Free Old Flames by John Lawton

the Greenwich trip, he dug out an old copy of The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad,
in which a child is blown to pieces unwittingly carrying a bomb to the Observatory. Every time he was shuffled into a side room at Number 10 or stuck in Khrushchev’s suite at Claridge’s
he would read a few more pages of Conrad and scan the newspapers. Occasionally the two worlds would meet. The world in front of his eyes would be reflected in the remote world-out-there, the
world-in-print: thirty thousand dissidents released in Poland; Soviet Admiral of the Fleet Kuznetsov sacked; Stalinist Politburo member Andrei Vishinsky denounced for his part in the show trials of
the thirties; the head of MI6 to be replaced. This was oddly timed. Why now of all times? And of course the newspapers did not name the new man. Troy made a mental note to ask Rod the next time
they met. Rod could not resist a bet, and Troy had a vague memory of him putting ten bob on some chap called White, or was it Black?
    On the Saturday, out at Harwell, the Atomic Research Establishment, Khrushchev hit rock bottom in Troy’s esteem. Establishment was an odd term; it concealed more than it revealed about the
true nature of the place. But, in part, it was a factory, and being such had factory workers. As the visiting party sped around in their white coats, they would pause like passing royalty for
meaningless banter with the working man.
    The working man departed from the script. A large man, northern accent, gentle face, huge hands, which he, playing the part to the hilt, was found wiping on a rag as the party approached. Troy
had no idea what job he did in this complex of concealment—it seemed to him that the only reason they were here was to shove the notion of ‘atomic’ down Khrushchev’s throat.
All the way there Troy had heard him ask, ‘Is this a factory, now? I asked for more factories.’
    Khrushchev shook the working man’s hand.
    ‘Pleased to meet yer,’ the working man said.
    Then he looked at his hand, palm up, checking the level of grease and dirt.
    ‘Yer’ll not have to mind the muck,’ he said. ‘Honest toil, after all.’
    He smiled. Khrushchev smiled at the translation. For a moment they seemed to be on the same wavelength.
    ‘I’m a Union man meself,’ the working man went on. ‘Man and boy. Joined when ah were sixteen.’
    Khrushchev clearly found this less than fascinating, but continued to smile.
    ‘Ah wanted to ask yer, like.’
    His eyes strayed off to the accompanying faces, seeking authority. He looked at Troy, Troy pointed discreetly to the young chinless wonder from the Foreign Office who had trailed after them all
day looking lost.
    ‘I mean, it’s OK ter ask ’im a question, in’t it? ’E dun’t mind answerin’ questions.’
    The FO wonder looked nonplussed. Khrushchev’s interpreter whispered it rapidly in his ear. Khrushchev said, ‘Da, da,’ syllables so simple as to be comprehensible across
any barrier, and gestured with his hand. A flicking, upward motion that seemed to Troy indicative of his dwindling patience.
    ‘When are you going to have free trade unions in the East?’ the working man asked at last, without a trace of the hesitation that had dogged him up to now.
    The FO man gasped audibly. He’d obviously been expecting something about the price of cabbage, or Khrushchev’s recipe for a bloody Mary. The interpreter, a man who seemed to exercise
no censorship on anything put to him, rendered it precisely for Khrushchev. It was, Troy thought, the first sensible question anyone had asked. Khrushchev didn’t walk off in outrage. Nor did
he attempt an answer. He behaved like a politician; did what any politician, in any country, would do. He ducked it.
    ‘We’ll get nowhere if we start criticising each other. Consider our point of view and we will consider yours.’
    Which meant absolutely nothing.
    ‘He’s just another damn politician,’ Troy told Charlie when Charlie phoned to ask ‘how