The car arrived to the minute, and he was accorded an impressive ride into the ancient fortress of Russian power. Again the car’s headlamps were kept on high-beam; the traffic lights at all the street intersections began flashing red at their approach; and militiamen stood holding back pedestrians with their lighted batons. They reduced speed only on the ramp up to the great gate in the crenelated wall behind its row of fir trees.
The two red lights on either side of the gate turned to amber, and a guard with an automatic rifle slung across the front of his long greatcoat stepped down and carefully inspected their credentials, saluted and lifted a wall telephone. Instantly the twin lights turned to green and the iron gate swung soundlessly upwards like a drawbridge, then slid shut behind them as they drove into the blue glare of an arc-light. Two more guards, carrying only side-arms this time, appeared from inside a bullet-proof glass cubicle, studied the documents again, and a shrill bell began to ring.
It went on ringing as the car rumbled softly forward over a cobbled avenue, swept free of snow, between high walls of darkened windows, then into a courtyard ablaze with light and full of black official limousines, many of them with diplomatic number-plates.
The car stopped, the door was pulled open, and Pol stepped out into an unnatural stillness. Boots creaked on the cobbles, and a couple of plain-clothes men escorted him through a pair of massive folding doors, into a vestibule where he was relieved of his vicuna coat and astrakhan hat, then ushered through another pair of doors into a long hall full of formally dressed men and women gripping glasses of champagne and talking in undertones.
From Pol’s experience of Soviet Government receptions, he knew that protocol not only controlled the rank of guest, but also extended to standards of behaviour. Receptions given at Politburo level were always conducted with severe decorum — although lapses had been known. (Western Ambassadors had been insulted to their faces; top Government officials had tried to dance the Gopek; and on a recent notorious occasion a member of the Central Committee had goosed the wife of a senior Scandinavian diplomat.)
Pol saw at once that the reception in his honour rated only second billing. The Central Committee was not represented, and most Western countries had sent only their First Secretaries or Heads of Chancery. On such occasions, the pace tended to be set by members of the foreign Press corps; but it was early yet, and only the first tentative sips had been taken.
Pol succeeded finally in detaching himself from the row of formal greetings, and now made for the long white-covered table laden with regiments of bottles, plates of canapés, cream-layered cakes, caviar, fresh sturgeon, and giant pickled mushrooms. The most active of the waiters were elderly and discreetly efficient, like experienced croupiers, while behind them, standing like sentinels, stood rows of stocky pug-faced men in ill-fitting white jackets who rarely moved from their positions round the walls.
Pol noticed that as usual the women were conspicuously uninteresting, although it was clear that the Western wives had taken some trouble to paint and preen themselves. The guests themselves were mostly still congealed in self-segregated groups from the various diplomatic colonies: there were the familiar African faces, and little parties of awkward-looking men from other parts of the world huddled together sipping sweet gassy lemonade. There were no Chinese.
Pol spotted his own Embassy delegation at the far end of the hall, surrounded by Russian dignitaries. Since the function was in honour of a nominally French enterprise, the Ambassador was present, together with all heads of departments; but Pol, who held diplomats in only slightly less contempt than politicians and policemen, was in no hurry to grant them the pleasure of his company.
One of the older waiters handed him a glass of champagne, which he recognized as Georgian, but tolerably dry this time. He helped himself to a plate of sturgeon and a pool of shiny grey Beluga, while all around him his Russian hosts lurked in surreptitious groups of twos and threes, choosing the people they talked to with obvious caution. Pol estimated them to be junior functionaries, interpreters, and informers.
At a few minutes past eight the Ministers of Trade, Transport and Civil Aviation made their entrance, to an obsequious shuffling and bowing among the Soviet contingent. It was the signal for Pol to step reluctantly into the limelight.
The Press had been among the last arrivals, distinguished by the speed to which they helped themselves to drinks and the way they moved, with weary indifference, among the various groupings about the hall. Barry Cayle came in the company of one of the less reputable members of the Western Press corps, Frank Smollett, an angry little Irishman with red eyes and a beard like a hunk of shredded wheat.
Smollett was on his fourth cherry-vodka, and Cayle stood watching the guests, when there was a call for silence. A thin bespectacled man climbed on to the rostrum and began to speak into a microphone which at first failed to work. There were several whines and crackles, a piercing shriek, then a monotonous flow of Russian, followed by translations in French and English, to introduce the three Ministers. A burst of loud, indifferent applause followed, then came the speeches.
The journalists stealthily refilled their glasses, since even the older waiters were now immobile. The thin man on the rostrum was translating a peroration about increased Franco-Soviet cooperations in the field of trade and technology, when Cayle felt his pulse quicken with the dawning of great excitement. He was looking at the latest arrival to the
