IT TOOK ALL morning to reach the ranch. When Nessheim had started from home it had already been humid and warm, but the coastal highway was much cooler. It wriggled along the edge of the Pacific, so close that spray from the waves splattered his windshield. The road was a remarkable feat of engineering, he realised, since it rarely climbed or twisted through the adjacent hills, but stuck like a limpet against their base, just above the incoming tide.
He stopped halfway at a lay-by of landfill pushed out like a pie which the diggers had excavated from the hillside. He got out of the car to stare at the ocean, where the waves were throwing enormous white-topped curls against the shoreline rocks, like a glamorous woman tossing her hair.
In Santa Barbara he stopped again, filling up with gas and checking his oil and water. He’d skipped breakfast at home after discovering the milk had gone off and he’d run out of bread, so now he ambled over to a neighbouring roadside stand next door where a Mexican sold him a tortilla filled with chopped hamburger meat, chillies and onions. Tacos, the Mexicans in LA called them, and Nessheim wolfed his down, taking pains not to stain his suit. He’d brought a clean shirt for dinner and a hat – a panama he’d got in San Francisco, but he didn’t like to wear it when he was driving.
He moved east now, on a new highway called 154, climbing sharply almost as soon as he left town. In the lower parts he passed groves of shaggy avocado trees, the long thin leaves flecked with crimson. There were pastures, yellowed from a summer of sun and dotted with cattle and horses. Then the road steepened; he followed directions and turned off on to El Cielo, then drove onto on a track of packed, dusty sand that gently traversed the mountain, back and forth in an almost imperceptible ascent. The terrain up here was more barren and the mix of trees that lined the meadows below – conifers and peeling red madrone and bay laurel – gave way to standalone specimens, mainly oaks. The papers said more people were migrating to California than the rest of the states of the Union combined, but out here Nessheim could only think there was plenty of room. Especially if most of the migrants were hell bent on Hollywood and dreams of a movie career.
The track itself suddenly climbed sharply and, as he came to the top of a ninety-degree bend, dipped down into a small valley which sat like the folded underbelly of the mountain. There were trees here, too, including a large stand of jack pine the track cut through, and as he emerged out of its cooling shade into the glare of a now overhead sun, he could just make out a collection of low-level buildings a quarter mile ahead. As he drove closer he saw that one of them was larger than the rest, and must be the ranch house; the others were a mix of low hay barns and sheds, without the shade that a little copse of taller oaks provided the main residence. At one side a pond not much bigger than a football field sat like a spilt pool of black ink, glittering in the sun.
There were two cars parked in the shade by the house, and he drew up next to them. He got out, wondering if the other guests had yet to arrive and wondering why he had been asked. At the front door of the long, adobe-faced house he raised its heavy brass knocker and banged it hard against the dark panels of the door. He waited but no one came and he looked around. From one of the sheds a door opened and someone came out. He was a short Chinese man, wearing black trousers and a short-sleeved white shirt. Nessheim reckoned it was ninety degrees in the shade, and even this high there was no breeze.
As the Chinese man approached, Nessheim said, ‘I’m looking for Mrs Mukasei.’
‘You are who?’ the man asked.
‘Nessheim.’
‘The others gone to town. But Mrs M say you come join her.’ The Chinese man pointed down past the sheds and Nessheim could see a row of whitewashed stables and a dirt-packed corral.
‘Mrs M say you riding. You better give me jacket.’
Thankfully he hadn’t brought his holster and .38. Nessheim took his suit jacket and handed it over. As the Chinese servant headed back to the house, Nessheim set off towards the barn, trying to think when he had last ridden a horse. It had to be fifteen years, he reckoned, when the Karlbergs, his parents’ nearest neighbours, had briefly kept two mares.
He found Mrs Mukasei inside the barn, dressed in Western jeans, a man’s shirt she had tucked into her pants, and no make-up as far as he could see. It didn’t matter: he found her face attractive precisely because it was so frankly unadorned. It wasn’t a hardened set of features – those were for Hollywood’s aspirant actresses, once they’d learned that advancement had less to do with talent than with the casting couch – but you felt nonetheless that this woman had seen a lot.
She was saddling the second of two horses, an Appaloosa. The other was a grey. ‘Agent Nessheim!’ she exclaimed when she heard his footfall. ‘You have made it.’
‘I hope I’m not late. And I hope you won’t keep calling me Agent Nessheim.’
‘You are Chimmy then?’ Her face was handsome rather than pretty, but Nessheim found her attractive.
‘Most people just call me Nessheim.’
‘I hope you don’t mind, but everyone has gone to lunch in Santa Ynez. It’s that way,’ she said, pointing north. ‘We can join them if you wish, but I thought you might enjoy a ride.’
‘I’d like that,’ he said. It would not have been his first choice on such a hot day, but she’d saddled the horses already. ‘I’m a little rusty.’
‘So am I. I did not learn to ride with a saddle. You had better take the grey. The Appaloosa seems to be in love with me.’
They rode out slowly, heading north through the little valley where the ranch was situated, then up a trail that climbed gently through a stand of tanbark oaks and pines. Elizaveta sat easy in the saddle and had a natural seat; Nessheim, used to his Wisconsin neighbour’s ancient mare, found the grey tricky, fighting the bit each time he pulled the reins.
When they emerged from the trees side by side they faced a stretch of meadow grass before the terrain climbed to a high ridge. It looked like rich grazing land, but didn’t hold a hint of green. Most grasslands in California were yellow eleven months of the year, but after the lush greenness of Wisconsin it was still a start-ling sight.
Elizaveta looked at Nessheim. ‘I will race you,’ she said, and slapped the Appaloosa’s mane with the doubled-up reins. He watched as her horse took off, then he broke the grey into a canter which with a bit of urging turned into a steady gallop. But the Appaloosa wasn’t going to be caught, and when he reached the bottom of the trail on the far side of the meadow, breathing hard, Elizaveta was waiting, looking triumphant and cool. She grinned at him. ‘For a rusty rider you are doing well.’
They climbed the ridge single file, working back and forth against its steep side. The trail was narrow and rocky, and Nessheim paid attention, since to stumble here would be no joke. As they rose, the grassland gave way to sage scrub and the dry mix of chaparral. The odd madrone tree grew out of the sandy soil, and twice the path meandered around sandstone boulders that must have been too big to move.
Just as Nessheim was wondering when the climb would end, they turned a last bend and reached the top of the ridge. Elizaveta pointed behind them. He turned and saw the Pacific in the distance, sky blue in the blistering sun. Down below, nestled between the shore and the first sharp rise of hill, lay dotted little dice-like cubes he recognised as houses. ‘Santa Barbara,’ said Elizaveta.
She turned her horse and he did likewise. To the north, a long wide valley stretched for miles below them, punctuated by small rises and dotted by large stands of trees. Far away an even higher mountain range ran at an angle, its peaks like jagged teeth.
They sat for a moment just looking. ‘So tell me about yourself, Jimmy.’ She said it matter-of-factly, as if the time for small talk was over and they had to get down to business. Inwardly he groaned.
‘You know what I do for a living,’ he said hesitantly.
She flapped a dismissive hand. ‘I don’t mean your work. I mean you – the person. How did you get here?’
He knew she wasn’t asking if he’d come by Highway 154 or Route One, but he was uncomfortable with anything more. Yet her manner was such a mix of insistence and seemingly authentic interest that he felt obliged to try. So he started, awkwardly, explaining that he’d grown up on a farm.
‘Your own?’ She seemed surprised.
‘Well my father’s, though he rented some of it out. He also owned a store in town. He lost them both.’
‘Ah, were they seized by the Government?’
Nessheim shook his head. ‘No – they just went bust. The bank took them, not the Government.’
‘Did it happen to other farms where you lived?’
‘Lots.’
‘Starve? No, I don’t know anybody that actually starved.’
‘Are you sure?’ she challenged.
‘I’m sure. Why?’
‘One heard tales of hunger,’ she said.
‘That was true enough. But not starvation.’
‘I thought perhaps it was your form of propaganda. In the Soviet Union sometimes the papers were allowed to say of a place, “people have been hungry”. That meant corpses were stacked like firewood in the fields.’ She laughed bitterly and looked at Nessheim intently. ‘I think I have still a lot to learn about your country. But I like it, even though there are so many lies. “Buy a Packard and be happy,”’ she said, lifting her voice to a radio ad’s pitch. ‘Such nonsense. But at least you don’t have to believe it. No one goes to prison if they don’t. I like that. Though no true Communist could like Los Angeles.’
‘And you do?’
‘Absolutely.’ She put a finger to her lips to indicate it was a secret, then laughed. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Not much.’ He thought of his beautiful drive that morning, thought too of San Francisco, where he had lived very happily if impatiently (he had been waiting for a special assignment) for two years. ‘I do like California.’
‘So we are not so far apart.’
‘What about you? Are you a farm girl?’
She shook her head. ‘City girl. But very poor. We had to move to Tashkent in order not to starve.’ She laughed at the thought. ‘If you knew Tashkent, you would know how bad off we were – no one would go there out of choice. But come, I have something to show you.’
They rode along the ridge for half a mile or so, then followed a trail down the north side, trotting now, down and up until they came through a stand of pine and there, in front of them, were the ruins of a colossal house. More than one house – Nessheim counted seven buildings, or what had once been buildings since all that remained were foundations and a few half-walls made of sandstone, charred black by fire.
‘What was it?’ asked Nessheim.
‘A rich man’s mansion. Then a nice lady bought it for her friend, only it burned down five weeks later. Very sad,’ she said, for the first time with a false note. ‘Her friend was a woman friend,’ she added meaningfully. ‘She is an opera singer – have you heard of Lotte Lehmann?’
‘I’ve even heard her sing.’
‘You are a lover of opera?’
‘Can’t bear it,’ he said.
She laughed. ‘So why have you heard this woman sing?’
‘A girlfriend took me.’ Stacey Madison’s rich parents had a box at the Lyric Opera House in Chicago. Nessheim had gone once; he’d had to rent a penguin suit and make polite conversation with Stacey’s mother, who seemed happy to discover that her daughter had at least one friend who wasn’t a Communist. At intermission Mr Madison had bought him a weak highball and admitted that he couldn’t stand opera either.
‘You must have been in love,’ Elizaveta said teasingly. ‘Or was it lust?’
‘A bit of both,’ he admitted.
‘I think you are something of a lady’s man, Agent Nessheim.’ And she looked delighted when he blushed.
They dismounted and she took off a large saddle bag while he tied up her horse to a thick bay laurel. They walked over to the ruin of the big house. Enough of the ground-floor walls remained to indicate the different rooms. It had been a big place and the largest room – which must have been the living room – was a good forty feet long. It sat in the north-west corner of the site and had the best view of the Santa Ynez Valley to the north. Elizaveta sat down on the low remaining part of the outer wall and took out parcels wrapped in brown paper, two tin plates and two tin mugs, and a bottle of California wine. ‘I hope you are hungry.’
She handed him a sandwich – pork loin between slices of rye bread studded with caraway seeds and slathered with a sour mustard. She set down some garlicky pickles and small roasted beets with their stems still attached so they could be eaten by hand. She poured red wine from the bottle, after handing it to him so he could pull out the cork, which she’d partly pulled out before. ‘Is it okay?’ she asked as he took a sip, and he nodded. She said, ‘I like wine, but there isn’t much of it in Russia. Just vodka.’
‘Where I’m from everybody drinks beer.’
They ate in silence until she sat back against the remains of a sandstone pier, looking out over the long valley of golden-coloured grass speckled with green by the occasional stand of trees. She said, ‘It is hard to believe that at this very moment Russia is covered with snow.’
‘They say it should help your side.’
‘I hope so. But it can’t be easy being a soldier there, whatever your side. My husband is itching to get back and fight, but the authorities say what he’s doing here is more important.’
‘Do you want to go back, too?’
She lowered her chin shyly onto the front of her shirt. ‘Would you think less of me if I said no?’ Before he could reply, she added, ‘I hate the Nazis as much as anyone – I hate them as much as the Jews do.’ Her voice was protesting and Nessheim felt the urge to reassure her, but reassure her about what?
‘But …?’ he asked encouragingly.
‘I am not a counter-revolutionary, Agent Nessheim,’ and she smiled. ‘But I am not a great believer in Comrade Stalin either. I know too many people he has wronged – too many sent to camps, too many even executed for not believing enough. Yet it is amazing how many still believe.’
‘Like your husband?’
She started to speak, then bit her lip and nodded grimly.
‘What exactly does he do here?’ He looked determinedly into the distance, miles away where the valley gave way to the towering San Rafael Mountains.
‘As you know, he is the Vice-Consul,’ she said. She added with a deliberately thick accent, ‘Is important job, no?’
‘Da,’ he said.
‘Good pronunciation.’
‘It’s the only Russian word I know.’
She pointed at the remaining food. ‘If you do not eat that pickle, Nessheim, I will.’
When they returned to the ranch the Santa Ynez party was back – there were half a dozen cars by the house. Nessheim helped Elizaveta untack the horses and then walked up towards the pond and the other buildings. Elizaveta said, ‘Let me show you where you are staying tonight. I hope you do not mind it is not in the main house – there are not so many bedrooms.’
He got his bag from the car while she waited, then she led him along the edge of the pond towards a group of mixed oaks and pines. Nestled in a break in the trees was a small clapboard cabin with a sharply pitched roof.
‘Mrs Willems says this is for bachelor guests. But I hope you will be comfortable. There’s a bath inside, but if you want a shower there’s one outside, behind the cabin. Or have a swim in the pond – the water is warm. I’ll leave you now – I want to make sure everyone else is settled in. Drinks are at five thirty, but do please arrive when you like.’
His cabin was simple but well appointed, with a desk and chair, a big dresser and watercolours of the Santa Ynez Mountains on the walls. The bed was cedar-boarded and stretched under the window, which was hooked open with a screen to keep out mosquitoes. The Chinese man had left Nessheim’s khaki suit jacket draped over the pillows.
A door in the rear led to a bathroom, which had a big tub with claw feet and brass taps. From a rickety basin Nessheim drew and drank a tin cup of the water, which must arrive straight from the mountains.
He stripped off and rubbed the long scar that ran down the right side of his chest. It was itching, as it was wont to do in the humid heat. Taking a towel from the bathroom he found the shower, a rudimentary affair with water running from a pipe that came out of the cabin. There was no soap, but he washed himself clean in the cool water that fell in unsteady streams from the rusty head. He was tired from the riding and stiff, so after drying off he went and lay down in his cabin, wearing just his boxer shorts, since the day was still warm. He read some more of Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not, finding it oddly dissatisfying. There was something phoney about the novel’s adventures, as if Hemingway’s hero actively wanted trouble. Having seen more than his share, Nessheim no longer thought it was something worth looking for.
Drinks and dinner were in the main house, which had a long comfortable living room with views of the pond. At the room’s far end the Chinese man stood in a waiter’s coat by a makeshift bar. As Nessheim entered, Elizaveta came over, followed by Mikhail. She introduced them and the two men shook hands as Elizaveta went to talk with the other guests. The Russian was as tall as Nessheim and dressed in a thin grey corduroy suit with a white dress shirt and polished black ankle boots. He had a hawk nose, curved like a scimitar, and eyes that never seemed to blink. There was an intensity to him that was accentuated by the leanness of his physique and he held himself with the stiffness of a Crown Prince at court. He said, ‘I apologise for not greeting you when you arrived. But Elza said you had an excellent ride.’
‘Yes, thank you. What wonderful country around here.’
‘Yes. The Willems are very kind to let us use it in their absence. But excuse me – I believe I heard a car.’
Nessheim took a bourbon and water from the Chinese man, with lots of ice in a tall glass. He was impressed by the ice – there was no way electricity would have got this far up the mountainside. The lamps in the room held light bulbs, so there had to be a generator somewhere.
He took his drink and turned back to the room; a couple came up and introduced themselves – the man was named Nick and was a writer at MGM, and his wife Jean was an actress under contract to Paramount. They’d been to the ranch once before, they said, and Nick asked what Nessheim did. He hesitated, not sure how to respond. ‘I’m working now at AMP,’ he said and left it at that.
‘Ah, for the legendary Buddy Pearl,’ said Nick.
‘Legendary?’
Jean swirled her drink. ‘Nick really means notorious but is too polite to say so.’
‘Honey,’ warned Nick.
Nessheim said, ‘Don’t worry, I don’t actually work for him. Feel free to speak your mind.’
‘That’s big of you,’ said Jean sharply.
Her husband rolled his eyes. ‘The Mukaseis brought a bottle of vodka along. I fear my wife has mistaken it for water.’
A door opened at the far end of the room, next to a little hall by the front door, and a couple entered, followed by Mikhail again. Suddenly a frisson ran through the room like a charge of electricity, intangible but somehow there. Jean turned around, as if on command, and Nick tried not to stare but failed, tried not to stare again, and failed again. When Nessheim looked over he saw a dapper middle-aged man, wearing a suit and open-collared shirt, standing next to an absolutely stunning young girl. She wore a tight-fitting silk dress that showed off her precociously good figure. She had deep dark eyes, a cutie-pie dimple in her chin and dyed hair the colour of corn silk. Nessheim would have assumed she was the older man’s daughter if they hadn’t been holding hands in an interlocking grip that didn’t look remotely paternal.
The man let go of the girl’s hand to greet Elizaveta and Mikhail, and the girl eyed the room with the innocent confidence of someone very pretty and very young. When her eyes got to Nessheim they lingered for a minute and he smiled at her – she smiled back. It was then he looked at her companion and realised it was Charlie Chaplin. What was he doing here? And where was his wife, Paulette Goddard?
Jean said, ‘I didn’t know Charlie had two nieces.’
Nick spat an ice cube back into his glass and started coughing. Jean turned to Nessheim and said, ‘Are you here because of John?’ He was about to ask who John was, but then he understood. Waverley had entered the room. He saw Nessheim and nodded. But didn’t come over.
Dinner was in a room next door with two silver candelabra hanging over a long table covered with a white linen table-cloth. Here the Old West met new money: the plates were china, the cutlery silver, the wine glasses had been hand-blown, but the food was ranch-style and they helped themselves from an old oak sideboard – steak and fried potatoes, boiled squash still steaming in a large crockery bowl. The Chinese man stood attentively in a corner while they served themselves, then returned to the kitchen through a swing door.
At dinner the conversation down the table was loud and political. A tall bald man in a frock coat and a high-collared European shirt was insisting that the workers of America wanted to join their Russian comrades in the fight against fascism, but were being prevented by Western capitalist bosses sympathetic to Hitler. It sounded like the editorials of the Daily Worker, and about as interesting – even Mikhail could only manage a polite nod as the man went on.
Chaplin was in the middle of the table, next to Elizaveta, and now spoke up. ‘The free world is with your countrymen, Mikhail. I hope they know that. If you think a broadcast from here would increase morale, you have only to ask.’
Mikhail nodded, but seemed pensive. ‘That is very generous of you. Perhaps when the situation is clearer.’
The writer Nick piped up. ‘They say Moscow will stand or fall by Christmas. Is that right?’
‘I think so,’ said Mikhail. ‘I am praying the snow continues.’
‘It can’t help that you have to watch your back in the east as well. Though I see they’ve pulled General Zhukov back to Moscow. That’s a good sign.’
‘Why’s that?’ Chaplin asked mildly.
Nick looked a little abashed, but ploughed on. ‘Well, that could mean the Russians have a secret weapon the Germans don’t know about.’
‘What do you mean?’ Mikhail asked sharply.
‘More divisions,’ said Nick. He explained, ‘If the Russians know the Japs—’
A glass suddenly toppled over at the end of the table and broke, the bowl detaching from the stem. A small flood of red wine surged down the tablecloth.
‘God, I’m sorry!’ Waverley exclaimed, for it was his glass that had been knocked over.
Hearing the noise of the accident, the Chinese man came in with a cloth to clean up. Nessheim felt an elbow dig into his ribs. He turned to find Chaplin’s girl looking annoyed. ‘It’s been getting too serious down there,’ she said, rolling her big dark eyes in mock-despair. She smelled of talcum powder and scent. ‘Charlie said it would be a fun party,’ she complained, brushing her knee against Nessheim’s under the table. She smiled flirtatiously. ‘So what do you do for fun, mister?’
‘Oh this and that,’ he said.
She giggled. ‘Let’s start with this,’ she said and her knee brushed his again.
The Chinaman was picking glass from the table, bringing a halt to conversation at the far end of the table. Nessheim gave the girl his full attention.
Her name was Suzette and he rapidly discovered that she would laugh at anything he said, which was slightly disconcerting since he wasn’t trying to be funny. Across the table sat Nick’s wife Jean, who smoked more than she ate and leaned over, lipstick-stained gasper in hand, to relate deprecating anecdotes of the famous people she had worked with. Awkwardly for Nessheim she spoke only to him, completely ignoring Suzette. He was glad when they finished their dessert of angel food cake and homemade ice cream and were led by Elizaveta back to the living room, where bottles of liqueurs sat on a tray. When some people went outside to smoke Nessheim joined them, grateful for the fresh air.
He walked over to the pond and looked up at a star-infested sky. The cloudless night was nippy and he reckoned the first snowfall would not be far off back in Wisconsin. He was tired and once back inside he didn’t stay up very long – before eleven he went out to his cabin. The party was still going strong. Chaplin and Suzette had retired, but the other guests had gathered around the piano in the living room, and while Nick played show tunes and popular songs they all joined in, fuelled by a second bottle of brandy the Chinaman had brought out. Then Jean did a passable imitation of Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’, followed by a Russian folk song that Mikhail declaimed in a sombre bass voice. They were hoarsely singing ‘Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue’, when Nessheim made his excuses.
In the cabin he turned off the light and put on pyjama bottoms but no top – it was cool now this high up, but he was still warm from the main house, where the Chinese servant had lit fires after dinner. He got into bed and lay down on his back, able to see a patch of star-studded sky out the window. He thought of his conversation with Chaplin and realised that for the first time since he’d arrived in Hollywood he had felt star-struck – not on his own behalf, but vicariously for his mother, who loved Chaplin and had seen Modern Times three times and would start to giggle whenever she described the movie. In his next letter home Nessheim would tell her about meeting her idol, though he would leave out reference to Chaplin’s young companion.
Outside crickets chirping filled the air; in the distance an owl gave a long muted hoot. Nessheim felt suddenly drowsy, the effect of his long ride, and was almost asleep when a whisper came from just outside the window.
‘Chim,’ whispered a familiar voice. Was he dreaming? He shook the drowsiness out of his head as the voice spoke again. ‘Nessheim, it’s me. Elizaveta.’
‘Yes?’ he said, fully awake now. He sat up and put his legs on the floor. He could see her face, pressed against the screen window.
‘Come for a swim? The water’s lovely.’ She was still whispering.
‘Okay. Let me get my trunks on.’
‘You don’t have to,’ she teased, but her face had moved away from the screen.
He got up and put on his trunks nonetheless, then left the little cabin, making sure its swing door didn’t bang shut. In the dark he heard a giggle several feet away. He moved towards it and the giggle moved too. Gradually his eyes adjusted to the night and he could make out the reed beds on the edge of the pond, then watched a white figure in a dark bathing suit walk across the sandy edge and disappear into the water.
He edged his way closer to the landing dock, where the land was clear of growth, and walked out into the water. The sandy bottom fell away quickly and the water was surprisingly warm, almost bath-like; he sank into it without flinching. He swam hard in the direction of the float he’d seen in daylight, breaking his crawl only once to readjust direction.
When he reached the float Elizaveta was already there, standing still in the water with one hand keeping a grip on the slats of the float. ‘I didn’t think I would win two races today,’ she said.
‘Race you back and you won’t win this time.’
‘In a minute. But listen.’
He did, but could hear only the soft clink of a glass and the murmur of voices from the main house.
Then the owl hooted again, like the lonely whistle of a night-time train.
He turned, ready to swim back, but Elizaveta put a hand on his shoulder.
‘There’s something I want to tell you. One day, not so long from now Mikhail will be going home. I would expect it to happen within the next year. Assuming Hitler does not have his way.’
Nessheim sensed their conversation was on the edge of something. He said pointedly, ‘I thought his work was too important for him to go back.’
She shrugged her shoulders, pale in the moonless dark. ‘You must know what he does.’
‘Intelligence, I assume.’ She gave a little nod. ‘Is he watching other nationalities – Germans?’ He thought of Osaka. ‘Or the Japanese. Everyone’s scared of the Japanese invading.’
‘No, no. It’s Americans he’s focused on. He’s supposed to influence opinion here. Newspapers, and especially the movies.’
Like me, thought Nessheim. He wanted to ask why she was telling him this, though he was starting to sense where she was headed. He asked, ‘What about you?’
‘Me?’ She took her hand off his shoulder, trying to sound surprised, but Nessheim was sure it was an act. ‘I am not important – unless I don’t go back.’
‘Is that what you’d like?’
She didn’t speak for a moment, and when he turned to look at her face, little more than a foot away from him, she nodded, her firm jaw dipping down and up like a see-saw.
‘It is probably just a dream to think like that.’
‘Why?’ asked Nessheim, who had seen some of his own dreams dashed without giving up the habit of dreaming.
‘Oh, the usual reasons. I am a wife. Wives do as they are told. To stay would be cowardice when my country needs me. Then my government would be very cross.’
‘They’ll stick the Bruiser onto you?’ he asked.
‘That’s no joke,’ she said grimly. ‘But anyway, it would be very difficult to persuade your government to let me stay. The Russian quota’s full, believe me, and it’s not as if I have much to offer.’
She went quiet and Nessheim felt he had been given his cue. ‘You know a lot about your government. That’s always valuable. Especially if we become allies,’ he said disingenuously.
Before she could reply a voice came from the shore.
‘Elza!’
It was Mikhail and he had a flashlight, though its beam was too weak to reach the float.
‘I better go now,’ she whispered.
‘I’ll swim with you.’
‘No!’ She put her hand again on his arm.
‘What’s the problem? We were only swimming.’
‘Elza!’ came another cry from the shore.
‘So far,’ she said enigmatically. Then her hand moved under the water and caressed him lightly on his stomach. ‘I would like to see you again. I need you to advise me.’
Pushing off from the float she swam towards the shore in a slow, steady crawl, returning dutifully back to her husband. It was only a hundred yards or so and halfway there she was illuminated by the beam from Mikhail’s flash-light, which then followed her all the way in.
Nessheim watched as she stood up in the shallows, then walked towards her husband. Enough light came from the house that Nessheim could see the two, and he could hear their voices as each spoke. The Russian words sounded harsh and loud. It was impossible to tell if they were arguing or merely talking volubly. He could have sworn he heard his name pronounced – ‘Nessheim’ – by Mikhail as Elizaveta stood beside him on the grass.
Suddenly he saw Elizaveta move towards her husband and he watched as the tall figure fell backwards, landing with a splash in the water. Mikhail stood up, the water knee high, while Elizaveta gave a loud triumphant laugh. She turned and skipped towards the house like a jubilant schoolgirl, her white limbs slipping seal-like through the dark, while her husband emerged, cursing, from the pond. Nessheim waited until Mikhail had gone back into the house before he swam back to shore, hoping this time he could go to sleep.