Archangel (Mass Market Paperback) Page 9

  STOP

  'Play it again,' said Arsenyev. 'Not Ludmilla. The latter part.

  Through the armoured glass at Arsenyev's back Suvorin could see the ripple of the office lights reflected in Yasenevo's ornamental lake, and the massive floodlit head of Lenin, and beyond these, almost invisible now, the dark line of the forest, its edge serrated against the evening sky. A pair of headlights winked through the trees and disappeared. A security patrol, thought Suvorin, suppressing a yawn. He was happy to let Netto do the talking. Give the lad a chance.

  A black oilskin notebook that used to belong to JosefStalin...'

  'Fuck me,' said Arsenyev, softly, and his flabby face tautened.

  'The call was initiated this afternoon, at fourteenfourteen, by this man,' continued Netto, handing out two flimsy buff-coloured folders. 'Christopher Richard Andrew Kelso, commonly known as "Fluke".'

  Archangel

  'Now this is nice,' said Suvorin, who hadn't seen the photograph before. It was still glistening from the darkroom, and reeked of sodium thiosulphate. 'Where are we?'

  'Third floor, inner courtyard, opposite the entrance to Mamantov's staircase.'

  'So now we can afford an apartment in the House on the Embankment?' grumbled Arsenyev.

  'It's empty. Doesn't cost us a rouble.'

  'How long did he stay?'

  'Arrived at fourteen-thirty-two, colonel. Left at fifteen-seven. One of our operatives, Lieutenant Bunin, was then detailed to follow him. Kelso caught the metro at Borovitskaya, here, changed once, got out at Krasnopresnenskaya, and walked to a house here -' Netto again put his finger on the map '- in Vspolnyi Street. A deserted property. He made an illegal entry and spent approximately forty-five minutes inside. He was last reported here, heading south on foot along the Garden Ring. That was ten minutes ago.

  'What does that mean exactly? "Fluke"?'

  "A lucky stroke", colonel,' said Netto, smartly. "'An unexpected success."'

  'Sergo? Where's that damned coffee?' Arsenyev, immensely fat, had a habit of falling asleep if he didn't have caffeine every hour.

  'It's coming, Yuri Semonovich,' said a voice from the intercom.

  'Kelso's parents were both in their forties, sir, when he was born.'

  Arsenyev turned a tiny and astonished eye towards Vissari Netto. 'Why do we care about his parents?'

  'Well -' The young man wilted, stalled, appealed to Suvorin.

  'Kelso was a fluke,' said Suvorin. 'The joke. It's a joke.'

  'And that is funny?'

  They were spared by the arrival of the coffee, borne in by Arsenyev's male assistant. The blue mug said 'I LOVE NEW YORK' and Arsenyev raised it towards them, as if drinking their health. 'So tell me,' he said, blinking through the steam over the rim, 'about Mister Fluke.'

  'Born Wimbledon, England, nineteen fifty-four,' said Netto, reading from the file (he had done well, thought Suvorin, to get all this together in the space of an afternoon the lad was keen, you couldn't fault him on ambition). 'Father, a typical petit-bourgeois, a clerk in legal chambers; three sisters, all older; standard education; nineteen seventy-three, scholarship to study history at the college of St John, Cambridge; starred first class honours degree, nineteen seventy-six -Suvorin had already skimmed through all of this – the personal file dredged up from the Registry, a few newspaper cuttings, the entry in Who~- Who - and now he tried to reconcile the biography with this snatched picture of a figure in a raincoat leaving an apartment. The graininess of the picture had a pleasing, fifties feel: the man, glancing across the street, a cigarette in his mouth, had the appearance of a slightly seedy French actor playing a dodgy cop. Fluke. Does a name stick because it suits a man or does the man, unconsciously, evolve into his name? Fluke, the spoiled and lazy teenager, doted on by all these family women, who astonishes his teachers by winning a scholarship to Cambridge - the first in the history of his minor grammar school. Fluke, the carousing student who, after three years of no apparent effort, walks away with the best history degree of his year. Fluke, who just happens to turn up on the doorstep of one of the most dangerous men in Moscow -although, naturally, as a foreigner he would have felt

  invulnerable. Yes, one would have to be wary of this Fluke scholarship to Harvard, nineteen seventy-eight; admitted to Moscow University, under the "Students for Peace" scheme, nineteen eighty; dissident contacts - see annex 'A" - led to re-categorisation from "bourgeois-liberal" to "conservative and reactionary"; doctoral thesis published eighty-four, Power in the Land: The Peasantry of the Volga Region~ 191 7-22; lecturer in modern history, Oxford University, eighty-three to ninety-four; now resident in New York City; author of the Oxfbrd History of Eastern Europe, 1945-87; Vortex: The Collapse of the Soviet Empire, published ninety-three; numerous articles -'

  'All right, Netto,' said Arsenyev, holding up a hand. 'It's getting late. Did we ever make a pass at him?' This question was addressed to Suvorin.

  'Twice,' said Suvorin. 'Once at the University, obviously, in nineteen eighty. Again in Moscow in ninety-one, when we tried to sell him on democracy and the New Russia.-

  'And?'

  'And? Looking at the reports? I should say he laughed in our faces.'

  'He's a western asset, do we think?'

  'Unlikely. He wrote an article in the New Yorker - it's in the file - describing how the Agency and SIS both tried to sign him. Rather a funny piece, in fact.'

  Arsenyev frowned. He disapproved of publicity, on either side. 'Wife? Kids?'

  Netto jumped in again: 'Married three times.' He glanced at Suvorin, and Suvorin made a little 'go ahead' gesture with his hand: he was happy to take a back seat. 'First, as a student, Katherine Jane Owen, marriage dissolved, seventy-nine. Second, Irma Mik1~ailovna Pugacheva, married eighty-one -'He married a Russian?'

  'Ukrainian. Almost certainly a marriage of convenience. She was expelled from the University for anti-state activity. This is the beginning of Kelso's dissident contact. She was granted a visa in eighty-four.

  'So we blocked her entry into Britain for three years?'

  'No, colonel, the British did. By the time they let her in, Kelso was living with one of his students, an American, a Rhodes Scholar. Marriage to Pugacheva dissolved in eighty-five. She is now married to an orthodontist in Glamorgan.

  There is a file but I'm afraid I haven t -'Forget it,' said Arsenyev. 'We'll drown in paper. And the third marriage?' He winked at Suvorin. A real romeo!' 'Margaret Madeline Lodge, an American student -''This is the Rhodes Scholar?'

  'No, this is a different Rhodes Scholar. He married this one in eighty-six. The marriage was dissolved last year.'

  'Kids?'

  'Two sons. Resident with their mother in New York City.'

  'One cannot help but admire this fellow,' said Arsenyev, who, despite his bulk, had a mistress of his own in Technical Support. He contemplated the photograph, the corners of his mouth turned down in admiration. 'What's he doing in Moscow?'

  'Rosarkhiv are holding a conference,' said Netto, 'for foreign scholars.'

  'Feliks?'

  Major Suvorin had his right ankle swung up on to his left knee, his elbows resting casually on the sofa back, his sports jacket unbuttoned - easy, confident, Americanized: his style. He took a pull on his pipe before he spoke.

  'The words used on the telephone are ambiguous, obviously. The implication could be that Mamantov has this notebook, and the historian wishes to see it. Or the historian himself has the notebook, or has heard of it, and wishes to check some detail with Mamantov. Whichever is the case, Mamantov is clearly aware of our surveillance, which is why he cuts the conversation short. When is Kelso due to leave the Federation, Vissari, do we know yet?'

  'Tomorrow lunchtime,' said Netto. 'Delta flight to JFK, leaves Sheremetevo-2 at thirteen-thirty. Seat booked and confirmed.'

  'I recommend we arrange for Kelso to be stopped and searched,' said Suvorin. 'Strip-searched, it had better be -delay the flight if necessary - on suspicion of exporting material of historical
or cultural interest. If he's taken anything from this house in Vspolnyi Street, we can get it off him. In the meantime, we maintain our coverage of Mamantov.'

  A buzzer sounded on Arsenyev's desk; Sergo's voice.

  'There's a call for Vissari Petrovich.'

  'All right, Netto,' said Arsenyev. 'Take it in the outer office.' When the door was closed, he scowled at Suvorin, 'Efficient little bastard, isn't he?'

  'He's harmless enough, Yuri. He's just keen.

  Arsenyev grunted, took two long squirts from his inhaler, unhitched his belt a notch, let his flesh sag towards his desk. The colonel's fat was a kind of camouflage: a blubbery, dimpled netting thrown over an acute mind, so that while other, sleeker men had fallen, Arsenyev had safely waddled on - through the cold war (KGB chief resident in Canberra and Ottawa), through glasnost and the failed coup and the break-up of the service, on and on, beneath the armoured soft protective shell of his flesh, until now, at last, he was into the final stretch: retirement in one year, dacha, mistress, pension, and the rest of the world could go fuck its collective mother. Suvorin rather liked him.

  'All right, Feliks. What do you think?'

  'The purpose of the Mamantov operation,' said Suvorin, carefully, 'is to discover how five hundred million roubles were siphoned out of KGB funds, where Mamantov hid them, and how this money is being used to fund the anti-democratic opposition. We already know he bankrolls that red fascist mucksheet -'

  'Aurora -'- Aurora - if it now turns out he's spending it on guns as well, I'm interested. If he's buying Stalin memorabilia, or selling it, for that matter - well, it's sick, but -'

  'This isn't just memorabilia, Feliks. This - this is famous -there was a file on this notebook - it was one of "the legends of Lubyanka".'

  Suvorin's first reaction was to laugh. The old man couldn't be serious, surely? Stalin's notebook? But then he saw the expression on Arsenyev's face and hastily turned his laughter into a cough. 'I'm sorry, Yuri Semonovich - forgive me - if you take it seriously, then, of course, I take it seriously.'

  'Run the tape again, Feliks, would you be so good? I never could work these damned machines.'

  He slid it across the desk with a hairy, pudgy forefinger. Suvorin came over from the sofa and they listened to it together, Arsenyev breathing heavily, tugging at the thick flesh of his fat neck, which was what he always did when he scented trouble.

  '... a black oilskin notebook that used to belong to Josef Stalin...'

  They were still bent over the tape when Netto crept back in, his complexion three shades paler than usual, to announce he had bad news.

  FELIKS Stepanovich Suvorin, with Netto at his heels, walked back, grim-faced~ to his office. It was a long trek from the leadership suites in the west of the building to the operational block in the east, and in the course of it at least a dozen people must have nodded and smiled at him, for in the Finnish-designed, wood and white-tile corridors of Yasenevo, the major was the golden boy, the coming man. He spoke English with an American accent, subscribed to the leading American magazines and had a collection of modern American jazz, which he listened to with his wife, the daughter of one of the President's most liberal economic advisers. Even Suvorin's clothes were American - the button-down shirt, the striped tie, the brown sports jacket - each one a legacy of his years as the KGB resident in Washington.

  Look at Feliks Stepanovich!, you could see them thinking, as they struggled into their winter coats and hurried past to catch the buses home. Put in as number two to that fat old timer, Arsenyev, primed to take over an entire directorate at the age of thirty-eight. And not just any directorate, either, but RT - one of the most secret of them all! - licensed to conduct foreign intelligence operations on Russian soil. Look at him, the coming man, hurrying back to his office to work, while we go off home for the night...

  'Good evening to you, Feliks Stepanovich!'

  'So long, Feliks! Cheer up!'

  'Working late again, I see, comrade major!'

  Suvorin half-smiled, nodded, gestured vaguely with his pipe, preoccupied.

  The details, as Netto had relayed them, were sparse but eloquent. Fluke Kelso had left the Mamantovs' apartment at fifteen-seven. Suvorin had also left the scene a few minutes later. At fifteen-twenty-two, Ludmilla Fedorova Mamantova, in the company of the bodyguard, Viktor Bubka, was also observed to leave the apartment for her customary afternoon stroll to the Bolotnaya Park (given her confused condition, she had always to be accompanied). Since there was only one man on duty, they were not followed.

  They did not return.

  Shortly after seventeen hundred, a neighbour in the apartment beneath the Mamantovs' reported hearing prolonged, hysterical screams. The porter had been summoned, the apartment - with difficulty - opened and Madame Mamantov had been discovered alone, in her undergarments, locked inside a cupboard, through the door of which she had nevertheless managed to kick a hole using her bare feet. She had been taken to the Diplomatic Policlinic in a state of extreme distress. Both her ankles were broken.

  'This must be an emergency escape plan,' said Suvorin, as they reached his office. 'He's clearly had this up his sleeve for quite a while, even down to establishing a routine for his wife. The question is: what's the emergency?'

  He pressed the light switch. Neon panels stuttered into life. The leadership's side of the building had the view of the lake and the trees while Suvorin's office looked north, towards the Moscow ring road and the squat and crowded tower blocks of a housing estate. Suvorin threw himself into his chair, grabbed his tobacco pouch and swung his feet up on to the window sill. He saw Netto, reflected, coming in

  and closing the door. Arsenyev had given him a blasting, which wasn't really fair. If anyone was to blame, it was Suvorin, for sending Bunin after Kelso.

  'How many men do we have at Mamantov's apartment right now?'

  'Two, major.'

  'Split them. One to the Policlinic to keep an eye on the wife, one to stay in place. Bunin's to stick with Kelso. What's his hotel?'

  'The Ukraina.'

  'Right. If he's heading south down the Garden Ring he's probably on his way back. Call Gromov at the Sixteenth and tell him we want a full communications intercept on Kelso. He'll tell you he hasn't the resources. Refer him to Arsenyev. Have the authorisation papers on my desk within fifteen minutes.

  'Yes, major.'

  'Leave the Tenth to me.

  'The Tenth, major?' The Tenth was the archives branch.

  According to the colonel, there should be a file on this Stalin notebook.' Legend of the Lubyanka, indeed! 'I'll need to dream up some excuse to see it. Check on this place in Vspolnyi Street: what is it exactly? God, we need more men!'

  Suvorin banged his desk in frustration. 'Where's Kolosov?'

  'He left for Switzerland yesterday.'

  'Anybody else around? Barsukov?'

  'Barsukov's in Ivanovo with his Germans.'

  Suvorin groaned. This operation was running on paraffin and thin air, that was the trouble with it. It didn't have a name, a budget. Technically, it wasn't even legal.

  Netto was writing rapidly. 'What do you want to do with Kelso?'

  'Just continue to keep an eye on him.'

  'Not pick him up?'

  'For what exactly? And where do we take him? We have no cells. We have no legal basis to make arrests. How long's Mamantov been loose?'

  'Three hours, major. I'm sorry, I -' Netto looked close to tears.

  'Forget it, Vissi. It's not your fault.' He smiled at the young man's reflection. 'Mamantov was pulling stunts like that while we were in the womb. We'll find him,' he added, with a confidence he did not feel, 'sooner or later. Now off you go. I've got to call my wife.'

  After Netto had gone, Suvorin removed the photograph of Kelso from its folder and pinned it to the noticeboard beside his desk. Here he was, with so much else to do, on issues which really mattered - economic intelligence, biotechnology, fibre optics - reduced to worrying about whether and why Vladimir
Mamantov was after Stalin's notebook. It was absurd. It was worse than absurd. It was shaming. What kind of a country was this? Slowly, he tamped the tobacco in his pipe and lit it. And then he stood there for a full minute, his hands clasped behind his back, his pipe between his teeth, regarding the historian with an expression of pure loathing.

  ELIJKEKELSO LAY on his back, on his bed, in his room on the twenty-third floor of the Ukraina Hotel, smoking a cigarette and staring at the ceiling, the fingers of his left hand curled around the comforting and familiar shape of a quarter-bottle of Scotch.

  He hadn't bothered to take off his coat, nor had he turned on the bedside lamp. Not that he needed to. The brilliant white floodlights that lit the Stalinist-Gothic skyscraper shone into his room and provided a feverish illumination. Through the closed window he could hear the sound of the early evening traffic on the wet road far below. A melancholy hour this, he always thought, for a stranger in a foreign city - nightfall, the brittle lights, the temperature dropping, the office workers hurrying home, the businessmen trying to look cheerful in the hotel bars.

  He took another swig of Scotch, then reached over for the ashtray and balanced it on his chest, tapping the end of his cigarette into it. The bowl hadn't been cleaned properly. Still stuck to its dusty bottom, like a small green egg, nested a gobbet of Papu Rapava's phlegm.

  It had taken Kelso only a few minutes - the length of one short visit to the Ukraina's business centre and the time it took to flick through an old Moscow telephone directory -to establish that the house on Vspolnyi Street had indeed once been an Mrican embassy. It was listed under the Republic of Tunisia.

  And it had taken him only slightly longer to extract the rest of the information he needed - sitting on the edge of his hard and narrow bed, talking earnestly on the telephone to the press attache at the new Tunisian Embassy, pretending an intense interest in the booming Moscow property market and the precise design of the Tunisian flag.

  According to the press attache, the Tunisians had been offered the mansion on Vspolnyi Street by the Soviet government in 1956, on a short-term lease, renewable every seven years. In January, the ambassador had been notified that the lease would not be extended when it came up for renegotiation, and in August they had moved out. And in truth, sir, they had not been too sorry to go, no indeed, not after that unfortunate business in 1993 when workmen had dug up twelve human skeletons, victims of the Stalinist repression, buried beneath the pavement outside. No explanation for the eviction had been offered, but, as everyone knew, great swathes of state property were now being privatised in central Moscow and sold on to foreign investors; fortunes were being made.