The Russian Interpreter

He dropped the paper over the partition and waited. He waited for what seemed a long time. The tapping of the ring against the basins began to sound impatient; he became frightened that the guard would order him out. Then Konstantin’s hand appeared over the top of the partition, and a sheet of toilet paper fluttered down. It said:

‘1. Paul! My great joy at your safety and freedom.

‘2. My humble thanks for your silence.

‘3. A message I promised I would deliver from Katya. She is out of hospital (it was hunger and exposure), but not well. Her mother has died. R. and I are looking after her. She insists you should know that while she was in hospital the police visited her and asked her about you. She told them you had deposited the books at the Kiev Station, and she asks your forgiveness.

‘4. R. and I – both all right. Knew about you through R’s father.’

The guard tapped on the door of the cubicle.

‘Finished?’ he said.

‘Coming,’ said Manning. In great haste he tore off another piece of paper and scribbled:

‘Tell K. police would probably have known anyway. I kiss her feet and ask her forgiveness for involving her. My love to her, to R., and to you, Kostik.’

He dropped it over the partition. Then he put Konstantin’s note in the lavatory pan and flushed it away.

39

The stubby silver Tu-104 screamed and shook, straining against its wheel-brakes. Dust and scraps of paper on the apron fled back from the blast of its jets. Manning pressed his face against the vibrating window glass, trying to make out Sasha or Konstantin among the scattering of spectators. But the only person he could distinguish for certain was one of the police escorts watching discreetly from a doorway.

He gave up trying to see and felt the shaving cut on his neck. It was still wet. He would arrive in London with blood on his collar. London … the name sounded as strange and promising as Samarkand or Valparaiso. Was the same brilliant summer’s day just starting in London? Would anyone know he was arriving? Would his mother have been told about him?

The engine note rose. Suddenly Moscow, and all its cares and heavinesses, seemed remote and insubstantial. He had an almost physical sense of the city and his life in it as being behind him. For the first time he began to take in his sudden liberty.

Then the engine note fell again, and each engine in turn was switched off.

A great silence fell. Manning could hear passengers making small interrogative noises to each other. He had a sensation of falling. And only at that moment did he really appreciate the true quality of the nightmare from which he had just been delivered.

The steps were wheeled forward again, and the door of the plane was opening. Manning strained to see what was happening, but he was on the wrong side of the cabin. There were voices. Then the noise of someone coming swiftly up the steps, and pretending to pant, as if to demonstrate that he had hurried.

‘Don’t worry,’ said the voice of one of the stewardesses.

The door was shut again. One by one the engines started and rose to a scream. And down the gangway in the centre of the cabin came Proctor-Gould, grinning guiltily, peering round to find a seat, and too confused to see.

Manning waved at him wordlessly over the noise of the engines. For a moment Proctor-Gould didn’t take him in. Then his face came over red, and he shook Manning’s hand with curious formality, and when he had finished, pulled desperately at his ear. They mouthed incomprehensible questions and answers to each other. Manning pointed at the empty seat next to him, and mimed doing up his safety-belt. Proctor-Gould sat down vaguely, for once apparently left at a loss by the progression of events.

After the plane had started to taxi, and the engine noise had fallen a little, Proctor-Gould shouted:

‘Where did they put you?’

‘Somewhere out beyond the Yauza. I’m not sure exactly.’

‘I was in Vladimir. We had a nightmare ride in this morning – eighty miles an hour all the way.’

The plane took off and climbed into the perfect sky. Manning looked out of the window. Already Moscow was disappearing into the ground haze behind them. He could just make out some of the skyscrapers – the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Leningrad Hotel, the University.

‘Were you treated all right at Vladimir?’ asked Manning.

‘Not too badly, as a matter of fact.’

‘Did anybody ask you any questions?’

‘It was nothing but questions. I was interrogated almost every day.’

‘What did you tell them?’

‘Everything, Paul. It would have been insane to try and prevaricate at that stage. I take it you did the same?’

‘No one asked me, Gordon. Apart from the warders, no one came near me all the time I was inside.’

Proctor-Gould looked at Manning rather strangely, the suggestion of an embarrassed smile forming about his lips.

‘You mean, you haven’t heard the details?’ he asked slowly.

‘Sasha filled me in on the way out to the airport.’

‘So you know what they found in that book?’

‘Yes.’