Quiller Meridian

by Adam Hall

  ‘Would you like a cup, now I’ve made it?’

  Jane had put a tray on the long carved stool; one of its legs had been mended with glue and string. ‘It’s not Chippendale,’ she aid — she was a quick observer — ‘but it’s better than the plastic able I found here when I came.’ she’d taken off her windcheater and was suddenly thin, boyish, in a ballet top under a black cardigan.

  I said I didn’t want any coffee: there might be a chance of some sleep.

  ‘They gave me instructions,’ she said,’ to clear you for the USSR, since it looks as if they’ll be running the mission here. You’re completely fluent and can pass for a Muscovite, is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She fetched a couple of faded blue cushions and dropped them onto the floor, one on each side of the stool. ‘Or do you want to sit at the table?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay —’ she lugged a weathered black briefcase from under the stool and flipped the buckles open — ‘this will be yours to keep, as well as the stuff inside.’ she pulled out a thin typed file and a map and turned them to face me. ‘Light cover — you probably won’t have enough time to study anything deeper, will you? The map’s only a few months old. When were you in Moscow last?’

  ‘Before Yeltsin.’

  ‘Been a few changes.’

  ‘Yes.’ I hadn’t seen any KGB when I’d come through the airport, and there’d been no ‘concierge’ on the ground floor when we’d come into the building.

  ‘They’re surface changes,’ Jane said, ‘at the moment. The KGB are meant to be calling themselves the MPS, Ministry of Public Security, but of course most of them are still very much KGB under the skin — think of the power they had! — and a lot of them are just going through the motions of being nice to the proletariat while they wait for another coup. And there —’

  ‘You think they’ll get one?’

  ‘Coups and rumours of coups … someone sounds the alarm about once a week, for obvious reasons: unless the Russians and the satellites can get through the winter with enough food and the basics they’re liable to storm the government offices and demand a coup just to get Yeltsin out. This is mainly embassy gossip, but everyone knows there are something like three million die — hard apparatchiks holed up across the country with a hammer and sickle behind the curtains. We can’t let our guard down yet, that’s all.’ With a shrug — ‘But I expect you know all this, from the stuff going through the London signals room.’

  ‘It’s a help to have it confirmed in the field.’

  A quick smile — ‘thank you. Shall I get you cleared?’

  She didn’t have any printed forms here so I gave it to her verbatim and she made notes — no medical problems, date of last vaccination, no request for a codicil, bequests unchanged. Then she made some notes of her own and I signed them: active service waiver in the event of death, responsibility for expenses incurred, the undertaking to protect secrecy — most of the forms they had for this kind of thing at the Bureau were from the Foreign Office and totally out of date, and every time we ask them to do something about it guess what happens.

  I made the final signature and Jane asked me: ‘Do you want a capsule?’

  Her eyes widened a little as she watched me.

  ‘Ask them to send one out with my DIF. I shouldn’t need one before then.’

  She looked down. ‘Or at all, I hope.’ she made a note and shut the pad.

  ‘They probably told you that as far as we know you’ll be operating in the USSR, so there’s a good little second — hand clothes shop for men I can take you to first thing in the morning — they’ve got shoes as well. And you can start letting your nails grow and don’t wash your hair too often, work up a bit of stubble — but I’m sure you know all this, you’re very —’

  ‘Reminders are invaluable.’

  She suddenly drew in a deep breath and let it out again. ‘You’re being terribly polite, but it’s just that — you know — I don’t get many people coming through here with your track record and I think I’m rather desperate to get everything right. Blown my cover?’

  ‘Not really.’

  She finished her coffee and said, ‘Okay, I’ll get you some blankets and we’ll pull out the couch, bathroom’s through there, you won’t disturb Amy.’ she levered her legs out of the half — lotus and took the pad over to the phone table and put it into the drawer and locked it and came back.

  ‘You do ballet?’ I asked her.

  ‘Shows in my walk?’

  ‘Yes:’

  A wry smile — ‘Always tell a beginner, can’t you? We overdo it, hoping people are going to notice, not many things in Moscow that’ll give you status unless you’re in the nomenklatura and then you’d be in a Zil. Prance along with your feet out and your pony — tail dancing and you’ve got it made.’ she went over to the Put — U — Up and I helped her. ‘Stinks of mothballs, but I suppose there are worse things.’ she brought a white patched sheet and some blankets. ‘If you feel like some food, just help yourself from the pantry; the fridge is empty, doesn’t work. It’s only local fare but the bread’s terrific, of course. You’ll take the call, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She watched me for a moment, her young and intent blue eyes showing the concern of a mother. ‘You’ll be all right? There are more blankets if you need them, but the stove keeps in all night.’

  ‘Get some sleep, Jane.’

  She gave a little nod and went across to the other room, her feet out and her pony — tail swinging.

  I went over the map and opened the thin typed file and gave my cover a first reading: Viktor K. Shokin, forty — two, married to Natalia Yelina, nee Maslennikova, two children, boy and girl, Yuri and Masha, six and seven. Brief history of schooling, university, first job as a stringer for a local newspaper and then a stint as copy — boy in the Pravda overseas office before joining the reconstituted Toss agency.

  A lump of coke fell inside the big cast — iron stove and sparks lit the mica window. I thought I heard Jane and Amy talking, or it could have been some people in another flat.

  Favourite sport, football, no hobbies, slight knowledge of English, Russian Orthodox.

  It was just gone 3:15 when I dropped the file onto the floor and switched the lamp off and heard a spring twang as I lay down and started memorizing the cover, giving it another ten minutes. The voices had stopped, and through the small high window the snow drifted in silhouette, black against the haze of the city lights, and the last thing I saw was the steady green glow of the LED on the scrambler over there, and the last thought I had was about the other reason that might have delayed Zymyanin’s getting into contact with us again: he could have set up the kill himself at the rendezvous in Bucharest and could be busy setting up another one, for me.

  Chapter 3

  ROSSIYA

  ‘I broke K — 15,’ she said, and tilted the frying pan to get the butter over the eggs.

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ I said, ‘and you were trying to impress me by walking like a duck.’

  ‘Thought I’d kind of steal up on you.’

  K — 15 was a hands — on but much — used Soviet code that the people in Codes and Cyphers at the Bureau had been trying to break for three years. I knew it had been done but I’d thought it was in London.

  ‘Another egg?’ Jane asked.

  ‘If you can spare one.’

  ‘No problem,’ she said. ‘Blackmarket.’

  I didn’t know when I was going to eat again. There’d been two signals from Control earlier this morning but Zymyanin still hadn’t made contact. It was just gone eight, and the clothing shop wouldn’t open until nine. ‘Even if then,’ Jane had said. ‘We might have to bash at the back door.’

  ‘You worked on it at the embassy here?’ I asked her. On K — 15.

  ‘Yes. I’d be an infant prodigy in maths, if I were an infant. When I was six I used to finish Dad’s crossword puzzles for him when he was at the office, made him furious. And th
ey were in The Times.’

  At the scrubbed pinewood table she said, ‘Ketchup? I also created Mystere.’ she watched me for my reaction.

  ‘Did you, now.’

  Mystere was also a hands — on code, non — computerized, and C and C had brought in a man from the Foreign Office to try breaking it. He hadn’t managed it so far but when he did we’d destroy it, because if he could break it so could the Soviets, or someone else.

  ‘I got it from my typewriter,’ Jane said.’ Or that started me off. I use a Canon AP810 — III, and I was changing the ribbon when I noticed the characters on the old one. It’s a wide ribbon and they’re not in a single — line row, it prints three characters vertically, shifts — wait a minute —’ she reached for her pad and got a pencil —’ it prints three characters vertically downwards, then shifts one space to the right and prints upwards again, three —’ she glanced up at me —’ am I being an infant prodigy all over you?’

  ‘I’ve worked on codes,’ I said. ‘I’m interested.’

  ‘All right. Three down, then shift, three up, shift, three down again, like this. And if you read it like that, it makes sense, but we always read in a single line from left to right, and that looked like gibberish, and it suddenly struck me — 1 was looking at a code.’ she put the pencil down and bit on some toast and munched it. ‘But if we, say, typed the words, oh, I dunno, “if you like”, the “y” comes at the bottom of the first vertical and the “o” comes at the bottom of the next one, and there aren’t too many ordinary words beginning with “yo” except for “you” — and you start getting the drift. So at the top and bottom of every vertical I inserted a blind character to break the rhythm, and that was much nicer.’ she sat back and looked at me. ‘Had enough?’

  ‘No.’

  . ‘ Glutton for punishment. So I ‘m reading three horizontal lines of code and I’m not picking up clues from the verticals because of the blinds. At that stage it would have taken a bright teenager maybe half an hour to break, so I threw in a reverse — direction read — out and put it on the standard grid and went for three — character alphabetical substitutes and froze it. Mystere!’ she shook her pony — tail. ‘God, don’t tell the man in London.’ Her eyes were suddenly deep, their colour darkening. ‘Or anyone.’

  ‘I’m offended,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry.’ she drew a breath, let it out. ‘I want that one to run forever.’

  ‘It probably will.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. I mean, basically it’s terribly simple. But it touched my funny — bone to think of all those typists out there — it’s probably the same with any typewriter, not just a Canon — using the basis for Mystere when they’re ordering another consignment of paperclips or whatever. More toast?’

  ‘No, I’ve finished. Are you working on anything new, at the — ‘then the phone rang and I went over to it while Jane cleared the table.

  ‘We’ve found Zymyanin.’ It wasn’t Medlock’s voice; this was the man on the day shift, and I recognized him because he’d been on the board for Solitaire, name was Carey. ‘He’s still in Moscow.’

  ‘He made contact?’

  ‘No. We had him traced — he went to his base in Lenin Prospekt.’

  ‘He’s worked with us before?’

  In a moment, ‘He’s Bureau, but rather a lone wolf.’ He didn’t query the fact that I hadn’t been briefed on Zymyanin, didn’t want to tread on any toes. ‘We’ve got a watch on him, and when he moves, we’ll let you know. We think he’s frightened, you see.’

  ‘Yes.’ It was possible that Jane didn’t know Zymyanin, and couldn’t have briefed me. Croder would have assumed I could trust him to know that the Soviet was reliable. But it made me uneasy: I didn’t much care for lone wolves in a sensitive field like Moscow.

  ‘But he should come round, in good time. If he doesn’t ask for a rendezvous you’ll have to make your own way. We’ll keep you posted as to his movements. Don’t leave the phone.’

  I told him I’d got to go and find some clothes.

  ‘Okay, but there’s an answering machine, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Keep as close as you can, though, in case he suddenly takes off somewhere.’

  I said I’d do that.

  ‘Any questions?’ Carey asked me.

  ‘No, but you can look after a couple of things for me. Was Hornby married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Send some flowers, will you?’

  ‘How much for?’

  ‘Oh, twenty pounds.’

  ‘Name on the card?’

  ‘Put anything. She doesn’t know me.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘And tell Accounts we owe the Romanian Ministry of Agriculture for a sack of Grade A rye grain, 150 lbs.’

  There’d be a squeal from that acidic old bitch in the counting house because she’s always touchy about passing anonymous funds into Moscow without any explanation, but the rule is that if we damage any property we’ve got to report it and it’s got to be paid for, and in any case this was nothing, the last thing I’d stuck Accounts for was a smashed Mercedes.

  ‘Anything else?’ Carey asked me. I said no and we shut down.

  This was at 8:44.

  It was mid — afternoon when London came through with instructions.

  Medlock was back at the board.

  ‘Zymyanin has booked out on the Rossiya to Vladivostok. Please stand by for Chief of Signals.’

  Jane had been typing a report for the embassy, and stopped, leaving the room quiet. The sky in the high narrow window was already darkening toward nightfall even at this hour. The snow had eased off soon after we’d got back from the clothing shop.

  I heard Croder’s voice on the line.

  ‘Your instructions are to board the train and try to make contact with him.’

  With Zymyanin. I asked Croder: ‘He signalled you?’

  ‘No. We had his movements monitored. We think he finally decided against making a second rendezvous. Zymyanin is not normally a nervous man, but it seems he was frightened off by the Bucharest debacle.’

  It didn’t surprise me. You don’t need to be nervous to get clear from a blown rendezvous with no intention of trying your luck again: it’s simply a logical precaution. This trade’s chancy enough without begging for an early grave. But what I didn’t like was the idea of forcing Zymyanin into a rendezvous he hadn’t asked for, because there were a lot of risks and some of them could be lethal, and if it had been anyone but Croder giving me these instructions I would have turned them down. I’ve taken lethal risks all my life with the Bureau — it’s built into the business — but I always need to know in each particular case whether it’s worth it.

  ‘What’s the situation?’ I asked him.

  ‘The situation is that we still think Zymyanin has something of major importance to give us, if we can persuade him. I don’t need to tell you, of course, that he may be very difficult to handle by now.’

  Yes indeed. It looked as if the Soviet had got clear of the Bucharest thing and was simply unwilling to take any more risks, but that was an assumption, and assumptions are always dangerous.

  ‘You mean,” I said, ‘he might not have got away clean.’

  ‘Quite so. He may have been tracked from Bucharest to Moscow.’

  Tracked by the people who’d killed Hornby.

  ‘He could in effect be still on the run.’

  ‘That is possible.’

  I watched the sky darkening in the window.’ He could have been caught,’ I said, ‘caught and turned and given new instructions. Is that what you mean by “difficult to handle”?’

  ‘something along those lines.’

  He’s got a dry, thin voice, Croder. It’s more like the sound of a paper shredder, and if you listen very carefully — as you should, if you are talking to the Chief of Signals — you can almost hear those little bright blades in there cutting the words out for you, the sibilants sharp and clear.

  Some
thing along those lines. I wasn’t going to let him get away with that. I wanted him to know I was quite aware of what he was asking me to do. ‘He could,’ I said — Zymyanin — ‘have been told to stay out of contact with London and try and draw me into a trap.’

  In a moment,’ that is also possible.’

  There was a sharp ringing sound in the room; I think Jane had gone into the little kitchenette and had dropped a spoon or something. I didn’t like the way it touched my nerves. Vladivostok was nine or ten thousand kilometres from Moscow on the Sea of Japan, and it would take seven or eight days to get there, straight through the heart of Siberia. In terms of security a moving train comes right at the bottom of the scale: call it a super — trap.

  Croder was waiting. ‘The thing is,’ I asked him, ‘is it worth the risk?’

  Zymyanin was said to be Bureau, but at most he was an agent — in — place or a roving watchdog; he wouldn’t know much about London and if the opposition had in fact caught him and put him under the light and burned everything out of him they wouldn’t have finished up with anything major. If they did the same thing with a senior shadow executive he’d blow Big Ben into the Thames if he couldn’t get to the capsule fast enough.

  It’s a built — in risk factor and well — recognized at the Bureau: the longer an executive runs and the more he knows, the more valuable he is to the opposition. Nobody likes this but there’s nothing we can do about it except take out insurance, and the only insurance you can take out is not to send him into the field again.

  Croder’s voice came. ‘I was expecting your question.’ Whether it was worth the risk, this time around. ‘Yes, we believe it’s worth it’

  I didn’t ask why. Croder gives no easy answers: he thinks them out, and he must have been thinking this one out ever since Longs hot had crashed all over the signals board in London and sent people running for cover. He had also been getting input from Bureau agents — in — place in Moscow on the general intelligence background there, and he had finally put Zymyanin into the overall picture and come up with his findings: that it was worth risking the life of a senior shadow and worth risking that shadow’s getting seized and interrogated and thrown onto the trash heap with nothing left in his skull but the burned — out circuits of his brain.