Document Z (36 page)

Even as he dragged this page from the typewriter, he knew that the described visit would never occur. Was the KGB going to allow any member of a defector's immediate family to set foot outside the USSR?

Not in a million years.

Correspondence contact only. Little glimpses of a life. Tamara meeting a man in Kiev while working on a building there, a university man, a lecturer, well spoken, a voice that could be listened to. Tamara getting married. Tamara having a son, living in a room in Moscow, baby pictures sent in the post and seated carefully on the mantel. Tamara worrying for her husband, his drinking, his inability to find work. Tamara alone with her son in the room.

Her mother's handwriting became weaker, her letters drastically shorter, arriving wrapped inside Tamara's. Evdokia understood that she was bedridden, even if both she and Tamara did not say.

She died in the Russian summer, on a date in July. Evdokia called in sick to the company where she worked and—for perhaps the third time in her life—went to a church, needing a quiet place, needing a place to be with her mother, who, despite everything the revolution had to teach, had never given up her religion.

Ten days later, America put two men on the moon. Evdokia watched the moment of the landing but didn't applaud.

Life went on.

They began a series of dinners with defectors. Oysters in a South Melbourne restaurant with Anatoliy Golitsyn. Pasta in Carlton with Igor Gouzenko. Colonel Spry called it Defectors On Tour. Their talk was always of Russia, its weather, the people and places they'd known.

Volodya's drinking intensified. He took fishing trips, which she knew were drinking trips, a man and his dog and his bottle, alone. Coughing fits. Cold sweats and off-coloured urine. She told him in a tone that was caring that he was a chronic drunk. There were periods in hospital; weeks recovering from an illness that wasn't diagnosed. He remained convinced he would be murdered. He inspected the nurses' identification before he took the medicines they were giving.

Evdokia kept carefully within her circle of friends, the women from the company where she worked. The beach, the cinema, the city shows. Everybody addressed her by her new name. Newcomers took years to realise who she actually was.

Tamara's son in his school clothes. Tamara's son in the Pioneers. The boy looked like their brother at that age, thin-jawed and skinny-legged.

Her sister applied to the militia every two years for her holiday. Each time, the answer was Request Denied.

Evdokia suspected it was a life. She had her work and her things to do. She had her dog and she watched TV. At a certain distance, she even made a return to following the bigger events: East and West Germany, America, Britain, the USSR. It was selfish to ask what else there might be.

Spry came occasionally with questions: did you ever hear of such and such a project; do you remember so and so? The director was always lively, arriving with jokes prepared, and the visits rarely failed to cheer her. Sometimes he came for no reason and she supposed they were friends.

Habitually, she walked in the gardens and on the beach, walking the dog at dawn. Neat little waves. Everything flat: the bay, the suburb behind. She stood watching the dog as he sped across the sand. Sometimes it all felt so tremendously unexpected. The sun sparkling on the water, the cold sand underfoot and the dog running. She recalled summer camps with the Pioneer Youth. Tents by the sea. Days of naive thought where the world was a few hectares of coastline, the colour of your scarf, the gloss on your pin. She thought about the promises and potential, the possibilities entertained. The things that were the future then but that would not be. She thought about her work, her friends, the running dog, the bay and her TV. The slight waves broke so close to the sand. She knew that what was left was what had happened. What had happened, and what little remained below the flame.

The streets are a place visited now and then in early hours, buildings towering gravely, streets that are spectral and awash with light. She is here to walk along Great Lubyanka Street. A changing distance: sometimes only a block or two, sometimes close to a mile.

There are the Moscow crowds. Children, adults. They are at once easy and hard to hear, voices like the mutterings of ghosts.

In each recurrence of this world she is a visitor without identity, lacking papers, a passport. She is desperate to blend in, desperate to reach the building at the end of the street, a hotel turned tenement rising six storeys high, a place here but half anywhere, no glass in its windows, and from each gap the sound of conversation, words indecipherable, as if spoken through cloth.

Why is she here? What is she seeking?

If she needs access to this building, its corridors, its stairwells, the body-strewn rooms she knows are inside, it is not granted. It is her fate to stand before it. Outside it, looking up.

It is a dream long suffered. A secret in her sleep, a kind of stitching, she thinks, between lives.

When the historian visits, he sets a microphone on the table and she speaks—an old woman—for the National Library. It is a week-long task. The historian's questions give her the space to betray Volodya, to admit his faults, to commit herself, finally, to the truth. She doesn't. The record is no all-important thing, and what exactly would be the point?

The journalists continue to come, sitting darkly in their cars, spurred by the anniversary of Cold War events.

‘Mrs Petrov? Are you Mrs Petrov?'

She calls the police. The matter is brought up by a politician in parliament on her behalf.

Which is why, at 5 a.m. on a day in 1996, she checks the street carefully before going to the taxi. Just an old woman, a nobody headed to Tullamarine without a suitcase.

‘Meeting someone?' asks the driver.

‘Yes. My sister.'

She waits in the Qantas lounge. Sets eyes on Tamara for the first time in four decades. And the moment is like air. In their embrace is the heat of all things lost that cannot be regained. They spend the afternoon in the backyard, drinking tea and talking, their voices carrying on the wind. An afternoon long dying. Long veins of grey cloud turning red.

Author's note

This is a work of fiction. While it draws upon historical events and personalities, its characters are speculative versions of their real-world counterparts and many of their traits and actions have been exaggerated or wholly invented. Much of
Document Z
is based on archival sources: either on the records of the 1954 Royal Commission on Espionage, or on the reports, recordings and other files later released by ASIO and now held by the National Archives (some of which can be viewed online at
www.naa.gov.au
). I am also indebted to the viewed online at
www.naa.gov.au
). I am also indebted to the accounts of the affair written by those at its centre, specifically accounts of the affair written by those at its centre, specifically Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov's
Empire of Fear
(London: Andre Deutsch, 1956), Michael Bialoguski's
The Petrov Story
(London: William Heinemann, 1955) and Michael Thwaites'
Truth Will Out
(Sydney: Collins, 1980). I am grateful for Robert Manne's
The Petrov Affair
(Sydney: Pergamon, 1987), the authoritative history to which those seeking to know more about the affair should turn.

Acknowledgements

Document Z
began as a PhD thesis and I would like to thank Tony Birch and Ken Gelder for their invaluable guidance and advice over a rewarding four years.

For their knowledge, enthusiasm and expertise transforming
Document Z
from manuscript to book, my thanks to Annette Barlow, Catherine Milne, Alexandra Nahlous, Renee Senogles and all at Allen & Unwin.

For her careful editing, insights and suggestions, I am indebted to Nicola O'Shea.

For their long-standing commitment to Australian writing, thanks to
The Australian
and Vogel's.

Lastly, for all their support, thank you to my family—Roger, Margaret, Helen and Alice—and to Molly Peterson, not least for her unwavering encouragement.

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