said: ‘Built on the coast then?’
‘Still see quite a lot around Boston,’ she assured him. ‘Heard there are some in Providence, too.’
‘None around here?’
‘Oh sure,’ she said. ‘Litchfield. It’s the cutest place: colonially preserved. I guess they just copied the idea.’
The bubble ballooned and then popped. Yuri said: ‘And that’s close?’
‘Fifteen minutes, due south on the 202…’ She gestured through the window. ‘That way.’
‘Save me a journey to Boston, won’t it?’ said Yuri, turning to go and then stopping. ‘What’s the rock called all around here?’
‘Ledge,’ said the woman. ‘It’s granite really but it’s always been called ledge. No one knows why.’
‘You’ve been very helpful,’ thanked Yuri sincerely.
‘Like to buy a local guidebook?’ asked the woman, remembering her function.
‘I’d like very much to buy one of your guidebooks,’ said Yuri, in small but literal repayment.
His car was even pointing in the direction she’d indicated and Yuri got to Litchfield in ten, not fifteen minutes. It was cute and preserved, like she’d promised, a place of all-wooden houses painted in uniform white and set amid barbered lawns around a central grassed area. He thought it looked as if it were kept permanently under the protection of glass. He counted seven rooftop verandahs within a hundred yards of the pointed-roof church and found the tourist office in the middle of the central reservation. He bought the guidebook at once this time, from a waistcoated man with white hair and metal-framed spectacles, but asked about the township’s history without opening it. He heard about it being named, but wrongly, after a town in Staffordshire, in England, and listened patiently about someone called Tapping Reeve who’d opened the first law school ever to exist in America and of another academy that had been the first to provide higher education for women. Then the man pointed to a road he identified as North Street and said it was possible to see the house that had been occupied during the American War of Independence by Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge, who had been chief of intelligence for the American rebels. Who had been, finished the man, a friend of Nathan Hale, who had actually been hanged by the British for espionage. Complete, thought Yuri. Almost.
‘Does it have a school?’ he asked.
‘One of the best,’ assured the man. ‘Forman. Down that street, about three hundred yards. Can’t miss it.’
Yuri didn’t. The boy he recognized as Petr Levin from the photographs with which he had been provided in Moscow was the third to come out when school ended that day, lingering for a moment with a blonde girl and then entering a car in which the driver sat waiting. It was a Buick, blue this time.
The solitary waiting – and not knowing what he was waiting for – got on Willick’s nerves, and the second day he went through what he regarded as the ridiculous charade of lifting the telephone and asking to be allowed to go out of the apartment for a walk at least. The man said, simply, ‘No’, and put the telephone down, and when Willick tried to go out anyway he found that the gates leading from the courtyard were locked. When he turned the man who had earlier refused him was watching from a ground-floor doorway. He didn’t do or say anything and Willick slowly climbed the stairs back to his suite feeling like an admonished child.
A supply of Scotch was maintained and thin red wine was made available at midday and in the evening, and so Willick drank a lot. On the third day the alcohol stopped and when he asked for it the man, whom he’d first thought of as an attendant and now, properly, regarded as his guard, shook his head in refusal, not even bothering to talk this time. On the telephone Willick yelled for someone in charge to come to see him, but nobody did, not for a further four days.
‘Why am I being treated like a prisoner?’ Willick demanded the moment Belov entered the room.
‘Because it is necessary,’ said the American division chief.
‘Why?’
‘Some of the Western correspondents might have tried to find you: it is doubtful they would have succeeded but we had to take precautions.’
‘There’s still a lot of publicity about me?’
‘There was, for a few days. Not any longer.’
Willick felt disappointed. ‘I was impressive, at the conference though, wasn’t I?’
‘I told you so at the time.’
‘I can go out now?’
‘That’s what I’m here for,’ said Belov. He didn’t like the American and was glad this was the last occasion he’d have to deal with the man.
Willick trailed respectfully behind the Russian and in the courtyard smiled in some imagined triumph at the attendant who’d refused to let him out. Surprisingly, the man smiled back. The car was smaller than it had been on other occasions and Willick felt further disappointment. Belov sat pulled away in the far corner, looking out of the window, apparently uninterested in him, so Willick looked out too, conscious that everyone was bundled up against the weather and realizing he would have to get some thicker clothing. There was so much he had to do. They drove for what seemed a long way and Willick saw that the grandiose architecture of central Moscow was giving way to smaller buildings, a sprawl of suburbia.
‘Where are we going?’ asked the American.
‘Karacharovo.’
‘What is that?’
‘An area of Moscow.’
‘What’s there?’
‘Your home.’
‘My what!’
‘Your home,’ repeated the Russian.
‘But I thought…’ said Willick, foolishly twisting in his seat, as if the luxury building beyond the gated courtyard would still be visible, like Coney Island had been that day when they drove away.
The man beside him laughed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ he said. ‘Gorbachov himself doesn’t live in a place like that!’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Willick, weak-voiced.
‘We wanted you comfortable to perform a particular function, which you did,’ said Belov.
‘And now?’
‘You are being allocated an apartment of your own in a block at Karacharovo,’ disclosed Belov. ‘That in itself is a concession: housing is not easy in Moscow. Each day be ready at 8.30. A car will call for you: there are a lot of questions we need answering, upon the information you provided over the years.’
It was crumbling again, like it always did, thought the American desperately. ‘What happens after I’ve answered all your questions?’ he asked.
‘You will be allowed to attend school to learn Russian.’
‘How will I live? Money, I mean,’ said Willick.
‘A job will be found when you are considered qualified. There’ll be a pension, for what you’ve done in the past. And a salary when you start working. You really will be treated extremely well.’
The apartment was in an isolated block on what looked like the beginning of a new housing estate. A lot of side roads were unpaved, puddled and rutted, and a second block stood half finished, girders and metal rods sticking up like a giant rib cage. No one was working on it and the impression was of desolation. They had to balance on planking because the outside pavement was not completed and the area hollowed out for it was one huge, water-filled ditch. The elevator shaft was an empty, unprotected hole, but Willick’s flat was fortunately only on the second floor. Belov handed him a key, for the American to admit himself. In contrast to its outside appearance everything inside the apartment seemed old and worn. The scrap of carpet was threadbare and the seats of two chairs either side of a small dining table were greased by previous use. The kitchen led directly off. The stove was slimed and black and there were several rings grimed around the sink. There were further rings around the bath and the toilet and the similarly stained mirror over the handbasin was cracked so that it reflected a distorted image. The bedroom had a mirrored dresser, a small wardrobe and a narrow single bed, covered in thin, grey linen.
Willick turned, face twisted in disgust, and said: ‘I can’t live here!’
