The Russian Interpreter

‘Stormy applause. Stormily applaud myself. Everything the Englishman Proctor-Gould says is true. Free from negative characteristics. Couldn’t be better.

‘And filled with a practical desire to forge the bonds of friendship then and there, the English comrade suddenly rounds on the little professor with the drooping eyelid and presents him with a handsomely bound volume of dialectically incorrect bourgeois history. “Take,” he says, “this simple volume of imperialist lies as a token of the English people’s eternal esteem.”

‘The dwarf professor accepts it with deep gratitude and a long pair of tongs. Applause. Photographers’ flashes. And before the bond of friendship has had time to cool, the professor is brandishing a silver-gilt model of Moscow University. “Be so good,” he says, “as to condescend to accept this worthless, thirty-centimetres high, silver-gilt facsimile of our humble skyscraper.” Thunderstorm of clapping and electronic flashes.

‘And at that moment it struck me.

‘“Holy God!” I thought. “This tiny brigand is handing over the precious secrets of our Soviet state for foreign gold! I can tell by the look on their faces!”’

32

It was beginning to rain. Fat, wet drops smacked down on to the pavement and roadway. Konstantin looked up to investigate, and one struck the right-hand lens of his spectacles, obliterating it entirely and making him jump.

‘There’s a Metro station at the end of this road,’ he said. ‘We might get a carriage to ourselves at this time of night. Sit back – put our feet up. Good as a suite at the Sovietskaya.’

They trotted to the station, dark splodges of wetness speckling their clothes like a rash.

‘Ah,’ said Konstantin, as they got into a carriage with only two old women at the other end of it. ‘This is underground travel as it ought to be. Take a seat. Make yourself at home. Waiter! A bottle of champagne!’

He whipped off his glasses and polished them on the lining of his cap, his nose twitching at the absence of the accustomed weight.

‘It’s a good way to transmit information,’ he said. ‘Much better than furtively depositing it in dead letter-boxes, or hiding it in false-bottomed cigarette-lighters, or slipping it into the pocket of someone’s overcoat at a party. Do something secretive and someone may spy on you. Do it in public, in front of cameras, accompanied by toasts and speeches, and no one can spy on you, because everybody’s watching anyway. Open deception, openly arrived at – the secret of conjurors, businessmen, and tyrants alike.’

‘And you deduced all this from the expression on their faces?’

Konstantin shrugged.

‘A pure blind guess, really,’ he said. ‘A working hypothesis, as we natural scientists call it.’

‘But you thought it was worth testing?’

‘Modesty. If the system had occurred to me I was sure it must have occurred to Western intelligence agencies, too.’

‘So you got Ray a to steal the presents?’

‘Correct. Stole the Soviet ones first – naturally assumed the information was going out. First the silver-gilt university. Then a Spassky Tower in alabaster, a plastic sputnik, a china eagle with outspread wings, a painted wooden cigarette box, and a number of other articles repugnant to Western taste. Not a spark of reaction from Proctor-Gould. Glad to see them go, from all I could tell.’

‘He was being broad-minded about Raya.’

‘Then I thought, perhaps he’s bringing something in – instructions to agents, I don’t know. So we stole the Nescafé. No reaction. Stole the books – and there we were.’

They were riding on the Circle line. One by one the almost deserted stations drew level with the train, ground to a halt, and vanished again. Kievskaya, Krasnopresnenskaya, Bielorusskaya, Novoslobodskaya. Manning watched them dreamily, wondering in what tone of voice the names announced themselves, whether boastfully, apologetically, or benevolently.

‘I’m sorry, Konstantin,’ he said awkwardly at last. ‘I don’t entirely believe you.’

‘In what sense, don’t believe?’ said Konstantin slowly, blinking at Manning.

‘For a start, I don’t believe your story about guessing. That was pure invention, wasn’t it? And your deduction about Western intelligence. That seems reasonable as far as it goes. But there’s another deduction which one can’t help making at the same time – that Soviet counter-intelligence would have thought of the system, too.’

‘So what conclusion do you arrive at, Paul?’

‘I’m not sure, Konstantin.’

‘Call me Kostik, Paul. It’s more normal.’

‘The conclusion that suggests itself, Kostik, is that you’re working for Soviet security in some way. Perhaps in a freelance capacity. I suppose you’re trying to bluff Proctor-Gould into letting himself be blackmailed, so that somebody can use the fact of his having allowed himself to be blackmailed in order to blackmail him further.’

Konstantin didn’t answer. He sat in silence from one station to the next, looking out of the window and biting his thumb-nail. Then he sighed.

‘There’s a lot of truth in what you say,’ he said, and began to bite his thumb-nail again.