woman jerked back, as if she had been physically slapped, and despite the gloom the fear was immediately visible, not just in her face but in her eyes. It was the first time Yuri had witnessed the reaction of an ordinary Russian to the KGB. It was unsettling.
‘I knew you’d come. Said so,’ stammered the woman. ‘Knew it would happen.’
‘Natalia Yevgennova?’ repeated Yuri.
The old lady stood back, saying nothing more, and Yuri walked past her into the apartment: the outside smells seemed to follow him in. The girl whose features he had earlier studied stood in the middle of the main room, hand up to her face, knuckles against her teeth. The spectacles appeared thinner-lensed than in the photograph and her eyes were red beyond, but she was not squinting.
‘What is going to happen to me?’ Natalia said. Her voice was cracked, difficult to hear from behind her hand.
While Yuri was searching for some response, the old woman’s voice came from behind. She said: ‘When do we have to get out?’ and Yuri partially understood their apprehension.
He said: ‘I am not here about the apartment.’ It was minimally but comfortably furnished, he saw, and the impression of the outside smells had been mistaken. It was clean and there were flowers, in two separate vases. On a side table and a ledge that ran the length of one wall there were four separate photographs of Yevgennie and Galina Levin – in one of which they appeared dressed as he’d so recently seen his parents dressed, for the ceremony at the Hall of Weddings – and two of the boy, Petr. In both of them Petr was wearing American-style clothes and was clearly older than the official file picture.
‘We’re not being expelled?’ It was the old woman again, distrustful and suspicious.
‘Not by me,’ assured Yuri. Why hadn’t they been? he wondered, focusing on their concern. Yevgennie Levin was a traitor who had betrayed his country. Basic though it was, this was still a favoured apartment – and unshared, so therefore further favoured – and Yuri would have expected the privilege to have been withdrawn.
‘When?’ persisted the woman.
Yuri realized the supposed positions were reversed: he was being interrogated instead of interrogating. He remembered the reaction at the door and decided he did not want to be cast as an interrogator. These two had done nothing wrong. Ignoring the question, he said to Natalia: ‘I want to talk about your father.’
‘I am being allowed to go to America!’ The girl’s hand came away from her face, abruptly relaxing into a tentative, hopeful smile.
Levin’s apparently confident hope and Natalia’s seeming expectation to be allowed to leave the Soviet Union had been one of the first points to register with Yuri when he read the letters. Wanting to move the exchange on to his terms, he avoided the direct answer and said: ‘It is under consideration. We have to talk first.’
‘What about?’ asked the girl, the smile leaking away.
‘I want to know what it was like when you were in New York.’
‘Like?’
‘Where did you live?’ asked Yuri, who knew anyway but wanted to conceal the real question. ‘What did you do? What friends did you have?’
Natalia frowned and Yuri hoped she was as confused as he wanted her to be. She said: ‘We lived at Riverdale, of course. Everyone does.’
‘You went to school there?’
The girl shook her head. ‘The Soviet mission academy.’
‘What about friends?’
‘Of course I had friends.’
‘What sort of friends? Russian friends? Or other friends?’
‘Russian friends.’
‘Only Russian?’
‘Yes: that’s the way it is. The way it has to be.’
‘No others? American perhaps?’ Natalia’s face had closed against him in uncertain suspicion, Yuri saw.
‘No others,’ said the girl.
The old woman came by him at last, going supportively to the girl’s side. Uninvited Yuri sat in the chair he guessed to be the old woman’s because it was in the dominant place in the room, a place he needed now to occupy. ‘Sit down,’ he said to both of them, an order rather than an invitation. He was not enjoying the part of a bully, either. They hesitated and then did as they were told. Yuri said: ‘What about your parents? What sort of friends did they have?’
Yuri saw a further tightening of her face and guessed she had not been confused at all. ‘The same,’ she said.
‘No Americans?’
‘No.’
He would have to bully further, Yuri realized uncomfortably. He said: ‘You realize, don’t you, that the possibility of your being allowed to go to America… your being allowed to remain here, in this apartment, depends upon you cooperating?’
Natalia’s eyes filmed and Yuri thought she was going to cry, and gripped his hands against her doing so. She didn’t but he knew it had been close. Natalia said: ‘Yes, I realize that.’
‘You never saw your father with an American?’
‘Never.’
‘Overheard any conversation, between your mother and your father about any Americans?’
‘No.’
The conversation had gone into a cul-de-sac, Yuri accepted. He said: ‘Tell me about your operation.’
The girl hesitated, unsure how to respond. Then she said: ‘I had a cornea deformation, from the time I was born. The specialists said it could be corrected when I was old enough.’
This could be a useful direction, gauged Malik. He said: ‘So it was planned, for a long time?’
‘Yes.’
‘To be carried out now? Or was the date suddenly given to you from the Moscow clinic?’
‘There was about six weeks’ notice,’ said the girl.
‘What did your father say?’
Natalia looked quizzically at him. ‘That I had to have it done: that it was what we had been waiting for!’
‘He was anxious for you to have it done?’
‘Very anxious.’
Yuri was reluctant to ask the question but knew it was necessary. Prepared for her reaction from what he’d read in the letters, he said: ‘Your father loves you?’
This time she did start to cry, tears building up and then bursting by her glasses. Very carefully she removed them, tried to dry her eyes and then just as gently replaced them. Unevenly she said: ‘Of course he loves me.’
‘What did you think, when you learned he had defected?’
‘I couldn’t understand it. I still can’t understand it.’
Neither could he, decided Yuri. He didn’t doubt the affection in the letters or what she had just said, about love. Which made it inconceivable that Levin would have moved with her out of the country, beyond reach. So six weeks prior to the provable date of her operation, the man had not intended to cross. Yuri wondered if it had any significance. ‘What have you come to think since?’
‘I haven’t,’ mumbled Natalia. Her lips quivered. She made a determined effort at control and said: ‘Will I be able to join them?’
Another imponderable, isolated Yuri: like their being allowed to maintain this apartment. And the constant references in the letters to their being reunited, which this girl clearly expected. What made Levin imagine it could – or would – happen? Unable to answer the girl’s question, Yuri said: ‘That is being decided.’
‘How soon?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Yuri. Before there was the chance of another demand from her, he said: ‘Did you like America?’
‘It was different,’ said Natalia, imagining he had the power of letting her leave or not and anxious against any offence.
‘What about your father?’
