was some sort of minor incident I believe. Nothing of any interest to you.’
‘Who said it was? And in any case that’s for me to judge.’
Ansell tried to recall his diplomatic training. ‘Of course I realise you know your business. Have a drink.’
Green said: ‘I’ll have a Scotch.’
Mortimer said nothing. The suspicion that he may have been guilty of an indiscretion was chilling into a certainty.
‘As a matter of interest who told you about this incident?’ Ansell asked.
‘Tut, tut.’ Green waved a finger under Ansell’s nose. ‘You should know that a journalist never discloses the source of his information.’
‘I just wondered,’ Ansell said. ‘Out of interest.’
It occurred to Mortimer that Ansell was not as drunk as he had seemed to be earlier.
Green clinked the ice in his glass. ‘A lovely sound,’ he said. ‘Reminds me of chandeliers tinkling in the breeze.’ He finished the drink. ‘I got the story the usual way—someone talked.’
‘I wonder if I can ask you a special favour,’ Ansell said. ‘After all we’re almost colleagues.’
‘I trust you’re not going to ask me to suppress a story. And as for being colleagues it’s hardly the case, is it? We’re not allowed to use the commissariat any more. And the embassy can’t even help a friend of mine to get his child into the Anglo-American school.’
Ansell’s diplomacy lay in ruins. ‘Surely the interests of your country are more important than some bloody little headline with your name under it.’
Green didn’t lose his temper. Mortimer suspected that he rarely did. ‘I don’t think,’ he said deliberately, ‘that the interests of my country are well served by attempts to suppress news. And in any case I don’t see how the fact that a Russian tried to defect can possibly have anything to do with the interests of my country.’
‘It certainly won’t help Anglo-Russian relations,’ Ansell said. ‘And it will be an acute embarrassment to Mrs. Masterson.’
‘That,’ said Green, ‘is more like it. Do you mind if I just make a note of that name? I didn’t know it before.’
‘Do what you like you little shit,’ Ansell said.
‘I will,’ Green said. ‘I’ll go and phone the story to London.’
‘Come on,’ Ansell said to Mortimer. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Good-night, gentlemen,’ Elmer said. ‘Sure hope you enjoyed the film. Don’t forget to fill in that membership form. I wouldn’t like to have to turn you away.’
A couple of nannies made their way towards the hi-fi and the sofas.
At the desk downstairs Luke Randall was asking for his coat.
‘Hallo,’ Mortimer said. ‘I didn’t see you in there.’
‘I was drinking in a quiet dark corner,’ Randall said. ‘I saw you making friends with the Press.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?’ Mortimer said.
Randall shrugged. ‘I didn’t say there was.’
Elmer helped him into his coat. Randall was one of the few people he seemed to respect.
Outside a snow-dusted militiaman watched the cars speed away hoping that one day he would be given authority to arrest foreigners for driving under the influence of drink.
Ansell drove too fast, skidding to a halt at a red light. ‘I didn’t know you knew Randall,’ he said.
‘I don’t know him very well,’ Mortimer said. He added: ‘The lights have turned green.’
Ansell applied his anger to the clutch and accelerator. ‘Was it you who told Green about the business this afternoon?’
Mortimer said: ‘He seemed to know all about it.’
‘Like hell he did. He didn’t even know Mrs. Masterson’s name.’
Mortimer wanted to say: ‘Not until you told him.’ Instead he said: ‘He knew there had been some trouble at the embassy.’
‘And that’s all he bloody well knew. Until you filled in the answers for him.’
‘I suppose I was a bit indiscreet. But honestly, Giles, I just didn’t realise. I suppose I’d had a few drinks and I presumed he knew all about it.’
‘He’s a cunning little shit.’
‘I don’t know, I suppose he’s only doing his job.’
‘And what a bloody job it is.’
Mortimer felt physically sick with the knowledge of failure and dramatic with alcohol. ‘I’m not cut out to be a diplomat,’ he said. ‘I never was. I’m just not the type. I think I’ll pack it up and get some sort of job with an oil company. That’s what all my friends who were no good at anything else did. I always thought I could do better than them. But obviously I can’t. If I can’t keep a secret for more than five minutes then there’s not much point in trying to succeed in diplomacy. I’ll go and see the Ambassador in the morning.’
‘Steady on old man,’ Ansell said. ‘Everyone makes mistakes. The thing to do is to learn by them. You’ll feel different in the morning. It was just bad luck that Green got at you. I suppose I was a bit harsh, too. I just get so browned off with the bloody Press learning all our business.’
He swerved to avoid a cat walking delicately across the road, and swerved back again to avoid an oncoming taxi. Mauve sparks still spilled from the embryonic blocks along Kalinina lighting the falling snow. The streets were deserted and the city was tranquil in sleep. Ansell accelerated along Kutuzovsky and changed down savagely for the U turn. Again they skidded. ‘Bloody road surfaces,’ he said. ‘You’d think they would have done something about it by now. After all it’s not as if it only snows every five years.’
The militiaman watched them from his grey box, an incurious, disembodied head, theatrically illumined by the light from a naked bulb. A few of the flats were still lit, blurred figures moving behind the curtains.
‘See you in the morning, then,’ Ansell said. The snow whitened his hair but he didn’t look distinguished. ‘Don’t worry too much about what’s happened tonight.’
‘I don’t feel much like sleep,’ Mortimer said.
‘I’d ask you up for a night-cap but I expect Anne will be looking for blood. She’s probably got the rolling-pin out now. In any case I think we’re out of gin.’
‘Do you think there’ll be much trouble about Green’s story?’
‘Bound to be, I’m afraid. It’ll come zooming back from the FO first thing in the morning. Then there’ll
