The Man Who Was Saturday

by Derek Lambert

  But when the dosage had stopped – when Dalby had been forced to escape to Moscow – he had experienced withdrawal symptoms. And when he had traced them to their source he had seen only the grand deception. His reward for a life of deceit? Pensioned exile in an alien land.

  ‘So what can I do for you?’ Dalby asked. ‘I don’t imagine this visit is purely social.’ He stood at the window where, on the sill, a dying fly buzzed intermittently.

  ‘Calder. He’s on the run.’ As always they conversed in English.

  ‘I’m n … not surprised. I warned you that he was becoming restless.’ Just the same Dalby looked a little surprised, for him an extravagance.

  ‘You didn’t know?’

  ‘Why should I? He would hardly seek refuge with me.’

  ‘He might get in touch if he’s desperate. If he does call me. And he may have confided in other defectors. Sound them out.’

  ‘If you wish. You’re very sure of me, aren’t you?’ The fly buzzed despairingly beside him.

  ‘I’m not very sure of anyone. But I do know you regard it as your duty to report any traitors to The Cause. Very commendable.’ Spandarian stroked the wings of his moustache.

  ‘Traitors? That’s a laugh. We’re all traitors.’

  ‘On the contrary, you’re idealists, a cut above patriots.’

  ‘Idealists? My dear fellow you’re too kind. What am I, after all, but a g … grass. A super grass I believe they call them in Britain. Idealists? Is Fellows an idealist wearing a spurious Old Etonian tie, warbling about cricket and carting a matchbox full of English soil around with him? Is Bennet an idealist searching for his convictions at the bottom of an ever-empty glass? Is Fabre an idealist listening to his lungs wheezing with guilt and acting like an emaciated Maurice Chevalier, God rest his soul? Is idealism seeking justification for your actions and saving p … pressed flowers from the land of your birth?’

  ‘But surely you all had ideals. All that’s happened is that they’ve aged, like all values.’

  ‘What you’re saying, my dear chap, is that age merely contradicts our expectations. That maturity is only a clouding of vision. Or is age truth?’

  Spandarian said abruptly: ‘As you’re in such a cynical mood tell me – why did you turn on your own kind?’

  ‘Ah, there you have me. I would like to profess belief in equality, or some p … platitude. But that wouldn’t fool you for one minute would it, Comrade Spandarian? You’re far too clever. You know something? I envy you: you’ve never doubted. You’re no more a communist than I am but you accept the society into which you were born and you intend to prosper in it.’

  Spandarian lit a yellow cigarette and blew smoke in the direction of a vase of spent carnations. ‘What bothers me at the moment,’ he said, ‘is why, after all these years, you’ve suddenly become indiscreet.’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious? One of our flock has flown the nest. It makes me restless, rash.’

  ‘Does that mean you envy him?’

  ‘A difficult question, comrade. Calder is a younger man than I am. If he has found his convictions then, yes, I envy him. But if he is merely running because circumstances dictate it then he’s welcome to his freedom.’

  ‘Freedom? You make Moscow sound like a prison. And don’t forget, Comrade Dalby, that one of the reasons he’s running is that he fears for his life because of information laid by you. Why did you tell me about Calder’s doubts? Did you envy those? Did all those who died because of information laid by you lose their lives because you envied them?’

  The fly buzzed for the last time as, with a rolled-up copy of Pravda, Dalby swotted its upturned body. ‘What is true is that you need have no fear that I will renege. No need for anyone to grass on the grass. For better or worse the c … corkscrew that has been my life has straightened out.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Spandarian finished his brandy and stood up. ‘Now tell me, where in Moscow would Calder arrange to meet a contact before making the real break?’

  ‘Sokolinki Park,’ Dalby told him.

  From a call-box outside the apartment block Spandarian called the Estonian who had lost Calder in GUM. He told him to change his car and drive to Sokolinki. If he caught Calder, there was just a chance that he wouldn’t be posted to Yakut in Siberia, the coldest territory in the northern hemisphere.

  What Calder had forgotten was that there was a Japanese trade fair at the exhibition site in Sokolinki. The Japanese pavilion, deceptively fragile with silk screens and water gardens, stood near the American hall, a geodesic dome that had lingered there, spanning more than a quarter of a century of Russo-American suspicion. Businessmen in lightweight suits from Comecon and capitalist countries thronged the site near the entrance to the park.

  Calder waited at the fountain where he normally met Dalby. He had considered calling Dalby. But no, Dalby was devious – and honest about it. ‘Everything is a deception,’ he had once told Calder. ‘We deceive ourselves: we are our most gullible enemies. Values, ideals, aspirations – all fraudulent.’

  Despite the crowds, despite the grey lightweight that made him look like a foreign buyer, Calder felt conspicuous. If it was true that one in twelve Soviet citizens had KGB contacts then he had twenty million enemies!

  Jessel said: ‘Okay, let’s walk. And talk. And it had better be good.’

  ‘You brought cash and ID?’

  ‘First the proof.’

  Calder guessed that Jessel had been in touch with Washington otherwise there wouldn’t have been any documents or money. He shook his head. ‘That isn’t the deal.’

  ‘We don’t have a deal yet.’

  ‘We will, ‘Calder said.

  He set out across the park where falcons once plundered. A military band was playing chirpily on a bandstand. Calder looked for a place to talk. The birch wood where he and Dalby had once kept indiscretions in deep-freeze was now sighing with lovers. He scanned the amusement park and shooting gallery, finally settled on the open-air theatre; they were showing a mime about the Great Patriotic War but on this balmy summer afternoon not many Muscovites had any stomach for it. Calder and Jessel sat in a wilderness of empty seats at the back of the theatre.

  Calder said: ‘Okay, give.’

  Reluctantly, Jessel handed over the ID and a wad of used ten-, five- and three-rouble bills. Calder examined the forged internal passport complete with Moscow registration. He was Ivan Yacob, a computer hardware specialist from Irkutsk in the Far East of Siberia. Height, weight et cetera were accurate as near as dammit; the head-and-shoulders photograph was too young but that was a common discrepancy in Soviet documents.

  ‘It will do for now,’ Calder said.

  ‘Now your side of the bargain.’

  In a quiet voice Calder spelled it out, fleshing the skeletons he had dangled in Komsomolskaya metro station.

  The brief of KGB agents such as Fuchs, Philby and Blunt, he told Jessel, had not been merely to pass on secrets: they had been charged with recruiting successors before retiring or defecting.

  But not junior league successors: they had been ordered to steal the souls of young men who looked as if they were going places. Steal enough and you were assured of a clutch of spies ultimately walking the corridors of power in the West.

  Jessel said: ‘And you’re saying these sleepers were established?’

  ‘What I’m saying is simply this: the West is blown. If a nuclear war broke out tomorrow the Soviet Union would win it.’

  On stage six Red Army soldiers wordlessly counter-attacked the Germans outside Moscow. Ten empty rows in front of Calder and Jessel an old man snored.

  ‘And you know the identities of these high-flying spies?’

  ‘I know the codenames of all of them. They’re the days of the week. I know the real names of six.’

  ‘Who’s missing?’

  ‘The Man Who Was Saturday,’ Calder said.

  ‘And you want to trade the real identities in return for an assisted passage back to the States?�
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  ‘You’ll have to get authority first.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘I want you to contact Washington again.’

  ‘Who in Washington?’

  ‘The President,’ Calder said. ‘Who else?’

  The Estonian entered the park as the Red Army recaptured Kharkov.

  He gazed uncertainly at the Japanese and their customers swarming round the trade pavilion. Then, picking his way through sun-reddened families sprawled on the grass, he made his way towards the birch woods.

  Sweating beneath his jacket hanging awkwardly over his gun-holster, he explored the park through a pair of binoculars.

  Hopeless. Siberia here I come.

  He made a last, cursory sweep of the amusement park and, far away, the open-air theatre. He steadied the binoculars on the third row from the back.

  And began to run.

  Jessel said: ‘Give me one name and I’ll do it.’

  Calder thought it over. He could hear the crackle of gunfire from the rifle range and piped music from an old-fashioned carousel. ‘Okay,’ he said after a while. ‘It’s a deal.’

  ‘The name?’

  Calder gave him one.

  ‘Holy shit,’ Jessel said.

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ Jessel said, as they left the theatre, ‘is why the comrades have allowed you to stay alive for so long.’

  ‘I can only guess. The KGB always look after their servants. I had spied for them, defected when I was blown. Why would I try to destroy their network?’

  ‘But all those deaths from natural causes, accidents …. You thought the defectors were being liquidated. You must have wondered if you would be next.’

  ‘I suspect that Spandarian assesses a defector’s breaking point. If he displays symptoms of reneging then he is killed in a way that won’t alarm potential turncoats. Logical, I guess: they found evidence that both Maclean and Burgess were contemplating back-tracking.’

  ‘Then,’ Jessel said, dodging a small boy with a dripping ice-cream, ‘I’ll re-phrase my first question. Why are they so keen on killing you now?’

  ‘A change at the top of State Security. Andropov was an honourable guy, so was his successor. But Kirov is a hard-liner. He can’t see any justification in keeping alive the one man who could destroy the Soviet initiative in the West.’ Calder smiled thinly. ‘He has a point.’

  Calder glanced behind him. He remembered the blur that had become a Volga. But in the windshield there had been a smaller blur. It cleared now. A blond head.

  Calder dived through a game of volley-ball. The blond head followed. Calder ran down a path – into a gaggle of cyclists. Some wobbled onto the grass, a couple stopped abruptly tipping onto front wheels, three fell in a heap of threshing legs and spinning wheels; but Calder was through them.

  He reached the amusement park. A children’s ferris wheel rotated slowly beside the carousel. Cocoons of pink candy-floss floated around him. A girl with pigtails holding a goldfish in a plastic bag of water stared at him.

  He looked back. The fair-haired man was gaining on him, parting the crowds with the pistol in his hand. Calder stopped by the shooting gallery and grabbed an ancient rifle from a youth about to take aim. The rifles were loaded with lead pellets; the object was to cut out the heart from a man-sized target. One burst could do the trick.

  Calder swivelled and squeezed the trigger.

  The blond head turned crimson.

  Calder dropped the rifle and ran to the exit of the amusement park. A bicycle lay on the grass beside a man asleep beside an empty half-litre vodka bottle. He mounted it and pedalled towards the tiny outpost of Japan at the entrance to the park.

  ADJOURNMENT

  CHAPTER 14

  The first part of Calder’s message was relayed to President Gary Holden as he sat at the bedside of his dying father in Boston.

  Holden rose, walked to the window and stared into the past. Games of chess, sandwiches at Elsie’s, words like shining coins, treasure troves of them. But the words had been an indulgence of youth and, being older than Robert Calder, he had realised that first.

  To give substance to those shining coins you had to manoeuvre, to compromise. And he had succeeded: like another young president before him, John F. Kennedy, he had given the American people a new resolve.

  But while he had climbed, Calder had sunk. Calder’s defection had disgusted him. But was I partly responsible? he asked himself as he gazed across the lawns where he had played as a boy.

  It was possible. He had been a surrogate brother and, although he had been older, he hadn’t been mature enough to understand how easily he could disillusion Calder. Hardly grounds for betraying your country but where would I be today if my brother had been killed in Vietnam?

  And now Calder wanted to come back. The shadow on my conscience for the past five years.

  The old man lying on the bed sighed, a rustling like wandering autumn leaves. Holden turned and smiled at him, but his father hadn’t recognised him since he had arrived: he had returned to a past more real than the present. Holden watched two golden retrievers chasing each other across the grass; the garden reminded him of the Rose Garden outside the Oval Office – boxwood hedges, anemones, delphiniums and roses beneath crab-apple trees.

  Not only was Calder hellbent on returning, he was proposing to bring with him the means to negate Soviet penetration in the West. At the highest possible level, according to Jessel.

  Holden lifted his father’s arm which was hanging beside the bed and placed it on the blanket. The old man looked at him through faded blue eyes and said: ‘Most goals in one season? Easy one, Charlie. Phil Esposito, Bruins, 1970–71.’

  In the corridor the nurse in crackling white said: ‘He could stay like that for a long time, Mr President. But he’s happy enough.’

  Holden laid his hand on her shoulder. ‘He’s in good hands,’ he said and walked down the great curve of the staircase to the hall. On a rosewood table he noticed a photograph of himself as a teenager standing in the stern of his father’s yacht; the photograph had stood on his mother’s bedside table until she had died three years ago. Holden picked it up. The young man, dark-haired and bold, smiled winningly at him, an electioneering smile even then. The smile had become more professional over the years and the dark hair had thinned but Holden was still a crusader, or so he believed.

  Another similar snap had been taken at the same time. Calder in the stern of the boat. The photograph had been destroyed five years ago.

  President and traitor. What extravagantly different directions their lives had taken. But whereas I knew where I was going, Calder had only wanted to be a successful lawyer. I changed all that.

  Holden replaced the photograph on the table and admitted to himself that there was another reason why the prospect of Calder’s re-defection perturbed him: Calder knew about those adolescent flirtations with communism and a youthful indiscretion could easily blight a re-election campaign.

  He saw a newspaper headline. PRESIDENT ADMITS HELPING SPY TO FLEE RUSSIA. A gift from the gods for the Opposition. He shrugged. It was a risk he would have to take.

  He summoned an aide standing in the corner of the hall and headed for the door. But what had made Calder renege after five years in Russia?

  He paused at the door, turned to the aide and said: ‘Do me a favour, Dick, find the unlisted phone number for a Mrs Ruth Calder in Boston and get her on the line.’

  He took the call in the living room and heard the splinters of anxiety in her voice.

  ‘Gary? What do you want for Chrissake?’

  ‘Bob wants to come back. I thought you might know why.’

  A pause, a sob. ‘Harry’s been hurt. Maybe Bob knows.’

  ‘Bad?’

  ‘He got hit on the head boating. He’s in intensive care. Fractured skull ….’

  ‘Jesus, I’m sorry. Is there anything …?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Another pause. Then incredulously: ‘He wants to
come back?’ Holden imagined her distractedly combing at her short red-gold hair with her fingers. ‘Are you going to help him?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  He could hear her breathing. ‘He’s got something to trade?’

  ‘A lot. Would you have him back if he put the record straight?’

  ‘Harry came out of his coma for a few moments last night. He asked after his father. After all those years …. Strange, isn’t it? You know, old people when they’re dying return to their youth.’

  She began to cry.

  For a moment it was his own wife, Helen, crying, his son, Tom, hurt. ‘I’m sure he’ll be okay,’ he said inadequately.

  He heard her trying to control the sobbing. Then: ‘You know you were one of the reasons Bob did what he did.’

  ‘I know it.’ And gently: ‘I asked you a question just now.’

  ‘Would I have him back? I can’t answer that, Gary. But if Harry regains consciousness again and asks about Bob can I tell him he’s on his way?’

  ‘Tell him,’ Holden said.

  He beckoned the aide and they walked down the marble steps to the black Mercedes.

  Two Secret Service limousines shepherded the Mercedes to Logan airport where Holden boarded the executive jet, which he used when he was travelling unofficially, to fly back to Washington to take delivery of the second half of the message from Moscow – the name of one high-flying spy.

  The meeting of the nucleus of the National Security Council was held in the Cabinet Room in the West Wing of the White House.

  Holden sat at the head of the mahogany table facing a portrait of Harry S. Truman. Appropriate because it was Truman who in 1952 had approved the formation of the NSA, the grey eminence of American Intelligence.

  The Director of NSA, Howard Zec, sat two chairs away with his back to the blue drapes framing a window overlooking the Rose Garden. Zec was an admiral in the US Navy who had sailed into NSA via post-Pearl Harbor cryptology and Washington intrigue; white-haired and weatherbeaten, he looked expansive although he was in fact taciturn and reclusive.