“No, I meant, if it’s gunna happen again, I’ll pop out for a smoke.” He waggled his lighter in illustration. “And if I decide that display was to avoid answering questions, I’ll drag you out with me and put this to use.”
Katinsky stared at him without speaking for twelve long seconds, then shifted his gaze to the tabletop. When he started speaking again his voice was steady. “Cicadas is a word I overheard, Jackson Lamb. Alongside a name I think you’re familiar with. Alexander Popov. It meant nothing to me then, but it was spoken in a tone approaching … what would I say? I think I would say awe, Jackson Lamb. In a tone approaching awe.”
“Where was this?”
“It was in a lavatory. A shithouse, if you prefer. That was the use I was putting it to, certainly. It was an ordinary work day, except that it was not long before the Wall came down, so no days were ordinary. I’ve heard it said many times that the fall came suddenly, that nobody was prepared, but you and I know it wasn’t like that. They say animals sense an earthquake before it happens, and the same holds true of spooks, yes? I don’t know what life was like in Regent’s Park, but in Moscow Centre it was like waiting for the results of a medical exam.”
“Jesus wept,” said Jackson Lamb. “You were in a shithouse.”
“I had stomach cramps, so I retreated to the lavatory where I succumbed to an attack of diarrhea. And that is where I was, in a stall, when two men came in and used the urinals. And while they did so, they exchanged words. One said, You think it still matters? And his companion said, Alexander Popov thinks it does. And the first said, well, of course he does. The cicadas are his baby.” Katinsky paused. Then said, “He did not actually say ‘his baby’. But that’s the closest I can come.”
“And that was that?” Lamb said.
“They finished their piss and left. I remained there some while, more concerned with my stomach than the meaning of their words.”
“Who were the men?” Lamb asked.
Katinsky shrugged. “If I knew, I’d have said.”
“And they had this conversation without checking they weren’t being overheard?”
“They must have done. Because I was there, and they had the conversation all the same.”
“Convenient.”
“If you say so. But it meant nothing to me. I gave it no thought until I was dredging things up from the back of my mind in a room under Regent’s Park.” His brow furrowed. “I didn’t even know what cicadas were. I thought they were fish.”
“Instead of some kind of funny insect.”
“Funny insect, yes. With one particularly funny trait.”
Lamb said, “For Christ’s sake,” and sounded genuinely pained. “You think I don’t know?”
“They bury themselves underground for long periods,” Katinsky went on. “Seventeen years in some cases, I believe. And then they burst out and they sing.”
“If it was a genuine code word,” Lamb said, “it would only mean one thing.”
“But it wasn’t genuine, was it?”
“No. You were a dupe. Just another straw man feeding us a line about Alexander Popov, who didn’t exist. So we’d end up chasing our tails, trying to find a sleeper network which didn’t exist either.”
“So why keep me, Jackson Lamb? Why not throw me back?”
Lamb shrugged. “They probably thought you were cheap enough to be worth a punt. Just in case.”
“In case it turned out that what I overheard was real.” Katinsky was recovering from his coughing fit. The gaps between his sentences were diminishing, and he began rolling another of his old lag’s cigarettes. Placing it on the table as carefully as if it were a holy relic, he addressed his next words to it. “Which would mean what? That your bogeyman’s real too, and not only real but with an actual network. All these years after the fall. Here in dear old Blighty.”
Lamb said, “Thanks. Now I’ve heard it out loud, it’s clearly bollocks.”
“Of course.” Katinsky bowed his head. “Clearly. There is no precedent for such a thing.”
“Funny.”
“Except the whole world knows there is. Is that why you turned up at my door, Jackson Lamb? You’ve been reading last year’s papers, and got to worrying it could happen again?” He was enjoying himself now. “It’s going to look careless, isn’t it? Allowing not one but two nests of communist spies to bed down in western comfort all these years.”
“I’m not sure anyone would care about their politics,” Lamb said. “That dog died a while ago.”
“It certainly did. The workers’ paradise is today run by gangsters and capitalists. Much like the west.”
“Missing the good old days, Nicky? We could always ship you back.”
