by Craig Thomas
"Sir Kenneth," he murmured. Eldon, behind his military moustache, was sleek, handsome, clear-eyed; he was also tall. And Aubrey sensed a tough doggedness just beneath the surface of this senior interrogator. For a moment, Aubrey's heart beat with a ragged swiftness. He gripped the arms of his chair to suppress the quiver of his hands. The game had begun in earnest. There was no room for mistakes, no margin for error.
"I have been held under what I can only consider to be house arrest for two days. My telephone has been tapped, there have been guards at my door. My housekeeper has only been allowed to go shopping after a humiliating search. She is searched again when she returns. Oh, sit down, Eldon—!" He waved his hand towards the unoccupied sofa. Eldon sank into its deep cushions. The interruption had defused Aubrey's angry protest.
Babbington said: "You wish the charges against you to be clarified?" There was something sharp gleaming through the man's urbanity, and it worried Aubrey.
"What charges?"
"Charges of treason," Babbington snapped.
"So you said at the Belvedere, and again at the embassy — and again on the aircraft and in the car from Heathrow. You must be more explicit," Aubrey added with a calm acidity he did not feel.
Babbington grinned. Apparently, a moment for which he had been waiting had arrived. Eldon, too, seemed pleased that a point of crisis had been reached. He was stroking his moustache in a parody of the military man he had once been. His eyes appeared blank and unfocused, and Aubrey realised that the man was dangerously intelligent, dangerously good at his job.
"Very well, Kenneth," Babbington replied.
"You'll have to try very hard, Babbington — even were I guilty!" Aubrey snapped, surprised at his own rage.
"Oh, we realise it will be a very long job, Sir Kenneth," Eldon murmured.
"Why have I been denied all access to the Minister, to the Chairman of the JIC — whom I might expect to be here in your stead, incidentally — and even to the Cabinet Office?"
"Because for the present, and until this matter is resolved — the power of all three lies in me."
"I see," Aubrey replied. He controlled the muscles of his face, which wished to express apprehension, even shock. "Yet another rearrangement of our peculiar hierarchy, I gather," he murmured contemptuously.
Babbington merely smiled. Aubrey had been appointed as 'C' after the retirement of Sir Richard Cunningham. The appointment had coincided with the changes in the Joint Intelligence Committee that the Franks Report on the Falklands campaign had urged. The Chairmanship of the JIC had been lost by the Foreign Office, and MI5, under Babbington, had seized its chance to bask in the sun. MI5 had survived the Blunt, Hollis, Long scandals and emerged in the ascendent under a younger, more virile leadership. SIS was regarded as a country for old men, Aubrey being the oldest among them. Everyone was waiting for his retirement. Sir William Guest, as Chairman of the JIC and with the ear of the PM, had his own plans for a combined security and intelligence service. And Aubrey knew that he intended Babbington to head the new service, SAID. Everyone -
simply everyone — was waiting for his retirement. He could almost see the impatience in Babbington's eyes, sense it in the room. And now, this — this thing that had lumbered out of one of his nightmares had fallen into their hands, and they were all prepared to use it to get rid of him. It almost did not matter to them whether he were guilty or innocent. He would be removed and the new service would be inaugurated, and Babbington would have his place in the sun.
Aubrey controlled his features once more. Babbington was enjoying whatever expression of anger or bitterness played about his lips.
They had him now. Another Russian agent. Babbington was outraged, even vengeful. That latter would be because he was an old family friend of the Castlefords.
Evidently his face had again betrayed his thoughts, because Babbington smiled and said with silky threat: "Whatever else may or may not be true, Kenneth — if you betrayed Robert Castleford to the NKVD in 1946, I will have your head. I promise you that." The anger was cold, well-savoured, decided upon. It was an emotion that had become a motive, a mainspring of action. Aubrey avoided glancing towards Eldon's glittering eyes.
Then Eldon said: "Sir Kenneth…" Aubrey looked venomously in his direction. "Perhaps you would prefer that these conversations…" His hands moved apart, suggesting the passage of a great deal of time; a time without specified term. "… take place at one of our — residences out of town?"
Aubrey shook his head. "I'm sure you realise that I would prefer to cling to the familiar?" he replied with an acid smile. "In this case, however, I would be using my surroundings as a constant reminder of what is at stake for me — what I might lose."
"You would prefer to remain here, too, I suspect — comfort and familiarity can be great betrayers." Eldon nodded his head in acknowledgement. "No, we'll stay here, I think. Coffee?" he added brightly.
"Please."
Aubrey lifted the small silver bell which Mrs Grey had instructed him to buy and use as a proper means of summoning her, and it tinkled softly in the comfortable room whose windows looked north over Regent's Park. The central heating clunked dully. The morning's headlines lay exposed and sharp on the table beside Aubrey's chair.
When he had ordered coffee, Aubrey said: "Why was no D-notice issued, Babbington? Why the hue and cry? I can't see how that can be to your advantage…"
"Not us. The Americans, we're pretty sure. They're impatient for answers, for proof."
"Ah. They'd prefer to see the ascendency of your service completed." His face folded into bitter creases, and his hand plucked for a moment at the fringing on the armchair. "As would HMG, now that there is the slightest doubt about myself. No country for old men, mm?" He looked up at Babbington, whose face was as immobile as if he had suffered a stroke. One eyelid flickered for a moment. Then Aubrey laughed, a short, derisive bark. "My God, Babbington, you really do have a lot to gain from my guilt!"
"And are you guilty, Sir Kenneth?" Eldon interjected.
Aubrey threw down his challenge. "I was using more sophisticated techniques of interrogation when you were still fagging for your house captain, Eldon."
"I'm well aware of your reputation, Sir Kenneth."
"Ah, coffee — excellent. Thank you, Mrs Grey."
Mrs Grey deposited the silver tray on the sideboard, bestowed glances of proprietorial malice upon Aubrey's visitors, and then left the room. Aubrey poured the coffee, fussing over it in a caricature of aged bachelorhood. He flexed mental muscles as he did so. Then he returned to his seat.
"Well, gentlemen?" he asked brightly. "I have the last forty-five years to lose, and the emperor's new clothes…" He indicated the large room and its furniture. "Perhaps you'd better begin."
Immediately, Eldon said: "Sir Kenneth, did you know that at your last Helsinki meeting your controller was wired for sound, even though you were not… by his request, if I remember your report correctly."
Aubrey was silent for some moments. The information had winded him. Suspicions crowded in his mind, just out of the light. "Wired for sound? Controller!" He squeezed contempt into his voice.
"Your KGB contact, if you prefer," Eldon corrected himself. "Yes, wired for sound. We have the tape."
"Then—"
"It seems very conclusive."
"Where is it?"
"We'll let you hear it, Kenneth," Babbington soothed, savouring Aubrey's failure of nerve.
"Conclusive, you say — then why the need for…?"
"Conclusive of treason, perhaps I should have said, Sir Kenneth."
"Then it's faked! Where did you get it?"
"The Finns. They have people in the Soviet apparat in Helsinki. One of them got it out, the Finns handed it straight on to us — to Sir William and the Cabinet Office…"
"You bloody fools — you dangerous fools!" Aubrey snapped.
"We're in the process of submitting it to the most stringent technological tests, Sir Kenneth," Eldon continued, unpe
rturbed. "I may say that, thus far, it holds up. It would appear to be genuine. The meeting took place at the zoo. Near the monkey house, from the background noises."
"Kenneth," Babbington interrupted with what might have been genuine concern, "it's not good. This tape holds up just like the file that fell into the hands of the CIA. They're convinced that file is genuine — and so are we." His voice hardened on the last words, as if he were pressing them in a vice.
"My God…" Aubrey whispered. He saw the way ahead very clearly; a dark path between close, high trees in failing light. It was the only path, and his feet were already upon it.
"The file indicates quite clearly that you were the instrument of Robert Castleford's betrayal," Babbington insinuated. The use of his name brought the man himself back vividly to Aubrey; not the photograph in the newspapers nor on the television, but a haggard, defeated, cunning face — the last occasion they had met. The last time he had seen Castleford alive. An older, surprised, appalled, finally dangerous Castleford. Careful of your face, your eyes, Aubrey reminded himself, as if afraid that the memories would become visible like stigmata.
"I'm afraid that is precisely what the Teardrop file indicates, Sir Kenneth," Eldon agreed.
"What did you call it?" Aubrey demanded, stunned.
"Teardrop." Eldon appeared to permit himself a smile, and a catlike smoothing of his moustache. His eyes glinted with concentration. "Your codename, apparently."
"My codename? My God—!" Aubrey half raised himself from his chair. "You know it was his codename, dammit!"
"Do we? The file now in Washington has Teardrop upon its cover. It was opened in 1946, Sir Kenneth."
"But you've checked the records — dammit, you know that Kapustin was Teardrop…" His jaw dropped. "The records are ambiguous," he admitted in a hoarse whisper. "I could just as easily have been meeting — my controller from Moscow…"
"Precisely, Sir Kenneth."
"And you — have drawn that conclusion."
"Let's say we're proceeding on that assumption, Kenneth," Babbington supplied. "It will be up to you to disprove it, if you can."
"I might add, Sir Kenneth, that we have some film with the Helsinki tape. We're examining that, too, for signs that it might be a forgery. We don't think it is."
Aubrey shook his head weakly, and then looked at them, his eyes moving from face to face. He felt as close to pleading with them to be believed as he felt distant from their sympathy and understanding.
"Where's Hyde?" he asked unexpectedly. "Why did he flee the scene?"
Babbington appeared taken aback.
"We — we're looking for him now."
"He hasn't called in?"
"No."
"Why not? What smell's in his nose, Babbington?"
"Hyde could be on a binge for all we know, Sir Kenneth," Eldon said dismissively.
"Good God, man — you're not even interested!" His outburst was directed at Babbington. "I have been cleverly — very cleverly — framed, and you are going along with it out of personal ambition!"
Babbington stood up quickly. His eyes glared at Aubrey.
"If you want a personal motive, Kenneth," he said, "then I should try revenge rather than ambition. You betrayed Robert Castleford — you've betrayed everybody and everything for the last thirty-five years and more!" Babbington's mouth clamped into a thin line, then he added in a quieter voice: "We'll leave you for a few hours now, Kenneth. Shall we say two-thirty this afternoon? We'll be taping, naturally."
Babbington strode to the door. Eldon followed him with an easy, relaxed step. At the door, however, the colonel turned to Aubrey and said: "You will recall, Sir Kenneth, that the emperor had no new clothes." Then he shut the door behind him.
Aubrey heard Mrs Grey usher the two men coldly from the flat, and consciously suppressed his sudden desire for alcohol. A large cognac would be craven, not medicinal. The wall lights in the drawing-room, switched on because of the lowering grey sky outside, glinted on the crystal decanters next to the silver coffee pot.
For two days they had left him alone and unvisited. And uninformed. Alone with his growing suspicions and his imaginings. Now, a series of detonations had damaged, perhaps destroyed, his foundations. He was like an old building that tottered from the concussions. Tapes, films, files — Teardrop. Above all, that clever, clever, clever codename — calm down…
All he had known before that morning had been gathered from the newspapers, and the television the previous evening — early news, Nine o'Clock News, News at Ten, Newsnight, the endless repetition of a growing nightmare.
Two species of treachery, separate yet interwoven. In December 1946, he had betrayed Robert Castleford, a distinguished civil servant working for the Allied Control Commission in post-war Berlin, and ever since then he had been a double agent, at first for the NKVD, then later the MVD, finally the KGB. For more than thirty-five years he had led a secret life. He was Philby, he was Blunt, he was Burgess — he was worse than any of them.
Mrs Grey's head appeared at the door, and hastily withdrew as he turned a baleful glance upon her.
And he had done none of it.
And he could never prove his innocence.
He could never tell the truth, not about December 1946, not about Castleford.
Impatiently, leadenly, he paced the room. The emperor had no new clothes. Silver, white napery, jade, velvet, wool, crystal, china, porcelain, oak, walnut. The emperor had no new clothes. KCVO. Sir Kenneth. Director-General. The emperor had no new clothes.
He could never tell the truth. There was a crime, but he could never reveal it. He would not be believed. He would never be believed innocent. He would only compound his guilt if he told the truth, because he had killed Robert Castleford.
In a grey tin box, in the safe keeping of one of the few people who had never lost his trust, his motives lay bound in leather, inside a buff envelope. He had written the account immediately in the wake of Castleford's murder. After the war, it had lain in a deposit box in his bank. His secret, his bane. His leather-bound guilt and conscience. Then, in 1949, when he had met Clara Elsenreith once again, in Vienna during his service there with the Allied Control Commission, he had surrendered the journal — confession? — into her safekeeping. She still possessed it. All the reasons were there, he had fully explained them; but now those reasons would never excuse the crime. The truth would finish him as effectively as the KGB's lies. He had killed Robert Castleford.
The emperor had no new clothes, he thought bitterly, anger vying in his chest and stomach with growing fear, so that he felt inflated; asphyxiated. His head had begun to pound with a sudden headache, and the chill grey light from the tall windows pained his eyes. The trap was perfect. Teardrop — Deputy Chairman Kapustin — had set him up to perfection, had led him by the nose for two unsuspecting years while his damnation was arranged. His heart pumped, his head beat with his impotent rage and accusations of failure and gullibility. He had been tricked — he had been tricked…
He banged his fists against his thighs as he paced back and forth across the length of the lounge. The icing on the cake was to make him appear to have been activated as a Soviet agent; it clinched the guilt they had suggested for him in 1946. The emperor had no new clothes.
The KGB had him. Teardrop was now his codename, the codename of a traitor, a traitor who was Director-General of SIS. The trap had closed. In his mind, he could distinctly hear the slamming of steel doors.
Crystal, jade, silver; presents for the nativity of his promotion. The emperor's clothes. Unreal, like the new flat overlooking Regent's Park, like the new housekeeper, like the new office at Century House, overlooking the river; like his knighthood, which he had been so long in taking. He had been moated with fulfilled ambitions, but now they had him, inescapably, finally. For he had killed Castleford, and they evidently knew that, and upon their knowledge the whole strategy turned. He had killed him and had hidden the crime for thirty-five… for so many years…
Into Aubrey's mind a clear, high, pure treble voice floated, an almost unearthly sound; a boy's voice. The words of the hymn or anthem, whichever it was, were indistinguishable in the echoing innocence of the voice. Perhaps Abide with me, perhaps the Nunc Dimittis. He did not know which words he was singing in his vividly remembered childhood. A cathedral nave, but other churches and chapels crowded their architecture upon him, too. White surplices were no more than ghostly in an incensed gloom. His father, the disgruntled, vicious, bigoted cathedral verger, was there, smiling; his lips drawn back over his teeth in the demonstration of a snarl.
Aubrey was frightened of the memory; not because of its potency, but because it seemed to herald an incontinence of mind that endangered him. It was an involuntary retreat from the present when he needed all his energies, all his concentration, simply to survive.
He looked up, visibly shaken, as Paul Massinger appeared at the door, unannounced. Aubrey's eyes narrowed in calculation and surprise — Castleford's face as they struggled was vivid and unnerving in his mind. He saw Massinger's handsome face register shock and he recalled Massinger's wife; Castleford's daughter. Then Aubrey pushed himself firmly to his feet.
"Paul, my dear fellow! How good of you to come…"
"Kenneth — you're all right? You look—"
"Yes, yes," Aubrey replied testily. "A little tired. Sit down, sit down."
Massinger chose Eldon's place on the sofa, opposite Aubrey.
Aubrey noticed the walking stick and the moment of discomfort as Massinger lowered himself into the cushions. The man's breath escaped in a sigh.
"I—" Massinger began.
"A drink?" Aubrey suggested, almost involuntarily beginning to control the situation.