The Bearpit

11

It was what the Russians call a gift day, a break in the late autumn weather already breathing winter’s cold, the sun throbbing from a cloudless sky and the air heavy with heat. The protective shutters were closed, as they always were during the week, so it was cool inside and it stayed that way after they opened them to the brightness. The double glazing would help to keep it cold, Yuri guessed, just like it kept the country house warm in winter. The house was wood shingled over a timber frame, with an encircling verandah built high to allow for the winter snows, and the log store was raised on stilts, for the same reason. The main room was dominated by a wood-burning stove.

Yuri knew the use of all government guest houses was expected to be transient but realized that his father had been accorded the use of this place for as long as he could remember: even as a child, with his nurse, he had been brought here at weekends to play out among the trees or the stream that ran through the property. Yet never had his father made any attempt to impose his own personality upon the place; bothered to alter the government-decreed decor or the government-decreed furnishings. The wood stove, which smoked and made his eyes sting, and the huge flocked bedcover and the rustic drapes and the prints of brave soldiers marching out to fight in the Patriotic War remained as he recalled from those childhood days: as if, despite the length of time he’d been allowed its use, the old man didn’t expect his occupation to be anything but transient either.

The only additions to the property appeared to be the photographs upon two side tables and a third upon the mantelpiece over the wood stove of a fair-haired, shyly smiling woman in a buttoned-to-the-neck-dress whom he had never known but had been told was his mother.

Perhaps the dacha would have been different, been a home instead of a temporary resting place, if she had not died giving birth to him. He wondered if he had inherited his fair hair from her.

Yuri helped his father carry their weekend provisions into the kitchen, original and basic like everything else. There was a cold pantry instead of a refrigerator and the cooker was wood fired and smoked only slightly less than the heating stove in the main room. It had to be fired summer as well as winter, because there was no hot-water system, so everything had to be heated upon it, just like the big-bellied boiler in the outhouse had to be stoked to provide water for the enamelled bath which was also in the outhouse and therefore unusable at those occasional freezing times of the winter when it was possible to come up from the city. He watched his father unpack, aware that only the bread and the milk were fresh. Everything else was in tins and once more he had the impression of being in transit, equipped with provisions that were easily transportable.

His father had halted the stop-start reminiscence long before they reached the dacha. Hoping to prompt him into beginning again, Yuri said, immediately after they had unpacked, ‘I still don’t understand why you consider the inquiry such a failure.’

‘Let’s walk,’ suggested the other man.

Yuri did not find the suggestion out of place. Yuri thought it odd for someone so awkwardly affected by permanent injury to make walking his only concession to physical exercise. One of his frequent student recollections was trailing around Moscow at his father’s heels, panting to keep up. The limp appeared to have worsened since their last such expedition and his father seemed to have developed a sagging stomach and become thicker around the hips, too. Yuri wondered if he would inherit a tendency to fat. Hopefully not, he thought: he lacked his father’s height by several inches. Another legacy from his unknown mother? So much he didn’t know: could never know.

As he followed his father across the verandah, he thought that when he was awarded his own dacha – and who could doubt it would eventually be awarded, after the praise of today’s enquiry? – he would do the opposite to his father and very much stamp his own personality upon it. He’d insist upon his own decoration and certainly dictate the fittings. Which would most definitely include a proper hot-water bathroom, not the ball-freezing torture of his father’s outhouse.

They reached the bank of the stream meandering through the grounds. It appeared wider and deeper than last time and Yuri stared around, caught by the impression of remoteness. Trees encircled them on three sides and there was emptiness on the fourth, beyond the water, apart from a wooden cottage – or maybe it was a shed – far away in a fold of a hill, like an ornament on a shelf. There was no sign of life around it. Nearer, directly over the water, insects startled awake by the unexpected heat misted in surprised confusion and birds – swallows he thought, although he was not sure – dived and swooped, to feed on the unexpected feast. Probably eating better than he would, from the contents of the cans back in the house, Yuri thought. The older man sat awkwardly on the grass beside the stream, an abrupt, slumping movement that reminded Yuri of a large animal, a horse or a cow maybe, collapsing to rest. The irreverent reflection made him feel uncomfortable: he wondered why, now, he seemed so conscious of his father’s deformity. He sat down too, waiting.

‘I think Agayans’ death is suspicious,’ announced Malik abruptly.

‘How suspicious?’

‘Possibly that it wasn’t suicide,’ said Malik. His son’s disbelief was obvious and Malik regretted beginning so dramatically: he wanted agreement, not doubt. More carefully he told of his interview with Panchenko and of learning the man’s sponsorship by Kazin and why, because of the quickness with which the inquiry had been convened, he had not been able to extend the necessary interrogation to the rest of the seizure squad on the night of Agayans’ death.

Throughout the explanation Yuri sat nodding, not needing to be convinced of the absurdity of what had been proposed in Kabul but finding difficulty with everything else. When his father stopped talking, Yuri said: ‘You believe he was killed!’

‘Such things have happened before.’

‘In Stalin’s day, maybe. Not now.’

‘There are still a lot of people nostalgic for Stalin’s days,’ insisted Malik. ‘The sort of people who don’t want the type of changes being introduced now.’

No! rejected Yuri. Dzerzhinsky Square politics and infighting maybe, but not killing. This was real life, reality, not fiction. The reflection brought him up short. He leaned forward curiously towards his father and said: ‘Would you? Kill, I mean?’ and was surprised when there was not an immediate dismissal.

Instead Malik remained silent for several moments, carefully choosing his reply. Then he said: ‘Not cold bloodedly: premeditatedly. But I think I could kill someone who tried to kill me.’

‘That’s not an answer to the question,’ said the younger man, refusing his father the escape. ‘What you’re talking about is self-defence, against attack.’

Again there was a hesitation and then the man said: isn’t that what we are talking about: ourselves being under attack?’

Now it was Yuri’s turn to remain silent. The second answer was better than the first but he still couldn’t conceive that the paunchy, high-shouldered man idly plucking at grass tufts with his hand honestly meant what he was saying. It was like debating with a complete stranger. At once came the contradiction. It wasn’t like that at all. Rather it was getting to know the man for the first time, if it weren’t preposterous to imagine getting to know his father for the first time at the age of twenty-three. Preposterous or not, that was definitely his feeling. He said: ‘What are you going to do?’

‘Inquiries can be reopened,’ suggested Malik.

‘You’re going to interrogate the rest of the squad?’

‘To start with.’

‘What else?’

‘I haven’t decided yet, not completely. Save things, certainly.’

‘Save things?’

‘I’ve made copies, of everything. Files, cipher records, Panchenko’s report: even the diary entries.’

‘Isn’t that taking a risk?’

‘It’s the sort of risk you had to decide upon in Kabul… which I’m glad you did, incidentally.’

‘Will it be difficult, to reopen the inquiry?’

‘Impossible without some evidence directly contradictory to that already presented,’ admitted Malik.

Yuri shifted from the position in which he was sitting, although his discomfort was not physical. The night of his arrival from Kabul his father had suggested that the scheming might involve him, as well. He said: ‘What else can you do? Something positive, I mean?’

‘Nothing, not unless I get the proper evidence,’ conceded Malik.

It was all too uncertain, thought Yuri. And he didn’t like uncertainty. Along with all the other formative-year images of his father, Yuri had always considered the man to be invulnerable. He did not like the sudden contradiction. Reminded by the reflection of Kabul, Yuri said: ‘But you’re in the superior position now?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Malik.

‘I don’t want to stay any longer in Afghanistan.’

Malik nodded reflectively. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can intercede now. In fact to do so would show up Kazin’s weakness. I’ve got to capitalize upon that as much as I can.’

Yuri was about to speak again when the telephone shrilled, back in the house. He watched his father lope back in his odd, rocking gait, aware there was another explanation he was still lacking. It was a very quick call, the older man reappearing almost at once from the house to return, head sunk in thought against his chest, to where they had been sitting. He didn’t sit again, so Yuri had to squint up against the sunlight.

‘There even seems to be a vacancy for you,’ Malik said. ‘There’s been a defection, in New York.’

‘You didn’t tell me what happened between you and Kazin,’ reminded Yuri.

For several moments his father remained staring down at him and because of the brightness it was difficult for Yuri to see the expression on the man’s face. Then Malik said: ‘I know I didn’t,’ and turned back towards the dacha.

The supposed compartmenting failed to prevent the outcome of the inquiry becoming known throughout every department and Vladislav Belov approached the meeting with the censured Kazin even more reluctantly than he had on the previous occasion, when they’d finalized the American operation. Angry, too, at Kazin stupidly initiating the defection without any consultation. The whole scheme could have been ruined: might still be. In Dzerzhinsky Square there could be a whirlpool effect from being linked to a sinking man, and Kazin appeared inevitably to be sinking.

‘The timing was premature,’ Belov said, immediately critical.

‘I didn’t consider it to be,’ said Kazin. He knew this was going to provide a better recovery than he’d already imagined: when it all meshed together, like cogs engaging a gear, it would erase completely the setback of the tribunal. Beneath the desk his leg pumped in its usual nervousness.

‘The promise to Levin was always that they could go together, as a family.’

‘Keeping the girl makes it look more genuine.’

‘What if Levin hadn’t crossed?’

‘He didn’t have a choice. There was the evidence of his association with the FBI and he knew it.’

Belov succeeded in keeping the incredulity from showing, but only just. Surely the mad fool would not have done that? Unless he was mad. He said: ‘You mean she’s some sort of hostage?’

‘After the blandishments of the West, wasn’t there a possibility of his defection being genuine?’ asked Kazin, question for question.

‘It wasn’t necessary,’ insisted Belov. He wondered if the other man believed the reflection he saw in his shaving mirror every morning.

‘I thought it was,’ said Kazin, in the voice of a superior indicating that the conversation was at an end. ‘It’s an academic discussion anyway. He did defect.’

Belov refused to be dismissed, seeing the weakness. He said: ‘Isn’t the greater risk of the defection becoming genuine because of our keeping the child? Of his trusting the Americans more than us?’

‘He’d know that way there’d never be a chance of his seeing her again,’ rejected Kazin. ‘Holding the daughter ensures that Levin behaves exactly as we want him to. As it’s been planned.’

‘She’s to be allowed to leave, then?’ seized Belov.

‘In time,’ said Kazin. ‘When the proper indications start to come from America. Which is what we’re supposed to be discussing.’

‘Activate Kapalet?’

‘At once,’ ordered Kazin. ‘But just sufficient at this stage to start the panic: nothing more than a hint from which the Americans can discover for themselves that there’s a Soviet spy within the CIA.’

‘Could we in future discuss everything in advance?’

‘I guarantee it,’ said Kazin.

Liar, thought Belov. Or was madman more accurate?