JACK SANGER

The Spy Who Came in for a Massage 

I was a professional postman. I never knew the value or the significance of what I carried. I did know that if I was caught it might mean anything from a summary execution to becoming a high stakes international cause celebre such as a pawn in a spy swop. Now, retired, my sons ask me what was the most eventful operation I was involved in. This was it. 

It was the year before the Russians pulled out of Uzbekistan, 1990. I was ostensibly in Tashkent on academic business. An expert in European Literature. I hadn’t actually been very well before being psyched and fully rehearsed for the trip. My back had suffered a nasty twist in judo class and several hours on the plane was not conducive to improving matters. Maybe I was getting too old for martial arts. What made it worse was I was expected to commute between the city’s universities during my stay. Like all cover operations arranged by the Section, it was immaculately planned. I was an authentic, well published academic. I had the right background for this job. All that remained was for the on-ground side to be equally well organised. The EU, who were innocently providing the cover and paying me under a grant scheme, had kindly provided me with very nice quarters in the middle of the city for my base. Fortified by high walls and steel gates, there was an extensive garden area. The house had a veranda with a barbecue, a cleaner and a cook. The latter, Natalya, was married to the driver of the jeep, Nikoliev. They had a nice thing going. Virtually a cost free existence since they could chop a share of everything they provided for their guests and no-one was the wiser. 

Anyway, before I discovered these ins and outs of my projected home life for the next two weeks, and after I’d been whisked away for the obligatory bowl of vodka with the Minister of Education, I was picked up by my driver, Nikoliev. He was carrying my heavier luggage to the jeep when I winced and a short yelp left my lips.  

“You ill?” he asked. “Back? They warn me.” 

“Judo.” 

He stared at me in disbelief. “You not young man. I have sort it.” 

So, there I was, after an excruciating trip through heavy Tashkent traffic and a familiarisation tour of the house and grounds, lying on my bed in my room. Natalya brought me chamomile tea to help me nap. I was a bit jet lagged. I went straight to sleep. It was late afternoon, cold and clear when I woke up. The sun had dropped and the lights in the high rise buildings all around were blinking on. Nikoliev and Natalya had a cottage in the compound. It included a small dining room annex for guests. I walked over to their place, stooping and limping with pain. 

“Natalya wonder you eat soon?” Nikoliev asked. 

“Not hungry.” I patted my lower back. 

“Ah – I organise massage. Not far. I walk you. You come back ok after. Eat then. Put on coat. Cold.” A few minutes later I had donned a puffer jacket, gloves, scarf and faux fur cap. I took my money out of my briefcase, held back a few notes and locked my important stuff in the bedroom combination safe which was welded to the wall.  

My handlers had taken in the news of my hurt back with impassive faces. They even said they would build it into the script for the operation. I could be approached at any time on the trip. During my social interactions with dignitaries, journalists, students and staff, someone would ask the question, “I believe you have written books about Russian novelists?” “Only one, Michail Bulgakov.”  I was to reply. “What is your favourite Bulkakov novel?” would be asked next. “Dog’s Heart,” I had to answer. This snatch of script had to be perfect, word for word. I didn’t, of course,  expect to make the drop until at least the first university gig in two days time.  

Nikoliev led me across a large, paved concrete space bounded by the high rise buildings I’d seen from the house. They were all brightly lit. At the base of one, steps led down to a nightclub. It was only open at the weekend. He knocked and the door opened. After a few sentences in Uzbek with the ageing dyed blonde receptionist and the production of a bank note, he nodded to me and left. I looked around at the dismal, tawdry fittings. Like a disused film set. Perhaps when it was lit up, the place would have allure for the locals. But everything looked squalid and plasticky.  

The receptionist spoke into an intercom and a few minutes passed before she led me down a corridor to a room of cubicles. Each was big enough for a bed and a chair. She said, “Take off.“ and motioned at her own clothes in a mime, then left me. I stripped to my pants and sat on the bed. The masseuse entered, a cigarette dangling from her lips. She was perhaps forty, good looking, athletic and lamp bronzed. She wore slip-on furry pink shoes and a white towelling dressing gown. 

“You want?” She smiled encouragingly and spread her hands in a gesture that suggested a whole realm of possibilities. One thing I learned in this work was to keep my blinkers and bridle on. I pointed to my back, prudishly. “Bad,” I said. She stared at me for a moment, as though I had asked for something so utterly bizarre, it was incomprehensible. Then she nodded and said, “Lie on belly.” 

What followed was a half hour of punishing physio. She had fingers like grappling hooks and knuckles of iron. Then she sat back, exhausted and took a packet of cigarettes from one of her dressing gown pockets and lit one. Her legs fell open and her gown slipped away revealing her nudity. Curiously, it was not in the least sexual, it even felt familiar and comradely. I started to get dressed slowly as she observed me coolly. My back ached from the pummelling. 

Then she asked, “I believe you have written books about Russian novelists?”  

I was floored by this untimely piece of surrealist theatre but said without hesitation, “Only one, Michail Bulgakov.”   

 “What is your favourite Bulkakov novel?” 

“Dog’s Heart.” 

She raised her thumb and said, “Oldik”, before adding, “Come. Bring your head here. I sat submissively before her and opened my mouth while she took a tiny silver extractor from a pocket. She entered my mouth and I felt the tool grip my false tooth, twist it a few times followed by a tug. She held the dental implant up at eye level and slid from it a tiny cylinder and nodded. She replaced it and took a small circular container from the versatile pocket, clicked it open, placed the tooth back in its cylinder inside it and took out a carbon copy. She screwed it into place.  

“Return mail,” She smiled. As she arranged her gown she added, “I prefer  Bulkakov’s The Master and Margarita, by the way.”  

Moments later, demurely swaddled, she left. That, I thought, would be the last I ever saw of her. 

+++++++ 

On my final working day in Uzbekistan I was to be the key panel member at a conference entitled, The Power of Literary Satire in Shaping Politics. I bowed to applause just as the last member of the panel hurried in. She was smartly dressed in a suit, her hair in a bun. As she turned to greet me she ostentatiously placed a book on the table in front of her. It was The Master and Margarita. Our eyes locked and held and I was suddenly and unexpectedly the victim, if I may call it that, of a lightning strike of sexual desire.

Born in India. Social worker, teacher, Research Professor and now a writer of fiction: novels, poetry and plays.

He lives in the Pyrenees in France. He has travelled and worked in over twenty countries, including Uzbekistan, Russia, Bulgaria, Canada and much of western Europe. These experiences have fed into his prose.

His ideology is a humanitarian regard for equality, fairness and the development of a critical consciousness in all of us. He is an agnostic with perennial interest in morality, religion, spirituality and the big questions.