Chapter 2

‘Good morning, Sister Duval.’ Irina had changed into her white coat. She never wore it with ordinary patients. It intimidated them. She liked to project herself more as a friend than a doctor.

‘Good morning,’ the sister said. Her tone was hostile. ‘Here are the night staff’s notes on Monsieur Brückner. As you instructed, we gave no sedatives. He became seriously agitated. We had to call in male nurses to restrain him. I couldn’t take the responsibility for what was happening. At six a.m. I called in Doctor Minden and he sedated the patient.’

She was a very experienced psychiatric nurse and Doctor Volkov’s callousness verged on deliberate cruelty. The unfortunate man had suffered such violent panic attacks that he tried to throw himself out of the window. She saw the Russian flush angrily.

‘Doctor Minden had no right to interfere with my treatment programme,’ she snapped. ‘I shall take this up with him. You should have called me, Sister!’

The sister said, ‘I’m sorry’, in a chilly voice.

‘I’ll see my patient now,’ Irina said. ‘We’re not to be disturbed.’

He was unconscious; his pallor was frightening and he’d bitten through his lower lip. He was strapped down to his bed and as Irina stood watching him he stirred, the eyelids fluttered open for a second and then closed tight. There was nothing she could do till the sedative wore off. She had cancelled all other appointments. The morning was free.

She’d slept very badly. She felt tired and low spirited. And frustrated because Brückner was out of her reach for some hours.

Volkov had been asleep when she came home. The dinner with the Schmidts hadn’t been a success. It was her fault; she had been tense and ill at ease. Volkov worried her. She sensed he was pretending to be asleep when she got in to bed. How many times had she reached out to him, trying to rouse the passion they used to share? And been rejected. In the end she had subdued her body as she disciplined her emotions.

Sex had brought them together, bound them through the difficult and dangerous years when he was actively opposing the authorities. Sex and a strong maternal instinct made her love him. There was no child at her breast, but a vulnerable, misguided husband who was doomed unless she took control. They might still have come together in spite of what she had done. If it hadn’t been for Müller.

She sat in her bright office and thought of Müller coming to the apartment that day. He often visited her in the early months, talking as if the passive figure in the background wasn’t there. It hadn’t mattered what he said. Dimitri Volkov was in a fog of mental apathy and confusion. Müller had said to her once, ‘How can you live with him like that? Why don’t you just keep him in the clinic?’ and shrugged her angry retort aside. And then, that fatal day when he came early. She hadn’t time to get Volkov out of the room. He had been off drugs for three months. Müller in high spirits, boasting, ‘I’ve got a client for you Irina. French diplomat. Likes little boys. Doesn’t fancy anything over six years old. He’s got a big job in the French Foreign Ministry. Centre will love this one!’ And he’d laughed out loud, talking through her, ignoring her frantic attempts to stop him.

It had been too late. He had seen the signals too late. He had stared at Dimitri Volkov and grimaced. ‘What’s the matter? He wouldn’t know if it was Christmas or Easter.’

That was how Volkov had discovered the real implications of his release. His wife had been put in place as a Soviet agent. Centre was Moscow Centre, the heart of Soviet Intelligence. They had financed the clinic and prepared the set-up in Geneva especially to make use of her talent. A unique talent, honed and polished in the Lenin Institute, where brainwashing was a fine art.

Müller had brazened it out. He’d tried to bluff and bully his way out of his terrible mistake, but Volkov wouldn’t be intimidated. He was physically frail, but mentally clear. He had got up and faced them both. He’d said to Müller, ‘You do it for money. You’d have sold Christ for dollars,’ and turned his back on the German.

‘You fool,’ Irina remembered shouting in desperation at him. ‘You big mouth! Get out! Get out of here!’

She sat for a while, the inevitable cigarette burning out in the ashtray.

She had tried to explain, to make excuses, but he wouldn’t listen. His contempt shrivelled them on her tongue. She had burst into tears. He was so soft-hearted, he hated anyone to cry. But he recoiled in disgust when she came near him. He had actually held up his hands as if to ward off something evil.

‘If I’d know what you were, I’d have killed myself in the Lubianka.’

He’d locked himself in their room and drunk himself insensible. He hadn’t denounced her. Irina had waited, gambling that he wouldn’t turn her in.

For the next four years he had lived in his private hell, and his silence had condemned her to live in it with him.

But last night he had been different. It wasn’t brandy bravado that spoke. She knew that too well. She was reminded of the man she had seen fight the invincible power of the KGB and refuse to back away. For only a moment, hardly discernable, except to a trained eye, the old Dimitri Volkov had shown himself.

Her telephone rang. She was startled back in to the present. It was the ward sister.

‘Your patient, Monsieur Brückner, is awake.’

‘Thank you,’ Irinia said. ‘I’ll come right away.’

Brückner was sitting up in a chair. He was gaunt and hollow-eyed; his voice trembled. Irina sat behind him, a disembodied voice asking questions through the drugged haze that was his mind.

‘Why did you spare the two children, Adolph?’

‘I didn’t want Boris to kill them.’

‘That was a good thing you did. A kind thing. I’m proud of you for doing that. Did Boris like killing people?’

‘He didn’t care. If it suited him, he’d kill them.’

‘Were you together for long?’

‘About a year. We were a team. We fought at Kiev together. He was decorated. He only laughed. “They can stuff the Iron Cross,” he said. “The one I’ve got is going to make me rich!”’

‘The cross he stole from the woman?’

‘Yes. He was always talking about it. He was going to sell it to some Jew. That’s why he joined the Einsatz Commando.’

‘The SS extermination squad?’

‘They were wiping out all the Jews they could find. He thought he’d find a rich one and sell him the cross for a good price. Then shoot him. He thought it was a great joke.’

‘Did you join with him?’ the quiet voice asked him.

‘No. I was a soldier. They were murderers. The Ukrainians hated the Jews as much as we did. A lot of them joined the SS. We got drunk together the night before Boris left. He got the cross out and showed it to me. He kissed it. “There’s my beauty,” he said. “With what I’ll get for it, I’ll live like a prince! All the girls I want, all the drink. You’ll make a few roubles out of that clock, old lad. But I’m going to be rich!”’

‘When did you see him again?’

‘I never saw him. I was wounded and sent back home. I was put on light duties. My leg was very bad.’

‘So you never found out what happened to him?’ She went on probing.

‘No. I didn’t even think about him. I wanted to forget. I never told anyone about what it was like. I kept the clock and the calendar. I didn’t want to sell them. They were beautiful. I wanted to make money, so I could have more things like them.’

‘And you did,’ she encouraged him. ‘You worked hard after the war. You made a lot of money and became a powerful man, didn’t you, Adolph? You’re well respected. You have a lovely wife and three nice children. And a fine art collection. So long as nobody knows how it started.’

She had inserted the point of the knife. He didn’t seem to notice.

‘That’s the irony,’ he muttered. ‘If it wasn’t for the desk set I wouldn’t have got interested in Russian art. I’ll never forget the day I saw it. I couldn’t believe it. There it was. Boris’s cross! The medieval treasure lost during the Revolution.’

She said sharply, ‘What was lost? What are you talking about?’

‘The holy Cross of St Vladimir. Priceless. Thirteenth-century gold and jewels. It was the same. It was the cross Boris stole. And he’d taken it. Without knowing what he’d got. I could have wept thinking what I’d missed. I made enquiries. I tried to find it. I’d have paid anything.’

‘What did you find out?’

‘Someone had taken it to a French jeweller after the war and tried to sell it. The jeweller said the jewels weren’t rubies. They were spinels. He offered very little, so the man didn’t sell.’

‘Was the man Boris?’

‘No way of knowing. The jeweller was vague. He said the man was a foreigner. He wouldn’t part with the cross. If that fool had known what it was, he’d have given him the money!’ Brückner wiped the saliva from his mouth. ‘To think of it—what a treasure I missed! With such a history! I found out all about it. It’s in all the reference books. The Bolsheviks never found it. It disappeared from the cathedral at Kiev. The White armies would have beaten the Reds if they’d got that cross.’

Irina didn’t move, she didn’t interrupt. He was ranting now, venting his frustration.

‘When I think of that marvellous treasure being hawked around for sale … I went back to that idiot, the jeweller who turned it down. I kept asking him questions. What did the man look like? Couldn’t he try and describe him? He couldn’t. I told him what Boris looked like. He didn’t think it was the same man. I could have strangled him. He was my only link with the cross. I put detectives on it; they found nothing. I even advertised in the art magazines. I was careful, very careful.’ He looked sly. ‘I didn’t want the Russians on my track if they knew what I was looking for—just think what it would mean if it turned up now? Just think—that’d put Gorbachev in trouble! There’d be a blood bath.’ He cackled wildly. He was becoming very agitated.

Irina interrupted him. ‘You were mistaken,’ she said firmly. ‘It wasn’t a treasure. The jeweller would have known. You’ve imagined it, Adolph. It’s not what you think.’

He croaked at her, trying to raise his voice. ‘I held it. I counted the stones. It’s unique! There’s not another cross like it in the world. Don’t you know I’m an expert on that period? Just because of that cross. I’ve spent all these years thinking about it, wondering how it got in to that house. Like the Fabergé.’ Sweat was running down his face. ‘If Boris had known they weren’t rubies, he’d have taken that instead.’

He leaned back exhausted. ‘He couldn’t have sold it to a Jew. All the Jews were killed. Perhaps he was killed. Perhaps it was stolen from him. I’ll never know. I’ll never find it now.’

‘No,’ Irina said quietly. ‘You never will. But you couldn’t have shown it to anyone, could you? You couldn’t have risked people finding out you’d stolen it from a woman you’d raped during the Russian campaign. Fabergé pieces were on sale. You could lie about them. But not a holy Russian cross. The only one in the world. People would have found out you were a thief and a rapist who’d let a woman and child be butchered in cold blood. No wonder you got headaches, living with a crime like that for all these years. No wonder you were driving yourself mad. You wanted to kill yourself last night, didn’t you?’

He had sunk again, and his eyes were full of tears.

‘Yes.’ It was a mumble.

‘And you will kill yourself if I don’t help you. You know you can trust me, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re safe, so long as nobody else finds out. And you won’t have headaches any more because you saved the other child and the baby. That was a good thing to do, Adolph. Boris did the killing. But other people wouldn’t care about that. They’d think you were as bad.’

He was crying. ‘I was punished. I am sterile. I was punished.’

‘That’s enough for today,’ Irina got up. ‘You’ll have a sleep now. We’ll talk again tomorrow. You’ll feel better. Much better. Get up.’

She wouldn’t help him; he was weak and unsteady, but she wouldn’t take his arm or guide him to the bed. She let him stumble and fall to his knees. For a moment he looked at her with lucidity.

‘You hate me,’ he said.

Irina pressed the bell for the nurse. ‘I’m helping you,’ she said. ‘You hate yourself.’

Müller arrived at Geneva Airport just after eleven in the morning. He wandered down the Rue du Rhône, admiring the window displays. It was a rich city, comfortable and self-confident. He stopped to inspect the latest Piaget watches and was tempted to buy one for Susan. She loved jewellery. She had done a lot towards making that sale to the Americans. She deserved a present.

They had two boys, both at college in America. He didn’t want his sons to grow up in Germany. They were not going to be involved in what he did. Their lives lay with the capitalist world he had hated so bitterly in his own youth.

He didn’t hate it now. He accepted it, enjoyed what it had to offer and lived his secret life because he loved it. He loved the game for its own sake. If it had ever been necessary he could just as happily have switched sides.

He decided to be generous and went in to the shop. He bought a gold Piaget with a diamond-set face, had it gift-wrapped and went out to find a cab and go to meet Irina.

He was on the pavement, waiting, when he saw Volkov on the opposite side of the road. The same familiar figure, untidily dressed, with too-long hair and a hang-dog look about him. Then he saw the girl. She was beside him and she had taken his arm as they waited on the pavement across the road. Müller stared hard. She was young, in her late twenties, very blonde and pretty.

‘I’ll be damned,’ he said to himself ‘I wonder what Irina would think of that!’ He turned away, not wanting Dimitri Volkov to see him. He was in luck because a cab drew up alongside him and a man got out. He jumped in and set off for his rendezvous with Volkov’s wife.

Müller grimaced at the thought of her. He had grown out of fanaticism. He despised the single-mindedness of people like Irina Volkova. They were blinkered by their own convictions. Often they did their cause more harm than good. Even more important to Müller, they harmed others more flexible than themselves. He didn’t like her. She was a type he found threatening.

But he had despised her husband from the beginning. A fiery orator, and self-styled leader of the persecuted and oppressed, consumed with a reckless urge to sacrifice himself for his ideals. Müller hadn’t admired him for it, even when he was a thorn in the Soviet government’s side. He thought Volkov was a fool. There was no place in Müller’s scale of values for a loser. He had long since abandoned heroics. They were all losers; the Jewish refusniks, the intellectual dissidents, the scattered Christians asking to be eaten by the KGB lions. All the men and women of conscience who had confronted the invincible system. The jails, the labour camps and the asylums were full of them. They were building railways and digging roads in the frozen wastes of Siberia. They had changed nothing. Change had come in spite of them, that was the irony. Change was a mass movement; it owed nothing to the puny efforts of the individual. Gorbachev and the new era in Russia was the result of the great pendulum swing of economics.

Inequity and deprivation had brought Marxism to birth. The same forces were calling for freedom and democracy. What people wanted was food in the shops and a slice of the materialist cake they saw being gobbled in the West.

Few things surprised Müller; he had lived through the trauma of Germany’s defeat and the painful reconstruction of a shattered and divided people. He had come out of it successful, respected and secretly wealthy. But the sight of Dimitri Volkov with a woman gave him pause. It was no chance acquaintance. They were isolated from the crowd, their arms linked, the woman gazing up in to his face. Volkov had been written off for the last five years. He was drowning himself in booze and self-pity. He posed no threat to anyone. He was the last man in the world with the guts to deceive his wife. But even in that brief glimpse, Müller was certain that he was deceiving her.

She should be told, of course. He should mention it, alert her in their mutual interest. But he disliked her enough to postpone it. What harm would come if she were being fooled for a change? He had never forgiven her for reporting his indiscretion in front of her husband. Even though the husband had made no use of it. She had rounded on him without mercy. If his controller had taken her seriously, he might have been in real trouble. No, he decided. Let Volkov cheat on her. A little adultery now and then was harmless. As harmless as the man himself. And Müller could play that particular ace if and when Irina Volkov needed a slap in the face.

‘Tell me about yourself, Lucy. I want to know about you.’

She smiled at him. They were together, sitting in the sunshine on the balcony of her apartment. They had made love that morning and it was better than the day before.

‘I’ve told you all there is,’ she said. ‘The only interesting thing about me is finding you.’

He had a strand of her hair in his fingers; he played with it, twisting it round until it curled.

‘You have lovely hair,’ he said. ‘Tell me about your father then. How did he get to England? And your mother?’

He was happy; he had lost the familiar feeling of dread and despair. The elation, the excitement and the wonderful afterglow of making love to her had left him in a mood of carefree tenderness. The sun was shining and they were warm on the pretty little balcony with its boxes of flowers. He was in the mood for confidences. He wanted to extend their intimacy, to hear about her childhood, her family. He wanted to imagine her growing up.

‘My father was in a camp at the end of the war,’ Lucy said. ‘He’d been taken back to Germany for slave labour. His parents were shot. The camp was run by the British and one of the officers had taken an interest in him.’ The same officer who had let him say goodbye to his friend Boris, but she didn’t tell him that.

‘He got my father to England after the war, gave him a job and helped him to get settled. My father became naturalized, but he was always a Ukrainian. My mother was Irish; she died when I was seven, but I remember her very well. She was so pretty. My father brought me up. Major Hope left him the business when he died; he’d lost his only son through drugs, I think, and he more or less adopted my father. They were very close.’

He held her hand. ‘I’ll take care of you now,’ he said gently. ‘Your father taught you to speak Russian?’

‘He taught me everything,’ she said. ‘He’d had so little education, but he loved books and believed learning was the key to living. And to being free. That’s why you meant so much to him. He’d lost his freedom, his parents … He was beaten and half-starved … But he never gave in. Like you, Dimitri.

‘He wrote letters to politicians, to Church leaders. He got up petitions and raised money when you were arrested. And he gave me a picture of you to put in my room. Every Sunday we went to Mass and prayed you’d be released. I wish he’d lived long enough to meet you.’

‘I didn’t deserve anyone’s prayers.’ Volkov said slowly. ‘I don’t deserve you. What are we going to do, Lucy? This can’t go on forever.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It can’t. But we have a little time left. We’ve got today and we’re going to be happy together. The sun’s gone in, and you look cold. Come inside and I’ll warm you.’

In the evening they went walking, hand in hand, as if it were the first love for each of them.

‘How long must I wait,’ he said suddenly, ‘till you tell me why we are here together?’

‘Not very long, I think,’ Lucy answered. ‘I never thought I’d love you, you know that? I imagined meeting you, talking to you, but nothing like this. I’d built up a picture of you, like the one my father cut out and gave me, but it’s nothing like you, Dimitri. You can’t fall in love with heroes. You trust me, don’t you?’

‘I trust you,’ he answered.

‘My life is in your hands, Lucy. And your life in mine. It frightens me.’

She stopped and they faced each other. ‘Your wife won’t find out about us,’ she said. ‘But if she does, it won’t matter because we will be out of her reach. I’m going to say goodbye, Dimitri, my love. It’s getting late and you should go home. I don’t worry about that any more. I know you won’t drink. I know she can’t hurt you. I won’t come to the flower shop tomorrow. I’ll wait at the apartment.’

He bent and kissed her. She gasped as he opened her lips. He held her tightly.

‘I’ll come to you tomorrow,’ he said.

Irina was early. They met in the cocktail bar of the Richemond. There was an old Intelligence adage which held that if you want to hide something, put it on public view. If two subversives want to meet and pass unnoticed, then do it in the smartest, most exclusive hotel in Geneva. She waited irritably, smoking, checking her watch.

He came into the bar without any sign of being flustered. He walked up to the table, smiled, pulled out a chair and sat down.

‘Irina,’ Müller said. ‘What can I get for you?’

‘You’re late,’ she said icily. ‘I have afternoon appointments.’

‘So have I,’ he retorted. ‘I’m going to waste my time visiting two dealers, both of whom will try to sell me items I don’t want—and one of which I know is a nineteenth-century fake. But I had to have an excuse to see you, so I’m not complaining. I shall have a Kïr. The same for you?’

‘I hate liqueur in wine,’ she said. ‘A glass of Moselle will do. Now, can we be serious?’

‘You’re always serious,’ Müller remarked. ‘How is our friend Adolph? Have you discovered why he has his headaches?’

She was a very cool, self-composed woman, who seldom showed her feelings. Except on that one occasion when she lost her temper and shouted at him like a fishwife in front of her husband. He would never forget that. Now he saw anger in her eyes and a faint flush of colour in her cheeks.

‘Rape and murder,’ she said. ‘It’s taken a long time for the guilt to surface.’

Müller raised his brows and pursed his lips in a tiny whistle. ‘Adolph? My God! Tell me about it.’

‘He and a Ukrainian Nazi attacked and killed a woman during the Russian campaign. He stole the Fabergé desk set from her. That’s why he lied about it. That’s not the important point. The Ukrainian stole a cross. Does St Vladimir’s Cross mean anything to you?’

He set his glass down on the table. ‘It does indeed. What are you saying?’

‘In a minute,’ she leaned towards him. ‘What do you know about it?’

‘It was an early thirteenth-century gold cross which vanished from Kiev during the Revolution. Most likely the Bolsheviks destroyed it. With all due respect, my dear Irina, they were a lot of barbarians in those early days.’ Then he frowned. ‘You’re not suggesting there’s a connection with it and this cross Adolph told you about. That would be impossible!’

She said quietly. ‘It was a humble farmhouse. They were country people. But they had a Tsarist treasure hidden there—that desk set. He told me about the cross. He ranted and raved because he found out years afterwards what it was the other swine had taken. He’s a world expert on Russian art, isn’t he?’

Müller said, ‘He likes to think he is. I’ve told him so anyway. So?’

‘He swore it was the genuine cross. He tried to find it after the war. He thinks the Ukrainian probably was killed and someone stole it from him and got it to Europe.’ She paused. He didn’t interrupt her. ‘He used his resources to try and trace it and he came up with a French jeweller who’d been offered it about twenty-five years ago. He wouldn’t pay good money because it was set with spinels instead of rubies, so the man took it back.’

Müller said slowly, ‘It would be spinels. There weren’t any rubies of large size in that period. And that was all? He got no further?’

‘No,’ Irinia said. ‘He knew its significance. He said he didn’t want the Russians getting on to him, so he had to be very discreet. But he came to a dead end with that jeweller.’

‘What exactly is its significance?’ Müller asked. ‘I assume you mean political?’

‘Political disaster, if the wrong people got hold of it,’ she retorted. ‘Brückner knew how dangerous it was. He said it this afternoon.’

‘And you want me to make enquiries?’

‘I want you to tell our friends at home. This is too big a responsibility for us to take on our own. It must go to the top. At once.’

‘You don’t think you’re being alarmist,’ he suggested. ‘It’s very unlikely that it survived the Civil War in 1919, and even less likely that it was looted during the war and brought out of Russia in one piece. Personally, I don’t believe the story.’ He shrugged. ‘No doubt there was some cross or ornament they found when they robbed that poor creature, and Adolph had made a fantasy out of it. He’s half-mad anyway, from what you tell me. I’ll pass it on, but I must add my own disclaimer. I don’t want to look a fool.’

Irina got up. ‘I have to see my evening patients,’ she said. ‘As for looking a fool, I wouldn’t play this down if I were you. I have an instinct that he’s right.’

Müller summoned the waiter for the bill. He got up, bent briefly over her hand. It was a charming display of good manners by a suave middle-aged man to an attractive woman.

‘I have a great respect for female intuition,’ he said. ‘But I never suspected you relied on it. My contact is in Berlin at the moment,’ he added. ‘It wouldn’t be wise to communicate with him in the usual way while he’s there.’

Irina looked at him. ‘You can fly there yourself. If you don’t, I’ll make contact.’ She turned and walked away.

Müller sat down again and ordered another Kïr. He had time to spare before his appointments. She meant what she said. If he didn’t go to Berlin, she’d pre-empt him. She believed in Adolph’s fairy story. But then she would, he thought, sipping the delicate drink. Superstition was embedded in the Russian psyche. Not even the dehumanizing process of Soviet medical training could eradicate the myths and legends of a thousand years of Russian Christianity. A brand of religion peculiar to the country and its people, where saints and miracles were part of everyday life and idiots were revered as the children of God.

Part of Irina Volkova would believe in a cross that might cause people to rise up and start a counter-revolution. Being Russian she knew it was possible … After seventy years of atheism, religion was re-emerging in the Soviet Union. When official attitudes relaxed, the Easter services had been packed with worshippers. And not just the babushkas, mumbling their prayers, but with young men and women. Perhaps Irina was right to be alarmed.

He finished the glass of Kïr and decided that he had better see his controller in person. He travelled all over Europe on buying trips. He wouldn’t be suspected. He paid and left for his first call at a dealer’s house in the Place du Bourg-de-Four. He planned to catch the 6 pm flight back to Munich. And then go on to Berlin the next day.

Irina had cooked dinner; she noticed that Volkov refused wine.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked him. ‘Aren’t you feeling well?’

He said, ‘I’ve decided to give up drink.’

On an impulse she reached over and touched his hand. ‘I’m so glad, darling. I’ll help you. It won’t be easy.’

He pulled his hand away. ‘No, thank you,’ he said. ‘I’m never taking medicine from you again. I’ll manage.’

She said, ‘Why? After all this time, when I begged and begged you to cut down, why suddenly say you’re going to stop?’

‘I’m taking your advice,’ he answered. ‘I’m pulling myself together. That’s what you keep telling me to do, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, yes, of course. But why do you have to be so hostile?’

‘How’s your patient?’

She saw the contempt in his eyes. She bit her lip; he knew the mannerism well. It signified that he had hurt her.

‘He’s recovering,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. There’s a play on television. I want to watch it.’

They didn’t sit together. He avoided contact with her even more these days, she noticed. She tried to concentrate on the screen, but she kept looking at him. Watching him. He made her uneasy.

‘What have you got there?’ she asked. He was eating something out of a box.

‘Chocolate,’ Volkov answered.

‘You would need sweet things,’ Irina said. ‘It’ll help if you feel a craving.’

He stared at the screen. She knew he hadn’t been paying any attention to the play.

‘I don’t feel a craving,’ he said. ‘And I don’t want advice from you. I thought you wanted to watch this nonsense?’

She got up. She switched the set off. ‘I’m going to bed,’ she said. ‘I’ve been miserable with you for five years, Dimitri. I don’t know why I don’t throw you out on to the street!’

‘Because you love me,’ he said coolly. ‘You said so not long ago. “I love you, Dimitri. I betrayed your trust and I betray sick, helpless people who come to me for help, because I love you.”’

‘Don’t count on it,’ she said slowly. ‘I’m only human. There’s a limit to what I can endure.’

‘Unlike your patients.’

He didn’t turn round when he heard the door bang. He switched the set back on, changing the channel to a news programme. It was so long since he had taken an interest in anything. Years of self-induced coma. An abdication from life and from reality. Sexless, motiveless, enmeshed in guilt for the crimes of someone else. He knew she would cry when she was alone. He had seen her weep when he turned away, chilled into impotence at her touch. He had made her suffer and further imprisoned himself by doing so.

Courage was what he needed. The courage to leave her and beg public forgiveness for his desertion of his cause and his friends. Love, his terrible wife called her obsession with him. But love was what he felt for the stranger who’d thrust herself upon him. Not just the love for her body, for the softness and the scent of her, but for the person inside that body. The spirit that believed in him and would dare anything in its innocence. She had made him come alive in heart and mind.

He sat forward and concentrated on the interview being screened.

A first-floor office had been made available to Müller’s controller in the new Soviet Embassy in Berlin. From the windows he had a clear view of the Brandenburg Gate. So much had changed in the city. The wall was long gone, the divided city was united like the country. Germany was one.

Viktor Rakovsky had made a sketch of the scene; he would finish it later. His speciality was water colours. He had exhibited in Moscow under a pseudonym and been pleased with the critical reaction. The painting of St Basil’s Cathedral was highly praised. He preferred not to think that everyone knew the artist had painted his best-known work from the window overlooking Dzerjhinsky Square.

He had chosen his stepfather Lepkin’s old office when he made his permanent headquarters in Moscow. He had a photograph of him enlarged and framed in silver gilt on his desk. There was another photograph, the same size and framed identically. It showed the famous partisan leader, Ivan Zakob, wearing the medals bestowed on him by Stalin. The two men that Viktor loved. There was no picture of his mother or his murdered brother Stefan. His childish drawings of them were in his bedroom, the only visible momento of their lives.

Rakovsky was thinking of them as he sat there in the borrowed office in Berlin. It was late afternoon and the sky was turning red outside. He remembered the vivid sunsets of his boyhood and the way the sun would hang like a crimson ball above the edge of the trees surrounding their house and then plunge out of sight as if it had been dropped in a moment of carelessness. He had been frightened until Ivan explained to him that the sun went to bed like everyone else and would be up and shining for them in the morning. Ivan was a fanciful fellow, and he loved to tell the boys stories. Who would have thought he could turn into a hero—leading his partisans against the Germans.

Ivan had become a legend, a symbol of all the other Ivans who died on the battlefields and fought village by village and street by street to drive the invader out of Russia. He had stood for them all, when he was made a hero of the Soviet Union by Stalin himself.

Ivan was old and dying, but he lived in Rakovsky’s handsome dacha and his days were comfortable. Rakovsky called him Little Father and Ivan called him son.

There was a report on the desk in front of Rakovsky. His agent, Peter Müller, had prepared it and left it in one of the embassy ‘letter boxes’ for collection. It was in the sleeve of a classical album which Rakovsky’s junior secretary had picked up from one of Berlin’s best-known music shop on the Tiergarten.

The words leapt at Rakovsky off the page. The words of a man confessing under duress, from drugs and a long festering guilt. Rakovsky could see it all. The house in the woods. His mother screaming as she was raped; his brother bursting from their hiding place to run in and try to save her. Sweat broke out over his body. He couldn’t go on reading. He had a bottle of Scotch whisky in his office; he poured a half tumblerfull and drank it down. Now he saw the missing details in his nightmare. His brother lying on the floor with his skull crushed. His mother stretched mute and bleeding on the bed. The sound of shots as her ravager murdered her. And then the moment when the cupboard door opened and he looked up in terror at the German soldier staring down at him. He was still stifling his baby sister’s cries. Then the door closed.

He heard the roar of the motorcycle being started up and then fading until it was silent. A long silence afterwards. He hadn’t dared to move. He was trembling with shock. He was in the dark. At last he let the baby cry. He was afraid she might suffocate. He didn’t open the cupboard door till he heard Ivan’s voice calling when he came in. Then Ivan’s terrible cry of anguish from the bedroom.

Ivan had gathered Viktor and the baby Valeria in his arms; tears were streaming down his face.

He heard his own voice saying over and over, ‘Germans. Germans did it.’ Ivan had held him back from the bedroom by force. They had dug the grave together. He remembered how deep it was and how hard it was to break the earth. He hadn’t seen their bodies. Ivan had wrapped them together in the curtains his mother had made for the sitting room, and laid them in the bottom of the grave. Even so, Viktor had seen the red stain spreading amongst the bright colours of the makeshift shroud.

They didn’t get the train to Moscow. The terminal at Kharkov had been bombed. There were no trains and the roads were under constant air attack.

The days afterwards were blurred in his memory. He was in shock. He screamed if Ivan left him alone, even for a few minutes. They journeyed into the countryside, sleeping under the trees, eating what Ivan could trap or shoot. When the partisans found them, they gave Valeria to one of the women to look after, but he stayed with Ivan. The camp in the forest was their home. It moved as the Germans advanced. They lived like nomads, ambushing, killing the enemy, moving on.

Some of them were captured. Viktor had seen their bodies swinging from a gallows in a little hamlet after the Red Army had retaken it. He had been given a rifle and Ivan taught him how to shoot. He’d said, ‘You’re a man now. You’re old enough to kill Germans.’

They never took prisoners. They lined them up and shot them. The first time Viktor saw an execution, he vomited. Then he remembered his mother and Stefan and made himself go back and look up at the bodies till he didn’t mind any more. Ivan had understood. Ivan was beside him when he shot his first German. He was ten years old.

‘Now you’ll sleep better, he had told him. ‘Your mother is smiling on you from heaven.’

Viktor drank more whisky. He had lived through the war with the partisans. He had learned to accept death. His little sister had sickened and died before her second birthday. There were no drugs in the camp. A lot of the children died. He had seen horrors committed by the enemy, and horrors that were the doing of his comrades-in-arms.

Lepkin had been captured during the Battle for Smolensk. He had been denounced as NKVD by one of his own men and executed.

Viktor was twelve when the war ended and by that time he had forgotten how to cry. Now he sat and stared out at the Brandenburg Gate, lit by the bloody glow of a German sunset and saw it through a mist of tears. After thirty years, he could come face to face with the soldier who had spared his life. And raped and robbed his mother.

Lepkin’s gift to her was on display in the German’s Munich mansion. Viktor had sketched the green enamel and the twinkling diamonds in the tattered book he’d taken with him from the charnel house that had been his home. Ivan had given it to him, with the wooden doll he’d made for Valeria. They’d buried the doll with her in the forest.

And he’d drawn and coloured the cross that he’d seen on his mother’s bed. The cross she spoke of with hatred, as if she feared it. Her ravisher and murderer had stolen it.

Müller had ended his report: ‘If the cross Brückner describes could possibly be the genuine Relic from Kiev Cathedral it could present a serious threat to Soviet stability in the Ukraine.’

Rape and murder, wartime looting—a dark stain on the past of a very important German industrialist. Such incidents were not unique. It was the cross that had prompted Müller’s journey to Berlin, and the rarely used ‘urgent’ signal he’d sent to the embassy.

And he was right. The threat was incalculable. Rakovsky forced himself to be calm, to consider the wider implications. The great Soviet Empire was only just holding together; if a group of Ukrainian nationalists were to raise St Vladimir’s Cross as a rallying point, the most important state within the Union would erupt into rebellion against Moscow.

Müller was not only a very good agent, but an old partner. He had asked for an urgent meeting with Rakovsky to discuss the report and get instructions.

They hadn’t seen each other for a long time. Both had been comparatively junior when their association started. Rakovsky was embarking on his career as a diplomatic spy, moving under different names and jobs from one Western embassy to the next. He had personally recruited the antique dealer. Over the years they had worked well and closely together until the political situation in Russia underwent the first dramatic changes. It was time for Rakovsky to leave the field and work in Moscow. Another reason was his beloved Ivan. Terminal cancer was diagnosed. But Rakovsky kept one or two special agents under his control. He wouldn’t relinquish Peter Müller to anyone else.

The light was fading; lamps were aglow in the streets and the shop windows were lit invitingly, tempting the late shoppers. There was a reception at the Italian Embassy; he was expected as a special guest. A dinner and the theatre afterwards, arranged by his own ambassador to entertain the trade delegation he was leading.

Trade interested him now, as other intelligence spheres had done in harder days. Industrial espionage was high on the list of Soviet priorities. They were starved of the technical skills of Western manufacturing industries. The best brains and resources had gone into military research and development until Gorbachev came to power.

Rakovsky drank another whisky. He would go to the Italians. He would attend the dinner and the theatre. He would smile and talk engagingly and hide his feelings. And then, when he was alone, he would get drunk enough to sleep without dreaming of his mother screaming.

Müller was a little early for the rendezvous. Rakovsky was visiting a Russian arts and crafts shop selling embroidery, pottery and lacquer work. Müller arrived ahead of him by twenty minutes and waited in the private room at the back. He thought the goods on display were crude and tasteless; but sometimes it was possible to find a little gem amongst the mass-produced dross. One small lacquer box had caught his eye. It was the work of an original craftsman. He asked to buy it. His wife liked little trinkets for her dressing table.

He was surprised at how much Rakovsky had aged when he came in. They hadn’t seen each other for so long. They shook hands and then embraced like old friends. He had aged, Müller decided, noticing the puffy skin under his eyes. He looked as if he had hardly slept.

They drank tea together and Müller went over the report with him. Rakovsky was quiet, which was unlike him. He let Müller talk while he listened. He was not only older, but subdued.

Müller said suddenly, ‘You don’t seem well, Viktor. Is anything wrong?’

‘It’s been a heavy schedule,’ Rakovsky said. ‘Too many parties every evening. Peter, I’ve decided to go to Geneva. I’m going to see this man, Brückner, and check his story for myself. I’ll make the travel arrangements. What you must do is tell Irina to keep him in the clinic till I can come. And not to lean on him too heavily. I know her methods. They don’t leave much at the end. I want to talk to him myself.’

Müller hid his surprise. Rakovsky had never visited the clinic. He knew Irina very well from her Moscow days. He had been instrumental in getting Volkov released so she could take up her appointment in Geneva. But he had left the running of the operation to Müller.

‘Of course I’ll tell her.’

‘And Volkov? Still drinking?’

Müller shrugged. ‘Still drinking. She leads a hell of a life with him. And he’s cheating, which is interesting.’

Rakovsky glanced up at him. ‘You mean with a woman? How do you know?’

‘I saw them together, by chance. Young, very pretty. They looked like lovers to me. Irina doesn’t know. I saw no reason to tell her. She might do something stupid. She’s still obsessed with him.’

‘It was her one weakness,’ Rakovsky remarked. ‘Everyone warned her; her father, all his friends, but she would marry him. Her own career was at risk. Even her loyalty came under suspicion because of his activities. I remember her coming to see me and begging me to help when he was arrested. She was crying. She was an attractive woman, but I never thought she had a human feeling in her. To me she was just a brain, a scientific machine in a bedworthy body. She’d have agreed to anything to save his life and get him out. And this is how he’s showing gratitude. Well!’ He paused, then he offered Müller another glass of tea. Müller declined. He didn’t like Russian tea.

‘Perhaps we’d better find out about the woman. Just routine, Peter, but we don’t want that drunken fool getting into mischief. And we don’t want Irina upset. She’s much too valuable.’ He finished his tea and stood up. He shook hands with Müller.

‘You were right to bring this to me direct,’ he said. ‘I’m going home at the end of the week and I’ll make arrangements to go to Geneva as soon as possible. And I’ll authorize another payment for you. Look after yourself, my friend.’

‘And you, Viktor. I’ll go out the back way.’

‘My love,’ Lucy said. ‘He wants to speak to you.’ Volkov hesitated.

‘Go on,’ she urged. ‘He’s waiting.’

He took the receiver from her. She had dialled the number in London.

‘Mischa is my father’s oldest friend,’ she said. ‘He worked so hard for you, getting signatures, writing to the newspapers.’

She had described Mischa to him, and his wife and his children. How they worked for the dissidents, raised money, edited a Ukrainian language broadsheet. Now he was going to talk to the man himself.

Lucy watched him; she came and stroked his hair with tenderness to give encouragement.

‘I love you,’ she whispered, and then left him to speak.

He had changed so much in the time they’d spent together. He was still hesitant, still uncertain. His hands shook and he was suffering, but he didn’t drink. Mother, mistress, friend, Lucy filled whatever role he needed, when he needed it. Her little apartment had become their home, where she cooked for him and they shared all the daylight hours together. He went back to prison at night. They were his words and as soon as he said them, she knew she had won him to freedom. Mischa was the next step. Mischa knew what to say. Lucy had primed him carefully.

She went out of the room while he spoke on the telephone. There was a fine line to walk between protecting him and urging him to self-reliance. If she crossed it, he regressed.

When she came back he had finished speaking. There was a little colour in his face and a brightness in his eye. He drew her close and kissed her gently.

‘You were talking for a long time,’ she said.

‘He reminded me of so many things I’d half-forgotten. The way we used to fight at home; our little victories. I never realized how the world was watching us. That was the worst thing they did to you in prison. They said it every day. “Nobody even knows you’re here. Nobody cares whether you’re alive or dead. You’re just a number. You’ll be a number till the day you die.” It used to frighten me. I kept saying my own name so I wouldn’t forget it. Your friend told me they held vigils outside the Soviet embassies all over the world when I was arrested and when Sakharov went on hunger strike. Lucy, how could I have abandoned people like that?’

‘You mustn’t say that,’ she said quickly. ‘All that is in the past; you’re not to think about it. You’ve come back to lead them.’

He looked at her solemnly. ‘How can I lead them, Lucy? History’s overtaken me. I’ve been left behind.’

She stood up and looked down at him. ‘When my father was at the camp at Spittal, another Ukrainian looked after him. He’d joined the SS. He’d done some dreadful things, but my father was only a boy and this man took care of him. He was sent back to be shot by the Red Army.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Do you want me to go on?’

He nodded.

‘Before he was taken away, this man gave my father something he’d stolen during the war. He thought it was valuable and my father could sell it. He knew he was going to die. But my father kept it. Then, when my mother was so ill, he did try and sell it to get money for treatment for her. He told me that. He said, “The hand of God saved me, Lucy.” The jeweller didn’t know what it was my father showed him. He saw an old paste cross and he wouldn’t offer any money for it.’ She slipped to the floor and knelt beside him. ‘My father came back with the cross; his friend, Major Hope, paid for my mother’s treatment.

‘Before he died, he showed it to me. He’d kept it hidden for fifty years. He’d tried to sell the Holy Relic, St Vladimir’s Cross. And what’s why I came to Geneva. To find you and give it to you.’

She couldn’t help herself; she burst into tears. He raised her up and held her.

‘No, my darling,’ he said very gently. ‘That was destroyed. Everyone knows the Reds destroyed it.’

‘I have it,’ she said. ‘In my house. It’s the Relic. I can prove it to you.’

He left her early. He took one of the water buses that ferried across the lake. He needed to be alone. She understood and accepted it. When he left her she was very pale and quiet.

‘I’ll be back,’ he promised. ‘Just give me a little time to take it in.’

She had shown him the book where it was illustrated. And he had the article written a few years ago about the missing Tsarist treasures. It featured another illustration, large and faithfully depicted. The delicate gold filigree, the massive red gems.

Paste, the jeweller had said, refusing to buy the cross. Missing from the cathedral at Kiev since 1919. It was a learned article; it went into details about the workmanship, the size and influence of Byzantine art on the beautiful object specially commissioned by Vladimir to mark his conversion from paganism. And the writer hadn’t spared the legends, because it explained the Bolshevik obsession with the Relic. If the White armies could claim it, the Civil War might go in their favour. The Reds spread the rumours of its destruction, but there was no evidence to support this. There was evidence that despite torture and execution, the clergy at the cathedral had managed to conceal it. There was no evidence of its destruction.

Volkov had the article in his pocket, the pages scissored out of a famous art magazine. They were creased and folded, a little frayed at the edges. He looked at the cross. Besides the colour reproduction, there was an old scale drawing, and an enlarged section of a painting of the last Tsar’s coronation, with the Relic in his right hand.

Lucy had said simply to him, ‘It’s the real cross. This is the photograph my father took. Compare them. The scale is right, the goldwork is identical. No one ever copied that cross; it would have been blasphemous.’

He put the pages back in his pocket. There was a restaurant on board the ferry. All he had to do was get up and walk a few steps and he could escape it all.

He could be what his gaolers had told him he was. A number. No identity, no name, just a set of numerals. Numbers didn’t have responsibilities. They weren’t presented with ancient symbols of faith with powers to topple a tyranny. They weren’t challenged to do anything. They hardly existed. Prisoner 36672. That’s who he was. Five digits. One brandy would make him in to a number. His hands trembled. Sweat broke out all over his body, chilling him. One brandy. Then two and afterwards he’d lose count. He wouldn’t remember his number even. He got up and went to the restaurant. He put money down.

The waitress said, ‘What can I get you?’ She had very pale blue eyes. Not the same limpid colour as Lucy’s eyes, but pale and blue.

He said, ‘A glass of mineral water, please. I’m thirsty.’

He had been gone for a long time. The little clock in the sitting room struck the hour. It could have been the span of her whole life. She paced up and down; she went backwards and forwards to the windows, stepping on to the little balcony where they sat together in the afternoon sun, peering down the street.

There was no sign of him. Other men walked along, passed underneath. But not Volkov. Volkov had gone away to think. Or to escape! To step backwards into the limbo of the last five years. If he drank, he would be lost for ever.…

She almost cried out in desperation and self-blame. She’d acted too soon, burdened him before he was ready. She went into the bedroom and gave way to a burst of weeping.

She heard the clock strike again. She washed her face and went wearily back to look out for him, but she was losing hope. She was leaning by the window, watching the first clouds creeping up from the horizon to challenge the sun, when the door opened. She heard her name.

‘Lucy?’

She turned and saw him. He walked towards her. He was steady, sober. She ran into his arms.

‘I took the water bus,’ he said. ‘That’s why I was so long. Were you worried? Did you think I wouldn’t come back?’

Lucy held tight to him, ‘No,’ she lied. ‘I knew you would.’

He didn’t contradict her. In her place, he would have doubted, too. Then she managed to smile up at him.

‘That’s not true,’ she said. ‘But thank God you did.’

Later, he said. ‘I’m not going home tonight.’

‘You must. What will your wife think? Darling, you mustn’t be reckless. You said she was dangerous.’

‘Dangerous to you,’ he corrected. ‘But she doesn’t know about you. I’ve stayed out before. I went to sleep at an all-night cinema once. I don’t want to leave you tonight. We’ve got so much to think about. Will you let me stay?’

Lucy drew him down to her. ‘Kiss me,’ she said.

Irina hung up in exasperation. She had been trying the apartment since seven o’clock. She had an emergency patient to attend to. A rich Italian suffering severe post-natal depression had been brought in by ambulance, having tried to kill her six-week-old son, and then taken an overdose. The family were following on in a state of high Latin hysteria.

Irina didn’t know when or if, she would get home that night. There was no answer to her calls. He was either out and hadn’t switched on the answering machine or he was tormenting her by ignoring the telephone. He sometimes did that.

She wondered whether he’d started drinking again. She hadn’t taken him seriously when he said he was giving up. Even though he’d never said it before. Miracle cures for alcoholism didn’t happen. He’d slip. It was inevitable. And he’d been more unkind than usual in this odd period of sobriety. That was a common symptom, but she didn’t welcome it. Mute, drunken dislike was easier than the cold hatred of the last few weeks.

She put her unhappiness aside. She had a seriously ill patient to contend with and she’d just had a telephone message to say that Brückner’s wife wanted to come up and visit him. She’d deal with that in the morning. Müller’s instructions were clear. Keep him quiet, but don’t disorientate him. Viktor Rakovsky wanted to talk to him. A most significant departure for someone so senior to involve himself personally. She had been right about the importance of Brückner’s story. Right to overrule Müller’s judgement. No doubt he had claimed the credit for himself. She would let Rakovsky know the truth. I hate Müller, she thought. He ruined my happiness. If it wasn’t for him, I’d have talked Dimitri round. We’d be living together like in the old days.

Her internal phone rang. The patient was recovering consciousness. Her mother was being treated for shock by one of the junior physicians and the husband was creating hell. Could she please come down and deal with the situation? Irina hurried out. She forgot to call the apartment again, and decided by two in the morning that she might as well stay at the clinic for what was left of the night.

Volkov had woken early. He was restless and excited. Lucy watched him in wonder.

‘I nearly had a drink yesterday on that boat,’ he told her. ‘I went to the restaurant and put the money down for a large brandy. Then I thought of you. It was easy then, my darling. I can’t believe how easy it was. It’s over. I know I’ll never drink again!’

‘You’ve got to get away from here,’ she insisted. ‘We can go to England. Mischa will organize meetings. He has contacts inside the Ukraine. We can’t plan anything till you’re safe and out of their reach.’

Volkov said, ‘I disappear and then I reappear very publicly. I do all the things I didn’t do the first time. I give interviews. I hold a Press conference. I’ve thought it out already. I draw so much attention to myself that they won’t dare touch me.’

‘We shouldn’t waste time,’ Lucy said. ‘We should get away from Switzerland.’

He was bold and confident, almost euphoric. Suddenly she was afraid. Afraid for him and for herself. And the fear was growing as he made his plans. She came up and put her arms round him.

‘We could leave here tomorrow. Why don’t we? Why don’t we just go to the airport and get on a plane?’

He shook his head. ‘We can’t travel together,’ he said. ‘And there is a practical problem—I have to find my passport.’ He frowned. ‘It may be out of date. It may have been renewed. I wouldn’t remember. Irina took care of everything. I was just a piece of luggage to be labelled and sent wherever they wanted. You speak to Mischa. Ask him if he could help with papers. Say I’m sure it won’t be necessary, but just as a precaution. Meet me at seven at the St Honoré. We’ll hide ourselves in a corner and celebrate!’

He hugged her tight. ‘I feel like Lazarus,’ he said. ‘Out of the tomb and into the sunshine! How much I love you, Lucy! Seven o’clock—at our café.’

Then he was gone and she watched him striding away down the street. Now he was a traveller with a destination. This was the Dimitri Volkov the world had watched in admiration.

But the fear stayed with her, its cold hand on her heart.

The big Illuyshin jet made a smooth landing at Sheremetov airport. Viktor watched the descent over the city he loved. He was glad to be home. He had always felt the same elation at the end of his long tours abroad. When he came back to Russia he shed his aliases. He was himself.

The official Zil, with his driver, was there to meet him. There were no airport formalities for him and the rest of his delegation.

It was a warm evening and the air was sweet. He opened the window after they turned in to the country. His dacha was in the woods on the banks of the Moscova river. He loved Moscow, but he didn’t like living there. His dacha was home to him. The forest and the lapping water of the great river were a balm to the spirit.

His housekeeper came out to greet him. He kept his mistress in an apartment in Moscow. He never brought women to the dacha. He made his way to the upper floor. He opened the door of a big airy room with views down to the great river itself. The old man sitting in his chair by the window turned round and smiled at him. Ivan! Cancer had eaten in to him, but he was still alive. A wraith with bright eyes in his gaunt face. He was too feeble to leave his room now, but Viktor had the window specially made so he could sit and watch the river.

Viktor embraced him. The body was a skeleton wrapped in a winding sheet of clothes, but the eyes were bright and the smile was glad.

‘How have you been, Little Father?’

‘Well, son, well. And you?’

Viktor offered him a drink. A very small drink, since he had only half a stomach. In the old days Ivan could swallow a bottle of vodka and keep his legs.

‘I want to show you this,’ Viktor said.

He put an exercise book on the old man’s lap. The cover was faded from bright red to pink. It was creased and frayed. He turned the pages. The childish drawing of rabbits sitting under the trees among the spring daffodils; his sketch of Ivan on the sled, of Lepkin dozing in his chair by the stove. The cat with yellow eyes crouched in the long grass in pursuit of a bird.

The old man nodded. ‘Your drawings,’ he said. ‘You could have been an artist.’

‘A bad one,’ Viktor answered. ‘Anyway it wasn’t a time for painting pictures, Little Father.’

The sketch was from memory, but he had an eye for detail. He had drawn the cross he’d seen so briefly, and coloured the stones red and the setting yellow. Ivan looked at it and didn’t speak.

‘I can’t remember why I drew that,’ Viktor prompted.

‘It belonged to your father,’ the old man said at last.

‘To Lepkin?’

‘No, your real father. The minister Rakovsky. I think he gave it to Lepkin as a bribe.’

‘How do you know?’ Viktor asked gently.

‘I saw him look at it in the car when we were driving to the Lubiyanka. It was tied up in a parcel. I saw him in the driving mirror. I thought, he’s got something valuable there. He’s in trouble; he’s going to buy someone with that cross. It was full of red jewels. He didn’t know I could see him. I saw a lot of things, but I never let on. It was safer to look stupid.’

‘You’re a fox, Little Father,’ Viktor said.

The light was fading. Clouds were creeping up over the edges of the trees and the river’s surface was turning black. His father had given the cross to Lepkin. A bribe, Ivan had said. Viktor watched the darkness spreading. Lepkin had saved Rakovsky’s family. He’d married the widow and been a father to Rakovsky’s children. Rakovsky had bought their lives with that cross.

He took the drawing book and said, ‘I have work to do. I’ll come up later and say goodnight. Is there anything you want, Little Father?’

‘Some tea,’ the old man murmured. ‘And that stuff that stops the pain.’

‘I’ll send the nurse,’ Viktor promised.

Viktor had dinner alone. He went up to see Ivan and found him asleep.

‘He was uncomfortable, comrade Rakovsky,’ the nurse explained. ‘I increased the dose as you instructed. He drank some tea and then he slept.’ No pain, no sorrow, no cloud to blur the sunset of his life.

That was his decree for the man he loved best in the world.

‘Watch him tonight,’ he instructed. ‘Call me if he wakes or he asks for me.’

The next morning he was assured by the nurse that Ivan had slept peacefully and eaten a little breakfast. He was in good spirits. There was no immediate danger.

Viktor went in to his Kremlin office. The necessary papers were provided for him, the travelling arranged, and by noon he was on an Aeroflot plane to Geneva.

He was met at the airport. He travelled on a Polish passport. His occupation was given as manufacturer of industrial components. He went unnoticed through Swiss immigration. Poles were travelling freely these days, seeking business, and Western commercial and technical expertise. He spoke perfect Polish. Also excellent German and fluent English.

He had learned his languages at the highly sophisticated KGB school in Leningrad. He had been recruited on the strength of his life with the partisans. He was the kind of material Stalin’s Intelligence services needed in the Cold War.

The taxi took him through the city and up into the countryside beyond the lake, where the Amner clinic commanded its famous views. He was shown up to Irina’s office immediately.

He hadn’t seen her for five years. She had changed. She was slimmer, more sophisticated. He noticed the artful make-up, the elegant hair style. A very good-looking woman.

He was fond of women; he enjoyed their company and he liked making love. He wondered whether she had taken a lover during the last five years. Then he remembered that it was Volkov who was being unfaithful.

They shook hands. They were on first-name terms. He and her father were friends.

‘It’s good to see you, Irina. You’re looking very well. Swiss air suits you.’

‘Thank you. You look well too, Viktor. Please sit down. Can I get you a drink? It’s not too early?’

He smiled. ‘It’s never too early. But I won’t have anything. How is your husband?’

She shrugged slightly. ‘The same. He’s never recovered from Müller’s visit.’

She still held that grudge, he noted. Müller, beware, he thought.

He said, ‘That was a long time ago. Müller wasn’t to know he’d come off your medication. And I haven’t come all this way to listen to the same complaint, Irina. You’ve made it officially and it’s been noted. I want to see Adolph Brückner. How is he?’

‘I’ve kept his sedation to a minimum. And I haven’t advanced his re-education since I got your message. His family are agitating to get him home. I’m glad you’ve come; it was getting difficult to stall them.’

‘So far he’s responded well?’ he asked.

‘Well enough. The trouble is, he hates himself. There’s a strong suicidal tendency. That’s why I’ve decided to let his wife and children come and see him. He needs motivation. I can advance the programme; that’s no problem. He’s already highly suggestible.’

Rakovsky listened to the cool voice describing the intensive hypnosis and subliminal suggestion that would distort Brückner’s mentality. Visual images flashed on and off at fractions of a second to imprint themselves on the subconscious mind. Images of guilt, of fear, of the excruciating headaches he had inflicted on himself which only the doctor could hold in check. Obedience and trust. The treatment hammered them into the defenceless mind. Trust in the doctor. Obedience to the doctor.

‘I’m glad you’ve come,’ Irina said again. ‘I insisted that Müller contact you at once. He thought it was a fantasy. I had such difficulty persuading him to take Brückner’s story seriously. I had to practically draft the report myself!’

Oh yes, Rakovsky noted, Müller had better beware. He said, ‘I’d like to see him now.’

‘Of course. He’s had some medication. He’ll be pliable.’

They went down in the lift. Irina spoke to the nurse on duty in the corridor.

‘I have a visitor for Monsieur Brückner.’

He stood back while she approached the bed. Fifty years had passed. The man lying there was in his seventies. He was white haired, with dull eyes and a slack mouth; saliva dribbled from one corner.

‘Wake him up!’ Rakovsky commanded.

Irina bent over and shook him. She shook him hard. ‘Adolph! Adolph, pay attention!’

He focused on her, he mumbled something. Viktor came to the edge of the bed.

‘He can see you,’ she whispered. ‘He’s sedated, but he might recognize you.’

‘It won’t matter,’ was the answer. ‘I’m going to question him. Tell him he’s got to answer me. Go on, tell him!’

Irina glanced quickly at Rakovsky. There was a terrible rage in him; she could feel it like an electric charge in the room. She raised her voice to the tone of command that meant, obey me or you will suffer for it.

‘My friend is going to ask some questions. You’ll answer them, Adolph. You tell him everything he wants to know. You understand me?’

‘I understand.’ The voice was tremulous.

Viktor Rakovsky came very close to him. He loomed over the prostrate man in the bed. ‘Tell me about the cross that was stolen,’ he said. ‘Describe it to me.’

‘It was gold. Very old workmanship. With big red stones. It was so beautiful.’

‘How many stones?’

‘Seven. Boris counted them. Three in the traverse and four in the body. He kept saying he’d be rich.’

Rakovsky’s hands were clenched in to fists. Irinia thought he was near to striking the old man. She had begun to feel uneasy. This was no ordinary interrogation.

‘How big was the cross?’

‘Bigger than my hand. He let me hold it once. It felt so light.’

The description fitted exactly. Filigree goldwork, seven red spinels. The right measurement. He leaned closer, nearer to Brückner. Brückner was watching him with wide, frightened eyes.

‘What happened to the man you call Boris? Tell me!’

‘I don’t know. He was SS. I heard they’d all been killed. The Reds never took SS prisoners.’

‘No,’ Viktor said. ‘They didn’t. You raped the woman in the house, didn’t you?’

Irina protested. ‘Please, you mustn’t talk about that. You don’t know what harm it could do now.’

She came and caught Rakovsky’s arm. He thrust her away. He seized Brückner by the jacket of his pyjamas. He heaved him upright.

‘You raped her, didn’t you? You held her down for the other one. Didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’ It was a quavering cry. ‘Yes.’

‘You raped my mother and you’re going to die for it. You understand me? You hear me? You’re going to die for what you did to her.’

Behind him, Irina gasped. He didn’t hear her.

‘You should have shot me. I was the boy hiding in the cupboard, gagging my little sister so she wouldn’t cry out. You made a mistake. You didn’t kill me. Now you’re going to be punished. You’re going to die!’

Brückner screamed. It was a thin sound of rising terror.

Viktor turned to Irina. She was filling a syringe. She paused for a moment, staring at him.

‘Is it true? You were there?’

‘It’s true,’ Rakovsky said. ‘What are you giving him?’

Brückner was moaning, tossing to and fro.

‘I’m going to knock him out,’ she said. ‘I don’t want that busybody nurse coming in if she hears him.’

Viktor stepped away from the bed. He laid a hand upon her arm. It gripped so tightly it hurt.

‘I meant what I said. Give him a lethal injection. That is an order. I’ll wait in your office.’

He didn’t look back. He walked out of the room and closed the door. He went up in the lift and sat down in Irina’s pleasant office. He wiped sweat from his forehead. Now he would sleep as peacefully as his mother and brother in their unmarked grave in the woods. The time passed. He was calm. He waited. At last the door opened and Irina came in. She was very pale. He stood up.

‘Is he dead?’

‘Yes. Why did you make me do that? I’ve never killed a patient.’

He dismissed the protest. ‘Don’t be a hypocrite. You destroy their minds. This is cleaner.’

She sat down. She gripped her hands together.

‘I feel very shocked,’ she said. ‘I’ve killed in cold blood. You must excuse me.’

‘You’ll get over it,’ Viktor said. ‘You did your duty, Irina. I gave the order. You obeyed it. That’s all. How did you explain it?’

‘Cardiac failure. I overdosed him and then rang for emergency resuscitation. I knew it couldn’t work. They went on and on trying. I’ll have to call his wife,’ she said. ‘I have to make a full report. There’ll be an inquest.’

‘But they won’t find anything?’

‘Nothing. Not a trace. He had a heart attack. I gave him digitalis. His heart couldn’t stand the shock.’

He could see she was recovering her composure.

He said, ‘You were serving your country. Times are dangerous for us all. One life is nothing compared to the survival of our system. He’d lived fifty years too long. Remember that. I’m staying at the Hôtel d’Angleterre. Get through to Müller and tell him to contact me there. I’ll be in Geneva for only two days. There’s a lot of work to be done. If the cross still exists, we have to find it.’

‘It was so kind of you to come with me, Peter.’ Eloise Brückner’s eyes filled with tears. Müller shook his head.

‘My dear,’ he said. ‘It’s the least I could do. It’s been so sudden, such a terrible shock!’

The children were with her. They were white-faced and dumb.

‘I couldn’t have managed without you,’ she insisted. ‘All those dreadful arrangements to make and that inquest. Oh, I’ll be so glad to get home!’

Müller knew that her grief was quite genuine. It had been a happy marriage, in spite of the difference in their ages. It had shocked him, too, when he heard of Adolph Brückner’s sudden death. Irina had been brisk when she called with the news and told him to telephone Rakovsky at his hotel.

She hadn’t wanted to discuss what had happened. A heart attack, she said, and rang off before he could ask questions. It was unlike her to miss a heart condition in a special patient. They weren’t any use to Moscow dead.

He was sorry for Eloise, but a rich and attractive widow of forty wouldn’t grieve alone for long. She wiped her eyes with a lace handkerchief and he caught the drift of her exotic scent. He had toyed with the fantasy of sleeping with her; the rich smell aroused him. He had never dared do more than imagine it while Brückner was alive. Now—why not? A shoulder to cry on. He put his arm around her. She didn’t resist.

‘Some of Adolph’s cousins are coming for the funeral,’ she said. ‘I don’t know them. I think they’re only coming in case there’s any money for them.’

Müller said gently, ‘Adolph left everything to you and the children. He told me. Don’t worry about them. Susan and I will be there to support you.’

‘I know,’ she murmured. ‘I’m so grateful to you. We’re not going to be late, are we? I couldn’t bear it if we missed the flight.’

She had begun to panic about things like tickets and timetables. For twenty years all these details had been arranged for her. It was a symptom of widowhood.

‘Plenty of time,’ he reassured her. ‘Just relax, my dear. Let me take care of you and the children.’

Her luggage was packed. They waited in her suite at the Richemond for the hire car to take them to the airport. When reception rang through Müller answered it. It was not the car. There was a lady asking to see Madame Brückner. He looked over to Eloise.

‘Someone’s downstairs. You’re not expecting anyone?’

‘No, no. I don’t want to see anyone.’

The receptionist sounded apologetic. The lady was very insistent. Could she speak to Madame Brückner? Just for a few minutes? It was very important.

Müller said, ‘I’m afraid not, just get rid of her. Oh it has. Very well. We’ll come down.’ He hung up. ‘The car’s here. They’re coming up for the luggage.’

They went down in the lift and crossed the big reception hall. A woman moved quickly and caught up with Eloise. Eloise stopped.

The woman said, ‘Madame Brückner? Please excuse me. I saw you at the clinic. I’ve got to talk to you. It’s about your husband. I was the sister on his corridor.’

They didn’t catch the flight.

She was in her mid-forties, neatly dressed with a quiet air of authority. She spoke calmly enough. She had insisted on seeing Eloise Brückner alone. Müller had smelled trouble the moment she said who she was. He’d tried to hurry Eloise away, to sidetrack the woman standing in their path. But he was overruled. Eloise Brückner wasn’t going without hearing what the sister who had nursed her husband had to say. They all turned back and went up to the suite.

‘My name is Beatrice Duval. Your husband was admitted to my corridor. Let me say first, I’ve been nursing psychiatric patients for more than twenty years and I know what I’m talking about. I’ve never experienced a case like this.’

‘Why? What do you mean?’ Eloise stared at her.

‘The way Doctor Volkov treated him was nothing less than sadistic. I’m sorry, this isn’t going to be easy for you, but I’ve got to say it. It was deliberate cruelty. And it’s been on my conscience ever since.’

‘Cruelty? How? I don’t believe you!’

‘I’ve nothing to gain,’ Beatrice Duval said. ‘I expect I’ll lose my job for telling you. But it’s preyed on my mind. The doctor wouldn’t allow sedatives, or painkillers when he had those dreadful headaches. She put him through the most intensive analysis with nothing to help him afterwards. ‘It’s a wonder he didn’t go mad. He suffered such terrible symptoms he tried to kill himself. He had to be tied down. In the end I got another doctor to sedate the poor man. She was off duty and I didn’t call her. She had me moved to another patient after that.’

‘My God,’ Eloise said. ‘My God, it’s like a nightmare.’

‘It was a nightmare for him,’ the sister said. ‘I don’t know why she did it, Madame Brückner. If he hadn’t died of that heart attack, he’d have been a mental wreck.’

‘You’re sure? You’re sure this is true?’ Eloise was standing now. The scented handkerchief that had roused Müller’s lust was tearing in her hands.

‘As God’s my witness. I asked the nurse on duty about the day he died. She said the doctor and another man, a visitor, were in his room. She told me she heard him scream. A few minutes later she came rushing out saying he’d collapsed. I say she brought on that heart attack!’

Eloise said at last, ‘I’m going back home and I’ll contact my lawyers. They’ll want to see you and take a statement. All expenses will be paid, you won’t be out of pocket. You will come, won’t you? You won’t change your mind?’

‘I won’t. I wouldn’t have come if I wasn’t prepared to tell the truth. What will you do?’

‘If we prove mistreatment, they’ll bring criminal charges. I’ve got the best lawyers in Germany. I’m very, very grateful to you. You’re still working there?’

‘Yes. I’ve been there since it opened. It’s a very good place. It was just that one case. I hadn’t worked with her before.’

‘Give me your private address and telephone number,’ Eloise said. ‘Don’t talk about it to anyone else. Wait till you hear from me. It’ll be very soon.’ She went to the door of the suite. Her eyes filled up. ‘Thank God you told me.’ she said. ‘I won’t let her get away with this, I promise you. My poor darling Adolph.’

She turned away. When the door closed after her visitor she broke down in tears.

‘I wouldn’t believe a word of it!’ Müller insisted. ‘The woman’s got a grudge. She’s probably trying to get money out of you.’

‘No,’ Eloise countered. ‘She said herself she could lose her job. I believe her, Peter. I don’t want to, but I do. Something dreadful happened to Adolph and I’m going to find out what it was!’

‘It’s nonsense,’ he said. ‘Doctor Volkova is a famous psychiatrist. That nurse didn’t understand what she was doing. He was getting better. You were going to take him home very soon! For God’s sake, Eloise be careful. If you defame the clinic or the doctor you could be sued for a fortune!’

She looked up at him. ‘You needn’t worry because you recommended her, Peter,’ she said. ‘I’m not blaming you. I know you were trying to help.’

He hadn’t expected that. He backtracked. ‘My dear! I’m not thinking of myself. I’m thinking of you.’

‘I’m thinking of my husband,’ she said slowly. ‘I’m going to follow it up. I can’t forget what she said. He tried to kill himself. He was tied down. If that’s medical treatment, it ought to be stopped! I’m not frightened of anything that doctor or her clinic can do to me. If she hurt Adolph she’ll face criminal charges. And who was the visitor she took in there the day he died? She told me no one was allowed to see him. I want answers. I want to know why my husband was heard screaming.’

My Christ, Müller said to himself. If I go on defending Irina, I’m going to lose out. He moved closer to Eloise Brückner.

He said seriously, ‘You’re right. I was only trying to spare you. Of course, this must be investigated. I’ll come to the lawyers with you, if you like. Adolph was my friend, and I do feel responsible. I did recommend the clinic. I’m with you every step of the way.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you, Peter. Now for God’s sake let’s go to the airport and get on the next flight home.’ She looked round her at the luxurious suite and shuddered. ‘I can’t wait to get away from this awful place.’

The flight to Munich took just two hours. They ran into bad weather and the turbulence upset the youngest Brückner child. She was frightened and she was sick. Müller made soothing noises while Eloise moved seats to comfort her and then he settled back to plan what he must do. By the time they had risen above the storm, there was a slight smile on his lips, as if he were thinking pleasant thoughts. And they were pleasant. Now it was his turn. Irina had put a black mark against him with Rakovsky. Fortunately, Viktor valued him and they had a long association before he ever worked with Irina. Otherwise he might have been in serious trouble.

He wasn’t going to warn Irina. He was going to report direct to Rakovsky in Moscow. She was about to be investigated and charged with malpractice towards a patient. Under Swiss law she would get a long prison sentence. She’d exceeded her brief with Adolph Brückner and the operation through the clinic would have to be closed down. That, he decided, would put an end to Irina’s career, if not to Irina.

He was very solicitous to the Brückner family when they landed, paying particular attention to the sickly daughter clinging to her mother’s arm. He would end up in bed with Eloise; he was hot with excitement at the thought of it. And he would somehow persuade her to part with the Fabergé desk set.

Rakovsky wanted that. Steal it if necessary. But get it. It belongs in Russia. No Irina Volkova to goad him with her arrogance and her interference. An affair with this lovely woman who was so rich and inviting, and Viktor’s brief to him, track down the cross. Use any means, spend whatever is necessary. Find it if it exists, or prove it if it doesn’t. I’ll make sure your reward will be in proportion to the value of your information. It was a glittering prospect and gave him the courage to brush his hand against Eloise’s breast as he kissed her goodbye.

‘We’ll go to the lawyers,’ he said. ‘We’ll see it through together. Now sleep well, my dear. I’ll call you in the morning.’

Eloise’s daughter frowned. When he’d gone she said, ‘Mummy, I don’t like that man.’

‘Now, darling, you mustn’t say that. He’s been so kind.’

Viktor Rakovsky was in conference when the message came. He couldn’t leave, duty came first. His self-discipline had been forged and tempered by years of training. He glanced briefly at the written note, put it aside and went on with the meeting. His concentration was equal to his self-control. The last item on the agenda was the renewed activities of anti-Soviet groups in Europe and the North American continent.

Not just the normal fundraising and propaganda through the media. After the uproar created by Nicholas Tolstoy over the Cossack repatriations, the fringe groups had been taken very seriously. Their leaders covered a wide spectrum. Free Ukrainians, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Liberal Socialists, even the anomaly of a tiny White Russian remnant hoping for the restoration of the monarchy. They were moving, these disparate community leaders; visas and travel arrangements were reported and the rendezvous was in Europe. The KGB had penetrated all these organizations over the years, but the purpose and the location of this summit was kept secret.

In the days of Andropov, the solution would have been easy. Selected targets would have been eliminated. The rest would have understood the warning, and the plot, whatever its form, would have fizzled out, as so many had done over the years. But not now. Now the KGB itself was subject to scrutiny, to accountability.

The murder of anti-Soviet activists abroad would stir up fierce controversy at home. The old powers and the impenetrable secrecy that protected them had been breeched by the new liberties. It was ironic to Victor and the colleagues sitting round the table that morning that Gorbachev had been the KGB choice as leader.

Other, more subtle methods had to be employed. Rakovsky suggested that one of his protégés, an able and dedicated counterespionage officer, should take over the activist case files and plan the Soviet response. At thirty-five, Leon Gusev had reached colonel’s rank on account of his excellent work with agitators in the Baltic Republics. He had scored notable successes in Estonia and Latvia. It was agreed and at last the meeting ended. Viktor made the announcement.

Ivan Zakob, the father of the partisans in the great patriotic war, was dying. His name and his exploits were part of every Russian child’s curriculum. He was a hero who had become a legend. Every man there expressed his sympathy. They were genuinely moved by the news.

Viktor reached his dacha before noon. The nurse was waiting. Victor raced up the stairs and the doctor opened the door to Ivan’s bedroom.

‘He’s still conscious,’ he said. ‘He’s been asking for you.’

Viktor sat by the bedside. He held the frail hand.

‘I waited for you, my son,’ the weak voice whispered. ‘I wouldn’t go till you came.’

‘I’m with you, Little Father,’ Victor said. ‘I won’t leave you.’

‘You’ve been a good son to me,’ the old man said. ‘We fought together and we suffered together. I want to tell you something.’

‘Tell me,’ Victor bent close to him.

‘I loved your mother. There was no harm meant, but I loved her.’

‘I know you did,’ Victor answered. ‘I found one of the men who killed her, Little Father. He was punished.’

Ivan’s eyes opened; he gazed up at Rakovsky.

‘Too many dead,’ he said. ‘Too much pain. It’s time to forgive, my son. I want to die in peace. I want you to live in peace. Remember that. I’d like a priest to bless me.’

‘I’ll send for one,’ Viktor promised.

‘Then I’ll wait,’ the old man murmured and closed his eyes.

The priest was young and flustered; a number of churches in the district were open for services. Viktor stood while he blessed the dying man and anointed him. The priest intoned the prayers in a nervous voice, pulling at his beard. It was a privilege to send such a hero on his way to heaven. He summoned his courage and said so to the grim-faced man before he left the sick room. He knew he was a very important Party official.

‘Thank you, Father,’ Viktor said. ‘It’s been a comfort to him.’

He came to the bedside. The priest had gone, but he had left the smell of scented oils behind him. Viktor knelt beside the bed and bowed his head.

‘Don’t cry, my son. I’m happy now. I’m not afraid to go. Maybe I’ll see your mother … and Stefan.’

He died so quickly that Viktor didn’t know he’d gone. The silence told him. When he laid his hand against the old man’s waxen cheek it was already cold. He got up and did what Ivan would have wished him to do. He opened all the windows to give the spirit easy exit.

Volkov looked round the apartment. There was no smell of Balkan tobacco. It was Irina’s signature. Whenever she was at home, he smelled her cigarettes.

He went in to their bedroom. The bed hadn’t been slept in. He knew because his pyjamas were exactly where he’d left them, dropped on the end of the coverlet. Untidy! She hated untidiness. Making a mess was one of his little rebellions against her. How trivial and demeaning it seemed to him now. How low he’d sunk through his own choosing. There were no messages on the machine. He’d forgotten to switch it on. She hadn’t been home and she hadn’t been able to call in. That would have infuriated her. When that happened it meant he was drunk, sprawled out on the sofa if he hadn’t been able to reach the bed.

He went to the window, made sure her car wasn’t coming, or turning into the communal garage. Then he started looking. He opened the drawers in her dressing table. They were full of makeup, boxes of this and pots of that; a case with her expensive jewellery, all the pieces meticulously fitted in to their places. He opened everything, searched, put everything back. He’d learned to be very tidy when he was in prison. If the straw mattress was an inch out of line with the plank bed base, his food was reduced by one meal. A few drops of urine on the floor by his slop pail merited a scientifically aimed punch at his kidneys from the guard. He had thrown his clothes on the floor, spilled his food, deliberately kicked over the stinking pail in the first weeks and suffered terribly for his defiance.

Searching for his passport, he paused, remembering it all. The battles he won at such a cost to his health that he couldn’t help but lose the war in the end. The pain of coughing and the blood that frothed up in his sputum. The cold, that cruelest of all tortures. And the smell of those cigarettes in his tormentor’s office, where he stood barefoot and shivering for hours on end.

He paused and suddenly tears welled up. He felt weak and overwhelmed. No passport in her private drawers. He forced himself to search the wardrobe, the chests full of her clothes. He went to the kitchen and found nothing but food and neatly arranged cooking knives and spoons, hanging like guardsmen from their hooks in perfect rows.

There was a desk in the sitting room. She never locked it. He’d gone through the drawers once, looking for something—he couldn’t remember what, but there was nothing personal in that desk. Writing paper, envelopes, address book, a list of numbers where Irina could be contacted, paper clips, stamps, an India rubber, a packet of rubber bands, a stick of unused red sealing wax. He opened and shut the drawers and the flap and found what he expected. Nothing! She must keep her documentation at the clinic.

He sat down and wiped his brow. It was wet with sweat. The sweat of old memories, buried horrors, miserable lonely fears. No alcohol to dull the nerves; no soothing glow to warm the chill of despair into a muddled kind of peace.

Anger instead. Anger was making him sweat. Not anger for what he had suffered, but a deep and terrible rage for what had been inflicted upon others. Friends, colleagues in the movement who’d never left their bitter cells, or spent their lives in-labour camps till they died of exhaustion.

He had no passort, but that wasn’t going to stop him. He’d been offered a second chance of salvation. The girl who found him that day by the lake was sent by destiny, by fate, the atheists’ substitute for God. The Holy Relic passed down by who-knows-what route out of Russia, given to an orphan in an Austrian prison camp. Into Lucy’s keeping, so she could give it to him and with it, he could challenge the system that had tormented him and millions of the innocent. And win.

The front door opened. He saw his wife come in to the room. It was strange, but his hatred was purged. He looked at her and saw a stranger, who had never been anything else.

‘You’re up early? I tried to ring last night to say I wouldn’t be home, but the machine wasn’t on.’

She looked very tired, he noticed; pinched and pale. He felt nothing. He wasn’t glad.

‘I do wish you’d remember,’ she said irritably. ‘It’s not such a lot to ask! God, I’m exhausted. I think I’ll go to bed and get some sleep.’

‘Did you have a crisis?’ he asked her.

The passport must be in the clinic. But it wasn’t going to stop him.

‘Yes. Attempted suicide. God save me from Italians! They had the place in an uproar.’

‘It wasn’t your special patient then?’

She stiffened, anticipating an attack. ‘No.’

‘Is he still there?’ Volkov said it casually.

She was caught off guard. ‘No, he isn’t. He had a heart attack. He died.’ She was on her way to the bedroom, slipping out of her jacket.

Volkov said quietly. ‘He was lucky. Are you off duty for the day now?’

She stopped at the door. ‘Why? What do you care? You’re never at home these days anyway.’

‘I don’t care,’ he answered. ‘I don’t stay around here because I get bored. That might make me drink. I go out and about and keep busy. You ought to be pleased.’

She sighed. She was tired and her spirits were low.

‘I’m not pleased,’ she said. ‘I don’t care either! I’m going to bed.’

She went in and closed the door. He waited. She had left her handbag on the chair. He waited for a full half an hour by his watch before he opened it.

‘What are we going to do? You can’t go near that place!’ Lucy leaned towards him. ‘Dimitri, you mustn’t!’

He said, ‘It’s the only way. My darling, you’re not to worry, I’ll be careful, I promise you. Now, drink your wine. This is our celebration, remember?’ He smiled and reached out for her hand. ‘It’s no good complaining now. You were the one who made me brave.’ He turned her hand upward and kissed the inside of the soft palm. ‘When we’re ready to leave I’ll go to the clinic, get my passport out of the desk and meet you at the airport. Simple!’

Irinia’s passion for neatness had labelled the key in her handbag. ‘Office, drawer. Doc.’

‘If she misses the key out of her bag,’ Lucy protested.

Nothing could shake his calm or give him pause. He only laughed at her fears.

‘She won’t,’ he countered. ‘Because I’ve got this.’

He put an envelope on the table and slid a rough white square out of it. ‘I’ll have another key made with this,’ he said. ‘Candle wax, Lucy. You melt it and take an impression.’

‘Oh, darling, why don’t we just try Mischa? Please? I can’t bear it if you take any risks now!’

‘Life is a risk,’ he said. ‘Every time you cross the road, get in a car, climb a ladder! The risks are all ahead and I don’t give a damn! We’re going to succeed, you and I. How strange it all is! If I believed in anything, I’d say it was part of a divine plan.’

‘My father was convinced of it,’ she said. They had chosen a table out of view in the café he called ‘their café’. The waiter who’d tried to pick her up that first morning wasn’t on duty. It was warm and there were flowers in a little silver vase with candles lit for them. He’d ordered champagne for her. He was flushed and happy and he hadn’t let go of her hand since they’d sat down.

‘You look so beautiful,’ he whispered. ‘When we’re back home I want to marry you.’

‘Home?’ she questioned.

‘In Russia,’ he said. ‘I can’t wait to show it to you. I want to drink tea with you at the Samoyovska Hotel in Kiev, and vodka with you in the evening in a place where they used to play gypsy music when I was a student. If it’s still there.’

‘It’ll be there,’ Lucy said.

He leaned close to her. ‘Nobody’s looking. Kiss me. Ah, that’s better. Again, sweetheart. I love the taste of you. Why don’t we get under the table and make love?’

‘You’re crazy.’ Lucy protested.

‘In that café where the gypsies were, we used to do that. When we were very drunk. I was wild in those days.’

‘You’re wild now,’ she said.

By the end of their dinner she was imbued with his optimism. He talked of the future; he made light of the present and its difficulties until Lucy lost sight of them too. They went home, walking the streets with their arms around each other. They walked slowly and clumsily, her head resting on his shoulder. The private detective following them cursed when they stopped and kissed in the middle of the street. By the next morning he had a full report on Dimitri Volkov and his lover, ready for despatch to Peter Müller in Munich.