Visibility

by Boris Starling

  Papworth headed right at the first corner, so that he was going down the east side of Grosvenor Square; all the way down, across an intersection, and into Carlos Place.

  He stopped without warning.

  Herbert flung out his arms to stop de Vere Green and Hannah in their tracks.

  This was what it must feel like to be Hannah, he thought; doing everything by sound alone.

  Papworth began to turn slowly.

  Herbert took a couple of steps backward, forcing the others into reverse, too, and grabbing at Hannah when, startled, she began to stumble.

  Papworth was still turning; and then Herbert lost sight of him, obscured by a particularly thick finger of fog which floated across the pavement.

  Footsteps sounded muffled in Herbert’s ears: Papworth, coming back to check.

  If he found them, he would know they had been following him. It was hardly the weather for a Sunday-morning stroll, after all.

  Herbert took another pace backward, willing them to melt into the fog.

  The footsteps stopped, and then started again, this time receding.

  Perhaps Papworth had just thought himself lost, and had retraced his steps to check. Or perhaps he had heard something suspicious, and after a moment dismissed it as paranoia. Following someone through this fog was no task for the fainthearted.

  Herbert hurried forward again, concerned that they shouldn’t lose Papworth.

  It occurred to him as he did so that if the situation had been reversed and he had wanted to flush out a follower, this was exactly what he would have done: stopped, resumed, and then waited for the trackers to come careering out of the mist so as not to lose their quarry.

  No; Papworth was still walking, several paces ahead.

  He passed through a pair of gates beyond which the fog seemed even blacker than elsewhere. It took Herbert a moment to realize that it was the outline of a building.

  More precisely, according to the sign, the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Farm Street, Mayfair.

  It was neither much warmer nor much clearer inside the church than it was outside. Matins would be sparsely attended, Herbert thought, when it began in an hour or so. Today was a morning where communing with God would best be done from home.

  Papworth entered at the altar end, and immediately turned right, into a small alcove where three statues clustered. Herbert saw Our Lady Montserrat, with a golden ball in one hand and a child in her lap; a group at Calvary; and St. Francis Xavier, rather magnificent in flowing robes.

  Farther along the side, just at the edge of the mist, Ignatius Loyola loomed in black, one hand raised and the other clutching a Bible. A Jesuit church.

  There was nothing Jesuit, however, about the man waiting for Papworth in the alcove. It was Kazantsev.

  Herbert and de Vere Green looked at each other, and de Vere Green must have made some sound of surprise or disgust, because Kazantsev raised his head with the languid vigilance of a zebra who had just heard a lion rustling in the bush.

  Papworth looked around, first at Herbert, then at de Vere Green, then back at Herbert again, and then finally at Kazantsev.

  “Go,” he said simply.

  With unhurried pace, Kazantsev slipped through the door and out into the fog before either Herbert or de Vere Green could react.

  “Who’s she?” Papworth asked, looking at Hannah.

  “Why don’t you ask her?” Herbert said.

  Papworth turned to Hannah. “Who-are-you?” he said slowly, as though she didn’t speak English, or was a child, or a retard, or all three.

  Hannah did not answer, dignity restraining her fury.

  “She’s with me,” Herbert said.

  Papworth flipped a hand in dismissal, as if to say that if she was blind, she was clearly of no consequence.

  Then he sighed, the exasperation of a man whose plans had been undone by well-meaning but limited drones who could not possibly understand the grandness of his vision and talents.

  “I told you,” de Vere Green said.

  “Told you what?” Papworth said.

  Herbert stared at him.

  “That you’re a Soviet agent,” Herbert said at length.

  Papworth snorted. “Don’t be so ridiculous, Herbie.”

  Herbert gestured to the space where Kazantsev had been, as if to say: Well then, if you’re not a Soviet agent, how do you explain that?

  Papworth’s eyes widened in recognition of Herbert’s implication, and he laughed.

  “You guys.” He shook his head in amusement. “You couldn’t find your own assholes with a mirror, could you?”

  “That was a clandestine meeting with an MGB agent,” de Vere Green said.

  “Of course it was,” Papworth said.

  “Of course?” said Herbert.

  “Of course,” Papworth reiterated. “He’s working for me.”

  * * *

  Things got ugly after that.

  “You stupid, stupid bastards,” Papworth hissed, making de Vere Green flinch at the use of profanity in a church. “You’ve almost certainly compromised Kazantsev’s continued willingness to run both sides of the fence. I tell you now, if I’ve lost him as an asset, I’m going to make your lives a misery, I swear to God.”

  A priest came over. “Is everything all right here, gentlemen?”

  Papworth, getting angrier by the second, only just refrained from telling a man of God, in the house of God, to do something which was not only biologically impossible but also surely in breach of every religious stricture going.

  The priest went away again.

  “What the hell were you doing following me in the first place?” Papworth asked.

  “The decrypts,” Herbert said. “Material from Venona—it all points to you as a Soviet agent, code name Achilles. Times and places all match.”

  “Let me guess,” Papworth said, and turned to de Vere Green. “This is your doing, yes? Why am I not surprised? Well, let me tell you something. I get the decrypts, too, and it’s funny that de Vere Green should suspect me. You know why? Because the more I read, the more I’m starting to think that maybe de Vere Green is Achilles.”

  “Impossible,” de Vere Green said.

  “Far from it. Check the times, check the places. Everywhere those decrypts refer to, if I’ve been there, so have you. We were at Los Alamos together. We’ve been in London together for four years. Hell, you even spent nine months in Washington just after the war.”

  “This is absurd,” de Vere Green said.

  “You find me a single Achilles decrypt which you could categorically not have been responsible for, and I’ll retract it all. Until then, you’re in the frame as much as I am. More, in fact.”

  “More?” Herbert asked.

  “Of course. What better disinformation than trying to blame someone else for your own treachery?”

  “That applies to both of you.”

  “All right, then. Take a look at our careers. I’ve helped bring down the Rosenbergs, I helped winkle out Klaus Fuchs. I’ve also worked with Senator McCarthy, on the Malmédy massacre trial. De Vere Green, on the other hand, told you not to worry when Maclean waved from the platform at Charing Cross. In effect—and you must have thought of this before, Herbert—he was the one who let them escape. And then, and then, he blamed it on you. He let you take the fall for something you didn’t do. See any parallels yet?”

  De Vere Green’s mouth was working, but no sounds were coming out. A thin trail of saliva spanned a corner where his lips met. He looked as though he might keel over at any moment.

  Papworth’s flow was unabated. “Not to mention the fact that he spends half his time in Cambridge, where Burgess and Maclean were, and which, let’s face it, is hardly known for eschewing communists in the ranks. It’s all there, Herbert, if only you’d look; more precisely, if only you’d see.”

  Red and pink, Five had taught Herbert, red and pink: sodomy equaled heresy, and heresy equaled treachery.

  “That’s not true,”
de Vere Green managed to splutter.

  “Which particular bit is not true, Richard?” Papworth asked. “Name me one.”

  De Vere Green could not.

  If he had looked bad at the funeral yesterday, and worse when he had barged into Herbert’s flat a few hours before, those occasions suddenly seemed pictures of gaiety and vitality compared to his appearance now.

  Like Kazantsev—appropriately enough, Herbert thought, under the circumstances—de Vere Green left the church; though, unlike Kazantsev, he did it with a stumbling panic that bordered on hysteria.

  Papworth was breathing hard, more through anger than anything else.

  Herbert, hoping to defuse the tension, said the first thing he could think of.

  “What was The Mousetrap like?”

  Papworth stared at him, trying to make the mental leap back to this most banal of questions; and then, rather unexpectedly, he smiled.

  “It was horseshit. It’ll close down before New Year. You see if I’m not right.”

  The fog squatted before, behind, and around them. Herbert could not remember a thicker one, and certainly none dirtier. The sulfurous yellow tinge was becoming ever more pronounced. Hannah may not have been able to see it, but she could certainly smell and taste it.

  There was a police box on Berkeley Square, right around the corner from the church. Herbert sat on the stool for a few moments, working out how best to proceed; and Hannah, understanding the need for silence, gave him the quiet in which to think.

  Eventually, he picked up the phone, went through the same rigmarole as before in getting the local station to patch him through to New Scotland Yard, and explained to Tyce what had happened.

  Tyce understood immediately. Much as he wanted to keep jurisdiction of this case, treason put control of de Vere Green out of police hands. Tyce would take it instantly to Scott, who would doubtless pass it to Sillitoe; all at the highest level, as was proper for an accusation of this magnitude against an official of de Vere Green’s status.

  Not that Herbert was out of the loop, however. The murder investigation was still very much alive, as it were; he had every right to continue his inquiries into both Stensness’ death and the extent of de Vere Green’s involvement in it. De Vere Green may have been a traitor but not a murderer; he may have been a murderer but not a traitor; he may have been both; he may even have been neither.

  In effect, there were now two investigations, nominally separate, more probably connected. So Five could ask their questions, and Herbert his; and if he had anything to do with it, Tyce said, he’d make sure that Herbert got first dibs, for he, Tyce, no longer doubted which side Herbert was on.

  But Five had to be the ones to find him, unless Herbert had absolutely concrete evidence linking him to the murder.

  No, Herbert said; nothing concrete.

  Then they had to wait for Five. The complexion of the case had changed drastically since Tyce had fought his corner with de Vere Green on Friday. It was cumbersome, infuriating, and perhaps even illogical, but that was the way things worked.

  Herbert said he would ring in again when he next found a phone. He wanted to thank Tyce, but Tyce did not go long on expressions of gratitude, whether given or received.

  “You think he is guilty?” Hannah asked, when Herbert had hung up.

  “Who? De Vere Green?”

  “The man who came to flat this morning? Him?”

  “Yes, that’s de Vere Green. And yes, he’s guilty. There’s no doubt.”

  “Herbert, always there is doubt, in life.”

  “You didn’t see him when Papworth turned on him, Hannah. He looked … gone.”

  “No, I not see him, but I listen. Is harder to hide tones of voice than expressions of the face, or gestures. Voice gets more tight, higher. Little muscles in throat, resonance in head and chest. Voice reveals anger, fear, people who lie. People know you watch them, they change the language of their body; but they forget to change the voice.”

  Herbert was staring at her. “And?”

  Hannah shrugged. “I don’t know. When de Vere Green come to flat, I think he tell the truth. He in bad way, but he no sound like man who lie. Then here, Papworth say that de Vere Green lie.”

  “And Papworth’s voice?”

  “That’s the thing. Papworth sound the truth. He has positive voice. So I think, they both sound like they tell the truth. But only one can be doing so.”

  Only one, indeed. And de Vere Green’s reaction had surely proved which one.

  “Where now?” he said, more to himself than her.

  “You go to laboratory already?” she asked.

  “Of course. Straight after you found the coat in the Long Water, actually.”

  “Yes, but you search it then?”

  “No.”

  “So. You find clue at his home; why not at office?”

  Why not, indeed?

  He should, Herbert reflected, probably have searched Stensness’ laboratory before; but when had he had the time, until now?

  Or, for that matter, pending the arrest of de Vere Green, so few alternatives?

  The underground was still running, so they took a tube from Green Park; not that they had much choice. They would have been more likely to find a taxi in the Sahara.

  Sunday service was much slower and less frequent than weekdays, and they had to wait ten minutes for a train. Herbert took his mind off the wait by reading the platform advertisements, and almost laughed at one for tobacco which read simply: When you find that things go wrong, fill your pipe and smoke Tom Long.

  He wondered whether Tom Long would make him a company director.

  In the train, Herbert looked at his distorted reflection in the window. He listened to the wheels on the tracks, and to the creaking of the carriages as they swayed. He smelled printed newspapers, cigar smoke, and sweat, and thought how often he had failed to notice all these sounds and odors.

  Hannah was right. Sighted people thought with their eyes, and little else.

  “Kazantsev was there, too, you know,” Herbert said.

  “I know. I smell him.”

  “You smelled him? How? You’ve never met him before. How do you know what he smells like?”

  “He smells like Russian.”

  “Which is?”

  “Shit. Russians are all scum.”

  Herbert laughed, and Hannah cut him off, genuinely angry now. “You come to my country, Herbert. You come to Budapest, see what the Soviets do there. Stalin, he try to finish what Hitler started. They as bad as each other. Four years’ time, you wait, bad thing happen.”

  “Four years? Why four years?”

  “Every twelve years, Russians do bad things.”

  “Really?”

  “You think I joke? In 1920, civil war finally ends; 1932, collectivization; 1944, deporting Chechens, entire country, all the way to Kazakh Republic—they still there, thousands kilometers from home. So 1956, something bad is due; and Hungary’s turn then, I’m sure. You come to my country; then you no laugh no more.”

  The rest of the journey passed in strained silence, Herbert once more cursing his insensitivity and giving silent thanks for the distraction of an investigation.

  At Temple station, they got out. King’s was literally next door, so even in the murk they found it first time.

  The laboratory was silent; no bubbling beakers or demented scientists brewing up lethal chemicals. Perhaps Herbert had watched too many second-rate movies.

  He had not looked around too closely on Friday morning, when he had been interviewing Rosalind and Wilkins.

  Now he saw that the laboratory was clearly for two people only, which must have meant Stensness and Rosalind; there were only two chairs, after all, each tucked under a different section of the workbench.

  They effectively had a wall’s length of work space each; about three times as much space as Herbert enjoyed at Scotland Yard, but then he did not need a panoply of instruments and apparatus as these people did.

>   Rosalind’s was the nearer of the two desks. A red Chinese silk evening gown was hanging from a hook nearby, and pinned to the wall above the bench was a typewritten card. Herbert leaned in closer to read it.

  A scientist makes science the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find this way the peace and security which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience. His research is akin to that of the religious worshipper or the lover; the daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart.

  —Albert Einstein

  There were machines and equipment whose purpose Herbert could not have guessed in an aeon, strange contraptions of dull steel and fraying rubber. How would he find anything in here? He might not have known what he was looking for in Stensness’ house, but at least there the possessions had been items which Herbert recognized. Here, he thought, he might stumble past some vital clue a thousand times and be none the wiser.

  The average Joe could have a good crack at naming at least half of England’s monarchs, but science really was an alien discipline; either one spoke the language or one did not, and Herbert knew on which side of the fence he sat.

  The first thing he saw on Stensness’ desk was, at least, something with which he was familiar: a typewriter, dark green metal and pretty cumbersome in appearance. Herbert poked around it, more in hope than expectation, and found nothing out of the ordinary. No secret compartments, no incriminating documents still wound round the roller, not even a trace of typescript on the ribbon.

  That last brought him up short.

  Typing any kind of text left indentations on the ribbon, no matter how faint. If one was skillful and patient enough, one could decipher pretty much anything typed within the past few weeks.

  The only way a ribbon could be as clear as this was if it was new—and it certainly did not look new, for the material was beginning to wear at the edges, and it had lost the glinting sheen of one straight out of the box—or if it had been boiled. Boiling ribbons eradicated the typescript.

  Boiling ribbons meant that Stensness must have had something to hide.

  Herbert felt his ears twitch, as though he were a terrier.