He wondered if he’d paid for her services back in Helsinki. He couldn’t remember handing over any money, but then he could hardly remember anything about that night. So maybe that was the explanation, and it hadn’t been romantic infatuation after all, which was a shame. But he wouldn’t mind seeing her again anyway, even on those terms.
Whatever the case, Melanie would have to wait until later. In fact, she might need to wait until he could afford a Miu Miu bag or two. She seemed to imply she thought he could be as good a customer as Mitchell had been in that respect. Unfortunately for her, that was most unlikely; he had a hard enough job paying his normal bills, never mind trying to pay for an expensive ‘girlfriend’.
Anyway, right now, all he wanted to do was open the envelope. He watched Melanie walk off, back in the direction of Knightsbridge. For some reason, he wanted to make sure she wouldn’t see him opening the envelope. That act was going to be too private. It was possibly even dangerous. By the time he judged she was far enough away, he was itching to get it open and have done with it.
Some burka-clad women were waddling towards him, and skaters suddenly appeared and sped off. He would need to head further into the park, into the trees. There he would be alone. Alone, and therefore vulnerable in a different way.
He began walking further into the centre of the park, looking for a quiet bench. He wanted to be sure no one was watching. He also felt he had to sit down to open the envelope. He was so nervous about it; it was worse than getting exam results. He could feel his heart beating. At last he found a quiet park bench.
The burka-clad women were well in the distance now, being overtaken by some joggers. He sat down. With trembling hands, he ended up accidentally ripping the envelope open so clumsily that it burst apart, sending a flash-drive and a smaller envelope spinning into the air. Fortunately, they were both white and easily visible. He scrabbled to retrieve them, quickly and anxiously checking the ground at his feet to make sure nothing else had dropped out. Nothing had.
He stared at the small envelope, almost as though it was beyond belief. Something that was impossible had finally happened.
The word was clearly marked on the small envelope. The word he had been waiting for. There it was… ZIMA!
“Zima” (in fact, ‘зима’ in Cyrillic) was Russian for “winter”.
It was too good to be true! A wave of relief swept over him, as though he had been trapped, but the trap had sprung open, releasing him. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He had never felt such a feeling of elation and freedom. Soon the whole world would be free!
He opened the second envelope, but it was almost as though the second envelope was reversing the spell the first had cast. He was already becoming aware that, in reality, the word Zima had not liberated him; not yet. Instead he would be moving, in some intangible way, into a world of shadows and danger.
But at least he now knew. The sense of anticipation had been replaced by a calmness. Now he knew where he stood. He knew for certain he would need to do everything carefully.
The second envelope contained a key and a message from Mitchell.
“Richard, if you are opening this envelope it is because something has gone wrong for me. I left this message with someone I could trust, so they could pass it on to you. This is a copy of the key to my desk (#31). There you will find the remaining instructions. Too bad that we could not work together on this.
You blanked me in Helsinki. Please, you must proceed now. This is the only chance.”
Richard blinked. “Blanked him?” He closed his eyes and tried to remember. For some reason, he put his hand to his forehead and immediately felt stupid and self-conscious about it. He was distracted by the image of himself posing thoughtfully. Suddenly the trees darkening in the distance were the Tulgey Wood in which the Jabberwock lived.
“As in uffish thought he stood.”
He couldn’t remember. There was nothing. No real memory at all of what had happened in Helsinki. He decided that it could not be important anyway. Everything was clear now; now he knew what he had to do.
All of this had taken years, and had been delayed by months by the misunderstanding or miscommunication, or whatever it was, in Helsinki. Now he could not contain his impatience – he wanted to get hold of those instructions immediately. He had to remind himself he needed to do all of this very carefully, but his thoughts were in turmoil. What if I go back to the office with the memory stick and someone asks to see what is on it? Is there going to be anything on it or in the instructions that would be explicit or incriminating? If so, is it better to keep them (the memory stick and instructions) separate to reduce the chances that they will incriminate me?
But the turmoil didn’t end there. It swept around him like a maelstrom: If I have to keep the memory stick and remaining instructions separate, how might I do it? He weighed his options anxiously. He thought of taking the stick home first, before going back to the office, or putting it in a locker in a train station, or hiding it some- where in Hyde Park, or even posting it to himself in an envelope.
But he’d waited years for this and didn’t want to leave it anywhere until he knew what it contained. Now he had it, he somehow couldn’t let go of it, whatever the risk. He was stuck with it, held in its power like Gollum and the One Ring To Rule Them All. It was his “precious”.
He would have to go back to the office. Why was he so worried someone there might ask why he’d come back? Returning to the office wasn’t such an outlandish thing to do. So what if he was carrying instructions that would sabotage the entire banking system? Why on Earth would anyone ask to see what he was carrying? No matter how incriminating the material was, no one would have any cause to ask to see it. Finally, he succeeded in reassuring himself he might as well go back and get whatever it was out of Mitchell’s desk as soon as he could.
◆◆◆
He was back in the tube, on his way back to the office. It was already building up to rush hour. The tube was busy. Richard held the memory stick in a fist made by his right hand and kept it in his pocket. Whenever he became desensitised to it through familiarity with its shape, he would give a little squeeze to reset his perception of touch. As though, if he didn’t, it might really vanish. The idea the whole thing was, in any case, just a dream, also haunted him. Even the preposterous notion some particularly expert pickpocket would be able to steal it from within his grasp nagged him.
He had to do everything else with just his left hand. He kept his Oyster Card in his left-hand pocket so that it would be easy to get through the tube barrier.
10. Four Seasons
(Glasgow – 1977)
Richard had gone to meet Eddie in the Socialist People’s Party bookshop on the top floor of a tenement building in Queen Street. As usual, there was no one there except whoever had volunteered to man the till. Today it was Linda McPherson, who had doomed herself to sit in the store for hours with little prospect of a paying customer.
There wasn’t a huge demand for the sort of books stocked by the Socialist People’s Party bookshop. They were mainly thin revolutionary pamphlets that preached only to the converted. Or, at the other extreme, academic tomes probably only read by the writer and his publisher.
Once, Richard’s attention had been caught by one of these mighty works, bound in three hefty volumes – A Revolution Betrayed: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1956. He imagined it might be interesting to read this to get an insight, from
