Free Document Z by Andrew Croome Page A

champagne and, at Pakhomov’s urging, made blunt criticisms of the band. Lydia kept asking him questions, raking his personal history in a way he thought was too interrogatory to be without purpose, Petrov listening the whole time. Near the end of the evening, the girl departed the table for the bathroom, and Bialoguski was left alone with the two Russians.
    â€˜My knees,’ said Petrov.
    â€˜Your knees.’
    â€˜There is an ache they have. Here, in the joint.’
    â€˜An ache.’
    â€˜Yes. Some kind of pain.’
    â€˜I will look at it.’
    â€˜Not now. I think perhaps I should visit you professionally. Sometime soon.’
    â€˜I have a card.’
    The Soviet accepted it, placed it carefully in his breast pocket. Then he stood and looked at Pakhomov, who an-nounced they would leave. Bialoguski followed them to the bar, where he ordered a beer, said his goodbyes, and waited for Lydia Mokras.
    She never returned. He waited until closing time, wondering how she’d escaped the club, chatting here and there with a few people who knew him, making mental note of the things they said, writing everything down a short time later, regardless of its Security interest, onto a leather-bound pad he kept for the purpose in the glove box of his car.
    â€˜Kings Cross,’ the driver announced.
    Buildings lit up at night, a huge sign, ‘Capstan’, cheering from a rooftop. Petrov had heard from Zizka there was a witch out here. There was a sex witch who had a cult of worshippers, hedonistic black magicians, sex acts performed in ritual circles by occultists or sex barbarians posing as occultists. It was a flat somewhere in the Cross, sorcery and spiritism, corrupt as Berlin. People in masks, arranging their bodies in dark and elementary geometries, lowly chanting rites with their sex organs exposed.
    Petrov asked insistently, but the taxi driver knew nothing about this. Gave him instead the address of some kind of club. He would go there later tonight. He wanted a drink in his hotel room first. He’d had a few beers at the Russian Social Club, but that was work. He’d needed to watch his behaviour under Pakhomov’s nose.
    His room at the Oriental looked onto the fire escape of the building next door. He found the bottle of brandy he’d bought at the terminal at Mascot and drank straight from it.
    His mission was to report to Sparta on the state of the club. That doctor, Bialoguski, looked like an interesting prospect. A man in his position would be a good source of information, even a good agent perhaps. Petrov supposed he should sketch the night’s events on a piece of paper—the personalities, the conversations—but he couldn’t be bothered. Instead, lamplight and this brandy. The sounds of traffic and the skip of city voices through the open window.
    The girl, Lydia, seemed a player. Pakhomov had introduced them, whispered that she had some kind of intelligence con-nection, maybe the Czechs; or was she even, he’d suggested, a novator —an agent on their own illegal line? Petrov had laughed. He’d said that as far as he knew there were no illegals incoun-try. But the girl did seem mysterious: she knew her politics, appeared overly connected for someone who claimed to have been in Sydney only six months. Someone to keep an eye on. He would ask Moscow Centre what they knew.
    Down on the street, the air seemed warmer and people were walking unsteadily or in loud groups. At the address the taxi driver had offered there was no signage, simply a staircase leading down to basement rooms. He could hear the dull and muffled sound of music. He stood near the doorway, his thumb clipped into his belt, finishing his cigarette, watching people go by, hunting for any shadowy figures that weren’t passing as much as staying, noticing nobody before going down.
    A Sunday afternoon at home; Bialoguski trying to write his violin concerto. It was music about two