Adrian hunched behind the pen-and-pencil set, head turned towards the empty window, to avoid her direct stare. Despite their complaints, the maintenance people hadn’t cleaned the window-sill and the chocolate was parched, like a dried-up riverbed. It wouldn’t be today, not now. Today she’d won. Again. Perhaps tomorrow.
‘What did she want?’
‘She asked me to give you the address of a solicitor,’ said Miss Aimes and again there was that smirk. She handed him a piece of paper. Runthorpe, Golding and Chapel, Pauls Mews, London EG2. Very respectable-sounding, he thought. I wonder how many lesbians Mr Runthorpe had acted for in the past? Still, who said it was a man? Perhaps it was a Miss Runthorpe, all part of Anita’s new set of friends.
‘You wanted to ask me something?’
Adrian looked at her, puzzled. ‘What?’
‘You were complaining of my being late and going to ask me something,’ reminded Miss Aimes, confidently.
‘Oh, it was nothing,’ said Adrian. ‘Nothing at all. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.’
Miss Aimes wouldn’t let go.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ said Adrian, ‘quite sure.’
They reversed the routine the second day, bringing Bennovitch across country to Pulborough. Pavel had seemed surprised, at first, as if expecting to go to the other man, but then he accepted the change without comment. The scientist was withdrawn, grunting reactions to Adrian’s attempts at conversation while they awaited the other Russian.
Bennovitch waddled in, like a newborn bear on show at a zoo for the first time. Adrian noticed that the nervousness was subdued, the hands not automatically in his mouth now.
As before, the two men embraced and immediately began talking.
‘I’ve worked on the solar wind speeds, during the night. Look.’
Bennovitch produced his calculations proudly, anticipating praise. Adrian remembered the jottings of the previous day. What had happened to them? A mistake he realized. He’d have to collect them. Had Pavel taken them? He couldn’t remember.
The two men launched into a technical discussion of calculations. And in Russian, mused Adrian. That would take some translation and analysis. But that didn’t matter. Ebbetts was getting what he wanted, the information that the two men possessed, and in two weeks’ time he’d initiate his diplomacy and get something from every side.
But the major benefit would be for Ebbetts and Britain. That, supposed Adrian, was the meaning of statesmanship, the successful manipulation of everybody and every country and everything to your own advantage.
He wondered if statesmen and prime ministers and diplomats ever regretted afterwards the concessions and compromises and ruthlessness necessary to earn their reputations. Probably not. The end always justifies the means, unless the end deviates from the expected success, and then the inbuilt protection is brought forth, and the mistakes can be shown as those of others.
Life, thought Adrian, the sort of life he lived, was a shit. Everyone was a shit, him and the people he dealt with and even the things he had to do. A shit.
He sat, half listening to the two Russians, enjoying the description. Everything was certainly changing. That was a word that would not have presented itself three weeks before. Adrian Dodds, you’re growing up. He sighed. Growing up. But too late. A shit. He brought the word to mind again, consciously, enjoying his mental graffito, like a fourteen-year-old inscribing his adulthood on a lavatory wall. But my way is safer than lavatory walls, thought Adrian. I can’t get caught.
Pavel was nodding, accepting Bennovitch’s argument, and the younger man was smiling shyly. If he had a tail, thought Adrian, he’d wag it.
The Englishman suddenly became conscious that they were recognizing his presence in the room and began to concentrate.
‘I asked you a question,’ said Bennovitch testily, eager to prove his attitude towards the interrogator.
Adrian smiled. There was no point in constantly defeating the tiny man.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, deferentially. ‘What did you say?’
‘When will we be allowed to be together all the time?’
‘Soon,’ said Adrian, vaguely. ‘It’s pointless occupying two houses. It’s obviously better for you to be together. I’ll make the recommendation tonight.’
‘And the debriefing takes so much less time, doesn’t it?’
The cynicism of three days before emerged unexpectedly and Adrian looked at Pavel.
‘Yes,’ he conceded, ‘so much less time.’
‘We’ll go to America, won’t we?’ asked Bennovitch. He seemed anxious to prove himself constantly to the other Russian. A son with an inferiority complex trying to compete with a brilliant father, decided Adrian.
‘That depends.’ He began to hedge, but Pavel intruded, abruptly.
‘Oh no it doesn’t,’ he contradicted. ‘What use would we have in Britain, whose space programme is limited to a firework on the Woomera rocket range?’
You’d be surprised, thought Adrian. He smiled at Pavel. ‘Of course America wants you,’ he said. ‘You don’t need me to tell you that. Washington has officially asked that their embassy here be given access to you as soon as possible. They intend making you an offer, obviously. And it’ll be a good one.’
‘Sought after,’ mocked Pavel, speaking to the other Russian. ‘We’re being fought over, Alexandre.’
Bennovitch misunderstood the irony and smiled happily, pleased that they were being considered together, each as useful as the other. A year, judged Adrian perhaps eighteen months at the outside before Bennovitch had a breakdown.
One of the security men entered and nodded and Pavel said, still sarcastic, ‘Visiting time is up. Time to go.’
Bennovitch looked from him to Adrian and then back again, trying to gauge the feeling that existed between them and failing.
Adrian nodded to Bennovitch. ‘It’s time to go, Alexandre,’ he said. ‘You’ve been here three hours.’
‘Tomorrow?’ asked the younger Russian.
‘Of course. Perhaps for good.’
Bennovitch smiled and turned back to Pavel. They embraced again and as Bennovitch began to move back Pavel held him, the affection almost embarrassing.
Adrian sat unspeaking with Pavel for several moments after Bennovitch had gone. He felt unsettled. He couldn’t isolate the cause or harden the feeling beyond a vague impression. And he wasn’t allowed impressions any more, by direct order from the Prime Minister.
‘You have a lot, haven’t you?’ said Pavel.
‘What?’
‘I can tell by the freedom with which Alexandre talks that he’s told you a lot.’
‘He’s been helpful,’ allowed Adrian, guardedly.
‘And with us together, it’s one hundred times better, isn’t it?’
‘You seem to be a fantastic team,’ admitted Adrian.
‘We are,’ said Pavel, without conceit, ‘we are.’
Silence settled again. The feeling persisted in Adrian. Pavel stood up, wandering without direction around the room, and Adrian was reminded of an actor rehearsing his lines. When Pavel sat down, it proved an apt simile.
‘I don’t want to see Alexandre again,’ he began.
So his impression had been right. That was his immediate reaction, the knowledge that he was going to be proved right. He had warned of something unusual happening and here it was. Adrian wondered what Ebbetts’s response would be.
‘What?’
‘I said I don’t want to see Alexandre any more.’
‘But why …?’ Adrian forced the question, aware of the answer.
Pavel got up and completed another tour of the room before he answered. Then, spacing the words as if anxious there should be no misunderstanding, he said, ‘I want to go back.’