Derek Lambert - The Red Dove

‘Our lives have always been arranged, you know that. And let me assure you that it’s not so different in the West. Lives are regulated just as methodically there but the people don’t realise it: they believe they are masters of their own destiny. But they still set their alarms for seven, catch the eight-twenty train, leave the office at five-thirty, switch on television at seven-forty-five and go on vacation every August. Life is a timetable, Shakespeare knew that. All we can do is enjoy the ride in between the stops.’

‘I’ve never heard you talk so much,’ Talin remarked. ‘You must be nervous.’

‘I’m just telling you not to let our version of the timetable interfere with your feelings for Sonya.’ Sedov zipped up his parka. ‘Personally I think I instilled a little humour into the situation. Imagine a general acting as a go-between.’ He stuck out his hand. ‘Well, I must be off.’

‘To report on the success of the mission to the Comrade General?’

‘To buy a bottle of vodka to celebrate your engagement,’ Sedov said.

They shook hands and walked into the street and went their separate ways in the cold bright sunshine.

The swan died. The curtain fell. The audience erupted.

In his box in the great red and gold well of the theatre Talin watched the audience clapping and cheering. Sedov should have been with him: nothing was arranged here.

Beneath him a stout woman dressed in grey was crying; her husband, a balding man in a black suit and open-neck white shirt, put his arm round her.

The Bolshoi, the gold domes of the Kremlin, wooden cathedrals in the countryside, dachas, Tzarist treasures, icons… they were all the scourge of the Party publicist trying to accommodate the decadent past in the present. The publicist’s mistake was in trying; the extremes and contradictions were an entity, part of the exquisite torment of Russia.

In the front stalls they were on their feet, these discriminating judges. If they departed after a mere couple of encores then the ballerina might as well retire to teach dancing in Archangel. Tonight Talin lost count of the encores for Bragina who, according to his companions in the box, was comparable with Pavlova. Her arms were full of flowers.

Talin excused himself from the box; outside he drank a glass of pink champagne in which a glacé cherry bobbed like a cork. Communism! He fetched his coat from the cloakroom and in the street, beneath the Quadriga of Apollo, hailed a cab and told the driver to take him to the Georgian restaurant where he had reserved a table for two.

Three quarters of an hour later she joined him; she wore a white gold-threaded dress cut low – for her that was – and her shining blonde hair was loose, which was also unusual, so that he wondered if she had sensed that he was going to propose. Worse, if she had been told. Could the whole relationship have been set up from the beginning? Had she known all along? Angry with himself, Talin thrust aside such suspicions. This was a day for gossamer, not cobwebs. He told the waiter to bring the champagne he had ordered.

‘You’re very extravagant.’

But she was smiling. She must know the reason for the extravagance. Stop it!

The cork popped, the champagne fizzed; expertly the waiter, wearing black jacket and drooping bow-tie, poured it and replaced the bottle in the ice bucket. Several people stared. Talin was rarely recognised alone, Sonya occasionally, betrayed by the mole on her cheek; together they attracted attention as though they had stepped out of a magazine page. Twenty years ago, reflected Talin, the only couples photographed in the Press would have been workers on an assembly line or a combine harvester; no longer – today a few stars were allowed to glitter.

‘Would you like to order now?’

She nodded, watching the bubbles spiral to the surface of her glass of champagne. Waiting!

He called the waiter who handed them a menu. The restaurant was ordinary, its only concession to style a few silk screens, but the food was good, if expensive, prepared exclusively for tourists and the Muscovite élite. Such blatant class-consciousness was part of the unique Georgian approach: even their graft was arrogantly obvious. They ordered a dish made out of Georgian grass, lamb shashlik and Kinzmarauli wine.

On the table the waiter placed a carnation flown from Tbilisi. The set-up! Talin drank more champagne inwardly cursing the First Deputy Commander-in-Chief and Oleg Sedov.

She said: ‘You don’t seem in a very good mood, Nicolay.’

‘I’m jealous,’ he said, ‘of all the men looking at you.’

It was true that they were looking at her. So they might. With her high cheek bones and her assurance, which was mistaken for aloofness, she looked unattainable, and yet at the same time she exuded sensuality and Talin had a good idea what form the men’s fantasies took when they glanced slyly at her. It was not true that he was jealous.

His reactions, however, would have been more extreme had he known what the man recalling a photograph of Sonya on an Ilyushin 62 airliner high above the Atlantic was thinking at that moment.

Robert Massey was wondering whether such a girl was capable of forestalling the plot to subvert Talin.

Reynolds had shown him two photographs to memorise, Sonya Bragina and Oleg Sedov. Reynolds believed that these were the two Russians most likely to loosen any hold Massey might obtain over Talin.

Remembering the black and white photograph of Sonya Bragina – like a Hollywood casting photograph from the thirties – Massey could, in her case, believe it. The beauty spot on her cheek did nothing to disguise the strength in the set of her eyes and mouth. Ballet graces cast in steel.

The pictures of Sedov had been more enigmatic. Massey had detected loneliness in his eyes. According to the terse CIA biography he was married but after a child, a son, had been stillborn his wife had suffered a breakdown from which she had never recovered; she was believed to be a patient in a clinic among the VIPs’ summer dachas to the west of Moscow.

A stewardess stopped beside Massey’s seat with a trolley bearing Russian champagne, Stolichnaya vodka, Kinzmarauli wine, Long John whisky, amber beads, lacquer boxes, beaming wooden dolls and jars of caviar glistening in the cabin lights. Massey had been steered away from hard liquor but, hell, he wasn’t being totally dried out; his hand hovered over the Long John, picked up the vodka.

The woman with the blue rinse sitting beside him bought a jar of caviar, confiding: ‘I’ve never tasted it, but it looks like blackberry jam.’ If the woman, a member of the same package deal as Massey, wanted a conversation she was out of luck; Massey had too many thoughts to contend with.

He went to the bathroom and, while washing his hands, glanced in the mirror. He surprised himself. His eyes were clear, his skin, although prematurely lined here and there, was healthy, even his thick moustache seemed to have a gloss to it. His face was… jaunty, that’s what it was. The face of a man with a purpose who had, for the moment, forgotten his doubts about the means to the end.

When he returned to his seat the woman said: ‘Have you ever been to Russia before?’ and Massey said: ‘Why, is that where we’re going?’

She took his hand and kissed it and said: ‘Of course I will, Nicolay.’

Happiness expanded inside him but didn’t quite banish the doubt. ‘Did you know I was going to ask you?’

‘I guessed.’

‘Only guessed?’

She frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘No one told you?’

She let go of his hand. ‘How would anyone know?’ Enlightenment dawned. ‘You told Sedov first?’

‘I told him this morning,’ on the defensive.

‘Always Sedov,’ she said bitterly. ‘You even share your marriage proposal with him. Do you intend to share the marriage itself with him?’