We both stayed at the Europe Hotel that night. The next morning Harvey and I had breakfast together in the buffet – curd cakes and sour cream – and I got around to saying good-bye as gracefully as I could.
‘Coming out to the airport?’ I said. ‘I’m catching the morning flight.’
‘What’s waiting out there for me? Twenty strong-arm men and a padded jet plane?’
‘Don’t be that way, Harvey.’
‘Don’t be that way, Harvey,’ Harvey echoed. ‘What I should be doing is turning you over to the Russians right now.’
‘Listen, Harvey. Just because you’ve been playing electronic Monopoly out there in Texas for too long, don’t get the idea that you’re in the intelligence business. Every senior-grade Russian intelligence man knows that I came into town on the train last night. They know who I am just as I know who they are. No one puts on false hair-pieces and pebbles in one shoe and sketches the fortifications any more.’
‘I did,’ said Harvey.
‘You did and that’s what had us fooled for a couple of weeks. I couldn’t make anyone believe that there were people like you around any more except on late-night TV.’
‘I could still tell them a couple of things they don’t know about you.’
‘Don’t bet on it, sonny. If you take my advice you are going to stay dumb, because it’s my guess that you are going to get very disenchanted with this town and when you do, you are going to need some nice friendly country to move to – and you’re running short of countries to move to – especially since you are going to have no hot news or live eggs to peddle next time.’
‘That’s what you think …’
‘Don’t say a word,’ I told him. ‘You may spend the rest of your life regretting it.’
‘All I regret is that those boys in Riga didn’t knock you off.’ Harvey wiped sour cream off his mouth and threw down his serviette. ‘I’ll see you to your cab,’ he said.
We walked out. There were signs of a thaw. All along the Prospekt the huge drainpipes were groaning and rattling and emitting sudden avalanches of ice across the pavement. Sweeping machines were removing the final traces of last night’s snowfall, but even as Harvey remarked on how clean the streets were a formation of suicide flakes came spinning down, preparing the way for a new snowstorm.
A few cabs went by, all hired. One of them switched out his green light when he saw us. I suppose he was heading home – all over the world taxi-drivers return home the moment the weather takes a turn for the worse. Harvey got depressed because he couldn’t find a cab. I suppose he felt everyone should be greeting him and thanking him for being a convert. ‘I’ve got a headache,’ Harvey said. ‘And last night I had a temperature and the cut on my arm hurt. I bet I’ve got a temperature right now.’
‘You want to go back to the hotel?’
‘No, I’ll be all right, but everything goes black. Whenever I bend down, everything goes black. Why does it do that, I mean is it serious?’
‘That’s because everything is black and you only see it properly when you’re bending down.’
‘You don’t give a damn about anybody. I’m sick.’ But Harvey didn’t go back to the hotel. We walked slowly up the Nevsky; it was crowded like a rough sea of dull overcoating and fur. There were the wide faces of Mongolia, small pinched Armenians with little black moustaches, naval officers in black uniforms and soldiers in tall astrakhan hats.
A boy in a jazzy bow tie grabbed Harvey’s arm and said, ‘You an American? You want to sell something; cameras …’
‘No I’m not,’ Harvey said and wrenched free. The youth blundered into a group of naval officers and as we moved on I could hear their voices scolding him. ‘He hurt my arm,’ Harvey explained. ‘My bad arm.’ He rubbed the arm. Harvey wanted to cross the Prospekt against the red light, but I dissuaded him. ‘Is it man’s ultimate fate to be ruled by machines?’ Harvey said. He smiled. I tried to see the extent of his irony. Was that Harvey’s comment upon the billion-dollar Brain? I couldn’t tell. I’ll never know, for that was virtually Harvey’s last remark to me. We edged down the pavement of Nevsky Prospekt, Harvey stroking his grazed arm and me watching for a taxi.
‘Yes,’ I said, still looking for a taxi.
‘More cabs on the other side of the street,’ Harvey said. We stood on the corner watching the fast-moving traffic. ‘There,’ I said. ‘There’s one.’
He stepped off the pavement. There was a scream of brakes and a man shouted, but the single-decker bus slammed into Harvey fairly and squarely and Harvey disappeared under it. The bus gave two jolts, then as the brakes were applied the locked wheels slid on a slick of red oil. A bundle of rags spewed out from the rear of the bus as it slewed round and came to rest broadside to the traffic. The long puddle of oil was streaked with blood. There were two shoes sticking out from the bundle but they were at a strange angle. The driver climbed stiffly down from the bus. She was in her early thirties, her large peasant face made even rounder by the headscarf tied tightly under her chin. She was wiping the palms of her hands on her hips and watched while the man who had shouted – a tiny wiry man – knelt down beside the bundle and clawed at it gently, after first removing his fur hat.
‘Dead,’ he called.
The bus driver was crying and wringing her hands. She intoned a short Russian prayer over and over again. Two policemen arrived on a motor cycle and sidecar. They fastened back the flaps of their fur hats and began to question the bystanders. One of the passengers on the bus pointed to me and as the policeman looked round I eased my way back into the crowd. The man immediately behind me did not stand aside. He was still blocking my escape when one of the traffic cops reached me. The cop began to speak to me in Russian but the man showed them a card and they saluted and turned on their heel. ‘This way,’ said the man, ‘I’ll get you along to the airport.’ The woman bus driver’s prayer was broken by her racking sobs. They had moved Harvey’s body and she could see his face. I didn’t want to go with this man, I wanted to comfort the driver. I wanted to tell her that it wasn’t her fault. I wanted to explain that she was just a victim of circumstances which she couldn’t possibly have avoided. But as I thought about it I thought that perhaps it was her fault. Maybe it was Harvey who was the victim of circumstances where the driver and a few million others do nothing to cure a mad world in which I am proud of myself for being on my side, and I despise Harvey for his code of honour and telling the truth.
‘The airport?’ said the man again.
One of the policemen began to scatter sand over the pool of oil and blood. ‘Yes please, Colonel Stok,’ I said. Near by a thawing drainpipe gave a great rumble and vomited a heap of wet ice across the pavement.
Stok stepped clear of the crowd and snapped his fingers. From across the street a Zis car swung through the traffic and drew up in front of us. The driver leapt out and opened the door. Stok motioned me in. The car radio was going and there were warnings being broadcast. The ice was cracking on the river Neva, people were warned against walking across it. Stok told the driver to switch the radio off. ‘Ice,’ Stok said. ‘I know all about that.’ He pulled a small flask out of his pocket and handed it to me. ‘Have a drink; it’s warming.’
I drank a little and then coughed. It was thick and so bitter as to be almost undrinkable.
‘Riga Balsam,’ said Stok. ‘It will warm you.’
‘Warm me? What do I have to do, set fire to it?’ But I took a second swig anyway as the car pulled out on to the road for the airport. I looked back towards the bus. No matter how much sand they put down, the blood and oil showed through it.
Some of the Zis cars have a special tone of horn that warns policemen on point duty that a VIP is on his way. Stok’s car had such a horn and the car roared through the intersections without pausing.
Stok said, ‘It’s an anniversary for me today. My wound.’ He rubbed his shoulder. ‘I was wounded by a sniper during the Finnish business. If he’d had a little less vodka perhaps he would have killed me.’ He laughed. ‘It wasn’t often their snipers missed – cuckoos we called them – they infiltrated miles behind the front and killed even generals. Some of them would infiltrate our lines, eat at our field kitchens and then vanish back to their own bunkers. Remarkable. It was a day a little like today. Icy, a slight snowfall. I was with a tank regiment. We saw a group of men in Red Army traffic-control uniforms complete with arm-bands, waving their flags and diverting us off the road. That was not unusual, we often travelled across open country. But those men were Finns in Red Army uniform. Suddenly we came under a terrible fire. I kept the hatch open. I had to see. It was a mistake.’ He rubbed his shoulder and laughed. ‘It was my first day of front-line action.’
‘Bad luck.’
‘We have a saying here in Russia, “the first pancake is always a lump”.’ He kept hold of the shoulder. ‘Sometimes on a cold day I feel a twitch in the muscle. The medicine-men in the front lines were not good with the sewing needle, and you would never believe how cold it was. The fighting went on even at forty degrees below zero. Ice formed across the open wounds. Ice is a terrible thing.’ Stok produced a packet of cigarettes and we both lit up. ‘I know something about ice,’ Stok said again. He exhaled a great billow of smoke. The driver hit the horn. ‘I fought near here during the Great Patriotic War.1 On one occasion we went out on skis to take samples of local ice. We needed to know if the Lake Ilmen ice would support the weight of a KV tank – forty-three tons – so that we could take the Fascist 290th Infantry Division in flank. Forty-three tons is three hundred pounds per square centimetre. The Lake Ilmen ice was fine. It was frozen almost to the bed of the lake, but do you know at times it was possible to see the ice bending, bending under the weight. Of course the tanks had to keep well spread out across the lake as we moved. There were two rivers ahead, the movement of the water meant that the ice would never grow very thick. On our reconnaissance we put logs into the water so that the logs would freeze together to make a hard surface. We put steel cables from tank to tank – like men climbing a mountain – and the first four tanks went over the ice and logs without trouble except that there was a crack here and there. Then as the fifth tank was a little over halfway across there was a noise like pistol shots. The four leading tanks revved up and as number five sank they dragged it right through the surface ice – perhaps half a metre of ice – with a tremendous noise. For perhaps three minutes the tanks were not moving, straining at …’ he paused. Stok pressed his enormous hands together and made cracking sounds with the joints. ‘Then with a huge noise, through it came.’
‘The crew couldn’t have survived that freezing water for three minutes.’
Stok was puzzled. ‘The crew? No, there were plenty of crews.’ He laughed and for a moment stared past me at his youth. There are always plenty of men,’ Stok said. ‘Plenty to follow me, plenty to follow you.’ We turned across the traffic at the Winter Palace. There were a dozen tourist buses and a long line of people waiting patiently to view the treasures of the Tsars.
‘Plenty to follow Harvey Newbegin,’ I said.
‘Harvey Newbegin,’ said Stok, choosing his words with even greater care than usual, ‘was a typical product of your wasteful capitalist system.’
I said, ‘There’s a man named General Midwinter who thought that Harvey was a typical example of your system.’
‘There’s only one General Winter,’ Stok said, ‘and he’s on our side.’ The car was speeding along the bank of the Neva. On the far side I saw the Peter and Paul fortress and the ancient cruiser Aurora through the veil of falling snow. In the Summer Garden the statues had been encased in wooden boxes to prevent them cracking in the cold.
The snow was getting heavier and visibility was so reduced that I wondered whether the plane would be on schedule. I wondered too whether Stok was really taking me to the airport.
‘Harvey Newbegin was your friend?’ Stok asked.
‘To tell you truthfully,’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’
‘He had little faith in the Western world.’
‘He had little faith in anything,’ I said. ‘He thought faith a luxury.’
‘In the Western world it is a luxury,’ Stok said. ‘Christianity tells you to work hard today for little or no reward, and tomorrow you will die and awake in paradise. Faith like that is a luxury.’
I shrugged. ‘And Marxism says work hard today for little or no reward, and tomorrow you will die and your children will awake in paradise. What’s the difference?’
Stok didn’t answer, he tugged at his chin and watched the crowded pavements.
Finally he said, ‘A high official of your Christian Church spoke at a conference recently. He said what they have most to fear is not a Godless world but a faithless Church. This is the problem of Communism too. We do not fear the petty psychopathic hostility of your Midwinters, if anything they help us, for our people become at once more unified when they understand the hate directed towards us. What we have to fear is the loss of purity within ourselves – the faithlessness of leadership, an abandoning of principle for the sake of policy. In the West all your political movements from the muddled left to the obsessional right have learned how to compromise their original – perhaps naïve – objectives for the sake of the realities of power. In Russia we too have compromised.’ He stopped talking.
‘Compromise is no pejorative word,’ I said. ‘If we choose between compromise and war, I’ll take compromise.’
Stok said, ‘I am not talking about a compromise between my world and the West; I am talking about a compromise between Russian socialism today – powerful, realistic and worldly – and the Russian socialism of my youth and even my father’s youth – uncompromising, idealistic, pure.’
‘You are not talking about socialism,’ I said. ‘You’re talking about youth. You are not regretting the passing of the ideals of your boyhood, you’re regretting the passing of your boyhood itself.’
‘Perhaps you are right,’ said Stok.
‘I am,’ I said. ‘Everything that has happened to me in the last few weeks has been due to this sad envy and admiration that old age has for youth.’
‘Oh well, we shall see,’ said Stok. ‘In a decade we shall know which system can offer the best standard of living if nothing else. We’ll see who has an economic miracle. We’ll see who is travelling where to get luxury consumer goods.’
‘I’m pleased to hear you endorsing the idea of a competitive system,’ I said.
Stok said, ‘You are going too fast,’ to the driver. ‘Overtake the lorry with care.’ He turned back to me and smiled a warm smile. ‘Why did you push your friend2 Harvey under the bus?’
We looked at each other calmly. There were cuts on his chin and the blood had dried in small shiny dark pimples. ‘You tried your criminal murdering activities at the frontier and failed, so you were assigned the murder of Newbegin here in the centre of our beautiful Leningrad. Is that it?’
I took another swig at the Riga Balsam and said nothing.
‘What are you, English, a paid assassin, a hired killer?’
‘All soldiers are that,’ I said. Stok looked at me thoughtfully and finally nodded. We were speeding down that incredibly long road to the airport that ends at some strange monument I have never visited. We turned off to the right, through the entrance to the airport. The driver drove up to the wire barriers and sounded the horn. A soldier swung the barrier back and we drove right on to the tarmac, bumped off the concrete and pulled up alongside an IL-18 that had the turbo props spinning. Stok reached inside his black civilian overcoat and produced my passport. He said, ‘I collected this from your hotel, Mr …’ he peered at the passport, ‘… Mr Dempsey.’
Stok made no attempt to let me out of the car. He went on chatting as though the wash of the turbo props wasn’t rocking us gently on our springs. ‘You must imagine, English, that there are two mighty armies advancing towards each other across a vast desolate place. They have no orders, nor does either suspect that the other is there. You understand how armies move: one man a long way out in front has a pair of binoculars, a submachine-gun and a radiation counter. Behind him comes the armour and then the motors and the medicine-men and finally dentists and the generals and the caviare. So the very first fingertips of those armies will be two, not very clever, men who when they meet will have to decide, very quickly, whether to extend a hand or pull a trigger. According to what they do, either the armies will that night share an encampment, exchange stories and vodka, dance and tell lies; or those armies will be tearing each other to shreds in the most efficient way that man can devise. We are the fingertips,’ Stok said.
‘You are an incurable romantic, Comrade-Colonel Stok,’ I said.
‘Perhaps I am,’ Stok said. ‘But do not try that trick of dressing your men up in Soviet uniforms for a second time. Especially in my district.’
‘I did nothing like that.’
‘Then do not try it for the first time,’ Stok said. He opened the door on his side and clicked his fingers. His driver ran quickly around the car and held the door. I got out of the car past Stok. He looked at me with Buddha-like impassivity and cracked his knuckles. He held out an open hand as though he expected me to put something into it. I didn’t shake hands. I walked up the steps and into the aircraft. There was a soldier standing in the aisle scrutinizing the passport of every passenger. I wasn’t breathing easily until we were out over the sea. It was then that I found myself still holding Stok’s hip-flask. Outside the snow beat around the plane like a plague of locusts. It wasn’t going to thaw.
1Russian name for World War Two.
2Stok used the word droog. While a tovarich can be anyone with whom you come into contact even if you hate them, a droog is someone who has a special closeness and for whom you might possibly do something against the national interest. E.g. if the police are after you, you would possibly go to a droog for shelter, but a tovarich would turn you in.