by John Gardner
Naldo nodded. He remembered some papers crossing his desk at the shop, wondering if they could do anything about the musician and the poet, Shostakovitch and Yevtushenko.
After a long pause she made the move, reaching across the table and running her hand over his. ‘You are lonely without your wife?’
‘She is divorcing me.’
‘General Pliner tell me. You must need a woman.’
‘Sometimes,’ he said, quietly. ‘But not yet.’
She said nothing more, but her eyes looked troubled and he wondered if she would receive a tongue-lashing from Pliner for not seducing him. Good, hope she does, he thought. But, by the following Saturday, when she showed him around the Kremlin, Naldo relented, took her back to his new apartment, kissed her twice and felt her respond with her sharp tongue penetrating his lips. Either she liked him very much, or she was well trained, he considered.
Kati made love as though this was the first occasion she had been let off a tight rein in her entire adult life. ‘There was a time,’ she told him later, ‘when I would have done this for a crust of bread.’
Naldo wanted to say, ‘Isn’t that what you’re doing it for now?’ but he controlled his tongue, just as he curbed his mind while taking her. Yet his mind was not held back for long. Here was a woman who knew what bed was all about, and she surprised Naldo by her inventiveness.
‘Ask anything of me, Naldo,’ she whispered. ‘I will do whatever you wish. You think me slut, yes?’
‘No,’ he lied as tenderly as he could.
In the silence of the night, disturbed only by Kati’s steady breathing, Naldo wondered what he was doing here at all. He wanted to be home with Barbara and the kids, and, now that the interrogation was over, they seemed to be playing the fool with him. First he had been given small tours of inspection. The sheer size of the Russian service was awesome, and he recalled his Uncle Caspar once saying, ‘Never underestimate the buggers. They hold a couple of cards we can never play.’ Now, he understood what those cards were. First, weight of numbers; second, and most important, the KGB was still the most necessary part of the whole regime, for it had been forged out of the revolution and was required to support what was still, in reality, if not in fact, an illegal government which had taken the country by force. The hierarchy remained paranoid with suspicion, of people at home and governments abroad.
Kati began to press him to let her stay with him. Live in the apartment. He saw the action as a clever surveillance move. The round-the-clock watchers could be called off. Naldo resisted as long as possible, but, in October, there was capitulation. By then it appeared that they had accepted him, giving him the rank of colonel and the Order of Lenin, but not yet allowing him to see Arnie, though he heard his American cousin was now also a colonel in his own right, and hung with every honour and decoration the grateful service could award.
They put Naldo in that department within the First Chief Directorate which dealt with illegals, picking his brains about English characteristics, in particular the kind of education that might put people in line for a pass from the SIS or MI5. Naldo saw no point in lying or prevaricating. He reasoned they knew it all anyway and were using him merely as a testing ground. Indeed they put possible legends to him for approval or comment, asking questions about how the two British services had changed since the war.
Did they, the faceless questioners asked, continue to make passes at people still in the universities? Were the redbrick universities now the true stamping ground of the coat-trailers and auditioners? Did they still spot men and women who were borderline cases when taking the Foreign Service examinations?
God knew, Naldo thought. He had taken no part in recruiting for years. The questions arrived at his desk each day in the revolting institutional green-painted room, with a window that looked straight out on Dzerzhinsky Square: a high-ceilinged office with heavy furnishings, almost Germanic in their dark and solid build.
Each evening he would return to the apartment and Kati; in fact he had grown quite fond of her: nothing to do with love, though they rutted shamefully and he discovered that Russian girls can have odd sexual preferences like bondage. He supposed that, in Kati, it was the counterside of guilt. Unless she was an exceptionally skilled actress, it would seem that she really adored him and, now they both had privileges, more luxury goods flowed into the Smolensk Boulevard. Kati was always giving him little surprises, gramophone records of English composers’ works. One weekend she provided the Walton First and his Belshazzar’s Feast. They played them all that weekend, even as they made violent love. Kati hardly ever seemed to be on duty any more, and only appeared in her uniform, or at least part of it, when she wanted to play sexual games. She was Naldo’s trained housekeeper, making sure he did not slip out to fill some dead-letter box, or meet a contact. He was certain she went through his meagre mail for it was always very long in arriving.
By early autumn there had been exchanges between Barbara’s solicitors and his own, an SIS P4 firm who acted as though he was still in England. He reported the facts to General Pliner who gave a secret smile and said, ‘Is good, yes?’
One Monday morning in early November, just as the cold was starting to edge itself into his bones again, Naldo’s office door opened without the usual warning from the young officer who acted as clerk/minder.
‘Hello, Comrade Colonel, how’s the world treating you?’ asked Arnie Farthing, all done up in boots and greatcoat, a big fur hat in his hand.
Naldo rose, smiling. ‘Arnie …’ he began, then moved towards the big man with his battered face, and embraced him in Russian fashion. Behind Arnold Farthing he saw another man: sleek, immaculate, with one of those shining well-barbered chins you usually associate with wealth in the City.
‘Brought someone to meet you.’ Arnold looked into Naldo’s eyes and he could not tell whether it was a sign of warning or one of triumph.
The door was closed and the newcomer smiled. He was much shorter than either Naldo or Arnie, with sharp features and thick greying hair that had once been black like his eyes.
Naldo took in the small scar below the man’s lower lip, and, as he reached out a hand, saw also the tiny scar on its back and knew he had met this officer before, in Caspar’s real diary.
With a minimum of gestures, General Vladimir Spatukin introduced himself, taking a chair and sitting. Naldo hardly saw him move. It was like a cinema jump-cut, standing one moment, then seated, perfectly still, the next, looking up speculatively at Naldo.
Arnold broke the ice. ‘General Spatukin is to be your immediate superior at the turn of the year,’ he said, and Naldo definitely detected a note of warning. ‘I have been helping him with the possibility of new illegals in the United States, which should not be difficult now they are so hopelessly entangled in Vietnam.’
Naldo had heard all the news there was to come out of Vietnam, and felt coldly worried for America and its youth.
‘It is possible I shall go there for a few weeks to see the reality,’ Arnie continued easily, and Naldo wondered, not for the first time, if his American cousin was exactly what he sold himself as. By now he trusted nobody and wondered if he was becoming as paranoid as those he worked with and for.
‘Go to Vietnam?’ Naldo knew he sounded like a half-wit.
‘Why not? Already we are getting samples of the latest American equipment. I shall be doing some analysis on it in the spring. Vietnam will be warmer than a December and January in Moscow. What news of Barbara?’
Spatukin cut in, speaking perfect English, with the hint of almost a French accent, ‘She is divorcing him, is she not, Comrade Colonel Railton?’
Naldo nodded, looking into Spatukin’s eyes. He remembered his uncle’s comment about the eyes. Like a snake’s tongue rather than eyes.
‘I knew others of your family, Comrade Colonel.’ Spatukin’s thin mouth hinted at a smile.
‘Yes, my uncle, Caspar.’
The Russian nodded. ‘A sound man. I also knew the other
. The sexual deviant.’ The smile broadened and Naldo’s stomach turned at the next words. ‘I did not think I would live to become the father-in-law of another Railton.’
‘The …?’
‘You are living with my Kati, my daughter. She has had one bad marriage, but says she’ll be happy with you. It seems you are the apple of her eye, her once and only love. I can only trust that she is as near and dear to you …’ He paused, then picked up the poem from which the last words had been taken, slightly changed:
‘In every feature
As the shores are close to the sea
In every breaker.
There, it is not usual to hear men in KGB fouling their lips with Boris Pasternak’s poetry, but there is excuse for me, because I knew him, like I knew your Uncle Caspar in a way.’
He moved his eyes towards Arnold, and Naldo recalled the other thing Caspar had written, about Spatukin flicking his eyes towards people without moving his head. ‘So,’ he said quietly. ‘I look forward for news of your divorce, so we can have a real Russian wedding.’ He paused, the smile friendly. ‘Now, though it is raw and cold outside, I think you two boys should go for a walk in the park while I hold the fort here.’ He gave a minuscule nod of his head, inclining it towards the door.
Naldo could only think of Barbara and his house in Kensington, and his children.
FIFTEEN
1
They had spoken to Barbara for two days, right there in the Dzerzhinsky Square building, before telling her she could return home. At first they asked about her relationship with Naldo, then it was detail. Could she identify the people who brought her over? No. What would she say to the SIS inquisition? Tell them my husband’s a bloody traitor, then ask for a lawyer to deal with the divorce. You will not change your mind? Why should I change my mind? If you change your mind we shall find you, Madame Railton. There is no place on earth where you can hide from us.
After the frighteners came the soft lads. Two of them with good physique and light-coloured hair. She thought of them as the twins. How could they make life easier for her? Just get me out of your dirty, sloppy, disgusting country. But we can still help you in England, Barbara Railton. No thank you, I can help my bloody self. That’s all folks.
They laughed and then explained how she would go. Two passports, a wig and a pair of severe spectacles. It would be better for her that way. A passport in the name of Rourke. Brenda Rourke. Republic of Ireland paper. There was an address in Malahide. Photographs so she could describe the place and some small details. Letters in her desk; clothes in the wardrobe. They even had a legend for her: assistant to a publisher’s distributor in Swords, not far from Dublin airport. She would leave Moscow on a Finnair flight to Helsinki. Helsinki-Paris. Paris-Dublin. Drop out of sight for three days in Dublin. The hotels will not ask to see your passport. Then Dublin-Heathrow with Aer Lingus, and no questions. They could guarantee it.
She did not believe them, but it all happened just as they said it would. She missed Naldo like the very devil, but followed his instructions, taking a cab home, then, that night, going to a secure line and dialling the number, saying the words, ‘I’ve a message from a man who asks if you remember the night they invented champagne?’
Big Herbie laughed loudly. A belly laugh, and the sound waves came as a reverberating shock through the receiver. Barbara flinched and held the instrument away from her ear. Naldo had said there was no reason to think, at this stage, that Herb’s home telephone was being monitored. If it was, they had a fallback, a cover story.
‘Sure I remember. How could I forget? Who forgets his first champagne? It was Paris, 1948, still a child. They got me pissed as arseholes, excuse please the language.’ Big Herb’s growl made Barbara forget her sadness for a moment. She was strung out like piano wire and thought she might snap at any time.
‘Tell him I see him at Earls Court underground at six tomorrow night, OK?’ Herb growled, still chuckling.
‘OK’, she said, closing the line and doing the arithmetic. For Earls Court read Baker Street, with the ghosts of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson for pipe-dream, fictional comfort. For six tomorrow night make it one hour from now. The fallback was Waterloo at an hour and a half after the meeting was broken. Following that, Naldo had written, ‘God help you both. The Ks will have hounds after you, not to mention the boys back at the shop. It has to be done correctly otherwise nobody’s going to believe you.’
Between the bouts of sex and the faked rows, Naldo had taught her the elementary rules. ‘You have to think of it as an epidemic,’ he wrote before burning. ‘Imagine anyone on to you has got the killer disease, and you catch it, ring o’ roses and all. Tishoo-tishoo, all fall down. Black Death. All surveillance is the Black Death.’
She did three doubles on the underground and changed taxis twice, walking for the last half-mile, and was as sure as anyone who has not done it before could be sure, that she had no tails. No cars. Nobody on foot. She came down past Madame Tussaud’s and thought about the Chamber of Horrors and the execution panoramas: the axe and the gibbet, the rack. All for traitors as well as murderers. But traitors were murderers also. My bloody family seem to have cornered the market in treachery. Deception runs through our history like haemophilia ran through the bloody Romanovs. He had looked gravely at her as he burned the paper and whispered, ‘We’re all a lot of bleeders,’ softly, so that the tapes would not hear.
She loitered outside the station, then saw a black cab flash its lights once. It had the ‘For Hire’ sign lighted, so she flagged him down.
In the back, Herbie opened the door and pulled her in. ‘Round the block three times,’ he said to the driver, and made him take a fourth for the insurance. Then, looking at Barbara in the diffused light of the cab, ‘Jesus, Barb, you change your hair.’
She had removed the wig and dumped it in a litter bin after making the phone call. ‘My hair’s changed me.’ She looked away so that the large German would not see the tears.
They went to Herbie’s office in the Annexe. It had been deloused that morning and was clean. At this time in the evening there was a tape on the telephone and that was all. He left her there and went out, returning with some brandy and cheese sandwiches.
‘Sorry, no champagne, they ain’t invented it yet.’ He gave her his big daft grin and sat down on the far side of the desk. OK, Barb, what’s the story? No way I can keep you hidden for long.’
She kept absolutely to the scenario Naldo had given her. There was special-interest stuff at each level, though she did not tell him that. ‘The American agency will deny,’ she said after giving the broad outline. ‘They’re running it very close, and Nald doesn’t even know if the DCI is in the picture. The rest of the stuff is very hot.’ And she told him about Caspar’s two diaries. ‘The one being dissected by the Credit committee is the phoney, but it’s also a trap. It should lead them to one of three people. I can’t say who, not to you, Herb, and not to the committee. Naldo says they have to find out for themselves. Put two and two together and come up with the right name. Even he’s not sure. He called it a game of ‘Find the Lady’, only it’s ‘Find the Jokers’. And it’s family. Three contestants. One certainly still active. Another maybe still active, certainly concerned.’ Then she went on with the important message for Herbie’s ears only.
‘Could be a year, two, more even. Might only be six months. But he’ll contact you first. You and only you. You’re to be his way back. He said you’d play the honest broker. Keep clearing Box 12. That make sense?’
‘Sure it make sense. God hope I’m still here. In England. Then he tell me where both diaries have been stashed, eh?’ Herbie looked grave, no flicker of a smile. ‘What is crypto for these bastards? We know this?’
‘One’s Croesus,’ she said, and the saying of it made her feel sick, just as it had caused Naldo to vomit when he had worked out the full strength in the Hotel Victoria-Jungfrau, Interlaken. ‘One of the three Railtons. A double from way back. Lying dormant like a snak
e under a rock.’ Christ, she thought for the hundredth time, how the hell can Nald bear it.
‘Credit committee know the crypto Croesus.’ He was not smiling now. ‘Gus Keene know it. They ask me. Blunt knew also.’
Barbara nodded.
‘You got to turn yourself in, Barb. You know that?’
‘Yes,’ very quietly. ‘Yes, but I’m going to do it the way he told me. In fact, Herb, you’re going to turn me in.’
‘So? I put you in chains, Barb? Take you with the cufflinks?’
‘Handcuffs, Herb.’ She had caught the habit from her husband. ‘No, you’re to call Gus Keene and say I’m here and I want to come in, but I’ll only speak to him. No Credit committee. No supernumerary confessors. I’ll give Gus all my sins and some of Naldo’s as well. You’ll do this for me, Herb? It’s what Naldo wishes.’
‘Sure,’ he said, and then asked if she had anything else to tell him.
She nodded, and spilled the really secret stuff Naldo had said she must get into Herbie’s mind: the trigger phrases, signal words, and two map references. When it was over, Herbie said he understood, repeated it all back to her, then picked up the telephone to dial Gus, who was in Warminster.
2
As far as the Credit committee and the general investigation into the strange carryings-on of the late Sir Caspar Railton in the 1930s were concerned, things remained very active indeed. The Committee met once a week, sometimes at the shop, but often in odd rooms of even odder houses and flats scattered throughout London.
Each week, after the meeting, various members of Credit repaired to the Registry armed with index numbers of files and dossiers. Already they had managed to check every movement Caspar had made during those fallow years of the 1930s. Any time he stepped out of the country had been followed through, land all dates matched. ‘Not a foot wrong,’ said Davila Barnard, sleek as ever and, as a counter-intelligence officer of no small standing, with a sneaking regard for Caspar’s choreography. He had an attitude to Caspar’s journeys which was similar to that of a banker looking at a dodgy account, and, to prove it, had drawn a chart to cover the period set out in the diary. It was like a ledger, and his double-entry system appeared to have paid off, which was more than one could say about any back-up confirmation from Lady Phoebe.