Shadow Hunter

by Geoffrey Archer

  Inside it smelled damp, as if seldom used. An oil heater burned in the hall. A guard emerged from the front reception room, carrying a sub-machine gun. The escort removed his parka and helped the Admiral off with his coat. Then he led the way upstairs.

  Savkin seemed smaller than Astashenkov remembered, as if the burden of a national crisis had begun to crush him. At the sound of Astashenkov’s entrance, the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and President of the USSR stopped in mid-pace across the room.

  ‘Ah, Feliks! A tired, impatient victim of air travel! And they always call it a “technical” fault, don’t they?’

  The smile looked forced. The pure white mane of hair looked as if it had not seen a comb all day.

  ‘They wouldn’t let us leave the plane! We were like pigs in a pen.’

  ‘All the more reason for me to be grateful that you came.’

  ‘It was my duty, Comrade General Secretary.’

  Savkin’s eyebrows arched momentarily. ‘Duty’ was such a subjective concept. Where would the Admiral feel his ‘duty’ lay once he’d heard what Savkin had to say?

  ‘Come and sit down. I must apologize for the room.’

  He waved a hand dismissively. The walls were faded and peeling, marked with dusty rectangles where paintings had once hung. A heavy pedestal desk in one corner was half covered with files from an open briefcase. Savkin led the way to a green, leather chaise longue, and sat himself in the high-backed armchair opposite.

  ‘The house belongs to the Pushkin. It’s not used much, only for storing spare exhibits. My wife’s cousin is curator of the gallery, so my link with the place is personal rather than official, which means it’s clean – no bugs. And the guards here are my men. They’ll bring us tea in a moment. Now, remind me. When was the last time . . . ?’

  It was a gambit. Savkin would remember perfectly well. Such urbanity did nothing to calm Astashenkov’s unease.

  ‘It was June. At Polyarny. Podvodnaya Lodka Atomnaya. The nuclear patrol submarines – your inspection.’

  ‘Of course.’ Savkin nodded. ‘It was a good turnout. Very impressive. Fine technology. The efficiency of your men was so vibrant you could almost touch it.’

  ‘They were on their best behaviour. You must be used to that.’

  ‘Yes, but you can tell when it’s just show . . .’

  There was a tap at the door, which had been left ajar. It was the guard bringing the tea. Conversation lapsed until he had left the room.

  ‘Now. Why do you think you’re here, like this?’ His tone of voice was condescending, keeping the Admiral at a disadvantage. He would be asking a lot from Astashenkov, but did not want to appear to be a beggar.

  The Admiral shrugged. There was no point in prevaricating.

  ‘I really don’t know. It might be that you require some service from me which would not win the approval of my Commanding Officer . . . ?’

  Savkin smiled drily. He’d wanted a forthright reply. It saved time.

  ‘And if that were the case . . . ? If neither Grekov not Belikov were to be involved?’

  ‘Then it would be a difficult decision. I should need to understand why.’

  ‘Of course.’

  The grey eyes studied the sailor. Astashenkov recognized in them the flicker of uncertainty and weariness.

  ‘Let me ask you something,’ the General Secretary said. ‘I’ve gained the impression, on the few occasions we’ve met, that your interests stretch wider than just naval matters. That perestroika has caused you some excitement; that you welcome it. Am I right?’

  ‘It’s my duty to be politically aware . . .’ Feliks stalled.

  ‘Yes, but you know I’m talking of more than awareness, Comrade. I’m talking of commitment.’

  Astashenkov looked blank. Savkin would need to be more explicit.

  ‘The changes on the farms and in the factories, and in the public services – making our people more responsible for their labour, and rewarding them individually – is a process I believe you support in principal, Feliks. But that process, as you know, is now at its nadir. People’s lives have become harder, but not yet better. Faith in the policy has crumbled. It’s no secret that the Zhiguli car factory has been on strike for two weeks because the enforcement of new quality standards has cut the workers’ bonuses. What is still a secret, however, is how fast the strikes are spreading. Within two weeks, fifty per cent of our industrial production may be at a standstill.’

  Astashenkov let out an involuntary low whistle.

  ‘Yes. It’s as bad as that,’ Savkin was pleased he’d been able to startle the Admiral. ‘And the strikers are supported by the majority of the Party. The Nomenklatura can hear the death-rattle of perestroika, and plan to finish it off!’

  ‘But then what? A return to the old ways? They must know that’s impossible now.’

  ‘Is it? Are you sure?’

  Astashenkov sensed he had been trapped.

  ‘Well . . .I’m only a submariner. I’ve no real understanding of economics . . .’

  Savkin was not satisfied with that answer. He waited for Astashenkov to continue.

  ‘It seems impossible to me. If we’re not to be at an economic disadvantage for ever, we must produce at a price and to a standard that will enable us to compete worldwide. To return to a system of quotas without accountability . . .’

  He knew he sounded if he were parrotting one of Savkin’s own speeches. But it was what he believed.

  ‘So you think we must continue with the policy? Perestroika at any price?’

  Astashenkov breathed in deeply and let out a sigh. He sensed a noose tightening.

  ‘It’s what they accuse me of,’ the General Secretary persisted. ‘The Nomenklatura. They say it’s my vanity, that I can’t admit the policy is a failure.’

  ‘Not all the Nomenklatura, Comrade General Secretary.’ Feliks himself held one of those appointments which had to be approved by the Party.

  Savkin frowned. Impatiently he pushed his fingers through the straggling white tufts at his temples.

  ‘Feliks, I need to know how far you yourself will go, in supporting me?’

  * * *

  An hour later, Feliks Astashenkov stood outside one of those slab-sided apartment blocks that fill much of Moscow’s suburbs. Savkin’s courier had dropped him at the end of the road, as he’d asked, and he’d walked the last few hundred metres to Tatiana’s flat. He was badly in need of the fresh air, which was cold enough to numb the end of his nose. What Savkin was planning had shaken him to the core.

  He’d telephoned Tatiana the day before, to check she would be at home that evening. Opportunities to see her were so infrequent nowadays, he seized them whenever they arose. But now, as he stood looking up at the lighted windows, trying to remember which one was hers, he regretted making the rendezvous. Solitude was what he needed, not the distracting company of his mistress. He wanted time alone, to consider what Savkin had asked him to do. Not a word of his meeting would he be able to share with Tatiana. No one must ever learn from him what had been said that day.

  She’d sounded edgy on the telephone, affecting indifference to his proposal to visit her. Feliks knew what that meant. His affair with her had started when he had been posted to Moscow three years earlier but since his transfer to the Kola Peninsula eighteen months ago, they’d not spent more than a dozen days together. He’d known it couldn’t last. For the second time that day, he approached a rendezvous with trepidation.

  * * *

  Saturday 19th October.

  Devon, England.

  Andrew Tinker had been home for two days. He opened his eyes and looked at the bedside clock. It was just after seven a.m.; there was no hurry.

  It was the birdsong that had woken him. At sea, he was accustomed to the dull roar of the ventilation system, to being awakened at any time by a call from the control-room and dropping off again easily. But here the persistent trill of a blackbird defeated him.

  Patsy’s
naked body radiated warmth beside him. His first night home had been difficult. It usually was, with both of them tense from suppressing their feelings for so many weeks. Last night had been different, however.

  He turned on his side; she had her back to him.

  ‘Mmmm. Hello, stranger,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Hel-lo.’

  ‘Are you the same stranger who did such lovely things to me last night?’

  ‘That rings a bell . . .’ Andrew chuckled.

  He kissed her neck. She smelled muskily of sweat and perfumed bath oil.

  ‘Can you prove it?’

  ‘Maybe. There’s only one way to find out!’

  * * *

  ‘I’m going to do bacon and eggs,’ he called to Patsy, who was in the shower. ‘Just to show you there’s more than one thing I’m good at! Like some?’

  ‘Put like that, how could I refuse . . .?’

  He was just dishing up when the telephone rang.

  It was Norman Craig.

  Andrew caught Patsy’s eye across the kitchen and gave her a thumbs-down sign. Craig meant work.

  ‘Hello, sir. Good morning to you.’

  ‘I’m desperately sorry, Andrew. Pasty’ll never speak to me again. But I’m about to ruin your weekend. If it’s any consolation, I’m in the same boat, but I’ve been tied up since yesterday.’

  ‘Sounds serious. What’s the problem?’

  ‘Look, I’m not being unreasonable, but I simply can’t tell you anything over the phone. You understand. But if you could meet me in my office at about ten, earlier if you can make it, I’d be eternally grateful. It’s bloody important. I wouldn’t be disturbing your leave if it weren’t.’

  The captain’s voice had developed an edge.

  ‘No, of course not. I’ll be on my way in a few minutes.’

  Andrew replaced the receiver.

  ‘What do you mean “you’ll be on your way”? Where are you going?’

  ‘To Defiance. To Craig’s office,’ he replied.

  ‘Oh hell! When will you be back?’

  ‘I don’t know. He wouldn’t say what it was about.’

  ‘It’s not fair. You’ve just got home, and now this . . .’

  He poured them some coffee and began to eat fast. He would have to change into uniform if he was going to the naval base.

  ‘Ring me, will you? When you know what he wants?’

  ‘Sure. But I’m bound to be back by lunchtime.’

  * * *

  HMS Defiance was a building of concrete and brick. On the first floor Tinker pushed his security pass into a turnstile which let him into the administrative sector. The ground floor was packed with workshops; Defiance was primarily the maintainance base for the Squadron. As its Captain, Norman Craig described himself as ‘working from an office over a garage’.

  ‘Oh, well done. You made it,’ Craig remarked, ushering Tinker to the small sofa, while looking at his watch. ‘Sorry I was cryptic on the blower, but this one really is a stinker. Bloody Sovs. Let me get you a coffee. NATO standard?’

  ‘No sugar, thanks.’

  ‘I’ve boiled the kettle. Shan’t be a mo.’

  Craig slipped into the clerk’s office next door. None of the staff was in on Saturday. He returned, carrying the mugs.

  ‘Now . . .’ he began, dark eyes concentrating on Andrew. ‘You’re an old chum of Phil Hitchens, aren’t you?’

  Tinker nodded.

  ‘You know his wife Sara?’

  ‘Well, yes. We’ve been friends a long time. Their boy’s my godson.’

  ‘Of course. Well, she’s in a spot of trouble.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘In fact, I think we all are.’

  Andrew frowned, wishing Craig would get to the point.

  ‘Yesterday evening, I had a visitor. Chap from London. Security. Actually wore a trenchcoat, would you believe! There’s someone they’ve been keeping an eye on, apparently. Claims to be Swedish, but they’ve discovered he’s about as Scandinavian as Josef Stalin!

  ‘Anyway, this man lives in London but does business in the West Country. That’s his story, anyway. MI5 heard about him from the local Special Branch who’d been called in by our own security staff here at Devonport. They’d been tipped off by a young sailor, who met this so-called Swede in a pub and wasn’t too happy about the sort of questions he was asking. The sailor’s a marine engineer, on nuclear propulsion. He’s a good lad. Did the right thing in reporting it.

  ‘The Branch boys started tailing the man. On Wednesday night, something happened which made them call in MI5. They showed the London men a photo, but they had nothing on him.

  ‘Then, by pure chance, MI5 got a tip-off in London. A couple of foreigners had done a bunk from their home in the middle of Wednesday night. They showed our local boys’ picture to the neighbours and it all fell into place. They instantly reckoned the Swede was an illegal, a Russian undercover agent. Ten out of ten for sharp thinking!

  ‘The fellow had quite a circle of naval friends in pubs around Plymouth, but it seems he was still building up confidence and hadn’t asked too many clever questions yet.

  ‘Anyway . . . , to cut a long story short – that incident on Wednesday. The watchers saw the Swede meet a woman in a kebab house in Plymouth. They seemed to know each other intimately. Lots of holding hands and whispering. But the woman got upset, and left without finishing her meal. One of the watchers followed her home. Can you guess who she was?’

  Andrew’s frown deepened.

  ‘You don’t mean Sara Hitchens?’

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’

  ‘Exactly. And the reason MI5 decided to call on me yesterday is that when they raided the house in London they found the couple had left some bits and pieces behind. Including some of the little knick-knacks you get given free when you work for the KGB! The Swede was a Russian spy. Confirmed.’

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘Exactly. And we’re in it. Up to our necks!’

  ‘So, you’re saying Sara was having an affair with a Soviet spy?’

  ‘Correct. Not the first little dalliance, by all accounts. There’d been gossip about her among some of the wives, so I’m told.’

  Andrew felt the back of his neck prickle, uncomfortably aware that the gossip was well-founded.

  ‘But Sara can’t know anything important,’ he stated briskly. ‘What would a KGB man hope to get from her?’

  ‘Apart from a good time, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, well . . . it doesn’t quite make sense, does it?’

  ‘I put the same point to MI5. They seem to think the man had only just started spying. Still feeling his way around, as it were, seizing any opportunity that presented itself. And one day, there was Sara. Do you know what she used to do when her old man was off on patrol? She used to go on her own to restaurants and pubs, sit at a table all by herself, and see who she could pick up.’

  ‘I don’t believe it!’

  Poor Sara. Still desperate for affection, Andrew thought.

  ‘It’s true. She admitted it. Told MI5 that was the way she’d met the Russian. Said it usually worked a treat. Navy town – full of presentable young men, all a bit lonely, looking for female company . . .’

  ‘What’s happened? Has she been arrested?’

  ‘No. Adultery’s not a criminal offence. She denies utterly that she ever said anything to her lover. Anything secret, that is. There’s nothing to charge her with.’

  ‘But if she didn’t know anything of any importance, and denies telling him anything anyway, why are you so concerned? Why . . .’

  ‘Why have I dragged you in here on a Saturday morning? Quite simply because I’m far from sure that Sara told MI5 the truth. Normally, I’d agree, she wouldn’t be much use to a spy, but in the last few days something may have happened to change that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She told the police that Philip had found out about her affairs and they’d had one hell
of a fight.’

  ‘Oh God!’

  ‘In a situation like that, things get said. Things you wouldn’t normally let on about, but in the heat of the moment . . .’

  ‘When did you say you heard about this?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘Phil was at sea by then, so he wouldn’t have known that the boyfriend was a spy?’

  ‘Presumably not, since Sara claims she was convinced the man was a Swede.’

  ‘So, you’re worried that in the middle of a domestic row he might have blurted out some state secret that she could later have passed to the Russians? Bit unlikely, isn’t it, sir?’

  ‘It’s the timing that matters. The date when the row happened. As far as I can work out it must have been just after his ops briefing at Northwood.’

  ‘But that sort of detail, he’d never bring it up in a screaming match with his wife!’

  ‘It would only need one detail, Andrew . . .’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Like exactly where he was going . . .’

  The penny began to drop.

  ‘They had something special on?’

  ‘Precisely. Truculent wasn’t just taking part in Exercise Ocean Guardian.’

  ‘Can you say what it was?’

  ‘I don’t even know, Andrew. Just that it wasn’t an ordinary mission.’

  ‘I see . . . So, you want me to try to assess the likelihood of his having given something away? Because I know them both. Is that it?’

  ‘I want you to go and see her. She may open up more to you than she did with the police.’

  ‘Now, wait a minute . . .’ Tinker cut in. ‘In what capacity? Am I the Navy, or a friend?’

  ‘Both. A special ambassador chosen because of your personal links with the Kitchens family,’ Craig sounded unfortunately pompous. ‘You’re concerned for her welfare, and so is the Navy. And concerned for Philip, of course.’

  The last point was the key consideration for Andrew. He pictured himself at the start of a two-month patrol, and wondered how he would cope if his own marriage had disintegrated days before he’d sailed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  HE WENT HOME to change first, not wanting to look conspicuous by arriving at Sara’s house in uniform.