Half an hour later Cayle had cleared the formalities and entered a lift which was already occupied by a large drunken man in a double-breasted suit. Cayle rode up to the third floor, showed his pass to the matron at the floor-desk, waited while she selected his key, then walked down several hundred yards of balding carpet to Room 246. Inside, it was small and very hot. His case was already standing behind the door. He took out his bottle of duty-free Scotch and went into the tiny bathroom to get a glass, but there wasn’t one; nor was there any soap or plug to the bath. The only consolation was a brand-new roll of toilet paper.
He decided to return downstairs and have a drink at the foreign-currency bar. When the lift arrived, he stepped in and collided with the well-dressed drunk who had ridden up with him. They stopped at the ground floor and Cayle stood aside to let him out, but the man stood squinting at the floor, waiting for the doors to close again. Cayle had long accustomed himself to accept that nothing in Russia is quite what it seems to be; and he did not rule out the possibility that the drunk was a security man.
In the bar he paid for his whisky with a pound note and received a Czech crown and two Kenyan shillings in change; then sat inspecting the other guests. There was a delegation of East Germans with lapels studded with Party badges; a couple of Africans morosely sipping beer; a row of Western businessmen laughing and tapping their feet to a noisy number by the Rolling Stones. He recognized no obvious Russians.
After half an hour he left for the huge dining-room where he ate alone to the strains of an orchestra of old men in evening dress ravaging Cole Porter under triple chandeliers.
CHAPTER 3
Cayle woke late and had breakfast in his room, then spent some time on the telephone trying to negotiate for some soap and a plug for the bath. When he finally got downstairs it was lunchtime, but the restaurant was full of old women with mops and vacuum cleaners.
On his way through the lobby he stopped at a desk selling newspapers; there were two racks, one full of the Soviet and East European Press, the other with yesterday’s Western Communist papers. He asked what time today’s papers arrived from the West and was told between three and four o’clock He knew that the Morning Star would be the only English one to be exhibited, but that the big international hotels usually kept a few copies of The Times, along with the Herald Tribune and Le Monde, available on demand to Western guests.
He looked at his watch: he had between three and four hours to kill. He went outside and took a taxi to an Uzbek restaurant which was not well known to tourists. There was a long queue inside the door, but he was soon recognized as a foreigner and shown to a table with two men who were eating curds with their fingers. Nearly an hour later his food came, tepid and highly spiced, and while he was eating it a young man in a blue suit approached him with an offer in English to sell roubles for dollars. Cayle knew this was one of the oldest tricks for compromising foreign visitors, and said something in broken Russian that made the young man walk hurriedly out of the restaurant. But Cayle was puzzled that he should be so readily conspicuous as a Westerner. He had never enjoyed a reputation for sartorial elegance, and his general demeanour had a markedly proletarian aspect — what a friend had described as a middle-brow lumberjack with a hangover.
When he returned to the Metropol, it was nearly four o’clock. Today’s Western Communist papers were still not on display; but he decided to follow through with his plan all the same. He went to his room and collected The Confidential Agent, then took a taxi to the Foreign Post Office in Kirov Street. It was a fifteen-minute drive into a forlorn district full of concrete blocks and broken pavements.
There was a militiaman on the steps of the Post Office who eyed him dolefully as he walked past, into a bright naked hall with queues waiting at the rows of iron grilles. A second militiaman stood at the far end, near the Poste Restante.
The digital clock on the wall said 4.37. Cayle sat down on a bench, tapped out a cheroot and began to light it, when the militiaman yelled at him and pointed at a notice forbidding smoking in four languages. Cayle put the packet away and stared at the crowds. Most of them looked like students: a lot of Africans and Arabs and Indians, and a few Westerners who he guessed had been travelling in the Soviet Union and were returning to collect their mail.
The minutes passed slowly. At 4.58 a bell began to ring. There was a clang as the doors were opened. Cayle stood up and passed two men in bulky overcoats and fur hats coming away from the Poste Restante. One of them had a copy of The Times in an airmail wrapper tucked under his arm. Cayle stepped up beside him and said, ‘Excuse me — Mr Philby?’
A leaky blue eye peered round at him out of a pouchy face, and the man muttered something in Russian and walked on.
Cayle caught up with him again and said, ‘We met twelve years ago on a trip to the Yemen. Nine days without a drink.’ The man hesitated, then spoke again in Russian and his companion took hold of Cayle’s arm. With his free hand Cayle produced The Confidential Agent from inside his anorak. ‘I was asked by a friend to bring you this.’ A second bell rang and the militiaman shouted something from the door. The hall was emptying fast.
‘Wh-who are you?’
Cayle told him.
‘Wh-where are you s-staying?’ Philby asked, wincing with the stutter. He was shorter and plumper than Cayle remembered, and smelt strongly of Russian cigarettes.
Cayle said, ‘The Metropol — Room 246.’
‘I’ll c-c-call you.’ Philby took the book from Cayle’s hand and walked briskly away towards the entrance. His companion waited a full ten seconds before letting go of Cayle’s arm, then also hurried off to join the last of the crowd shuffling through the doors. Cayle got outside in time to see the two of them get into a black Volga saloon which accelerated away with a growl of snow tyres.
Cayle was in good spirits. It had been an inspired shot in the dark: the Second Test was being played in the West Indies, and he knew that one of Philby’s great passions was to follow the score each day in The Times. He no doubt felt that it would offend against protocol to have the paper delivered to his office in Dzerzhinski Square, and to have had it sent direct to his flat would have meant revealing his address to London.
Meanwhile, Philby knew Cayle’s hotel and room number; and there was nothing to do but wait.
Cayle was getting into the bath that evening when the telephone rang.
‘Barry? How’s things?’
Cayle scowled. ‘Hello Lennie. And how’s the wheeling and dealing?’
‘Marking time, old boy. The Frenchie’s delayed in Switzerland and it looks as if I’ve got to cool my heels for a few days. How ’bout a drinkie?’
Cayle had no wish to spend the evening with Leonard Maddox; but there was something about the events of the past twenty-four hours that suggested that his meeting with the man had not been entirely fortuitous. ‘Where are you?’
‘At the office — Hotel Intourist, just across the way. I can be with you in a couple o’ shakes. Downstairs bar — all right?’
‘All right,’ said Cayle, and hung up.
He didn’t hurry. Half an hour later he found Lennie Maddox waiting patiently in a dark corner of the foreign-currency bar, under a blaring loudspeaker. Maddox waved at him and mouthed wordlessly into the music. No need to worry about ‘bugs’, Cayle thought, as he sat down; and wondered if Maddox had chosen the spot on purpose.
‘Enjoying yerself?’ Maddox shouted, pushing his face close to Cayle’s to make himself heard.
‘Does anyone enjoy themselves in Moscow?’ said Cayle; and Maddox’s lips drew back in a soundless laugh.
‘Well, there are ways! But then o’ course, you’re here to work? Must be a damned tricky place, Moscow, for a journalist. I mean, if you stumble on a really good story, the chances are a ninety-nine per cent cert it’s something hush-hush?’
‘Like the aircraft deal you and your French boss are pulling off?’
Maddox had turned and was energetically ordering two double whiski
es. ‘No, I wasn’t exactly thinking of that,’ he said; then cocked his head sideways and put a hand on Cayle’s arm. ‘Know what I think, Barry? I think you’re on to a story already.’
‘And what would that be?’
Maddox squeezed his arm, and his fingers felt very hard. ‘Don’t think me nosey, but a chap like you would hardly come all the way to Moscow just to go to the Bolshoi. So what’s the game?’
‘I like to live dangerously, Lennie. I like to sit in dark corners and watch nasty things crawl out from under the carpet.’
Maddox gulped his drink. ‘You’re not referring to me, are you?’ And Cayle noticed that the man’s fingers had clenched into a fist.
‘I’ve got no opinions about you, Lennie. And no illusions either. I know you’re after something. You picked me up on the plane yesterday and now you’re wetting your pants to find out what I’m doing in Moscow.’
Maddox had tilted his head back and was stroking his acne-raw neck. ‘Tell you what,’ he said suddenly. ‘How about a bit o’ nosh? There’s a very good joint round the corner — place called the “Ararat”. Just the right atmosphere for a friendly chat.’ He stood up and started towards the door; Cayle followed without protest. As he had said, Maddox was after something, and Cayle felt professionally bound to find out what it was.
The restaurant was fairly crowded, but the waiter found them a table under a crude mural of Mount Ararat, with its twin peaks rising out of a wreath of cloud. The same image was printed in white on the front and back of the waiters’ blue T-shirts. Maddox insisted on doing the ordering, which included blinis, shashlik, raw herrings, and Caucasian red wine. He was odiously cheerful and talked incessantly. By the second course he was happily laying into Britain again, describing her as a nation of snobs and parasites, and seemed to assume that Cayle, as an Australian, was in full agreement.
‘I’ll tell you something, Barry,’ he was saying as the waiter cleared away the shashlik. ‘In some ways I wouldn’t mind settling here. A lot o’ people have done it — and some pretty funny ones at that. Westerners, I mean. You know what they call ’em here? They call ’em the “Grey Men” — because they live in a kind o’ limbo, neither Western nor Russian. Most of ’em are fellow-travellers from way back before the war — the ones who somehow escaped the Purges and managed to find themselves cosy jobs here, usually with Radio Moscow or the Foreign Languages Publishing House. Nowadays they’re mostly too old to go back to their own countries, even if their countries would have them. They couldn’t get jobs, for a start — at least, nothing like as well paid as they’ve got here.’
‘Look,’ said Cayle, ‘I’m not a bloody bitch on heat! Stop sniffing around and come to the point. All this about you wanting to settle down here’s a load of balls. Unless, of course, your job with the rich French Marxist is turning sour?’
‘What makes you think that?’ Maddox said quickly.
Cayle grinned, as the waiter arrived with a multicoloured ice-cream which he began to slice up on to separate plates, while a second waiter poured brandy over each helping. ‘Spit it out, Lennie. You were telling me about these so-called “Grey Men”, and how they can’t go back to their own countries. And some can’t more than others, eh?’
Maddox took his fork and made a careful incision in the ice-cream. Cayle had noticed that he was a fussy eater who wiped his lips after every mouthful. ‘You know about my boss — the Frenchman, Pol? Well, he’s a pretty big wheel, even out here. Got his finger in a lot o’ pies, and I don’t just mean the aero industry. That deal with the Troika-Caravelle airbus will be just chicken-feed to him. I happen to know, Barry, that Pol’s on to something much bigger. Something of international importance.’
‘Something to do with one of these “Grey Men”?’
Maddox sat back and grinned nervously. ‘Could be.’
‘What’s the price, Lennie?’
Maddox paused to let the ice-cream melt in his mouth. ‘Five grand, US dollars — cash, with one grand in advance.’
‘In advance of what?’
‘Giving you a piece of info that’ll make headlines round the world.’
‘According to you. But you’re not in the newspaper business. And I’m not in a position to make blind deals with strangers who pick me up in foreign hotel bars.’
‘Oh, don’t be bloody-minded, Cayle! I know a good story when I see one. And even if you don’t want it, plenty of others will.’ He had clenched his fist again and his face had taken on a greyish pallor that exaggerated the inflamed blotches round his nose and mouth. ‘Don’t you even want to hear what the story is?’
‘Only if it’s free.’
‘Supposing I told you there was an Embassy angle?’
‘Depends which embassy,’ said Cayle.
‘H.M.’s. One of the dips — works in Chancery — anonymous desk-job, with a hot line to the nabobs back in Whitehall.’
‘So?’
‘It just so happens,’ said Maddox, ‘that he’s been having contacts with my boss, Pol. And Pol’s been getting very matey with a certain Englishman out here. You might say, the most famous — or rather, notorious — of all the “Grey Men”.’
‘Okay. Kim Philby.’ Cayle looked hard at Lennie Maddox, who tried to avoid his gaze, shifting in his chair and glancing round for a waiter. ‘What’s your source?’
Maddox smirked, ‘Secrets of the trade, old boy. Just let’s say that as far as Lipp Entreprises is concerned, I may not be a senior partner yet, but I’m not the office boy either. I keep my eyes and ears wide open.’
‘As well as the occasional piece of private correspondence, no doubt?’
‘Now, now! That’s not very nice — not from someone you’re going to do business with.’
‘You’re jumping the gun, Lennie. I haven’t agreed to do any business with you.’
‘It’s cheap at the price!’ Maddox cried. ‘But if your paper’s so bloody high and mighty they daren’t tread on any precious embassy toes, I’ll flog it to one o’ the tabloids. They might even make it ten grand.’
‘So why don’t you?’
Maddox paused. ‘Because your paper was the one that broke the original story. I reckoned you’d be the natural choice.’
‘That’s not the whole reason, Lennie. You’re also in a hurry. Maybe something you read in one of the confidential letters to your boss was a bit too hot, even for you? Now you’re trying to make a quick thousand bucks, then run for it.’
Maddox had turned dark pink and his fists began to shake. ‘Sod you, Cayle! I’ve already told you more than’s good for either of us. Now you just spit in my face.’
Cayle shrugged. ‘I want names. Sources. Proof.’
Maddox dug a fingernail into the tablecloth. ‘Ever heard of a chap called Hann? Simon Hann, member of Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Corps?’
Cayle shook his head.
‘Toffee-nosed little bastard. Typical FO — you’d think he spent most of his life dressing.’
‘What of him?’
‘He’s been in Moscow for just six weeks. And I happen to know that his real job is connected with Security. A month ago my boss, Pol, had a hush-hush meeting with him — up in a dasha on the Lenin Hills. Afterwards, Pol went straight back to Geneva and I was left more or less in charge of the Moscow end o’ the business.’
‘What are you trying to sell, Lennie?’
Maddox looked anxiously round again for the waiter. ‘Listen, Cayle.’ He was sweating now. ‘Something big is blowing up — and it’s to do with Philby.’
‘Where’s the proof?’
‘For Christ’s sake, I’m not bloody daft! You don’t think I keep copies o’ those letters, do you?’
‘Not if you hadn’t planned this thing from the beginning.’
‘And what the hell does that mean?’
‘What I said just now. You’ve been working with this man Pol on a few fast deals and suddenly you’re into something where you’re out of your depth. You want to cut your losses, ma
ke a quick grand, and scarper. Right?’
The waiter poured them two brandies, and Maddox swallowed his in a gulp. ‘Make it five hundred,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I can’t go lower.’
‘Sorry. As I said, I’m not empowered to make deals without higher authority. But it would make it a lot easier if you told me just where Philby fits in. What’s his connection with this fellow Hann and your boss, Pol?’
‘That’s what you’ll have to pay for. But I can tell you, the three of them are in on something together.’
Cayle shook his head. ‘It’s not good enough, Lennie. Unless, of course, I could talk to Pol direct and confirm the story with him.’
‘And get me done in?’ Maddox snapped. There was a pause. ‘I might be able to get something for you,’ he added. ‘When Pol gets back. Something in writing, maybe. Or even a photograph.’ His face now had a pinched, miserable look; he tried to smile: ‘A photo of Philby meeting Pol — how ’bout that? But o’ course, it would mean a bonus.’
Cayle took out his wallet and put ten one-rouble notes, which he’d changed at the Intourist Desk, in front of Maddox’s empty ice-cream plate, ‘Thanks for the dinner, Lennie. But you’re going to have to work a lot harder, even for five hundred dollars.’ He heard Maddox shout something after him, as he collected his anorak from the old woman at the door; but he got outside without anyone following him.
He took a deep icy breath and began to walk quickly away.
CHAPTER 4
At nine-thirty next morning, while Cayle was on his third coffee in his room, the phone rang. He lifted it and heard a croak: ‘Ck… Ck… Ck…’ Then the line went dead and he hung up. It rang thirty seconds later, and the same sound came again.
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