The Trinity Six (2011)

by Charles Cumming

  ‘All right then.’ He reached into the back seat of the Toyota, retrieved a North Face parka, zipped it up against the deteriorating weather and closed the door. ‘Sir John is concerned that you may be establishing a relationship with a British academic named Sam Gaddis.’

  ‘Establishing a relationship? What the fuck does that mean?’ Wilkinson knew, instantly, that SIS had bugged Gaddis’s call. Years of carefully cultivated anonymity had been obliterated in an instant by a reckless academic in a London phone box.

  ‘Doctor Gaddis has discovered the truth about ATTILA. We believe that he knows you were running Edward Crane in East Germany in the 1980s. The Service is worried that you may be passing information to Gaddis of a sensitive nature, in breach of your commitment to the Official Secrets Act.’

  Wilkinson took a step forward. He was in his early sixties, stocky and imposing. His face, particularly in the fading light of a chill spring evening, had a quality of ruthlessness which had scared braver men than Christopher Brooke.

  ‘What’s your name, young man?’

  ‘My name is Christopher. I’m Head of Station in Canberra.’

  ‘And you’ve come all the way from Australia to tell me this, have you, Chris?’

  Brooke thought of his pregnant wife, of the Qantas cabin sprayed for insects, of freeze-dried in-flight meals and the interminable roads of Central Otago. He said: ‘That is correct.’

  ‘And don’t they teach you to keep civilized hours at Fort Monkton any more? What do you mean by showing up here at dusk? You could have been anybody.’

  Brooke had been informed that Wilkinson was ‘paranoid up to the eyeballs about Russian assassins’ and assumed that he would now regain some of his composure, safe in the knowledge that his surprise visitor had not been sent by the FSB.

  ‘I apologize for startling you,’ he said, extending a hand. ‘Nobody in the local community had heard of you. I had great difficulty locating your address. It’s only fractionally less remote round here than the Sea of Tranquility.’

  Wilkinson produced a grunt of indifference. ‘Is that your idea of a joke? Is that how you soften people up nowadays? A little galactic irony? A little lunar wit?’

  Brooke could see that it was a lost cause. He put the extended hand back in the pocket of his parka and decided to abandon any pretence at camaraderie. He wanted nothing more than to be driving back to Dunedin, getting a good night’s sleep and catching a flight home to Canberra. He wanted to be away from this gun-wielding maniac. He wanted to be filing a report for Brennan, drinking a bottle of Pinot Noir and eating Thai green curry with his wife. But he had a job to do.

  ‘Here’s the situation,’ he said. ‘Why don’t I just get it off my chest, because it’s fairly obvious that this isn’t going to be a civilized conversation? I wasn’t expecting a home-cooked meal, Mr Wilkinson. I wasn’t expecting a bed for the night. But if you want to do this out here, then we’ll do it out here.’ Right on cue, a wind came gusting across the plain, rattling the leaves of the willow trees. ‘As I understand it, Gaddis is threatening to blow the lid off two of the most closely guarded secrets of the Cold War, secrets that my colleagues - yourself included - have done a very good job of covering up for the past sixty years. The Chief has asked me to remind you that there are - to use his word - anomalies in the final years of Mr Crane’s career which would have massive repercussions on our relationship with Moscow if they came to light. Now I don’t happen to know what those anomalies are. But, I am reliably informed that you do.’ He saw Wilkinson’s face lift in the failing light and heard a short sniff, which he took to be a gesture of assent. ‘Sir John has always been deeply concerned that retired intelligence officers should not feel the need to sell their life stories to the highest bidder.’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  ‘I think you understand what I mean. The Service is aware that you disclosed sensitive information to a Mrs Katya Levette at various stages of your career, as a means both of leaking politically damaging stories to the British press and as a channel for your own autobiographical recollections.’

  ‘You want to be careful with that smooth tongue of yours,’ Wilkinson said, shifting the gun into his right hand. ‘It could get you into trouble.’

  The rain was falling heavily now and Brooke pulled up the hood of his jacket.

  ‘Is it not the case that you and Mrs Levette discussed the possibility of ghosting your memoirs?’

  Wilkinson had heard enough. He moved against the rain until he was face-to-face with Brooke, studying him rather as a crocodile might size up a snack for lunch.

  ‘Let me tell you something. I woke up three days ago and made myself a cup of tea. The telephone rang and I answered it. This Doctor Gaddis was on the other end of the line. He was calling me from London, from a phone box, asking questions about Eddie Crane. I’d never heard of him. You see, I didn’t realize that ATTILA was suddenly public knowledge. I also had no idea how an opportunistic British academic had managed to track me down. Let me assure you that I had absolutely no intention of discussing my career with him. I would assume that our private conversation was scooped up as a favour to the old country by local liaison. Is that the case?’

  ‘I have no idea what role, if any, the GCSB has played in all this.’

  ‘No?’ Wilkinson watched the rain sluicing down Brooke’s face. ‘I bet you don’t. You’re only Head of Station in Canberra, after all.’

  He raised a hand when Brooke attempted to respond.

  ‘Wait. I haven’t finished.’ He was angry now, livid at the invasion of his privacy and infuriated that his relationship with Katya was once again being dragged through the mud. ‘Please tell Sir John - he was just “John” when I knew him, but he was always keen on going places - tell Sir John that I will do whatever the hell I like in my retirement. If that includes talking to out-of-their-depth academics in London, so be it. You see, I remember how things ended. I remember a bomb under my car. I remember experiencing the distinct feeling that the Service would have preferred it if Bob Wilkinson had been blown up by Sergei Platov and thrown into the skies above Fulham.’ Brooke was wiping rainwater out of his eyes. ‘You look confused, Christopher.’

  ‘You’ve lost me,’ he replied. ‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘No,’ said Wilkinson. ‘I expect you don’t.’ Another gust of wind came buffeting across the plain. ‘But Sir John Brennan knows exactly what I’m talking about. Be sure to tell him that I understand the definition of loyalty. He never looked out for me, so why should I look out for him? If this Gaddis wants chapter and verse on ATTILA, perhaps I’ll give it to him. It’s time the whole story came out anyway. Christ, the British government would probably benefit if it did. Wouldn’t you like to see the back of that maniac?’

  ‘Which maniac?’

  ‘Platov,’ Wilkinson replied witheringly, as if Brooke had laid out his ignorance for the world to see. ‘They really haven’t put you in the picture at all, have they? You really have no idea what the hell is going on.’

  Chapter 35

  Late on Thursday afternoon, Sam Gaddis was squeezing through a pavement crush of students outside the School of Eastern European and Slavonic Studies when he spotted Tanya Acocella on the opposite side of Taviton Street. She was wearing a beige raincoat, leather boots and a beret which brought out the stark white bones of her face. He thought that she looked tired, but felt the irritating pang of attraction nonetheless; he had to remind himself to look annoyed as he crossed the street to speak to her.

  ‘I don’t suppose this is a coincidence.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Walk with me?’

  She was taking a risk, being seen with him. Brennan could have eyes all over UCL. A simple surveillance photograph of the two of them together, fed back to Vauxhall Cross, would reveal that she had ignored the Chief’s order to abandon contact with POLARBEAR.

  ‘I wondered how you were getting along,’ she asked.

  Gadd
is took the question at face value and said that he had been ‘fine, absolutely fine’ since the shootings in Berlin.

  ‘We’ve managed to come to an arrangement with the German authorities. They’ve put a squeeze on coverage of the incident in the media. The police won’t be looking for a second gunman. The man who killed Meisner, the man you shot, was a Russian named Nicolai Doronin. MI5 had been observing him for several months. The Germans know that he has links to the FSB, but they’re not expecting to pursue a complaint against Moscow. Doronin will make a full recovery and he’ll be turfed out of Berlin. He’ll know that if he tries to finger any of his colleagues in connection with the conspiracy, there’ll be repercussions for his family in London.’

  ‘What a lovely story,’ said Gaddis, taking out a cigarette. Tanya asked for one and he lit it for her as a student came up behind them, asked Gaddis a question about an essay deadline and then walked off towards Endsleigh Gardens.

  ‘The Berlin solution is the best you’re going to get,’ Tanya said, pointedly expecting some measure of thanks for the horse-trading SIS had done on Gaddis’s behalf.

  ‘I understand that,’ he said. ‘Believe me, I’m extremely grateful.’

  They walked in silence. She was wondering how best to say what she had come to say.

  ‘You are being careful, aren’t you, Sam?’

  ‘Careful in what way?’

  ‘You understand the terms of our arrangement? You can’t go looking for Crane. You can’t go seeking vengeance for what happened to Meisner and Charlotte.’

  She thought of Brennan lashing out at her in his office and wondered why she was being so considerate of Gaddis’s feelings. A pigeon settled on the pavement ahead of them, hopped into the path of a taxi turning into the road and flew off.

  ‘If you leave the country, the minute your passport is presented anywhere in the EU, they’ll know where to find you.’

  Gaddis stopped and turned. ‘What do you mean “they”?’

  ‘I’ve been removed from the operation. Pastures new. Brennan has a new team working on you.’

  He was confused. Did she want his sympathy?

  ‘Why have they taken you off the case?’

  ‘Long story.’ Gaddis felt that she might have been about to explain, but instead Tanya merely reiterated her earlier warning. ‘It doesn’t matter who’s running you now. The terms of the arrangement are the same. Don’t go looking for Crane. Do you understand?’

  Gaddis tried his best to convince her. ‘I have told you,’ he replied. ‘I understand, Tanya.’

  She didn’t like to see him lying; it didn’t suit him.

  ‘It’s just that Robert Wilkinson may not be in New Zealand for ever,’ she said. ‘We wondered whether you might already know that. We wanted to be absolutely certain that you wouldn’t make any attempt to see him if, for example, he came to Vienna.’

  Gaddis could only laugh, but it was a hollow sound, a breathless, near-silent surrender to the omnipotence of SIS. They had eyes and ears everywhere; they were listening to everything he said, even to a phone box on the edge of a housing estate in South Africa Road.

  ‘Wilkinson doesn’t want to have anything to do with me,’ he said. He dropped his half-smoked cigarette on to the ground and snuffed it out with his shoe. ‘Crane has disappeared. Even if I wanted to finish the book, I don’t have any more leads. It’s over.’

  ‘We both know that’s not quite true.’ He marvelled at her ability to convince him that she was still on his side. Perhaps it was the outfit: she looked so elegant, so off-duty, every inch the beautiful, available, seductive Josephine Warner.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I could go to Vienna. I could gate-crash Catherine’s wedding. I could grab Bob Wilkinson over a smoked salmon canape and ask him to tell me all about Dresden, just as a favour to an academic that he doesn’t know and doesn’t even particularly like. Do you really think that’s what I’m planning to do?’

  ‘I think you’re capable of anything.’

  Gaddis reached out and held her. ‘You need to trust me,’ he said. Her arms were gym-exercised, taut and wiry. ‘Check your surveillance records. I’m going to be in Barcelona for the rest of the month. I’ve arranged to spend a fortnight with Min.’

  ‘You have?’

  Tanya was no longer privy to the POLARBEAR product; it was infuriating not to know even this simple piece of information.

  ‘I have,’ he said. ‘So if Des feels like following me, tell him to pack his swimming trunks. My daughter and I will be spending a lot of time at the beach.’

  Chapter 36

  It was a half-truth, at best, but Gaddis reasoned that he owed Tanya Acocella a lie or two. Barcelona was just his way of getting even.

  He had spent the morning out at Colindale, on the outskirts of north-west London, going through back issues of The Times. He could have searched for what he was looking for online, but what was the point of risking the Internet when there were hard copies going back as far as the eye could see? The issue he found was dated 6 January. Gaddis laid a private bet with himself that Catherine Wilkinson had accepted her fiance’s proposal on New Year’s Eve, shortly before the corks had flown on the midnight champagne.

  MR M.T.M. DRECHSEL AND MISS C.L. WILKINSON

  The engagement is announced between Matthias, elder son of Mr Rudolph Drechsel and Mrs Elfriede Drechsel, of Vienna, Austria, and Catherine, younger daughter of Mr Robert Wilkinson and of Mrs Mary Edwards, of Edinburgh, Scotland.

  That gave him the surname for the wedding party, which was the first step of his plan.

  The second step was to ascertain the date of the wedding and to find the hotel in Vienna where the bulk of the guests would be staying. To that end, Gaddis printed out a list of all of the four- and five-star hotels in Vienna and called them, one by one, from two phone boxes at Colindale station, making the same request.

  ‘Hello. I’d like to book a room for the weekend of the Drechsel-Wilkinson wedding. I’ve been advised that you are offering a special rate for guests of the couple.’

  The first fourteen hotels had ‘no record at all of a wedding booked under that name’, but the fifteenth - the SAS Radisson on Schubertring - knew all about it and asked Gaddis for his surname.

  ‘It’s Peters,’ he said. ‘P-E-T-E-R-S. Peters.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Peters. And when would you like to arrive?’

  Gaddis now moved to the next phase of his strategy. He needed a precise date for the wedding, so he said: ‘Could you tell me if any of the other guests are arriving on the Thursday evening? Would that be too early, do you think?’

  ‘Thursday the twenty-third, sir? Let me see.’

  Then it was just a question of whether the ceremony would take place on the afternoon of Friday twenty-fourth or Saturday twenty-fifth.

  ‘Mr Peters?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It is difficult to say, sir. We have a number of guests arriving on Thursday evening, but the majority appear to be checking in on Friday.’

  So, the reception would be on Saturday twenty-fifth. ‘I see,’ he said.

  Gaddis had played along for a few moments more, requesting a double room for the Friday and Saturday nights, but when it came to divulging his full name and address, he had pretended that he had ‘an important call coming through on another line’ and promised the receptionist that he would complete the booking online.

  ‘Of course, Mr Peters. Of course. We very much look forward to seeing you in Vienna.’

  Chapter 37

  Two days later, Gaddis left London for Spain, catching an evening flight from Heathrow to Barcelona. He experienced no difficulties at passport control, but assumed that SIS would have Natasha’s apartment under tight surveillance. His plan was straightforward: to spend a few days in Spain with Min and then to go to Austria by train. Under the terms of the Schengen Agreement, it was possible to travel all the way to Vienna without displaying a passport; Gaddis assumed that this would make the task of trackin
g him considerably more complicated. He planned to arrive at the Radisson on the evening of Friday twenty-fourth, in time to mingle with the other guests. He would pretend to be a friend of the Drechsel family, discover the location of the wedding reception and perhaps accompany some of his new-found friends to the service the following day. That would bring him into direct contact with Robert Wilkinson.

  As it transpired, SIS were short on manpower and had to task the observation of POLARBEAR in Barcelona to two local officials based at the British Consulate-General on Avenida Diagonal. Their surveillance reports, sent direct to Sir John Brennan in London, recorded a staggeringly mundane series of visits to local playgrounds, branches of VIPS restaurant, shivering swims in the October waters of Icaria Beach and father-and-daughter strolls along the Ramblas. Brennan was shown photographs of Min piggy-backing on her father’s shoulders, emerging from a cinema carrying an ice cream, and laughing as Gaddis told her a story on the Metro. There was evidence that POLARBEAR had been involved in a heated exchange with his ex-wife over tapas at a restaurant named Celler de la Ribera, but this was put down to the commonplace anxiety of a messy divorce. In every respect, POLARBEAR appeared to have abandoned any interest in pursuing Crane and Wilkinson.

  Gaddis, of course, had done his bit to convince the boys and girls at GCHQ that he was a reformed character. He sent a Facebook message to Charlotte’s husband, Paul, for example, telling him that he had ‘not been able to make any headway at all’ with Charlotte’s book and had therefore decided to ‘set it to one side, at least for the time being’. He made deliberate decoy appointments by email, arranging to see a PhD student at UCL on the morning of Friday twenty-fourth. Using his regular mobile phone, he had also called Holly in London, telling her how much he missed her and inviting her to dinner at Quo Vadis on the night of Saturday twenty-fifth.

  Brennan knew there was a possibility that POLARBEAR was laying an elaborate trap which would be sprung in Vienna, but he was more immediately concerned by the report Christopher Brooke had filed describing his encounter with Robert Wilkinson. Two passages, in particular, had alarmed him to the point of fury: