There was a brisk discussion, then the woman doctor pulled off her mask and wrote something in a notebook, tearing off the page and giving it to the Aeroflot woman, who turned to Cayle and said, ‘I will send now for some medicine. You will please stay in this room. If you are not recovered by this afternoon, you will go to the hospital.’
‘What about my visa?’ he asked feebly.
‘You have visa valid how long?’
‘I have to leave the Soviet Union tonight.’
She nodded. ‘That will be arranged. Where is your passport?’
‘Still with Reception.’ He sat up, as the doctor and nurse started towards the door. ‘I don’t want any trouble over my visa when I get to the airport!’ he cried.
‘There will be no trouble,’ said the Aeroflot woman placidly. ‘You will be given the necessary extension until you are able to travel.’ She turned, unsmiling, and the three of them walked out and closed the door.
Cayle waited a full hour before venturing along to the lift and riding down to the marble Metro station under the hotel, where he was safely lost among the mass of travellers from every part of the USSR. He took a train to Sverdlova Square, in the city centre, and walked through driving snow up to the Hotel Intourist, rising behind the Bolshoi like a huge upturned mouthorgan.
The lobby was full of Western businessmen and the cool dry smell of air-conditioning. The girl at the reception desk had mauve fingernails and an American accent. Cayle asked for Room 1727. She lifted a white telephone, whispered into it, and said to Cayle, ‘Your name, please, sir?’
He told her, and she spoke again into the phone, then hung up. ‘The gentleman asks if you will meet him in the coffee-lounge. He’ll be down right away.’
Cayle thanked her and bought a copy of yesterday’s Morning Star, with most of the front page taken up with the threat of an engineering strike and a NATO build-up. Sir Roger Jameson-Clarke was squeezed into half an inch at the bottom of the inside page, under the headline, NO CLUES TO MISSING FO MAN. It was a straight agency story and added nothing to what Cayle had last read on leaving London.
He walked up the shallow open stairway to the coffee-lounge, and had just sat down at a corner table when a hand slapped him on the shoulder from behind. ‘Well, well, long time no see!’ Lennie Maddox sat down opposite and bared his gums in greeting. ‘I called you a couple o’ times, but they told me you’d gone back to the old country. Here for long?’ he added.
‘That depends.’
‘Depends on what?’
‘I think you know that, Lennie. One of your mates among the “Grey Men”. The one who can’t go back to his own country, because if he did they’d slam him in the clink for at least a hundred years. Unless someone killed him first, of course.’
‘Who’s been talking about killing him?’ said Maddox, pressing his knuckles against his damp chin.
‘Just an idle thought. We journalists have a bad habit of always wanting to write the stories that never happen.’
Maddox looked relieved. ‘By the way, how did you know I was here? You didn’t ring, did you?’
‘I came on spec, Lennie. Like I came back to Moscow on spec. I want to take you up on that deal.’
Maddox’s eyes flickered sideways. ‘One thousand dollars, US,’ he murmured.
‘It was five hundred last time,’ said Cayle.
‘That was last time, Barry. I’ve got some more info since then. Something really big — and soon.’
‘I’m not horse-trading any more,’ said Cayle. ‘I’m in a hurry, too. So let’s have a sample of what you’ve got,’
There was a pause. Lennie Maddox seemed to be having difficulty getting comfortable on his chair. When he spoke, his eyes had a dull worried look. ‘Listen, things are coming to a head. That aircraft deal I told you about — well, they’re holding a big reception for it tonight in the Kremlin. Pol’s going to be one of the guests of honour. All the international Press will be there — you too, no doubt?’ He looked expectantly at Cayle. ‘It’ll be a good chance for you to meet Pol,’ he added.
‘I’m not paying to meet Pol. I’m more interested in our other friend. The Grey One. I don’t suppose you’d find him at a Kremlin reception.’
‘Don’t worry!’ Maddox pushed his face right up to Cayle’s and whispered, ‘By tomorrow night I’ll have the full gen for you. You won’t be disappointed.’
‘Where and when do we meet?’
Maddox hesitated. ‘I don’t even know where you’re staying.’
‘The Aeroflot.’
Maddox looked at his watch. ‘I’ll call you there — between four and six tomorrow afternoon.’ He suddenly sounded anxious to leave. He stood up and Cayle said: ‘Anyway, I’ll probably see you tomorrow night in the Kremlin?’
Maddox stopped and gave a cheerless laugh. ‘At a diplomatic reception? You must be joking! Or else you don’t know much about dips. Hardly my social scene, old boy.’ He waved. ‘Till tomorrow evening — okay?’
‘Okay,’ said Cayle; and he watched Maddox scuttle across the floor with his rusty head tilted to one side.
Some moments later a waitress sauntered across to take Cayle’s order.
Charles Pol returned to his suite in the Hotel Intourist at just after five that evening. He bathed luxuriously with a tumbler of Johnny Walker Black Label at his elbow; shaved and trimmed his goatee; sprinkled himself with Eau Sauvage; and with the help of a hand-mirror arranged his remaining hair in an intricate spiral round the crown of his egg-shaped skull, signing it off with the black comma of kiss-curl across his forehead. He then dressed in an outsize suit of white slub-silk over a lace-frilled shirt and bold floral tie; and
