CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“I remember an American couple I met last year, when I was on vacation with a girlfriend over in Connemara on the Irish Atlantic coast. Nice looker, too: used to model flimsy knickers and things—you know, the kind you see on the posters in the tube stations. . . . Anyway this couple—a carpenter of some kind and his wife, they were, from Michigan—had bought a porcelain figurine, you see, that they’d found in some little antique shop in a fishing village they’d driven through. It was rather attractive, I must say—two leprechauns with long pipes and evil grins, hatching mischief over jugs of grog. It could easily have been a hundred years old or more. . . .”
“Jeremy,” from the British Special Intelligence Service, paused to smile at the recollection as he sat between the two women in the rear seat of the London taxicab. He was suave, urbane, smooth-shaven, wavy-haired, and nattily dressed in a dark three-piece suit with a buttonhole carnation. His speech and manner evoked something of an image that Barbara thought had gone out of style with tailcoats and dreadnoughts.
He continued, “Well, this figurine had an inscription round the base in Gaelic which had been intriguing them for days, but nobody they’d met had been able to translate it for them. But Gaelic poetry was something I used to dabble in, back at university. Would you have believed I’d decided to try and become a playwright, years ago? I actually got a couple of things staged, too—the usual provincial kind of thing, you know.”
“So what did it say?” Sylvia asked from his other side. She was also from SIS, and had been carefully picked for the job because of her tall, lean build, tapering face, and black, shoulder-length hair. She was wearing a navy two-piece costume with polka-dot scarf and trim, white shoes and matching purse, a floppy white hat, and carrying a lightweight pastel-blue shoulder wrap over her arm.
“That was the funny part,” Jeremy said. “You see, it said, ha-ha . . . it said, ‘Made in Taiwan.’ “
Barbara smiled and looked away at the crowd thronging the sidewalk on Oxford Street, a few hundred yards east from Marble Arch. It was well into July, and the summer sun and blue skies had brought out the colors on the London streets: the shirts and dresses of the tourists and late-morning shoppers, the seasonal offerings in the windows of the fashion houses, and riotous displays of orchids, roses, and lilies on the carts of streetcorner flower vendors. There were couples old and young, some arm in arm, some with children; businessmen strolling to lunch, jackets slung over their shoulders, women in colored slacks and bright summer dresses; two Arabs studying a painting in one of the shop windows; an Indian in a turban, munching an ice-cream cone. Just ordinary people, wanting nothing more than to be left alone.
Barbara liked watching people minding their own business. It summed up her outlook on life, as she’d said to Foleda. She thought it a pity that so many people were incapable of doing likewise. And always the wrong people. For invariably, it seemed, it was those of mediocre talents but inflated ambitions, with no affairs of their own worth minding, who meddled the most in other people’s. So the people most likely to end up making decisions about other people’s lives were usually the last ones anyone would want doing the job. Although she worked for a government, privately she thought they were not unlike germs: the only thing anyone really needed them for was to protect themselves from other people’s.
The cab crossed the end of Baker Street, and Jeremy glanced at his watch. They were exactly on time. The driver slowed down and cruised for a block. A woman was waiting on the corner of Duke Street. She was tall and lean, with a tapering face, black shoulder-length hair, and wearing a navy two-piece costume with polka-dot scarf and trim, white shoes and purse, a floppy hat, and carrying a light-weight pastel-blue shoulder wrap. “That’s her, Freddie,” Jeremy said, pointing. The woman was looking at the taxi-cabs in the oncoming traffic. She saw the yellow-bound notebook wedged on top of the dashboard inside the windshield and raised her arm. The cab pulled over, and she climbed in, seating herself next to Sylvia, who was on the curb side. Because of the tinted rear windows and the high upright back with just a tiny window in the center that London taxis had, it would not be apparent to anyone watching that it was already occupied. The woman would seem to have simply hailed a cab and climbed in.
“Gawd, it’s ‘er twin sister!” Freddie chirped.
“Just drive, there’s a good fellow,” Jeremy said. He closed the driver’s partition, and they pulled back out into the traffic.
“This is Anita Dorkas,” Jeremy said to Barbara. “Anita, this is the American who wants to talk to you. Don’t worry about this other person. She’s you, as you’ve probably gathered already, so there’s nothing I can tell you about her. So how are things? Do you still have the afternoon free?”
Anita nodded. “I need to be back at the embassy by five, though.” She spoke English competently, though her Russian accent was distinctive. “I’m pleased to meet you,” she said to Barbara.
“Me, also.”
“Did you arrive in England this morning?” Anita asked.
“Nobody said I’d just come here from anywhere,” Barbara pointed out. “Only that I’m American.”
“Incurably Russian and suspicious,” Jeremy said breezily. “She fishes compulsively.”
Sylvia was scrutinizing Anita carefully, from her hat down to her shoes. “Tch, tch. You’re not wearing lipstick,” she said reproachfully.
Anita raised a hand to her mouth involuntarily. “I forgot. I’m sorry—I hardly ever use it.”
“Terrible capitalist muck, anyway,” Jeremy remarked.
Sylvia produced a handkerchief and mirror from her purse, moistened the handkerchief with her tongue, and wiped her own lips clean. “How’s that?”
Jeremy looked her up and down, then Anita, and nodded. “Splendid. Two peas in a pod.”
They made a right into New Bond Street, followed it down to Picadilly, and there turned left to head toward the Circus. Jeremy slid the partition open again. “Here’ll do, Freddie.” The cab pulled over and stopped. Sylvia squeezed by in front of Anita’s knees to open the door and climb out. She paid Freddie the fare and added a tip, then strolled along the sidewalk for a few yards before stopping to admire a diorama of the South Seas in a travel agent’s window. A half block back along the street, the thickset man in the felt hat and baggy blue suit, who had gotten out of another cab following a few cars behind, stopped in a doorway and studied his newspaper. After a few seconds Sylvia began moving again, and so did he. By that time the cab carrying Barbara, Anita, and Jeremy was already lost in the traffic and on its way to a hotel near Regent’s Park, where a suite had been reserved. Meanwhile Sylvia had a slow, solitary but relaxing afternoon ahead of her, leading her tail, whom she had already spotted, around the circuit that Anita had memorized: window shopping along Picadilly and Regent Street, lunch in Leicester Square, a visit to the National Gallery, and then a walk across St. James’s Park and coffee over a magazine in a boulevard cafe near Victoria Station before the rendezvous in Buckingham Palace Road to work the switch back again. And she was getting paid for it. There could be worse ways of making a living, she supposed.
Barbara stuck her head through into the bedroom of the hotel suite. “Don’t hang up. Anita wants milk, not cream, for the coffee,” she told Jeremy, who was sitting propped on the bed with his back against a stack of pillows and his legs stretched out in front of him. His jacket and shoulder strap with holster containing a .38 were draped over the back of a chair, and he was holding a book lying open on his lap.
He addressed the viphone by the bed, which was switched to voice only and at that moment connected to room service. “Oh, one moment. Could we have some milk as well as cream for the coffee, please?” He glanced at Barbara. “Is that it?” She nodded. “That will be all, thank you.”
“Thank you, sir,” a dignified voice acknowledged from a grille in the unit. “It will be about fifteen minutes.” The voice signed itself off with a click.
“Everything going all right?” Jeremy asked.
“Better than we hoped,” Barbara said.
“Good-o. The firm likes to please, you know.” Jeremy settled himself back more comfortably and returned his attention to his book.
Barbara turned from the doorway and walked back across the lounge to where Anita was sitting in one of the two easy chairs at the table by the window. The view outside was a rolling green sea of Regent’s Park treetops, with the buildings of the zoological gardens visible above like white cliffs in the distance. Anita resumed talking as Barbara sat down.
“It was a difficult decision in many ways, but I came to the conclusion that there are basic human values that have to come before patriotism. Certainly that’s true if one defines loyalty to the present Soviet regime as patriotism. But that isn’t how we see it. Before 1917, Russia was socially and politically backward compared to Western Europe, I admit, but when you allow for the effect of a czar who was living in a different age and an emotionally unbalanced empress, it was making tremendous strides to catch up. Russia was starting to assert itself as a modern state. The charade of archaic pomp, royal courts, and fairy-tale palaces was played out. Nothing could stop the tides of industry and trade that were sweeping Russia into the twentieth century. The uprising in March was the voice of the real Russia. That was the direction that it should have kept going in. What happened in November was all wrong, an aberration. That is what has to be undone. At the time of the Revolution, Maxim Gorky—and he was no lover of czarism—warned the people not to destroy the palaces and treasures of the old order, because those things represented a cultural heritage that would continue to grow in the new Russia. But instead, it was stunted. What we have seen in the last hundred years is a cancer of barren political dogma and mindless slogans that has suppressed culture. That is what we are committed to ending. Our loyalty is to the Russia that should have been, and which will be one day.”
Anita sat on the edge of her chair, polite, but at the same time tense and unsmiling. Her face, though at first sight attractive in proportion and line, revealed an undertone of pallor and tiredness in the daylight by the window which seemed to accentuate the spareness of her frame. Barbara’s impression was of someone very serious and very dedicated, for whom one ideal had come to dominate all other considerations in life. Her instinct was to accept Anita as being what she claimed to be—but, of course, something more substantial than that would be needed eventually.
“What I wanted to ask you about was something else,” Barbara said. “It goes back a number of years, now. Your former husband, Igor. What can you tell me about him?” She watched Anita’s face but was unable to detect an immediate reaction that hinted either of aversion, lingering affection, or any other emotion.
“A lot of things,” Anita replied. “What would you like to know?”
“You don’t seem surprised or curious about why we should be interested in him.”
“Nothing surprises me anymore. I’m sure you have your reasons.”
“You were a member of the Friday Club as long as eight years ago,” Barbara said, making it a matter-of-fact statement rather than a question.
“Yes.”
“And other affiliated groups before that.” That was a guess, but worth a stab.
“Yes,” Anita answered.
“What kinds of activities were you involved in back then?”
“Is this really necessary? I’ve been through this over and over with the British. Don’t you people talk to each other? I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that we have limited time. My understanding was that you considered this meeting to be very important. I would like to make it as useful as possible.”
Barbara conceded the point with a nod. “Tell me, then, was your husband also involved in the dissident movement? Did you work together? How close were his views to the ones you expressed a few minutes ago?”
“We were in Sevastopol then. He was working on submarine communications,” Anita said distantly. “Then we moved to Moscow. He was made a professor at the university.”
“Yes, I have seen his chronological record.”
A pigeon alighted on the sill outside the window. It strutted a few steps with its chest pouting and its head extending and retracting like that of a comical clockwork toy, then stopped and cocked an eye to peer in through a pane for a couple of seconds. Then it flew away. “He was one of us,” Anita said. “He lived for the same cause. But he was never as passionate about it as some of them were. Maybe it had something to do with his being a scientist. Or maybe he became a scientist because he was that way to begin with. . . . But he was always more unexcitable and analytical. And very patient. He could have waited a hundred years for the system to change.”
“Does that mean he might still be actively involved?” Barbara asked.
“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” Anita said without hesitation. “He’s not the kind to be easily changed.”
“Do you know where he is now?”
“The last I heard was that he’d moved to Siberia, some kind of scientific establishment somewhere—but that was several years ago now.”
“You haven’t kept in touch since you separated?”
“No.”
Barbara looked surprised. “I’d have thought you work would have required it.”
Anita hesitated, then said, “My marriage to Enriko—my present husband—was a very fortunate occurrence for our group. As you can see, it provides opportunities for extending our contacts and gaining overseas support. It seemed better, in order not to risk jeopardizing such a stroke of good luck, to cut my connections with the past.” The explanation didn’t stand up. If Dyashkin were ever exposed by the KGB, his ex-wife would automatically be on the suspect list regardless of whether she stayed in touch with him or not. That Anita’s marriage to a KGB officer had been allowed to go through said, as clearly as anything could, that so far Dyashkin had managed to stay clean. Barbara stared back and said nothing.
Anita became agitated and reached for her purse, which she had set down by the window. She rummaged inside and took out a box of pills. Barbara picked up the jug of fruit juice from the tray standing on the table by the recorder taping the conversation, filled one of the glasses, and held it out. Anita took one of the pills and recomposed herself. “There was more to it than that,” she said. “Igor always had an eye for women—maybe you already know that. They responded to him, too, even though he never said very much. He had a way of radiating an aura of . . . well, call it mystery, or dominance, if you will. You know the kind of thing.”
Barbara smiled and tried to look encouraging. “Sure. Who hasn’t met a few like that?”
Anita went on, “Perhaps our getting married was a mistake. Igor was a brilliant man. Sometimes I felt I couldn’t provide the amount of intellectual stimulation he needed. He was in the Navy when we met, and for a time things seemed to go all right. But after he got his doctorate and we began meeting more academic kinds of people . . .” Anita drained the rest of the glass of juice. “One of his affairs became serious. Of course, the woman was also a scientist—a nuclear expert of some kind. I met her a few times. A very spirited woman. Her hair was the most noticeable thing. Like fire. Yellowy red, almost orange.”
“Can you tell me her name?” Barbara asked.
“Oshkadov. Olga Oshkadov.”
“Where was she from?”
“I don’t know. But she worked at the science city, Novosibirsk.”
“I see. Go on.”
Anita shrugged. “There isn’t really a lot more to tell. He was adamant that he wanted to separate. Because of our underground activities, however, we both saw that it was in our interests not to quarrel or get emotional about the situation. He agreed to a generous settlement financially to smooth things over. I have no complaints, really.”
“Was Olga also a dissident?”
“I don’t know. If she was, I was never told. But then, you’ll appreciate that we were hardly in the habit of publicizing such matters.”
Barbara nodded. “And your present marriage to Enriko. Would you say it was, well . . .”
“How far does affection enter into it?” Anita shook her head and smiled humorlessly. “Oh, there’s no need to worry about that. I’ve had my share of those kinds of delusions. Now only the cause matters to me. Enriko means nothing. This time it’s purely a matter of expedience—an opportunity that was too good not to seize.”
There was a tap on the door. Jeremy ambled out of the bedroom and opened it to admit a waiter with a cart loaded with plates, silver dishes, and pots. “Oh, jolly good. Just leave it there, would you? Here, buy yourself a drink on us.”
“Thank you very much, sir.” The waiter left.
“Just one last thing,” Barbara said.
Anita looked at her. “Yes?”
“Were you or your husband ever involved with a group known as the Committee for Freedom and Dignity?”
Anita looked puzzled. “No.”
“You didn’t deal with a person who went by the name of ‘Tortoise’?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
Anita shook her head. “I’ve never heard of either of them. Who are they?”
“You really don’t know?”
“No. . . . Can’t you tell me who they are?”
Barbara finished the notes she had been making and closed her book. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It’s time for lunch.”
It was hardly surprising that Anita had never heard of either the Committee or the Tortoise, for neither of them existed. The terms had been invented purely for introduction into the conversation as “tracers.” If they turned up in the official Soviet communications traffic intercepted by the Western intelligence in the weeks ahead, it would be a give-away that Anita’s loyalties were not as she claimed.