Gerald Seymour - Kingfisher

'How easy 1 It was going to work. The whole thing was going to work. He wanted to shout, to yell the message. David and Rebecca and Isaac, they'd show the bastards. Show them all.

Isaac's mother was waiting, as he had told her to, outside the Savings Bank nearest to their home.

She was a small, sparrow- sized woman, and the fines on her face were devoid of relief. The boy had not explained, given her no reason for her presence there, just told her to bring the payment book. A hard and suffering time she had had, with money not easy to come by; it had been grafted for, worked for and collected With a miser's hand. And he had said he would need most of the deposit that had increased at such pitiful speed over the previous thirty years. He had told her that David and Rebecca's mothers would repay her in part, and she had thought that she barely knew these other persons who were families of her son's friends. But something in the boy's looks had stopped her from remonstrating, and so she now stood and waited for him.

Two per cent per annum they paid – not a way to get rich, not a way that people could lift themselves from the bog of their lives. But what alternative was there? What else could one do with one's money? When he came Isaac took her arm, kissed her on the cheek and together they took their place in the queue. A bright, airy interior. Lace curtains and flowers on the table where the customers could sit and prepare their paperwork. Even Lenin, in his wall portrait, seemed content, as he looked the length of the bank across to the photograph of the Ukrainian General Secretary of the Party. At the counter, like a ventriloquist's doll, his mother spoke while Isaac a pace behind her primed the old lady's ear as to how much she should withdraw. It was time-consuming but without difficulty, and they maintained a punctilious politeness to the girl, for she could easily hinder them if they aggravated her. And they were Jews, so it was easy to offend.

When the money had passed to his mother and on to Isaac, he said, ' I cannot tell you why, but you will know by tomorrow night, and you must have courage, the courage of our people.

Whatever happens you must be brave. Do not bow to them. I will not be home tonight. Do not ask why; be brave.'

There was no emotion displayed by the old lady as she stepped out on to the street again. She walked away with a brisk and sturdy step.

And he had the money in his pocket. A tight wad of rolled, crisp banknotes, and he was hurrying for the bus that would take him back to the centre of Kiev and the Aeroflot offices. So he had done his part; they could board the plane that would lift off in twenty-three hours. But had David the guns? Would Rebecca secure access for them? And when would Moses break, when would Moses talk?

Yevsei Allon could barely believe his luck.

First the call by telephone to the freight office, and his being told by the Under Manager that there was a personal message for him, and not to take long because the line carried official business. The voice of the girl that he remembered from school, and who had been too haughty then to acknowledge him, the suggestion that they should meet and talk about the old days in the classroom, the little laugh that mingled with the static of the poor connection, and his thinking of his night classes, and not daring to mention them. They would meet at the subway entrance that was near the small church of Saint Sophia.

Before he had left the airport at the end of the day-shift Yevsei had spent ten full minutes in the washroom, scrubbing his hands and lathering the hard public utilities soap on his face. He wetted and then combed the short hair on his head till the parting was straight and exact, and he had looked at himself in the mirror, and the man who waited behind him to use the basin had quipped, 'You'll need more than soap and a comb to please her.' He'd blushed, crimson over his whitened face, and mumbled an answer before running for the bus.

They had had coffee after they met, sitting at a table away from the bar where the voices of other customers were reduced to a background drone. The girl listened to him as he grew in confidence, and she had asked him about his job, what he did at the airport, and they had talked of their teachers in the low voices of conspiracy and of their friends, and demolished them all.

Her white teeth had flashed when he made his jokes, and she had thrown back her head, so that the long black hair trailed away from the slightness of her neck. He could see the shape of her breasts and the outline of her waist till there was a tightness and a sweat inside the ill- fitting trousers that he cursed himself for having chosen to wear that morning. Too much really to believe in. On his way to the toilet he'd stumbled, banging his foot against the leg of the table, rattling the cups. Then he'd scrabbled in his pocket for the kopecks that he needed for the machine, and for the sachet that he would want when the light faded.

She took him in the early evening to the sandbank of the Dneiper, and they swam in the great river that flows north to south through the city. She was prepared, and wearing a one-piece bathing suit that had been concealed under her dress, he in the blue underpants that bulged and heaved in spite of the cold drift of water round his lower belly. When he touched her in the water, trying to pretend it was an accident, she had not moved away as the other girls did, and when she laughed it was with him, not at him. There were others there, naturally, because it was a warm evening and the authorities prided themselves on the cleanliness of the river, the way they had been able to stave off pollution from the water artery of an industrialized city of more than two million inhabitants. But she seemed oblivious to them, allowing no intruders in the private oasis she was creating for the man who worked at Kiev airport and who had access to the tarmac and the planes.

The parks are numerous in the city, putting those of London and Paris and Frankfurt and Rome to shame. Some are ornamental, with laid out flower beds where the elderly go, others little more than enclosed spaces of bushes and trees where the grass has been permitted to grow, and there are paths that can lead far from the noise of voices. It was to such a place that they walked after the river. His trousers showed a dark and damp stain at the seat from his sodden pants and she, still encased in her costume, hid the shivers she felt. But her trembling was not from any sharp wind, but of what must happen that the guns would go on board the plane; and he mistook the shaking of her hand for an excitement for which he believed he was responsible.

The place they found was some way from the life of the city, hidden and enclosed by undergrowth, and she said to him, 'Don't look, but I can't wear this costume. I'll catch my death if I keep these damp things against my skin.' She had twisted away from where he sat and turned her back on him, and reached behind her to pull down the zip fastener of the dress till it was clear of her shoulders. More contortions and the garment was hanging, straps free, at her waist. Hands now under the skirt of her dress, and the wriggling before it was free and she reached up again to pull the dress back into position. But the zip remained loose and he could see, suntanned by the weather, the knotted outline of her backbone.

'Why don't you take yours off?' she said, matter of fact, as though it were everyday, nothing special.

Though he could feel the clamminess of his pants against his skin he said, ' I'm all right. I think they've just about dried.' There was a huskiness in his voice. The sort of thing the men at work talked about in the canteen during lunch break, and it was happening to him, to Yevsei Allon.

She laid her costume out on the grass neatly and with care as if to prevent it becoming creased, then fell back on to the ground, and with her arms stretched above her head ' I love it here. So peaceful, so beautiful, so quiet It makes you forget everything else.' It was a lie; her thoughts were far from the leaves, and the cool grass. What would they do to the boy, if he did as she was to ask? What would be his punishment?