6 : Ignatov

Two kopecks. 'Is Sergei there?' 'Who?' 'Sergei Panov.' 'I'm sorry, there's nobody here of that name. This is the British Embassy.' 'Oh, excuse me. I must have asked for the wrong number.' 'That's quite all right.' Every line to the Embassy was tapped and radio was out of the question and protracted speech-code was a slow-burn fuse because they'd go straight through the exchange and trace the call and raid the place within minutes so I'd had to ask for a cut-out. 'Sergei' was for Taganskaja Metro station and I got there in fourteen minutes, feeling nervy again because in this city there wasn't much traffic at night and I was vulnerable. It had been bad enough half an hour ago. Have you been to the café? the younger one had asked. Yes, she'd said before I could stop her. I see. And were you talking about the trial there? About the traitor Borodinski? His eyes going over my papers again, turning them to the light, looking for the wrong weave, the wrong coloration, the wrong serial number, looking at the photograph and then at my face, then back at the photograph. We were talking about Prokofiev, I said before she could answer. She could get us arrested: they were trying to provoke us into saying something wrong. Prokofiev, or Borodin-ski? A little joke, his tone amused, a young man who knew his composers. He wasn't playing a game of his own. Since the trial had begun, the standing orders for the police were to show these dissidents that it was useless protesting and demonstrating and thumping the cafe tables. Comrade Borodinski would be tried in the court, not in the streets. A night in the cell would remind them of that. If we call him a traitor before he's tried It simply means, I cut in on her again, that it's how we regard him. With a short laugh, squeezing her arm, Ask Helmut - he says we ought to raid the courthouse and string him up from a lamp-post outside. Who is Helmut? His eyes watching her, watching me. A friend of ours, I told him. He feels rather strongly about traitors. The other man stamped his feet, feeling the cold, getting bored. I was waiting for Natalya to say something, ready to cut in on her at once; but she was quiet now, because of my warning. Where are you two going now? Home, I said. He looked down at the papers again. But you live in opposite directions from here. I'm seeing my friend home first. His head came up. Why? Are you saying the streets are dangerous? Of course not. It's just that I'm enjoying her company. A thin smile. Let's hope she's enjoying yours. He passed my papers back, slapping them on to my hand. It's late for people to be out on the streets. It disturbs the more respectable citizens who are trying to sleep. Quite bad enough. The cut-out came up the escalator of the Metro station, dropping his thin little cigar into the sand bin at the fourth pace from the moving stairs and sliding both hands into the pockets of his coat, thumbs hooked out. He wasn't too quick on the parole and countersign and I put him through a variation before I took him across to the car and drove five blocks and stopped between two trucks parked on the wasteground alongside a building site where a crew was working the night shift. It was a new apartment block and the crane was swinging an entire prefabricated wall into place with four window apertures in it; sparks flew in a fountain from a welder's torch on the floor below. 'Have they found Schrenk yet?' 'Not yet,' he said. 'You'd have been told.' 'I was absent from base.'