He did not need their scared labels and their weakling systems. He was one man alone but he was greater than the sum of those who had presumed to take control of him. He knew them as the worst of all bad weapons, because their existence justified their targets.
In a gentle way that was not even all that gentle, he had discovered anger. He could smell its first kindling and hear the crackle of its brushwood.
There was only now. Gocthe was right. There was no tomorrow because tomorrow was the excuse. There was now or there was nowhere and Goethe, even nowhere, was still right. We must cut down the grey men inside ourselves, we must burn our grey suits and set our good hearts free, which is the dream of every decent soul, and even – believe it or not – of certain grey men too. But how, with what?
Goethe was right, and it was not his fault or Barley's that each by accident had set the other in motion. With the radiance of spirit that was rising in him, Barley's sense of kinship with his unlikely friend was overwhelming. He brimmed with allegiance to Goethe's frantic dream of un- leashing the forces of sanity and opening the doors on dirty rooms.
But Barley did not dwell long on Goethe's agony. Goethe was in hell and very likely Barley would soon be following him. I'll mourn him when I have the time, he thought. Until then his business was with the living whom Goethe had put so shamefully at risk, and in a brave last gesture had attempted to preserve.
For his immediate business Barley must use the grey men's wiles. He must be himself but more so than he has ever been before. He must wait. He must worry. He must be a man reversed, inwardly reconciled, outwardly unfulfilled. He must live secretly on tiptoe, arch as a cat inside his head while he acts the Barley Blair they wish to see, their creature all the way.
Meanwhile the chess-player in him reckons his moves. The slumbering negotiator is becoming unobservably awake. The publisher is achieving what he has never achieved before, he is becoming the cool-headed broker between the necessity and the far vision.
Katya knows, he reasons. She knows Goethe is caught.
But they do not know she knows, because she kept her wits about her on the telephone.
And they do not know I know that Katya knows.
In the whole world I am the only person apartfrom Katya and Goethe who knows that Katya knows.
Katya is still free.
Why?
They have not stolen her children, ransacked her flat, thrown Matvey in the madhouse or displayed any of the delicacy traditionally reserved for Russian ladies playing courier to Soviet defence physicists who have decided to entrust their nation's secrets to a derelict Western publisher.
Why?
I too this far am free. They have not chained my neck to a brick wall.
Why?
Because they do not know we know they know.
So they want more.
They want us, but more than us.
They can wait for us, because they want more.
But what is the more?
What is the clue to their patience?
Everybody talks, Ned had said, stating a fact of life. With today's methods everybody talks. He was telling Barley not to try and hold out if he was caught, But Barley was not thinking about himself any more. He was thinking about Katya.
Each night, each day that followed, Barley moved the pieces round in his mind, honing his plan while he waited, as we all did, for Friday's promised meeting with the Bluebird.
At breakfast, Barley punctually on parade, a model publisher and spy. And each day, all day long, the life and soul of the fair.
Goethe. Nothing I can do for you. No power on earth will prise you from their grip.
Katya, still savable. Her children, still savable. Even though everybody talks and Goethe its the end will be no exception.
Myself, unsavable as ever.
Goethe gave me the courage, he thought, as his secret purpose grew in him, and Katya the love.
No. Katya gave me both. And gives them to me still.
And the Friday as quiet as the days before, the screens near-blank, as Barley steers himself methodically towards the evening's grand Potomac & Blair Launch Party in the Spirit of Goodwill and Glasnost, as our flowery invitations have it, printed in triptych with deckle edges on the Service's own printing press not two weeks ago.
And intermittently, with a seeming casualness, Barley assures himself of Katya's continuing welfare. He rings her whenever he can. He chats to her and makes her use the word 'convenient' as a safety signal. In return he includes the word 'frankly' in his own careless chatter. Nothing heavy; nothing on the matter of love or death or great German poets. Just:
How are you doing?
Is the fair wearing you out, frankly?
How are the twins?
Is Matvey still enjoying his pipe?
Meaning, I love you, and I love you, and I love you, and I love you frankly.
For further assurance regarding her safety Barley despatches Wicklow to take a passing look at her in the Socialist pavilion. 'She's fine,' Wicklow reports with a smile, humouring Barley's nervousness. 'She's steady as she goes.'
'Thanks,' says Barley. 'Jolly nice of you, old boy.'
The second time, again at Barley's bidding, Henziger himself goes. Perhaps Barley is saving himself for the evening. Or perhaps he does not trust his own emotions. But she is still there, still alive, still breathing, and she has changed into her party frock.
Yet all the while, even driving back early to town in order to be ahead of his guests, Barley continues to muster his private army of alterable and unalterable facts with a clarity that the most trained and compromised lawyer would be proud of.
CHAPTER 16
'Gyorgy! Marvellous! Fantastic! Where's Varenka?'
'Barley, my friend, for Christ's sake save us! We don't like the twentieth century any better than you English. Let's run away from it together! We leave tonight, okay? You buy the tickets?'
'Yuri. My God, is this your new wife? Leave him. He's a monster.'
'Barley! Listen! Everything is fine! We have no more problems! In the old days we had to assume that everything was a mess! Now we can look in our newspapers and confirm it!'
'Misha! How's the work going? Super!'
'It's war, for Christ's sake, Barley, open war. Firstwe got to hang the old guard, then we got to fight another Stalingrad!'
'Leo! Great to see you! How's Sonya?'
'Barley, pay attention to me! Communism is not a threat! It's a parasite industry that lives off the mistakes of all you stupid assholes in the West!'
The reception was in the mirrored upstairs room of an elderly mid-town hotel. Plainclothes guards stood outside on the pavement. More hovered in the hall and on the staircase and at the entrance to the room.
Potomac & Blair had invited a hundred people. Eight had accepted, nobody had refused, and so far a hundred and fifty had arrived. But until Katya was among them Barley preferred the spaces near the door.
A flock of Western girls swept in, escorted by the usual dubious official interpreters, all men. A portly philosopher who played the clarinet arrived with his newest boyfriend.
'Aleksandr! Fantastic! Marvellous!'
A lonely Siberian called Andrey, already drunk, needed to speak to Barley on a matter of vital urgency. 'One-party Socialism is a disaster, Barley. It has broken our hearts. Keep your British variety. You will publish my new novel?'
'Well I don't know about that, Andrey,' Barley replied cautiously, glancing towards the door. 'Our Russian editor admires it but he doesn't see an English market. We're thinking about it.'
'You know why I came tonight?' Andrey asked.
'Tell me.'
Another jolly group arrived, but still with no Katya among them.
'In order to wear my -fine clothes for you. We Russians know each other's tricks too well, We need your Western mirror. You come here, you depart again with our best images reflected in you and we feel noble. If you have published my first novel, it is only logical that you publish my second.'
'Not if the first one didn't make any money, it isn't, Andrcy,' said Barley with rare firmness, and to his relief saw Wicklow slipping towards them across the room.
'You have heard that Anatoly died in prison of a hunger strike in December? After two years of this Great New Russia we are enjoying?' Andrey continued, taking another enormous pull of whisky, supplied courtesy of the American Embassy in support of a more sober Russia.
'Of course we heard about him,' Wicklow cut in soothingly. 'it was disgusting.'
'So why don't you publish my novel?'
Leaving Wicklow to cope, Barley spread his arms and hastened beaming to the door. The superb Natalie of the All-Union State Library of Foreign Literature had arrived, a wise beauty of sixty. They fell into an adoring embrace.
'So whom shall we discuss tonight, Barley? James Joyce or Adrian Mole? Why are you looking so intelligent, suddenly? It is because you have become a capitalist.'
A stampede flung half the company to the further end of the room and caused the guards to peer through the doorway in alarm. The roar of conversation dipped and recovered. The buffct had been unveiled.