Old Flames by John Lawton Page A

stood there and said nothing seemed to bring Khrushchev to a halt, like an old engine gliding slowly
to the buffers.
    Rod spoke in the quiet, demonstrative tones that chilled Troy to the bone with their reminder of his father’s technique for public speaking. He seized an audience by timbre—Troy
could think of no other word for it—rather than by volume or speed; let the tessitura of his voice hold his listeners. It shut Khrushchev up. It shut the Labour Party up—and they
hadn’t a clue what he was saying.
    ‘It seems, Comrade Khrushchev’—no other that night had called him comrade—‘that this is an apt moment at which to give you this. These are the names of political
dissidents in Hungary, in Poland, in East Germany, in Czechoslovakia, who are missing. I would be most grateful to you if you could be of any assistance to me in tracing these people and in
informing their families of their whereabouts.’
    Rod said no more, simply held out a single sheet of paper folded over. Khrushchev would not take it. A stalemate that seemed to drag on for the best part of half a minute followed, until the
interpreter risked life and job by plucking the list gently from Rod’s hand. The spell broke. The mirror crack’d from side to side. Khrushchev headed for the door. All over the room,
chairs were pushed back. Troy had to run to reach the door before Khrushchev got through it. They met almost shoulder to shoulder, almost collided. Troy could have sworn he heard Khrushchev say,
‘Bugger the lot of them’—and then they were out.

§11
    Out in the Commons yard, in the April drizzle, Khrushchev was raging.
    ‘ Они насрали на Россию! Они
насрали на Россию ! They shit on Russia! They shit on Russia!’
    He bellowed at the embassy staff, bellowed at Bulganin, and when his translator moved to get into the Daimler, he snatched Rod’s list from his hand and firmly pointed him to the escort
car. Troy followed, assuming he meant to simmer alone, but Khrushchev stopped him with a hand on his sleeve.
    ‘No,’ he said, almost calm. ‘Not you. You get in the back.’
    The car moved off towards Victoria and Hyde Park Corner—Clark in the front with the driver, the dividing screen fully closed, and Troy in the back with quite possibly the most powerful man
on earth, wondering what on earth was coming next. Khrushchev looked out of the window of the moving car, not speaking to Troy. As they passed Westminster Cathedral he turned his head and ducked to
get a look at the looming red-brick tower, but still he said nothing. No tourist question. No tasteless black joke. At Hyde Park Corner he took Rod’s list from his inside pocket and looked at
it for a moment or two. As his hand slid the folded paper back into his pocket, his eyes still focused on the street outside, he asked, ‘Who was he? The man with the names.’
    ‘My brother,’ Troy answered.
    ‘And where did you boys learn your Russian?’
    ‘At home. In the nursery. From our parents.’
    ‘From your parents,’ Khrushchev echoed flatly. It sounded to Troy more like realisation, a gentle mulling over, than a question.
    ‘The family name is Troitsky.’
    ‘Aha … Whites!’
    Khrushchev at last looked at Troy. A glint of triumph in the nutty little eyes.
    ‘No,’ Troy replied. ‘Nineteen-o-fivers.’
    ‘Mensheviks?’
    ‘More like Anarchists, I think. But that was a long time ago.’
    ‘Indeed. And now?’
    ‘My brother, as you will have gathered, has made his peace with history and joined the Labour Party. Whatever you might think, they are Social Democrats, no more, no less than
that.’
    ‘And you?’
    ‘I’m a policeman. I have no politics.’
    ‘If a Soviet policeman made such a statement to me I’d have him fired for thinking I was stupid. You don’t think there’s a sentient being on this planet who can honestly
say he has no politics, do you?’
    Of course Khrushchev was right. Troy knew that.