Moskva (3 page)

‘Do we want to bring their government down?’

‘Your husband’s more likely to know that than me.’

It wasn’t the real reason he was here, of course. He was here to keep him out of trouble. How much trouble he was in was being decided back in London. Meanwhile, to give his bosses a break, he was here.

Having made enough small talk to give him a headache, Tom pleaded the need for air and another cigarette. Skirting the dance floor entailed endless ‘excuse me’s as he made his way round the edge of the chocolate-box ballroom, with its white panels and gilding. As he went, he wondered what Caro was doing, then wished he hadn’t.

It would be teatime back home. She’d be on the sofa between her parents most likely, a fire already blazing in the hearth. The black-and-white portable wouldn’t be turned on until later. And even then it would have the sound down so no one had to pay it any attention until the chimes. Charlie would be getting ready for bed.

A brief protest at not being allowed up, then sleep and, with luck, no dreams.

A year from now …? His boy would still be in bed come New Year’s Eve. Probably still protesting, but not fiercely enough to make a difference. And Caro? Whoever’s bed she climbed into, Tom doubted it would be his. So why not give her what she wanted? It would be best for the boy. That was what she kept telling him.
Charlie needs to know where he stands
. ‘Bitch,’ Tom muttered.

‘Hey, that’s rude.’

It was the girl who’d begged a cigarette.

Tom blinked, ‘I’m sorry?’

‘I said that’s really rude.’

‘I wasn’t talking about you, obviously.’

‘
Obviously …
’ She did a passable imitation of Tom’s irritation.

‘People are watching,’ he said.

‘You think I care?’

‘No, I think that’s what you want.’

Her hair was wilder than before, her dinner jacket too tight to button. She’d folded up both sleeves since he last looked. Close to, he could see she was younger than he’d imagined. Her gaze found Sir Edward in the crowd and she smirked. ‘I’m going to tell my stepfather about you.’

Tom grabbed her as she turned.

The bones in her damaged wrist felt frighteningly fragile. Out of the corner of his eye, Tom saw the black woman he’d talked to earlier heading towards him and let the girl’s wrist drop. Her mother wasn’t the only one drunk around here.

‘Roll your sleeves down,’ he said, stepping back. ‘Or roll them up, let your parents see and have the damn argument. You’re obviously desperate for a fight.’

‘He’s not my parent.’

‘Whatever.’

Beneath her cuffs, not quite visible and not quite hidden, raw welts crossed both wrists. A blunt knife would do it.

‘What’s it got to do with you anyway?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Wrist to elbow,’ he said. ‘Wrist to elbow. If you’re serious.’

Shrugging himself into his Belstaff, Tom left the party through high gates between wrought-iron railings mostly hidden by frosted trees. He made a point of nodding to the
militsiya
sergeant stamping his feet on the pavement outside. Brown coat, peaked cap, cheap boots, Makarov in a brown-leather holster.

Same poor sod as earlier.

Taking the metro would cost five kopeks, and the stations had such elegance they put London to shame, but Tom wanted to walk and if the little Russian assigned as Tom’s KGB shadow had to walk too, that was his bad luck.

From his pocket, Tom pulled a rabbit-fur cap bought that afternoon. It was second-hand and split along one edge. Cramming it on to his head, he lit a Russian cigarette and checked his reflection in a car window, flattering himself that he was safely anonymous, as drably dressed as those around him.

Just north of the Bolshoi and south of the Boulevard Ring that ran round inner Moscow, what Tom thought was a scraped-together mound of snow on the steps of a church shivered, and he stepped back as the mound shook itself from white to black, recently fallen flakes scattering to reveal an old woman.

A red scarf was tight around her head. She looked for a moment puzzled at where she found herself and then
shrugged and examined the man in front of her with bright eyes. ‘American,’ she announced.

Tom shook his head.

‘Ah, he speaks Russian. Well, perhaps he knows the odd word.’ She looked beyond Tom to the crossroads, which was empty except for Tom’s shadow a hundred paces away, pretending to tie his shoe. Early twenties, skinny and rat-faced, he was putting in time as a pavement artist on his way to a nice warm desk from which he could order others to trawl around in the cold. Tom waved and received a scowl in reply.

He’d expected Soviet tradecraft to be better.

‘Here.’ The old woman offered Tom what looked like a sliver of ivory.

It was an angel carved from wax. Squat and moon-faced, unnervingly ugly, with a bent wing.

Distractedly, Tom dug into his pocket for change. He shook his head when she pushed the figure at him. ‘Sell it again,’ he suggested.

‘That would be bad luck.’

Her accent was hard. She might be southern, to judge from her leathery face and the sharpness of her cheekbones. Georgian? Azerbaijani? Tom’s Russian was too rusty for him to place her. He was pleased enough to understand the words.

‘So,’ she said, ‘what’s your name?’

‘Why?’ Tom demanded.

‘I was being polite.’

Despite himself, Tom grinned.

‘See. That’s better. Can you spare one of those?’ She nodded at the burned-out papirosa in his fingers. And taking one for himself, Tom gave her the packet. As he was leaving, she called after him.

‘If not American?’

‘English …’

‘Covent Garden. The Royal Ballet. Sadler’s Wells.’

Hard walking on slippery pavements brought him to the Garden Ring and the Sadovaya Samotechnaya block for foreigners that stood in its shadow. As he approached, a black cat hurried between ruts in the snow, dodged round the KGB man guarding its entrance and mewed for the gate to be opened.

‘He lives here?’ Tom asked the guard, who did his best not to be shocked that Tom spoke his language.

‘I’m not sure he has papers.’

Tom laughed.

The man couldn’t help glancing beyond Tom to his shadow, who was now pretending to admire a bronze statue of a Soviet youth in gym shorts holding the hand of a girl in a summer dress. When the boy felt he’d admired the statue for as long as was believable, he knelt and tied his shoelace for the fifth time that evening.

Tom could lose him easily.

But the Committee for State Security would assign someone better. Then, when Tom really needed to shake free – if he ever really needed to shake free – it would be harder.

‘Where’s a good place to drink?’

‘Everywhere is closed.’

‘It’s New Year’s Eve.’

‘In Moscow, bars close at eleven.’

‘Tovarishch.
Comrade
…
Don’t be ridiculous. It’s New Year’s Eve. There must be a bar open somewhere in this city.’

The KGB man sighed.

Lights still shone in at least half the flats overlooking the bleak street, but its cafes and shops were firmly shut. He’d
just decided he must have overshot the address he’d been given – along with a warning about foreigners not necessarily being welcome, New Year’s Eve or not – when a man shouted from a concrete walkway above, and a familiar noise brought Tom up short.

He knew the sound of a door being kicked open.

He’d heard enough of that in Northern Ireland. Usually, though, the kick came from outside. This time … Tom heard the door slam into a wall and saw a man’s body tumble down the concrete stairs to land in a sprawl.

Behind him stamped a broad-shouldered man in his twenties, his torso bare except for a stained singlet. What Tom noticed, though, was his leg. It was missing, its replacement constructed from the leaf spring of a vehicle. Having dragged his victim to his feet, the man hurled him into a bank of snow and finally noticed Tom watching.

‘What are you looking at?’

‘You,’ Tom said.

The man considered that.

‘Do I look like I play Abba?’ he asked furiously. ‘I mean, really? The Beatles, if you must. The Stones, back when they were good. New York Dolls. The Cramps. The Ramones. But Abba?’

‘Always hated them,’ Tom said.

‘You lost?’

‘Who isn’t? No. I’m looking for a bar.’

The man jerked his head towards the stairs down which the drunk had been thrown. ‘There are worse ones than mine. Not many, mind you …’

‘I’m not that choosy.’

The upstairs bar had a long length of battered zinc against which a dozen men leaned. Another four formed a queue behind a fifth, who stood in front of a computer monitor with
a filthy screen. The fifth man was battering a keyboard as he tried to twist the shapes that rained from above. When he mistimed a move, falling blocks built up and his screen filled. Cursing, he stepped aside for the man behind to take his place.

‘Tetris,’ the bar owner said sourly. ‘Worse than heroin.’

‘Where did the computer come from?’

‘The army.’

‘Do they know it’s gone?’

‘They’ve probably replaced it.’

The man who’d just lost his game yelled a food order.

Instead of answering, the one-legged man took himself behind the zinc and vanished through a curtained gap in a wall of records. Mostly albums, although a row of 45s sat high up. He returned with a bowl of red cabbage, which he thrust at the loser with a shrug that suggested personally he wouldn’t eat it. Then he headed for a battered turntable on a shelf attached to the record wall.

‘Any requests?’

There was silence from the room.

‘Yeah,’ Tom said. ‘“Sympathy for the Devil”.’

The barman stared at him.

‘Could have been written about any of us,’ said Tom. ‘Apart from the bits about wealth and taste.’

Straight after came ‘Stray Cat Blues’.

‘To Behemoth,’ said the one-legged bar owner. ‘Sadly absent.’

Then the man put away
Beggars Banquet
, pulled out
David Johansen
and played ‘Frenchette’ twice before lowering the needle on to a badly scratched 45 of The Damned’s ‘New Rose’
.
In between, he served flasks of vodka and iced bottles of Zhigulevskoe lager to a slowly dwindling crowd that finally comprised only a hard core of drinkers and those too drunk to find the door.

There were no seats in his bar, no tables.

His customers were restless and cheaply dressed and stank of the vinegary cabbage ferried endlessly from the kitchen. Sweat, vodka and cigarette smoke soured the room. Anyone who believes vodka doesn’t smell hasn’t sweated it out. After a flask and a half, Tom finally cracked and asked for a bowl of whatever everyone was eating.

The bar owner shouted and a whey-faced teenager came in from the kitchen. She scowled at the owner, looked over at Tom and her eyes flicked towards the papirosa he was lighting. Tom realized it wasn’t the cigarette that attracted her.

It was the flame …

The cabbage she dumped at his elbow was sweet and sour and tasted of raisins. Its welcome warmth reminded him of hunger. Of being cold and fed up, cold, fed up, wet and hungry. Without thinking, he went to the window and stared down at his KGB shadow. The man was stamping his feet in a doorway, his donkey jacket wrapped as tightly round him as it would go. Cold nights in dark doorways.

Worse nights in the wastes of a Belfast multi-storey.

The wind blowing through him, whistling between his ribs, while he pissed in a milk carton and shat in a supermarket bag, waiting for a man who didn’t show and men who wanted to kill him, who did.

There’d been women over there. When the nights were darkest, they’d put warmth in his bed. Only one of them had realized it wasn’t the sex he needed. She’d cradled his head as he cried through a long December night, and never referred to it again. That was ten years ago. Her man came out of prison eventually. Around the time her son went in.

‘Who is he?’ the bar owner asked.

‘KGB. My shadow.’

‘You American?’

‘English.’

The bar owner looked doubtful.

‘Promise you,’ Tom said. ‘English.’

The man brought Tom another beer and a fresh flask of vodka, waving the payment away. ‘What brings someone like you to a bar like this?’

‘I like this bar.’

‘So do I. I own it. That doesn’t answer my question.’

‘I was at a party …’ Tom hesitated. ‘I left.’

‘You didn’t like the other guests?’

‘I wanted to punch them.’

The man smiled sympathetically.

‘Ivan Petrovich Dennisov,’ he said, putting out his hand.

‘
Tovarishch.
’

‘You call me Dennisov.’

‘Tom Fox,’ Tom said. ‘Major Tom Fox.’

Dennisov grinned. ‘David Bowie. “Space Oddity”. Also “Ashes to Ashes”, “Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)”.’ He put a fresh flask of vodka in front of Tom, helped himself to a glassful and raised it in salute.

‘Major Tom.’

Tom looked at him.

‘You have to say “Ground Control”.’

A copy of that day’s
Pravda
had been dumped on the zinc and Tom read it, as much to keep his Russian sharp as for any information it might contain. Victories in Afghanistan, a new dam beyond the Urals, advances in Soviet computing. The police in the Yakut autonomous republic were investigating a spate of horrific murders with all diligence. An arrest was imminently expected.

A famous dissident had been rehabilitated. A poet had
been unbanned. An amnesty granted state-wide in five categories for politicals jailed before 1953.

‘Things are getting better?’ Tom suggested.

‘They could hardly get worse.’

Later, as dawn threatened, while the teenager clattered around her tiny kitchen, the man came out from behind his bar with a mop to rid the floor of spilt beer. Seeing Tom glance at his leg, he said suspiciously, ‘You sure you’re not American?’

‘Quite sure. I have friends who’d be impressed by that.’

‘Friends who crashed helicopters?’

‘Who tripped wires on mines. Met bombs beside the road. Bombs in bins.’

‘You never met bombs in bins?’

‘No,’ said Tom. ‘I just got shot.’

‘Me too,’ the man said. ‘But by a missile. An American one. Three friends died instantly. One man lived. One died later.’

‘What happened next?’

‘Me? Airlifted to Kabul. My countrymen? They went in with gunships and lost another Mi-24 reducing some shithole to rubble. Now … It’s time you went home.’

What home?
Tom wanted to ask. The man was right though. Looking around, Tom realized the room was empty; he was the last.