John Sweeney - The Useful Idiot

Jones studied Haywood’s one good eye.

“Winnie makes extra money singing this and that at parties and the like. She tells me she did a gig, that’s what them jazz singers call an engagement these days, about a year back at a dacha not far from Moscow for the German military attaché, Verbling. Lots of beautiful girls there, as usual for Russia. Lots of beautiful boys, too. Lots and lots of beautiful boys.”

“So?”

“Now Winnie, she likes boys.”

Jones said nothing.

“So Winnie ends up going to bed with a boy at Verbling’s party and he makes some pillow talk. Winnie’s boy says that Verbling doesn’t just like boys, he loves them. As in, he loves going to bed with them. The Cheka are very happy to cater for his tastes. Word is that the Germans are paying the Russians a lot of money so that they can test their new tanks without any of the western powers knowing anything about it. So Verbling and his friends get the pick of all the Russian boys they want.”

“What’s this to do with Ilver?”

“Winnie’s boy, he swings both ways. Winnie keeps on seeing him. Turns out Winnie ends up sharing her boy with Verbling.”

“Not at the same time?”

“No, leastways, I don’t think so. And Winnie also finds out that he is sharing the boy with an Englishman who works at the embassy.”

“Ilver?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That doesn’t mean that Ilver informs for the Cheka.”

“No, it sure doesn’t. But Verbling has something on him. If Ilver doesn’t share what he knows with Verbling, he might get into trouble.”

“Attercliffe gave me a photograph of a German-Soviet tank research programme. I told Ilver.”

“You told Ilver you got the photo from Attercliffe?”

“Attercliffe didn’t tell me not to. Not when he handed it over to me. I didn’t know.”

“Attercliffe is in the Lubyanka.”

Jones bowed his head. “I know. I feel so…” He searched for the right phrase “…so wretchedly guilty.”

“Red and Brown, they keep it quiet but they stick together.”

Jones sighed. “I told Ilver about the film, that I had a film reel shot in Ukraine of famine victims. I asked him to get it to London.”

“To Verbling, that information is worth ten boys. The Cheka will be pleased.”

“Ilver works for the British embassy, for Christ’s sake. I had no idea.”

Low cloud scudded across a half-moon, casting their world into a greater darkness.

“You didn’t know,” said Haywood. “We didn’t know about Ilver until we started asking around. But it’s not good news about the film. They’ll want to know who shot it. They’ll suspect Max.”

“Where is he?”

“He should be here.”

“Is there anything I can do to make amends?”

“Nothing. We know the risks, Max most of all. It’s a volunteer army we’ve got here.”

On the other side of the flat roof, a worker, soot on his face, tumbled through a gap in the chimneys and dropped down lightly. Both men started – but Jones was quicker, his right hand open, his left curled into a hard fist, closing in on the intruder.

“V chem delo?” Jones demanded What’s going on? His voice was tight, requiring an explanation, and a quick one too. He raised his fist. The answer had better be good.

The worker lifted off his hat, revealing a great lick of glossy black hair.

“Evgenia?”

“I hated the thought of missing one of Winnie’s parties. Too many watchers out tonight, so I made my way here through a different entrance.”

“Over the roof?”

“A true English gentleman would give the newly arrived lady at a party a drink, not question her about how she got here.”

“I’ve told you a thousand times, I’m Welsh.”

“The drink?”

“Let’s go inside,” suggested Haywood.

“Wait,” said Evgenia. “Something bad’s happened.”

“We know about Hitler becoming Chancellor,” said Jones. “That’s old news.”

There was ice in her dark eyes. “I know that, idiot.” She hesitated, before going on, “The Americans are going to recognise the Soviet Union.”

“But Roosevelt isn’t going to be inaugurated until March,” said Jones. “No change until then.”

“Professor Pig-iron has written his report for the State Department. It heavily recommends that the American transition team take urgent steps to recognise.”

“Who told you that?”

“Duranty, of course. He got it from Dr Limner. This means our ‘roof’ has gone.”

Jones didn’t get it.

“Roof, sonny,” Haywood explained. “Krysha. I told you. It means protection, cover, insurance policy. And it’s just been torn up.”

Inside, the party was getting into full swing. They went in from the cold and Jones found Evgenia a glass and poured two fingers of vodka which she knocked back in one. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she said, “Climbing over roofs is thirsty work. More.” He poured another while Winnie started to hum, soft and low. Soon the hum had turned into a whistle, and soon after that her whistling had turned into song. Winnie’s voice lifted the room: husky, sensual, bitter-sweet.

Jones knew the tune well enough. Back home, they called it Mack The Knife. No sooner had he made the connection, Winnie switched from German to English, and the song of a clever murderer who hid his crimes held the room in rapt attention:

Evgenia sat down on a chair, her head to one side, the vodka in her glass turning by a trick of the red spotlight into blood. As the song continued, she raised her glass to Jones, who nodded back as coolly as he could pretend.

There was no better audience in the world, perhaps, to understand the heft of those words, the clever, unstated implication that lay behind them. When Winnie finished, there was a long, wistful silence, one which broke into a storm of applause, the stamping of feet and catcalls. Moments later, Beal lifted his sax, and couples hit the dance floor as a buzz of conversation took off.

This party was far, far poorer than the spectaculars thrown by the Soviets or the wild nihilism at the Metropol – but all the better for it. There was some awful urgency about it, too, for the people gathered here had all heard the news from Berlin. They knew the context, the intricate threads that had led to this knot being tied between the German people and the man with the small moustache, and they feared its consequence. They knew, too, that Herr Hitler had been helped to power by the man here in the Kremlin, the one with the bigger moustache, and that bode well for none of them. More than anything, they needed release, in alcohol, in the easy lie of each other’s bodies.

Haywood raised a hand and called for silence. “I’m a country boy from out West, born in Salt Lake City, back in ’69. My old pa, he was a rider for the Pony Express. He died when I was only three, sick as a dog from being worked too hard. So I never had that much education. But I’ve always loved poetry, man and boy. Here’s a new poem, by one of Russia’s best, Osip Mandelstam. He’s kind of an honorary Wobblie. It’s called… never mind what’s it’s called. I’m going to read it out and then all of you are going to forget this ever happened.”

Holding a piece of flimsy typewritten paper in his hand, the one-eyed man recited the poem in his beautiful gravelly tones. Its subject was a man in the Kremlin, a killer. It closed:

The poem was received in silence.

Beal was the first to recover. Soon he began to lift the room by playing a Cab Calloway number. Beal was very good with his sax and Jones fleetingly regretted hitting him quite so hard on the jaw that time he had started a fight in the Metropol. With the music soaring around him, Jones asked Evgenia for a dance with an awkwardness just this side of pitiable. She smiled, mockingly, but did not say no. Soon they were locked in a slow dance.