Derek Lambert - The Red Dove

‘I don’t know. The shuttle, it’s a different concept. Soon we will be flying up and down into space just like jet pilots.’

‘But when will you stop?’

‘When you stop dancing,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s jive again and give them a treat.’

When they went to bed Sonya immediately fell asleep in his arms. After a few moments he, too, slept and dreamed about shooting stars burning themselves out in the darkness of infinity wherein lay the answer to all things, even equations.

At first she was a dove fluttering around a village square but chained, figuratively, to a cote. When she beat her wings in protest at her captivity she was also beating them against the mockery of the other doves. Then into the square came a young man, the Prince of Light. He and the dove danced a pas de deux in which he enticed her towards freedom, towards space. Her wingbeats grew more frantic until with a ringing chord of music, he severed her invisible ties. Pink spotlights bathed the spinning figure of Sonya Bragina as she was lifted on a trapeze towards the heavens.

‘The second act is our act,’ said Massey consulting the programme as the lights came on. ‘Let’s hope they get the flight path right.’

Sonya hadn’t been able to get him a ticket; hadn’t tried, Talin suspected. But Sedov was still in Moscow so Talin had given his ticket to Massey.

‘The audience don’t look as if they care one way or the other,’ replied Talin. One man at the end of their row was asleep. This wasn’t Moscow.

But the audience became more attentive in the second act. The stage was space; stars glittered, beams of light swept the heavens, shivering and deflecting when they touched. The Red Dove was now more incisively graceful in her solo, circling the stage in adagio movements, in orbit. Then from the wings sprang the Prince of Darkness.

‘He’s got to be an American,’ Massey whispered to Talin.

The Prince of Darkness gave chase. The beams of light became sharper, slicing through the star-shimmering darkness above the dancers. Lasers, thought Talin.

But the Red Dove was saved by the Prince of Light. In a crescendo of music he bore down on the Prince of Darkness who was hurled from orbit to drift eternally in space.

In the last act the dove returned to the village square to be welcomed by the other doves. She no longer minded being a prisoner: she knew what lay beyond the earth’s horizons. As she danced her last solo she gazed upwards and there in the firmament was a spaceship.

Massey and Talin were deeply moved; they, too, had been where the dove had been, looking down.

The audience responded cheerfully. But there was none of the feverish applause that the company might have expected in Moscow.

Talin went backstage because he knew Sonya would be despondent; he took Massey with him.

Sonya, sitting in front of a mirror removing her make-up, was certainly despondent, but angry with it. ‘Peasants,’ she said, the familiar dismissal of the unappreciative; an unfortunate expression, Talin always thought, because it dismissed half the citizens of the Soviet Union.

Sonya barely acknowledged Massey.

Talin put his hands on her bare shoulders. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘it was fantastic. Wait till you dance it in Moscow. And London and Paris and New York.’

She was mollified because she valued his opinion. ‘You really think it was good?’ and Massey, answering for Talin, said: ‘It was the best thing the Bolshoi has done since Spartacus. ’

For a moment the remark hung incongruously; Talin wasn’t sure why, but it contained a flawed note. The remark of a man who had done hurried homework?

Sonya said: ‘You’ve seen Grigorovich’s work, Gaspadeen Massey.’

A tiny pause? Or is it my imagination? In any event Massey answered convincingly enough: ‘Sure, I saw it in New York in 1979 when the Bolshoi toured the States,’ and Talin forgot his doubts.

In the foyer of the theatre, emptied now of ‘peasants’, Massey hesitated before leaving Talin. Almost shyly, he said: ‘We have a lot in common you and I, Nicolay. Did you know that I learned quite a lot about you in the States?’

Intrigued, Talin said: ‘What sort of things?’

‘Perhaps,’ Massey said quickly as Sonya approached, ‘you’d like to drop round to my apartment one day this week for a drink? Say Tuesday?’

‘I look forward to it,’ Talin said. Why not? After all the ballet had been all about freedom.

Depressed, Nicolay Vlasov examined the photographs of his children, two boys and a girl, on the wall of his study on Kutuzovsky. They seemed to be appealing to him to try to understand them. But their appeals had gone unheeded.

At least, Vlasov thought, I am not so hypocritical that I ask myself: Where did I go wrong? I know where I went wrong and, given my time again, I should probably do so again.

Because it had been written. He had been born a schemer and he would die one. A curse, a blessing, he knew not which. But his scheming had lost him his children and the respect of the stranger in his home, his wife.

Wherever he went suspicion accompanied him. It was with him now in the pink dossier on his desk marked ROBERT MASSEY. Only the faintest breath of it, true, and quite possibly unfounded. Just the same it had to be laid to rest.

What bothered Vlasov was not the arrival – and abrupt departure – of Brasack in Leninsk. The arrival of a CIA agent either to turn or kill Massey had always been on the cards. When Department V had put out a trace on the East German journalist before the killing the SSD, the East German political police, had gained access to his home; he was CIA all right and the SSD director in East Berlin had subsequently been summoned to Moscow to explain his lapse.

No, what bothered Vlasov was Massey’s burgeoning relationship with Talin. The chance meeting in the food store observed by the man known as the Hunter, the lunch in the canteen, the adjacent seats at the ballet… these were the sort of incidents that, by not assigning a minder to Massey, Vlasov had expected to hear about. If Massey was double-dealing then, unrestricted, he might give himself away.

But all the incidents had been perfectly logical. Massey and Talin obviously had a lot in common. Which was why, when Vlasov had acceded to Massey’s demand to return to space, he had decided to put him up there with Talin. Not next time, of course, but soon.

Perhaps that was what had ignited the flame of suspicion: Massey and Talin had anticipated his plans for them.

From the dossier Vlasov extracted Talin’s latest computer assessment. YOUTHFUL SIGNS OF REBELLION COMPLETELY SUBORDINATED. SUBJECT HAS DEVELOPED AS ADVENTUROUS BUT OBEDIENT SERVANT OF THE PARTY…

So he would let the relationship develop naturally. But, at the same time, keep it under scrutiny.

He stared at the photographs on the wall. They stared back at him, through him.

If I bring off the Vandenberg coup, Vlasov decided, then I shall retire. And I shall go and see the owners of those faces on the wall and explain. If I fail then the likes of Peslyak will be baying at my heels.

Phase 2. Relationship development, sow seeds of doubt.

Well I have developed the relationship, Massey thought as he lay on the bed in his apartment. I haven’t yet sowed doubt but I have intrigued Talin. Time to make a progress report.

And it was only then that Massey realised that he no longer had anyone to whom he could report; his only contact was dead.

In Leninsk he was a satellite thrust out of orbit to drift in a void. Like the Prince of Darkness.

The second Russian connection with Vandenberg was OUTPUT FROM THE AMERICANS.