Document Z (26 page)

‘It's a small breach, Doosia. A small breach and that is all.'

‘A breach is a breach. And now of all times!'

‘It's nothing. Moscow will see it as such.'

‘Are you trying to have us destroyed? Look at you. Holding that stupid air ticket. This charge is all they need!'

He gazed at her, but not.

‘You understand, then,' she said. ‘Or perhaps you are trying to help? Are you finding us a better camp in the gulag by adding to the charges? You know all the best ones.'

‘Doosia.'

‘What do you have to say, Volodya?'

‘You're angry. Alright. But don't be so loud. Don't be too loud because that is a victory and they will hear.'

She opened the door, stepped outside. Slammed it.

He got the latest copy of
Pravda
and wrapped Moscow's documents in its folds. He undid his shirt and shoved the newspaper inside, twisting his torso. No noise. He walked downstairs, passing no one. The hinges of the back gate whined. At the house, he lifted the mattress and put the newspaper underneath. It was an obvious hiding place, he knew, but he wanted to put them out of sight as fast as he could.

He opened a scotch bottle and drank. Jack was trailing him. ‘What are we going to do with you?' he asked the dog. Jack said nothing. Petrov boxed his ears.

He and Evdokia did not speak when she came home. It was a hard silence and he didn't break it. Had he planned on asking her one more time? He wasn't sure. Her yelling had got to him and now he was happy to just sit and wait.

He transferred the documents to his satchel.

Next morning, Sanko was early to collect him for the airport. He dressed and wondered about things to say. He felt nothing. He ought to feel something but he didn't. He looked at Evdokia eating breakfast. Suddenly, walking out the door was the simplest of affairs. As if he was going to buy cigarettes in Manuka. Back in five.

Sanko honked from out the front. He looked at his watch, standing in the hallway with his luggage. For a moment, he almost walked into the kitchen to say goodbye. But he was afraid. Scared that whatever this confidence was, it might falter. He closed the front door behind himself and set out across the grass. Sanko lifted his things into the Zim, and he got into the front seat and the car started and Sanko did a U-turn. He dared a last glance at the house. She was standing on the porch with Jack, still in her nightgown, holding something, he couldn't be sure what, standing there watching with Jack as the car pulled away.

18

M
id-morning, but the light had an afternoon hue, wrong-shadowed and washed out, she thought, mysteriously connected to an apprehension that was lurking, a sick feeling in the house she was trying to expel. She was sitting at the small table in the kitchen, chain-smoking. A fourth cigarette and a fifth. Irina was the last time she had done this.

Someone knocked at the door. She stood slowly and stepped quietly into the hall. Two columns under the door sill. She didn't answer and the someone walked down the side of the house. Golovanov, whistling. Tending to his vegetables, she supposed.

When she woke up it was dusk. The phone was ringing and she went to answer but was too late and she would never in her life know who that was.

Friday, 2 April 1954. She made a stew with some remaining beef, some potatoes and peas from a can.

It was a restless night, passing half-dreamt, the kind of nervous sleep that suggests maybe you are becoming ill.

On the Sunday morning she met their successor, Kovalenok. The Sydney plane had arrived early, a tail wind, and she got to the embassy to find him in the MVD office. They began the process of the handover. Kovalenok was perhaps ten years her junior, dressed in a good suit, wearing thin-framed, rudimentary glasses, intelligent-looking, a courteous man, seemingly competent and at ease. The first task was to cable Moscow Centre notification of his arrival. They wrote the message quickly, using the cypher that was then signed over to his control.

Kovalenok signed for the contents of the MVD safe. They counted the money in the strongbox—two thousand, two hundred and fifty-five pounds, all correct—and he signed for this as well.

He said, ‘In Sydney, your husband asked me to say he will be delayed.'

‘Oh?'

‘He said if he is not back today, then it will be Monday.'

‘It's not surprising. He is always busy in Sydney. Likely the city will occupy you as well.'

‘Yes.'

‘You are taking Lockyer Street?'

‘I am.'

‘It is a good house. The night duty officer has a vegetable plot in the yard. Let him keep it. His turnips are good. I'm sure he will give you some in return.'

‘Alright.'

She pointed to Volodya's latest reports. Kovalenok said he'd read most of them in Moscow.

She watched him examine the contents of a drawer. ‘At the Centre,' she asked carefully, ‘did you hear about the campaign against us?'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘I wouldn't worry about that. Your husband is a good man. Moscow understands the situation. They will be needing people of experience to guide things. Don't worry about any of that.'

She ate the remainder of the stew for lunch, feeling relieved, wondering whether it had been Volodya who had made that call.

Masha's daughter had had another baby. At the Highgate Café they read the letters once more. A woman at the next table muttered something about the English language, and for a few moments drinking Schweppes soda water, Evdokia looked forward again to the journey home. She was completely out of work now, having signed away the MVD responsibilities. She and Masha went to the Capitol Theatre, but found the matinee was a children's film.

The next morning, she wandered the house, not quite aimless, but unable to fix herself to a certain thing. The phone rang.

‘Evdokia Alexeyevna?' It was Ivan Golovanov.

‘Yes.'

‘This is the duty officer,' he said.

‘Ivan? I know who you are.'

‘Yes, Evdokia. Listen. Have you heard from Vladimir?'

‘No.'

She listened to him breathe. He sounded tired. ‘Well, Generalov needs to see you. Come to the embassy. Alright?'

The ambassador was holding a copy of the
Canberra
Times
. She stood in front of his desk and he asked the same question. Where was her husband? She knew Vislykha, in the antechamber, was listening. She tried to look Generalov in the face and remain composed.

‘I don't know,' she told him.

‘Isn't he late from Sydney?'

‘Late? I don't think so. Timetables change quickly in our work.'

‘He told Kovalenok he would return Sunday.'

She shrugged. ‘Now it is Monday. It's one day. That is all.'

She went home and sat and thought and asked herself when he had said he'd be home. Sunday? Monday? In truth, she couldn't be sure. She picked up the phone and called Doctor Bialoguski. No answer.

Don't have killed yourself, she thought.

Masha spent the night at Lockyer Street. The next day, Evdokia was in the ambassador's office once more.

‘I am fearful now,' he said. ‘Vladimir is past overdue and I worry that something has occurred. Of course I remember the crash. Do you know I have premonitions? I have a foreboding. I must report your husband missing. Has he contacted you?'

‘He will be back, Ambassador. Something will have him waylaid.'

‘The first step, of course, is to notify Moscow. We will also ask the Australians. We will ask their government's help to find him.'

‘Aren't you overreacting?'

‘He is two days missing, Comrade.'

Kovalenok came into the room.

Generalov said, ‘I do not want to alarm you, Petrova, but it is possible your husband has been kidnapped. We must protect you from this fate. Kovalenok will escort you safely to collect what you need, then you must stay here in the embassy where no harm can reach you.'

‘Ambassador—' ‘Do not argue, Evdokia Alexeyevna. We must take these precautions until your husband is found. Do you know of his plans in Sydney?'

‘No, I do not.'

‘We ask that you cease your enquiries.'

‘What enquiries?'

‘Do not attempt to locate him. Tell us what you know and we will find him.'

She got into the Zim with Sanko and Kovalenok. They drove the short way to the house. The MVD man said, ‘What was his mood when he left for Sydney? Was there anything unusual?'

She replied that her husband had been happy. The man could make of that what he would.

They waited in the front yard while she went inside. The house was suddenly a strange zone, an odd smell in the rooms, particles hanging brightly in the air. She collected her clothes and toiletries, hardly thinking, grabbing at drawers and shoving things into a bag. She heard the cut of a shovel and realised Ivan Golovanov was in the backyard. He came to the window of the kitchen.

‘They are taking me to the embassy,' she said.

‘What do you mean?'

‘I think they are making me a prisoner.'

‘A prisoner?'

‘Tell Masha.'

‘I will.'

She needn't have appealed. The room they put her in was Ivan's—the duty officer's room with its desk and equipment cupboard. She stood and thought. She went to the telephone in the consular office and called TAA. She told them it was the Soviet embassy speaking and asked whether Vladimir Petrov had a flight booked for Canberra. He hadn't. She called ANA. The woman there knew her but said her husband wasn't listed.

Kovalenok told her Moscow had sent some questions. She sat with him in the ambassador's office and the ambassador did the asking.

‘How was your relationship with your husband?'

‘We were on good terms. Happy terms. There was no indication that anything was wrong. A good man. A strong man.'

‘Did he pack extra clothes?'

‘No. Only the usual. The ordinary.'

‘What money did he have?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Has he ever suggested suicide?'

‘I think he could easily commit suicide. That was the state he was in. Over the edge.'

‘Was he looking forward to returning to Moscow?'

‘We were making preparations. He was ready to go back but he was afraid of lies that were circulating.'

‘Can you help locate him?'

‘No. If I knew where he was, I would tell you.'

When this was done, Kovalenok took Moscow's cable and asked the same questions again, his tone slightly more comforting than the ambassador's, but she gave the same answers, too strong for the moment to slip up.

‘Where is your husband now?'

Good question, she thought, trying to arrange certain facts in her mind.

‘What about this Bialoguski?' said Kovalenok. ‘He is friends with this man, is he not?'

‘Yes.'

‘Plaitkais has spoken to him. He has not been of much help.'

‘I might speak to him,' she said suddenly. ‘Perhaps he has seen Vladimir and will tell me.'

They booked the trunk call. Bialoguski answered. He said that Petrov was probably somewhere in Sydney, busy and somehow occupied. He would turn up. A man is not a needle.

She returned to the duty room and sat. The room had a musty, boarding-house smell. Women were outside on the lawn, talking, Pipniakova and Koslova amongst them. Were they meaning to tease her? Let's poke fun at the animal in its cage.

She drew the curtains. She felt a searing hate for everyone.

In the morning, Kislitsyn came to the duty room. They didn't have much to say to one another, him sitting there idly toying with his watch. He told her he was going to fly to Sydney. An on-the-ground search: Moscow's brilliant idea. He didn't ask about Volodya. She didn't volunteer a word.

She was hungry. Wasn't anyone going to bring her something to eat?

Not if it wasn't their job.

Koslova stopped her at the door to the kitchen.

‘Evdokia Alexeyevna, are you authorised to be here?'

‘I have a right to eat,' she snapped.

The woman eyed her as she cut some cold meat.

Masha brought the newspapers: the
Canberra Times
and the
Sydney Morning Herald
. Evdokia took them to the edge of the orchard and read them cover to cover, searching for anything of bearing. There had been two car crashes. In the first, a child had been dragged three hundred yards in a pram when a drunk hit a family of five. The drunk had been caught—a metal worker. In the second accident, a single car had veered from the road outside Sydney and struck a tree. Holiday-makers, husband and wife. There was a murder also, but the names of the victim and the perpetrator were known.

She looked up to see Kovalenok standing over her. He told her politely that she might be kidnapped from this spot. It would be much safer for all of them if she were to remain inside.

In return, she asked for a radio set. Sanko and Chezhev brought one and placed it in the corner of the room. She listened to the news broadcast and a drama, falling asleep on the sofa, and it was dark and raining when she woke.

Ivan Golovanov was sitting on a small chair in the hallway.

‘What if I escaped through the window?' she said.

If it wasn't Golovanov guarding her, it was Chezhev. If not Chezhev, then Sanko. They sat in the hallway, a twenty-four-hour watch. She had nothing to do but read and listen. Three days passed before Generalov came. He arrived holding a pipe. She had never seen him smoke before.

‘Comrade,' he said, ‘I am now certain that your husband will not return.'

Stress on his face. She thought of the pressure that Moscow must be bringing to bear.

‘Is that an opinion or a fact?' she asked.

He remained silent. She was half-convinced he was about to announce that Volodya was dead.

‘Have you received something?' she questioned. ‘Have you heard where he is?'