advocate, in fact. But to limit their contact and association. Panchenko had been useful this time and doubtless would be again but it would be wrong for the man to imagine any permanent situation. Kazin had not enjoyed having so openly to concede the dependence.
‘You know you’re telling me to kill a First Chief Deputy of the KGB, don’t you?’ said Panchenko.
Kazin shook his head across the tiny pavilion at the security chief, inwardly contemptuous of the man’s almost catatonic demeanour. Most definitely limited contact in future, he thought. He said: ‘I’m telling you how to save yourself from destruction. How to save us both.’
Panchenko, who had feared the other man might become suspicious at the almost awkward repositioning when he’d shifted in the cold, decided he had been wise to equip himself with the sound equipment and the directional body microphone to record everything that had been said between himself and Kazin. He tried to think if there were anything he had failed to manipulate on to the tape and decided there wasn’t. He said, finally for the benefit of the recording: ‘I obey your orders, Comrade First Chief Deputy.’
Natalia’s maternal grandmother lived on the outskirts of Mytishchi, in a forever stretching development of identical high-rise after identical high-rise. It was a neglected estate. The elevators were invariably broken and the smell along the therefore necessary stairways, cavernous by design and dark from the further neglect of unreplaced bulbs, was of sour damp and even sourer cooking. But it was an unshared apartment and therefore luxurious by Soviet standards and so from the moment of Levin’s defection the old woman and the girl had lived in daily apprehension of eviction. So when the official envelope was delivered both were initially too terrified to open it, staring fearfully at it on the table between them, as if in some way it were contaminated. It was Natalia who moved at last, the bravery of youth coming slightly ahead of the resignation of age, and when she read its contents the girl’s bewilderment deepened.
‘I can write,’ she announced simply. ‘The Foreign Ministry are permitting us to exchange letters.’
‘Nothing about having to get out?’ demanded the old woman, unimpressed and still suspicious.
‘Nothing.’
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ she insisted. ‘Retribution is always exacted against the families of traitors.’
Natalia winced at the word but didn’t challenge it. She said: ‘Being able to write is practically a favour.’
‘It is a favour,’ insisted the old woman. ‘That’s what doesn’t make sense.’
Natalia sat for a long time, paper and pen untouched before her, trying to envision an ordinary sort of letter and then decided that nothing she wrote could be ordinary and that it was ludicrous trying to formulate any normal sort of correspondence. At last, almost impulsively, she snatched up the pen, scribbling hurriedly.
‘My Darling Mamma and Papa and Petr,’ she wrote, lower lip trapped between her teeth, ‘I love you so much and thought you loved me and so I cannot understand why you have abandoned me…’
Inya suggested the United Nations Plaza, because it was the hotel closest to the UN building from which it got its name and because, she said, it epitomized the glamour and glitter of New York. Yuri agreed, really uncaring at the choice. When they settled in the cocktail bar, he decided it was well chosen anyway.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘Very glitzy,’ said Yuri. It was a new word he was trying out.
‘Very much New York?’
‘Very much New York,’ he agreed. She really did have a spectacular body. So why wasn’t he more interested than he was?
‘I have a question,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘You are Russian?’
‘You know I am.’
The woman giggled and said archly: ‘No, it’s ridiculous.’
Yuri thought it was, too, but was curious at his irritation. This was seduction coquettishness, the familiar pre-mating ritual, and before he’d always accepted its necessity without impatience. So what was different this time? Forcing himself into the expected response he said: ‘Go on: what is it?’
Inya sniggered again. ‘You know what they say about Russians, at the United Nations?’
‘What?’ he asked expectantly.
‘That you’re all spies!’
She put her hand to her mouth, as if shocked by her own outrageousness, and Yuri hoped it was all worthwhile when they finally got to bed. It was, he reflected, still a useful test of sorts: not so many weeks – even days – ago a challenge like this would have tightened him like a spring. Tonight he just smiled back at the woman, quite unworried. He said: ‘Do they?’
‘So are you?’
Was there an aphrodisiac for her in the knowledge? Yuri said: ‘Of course I am. Everyone knows that!’
‘Now you’re mocking me!’
He pointed towards the olive in her drink and said: ‘That’s a bug recording everything we say.’
‘You are mocking me!’
‘I’m telling you the truth,’ said Yuri. ‘All Russians are spies and we’ve got snow permanently on our boots and we eat children and we can hardly wait to press all those red buttons to launch the missiles at America. The only reason we haven’t fired them already is that we’ve got so many they’d all collide with each other and explode over Minsk.’
Inya laughed, genuinely enjoying herself, and said: ‘OK, so I apologize. You’re not a spy. I was curious, though, that you seemed to have more freedom than a lot of other Soviets in the building.’
Yuri experienced a slight stir of unease, wondering at the extent of the talk about him. He said: ‘Can’t you guess the reason?’
‘What?’
‘I’m so unimportant I’m not worth worrying about.’
‘I don’t think you unimportant,’ said Inya heavily, moving on to another part of the ritual.
‘I don’t think you are, either,’ said Yuri, another matching response.
Yuri guessed she expected to go at that moment but although he was impatient with this untouching foreplay he found himself strangely – inexplicably – reluctant to move on to what was the purpose of their being together anyway. Conscious of her surprise he suggested they remain in the bar, which really did epitomize the glamour of New York, like the staggering view of the Manhattan skyline from the River Cafe. Yuri wondered what Caroline Dixon was doing at that moment. And with whom. He forced the conversation and the lightness, making Inya laugh at least, and insisted on a further drink, aware as he did so of her curiosity.
She lived downtown, so he’d booked at Harvey’s, and as the cab took them there Yuri thought of the last time he’d travelled in this direction and with whom. Throughout the meal Yuri feigned interest in her stories of Scandinavia and United Nations gossip – concentrating momentarily to isolate the hint to pass on to Granov that Smallbone, the head of their section, had homosexual inclinations – and felt another positive reluctance when he could not any longer delay their leaving.
Inya had a loft on a secluded street near Gramercy Park and so they walked. As they set out Inya slipped her arm through his and Yuri was given another reminder of another time.
Her room was high, with a view of the river, and decorated and furnished in stark Scandinavian attractiveness, contrasting blacks and whites and light furniture and a lot of space. Yuri was later to realize how hard she tried. She served chilled aquavit and put a soft jazz combo on a player, and when he kissed her – the ritual continuing – she came back at once, actually leading, which until this moment Yuri had always found arousing. Her body was as lithely exciting as he had imagined it would be and her breasts wonderful. She knew and tried every lovemaking trick and technique and throughout it all he remained limp and flaccid. He brought her off, of course, with his hand and tongue but he knew she had expected more, like he had of himself.
‘You do not like me?’
‘Of course I do,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’m not attractive?’
‘You’re beautiful.’
‘Why then?’
‘Drink,’ he lied. ‘Too much to drink.’ Would Caroline be with her three-buttoned advertising executive, he wondered.
