‘Fine.’ She leaned her elbows on the kitchen table, eyes closed, head bowed, as if in the early stages of prayer. ‘Bob Wilkinson,’ she muttered to herself. She was plainly having difficulty remembering the details. ‘Mum’s last boyfriend before Dad. Possibly first love. Can’t remember.’
‘And you’ve met him?’
‘Sure.’
‘What’s he like?’
She looked up and stared at Gaddis in irritation, as if a character sketch was far beyond her remit at half-past four in the morning.
He backed off. ‘OK, fine. Then tell me when they were involved.’
He had stood up as he asked the question and switched on a small digital radio in the corner of the kitchen. He didn’t want the conversation to be overheard. Classical music began to pour into the room. Holly frowned, but she was too tired to question his bizarre behaviour. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Sam. Early seventies, probably.’ She curled a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Mum would have been about my age. They almost got engaged but Bob was sent abroad by the Foreign Office or something and they had to break up.’
Gaddis didn’t like that. ‘Foreign Office or something.’ It sounded as though she was overcompensating for a lie.
‘He chose his career over your mother?’
‘Well, that’s one way of looking at it.’ She laughed. ‘Mum was actually relieved. She’d met my father, they got married soon after, they had me. And we all lived happily ever after.’ She began to play with the lid on one of the shoeboxes. ‘Only Bob never forgot about her. Got married, got divorced, always stayed in touch with Mum, then helped her a lot with her career after Dad died.’
Gaddis saw that she was frowning.
‘Why are you looking like that?’
Holly shook her head. ‘I think they may have had an affair, a rekindled thing, about ten years ago.’ She turned towards the radio. ‘Why the fuck have you turned on Classic FM?’
‘Give me some credit. It’s Radio 3.’
Holly stood up. She poured herself a glass of water from a bottle in the fridge then turned down the volume on the radio. Gaddis wanted to object but understood the absurdity of his behaviour; he could not afford to alienate her with a paranoid rant about audio surveillance. Instead, he watched as she drank the water - the entire glass, like a cure for a hangover - before returning to her chair.
‘Mum wrote about political issues, geo-politics, espionage.’ Holly dropped into a stage whisper, putting a finger to her lips. She was beginning to enjoy herself. ‘Bob was a huge spy. Iron Curtain. Cold War. Is that why you’re worried about being bugged?’ She looked as though she was about to burst out laughing. ‘Are you using Mum’s stuff to write a book about MI6?’
He gestured at her to keep talking.
‘Far as I know, Bob would feed Mum titbits of information all the time. Spy gossip, rumours from Washington and Westminster.’ She tapped the table with her knuckles. ‘He probably gave her fifty per cent of this stuff. It was his way of expressing his affection. Either that, or a way of assuaging his guilt for running off to Moscow. He said he wanted her to write a great book about Western intelligence, all the things Bob Wilkinson couldn’t say because he was bound by the Official Secrets Act.’ She took Gaddis’s hand in hers and her lively mood suddenly subsided. ‘But Mum never got round to it. She probably never even read the files. At the end of the day, Bob annoyed her. He was like a fly she couldn’t brush off. And she was never well enough to do any work. I think Bob lives in New Zealand now. I haven’t seen him for ages.’
‘Didn’t he come to your mother’s funeral?’
Holly shook her head. ‘Can’t remember. I’d broken the world record for valium consumption. Possibly. He may not even know that she’s died.’
Gaddis picked up the letter and passed it to her. A lorry tore past the sitting-room windows, hurtling over speed bumps in the dead of the night. He pointed to the line about Platov. ‘What do you think he meant by this?’
‘Here?’ Holly squinted, like an old woman in need of glasses. ‘Platov? I haven’t got a clue.’
Gaddis studied her face intently, still unsure whether he was being manipulated. ‘Your mother never mentioned that she was investigating anyone in the Kremlin?’
‘Never, no.’ Holly leaned back in her chair with a scrutinizing frown. ‘I thought you were the expert on Platov. What’s going on, Sam?’
‘You tell me.’
Chapter 33
Inevitably, international directory enquiries had no listing in New Zealand for a Robert Wilkinson so Gaddis had to ask Holly for a favour. Did her mother keep an address book? Would it be possible to track down a number for Bob? Holly asked him why he was so keen to speak to Wilkinson, but Gaddis was deliberately vague about the details.
‘He was in Berlin during an important phase of the Cold War. It’s for the MI6 book. I want to try to set up a meeting.’
The following evening, Holly had called from Tite Street with the details. There was no way of preventing her from reading out Wilkinson’s number over an open line, so Gaddis had written it down and immediately walked outside to a phone box a quarter of a mile away on South Africa Road. If GCHQ had been eavesdropping on Holly’s call, he reckoned it would still take them several hours to establish a bug on Wilkinson’s phone in New Zealand.
It was eight o’clock in the evening in London, eight o’clock in the morning in New Zealand. He rolled four pound coins into the payphone and tapped in the number.
‘Hello?’
‘Is that Robert Wilkinson?’
‘Speaking. Who is this?’
The line was very clear. Gaddis was surprised by the class-lessness of Wilkinson’s accent: he had grown up with the idea that all senior MI6 personnel sounded like members of the Royal Family.
‘My name is Sam Gaddis. I’m a lecturer in Russian History at UCL. I’ve also just completed a biography of Sergei Platov. Does my name mean anything to you?’
‘It means nothing to me whatsoever.’
Silence. Gaddis could sense that he had another Thomas Neame on his hands.
‘Is it a good time to talk?’
‘As good as any.’
‘It’s just that I wanted to speak to you about Katya Levette.’ That got his attention. Gaddis heard a sharp, near-anxious intake of breath, the arrogance going out of him, then half a word - ‘Kat—’
‘I understand that you were good friends.’
‘Yes. Who told you this?’
‘Holly is a friend of mine.’
‘Good God. Holly. How is she?’
Wilkinson was opening up. Gaddis took out a pen and a scrap of paper and tried to pin them on the phone casing with his elbow. ‘She’s very well. She wanted me to send you her love.’
‘How kind of her.’ There was a brief interruption on the line, perhaps a technical fault, perhaps the sound of Wilkinson finding a quieter and more comfortable place in his house from which to speak. ‘Who did you say you were again? Who am I speaking to?’
‘My name is Sam Gaddis. I’m an academic, a writer. I’m calling you from London.’
‘Of course. And you’re working with Katya on a story?’
He obviously didn’t know about Katya. Wilkinson hadn’t been told that Levette was dead. Gaddis was going to have to break it to him.
‘You hadn’t heard, sir?’ He was surprised that he called him that, but had felt a sense of deference in the moment. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t know that I would be the one to tell you. I just assumed that you already knew. Katya has died, Mr Wilkinson. I’m very sorry. Six months ago.’
‘Dear me, that’s terrible news.’ The reply was instant and stoic; Gaddis felt that he could picture the resilience in Wilkinson’s face. He had just lost the great love of his life, but he was not going to display his grief to a stranger. ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said. ‘How is Holly coping?’
‘So, so,’ said Gaddis. ‘She’s all right.’
Wilkinson asked how Katya had die
d and Gaddis told him that she had suffered from liver failure, a euphemism which the older man immediately understood.
‘Yes. I was afraid that would take her in the end. The bloody drink was a lifelong struggle for her. I’ll write to Holly with my condolences. Is she still at the flat in Tite Street?’
‘She is. And I’m sure she’d appreciate that.’
‘In fact, Catherine is getting married later this month. I might see if Holly can come along to the wedding. It would be wonderful to meet her again.’
Gaddis knew, from conversations with Holly, that Catherine was Wilkinson’s daughter, but he felt that he should feign ignorance.
‘Catherine?’
‘My youngest. Marrying an Austrian in Vienna. I’ll be coming over for the wedding. We must try to entice Holly along.’
‘I’ll certainly mention that.’
Gaddis looked at the read-out and saw that he was down to fifty pence of credit. He put four further pounds into the slot and coughed to conceal the noise of the coins chugging into the phone.
It did no good.
‘Are you speaking to me from a phone box?’ Wilkinson asked.
Even if Gaddis had wanted to lie, it would have been impossible to do so: a souped-up Volkswagen Golf had pulled up on the street beside him. The driver leaned on his horn repeatedly in an effort to gain the attention of someone in a nearby housing estate. It must have sounded to Wilkinson as though Gaddis was calling from the middle of the M4.
‘The phone at my house is out of order,’ he said, accidentally knocking the pen and the scrap of paper on to the floor of the booth. As he bent down to retrieve them, stretching the receiver to his ear, he said: ‘I was just very keen to ring you as soon as possible.’
‘About what, Doctor Gaddis?’
‘I’ve come into possession of some documents that I think you gave to Katya.’
A pause. Wilkinson was weighing up his options. ‘I see.’
‘Holly gave them to me. A mutual friend thought that I might be interested in the material.’
‘And are you?’
Some of the obstructiveness which had characterized Wilkinson’s tone in the early part of the conversation had returned.
‘I haven’t really had a proper chance to go through it all yet. I’ve been busy working on something else. I wondered if you knew what Katya was planning to do with the documents?’
‘I’m afraid I really wouldn’t know.’
It sounded like a lie but Gaddis had not expected a straight answer. Wilkinson was guilty of passing potentially sensitive intelligence information to a journalist. He had no means of knowing whether Gaddis was a bona fide historian or an agent provocateur hired by SIS to elicit a confession.
‘Perhaps we could meet in Vienna to discuss this?’ Gaddis suggested, a wild idea which was out of his mouth before he had thought through its implications.
‘Perhaps,’ Wilkinson replied, with a complete lack of conviction. Time was running out. If Gaddis wasn’t careful, the conversation would soon be brought to an abrupt end.
‘There was just one person in particular that I’m keen to talk to you about,’ he said.
‘Yes? And who’s that?’
‘Sergei Platov.’
Wilkinson produced a grunt of indifference. ‘But you told me that you’ve already written his biography. Why would you want to start all over again?’
‘It’s a different angle this time.’ Gaddis was wondering how best to play his trump card. ‘I’m interested in Platov’s relationship with three former intelligence officers from the Soviet era.’
‘Intelligence officers—’
‘Fyodor Tretiak was a high-ranking KGB resident in Dresden. Edward Crane was a British double agent for more than fifty years. The man who ran him from Berlin in the mid-1980s used the pseudonym Dominic Ulvert.’
Wilkinson’s shock came down the long-distance line as a whispered expletive.
‘You bloody idiot. Is this line secure?’
‘I think so—’
‘I will thank you not to contact me here again.’
Chapter 34
On the transcript of the conversation shown to Sir John Brennan the following morning, the abrupt climax of the discussion between POLARBEAR and Robert Wilkinson was rendered with the simple phrase: ‘CALL TERMINATED’.
Brennan, who had been led to believe that Gaddis had abandoned his interest in ATTILA, flew into a rage, calling a meeting with Tanya Acocella at which he admonished her for ‘failing to persuade this fucking academic’ that ‘if he so much as goes near Edward Crane ever again, we will throw him to the wolves in Moscow. I didn’t spend every waking hour of my fucking weekend on bended knee to the head of the BND asking him to turn a blind eye to Gaddis’s handiwork in Berlin just so that he could immediately pick up the phone and start chatting to Bob bloody Wilkinson.’
Tanya had attempted to interject, but Brennan wasn’t finished.
‘Does Gaddis have any fucking concept of what will happen to him if the Russians find out who he is? Does he know what’s at stake? Didn’t you make it plain to him after you landed at Gatwick? What did you talk about? House prices? Gastro pubs? Were you planning, Tanya, at any fucking stage, to do your job properly?’
She had been dismissed from Brennan’s office with a parting shot which had enraged her.
‘Here’s what you’ll do. Go back to CHESAPEAKE. Consider POLARBEAR closed for business. If you can’t cope with a simple problem like Sam Gaddis, I’ll have to take care of it myself.’
With Acocella in the lift, Brennan had immediately contacted the British Embassy in Canberra and instructed Christopher Brooke, the thirty-five-year-old Head of Station in Australia, to catch the next flight to New Zealand where he was to have ‘a quiet word with one of our former employees’. SIS activities out of Wellington had been wound down as part of a cost-cutting exercise, which meant that Brooke faced a seven-hour trip to Christchurch via Sydney, a further forty-five-minute flight from Christchurch to Dunedin, followed by a three-hour drive, in a rented Toyota Corolla, from Dunedin to Alexandra, which was in the heart of the South Island. Accounting for delays and transfers, the journey - from the moment he left his house in Canberra, to the moment he arrived in Alexandra - took just under fourteen hours and cost Brooke an explosive argument with his pregnant wife, who had been looking forward to a long-awaited five-day break on the Gold Coast. Brooke had fallen asleep more or less as soon as he had reached his hotel room, waking at dawn on Wednesday to discover that nobody had ever heard of Robert Wilkinson, nor of the property at Drybread.
‘We know most of the people round here, luv,’ said the manageress of the Dunstan House. ‘Drybread used to be a gold mine. Nobody’s lived out there for years.’
‘You sure you’ve got the right place, mate?’ asked a petrol pump attendant at a garage on the edge of Alexandra.
Brooke drove all morning. He saw three people in three hours, none of whom were able to give him directions. He scanned road maps but could not access the Internet in order to download images from Google Earth which might have provided him with a route to Drybread. He was passing through some of the most dramatic scenery he had ever witnessed, yet for the most part his Hertz Toyota was filled with the sound of a worn-out, irritated British spook swearing at the injustice of being posted to the arse end of the intelligence world and blaspheming venomously at the prospect of spending three days searching for a retired Cold War spy who, if the locals were to be believed, had never set foot in New Zealand.
Finally, Brooke drove back to Alexandra, went to the Public Library and found a reference to ‘Drybread’ in a historical guide to Central Otago, dated 1947. Wilkinson’s home had once been a gold-mining settlement and subsequently a farm. From the description in the guide, it was situated at the end of ‘Drybread Road’ in a gully at the base of the Dunstan Range, forty-five kilometres north-west of Alexandra.
He set out from the library. He passed through a dry, barren landscap
e - identified on the map as the Maniototo Plain - stopping for petrol and some food in Omakau, a settlement which boasted little more than a pub and a local store. At about four o’clock, he turned from the S85 highway on to an unsealed, single-track road flanked by rivers and streams which turned a deep, sky-matching blue in the late afternoon sun. Every few hundred metres he was obliged to stop and to open farm gates, the road becoming more rugged with every passing kilometre. He was concerned that the Toyota would puncture at any moment, leaving him stranded in the centre of a vast, underpopulated plain which would soon be cloaked in darkness. Just after six, however, approximately ten kilometres inland from the main road, he at last saw a battered sign for ‘Drybread’ and turned on to a narrow, potholed trail which ran across a cultivated plain towards a screen of jagged hills. The property was a small, two-storey homestead half a mile along the trail, nestled within a rectangle of willow trees. As he steered through the gate, Brooke spotted a figure in a prehistoric Barbour chopping wood on the eastern side of the property. It was beginning to spot with rain. He switched off the engine, stepped on to the drive and was about to raise a hand in greeting when he saw Robert Wilkinson walking towards him brandishing a cold-eyed stare and a double-barrelled shotgun.
‘Who the fuck are you?’
Brooke had his hands in the air within a split second.
‘Friendly! Friendly!’ he shouted, a hangover from three eventful years with the Service in Basra. ‘I’m with the Office. I’ve come from Canberra to talk to you.’
‘Who sent you?’ Wilkinson was holding at a distance of fifty metres, shouldering the gun and keeping it levelled at Brooke’s solar plexus.
‘Sir John Brennan. It’s about ATTILA. I have a message to convey to you.’
Wilkinson lowered the gun, broke the chamber and hooked it over his wrist.
‘Convey it,’ he said.
Brooke looked around. He had been warned that Wilkinson had ‘turned a bit native’, but had, at the very least, been expecting a cup of tea.
‘Out here?’
‘Out here,’ Wilkinson replied.
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