The Oktober Projekt Read Free Page B

the shock on Evgeniya’s face, how she clasped her
hands to her cheeks in the perfect symmetry of Munch’s screamer and let out a
small sob.  
    ‘That’s not the deal,’ Nick told him wearily.               
    ‘If you want what I offer,
you will have to take me,’ insisted Lubov.
    ‘What about me, Vasily? You are going to leave me?’ Evgeniya
cried.
    Nick thought Lubov and his mistress were going to have a
full-on tiff and he’d have to separate them until Lubov’s next statement
changed everything.
    ‘I am sure, maybe ninety-seven per cent that I am a suspect,’
Lubov confessed, launching into his hazy grasp of English. ‘My superiors, I
think have been watching me,’ he added, turning to Evgeniya for support but she
simply stared at him, not out of anger but pure surprise, dumbstruck.
    Great, thought Nick. Absolutely marvellous news, the best I’ve
heard all month and if we get out of this it’d be a miracle.
    ‘I haven’t room for a passenger,’ Nick said. ‘I’m leaving in
one minute and I need to make the collection, discuss terms.’
    Lubov’s shoulders shrank, his face suggesting he was close to
surrender, only his eyes appeared bright and fierce.
    ‘The deal has changed.’
    ‘Changed, what’d you mean changed?’ Nick demanded.
    Lubov stretched for a faded canvas bag, caught at the neck by a
frayed cord. ‘I must speak to senior ex-officer in London. Only me, we are in
danger unless I do this.’
    Nick shook his head in total dismay. ‘Then we go. Now.’
    ‘You promise that when I’m safe and you have material, Evgeniya
can come too?’ he asked, turning his watery eyes on his mistress.
    ‘Sure, why not,’ said Nick. ‘Invite the whole block.’
    ‘See,’ Lubov told her, giving her a long embrace. ‘We will be
together again soon.’
    She touched his arm and in the same movement turned her broad
face towards him, a paper lantern burning with a steady blush, watching her
lover go knowing he’d never come back.
    ‘I’ll be here,’ she called as they moved to the door. Only her
eyes told of the lie.
    Listening at the door as their feet slapped down the concrete
steps, Evgeniya made herself count to thirty just to be safe. The surprise that
Vasily Lubov had decided to defect had genuinely caught her off guard, she had
not seen that coming or that he, little Vasily, must posses all the evidence
himself. How sweet that he wanted her to join him in London she thought,
punching in a number on a mobile phone so she could call in her report, inform
her commanding officer that Lubov had at last shown his hand, had flown the
nest.
     
    • • •
     
    They moved in total silence. Nick
leading the way down the stairs, past plaster littered with lover’s names
boldly hacked in for eternity. A girl’s laugh flew past them up the stairwell
like a rocket. A door snapped closed behind them with a dull steel echo leaving
nothing but a distant hum.
    Together they set out for the car, in Nick’s mind a thousand
things to go wrong. The snow had slackened but not stopped which for Nick
constituted one small blessing. If a car happened to come out of the distance
he would pause, sensing Lubov behind him doing the same. They kept close to the
apartment walls for what little protection they offered, but in the end they
were out in the open approaching the Gaz fast. Nick bundled Lubov into the back
without ceremony and dumped himself next to Foula in the front.  
    ‘Go,’ Nick ordered, his eyes fixed squarely ahead though Foula
was twisted in his seat, his face in a wild grimace, his eyes frozen on Lubov.
    ‘What…?’
    ‘Don’t ask,’ Nick told him, ‘Just go.’
    In his haste to be off and away Foula fumbled with the ignition
key, started the engine then messed the gears, the clutch, finally bucking the
Gaz clumsily out into the slack traffic.
    ‘Keep it steady,’ Nick insisted, ‘he’s coming home with us,’ he
added, cocking a thumb towards Lubov in the rear.
    ‘He