Stephen Burke: The Reluctant Contact

‘Are you the one I’m waiting for?’ said Yuri. ‘That’s what you said to me, remember? Is that what you said to Semyon?’

Yuri saw from her expression that Anya realised she had been caught. Catherine looked back and forth between the two of them, not understanding any of what was going on.

‘You are the one in his notebook, aren’t you?’ said Yuri. ‘Eagle.’

‘What notebook?’ said Anya.

She glanced towards the door, as though she might make a run for it. But Catherine was leaning against it, blocking her way.

‘Before you say anything, please don’t give me another lie,’ said Yuri. ‘I’m not sure I could take it. All right?’

Anya looked him in the eye, then turned away before she spoke.

‘I am not the only one who has lied. Am I?’ she said. ‘He thought Semyon might be my contact. I don’t know why. But that’s why I asked him. I had already waited weeks.’

‘Who are you talking about? Who is “he”?’ asked Yuri.

‘I think you already know the answer to that,’ said Anya. ‘Don’t you?’

Yuri nodded his head, and glanced at Catherine before answering.

‘Timur,’ he said. ‘He was the one who thought the contact might be Semyon.’

Catherine had been an objective observer up to this point, but now he saw her coming to the unwelcome realisation that she was involved after all.

‘Yes,’ said Anya. ‘Neither of us could understand why the contact had not been in touch with me before then. They were the ones who arranged my trip here. So it was strange. At first we thought something had gone wrong. Then when the boats stopped coming, we thought it must be someone who was already here in Pyramiden. Semyon was working as an informer for Timur, but he didn’t trust him. He said that anyone who was willing to inform for one side is capable of doing it for the other.’

‘So you asked Semyon if he was your contact. And what did he say?’

Anya shook her head. ‘He said yes, he was the one. He misunderstood. He thought I liked him.’

Yuri pictured the little Latvian standing in front of this beautiful woman, thinking all his dreams had come true at once. Of course, he had said yes. He remembered Semyon’s file in Timur’s office. All those reports he had gotten Semyon to do on Pyramiden’s residents. He was looking for the contact, trying to figure out who it might be. The repeated and apparently innocuous conversations between Semyon and Grigory made sense now. Timur had seen something in Grigory that made him suspect him. Or perhaps he had wanted it to be him. The conversations between the two men had revealed nothing, so he had finally turned his gaze full circle on to his own informant.

‘Let me guess, you arranged to meet Semyon at the whaling house,’ said Yuri. ‘Whose idea was it to go there?’

‘How the hell did you know that?’ asked Anya.

‘I know a lot of things, now,’ said Yuri. ‘I am not as stupid as I used to be.’

‘It was his idea, Semyon’s. He said he used to go there sometimes to get away from everyone for a while. I can’t see why. It’s barely standing, and completely freezing.’

‘All right, so you met him there. Then what happened?’

Anya made a face, as though the question brought back unpleasant memories.

‘Then it all went wrong,’ she said. ‘Once we were inside he pushed the door shut, and then he tried to touch me. I told him to stop; that I had no interest in him in that way. He got angry, and started shouting. I said all I wanted from him was his help to get me to the west, as arranged.’

‘I bet he wasn’t expecting that,’ said Yuri.

Anya nodded. ‘No, he wasn’t. He called me names. Said I was a traitor to my country. And worse things than that. He threatened to inform on me to Timur.’

‘But that didn’t scare you, did it?’ asked Yuri. ‘Because Timur already knew all about you, didn’t he?’

Anya did not answer. She caught Catherine’s eye, but they both looked away quickly. The English woman shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and looked even more confused.

‘Did you tell Semyon that you and Timur were the best of pals?’ asked Yuri. ‘That would have made him keep his hands to himself.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t tell him. If he was not my contact, then I had already told him too much. I just wanted to get out of there. But he wouldn’t let me leave. He said he was going to blackmail me… and not for money. He finally let me out when I promised to meet him again.’

Yuri’s late-night conversation with the Lithuanians made sense now. They’d accused him of being the one that Semyon was trying to blackmail. They had gotten the wrong impression too; that the Latvian had come across some information that would enable him to extort money. But it was sex he was after. Semyon had not made a report to Timur, because he thought he could get Anya into bed by one means or another. Informing on her to the KGB man would have put an end to that possibility. He did not realise the game he was getting involved in was much bigger than that. It cost him his life. After hearing Anya’s story, Yuri had even less sympathy for his former assistant.

‘And is that why you killed him?’ said Yuri. ‘Because he was blackmailing you? Or because he knew too much about you, and you were afraid who else he might tell?’

‘I thought that was an accident?’ said Anya, her voice raised in indignation. ‘How could you think that I did something like that?’

Yuri shrugged. Right now he did not know what she was capable of.

‘He was killed,’ said Yuri. ‘I think because of what you told him.’

‘Well, I did not do it,’ said Anya. ‘Thank you for thinking I did.’

‘Timur then,’ said Yuri. ‘Did he do it?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Anya. ‘You will have to ask him that.’

Yuri caught a sharp glance from Catherine. She appeared shaken by the turn in the conversation.

‘Semyon wasn’t a spy,’ said Yuri. ‘He was just an ambitious little shit.’

Anya nodded that she knew this, and she appeared to feel some tinge of guilt over his death. Perhaps she had not drawn the short straw at the school after all, and had volunteered to attend his funeral.

‘Did you really believe it was an accident?’ asked Yuri. ‘It was a pretty convenient one for you if it was.’

Anya shrugged. ‘It seemed strange to me at the time, all right. But everyone said it had happened that way, so I thought that it must have.’

‘Trust your instincts,’ said Yuri. ‘You will get into less trouble that way. I am trying to learn the same lesson. And then you thought your contact might be me. Let me guess – because I sabotaged my own system to keep my job.’

Anya nodded, and he thought he saw a flash of remorse in her eyes.

‘It was Timur’s idea. I just did what he told me to do. But with you, I thought he might be right. I’d seen you looking at me for weeks, like you had something to say to me. You even came into my classroom to fix something that wasn’t broken.’

Yuri could see how they had gotten the wrong idea. It seemed he was not so different from Semyon after all; he was just trying to get her into bed too. He paused, trying to put all the pieces together. They still did not make sense.

‘How long did it take you to figure out I was not your contact either?’ asked Yuri.

‘Not long. You made it pretty clear what you were after. Timur still believed it might be you, even though I told him I was sure you weren’t the one. He made me put a listening device in your room. We have been giving him a good show for all these months.’

Catherine started coughing on the other side of the room.

‘Where is it?’ asked Yuri. ‘The microphone.’