'All right, Netto,' said Arsenyev, holding up a hand. 'It's getting late. Did we ever make a pass at him?' This question was addressed to Suvorin.
'Twice,' said Suvorin. 'Once at the University, obviously, in nineteen eighty. Again in Moscow in ninety-one, when we tried to sell him on democracy and the New Russia.-
'And?'
'And? Looking at the reports? I should say he laughed in our faces.'
'He's a western asset, do we think?'
'Unlikely. He wrote an article in the New Yorker - it's in the file - describing how the Agency and SIS both tried to sign him. Rather a funny piece, in fact.'
Arsenyev frowned. He disapproved of publicity, on either side. 'Wife? Kids?'
Netto jumped in again: 'Married three times.' He glanced at Suvorin, and Suvorin made a little 'go ahead' gesture with his hand: he was happy to take a back seat. 'First, as a student, Katherine Jane Owen, marriage dissolved, seventy-nine. Second, Irma Mik1~ailovna Pugacheva, married eighty-one -'He married a Russian?'
'Ukrainian. Almost certainly a marriage of convenience. She was expelled from the University for anti-state activity. This is the beginning of Kelso's dissident contact. She was granted a visa in eighty-four.
'So we blocked her entry into Britain for three years?'
'No, colonel, the British did. By the time they let her in, Kelso was living with one of his students, an American, a Rhodes Scholar. Marriage to Pugacheva dissolved in eighty-five. She is now married to an orthodontist in Glamorgan.
There is a file but I'm afraid I haven t -'Forget it,' said Arsenyev. 'We'll drown in paper. And the third marriage?' He winked at Suvorin. A real romeo!' 'Margaret Madeline Lodge, an American student -''This is the Rhodes Scholar?'
'No, this is a different Rhodes Scholar. He married this one in eighty-six. The marriage was dissolved last year.'
'Kids?'
'Two sons. Resident with their mother in New York City.'
'One cannot help but admire this fellow,' said Arsenyev, who, despite his bulk, had a mistress of his own in Technical Support. He contemplated the photograph, the corners of his mouth turned down in admiration. 'What's he doing in Moscow?'
'Rosarkhiv are holding a conference,' said Netto, 'for foreign scholars.'
'Feliks?'
Major Suvorin had his right ankle swung up on to his left knee, his elbows resting casually on the sofa back, his sports jacket unbuttoned - easy, confident, Americanized: his style. He took a pull on his pipe before he spoke.
'The words used on the telephone are ambiguous, obviously. The implication could be that Mamantov has this notebook, and the historian wishes to see it. Or the historian himself has the notebook, or has heard of it, and wishes to check some detail with Mamantov. Whichever is the case, Mamantov is clearly aware of our surveillance, which is why he cuts the conversation short. When is Kelso due to leave the Federation, Vissari, do we know yet?'
'Tomorrow lunchtime,' said Netto. 'Delta flight to JFK, leaves Sheremetevo-2 at thirteen-thirty. Seat booked and confirmed.'
'I recommend we arrange for Kelso to be stopped and searched,' said Suvorin. 'Strip-searched, it had better be -delay the flight if necessary - on suspicion of exporting material of historical or cultural interest. If he's taken anything from this house in Vspolnyi Street, we can get it off him. In the meantime, we maintain our coverage of Mamantov.'
A buzzer sounded on Arsenyev's desk; Sergo's voice.
'There's a call for Vissari Petrovich.'
'All right, Netto,' said Arsenyev. 'Take it in the outer office.' When the door was closed, he scowled at Suvorin, 'Efficient little bastard, isn't he?'
'He's harmless enough, Yuri. He's just keen.
Arsenyev grunted, took two long squirts from his inhaler, unhitched his belt a notch, let his flesh sag towards his desk. The colonel's fat was a kind of camouflage: a blubbery, dimpled netting thrown over an acute mind, so that while other, sleeker men had fallen, Arsenyev had safely waddled on - through the cold war (KGB chief resident in Canberra and Ottawa), through glasnost and the failed coup and the break-up of the service, on and on, beneath the armoured soft protective shell of his flesh, until now, at last, he was into the final stretch: retirement in one year, dacha, mistress, pension, and the rest of the world could go fuck its collective mother. Suvorin rather liked him.
'All right, Feliks. What do you think?'
'The purpose of the Mamantov operation,' said Suvorin, carefully, 'is to discover how five hundred million roubles were siphoned out of KGB funds, where Mamantov hid them, and how this money is being used to fund the anti-democratic opposition. We already know he bankrolls that red fascist mucksheet -'
'Aurora -'- Aurora - if it now turns out he's spending it on guns as well, I'm interested. If he's buying Stalin memorabilia, or selling it, for that matter - well, it's sick, but -'
'This isn't just memorabilia, Feliks. This - this is famous -there was a file on this notebook - it was one of "the legends of Lubyanka".'
Suvorin's first reaction was to laugh. The old man couldn't be serious, surely? Stalin's notebook? But then he saw the expression on Arsenyev's face and hastily turned his laughter into a cough. 'I'm sorry, Yuri Semonovich - forgive me - if you take it seriously, then, of course, I take it seriously.'
'Run the tape again, Feliks, would you be so good? I never could work these damned machines.'
He slid it across the desk with a hairy, pudgy forefinger. Suvorin came over from the sofa and they listened to it together, Arsenyev breathing heavily, tugging at the thick flesh of his fat neck, which was what he always did when he scented trouble.
'... a black oilskin notebook that used to belong to Josef Stalin...'
They were still bent over the tape when Netto crept back in, his complexion three shades paler than usual, to announce he had bad news.
FELIKS Stepanovich Suvorin, with Netto at his heels, walked back, grim-faced~ to his office. It was a long trek from the leadership suites in the west of the building to the operational block in the east, and in the course of it at least a dozen people must have nodded and smiled at him, for in the Finnish-designed, wood and white-tile corridors of Yasenevo, the major was the golden boy, the coming man. He spoke English with an American accent, subscribed to the leading American magazines and had a collection of modern American jazz, which he listened to with his wife, the daughter of one of the President's most liberal economic advisers. Even Suvorin's clothes were American - the button-down shirt, the striped tie, the brown sports jacket - each one a legacy of his years as the KGB resident in Washington.
Look at Feliks Stepanovich!, you could see them thinking, as they struggled into their winter coats and hurried past to catch the buses home. Put in as number two to that fat old timer, Arsenyev, primed to take over an entire directorate at the age of thirty-eight. And not just any directorate, either, but RT - one of the most secret of them all! - licensed to conduct foreign intelligence operations on Russian soil. Look at him, the coming man, hurrying back to his office to work, while we go off home for the night...
'Good evening to you, Feliks Stepanovich!'
'So long, Feliks! Cheer up!'
'Working late again, I see, comrade major!'
Suvorin half-smiled, nodded, gestured vaguely with his pipe, preoccupied.
The details, as Netto had relayed them, were sparse but eloquent. Fluke Kelso had left the Mamantovs' apartment at fifteen-seven. Suvorin had also left the scene a few minutes later. At fifteen-twenty-two, Ludmilla Fedorova Mamantova, in the company of the bodyguard, Viktor Bubka, was also observed to leave the apartment for her customary afternoon stroll to the Bolotnaya Park (given her confused condition, she had always to be accompanied). Since there was only one man on duty, they were not followed.