Gentleman Traitor

by Alan Williams

  ‘What makes you think I know either of them?’ said Hann icily.

  ‘Because Maddox told me you do — told me you met Pol up on the Lenin Hills a few weeks back.’

  ‘Maddox is a crook. Or didn’t you know that?’

  ‘Well, he’s trying to flog me some info that he says he’s got from Pol, and which involves you, among others. And he’s asking for a thousand bucks, which he says is cheap at the price.’

  ‘I see.’ Hann gazed across the crowded hall where the listless diplomatic ritual was being resuscitated by a series of toasts. ‘But he hasn’t yet told you what it is?’

  ‘He’s promised to call me before six tomorrow evening.’

  Hann winced as he sipped the scalding tea. ‘And you’re prepared to do business?’

  ‘I’m prepared to listen to what he’s got to say.’

  ‘Yes, well that would be reasonable, under the circumstances. The trouble is, Mr Cayle, you might also learn something that would put you in a highly sensitive position.’

  ‘I’ll risk that,’ said Cayle. ‘You know, of course, what Maddox’s going to tell me?’

  Hann gave him a prim smile. ‘I suggest you let Maddox earn his thousand dollars. Though personally, I wouldn’t trust him with a two-kopek piece.’

  ‘If he’s a crook, why do the Russians put up with him? Or for that matter, why does Pol?’

  ‘Isn’t there a proverb about letting the small fish catch the big fish? The Russians will pick him up in due course, and no doubt the Embassy will have to speak up in his favour.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t like that?’

  ‘It would be tiresome. People like Maddox always are. As for you, I advise you to treat anything Maddox tells you with a good measure of scepticism.’

  ‘I’m not a fool, Hann.’

  ‘I hope not.’ He flicked an invisible speck from his cuff and said, ‘Listen to what Maddox has to tell you tomorrow. It may be rubbish, but whatever it is, I’d like to know. And if you’ve got scruples about talking to me afterwards, just remember that I know a lot more about this affair than either you or Maddox. I also have a lot more influence. You may be entering a very dangerous area, Cayle. I just hope, for your own sake, that you don’t attempt to act alone.’

  He was interrupted by a small fat Russian who had been standing with a crowd some yards away, and who suddenly came cantering backwards across the floor, cannoned off Hann’s shoulder, splashing tea down the diplomat’s trousers, and came to rest with a crash of glass against a double-glazed french window.

  A waiter strolled over and kicked the glass under a curtain, but left the man where he was lying.

  Hann had whisked the handkerchief out of his top pocket and was wiping down his trousers. ‘Drunken fool!’ he muttered.

  ‘Philby hates it too,’ said Cayle. ‘In fact, he hates it so much, I’ve an idea he’d like to get out, if he could.’

  ‘A journalist’s pipe-dream,’ said Hann. ‘Of course he can’t. The Russians would never let him go. And anyway, even if they did, where would he go to?’

  ‘A place in the sun where the drinks are cheap and the cops look the other way. A banana republic probably.’

  Hann shook his head. ‘Too close to the CIA.’

  ‘Well, perhaps one of the Arab countries — one that isn’t too tight on the booze.’

  ‘Too close to the Russians.’

  ‘And you think the Russians would go after him?’

  Hann shrugged. ‘The British, the Americans, the Russians — what does it matter?’

  ‘It would matter to Philby,’ said Cayle. ‘Or perhaps it wouldn’t. Tell me something, Mr Hann — what would you have done back in Beirut if you’d been in Kim’s shoes?’

  ‘God forbid. You tell me.’

  ‘I’d have kept a nice neat dossier, with all the names, dates and details, on my former colleagues and accomplices in the FO and SIS, and perhaps a few other corners of the great British Establishment. And I’d have put that dossier in a Swiss bank, with instructions to a discreet Swiss lawyer for it to be published in the event of my arrest or violent death — including accidents.’

  Hann stepped away from him and said softly, ‘You’re even more naïve than I thought, Cayle. You’re playing in Leonard Maddox’s league now, and when things go wrong — as they’re bound to go wrong — you’re going to have no one to blame but yourself, and what’s more, no one to help you.’

  Cayle leant out and tapped the belly of the samovar. ‘It’s just occurred to me — it might be a bit unfortunate if this conversation’s been bugged?’

  ‘It certainly would be,’ said Hann, ‘for you. I’ve got diplomatic immunity. Good night, Mr Cayle. I may hear from you tomorrow?’

  Cayle watched him walk away into the crowd.

  CHAPTER 10

  The phone by his bed woke Cayle at eight o’clock next morning. This time the line was clear, but the stammer had returned. ‘B-Barry? S-sorry to wake you so early, but you’ve been d-damned elusive. I c-called you f-five times last night.’

  ‘I was drinking champagne in the Kremlin,’ Cayle said sleepily. ‘By the way, is this line tapped?’

  ‘Tapped b-both ends.’ There was a chuckle, then Philby went on: ‘I only heard yesterday that you’re back with us.’ As his voice gained confidence, the stammer subsided. ‘You’ll be checking out of your hotel today. And I want you to call round at four o’clock this afternoon to the travel bureau at the Hotel Intourist. Just show your passport, and you’ll be given your ticket on the Red Arrow Express for Leningrad. You have a sleeper. It leaves at eleven, and a driver will meet you in the lobby at ten-thirty to take you to the station.’

  ‘Who do I thank for this?’ Cayle asked; and remembered his date to be at the Aeroflot Hotel before six, when Lennie Maddox would call.

  Philby said: ‘A French gentleman called Pol. He’s very anxious that you and all your colleagues should be in Leningrad tomorrow for the inaugural flight of his new Troika-Caravelle airbus. I’m sure it’s made a couple of inches on page eight.’

  ‘You’re very kind,’ said Cayle. ‘It was just what my editor had in mind. Any chance of us meeting again?’

  ‘I’m sure there is. And, oh, Barry —’ There was a pause, then another chuckle down the line. ‘Congratulations on your visa. I enjoyed that — especially your act with the doctors. What did you use? Cordite?’

  ‘Soap.’

  ‘Must have been nice.’

  ‘Lovely. I just hope it pays off.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Philby, ‘so do I. By the way, you didn’t b-by any chance b-b…’ again there was a pause — ‘bring me anything for my library?’

  ‘Yeah, just a paperback this time. I expect you’ve got it — The Heart of the Matter.’

  ‘Ah, wonderful book! His best, in my view. But it got him into a lot of trouble with his Catholic friends. It was even put on the Index. More censorship and suppression.’

  ‘How do I get it to you?’ said Cayle.

  ‘Oh, you can give it to me when we next meet.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘Soon, I hope. Well, bye for now. Enjoy Leningrad.’ And he hung up.

  CHAPTER 11

  M. Pol stood at the window of his office on the ninth floor of the Hotel Intourist and looked down on the evening glow of the city. He looked at the spray of lights at the entrance to the Bolshoi; the pricks of fluorescent blue round Revolution Square; at the four bright numerals of the illuminated digital clock over Karl Marx Prospekt. As he looked, the last numeral flicked from a 2 to a 3. It now read 16.43. Pol consulted his watch and saw that it was running two minutes behind the electric sign below.

  He turned slowly and said, ‘It is time you were departing, Monsieur Léonard.’

  Lennie Maddox glanced up from an electric typewriter on which he had been addressing envelopes for the past twenty minutes. ‘Oui, Monsieur Pol.’ His relations with his employer were cordial but correct; only occasionally, after a particularly arduous da
y’s work or to celebrate some business coup, would Pol offer him a drink. But tonight Maddox was dismissed, with instructions to deliver an urgent message by hand to a room-number in the Metropol before five o’clock.

  Maddox had switched off the typewriter, and was arranging the finished envelopes into a neat pile, when Pol said, ‘Leave them, Monsieur Léonard. You must hurry.’ There was an unfamiliar note of impatience in the Frenchman’s voice, and he watched with a frown as Maddox pulled on his overcoat.

  ‘Au revoir, Monsieur Pol. À demain.’

  Pol nodded and turned back to the window. The trams along Pushkin Street were packed; there were small crowds waiting for the lights at the corners of Gorki and Petrovska Streets; and the digital clock above Karl Marx Prospekt now read 16.45. Pol heard the door close softly behind Maddox. He waited till the digits changed to 46, then toddled over to the wall-cabinet and poured himself an inch of whisky from a cut-glass decanter, sank into an armchair and stared at his belly. ‘Man is driven by two forces,’ he reflected: ‘Self-interest and fear.’ Both applied in classic measure to Leonard Maddox.

  Maddox would be no loss to anyone, Pol decided. Unfortunately, however, it was not merely Maddox who presented the problem. For Maddox had a mistress in Moscow — an insufferably genteel Englishwoman whom Pol had carelessly neglected to find out about when he’d first employed Maddox. She had since become one of the small afflictions in the Frenchman’s professional life, turning up uninvited at his office in the Hotel Intourist, where she was always trying to tempt him with what she claimed was inside information on commodities.

  Pol had discovered that she had a part-time job with the English Language department of Radio Moscow, and that she lived with Maddox in a block of flats reserved for foreigners. Maddox had also told him that she’d had experience in a London finance-house, and it was clear to Pol that she had ambitions towards being taken on by Entreprises Lipp. These he had so far firmly resisted.

  As for Lennie Maddox, he’d been recommended to Pol by a financier in Geneva who’d assured him that the Englishman had a sharp head for figures and could be relied upon not to be too scrupulous about Pol’s more delicate dealings, provided the money was right; and besides, Maddox had had the advantage of appearing so immediately untrustworthy that should any serious complications have ever arisen with the Soviet authorities, he would have made an obvious scapegoat.

  Pol had paid him a comfortable salary in Swiss francs, transferred monthly to Moscow, plus the promise of a bonus when his year’s contract had expired. That contract still had just over seven months to run; and Pol had thought it would be enough to keep Maddox satisfied, without making him greedy. He’d been wrong.

  Pol hated to be wrong. It made him reckless and vengeful: and he just hoped that he had not let his emotions distort his judgement: that his hasty arrangements for the evening would prove satisfactory. But even then, only half the problem would be solved. The other half was Maddox’s damnable lady-friend. For over the last few days there had been certain developments which had convinced Pol that Lennie Maddox was not just greedy and treacherous; he was also stupid. By a stroke of extreme luck, involving the Englishwoman’s infidelity to her lover, Pol had learnt that Maddox had not only been stealing confidential information from him, but that he had discussed at least some of this information with his mistress.

  The knowledge that anyone — let alone a pair of cheap Anglo-Saxon chisellers with the morals of alley-cats — should know anything about his private affairs caused Pol not merely embarrassment, but in this case, grave concern.

  He sipped his Scotch and felt some of the tension seeping out of his massive frame, when the telephone purred on the desk. A man’s voice, with a thick accent, said in French: ‘Your reservation to Leningrad is being confirmed, Monsieur. I will call you as soon as it is in order.’ Pol thanked him and hung up. His watch now said twenty-two minutes to five. Two minutes slow, by the sign over Karl Marx Prospekt. He would check it by the time-signal at five on the radio.

  Six o’clock, he thought. He should know by then — know enough to be safe. He finished his drink, made sure that all the drawers in the filing-cabinet were locked, paused at the desk and flicked through the envelopes that Maddox had been addressing — noting what a slovenly typist he was — then looked again at his watch. The minute-hand in the chunky platinum case seemed scarcely to have moved. Platinum, he thought: that’s what Maddox’s English mistress had been going on about last night — sitting there on his desk and telling him how to corner the platinum market. Impertinent camel! But with any luck she wouldn’t be troubling him anymore.

  He returned to the window. It was not in his nature to be pessimistic, but here the timing had to be exact, and yet so many things had been left to chance. Like all the lifts being taken and Maddox having to use the stairs; the possibility of his stopping to buy cigarettes — but then he didn’t smoke, of course. Or running into a friend, or dropping into the bar.

  No, he thought. His instructions had been imperative — the message must be delivered at the Metropol before five o’clock.

  It was only a few minutes’ walk from the Hotel Intourist to the Metropol, even allowing for the rush-hour traffic. It had stopped snowing, but the ground was treacherous, with the powdered surface trampled into black ice, and banks of sludge piled up at the edge of the gutters where the snowploughs had passed.

  Lennie Maddox crossed Pushkin Street and felt the chill of the evening, even through his fur-lined overcoat. He had a funny feeling — a funny itchy feeling in his legs and up the base of his spine that made him want to quicken his steps, break into a run. But it was no feeling of elation. He wanted to get away. Get away from Pol, from Moscow, even from Joyce. It had become a stinking business. And in the end Joyce had betrayed him, just as he had betrayed — or was about to betray — Pol. It was time to cut his losses and get out.

  He had reached the corner of the broad Karl Marx Prospekt where it opens into Revolution Square…

  Here he joined the crowd waiting for the lights to change. A militiaman stood in the centre of the Prospekt and executed heavy-footed pirouettes, swinging his lighted baton for the traffic to move or stop. A man bumped against Maddox and mumbled something, dropping a box of matches in the snow. He leant down and fumbled for it with his woollen mittens, failed to retrieve it, and lurched out into the street. A car hooted, there was a screech of brakes, the man groped backwards, tripped on the kerb and sat down in the slush. The pedestrian signal-lights changed to green and the crowd began to move round him.

  There was a shrill whistle-blast and the militiaman came striding over, yelling furiously. Several of the crowd stopped to watch. The man sat cross-eyed in the snow and made a helpless gesture with his mittened hand. The militiaman seized his arm and tried to yank him to his feet. An old woman in a man’s overcoat waded in and began to shout at the militiaman, who let go of the man’s arm to defend himself against the woman’s fury.

  The crowd were now drifting back across the Prospekt. Maddox wished he’d had his camera. The scene would have made a good pic — typical vignette of Moscow life, the sort of thing the posh Sunday papers went in for — Cayle’s paper, for instance. He was thinking about Cayle when the truck hit him.

  There was no hoot, no sound of brakes or slither of tyres; it hit him side-on, the high steel bumper scooping him off the ground and flinging him up to where the pointed radiator grille snapped his spine and sent his body hurtling forwards, twisting in mid-air and flopping down on the black ice just as the front wheel crushed his neck, almost severing it from his body. The double rear wheels followed, smashing his shoulders and splitting his head open like a soft-boiled egg.

  It was over in three seconds. The truck accelerated with a skidding howl and turned sharply left into Revolution Square, cut across a taxi which had to brake to a halt, then, with a burst of black exhaust smoke which obscured its rear number-plate, it raced down Petrovska Street and disappeared behind the Bolshoi.

&
nbsp; The digital clock above Karl Marx Prospekt flicked to 16.46.

  Pol watched the crowd swelling at the corner by the lights. The militiaman was struggling to hold them back; traffic began piling up; more people were swarming across from the Square. A mobile police patrol would arrive any moment; and the ambulance would not be much longer. Where accidents were concerned, Moscow was an efficient city.

  He finished his second whisky, waddled into the bathroom and turned the taps on full. He was sweating, and cursed the hotel for not having separate central-heating regulators in all rooms. For a man like Pol, one of the few luxuries of Moscow in winter was that he didn’t have to sweat too much. Until now.

  He was lowering himself into the bath when the phone rang again. With surprising agility he sprang out and paddled back, naked and dripping, into the main room where he wiped his hand on a cushion before lifting the receiver. The same man spoke again in French: ‘Monsieur Pol?’ Pol grunted, and the voice said, ‘All is in order, monsieur. Your ticket and reservation have been confirmed.’

  ‘You are absolutely sure?’

  ‘Absolutely. Thank you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Pol, and he hung up smiling. His smile became a cooing chuckle as he poured himself a third whisky, larger this time, and carried it back into the bathroom. He could relax now. There was plenty of time before the car came to collect him.

  CHAPTER 12

  When Cayle checked out of the Aeroflot Hotel that morning he learnt that his bill had been settled. He did not inquire by whom; that would only attract attention. Instead he asked the girl at Reception to tell anyone who called that he would be back by five o’clock. He lunched at the Foreign Press Club and glancing through yesterday’s Western papers, saw that the only development over the disappearance of Sir Roger Jameson-Clarke had been a question in the Commons, asking the Home Secretary when Sir Roger had last had a security vetting, and what the results had been. The written reply had stated that all Foreign Office personnel were subject to the same Security controls, and that the Home Secretary was satisfied that these controls were perfectly adequate, without being obtrusive. Meanwhile, Sir Roger was still missing.