Billion-Dollar Brain (10 page)

‘No,’ he said. ‘No thank you.’

‘You are a cigar-smoker, Comrade-Colonel?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said the man, ‘but in our subway we…’

‘Of course,’ I said. I put the packet away. I didn’t want to break the law. ‘I don’t want to break the law,’ I said. The man smiled but I was serious.

The train rattled along and we both hung on to the straps looking at each other.

He was a heavy muscular man of about sixty. He had a round face that hadn’t done much smiling until middle age, and an uptilted nose that perhaps had been busted and reset by a plumber. His eyes were small black sentries that marched up and down, and his hands were bunches of bananas unsold over the weekend.

I said, ‘I am getting off here and walking to the Astoria, where I will drink one hundred grams of port wine. I will listen to the band playing American dance music for perhaps twenty minutes, then I will walk back to the Hotel Europe.’

He nodded and did not follow me as I got off the train.

I did exactly as I had promised. Less than half an hour later I left the front entrance of the Astoria and walked down the dark side street. When it’s daylight in Leningrad and the buses and lorries are roaring along the wide Nevsky, and African delegates are being toasted at multi-course lunches at the Astoria, then it’s easy to see Leningrad as the birthplace of Communism. But when it’s dark and the moon glints on the Peter and Paul Fortress, and two out of every three street lights are extinguished for economy so that the puddles and newly fallen
snow are discovered only by an errant foot, then it is once again St Petersburg, and Dostoevsky is humpbacked in a slum behind Sennaya Square, and Pushkin is dying after his duel and saying ‘Goodbye, my friends’ to his rows of books.

Behind me I heard a slow-moving car. It was a large Zis—a car used only by government officials. The driver flashed the lights and the car drew alongside. The door opened, blocking my forward movement. From the back seat the voice of the colonel I had seen in the subway said, ‘Won’t you get in, English?’

I got into the rear seat and the colonel closed the door. There was a lot of cigar smoke.

‘So we meet again, Colonel Stok?’ I said like they say it in films.

‘Oleg.’

‘So we meet again, Oleg?’

‘Yes.’ He gave an order to the driver, who switched off the car motor. ‘You are enjoying our Russian winter?’ Stok stared at me. His head looked like that of a statue that someone had found and rolled home so that all the delicate parts had broken off.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’m enjoying the Russian winter. Are you?’

Stok tugged at his fleshy chin. ‘We have a saying in my country, “For him who stands at the top of the tower there is no other season but winter.”’

‘Yes,’ I said, although I still don’t understand what that proverb means.

‘You are involving yourself with a particularly foolish and headstrong group of trouble-makers. I think they are exploiting you. When I move against them do not expect me to treat you differently from the way I treat them. It may be that you are investigating these evil people on behalf of your government, or it may be that you are ordered to co-operate with them. They are troublemakers, English; but they will find that I am more expert at making trouble than they are.’

‘I believe you,’ I said. ‘But in my experience there aren’t many evil people around. Just ill-informed, misguided and ignorant ones.’

Colonel Stok said, ‘In Russia our people are not misinformed.’

‘There are many people who think that water has no taste,’ I said, ‘because we were born with it in our mouths and it’s been there ever since.’

Stok didn’t reply. ‘Hotel Yevropeiskaya,’ he shouted to the driver. The car moved. ‘We will take you to your hotel,’ he said to me. ‘It is not a good night for walking.’

I didn’t argue. If it wasn’t a good night for walking Stok would know.

There are fifteen Republics in the Soviet Union. Each one constitutes a separate ethnic unit, has a self-sufficient economy, a flag, a Supreme Soviet, a council of ministers and, most important, is placed between the area we call Russia and the world outside. The three Baltic Republics are Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. They huddle close and drink at the trough of the Baltic along with Sweden and Finland.

I caught the Aeroflot 392 flight from Leningrad to Riga. It left at two fifty
P.M.
and was crowded with people in heavy coats and fur hats who changed their mind constantly about leaving their outer clothing in the small wardrobe at the front of the cabin. There was some confusion about the seat numbering: two women with armfuls of overcoats and a crying baby had the same seat ticket that I had. This was sorted out by a ravishingly beautiful air hostess who distributed boiled sweets to all concerned and reprimanded a tovarich for smoking.

The plane climbed across the smoky suburbs of Leningrad and over the Elektrosila plant. Brick suburbs gave way to big wooden houses, then single-storey houses which became more and more isolated until there was nothing but grizzled, frozen marsh. Winter had closed the eyelids of the land and the snow that covered it was ill-fitting and dingy like a second-hand shroud. Under the starboard wing slowly moved Lake Peipus, scene of Alexander Nevsky’s great battle when the Knights of the Teutonic Order probed too far eastwards and went, complete with horses and heavy armour, through the ice crust and into the deep black water.

The trimly uniformed stewardess—definitely wearing Western foundation garments—brought a Cellophane envelope for leaky fountain pens and a plastic cup of fizzy lemonade. I smiled at her, and she jammed a copy of
Pravda
into my hand, her smile still ticking over. Below us the landscape shone in great brown-and-white patterns like the coat of a well-groomed piebald horse. We began the descent above the Gulf of Riga and dropped towards the military airport. In the seat in front two passengers recognized the farm where they lived and wanted me to see it too. We nodded, smiled and pointed down while a dual-seat jet fighter screamed off the runway in a climb that indicated that the instructor was pushing the buttons.

The stewardess said, ‘You come from London?’ She offered me a tray of boiled sweets.

I took one, and thanked her.

‘I know a poem about London,’ she said.

‘I know a limerick about Riga,’ I said.

She nodded and passed on. The plane came down for a smooth landing amid the radar gear.

The Hotel Riga is built on the site of the old Hotel Rome, just across the street from the opera house. The pavements were crowded with women sweeping snow and fur-hatted soldiers in padded fatigue coats and dirty boots. All the while long lines of lorries trundled along the streets as if it was 1945 and the retreating Wehrmacht only a couple of miles away. The dual language signs—in Latvian and Russian—heightened the illusion. As fast as the street-cleaners worked, more snow swept down upon the street, shining like tracer bullets on the dark winter air. I turned away from the window and sank down upon the bed.

I went to sleep that afternoon fully dressed, and I didn’t wake up until seven forty-five P.M. I washed and changed my clothes, and walked through the old part of the city with its strange, crouch-backed, medieval buildings, like a Hollywood set built for Garbo. I walked as far as the castle, where the tram tracks jut out towards the far bank of the Daugava River to show where the bridge was torn away from under them. I picked my way through the narrow streets where the old bent buildings leaned together for warmth. I wasn’t followed. I suppose my shadow calculated that I would soon come in off the streets, or perhaps he was using the opportunity to go through my baggage. By comparison with the
cold cobbled alleys, the hotel restaurant was a scene of throbbing gaiety. A small orchestra was playing ‘Lights of Moscow’ and the waiters were clattering metal dishes and semaphoring with table napkins, and there was the air of subdued hysteria that you get in a big theatre when the orchestra is tuning up. A waiter smiled and ushered me to a corner table marked with a reserved sign that said ‘Intourist only’, and gave me the English-language menu. It was bent and stained.

The restaurant was like many of its kind throughout the Soviet Union, although perhaps better cared for than most. The parquet was shined, the table-cloths starched and the waiters had clean shirts. At a table near the window sat a delegation of Africans, and another table nearer to the dance floor had South-East Asian faces that nodded every time their Russian host spoke. Here and there sat groups of army officers in baggy trousers and boots, with enamel medals on their chests. Each time the music began half a dozen unsteady men wandered through the restaurant asking the women to dance. More often than not the women declined, but this did not discourage the tipsy men. I ordered red caviare and black bread and butter and two hundred grams of vodka. I ate slowly and watched the dance floor. I tried to guess which of the women were the Russian wives of men stationed here and which were Latvian girls.

An unkempt man with a torn shirt-collar and a large bundle sat down opposite me. He asked me
for a light and I offered him one of my Gauloises. He inspected it carefully, thanked me and lit it. He asked me if I was English, and I told him Irish. He told me that this was not a good time of the year to see Riga. June, he said, was the time to come here. He ordered another two hundred grams of vodka.

One of the army officers at the next table called across to my companion, ‘Businessman?’

He leaned over to me. ‘They want pineapples,’ he said.

‘Is that so?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and I have the best ones in town.’

We watched one of the army officers get to his feet. He was a short fair-haired man with gold epaulettes and the black flashes of the tank units. The other officers were teasing him, but he did not smile. He walked across the restaurant to the long table near the dance floor, where the delegation sat. He clicked his heels and bowed briefly towards a beautiful Eurasian girl. She got up and they completed a rather formal foxtrot amid the strange gyrations of the more experimental couples. After the dance he escorted her back to the rest of the delegation, and returned across the floor to us. He whispered something into the ear of my dishevelled companion, who produced a bundle wrapped in old copies of
Pravda.
It was a large pineapple. Roubles changed hands.

My companion winked at me. ‘Are pineapples difficult to get in your country?’ I watched the officer present the pineapple to the girl.

‘Not as far as I know,’ I said. ‘Why can you get them when no one else can?’

He put an index finger alongside his nose. ‘I fly them up from Djakarta,’ he said. ‘I’m an Aeroflot pilot.’

The band played ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’. ‘This is my favourite song,’ said the man from Aeroflot. ‘I shall find a girl to dance with.’ He indicated dancing by making a stirring motion with his index finger and nearly knocking the vodka flask over, and then he lurched off towards the music. ‘Guard my pineapples,’ he called.

‘Yes,’ I said.

Latvia—or at least Riga—is more sophisticated than Leningrad or Moscow. If you ask for breakfast in your room they have difficulty in understanding the idea, but they will do it. A suggestion like that in Leningrad is subversive. In Riga the waitresses wear clean uniforms with white starched caps in the Mrs Beeton tradition; in Leningrad they wear greasy black suits. So when, late that night as I was just about to go to bed, I heard a discreet knock at the door, I was not amazed to find a waiter in a claw-hammer coat pulling a heavily laden food trolley into my room.

‘I didn’t order anything,’ I said.

His broad back just kept coming through the door as if he was laying a cable. Once inside he turned and smiled.

‘I didn’t know you could get KGB
*
men from room service,’ I said.

Colonel Stok said, ‘I would be obliged if you would speak more quietly.’ He went across to the wash-basin, picked up a drinking-glass and, putting the top of it against the wall, applied his ear to the base. I held up a bottle of Long John that I had brought from Helsinki. Stok looked at me blankly—still listening through the wall—and nodded. By the time I walked across to him Stok had the glass in the drinking position. The evening suit was not a good fit and he looked as though he was part of a Marx brothers film.

He said, ‘Within the next hour you will receive a phone call.’

Stok sipped his drink and waited as though he expected a round of applause.

‘Is that what you call revolutionary consciousness?’

Stok looked at me calmly, trying to read the small print in my eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said finally, ‘revolutionary consciousness.’ He tugged one end of his bow tie and the knot came undone. The tie tumbled down his shirt-front like a little cascade of ink. Stok proceeded with his prediction, ‘Within an hour you will receive a phone call. It will arrange a meeting somewhere along the Komsomol Boulevard, probably near the October Bridge. If you attend that meeting I shall be forced to treat you as I shall treat the
others. However, I advise you strongly not to go because you will be in danger.’

‘Danger from whom?’

Colonel Stok was as big as an old oak wardrobe. Maybe some of the carving had got damaged in transit, but he was as firm and heavy as ever. He walked across the floor and, although he caused little sound, the whole room vibrated with his weight. ‘Not from me or any of my men,’ Stok said. ‘I promise you that.’ Stok drank the whisky in one gulp.

‘You think that these other people you mentioned will do me harm?’

Stok took off his evening-dress jacket and put it over a hanger that was lying on my open suitcase. ‘I think they will,’ said Stok, ‘I think they will do you harm.’ He arranged the coat on the hanger, wrenched at his wing-collar and unclipped the shirt-stud. The starched front of his shirt parted with a clatter, he dropped the handful of studs into an ashtray and kicked off his black patent-leather shoes. He flexed his toes on the carpet. ‘My feet,’ he said. ‘I suppose a young man like you wouldn’t understand what pleasure it gives me to remove tight shoes?’ He arched one foot like a cat’s back, and said, ‘Aahh.’

‘And that’s momentary interest,’
*
I said.

Stock said nothing for a moment, then he looked through me and said, ‘I touched Lenin. I stood beside him in Vosstaniye Square in July 1920—the second congress—I touched him. So don’t use Lenin’s words to me. Momentary interest.’ Stok crossed his arms across his face and began to pull his shirt off, and his words were lost beneath the white cotton. Beneath his shirt was a khaki singlet. Stok’s face emerged flushed and smiling. ‘Do you know the words of the poet Burns?’ He hung his trousers on a hanger. He wore long underwear and elastic suspenders held his socks.

‘I know “To a Haggis”,’ I said.

Stok nodded. ‘I read a lot of Burns,’ he said. ‘You should read him more. You would learn a lot. “We labour soon, we labour late, to feed the titled knave, man.” Burns understood. The man who taught me English could recite Burns by the hour.’ Stok went across to the window and looked through the side of the curtain like they do in gangster films. ‘Aren’t you going to offer me another drink?’ he asked.

I poured a slug of whisky into the glass. Stok drained it without even a pause to say thanks. ‘That’s better,’ was all he said. He walked across to the food trolley, and removed the starched cloth with a flourish. Instead of metal serving-dishes there was an officer’s uniform laid out there, complete with peaked cap and well-shined high boots. Stok reached for his riding breeches, buttoned himself into them, tucked his shirt in, then walked
across to where I was sitting. He flexed his toes again.

‘You wonder why I am warning you, instead of rounding you all up? Well, I’ll tell you. If I round up all these criminals and trouble-makers, no one will say, “What a clever man is Colonel Stok to grab these people before they could cause our country trouble.” They will say, “Look how many subversives have been working under the very nose of Colonel Stok.” You understand this, English, we have known each other before. My desire is that these criminals leave my district and abandon their fantastic dreams.’

Stok tied his tie, using all the muscles of his fingers as though it was made of metal instead of cloth. He slipped into his coat and shook his arms to make his shirt cuffs appear.

‘What fantastic dreams do they have?’ I asked.

Stok pinched the big knot with his fingers. Then he poured himself another drink. ‘Don’t try to make a fool of me, English.’

‘I just want to know.’

‘They think that the Soviet Union is on the verge of overthrowing its tyrannical overlords. They think the people walking on the street out there are dreaming of the moment when they can become capitalist serfs again. They think that we all lie awake dreaming of going to America. They think they can distribute pamphlets and gold and a vast army of monarchists will materialize overnight. That’s what I call fantastic dreams. You understand?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

Stok put on his uniform cap and a thigh-length padded jacket of the sort that Russian troops wear as fatigue dress when it’s very cold. There were now no badges of rank to be seen. He walked across to the window, and producing a knife ran it round the paper sealing strip, then opened it. He opened the outer window as well, and stepped out on to the fire escape. ‘Thank you for the use of your room,’ said Stok.

‘One good turn deserves another,’ I said. He held up his whisky.

‘You speak the truth,’ said Stok. ‘Well, do as you wish. It’s a free country.’ He drank, and I took his glass.

‘You mustn’t believe all you read in
Pravda,
’ I said.

Stok walked down into the darkness.

I poured myself a drink and sipped it. I wondered what to do. There was no question of contacting Dawlish. I wasn’t so concerned with Midwinter’s security but it would take ages to phone New York. Perhaps Midwinter had already out-thought Stok. I didn’t think so. Stok was something no computer could deal with; perhaps that’s what I liked about him.