Our Game

"So I mean that Caucasus might make rather good sense, in a way. Even if you have to sort of tough it out with the other women, so to speak, and don't get to see that much of Larry. For a time, at least. Till things have died down."

"You mean from a practical point of view," she suggested, raising her voice slightly in challenge.

"Well, it's not always the worst point of view, the practical one. The irony is, you see, I'm in the same boat."

"You what? Nonsense, Tim. Why?"

"Well, the powers that be have lumped me in with your operation, I'm afraid. They think I'm part of it. With the result that ... well, I'm on the run too."

"How utterly ridiculous. Just tell them you're not part of it." She was cross that I should aspire to the heights of their shared criminality. "You're terribly persuasive when you want to be. Your signature isn't on anything. You're not Larry. You're you. I never heard anything so absurd."

"Well, anyway, I just thought I'd wander for a bit," I said, feeling obliged for some reason to persist with this futuristic account of myself. "Stay out of England. Out of harm's way. Let things die down."

But it was already clear that she wasn't faintly interested in my future.

"And it wasn't all a wicked Kremlin plot; we know that now," I said conversationally, like someone determined to look on the bright side. "I mean you and Larry and CC—setting me up somehow, using Honeybrook as a safe house or something. I had these awful conspiracy theories when I was low. It was such a relief to discover they were nonsense."

She shook her head, pitying me, and I knew it was a relief to her to discover that I was once more beyond the pale. "Tim. Honestly

, Tim. Really."

I was at the door before she realised I was saying goodbye. I considered other things to say—nice things: "I'll always be there if you want me," for instance, or "If I find him I'll give him your love"—but if I had a sense of anything, it was of my irrelevance, so I said nothing. And Emma at the window seemed to have reached the same decision, for she remained looking out as if she were expecting Larry to come striding towards her down the riverbank, wearing one of his hats.

"Yes. So goodbye," she said.

* * *

Contact Sergei, who is arranging to post this letter for me, I read as I lay sleepless.

Phone him in English only at the number you know . . . In Zorin's world, it was wise to have a Sergei.

I dialled the number in Moscow, and at the sixth attempt it rang. A man's voice answered.

"This is Timothy," I said in English. "Peter's friend. I would like to speak to Sergei."

"Sergei is speaking."

"Kindly tell Peter I'm on my way to Moscow. Tell him to leave word with a friend of mine named Bairstow. He'll be staying at the Luxor Hotel a few days from now." I spelled Bairstow, then added Colin for good measure.

"You will receive a message, Mr. Timothy. Please do not call this number again."

* * *

For the three days while I waited for my visa I visited art galleries, ate meals, read newspapers, and watched my back. But I saw and tasted nothing. By day I remembered her with fondness. She was family, an old friend, a rash act long forgiven. But by night visions of mutilated corpses alternated with images of Emma dead in forest pools. Bloodstained heaps of sawdust rose in Caucasian mountain ranges round my bed. I traced the causality of everything that had happened to me in my life till now and saw Emma as the consummation of its failure. I remembered all my avoiding and pretending. I looked back on everything I had valued, the shelter and ease that I had taken for granted, the prejudices I had unthinkingly adhered to and the nimble ways in which I had escaped the import of my self-perceptions. Seated at my bedroom window, watching the old city brace itself for winter, I realised also, without any great sense of revelation, that Emma was dead: which was to say that from the moment it was clear to me that she had no use for my protection, she was as remote from me and as faceless as any passerby out there on the pavement.

Emma was dead because she had killed me, and because she had returned herself to the half-world where I had found her, feet sinking in the mud, eyes fixed on the impossible horizon. Larry alone survived. Only by going after Larry could I fill the pit that for so long had done duty for my soul.

FOURTEEN

THERE WAS NO message from Sergei.