Zara watched from the comfort of a far-too elaborate and ostentatiously palatial four-poster bed in a grand bedroom of the Kremlin Palace as Alex buttoned up his pristine white immaculately pressed and starched dress shirt. ‘I keep thinking I’m dreaming. This is the most surreal experience of my life.’ Alex turned round to look at her as he picked up a pair of hammer and sickle stamped gold cufflinks from the nearby table.
‘You’ll get used to it.’
‘Will I...’
‘The novelty wears off quickly enough. I hated this place growing up. All the kids out there with their bourgeoisie black market videos and bootlegged music, and I was stuck in here being lectured on the history of the Soviet economic model in the military school.’
‘Is that why you left?’
‘Partly. Teenage rebellion. You know how it is.’
‘Well not really, my teenage rebellion involved having a cheeky smoke on the way home, not chucking a ladder over the Kremlin wall and running away to the evil and decadent British Empire. Bit of a different league. So what’s the plan for today?’
‘I have to visit someone for the president. Deliver a message.’
‘And me?’
‘Take advantage. Not many western tourists get a full tour of The Kremlin, least of all former M.I.6 agents.’
‘Still getting used to it being the former M.I.6 agent. My supervisor would spit his tea out if he knew I was sat in a car with the head of the F.S.B last night. Might take a bit of an issue with being in the president’s box with him at the ballet as well.’
‘They’ll know by now. I should imagine at least half a dozen people in that audience developed a sudden need to leave before the first act was complete, for some strange reason.’
‘Burgess, McClean and now Scott. A new era of Anglo-Russian politics, yet the defections continue. At least I can tell them I was seduced by a handsome agent in a reverse honey-trap.’
‘I always thought you seduced me,’ Alex said putting his tunic on and buttoning it up.
‘Call it fifty fifty.’ Alex finished dressing, walked over and sat on the bed. ‘So are we allowed to talk about your situation, or has Grigor got the whole room wired up?’
‘Probably.’ Alex smiled. ‘Things are fine. There’s nothing for you to worry about here. I just need to take care of a few domestic issues then we’ll get back to your plan to save the world from itself soon enough.’
‘I thought we were playing your game now?’
‘No. I think we’re all playing Zara’s game. You just want us to think we’re playing our own.’
‘Who told you that? I bet it was Hani.’
‘Good guess. Something about the secret to a successful marriage. Let your wife make the decisions that you agree to or words to that effect.’
‘Told you Hani was smart.’
‘I have to go. I’ll be back before dinner.’
‘Should I stay in my room?’
‘Why? Have you been naughty?’
‘No...just. Feel like everyone thinks I’m here to burgle the place then run off out of the gate with bundles of documents under my arms.’
‘I think they’ve got security under control in that respect. I’ll see you later.’ Alex picked up his coat and headed out of the room. Zara got out of the bed, walked over the grand window and stared out at the snow covered gardens, a picturesque but strangely chilling scene that would make a nice tourist postcard were it not for the evoked memories of the era when The Kremlin was the seat of power that was the ever present threat to her own country. And yet she felt no sense of not belonging there, rather than being an enemy intruder, it felt strangely familiar — as if some part of her destiny had drawn her there. She gazed out, captivated by the sheer weight of history the walls contained, imagining all those that had passed before her, and the great game that had been played out from within the walls of The Red Castle. From outwards appearances it seemed an impenetrable and intimidating place of ultimate power, but she wondered if its occupants didn’t feel the same fragility and terror at the prospect of annihilation that those on the opposing side felt, and the stoic rhetoric was merely a front to their sense of isolation, persecution, and demonization by the supposed powers of freedom and democracy, powers Zara had long since learnt were nothing more than a facade for the self-interests of the privileged few. There was grandness to the Soviet ideal that appealed, however poorly it had been executed, and Zara couldn’t help but feel some admiration for Lenin’s grand vision of social justice. She stared at his statue in the centre of the garden, one hand held aloft, book in the other, and wondered what might have been if he had survived long enough to remain architect for the implementation of the principals of the revolution before Stalin transformed them into his own cult of personality. Perhaps nothing much would have really changed, perhaps Stalin really was a much needed, if brutal, next step in the progress to transform the agrarian idealists into an industrialised military power. Perhaps the brutality was inevitable, and unavoidable, to make Russia as she needed to be. As she finally returned from her thoughts, Zara resolved to explore more of the history and principles to better understand the world as Alex saw it. Removed from the constraints of her former employer she could see Marxism from a more academic perspective and free from the pollution of counter-argument brought about by those with alternate agendas. For all she felt she knew of the world, in many ways, Zara realised her real education was just beginning.