He could not remember a time without Uncle Kolya. He was there from the beginning, more clear than his father in Kirov’s recollection. He too wore the varnished boots and the NKVD collar patches on his uniform. When Kirov’s father disappeared, Uncle Kolya came to the apartment. His face was flushed with exertion and emotion. He stood in the doorway silhouetted against the dull light of the landing, his greatcoat swinging from one shoulder like a hussar’s pelisse so that he came into the room in appearance a romantic hero and said one breathless word, ‘Anya!’ to Kirov’s mother. Had it really been like that?
When Kirov was fourteen Uncle Kolya took him on holiday to Riga and the Baltic coast. They stood on the gritty shore, faces into the wind that blew across the cold sea and he told the boy the things that men should know. He used that coy expression. There on the beach with the sand filling their shoes, he wore a blue suit with baggy trousers, a snap-brimmed hat and a shirt with the collar undone because they were on holiday; and he handed the boy an orange, which Kirov thought a miracle. By then he was acquiring a paunch; he had a broad, friendly smile and teeth that were discoloured from chain-smoking papirossi. At that time he was a colonel, as Kirov was now.
‘Nikolai Konstantinovitch?’ Kirov prodded the General softly with words. Tatiana Yurievna stood at his shoulder telling him that he mustn’t get the old man excited and sounding annoyed, which meant she was pleased he had come.
‘Who is it?’ the patient said faintly. He raised one leathery eyelid and a cunning eye peeped out. ‘Ah, it’s you, you young bugger. Come to see your old uncle?’ His fingers tapped painfully on the bedclothes. Kirov accepted the invitation and sat on the edge of the bed.
‘It’s dark in here.’ The window was shuttered and the atmosphere close.
‘That’s the Old Woman’s doing. Peasant! She doesn’t believe in light and fresh air. She’d have a priest in here if I let her. Got a smoke on you?’
‘The doctor says you shouldn’t be smoking.’
‘Bugger the doctor!’ the old man retorted, but he was too weak to press the point. Kirov took his hand. It was mottled and shivering. Kirov held it and sat like that for half an hour, during which they did not speak.
It was evening. Kirov found he had dozed. His apartment was in darkness. He struggled with the discomfort of the chair and his right hand touched a soft piece of cloth. He unfolded a pair of silk camiknickers he had bought for Lara on his last foreign trip. He remembered discovering them under a cushion. In her haste to quit the flat, Lara had left them. They were not to be had in Moscow and so were a measure of her urgency after their last quarrel. He threw them onto the floor and went to make himself some coffee.
From the kitchen he heard the phone ring and went to answer it. It was Neville Lucas on a social call.
‘Peter?’ Lucas used the English form of his name. After twenty-odd years in Moscow the Englishman’s Russian was still heavily accented and he spoke his own language whenever possible.
‘Neville?’
‘Are you there or have we got a bad line?’
‘I was asleep.’
‘Ah, sleep of the innocent. Wish I could. My trouble is I’m not innocent. Just an old whore. Fancy a drink?’
Lucas’s voice was full of sad humour. Kirov had never fathomed the source of that sadness. When he suggested from time to time that the Englishman regretted his life in Russia, the robust reply was, ‘Rubbish! The Soviet Union is the finest country in the world! God’s own people!’ The sadness was left as an echo. England on the other hand was ‘not the place it used to be’. But Lucas had defected from the place it used to be, taking with him such paltry secrets as he could lay his hands on.
‘I thought a few jars in the Mezh would be in order,’ Lucas said. Lucas liked to drink in the Mezhdunarodnaya or any of the other international hotels where he could speak English and be entertained by the visiting businessmen on the lookout for Moscow colour. Nowadays, apart from his nominal rank in the KGB, he spent his time at the Writers’ Union translating textbooks into English for the Indian market. ‘Not the real thing,’ he said of his efforts. ‘Like writing in code. English was meant to be spoken — declaimed, as witness old Will Thingummy, the Great Bard.’
‘How about wetting your whistle?’
‘Not tonight, I’ve got something on,’ Kirov answered.
‘Not something wicked, I hope.’
‘I have a case on.’
‘Enough said.’
Kirov put down the phone. Almost immediately it rang again. Bogdanov was on the line. ‘Where are you?’ Kirov asked.
‘The Butyrka. Can you come here quick?’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Gusev — he’s taken a turn for the worse. They’ve moved him into surgery.’
It was ten o’clock, the snow was gone, the streets were wet, and a slow melancholy train of clanking green carriages gave a wail as it entered Byelorussia Station. Some marshals from the Party were supervising volunteers as they struggled to hang a banner from the station facade, and in Lesnaya Street a line of trucks held placards for the next day’s rally. The demonstration was against war and in favour of peace. Since the pro-war anti-peace party wasn’t numerous, no one was expecting trouble, but the Sluzhba had been kept hopping, checking the papers of non-residents and packing off dissidents for a few days’ unpaid holiday out of the city. Kirov supposed that the exercise was to warm up the population for the next round of the Geneva arms-control talks, which Gorbachev himself was scheduled to attend.
He parked the car in Lesnaya Street and walked the remaining distance to the Butyrka, counting the paces between the ancient turrets along the long penitential wall, gathering his thoughts in the monotony of movement. Bogdanov was waiting for him in the empty stone courtyard, smoking a cigarette in the doorway of the parcels reception office. He stubbed it out and approached Kirov with an urgency in his step.
‘Bakradze has beaten you to it,’ he said. ‘He turned up inside fifteen minutes with six heavies from Petrovka and a police medic; young Tumanov is keeping an eye on them. Bakradze is making calls, smoking his head off and walking the corridors as if he’s expecting a baby. Gusev is unconscious.’
‘Why is he still here? Why hasn’t he been moved to a proper hospital?’
‘He’s too sick to move — I believe them. An hour ago he suddenly started throwing up blood. It has nothing to do with his wound but he was puking blood as if he’d never run out of the stuff. He looked as if he was dying.’
‘Call one of our surgeons in.’
‘Do you know how hard that is at this time of night? Sorry, I’m tired. I was at home when Tumanov called me.’ Bogdanov avoided Kirov’s enquiring eyes. He looked beyond Kirov’s shoulder as if addressing his concerns to an invisible stranger. ‘I managed to find a surgeon. I had to drag him from a lecture at the Sklifasovsky First Aid Institute. He’s on his way now.’ He checked his watch. ‘Fomin — do you know him?’
‘No.’ Kirov glanced at his own watch, though time meant nothing to him. How long was a fatal delay?
They went inside and made their way to the operating theatre. The door was barred and Bakradze and a brace of detectives from Petrovka were waiting outside, watched by a nervous Tumanov. Bogdanov had exaggerated Bakradze’s concern. The lawyer seemed relieved.
‘Pyotr Andreevitch! I’m glad you’re here.’
‘Why?’
Bakradze looked hurt. He hesitated and for want of anything better took out a pack of cigarettes and passed them round the detectives. When he returned to speech, his manner was confidential, even apologetic. ‘This morning I thought we didn’t exactly hit it off. Partly my fault, I suppose. You took me by surprise when you suggested that I was trying to do something behind your back.’