The Bearpit

23

Yuri was astonished how few of his father’s personal possessions there were to remove from the dacha: from the bedroom a jacket, two pairs of trousers, some underwear and a smock, the photographs of his unknown mother; some winter boots and a frayed greatcoat, also for the winter, which he found in the outhouse. Truly a transient occupation, decided Yuri, recalling his impression the last time they had been there together: the last time he had seen his father alive. There was no mark of the man whatsoever, anywhere: as if he had never existed. Caught by the thought, Yuri wondered if at Kutuzovsky Prospekt there would be any photographs of his father: he couldn’t remember there being. If there weren’t, there would be no tangible memory of him at all: the pictures here were all that he wanted to keep. Everything else could be thrown away: hardly worth the trip out of the city.

Yuri bundled everything, even the greatcoat, into a single suitcase and stood above it, gazing around the main room of the country house. Who would be the next occupant? Would he – or they – make it a home, rather than a temporary resting place? He looked back to the suitcase. So little, he thought; not enough.

It was almost without thought that he mounted the stairs to make a final search for anything he might have missed, checking first the cupboards and drawers of the room he’d occupied and finding nothing apart from the government-supplied linen, and after that his father’s room and finding the same. It was when he left the second bedroom that he glanced upwards, again without thought, and guessed from the slope of the ceiling above him that there was probably a loft: certainly a space between the peak of the roof and the covering above his head. Curiously, with closer concentration, Yuri looked for a trap door throughout the length of the landing but there was no evidence of one. He went back, staring upwards this time, into both bedrooms but there was no entry from either.

If there were an attic it was sealed, Malik concluded, going out again on to the central corridor: another aimless search. He was practically at the head of the stairs when he stopped, parallel with the door to the narrow storage cupboard which he’d already checked and knew to contain only more government-owned material, mostly bedcovering. He opened it again, looking for something else this time.

It was a narrow hatchway, seeming to be tightly cut from the planking after it had been laid, so that only by looking positively was it possible to detect the likelihood of an opening. And impossible to reach anyway because of the serried layers of slatted shelves upon which the sheets and towels lay. Yuri removed the contents and after the contents the wooden strips, which was difficult because they were sized differently. At first he took them all out but then realized he would have to replace one at each level, to provide some sort of ladder to reach the entry. He had to climb with his back pressed against one wall, with no handhold, and strain to push the overhead hatch open, so snug was its fitting into its surround. He had not thought of the need for illumination until the planking moved and then saw he would not need it; there was a window, invisible from the ground, actually set into the roof.

Yuri hauled himself through the gap, sitting with his legs dangling over the edge. His immediate thought was that it had been a wasted effort and that the angled room was as empty as everywhere else in the house. And then he saw the trunk, quite compact but with a curved top, wedged into the darkest corner, at the furthermost point from the window’s light.

It was a small room, restricted by the roof’s drop, so Yuri crawled towards the box, pulling it out directly to be under the window. There was a stir of dust and a cobweb snagged across his face, but the container appeared quite clean. For several moments he gazed down, not attempting to open it, the strange reluctance to intrude briefly stronger than his absorbed curiosity. There was a lock, but no key. To have to break it open seemed… he didn’t know what it seemed but he didn’t want to do it. But he didn’t have to: the lid lifted quite easily and held, kept up by hinged metal struts. His initial reaction was one of disappointment. Yuri had expected it to be full – of what he didn’t know – but it wasn’t: only a third, maybe less, was taken up. There were several stacks of papers, all appearing to be aged. Tentatively he reached out, feeling their brittleness to his touch. He lifted the topmost document cautiously, conscious of tiny cracks at the edges, knowing it would be most fragile at the fold, so he was even more careful straightening it.

‘My Darling,’ he read. ‘I am still warm from you, wet from you, feeling so much loved by you: I touch my sex to feel where you have been and want you there again. You consume me, my own darling. Make me live…’

Yuri jerked his eyes away from the yellowing paper, face burning and aware that he was physically blushing. He’d already guessed anyway but he still looked to the second, final sheet of what he held, for the inscription. His mother had signed it, strangely formally, ‘Olga’, which surprised him: he’d expected something else, a love-name, and was absurdly disappointed. Still with the first letter in his hand, Yuri went to another, separate bundle, aware at once of the different handwriting and recognizing it just as quickly. His mother’s letters to his father, his father’s letters to his mother: before him, on cracked and frail paper, was set out their love, their life. He felt like a child – which in reality he could never remembering feeling – peering through the keyhole of their bedroom, shocked by their nakedness and by what they were doing. But like the peeping child, he did not stop looking, despite the discomfort. The correspondence was carefully arranged by date, so that it was easy to follow, to chart the progress of their relationship. The first letters had been formal – his father had signed off three ‘Your respectful and obedient servant’, at which Yuri openly sniggered – the intimacy gradual, almost imperceptible. As he read, Yuri’s embarrassment seeped away, replaced by another surprise. His mother had only ever been a frozen image, encompassed in a frame. But he’d known his father… no, not known: been aware of. Familiar. He would never have believed – still could not have believed but for the letters he held in his hands – that the aloof, white-haired, uneven-shouldered man who had always found any expression of affection so difficult could have brought himself to write the sort of intimate, exposing words he was reading.

There was too much for him to read sitting up here in the darkening attic. Yuri flicked through, finding the photographs halfway down the pile of his father’s letters, obviously in their special place. Four were of their actual wedding, his father not disfigured then, towering above her, thickly dark-haired. There was a shot of his mother staring adoringly up at the man and another of her placing her wedding flowers traditionally upon the monument to the unknown soldier. And then Kazin. It was not a good photograph, blurred by poor focus, but Yuri knew It to be the man: much thinner than he was now, smiling towards her. Kazin’s expression appeared proprietorial, which Yuri knew it could surely not have been, not on the day that she married someone else. There was a further photograph of his mother alone, demure and not actually facing the camera, looking instead into what Yuri guessed to be the stream running past the dacha and which he preferred to the framed ones he had already packed. And a close-up, full-faced shot of his father, still uninjured. The man had on what appeared to be the same suit he’d worn at the wedding but Yuri didn’t think it had been taken then: this looked more like the sort of formal portrait for some KGB accreditation, stern and expressionless. At least he would not have to worry about any photographs being available at Kutuzovsky Prospekt, thought Yuri; he wished there had been more.

He reached out, touching the unread correspondence again. How much more, beyond the fuzzy photograph, was there here about his mother’s involvement with Kazin? And how much better would he know her – understand even – when he’d read everything? It was difficult to know. It would be like trying to understand someone from the pages of a book and Yuri had always found that difficult: from the contents of this box he would always be someone outside the window of his mother’s and father’s life, able to look in and catch the occasional word but never truly able to understand what really occurred between them.

Yuri replaced everything within the box exactly as it had been arranged when he opened it – even the photographs precisely where he’d found them – and depressed the hinges to lower the lid. He had his… had his what? Memories was not the right word. Legacy either. Momentos, he supposed, although that did not seem proper, either. Maybe a combination of all three. A small box (why did everything always seem inadequate?) that contained the life and the innermost secrets of two strangers who had been his parents. Maybe, after he’d read everything, they would not seem quite such strangers.

Yuri scraped the trunk across the floor after him and lowered himself ahead of it through the trap door, feeling about blindly for the foot-supporting slats. When his foot connected he eased through until he was supported by one arm, leaving his other hand free to pull the box finally to the lip of the hole. He was actually beneath it, feeling up to get a hold on its bottom, when his fingers encountered the unevenness. He managed to wedge the box on his shoulder to get it back on to the landing and having done so turned it over.

The concealment was very clever and almost perfect; Yuri guessed only his jerked hauling of the box across the attic floor had dislodged the intricately tooled wooden sleeve that formed an envelope for more papers and which was cut to fit as a false but very narrow base. He tugged at it, gently, freeing it completely and then tapping the papers into his lap. It was too dark to read them on the landing, so Yuri carried it all downstairs into the room in which the already packed suitcase lay, and lit a lamp near the stove.

I’ve made copies, of everything.

His father’s words, that freak late summer day here at the dacha, echoed in Yuri’s mind as he looked down at the documents in his hand. It had not been an exaggeration, Yuri decided. Here was everything: a memorandum in his father’s name, within days of the GRU debacle in Afghanistan, a bundle of decoded messages to and from Kabul, aborting the insane retribution, the request for the inquiry in which he had been so disappointed and the result of that inquiry. And much more. There appeared to be a heavily annotated and queried report, from Colonel Panchenko, and another account, just as heavily marked, to point up apparent contradictions from a major named Chernov. And a top page which Yuri supposed to be some sort of index, a prompt sheet. There was a list of three men beneath the heading ‘Squad’ and a date, in two weeks’ time. Against Agayans’ name was written ‘gun’ with a query against it and there were question marks after notes about a post mortem and forensic examination.

Yuri sat as still as he had upstairs in the loft, this time gripped by a fury, an anger he consciously felt move through him. It was a sensation not of heat but of coldness: implacable coldness. He’d been sure his father had been killed and now he was equally sure he knew the reason; that he was physically holding it, in his hands. His father had continued to probe, as he’d said he would. And was uncovering the lies, as he’d said he would. And somehow they – Kazin or Panchenko or maybe both – had become aware what he was doing and killed or had him killed before he could obtain sufficient proof to reopen the inquiry and expose them.

And now he possessed it, Yuri recognized. So what? His fury deepened at the self-demand, because of the immediate awareness of his impotence. What he had was half an investigation, maybe more than half, but what could he do with it? He could only pass it on to be continued to someone in higher authority. And Kazin was that higher authority, the person through whom regulations decreed he always had to move, to any ultimate superior. And continued by whom? Those same regulations dictated that internal Directorate irregularities and crime be investigated by the security department headed by Colonel Lev Konstantinovich Panchenko. Helpless, thought Malik bitterly: he was absolutely and utterly helpless.

A question of choosing the greater or the lesser risk.

Something else his father had said that day: actually praising him for making the choice about intercession in Kabul. Different then, though. Then he had acted knowing he had the power and the prestige of his father behind him; had actually bullied the Kabul rezident with that power and prestige. Which he no longer had. Any more, as he had already frighteningly realized, than he no longer had the old man’s protection.

He would do something! The conviction came quite rationally, not spurred by unthinking anger or I-will-avenge-my-father bombast. He did not know how – or what – it would be but Yuri determined to expose the two men as his father had intended to expose them.

The greater or lesser risk, he thought again. His father had taken the risk and now his father was dead. Objectively, but strangely without the fear he was finding it easy to acknowledge at last, Yuri greeted the realization without concern. He felt that knowing the danger gave him some sort of advantage: like possessing everything his father had discovered – but which Kazin and Panchenko would never suspect – gave him some sort of advantage.

He returned the file to its wooden envelope and slotted it snugly and imperceptibly into place in the base of the trunk, balancing the weight of it in one hand against the suitcase in the other to walk out into the complete blackness of the night.

So what, he asked himself, was he going to do?

As always the meeting was to be in a public place, this time the Museum of American History, and Willick hurried early in off Constitution Avenue, anxious for the encounter with the Russian. Had he been too greedy in demanding $2,000? He needed the money – Christ how he needed the money! – but he wished now he’d tried to get it a different way. Asking, in fact: not demanding. The man he knew only as Oleg had been right in reminding him of the pressure they could exert, if they chose. What was he going to do if they refused? And not only refused the increase but held back the $1,000 upon which he had become so dependent, blackmailing him into working for nothing? He’d be destroyed, Willick accepted: utterly destroyed. Christ, what a mess!

‘In reality, the life of an American cowboy was very dirty, wasn’t it?’ said the Russian, approaching as Willick stood unseeing before some original photographs of a cattle drive to Chicago.

‘Very,’ agreed Willick. Who the fuck wanted to talk about dumb-assed cowboys!

‘You were early.’

‘Found a parking place first time,’ mumbled Willick, trying not to disclose his anxiety.

‘Moscow were extremely pleased with the names you provided,’ announced the Russian.

Hope flared at once through Willick. He said: ‘It has proved my worth?’

‘Oh, absolutely,’ said Oleg mildly.

‘So what was their reaction?’

‘They’ve agreed the increase as from this meeting,’ said the Russian, quite matter of fact.

Willick had to bite his mouth closed to prevent the mew of relief. He’d made it! Everything was going to be all right! That’s good,’ he said tightly.

‘But in return we want very specific things,’ said the man.

‘Like what?’

‘The complete structure, names and biographies… on everyone possible within the CIA. From the Director downwards…’

‘That’s not all held in the records to which I have access!’

‘Everything that there is,’ insisted the Russian. ‘For the increase to $2,000 we want absolutely everything. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ said Willick emptily. ‘I understand.’