There was something funereal about the drive back down to Malá Strana. Egorkin and Sam sat in the front like two undertaker mutes while the girl sat alone in the back like a principal mourner, sniffing quietly to herself.
In the square outside his apartment building there was nobody about, no watching policemen, no waiting cars, no sign of anything out of the ordinary. A light showed behind the curtains at the windows of his sitting room, which gave him some kind of comfort. He ushered his passengers from the car into the building. The hallway was silent and empty. They crept up like thieves to the first floor. His door key grating in the lock seemed loud and intrusive, an alarm to waken the dead.
‘It’s me,’ he called into the interior of the flat as he opened the door. ‘I’ve got people with me.’
There was a moment when he thought perhaps she had gone. And then she was there at the door to their bedroom, bare-legged with a towel held to her front, her face pale with anxiety, her eyes wide.
‘Go back inside,’ he told her. ‘I’ll be with you in a moment.’
The Russians had followed him in. They stood now, a disconsolate couple, in the middle of the hallway, like refugees from the outbreak of war. Egorkin seemed diminished in size compared with the man Sam had encountered in the gardens in Mariánské Lázně. And the woman beside him, who had appeared proud and vigorous on stage, was now seen in the hall light to be a mere slip, a bewildered child looking at him with horror, as though the full import of what she had done was only just dawning on her.
Sam pushed them past the bedroom and the living room, past the kitchen and bathroom to the spare room at the back. There was nothing there beyond some of his old clothes. The bed wasn’t even made up, hadn’t been touched ever since his mother had come to stay the previous year. He found some sheets in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe and tossed them to Nadia. ‘You’ll have to make the bed,’ he said in Russian, and she smiled at hearing her own language in a foreign mouth. ‘Towels, soap, but I haven’t got anything else. Not even a spare toothbrush. We’ll have to get stuff for you in the morning. I can find you something to eat if you want.’
They wanted nothing. Frugal was the watchword for Russian defectors in the hands of their hosts. Egorkin sat on the bed, bent forward with his elbows on his knees and his forearms hanging slack between his legs. He wore the expression of someone who has jumped over the cliff and suddenly understands that there is no way to go but down. It was the girl, Nadezhda Pankova, who started to do something. She shoved him off the bed and into the only chair in the room. Then she began to make the bed, as though housework was the solution to all their problems.
Sam closed the door on them and went back to his own room where Lenka waited, her face set against the world. ‘What are they doing here?’ she asked.
Sam began to undress. ‘They are guests for the night.’
‘They are Russians. Perhaps they are musicians, but they are Russians. Why are they here?’
‘Because they have just run away from Russia.’
She considered this, looking at him with suspicious eyes. ‘Who can blame them?’
35
A brief telephone call, first thing next day. Sam tried to picture Eric Whittaker in his pyjamas, yawning and scratching his head and trying to work out who this might be disturbing him so early on Saturday morning. And Madeleine lying in bed beside him, wearing, presumably, some exotic French nightdress. ‘Guests? What guests?’ Eric asked irritably.
‘Perhaps if you were to come round. I’d rather not talk over the phone.’
Whittaker was round in fifteen minutes. Sam opened the door to him and ushered him into the sitting room. ‘It’s Gennady Egorkin,’ he said before Whittaker could utter a word.
‘What about him?’
‘He’s here, in the spare room.’
‘Here?’
‘He called me last night. Threw himself on my mercy, more or less. Him and his girlfriend.’
‘Girlfriend?’
‘Nadezhda Pankova, the violinist. You saw her playing the Brahms. And then I heard them in Mariánské Lázně, and—’
‘What the hell’s going on, Sam?’
‘They’re looking for asylum.’
‘Asylum? And you’ve done what exactly? Taken it upon yourself to grant it to them?’
‘Not exactly. I just thought we ought to consider it. There’s nothing wrong with putting them up for the night, is there? And then we can go from there.’
‘Nothing wrong? For fuck’s sake!’ Eric Whittaker’s face seemed about to explode. There was something almost geological about it, his whole countenance trembling under the onslaught of internal disturbances like the surface ripples from an earthquake buried deep below his crust of elegant complacency. Occasional eruptions broke out along the fault lines. A twitch, an open mouth, a grimace. ‘What do you want, Sam? A row with the Soviet Union just when they’re looking to pick a fight with the Czechos? Jesus Christ!’
‘I just did what any human being would do – tried to help them.’
‘Human being? But you’re not a human being – you’re a bloody British diplomat!’
He turned away and went over to the window, stood there looking out at the dunce-cap towers of the bridge gate rising over the neighbouring roofs. ‘What the hell is H.E. going to say? I’ve no idea but I tell you one thing, whatever the final outcome, this is going down on your annual report as a pretty black mark.’
Sam smiled, grateful that Eric had his back to him because he would only have interpreted the expression as mocking or smug or something, whereas really it was relief. ‘My annual report against two artists desperate for freedom? It doesn’t really balance, does it, Eric?’
Whittaker turned. ‘Do you know how pompous that sounds, Sam?’
‘You know Gennady Egorkin, Eric. You’ve been to one of his concerts—’
‘Two, actually. Heard him playing Beethoven at the Royal Festival Hall a couple of years ago.’
‘So you understand his importance. And Pankova. We’re talking about artists here. I know it doesn’t fit in with politics or economics or whatever it is that occupies the Foreign Office mind at the moment, but it’s every bit as important. I mean, look at Ashkenazy, for example. Or Nureyev. Not only a triumph for art but also—’
‘A triumph for politics.’
‘I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to say, a humanitarian act.’
‘But it’s the political side of things that London appreciates. And anyway, the wretched man is here, not in London.’
‘So we get him out.’
‘That, my dear Sam, is easier said than done.’ Whittaker shook his head despairingly. ‘Look, I’ll have a word with him if you like, but I don’t want to give him the impression that this is official, is that clear? Not until we’ve got some kind of clearance from head office. Or at least from H.E. So the story is, Egorkin appealed to you and you took him and his girlfriend back to your flat as nothing more than an act of kindness. A private decision. Is that clear?’
It was clear. It was precisely what Sam had told them. ‘I’m not a bloody idiot, Eric.’