by John Lawton
He drove the truck back to the chancery’s underground car park, logged in with no one and went home.
He’d been in the flat about an hour and a half, rinsed off the days on the road in the shower and was just contemplating the prospect of Estonian Burgundy and wishing there were another choice when there was a knock at the door.
Janis Bell stood on the landing with a bottle of red wine in her hand. She glanced at the corkscrew in Wilderness’s hand and said, “Seems we have the same idea.”
“You were passing?”
“No, I live on the top floor. Most people in Paradise Apartments work for the embassy.”
“What kept you?”
“I didn’t want you to think I’m easy.”
“And I didn’t want you to think I was available.”
“It’s OK. I’ve read your file. I know you’re married. And to whom. The son-in-law also rises.”
“Not funny, not funny at all.”
He handed her the corkscrew.
“If you can’t be funny at least be useful.”
While she uncorked the bottle, he found glasses and tucked the envelope of cash into the cutlery drawer.
She held up the burgundy.
“Can you honestly drink this muck?”
“No. I drink it dishonestly. Why? What have you brought?”
“Moldavian claret. A Purcari 1952.”
“Good stuff?”
“Good enough for the Tsar in its day. Call it one of the perks of the deeply ambivalent relationship this country has with its big next-door neighbour.”
She slipped off her shoes. Curled her legs under herself on the sofa. Wilderness hoped she’d told him the truth, that this was not a seduction, as he could feel his resistance melting.
“The blokes on the gate say you got back at four.”
“Sounds about right.”
“You didn’t report to the boss?”
“As I would have had to pass your desk, you know damn well I didn’t.”
“She’s … concerned.”
“Would that be the same as pissed off?”
“Perhaps either term is an understatement. You’ve made two trips north and reported back on neither.”
“There’s nothing to spy on. Not a damn thing. Lapland seems to have early closing day every day. A perpetual Wednesday. There’s nothing to report. Just the buzz of tourism. It’ll peak in a day or two then tail off for the autumn and peak again around Christmas. All so predictable as not to be worth comment.”
“And when there is?”
“When there is, I’ll consider what to tell her.”
“She is Head of Station. She could just have you packed off back to Blighty.”
“You don’t know how happy that would make me. ‘Who do I have to fuck to get off this movie?’ ”
“Or she could just make your life hell.”
“I doubt that. But … why are you telling me this?”
“I suppose I think you deserve a warning.”
“Deserve?”
“You’ve earned it.”
“How?”
“By being the first person posted out since I got here who isn’t a total bore.”
Oh yes, he really hoped this was not a seduction. As she took the plastic slide from her hair and let it tumble to her shoulders he all but prayed it wasn’t.
“OK. What are you warning me about?”
“The coded letters you had Charlie send to London. She knows about them. I’d tell you Charlie can’t be trusted, but the truth is he’s doing what we trust him to do. His job.”
“He hasn’t cracked the code?”
“No. You’ve hurt his professional pride there. Whoever came up with it was one clever bastard.”
“My Number Two—Eddie Clark. I don’t have that kind of mind.”
“But if he does crack it?”
“He won’t. But Mrs. Burton can always tell him to stop transmitting for me.”
“Then you’d just find another way.”
“Yep.”
“Hmm … well, she hasn’t told him to stop. She’s hoping Charlie will crack it and then she’ll have you by the balls.”
At that moment Wilderness hoped sincerely that no woman was about to approach his balls.
“What are you up to, Joe?”
“As you said not a moment ago, just doing my job.”
She shook her head, the black mop swaying from side to side … the grass skirt on a hula dancer … the fifth or sixth of the seven veils.
“No … no … noooo. You’re not a cultural attaché, you’re a spy, and if there’s nothing to spy on … what are you?”
One aspect of his new-found relationship with Niilo and the Aussies still nagged at him. When he’d asked, “What makes you lot think I’m bent?” they’d roared with laughter, but none had actually answered.
He knew exactly what Janis was going to say next. She scarcely needed to utter it.
But when she did he felt the touch of the feather as it knocked him down.
“You’re a Schieber, aren’t you?”
“How do you know that word?”
“First class honours in Modern Languages, Cambridge 1962. Just think, we went to the same university.”
“I suppose so, but it’s a strained comparison. I was never an undergraduate. I have no degree, no diploma. No affiliation to any college.”
“I read French and German at Newnham. I’ve taught myself Russian since and I’m dabbling in some of the languages between here and there … you know, the Mitteleuropa alphabet soups … Polish … Czech.”
“And yet here you are, typing letters for Mrs. Burton.”
“Strictly pro tem. I have diplomatic status. I’m a Third Secretary in Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service, not a shorthand typist. Not my fault if ‘secretary’ is a bit too bloody literal at the moment.”
“Aha.”
“Aha, bollocks! I intend to run MI6. One day.”
“When you grow up.”
“Of course, when I grow up. And you, Joe Holderness, what will you do when you grow up?”
“Define my being grown up. When will I know I’ve got there?”
“That’s easy, Joe. When you stop nicking things.”
§44
Wilderness had not stocked the narrow galley that passed for a kitchen. Eating out emphatically meant “out” of his flat. Anything was better.
Advice to agents serving abroad always included the patronising “do not establish a pattern to your movements”—which Wilderness habitually ignored.
His “pattern” was to take breakfast most days in a café just a hundred yards from his flat—the Egg & Sausage diner, Muna Ja Makkara, or as the sign read simply, M&M. If the KGB wanted to assassinate him, they’d know where to find him, and perhaps they’d all have a cup of coffee before the guns came out.
The guns did not come out—a “gun” came in, in the person of Tom Rockford.
Wilderness had met Rockford half a dozen times. He’d been the CIA’s man in Vienna and in Lisbon. He’d been in Madrid that time the Spanish had locked up Wilderness and then banned him from ever visiting Spain again.
He slipped into the booth opposite Wilderness.
“Joe.”
“Rocky.”
Wilderness didn’t know Rockford was attached to the Helsinki embassy, but then he hadn’t asked. The CIA were everywhere. Sooner or later they’d make themselves known.
“Welcome to Finland.”
“You took your time. I’ve been here nearly a month.”
“Didn’t want to show my hand too soon.”
“Don’t make me laugh while I’m eating, Rocky. Could be messy.”
“I hear you’ve been up to Lapland.”
“Yep. It’s no secret.”
In Finland, Wilderness had concluded, nothing was a secret.
“I just wondered if there’s anything you’d care to share.”
“There’s nothing to share.”
“A
w. C’mon.”
“No, honestly, I mean I’ve learnt nothing. There’s fuck all happening up there.”
Rockford decided it was time to order a coffee, and while he flagged down a waitress neither of them said any more.
Once the girl had scribbled on her notepad and moved away, Rockford lowered his voice.
“We’re … kinda thin on the ground these days.”
“I had noticed.”
“I mean … that asshole George Fosse … blundered all over the place in ’62 … took liberties the Finns wouldn’t put up with … got himself kicked out and a few dozen good guys along with him.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll be back. And I can’t believe there’s anything about Lapland you don’t already know. I heard you mapped every bog and ditch.”
Another awkward silence as the waitress plonked a milky coffee in front of Rockford.
“All it amounts to,” Wilderness continued, “is that the Finns put an end to spy tourism.”
“That’s cute. You just make that up?”
“Find me a better term for what you lot were up to.”
“It leaves a gap.”
“No it doesn’t. You’re missing nothing but bird migration. And I don’t think the arctic terns and the snow geese work for Brezhnev.”
“Fosse was an idiot. Didn’t think to pay off the Supo.”
“Perhaps some people can’t be bought,” said Wilderness, suppressing any thought of Niilo Pastorius.
“You know we had a reciprocal on intel with the Finns,” Rockford said.
“No. But I’m not surprised either.”
“They cancelled on us last year.”
“Really? The words shit, creek and paddle come to mind. Has it occurred to Langley that perhaps the Finns don’t trust you?”
“Joe … for fuck’s sake … we’re their ally …”
“If I were Finland—the Spam and mustard filling in a Soviet-American sandwich—I wouldn’t trust anybody. Nothing personal, Rocky, but if I were unearthing anything vital up in Lapland I wouldn’t tell you. The Finns think the Russians are the threat, but it’s you lot, isn’t it? Tell me you haven’t got a scenario to nuke the shit out of this country if you have to deny it to the Russians. Tell me every bridge, every port and railway junction doesn’t have a target number assigned to it. Tell me you’re not still adding targets. Tell me you won’t leave Lapland as scorched as the Nazis did. Tell me all that and I’ll call you a liar. You dig your bunkers at home and you prepare to nuke the rest of us. Rocky, I’ve even heard you lot have a term for your nuclear policy—’So What? Optimism.’ Marginally better than ‘Mutually Assured Destruction.’ I suppose ‘Couldn’t Give a Flying Fuck’ was already taken?”
Rockford was one of those big men whose emotions were oft as not made manifest in their cheeks. He was the kind of man to turn red in the face about three-tenths of a second before he lost it.
“Jesus H. Christ, Joe—whose side are you on? Whose fuckin’ side! And if the Finns are so damn goody-two-shoes why are they buying MiGs?!”
“Say it louder, Rocky. I’m not sure everyone in the restaurant heard you.”
Rockford got up, all bustle and rage.
“Special relationship, my ass. Fuck you, Joe.”
It had been worth provoking him. If “fuck you” was the limit of his verbal armoury then Wilderness felt reassured. If Rocky had known about Pastorius, he’d have used it.
§45
For two days Wilderness drove the poet Prudence Latymer to readings. She was devoutly Christian—not an f-word passed her lips—and seemed dedicated to simple rhyming couplets celebrating dance, spring, renewal, the natural world and the smaller breeds of English and Scottish dog. It was as though T. S. Eliot had never lived.
By the third day Wilderness was considering shooting her.
Instead he rang Janis Bell and said, “I’m off up north. She’s all yours.”
“You’re not supposed to do this. The boss’ll be really angry.”
“Fine. You do it.”
“What do I tell Burton?”
“How about … I felt the call of the wild?”
“Fuck you, Joe.”
§46
A pattern established that was neither fulfilling nor intolerable. He would arrive in Persereiikkä after stopping in two or three rural backwaters—he had learnt almost at once the trick of sleeping through a film whilst appearing to be awake, and now found the opening score of The Titfield Thunderbolt soothingly somnolent. His only worry was that he might show the same film twice to the same village and not realise it.
After a night in Persereiikkä he would press on to Joeerämaa the next morning, load up with moonshine, show Momo another Carry On film and follow a different route, via different villages and with any luck different films, back to Helsinki.
The first time he handed over the envelope, Pastorius said, “You haven’t opened it?”
“Why would I?”
And Pastorius had riffled through the money with the dexterity of a casino dealer and divvied up four equal shares. Wilderness did not bother to count his, merely weighed it on the palm of the hand. After two more runs he reckoned he’d got the equivalent of three months’ pay tucked away at the back of the cutlery drawer. After six he might have felt rich, if he’d bothered to count it.
He also had, and this puzzled and surprised him, a hint of that forgotten feeling of belonging that only came with “partners in crime.” The Schiebers revisited. None of them was Eddie, the ultimately reliable man, but Pastorius was honest in his dishonesty, a crook you could trust to play fair, and while Momo and Bruce were ne’er-do-well piss artists … neither of them was a Frank Spoleto.
But on the Sunday night following a late August black market trip, he arrived home to a note under the door:
You must tell Burton something. She’s in London for ten days as of yesterday. And you can bet your bottom dollar she’s complaining like hell about you. Joe—please give me something I can put on file and show to her the minute she gets back. I know nothing’s happening up there, but couldn’t you dress that up as a positive? All quiet on the northern front? Or some such nonsense?
Janis
Wilderness liked to think he could take good advice when he saw it. To have the Brocken Witch kick up a shit storm just when he was starting to make serious money would be counterproductive. He typed up a no-names account of Pastorius’s ferreting expeditions and presented it as evidence of no Russian activity. He threw in handy phrases such as “on the one hand” and “all things considered” and wondered about “under the circumstances” … but he couldn’t think what circumstances there might be.
On Monday morning he got into chancery ahead of Janis Bell, put his puffed-up piece of nonsense on her desk and whilst hoping to make a run for it before she arrived, could not help pausing to read the schedule for “the week in culture” that she had left next to the IBM—two more poets and an expert on Norman architecture.
He scribbled “called by the wild” across the schedule and set off north again. He had, after all, a new treat for the culturally deprived Finns—a three-year-old BBC recording of the wedding of Princess Alexandra to the Hon. Angus Ogilvy in Westminster Abbey. Who could resist? Once Finland had seen that, the Cold War was all over bar the shouting.
§47
The tourist agency was closed up. Pastorius was not expecting him. He’d shown no films on the way and managed the journey in one long, exhausting twelve-hour stint. Three breaks along the way for coffee or he would have fallen asleep at the wheel.
Instead he skipped dinner, fell asleep in bed at the White Nights and told himself it was not so much running away as tactical withdrawal.
In the morning he went down to breakfast. Asked if there were any messages.
There was one:
Ratbag! Yrs Bell.
“And,” said the bloke at the desk, “a man was asking for you about half an hour ago.”
“For me? Who?
Wilderness was inhaling the aroma of his first coffee when he felt the man looming. Not the plump looming of an Eddie but a tall skinny looming, although when Wilderness looked up at him, the first thing he thought was that time had filled him out rather well. Flesh on his bones and perhaps the nervous twitch had vanished from his cheeks.
“Kein Wort auf Russisch.”
(Not one word in Russian.)
“Are there any Germans called Kostya?”
“Joe. Please.”
“For fuck’s sake, Kostya. Just sit down.”
Oh, but the twitch was still there. All too apparent as he looked around to see who was listening. If Carry On ever made a Carry On Spying, that look, so damned hammy, would be perfect.
“You’re looking well. Shall we stick with German?”
“Yes. And thank you, I am indeed well.”
“And your mother? Did she invest the money she stole from me with her peanut butter scam? Buy her own private salt mine?”
“You are joking?”
“Of course I’m joking. She made general. Everyone in Six knows that. Everyone at Langley knows that. Quite an achievement. Volga Vasilievna Zolotukhina, captain of netball and head girl of the KGB, eh?”
“Not quite. Not while Krasnaya still lives.”
“But she must be seventy by now.”
“Sixty-eight. There is talk she might retire at seventy. Then my mother is, what you said … head girl.”
Wilderness didn’t think he’d ever seen Kostya out of uniform before. A business suit in a dark shade of nothing—a briefcase set down beside him in the booth. All a disguise for what?
“And you … Am I about to handle your defection?”
“And still you joke. No. I am very loyal. I too have been promoted. I am a captain.”
“And I’m just a fucking sergeant. Would you bloody believe it?”
Kostya looked around the room again. It wasn’t even a quarter full. The twitch had spread to his lower left eyelid.
Wilderness beckoned to the waiter, ordered breakfast for two. Who knew how long it would take Kostya to get to the point? They might as well eat.