The Red House. Derek Lambert
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the pocket of his pink satin jeans the leader took a slingshot. Sighted with deliberation and pulled back the lethal rubber.
The lights changed. Zhukov jammed his foot on the accelerator, the stone smacked the windscreen drilling a small hole and frosting the glass.
But they were away. As he drove Zhukov punched out the glass. His hands were shaking and his foot on the accelerator was wobbly.
In the driving mirror he saw them in the middle of the road, fists raised in panther salutes, faces triumphant.
‘Do you still want to live here?’
‘Please, Vladimir.’
He noticed a trickle of blood on her cheekbone.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Is it serious?’
‘It’s nothing. The stone just grazed me.’
‘Shall I take you to a hospital.’
‘I told you—it’s nothing.’ She reached back and picked up the stone lying on the back seat. A small sharp flint.
On the sidewalk Zhukov saw a drunken old man with a folded black face and a jockey cap picking up a cigarette butt from the gutter. Through a vista ahead he briefly saw the tip of the noble white dome of the Capitol.
IT was a perfect night for spying, socializing, intriguing and electioneering in Washington, D.C.—activities which blended easily into an entity in the capital city. A fine frosty night; the sky filled with calculating stars, the sidewalks glittering with jewels.
At the black-tie affairs in the mansions and palaces around Massachusetts Avenue—held simultaneously with clandestine meetings in the ghetto where they were plotting to overthrow the whole elegant caboosh—the organization was as smooth as a butler’s voice. Although this evening there was some unfortunate coincidence because there were affairs at both the French and the Spanish Embassies and a select dinner at the White House garnished with rumours that, over liqueurs, there might be an important leak about the President’s intentions in the election. (During the day, Richard Nixon, vying for the Republican nomination, had promised in a speech in New Hampshire to finish the war in Vietnam with these words, ‘I pledge to you that the new leadership the Republicans offer will end the war and win the peace in the Pacific.’)
God knows how the clash occurred. The French and the Spaniards were both highly desirable invitations for palate and prestige and it was surely a prima facie case for establishing a clearing house for such occasions. Even the current in hostess (wife of a Mid West crusading senator), whose blunt wit had made her some sort of reputation was in a quandary. She had planned first a few pithy but serious words of advice for Franco which would be relayed to the Generalissimo; then the French invitation had arrived and she had composed some saucy directives for de Gaulle; then, deciding to visit both and fearing that she might confuse her messages, she had resolved to crystallize her words into two well-timed cracks that could apply to either leader. Thank heavens, she thought under the drier at Jean-Paul’s, that through some bureaucratic oversight they had forgotten to invite her to the White House dinner.
Elsewhere in Pierre l’Enfant’s dream city the beautiful, the ambitious, the dedicated, the sycophantic, the established and the insecure, pondered the invitations. Democrats and Republicans, the Chief Justice, the Secretary of State (thankfully committed to the White House), the Attorney General, several ministers, umpteen advisers, Congressmen, journalists, a pet author, a vivacious pop singer, some aristocracy from Britain, a couple of Italian diplomats of impeccable lechery, all the ambassadors and many of their henchmen, innumerable spies, innumerable courtesans, a general or two, lawyers seeking slander, some widows still game at sixty, a couple of Mafia junior officers disgusted by so much overt intrigue, the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and the K.G.B., a blackmailer, one virgin, half a dozen TV producers, their sons and daughters, and there among them all maybe a future president or two.
Almost everyone omitted from the White House invitation list elected to attend both receptions. Thus the problem became simply one of strategy: which to attend first? Because the implied insult of visiting one’s host second was worse than declining the invitation altogether. The in hostess decided to grace the Spanish reception first and explain to the French that she had been asked to deliver an urgent message to Prince Juan Carlos, heir apparent to the Spanish throne.
At the Russian Embassy the debate was less refined. It was merely a question of who was to be let out on a leash for the night. Among the few given a pass was Vladimir Zhukov because his new duties entailed mixing with the Beautiful People.
With his paranoid conviction that, like himself, everyone was a potential eavesdropper, Mikhail Brodsky chose an open-air venue for the briefing. They met on the steps of the Capitol.
‘Greetings comrade,’ Brodsky said in his imprisoned voice.
Zhukov nodded, almost a first secretary now.
‘Shall we walk? It’s such a fine morning and Washington is a beautiful place on a day like this.’
As indeed it was, Zhukov thought. Velvet buds enticed by the thaw, trees straining for summer, the Roman dome of the Capitol gleaming in the sunlight, Stars and Stripes rippling against the winter-blue sky, frost melting on the city’s recuperating carpets. Over all this nobility an airliner lingered like a spent match. He remembered Leningrad, another noble city, on mornings like this.
‘Why all this secrecy?’ Zhukov demanded. ‘I nearly didn’t come.’
‘You are perhaps feeling your authority now that you are nearly a first secretary?’
Zhukov shrugged. ‘You, after all, are only a third secretary.’
They turned into the Botanical Gardens. (Ninety varieties of azaleas, 500 kinds of orchid, Zhukov’s computer reminded him.)
Brodsky was silent for a while. Smarter than usual in a light grey overcoat and plaid scarf. His hat and his poor shoes and, somehow, his gold-rimmed spectacles the give-away. Finally he said: ‘You are doing very well, Comrade Zhukov. But you mustn’t get drunk with power.’ He giggled.
‘A first secretary can hardly do that.’
‘But you mustn’t forget that position is nothing in the Soviet System. We do not recognize the cult of personality on any level.’ He tucked a lock of girlish hair under his hat. ‘And you mustn’t forget that some of the least significant members of the Party have certain other authorities.’ His voice iced up. ‘You could be demoted just as easily as you have been promoted. In fact, in certain circumstances, you could be put on a plane back to Moscow within a few hours. Tonight for instance.’
‘I doubt it,’ Zhukov said without conviction.
They walked slowly down Capitol Hill, and Brodsky assured him that no such move was anticipated because it was well known that Zhukov was a loyal servant of the Party and the Soviet Union. And he reverted to the tentative approaches made in Moscow about extensions of his official duties in Washington.
Zhukov remembered the approaches. ‘You may be asked to mix a little. To make friends in the right places. To socialize just a little more than some of your colleagues. After all, we have to keep contact with our hosts and you are an excellent linguist …’
Brodsky danced over a fallen branch. ‘They no doubt put it very vaguely. And, of course, at that time you were only going to be our second-string socialite. Until the Tardovsky fiasco. Now you have taken his place. Because you have a certain charm, because you are a man of sensitivity and comparative sophistication. In short, Comrade Zhukov, you are an attractive and articulate man.’
‘You are very kind.’ Perhaps Brodsky had some homosexual inclinations? ‘Do you mean you want me to become a spy?’
‘Nothing so dramatic. If we—they—had wanted you to become a spy your training in Moscow would have been far more rigorous. No, we do not