All My Fortunes by Katie Flynn

Author:Katie Flynn
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448164844
Publisher: Random House

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It took a good deal of arranging, in the end, a trip to Turkey which just might include a highly illegal rush over the border into Georgia. Left to himself David would not have mentioned the possibility of going into Russia if Pavel did not turn up at the rendezvous, but when he went to the Foreign Office he met a schoolfriend, Roy Masters, who had apparently followed his career in Russia with some interest.

‘I know you’ve applied to go back and they’ve warned you off,’ he said casually, as the two of them sipped coffee in his nondescript and obviously non-executive office. ‘We’ve been wondering for a while whether you’d manage to get the girl out … you must realise that with the restrictions placed on travellers, and the security web in which our diplomats and journalists are enmeshed, we know surprisingly little about feelings in the country at large.’

‘I don’t know that Pavel will be much wiser,’ David admitted. ‘She’s living on a farm, or she was, a long way from civilisation, and the Caucasus really are difficult of access, even with modern means of communication – to say nothing of the fact that Caucasians themselves are fanatical about freedom and hate the Russians of the plains.’

‘Yes, we realised that, old boy. At one time we rather hoped you’d marry her and stay there for a few years … you could have been a useful contact. As it is, should you need to actually go in and fetch her out, keep your eyes and ears open. Feeling, opinion, the general trend of thought about the way the State acts and thinks compared with the way it says it acts and thinks … feathers in the wind, you know.’

‘If I had to go in, would you support me?’ David asked incredulously, and was not much surprised by his friend’s raised brows and slight, supercilious smile.

‘Support a national acting illegally? Quite impossible, old fruit. But unofficially, with contacts, places, the odd spot of advice … by all means.’

‘Well look, I’ll put it like this … I don’t want to go in, because Party memories are long and they missed me out when they were pillorying other British engineers … they’d nail me as a spy and I’d be stuck in the Lubianka for ever and a day. But if I have to go in, I’d appreciate anything you can tell me which will help me find out what’s happened to my girl. And her sister and people too, if that’s possible. But quite honestly they’re a resourceful family, the Lazarovs. Fedor’s hard as nails and knows his way about, and Nyusha adores her girls, even though they aren’t actually the children of her body – they’re fostered. It may take time … I shan’t be there myself for quite a while, what with the voyage and papers and so on … but I’m sure they’ll make it, in the end.’

‘If so, bully for them; if not, then you’ll need our advice.

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