The morning passed too quickly for Kyril’s liking. Every time he looked at his watch the hands seemed to have jumped an hour or so. He tried to make himself slow down, take things easily, but it was no good. He was going to visit a woman he hadn’t seen for six years but who was as fresh in his mind, his body, as the solicitor’s secretary he had spoken to yesterday.
He went shopping, then spent the morning constructing a chair, the sole piece of furniture he reckoned he would need during his stay in Battersea. He used oak, dear and hard to come by, but indispensible. When he had finished the basic structure he set about fixing it to the floor, using cast-iron clamps with holes sufficiently large to admit steel bolts. Then he nailed thick leather belts to the arms and legs and made holes in the leather in such a way that the belts could be used to restrain whoever was sitting in the chair from making the slightest movement, however small.
He cut a round hole in the seat part, so that it looked like a crude lavatory. Behind the chair he embedded a large, closed-eye screw in the window-sill, and to this he attached a length of wire which he had unwound from the clay rod of an electric fire, purchased in a junk shop. In the same junk shop Kyril had picked up the last component he needed in order to complete his remarkable chair. Now everything was ready.
At last he stood up, well satisfied. The house would fall down before anyone escaped from that chair.
The chair was for Loshkevoi. Kyril had made up his mind.
Next Kyril turned his attention to the gas. The result of an hour’s work was that he could flood the lower floor with mains gas, making it uninhabitable, or divert the stream to its proper use upstairs. His preparations were complete.
He needed a break. For a few minutes he stood back from the window, smoking, while he inspected the street. No one was watching the house, he was sure of it. Apart from the evidence of his own eyes he did not feel watched, and that was the acid test. The nerves of his body did not register surveillance. The house opposite his own was occupied by the same family each day and there were few visitors anywhere along the road. The same cars stood on the street but their positions were different each day, and that was normal. No one made a pretext to come to the door.
Kyril likened the street to a busy river which threw up no sediment, formed no visible sandbanks, but continued to flow uninterruptedly past his door. If one day there was a sandbank, he would notice it.
Kyril ate some more of the insipid loaf and threw the rest away. ‘You need a meal,’ he said aloud. ‘Something to keep you alive. Do you realise you haven’t eaten properly for…’
He shut up, suddenly conscious of the folly of talking to himself. But the idea was good: he did not want to faint when she opened the door and he saw her for the first time, did not want to betray anything which might be construed as weakness.
At last he was ready. He went down the stairs to the front door, put his hand on the night-latch and turned it. A shaft of sunlight flooded into the dingy hall, causing Kyril to blink. The street was empty. He looked to right and left. Nobody came. No curtain moved.
He stepped into the small area of concrete which separated the house from the pavement and pulled the door to behind him. A car cruised slowly up the street. The black youth behind the wheel took no notice of Kyril. Somewhere close by he heard the noise of milk bottles smashing, followed by the miaow of a cat.
Now he was on the pavement.
Before he had gone more than a few paces he heard a door open and slam. The noise came from behind him, on the same side of the road. The door must belong to the house next to his own. Kyril’s breathing quickened. That’s where they’d be, the enemy… no, of course not, it was too soon. Surely it was too soon.
Footsteps behind him now, quick and young-sounding. A woman.
‘Hal-lo. Lovely day, innit?’
Kyril reluctantly stopped and turned. His next door neighbour was young and blonde, her hair trailing down to tiny breasts. On her hand hung the same silent child, thumb stuck firmly into mouth, as he had seen earlier. The child stared up at Kyril with unblinking curiosity.
He smiled and nodded. The girl’s eyes never quite fastened on his, as is the way of those who talk to strangers. Nothing about his appearance seemed to strike her as odd or worthy of comment. He began to breathe more easily.
‘Is that you making all the noise next door?’
Kyril wrestled with indecision. For a second he had thought she meant to move on but now she seemed rooted to the spot, ready to chat all day. He looked at the fourth finger of her left hand and found no ring. His first reaction had been the right one. A single mother; bored, lonely, slave to the voracious little monster by her side.
He pretended to be afflicted with a violent bout of coughing and banged his chest.
‘You all right?’
The girl’s eyes widened in concern. Why didn’t she go?
‘Me chest,’ he croaked. ‘Very bad lately.’
‘You ought to see someone about that. My movver died of it. Yeah. Bronchal, it was. ’Aven’t seen you since you come in. ’Ow you getting on then, all right?’
Kyril nodded again. The muscles of his lower abdomen were tight with nerves. He could stand only so much more of this.
‘You don’t half make a row. I dunno ’ow I put up wivit. An’ you don’t look at all well, honest.’
‘Feelin’ all right. Sorry about the noise. All done now.’
Kyril smiled and turned his back on her. He could feel the girl’s eyes boring into him. She did not move. He took a step. And another.
She was by his side.
‘Look, why don’t you come in for a cuppa tea or somefink. One day soon.’
Kyril nodded and coughed again.
‘Yeah, well, look after yourself. I gotta be going now. Playgroup.’
As if to emphasise this last point she gave the child a good shake. It – Kyril couldn’t tell the sex – extracted its thumb from its mouth and gave the girl a long, hard look that might have meant pain or just simple hate. Then they were going down the hill away from him, the child half-walking, half being dragged along by its mother, who said nothing but marched straight ahead, not turning back, until they reached the corner and disappeared.
Kyril was certain that the girl did not come from any of the major intelligence services. She was not, in any sense of the term, a ‘watcher’. Children were sometimes used as cover, but not children as young as that, and certainly not one-parent children who might suddenly require attention at an inconvenient moment.
Stanov? No. He would not as yet be aware even that Kyril had made it to London unscathed. But there was something of Stanov in the set-up, nonetheless: a baby-sitter next door, just in case.
Kyril shook his head. He was imagining things in his search for reassurance. She was just a girl, a girl with a bastard child, someone so tied up in her own affairs that she would be unlikely to remember even that she had invited him for tea.
He spent the next half-hour checking for tails. There were none. Once he was sure of that he ceased wandering aimlessly and began to walk with a purpose. He took a snack in a sandwich-bar, scanning the pavement as he munched his roll and drank his milk. When he left the traffic had grown busier, the streets more crowded. At last he was negotiating the busy junction at the end of St Johns Road.
A little shop on the corner caught his eye, and he realised he was getting low on cigarettes. He went in, and for the umpteenth time marvelled at the glittering array of packages and jars which confronted him. Every kind of chocolate, sweet, cigarette, even cigars were on prominent display here, in this tiny south London corner shop. Yet the people he passed on his way to the counter looked dour and dissatisfied, as if all this meant nothing. Kyril dithered for a moment between several brands of expensive king-size filters, enjoying the embarrassment of choice. The shopman took his money without a smile. ‘We will bury you’, that is what Kruschev had said, and he was right. That is what you did to dead people, people who were long ago rendered incapable of appreciating that they were alive at all.
He looked at his watch. The timing was perfect. A few more steps and he was in Vera’s road. Immediately it was like Athens all over again. The criss-cross rays of surveillance meshed to entrap him in their web. Now, however, Kyril did not falter in his stride. He was expecting watchers here; their absence would have spelled danger. He had orders to be seen at this time, in this place.
A car… no, two cars, on opposite sides of the road. Very obvious – the arm on the door, that was poor craft. If it had been up to Kyril he would have had the windows tightly closed and used a mirror from a concealed position on the floor. They must feel very confident.
If they were taking the game seriously, as Stanov predicted, SIS would have requisitioned the houses on either side of Vera’s and the one directly across the street from it. As he approached, Kyril vainly strove to see behind the net curtains. Nothing differentiated these houses from all the rest.
He turned into the gateway of Number 48 and walked up the path.
‘They sacked her, of course,’ Stanov had said, peering closely at him to see how he took it. ‘Even the British Foreign Office retains some pragmatism. But she’s still living in the old house. She works at home, typing mostly. So she’ll be in when you call.’
As his finger hovered over the bell Kyril hoped desperately that she was away, on holiday, in hospital, anything. Like his own house, No. 48 Turpin Road was divided into two flats, only in this part of Clapham they were called maisonettes. Kyril didn’t have to look for the right bell. His finger found it as if by instinct.
Behind him in the street a car engine fired. Kyril did not turn his head. He became aware that within the house there was suddenly silence, and he realised that a typewriter had been clacking away in his subconscious ever since he reached the door.
The car drove slowly up the street. As Kyril resisted the nagging voice in his head which told him to look back, the door opened.
She had changed, of course she had changed, but Kyril knew her instantly. The eyes could not alter. The same shy, diffident eyes with the same light in them, the look of surprise he remembered from years ago.
She stood with one hand on the doorframe, her lips slightly parted in the first shock of surprise at seeing a stranger and realising that he was not quite a stranger, after all. Then knowledge came; her mouth fell open, the hand dropped away from the frame, and she was retreating into the hall, her head moving from side to side in slow, disbelieving sweeps.
Kyril came over the threshold very quickly and shut the door.
‘Hello, Vera.’
She said nothing at first. Kyril wondered whether she had heard.
‘If you don’t mind,’ she said weakly, ‘I’m going to sit down.’
He followed her into the sitting-room. That had changed. The bare walls were now covered with a pretty paper, full of light and space, with neat watercolours carefully chosen to complement the pattern. In place of the old trestle, much stained with the rings left by hot dishes and mugs, was a fine piece of solid pine with carver chairs to match. The carpet looked new, as did the wing-chair in the window and the sofa, both covered with a loose version of the wallpaper.
In the window, beside the chair, stood a Chinese vase containing a spider-plant. That or a similar plant had stood in the same vase six years ago. It was as if someone had dismantled the room Kyril remembered and very carefully constructed a new one round the plant and its vase, so as not to disturb them.
Kyril looked again at Vera, for the first time noticing things other than her eyes. She looked tired but well. Her face was tanned, as if from lying in the sun, but the skin showed few signs of ageing. Only the neck, where the first indications come, was slightly mottled. Her hair was different; she used to wear it long but now it was cut short, curling inwards round her neck. It suited her. She was neither fatter nor taller than he remembered. The features were the same. Why was it, then, that she was no longer pretty?
He struggled for something to say, anything to break the silence. ‘This is… wonderful. You’ve done well.’
She looked around in response to his gesture, a look of puzzlement on her face.
‘The flat?’
‘Yes.’
She studied him, as if unsure whether he was playing a joke on her.
‘It’s all very cheap. It’s all I can afford.’
He stared at her. ‘But… in Moscow there is nothing like this. Only for wealthy people.’
She shook her head, the beginnings of a smile on her lips.
‘You never learn, do you? In England you have to be very poor now not to have a room like this. You and your Moscow. Oh Ivan.’
Her voice was a mixture of tired amusement and hopelessness. There was a new, inner calm about her which Kyril found unsettling, he couldn’t fathom why.
Her clothes were different, too. She was wearing a pair of faded denim jeans, the sort of thing which fetched a good price on the black market at home, and a thick, chunky sweater. With a little start of surprise he realised that almost everyone in London seemed able to afford clothes like that.
‘Oh Ivan, why did you go?’
She was sitting on one of the carver chairs, hands folded in her lap. He stood up abruptly and went to the window, taking care not to disturb the net curtains. One of the two cars was still there, the other had disappeared. The house opposite showed no sign of life.
‘Still the same Ivan. Who’s following you this time?’
Keeping his back to her he said, ‘Do you have a radio?’ For an answer she got up and went to a cabinet by the far wall. A second later loud pop music spilled into the room. ‘Nothing changes, does it Ivan?’
He moved about restlessly. Her probing annoyed him. ‘Some things do. For instance, I’m not sure, but I think they have a laser beam directed at this window. Whatever we say gets ferried along the beam to their receiver in the house over the way. Have you had any unusual visitors lately?’ She thought. ‘No.’
‘Telephone repairmen, gas inspectors, that sort of thing?’ Vera shook her head. ‘Nobody. Unless…’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, unless you count the solicitor.’
Kyril moved close to her. ‘Where did he stand? Did he sit?’
She showed him by acting out Sculby’s movements as far as she could remember them. Kyril watched her intently. ‘Wait… what was he doing over there?’
‘His case wouldn’t shut properly… he rested it on the table.’
There were a number of possibilities, but the first guess turned out to be correct. His fingers slid along the edge of the table and almost as once found a tiny plastic box on a spike, the size of a drawing pin’s. He held it up between his fingertips for her to see before throwing it on the floor and jumping on it.
‘Come.’
He beckoned her over to the sofa. She followed slowly, her wide eyes darting this way and that, the first signs of fear apparent on her face. As she sat down beside him he pulled her close and left his arm around her shoulder. She stiffened but did not pull away. After a while she relaxed a little and unconsciously nestled into the crook of his arm.
‘Whisper. Who was this solicitor? Tell me about him.’
‘He made an appointment to see me. He thought I might be able to help one of his clients by being a witness, I think…’
‘Name?’
‘Sculby. I’ve got his letter somewhere.’
She went across to the mantelpiece and felt behind the clock. ‘Here.’
Kyril read it quickly. Vera saw him crumple the paper at one point, as if something in the message had moved him. Then he held it up against the light. The letter seemed innocent enough. He handed it back to her with a frown on his face.
‘You can keep it if you like.’
He shook his head. ‘I’ll remember. What else did he say to you about this… Loshkevoi?’
Vera told him the morning’s events. Kyril sat with his head in his hands and his eyes closed, as if recording every word. When she had finished he said nothing. After a while she subdued the nervousness which his silence inspired in her enough to ask a question.
‘What are you doing?’
Kyril opened his eyes and licked his lips.
‘Defecting.’
Her eyes widened still further and for a moment she did not speak.
‘Who’s out there?’
‘Everyone. The KGB. They have to stop me, you see. And the British.’
‘Can’t they protect you? The British, I mean. If you’re going over to them…’
He shook his head sadly. ‘It’s not as simple as that. I have to choose my own time, Vera. They think I’m a plant, in any case. They’re just as likely to shoot me as the KGB.’
At the word ‘shoot’ her hand tightened on his arm, and immediately relaxed.
‘Then why have you come here. You must know they’d be watching me if they’re waiting for you…’
‘I had to see you. Don’t worry, Vera, I want nothing from you, not shelter, not money, nothing. But… can you understand this? I’m in the middle of making a decision, the biggest decision of my whole life. And if I get it wrong…’
He pulled her closer, and she gave without resistance. ‘But how can I help?’
‘By talking. About the past. About… us. You never married after I left.’
‘No, I never married.’ Her voice was suddenly cold. She allowed her head to loll back on the sofa so that she could stare at the ceiling without meeting Kyril’s eyes. ‘I told myself to forget you. I did forget you, in a way.’
‘In a way…?’
‘Yes. There never was a day went by without my thinking of you, seeing your face. The memories are blurred now.’
She slowly raised her head and turned to face him.
‘Not like they’ll be tomorrow. When you’re gone. Because you are going, aren’t you?’
He hesitated for a second before nodding.
She shook her head sadly. ‘Then why did you have to come back, Ivan? I could live without you. I have done for six years. Why come back and spoil it all. Wasn’t it enough, what you did to me?’
For several minutes the music from the radio was the only sound to be heard in the sunlit room. Vera pulled herself up abruptly and went to stand by the window, her arms folded, hands caressing forearms in a remote, despondent gesture.
‘Stay away from the window,’ warned Kyril. Vera shook her head violently.
‘I said…’ Kyril jumped up and reached out to jerk her back. Vera pulled away from him, keeping her head turned, and he realised that she was crying.
Inside Kyril something snapped. All his roughness died away. When he reached out it was to take her in his arms and hold her tightly, clutching her body to him while his hands began to stroke her hair, the glorious raven-black hair. It was as if his hands were reliving a memory. They had done this before, so many times. Vera’s body was shaking, the sobs communicating her distress straight into him, while they stood, locked together, uncaring, before the bright white window.
When he picked her up Vera did not protest. She lay quiescent in his arms, looking at him like a trusting child. As he laid her on the bed she raised her hands to help him remove the sweater, and when his own hands fumbled with the strap of her bra she showed him how it went. Only when he lay down beside her did she hold him away for a moment while looking up and down his body, as if in wonder. Her hand went to hold his erect penis, stroking it gently upwards in a way he remembered; Kyril lay there, passive, striving to keep his body under control while she renewed her acquaintance with his body. At last she raised her hand to his lips and he kissed the fingers one by one, tasting the faint musk of his own genitals, before folding her in his arms. The second before penetration, just as he was gently lowering his weight on to her, she pushed at his chest with her hands, in a moment of rebellion; then the same hands slipped round to his back and as her flesh closed round his he felt the sudden reflexive rending of her nails.
For Kyril everything was old and familiar and new and exciting. They made love twice, very quickly, and then, after an interval, a third time, more slowly. It was as though they were trying to compare the memory with the reality, unable to decide which was best. When they were tired and the room was growing darker he made her put on the sweater, nothing else, and lie in his arms with her head on his chest. For the first time, they began to talk: talk as old friends, old lovers.
‘What did they do to Stefanie?’
For a moment Vera wanted to pretend that the name meant nothing to her, but only for a moment. Poor, dear Stefanie, whose negative vetting did not disclose that she worked for the KGB, relaying information to the embassy through Ivan Bucharensky. First my boss, then my flat-mate, thought Vera. Friends. Until the day when, through a mixture of appallingly bad luck and Stefanie’s negligence, Vera had met Ivan.
‘Nothing, in the end. There wasn’t quite enough evidence for a trial. She went abroad, wrote for a while.’
‘And you?’
‘Oh come on, you know what happened to me.’
It was not hostile. They continued to lie in the gathering gloom, still content.
‘And you’re really poor?’
She smiled. ‘Not really. Not in the way you mean. It’s just… oh, I don’t know. We always lived in different worlds, you and I. The stuff in this flat, the furniture, the clothes, the food even, they’re ordinary, Ivan. Can’t you understand that? They’re the sort of thing we have in this country, that we’re used to. It’s funny, do you remember the famous weekend in Paris?’
His face crinkled in a frown. ‘Paris. I can’t…’
‘I’d been saving for months, long before I met you, a little bit put by every week, for two days in Paris. Stefanie and I, just us. And when we told you, you were so angry. Don’t you remember? You went on and on about extravagance, and decadence. When I learned the truth, later, about you and her… well, I thought perhaps Paris interfered with one of your plans, or something. But then I thought: no. It’s because where Ivan comes from people don’t go away at all. Because they can’t. And even if they could, even if the authorities would let them, they don’t have that kind of money. They don’t have the freedom to blow everything on one glorious spree of pink champagne and smoked salmon. The Soviet state will save them from their folly.’
She wriggled out of his arms and went to the dressing-table. Kyril heard the scrape of a match and smelled smoke. ‘Cigarettes? You?’
‘Oh yes, me. People do change, you know. England’s changing.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘We’re getting like you.’ She inhaled deeply and lay back in his arms, letting the smoke escape with her next words. ‘The state is determined to save us all from ourselves. Look. Have you seen this. Oh damn, it’s dark in here…’
She reached out to the bedside light, but he restrained her gently. ‘Just tell me.’
‘It says on the packet: Her Majesty’s Government Health Warning. Smoking can be dangerous to your health.’
‘Yes. I’ve seen it. But we don’t have that in Russia.’
‘No, but it’s all the same thing. It’s the low road, and we’ve started to tread it. Bit by bit, year by year. So slowly that we don’t even notice it’s happening any more.’
Kyril lay back, cradling his head in his arms, and looked at the ceiling. He didn’t understand. What had a packet of cigarettes to do with travelling abroad? In Russia every citizen had to carry an internal passport containing the all-important propiska, which entitled the bearer to reside in a particular locality. In England it was different. In England everyone was free. The greenest new schpick enduring his first day’s training in the KGB knew that.
‘Ivan.’
‘Yes.’
But Vera did not respond at once. Instead she drew hard on her cigarette; Kyril watched the little point of red fire glow in the darkness of the bedroom before dying away.
‘Ivan, have you come back to me? Have you? You said you were defecting…’
For a moment Kyril did nothing. Then he swung his legs off the bed and began to dress.
‘Ivan, no, listen to me, please listen to me. I didn’t want to interfere, it’s just that you said…’
‘I know what I said.’ His voice was low and sad and somehow humble. ‘Vera, I… I think I made a mistake to come here. I’m sorry.’
This time she managed to switch on the light without him sensing in advance what she was going to do. They blinked in the sudden flash. In a split second Kyril was by the window, drawing the curtains with a violence that surprised even him. As the anger drained away he let his head fall forward on to his hands where they met, holding the curtains tightly together.
‘I see.’
Vera stood up and mechanically began to smooth down the crumpled bedclothes. When she had done that she started to dress, keeping her back to Kyril.
‘Vera, listen.’ Kyril swung her round to face him. Vera’s eyes were cold, her expression closed against him. ‘Everything’s a mess at the moment. But if I manage to sort things out, if I can get through safely, then… then yes, I’ve come back to you. I promise.’
His hands dropped from her shoulders; she swayed a little, as if missing their support, but her eyes never left his face.
‘I love you, Vanya,’ she said evenly. ‘I’ve always loved you, right from the first. I’ll always love you.’
For an answer he held out his hands, and she came to him. ‘Tell me what to do,’ she said after a while.
‘Let’s get dressed first.’
When they were sitting in the front room again she brought him gin and supper. It was the first decent food Kyril had tasted since he arrived in England.
‘No vodka I’m afraid. Too painful. Silly, isn’t it?’
Kyril shook his head gently. ‘Not silly.’
She tilted her glass at him, and they drank.
‘The first thing is this. People are going to come and talk to you, lots of people. Tell them the truth and they won’t hurt you. I came. I stayed a while. I didn’t tell you anything except I’m defecting but I have problems. They know all that anyway. But most important, you don’t know where I am.’
‘Vanya, I…’
Kyril held up his hand. ‘No, Vera. It has to be this way. When I leave you, you don’t know where I’m going, and you can’t tell them what you don’t know. They’ll see the sense of that. They don’t seriously expect you to know.’
Her face seemed to have shrunk. He could see fear in her eyes, fear and the realisation, at last, of what it all meant.
‘No one’ll want to hurt you,’ he said reassuringly. ‘But they’ll ask you things and they’ll be very insistent. Don’t give in. And don’t – Vera, this is so important – don’t have anything to do with this solicitor who came to see you. Or his client. If Loshkevoi turns up here, don’t let him in, just call the police at once, you hear?’
She nodded numbly. For the second time her Vanya was turning the world upside down. She didn’t want to face the future, not yet.
Kyril stroked the hair off her forehead.
‘Be patient,’ he said. ‘Don’t believe anything you hear on the radio or television or read in the papers. Promise.’
She nodded again.
‘And now you have to help me get out of here.’
She looked up sharply, tears glistening in her eyes. ‘Now?’
‘Yes, Vera. I’m sorry. Now.’
He put down the tray and helped her to her feet. She clung to him and they kissed, long and hard. Then she pushed him away to show that she was ready, and he pointed to the telephone.
‘I want you to call a taxi. Choose a firm you haven’t used before. If they ask where you want to go, give an address somewhere quite close, but Vera… make sure it’s a real address. Ask them to say how long they’ll be in coming.’
Vera started to flip through the Yellow Pages. Kyril stood by the window, pushing aside the curtain a fraction, enough to give him a restricted view of the road. Everything was quiet.
It took a while for Vera to find a company prepared to answer the phone, let alone undertake the journey, but at last she had discharged Kyril’s instructions to the full.
‘Get your coat. You’re coming with me to the station.’
‘The station…’
‘I have a plan, Vera. But I need your help. Outside there are at least two men waiting for me, maybe more. One of them is British and he doesn’t matter. MI6 are waiting for me to make the first move. So long as they can see me they won’t worry. But the KGB are out there too, and they’re a different proposition. I’m wanted in Moscow – alive. Not even the KGB are stupid enough to kidnap me here, especially with a MI6 agent watching what goes on. But it’s doubly important for them not to lose me. Their only chance is to tail me from here back to my home-base.’
‘But can you be sure? Mightn’t they risk anything if they want you enough?’
‘They need to know where I’m staying. I’m supposed to have stolen one of their project-plans and it’s extremely unlikely that I’d have it on me.’ He smiled bleakly. ‘Don’t worry, Vera. I’m only followed if I want to be followed. And this time, I don’t. But you’ve got to help me. Now listen…’
About a quarter of an hour later a minicab drew up outside the house, and as the driver opened his door to get out he found the fares already slipping quietly into the back seat.
‘Clapham Junction,’ said Kyril, adding, as the driver was on the point of complaining, ‘We’ve changed our minds. Will ten pounds cover it?’
The driver said nothing, but started the engine.
Kyril looked back through the rear window. The darkened street was full of cars parked down both sides. Even as he looked, one of them pulled out and started to follow.
The minicab reached the junction of Turpin Road with St Johns Road, and stopped. The side-lights of the car behind approached very slowly, halting perhaps ten yards behind the cab. Beyond that Kyril could just make out a third car, its indicator winking.
The cab-driver turned right and began to accelerate. Through the rear windscreen Kyril saw both cars copy the manoeuvre, and smiled. The convoy travelled at a steady 40 mph, 20 or 30 yards between each car.
‘Your money’s on the seat.’
The driver looked askance at the notes which fluttered on to the Draylon beside him.
‘Ten for the firm. Ten for you. And you’ve never seen either of us.’
‘Blind,’ said the driver. ‘That’s me.’
‘It must make driving very difficult. Left here and stop hard.’
The driver obeyed, instinctively snapping to the command in Kyril’s voice. He gave no previous warning and Kyril had a sudden view of the car behind sailing on through the traffic-lights, which obligingly changed to red.
‘Out.’
Vera leapt out of the car and ran across the road to the footpath which led up to Clapham Junction station, Kyril at her heels. As he rounded the corner he caught a glimpse of the second car narrowly avoiding a collision with the stationary cab.
They were through the barrier and racing for the platform before the sleepy ticket-collector could do anything about it.
‘Just pray we don’t have to wait long.’
‘Platform Twelve,’ panted Vera. ‘I can hear it coming.’
They reached the top of the steps just as a Victoria-bound train was squealing and grinding its way to a halt. Kyril hustled Vera into a compartment of a carriage with no connecting corridor and stood at the window, like a lover who wants to discourage company on the ride.
‘Stan’ ’way!’ yelled a porter.
The whistle blew. Kyril’s fists clenched. What was the hold up? Why didn’t they go?
He heard the hiss of the vacuum brake and relaxed. The train started to move. A man flung himself up the last two steps to the platform and dived for the nearest carriage-door, wrenching it open and scrabbling with his feet for the running-board. He made it, just, and Kyril swore.
‘One,’ he said as he slammed up the window. ‘Too bad. But… only one.’
He and Vera had the compartment to themselves. They sat holding hands for most of the short journey to Victoria. When the train halted for a signal outside the terminus they each stood at a window, staring out.
‘D’you see anything?’
‘It’s dark this side… no, nothing.’
Again the hiss of the brake. The train began to roil forward. Kyril raised his window and turned to Vera.
‘He stayed put, then. No movement my side. I half-expected him to crawl along the footway. He’s biding his time. Maybe…’
He fell silent.
‘Maybe what?’
‘Nothing.’
He did not want to tell Vera the thought which had crossed his mind, that in the few seconds it had taken them to board the train the tail might have had time to radio his base and arrange for them to be met at Victoria.
Suddenly lights were everywhere; they were coming into the station. Kyril hurriedly took Vera in his arms and kissed her.
‘Now look.’
She broke away from him and lowered the window on the platform side.
‘About a dozen people scattered along the platform… I can see a door opening, I think it’s him, he’s only a couple of compartments down. There’s a porter…’
The driver applied the brakes and the train shuddered.
‘Only another twenty yards…’
They were going at little more than walking pace.
‘Ten yards… oh Vanya, Vanya.’
The train halted. Doors opened. Vera got out and turned to face the compartment, smiling up as if to snatch a last kiss before saying goodbye. Out of the corner of her eye she could see a man. Unlike the other passengers he was not walking away from her, down the platform to the barrier. She had an impression of jeans and a wind-cheater but kept her face upturned to the window, reaching for that final kiss. Her lips moved, as if talking to the unseen man inside. In fact, she was praying for the simple subterfuge to work.
A number of things happened very quickly.
The stranger reached across Vera to see that the compartment was empty, its far door open and a dark void on the other side. In the same instant he hurled himself forward into the compartment, thrusting Vera aside, only to fall flat on his face. Through bewilderment and pain he realised that Kyril had been concealed under the seat all along, and had reached out to grab his ankle.
Strong hands collared the stranger, he felt a knee in the small of his back and heard a voice cry, ‘Get in!’
It took a moment for Vera to realise that Kyril meant her. She scrambled back into the train and slammed the door, shutting off the melee from any curious passengers who might come along the platform, and stood looking out as Kyril had done earlier.
Behind her she could hear the muffled grunts and thumps of a fight. She clenched her fists to the glass and stared out as if her life depended on it. She was talking to herself: please finish it, finish it…
Through the open door on the other side of the compartment came another sound, that of a train drawing into the station along the adjacent track. It grew rapidly louder and was suddenly punctuated by the howl of the wind-horn: its driver must have seen the open door and sounded a warning. The approaching train was almost level with Vera’s compartment, its horn moaning continuously. Suddenly she could bear it no longer, and swung round crying ‘Vanya!’
But Kyril had gone. The compartment was empty.
With a piercing squeal of brakes the oncoming train ground to a halt outside the door opposite Vera, its horn still sounding a single note.
Her mouth fell open. For a second the carriage went round and round, somebody seemed to be twisting a band of steel into her forehead…
Vera Bradfield clutched her stomach and was violently sick.
Kyril lay between the rails, fighting to get his breath back. His brain had temporarily seized up. All he could think of was stories of men who suffered terrible amputations and could feel nothing, numbed by shock into the belief that they had miraculously come through unscathed.
He moved his right leg, then his left. He was alive. He could feel all his limbs.
And he could hear. A horn, the sound of many voices. It was time to go.
Carefully avoiding the live rails he flipped from under the train across to the track nearest the platform where he had arrived with Vera a few moments ago. He wanted to look back to see what had happened to his attacker but his brain, active once more, forbade it. Better not. You’ve got enough to cope with. So has Vera…
Using the monkey crawl he edged his way along the tracks beneath the first train, making for the end farthest from the barrier. There, all was peaceful. He poked his head out cautiously. Anyone who had been standing at this point a moment before would understandably have been attracted back along the platform where all the commotion was. He climbed from under the train and stood upright between the rails. There was nobody about. No one looked in his direction.
Kyril vaulted up on to the platform. A few metres away he could see an iron stairway leading to a gantry which spanned the platform. He ran up it three steps at a time, coming to rest in the shadow of the overhead air-terminal which the gantry was designed to serve. He peered round the corner to find that he had a bird’s eye view of the scene for which he was responsible.
Vera stood in the middle of a crowd of people, her face white. She was crying. A policeman was standing next to her, notebook in hand. An ambulance advanced slowly down the platform towards them.
On the other side he could see where the incoming train had stopped well short of the buffers, and there the crowd was smaller, more professional. A second ambulance was already parked close up to the train, its open doors flanked by policemen who every so often waved back a curious passerby. But for the most part the casual watchers had gone, repelled by their glimpse of what lay under the wheels of the train.
A necessity of the mission, Kyril told himself as he walked casually along the gantry, making for the platform farthest from the scene of the ‘accident’. For Vera he had no worries, once the initial shock had worn off: before leaving the house he had primed her with things to say if it went wrong, and he never doubted her ability to stay cool in a crisis.
For a moment he allowed his heart to go to her in a spasm of sympathy and remorse; then he was himself again. He had to go on. No matter what, he must succeed.
He took his seat in a ‘local’ which was going to Battersea Park. From there it would be a short walk to the house in Queenstown Road. Then a long, long sleep.
As the train accelerated out of the station Kyril allowed himself the brief luxury of visualising a scene in Moscow Centre. Against all the odds the moving, highly charged magnet conjured up by Stanov had reached London. Stanov was talking, perhaps even now…
‘There was a telex this afternoon… it came in at 1548 Greenwich Mean Time… it came to you… why did it come to you, comrade…?’ Comrade what, Kyril wondered. Colonel, probably, but a general was not out of the question.
Anyway. ‘Why did you not report this?’ Stanov would go on. ‘Why did you hold back?’ Or perhaps… ‘Why did you at once order an executioner from the A2 Institute to go to England?’
Kyril blanked out his thoughts. Hour by hour, minute by minute. That was how he had to live. Let the next minute come, that was all.
Above the clatter of the Battersea train crossing the points outside the terminus, Kyril’s sensitive ears detected the first high screech of a siren.