by Craig Thomas
Aubrey was a traitor. Kapustin smiled, tapped his teeth, and listened.
"I realise that," he heard himself saying, "but this information is very important." Beneath the words he could hear his own heartbeat, fainter than the pulse of the ferry's engines. "You must try…" he insisted.
"I am doing everything asked of me!" Aubrey replied with querulous and frightened anger. At least, it could have been fear. Where had that conversational snippet come from— Paris, Vienna, Berlin? This year, last year?
"No," he announced. "Switch off." The team leader appeared stoical, other and younger faces were crestfallen, one or two distinctly irritated in the hot, smoky room. "Sorry, lads— my heartbeat's not exact in the inserts. And there's something about the perspective of Aubrey's voice — he's got to be a little nearer."
"What about the background sound?" someone asked.
"That's OK — no difference. That's good. I'm sorry, but Finnish Intelligence is going to be given this when the time is right, and the first thing they're going to suspect is that it's a fake. They're going to try to find what's been put in and what's been taken out. I can hear it. It's not good enough. OK — run on to the zoo…"
The cassette tape whirred, then the Play switch clicked again. The lion roared as if on cue. The monkeys chattered at the children, the children at the monkeys. Kapustin listened.
"Your real work can begin then," he heard himself saying.
"No more than my duty," Aubrey replied stiffly. Then he continued: "I've waited patiently — for a very long time, Dmitri — now its's within our grasp…"
"Again!" Kapustin snapped, clipping the excitement from his voice.
Rewind than Play. He listened. Snippits of conversation from Berlin, from Vienna, from Rome. Background filtered out, new background supplied. The zoo. He listened. All that chatter — he had not believed thay could do it. They wanted it to disguise the inital filtering out of traffic, of wind or rain. Yet he had disbelieved them. Until now. This was…
"Marvellous," he breathed. A collective sigh of relief seemed to fill the room. Lion, monkeys, children. A seamless, flowing background, natural, lifelike; undoctored.
It had happened. This was the best it had ever been, on all the tapes they had doctored. The best in the last two years. The most curcial moment of betrayal, the springing of the trap.
Aubrey was Teardrop — was, for certain, Teardrop. Aubrey was a traitor to his service and his country. It was there, on the tape. Teardrop unmasked.
"Again," he whispered, luxurating in his sensations of complete, infallible success. "Again."
* * *
There was a video projection at the far end of the first floor of the shop. On it, in somewhat blurred colours, a ballet dancer impersonating Squirrel Nutkin bounced across a leaf-carpeted glade to the inappropriate accompaniment from wall speakers of a disco tune. The image caused him to smile, then he turned his back on the screen and went up the stairs to the cassette department. He was early for his apointment, for this final contact in the HMV Shop on Oxford Street.
He had come out of Bond Street tube statoningoa hot September afternoon that made the whole of crowded, sweltering Oxford Street seem to smell of frying onions from an invisible hotdog stall. Ground floor, he had been told. At foru precisely. At four, you come over. A pity you couldn't have posted to Washington or even New York — but, from Isford Street we can get you the couple of blocks ot the embassy in Grosvenor Square. The HMV Shop's always good and crowded. That'll be the pickup point. Be early, move around the shop. We'll want time to look for any tail. Be careful.
He should not have felt real tension, he knew. There should be only the feelings he had practiced and learned in readiness for this moment. Remember, they will expect fear, tension, sweating. Just as with the file, you must be sure of your emotions. They must be correct — what is expected in a defector on the point of going over. The smell of frying onions after the smell of hot dust in the tube station had revolted his stomach. It was an image to hold, to bring out later like a pressed flower. A proof of honesty.
A young-old boy with pink hair, eye make-up and an earring sat lounging behind the cash desk. Grigori Metkin moved slowly along the racks of cassettes, appearing to browse, finger running along the shelving, following the alphabet of pop singers and rock bands that were, almost without exception, unfamiliar to him. His eyes sought and found his shadow from the Soviet embassy, intently studying the bargain-priced cassettes. He carried two green Marks & Spencer bags. There was nothing Russian about him. He was dark and pot-bellied enough to be an Arab or an Iranian. Metkin glanced at his watch. Two minutes before four.
A man in a light suit brushed past him and stared knowingly into his face. There was the merest hint of an encouraging smile, then he was gone. After a moment, Metkin followed him down the stairs. On the video screen, to the accompaniment of Bach supported by the alien groundswell of electric guitars from the floor below, Raquel Welch in an animal-skin bikini fled from a dinosaur. Again, Metkin smiled. Then, as he looked back from the stairs leading to the ground floor and the wailing guitars, he saw his shadow with the green bags coming unconcernedly after him. For the briefest moment, he understood intensely what he was leaving behind and the dangers of his new role; his stomach became hollow and weak.
The man in the light suit was waiting for him. There was a second man, then a third. All in well-tailored suits, perhaps intending to advertise the sartorial benefits of America to him, their newest recruit. The conflicting noises of three or four different hit records seemed to increase in volume as he hesitated on the bottom step. The sunlight glared outside the doors of the shop.
Make it good, he thought. Make it convincing, he remembered.
Where was his instructor now, from which Oxford Street window would he be watching this? Then Metkin saw a flicker of recognition on the face of one of the Americans. His shadow had given himself away. The light suit moved towards him, and a strong brown hand grabbed his arm. The man's other hand began reaching into the breast of his jacket. A second American had moved swiftly towards the doors. Metkin could smell the frying onions again. He felt nauseous.
"Come on, come on," the American urged. Men in patterned shirts, all highly-coloured, moved towards himself and the CIA officer. The necessary counter-activity, the threat that the prize might yet be snatched away. The American bustled him to the doors, his right hand still inside his jacket as if seeking a missing wallet. "Come on—"
Sunlight, hard and dusty, collided with Metkin as he emerged. He bumped into an Arab woman and knocked over her child. He recognised that he would possess all the necessary emotions to recall under debriefing interrogation. A cry from behind them. Three suits, one next to him and two guarding the black limousine. The real door was opened. He was bundled in like a bag of washing. The American who had pushed him, the one in the light suit, slid into the seat next to him.
Look around, look frightened, he remembered. He saw the sweating, angry faces gather on the pavement. The Arab woman picked up, dusted off her child. The patterned shirts retreated, then disappeared as the car turned out of Oxford Street. The Americans were arguing.
"Neither of you picked those guys up — neither of you!"
"Sorry—"
Thank them, he remembered, thank them profusely…
"Thank you! Thank you!" he exclaimed breathily, feeling the sweat run freely beneath his arms, on his chest. "Oh, thank you, thank you…"
The American next to him smiled, then nodded. "You're safe now, pal. Safe."
And suddenly, ahead of the car, the weather stained white concrete of the US Embassy, surmounted by the eagle with its spread wings. To Metkin, it possessed the appearance of a prison and the associations of a minefield. Safe? His danger was only just beginning—
* * *
Their hands moved in and out of the pool of light that fell upon the desk, making skirmishes at the heap of photographic blowups. The ceiling of the darkened room was washed with pale li
ght, much of it filtering through the uncurtained windows from the moonlit snow lying deep on that part of the Virginia countryside. Their shadows bobbed and swelled and lessened on the ceiling.
"How much of this can you verify?" The Deputy Director of the CIA sounded reluctant to believe and yet equally reluctant to adopt a skeptical attitude.
"A lot of it."
"From Metkin, our defecting friend?"
"No. He knows nothing about this. He grabbed it as a bargaining lever. It was too secret for him to handle. But, look here—" Hands shuffled the gleaming, frequently over-exposed pictures, then tapped one of them. "We know this style of classification and secrecy grading has never been used by the KGB. It belonged to the NKVD, at least thirty years ago. And this…" The hands shuffled once more. The Deputy Director was struck by their confident, trained movements. The hands were indeed dealing cards — a bad hand. "… this is his handwriting all right. It's been checked again and again. A lot of experts have seen it. It's been scanned and examined by computer. It may be almost forty years old, but it's his handwriting."
"I see." The Deputy Director looked into the shadowy corners of his spacious office, then at the silvery snowgleam on the ceiling. His shadow and that of his companion seemed hunched and diminished and sinister, crouching over the photographs on his rosewood desk. He could smell his cigar butts still in the ashtray — no, they were on the pile carpet, upended there by a movement of the sheaf of blow-ups. "I see," he repeated, at a loss.
"The history fits, too. As far as we can check, all these 1946 dates can be corroborated."
"What about the recent dates — the last two years?"
"It all checks out. At least, as far as we can go without asking London direct."
"Then all this was garbage about a KGB Deputy Chairman wanting to defect…?"
"We think so."
"What else do you think?"
"Aubrey's been a sleeper for more than thirty-five years. Two years ago, when he was within an ace of the top job, they woke him up."
"You say you haven't talked to London?"
"No, sir. We need to talk to Babbington — to MI5, sure — but that's the Director's decision, not ours."
"OK." The Deputy Director's finger tapped at the blow-up of the file's summary sheet, near the bottom. On the ceiling, his shoulders seemed to move spasmodically in unison, as if he were vomiting. "You believe this defector — and this?"
"We've tried him every way. Even under drugs and hypnosis. He comes up smelling of roses every time. Same story. As a cipher clerk, he'd heard the rumours everyone else had heard. Important files about to be incinerated — topmost secrecy. He knew it could be his ticket on the first-class gravy train, so he took his Japanese camera to work — and found Teardrop."
"Aubrey's an old man now…"
"And he's just become Director-General of British Intelligence."
"Dammit, Bill, I know that…"
"Well, sir?"
The Deputy Director's large hands once more rearranged the sheaf of photographs, but this time irresolutely. "Hell, I don't know — I just don't know!"
"Sir, I'd stake my reputation on the fact that Teardrop is a genuine highest security file from Moscow Centre. More than that, these reference numbers on the cover show that it has been transferred to their main security computer. Also, access is limited to the Chairman and six Deputy Chairmen of the KGB. No one else, with the exception of Nikitin himself, can get to see it. These pictures come up genuine under every test we can make. The story they tell — however appalling — holds up under investigation…" Once more, the pictures were dealt like cards, fanned open across the whole desk. One or two slid to the carpet, out of the pool of strong white light. "And it all means that Kenneth Aubrey is a Soviet agent. It means he's the Soviet agent of all time!"
"And he's just been made head of British Intelligence." The Deputy Director sighed once, but the sound became a stifled belch. "OK — we'll take this to the Director first thing in the morning."
* * *
"Very well, Kapustin. Let it begin in earnest. The destruction of Kenneth Aubrey — and with him, the destruction of British Intelligence… I use Comrade President Nikitin's own words, Kapustin. Does he exaggerate?"
"He does not, Comrade Chairman."
"You promise that such claims will not have been exaggerated, in the outcome?"
"I do, Comrade Chairman. President Nikitin was right, as you were, to place Teardrop in my hands. It will work. I give you both my word on that."
"Then let's drink to it, mm?"
"A pleasure."
"We will wish Sir Kenneth Aubrey, KCVO, a Happy New Year — eh? A very Happy New Year!"
* * *
One by one, the rows of windows of the Belvedere Palace in Vienna turned from bronze to orange in the setting afternoon sun, as if invisible servants were going from room to room lighting great chandeliers. Kenneth Aubrey and the Russian were almost in darkness as they patrolled the terrace of the Upper Belvedere beneath the great windows; two shadowy, unsubstantial and isolated figures. Patrick Hyde sat perched on the stone plinth beneath the enigmatic, crouching statue of a sphinx. Its companions ranged away from him along the terrace, each of them staring out of Maria Theresa faces and from beneath eighteenth-century hair down towards the city. Hyde looked up at his sphinx as Kapustin continued his explanation to Aubrey. Yes, the smile on that face was alluring as much as mysterious; lewd, even, as it retreated into cold winter darkness. Appropriate to the conversation that he could tinnily hear through the earpiece of the portable recorder in the pocket of his dark overcoat. This time, Aubrey was wired for sound and Kapustin seemed unworried at the prospect.
In a pause in the halting, almost embarrassed explanation, Aubrey exploded with anger. Hyde had never heard him so enraged, so undiplomatic, so unreserved before.
"You cannot tell me now that you refuse to come over?" his voice asked in mocking, venomous disbelief. "After more than two years, you simply cannot mean that!"
The silence hummed. The KGB Deputy Chairman, Teardrop, was backing away. Hyde had known it for more than half an hour now, ever since the first moments of the meeting. Almost from the moment Kapustin had greeted Aubrey and Hyde had drifted to a more useful surveillance distance, he had sensed a new and even more reluctant mood.
And it was a woman. An inducement to remain in the Soviet Union that Aubrey would be incapable of understanding or accepting.
"I–I do mean that, my friend," Kapustin explained. "I — am sorry, but I can say it in no other way. I — cannot come with you."
"Everything is arranged!" Aubrey stormed. "You agreed everything at our last meeting. It was to be next week, dammit!"
Hyde watched the two almost indiscernible figures reach the far end of the terrace, turn and begin towards him again. The orange colour of the windows was now uniform, as if the early sunset had stalked after them along the terrace. Hyde saw the pale blotch of Wilkes's trench coat drifting like a patch of fog behind the two men. He and the rest of Vienna Station were in control of security. Once more Hyde felt himself, as Aubrey's traveling companion and minder, flatteringly unused; wasted. He rubbed his ungloved hands. His breath smoked in the last of the light. To the east, the pale sky darkened towards purple. The gardens of the Belvedere glittered with yesterday's snow.
"But, this woman—" Aubrey persisted. "You say you have known her only for a matter of a few months…"
"That is correct."
"Then, then — then I do not understand!"
"You have never been moved by such a passion, my friend?"
"Bring her with you!" Aubrey blurted out. Listening, Hyde shook his head.
"I cannot. She — has a family. I do not need to tell you what former colleagues of mine would do to them, with them, were the two of us to emerge in the West. No, my friend, it cannot be…"
"Dammit, you're sixty-one—!"
Hyde smiled and tossed his head. Aubrey, the man devoid of sexual passion, simply c
ould not comprehend. Deputy Chairman Kapustin would not come out to play, now or ever. To Hyde, it was a matter of indifference. The cold impinged more keenly. Only for the loss of Aubrey's coup was he regretful. And even that wasn't important — Aubrey already had it all; knighthood, director-generalship, honour and glory, world without end…
And perhaps after this he would return Hyde to the field, to proper work.
"And should know better?" Kapustin asked mockingly. "Evidently I do not."
"You could be blown—"
"I do not think so. And you, my friend, you would not betray me just for disappointing you. I am truly sorry. There is much in the West that I still covet, and much at home that sickens and disgusts me. But — I am in love…"
Hyde heard Aubrey's snort of derision and saw Kapustin spread his arms in a gesture of pleasurable hopelessness. Aubrey's stunted figure beside him, now that they were close again, looked feeble and old and bemused.
"Then this is our last meeting. We have nothing more to say to one another." Aubrey's voice was still hurtfully contemptuous.
"It would appear so. You have been patient and you have been secure. When I came to you, I asked a high price. You have, eventually, granted it. You have satisfied me in the matter of a new identity, a new life. And now that I have everything, it means nothing to me. I can no longer go down these steps—" They were standing just above Hyde now, at the head of a flight of stone steps. Hyde's sphinx seemed to smirk with superiority and a sense of power in the gloom. Frost had begun to glitter on her face. " — with you, or get into one of your cars parked outside the palace gates. London is an impossible distance away. Washington is another planet — for me, at least."
"Very well. I shall report the matter…"
"Ah, yes. You will give a most withering description of my sudden — weakness?" Kapustin laughed. To Hyde, the KGB Deputy Chairman sounded like an actor, overplaying his role.
"I — it's simply that I do not understand," Aubrey admitted.