Until two days ago Marija had been at her wits end before she learned that the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Roman Archdiocese of Malta had written to her parents and to the father of the groom, graciously offering the Cathedral of St Paul at Mdina to the ‘happy couple’ on Saturday 7th March, with the service to commence at one o’clock that day ‘war exigencies permitting’. This was the happiest of outcomes — St Catherine’s Hospital for Women was situated within yards of the Cathedral — and ensured that the wedding would be ‘a true carnival’. All this Marija had confided to Clara on their afternoon out, cementing the foundations of a new friendship that the older woman, in her present situation, craved.
Latterly, Clara’s life had become a very lonely, dangerous thing. She was mentally exhausted by constantly having to pretend to be somebody and something that she had not been for many years, and hoped never to be again. Meeting Arkady Rykov’s dull-eyed gaze she prayed he did not see straight through her.
She cleared her throat genteelly.
“Doctor Seiffert told me that you called yesterday when I was away from the Citadel,” Clara informed the man, her emotions roiling just beneath her carefully manufactured mask of equanimity.
“I’ve missed you.” Arkady Pavlovich Rykov was dressed in a lightweight, somewhat creased brown suit. He wore no tie, and had about him a down at heel look. Today he did not want to be noticed or remembered, he was a master of losing himself in a crowd, merging with the background, becoming invisible unless a searcher looked him directly in the eye.
“I shouldn’t have just moved out. That was, well,” Clara shrugged, suddenly feeling a little cold, “not fair.”
Rykov shrugged, pursed his lips.
“Do you know the first thing Lavrentiy Beria told me?” The KGB defector posed rhetorically.
Clara shook her head.
“Never tell somebody a thing that you don’t need to tell them,” the man went on, stepping up to the edge of the chest high rampart to see where she had been looking when he disturbed her.
Clara stood beside him, avoiding physical contact.
He had told her his darkest secrets and much later, after she had stopped being afraid; she had no longer felt many of the things she had felt for him before. Where once there had been devotion, what she had taken for love, there was an emotional void called Arkady Pavlovich Rykov. She thought she had loved him when she had not even known what his name was, she had thought she had loved him when he had almost got her killed several times, and she had tried to love him after she had learned who he was and discovered the darkest corners of his past life. Oddly, she had not stopped loving him when she witnessed him attack another man like a wild animal; it was only when he confessed he had tortured and killed women in cold blood that the part of her that had still loved him had died. He had confronted her with his evil because he had had to tell somebody before it destroyed him, consuming him from within like some excoriating poison; knowing that even as he confessed his sins that he might lose her forever. She was safe before she learned his secrets; now she was living on borrowed time.
“Marija took me to Mosta yesterday,” Clara said distractedly. “I think she saw how miserable I was and she wanted to cheer me up. Neither of us was needed until the evening so we jumped on a bus and off we went.” Nobody at the Hospital looked at her as if she was a fading courtesan and although she had forgotten practically everything she had learned in her training at Bart’s Hospital in London just after the 1945 war, everybody was helpful, considerate, understanding without her having to say a word. “We walked around the Church of the Assumption of our Lady. We sat a while. We said our prayers, or at least, Marija did. For somebody who is so sensible and practical, she is very spiritual. I rather envy her that.”
When she had not been taking time out to genuflect, meditate, or to pray, Marija had babbled and gossiped like a schoolgirl. The magnificent dome of the Church of the Assumption of our Lady, known locally either as the ‘Rotunda of Malta’ or the ‘Mosta Dome’ was one hundred and twenty-two feet across, making it either the third or the fourth biggest unsupported dome in the World, according to Marija. To bear the weight of the huge dome the church, which was consecrated in 1871, had thirty feet thick masonry walls. The German Luftwaffe had once — inadvertently it was believed because the Maltese were a forgiving people — attempted to destroy the church. In a day light raid on 9th April 1942 while over three hundred parishioners waited to celebrate early evening mass two bombs had struck the building; a 50-kilogram bomb that had bounced off, and a 500-kilogram device which had penetrated the dome and come to rest among the shocked congregation. Miraculously, the bomb had not exploded and after priests had shepherded their flock, none of whom had suffered any injuries in the raid to safety, a bomb disposal team had removed the offending bomb and dumped it out at sea.
Arkady Rykov viewed her thoughtfully. The former KGB man who had been her lover for most of the last year was silent.
“If we stayed together,” Clara said, in a virtual whisper, “deep down I would always be afraid of you.”
Arkady Rykov digested this.
“Yes, I know.”
“You should go now.”
The man made no attempt to move.
“The British think I lied to them about Red Dawn,” he informed Clara, dispassionately. “British Intelligence was so thoroughly penetrated before the war there are men, and probably women, who will bring me down if they can. That is the way of things.”
“What are you telling me this, Arkady?”
The former KGB man chuckled grimly.
“In case we never speak again, my love.”
Clara watched the man walk away, salty moisture blurring her vision. She turned, sniffed back her tears and looked again at the marvellous vista of the island stretched out beneath the walls of the Citadel from her eagle aerie viewpoint hundreds of feet above sea level. She stared sightlessly; unaware of the time passing. Presently, gathering clouds scudding across the archipelago from the north-west covered the sun and the breeze became biting, chilling. Shivering, Clara came down from the walls and began to make her way the short distance back to the Hospital where Margo had given her use of the top floor room next to Marija’s.
Margo Seiffert was a strange woman; so tough and yet so protective. It was as if she understood that Clara was bruised and sad, and had automatically taken her under her wing. It began to rain as she reached out to pull the bell handle to the hospital’s main doors onto St Paul’s Square. Glancing up for no reason she caught movement at the edge of her peripheral vision, half-turned her head and saw Peter Christopher and Marija sheltering in the portico of the Cathedral. The lovers did not notice her as she disappeared into the hospital.
“You are not angry?” Marija asked for the third time.
“About the big wedding, no!” Peter Christopher said for the third time, adding emphasis and quiet vehemence to his reassurance.
“The Archbishop wishes to preside during the ceremony,” Marija sighed, finally satisfied that he meant what he said, “but Father Dominic from the Church of St John’s in Sliema will assist him. I have known Father Dominic since I was this high,” she explained, lowering the flat of her right hand to approximately the level of her knees. “But you already know that…”