Gerald Seymour: At Close Quarters

The ambassador and Jane sat far back in the rear seat upholstery, while Holt shared the front with Valeri.

Holt reckoned that the chauffeur was about his own age, He had expected an old retainer, had not anticipated that His Excellency's driver would be a smartly turned out young man with the sort of hair cut that any limousine man in Mayfair would boast. It was still dark when they pulled away from the embassy courtyard onto the riverside across from the Kremlin. There was no traffic. He had learned that at the best of times cars were in high demand and short supply, even at rush hour the streets were good for a pretty fast run, but at this time they were empty. The pavements showed life.

The dribble of a night shift heading for the Metro tunnels, and street cleaners and the office advance guard appearing at street level, making darting runs across the wide streets.

He had barely spoken to Jane when they had met while they waited for the ambassador. Mercifully the man had been punctual, striding down the steps from the main door with that unnecessary glance at his watch to demonstrate that he was on time. He hadn't knowr how to communicate or what to say. So there was a problem, last night's problem, and he didn't want to talk about it, not in whispers.

He had known Jane for two weeks under three years.

Met at the School. Met in the way that most young men meet the girl who will one day become their wife – one seat free at a canteen table, and a curled gammon steak that needed disguising, and a request for the tomato ketchup, please. Two young people, both older than the average students around them, the one shuffling the tomato ketchup and the other pushing the salt and pepper. What a meeting – the young man thinking that the girl was quite beautiful, and the young girl thinking that he looked interesting. The young man able to say, quietly and without conceit, that he had done well in the Civil Service entrance examinations, and then well in the Diplomatic Corps entrance aptitude tests. She had said, looking straight at him, that she was just a secretary in Whitehall, nothing specific, and that she was damn lucky to have been plucked out of the pool and given the opportunity to learn Russian. More time together, and he'd thought she was struggling sometimes in the tutorials, and the relationship started when he made a habit of calling round at her Earls Court bed-sit to give her a hand with the essay that was the fortnightly chore. Fingers touching, mouths meeting, the unhurried building of something lovely. Weeks and months of learning to share lives, work and fun. A young until who was determined to be something special at his chosen career, and a young girl who was just a secretary in Whitehall. Right, no messing, he'd been pretty shattered by the marks she had won at the end of the course – not quite at his overall level, though pretty close – but young Holt had never questioned how it was that a girl who was just a secretary won marks that were pretty damned close to his own…

"How do you like Moscow, Mr Holt?"

"Very well indeed, thank you, Valeri."

His thoughts drifted away from Jane, away from him being hopeless in bed with her, away from the deception. His thoughts were on the ambassador's driver. Be a chosen man, wouldn't he? Not chosen by the British, chosen by the Organ of State Security. Nice looking fellow, but he'd large ears, and they'd be well rinsed.

They would hear everything said in the car. Holt wondered how it was done. Did the men from KGB call by on a Friday evening after Valeri's shift finished for a quick resume on what he'd learned that week while piloting the Rolls? Did he write out a little report every Saturday morning before he took his small kids to dancing class or the ice rink? He was far gone, concerned now with whether Valeri had a large wife, or an extra large wife, whether he was on Lady Armitage's list for tights with gusset.

They travelled in the fast lane, where the government officials were driven. Big blasts on the power horn to keep clear the path of Her Britannic Majesty's ambassador. There were men with brushes, there were old women with bundles of sticks; the street and pavement cleaning had started.

Holt could have cried, he felt so bloody miserable.

But how could she have told him? Of course she couldn't have bloody told him.

At the airport there was already a slow-moving confusion of queues. Valeri deposited their luggage at the rear of a queue and checked with Holt when they would be back, and the time and number of the return flight.

He wished them well, and said the Crimea would be beautiful after the Moscow winter. He had good cause to be pleased. With the big man away he'd have time on his hands, the chance to burnish the bonnet of the Roller with a leather. Holt carried the ambassador's briefcase, and Jane carried her own, and Holt hoped to hell that there wouldn't be a foul-up with the tickets.

There wasn't.

Nor were there special facilities for the ambassador and his party. It was the way he liked things done.

Didn't want a brace of officials there to shake his hand andwish him well. That's what he'd said to Holt. On such a trip he could sense the mood of the nation, and the temperature could not be taken in a VIP lounge.

They took their place in the queue. The ambassador lit his pipe and unfolded yesterday's Times from London.

Holt craved a cigarette, the prohibition could not last.

And Jane touched his arm. They had been in the queue for five minutes and not moved an inch.

"Do you know the hoary old one about queuing here?

If you do you're still going to hear it again. Ivan was in a queue for two hours trying to buy a pair of winter boots, and he snorts to the people around him that he's had enough, and he's going down to the Kremlin, and he's going to shoot old Gorbachov, and that's going to be his protest about the inefficiency of the Soviet Union. off Ivan goes, and three hours later he's back. He's asked if he's indeed shot Comrade Gorbachov. 'No,'

Ivan says, 'I couldn't be bothered to wait, the queue was too long.' Like it?"

Holt managed a small smile. Jane squeezed his arm, as if to tell him to calm down, as if to say that a queue at Vnukovo wasn't his fault.

"Certainly hoary, Miss Canning," the ambassador intoned "I have heard that anecdote told in turn of Messrs Brezhnev, Chernenko, Andropov and now Gorbachov. But I think that I am safe in stating that it was never said out loud during the revered leadership of uncle Joe Stalin… Don't fret, Holt, it won't go without us"

The blockage at the head of the queue was removed.

A man was shoved aside, hoarse with complaint and waving a ticket. Jane said it meant the flight was overbooked, and they were shedding the least important. A sour-faced woman behind the counter examined their tickets, looking at them as if to ascertain whether they could possibly be forgeries. They were checked once more by a bored militiaman at the gate, who then took an age studying Holt's and Jane's Foreign Ministry permission to leave the Moscow environs zone. They went on to the security barrier. Two more militiamen, an X-ray machine, and a metal detector arch to pass under. Jane had a camera, a palm-of-the-hand-sized Olympus that she took out of her handbag before it went on the belt. The ambassador's spectacle case, attracted the flashing red light and earned him a cursory body patting.

They were in the departure lounge. Holt and Jane went off in search of coffee for themselves and an orange juice, diluted, for the ambassador.

"Bit heavy, wasn't it, the security?"

"They've their quota of nasties just like the rest of us." He'd noticed, since reaching Moscow, how much she enjoyed filling him in on insider detail. Couldn't have happened in London, when he was doing his initial FCO time and she was just a secretary in Whitehall.