Document Z (12 page)

In the doctor's room, Petrov complained about slowly going blind. Beckett turned off the light in the room, got a pen-light, and shone it in his eye.

‘How long has this been happening?'

‘I don't know. A few weeks ago there appeared these specks.'

The man stood with his waist bent, two hands on the instrument, leaning into Petrov as if he were some form of intricate machine. The idea pleased Petrov. Whenever his health broke down he wanted to be treated as a man of nuts and bolts, a thing of mechanical logic, of processes designed and knowable and capable of being returned to working order. Anything other than the sublime terror he suspected the body really was.

‘We're looking at the beginnings of a macular star,' said Beckett. He stood and found the light, pulled a book from a shelf. They looked together as he flipped the pages. ‘Here,' he said. It was a black and white shot of the optic nerve, produced by special camera. Near the centre was a dazzling firework, an explosion of white dots, thick in the middle then petering out. It looked like an astral event or some form of bursting flare.

‘Yours isn't as acute.'

‘Acute?' asked Petrov.

‘Sharp. Severe. Intense.'

‘Oh.' He looked at the page again.

Beckett said, ‘Have you had any contact with cats?'

‘Cats. The animal?' asked Petrov.

‘Yes. This condition is often caused by cats. Usually the scratches of young kittens.'

Petrov waited a moment to check that the doctor wasn't joking. ‘No cats,' he eventually said. The surgeon wrote a script. Petrov was to take pills for two weeks, and if nothing got better he was to come back. In the meantime, he shouldn't drive.

The MVD at the embassy ran a system of checks on incoming mail. This was part of the MVD's SK work: maintaining an eye on the staff, watching for traitors or discontents. In many cases the letters were abuse:
Go fuck yourselves
, etc; random thoughts that arrived like stinging dust from the winds of public sentiment, unsigned and barely addressed. Other times they were from lunatics requesting money, or from men and women who thought the Australian government was persecuting them and wrote seeking the Soviet Union's intervention in their personal affairs.

In a cramped room on the ground floor, Evdokia examined the day's mail under a reading lamp, the bulb's heat across her knuckles. Lifanov thought himself in charge of this monitoring, which in turn he delegated to her. Yet while she passed him the mundane things—the anti-Soviet pamphlets, the true maniacs of mind-splatter—the more interesting material she kept for intelligence work. The monitoring was no secret: the staff expected to receive their mail opened. Except Lifanov, of course, who made a point of inspecting his post alone.

In the mail was a letter addressed to the ambassador ‘
Nicolai
Lifanov
'—no honorific, which piqued her attention. She held the envelope to the lamp and saw inside the veins of a handwritten message.

The MVD knew various ways to open envelopes, but the best method was to read the message without opening its packaging at all. For this task, she used a strand of wire, inserting it into the fold through the top corner, twisting monotonously until the letter coiled itself around the implement and she was able to delicately remove both.

The note was from a friend, an Australian using the initials M.T.
Nicolai Nikhailovich, you are popular here. Think of the
better future for your wife and son
. It was an encouragement to defect, personal, deliberate, reckless. She could hardly believe her luck. She tore open the envelope, looking to see that there was nothing else inside.

Upstairs, Volodya was reading a story on the Rosenbergs, the newspaper sprawled across his desk.

She gave him the letter. She expected at least a smile, but when he looked at her she saw no joy in his eyes. They read the letter again. Volodya got up and locked the door. He would write and she would cypher. They would send the report right now; two hours until the post office closed. He put the letter itself in the upstairs safe.

The following morning, Prudnikov gave them three priority cables. Moscow's response was perfect. The first cable informed them to wait; the report was going to the special committee. The second and third were from this committee's secretary— palpable panic. He wanted to know what kind of paper was used, how the letter was delivered. Had Lifanov seen it? Had he made any remarks?

Volodya took his time with their reply.

Lifanov's mood changes dramatically
, he wrote.

‘He is unpredictable,' Evdokia added.

He seems under great strain, as if an important decision weighs
on his mind.

He spends long hours in his office.

There are rumours of impropriety in some of his relations.

We suggest his previous secretarial assistant, in Moscow, be
interviewed.

He and Kovaliev are increasingly inseparable. They drink
with the commercial section at the ambassador's home, and it is
reported that the telling of anecdotes is encouraged.

Lifanov is known to engage in lies.

We have prevented him from sighting this letter.

We remain vigilant. Above his every action, a question mark.

Please forward your instructions and advice.

9

T
hey drew lots in the early morning freeze, each man's breath crisp and fierce, white moisture barking into the air. Trimmed grass and dew. The green blade of the first fairway twisted slightly to the right. In Kislitsyn's hands the club resembled a toy. Petrov and Prudnikov watched to see how this experiment would go. Kislitsyn put the face against the ball, judged the weight of the weapon, drew himself slightly to one side and practised a swing. He stood at the ball, deciding with a beginner's unease the best place to hold the stick.

‘Is the tee too high?'

‘Aim with your feet.'

‘Yes, alright, quiet.'

He threw the club backwards and swung. The sound was a snap and then a fizz and the ball flew high, gathering a slow fade, falling to earth in the right-side rough.

They were impressed.

Prudnikov stepped forward and jammed his tee into the grass. He stood behind the ball and peered, his stroke soon skipping down the fairway, losing pace with each dense bounce.

Petrov shot last, making a chip of it really, high and aloft and with no great measure of forward motion.

They walked towards the white dots on the landscape.

‘Loosen the limbs.'

‘How. Gymnastics?'

The trees each side had a yellow tinge. Petrov struck another chip, dull and weightless. They smiled at one another in their efforts to reach the green.

Putting was worse, the ball unpredictable and too light.

The next hole was a long one.

‘Don't swing so hard.'

‘Watch as you hit.'

‘How do you watch?'

‘Swing less.'

‘No. Alright.'

Thwack. An upward curve, spinning out flatly on the grass.

They walked, buggies trailing. In the rough, three birds pecked and flapped. The watery smell of drowned and breaking leaves.

‘I have news that will interest you,' said Prudnikov.

‘What is that?' asked Kislitsyn.

‘A cable that came late afternoon yesterday. For Lifanov.'

‘Yes?'

‘He's been recalled. I decrypted it.'

Petrov stopped. ‘He's going?'

‘That's right. Moscow says his posting is at an end.'

‘How soon?' said Kislitsyn.

‘He's to book on the first flight via London.'

The men smiled.

‘This is very good,' Kislitsyn said, moving into position to strike his ball. ‘Goodbye to the prick.'

Petrov watched Kislitsyn's shot sing down the fairway. He felt steely.

‘Do you think he'll be alright?' asked Prudnikov.

‘I don't think the ambassador is worried,' said Kislitsyn. ‘He probably has assurances.'

‘If he has assurances, he'll end up shot,' said Petrov.

Prudnikov grinned, enjoying himself. This wasn't actually them talking; it was the game, the arrangement of things, their ulterior selves in a rare and peculiar set-up—Kislitsyn's and Petrov's trust, Prudnikov's agency with the MVD—a licence given for the next few hours: here we can speak the truth.

‘The bastard must have told Kovaliev,' said Prudnikov. ‘I saw our unflappable commercial attaché moping in the corridor like an orphan with no supper.'

They crossed a long white bridge over the Molonglo, blue flags on the river's margin. At the next tee, Kislitsyn readied his shot, the low roof-points of the Hotel Canberra visible in the distance. Petrov watched, trying to understand the method behind Kislitsyn's swing, distracted by the Lifanov news, imagining Evdokia's relief at it.

On the next hole, they met a machine on the fairway, a tractor pulling a contraption of lawnmowers, an improvised-looking thing, a Frankenstein. Petrov stared at it and realised his eyes were almost clear. Whatever was in those tablets was a miracle. There was a blurriness now and again, but nothing that felt like it wouldn't eventually depart, and nothing that seemed to be affecting his aim.

It was true—Lifanov was departing. She wouldn't denigrate him. Best to be saddened; not as if Moscow had made the wrong decision (they never did), but as if they had made this one, at least, that was cheerless.

She walked into the antechamber to find the ambassador at her desk. She caught his posture before he straightened: an indignant slump, shoulders beaten and forward, forehead frowning. When he turned to her, she saw his eyes were alert, his mind ticking.

‘Evdokia Alexeyevna,' he said. ‘There will be a meeting of the staff in one hour. You will organise this, please.'

‘All staff, Ambassador?'

‘Yes, everyone.'

He took his jacket and went out into the hall.

She went from room to room, her voice flat and unhurried.

From the back step of the embassy, the staff gathered on the grass, Lifanov made his speech. He had been given another posting, Europe, probably Madrid. He had enjoyed his years here, and was thankful for the trust of the department and the camaraderie amongst his staff. He would be leaving posthaste, but there would be time for a celebration tomorrow afternoon and he could properly say goodbye. It was very much friends, colleagues, fellow comrades-in-arms; a speech so amiable she gave up her intuition that his conspirators would be denounced.

Sad applause bounced from the red-brick walls.

A week later, the day of his departure passed with little fuss. Evdokia was at her desk by 7.30 a.m., sorting the last of the cards that had come from Canberra's various ambassadors and consuls, some of the messages warm and handwritten, others just simple notes in type. Lifanov came into the antechamber, examined the messages she was filing, and pleasantly said, ‘Good morning'.

‘Your tickets, Ambassador.' She gave him a folder from the BOAC office.

He thanked her and said that he'd left some instructions on her desk, small things to be attended to for which he didn't have the time.

‘Of course, Ambassador,' she said.

He went through to his office and drew a handkerchief from his breast pocket. He ran the cloth over the planar surfaces, the desk and the sideboard, the various cabinets, the windowsills and the shelving. He wiped each surface then examined it closely. It seemed he was erasing the dust.

He came out and locked the door, then asked Evdokia to seal the key in an envelope.

As she stamped the sealing wax, Lifanov said, ‘Comrade, we have had our disagreements, certain things, certain ways you have behaved. But I think we understand each other; we know the pressures we have been under. When we see each other in Moscow, I hope we will stop and say hello and recall our time here favourably. Please tell Vladimir that I wish him good luck. I will not have time to visit him this morning.'

He took the envelope lightly from her grasp. She looked at him and saw in his face a rare expression, fresh and energised, the strain that usually worked a stress of wrinkled tension across his forehead gone.

‘Yes. Thank you, Ambassador,' she said. ‘Enjoy your journey.'

In the hallway, Moscow's two couriers sat opposite one another: Shcherbakov and Kopeikin. They were grim-looking men wearing coarse suits of Russian manufacture, both with zip-up woollen vests underneath. Each had a diplomatic satchel, but all presumed their real escort was Lifanov himself. Kopeikin's revolver bulged at his chest.

The party left at five minutes to midday, the car easing through the gates onto Canberra Avenue, Vasili Sanko at the helm, the Lifanovs and the couriers in the back. The entire staff gathered to watch it go. Afterwards, they returned silently to the building, performed their duties for ten or so minutes and then took lunch.

The doorbell rang at Lockyer Street. It was Masha Golovanova with Anna Kislitsyna and Tatiana, the child's hands around her mother's neck. It was an invitation to walk. Minutes later, they were all proceeding through the stripped emptiness of York Park, crossing the Circuit to the equally bare nothingness of Capital Hill, their shoes sinking slightly in the earth.

Reaching the hilltop, they saw the tops of the trees on the western side and, between them, the corrugated-iron sheds of the Capital Hill hostel. Faraway, a tube of white cloud hung over the Brindabella Hills.

They were facing east. Free of her mother, Tatiana ran down the slope with an unsteady gait.

‘You look tired again, Masha,' Anna said suddenly.

Masha laughed. Looking into her wide, round face, Evdokia saw nothing of Anna's observation. She thought Masha looked awake enough, lively even.

‘That's Ivan's fault,' Masha said. ‘He has been sick of late, a horrible cough. I have been doing his round in the mornings.'