The Best of British Crime omnibus Page 4

  The noise and laughter grew so loud that I missed a lot of the conversation, but it seemed that even at a party Mullett couldn’t refrain from doing his stuff. I heard him telling Cressey across the table that the food position in Russia was very good now, and that it had only been bad during the war because of the great efforts the Russians had made on behalf of their allies, and that though Cressey would probably see queues at Moscow food shops that was merely because the Russians were such sociable people and liked getting together.

  The only fly in the amber was that just as the champagne corks were popping there were scrabbling noises at the uncurtained window and three little white faces with noses flattened against the glass peered in at the festive board like the kids in Maeterlinck’s Blue Bird. The Mayor ignored the children at first, but as their excited chatter gradually drew the attention of the delegates, he became restive and told the waiter to shoo them away. As the door opened, they scuttled off.

  ‘Children will be children,’ said Mullett tolerantly.

  I caught Cressey’s eye, and jerked my head towards the window. ‘It’s merely that they’re interested,’ I said. ‘They don’t like rich food.’ Mullett gave me a very dirty look, but he didn’t say anything.

  About an hour later everybody returned to the train with varying degrees of assistance, and promptly went to bed. Next morning I found most of the delegates very cool – I think Mullett must have had a word with them about me. It was clear that they were getting ready to slough me off directly we reached Moscow, which suited me very well.

  After breakfast I sat at my window and watched the rolling countryside that runs in a picturesque belt thirty or forty miles west of Moscow. Perdita, in the corridor, was talking rather pretentiously to Islwyn about the ‘shape’ of the snow-laden silver birches, which were in fact very lovely. I was beginning to feel stirred myself now as old memories came crowding back to me. We press correspondents had covered this ground pretty thoroughly after the German retreat, grinding over corduroy roads in decrepit lorries, picking our way through the incredible litter of old battlefields, sleeping in peasant huts, checking up on atrocities, interviewing terrified prisoners in the dead of night. Every place-name in the last hundred miles had had its sharp wartime associations – Vyazma, Gzhatsk, Mozhaisk. No doubt things had changed a lot since then, but there were plenty of permanent things to make me nostalgic – the delicious whiff of wood-smoke in the crisp air when we were checked at a station, the smell of the tobacco-substitute, makhorka, the squat peasants with their dangling ear-flaps and old felt boots and heavy wooden sleighs, the coloured churches, and the log cabins with their carved window frames. I sank into a long reverie.

  When I again began to take notice, we were running through the outer suburbs of the capital and Mullett was starting his fussing all over again. I wouldn’t have been a member of his delegation for all the roubles in Russia.

  The scene at the terminus was very similar to the one in Warsaw, except that everything was on a far grander scale. There was a larger brass band, and a more vociferous demonstration, and a much more impressive reception committee. The Russians were evidently setting great store by this delegation. As the train came to rest, I noticed several familiar faces in the assembled crowd – Alexander Kropin, the writer; a poet named Suvalov, a man from the Soviet Foreign Office who had once been a censor, and several high officials from VOKS, the All-Russian Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. One of them was Mirnova, a plump attractive woman with high cheekbones and a heart-shaped face who always wore an expression of great candour and simplicity although in fact she was one of the toughest Party members in Moscow. I recognised one of her assistants, too, a pretty girl named Tanya, one of a pair of English-speaking twins who had been very popular with the correspondents during the war. She looked more sophisticated and her clothes were better, but she still wore her fair hair in a fringe with a page-boy bob.

  I kept well in the background and allowed the delegation plenty of time to get ahead. Islwyn Thomas gave me a casual nod of farewell as he turned to help Perdita down to the platform; Cressey came and shook hands. There was a lot of excitement below me as introductions were effected, and news cameras flashed, and the inevitable micro-phone was stuck in front of Mullett. At last they all moved off to an accompaniment of cheers and music. As the noise died away I managed to find a porter and I made my own way out of the station. I’d timed it very nicely. As I emerged, Tranter was just easing his stiff leg into the back of one of five luxurious limousines, and a moment later the convoy moved off.

  Chapter Two

  As I’d expected, there was no sign of a taxi anywhere about, so I went back into the station and telephoned a friend of mine who was staying at the Astoria – an American correspondent named Jefferson L. Clayton whom I’d got to know pretty well during a trip to Washington and who was just about coming to the end of a three months’ assignment in Moscow. I thought it probable that a car would be part of Jeff’s office equipment, and it was. When I phoned he was on the point of going to see his Ambassador, but he promised to send the car right on to pick me up. ‘Gosh!’ he cried, ‘am I glad to hear your voice!’ I told him I could hardly wait to hear his news and rang off, feeling pleasantly exhilarated. Jeff’s company was always a tonic, because everything he did and said was positive. I hung around for a while, and about twenty minutes later a surprisingly lush car rolled into the station and a smiling young chauffeur wrapped me up in rugs.

  From what I could see as we sped down the Tverskaya, the city hadn’t changed a lot in six years – not outwardly, at least. By contrast with the dazzling snow on the rooftops, everything looked drab and dilapidated, and more in need of paint than ever. Here and there along the route there were new buildings of a superficial impressiveness, but the vista was mainly of flaking walls and crumbling cement and cheerless courtyards stacked with timber and littered with accumulated rubbish. The streets were as noisy as ever, with tram bells ringing and car horns hooting incessantly. A distorted voice on the open-air loudspeaker system was exhorting citizens to contribute to the latest voluntary State loan. The ancient single-decker trams which clattered over the worn tracks were packed so full within and without that a sardine would have felt jostled. Gangs of women with padded jackets and shawled heads were brushing and chipping away at the snow and ice in the ceaseless winter struggle to keep the streets clear for traffic. On the uneven pavements, bulky figures carrying brief-cases and parcels and string bags were shuffling expertly along in their high felt boots, silent, dogged and pinch-faced in the keen frost. Paper flowers on sale at a corner kiosk seemed to mock the distant spring. The green towers and golden domes of the incomparable Kremlin provided a fantastic background to the dour winter scene.

  The cold was just beginning to numb my fingers and toes as I pushed through the double set of revolving doors into the Astoria Hotel, taking a wedge of icy air with me into the warm vestibule. Inside, everything was as familiar as though I had left the place only yesterday – the threadbare red carpet, the huge glass chandeliers with their inadequate quota of bulbs, the great gilded mirrors, even the green-shaded lamp on the receptionist’s table. Everywhere there was the same air of faded ornateness and slow decay. Shapeless figures who had crept into the building to get warm hung furtively around the door as they had always done. The porter who took my luggage was the same porter I had known in the old days – an ageless, obsequious grey-head named Ivan. The Astoria was probably the only place in Moscow where the servants still bent low and touched their caps.

  There was no difficulty about getting a room, for I’d sent a wire to Jeff telling him I was on my way and he’d taken care of everything. In exchange for my passport I was given the key of room 434 on the fourth floor – Jeff’s was 436 – and I went up in the big, shaky lift, feeling absurdly excited. Nothing seemed to have changed except the faces of the manageresses who sat at strategic points on each floor, watching and noting.

  There was
quite a commotion on the fourth floor, and it soon became apparent that the whole delegation was being accommodated along the corridor where I was to be housed. Luggage was still being taken into the rooms. Cressey and Tranter were ambling around in a rather bemused fashion and Islwyn Thomas, who had evidently managed to get his old room again, was going into reminiscent raptures in a loud excited voice. As I turned the key in 434, Mullett himself came out of 435 and passed me with a stiff little nod. I almost felt like asking for a transfer!

  I dumped my stuff and had a look at my quarters. The room was a fairly standard type for the Astoria – high, light and spacious, with a curtained-off bed annexe opening in turn into a private bathroom. The furniture was an odd mixture – Louis Quinze chairs and couch, a huge divan with a mirror at the back, a cheap deal wardrobe, a heavy mahogany table and a brass-knobbed bedstead. I pulled the bed away from the wall and wondered if there were any bugs. For two years during the war I had waged a running fight with them in this hotel, and had left just as victory seemed in sight. But perhaps things were different now. There was one marked improvement since the war days – the radiators were hot and the room was comfortably warm. In a month when the thermometer outside could fall as low as minus thirty Centigrade, there was nothing more important than that. The tall French windows – double, like all windows in Russia – had been sealed along all the cracks with broad strips of brown paper to keep out the cold air. This again, was the general practice between October and April. If you wanted ventilation you could open a tiny door at the top of the window, called a fortachka, and then the temperature became Arctic in a few minutes. Most people kept it firmly shut.

  Outside the French windows there was a railed-in concrete balcony with an inch or so of frozen snow on it. In the summer it would have been a pleasant place to sit, for it looked out on the broad expanse of Teatralni Square with the Bolshoi Theatre massive in the background and in front a formal garden with small trees. The only drawback about this side of the hotel was that trolleybus routes intersected just below, and there was usually a lot of noise. The rooms at the end of the corridor, round the corner, were better – they looked out over a quiet side-street. I was reminded, however, as I gazed down upon the square, that they weren’t nearly so much fun because you missed half the amusing things that went on. Just below me, for instance, a pedestrian was taking a short-cut diagonally across the open space, which was in flagrant defiance of regulations. A militiaman on the corner removed a cigarette from his mouth and blew his whistle angrily, but the offender took no notice. The whistle was blown again – a series of long blasts. The man looked round but continued doggedly on his way. The militiaman shouted, and began to follow him in a rather half-hearted manner. The man quickened his pace, and the militiaman shrugged and broke off the pursuit, turning to harangue some children about Socialist discipline in a loud, grumbling voice. It was so characteristic of Moscow.

  I’d just about finished unpacking when Jeff breezed in, with a whoop of delight and a crushing handshake. Jeff looks like the bobby-soxer’s dream come true. He’s tall and strongly-built, with crinkly brown hair and a blunt nose in a round, rather puckered face. No one would call him handsome, but he has a great deal of charm. He’s been practically all over the world, and he knows his job through and through. He likes getting his facts straight, and saying what he thinks, and drinking anything with alcohol in it, and pretty girls. He hates censors, and ‘hand-outs,’ and humbugs, and stuffed shirts, and being on his own. He usually appears rather cynical, and as far as his job’s concerned he’s seen plenty to make him, but he’s got a strong sentimental streak as well and he can get quite emotional. We’ve been friends for a long time, in the hail-and-farewell fashion of foreign correspondents. He once threatened to knock my block off – or whatever the equivalent American expression is – at a party in London when we were both tight and he said that W.D Wills on the cigarette packet was a better guy than H.O Wills on the same packet, and I said he wasn’t! That’s the only time we’ve had what I’d call a major difference of opinion.

  Before we got down to an exchange of news he insisted on a drink to celebrate. He marched me off to his room and with the precision of a maestro he smacked the bottom of a vodka bottle. The cardboard stopper flew off. He poured out two lethal doses and produced some crackers. ‘Here’s to civilisation,’ he said. ‘May we live to see it!’ We threw our heads back, tossed down the colourless spirit and made the sort of faces you have to make over vodka.

  ‘Well, you old son of a gun,’ he beamed, ‘how’s Paradise Regained?’

  ‘You know,’ I said, ‘it’s a funny thing – I always hanker to get back to Russia, and when I’ve been here a couple of hours I can’t for the life of me think why.’

  ‘Nuts! You know you’re crazy about it.’

  ‘I suppose most people feel something for places they’ve spent a long time in,’ I said. ‘I know men with a passion for Clacton-on-Sea. By the way, thanks for fixing my room.’

  ‘Think nothing of it, old boy.’ The ‘old boy’ was very much in quotes. ‘Though I reckon it’s just as well I did – a bunch of your fellow-countrymen have just moved in. The corridor’s stiff with ‘em.’

  ‘I know. Mullett’s Circus. I travelled with them from Warsaw.’

  If I’d told him I’d just escaped from Dachau he couldn’t have looked more concerned. ‘You poor s.o.b! A thing like that would take years off me. That guy Mullett gets right under my skin.’

  ‘Why, do you know him?’

  ‘I’ll say I do. I wrote a profile on him when I came through London last year, and did he make a fuss! I believe he thought he could get me fired. He talked of libel and God knows what, but it didn’t come to anything, of course. What a prize jerk!’

  ‘You know he has the room next door – 435?’

  ‘You don’t say! We’ll have to organise a pincer movement.’ He poured out two more shots of vodka.

  I said, ‘How’s work been, Jeff?’

  He gave me a dirty look. ‘You know damn well how it’s been.’

  I had to laugh. I’d seen him in London just before he’d left to take up this assignment, and like all good newspapermen he’d been sure that he could do what everyone else had failed to do. He’d had no political illusions, of course, and neither had his paper, but with no personal experience of Moscow he’d simply been unable to believe that working conditions could be quite as bad as they were reputed to be. ‘Don’t give me that gloom stuff,’ he’d said. ‘You guys just don’t know the right approach. I’ll soon have Vishinsky eating out of my hand.’

  Now he broke into a rueful smile. ‘You were dead right, of course,’ he said. ‘They like to have one or two of us kicking around, but they hate our guts, and the way they behave is out of this world. We can’t go anywhere, we can’t see anything except what’s too public to hide, and we can’t talk to anyone. I’ve put a lot of lines out but there hasn’t been a nibble. The ordinary Russians are too scared to speak to us. Every request has to be funnelled through the Press Department, and their job is plain obstruction. I’ve been waiting six weeks for VOKS to fix me a visit to a kindergarten. Practically every day I go and bang on Ganilov’s table – he’s the head of the Press Department now – but he only blinks at me through his thick glasses and says I must be patient. Patient! – can you beat it? It’s bloody well hopeless. I’m not sorry I came – it’s been a fascinating experience – but as far as the job’s concerned I sure won’t be sorry to leave.’

  I nodded sympathetically. It hadn’t taken him long to get the situation sized up. ‘When are you going, Jeff?’

  ‘That depends on how soon they can squeeze me into a plane, I guess. I applied for my exit permit yesterday.’

  ‘Pity! Never mind, we’ll have fun while we can. By the way, how’s the censorship these days?’

  He snorted. ‘Practically impenetrable. As far as the censor’s concerned this country is perfect and he passes nothing but friendly propaganda, if any. You
can’t even say that the corps de ballet was a shade off colour today! The only pieces I’ve succeeded in getting through were heavily ironical, and that’s always risky.’

  ‘How right you are! – and that goes for both ends. I’ll never forget an ironical piece I filed towards the end of the war, about some spontaneous demonstrations by freedom-loving Persians in favour of Russia taking over their oil. It got away from here all right, but some damn-fool sub at home put a heading “Persian Oil: The Truth at Last!” It taught me a lesson. No, the only thing to do is to collect what material you can and use it later.’

  ‘Sure – in a couple of paragraphs. You’re lucky, of course – you can talk the lingo. I guess that must help a little, if you can find anyone to talk it to. The only words I’ve picked up aren’t any use except in bed. If I want to ask any questions I have to have my secretary go along with me, and directly folk realise I’m a foreigner they shy away as though I were radioactive.’

  ‘Who is your secretary, Jeff?’

  ‘I call her Zina – she’s got some unpronounceable name. She’s quite a character. I reckon she’d be a good secretary if there was anything for her to do except get in the groceries and collect the “hand-outs”. As it is, I guess the only real work she does is to keep tabs on me for the M.V.D.’

  The M.V.D were the security police. ‘Those fellows are always changing their name,’ I said. ‘In my time they were the N.K.V.D. We used to call them the four-letter boys.’