The Chameleon, page 9
The book cipher. One of Roger’s lessons in those long afternoons we had spent in the stuffy classrooms at Fort Monkton had been cryptography. Every agent deployed to a foreign country had to be able to write and decode encrypted messages. On the day before Roger left London for Moscow he had a final briefing. He was handed a second-impression copy of Dorothy Richardson’s novel Pointed Roofs. He was told that this was the book that he would need to decode any encrypted messages from another SIS agent, and to encode any messages he wanted to send.
I had transformed myself into this book, reasoning that it would guarantee Roger would take me with him when he left for his posting. But now, as Roger dropped the piece of paper onto the desk and walked over to his bookcase, I had a realisation; if I was no longer wearing Pointed Roofs then Roger was going to have a hard time finding a copy.
I let him bumble around for a little bit, running his finger along the spines of his other books and scratching his head, rifling through stacks of old newspapers that had accumulated in corners around the apartment.
This I did mostly for my own amusement. It’s not often that I get to feel in control.
When he stalked off into the bedroom to continue his search I changed myself. I find in these situations it is best to be bold and decisive; it’s best not to wait until the person who is looking for you, or rather a certain version of you, has discounted the usual reasons as to why you might have disappeared and is ready to court the extraordinary.
Roger came back into the room and was beginning to look a little exasperated. I was tempted to string him out a little longer, but my impatience to find out what the message said won out. His eyes fell on me and he stopped. He looked off to the left, trying to remember what book had been on the desk a couple of minutes ago, but he wasn’t ready to consider the impossible.
He shook his head and accepted that Pointed Roofs had appeared out of thin air and that Lucky Jim had been consigned to the ether, then he set to work. He opened me up to page 63 and the sentence ‘Fraulein Pfaff rose and moved away’. He scribbled away, pausing occasionally to chew the end of his pencil. When he was finished he leant back and read the message through a number of times before standing up and walking over to the window, staring out onto the street.
He had left the decoded message on the table. An address in the Arbat district and a time, 19:00.
It was four thirty. The street-lights flickered into life. Roger turned and walked back towards the desk.
16
The address that Roger was summoned to by the note turned out to be a pivnaya, something between a bar and a cafe – serving beer and pickled vegetables to pickled old men. As Roger sat down and took me out of his pocket (Lucky Jim again, but now without the dustjacket in order to be less conspicuous) I could see why it had been chosen. Everyone looked like they had something to hide.
Roger ordered a vodka and a bottle of beer, putting a false gruffness into his voice. He opened me up and hid his face from the room, giving me an opportunity to get a measure of the place.
The walls were bare, but for the streaks of damp tapering down from the ceiling. The room was lit by a single light bulb. The bar itself was utterly mismatched – a grand old number in antique oak that would have been more at home in an estate owner’s banquet hall and the clientèle were the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil type.
A man in a heavy overcoat with a worker’s cap stood up and started to walk towards the bathroom. At the last moment he turned towards our table and sat down.
‘Greetings, comrade,’ the man said to Roger in Russian. Roger placed me on the table. I recoiled as one of my corners soaked in the residue of spilled beer.
The man continued: ‘It seems the weather is on the turn.’
Roger smiled, and gave the standard response he had been taught at Monkton, ‘Trouble never comes alone.’
The man took his cap from his head and placed it on his knee, leaning in and switching to whispered English: ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you. Cranley.’ We had been waiting so long that I’d forgotten that we’d been waiting at all.
The protocol had been set out in London before Roger was first posted. Meetings were to be set up by dead drops at pre-selected locations and arranged by sending letters through the post addressed with the surname ‘Markum’.
No one that Roger knew had ever met him. I was expecting an elegant Francis Walshingham type with arched eyebrows and a tailored suit. It wasn’t at all like the books I’d been.
‘Lovely spot you’ve found here,’ said Roger.
‘We’re a long way from the Savoy.’ He grinned, displaying a set of brilliant white teeth. ‘It serves a purpose. We can speak here with relative impunity. It’s a watering hole for black-market traders and such like; they are professionally inclined to have short memories.’ He took a sip of Roger’s beer. ‘So you’ve been here almost here a year now. How have you found the work so far?’ There was something dandyish about him, boyish.
‘It’s been . . . quiet.’
‘Don’t worry, we’ve got a nice bit of business for you now. We’re sending you to Irkutsk.’
‘Irkutsk . . .’ Roger paused as a man staggered past on his way to the toilet, leaning across the table as the door swung closed ‘. . . Irkutsk, Siberia?’
‘The very one.’
‘What on earth do you need me there for?’
Cranley looked a little taken aback. ‘Our network doesn’t have much of a presence there.’
Roger sat back and they both stared into space as the man staggered out of the toilet and back towards the bar.
‘Not much going on there as I remember it. Just an aviation factory. And lots of snow.’
Cranley waved to the bartender and pointed at Roger’s beer. ‘They’re looking to build a hydroelectric dam. Apparently the Kremlin have sent out a whole load of NKVD boys to oversee it. It all seems a tad excessive.’
‘So you want me to find out what they’re doing out there?’
‘We know that they’ve got some of their biggest gulags there, the ones where they send their least favourite dissidents to freeze to death. I’m sure that’s got to have something to do with it.’
Cranley saw the bartender approaching with his beer and switched to Russian, ‘. . . and the committee chairman said, the first step in joining the party? Go and see a psychiatrist.’ He let out a great belly laugh and slapped Roger on the back. Roger tried a grin and nodded at the barman as he put the bottle on the table alongside a ceramic plate of dubious-looking pickled carrots.
The barman turned and walked away without a smile or a word.
Cranley switched back to English. ‘I like to cultivate the idea that I’m an insurrectionary. Throws them off the scent.’ He flashed those big milky white teeth, and then was suddenly all business again. ‘You’ll be leaving in two weeks. We’ll get you a job, haven’t quite worked that part out yet but you’ll know before you leave.’
‘Two weeks?’ Roger paused. ‘Rather sooner than I expected.’ He knocked back the rest of his vodka.
‘You didn’t think that you would be sitting behind a desk in Moscow for the duration, did you?’
‘No, of course not, it’s just that my wife and I recently had a baby and they had planned to travel to Moscow to take up living with me. We only recently married, you see.’ Roger was frowning, tracing patterns in the beer foam on the table.
‘Well, I wouldn’t advise that you play Swiss Family Robinson out there, old man. Those tartars will eat a baby alive.’ He let out another roaring belly laugh and patted Roger on the shoulder again. ‘Don’t look so glum. You’ll have plenty of company. I’m sending you with a radio operative, Arthur Jones. I have it that you are friends.’ He looked to Roger for confirmation.
‘What do you have in mind for him?’ Roger asked, quickly adding, ‘If you don’t mind my asking.’
‘Better that you radio your reports. More secure. More efficient. Besides, it’ll be better if there are two of you, more ground covered. He can listen in on the local chatter, see if he can pick up something on those prison camps.’
There followed a silence, both men nursing their drinks. Eventually Cranley put his beer on the table and laid his hand on Roger’s shoulder, leaning in. ‘Look, there’ll be plenty of time for you to play happy families. You’ll be back by the spring. Wrap this up quick sharp and we might even be able to send you home for Easter.’
‘Will I be going to the office for the next couple of weeks as normal?’
‘Of course, we don’t want to break your cover until we know what job we’ll have for you in Irkutsk.’ Cranley drained his bottle of beer and stood up, leaning in. ‘It’s been a pleasure. And chin up. I’ve heard the coldest it gets is 40 below.’
Cranley switched to Russian and gave Roger a ‘Comrade!’ by way of farewell, loud enough to wake a couple of drunks leaning on the bar. With that he was gone.
17
Arthur left, trailing Werther’s wrappers in his wake.
Ruth has gone too, popped out to buy some food, walk the dog, clean the car – whatever it is that she does to escape for just a while. She needs to take a little time to remind herself that she is still alive. In rooms like this you can’t trust the knock of your own heart in your chest.
So now it’s just Jessica. But we’re not quite alone, see, because she’s reading that book. The other book.
I still can’t look into it. I could but I won’t, I suppose that’s more like it. I like to think of our two competing stories as matter and anti-matter. If we came into contact a black hole would open and you would all be sucked in between my pages. I’d write the final versions of everything, of all of your stories. For as I long as I avoid that other story, this remains a possibility.
What I can do, however, is dip my toe in. I can feel my way around the edges. There are only so many different kinds of stories, so many different beginnings, middles and ends. And in every new story there is the germ of a story that you’ve heard before, one that has already put its weights in your heart.
You need only to glimpse a little to be able to guess a lot. Hers is a bildungsroman with a twist, all told through flashback, that much I can feel. Doesn’t that sound awfully familiar? Ruth is as much a dilettante as I.
All of this is getting in the way of our own progress, as fears tend to.
We should return to Jessica, and her past, pure as the untrodden snow. Her first word, ‘Abba’, was spoken in this very room. She was sitting on Roger’s lap, snatching at his earlobes. I could tell you about the argument that it caused – almost descending into a shouting match – between Roger and Jess’s father, the first insistent she had said ‘Grandpa’, the other sure beyond doubt it had been ‘Papa’.
I prefer to imagine it was neither, and that she was simply enjoying watching these two hairy, ungainly faces as they strained for recognition in her uncomprehending infant eyes. Children have a special talent for whimsy.
We’ll avoid the subject of her father. His part in her story was a troubled and abbreviated one.
She’s playing with a pendant now, as she reads that book. Roger gave it to her the last time she visited before she went away.
He was in bed, daydreaming. She got all the way to his bedside before he noticed that she was here. She put a cup of tea down on the table and then laid a hand on the sleeve of his pyjamas. He jumped half out of his skin.
‘Oh, Jessica!’ he said. His eyes had the fading brightness of sea-washed pebbles.
‘Hello, Granddad. You’re looking well.’ She perched on the edge of the bed, a bird poised for flight.
‘It’s been such a long time.’ He looked slightly panicked for a second as his brain searched for something. ‘How is that man of yours?’ He found it. ‘Peter, is it?’
‘Very well remembered. He’s very well, thank you. We’re going away together in a few weeks.’
‘I say. Where are you going?’
‘We’re going to travel around south-east Asia for a few months: Thailand, Cambodia, Laos. Should be really good. Would you like some tea?’
‘That’s wonderful. You must travel,’ Roger said, ignoring the question. ‘So easy for your generation.’ His words rushed out together as he got excited. His tongue couldn’t quite keep up.
‘You got about a fair bit yourself, I’m told.’
‘Look, let me give you some money. Let me give you some money so you and Peter can have some nice meals. Get me my cheque book. It’s just over there on the . . .’
Jessica stood up, interrupting him ‘It’s okay, Granddad, I don’t need any money. Peter and I have been working and saving so we should have enough to see us . . .’
Now it was Roger’s turn to protest. ‘No no no, don’t be so silly, Jess. It’s breath I’m short of, not money. I want you to take it; it’s no good to me. Get me my cheque book. It’s there, on top of the dresser, next to that pile of books.’ Roger pointed right at me.
Jessica stood in the middle of room, unsure of what to do. She wanted to take the money, and she knew that there wasn’t any real reason for her to say no. But she must also have been aware of what the gift meant, the implicit message it carried. A latent guilt froze her to the spot.
By taking the money, was she complicit in his decline? This conflict passed over her face in an instant, and then the decision was made. She walked over towards the dresser and grabbed the cheque book, sending up a cloud of dust.
‘Thank you, Granddad. It’s very kind of you.’
Roger’s smile was quick to his lips. ‘Just think of me when you spend it.’
‘I will.’
‘Pass me that box, would you, the wooden one on the window sill.’
Jessica folded the cheque and slipped it in her back pocket, to put that little business out of her mind. She tiptoed over to the window sill and brought the box over to the bed, carrying it in both hands – a wooden box with a latticed lid.
Roger had a little trouble getting the lid off, his hands shaking with the distress. Jess took it from him and eased it open with a squeak. Roger pulled something out, a little silver medallion on a leather shoelace. His St. Christopher’s.
‘Your grandmother gave me this,’ he said, holding it up by the shoelace, turning it in the light. ‘She gave it to me on our wedding day.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a St Christopher’s. He’s the patron saint of travellers. Very soon after we got married I had to leave the country for work. So your grandmother gave this to me.’
His eyes went unconsciously to the little photo of the pair of them on their wedding day. Jessica picked up the photo from the chest of drawers.
‘Such a lovely photo. I wanted to use it in my project but it didn’t seem right somehow. How come she didn’t go with you? When you moved to Russia?’ she said.
‘Oh, lots of reasons. Your mother had just been born, I was travelling around the country all the time for work. She did visit, though. And I came back to London pretty often.’ He pauses and takes the photo from Jessica. ‘She did love me once, you know,’ and then, after another pause: ‘How is she anyway, your grandma?’
‘Grandma?’
‘Has she said anything about coming to see me?’ Roger said, coughing, with his hand over his mouth.
She hesitated momentarily, shifting uncomfortably on the bed, and then looked at again at him, enquiringly. But her look asked a question Roger couldn’t answer. ‘I haven’t asked. Granddad. I’m sorry.’
‘I know, no, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t ask questions like that, shouldn’t put you in the middle. It’s just because it’s no use speaking to your mother about it, she just gets so upset.’
‘I really think that you shouldn’t . . .’
‘I know, I know. Forget I said anything.’ Roger coughed, then put his hand over Jessica’s. ‘What I meant to say was that I want you to have it. Take it with you, an heirloom. It kept me safe, it’ll keep you safe too.’ He grinned and turned Jessica’s hand over, putting the necklace into her palm.
Jessica closed her hand around the pendant. ‘Thank you, Granddad.’
‘Let me put it on for you.’ Roger put his hands on her shoulders and she shifted around until her back was to him. She passed him the necklace and, after struggling with knot, he tied it around her neck.
‘There you go. You’ll protect Peter now too,’ he said, chuckling. Jess smiled as she got up, taking a deep breath. Relief, the visit was coming to an end.
‘I best be off now, Granddad, have to eat some lunch before I go to work.’
‘Yes, of course. Go, go,’ he said, bowing his head and making shoo shoo movements with his hands.
Jessica pulled the cheque out of her pocket and unfolded it with a snap, holding it up. ‘And thank you for this. I wasn’t expecting anything. It will make a big difference. To both of us.’
‘No no, honestly it’s nothing. I’m not short of money.’
‘Just of breath,’ she finished for him. They laughed together.
She clapped her hands together as she walked backwards towards the door. As she put her hand on the door frame, he said: ‘Come and see me, before you go. So I can see you off.’
‘I will, Granddad, don’t you worry.’
She didn’t, of course. It was one of those decisions that get made without ever feeling like you’ve made a decision at all.
She’s been here an awful lot these past couple of weeks – her presence made known by the discarded hair grips littering the sideboards, copies of the Scandi-noir thrillers that she likes piled up on the floor. I’ve resisted the urge to slip into one thus far. I’ll be in her hands soon enough.
What her presence here, now, means to Roger is unknowable. The person that she knew began to slip away a while before she left to see the world and was almost gone entirely by the time she got back.
