The Bearpit

17

Yuri was as careful about his return to America as he had been on the outward journey, routing himself from Amsterdam to Rome and from Italy flying back to Washington to complete the journey to New York as he would have done had he remained in the capital to sightsee, which was the cover for his weekend absence. It was late when he finally arrived at Penn Station and he was weak-legged from the exhaustion of the round trip so he deposited the British passport and his small case in a left-luggage locker, for later collection and delivery to 53rd Street.

It was mid-week before he bothered, the trail-clearing virtually automatic now as he crossed town. For part of the way, for the first time, he used the New York underground and was staggered by its dirt and its graffiti, literally confronted with the most direct contrast he’d so far encountered between the two countries. He thought it looked like an art gallery in Hell. So what did that make the marbled and chandeliered and daub-free mausoleums of the Moscow system? Something like a waiting room to the other place, he supposed: Comrade God has a season ticket on the Moscow underground! He got off after just two stops, grateful to return to street level. As he reclaimed the contents of the locker Yuri relegated the metro system to a last resort in any future surveillance evasion.

Yuri planned for it to be dark by the time he reached 53rd Street, which had the benefit of concealment but the disadvantage of enveloping the interior lobby in complete blackness. He groped out, locating the time switch, and was actually inserting the first of the apartment keys into its separate lock when the voice said: ‘Hi!’

The surprise grunted from Yuri as he jerked around, seeing the girl.

‘I made you jump,’ she laughed. ‘I’m sorry.’

She had, and it irritated Yuri. Not because it was so immediately obvious that he’d been startled but that he had been unaware of her, so close: his training was supposed to make that impossible. Automatically he looked down, seeing the rubber-soled training shoes visible beneath the cuffs of some sort of baggy trousers. Still no excuse. He said: ‘You certainly did.’

‘So you’re one of our mysterious writers, coming and going like ships in the night!’

‘I’m moving around on assignment, yes,’ agreed Yuri. Who the hell was she! And how did she know the cover by which he was using the apartment? She had not been behind him in the street: he was sure she hadn’t. But then he’d not been conscious of her when she was directly behind him. Writers, she’d said: more than one. How did she know more than one person used it? He said: ‘You live here?’

She thrust her hand out and said: ‘Caroline Dixon. I’ve got the apartment directly above yours…’

His door open and he clicked on the light. She looked beyond him, into the room and said: ‘… and it’s identical.’

Yuri remained in the doorway, his uncertainty a comparison to her smiling self-assurance. Becoming involved with anyone in the apartment block was positively precluded, for every obvious reason. But to shut the door in her face risked her becoming curious as well as affronted. Mysterious, she’d said. So she was already curious. Yuri took the offered hand and said: ‘Bell, William Bell.’

‘Bill? Or William?’

Before he could reply the time switch went off, plunging the hallway into darkness. Positively forbidden, he thought. Despite which he said: ‘Why not come in for a drink?’

‘It’s really too late to jog anyway,’ she accepted, at once. ‘So what is it?’

‘William,’ said Yuri, donning the false persona as he would put on a familiar jacket. ‘I guess it sticks from having the name on the articles in the magazines.’ He gestured to the table, realizing as he did so that uppermost were the hard and soft porn publications he’d carefully arranged as a warning if the apartment were entered in his absence.

‘You write for skin mags!’

‘No,’ he said quickly, hot with discomfort. He collected up Hustler and Penthouse and Playboy and said: ‘It’s a company apartment. These were left over by someone else. Not mine.’

‘It’s not a crime to read them,’ she grinned, aware of his embarrassment.

Yuri was aware of it too. He was surprised, because it was strange that he should be, but not unhappy, because it might be the sort of reaction she would expect. Forbidden though such encounters might be, Yuri realized that the soft-walking Caroline Dixon, whose jog-suit top bulged most interestingly, would be a useful and necessary test, like all the others he had set himself. At the United Nations he was identifiably Russian, at the Washington lecture he had been identifiably Russian, and during the flight to and from the Soviet Union William Bell had been nothing more than a false name to which he responded. Which made this the first time he had been in any sort of situation where he really had to be William Bell: to act out a passing social encounter without for one second it appearing to be an act, to avoid the silly, small mistakes that he’d been taught were invariably those which lead to discovery. He picked up the Dutch magazine and said: ‘I work for this. Travel. Nature stuff. That sort of thing.’

Politely she took them and Yuri studied her more closely as she flicked through. Sufficiently confident to confront a stranger without any make-up, her face actually shiny, the blonde hair he guessed to be about shoulder length caught up under some wrap-around band. She looked as if she really had been setting out to jog. She smiled up and said: ‘I can only just detect it.’

‘Detect it?’

‘The accent,’ said the girl.

Definitely a useful test, Yuri decided, feeling the apprehension rise. He said: ‘I didn’t think I had one.’

‘It’s hardly discernible,’ she said. ‘You’re not offended?’

‘Of course not,’ he said. The training schools would be, though. Quickly he added: ‘I’m not getting you that drink, am I?’

‘You got anything else?’

The query seemed a pointed one and he didn’t know how to respond: he felt the perspiration forming along his back, glueing his shirt, and hoped it was not showing on his face. He said: ‘I’ve been on the road for quite a while. I need to get things in.’

She said: ‘I thought you might carry but then I guess it could be difficult, in and out of airports.’

Yuri was baffled by the conversation, the apprehension lumping in his stomach. What did carry mean? Floundering, he said: ‘I will try to be more prepared next time,’ and she picked him up at once and said, coquettish and enjoying his discomfort, ‘Next time so soon!’ and Yuri recognized he was floundering more than he realized. This had been a ridiculous experiment, contravening every rule and instruction, and he had a stomach-wrenching awareness that the ice beneath his feet was thin and melting. Melting fast. He decided to utilize the embarrassment she was enjoying, adopting the pose of the hapless and ingenuous innocent. He said: ‘So what can I get you?’

‘I’ve got some,’ said the woman. ‘It’ll take me a minute.’

She was gone without any further explanation, leaving the door ajar, and almost at once Yuri thought he heard her go into her own apartment. Only a minute, she’d said. He wanted more than a minute: he wanted… what did he want? Yuri realized the ice was sagging, about to give way: and there was a very real danger of his disappearing over his head into the cold water of suspicion. So what about all the lectures from the supposed experts, the precautions against just such a thing happening? Apart from the slight accent not their fault, he answered himself rationally. The training had been to infiltrate and assimilate gradually. But in his conceit – the conceit he had imagined he’d lost – he had not thought he needed any infiltration or assimilation to be gradual: that he knew it all. Not just a spoiled brat but an over-sure, conceited one as well. But with a separation. There had not been any personal danger in being spoiled, as a kid. But he was no longer a kid and no longer under his father’s protection in Moscow and he feared there was a very real danger of his being caught out in his encounter with this discomforting woman.

When she re-entered the apartment Yuri saw that Caroline had taken down her hair, which did reach to her shoulders, and only bothered with the minimal amount of make-up, just a suggestion of lipstick. She held out her hand and he saw the kit and Yuri felt the pop of relief at his belated understanding. It still should not have taken him so long, so maybe the training school were to blame.

‘I don’t,’ he said.

‘You tried it?’

‘Sure,’ he lied.

‘Why not, then?’

‘Just doesn’t do enough for me.’

‘It does enough for everybody.’

‘Not me.’

‘Mind if I do?’

‘Go ahead.’

Yuri appeared to concentrate upon preparing his drink, busying himself with getting ice into a bucket and then making his choice of liquor, all the time intent as the woman chopped the lumps out of the tiny pile and from it made ready her line with the razor’s edge. Balancing his most recent thought, Yuri supposed there were some things never to be learned at a spy college. He hoped the accent would flatten out with his constant exposure and use of English.

‘You sure?’ she said.

‘Positive.’

She took a thin metal tube from its fastenings in her case, which was chamois, blocked off her left nostril to inhale half the line and then changed, gently breathing out between times, to complete the line in her right nostril. Almost at once she said: ‘Whee!’

Caroline was pressed back into the chair more directly in front of the ineffectual television, her eyes closed, but as Yuri carried his drink – Wild Turkey again, which he’d taken without interest or particular choice – to the adjoining seat she opened them and smiled at him. She appeared bright and alert, not soporific as he thought she might have been: more gaps in the training. Anxious to settle other uncertainties, he said: ‘How did you know I was one of the mysterious writers?’

‘Everyone knows,’ she said.

The concern settled deeper in Yuri’s stomach. ‘It’s hardly a big deal,’ he suggested, pleased with the way the sentence formed.

‘No big deal at all,’ she agreed. ‘Someone learned from the janitor that a Dutch publishing house were the leaseholders. I’ve only been here two years but there’s been quite a few of you guys through: the one before you was a miserable bastard, ignored everybody…’ She looked across at the rearranged magazines. ‘Just imagine what he got up to in here with that stuff!’

Yuri gauged it to be the normal sort of gossip, within an apartment block like this, but it would unquestionably require a warning to Moscow. Disconcerted though he had been – and could still easily be again – it definitely had not been a mistake to invite her in. Sat as she was, the sweatshirt was tighter, emphasizing her figure: he guessed her tits were easily as good as Inya’s. He said: ‘That’s the problem. We’re moving around so much there’s rarely the chance to be friendly.’

‘You’re being friendly,’ she said archly.

‘I’m glad we met,’ said Yuri, with mixed feeling.

‘So am I,’ she said.

A silence developed and Yuri didn’t want silence, he wanted to know what else was gossiped knowledge within the block. Calling upon his legend and his early concentration on American morning television he said: ‘I’ve just finished an assignment in Yellowstone Park. Never saw Yogi once.’

‘I’d be interested to read some of your stuff some time.’

So would I, thought Yuri. He said: ‘You get to know any of the other guys?’

Caroline shook her head. ‘That’s what makes this apartment so interesting: a place of strangers.’

Too much curiosity, thought Yuri at once. ‘Not any more,’ he said, to carry the conversation on.

‘Do you want to know something?’

‘What?’

‘I hid,’ admitted the woman. ‘When I heard the door open downstairs and the hall light went on I actually hung back on the stairs hoping it was someone from this apartment.’

‘Why?’

She shrugged and said: ‘Just because.’

The idiom didn’t mean anything to him but Yuri decided against challenging it. A safe house with a nosy neighbour living directly above (the smallest of drills, the most imperceptible microphone or lens) hardly qualified for the description of safe house. Except that the microphone or lens would hardly capture anything embarrassing, unless it focused on the lavatory where Granov hunched over his magazines. He said: ‘What would you have done if it had been the miserable bastard before me?’

‘Probably still said hello.’

Would Granov have been crept up upon so easily? That he hadn’t detected her still irritated Yuri. Time for curiosity of his own. He said: ‘We’re spending a lot of time talking about mysterious writers, who aren’t really mysterious at all. Just hacks. How does Caroline Dixon earn a living?’

She was in advertising, actually on Madison Avenue, completely responsible for five accounts and senior consultant on an additional four. ‘You know the ad where the plants don’t get fed the proper fertilizer so they all pull up their roots and walk to the next-door garden?’

‘No,’ said Yuri blankly. It would be necessary to confirm that Caroline Dixon did work for the Madison Avenue agency and was responsible for some nonsense involving walking plants. And not just a Caroline Dixon: this Caroline Dixon.

She seemed disappointed. ‘I got nominated for an award for it.’

‘I’ll watch out for it,’ promised Yuri.

‘You’re going to be here a while then?’

Yuri was instantly cautious, unsure of an answer sufficient to account for his infrequent use of the place. He said: ‘Away tomorrow. I don’t know for how long. But I’m assigned to America for the moment, so this is going to be my base.’

‘It’ll be nice, knowing my neighbour at last.’

Was the ice beginning to creak again, for different reasons? What real, positive danger was there? No schooling, no matter how intense, could properly equip him undetectably to mix as he was mixing now into the sort of Western environment in which he had to merge if he were to survive. Surely more advantage than danger, then? And he was sure those breasts would be spectacular. He said: ‘Are you in any hurry to go anywhere?’

‘No,’ she said at once, almost too quickly.

‘I’ve only just got back, so there’s nothing in,’ he apologized. ‘We could go out to eat, if you’d like.’

She smiled and said: ‘I think I’d like that very much…’ She looked down at her jogging outfit and said: ‘I’ll need fifteen minutes.’

‘Take as long as you like.’

Before she returned Yuri unpacked his carry-on case and positioned the William Bell passport again in such a way that he would know if it were tampered with while he was out of the apartment. This time he rearranged the magazines with the Dutch publications uppermost, in a recognizable way, but left the other signals as he had set them before. Finished, he considered another Wild Turkey and decided against it. The effect of the cocaine upon Caroline had not been as he expected; there had appeared no loss of control or lack of awareness at all: the opposite, in fact.

She wore pumps and jeans and a tighter sweater that confirmed Yuri’s impression, with a short jerkin jacket over it, and her hair was held back by a simple band. She still had not bothered with anything more than lipstick. ‘Didn’t need fifteen minutes,’ she said. ‘Where are we going?’

‘I don’t know Manhattan particularly well,’ he said. There was protection is playing the role of a stranger and it would not be a difficult part.

‘My choice?’

‘Your choice.’

In the street outside Caroline slipped her arm familiarly through his and although it surprised him he gave no reaction, actually cupping his hand over hers. Were all women in the West as immediately friendly as this? On Second Avenue she hailed the cab and he heard ‘Brooklyn’, but no more, so when he was inside he said: ‘Where are you taking me?’

‘Tourist stuff,’ she said.

Utilizing her earlier friendliness, Yuri put his arm along the back of the seat behind her, the movement enabling him to check through the back window for any pursuit. He didn’t detect any but the road was thick with vehicles so it was impossible to be completely sure: certainly the taxi appeared a genuine vehicle, not some counter-intelligence mock-up. Caroline maintained a constant babble of conversation, pointing out landmarks, insisting he lean forward for a better view of the skyscraper when they went by the United Nations, which he did in apparent straight-faced interest.

‘Costs millions and is complete crap,’ judged the woman. ‘Just a lot of supposed diplomats living tax free of the fat of the land telling countries to stop fighting each other and being given the straight middle finger in reply.’

What did ‘supposed’ mean? Thinking of his own country’s use of the organization, Yuri said: ‘It must serve some purpose.’

‘Yet to be discovered,’ Caroline insisted.

When the car started to cross the bridge, Yuri said: ‘We’re going to eat in Brooklyn?’

‘Wait,’ she insisted.

The driver was unsure so she leaned forward to give directions before they left the bridge, gesturing for the immediate right turn, which again enabled Yuri to look back. There was still no indication of any following vehicle but the packed road made it as difficult as before to be sure.

‘The River Cafe,’ she announced when the car stopped. ‘Recognize anything?’

‘Not at once,’ said Yuri doubtfully.

‘Better inside,’ she said.

Yuri followed her into the restaurant, intent on everything around him, straining for the recognition she apparently expected but unable to find it.

‘There!’ she announced, when they reached the bar.

Yuri looked across the river to the illuminated skyline of Manhattan, at once relieved and then thankful at last for the training-school videos and the television. ‘The famous view,’ he said.

‘Isn’t it great!’

‘Terrific,’ agreed Yuri. Caroline had to be too ingenuous to be any sort of counter-intelligence plant!

‘Just the beginning,’ she said.

He imagined they were going to eat there but she said they’d only come to drink, matching him martini for martini and then guiding the new cab driver back across the bridge and downtown to a Mexican cafe in Greenwich Village, which was an area of the city he had not explored. Ordering nearly became a problem because Caroline announced she would defer to an experienced travel writer: he recognized tacos and chilli on the menu and chose for both of them and was lucky, too, with Margueritas, which she declared to be a drink she liked. Yuri was confident she had not detected his hesitation. Caroline continued to lead the conversation and Yuri was happy to let her: it gave him the opportunity to study her, seeking the slightest hint to warn him that she was part of some entrapment operation. She talked of a San Francisco upbringing and of a Berkeley education and a marriage that lasted two years (‘we woke up one day and couldn’t understand why we’d done it in the first place; we send each other Christmas cards’) and of coming to New York to make a clean break and of loving advertising (‘you sure you haven’t seen the advert with the walking plants!’) and slowly Yuri began to relax. He offered scraps of his carefully prepared legend, improvising a Dutch father for his English mother to account for the newly discovered accent and of never having had time to get married, aware as he talked of Belov’s wisdom in choosing a European background to account easily for any further slight mistakes he might make.

Yuri thought the Margueritas were bland and suspected the tacos would give him heartburn; Caroline said wasn’t everything wonderful and Yuri agreed that it was. After the meal they walked aimlessly through the village and Caroline took him to a bar called the Lion’s Head because it sounded English. She went to the toilet while he ordered and as he did so Yuri realized Soviet security would already have alerted Granov of his failure to return at the expected time. After Levin’s defection they’d be very nervous of unaccountable absences but regulations forbade his making any contact from an insecure telephone. They’d just have to sweat. It would mean an inquiry and an official report the following day but Yuri was not really concerned, sure of a satisfactory explanation. Besides which, he was enjoying himself.

They left after only one drink, and in the uptown cab to their apartments Yuri wondered if Caroline were as curious as he was at what might happen when they got there. She did not appear to be. She went into the block ahead of him, pumped the courtesy light automatically and said: ‘You won’t have any coffee, having just got back. So it looks like my place.’

As he entered her apartment Yuri saw that it really was exactly like his, but without the strident colour of the Mexican rugs and bed covering. Instead the focal point of her decoration was a series of blown-up photographs and prints of what he presumed to be advertising promotions with which Caroline had been associated. He couldn’t see any illustration involving walking plants.

The coffee was excellent and she had French brandy and insisted he take the enveloping easy chair while she settled herself upon the bed, legs screwed up beneath her. She said: ‘I’ve had a great evening.’

‘So have I,’ said Yuri. Had it been the test he’d set it out to be? He thought so. Successful, too. Nothing positive, producing guidelines. What then? An attitude, he decided: a feeling of becoming comfortable – at ease and apparently accustomed – in what could have been an uncomfortable situation. And he had been uncomfortable, beyond the nervousness that Caroline’s pick-up had not been as casually accidental as it initially appeared. He was at least quite sure now about that: she was an adoptive New Yorker, nothing more.

‘Where are you off to tomorrow?’

He’d already told her he was leaving the following day so it was an innocent enough question. Prepared, he said: ‘Canada. Life-in-the-Rockies type of article.’

‘How long do you expect to be away?’

Yuri hesitated: innocent enough again. He said: ‘It’s never possible to be sure: as long as it takes.’

‘Oh.’ She seemed disappointed.

‘Weeks rather than months.’ Why had he said that, making some sort of promise? Tonight had been a test, an experiment, and valuable even though it was officially forbidden. He should not – could not – consider anything more.

‘So there’ll be other times?’

‘Yes,’ he said. No! he thought.

‘You think I’m a pushy broad?’

Broad had certainly been a word taught him by the disillusioned American defector. He said: ‘No, I don’t think you are a pushy broad.’

‘Want to know something?’

‘What?’

‘I was trying to impress you, with the coke and the tour of New York. All that stuff.’

Yuri supposed she had succeeded. He was unsure how to respond. He said: ‘Why?’

She shrugged, seeming embarrassed at the blurted confession. ‘Don’t know. Nervous I guess.’

‘And the coke helped?’

‘Didn’t do a lot for me, actually. It was a gift, from a client: sort of thing they do in Madison Avenue and Wall Street. I’ve had it a long time. I wasn’t really sure how to do it.’

Yuri said: ‘It’s not really important, is it?’

‘It’s just…’ She stopped, shrugging once more. ‘There seems to be a way of behaving here,’ she started again. ‘Everything’s brittle and finger-snapping; this minute is the last in my life, to hell with the sixty seconds coming next. I guess I behaved instinctively, imagining you’d be the same…’

The anxiety flooded back. Needing movement, Yuri put the half-finished coffee on a side table but retained the brandy snifter. Forcing the casualness, he said: ‘And?’

‘You’re not,’ she said, simply.

‘Really so different?’ Yuri realized, gratefully, that there was no shake in the hand holding the brandy glass.

‘Pleasantly so different,’ she said. ‘You’re…’ She halted again, smiling hesitantly up at him. i don’t know how this conversation got started: it’s embarrassing.’

‘I want you to go on,’ said Yuri, with more sincerity than she would ever know.

‘You’re straight,’ she said. ‘Straight and nice. Not acting at all.’

The snorted laugh, of apparent modesty, fitted her compliment but it was really a sigh of relief, the amusement that of irony. He had passed the test. Completely. He said: ‘Straight and nice sounds boring.’

‘I didn’t find it so…’ She sniggered to what was becoming one of her familiar hesitations. She said: ‘I’m coming on like a pushy broad again, aren’t I?’

‘I’ll tell you when to stop.’

‘Do you want another drink?’

‘No.’

‘Coffee?’

‘No.’

They remained looking at each other, eyes held, for several moments unspeaking in a loud silence. Then Caroline smiled and said: ‘Your move.’

All the much-considered words – like precluded and forbidden and prohibited – crowded in upon Yuri, along with others like madness and stupidity and insanity. He put the brandy glass on the convenient table, edging on to the bed beside her but avoiding any contact, just leaning forward to kiss her and she leaned forward to meet him but also without her body touching his. They stayed that way for a long time, mouth searching mouth, but when he finally reached out she snatched for him eagerly, pulling them together so that they fell back against the bed. Each started to undress the other, clumsy in their eagerness, so they became impatient and they stopped with each other and stripped their own clothes off, unable to wait. He explored her again with his mouth, her nipples hard to his tongue atop those spectacular breasts, and then tasting her wetness and she ate him too. He was too far gone when he entered her but so was she. They climaxed practically at once but he didn’t have to stop and the second time took much longer, settling to a rhythm, and again they came together.

‘We forgot the rules,’ she panted.

‘Rules?’

‘In the age of AIDS we’re supposed to use condoms.’

‘You’re safe,’ he said,

‘How do you know you are?’

Yuri laughed with her, taking the remark beyond her intended joke. How safe was he, in this situation? How safe in any situation? The inevitable reflection about Moscow brought another thought, jolting him. Was this how it had been for the grotesquely fat Kazin and a woman he had never known but who had been his mother? Yuri tried for some feeling, the disgust or hatred of which his father felt incapable, but could not manage it either. How could he feel any emotion about people he had never known?

The following morning he left early, before she got out of bed, promising to call as soon as he returned and careful to stop off at his own supposed apartment to collect a case to carry from the building if she looked out of her upstairs window and saw him in the street. It meant the delay of storing it again in a left-luggage locker but he used Grand Central instead of Penn Station, which was nearer to the UN building.

He ignored his own official section at the United Nations, going directly to confront Anatoli Granov, who stared bulge-eyed at him but held back from any open demand in surroundings of which they were unsure, waiting until they began the corridor perambulation. Even then the man’s fury – mixed, Yuri was sure, with relief – had to be muted by their being in a public place.

‘Where the hell were you?’

‘I had no choice.’

‘Moscow want an explanation.’

Yuri knew that was an exaggeration, an attempt to frighten him: Granov would not have raised any alarm this quickly. He recounted the confrontation with Caroline, stressing her remarks about mysterious strangers and the janitor’s gossip about the leaseholders, conscious as he talked of Granov’s anger deflating.

‘She was suspicious?’ demanded the rezident.

‘Curious,’ qualified Yuri. ‘Quite obviously it was necessary for me to remain overnight in the apartment.’

Granov nodded in reluctant agreement. ‘I will recommend to Moscow that we dispose of it: find somewhere else.’

‘To do that, because of a passing encounter, would too easily create suspicion,’ argued Yuri at once. Why was the protest so important? It had only been a one-night stand, like all the others.

‘You think we should do nothing?’

‘Some eventual contact was inevitable,’ said Yuri. ‘To run would be quite wrong.’

‘What is she like, this woman?’

‘Quite ordinary,’ lied Yuri easily.

‘How long were you together?’ pressed the older man.

‘Maybe an hour: perhaps a little longer. To have avoided the conversation would have been as suspicious as it would be to close up the apartment,’ said Yuri.

They were at that part of the corridor overlooking the main entrance. Granov stopped abruptly, jerking his head to look directly at Yuri. He said: ‘You didn’t get involved with her?’

‘Involved?’ queried Yuri, quite relaxed under the questioning.

‘Sleep with her?’

Yuri stared directly back at his superior. ‘Even to have considered such a thing would directly contravene all my training!’

Granov retreated under the imagined outrage. ‘Quite so.’

‘I have a question, Comrade Granov.’

‘What?’

‘Some of those magazines, showing unclothed women,’ said Yuri, with open-faced innocence. ‘Most decadent, I thought.’

‘I considered them essential, to give the impression of typical male occupation,’ said the rezident, flush-faced.

‘They’re yours!’ said Yuri, in apparent surprise. ‘Would you have me return them to you?’

‘Of course not!’

‘What about the ass on the blonde in Hustler!’ said Yuri. ‘Wasn’t she something?’

The local KGB controller stared at him and abruptly walked away without speaking.

‘You’ve been sweating us, Sergei,’ protested the American.

‘That’s not true,’ rejected Kapalet, sure of his strength. ‘The only purpose of a meeting is to pass on information: with no information there was no reason for us to meet. It would have been dangerous, in fact.’

‘So you’ve got something!’ demanded Drew eagerly.

They were in the Crazy Horse Saloon, Wilson Drew hunched over the bar, uninterested in the stage, the Russian looking in the opposite direction at the floor show in which a girl with disappointingly small breasts was stimulating herself with an eighteen-inch length of thick rope. Kapalet said: ‘I’m really not sure.’

‘What!’ said the American.

‘Shelenkov is a difficult sod,’ said Kapalet. ‘Talks in riddles.’

‘Just tell me what he says,’ insisted Drew with forced patience. ‘We’ll solve the riddles.’

‘Washington is worried, then?’ The information was important to send back to Moscow.

‘What do you think?’ said Drew. ‘They’ve established a special committee.’

Definitely important to relay back to Moscow. Kapalet said: ‘It comes out in bits: nothing connected.’

‘Just tell me!’ begged the American.

The woman on the stage definitely seemed to be screwing herself with that rope. Kapalet said: ‘You know about Semipalatinsk?’

Drew turned to him, frowning: ‘Your development complex?’

Kapalet nodded: ‘According to Shelenkov you think you’ve got a source there…’

‘ Think!’ interrupted Drew, isolating the important word.

‘Shelenkov got drunk, three nights ago. Said something about all those crosses over Semipalatinsk on the CIA maps being kisses, to America’s oblivion.’ Reluctantly Kapalet turned momentarily from the girations on the stage, to assess the reaction from the American. It was possible to see the tension stiffen through the CIA officer.

Drew said: ‘I’m not sure I’m getting this right.’

‘I’m not sure that I have, either,’ said Kapalet, turning back to the stage. It wasn’t possible to see the rope at all now. He said: ‘The way it sounded to me was that having established someone within the CIA to disseminate the reports as Moscow wanted, Dzerzhinsky Square installed someone inside Semipalatinsk to leak out whatever disinformation we wanted you to swallow.’

‘Holy shit!’ exclaimed Drew. ‘You any idea what that could mean?’

‘No,’ said Kapalet, whose limited knowledge anyway made it an honest answer.

‘It means that if we’ve been misleading the President about Soviet space technology, Star Wars is just so much wasted money,’ said Drew. He gulped at his drink and said again: ‘Holy shit!’

‘I think that’s too positive an assessment, on just those remarks alone,’ said Kapalet.

Drew shook his head, locked into some inward reflection. ‘What a fuck-up!’ said the American. ‘Jesus H. Christ what a fuck-up!’

‘It’s been useful?’ queried Kapalet, not forgetting the need to be paid.

Drew turned at last away from the bar, using the cover of his open jacket completely to conceal the passing of the money to the Russian. Drew said: ‘What else?’

‘That’s all,’ said Kapalet. Feigning the grievance, he said: ‘I would have thought that was pretty good, from your reaction.’

‘It’s terrific, Sergei: just terrific,’ placated Drew immediately. ‘You’re doing good, real good.’

There was a drum-roll crescendo on stage and the person whom Kapalet had for thirty minutes believed to be a woman engaged in self-intercourse with a piece of rope was triumphantly and explicitly revealed to be male.

‘It was a man,’ said Kapalet, disappointed.

Drew looked finally towards the stage. ‘Nothing’s what it seems,’ he said.

‘You’re right,’ agreed Kapalet.