‘What?’ said Brinkman.
‘Been asked to extend. Feeling is that the current leadership uncertainty makes this an important place to be.’
Bollocks, thought Brinkman. They’d discussed the leadership a dozen times. Blair’s disclosure about extending meant he was on to something but he was bloody sure it wasn’t on something as unfocussed as leadership interpretation. They’d interpreted that already, both of them. Was the suspicion true? Did Blair have a source, buried deep? ‘How long for?’
‘No specified time.’
How would Ann react to that? he thought suddenly. Private, he thought, quickly shutting the door. Deciding he wouldn’t get anything by direct questioning, Brinkman tried to offer something that had occurred – professionally – while the man had been away, discomfited at once because he knew the gesture was pointless because bugger all had happened. Chebrakin had appeared publicly ahead of Serada at a photographed session of the Central Committee – which confirmed what they already guessed – and there had been increasing criticism in Pravda of food shortages, which was a rare admission but an indication that someone was soon publicly to be blamed for them.
‘Not much then,’ discerned Blair, when Brinkman finished.
‘Not really,’ conceded Brinkman. ‘Still not the slightest indication of what’s happening beyond Chebrakin.’
‘That’s the kicker,’ said Blair. ‘That’s what everybody wants to know.’
And Blair did, decided Brinkman. Somehow – he didn’t know how – Blair had a lead on what the other moves were and that’s why he’d been recalled to Washington. But that wouldn’t have been enough, to be recalled. That could have been covered in a normal cable. Something about the leadership but important enough to go back to Washington personally to discuss it. But what? What in the name of Christ was it?
‘Thanks, incidentally, for looking after Ann while I was away,’ said Blair.
Brinkman met the American’s gaze across the table. ‘I enjoyed doing it,’ he said easily.
Two days later Serada was removed from the Politburo and the leadership of the Soviet Union. Anatoli Chebrakin was named as successor.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ann telephoned him at the embassy, which she hadn’t done before, and Brinkman was momentarily irritated because it blurred the divisions he’d created. And then he accepted divisions were an infantile effort on his part somehow to ease his conscience and that there couldn’t be any divide.
‘I’ve got to see you,’ she announced.
‘That’s not going to be easy any more, is it?’
‘Do you know what’s happened?’
‘Yes’, said Brinkman. ‘And we shouldn’t be talking on an open line.’
‘Damn an open line!’
‘I’ll try to think of something.’
‘I want to see you now! We had the most terrible row.’
People who had terrible rows sometimes said things they didn’t mean to say. It was still only eleven o’clock. ‘No chance of Eddie coming home to lunch?’
‘He never does. He’d phone if he decided to.’
‘I’ll come.’
‘Thank you, darling. There isn’t anybody else I can talk to.’
As Brinkman drove back to the compound he determined his initial reaction to her call had been the right one. Now Blair was back in Moscow it wasn’t going to be easy to see Ann any more. To attempt to was virtual madness. Did he want to anyway? Although he’d disguised it better, Brinkman had been as bewildered and confused as Ann by what occurred after the Bolshoi and made the same resolutions about mistakes and forgetting them. So why had it been he who made the first approach, afterwards? He’d told her it wasn’t a casual fuck and it wasn’t Romeo and Juliet either, so OK, what was it? A personal involvement hadn’t featured in his plans for Moscow. Without thinking positively about it he’d imagined affairs, pleasant conclusions to pleasant evenings – which is how this had started, he remembered – but he hadn’t wanted telephone-at-work, see-me-at-once situations. And not with the wife of a man doing the same job as he was doing at the American embassy. So what was he doing driving across Moscow for lunchtime assignations? It wasn’t an assignation, he thought, in immediate correction. And there was a purpose – what about the divisions now? – if Blair had inadvertently said something during their argument. Which was an excuse for what? Brinkman couldn’t decide and Brinkman didn’t like being unable to decide anything: certainly not about himself.
There was no hesitation any more. As soon as she let him into the apartment Ann clung to him and kissed him and Brinkman held her and kissed her back and realised he was even more undecided.
‘When did he tell you?’ she asked.
‘We had lunch at the embassy.’
‘Can you believe it!’
‘Professionally, yes,’ said Brinkman. He was trying to be fair as well as guide the conversation.
‘But he knew how I felt!’
‘It’s a very important time here, just now,’ said Brinkman, steering still.
‘That all I bloody well hear! I couldn’t give a damn about how important situations are here at the moment. I came willingly here because I knew how much it mattered to Eddie’s career and I’ve endured it here, for the same reason. To be with him I’ve been virtually cut off by my family and I abandoned all my friends and until now I’ve tried not to complain too much…’ Ann held up her hand, a physical correction. ‘I let him know, clearly enough. But I tried not to go on about it, like some spoilt brat. And all right, I know that’s how I might sound now, to you and to him. But at least we could have discussed it! Didn’t I deserve that, at least?’
Brinkman supposed she did. She appeared to have lobotomised herself to what had happened between them while Blair was away in her equations about who had let whom down. Maybe he wasn’t the only one to try to create divisions. ‘It wouldn’t have been easy, talking on the telephone from Washington, would it?’
‘Why not! What’s all this crap about open lines and secure lines? We wouldn’t have been talking about anything secret. We’d have been talking about our future. And why was it so important to get a decision there and then? Why couldn’t he have come back here to Moscow so we could have talked it through?’
No reason at all, conceded Brinkman. Except that wasn’t how these things were done. He wouldn’t be able to make her understand. It was time to try to get the conversation back on course again. He said, ‘How long’s the extension?’
She snorted a laugh. ‘He says no longer than three years but I don’t believe him. Or that it could be sooner: maybe that we’d be able to keep to the original schedule if the leadership thing is sorted out.’
When the hell was he going to get a lead he could understand and follow? He said, ‘So you could be getting upset about nothing?’
‘Will it be?’
‘Chebrakin has been declared the new leader,’ he said.
She smiled up, in sudden hope. ‘So it is sorted out!’
‘What does Eddie say?’ he asked, directly and hopefully.
‘We haven’t talked about it. We haven’t talked about anything much since he came back,’ she confessed.
Seeing a route to follow Brinkman said, ‘Knowing – as he does now – how you feel about staying on I would have thought he would have said something if everything had been solved by Chebrakin’s election.’
‘So would I,’ she agreed.
Come on! thought Brinkman, the exasperation practically constant now. He said, ‘Hasn’t he?’
‘No’, she said, shortly.
Brinkman knew his conjecture in the embassy cafeteria was right. But what in the name of God was sufficiently important beyond Chebrakin personally to go back to Washington? And likely to keep Blair here longer than his scheduled posting, as much as three years longer? Ann hadn’t believed that, remembered Brinkman. Maybe longer then. It had been worth the risk, coming here today. Wanting more and remembering his earlier thoughts about what happened during arguments, Brinkman said, ‘So it was a bad row?’