Making Enemies (21 page)

The memory I couldn’t get rid of was of that last fateful night journey through the snow, Hammerson attending to Krasov, befriending the man, caring for him, encouraging him. Was that out of duty? Was he acting in the interests of those who employed him? No, it was more than that, it was the nature of the man himself. I had been startled by the ferocity of his anti-Soviet sentiments, mostly because I found they had an echo in my own beliefs that I had never faced up to. I envied him his simplicity, his fearlessness, his certainty that what he said and did was right.

Now he was gone, and I held the secret of what had happened to him. Some nights the memory tormented me. His face would
look up from the snow, blood-spattered and bruised, and appeal to me.

Help me, Danny. Help me, please
.

His hands would reach out to drag me into the dark prison of his world and I would wake up, startled and sweating, the images rising up in the darkness and taking all hope of sleep from me.

*

I had left Helsinki with nothing of Tanya’s, though I had asked her for a photograph.

‘I need nothing to remind me of you. Why should you need something from me?’ she had said with an impeccable if frustrating logic. I had wanted to argue the point until I saw that she would not change her mind.

‘If you can recall me in your mind,’ she had said later, ‘you will not need anything else. If you can’t, then having something of mine will not help.’

I admired her fatalism and regretted it. But as the weeks went by, I saw that she was right. If I concentrated I could recall exactly how she was, how she had looked, the sound of her voice and her laugh, what we had done together. Slowly but irrevocably an image of Tanya emerged and stayed with me, a companion in everything I did. For the first time I recognized the places in my life where I was incomplete and I was able to measure my incompleteness. It was a shock to see how much of a delusion my own sense of self-reliance was. I longed for her desperately but there seemed no likelihood that I would be able to see her again.

As the spring slowly broke the icy grip of winter, the possibility of getting back to Finland had all the permanence of a dream on waking.

‘Remember me?’

It is not the voice she expects when she picks up the telephone, but it is a voice she knows. An alarm is triggered deep in her memory and a discipline she hasn’t used for years moves automatically into place.

‘How are you?’

‘I’m home again.’

No names, no dates, no times, no places. Those were the rules, she tells Stevens, as she continues her story. Give them nothing to work on, the secret listeners on the wire. Play the game and you might stay alive, though in those terrible times (how many years ago? Eight? Nine?), anonymity had provided no certainties.

‘It’s good to hear your voice again.’ The code is still intact. He will be pleased about that.

‘We’ll meet soon, won’t we?’

Somehow he will get a message to her with instructions for their meeting place. How careful he is. But then he works for the secret forces of the state.

‘I’d like that.’

Little Krasov is back in her life.

*

‘Little Krasov’ (she tells Stevens), ‘the boy with the large head and the small body – not weak, just misshapen until he was fifteen when his body filled out, though he was always small. We girls teased him but we protected him too, in our neighbourhood, at school, in the Young Communist League and afterwards when he joined the Moscow Engineering Academy. He was our mascot, our constant companion, and to us he always remained Little Krasov.’

She remembers the boastful stories he made up at school when he was teased about the hours he spent in the company of the girls in their neighbourhood.

‘His defence was to keep the boys intoxicated with stories of seeing us naked, how he could wander in and out of our bedrooms unnoticed because he was Little Krasov. Sometimes he would produce sheets of paper on which he had sketched us – we were his “life models”, he said as he passed the drawings around. We all knew he traced these from a book he found. We laughed when we saw his drawings. None of us had bodies like that. Oh, the things he had seen, the things he had done. He would roll his enormous eyes, the boys would jeer and shout and punch each other, but in their hearts they knew Little Krasov had been where they did not yet have the courage to go, and that was the basis of his protected status.’

After graduating from the academy he went to work on an engineering project in the Ukraine, and she lost touch with him. For years they had little news of each other. When he turned up in her life again, a year after the war had begun, he was no longer an engineer. He now worked, he told her, for military intelligence. He had been trained at a special school run by the Red Army general staff, he had learned English (and other skills he did not tell her about) and he was waiting for the final approval of his posting to London from the Foreign Branch of the Central Committee. He would be working as a journalist for Tass. There was important work to be done and he was anxious, to do it.

Little Krasov an agent of the state? That was hard to believe. She remembered a time when Little Krasov refused to join the Party. ‘It’s another of your stories,’ she says when he tells her of his departure for London. ‘I can’t believe in Little Krasov working for the state.’

‘Why not?’ he said, his finger to his lips.

‘Is that what you believe in now?’ she asks, ignoring his gesture for discretion. You cannot change the habits learned in your youth. She has never been discreet with him.

‘I am afraid even to think what I believe.’

Then he had gone to London and she had lost contact again. Years pass. She doesn’t forget Little Krasov but she has her own life to get on with. He never writes to her. If he returns to Moscow in that time (surely he must have) he has never got in touch. Now he has contacted her and she knows London is over, he is back in
Moscow and he wants to see her. She is pleased about that. It is always good to see an old friend. But she knows Little Krasov. Nothing is without a purpose. If he has made contact now it is because he wants something from her. An old instinct revived by Krasov’s telephone call puts her on her guard.

*

He is waiting for her outside the Lux Hotel, dressed in black as usual. She recognizes the faithful worn overcoat with the tattered astrakhan collar. He kisses her and puts his arm through hers. They cross the road and to her surprise, he guides her to the waiting room of Hospital 22, a large echoing hall, filled with rows of people patiently waiting. Around them, like flies buzzing over carrion, the nurses and doctors walk up and down, giving the impression of continuous activity. But the crowd never gets smaller, the number of occupied chairs never diminishes. As names are called and men and women shuffle in and out, newcomers appear at the door and take their places.

Why here? she wants to ask, but before she can say anything he has read her thoughts.

‘It’s crowded,’ he says, his huge eyes working their strange magic once again. ‘Our presence won’t be questioned, we can talk undisturbed for as long as we like. Who would think of looking for us in a hospital waiting room? And it’s warm in here.’

They choose two seats near the back of the waiting area. Krasov takes out a flask of tea and a sandwich from a bag he carries and offers both to Ruth. All around them food is being eaten by men and women who know they must keep their strength up while they wait hours, perhaps even days, for the treatment they need.

‘It helps us blend with our surroundings,’ he says, smiling. ‘Besides, I’m hungry.’ He takes her hand suddenly and speaks with an unexpected urgency. ‘We do not have much time, Ruth. You must believe everything I say. In the past I have lied too often, sometimes to those I love. Now I must redeem myself by speaking the truth.’

The emotional intensity, the way he can shrink the world until it contains only the two of them, the power of those huge dark eyes, the danger and excitement of his presence: that is the Little Krasov she remembers. Memories of old times return. How long since they last met? Three years or more?

‘Five.’

He talks to her about his time in London and makes her laugh with his descriptions of the English. But she knows that he has not asked her to this hospital waiting room to listen to his jokes. He has another, more serious purpose, which must wait until he is ready to tell her.

‘Did you ever meet my friend Gregor?’ he asks. ‘We were students together at the Engineering Academy.’

She shakes her head. It is not a name she knows.

‘I want to tell you about him.’

In the last year of the war, he says, Gregor Bakov worked as a military planner on the general staff. He was a member of the team that devised the final push by the Red Army through Eastern Europe to Berlin. He saw first-hand that there were two agendas: the need to achieve a military victory and how that military victory was to be exploited for political purposes. Bakov as a loyal Party member had no objection to the race to Berlin bringing the Soviet Union political advantage once the war was over. But he had fought at Stalingrad, he had witnessed the appalling slaughter of men and women there and when the battle was over, he resolved he would oppose any act which put the lives of Soviet soldiers at greater risk than was necessary.

He watched as the strategic objectives of the military planners were overruled by the political commissariat. He saw how corners were cut for political ends, how risks were to be taken in the campaign in order to extend the borders of Russian influence. He realized that these tactics took no account of the welfare of the troops, that Soviet lives would be thrown away to ensure that the Russians reached Berlin well before the Americans and the British. He remembered the sickening images of the dead in Stalingrad, frozen in grotesque postures, every corpse in that city a dreadful, silent plea that such a conflict might never again take place. It was intolerable now to be taking part, on this last crusade of the war, in the unnecessary slaughter of his fellow citizens. Soldiers were men, not animals.

‘For the sake of saving human lives, Bakov knew he had to do something.’

His distress brought him to the brink of suicide. The only result of putting a gun to his head would be his removal from the planning committee. He would be quickly replaced, the policy he opposed would continue and the lives of the men he wanted to save would still be wasted. Suicide would achieve nothing. Should he make a
lone protest? Should he refuse to take part in the planning exercise? That would bring about his own arrest and trial, no better than suicide.

Days of desperation followed as he sought a solution. Then came inspiration. He would inform Russia’s allies, the Americans, of the secret Red Army plans. In the debate in his mind, he repeated the word
allies
again and again, to convince himself he was not acting as a traitor. If they were made aware of Soviet intentions, perhaps the West would find a way of exercising some restraining influence. They were, after all, still fighting together for the defeat of a common enemy. With the information he would provide, the allies would argue Bakov’s case for him and the Soviet High Command might be forced to change their plans, to slow down, and fewer lives would be lost.

‘He saw the passing of information to the West about Russian military intentions as a patriotic act, not a betrayal.’

Early one morning, his briefcase full of secret papers snatched from the cabinets in his office, Bakov went to the American embassy. He showed them some of the documents in his possession and explained their importance. He waited for their response., Calmly, they gathered up the papers without looking at them and replaced them in his briefcase. He begged them to listen to what he had to say. But the American officials on duty at that hour were unmoved by his appeals.

‘The Americans thought he was a plant. That’s why they refused him. Nothing he could say or do would shift them.’

Taking him by both arms, they escorted him to the door of the embassy building. A military policeman pushed him out into the street, knocking his fur hat off in the process. Bakov watched it roll down the embassy steps and with it went all his hopes.

He was distraught. He now had less than ninety minutes in which to return the papers or the alarm would be raised. He had planned for many contingencies but never that his gift would be refused. He wandered disconsolately through the dark and deserted Moscow streets. Then, by the Embankment, his fate gave him a second chance.

‘He sees a figure coming out of a building in the diplomatic compound. He notices the furtive movements, so similar to his own, looking both ways to make sure the coast is clear before he emerges into the street. Then, head buried in the upturned collar of his
greatcoat, the figure hurries away in the darkness. Is it Bakov’s imagination or does the man look up at a window for a brief moment? Does a curtain move? Is there a woman’s face behind the curtain? He will never be sure.

‘From his hiding place in the doorway of a building, he recognizes the hurrying figure as Major Martineau, one of the military attachés at the British embassy whom he met at a reception some months before. Bakov hurries after him. He introduces himself, reminds him where they met and as they hurry on together, Bakov breathlessly explains what he has in his briefcase.

‘Martineau asks Bakov to accompany him to his flat. There is a great risk but by now Bakov is so desperate he does not care.

‘“Not a sound,” Martineau whispers as he puts his key in the lock. “My wife is asleep. I am on night duty at present.” He lies without a hint of difficulty but Bakov is too ridden with anxiety to notice.’

Martineau takes him into the bathroom, signalling that Bakov is to say nothing. Then he turns on the tap and lets it run. Now, he says, it is safe to speak. Bakov opens his case and hands over a few of the papers. It takes Martineau only a few moments to realize their importance. He fetches a camera and photographs the sample, and then makes an arrangement to meet Bakov at a safe house in Moscow later that evening.

‘How will I know you?’ Martineau asks.

‘My name,’ Bakov says, ‘is Peter the Great.’

Martineau shakes Bakov’s hand and sends him away to return the papers before their absence can be discovered. The meeting in his apartment has taken less than ten minutes.

‘That is how the British got Peter the Great,’ Krasov says. ‘Whether they understand what they have got is another matter altogether. But as a source of information about the Soviet Union, Peter is unrivalled.’

For the last months of the war the deception worked, and secret Russian military plans were regularly despatched to the British. What use they made of them Bakov never knew, but he had to assume that his acts were saving the lives of his fellow citizens. Then, in the second week of March 1945, Bakov sensed he was being watched. It was nothing overt, just an instinct, though about what he was unable to say. He aborted a planned meeting for a handover of documents at the safe house.

Martineau had no contact with him for a week. When Bakov did reappear, he said, ‘We are nearing the end.’

Martineau imagined he meant the end of the war, but Bakov said: ‘They suspect me. If I am caught they will execute me. I can die in the knowledge that I achieved something. Be patient. You may think he is dead, but he will be resurrected. Peter will never die.’ He shook Martineau’s hand. ‘Thank you for believing in me. You are a good man.’

Martineau never saw Bakov again. Two days later he was arrested by the KGB, given a summary trial and was already dead on the day the war ended. But before his arrest, he had secretly passed on responsibility for Peter the Great to Ivan Ulanov, an expert in the design of electronic navigational devices for shells and missiles. He had been a fellow student with Bakov and he too had his own reasons for hating the regime for which he worked. His parents, both teachers, had been arrested in 1938 on invented charges of conspiracy against the state (Bakov’s father taught English and copies of the novels of Charles Dickens had been found in his apartment, sufficient proof of treachery at that time). Both had been sent to concentration camps and he had never seen them again. His, exhilaration rapidly turned to terror when he learned of Bakov’s arrest and trial.