‘Give me a break, Mom!’
‘That’s exactly what I am trying to give you,’ said the woman.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Blair left the apartment early the following morning – earlier than he ever had – careless of Ann imagining it some continuation of the coldness which had existed between them since his return from Washington; careless of everything in his eagerness to get to the secure-doored isolation of his office at the embassy. He needed such absolute isolation, without the slightest distraction or interruption, properly to assimilate what had happened at the reception the previous night. Just five words – words he had been convinced at first that he had misheard – which must have showed, because Orlov had repeated them urgently: ‘I would like to meet.’ And the paper, slipped into his hand, the paper he had spread now on his desk and was staring down at, willing the neat, sterile letters to tell him more. ‘Kuntsevo. Fili Park. 1900. 11 June.’ Today was 11 June. So Pietr Orlov, recently returned Plenipotentiary Ambassador for the USSR at the United Nations, recently elected and youngest member of the central governing body, wanted to meet him at seven o’clock tonight at the last pier for the Moscow river boats, where the vessels change for the trip further north. Which was just beyond Fili Park. Dare he go? There were standard lectures about provocateur entrapment – not just for people like him but for all diplomatic staff – before any Moscow posting. But they weren’t about anything like this. The entrapments were crude affairs by KGB groundmen. They didn’t involve people like Pietr Orlov. It had to be genuine. Genuine what? That was an impossible speculation. He could absorb all the available file material that he’d already pulled and imagine half a dozen possibilities and still be a million miles from guessing right. He’d have to go. Unthinkable, of course, that he wouldn’t once he’d considered everything. He’d have to go to the pier and remain as inconspicuous as possible and let Orlov make the running. If the man showed then whatever it was he would be involved in the most spectacular moment in his career. He should tell Langley. It was common sense – apart from inviolate instructions – that he shouldn’t try to climb a greasy pole like this without at least trying to establish some form of padding if he fell backwards. Not that there was much they’d be able to do if it were a set-up, inconceivable though that might be. But he was reluctant to contact Washington. It was so little and so inconclusive. Shaking up the bees’ nest without knowing where the honey was. He postponed it, poring over the material that existed in the files. So little, he thought again. Married, no children, comparatively rapid rise through the diplomatic channel, culminating in the most recent election. Flat and empty, a Who’s Who entry; except that a Who’s Who entry gave hobbies and pastimes and what he had in front of him didn’t even provide that.
He had to contact Langley about other things from last night, Blair knew, coming back to his uncertainty. Aistov’s appearance, after the crop disaster, was important. The sort of thing he would have considerd very important indeed, before Orlov. He wrote the message and encoded it and then sat where he was instead of taking it to the cipher room. This was stupid. No matter what the uproar when he shook the nest, he had to tell them. Not to do so – for fear of making himself look a fool – would be abandoning his expertise as an intelligence officer and he prided that expertise above all else.
It took him an hour to write and encode and he had the Orlov message transmitted first and then sat, waiting. The response came within a hour, which, considering the procedural channels at Langley was practically at the speed of light. He responded patiently that he couldn’t amplify because he had included everything in his first message and when they asked for interpretation he said that was impossible, glad he’d thought it through before the request came. Langley said a special desk was being established, inside the existing 24-hour Watch Room and that he was to communicate immediately after the meeting – if it occurred – took place. There was the injunction to take all possible care and to avoid anything which might lead to an incident embarrassing to the United States and then, as an apparent afterthought, Hubble personally signed a message wishing him good luck.
The two-way exchanges meant he missed lunch but Blair was too excited to eat anyway. He telephoned Ann to say he would be late home – probably very late – and that she wasn’t to wait dinner and to go to bed without him. She’d been in bed that morning when he’d left so he asked her how she was and she said OK and how was he and he said OK, anxious to get off the telephone. Ann appeared to sense it and ended the conversation.
Blair realised he would be behaving like an amateur if he didn’t carry out a reconnaissance. He wasn’t an amateur: he was an extremely experienced professional who knew entrapments weren’t set up instantly: entrapments required planning and Blair was pretty sure that if he made a practice run early he would be professional enough to identify any preparation.
From the embassy on Ulitza Chaykovskovo Blair walked without haste to the nearest metro, wanting to pick up the watchers. He emerged from the underground at the Sverdlova station, only starting to hurry when he was almost across Red Square and approaching the gigantic GUM department store, enjoying himself with the thought that he was going to clear his trail actually in view of the KGB headquarters. Once through the doors he really hurried, burying himself in the largest department store in the Soviet Union and reflecting as he did so that it was an ideal place in which to lose a tail. He emerged from one of the side-doors, away from the Lenin Mausoleum, hurrying this time to the Ploshchad metro terminal. The essential of identifying any surveillance is obviously to identify your pursuers and throughout Blair was alert to people close around and when he boarded the train he checked and decided that no one in the immediate carriage had been with him earlier. Which didn’t preclude the following carriage, which was the one he would have chosen if he were conducting the surveillance. To avoid that, he disembarked after two stations, remaining where he was on the platform, so that any follower would have had to get off with him and remain obviously on the station, like he was. No one did. Blair caught the next train to come along, disembarked for the necessary change and still necessary further check and emerged comparatively satisfied at Kiev station, in front of the ferry pier. Blair allowed himself to be carried aboard by the crush of people, not shouldering forward in a way that would have attracted any attention. It was full of trippers and Blair decided if it were to be a genuine meet then Orlov had chosen his protection well. Intentionally Blair set himself on the deck, near a bend in the rail which meant he only had two directions in which to look, still alert for surveillance. As the ferry made its way up river, Blair gazed up at the thrusting colonnades and obelisks commemorating the Battle of Borodino as they passed under the Borodinskiy bridge, and decided it was the most attractive of the river crossing points. The buildings were too tall – not skyscrapers like he knew them but still tall – near the Kalininskiy Bridge. Blair turned away from the bridges, gazing instead across at the Krasnaya Presnya Park, using the movement still to watch everyone around him. He employed the long stretch of the river before the twist under the railway bridge to continue the search and by the time they neared his destination Blair was sure he was clean. He thought the factories along the last section were uniform and depressive but he thought Fili Park looked attractive. Just how attractive, he wondered, would it prove to be for him?
Blair let himself be carried off the ferry as he had boarded it, by the pressure of people around, detaching himself gradually at the end of the pier and staring around. Ahead he could see the larger boats taking the trippers further north, to the beaches at Plyazh. This was the junction point, people and boats going in both directions, a pushing and shoving melee of a place. Good for an ambush as well as an unobserved meeting. Blair wandered, with apparent aimlessness, in reality aware of everything around him. It was chaotic but the proper sort of chaos: there was no artifice, of people put on stage to play their part in a performance in which he was going to become a lead player. Very slightly he relaxed.