by Len Deighton
‘She’ll have to tell them,’ said Bret without hesitation. ‘Watertight or not, she’ll have to turn him in.’
‘Ummm.’ Bret Rensselaer was completely cold-blooded, thought the D-G. It wasn’t an attractive characteristic, but for this job it was just the ticket.
‘Unless you want to throw away all those years of good work.’
‘You haven’t heard all the circumstances, Bret.’
‘I don’t have to hear all the circumstances,’ said Bret. ‘If you don’t turn in that Russkie, you will erode the confidence of your agent.’
‘This particular Mrs X…’
‘Never mind the psychologist’s report,’ said Bret. ‘She’ll know that you measured the risk, that you put her in the scales, with this Russian defector in the other pan.’
‘I don’t see it that way.’
‘Never mind how you see it. In fact never mind the way it really is. We are sitting here talking about an agent whom you call “unique”. Right?’
‘Whose position and opportunity may be unique.’
‘May be unique. Okay. Well I’m telling you that if you compromise her, in even the slightest degree, in order to play footsie with a Russian agent, Mrs X will never deliver one hundred per cent.’
‘It might go the other way. Perhaps she’ll feel distressed that we sacrificed this Blum fellow,’ said the D-G gently. ‘Already she’s expressed her concern. Remember it’s a woman.’
‘I’m remembering that. She must contact them right away and reveal Blum’s approach to her. If you show any hesitation in telling her that, she’ll deeply resent your inaction for ever after. A woman may express her concern but she doesn’t want to be neglected in favour of a rival. In hindsight it will infuriate her. Yes, I’m remembering it’s a woman, Sir Henry.’
‘This fellow Blum might be bringing us something very good,’ said the D-G.
‘Never mind if he’s bringing an inside line to the Politburo. You’ll have to choose one or the other: not both.’ The two men looked at each other. Bret said, ‘I take it that Mrs X is separated from her husband?’
The D-G didn’t answer the question. He sat back and sniffed. After a moment’s thought he said, ‘You’re probably right, Bret.’
‘On this one, I am, sir. Never mind that I don’t know Mrs X; I know that much about women.’
‘Oh, but you do.’
‘Do?’
‘You do know Mrs X. You know her very well.’
The two men looked at each other, both knowing that the old man would only divulge the name if Bret Rensselaer agreed to take on the job of running her. ‘If you think I’m the right person for the job,’ said Bret, yielding to the inevitable. They’d both known he’d have to say yes right from the very beginning. This wasn’t the sort of job you advertised on the notice-board.
‘Capital!’ said the D-G in the firm bass tone that was the nearest he ever got to expressing his enthusiasm. He looked at his watch. ‘My goodness, it’s been such a splendid evening that the time has flown.’
Bret was still waiting to hear the name but he responded to his cue. He got to his feet and said, ‘Yes, I must be going.’
‘I believe your driver is in the kitchen, Bret.’
‘Eating? That’s very civil of you, Sir Henry.’
‘There’s nowhere round here for a chap to get a meal.’ Sir Henry pulled the silk cord and a bell jangled somewhere in a distant part of the house. ‘We’re in the wilds here. Even the village shop has closed down. I don’t know how on earth we’ll manage in future,’ he said, without any sign that the problem was causing him great stress.
‘It’s a magnificent old house.’
‘You must come in summer,’ said Sir Henry. ‘The garden is splendid.’
‘I would like that,’ Bret responded.
‘Come in August. We have an open day for the local church.’
‘That sounds most enjoyable.’ His enthusiasm dampened as he realized that the D-G was inviting him to be marshalled around the garden with a crowd of gawking tourists.
‘Do you fish?’ said the D-G, shepherding him towards the door.
‘I never seem to have enough time,’ said Bret. He heard his driver at the door. In a moment the servants would be in earshot and it would be too late. ‘Who is it, sir? Who is Mrs X?’
The D-G looked at him, relishing those last few moments and anticipating Bret’s astonishment. ‘Mrs Samson is the person in question.’
The door opened. ‘Mr Rensselaer’s car is here, sir.’ Sir Henry’s butler saw the look of dismay on Bret’s face and wondered if he was not well. Perhaps it was something about the food or the wine. He’d wondered about that Montrachet: in the same case he’d come upon a couple of corked bottles.
‘I see,’ said Bret Rensselaer, who didn’t see at all, and was even more surprised than Sir Henry thought he would be. All sorts of thoughts and consequences were whirling round in his mind. Mrs Bernard Samson. My God! Mrs Samson had a husband and young children. How the hell could it be Mrs Samson?
‘Goodnight, Bret. Look at all those stars…It will freeze hard tonight unless we get that rain those idiots on the TV keep forecasting.’
Bret almost got back out of the car. He felt like insisting that he should have another half an hour to discuss it all. Instead he dutifully said, ‘Yes, I’m afraid so. Look here, sir, we can’t possibly give Bernard Samson the German Desk in view of what you’ve told me.’
‘You think not? Samson was the only one to get across alive the other night, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘What bad luck. It was the other one – Busby – we needed to talk to. Yes, that’s right: Samson. No proper schooling of course, but he has flair and deserves a shot at the German Desk.’
‘I was going to make it official tomorrow.’
‘Whatever you say, Bret, old chap.’
‘It’s unthinkable with this other business on the cards. From every point of view…unthinkable. We’d better give the desk to Cruyer.’
‘Can he cope?’
‘With Samson as an assistant he’ll manage.’ Bret shifted position on the car seat. He began to think that the D-G had planned all this, knowing that Bernard Samson was about to be promoted. He’d invited Bret out here to dinner just to prevent him appointing Samson and thus threatening the prospect of the big one: putting Mrs Samson into ‘The Kremlin’. The cunning old bastard.
‘I’ll leave it with you,’ said the D-G.
‘Very well, sir. Thank you. Goodnight, Sir Henry.’
The D-G leaned into the car and said. ‘Oh, yes. On that matter we discussed: not a word to Silas Gaunt. For the time being it’s better he doesn’t know you’re a party to it.’
‘Is that wise, sir?’ said Bret, piqued that the D-G had obviously passed it off as his own idea when talking to ‘Uncle’ Silas.
The D-G knew what was going through Bret’s mind. He touched the side of his nose. ‘You can’t dance at two weddings with one bottle of wine. Ever hear that little proverb?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Hungarian.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Or Romanian, or Croatian. One of those damned countries where they dance at weddings. Get started, old chap. You’ve got a long journey and I’m getting cold.’
Sir Henry slammed the door and tapped the roof of the car. The car moved away, its tyres making loud crunching noises on the gravel roadway. He didn’t go back into the house, he watched the car until it disappeared round the bend of the long drive.
Sir Henry rubbed his hands together briskly as he turned back and went indoors. All had gone well. It would need a lot of tough talking to get it all approved, but Sir Henry had always been good at tough talking. Bret Rensselaer could do it if anyone could do it. The projections were convincing: this was the way to tackle the German Democratic Republic. And it was Bret’s idea, Bret’s baby. Bret had the right disposition for it: secretive, obsessional, patriotic, resourceful and
quick-witted. He cottoned on to the fact that we couldn’t have Samson running the German Desk while his wife was defecting: that would be a bit too much. Yes, Bret would do it.
So why did the Director-General still have reservations about what he’d set in motion? It was because Bret Rensselaer was too damned efficient. Given an order, Bret would carry it out at all costs. The D-G had seen that determination before in rich men’s sons; overcompensation or guilt or something. They never knew where to stop. The D-G shivered. It was cold tonight.
As the car turned on to the main road Bret Rensselaer sank back into the soft leather and closed his eyes to think more clearly. So Mrs Bernard Samson had been playing out the role of double agent for God knows how many years and no one had got even a sniff of it. Could it be true? It was absolutely incredible but he believed it. As far as Mrs Samson was concerned, Bret would believe anything. Fiona Samson was the most radiant and wonderful woman in the whole world. He had been secretly in love with her ever since the day he first met her.
4
Kent, England. March 1978.
‘We live in a society full of preventable disorders, preventable diseases and preventable pain, of harshness and stupid unpremeditated cruelties.’ His accent was Welsh. He paused: Fiona said nothing. ‘They are not my words, they are words of Mr H. G. Wells.’ He sat by the window. A caged canary above his head seemed to be asleep. It was almost April: the daylight was fading fast. The children playing in the garden next door were being called in to bed, only the most restless of the birds were still fidgeting in the trees. The sea, out of sight behind the rise, could be faintly heard. The man named Martin Euan Pryce-Hughes was a profile against the cheap net curtains. His almost completely white hair, long and inclined to waviness at the ends, framed his head like a helmet. Only when he drew on his curly pipe was his old, tightly lined face lit up.
‘I thought I recognized the words,’ said Fiona Samson.
‘The Fabian movement: fine people. Wells the theorist, the great George Bernard!…The Webbs, God bless their memory. Laski and Tawney. My father knew them all. I remember many of them coming to the house. Dreamers, of course. They thought the world could be changed by writers and poets and printed pamphlets.’ Without looking at her he smiled at the idea, and she could hear his disdain in the way he said it. His voice was low and attractive with the sonorous call of the Welsh Valleys. It was the same accent that she’d heard in the voice of his niece Dilwys, with whom she’d shared rooms at Oxford. The Department had instructed her to encourage that friendship and through her she’d met Martin.
On the bookshelf there was a photo of Martin’s father. She could see why so many women had thrown themselves at him. Perhaps free love was a part of the Fabian philosophy he’d so vigorously embraced when young. Like father like son? Within Martin too there was a violent and ruthless determination. And when he tried he could provide a fair imitation of his father’s famous charm. It was a combination that made both men irresistible to a certain sort of young woman. And it was a combination that brought Martin to the attention of the Russian spy apparatus even before it was called the KGB.
‘Some people are able to do something,’ said Fiona, giving the sort of answer that seemed to be expected of her. ‘Others talk and write. The world has always been like that. The dreamers are no less valuable, Martin.’
‘Yes, I knew you’d say that,’ he said. The way he said it scared her. There often seemed to be a double meaning – a warning – in the things he said. It could have meant that he’d known she’d say it because it was the right kind of banality: the sort of thing a class-enemy would say. She infinitely preferred to deal with the Russians. She could understand the Russians – they were tough professionals – but this embittered idealist, who was prepared to do their dirty work for them, was beyond her comprehension. And yet she didn’t hate him.
‘You know everything, Martin,’ she said.
‘What I don’t know,’ he admitted, ‘is why you married that husband of yours.’
‘Bernard is a wonderful man, Martin. He is brave and determined and clever.’
He puffed his pipe before replying. ‘Brave, perhaps. Determined: undoubtedly. But not even his most foolish friends could possibly call him clever, Fiona.’
She sighed. They had been through such exchanges before. Even though he was twice her age he felt he must compete for her. At first he’d made sexual advances, but that was a long time ago: he seemed to have given up on that score. But he had to establish his own superiority. He’d even shown a bitter sort of jealousy for her father when she’d mentioned the amazing fur coat he’d given her. Any fool can make money, Martin had growled. And she’d agreed with that in order to soothe his ego and pacify him.
Only lately had she come to understand that she was as important to him as he was to her. When the KGB man from the Trade Delegation appointed Martin to be her father-figure, factotum and cut-out, they’d never in their wildest dreams hoped that she would wind up employed by the British Secret Intelligence Service. This amazing development had proceeded with Martin monitoring and advising her on each and every step. Now that she was senior staff in London Central, Martin could look back on the previous ten years with great satisfaction. From being no more than a dogsbody for the Russians he’d become the trustee of their most precious investment. There was talk of giving him some award or KGB rank. He affected to be uninterested in such things but the thought of it gave him a warm glow of pleasure: and it might prove an advantage when dealing with the people at the London end. The Russians respected such distinctions.
She looked at her watch. How much longer before the courier came? He was already ten minutes late. That was unusual. In her rare dealings with KGB contacts they’d always been on time. She hoped there wasn’t trouble.
Fiona was a double agent but she never felt frightened. True, Moscow Centre had arranged the execution of several men over the previous eighteen months – one of them on the top deck of a bus in Fulham; killed with a poison dart – but they had all been native Russians. Should her duplicity be detected, the chances of them killing her were not great but they would get her to tell them all she knew, and the prospect of the KGB interrogation was terrifying. But for a woman of Fiona’s motivation it was even worse to contemplate the ruin of years and years of hard work. Years of preparation, years of establishing her bona fides. Years of deceiving her husband, children and her friends. And years of enduring the poisonous darts that came from the minds of men like Martin Euan Pryce-Hughes.
‘No,’ Martin repeated as if relishing the words. ‘Not even his best friends could call Mr Bernard Samson clever. We are lucky you married him, darling girl. A really clever man would have realized what you are up to.’
‘A suspicious husband, yes. Bernard trusts me. He loves me.’
Martin grunted. It was not an answer that pleased him. ‘I see him, you know?’ he said.
‘Bernard? You see Bernard?’
‘It’s necessary. For your sake, Fiona. Checking. We make contact now and again. Not only me but other people too.’
The self-important old bastard. She hadn’t reckoned on that, but of course the KGB would be checking up on her and Bernard would be one of the people they’d be watching. Thank God she’d never confided anything to him. It wasn’t that Bernard couldn’t keep a secret. His head buzzed with them. But this was too close to home. It was something that she had to do herself without Bernard’s help.
‘I suppose you know that they have given me this direct emergency link with a case officer?’ She said it in a soft and suggestive voice that would have well suited the beginning of a fairy story told to a wide-eyed and attentive audience of five-year-olds.
‘I do,’ he said. He turned and gave her a patronizing smile. The sort of smile he gave all women who aspired to be his comrades. ‘And it’s a fine idea.’
‘Yes, it is. And I shall use that contact. If you or Chesty or any of those other blundering incompetents in the Trade De
legation contact any of the people round me with a view to checking, or any other stupid tricks, they’ll have their balls ripped off. Do you understand that, Martin?’
She almost laughed to see his face: mouth open, pipe in hand, eyes popping. He’d not seen much of that side of her: for him she usually played the docile housewife.
‘Do you?’ she said, and this time her voice was hard and spiteful. She was determined that he’d answer, for that would remove any last idea that she might have been joking.
‘Yes, Fiona,’ he said meekly. He must have been instructed not to upset her. Or perhaps he knew what the Centre would do to him if Fiona complained. Lose her and he’d lose everything he cherished.
‘And I do mean stay away from Bernard. You’re amateurs; you’re not in Bernard’s league. He’s been in the real agent-running business from the time when he was a child. He’d eat people like you and Chesty for breakfast. We’ll be lucky if he’s not alerted already.’
‘I’ll stay away from him.’
‘Bernard likes people to take him for a fool. It’s the way he leads them on. If Bernard ever suspected…I’d be done for. He’d take me to pieces.’ She paused. ‘And the Centre would ask why.’
‘Perhaps you’re right.’ Pretending indifference, the man got to his feet, sighed loudly and looked out of the window over the net curtain as if trying to see the road down which the messenger would come.
It was possible to feel sorry for the old man. Brilliant son of a father who had been able to reconcile effortlessly his loudly espoused socialist beliefs with a lifetime of high living and political honours, Martin had never reconciled himself to the fact that his father was an unscrupulous and entertaining rogue blessed with unnatural luck. Martin was doggedly sincere in his political beliefs: diligent but uninspired in his studies, and humourless and demanding in his friendships. When his father died, in a luxury hotel in Cannes in bed with a wealthy socialite lady who ran back to her husband, he’d left Martin, his only child, a small legacy. Martin immediately gave up his job in a public library to stay at home and study political history and economics. It was difficult to eke out his tiny private income. It would have been even more difficult except that, at a political meeting, he encountered a Swedish scholar who persuaded him that helping the USSR was in the best interest of the proletariat, international socialism and world peace.