The White Russian (23 page)

It didn’t take long. Even with Grandmother’s box, and the photo, and the book I’d written my scrappy translations of those letters into, I didn’t have much.

When my box was closed, I pulled it into the study. What I should do soon, I knew, was to sit down and write to Mother to set her mind at rest about me and tell her about Grandmother. Not just a wire; a proper letter. But I couldn’t quite face that yet. So I was relieved when I realized I could keep busy, for now, by making a list of the pictures Grandmother had left me. I’d get a piece of paper from the desk, number them, give the list to Marie-Thérèse, and ask her to get them crated up and shipped after me.

Organizing the actual shipping of the pictures wasn’t something I needed to do myself. But I’d go out in a minute and ask Gaston to take me to the shipping office to pay for everything, and for my ticket. I could probably be on the train to Le Havre tonight.

For a moment, I stood looking round, wishing all this had ended differently.

I walked over to the big expanse of desk. It was spotless, with two chairs drawn up against it.

I tried to imagine it covered in a clutter of whirring machinery, with those two men I’d heard sitting at these chairs wearing big headphones. I could still see the socket on the wall which they must have plugged the equipment into, because the electric cable from the nearer desk lamp, which would normally be plugged in there, was still trailing uselessly along the floor. Marie-Thérèse must have forgotten to put it back.

Kneeling down myself I plugged it into the wall.

It was only when I was down on my knees, on the parquet floor, that I saw the other wire. It had been pushed along the small gap between floor and skirting board. Only the end was sticking out.

At first I just thought it was an uncharacteristic piece of mess in the otherwise immaculate room. Gingerly – what if it was still connected to something? What if it gave me an electric shock? – I pulled. Several feet of cable came out from the wall: enough, I could see, without even trying, to stretch comfortably to the desk.

At the wall end, this dark-coloured cable, which you could hardly see against the brown of the parquet, went right into the floor, a few inches below the electric socket in the skirting board.

I shuffled closer to the wall, intrigued despite myself. From here I could see that the two oblongs of parquet next to the wall were no longer properly glued down to the floor. They were just lying there, held by the other pieces around them, like loose bits in a jigsaw puzzle. Turning to reach for a paper knife from the desk, I ran the blade round one of them. It flipped up easily.

A small square had been cut in the floorboard
underneath, and the dark-brown wire ran down through that square into the ceiling of the room one floor below.

I knew what that room was. I’d been in it. It was General Miller’s private office.

I hadn’t taken seriously those stories Jean had told me about the Soviet agents circling his father’s office, waiting to attack. But now I sat back on my haunches, with the piece of parquet still in one hand and the paper knife in the other, looking slowly from the end of the wire that disappeared downwards, then back to the end that would reach so easily to the desk.

Then, feeling increasingly uneasy, I got up, put down the things in my hand, picked up the other end of the wire and walked with it to the desk. When I sat down at the desk with it still in my hand, I could see that it really was a perfect length to come just to about
here
… the exact place where a machine might have been placed on the mahogany surface. There were even dents in the cable at the end of the desk and at the floor, indicating exactly how it had lain.

But there was no way of seeing how the wire would have plugged into anything. Not any more. The end of the cable in my hand had no fitting. It had been cut – one neat, quick knife stroke. The men who’d taken the machinery away had been in a hurry, all right.

I felt suddenly sick. Whether those young Russian men with the recording equipment had been editing a recording of Plevitskaya’s voice at all now seemed in doubt. The only thing that this wire showed for sure was that they’d definitely been doing something else, too – using Grandmother’s study to spy on the General’s office downstairs.

It made a whole different, and more sinister, kind of sense
of the way the two men had just grabbed their stuff and rushed off with it so hastily as soon as Marie-Thérèse tried to shut them out of the apartment, saying Grandmother was ill. If they were spies, they would have wanted to clear their equipment out. They’d say: better safe than sorry; and make off.

Other thoughts came pounding into my mind.

Had Grandmother sat in here, on that evening, looking at this wire, and putting two and two together just as I was now doing? Was it this discovery that had brought on her
crise
?

And had it been the return of those two men, the next morning, which had brought on her second, fatal seizure? When she’d started trying to speak, buzzing with the sound she couldn’t quite get out, and I’d rushed out of the room to fetch the housekeeper, mustn’t she have wanted me,
someone
, to stay with her, and listen, and understand?

I couldn’t feel sorry for Plevitskaya any more either – not at all. She’d got this equipment in here, in the first place, playing on Grandmother’s pity and affection – so she must have been involved, mustn’t she?

And then everything became clear. I got up.

It didn’t matter what Plevitskaya’s role had been. I didn’t have time to worry about her.

The only real point was General Miller. Someone was spying on him. I didn’t have to work out who it was. But I did have to hurry.

I realized, with something like relief, that all I needed to do was to find Jean and, whether or not he wanted to speak to me, tell him what I knew – that his father was in danger.

It might also have been, I thought, remembering her urgent moan of ‘MMMM …’ (‘Miller?’), what Grandmother had wanted to tell me.

Nadya Plevitskaya had got up early to curl her hair. She was wearing a ruched dress with red flowers on a black background and, under her chic Wallis Simpson hat, big gold hoop earrings. It was hot enough, even by the end of breakfast, to make her rather regret the black linen jacket she’d added to the ensemble. But she’d put a big red chrysanthemum in the buttonhole, which looked festive, and the jacket did, at least, cover up the bulges at either end of her corset.

Throughout the long-drawn-out breakfast on the sunny
terrasse
of the rue du Colisée café, she flirted cheerfully with the proprietor and various fellow clients. After commenting that her husband was not fond of too much talk this early in the day, even on a holiday like this, when they were off to select stage outfits for her from no less a personage than Monsieur Epstein of Chez Caroline, she sent out a waiter for a newspaper for him to read while she talked and breakfasted. When the young man returned with
Le Figaro
, she looked at it in playful horror before saying that she couldn’t possibly let her husband read the thoughts of a perfume
manufacturer – and, to gales of sycophantic laughter from the proprietor, sent the waiter breathlessly back out again for
La Croix.

‘That’s women for you, eh, Jacquot!’ the proprietor chuckled, slapping his nephew on the shoulders, the second time back. She was doing a magnificent job, she thought, and holding half the street’s attention: teeth flashing, laughter pealing out – unlike her uncharismatic husband, who was barely even trying. The only time anyone could have told that
he
wasn’t actually dead was when he’d held out a hand for the paper.

She drank three bowls of chocolate. She dipped a
tartine
with strawberry jam into her first milky drink (until she caught her husband’s glance up from
La Croix
, at least). Then (to hell with her figure, and her husband) she ate two more croissants.

The sun rose. She was damp under her black jacket. She waved her hands around flamboyantly enough that, from time to time, without seeming to be looking, she caught a glimpse of the time. How slowly the hands on her watch seemed to be moving.

‘
Bozhe
,’ she cried when, eventually, they said ten o’clock. ‘Is that the time already?’ And she rose, without waiting for her husband, and sailed off down the street towards the waiting car.

The last thing she expected was for the American girl – who, as she only noticed too late, had been running in her direction – to cannon into her in the street.

Not by accident, either. The girl, who was a good six inches taller than she was, grabbed her by both shoulders.
She had none of yesterday’s forlorn, crossed-in-love charm. She was panting and indignant. Good God, Plevitskaya thought, disconcerted, she’s making straight for me; and she looks as though she’s about to
shake
me …

She glanced quickly behind. Her husband – never there when you wanted him – was still on the
terrasse
, folding up the paper and waiting for his change.

‘I found the wires,’ the girl was stammering, so angry she could hardly get the words out. Plevitskaya didn’t know what she was talking about. Politely, she tried to wriggle herself free. But the girl was clutching on to her shoulder pads for grim death.

Then, practically spitting into her face, the girl went on furiously: ‘Wires down through the floor to the General’s room. Was your recording – the one you wanted me to pay for – something to do with spying on ROVS?’

‘No!’ Plevitskaya said. ‘Of course not!’

And, in the breathy silence that followed, she took advantage of the girl’s look of doubt – and weakened grip – to shake herself loose.

Well, really, she was telling herself – feeling indignant, too – recording or no recording, whoever did this girl think she was? Why, she’d never been manhandled like that in her life …

And then, just as she was puffing herself up into a fluff of hurt pride and shock, she realized what the American girl must mean. Wires – from the recording equipment.

She stopped. Blackness flooded through her: a depth of cold rage such as she’d never known.

Was
that
the real reason why her husband had been so helpful about persuading Constance to have the recording
edited at her home? Just so he could bug Miller for the Moscow team, before the kidnapping?

When she glanced around again and saw him, newspaper folded under his arm, finally sauntering up the street towards her, smiling as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, she was appalled at the certainty she suddenly felt.

Of course it was. Moscow wouldn’t have invested all this effort and money in her husband just on trust. They’d have wanted him to lead from the front. They’d have wanted him to prove he was ready to betray Miller himself.

Which meant that the recording that she’d invested so much hope in, but he’d dreamed up, had just been a ploy – a Trojan horse, to get wires into Constance’s apartment.

He hadn’t given a hoot about her career. He’d been playing dirty tricks on her, all along, as surely as he had on that fat old fool Miller. And here she was, helping him out.

Suddenly all she wanted was to walk away, and for the whole thing to fail. Why should she care? If it all went wrong today, she’d end up in Moscow. And she’d a million times rather be there, looking for her son, than propping up her snake of a husband here.

She gazed back at the American girl, with her mouth half-open, listening to those unhurried footsteps coming up behind her, bursting with words – but too painfully full of all the contradictory things she wanted to say to be able to manage a single one.

And then she sighed, and the words all went away, because it was too late. She thought of the crab salesman, and knew she was afraid. She’d have to go through with it after all.

‘Mademoiselle,’ her husband said, with a formal bow and smile to the stunned-looking American girl (who didn’t challenge
him
, she noticed). She felt his arm slip through hers. With dreamlike dignity, she nodded, too.

As they moved slowly off, she heard herself saying almost apologetically to the American girl in whom she’d so nearly, for that one moment of insanity, confided, ‘You see, I have an appointment at the dressmaker’s.’

Evie

I hadn’t meant to go rushing up to Plevitskaya. But when she appeared, right in front of me, I saw red. All that sweetness, yesterday; all that concern … I could still remember how comforted I’d felt by her embrace. And all the time she was part of something so unspeakably awful as spying on General Miller. I couldn’t help myself.

But it felt like a dream, my moment of anger, because nothing came of it. She and her husband just went smoothly off, with their arms linked, leaving me standing there.

Except …

Except, now that I came to think of it, that when I’d first mentioned the wire she’d looked, for a moment, as shocked as I’d felt when I’d first seen it. And then she’d turned and glanced at Skoblin coming up behind, with his meek little half-smile and his paper.

And when she’d turned back to me, her face had changed. Could she have been scared?

I was standing in the street with the sun beating down on me. But, when I now called to mind the face of Skoblin – the neatly combed, thinnish hair, its once-black colour
turning to iron; the small moustache and quiet eyes – I suddenly felt cold.

Perhaps it had been
his
presence that had frozen me. He knew ROVS. He knew spying. And she, after all, had had every reason to want the recording completed. Wasn’t
he
likelier than his wife to have wanted to do this, and known how?

I couldn’t make it out. But I had a vague sense, even then, out there in the innocence of the hot Paris morning, that just beyond my inner fog of incomprehension, a new landscape of unimaginable deceit might be about to loom into view.

I was still standing, transfixed, when I heard the sound I’d been waiting for.

A taxi drew up in front of Grandmother’s building. I saw Jean get out and go to the passenger door.

‘Jean!’ I called, rushing towards him. ‘General Miller!’

I was a good hundred feet away. As I ran, I saw the General rise above the chassis, look in my direction and then, with irritation and embarrassment plain on his face as he saw who was calling out, hasten off towards the front door. ‘Wait!’ I called, frantically waving. ‘Please!’ But he was fiddling with his key, and looking away.

The door clicked shut behind him just as I reached the taxi.

I would have let myself into the building behind him and banged on the door of ROVS until they answered, but Jean stepped in front of me and barred my way.

‘Please,’ I panted, hardly daring to look into those blue eyes. I had my hands on the tensed muscles of his upper arms. He was so close that I could smell soap and
the cigarettes of the station café on him. ‘We need—’

‘Just leave him alone,’ he interrupted with cold anger. ‘Let him get on with his work.’

I let go of him. ‘You don’t understand,’ I said desperately. ‘Please don’t go.’

He looked at me then. He stopped. Waited.

‘It’s not about me, I promise,’ I went on, trying to make my voice steady and persuasive. ‘It’s about
him.
He’s being bugged.’

Jean rolled his eyes to the heavens and turned on his heel.

‘No!’ I cried. ‘I’ve found a wire.’

He’d already opened his car door by the time what I’d said sank in.

Then he stopped.

‘What wire?’

It took what seemed forever to persuade him to come up and see for himself. I was all fingers and thumbs with the keys and locks and handles.

But when I did finally get him into the study, and pulled out the wire, and held it so he could see how it had been cut through the floorboards and fed down into his father’s study ceiling, he stopped scowling and looking sceptical.

Instead he went very quiet.

Then he came over to where I was standing, and – quite gently – took the wire out of my hands. He tugged a little. But it was attached to something under the floor. It didn’t come loose.

‘I thought’, I whispered, ‘that it must have been connected with the recording they were editing up here; you know, of Plevitskaya’s voice.’

He took no notice of me. He just stared at the wire.

‘Because,’ I went stammering on, feeling foolish, ‘even if the other end has been cut, you can see it was just the right length to have reached the machine …’

He looked up, straight at me. I knew this wasn’t the moment for personal feelings, but I still couldn’t help a pang of joyful relief when I saw that he wasn’t angry any more – at least not with me. His eyes said, as clearly as anything, ‘I now see that you’re not just meddling.’ But some other emotion had overwhelmed him. He was searching for words.

‘The meeting’s a trap,’ he said. I stared back, lost. He didn’t explain – not, that is, unless a quick, appalled headshake and a mutter of ‘Skoblin’ counted as an explanation.

‘Skoblin,’ I repeated, wishing he hadn’t looked away again. ‘Because it’s his wife’s recording? Yes, that’s what
I
thought, too …’ But Jean was shaking his head and looking sick.

He threw down the wire, grabbed my hand and started pulling me towards the door. In spite of everything, I was grateful to feel his skin against mine.

‘I’ll explain,’ he said breathlessly. By then we were clattering downstairs and into the ROVS office. ‘I’ve got to talk to Father.’

We charged in through the front door, hand in hand, barging past the bewildered man who’d opened the door, and through the room full of uniformed secretaries typing at their desks – who all stopped and stared – and down the short corridor to the General’s room.

No one bothered with translating. ‘
Gdye Ghe-nye-RAL?
’
Jean called loudly over his shoulder, or that’s what it sounded like; and – though it was a shock to hear him speaking Russian – even I could more or less understand when the young men, pointing towards their boss’s office, started rising to their feet with the beginning of alarm. I could hear their footsteps, following ours.

But as soon as we opened the door it was clear we were too late.

The French windows at the back of his office – the ones opening on to the courtyard, from which you could sneak out of the service door into the back alley – were open, and the dingy muslin drapes were blowing in the wind. We stepped in with the young men following us. But the room was empty. General Miller had left.

It was only in the aftermath – once Jean started yelling in panicky Russian, and the young men started shouting, too, and then two of them chased out through the courtyard to see if they couldn’t stop the General somewhere further down the street, if he hadn’t gone far, while a third rushed to the phone and began calling, all with interruptions and orders from Jean – that, at last, he started explaining. It was only then that I heard what Jean was suddenly so frantic with anxiety about.

First, Skoblin had been planning a meeting between his master and two German agents. It had been supposed to be so hush-hush that none of the secretaries knew. Jean had pestered the secret out of him, as well as a vague sort of address. He had sensed his father was still holding back on him, but thought that was only because they both knew
he
so disapproved of the whole notion of the alliance with the Nazis that his father so wanted. (‘And not just me – I was
imagining what
you
would say, too,’ he added, shaking his head. He didn’t quite look at me.)

Now that Jean had seen that someone, and it must be Skoblin, was also behind the clandestine bugging of the General’s office, this planned rendezvous – which was about the only thing, except Grandmother’s funeral, that would have lured his father out of the safety of his office – was taking on a still more sinister colouring. This one extra piece of knowledge made it seem all too likely that the talk of a secret meeting had, all along, been just a ploy to get the General out of his office. Skoblin might have other masters, maybe even Soviet Moscow.

The two young men soon came back, looking frightened. It was obvious they hadn’t found the General. I’d had no time to form an opinion of the General’s startling intention of forming a pact with the Nazi government before hearing the equally startling information that the plan had probably never existed outside his own head, and Skoblin’s.

I sank down on to one of the leather armchairs in the secretaries’ room, to keep out of the way of all the pacing and scurrying. The returning young men rushed to their phones, too. They picked them up, but even I could see they didn’t know whom to call. They waited, with the earpieces up and hands poised, mutely asking for instruction. They were underlings, I could see, and there was no fight in them, now there was no one left to give commands.

‘Jean,’ I said, putting a hand on his arm.

He raised his head a fraction and looked at me with blank, appalled eyes.

‘Do you remember the address your father told you?’ I asked.

He nodded, and his eyes quickened with relief. Perhaps he was tired, I thought. This was when he’d normally go to sleep, after his night-long job driving. But I could see his purpose returning.

‘Go there,’ I said. ‘Now. Go in the taxi. See if you can get there in time to stop them.’

He stood up. ‘Will you come?’

It was a request. His voice was humble. I could hear he wanted me with him.

‘No,’ I said, because I could still hear Plevitskaya’s voice saying, ‘I have an appointment at the dressmaker’s.’ ‘I’m going to find Nadya Plevitskaya. She knows about this, I’m sure.’