Doctor Gavrilov (14 page)

‘You mean, you'll be away again? How often? How long for?'

‘I don't know, exactly. I'm sorry. But it is work.'

Katie said, ‘Of course you must go, but I wish you'd told me earlier it would involve so much travel… why didn't you talk to me about it? I thought that was the whole point…'

Dmitry didn't understand what she meant. ‘The point of what?'

‘Of marriage.'

He turned away, confused, wrong-footed.

Anna must have heard them; she suddenly came and put her arms tightly round him, saying she didn't want him to go away. She turned her face up to him, clinging to him. He lifted her up and kissed her nose. ‘Oh, it won't be for long,' he said, smoothing her hair, ‘I'll get you a present, a chess set of your own perhaps, or a Russian doll.'

Katie seemed exasperated. ‘Anna, get your coat. We're going to be late. You don't want a late mark, do you?'

That evening when the children were in bed they sat down at the table to work out their finances. Dmitry told her that he was expecting some more money from Geneva to be paid into his account next week. The payments he'd received already had made a lot of difference; they were paying off their debts. Katie came and sat beside him, leaned her head on his shoulder, but he didn't look at her. He had not anticipated how much lying to her would distance him from her. He no longer wanted to talk to her about anything of importance; he felt a need to avoid intimacy. He was afraid that if she looked him right in the eyes she would see that he was not being honest with her.

There were bills to pay. Dmitry picked up the phone bill, and without thinking queried some long calls she had made during the day. Katie snapped at him. ‘Look, I'm trapped here all day with Sasha, if I didn't talk to someone I would go mad…' she paused and ran a hand through her hair. ‘Look, Mitya, we have to talk, I can't carry on as we are. What's the matter with you these days? You've got some work now, you should be glad. Instead you seem so negative about everything… All right, things are difficult now, but why can't you look forward? Things will get better…'

Dmitry felt his heart beat faster, suddenly afraid that this was it, she was seeing through him, she would start to ask him all the questions he was dreading. He felt a need to block it off. He opened his mouth and found himself saying, ‘Get better? On the contrary, everything, all over the world, is going to get a lot worse, can't you see… this is just the beginning.'

Katie jumped to her feet. She said, ‘I can't deal with you, your Russian pessimism, your paranoia, it is suffocating me.' She flew upstairs. Dmitry sank his head into his hands for a moment; he wanted to go and comfort her, and yet he was afraid. He followed her, undressed, sat on the bed beside her watching her brushing out her thick hair. He put his hand on her shoulder. He said, ‘Katie, please forgive me. I wish things could be otherwise, I wish that I could make you happy. I…' he stopped. He wanted to confess everything to her, but he couldn't. What would she do? No, it was impossible.

She put down the brush. She asked, ‘Do you?' She turned to face him; she was angry, her face was hard; but when she looked at him it softened. He pulled her towards him and she came willingly, letting him kiss her, putting out her arms to embrace him. She knelt, leaning her head against his chest, her face hidden from him by her hair, and then, deliberately, placing her legs on either side of his, she lowered herself on to him. She was wet, but not very wet; he did not go in easily, and when he entered her she gasped and cried out. She said, ‘That hurts… no, please go on… I want you to hurt me.' He said, concerned, puzzled, because she had never asked this before, ‘Why do you want this?' and she replied with unusual vehemence, ‘Because then I can hate you.'

Tim was obsessed with his report. He had little over a week before he went to Moscow, and the pressure was building up all the time. He kept a huge book about nuclear physics on his desk, and in any spare minute that he had, he dipped into it. He was surprised to find that the principle behind an atomic bomb was so simple and well-known; almost any physics graduate could do it. The problem of course was how to get hold of the fissile material. There were two main routes to building a bomb. The first was the uranium route, which needed uranium enriched up to at least about 80 per cent. You could also make a bomb with plutonium, which could only be obtained from used fuel from nuclear reactors. Using plutonium was less attractive because it was more difficult to obtain, and it was also far more toxic and radioactive.

A voice in his ear said, ‘Tim,' and he looked up sharply. Rowley had come and sat on the edge of his desk with a memo in his hand. ‘French television apparently showed a short clip of film of what was believed to be a transaction to sell highly enriched uranium in Moscow… can you follow that up? Is your ticket booked?'

‘Yes, for next week.' Tim looked at the memo. The film had been shown on FR3, the French equivalent to Channel 4. He nodded his thanks to Rowley's retreating back and immediately rang Paris, finally managing to speak to the man responsible for the report. He said he had bought the film of the transaction from Russian state television. He had the name of the woman who had researched the item, Larissa Sukoruchkin.

Tim pulled out his file and added to his outline for the piece. He planned to find some nuclear scientist who would talk, preferably to say that he had been offered work abroad or that he would take it if he was. He would want to talk to one of the military officers in charge of nuclear warheads, who he knew would say how safe they were, and contrast this with some expert who would say they weren't. Then there were the experts in Vienna. Tim reached for another thick, turgid UN report. The IAEA in Vienna had been set up partly to police nuclear installations world-wide to ensure nuclear material was not diverted from power plants into military use. The more he thought about it, the more intrigued he was to think that Gavrilov had worked there. He thought that he would try to talk to him again tonight.

When he rang the bell and asked Katie if he could talk to her husband she looked bewildered. She said, ‘Oh, how silly, I'm sure he would have helped you, but… he isn't here. He's in Moscow himself. He went this morning.'

Tim stood on the step, hesitating only for a second. Maybe she could tell him something useful. ‘Look, if you're on your own, why don't you come down and have supper with me this evening. We could leave the doors open and you could pop upstairs to check the children.'

Katie looked at him for a moment, wiping floury hands across an over-large stripy apron. ‘Oh, Tim, how kind of you. That would be lovely.'

She came down at eight. He had rushed around the flat tidying and arranging things for the first time since Ingrid had left, and decided to cook something simple and safe rather than trying to impress her with a culinary expertise he didn't have. She sat opposite him in his tiny kitchen while he nervously stirred the spaghetti; he had given her a large glass of wine, and he noticed that she sipped it very slowly. She was wearing a thick grey sweater and black leggings, which didn't suit her because it emphasised how thin she was, and seemed to magnify the dark circles under her eyes. She had pinned her hair up and wore dangling earrings that emphasised the length of her neck. He was pleased that she had done something about her appearance in his honour. He thought it was a promising sign.

‘How long is your husband away for?'

‘Oh, I don't know… two or three weeks.' She looked at him and smiled, but he thought it seemed a sad, uncertain smile. He decided that the pasta must be done and strained it, and carried the plates through to the table at the end of the living room. He thought he could have done a bit more with the room but then, from what he had seen, she wasn't exactly a tidy person herself.

She started to eat, dabbing at the mound on her plate delicately with her fork. Tim poured himself more wine. He started with a safe subject, asking her about other people they had known at the BBC and filling her in on his more recent history. Katie listened, but said little. He sensed her sadness or depression and finally he steeled himself and said, ‘I get the impression… forgive me if I'm wrong… that you're not entirely happy.'

Katie looked up sharply from her plate. Then she half laughed and said, ‘Well, you find me any couple with financial worries and small children who are having a good time.'

‘Yes, I can see it must be difficult.'

Perhaps Katie read something in his expression because she said quite sharply, ‘Look, Tim, just to make it clear in case you're misunderstanding things… I'm absolutely committed to the marriage. I'll admit things are difficult now but that's not the point… besides, there are the children. Anna's lost one father… I couldn't go through that again.'

‘It still doesn't quite answer my question. I asked if you were happy.'

‘Marriage isn't just about happiness.'

‘No, I'm sorry, it was a naïve sort of thing to say. I haven't ever been married, so I wouldn't know.'

‘Tim, you don't know anything about our relationship. You don't know what we've been through in order to be together.' She paused. ‘I love him, Tim, if that's what you want to know.'

He looked at her. He realised suddenly that she was very fragile; that she was about to cry. He realised that he had struck a nerve, and he suddenly felt guilty about it. He had been indelicate; he shouldn't have asked so soon. She ate slowly, hesitantly, as if she was forcing herself to but wasn't really enjoying it. He asked, ‘Is the food that bad?'

‘No, it's very good, really… it's lovely to have someone else cook for me… you just gave me rather a lot.'

‘Perhaps you'd like some fruit.'

‘No, Tim, I'm all right. Perhaps a bit later.'

Tim stood up from the table and Katie sank back on the black leather couch, a hideous thing which the previous tenant had left behind. Tim put on some soft country and western music, a new band he rather liked, sat down at the other end of the couch and looked at her. She emptied her wine glass and suddenly laughed; she looked much better, more like the old Katie he used to know. She gave him a slightly coy glance and said, ‘I hope you're not going to try to seduce me.'

Tim feigned a look of surprise. He said, ‘Well, it did cross my mind… but I didn't think there was the slightest possibility that I might succeed.'

She didn't reply, and a silence fell. Tim offered Katie more wine but she shook her head. He said, ‘Katie, I was doing some research, the other day, looking at some IAEA documents, and your husband's name was there… I didn't realise that he's a nuclear scientist.'

‘He was,' corrected Katie.

‘Well, was… He was at the Kurchatov Institute, I gather, before the IAEA.'

‘Yes, that's right.' Katie was looking at him, guarded, cautious.

Tim tried to sound casual. ‘What was his position at the IAEA?'

‘He was a consultant. I don't know exactly, Tim. I can't remember the details.'

‘But why did he give it up? That must have been a good job for him, in the West, a UN salary…'

Katie sighed. ‘He was very disillusioned with it all, I think he saw too clearly how the safeguards programme had just become a cynical exercise… and then he met me. He just wanted to get out, to come to England, we both did.'

Tim thought he might not get another chance to raise it, so he pressed on, ‘But what was his subject, exactly? Reactor physics?'

‘No, uranium enrichment.'

A faint thrill of surprise, of excitement, went through Tim. He was, frankly, surprised that she had told him. He said, he couldn't help it, ‘Oh, I see. Sensitive stuff.'

Perhaps Katie instantly regretted what she had said; she suddenly looked away from him. ‘Look, I'm not defending him, Tim, I was never in favour of nuclear energy myself, at all, when I was young, you know that, but he's not worked on anything military, if that's what you're wondering…'

‘No, no, I wasn't thinking that, but, anyway, there's no difference, is there? The technique is the same, whether you want uranium for fuel or bombs.'

Katie said, ‘I know that. But he didn't exactly have any choice about it, did he? In Soviet Russia at that time, they selected children with the right abilities, they sent them to specialist schools, chose what areas they wanted them to work in. Anyway, if you're interested, you should talk to Mitya about it, not me. I don't know anything about all this stuff.'

‘Well yes, I would like to talk to him. I'll ask him when he comes back. Or perhaps I can look him up in Moscow, if you tell me where he's staying… Do you want me to take him anything?'

‘Take him… what kind of thing? Well, I suppose you could take him a letter, but… he'll only be there three weeks, I don't think there's any point in sending a food parcel or anything like that, if that's what you meant…'