A Spy's Life

by Henry Porter

  Vigo clapped his catalogue shut and held it up for Harland to see. ‘Incunabula!’ he proclaimed. ‘Isn’t that a marvellous word? It refers to all books printed before 1501 – just a few years after Caxton’s press.’

  ‘Yes, Walter, I think I knew that.’

  ‘But do you know what it means in Latin? I learned the other day that incunabula are swaddling clothes – I suppose it’s the idea of the very first stage in any given development.’

  Vigo hadn’t lost his pedagogical style. And physically he hadn’t changed much either, although Harland knew that he must have passed his fiftieth birthday. He had the same polished skin, the same prominent, fleshy nose and slightly popping eyes. Even his hair, a unique mass of tight curls that bunched at his collar like the improbable locks of a wig, seemed as thick and vigorous as it had been when Vigo had come to lecture Harland’s SIS intake at the Fort training school on Euro-communism. But he had gained weight around the shoulders and chest, and his face had thickened at the jaw, which added to his appearance of substance. A stranger might have taken him for a professional connoisseur, an art dealer or wine merchant. But there was nothing refined about Walter Vigo, nothing ponderous or precious about him. He could mix it with the best and, when circumstances required, was capable of demonic application. As he sat beaming across from Harland, he seemed more than ever to project a massive and protuberant cleverness.

  Harland’s champagne arrived. Vigo ceremoniously raised his own glass. ‘Here’s to your survival, Bobby. Good health.’ He drained the martini, never letting his eyes leave Harland’s. ‘From what I hear, it was a remarkable feat. You were half-dead when they got to you.’

  ‘I was lucky, the others weren’t. It’s as simple as that.’

  ‘Yes, but surviving in those conditions. That took some guts – not that there was ever any question about your personal courage, Bobby. We know that. We know what you did in Germany and Czechoslovakia. And I hear you’ve been in some pretty tight situations since you left us.’

  ‘As I say, I was lucky.’

  ‘I suppose in one sense you were. I mean happening upon that phone. What an extraordinary piece of fortune that was. And you knew the man whose phone it was.’

  ‘Yes, it was Alan Griswald’s.’

  Vigo was certainly on top of things. Almost none of this had been released to the press. Harland realised that the information would have been quickly picked up by the SIS contingent at the UK mission who had any number of friends in the UN.

  ‘Ah yes, of course. Alan Griswald. Now we’ve come across him before, haven’t we?’

  Harland wasn’t going to help. ‘Have you, Walter? I wasn’t aware of that.’

  ‘Yes, where did we meet Mr Griswald before?’

  ‘He was in Europe – Vienna and Berlin. Also in the Middle East.’

  ‘Oh yes, Alan Griswald. CIA to his boots, a good soldier, a good solid Cold War warrior. I remember him. He had a wife … um?’

  ‘Sally.’

  ‘Yes, Sally. Poor woman. Of course there were many other casualties, but it means a great deal more when you know someone. Griswald retired from the Agency. What did he go on to do? Was he involved with the UN?’

  ‘He was working for the War Crimes Tribunal. I saw him in The Hague last week. I was there for the World Water Convention. We bumped into each other outside the convention centre and then both of us walked slap-bang into Guy Cushing – you remember the man in the Far East Controllerate who had the money problem? Pushed out because of his debts and the gambling thing?’

  ‘Of course,’ Vigo said unenthusiastically. ‘Yes, Cushing.’

  ‘Guy works for the UN chemical weapons agency in The Hague. We all had dinner that evening in the old town – a place near the Palace. Griswald didn’t say much about what he was doing because Guy was there. He said that he had been engaged in some follow-up work for the Tribunal. I didn’t know what that meant. He said he was going to Washington and we loosely arranged to hook up because I was going to be in Rockville, which is no distance from DC. That’s how I came to be on the plane.’

  ‘Yes, I heard that from someone.’ He signalled for another martini. ‘Any idea whether he was going to see his former employers at Langley, Virginia? That’s not far from DC either.’

  ‘No,’ said Harland, now certain that this was not a friendly fixture. He thought suddenly and rather guiltily of Griswald’s wallet. Griswald had gone on about some big breakthrough he had made and on the cab journey to the restaurant Harland distinctly remembered how he had patted his breast pocket and said that he had found everything he needed for a hell of a case. ‘One day,’ he had said, ‘I’ll tell you the whole goddam frigging story and you, Bob, will be especially interested.’ That was the trouble with the last few days, Harland thought. He was so bloody vague; things were coming back to him, but very slowly.

  ‘So, then you flew back on the UN plane to New York,’ continued Vigo gently. ‘Had you seen each other in Washington?’

  ‘No, in the end it wasn’t possible.’

  ‘But you had arranged to fly back together on the UN plane.’

  ‘Not really. Vigo told me the time of the departure and said where they’d be. I thought I had missed it by a long time, but then I found them in the airport and took the ride.’

  ‘Anyone else on the plane that I’d know?’

  ‘I don’t think so, but they haven’t all been identified.’

  ‘How many remain unidentified?’

  ‘One – a man.’

  ‘Odd, that. I mean you would think he would have been missed by now. What did the investigators say to you? They’ve been to see you?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve seen them twice. I went out to the airport today – went over the crash scene.’

  ‘Did they have any ideas about this individual?’

  ‘Not that they told me.’

  The maître d’ appeared at their booth. Harland ordered soft-shell crab and lamb chops, Vigo lobster bisque and blinis of almas caviar – the roe of an albino beluga sturgeon. Vigo told the man to bring the wine they had discussed before Harland arrived.

  ‘How’s your sister?’ he asked, suddenly snapping a bread stick. ‘You knew Harriet was at Oxford with my wife, Davina. Davina always says that she was far and away the most able of her generation at LMH. What’s she doing now?’

  ‘She’s married to Robin Bosey, the advertising man. You may have heard of White Bosey Cane. That’s his agency.’

  ‘Oh yes, I know exactly who you mean: always in the papers; designs his own clothes, works for the Labour Party.’ A flicker of disdain swept through Vigo’s eyes. ‘And she’s happy with Robin?’

  ‘I think so. She does some financial consultancy, but brings up the children mostly. She had three, the last one four years ago.’

  ‘Seems an awful waste of such a good mind – I mean Harriet sitting at home and being married to a man like Bosey. You’re frightfully close, aren’t you? I believe she was a great support when you had that terrible year. What with Louise leaving and your getting ill, it must have been an extremely difficult period for you, Bobby. That’s all all right now?’ Harland nodded and smiled at Vigo’s parenthetic concern for his health.

  ‘What a year that was, eh?’ mused Vigo. ‘Stumps drawn on the great game. Enemies and friends wearing the same suits and driving the same cars and suddenly we had to look very hard indeed to understand the new patterns of play. It was unsettling, and yet deeply stimulating at the same time. The people who suggested that the twentieth century ended in those months are absolutely right. Look at what else happened – the technical revolution and the leap to globalisation. It took some time, I have to confess, for us to get the point that digital information was infinitely more fluid than the information that’s written down on a piece of paper, placed in a file and locked up in a steel vault. Secrets developed wings of their own. Things that had been stationary became fleet of foot; those that were solid and impenetrable became porous. Secrecy was no lon
ger an absolute condition, but something that was measured in degrees.’ He stopped to taste the wine that the maître d’ had brought, nodded and waited as it was poured. Harland picked up his glass, reflecting on the fact that he’d need the drink to get through the evening. ‘But, of course,’ continued Vigo, ‘what was our weakness was everybody’s weakness. There were new lines of attack, new pathways to explore and new friends to be made. You’ve missed a lot, Bobby. It’s been challenging for the old lags who’ve clung on.’

  Vigo had certainly clung on. Harland had heard the details from a colleague who was brushed aside in his ascent. Vigo had served for a brief period in Washington. In 1995 he had manoeuvred to take over the newly formed Controllerate responsible for the Middle East and Africa. Five years later he had become Controller, Central and Eastern Europe. Recently he had got an even grander position which required a special title which no one could remember, but which seemed to incorporate security and public affairs.

  ‘But you’ve done very well for yourself, Walter. I hear you’re a great power in the land. You must be going for the top job?’

  ‘No, no. I am sure that won’t come my way. Robin Teckman may be asked to stay on for three more years, which means that his successor will be chosen from the generation below me. Tim Lapthorne or Miles Morsehead are the obvious candidates. I’m content with my lot and there’s much to do in the years that remain to me in the Service.’

  Harland remembered Lapthorne and Morsehead, two bright stars of the early eighties’ intakes. Morsehead was the obvious choice. From an early moment in his career he had managed to seem bold and reassuring at the same time.

  ‘You’re sounding like a politician, Walter,’ he said.

  Vigo ignored the remark. The food arrived and he set about drawing up the bisque to his lips in a fluent scooping motion. ‘Of course,’ he said eventually, ‘you would have gone a long way up the ladder yourself, Bobby, if you hadn’t bailed out. You’ve got what it takes – intelligence, imagination, discipline, charm. You were good at winning people’s confidence, a very light touch with the most difficult of characters. Remember that Russian diplomat in Turkey you persuaded to drive over the border with a chunk of the new Soviet armour welded into his car engine? What was his name?’

  ‘Tishkov – Avi Tishkov.’

  He paused and glanced around the restaurant with an air of someone experiencing public transport for the first time.

  ‘Why did you go?’ he said emphatically. ‘Why? There was no need, surely? We would’ve made certain you had time to recover properly. You were marked for the top, Bobby.’

  Harland opened his hands in a gesture of appeal. ‘When you’ve had a brush with cancer, you think through your life and see it in a different light. It’s a terrible cliché, but it’s true. I decided to do something else. That was all. What I didn’t appreciate at the time was that Louise was thinking along the same lines.’

  ‘Yes, discipline,’ mused Vigo, failing to follow the trail about Louise’s departure. ‘That really is your foremost quality. You never gave in to what I would guess was an essentially turbulent nature. It was that tension between impulse and control that made you a good agent. You watched yourself as carefully as anyone else. You became a philosopher, a thinker, because that way you would survive. I admired you for that thoughtfulness and the way the habit of weighing things extended into your work. Yet I have to say that I feared what would happen if you let go of the reins. That would be the end of the philosopher spy, I was always sure of that, the end of the man who talked Descartes to some poor Polish trade official and induced him to donate all his country’s economic information to our data bank.’

  Harland saw that the nature of the conversation had changed entirely. He had the impression of a very large ship edging towards its berth.

  ‘What’s this about, Walter?’ he asked. ‘Is there something you want to know?’

  Vigo looked up from the nearly drained bowl, his eyes glittering with purpose. Harland was momentarily fascinated by the size and sensuality of his face. He remembered how someone in Century House had found a picture of a ceremonial mask from a Pacific island in one of the Sunday supplements and had pointed out that it looked exactly like Walter Vigo. For a short while afterwards he was called the Love Mask.

  ‘Oh yes, Bobby. There’s a lot I want to know. I want to know who was on that plane and what Griswald was taking with him to Washington. And, more particularly, I want to know whether your relationship with Griswald holds any significance. I ask myself, can it be that you really just happened upon each other in The Hague and had dinner at the Toison D’Or? Or was it that you two had some business there and in Washington? I want to know whether your presence is important on the flight, or whether it is simply Alan Griswald I should concern myself with. Yes, I would like to know the answers to these questions. Can you help?’

  ‘Not really, Walter,’ said Harland. ‘By the way, I didn’t mention the Toison D’Or. How did you know?’

  ‘I assumed it. The Golden Fleece is the only place there.’

  Smooth, thought Harland, but unconvincing. ‘I have had no professional dealings with Griswald whatsoever for more than a dozen years,’ he said. ‘I liked him and that’s why I was sitting with him on the plane. Indeed, that’s why I was on the plane. There’s nothing sinister about it.’

  Vigo sat motionless with his hands splayed on the table while the plates were removed.

  ‘I’m right in thinking that you and Griswald knew each other very well once,’ he said, when the waiter had gone. ‘You worked together in the eighties and you were both involved in that operation after the Wall came down – the operation to lift the Stasi files in East Berlin. God, what an excitement that was! And with good reason. Those files were matchless. They contained everything we could have wished to know about the East Germans and their intelligence service – absolutely everything.’

  He paused, as if to catch hold of the fading memory, eyes to the ceiling, hands stroking the tablecloth. ‘Yes … they were handed over in a villa in Berlin – Karlshorst – but not to you, not to the CIA, but astonishingly to the KGB. Then Griswald’s pals in Moscow station obtained them for an exceedingly large sum of money. I recall your excellent report, describing Alan Griswald’s pivotal role in the coup, and outlining what those files would mean to West German society and to us – the understanding of the Stasi’s strategy, the highly placed agents who’d been working for the East, to say nothing of their ingenious trade-craft. They were good, weren’t they?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose they were, but it all seems so long ago. The world’s moved on, as you say yourself.’

  Vigo was not easily diverted.

  ‘But then you and Griswald overreached yourselves and went south, to Czechoslovakia, on an extremely dubious fishing expedition to seize the files of the State Security Service in Prague. That was an occasion when you may have been driven by impulse rather than reason, I fear. But we were all carried along by your enthusiasm. Bobby Harland, the magician of the East European Controllerate, was going to bring home the bacon – everything we wanted to know about the StB. Your argument was so alluringly pitched. If I remember rightly, you pointed out that we couldn’t know what would happen in Eastern Europe. It might all be a flash in the pan, you said, so we’d better move quickly. We knew it was blue-chip intelligence, the real stuff, and we all desperately wanted it.

  ‘Everyone liked the idea,’ said Harland, knowing he was sounding defensive.

  ‘Oh yes, I know your plan was cleared by the Head of Soviet Ops and the Security Branch Officer – who incidentally had no business sanctioning such a harebrained scheme. Operational security! There was no operational security and everyone knew it. You didn’t know the set-up in Prague and our people there were extremely doubtful about the contacts you and Griswald had conjured from nowhere. But you insisted that cash would open the right doors and, well, I suppose we were all guilty of greed, weren’t we? A matter of days and you were arreste
d and beaten so badly you couldn’t walk. If The Bird and Macy Harp hadn’t got you out I doubt whether you would be alive today.’

  Harland suddenly saw the loping figure of Cuth Avocet, known to all as The Bird, and his equally improbable partner, Macy Harp. Both MI6-trained, they’d turned freelance and during the Cold War went behind the Iron Curtain to sort out problems which were underplayed as ‘situations’ in the argot of the great game.

  ‘How long were you in that Austrian hospital – five, six weeks? It all still puzzles me. I felt there was more to it than met the eye. Worth further thought some day, I said to myself, because it seemed to me that they were expecting you. You weren’t held in a standard prison, were you? Some bloody house on the outskirts of the city.’

  He stopped to let the waiter set down the second course, then looked down at his caviar with an expression of regret, perhaps caused by the thought that he would not be able to devote his full attention to it.

  Harland fought to put the image from his mind, the image of the room where he had been held for all those days and beaten senseless. But he didn’t succeed. He saw The Bird stepping into the doorway and saying, ‘Hello, old lad. Time to be on our way, don’t you think?’ And then The Bird had freed him from the leather restraints and virtually carried him out of the deserted villa. On the way they passed two guards who had been dispatched by him. And then they found Macy Harp waiting patiently in the street behind the wheel of an old but very fast BMW, and they had driven like the blazes to the Austrian border, where The Bird had squared things with the Czech border guards. There had been others involved in the operation, but he never knew their names, and when at length he visited The Bird and Macy to thank them, they had been stubbornly mysterious about how they had found him and who else had helped. It was part of their service, they said, and they had been well paid for it. However, they would prefer not to discuss the matter any more.

  Vigo was watching him now.

  ‘Was it the beating, Bobby? Was that what finally turned you against the Service? I know it must have been a terrible experience, but it’s not as though you went into some quieter line of business afterwards. I mean, Kurdistan in the early nineties, followed by Tajikistan and where else? Azerbaijan, Chechnya? Not a sheltered life, by any means. To tell you the truth, it always looked to me as if you were going out of your way to find danger. I used to ask myself why that might be.’ He paused to let the thought hang in the air. ‘In another man I would hazard that such compulsion was an indication of guilt.’