Safe House

by Paul Starkey

  “You have no idea.”

  She looked again; he was smiling sadly in her direction. She returned her gaze to the road. “When the…” she didn’t want to say the word gossip though that’s what it had been. “When news of your illness started filtering though, I remember wondering what it would be like. At first I assumed it wouldn’t be so bad, things haven’t changed that much in seventeen years. But the more I thought about it…” she looked at him. “The harder I realised it would be.”

  A flash of red made her look forward again, it was the brake lights of the car in front and she let the TT roll to a halt. She kept her right foot down and didn’t bother with the handbrake. After half a minute of them just sitting there however she sighed and pulled it into place. Then she turned back to the mess of contradictions in the passenger seat.

  “A lot has changed I imagine.”

  He nodded, but it became a shrug. The tired eyes regarded her warily, whether he was intimidated by her, or just naturally cautious, she couldn’t say.

  “The more things change the more they stay the same, they say that don’t they?” He glanced out of the window, not wanting a reply it seemed. “You don’t smoke, do you?” he said turning back. “I could murder a ciggie right about now.”

  “Sorry, I quit.”

  He chuckled. “So did I apparently. I don’t crave nicotine, but there’s still the ghost of an addiction there. Large portions of my life have that phantom quality.” He shook his head as if trying to shake dark thoughts away. “I was talking about how things hadn’t changed, right?”

  “Something like that.” Her eyes flickered ahead for a moment. The brake lights of the car ahead still dazzled through the rain.

  He sucked in air between his teeth with a low whistle. She wondered if he was imagining he had a cigarette clamped between them. He let the air out in a sigh. “There’s Iraq of course. Only I only remember the first time. Same with the World Trade Centre, I only remember the first time someone attacked the twin towers. It isn’t all doom and gloom though.” He gestured to the silent radio. “Take That are still in the charts.” He flashed her a lop-sided grin. She imagined he’d been a handsome man in his youth, and she’d heard he’d been a charmer, what these days they’d call a player. Now only the ghost of his charm remained it seemed.

  “And don’t even get me started on the football. The last World Cup I remember England in is 1990; Gaza crying and Lineker scoring hatfuls. Now one sells crisps and the other’s still crying.” He nodded to himself. “I can relate to that.” He smiled at her. “Beckham, Owen, Rooney…I had a lot of catching up to do.”

  The dim red glow that had bathed them was suddenly gone. She slipped the handbrake off and followed the car ahead.

  “Do you remember anything of the last seventeen years?” she asked without looking at him. The rain was getting heavier and the traffic quicker, and she didn’t dare take her eyes off the road.

  “Bits and pieces, odd fragmented images that have no context.” She wasn’t sure but in her periphery she thought she saw him rubbing at his left hand.

  “Oh and I can play the guitar. Apparently I learned a few years ago. I don’t remember learning of course, but I still have the skill. That makes no sense eh?”

  “Different parts of the brain, right? That’s procedural memory, the guitar playing I mean, remembering how to play it.”

  She chanced a glance in his direction and saw him nodding. “Yes, but that’s stored in a different part of the brain to episodic memory, where I’d remember learning. I can’t remember where the different bits are…I’ve read the literature over and over again, some of it sticks but a lot of it doesn’t. I guess you’ve been doing your research though.”

  She smiled. “Sorry. Seemed wise.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You probably understand encephalitis better than me.”

  “I doubt it,” she replied. “A lot of it went over my head. I’m guessing you don’t know how you contracted it?”

  “Not a clue. The type I had is the herpes variety, but I don’t think you get it from the clap, or even from cold sores. I’d been to some out of the way places in the year or two before I came down with it, so near as they can figure I got bit by something when I was in Algeria, or Nigeria, or Afghanistan…” suddenly he clicked his fingers. “Now that’s something that has changed. I remember when it was the Russians bogged down there, and how the brave Mujahadeen fought them off, they were always the heroes, in the films I mean, and back in the eighties. I remember the Russians leaving, how we all took it as yet another sign that the Soviets were on the ropes; Philosophically, financially…even tactically.” He uttered a tiny chuckle. “We really did think it was over for a while. I don’t remember most of the peace stuff with the IRA of course, the Easter agreement is it?”

  “Good Friday,” she corrected automatically.

  They’d come to a halt again and she looked over to see him nodding. He didn’t seem annoyed at being corrected. “I’ll probably forget again, don’t hold it against me.”

  “Ok.”

  “I don’t remember it whatever it was called, and it was another surprise to wake up to, but not that unexpected. It’d been obvious for a while that eventually they’d talk, eventually we’d let them.” He looked at her. “You know we were talking to them for years beforehand right, even when Thatcher was in charge, even before then.”

  “I know that,” she responded, trying to keep a patronising edge out of her voice.

  He was back looking out of the window again, and they were back moving. “So dark out, makes me feel sleepy.”

  “Don’t worry, once we clear this traffic it won’t take long to reach the safe house.”

  Silence followed and for a moment she thought he had nodded off, only when he spoke did she realise he was still very much awake. “I keep hoping they’ll come back…the memories that is. But they won’t.” He spoke with the voice of a child who’d been told Santa didn’t exist; desperate to return to innocence but knowing he couldn’t.

  “Maybe it’s better you don’t remember.” Despite the weather and the traffic she looked at him, trusting her reactions and that the car in front would continue to use his brake lights.

  He didn’t look happy at what she’d said, so she tried to clarify. “What I mean is, a blank slate’s something a lot of people would love to have.” She licked her lips. “Love to have,” she repeated, softer this time.

  “They’re welcome to it; I’d happily swap with someone if I could.”

  He shuffled uncomfortably in his seat, odd given how luxurious they were, and she figured it was the line of questioning, not the leather. “So what do you know about Ibex?”

  Ok then, she thought. We’ll consider that line of questioning closed. “Only what’s in the files, though you and Samuel Harris were quite meticulous.”

  “That was mainly Sam. I’ve never been a paperwork kind of guy.”

  She could relate to that. “Ibex. Quintus Armstrong, born in Lincoln Nebraska in 1955, father was a former colonel who left the armed forces after the Second World War and went into business, ended up running a medium sized manufacturer of auto parts and was heavily involved with the Democrats if I remember right. His mother was a teacher and also something of a local celebrity for her singing.

  “Quintus was a bright child, went to university in Aurora Illinois and came out with a good liberal arts degree. In 1975 he joined the American Foreign Agricultural Service, the FAS. He spent the first few years in Washington but then started moving up within the organisation and was posted abroad. The American embassy in Vienna first, but after two years he was transferred to the embassy in Wellington, New Zealand. It was back to Washington after that; he spent a year in the capitol then arrived in London after a two year stint in French Guiana. He was pretty highly placed within Grosvenor Square and that made him attractive to the Soviets. He approached the Russians in early 1988 and, once they figured he wasn’t a phoney, the KGB snapped him u
p.”

  “Who handled him?”

  She wasn’t sure from the tone of Tyrell’s voice whether he was questioning her research, or genuinely curious, maybe he’d forgotten?

  “Oleg…Zinovitch, was it…”

  “Zinovyev,” he corrected. He hadn’t forgotten.

  She shrugged. “Learning Russian pronunciations hadn’t been a major Service issue until lately.” She smiled. “Then again Anna Chapman’s pretty easy to pronounce,” she muttered.

  He ignored the reference. “I’d probably struggle with some of the Middle Eastern names you have to cope with.”

  She said nothing, knowing he’d apparently been quite adept at pronouncing the names of Muslims during the last few years.

  “Where was I? With Ibex I mean?”

  “He’d just started working for the Russians.”

  “Right. Early in 1988. From what I can tell it was quite a coup for the KGB.”

  She saw him nod out of the corner of her eye. “Yeah, they were struggling by then, part of the wider lethargy affecting the whole Eastern Bloc. More and more cracks were appearing, more and more defectors, more and more people slipping us information. They still hadn’t recovered from all the damage Gordievsky had done either.”

  Chalice nodded, knowing how important an asset Oleg Gordievsky had been for MI5, probably the most important Russian asset the British ever had, a man who was actually appointed to be the resident designate at the Russian embassy in London days before being blown and having to defect.

  Tyrell continued. “… the KGB got spread ever thinner trying to seal the leaks. Doing so much counter intelligence meant they had less time for actual intelligence gathering, recruitment and blackmail etcetera. Under those conditions a high profile walk in would have seemed like a miracle…if good communists believed in God of course.”

  The traffic was definitely speeding up ahead of her, but the rain didn’t show any sign of stopping in the near future. England in the autumn was so different to where she’d grown up, bathed in the arid, desert heat. “An asset inside the American embassy. According to Sam Harris” notes Ibex was their most prominent source in Grosvenor Square.’

  “That we knew of,” said Tyrell. “There were rumours of others; either the Yanks quietly removed them, or else they walked away from the Cold War once it ended with nobody any the wiser.”

  “It isn’t explained in the notes I’ve seen why Quintus Armstrong turned, became a double working for us...”

  A sudden patter of raindrops struck the side window and she turned to see Tyrell jump.

  “Nasty night,” she said.

  “The best kind for our business; you look a lot less conspicuous in a trench coat and trilby.” He smiled at her, though his face was pale.

  She laughed at the joke, and not just out of politeness. Her optimism had been misplaced, the traffic had stopped again. Looking head she saw rows of brake lights receding into the distance, looking back in her wing mirror she saw dozens of headlights behind, and she was reminded of a giant refugee column. Instinctively she looked up, hoping there wasn’t a dive-bomber up there.

  “Why do you think Quintus came to work for us?’

  She turned her attention back to Tyrell. He definitely seemed more awake right now, more alert. She wondered how long it would last. “He saw the writing on the wall. Like I said; a bright guy. He saw the Soviet Union was on its last legs and figured making a deal with us was a good insurance policy. His own people would likely just make an example of him and throw him in jail for the rest of his life, but the British…” she paused. “We,” she corrected, “would see the advantages in leaving him in place. Not only as a tool to feed the Soviets with false information, but because we liked to know what’s going on inside Grosvenor House too.”

  Tyrell was nodding. She noticed he’d pulled his hands back into his sleeves. It was perhaps a little chilly inside the car, but not exactly freezing. She considered altering the settings on the climate control, but decided against it—until she decided whether she could trust John Tyrell or not she wanted to keep him slightly off balance.

  “Nothing in the rule book against spying on your own allies,” he said now. “Besides, the Americans never told us everything anyway. Some of the intell we saw before Ibex passed it to Zinovyev proved very useful in securing favourable deals for British exports. We were careful though, we could gain from most of the information, but I think in the end we barely profited from a quarter of it. You don’t kill the golden goose after all.

  “Anyway,” he continued. “You’re right and wrong. Right about why we recruited him, wrong about why he came to us.”

  She found something about his tone galling. “Enlighten me,” she said curtly.

  He shrank back a fraction at her riposte.

  “Please,” she added with a forced smile.

  “Ok. Well to understand why Ibex offered his services to us you have to understand why he offered them to the Soviets…”

  “According to the files, your files, it was because he’d been passed over for promotion, and because the Russians paid him.”

  “Well like I said, Sam wrote most of the reports, and though he is, was, a good agent, he was a facts and figures man. He didn’t try to get inside Quintus’ head much.”

  “Unlike you?”

  “Unlike me. The promotion issue was perhaps the last straw for Ibex, but it was by no means the first. It started when he was born, when he was named Quintus.”

  She laughed. “He decided to betray his country because he didn’t like his name?”

  Tyrell shook his head. “Oh no. He loves his name, you saw the way he dresses—he’s a lot more ostentatious now but he was always a little eccentric—he likes to stand out from the crowd and a name like Quintus helps.”

  They were moving again, well crawling at any rate. She let her eyes dance between the road and Tyrell as he continued.

  “Quintus is traditionally a name given to a fifth son. Ibex has four older brothers. It’s hard to stand out under those circumstances. He didn’t even have the luxury of being the youngest for long. By the time he was two years old he had a sister, and by the time he started kindergarten he had another brother…Mr and Mrs Armstrong were exceptionally stringent Catholics apparently.”

  “I’m surprised his mother had time for singing,” she said, mind boggling at the thought of seven children. Alice had told her—in graphic detail—how painful childbirth was, and that was just doing it once! Chalice was pretty sure she was never going to have children, but on those occasions where she felt optimistic about the chances of finding another Mr Right she never got beyond the fantasy of two kids. A boy and a girl, though she comforted herself that she at least never got around to naming them.

  “Apparently part of her celebrity came from the fact she was usually pregnant. Quintus told us once about seeing her sing at some work do or some such, must have been when she was carrying his younger brother, I doubt he’d have remembered earlier than that.

  “Anyway. Six siblings made it hard for him to be anything but one of the clan,” he paused and eyed her. “Not the Ku Klux variety you understand.”

  “I knew what you meant.”

  He nodded and carried on. “Bad enough he had five brothers and a sister, but smart as he is, and if I’m honest we only really got this from reading between the lines, although I did do some background research as well…anyway, smart as he is, so were his siblings. As well as he’s done in life; several of them did better. One of his brothers is, probably was now, a senator, and his sister became a District Attorney, another wound up a professor at Yale… the point is that right from the off Quintus had something of a chip on his shoulder, he never felt his parents gave him enough credit for what he achieved, and he ended up feeling the same way about his peers within the FAS, heck he felt the same about America as a whole. There were several promotion issues though.

  “After New Zealand he thought he was on the fast track, was certain he’d
get a plum assignment in the Paris embassy. Instead he got recalled to Washington and the Paris gig went to, in Ibex’s words, an ass kisser.”

  She smiled. Tyrell had affected a very bad American accent while he said ‘ass kisser’.

  “And it got worse. He demanded another foreign assignment so they sent him to French Guiana. Ok so he ended up as the number three guy in London eventually, but he felt, knew, he should have been higher in the food chain. And he found it especially galling that the only reason he got moved to London was because the man who was supposed to go broke both his legs in a skiing accident, and the Embassy couldn’t wait.”

  “So he’s resentful? I suppose there have been worse reasons for betrayal.” She winced as she said it.

  “It isn’t really resentment. When Ibex approached the Russians it wasn’t about hurting America so much as it was about getting the respect he thought he deserved. At first the Russians gave it to him, and he was happy, but all too soon they started taking him for granted, that’s when he approached us. He is the centre of the universe as far as he’s concerned and the rest of us rotate around him. He never hated his country, or his parents, his siblings, his co-workers, not even the Russians…no one else on the planet is important enough to hate. He just wanted what he felt was rightfully his, and he’d lie cheat, steal, and possibly even kill to get it.”

  She frowned. “Possibly kill?” They’d stopped again so she could give him her full attention, although she did glance at the dash mounted clock. Time was ticking away, her time with Ibex, and every second she spent stuck in this car was a second she couldn’t spend milking information from Quintus Armstrong. It was times like this she wished she hadn’t quit smoking.

  Tyrell was smiling. With each passing minute as he talked about the past he seemed more vital, more alive. He might still have the body of a fifty year old, but she saw youthfulness in those pale blue eyes now; the eagerness of an alpha male, and that worried her.

  “Did the reports explain how Quintus got away with it, with betraying his country I mean?”