Document Z (15 page)

There was nothing to hear in the background. Perhaps it was the background that was the foreground, noise falling apart, vanishing. He thought the man would be sitting on a chair.

‘I see you've written me a letter,' Howley said.

‘That's right. Just some grievances I have.'

‘Money.'

‘It's a ridiculous system, this keeping of receipts. What kind of spy keeps an ice-cream container of papers and tabulates his expenses? Petrov is here all the time. What do I say if he finds them?'

‘You want a flat twenty-five pounds a week.'

‘That's right. It's an average expense. I've learnt that the well-equipped agent needs cash on hand to satisfy contingencies when they occur.'

‘It can't be done.'

‘Why not?'

‘Other people's money.'

They were silent for a moment.

The doctor said, ‘Should I buy a gun, do you think?'

‘A gun?'

‘If it's the communists following me. Aren't they men of intent? Aren't they capable of violence?'

‘No gun.'

The
Argus
form guide was on the floor beside him, race listings covered in scribble. On an intellectual level he knew his own writing but that didn't stop a sudden, instinctive sense that someone else had circled the bets. Certain marks were definitely his, the small crosses and the slant lines under the jockeys. But the diving verticals? He'd never noticed himself making those before.

‘I think I might resign,' he said.

‘What do you mean?'

‘I don't know. Is it worth it? I should be doctoring, concentrating on building my practice. Presumably you haven't read the
Polish News
? Here it is, the front-page story: “Doctor Bialo-guski Petitions for the Rosenbergs!” How do you think that will run with my patients, the majority being New Australians well known for their conservative views?'

‘Petrov is important to us.'

‘Yes, and a flat retainer is all I ask.'

‘Michael, it's been denied by those above. I can register disappointment, not much more.'

‘Fine tactics. You're like the branch manager at my bank. Whenever he's tugging at my overdraft he pretends it's head office on the strings.'

‘Where's Petrov right now?'

‘I don't know. But listen. A flat retainer. I'm demanding it or I quit.'

He thought there would be a note about the Generalissimo on the MVD channel, not a mourning necessarily but at least a resolute statement. Stalin is dead. Long live the Union. But there was nothing, not a breath of stasis. The work went on and the regular messages came out.

The processes described by Arkady Wassilieff for the production
of hard-wearing aviation bearings are already known to
Soviet industry. Permission for a visit to Russia cannot be granted
at this time.

Kislitsyn thought Beria destined to take control. They'd each met the man, Petrov twice. ‘An administrator of the highest order,' said Kislitsyn. ‘Watch him unite the Ministries of State Security and Internal Affairs.'

Stalin, dead. Still it wasn't quite believable. The mourning at the embassy was becoming high farce. Koukharenko had a room set up with the Georgian's picture, and staff were going in there, coming out with wet faces. It was show, completely. No one in their right mind was sad to see the author of the Yezhovshchina pass.

Four days went by before Generalov called him into his office to hand him the rebuke. A single line from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union commanding Vladimir Petrov not to bring his dog to work. Generalov added nothing to the missive. Petrov had known it was coming but the forewarning didn't prevent him feeling ill.

The following evening, he was carrying a crate of Bell's Special from the car to the garage in darkness when he saw a figure standing at the end of the drive. He froze at the sight: a woodcutter's body looming in a long coat, scarf and hat; a terrible Russian face in shadow, blunt, idiotic, belonging to the kind of man who might answer favourably to the questioner from the Directorate of Special Tasks: ‘Comrade, you look like someone of unusual strength. Do you think you could break a skull with one blow using this iron bar?'

The figure watched him for a moment longer then walked. Petrov skipped the car and went straight for the house. Had he really seen it? The odd-job assassin? The one-time clean-skin— favoured method of disposal abroad? It made sense. Someone had broken the street lamp. That would be standard procedure.

Evdokia was sleeping. He went to the sideboard in the hallway and made sure the Nagant was loaded. The bullets and their dull sheen. The thought suddenly occurred to him that someone might have changed them; switched them for duds. He tapped the six shells into his hand, then reloaded using the box behind the cereals in the kitchen.

Outside once more, he crept along the southern fence. There was a gap in the hedge here, and he crawled across the neighbour's yard, behind the house, until he was in the bushes on the edge of Lefroy Street.

Footfalls? He was listening. He expected to smell cigarettes. He expected to see discarded Soviet cigarette butts strewn over the ground. Nothing. The cars here he knew: the two dark Holdens, the white Dodge.

He shouldn't have come here. This bloody country. He knew some secrets. Perhaps some eagle-eyed fourth-floor analyst, spurred by Lifanov, had figured that out. The killing of the Chinese governor in Sinkiang was enough by itself. Frinovsky and Voitenkov, two of the operation's chiefs, had long been purged.

He knew Moscow had killed Trotsky. He had seen the file in the reading room of the Committee of Information. There were photographs of the Mexican villa from their agent inside, photographs of Trotsky's beard, Trotsky's bedclothes, Trotsky's dog. There was a photograph of the assassin, Mornard; detailed and labyrinthine plans for putting cyanide in the villa's water and for setting explosives in the floor.

He knew that they'd disposed of their own ambassador in Tehran. He knew the identities of Soviet agents in America, Sweden, Japan, Britain, Egypt, Spain. He knew that the cellars of 11 Dzerzhinsky Street were the killing rooms. That the weapon used was an eight-shot Tokarev. That the resident executioner lived always at 5 Komsomolsky Lane.

Back indoors, he opened the refrigerator door, reached above the back shelf and twisted the light globe until it went off. He opened and closed the door a few times. He turned towards the figure in the hall.

‘Why are you carrying your gun in the dark?' Evdokia said.

‘I'm going to put some bullets in a block of butter. Hide them in the fridge here, in the door.'

She stepped forward. ‘Where's Jack?'

‘Outside where he'll bark.'

‘Is something happening?'

‘We're being watched, I think, by a Russian.'

She walked quietly to the window, looking out. ‘You're scaring me. Put the gun away.'

‘It was a Russian man in a wretched-looking coat. I can recognise these things.'

‘Maybe an émigré,' Evdokia said.

‘No. I know every Russian in Canberra and this man tonight was not one of them.'

‘It's Generalov. Making you paranoid.'

‘Paranoid!' He laughed.

‘Well, afraid then. Hysterical.'

He let her take the Nagant, watching as she opened the latch. ‘I can't sleep in there with you out here,' she said. ‘It's like living with a nervous wreck.'

‘Hmm.'

‘Do bullets that have been in butter even shoot?'

Two days passed and still no word from Security. Howley probably thought that Bialoguski wasn't serious about leaving. Well, he'd demonstrate. He was fed up with haggling over money. Fed up with Security's incompetence, their general weakness. He had Petrov drunk, compromised on a growing number of fronts and ready to burn. No action. ASIO simply stood by, limp. What he needed was a serious client. An agency with nerve.

The American consulate was inside the MLC building at Martin Place. He passed through its doors, finding himself in a foyer of wood grain and granite. Clocks everywhere. He went to the third floor, US Consulate General, and pressed the bell.

He liked the Americans storing themselves in a building like this, where the floor tiles were polished by machine and the corridors screamed deep focus.

A woman waved him in. An eagle was set into the panelling of her desk. Bialoguski asked for Harry Mullin, the vice-consul, whom he'd met once at an orchestra reception. The Americans walked by him, a flash looseness in the fit of each man's suit.

Harry Mullin wore thickly framed brown glasses and looked twenty years younger than a vice-consul ought. He showed the doctor to a chair. They chatted in a small way about the orchestra, Bialoguski's practice, little zones of context. The man's accent was plain American. He offered the doctor a cigarette. Eventually Bialoguski said, ‘My reason for calling is that for a long time now I have been an agent for the Australian Security Organisation.'

‘The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation?' asked Mullin.

‘Yes . . . that might be a surprising thing for you to hear?'

Mullin drew on his cigarette.

‘As part of this service,' the doctor went on, ‘I have been engaged in activities of international importance. Activities, I think, that would be of interest to the United States.'

Mullin lifted a hand. ‘They know you're coming here, do they?'

‘Who?'

‘The Australians.'

‘No. The connection we had has been broken.'

‘Broken.'

‘I'm a free agent now.'

The doctor liked the idea of Americans as straight talkers. He felt as if he should put some kind of deal on the table. A take-it-or-leave-it-bud.

‘If there's an American service here,' he began, ‘an operating service that might interest itself, I'd be prepared to cooperate on two conditions. First, I won't under any circumstances reveal details of the Australian Security Organisation. I'm a naturalised Australian and a patriot. Second, as such, any US organisation interested in my services would need the direct permission of the Australian government. These would be the terms.'

Mullin leaned back in his chair. The view behind him was towards Darling Harbour: rooftops and cranes. ‘Well, it's really beyond my scope,' he said, producing a notebook. ‘Let's backtrack. Get at the details. I thought the body politic here had you firmly marked as Red?'

‘That's cover. In truth I'm a reliable citizen.'

‘Truth,' Mullin said. ‘The truth is an interest of ours. There's some guys here who undertake studies of truth using protractors and little bits of tape. They tell me some crazy things.' He looked up and down, pen suddenly to paper. ‘Listen, as I say, it's not my field. I'll just report your offer up the line.'

‘B-I-A-L-O-G-U-S-K-I.'

He left the building feeling happy—so happy he rang Petrov at the embassy. ‘Vladimir, it's about time I met this wife of yours. Why don't I drive down tomorrow? There's some business in Canberra I have to attend to.'

He was in the capital just after midday the following afternoon. He considered at first staying at the Kurrajong, but that wouldn't do lest he encounter one of his contacts from the unions. Instead, he drove down Commonwealth Avenue and turned into the Hotel Canberra, impressed by its squared gardens and hedges, brilliant in their rigidity and control.

It was just after two o'clock by the time he arrived at Parliament House. He walked up the steps and stood in the lobby. There was no one on the desk and so he took the opportunity to walk up the inner stairs and into a large open hall. Men in suits walked past him briskly. He saw a sign that said ‘Government Party Room' and went towards it down a corridor. Outside the room he stopped, looking for more signs. A man with a briefcase and a coat over his arm approached and told him he looked lost.

‘I'm after the prime minister,' he explained.

He was directed further down the hall. At its end, another man was coming out of an office holding a newspaper.

‘Can I help you?'

‘Yes, I'm here to see Mr Menzies.'

The man looked at him. ‘I didn't think he had any appointments this afternoon. Can I ask your name?'

‘I'd prefer not to mention.'

‘Not to mention?'

‘The matter I wish to discuss. My name may not be something that Mr Menzies will want to know.'

The man stared at him oddly. ‘I presume, then, you haven't arranged an appointment?'

‘No, but the prime minister will want to see me. It's a very important concern I need to raise.'

‘Have you checked in at the front desk?'

‘It was unstaffed.'

The man smiled faintly. ‘Well, we have processes here, you see. We have trouble with what we call WPCs—Walking Persecution Complexes. Madmen, you know. People who are being deliberately and callously done in by some arm of government. They come seeking Mr Menzies' salvation.'

Bialoguski spoke with a deliberate clarity. ‘The matter I want to discuss concerns the national security. I should ask your name, in fact, for the record.'

‘
The
national security?'

‘That's right.'

He gave the man a letter he'd written on the Hotel Canberra's stationery. Marked
For the Attention of the Prime
Minister Only
.

‘My name is Mr Yeend,' said the man. ‘I am deputised to read mail addressed to Mr Menzies. I'll open this quickly if you don't mind?'

Bialoguski gave a nod. The note explained that he was a secret agent of the government. That he needed to raise with the prime minister an urgent issue regarding the national future.

Yeend looked up. After a pause, they went into the small office from where he had emerged.

‘You're a secret agent?' said Yeend.