The first snow of winter fell in the evening. At Sheremetievo Airport a breeze whisked it across the tarmac into miniature drifts as the Aeroflot TU 104 bound for London waited at the end of the runway for permission to take off. Although it was warm on the flight deck the pilots shivered with the knowledge of the winter ahead, of the blizzards and ground-ice that would delay them and divert them to other airports.
In the cabin the British Embassy doctor sat down beside the patient. He was sorry for the poor devil; but he was also grateful to him for having the breakdown that had enabled him to take an unexpected couple of days leave in London. He waited anxiously for the aircraft to move forward and accelerate because even now no one seemed to know what the Russians proposed to do about Richard Mortimer. Although it did not look as if they intended to exploit his foolishness.
The doctor looked anxiously at Mortimer who was staring out of the window at the snow dancing into the light from the darkness. He had decided that it was better for him to travel this way rather than on a stretcher with all the additional drama involved, and he had given him an injection to steady him.
The Russian sitting beside them handed the doctor his copy of the Moscow evening paper. ‘You would like to read it?’ he asked.
‘No thank you,’ said the doctor, and hoped that his neighbour would not be talkative.
‘And your friend? Perhaps he would like to see it.’
‘As a matter of fact we’ve both read it,’ the doctor said.
The Russian took off his spectacles and polished them. ‘My name is Andrei,’ he said. Andrei Maisky. I am going to work for Intourist in London. I hope we will become good friends on this flight.’
The doctor smiled non-committally.
‘I used to work in Khabarrovsk. A town which has been built from nothing. I can tell you a lot about Khabarrovsk. But perhaps you can tell me something about London?’
‘Not very much,’ said the doctor who was a Cockney. ‘I come from Liverpool.’ He turned to his patient. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.
‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ Mortimer said in a toneless voice.
The doctor pointed out of the window. ‘It’s snowing,’ he said.
Mortimer said: ‘It was snowing the night I arrived.’
The airliner trundled forward and gained speed. A slight lurch and they were airborne. Briefly they saw the brooches and strings of lights of Moscow through the falling snow. Then they were in the clouds on their way to London.
Luke Randall left the balcony at Sheremetievo, brushed the snow from his coat and thought: ‘And that leaves you, you poor bastard.’ He went to the bar and ordered a small carafe of vodka to prepare himself for the winter that was just beginning to arrive outside.
Along the embankment by the bridges the snowploughs met again. On Red Square they prepared for a rehearsal of the fiftieth anniversary parade which was to be bigger than ever before with fine new rockets and men and women dressed in clothes and uniforms from the Revolution. Elsewhere armies of women thankfully got out their spades to begin scraping clean the pavements at fifty roubles a month.
Harry Waterman was in the beer hall when the first snow began to fall. He was very drunk and when he saw the flakes touching the window he immediately began to recall winters in the labour camp. But his neighbour wasn’t interested and turned his back. Yury Petrov was dead, of Nicolai Simenov there was no sign.
Harry was so drunk that when he tried to recall Grechenko’s words that afternoon they skipped away from him like the snowflakes outside. All he was left with was the essence of the brief conversation: there had been a blunder over the Richard Mortimer plan and as far as Nikita Grechenko was concerned Harry Waterman could rot in the Soviet Union for the rest of his life.
Harry shook the vodka bottle over his beer but the bottle was empty. The smell of the river and the hooting of the ships at the London docks receded for ever. They had double-crossed him. Harry rose to his feet. ‘—— you Russian pigs,’ he said. ‘—— the lot of you.’ He smashed the empty bottle against the wall.
One of the waitresses twisted his arm behind his back and propelled him up the worn steps where the snow was already gathering in the corners. She pushed him, without effort, so that he skidded along the pavement before falling.
When he stood up he thought he saw the lights of an aircraft through the falling snow. He walked unsteadily along searching the dark sky for the light which had disappeared. He was sure the aircraft was on its way to London. He stepped into the path of a cab which knocked him aside ripping the jacket off his back. The driver of a Moskvich saw his body falling and braked; but his wheels skidded on the new snow and passed over Harry Waterman.
As he died he thought of the black box locked in the bottom drawer of the dresser. He did not think of the house where he was born, of the pub sign swinging in the breeze, of the smells and sounds of the river. They were all there in the box.
His mind was suddenly clear of hatred and resentment and there was no time to consider his treachery. When they unlocked the box they would find the evidence of his patriotism. ‘We never guessed,’ they would say. Red, white and blue fused and darkened. He wished he had polished the cap badge once more.
As the snow settled on his thin body one of the eye-witnesses remarked on the old scars on his back.
Nicolai Simenov who liked to be knowledgeable said: ‘Yes, he got those in a labour camp.’ Then he dodged into the beer hall because the snow was falling on his new overcoat and, although a lot more snow would fall on it before the winter was over, there was no sense in exposing it unnecessarily.
In his smart flat Nikita Grechenko hummed to himself as he cleaned his skis and checked his guns. Soon he would be out hunting in the white taiga—a healthy, man’s world.
He thought briefly about the day’s work. The Mortimer ruse had been a fiasco. But that was none of his business: he had done what they had asked him. It was typical of the way that particular department worked, furtively and haphazardly, that the project should have been bungled. And now the girl’s brother was to be arrested and tried—a small and spiteful revenge.
Grechenko didn’t think about his interview with Harry Waterman because to him Harry Waterman was so contemptible and of such little significance that he was not worth thinking about. He heard his boys come in and, with a smile of anticipation on his face, he picked up the two pairs of skates which he had bought them that afternoon.
In Harry Waterman’s flat his wife Marsha finished sealing the windows with paper. ‘There,’ she said, ‘Harry will be pleased when he sees what I’ve done. He does so hate the cold.’
Her mother switched on the television. ‘I don’t know why he can’t seal them himself,’ she said. ‘He’s a useless washout if you ask me.’
‘Harry’s a very clever man,’ Marsha said. ‘He just hasn’t had the chances. They took ten years of his life away remember.’
‘They should have taken more.’
‘Anyway,’ Marsha said, ‘there’s no point in arguing about it. I’ve got to get his dinner ready. He hinted the other day that he might be able to get exit visas for both of us to visit his home in England.’
On her way to the kitchen she noticed that the bottom drawer of the dresser was open. Inside was a black box with the key still in the lock. No one, she thought, could have resisted such a temptation. She chided herself for her weakness and determined never to tell Harry that she had pried into his secrets. She was disappointed at the contents of the box—and relieved at the same time that Harry had nothing more sinister to hide from her. She fingered the cloth of the ribbons and wondered about the powdered soil in the matchbox. Then, because it was beginning to tarnish and she sensed that Harry would not like it that way, she rubbed the fragile cap badge on her apron. Immediately it shone with a bright lustre in the way of metal that is accustomed to being cared for.
Humming to herself she went into the kitchen to heat up the soup for Harry.
On the London-bound airliner Andrei Maisky leaned across the British Embassy doctor and prodded Richard Mortimer. ‘Perhaps you can tell me something about London,’ he said. ‘I am very much looking forward to living there and learning all about your building programme.’
‘I don’t know anything about London,’ Mortimer said. ‘And I don’t know anything about Moscow.’
‘Ah, there I can help you,’ Andrei Maisky said.
The doctor put a hand on his arm. ‘Not now,’ he said. ‘There’s a good chap.’
In the diplomatic compound at Kutuzovsky children pulled back their bedroom curtains and laughed when they saw the snow flakes touching the windows. Some children from Africa and South America had never seen snow before. They wanted to go out and feel it immediately but their parents said there would be plenty of time for that.
Luke Randall stamped the snow from his feet and went into his apartment. Anna had gone home but the living-room light was on. He found Michele sitting on the sofa sipping a cup of tea.
She smiled at him hesitantly. ‘I have been here a long time,’ she said. ‘Anna let me in before she left.’
He looked at her without speaking.
She spoke quickly and breathlessly. ‘I have told them I am not going to Bonn,’ she said. ‘I have volunteered to stay here in Moscow for another term. They say they think it will be all right.’ She looked suddenly frightened. ‘That is what you want, isn’t it, Luke?’
He held out his arms to her.
The snow was thickening now. But in the morning it would thaw. Thus it would continue for a few days. Then it would settle without thawing. The prophets forecast a long hard winter; and they were always right.