It was a Wednesday when I saw them for the first time in three years, their faces emerging expressionless above overcoats, below tilted fedoras, through thick steam on platform one of the Low Level station. We’d been playing dominoes away at the Great Western and, on my way back home, I’d nipped onto the station to get a packet of gaspers from the cafeteria. As the last train from London breathed out, I had to look hard to assure myself that this was, indeed, Allan and Grattan. Their wide-lapelled suits looked tailored, their moustaches carefully barbered; they each turned down a Craven ‘A’ in favour of something unspeakably French.
“How am ya, Gonby?” It was Allan who spoke first.
“Not bad, ta,” I replied, “What you been up to?”
Grattan raised his finger to his lips. Come on. Walk with us.”
We passed through the collonades towards North Street. Suddenly, Grattan threw out an arm to halt my progress. Again he motioned for silence. An old man came past us with a dog. We continued our walk. Outside of the echoing tiles, Allan spoke.
“We thought you might like to come on a trip with us.”
“I’ve got work in the morning, chaps,” I replied. “Anyway, the pubs are closed.”
“Oh, if it’s a drink you want, that can be arranged,” said Allan, jovially, “Work? We won’t keep you long. Come on.”
They took me to a basement drinking club on Queen Street, and we sat in the corner, me supping on Springfield bitter and they with vodka. Something had changed with them but I felt it wasn’t something new.
“I’ll bet you thought you’d never see either of us again,” said Allan. The crowd was sparse and he talked low; I hesitated at the implication of his words.
“You don’t think I had anything to do with…”
Grattan again raised his finger to his lips, shaking his head.
“Of course not,” said Allan, jovially though not completely without tension.
“You must be wondering why we’re back here, though, instead of freezing in some Siberian hell-hole. Or worse.”
“It wasn’t easy,” said Grattan. Or Gruminksy, as he was formerly known.
“We’re going on a trip,” continued Allan, “We’d like you to come with us.”
“Turkey.” said Grattan.
“Lovely weather this time of year,” Allan again. He’d worked selling insurance for a bit and he was probably fairly good at it. “Expense account.”
“I don’t think so, chaps,” I said, quaffing more deeply at my drink and looking at my wristwatch.
“We’ve told people you’ll come… important people.”
“Thing is,” said Allan, tapping his Gauloise into a Guinness ash-tray, “we’ve told people you’ll come. They’re expecting you to come with us.”
“Important people,” said Grattan.
“Very important people,” agreed Allan, a.k.a. Alogrin.
“MI6 people,” said Grattan.
Allan raised his eyebrows at this and nodded at me. “The kind of people you don’t like to let down. And, as it happens, the kind that would be interested in how you and your family kept a couple of Cossacks in hiding at the end of the war.”
“You’re welcome,” I said bitterly.
“Sorry, Gonby. Really. It’s not nice, this. But it was the only way we could convince them not to send us back. Do this little thing for us and everybody gets to carry on with their own lives, quietly. It’ll only be a couple of days.”
□ □ □ □ □
Dennis Allan, a.k.a. Sergei Alogrin is the more amenable. In itself that’s not saying much. Gruminsky stares straight at me, through me, says nothing for ten, fifteen minutes at a time. I try to sit on the same side as him when we board the train to Istanbul, but he thinks nothing of getting up and moving so he can continue the intimidation. In Paris went to different clandestine meetings while the other baby-sat me: Allan could be okay but Gruminsky went as far as showing me his pistol a couple of times. He keeps my passport – a diplomatic counterfeit they had knocked up in London – until I need it.
“It’s an unfortunate situation,” admits Dennis / Sergei once while Clive / Boris is buying vodka in the dining car, “but it’s not a difficult mission. The hard work’s already been done: Turkey’s in NATO, the Americans are decided, and Kruschev’s accepting the inevitable. But there are elements – elements loyal to Malenkov – who are still trying to undo the last five years, force a new regime, break Turkey’s pact with the West. Who can say whether they’d get very far? But London’s worried enough to send us to make sure.”
“And when you find these agents?”
“We let London know who they are.”
“And that’s all. You don’t…?”
“Sorry?”
“You don’t…?”
Gruminsky slides open the compartment door, and speaks gruffly to Alogrin in Russian. The train carries on through the Romanian evening, the forests slowly inhaling the deep aroma of intrigue.
□ □ □ □ □
I don’t know why I expected a hotel. The house on Konuk Sk is humble, surrounded by noise and odours good and bad, if such distinctions even hold here. As in Paris and London, they take turns, one guarding me while one is in the field, but Alogrin is less garrulous now. I still have no idea why I’m here.
On the fifth day, a Thursday, Gruminsky returns with company, and pistol-whips him in front of my eyes, before entering the makeshift interrogation room. Behind the locked door there is shouting, much cigarette smoking (the chaps have finished their French stuff and we are all now smoking dark local brands), tense silences and the occasional bang and shuffle of physical violence. After an hour, Alogrin enters, there is a gunshot. It is Gruminsky that never leaves the room. The former interrogee takes us to a black saloon car parked way down Efem Sk and gives Alogrin the keys. He heads out of town discreetly, before barrelling east towards Horasan, and a field where a hot-air balloon awaits.
“Y’am in the Flying Squadron, ay yer?” “As a passenger!” I protest, “’Chimdy’ Sweep deals with the flying!”
“Drive,” says Alogrin.
“I don’t know how…”
“Y’am in the Flying Squadron, ay yer?”
“As a passenger!” I protest, “’Chimdy’ Sweep deals with the flying!”
“I said drive!” shouts Alogrin gruffly, his pistol now drawn.
I start the burner and we’re airborne in fifteen minutes, sailing east under a smart breeze. Turns out piloting a balloon is fairly simple. We take in the plains and the Aragats massif, and talk of the past, when my parents took in ‘Dennis’ and ‘Clive’, tutored them intensely in the local dialect until they were fit to leave the house and look for work. And the games I took them to, at home and sometimes away: the metamorphoses of Anfield and the dark holes we passed through into the Baseball Ground. It’s the best part of the trip for me.
Yeah, it’s simple, this flying business, until it comes to landing. With Mount Aragats no longer visible on the port side, Alogrin tells me to land, and then I just cut the burner and tug a little at the flaps, which seems to work at first but the descent soon begins to gather terrible pace. There’s nothing around for miles but when I try to hit the burners again to soften the descent it’s too little, and way, way too late. We hit the ground with tremendous force and I cannot move. Broken ankles, perhaps. And it soon gets hot under the silk. Alogrin seems fine and his fast footfalls soon fade to nothing. I am alone and will probably die here.
□ □ □ □ □
I awake to the sound of a vehicle, and Armenian voices. One belongs to some kind of doctor. I try to communicate but nobody replies. I see sunlight again and feel pressure on the pain in my leg. The others begin folding up the silk and packing away. I feel an injection. I sleep.
□ □ □ □ □
I am sipping vodka on platform two of Yerevan station. My crutches lean against the wall beside me. The clock beneath Stalin’s face says nine-twenty a.m. It’s okay. My doctor says it’s okay. Anyway, we’re not the only ones doing it.
“You’ll be met at Moscow,” says Vasiliev, “there will be a room for you at the Metropole. You shall rest there a couple of days.”
“And then what? A knock at the door? Gas through the keyhole?”
Vasiliev smiles and shakes his head. “No questions will be asked. Malenkov is still in government, you know? There is a… flexible attitude to him. If your work here turns out to have any value…, well, you will be safely back in England by then.”
“And what do I tell MI6?”
The visa says ‘journalist’. “Do they like western journalists in Moscow?”
He shrugs his shoulders. “You’ll work that out. The point is, you will get back to Britain. Speaking of which, I have something for you.” He reaches into the inside pocket of his linen suit jacket, “A new passport. With visa. Alogrin thinks it will be more…, how do you say?… ‘up your road’?”
The visa says ‘journalist’. “Do they like western journalists in Moscow?”
“It depends what kind. Here,” reaches into the other side of his suit, “You’ll need these for your assignment.” I can read only the numbers in the dates and the two words of English on each ticket: WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS. “Alogrin told me to tell you he is sorry, for bringing you into this.”
I light a Dominant and inhale deeply. “Tell him it’s fine,” I say.
“Going back, there should be room for you on the team plane, though you’ll need to smooth that over yourself…. Your press pass…. And some roubles.” A whistle sounds at a distance, “That will be your train. I’ll help you.” We sip the last of the vodka together before I grab my crutches and Vasiliev helps me to my feet. The locomotive steams slowly in and all I can think about is Billy Wright and the inimitable Peter Broadbent, though they will go on to lose to Spartak and the trip home will not be anything like as simple as my doctor has led me to believe.