‘I went to Langley a couple of times,’ he said finally.
‘I thought you would.’
‘Talked about a lot of things.’
‘Like what?’ she said, suddenly attentive.
‘They’ve asked me to stay on.’
‘They’ve what?’ The question was asked quietly, the voice neutral, someone who thought they’d misheard.
‘Stay on, after the normal three years,’ said Blair. He knew he hadn’t done it right and so he hurriedly continued, trying to improve, enumerating all the concessions and the promises, wanting her to see how much to their advantage it would be.
‘You mean you’ve already agreed!’ The outrage was there now, the anger rising.
‘They wanted a decision on the spot.’
‘Without discussing it with me! Asking me how I felt!’
‘That wasn’t possible. You know that.’
‘And you know how I feel about this fucking place! How I hate and loathe it.’
‘Because you haven’t given it a chance.’
‘I’ve given it two years!’ she shouted. ‘Two years that have been like a fucking prison sentence.’
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Blair hadn’t expected her to welcome the decision but he hadn’t anticipated this sort of tirade, either.
It was a valid question, Ann accepted. She was angry – furious – but mixed up in the emotion was her own guilt and embarrassment and feeling of being a whore: being able to shout at him as if everything were his fault slightly lessened it all. Only very slightly. ‘What sort of question is that?’ she said, in controlled rage. ‘You know damned well how I hate it here. How I’ve always hated it. How I’ve been counting off the days and the weeks and the months – like a prison sentence – and hardly been able to wait until the time was up and we could be released…’ She laughed, a jeering sound. ‘That was actually the first word that came into my head, believe me,’ she said. ‘Released.’
Blair sat silent under the onslaught. He had misunderstood. He’d had some idea of her unhappiness but not that it was as bad as this. Not the obvious, bulging-eyed, nostril-flared hatred. Or had he? Hadn’t he known it all along and chosen to ignore or minimise it? Wasn’t it another cop out, like it had been with the boys, a refusal to let anything interfere with what he, Eddie Blair, ultimately wanted to happen? ‘It might not be any longer than three years,’ he said, in an attempt at recovery, remembering the search for his own reassurances. ‘You know the uncertainty that exists here. That’s why they want me to stay. If the leadership is settled we’d hold the aces and the kings…’ Abandoning the aircraft resolution, he said, ‘And you get to choose. Wherever you want, we’ll go.’
‘Christ!’ said Ann, striding without direction around the room. ‘I can’t believe it! I just can’t believe it! What if everything isn’t settled? We could be stuck here for years…’
‘No,’ said Blair, at once. ‘I made that clear. It’s not an open ticket.’
She stopped abruptly in front of him, staring down. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘So how long? How long if it’s not an open ticket?’
‘Not more than another three years,’ promised Blair, the first figure that came into his head.
‘Three years!’ echoed Ann, the outrage flooding back. ‘You mean you expect me to stay here for another three fucking years?’
‘No,’ said Blair, his own temper finally giving way. ‘I don’t expect you to stay here for another three fucking years. If Moscow and your dislike of it – OK, your hatred of it – is the biggest thing in your life then I don’t expect you to stay.’
His reaction quietened her at once, the thrust striking the rawest and most exposed nerve. She felt her face burn red and hoped Blair would believe it was her anger. ‘You’re telling me to get out?’ she demanded.
‘No,’ he said. ‘And you know I’m not. I love you and I want you to stay. It’s for you to decide whether you love me enough to stay.’
He sat, waiting. For several moments she stared down at him and then she burst into tears.
Brinkman responsed at once to Blair’s invitation, knowing of course that the American wanted an update on anything that had happened while he’d been away and hoping he might get a lead to what Blair had been doing from the man’s questions. Because it was Blair’s invitation, the meeting was at the American embassy, at their usual table in the cafeteria. Brinkman felt the briefest spurt of embarrassment at the moment of shaking hands but almost at once it went. Private life was private life but this was business and quite separate. If that made him a cunt – if cuckolding Blair made him a cunt – then OK, he was a cunt. Successful men often were.
There was the customary shadow boxing, the inconsequential smalltalk and then realistic enough to know he wouldn’t get anything unless he gave something, Blair said, ‘May be staying here longer than I planned.’
‘What?’ said Brinkman.
‘Been asked to extend. Feeling is that the current leadership uncertainty makes this an important place to be.’
Bollocks, thought Brinkman. They’d discussed the leadership a dozen times. Blair’s disclosure about extending meant he was on to something but he was bloody sure it wasn’t on something as unfocussed as leadership interpretation. They’d interpreted that already, both of them. Was the suspicion true? Did Blair have a source, buried deep? ‘How long for?’
‘No specified time.’
How would Ann react to that? he thought suddenly. Private, he thought, quickly shutting the door. Deciding he wouldn’t get anything by direct questioning, Brinkman tried to offer something that had occurred – professionally – while the man had been away, discomfited at once because he knew the gesture was pointless because bugger all had happened. Chebrakin had appeared publicly ahead of Serada at a photographed session of the Central Committee – which confirmed what they already guessed – and there had been increasing criticism in Pravda of food shortages, which was a rare admission but an indication that someone was soon publicly to be blamed for them.
‘Not much then,’ discerned Blair, when Brinkman finished.
‘Not really,’ conceded Brinkman. ‘Still not the slightest indication of what’s happening beyond Chebrakin.’
‘That’s the kicker,’ said Blair. ‘That’s what everybody wants to know.’
And Blair did, decided Brinkman. Somehow – he didn’t know how – Blair had a lead on what the other moves were and that’s why he’d been recalled to Washington. But that wouldn’t have been enough, to be recalled. That could have been covered in a normal cable. Something about the leadership but important enough to go back to Washington personally to discuss it. But what? What in the name of Christ was it?
‘Thanks, incidentally, for looking after Ann while I was away,’ said Blair.
Brinkman met the American’s gaze across the table. ‘I enjoyed doing it,’ he said easily.
Two days later Serada was removed from the Politburo and the leadership of the Soviet Union. Anatoli Chebrakin was named as successor.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ann telephoned him at the embassy, which she hadn’t done before, and Brinkman was momentarily irritated because it blurred the divisions he’d created. And then he accepted divisions were an infantile effort on his part somehow to ease his conscience and that there couldn’t be any divide.
‘I’ve got to see you,’ she announced.
‘That’s not going to be easy any more, is it?’
‘Do you know what’s happened?’
‘Yes’, said Brinkman. ‘And we shouldn’t be talking on an open line.’
‘Damn an open line!’
‘I’ll try to think of something.’
‘I want to see you now! We had the most terrible row.’
