Derek Lambert - The Red Dove

If everything went according to plan he was going to destroy their happiness. At times like this Massey had to sit down and reaffirm the reasons for what he was doing. The Book According to Reynolds. The President needs a coup to ensure his re-election: only if he is re-elected to bargain through strength can the West hope to survive Soviet aggression. And the coup itself: a spectacular that will both humiliate Russia and – the and was very important – reveal once and for all the full measure of Russia’s hostile intentions. According to Reynolds, that was.

Massey began to read.

Soul mates joined by a common ideology… he spreading the cause of Socialism in the heavens, she in the arts… both the physical and mental embodiment of the glorious spirit that has prevailed since the October Revolution…

Massey put down the magazine. Rubbish like that helped his re-affirmation.

Nevertheless, I am betraying Talin. Nonsense, he is an intelligent man capable of making up his own mind. I’m taking over where Reynolds left off, Massey thought.

He is a happy man. He has a wife whom he loves and his joy is travelling in space. He knows that space must not be violated, he knows there is a greater scheme of things.

How do I know that what I’m supposed to tell him is true? You don’t, but in this case the end indisputably justifies the means.

And my motives? Idealism. At least give yourself that. But compounded by selfishness, the desire to return to space. Well, of course, you could accept the Russian offer – AND HAVE YOUR THROAT CUT WHEN THEY DISCOVER THEY’VE BEEN DECEIVED.

To summarise, Massey thought, I have no choice. He parted the curtains. The windows were covered on the outside with frost patterns; it was still dark.

He lay down on the bed again and closed his eyes and the nightmares returned.

The banya was a relic of Tzarist indulgence. From the outside it was nondescript, a doorway in a row of leaning tenements painted in flaking yellow. Inside, the foyer was fashioned in marble the colour of old teeth but grand just the same. A flight of stairs covered in worn red carpet led down to the changing rooms.

Massey paid his entrance money, one rouble, to the woman at the cash desk and received in return a white towel and a bunch of birch twigs with which to beat the dirt from his own and others’ skins.

He changed and, draped in the towel, made his way into the bathhouse proper. The heat hit him a fierce blow as he entered; he closed the door and peered around. Steam scented with eucalyptus billowed around the chamber. Blinking the moisture from his eyelids, he saw that it was generated by firebricks in an oven; every so often a masochist threw a bucket of water on the bricks and more steam was discharged out of pipes snouting from the walls. The room was shaped like a small amphitheatre with benches rising on all sides. Massey assumed that it was hottest at the top.

He sat half way up. The wet heat seared his eyeballs, scalded his lungs. Around him other bathers were beating the dirt out of each other with their twigs. Massey sat and waited and endured.

The slip of paper making the appointment had been thrust in his hand beside the bookstall in the Ukraina. Just a time, midday, and the location of the banya. He had spun round but he was surrounded by the usual throng, indistinguishable from the crowd that had been there the night he arrived; any one of them could have passed on the message.

‘A barbaric custom.’ The voice issued from the steam on Massey’s left. ‘But part of our character.’

Massey wiped moisture from his eyes with his towel. The voice belonged to an elephant.

‘I can see from your expression that you would not want to beat me with birch twigs. I must admit there is a lot of me.’ A chuckle.

Could this great hulk of blubber be the contact?

Massey said: ‘I’ll beat you if you want but I’ve got a strong arm.’

‘Strength is everything,’ the fat man said inconsequentially. ‘But don’t worry, I don’t want to be beaten.’ Grappler’s hands gestured at the steam. ‘This is enough for me.’ He pointed at the other bathers. ‘Let them beat each other to death. But don’t misunderstand them…’ Had he said Massey or had it been a hiss of steam? ‘…it is not just the pain that they enjoy.’

‘What do they enjoy?’

‘You will see,’ wiping the sweat pouring from his face. ‘Are you English?’

‘American.’

‘I went to America once.’

‘What part?’

‘Texas.’

‘What part of Texas?’

‘An offshore island.’

‘Name?’

‘Padre Island. Even now I can remember the telephone number of the Padre Island National Seashore – 512 937 2621.’

The contact. Enough flesh there for two contacts. Despite everything Massey grinned.

Rybak said: ‘Come, the heat is getting to you. We must go.’ They stood up. Rybak gripped Massey’s arm, fingers like steel hooks. Bodies parted before him. Near the entrance he picked up a bucket and tossed water on to the firebricks. As steam hissed around them he said: ‘Do you have a message?’

‘Just tell them Phase Three starts tomorrow.’

‘Very well. We’ll meet in seven days at the same time at the chess boards in Gorky Park. Is this your first visit to a banya?’ as they made their way into the changing room.

‘First and last.’

‘It’s not so bad. Look.’ Rybak pointed to an area at one end of the changing room that Massey hadn’t noticed.

Men, young and old, fat and thin, were lounging in their towels playing chess and dominoes, laughing, talking, eating and drinking.

‘The banya is the great equaliser,’ Rybak said. ‘Even more so than Communism,’ he whispered. ‘Here you might meet a general literally rubbing shoulders with a peasant. And now you see what I meant about our enjoyment. It isn’t just the suffering in there,’ pointing towards the bathhouse, ‘it’s the blessed relief after it. A beer?’ he asked.

Massey nodded.

‘And something to eat. Some salt fish I think.’ He spoke to a male attendant who departed, returning with tankards of beer and a plate of fish as tough as shoeleather.

As they drank and chewed Rybak observed: ‘You look strong to me. Do you like to arm wrestle?’

‘No,’ Massey said.

‘Not even against a barrel of lard like me?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘I haven’t paid for the beer and fish yet. Shall we arm wrestle to see who pays?’

‘If you must.’

Elbow to elbow, forearm to forearm, hands clasped, they strained against each other on the floor. Three times Massey almost forced Rybak’s arm flat; three times it sprang back as though a spring had suddenly been released. Finally it was Massey who broke.

Rybak wobbled with merriment. ‘You pay,’ he said, popping the remains of the salt fish into his mouth and washing it down with the last of Massey’s beer.

Observing them from across the room where he was reading the latest spy thriller by Julian Semyonov, the Hunter thought: ‘If I ever tangle with that fat slob I shall have to watch my step.’

Nicolay Vlasov read the Hunter’s latest report in the back of the black Zil taking him from the Kremlin, where he had attended a Politburo meeting, to his apartment on Kutuzovsky.

The Zil occupied the centre of the darkened street, a Kremlin privilege. Occasionally the driver glanced in the rear-view mirror at the elegant passenger with the expensively barbered hair and fragile-looking skull. One crack with a blunt instrument and the bone would shatter like china. Greenish eyes glittered from the mirror as though Vlasov had heard his thoughts. The driver shivered.