HIS MIND WANDERED. IT HAD BEEN A GOOD NIGHT. HIS memory played tricks on him. Did they stay up there all night, and in the morning watched the sunrise, and the mail plane from Alexandria flying low overhead? He might have dreamed it. He had tried to kiss her, just the once. Henrietta pushed him away gently, smiling.
‘It won’t be like that,’ she said. ‘But we will be friends.’
Somehow he knew she was right.
‘Besides,’ she said, ‘I think Stéphanie likes you.’
Stéphanie… He didn’t think she liked him. Now he still couldn’t make his mind up if she ever did. He remembered one night, about six months later. They were in the hotel. The window was open, and Stéphanie was by the window, her naked back to him, smoking a cigarette. Vasily was in the bed, watching her watching the world outside.
‘I worry about Daniel,’ Stéphanie said. She turned and looked at Vasily. ‘He is not like us, Vasya. You and I understand the rules of this game. But Daniel, he is different. He is sensitive. He still has… ideals, I think.’
‘He’s a banker, Fanny,’ Vasily said, ‘for crying out loud.’
‘I just don’t want him to get hurt, that’s all,’ she said. She stubbed out her cigarette and came to sit on the bed.
‘You won’t try to trap him, will you?’ she said.
Vasily laughed. ‘I told you,’ he said. ‘I’m just a trade delegate.’
‘A Soviet trade delegate with a permanent room at the Balmoral and an expense account,’ Stéphanie said. ‘Old Volkov never made much of a secret of it, you know. I think it worked in his favour. He just sat at the bar every night and waited for someone to come. He figured sooner or later someone would.’
‘Well,’ Vasily said, pulling her down to the bed, ‘communism is in the right, and there are enough people in the West to think so, too. Why wouldn’t they wish to help the revolution?’
‘After Stalin?’ she said. ‘Maybe a few less people do.’
‘I don’t want to talk politics,’ he said, drawing her close. He went to kiss her.
‘You didn’t answer me,’ she said.
‘What was the question?’ he said.
‘If you were going to trap Pikorski.’
‘What would the KGB need with a banker?’ Vasily said. ‘Besides, I get all my information from a very beautiful agent of the French Service de documentation extérieure et de contre-espionnage.’
She laughed.
‘Do you ever think of defecting to the West?’ she said.
‘Why, are you offering?’ he said. He wasn’t sure now what game they were playing. She lay very close to him. He could feel her heat.
‘I know some people,’ she said. ‘If you were interested…’
Vasily kissed her.
‘I love my country,’ he said.
‘They have bugs here, don’t they,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind if they listen in.’
She nestled into him, and then they didn’t speak at all for a while.
*
‘Report, Tovarich Sokolov,’ Kirpichenko said. They sat in the secure room at the embassy.
‘I am embedded in the ex-pat community centred around the Balmoral Hotel,’ Vasily said. ‘So far I have refrained from using active measures’ – this being the current euphemism for attempts at recruitment, blackmail or undue influence of all sorts – ‘in favour of gaining trust and a greater understanding of the social circles operating in the small Western community—’
‘You sound like a sociologist,’ Igor Saakashvili said. He was a dour Georgian and a middling operative, the sole but inevitable representative of Department V. His job was to dream up contingency plans for assassinations and sabotage. At any given moment he was ready to carry out a sniper attack on Nasser, to poison the water of the River Nile, or blow up the pyramids in a false flag operation. In Vasily’s humble opinion, Saakashvili was a useless piece of shit, but that didn’t matter. Every large rezidentura had a Department V operative in the office, and as long as he stayed in the office then Vasily had no problem with him.
Ignoring Saakashvili, he said, ‘I have identified one potential asset for recruitment which I am currently evaluating.’ He didn’t mention his suspicion that Pikorski was CIA. ‘I am cultivating several high-placed sources in the shipping and banking industries. I am also looking at gaining trust with the West German scientists currently assisting the Nasser regime on their rocket programme—’
‘We have those well in hand, Vasily,’ Kirpichenko said. ‘I find these ex-Nazis distasteful, myself, but… we’re in effect the ones bankrolling the military here. Concentrate on the others. There are not as many Americans here and the tide is in our favour, but make no mistake, the Americans will be angling to sooner or later gain influence back in Egypt – if we let them. There are diplomatic staff, and the American University is just crawling with CIA operatives. I want to see some results soon.’
‘We could blow up the Aswan Dam,’ Saakashvili said.
‘We’re the ones building the Aswan Dam, Igor,’ Kirpichenko said.
‘I’m just saying,’ Saakashvili said.
‘I’ll get on with it, boss,’ Vasily said.
*
The rat was talking to Vasily now. It had the voice of a CIA debriefer. What happened then, Vasily? Did you get on with it? Did you produce results?
It depends, he wanted to say. Three years ago. Kirpichenko. He wasn’t a bad boss. A professional. What happened in ’61?
Vostok 1. He remembered that night…
They heard it on the radio first. Yuri Levitan on Radio Moscow broke the news: Gagarin was in orbit. The Soviet Union had launched the first man into space.
Vasily was in the bar at the Balmoral. Everyone was. For that whole day it didn’t matter who you were and where you were from. Everyone gathered at the bar, listening to the radio, hoping for news. They looked up at the skies, and couldn’t imagine there was a man up there, orbiting the Earth. Then the nail-biting moments as the cosmonaut re-entered Earth, the fear that it would all go wrong. How could the censors approve this? But already Vasily knew why. This was momentous. Even if Gagarin never came back, he had made it into orbit. The first human in space was a Soviet! He had felt such a swell of pride that day. The Soviet Union had shown the world what it could achieve. They made history!
They all drank vodka that night. Nothing else would do. Then the next day, on the news. Gagarin had landed safely. He was paraded as a hero through Moscow. There was a formal invitation from the embassy, as befitted a civilian trade delegate: the ambassador hosting a party for valued guests. Vasily guessed this was to be repeated across the world. The Soviet Union showing off its medals. Anyone who was anyone was invited.
Vasily dressed in his finest new suit. When he arrived at the embassy, the taxi driver of course smoking through the open window and honking his horn at anyone who dared get in his way, he realised how minor he was in the machinery of things. Expensive black cars with their uniformed drivers blocked the road. He saw Henrietta Feebes step out of a limousine accompanied by the Foreign Minister, Mahmoud Fawzi. Fawzi was a career diplomat, not a politician. He served under the former king and now he was close to Nasser. For the rezidentura he was white gloves approach only. Photographers snapped photos. Henrietta Feebes smiled for the cameras. She and Fawzi vanished inside.
‘Just drop me off here,’ Vasily told the driver. He handed him notes. He walked through the queue of cars. No one was going to take his photo. Inside there were waiters circulating with trays. Food and drink. Musicians played Shostakovich. He saw Ambassador Yerofeyev chatting to the American ambassador. Pictures of Yuri Gagarin and the rocket going into space adorned the walls.
‘I heard he landed in a potato field,’ Saakashvili said, passing him by. ‘Had to ask an old lady and her granddaughter to use the phone to call Moscow. Scared the shit out of them.’ He wandered off.
‘Hello, Vasily,’ Stéphanie said. She materialised beside him, holding a glass of champagne. ‘How decadent,’ she said.
He kissed her on the cheek.
‘Stéphanie.’
‘I’d like you to meet my friend Rusty,’ she said. A handsome German in a suit, a twinkle in his eye, extended his hand for a shake.
‘Wolfgang Lotz,’ he said. ‘A pleasure. Please, call me Rusty. All my friends do.’
‘Vasily Sokolov,’ Vasily said.
‘I heard you ride horses,’ Lotz said.
‘Sometimes,’ Vasily said.
‘You should join us at the club. Sometimes,’ Lotz said.
‘I would like that,’ Vasily said. He studied Lotz with interest.
‘What do you do, Mr Lotz?’ he said.
‘This and that,’ the man said. He had this easy smile… Vasily didn’t like him.
‘Mr Lotz is independently wealthy,’ Stéphanie said.
‘Aha.’
‘Excuse me,’ Lotz said, ‘I see my old friend Lieutenant General Mahmoud of the air force wishes to have a word with me. No doubt about the bottle of good whiskey I owe him! Stéphanie, always a pleasure. Mr Sokolov, I look forward to seeing you soon. Come to the club! Goodbye, goodbye.’
‘What does Mr Lotz really do?’ Vasily said.
Stéphanie smiled. ‘No one knows for sure. He’s an ex-Nazi. Wehrmacht, so I’m told. Lots of them about in Cairo. But Rusty’s not a bad one as far as they go. Mad about horses. Friends with all the generals – they all love horses too.’
‘Horses and whiskey?’ Vasily said.
‘And whores.’
Vasily watched Lotz thoughtfully. He looked like a playboy. He could be a spy. Bundesnachrichtendienst or Mossad, who the fuck knew. Or he could just be a rich playboy who liked riding horses. That was the problem in Vasily’s line of work. You had to assume no one was exactly who they said they were.
‘He does look like a Nazi,’ he said, and Stéphanie laughed.
There was vodka. There was caviar. There was music, and he and Stéphanie danced. Vasily went outside and lit a cigarette and watched the feluccas on the Nile. He didn’t need to turn to know when Henrietta Feebes came to stand beside him.
‘It’s a lovely night,’ she said. ‘You must be pleased. About Gagarin, I mean.’
‘It’s incredible,’ Vasily said. ‘Somehow it makes you feel so big and so small at the same time.’
‘We can go into space, but we still fight each other here on Earth,’ she said.
He said nothing to that.
‘My family,’ Henrietta said. ‘There has always been a paradox at the heart of our existence, ever since old Henry Feebes opened our Lima branch in 1822. By the middle of the last century my great-grandfather, Edward, had amassed a fortune from the exploitation of bird guano in Latin America. We have profited from others’ misery, Vasily. But at the same time, our power and influence have served to help the world, to open new trade routes and contribute to the economy and well-being of many more people than we have ever exploited.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ Vasily said, and she smiled.
‘You think me silly,’ she said. ‘But this is at the heart of our warring ideologies. Money can help people, Vasily.’
‘And it can destroy them,’ Vasily said.
‘My father, you know, he died some years back,’ Henrietta said. ‘A heart attack, though my brother James always suspected poison. There was a woman my father was seeing for a time, a Mrs Hoffman. James always resented her. A strange woman. Rather thin. Lives in Brighton now, I think. Do you think she poisoned him?’
Vasily shrugged.
‘Were you and your father close?’ he said.
She considered.
‘No. Not really,’ she said.
‘Your brother, he is the baron now?’ Vasily said.
‘Yes. Yes, he is.’
‘He must be very powerful.’
‘He has his club,’ Henrietta said. ‘He hasn’t much of a head for business. I don’t know why I am telling you all this, Vasily. Perhaps I am a little bit drunk.’
‘You are lonely, perhaps,’ Vasily said. He felt lonely too just then. He thought of Sveta and the baby, and whether they had gone to the parade, to see Gagarin. He felt a pang of sadness and he tamped it down. This was his job. They will understand it one day. He looked up at the sky again.
‘Do you think one day there will be other people up there?’ he said.
‘People,’ Henrietta said, ‘satellites like your Sputnik, who knows what else? Perhaps it will get so crowded we wouldn’t even be able to see the stars.’
‘My,’ Vasily said. ‘You are melancholic today, Miss Feebes.’
She laughed. ‘Don’t call me that,’ she said. ‘You make me sound like an old maid.’
‘You’re the furthest thing from it,’ he said gallantly.
‘I know. I will see you later, Vasily.’
She hesitated, looking at the Nile, then left.
When Vasily turned around, Daniel Pikorski was there.