by Adam Hall
She lurched to the door of the hut, her legs cramped from the long night, the long waiting, and when she'd gone I asked the guard in Russian, On whose orders?
Comrade Colonel Yasolev's.
I put away the sunglasses, and the environment took on brightness, colour: a steady 3,500 rpm on the revolution-counter, the star mascot outlined against the wash of the headlights, a signpost sliding by: Bernau 22km, Eberswalde 47km.
He'd known, of course, Comrade Colonel Yasolev, that it wouldn't have been worth putting her under the light, wearing her down, she knew almost nothing; she'd been a contact for the frontier line pulled in at the last minute to cover a gap in communications; she hadn't even been briefed, just told to get there and wait for instructions. She'd only made contact with me as a matter of routine to establish liaison, and that was when they'd caught us, holed up under the floorboards of a rotting wharf with our hands and faces darkened with some soot I'd scraped from a boiler and one of her feet shoeless, which was how they'd got on to us: the other shoe had come off when she'd run headlong for cover.
And what would have been the point, anyway, in their putting her on trial and sending her to a penal settlement? Another mouth to feed, however many mailbags she sewed, however much wood she hauled. But that wasn't why he'd let her go. It had been a, gesture. I'd got to know Comrade Colonel Yasolev quite well during the three weeks of the mission and I'd picked up a few things about him from the KGB lieutenant I'd pinned down and grilled in a cellar in Klimovsk: Yasolev was the son of a Soviet Army general, and a graduate of the Moscow State University with a degree in Japanese and some post-graduate work put in at the Institute of Oriental Studies. In 1985 he'd served undercover for the KGB as Bureau Chief of the Soviet magazine New Times in Tokyo; then he'd been brought back to his homeland to run clandestine operations from Moscow, trapping Western spooks for the counterespionage division and pulling in Price-Baker, Johnson of the Company, Foxwell and Grant and Bellows from the SIS, all of them senior people, most of them now in the Gulag, Foxwell dead and Johnson exchanged for Pitovsky a year ago.
But the most interesting thing I'd picked up from the lieutenant in Klimovsk was that Yasolev was a chivalrous man, enlightened, though not soft: He bullied the prosecutors for the maximum term in every case, and got it. He also had a daughter, Ludmila, who was now studying at the Academy of Science in Moscow. All right, for Margaret read Ludmila; they'd be about the same age or at least the same generation. And reading a little closer, between the lines, yes, his casual act of clemency had been subjective, self-indulgent; but the fact remained that I'd been there in that freezing hut and I'd seen her small huddled figure go lurching through the doorway to freedom and when the guard had told me whose the orders were I'd felt a moment of warmth in that bitter cold and had been astonished by it, because in this trade the smallest act of charity can have the force of revelation.
There'd been a postcard, a month ago, from East Grinstead, just signed 'Margaret'; she still kept in touch.
'About another ten minutes,' the driver said.
It was still dark.
'Are you armed?'
His eyes flicked to look at me in the mirror. 'No, sir. Those were my instructions. You're not expecting any kind of trouble?'
'No.' If he'd had anything on him I'd have told him to throw it away. The rendezvous is to be made, Shepley had said, according to the strict protocol of a diplomatic exchange of courtesies, and both sides understand that. Otherwise I'd never have agreed to go through the Wall in the wrong direction, not on your bloody life.
I still can't believe you managed it, she'd said in her postcard. It means so much to me. Because when she'd gone through that doorway she was certain I was up for a life term in Siberia and so was I. But on the way to the railhead at Vaznesenkoe one of the guards had wrenched his ankle in a hole under the snow and there'd been a chance and I'd taken it and the best they could do was a bullet in the shoulder and a bit of scalp ripped off before I'd got some trees behind me and found a refuge and lain on my back for three days under a snowdrift until they gave it up and left me for dead.
'My instructions,' the driver said, 'are to wait for you, within sight. Is that right?'
'Yes. How far is it now?'
'We're nearly there.'
'I could be quite a time. Did you bring anything to eat?'
'Got some sandwiches and a flask. They told me.'
I didn't know who he was. Certainly not embassy; he'd been in the field, it was written all over him. I'd been told to ask no questions on this trip, give no answers, except at the rendezvous itself.
A crack of light had come into the sky ahead of us, above a mass of dark trees that rose on one side of the road. The driver pulled onto a patch of rough ground and cut the engine.
'It's here?'
'Yes, sir.' He hit his seat-belt release and got a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and opened it out and showed it to me. 'Just up there, in the trees.'
I looked through the tinted window. He'd switched off his lights and I couldn't see a thing so I pressed the button and got the window down as far as I needed. Cold air came in against my eyes. I still couldn't see more than a dark mass of rising ground, heavily wooded, with no light, no signal from anywhere. It was very quiet.
'Is he coming down here?' He'll be at the rendezvous alone, Shepley had said.
'No, sir. You're to walk into the trees.' He folded the little map and put it away.
'We're seven minutes early.'
'Yes, sir.'
I suppose he meant yes, we were seven minutes early but that didn't have to stop me getting out and walking up there into the wood, better early than late, but then it wasn't his bloody neck. Shepley had spelt it all out, the strict protocol of a diplomatic exchange of courtesies, so forth, and they'd got a Red Army general under house arrest in London and the head of the Bureau — the head of the Bureau — wasn't likely to send one of his top executives straight into a trap, but the paperwork was over now and this was where the action was and I was sitting in a car at dawn on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain and I was expected to get out and walk into those trees and not question anything, doubt anything, but listen, I don't like trees, standing as these were, deep as black water, with somewhere inside them a KGB officer waiting for me.
Alone?
What could I do if they were setting me up again, the Bureau, just as they'd set me up before, that time with a bomb, this time with something much more subtle? What if they were using me as bait in some kind of diabolical trap that Shepley had rigged, throwing me to the dogs in the sacred cause of expedience?
Nothing.
I could do nothing.
I'd want your guarantee, I'd told him, that you wouldn't cut me down, whatever the pressure on you. He'd looked at his shoes. That would be difficult, he'd said.
I watched the clock on the facia glowing, digital, marking off the last minutes of the night. Listen, suppose they'd set up this rendezvous to send me straight into a -
But this was nonsense because Shepley wouldn't have come out here personally just to kill off a bloody ferret; it was paranoia, that was all, so I got out of the car six minutes early and slammed the door and stumbled through the low scattered bushes and then climbed, moving into the trees with my hands dug into my coat pockets and my breath clouding on the cold air and my eyes on the trees, on the gaps in the trees, my feet tripping sometimes in the undergrowth because it was still too dark to see much, my mind confident on a conscious level that all was well, that Shepley was playing it straight this time, while in the subconscious my shadow creature came with me, shaking like a leaf.
Rough ground, difficult ground and the smell of damp earth after rain, the crack of dawn in the east casting yellow light among the trees and giving them substance, defining them, beginning to throw shadows as fine as grey gossamer and sending ghost figures moving through them, one of them halting and standing perfectly still.
'Good morning.'
Ya
solev.
I stopped dead and he came towards me, a short man in a black overcoat and hat, his face pale, jaundiced with the creeping yellow light of the morning, his small eyes resting on mine with a steadiness that I believed was costing him an effort.
He was offering his hand. It was cold, dry, impersonal; he took it away too soon. He'd spoken in English; I spoke in Russian; from his thick accent I decided we were going to speak in his tongue, not mine, because I was fluent and I didn't want any misunderstandings.
'How are you, Yasolev?'
He inclined his head. It was rounded, balanced on his thick neck like a boulder; it looked heavy, like his body. But this was deceptive — I knew that his brain was capable of cool, incisive thought, accurate and assertive and uncluttered by emotion. He'd come up from the ranks and survived in an organisation that didn't suffer fools gladly.
'I am — ' in English, then a shrug as he slipped into the comfort of his own language '- I am well. And pleased you have come. I was not, as you can imagine, at all certain of it.'
He turned and led me to a clearing, and on our way I looked back down the hill and saw the two cars, the one that had brought me here and his own, half-hidden among the bushes and with two men standing by it. The light was brighter now, pouring below a ceiling of mist that hid the treetops, making it seem as if we'd wandered into a petrified forest.
'Not quite a banquet,' he said with a shrug, 'but — ' he left it. He'd draped a rough linen cloth across a tree stump and set out a couple of cardboard picnic plates and some canned caviar and what looked like a bowl of stuffed pirozhki. Two thick tumblers and a bottle of vodka: not a banquet, no, but a good enough effort, an acceptable gesture.
'Rather grand,' I said.
A deprecating tilt of his head. 'I chose this place for our meeting because I wanted you to be sure there weren't any little beetles around.'
He meant bugs; a joke, I supposed. There was a faint smell of tobacco smoke on the air, but I couldn't see any butt he might have thrown down. The trees were thick here; you couldn't see more than thirty yards.
'Civil of you,' I said.
'Of course — ' one of his little shrugs '- I could be wired. Do you wish to search me?'
This was major, a major point in our relationship, if there were going to be one, in the whole mission, if there were going to be a mission. I didn't answer right away because I wanted him to think I needed time. Then I said, 'I believe we're here on terms of mutual trust.'
He nodded gravely. 'Yes.'
'Then I don't want to search you.'
He opened his hands. He was busy with small gestures, Yasolev, and this one meant, I think, that I could indeed trust him, his hands being open, empty, with nothing to hide.
We ate some caviar on strips of thin dark bread, and he offered me some vodka but I said it was too early in the day; he drank some, almost half-filling a tumbler. The mist was slowly lightening above our heads, and somewhere a bird had started piping.
'And how is Margaret?' he asked.
The girl in the hut.
'She's well.'
He'd done his homework, got her name out of the files, and was reminding me that he'd been chivalrous. Trust again; he wanted my trust.
He'd have to work for it. 'How many men did you bring here?'
His eyes flicked away. 'Six. There are two waiting by the car, and four are dispersed at a distance.' But not at a great distance, because the tobacco smoke. 'And you?'
'One.' He knew perfectly well how many I'd brought: he would have monitored my passage through the checkpoint by radio-phone. 'Unarmed,' I said, to make my point.
He looked down. 'There are hunters in these woods. We don't want be disturbed.'
Then we both fell silent, each waiting for the other to take things further. I wasn't in any hurry, but it wasn't long before he half-filled tumbler again and took a swig and said, 'Let me tell you that we need someone from London who is willing to work with us for a time. My department said there was no one, but I told them that I believed there was such a man. We need someone still active in the field, a man knows how to take care of himself, because this will not be easy, you understand. It will not be — ' gesturing towards the remains of our meal '- a picnic.'
I didn't say anything. He offered me the last pirozhki but I shook my head.
'There is some tea.' He brought a huge thermos flask from behind the tree stump and filled two plastic cups, his hand shaking a little. For the first time it struck me that at this precise moment his nerves weren't any better than mine.
'No,' he said, 'it will not be a picnic.' The tea steamed thickly, giving off a sharp earthy scent. 'My assignment has been handed to me indirectly from Comrade General-Secretary Gorbachev, as you have been told. If I make any mistakes, I shall be cut down in the middle of my career. My career means a great deal to me. It means everything.'
He had small nicotine-brown eyes sunk under a deep brow, and at this moment I had the impression they were looking out at me from shelter. The risk, I could see now, wasn't going to be all mine.
'Gorbachev called you in?'
'Yes, but — '
I mean personally? You met with him about this?'
'No.' He looked quietly appalled. 'And I have to be very careful to keep his name out of it. After the most careful deliberations I decided to trust your Mr Shepley — ' he pronounced it as Shepili '- and to trust you. But if I am wrong, I am finished.'
I could see what he meant. They're not terribly charitable in Moscow towards people who screw up. I waited for a bit and then said, 'I can't speak for Shepley, but on my own account you can trust me as far as your first wrong move, and then God help you.'
He opened his hands again, bringing his head an inch lower in a perfectly clear gesture of submission. 'That is perhaps more than I could hope for. We shall be working under a great deal of stress, you see, a great deal of pressure, and it might sometimes be easy to suspect each other of duplicity. We must avoid that. Above all we must avoid that.' Turning away, turning back, 'My superiors have been understandably reticent on the matter of Comrade Gorbachev's personal involvement in this, but it is not precluded that an exchange has taken place between him and your Prime Minister Thatcher. Unofficially, of course. Has Mr Shepley mentioned this?'
'No.'
'It is my opinion. We are dealing with — ' his eyes held steadily on mine at last '- a matter of extremely high security, not only within the intelligence community but on the highest levels of government.'
Shot.
'Then you might have to find someone else.'
A slight chill along the spine. It had only been faint, but I suppose it was the suddenness, and the image of a man going down. 'Someone else?'
'To work with you instead of me.'
'Why is that?'
'It sounds too political. Too big.'
The sound of the gun came again and he took out a miniature walkie-talkie and pulled the antenna up and switched it on and spoke into it. 'Keep them away.'
Not man, rabbit, that was all. I took a sip of tea and burned my lips but the flavour was good, rich and raw and leaving a bitter after-taste.
'I would not have asked for you,' Yasolev said, 'if I didn't think it was something that suited your talents. Later I shall reassure you.'
'What's it to do with? Give me the gist.'
He hesitated and then pulled himself upright in his black coat, as if suddenly called upon to account for himself. 'There is a British mole buried in Berlin, on this side. He is a grave danger.'
'So what's the HUA doing?' East German Counterintelligence were extremely efficient, normally.
'They cannot reach him.'
'What about you people?'
'If we could reach him, we wouldn't have asked for your help.'
'Quite a mole.'
'He is more than that.'
'More than a mole?'
'Yes. From what we have learned, he is here in order to fulfil a specific assignment.'
'No. For whoever is paying him.' He took out a rumpled handkerchief and unfolded it.
'You don't know who's paying him?'
'We believe it is someone in the Kremlin.' He blew his nose, making much of it, giving his nerves some action.
'Jesus Christ,' I said, and started walking about. 'I'm surprised you didn't ask me if I was wired.'
He folded his handkerchief carefully, his eyes watering in the cold air. 'We made the approach. We have to trust you. And your Mr Shepili.'
I took a minute to think and then said, 'You've got the wrong word.'
He'd used 'krot'. 'You don't mean he's a mole, Yasolev; you mean he's an operator.' Rabotnik. 'So let me straighten it out a bit: you're talking about a British operator buried in East Berlin and preparing some kind of a strike, and he's being paid to do it, possibly by someone inside the Kremlin. Is that right?'
'Yes.'
'Who's his target, then?'
'Comrade General-Secretary Gorbachev.'
Oh my God.
British.
Of course. They couldn't risk using a Soviet.
'Are you sure?'
'Yes.' He was watching me steadily now, with the eyes of a man who had just thrown down four aces. 'So you see, we felt that your department might agree that it would be in the best interests of the British government for you to help us.'
I didn't show anything. In a moment I said, 'No wonder you're nervous, Yasolev.'
'No more than you.'
'I haven't accepted the mission.'
He shrugged, kicking up the fibrous earth with the toe of his creased black shoe. 'I hope you will.'
Hope on, then, comrade. Two heads on the block, Thatcher's and Gorbachev's, if that operator pulled off his assignment: Gorbachev's because he was the target and Thatcher's because if a British national hit the Chairman of the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet her government wouldn't last the night.
Not quite my cup of tea, but I suppose it was a compliment that Shepley had called me in and I'd been sent to this rendezvous to listen to Yasolev and check out the job, so I'd better do that.