The White Russian by Vanora Bennett

Author:Vanora Bennett [Bennett, Vanora]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781443438681
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2014-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

18

Jean

‘Are you insane? Sneaking out on your own like that, running all kinds of risks, and for what?’

Father was at his desk with his head in his hands. He looked like a child who hasn’t been able to resist doing wrong: shamed to have been caught, but still defiant.

I stopped. I took a deep breath. I was right to be angry. I loved this man. I had no one else. He shouldn’t have been hiding from his security men and going off alone. But it wasn’t doing any good raging at him. He appeared … well, I took a more careful look … just exhausted, maybe, but greyer and more wrinkled somehow, too. Old.

‘She was a neighbour,’ was all he said. ‘I owed her that respect, sharik. I can’t stop being a human being altogether, just for the sake of politics.’

He looked up cautiously. I knew, from the use of that childhood pet name, ‘little ball’ – I’d been fat, apparently, as a toddler – as well as from his timid glance, that he’d sensed I might soften and was trying to appeal to my affection. He wanted me to shrug and smile and say, Oh, well, let’s put it down to experience.

‘Did you at least leave a note, like I always tell you to?’ I said, less harshly, but still not letting go of my anger altogether. ‘Like Kutyopov’s, only with proper information?’

When General Kutyopov had disappeared, the police detectives had only had one clue to follow. There’d been a note in the diary in his desk, saying he was worried about the secret agent whom Skoblin had him down to visit that morning. But Kutyopov had written no more about where the meeting was supposed to be, or who the agent was. And Skoblin then told the police that the man, who, he said, must have been a double agent, had disappeared, leaving no trace. No wonder the investigation had got nowhere.

When Father took over the job, he’d made it the organization’s policy that he and all future White military leaders should be properly guarded. Much more reluctantly, he’d also made me a private promise: that, if he were ever to go out alone, in some emergency, he would leave a detailed note of where he was going, whom he was meeting, and why. He didn’t like the idea. He wasn’t a detail man. But I’d insisted, and he’d given in.

Or had he? Looking at him now – at the lowered eyes, and the tired skin – I could see, without waiting for his answer, that, no, he hadn’t left any notes yesterday.

‘Father,’ I said reproachfully as he shook his head.

‘Look, nothing bad happened,’ he muttered, letting his head droop on to his arm. ‘I was a fool. I took five minutes of freedom. I won’t do it again. There’s no need for distress.’

But when I let my footsteps take me round to his side of the desk, and put an arm round his shoulder, I could see his cheeks glistening.

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