The resounding voice sounded happy.
Rybnikov froze on the spot, mentally cursing his own thoughtlessness. He turned round slowly, putting on a surprised expression.
‘Where did you get to?’ Lidina chirped excitedly. ‘Shame on you, you promised! Why are you in civilian clothes? An excellent jacket, you look much better in it than in that terrible uniform! What about the drawings?’
She asked the last question in a whisper, after she had already jumped down on to the pavement.
Vasilii Alexandrovich warily shook the slim hand in the silk glove. He was nonplussed, which only happened to him very rarely – you might even say that it never happened at all
‘A bad business,’ he mumbled eventually. ‘I am obliged to lie low. That’s why I’m in civvies. And that’s why I didn’t come, too… You know, it’s best to keep well away from me just now.’ To make this more convincing, Rybnikov glanced round over his shoulder and lowered his voice. ‘You go on your way, and I’ll walk on. We shouldn’t attract attention.’
Glyceria Romanovna’s face looked frightened, but she didn’t move from the spot.
She glanced round too, and then spoke right into his ear.
‘A court martial, right? What is it – hard labour? Or… or worse?’
‘Worse,’ he said, moving away slightly. ‘There’s nothing to be done. It’s my own fault. I’m to blame for everything. Really, Glyceria Romanovna, my dear lady, I’ll be going.’
‘Not for anything in the world! How can I abandon you in misfortune? You probably need money, don’t you? I have some. Accommodation? I’ll think of something. Good Lord, what terrible bad luck!’ Tears glinted in the lady’s eyes.
‘No, thank you. I’m living with… with my aunt, my late mother’s sister. I don’t want for anything. See what a dandy I am… really, people are looking at us.’
Lidina took hold of his elbow. ‘You’re right. Get into the carriage, we’ll put the top up.’
And she didn’t wait for him to answer, she put him in – he already knew he could never match the stubbornness of this woman. Remarkably enough, although Vasilii Alexandrovich’s iron will did not exactly weaken at that moment, it was, so to speak, distracted, and his foot stepped up on to the running board of its own accord.
They took a drive round Moscow, talking about all sorts of things. The raised hood of the carriage lent even the most innocent subject an intimacy that Rybnikov found alarming. He decided several times to get out at the next corner, but somehow he didn’t get around to it. Lidina was concerned about one thing above all – how to help this poor fugitive who had the merciless sword of martial law dangling over his head.
When Vasilii Alexandrovich finally took his leave, he had to promise that he would come to Prechistensky Boulevard the next day. Lidina would be riding in her carriage, catch sight of him as though by chance, call him and he would get in again. Nothing suspicious, a perfectly normal street scene.
As he gave his promise, Rybnikov was certain that he would not keep it, but the next day the will of this man of iron was affected once again by the inexplicable phenomenon already mentioned above. At precisely five o’clock the correspondent’s feet brought him to the appointed place and the ride was repeated.
The same thing happened the next day, and the day after that.
There was not even a hint of flirting in their relationship – Rybnikov kept a very strict watch on that. No hints, glances or – God forbid! – sighs. For the most part their conversations were serious, and the tone was not at all the one in which men usually talk to beautiful ladies.
‘I like being with you,’ Lidina confessed one day. ‘You’re not like all the others. You don’t show off, you don’t pay compliments. I can tell that for you I’m not a creature of the female sex, but a person, an individual. I never thought that I could be friends with a man and it could be so enjoyable!’
Something must have changed in the expression on his face, because Glyceria Romanovna blushed and exclaimed guiltily:
‘Ah, what an egotist I am! I’m only thinking about myself! But you’re on the edge of a precipice!’
‘Yes, I am on the edge of a precipice…’ Vasilii Alexandrovich murmured desolately, and the way he said it was so convincing that tears sprang to Lidina’s eyes.
Glyceria Romanovna thought about poor Vasya (that was what she always called him to herself) all the time now – before their meetings and afterwards too. How could she help him? How could she save him? He was disoriented, defenceless, not suited to military service. How stupid to put an officer’s uniform on someone like that! It was enough just to remember what he looked like in that get-up! The war would end soon, and no one would ever remember about those papers, but a good man’s life would be ruined for ever.
Every time she appeared at their meeting elated, with a new plan to save him. She suggested hiring a skilled draughtsman who would make another drawing exactly the same. She thought of appealing for help to a high-ranking general of gendarmes, a good friend of hers, who wouldn’t dare refuse.
Every time, however, Rybnikov turned the conversation on to abstract subjects. He was reluctant and niggardly in speaking about himself. Lidina wanted very much to know where and how he had spent his childhood, but all that Vasilii Alexandrovich told her was that as a little boy he loved to catch dragonflies and let them go later from the top of a high cliff, to watch them darting about in zigzags above the void. He also loved imitating the voices of the birds – and he actually mimicked a cuckoo, a magpie and a blue tit so well that Glyceria Romanovna clapped her hands in delight.
On the fifth day of their drives Rybnikov returned to his apartment in a particularly thoughtful mood. First, because there were fewer than twenty-four hours remaining until both ‘projects’ moved into a crucial stage. And secondly, because he knew he had seen Lidina for the last time that day.
Glyceria Romanovna had been especially endearing today. She had come up with two plans to save Rybnikov: one we have already mentioned, about the general of gendarmes, and a second, which she particularly liked, to arrange for him to escape abroad. She described the advantages of this idea enthusiastically, coming back to it again and again, although he said straight away that it wouldn’t work – they would arrest him at the border post.
The fugitive staff captain strode along the boulevard with his jaw thrust out determinedly, so deep in thought that he didn’t glance at his mirror-bright watch at all.
Once he had reached the boarding house, though, and was inside his separate apartment, his habitual caution prompted him to peep out from behind the curtains.
He gritted his teeth: standing at the opposite pavement was a horse cab with its hood up, despite the bright weather. The driver was staring hard at the windows of the ‘Saint-Saëns’; the passenger could not be seen.
Scraps of thoughts started flitting rapidly through Rybnikov’s head.
How?
Why?
Countess Bovada?
Impossible.
But no one else knows.
The old contacts had been broken off, new ones had not yet been struck up.
There could only be one explanation: that damned Reuters Agency. One of the generals he had interviewed had decided to correct something or add something, phoned the Reuters Moscow office and discovered there was no Sten assigned there. He had taken fright, informed the Okhrana… But even if that was it – how had they found him?
And here again there was only one probable answer: by chance.
Some particularly lucky agent had recognised him in the street from a verbal description (ah, he should at least have changed his wardrobe!), and now was trailing him.
But if it was a chance occurrence, things could be set right, Vasilii told himself, and immediately felt calmer.
He estimated the distance to the carriage: sixteen – no, seventeen – steps.