Cayle took out his wallet and put ten one-rouble notes, which he’d changed at the Intourist Desk, in front of Maddox’s empty ice-cream plate, ‘Thanks for the dinner, Lennie. But you’re going to have to work a lot harder, even for five hundred dollars.’ He heard Maddox shout something after him, as he collected his anorak from the old woman at the door; but he got outside without anyone following him.
He took a deep icy breath and began to walk quickly away.
CHAPTER 4
At nine-thirty next morning, while Cayle was on his third coffee in his room, the phone rang. He lifted it and heard a croak: ‘Ck… Ck… Ck…’ Then the line went dead and he hung up. It rang thirty seconds later, and the same sound came again.
‘Hello,’ said Cayle. ‘Hello!’
‘Ck… Ck… Ck…’ Then again a click and silence.
He returned to his coffee, marvelling at a political system where telephones were tapped as a matter of routine, when half of them failed to work.
A couple of minutes later it went again. He let it go on ringing for several seconds before lifting the receiver, and then without answering.
‘C… C… Cayle? B… Barry Cayle?’
‘Speaking.’
‘Ph-Philby here. C-c-can you m-meet me this m-morning? Got a p-pen?’
Cayle grabbed one out of his jacket. ‘Right!’ he shouted into the receiver.
‘N-number Eighteen Dimitrievskaya Street, top floor, R-room 648. Got it? F-fine! S-see you at ten-thirty this morning.’
Cayle consulted the Moscow street-map which he’d bought in London — their being unobtainable in Russia — and found Dimitrievskaya Street leading off the river south of the Kremlin, just beyond the open-air swimming-baths.
He finished his breakfast, armed himself with a notebook and Press cards, and stuffed both tins of Whiskas into the side-pockets of his anorak. Outside it was a pale dry day, with a yellow sun hanging low over the skyline, and bone-chilling cold. His face was stiff even before he reached the taxi-rank at the corner of the hotel.
The driver already had the engine running and the heater on. They started off, across Red Square with the long queue shuffling like a black centipede into the Lenin Mausoleum; past the dark-red walls of the Kremlin and the twisted baubles of St Basil’s Cathedral, down to the river where lumps of brown ice bumped together like basking whales.
Dimitrievskaya Street consisted of two rows of featureless apartment blocks, each with a few naked saplings growing out of the frozen earth at its base. Number 18 had a low open doorway with concrete steps leading up onto a dark passage where a scarred old man in a muffler and overcoat sat in a concierge’s lodge behind a window with two broken panes. Cayle walked past him to the lift, pushed the top button, and clanked slowly upwards. The door opened and he stepped up against a short square man in a long coat and a flat cloth cap that was too small for him. He gave Cayle a dull stare, then turned and nodded towards a carpetless corridor lit by low-powered bulbs in wire cages. There was about half a dozen doors along each wall. At the end stood a second man, in an identical overcoat, but this time with a low-brimmed black fedora pulled down over his eyes.
The doors were brown flush wood with the numbers stencilled in grey. 648 was about half-way down. Cayle knocked, and the door was opened at once, although he saw no-one inside. He stepped through and found himself in what appeared to be an empty room.
The walls were bare and blotched with damp. There was a small double-glazed window with the outer panes grimy with frost. The only furniture was two deal chairs and a wooden table on which stood a couple of glasses and a litre bottle of vodka.
‘G-good morning, Mr Cayle.’
Cayle swung around. As he did so the door softly closed. Philby was standing behind it, where he had remained hidden when Cayle entered.
‘Sit d-down, w-won’t you? M-make yourself at home.’ Philby stepped forward and nodded at the two chairs. ‘I apologize for the décor, but it has been r-rather short notice.’
He was wearing a dark woollen shirt without a tie and a lumpy grey suit with leather patches on the elbows. The only item that might have betrayed him as a Westerner was a pair of thick-soled shiny suede chukka boots stained white with salt from the snow. In his left hand he carried a briefcase with the flap open.
He stopped a few feet from Cayle and added: ‘I haven’t the f-faintest idea who you are. But I must w-warn you. If you t-try anything, you won’t get as far as the lift.’
Cayle stared at him, trying not to smile. ‘For Christ’s sake, Mr Philby, I’m only a poor bloody journalist trying to do a job.’
‘Are you?’ Philby gave a small deprecating smile, then he lifted the flap of his briefcase and took out an automatic which he stood holding on his outstretched palm. To Cayle’s practised eye it looked freshly oiled, but not new.
He said: ‘I don’t want to get shot reaching for my pockets, but I’ve something to give you.’
‘You g-gave me something yesterday afternoon.’
‘I know, but that was by way of introduction. These are for your pussy-cats.’ He pulled the two tins of Whiskas from his anorak pocket and put them on the table next to the vodka bottle.
Philby stared at him for a moment, then dropped the gun back into the briefcase and laid it down against the table-leg. ‘Let’s have a d-drink. It’s not too early for you, is it?’
‘Is it ever too early in Moscow?’ said Cayle.
Philby sat down and began unpeeling the foil from the top
