Icelight

by Aly Monroe

  Their waiter brought them two large bowls of onion soup.

  ‘You’ll have to eat everything from Fauchon before you land in England,’ said Ayrtoun. ‘We now defend our fortress island against pleasure rather more effectively than we did against bombs.’

  The waiter brought them bread. It was hot. Ayrtoun broke some, pointed at the rising steam and shook his head.

  ‘Priorities,’ he said. He snorted, then sighed. He poured more wine and drank.

  ‘How are you handling things?’ he said.

  ‘I wasn’t able to do much for Watson,’ Cotton replied.

  Ayrtoun shook his head and popped more bread into his mouth. ‘No, your job was never to save queers from death or a fate worse than it. In any case you couldn’t have saved Watson. He was far too arrogant and insecure to let anyone else have control. That’s what suicide is for some, you know. Control. They make the decision, not you, me or anyone else. No, I think of you as part flak-catcher, part probe.’

  Cotton smiled briskly, almost a twitch, but hard enough for a small grunt.

  Ayrtoun blinked. ‘I meant how are you handling the paranoia?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The natural tendency of spies to feel spied on. Everywhere. A waiter brings you a plate – in theory you understand what he’s doing but your eyes check his fingernails, his shoes, if he’s sweating. Is he sweating too little or sweating too much? Your lover brings you a cup of coffee and you wonder what her real motive is. A colleague scratches his cheek in public and you look around to see who he is signalling.’

  Cotton laughed. ‘No. I’ve met Major Briggs and Watson and did not have the impression either was spying on me.’

  ‘Briggs is just a puffed-up amateur flirting with the edges of crime. He can’t imagine that anyone is looking at him.’

  ‘Are they?’

  ‘No need. He can be stopped at any time. The only doubt is how he can be made useful before then. He’s just another self-important little fantasy wandering about, unaware he is waiting for the final edit. Almost all the great and the good end up as queasy little footnotes. The successful get examined for their great flaws. The rest take up charity work or shame.’

  Cotton praised the soup. This was the first time he had ever seen Ayrtoun tired and bitter to no practical effect. His face was flushed and he had already ordered another bottle of wine. Ayrtoun, however, was quick as well as paranoid.

  ‘There’s also the business of having to be a brute. You remember Tibbets, don’t you?’

  Jeremy Tibbets had died alongside Katherine Ward in what had been officially recorded as an automobile accident in December 1945 during a snowstorm in Washington DC. Cotton had been planning to marry Katherine and thus remembered very well.

  ‘Damned stupid, really,’ said Ayrtoun. ‘I was told to pick a code-breaker but not told what for or what kind of characteristics they were looking for in my choice. I still don’t know exactly, but it’s perfectly easy to surmise from Tibbets’s working at Arlington Hall that it involved efforts to decipher Soviet codes.’

  ‘Tibbets told me the Soviets use a one-pad system but had been obliged during the Nazi invasion to repeat some of those pads,’ said Cotton. ‘He was frustrated because mathematics had very little to do with the job, and he was a proud mathematician.’

  Ayrtoun shook his head. ‘He shouldn’t have said a thing, of course.’ He shrugged. ‘Very late last December something happened at Arlington Hall. I think it happened before, but that was when there was a shocked official intake of American breath. I can’t swear to it, of course, but we think they had finally found definite and definitive evidence that the Soviets had not just infiltrated the Manhattan Project – the project was riddled with happy sharers.’

  Ayrtoun made a face, as if unimpressed the Americans had acted surprised when there were enough other indications to make the news expected.

  ‘By early January the Americans were already getting very restless and anxious to react. One of their easier options, of course, was looking at us, the back-door boys, as it were.’ He looked up. ‘How are you getting on with Ed Lowell?’

  ‘We get by, I suppose.’

  ‘You mustn’t underestimate him. Ed’s a very sharp New England tack. By the way, you have something wrong.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Ed’s a Department of Defense man. He was in the Navy. In American intelligence terms almost royalty with all that that entails.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Ed thinks he has more rights and common sense than more recent immigrants. He doesn’t approve of the new agency. He thinks that will be for lethal buffoons in zoot suits and vulgar ties. That doesn’t make him any less hard-nosed.’ Ayrtoun shook his head and indicated a couple in the restaurant.

  The couple was not particularly young. The man was in his thirties, dressed in a brown and white striped suit, and the woman was thin but with a lot of hair. They were preparing to kiss but had held off about six inches and looked somewhere between anticipation and manoeuvres, hers more than his but that may just have been her deep-red lipstick.

  Ayrtoun cleared his throat. ‘Most of our words for awkward things, from sex to subterfuge,’ he said, ‘are from the French. This new American agency, according to my sources, is going to concentrate on covert and clandestine things, instigate operations abroad.’ He shook his head. ‘We invoked the threat of violence and intimidation and did quite well avoiding trouble until we were rumbled, of course, during the war. The stupid side of America is actually going to take it all on, from bribery to assassination. They think it’s their duty. Top dog means you don’t just snarl, you bite.’

  Cotton was getting depressed. Ayrtoun’s grip was going in waves. He had looked bad before, but now the drink had made him look worse, and he was at the stage of sometimes closing his eyes as if that might help him to see better.

  ‘Do you know something?’ he said. ‘If I were a Soviet agent in the British Intelligence Services I’d keep deliberately making mistakes, decent-sized mistakes, that is, and at not too regular intervals. We’re awfully forgiving of mistakes. A slip-up? Rank stupidity? Colleagues rally round. The service matters most. These things happen.’

  Cotton said nothing. Was this what Ayrtoun was doing? Hunting for someone who made mistakes?

  ‘Just look at us here. A comfortable little dinner in Paris, we can appreciate these things. And of course you know where and what Burgundy is . . . but if you heard I was a Soviet agent you’d think, well, the man’s a frightful shit, of course, but steady on. His wife’s a drunk, he’s going that way, but there’s no need to be over-personal and he is under colossal strain from overwork. We all have our problems and flaws. He’s one of us. We really don’t want to think that something as fatuous as an ideology could win out over, well, we can’t use a word like “comradeship” but certainly something similar, to do with our shared class.’

  Though he had enjoyed the soup, Cotton was not feeling particularly chummy. The waiter served the duck.

  ‘Take your own position,’ said Ayrtoun. ‘If you were to marry that Czech girl, people might wince at your choice but would probably be understanding enough not to lift a finger.’

  The duck was good. ‘Who said anything about marrying her?’ said Cotton.

  ‘What if I were to tell you she’s in the Jewish underground, involved in spiriting the pounds the Nazis forged into the Zionist cause?’

  Cotton sighed. ‘I’d say she was the best agent I had ever met.’

  ‘But you can’t rule those things out!’

  ‘Sometimes you can.’

  Ayrtoun shook his head. ‘You’re a confident bastard, aren’t you? Are you thinking of marrying her?’

  ‘I barely know her.’

  ‘Then get rid of her.’

  ‘I’d prefer to get rid of Hans.’

  Ayrtoun shook his head. ‘He’s not entirely your chauffeur.’

  ‘Quite. Is this the wider view you
have pressed on me?’

  Ayrtoun winced, tilted to one side.

  ‘What is it?’ said Cotton.

  ‘I’m drunk,’ said Ayrtoun. ‘Are you chancing your arm?’

  ‘Have you got a point to this?’

  Ayrtoun belched. He blinked and shook his head. He belched again, this time with more evident relief. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I need you to concentrate. I spend far too much time on women. Our new man in Istanbul, for example. He’s a drunk and he’s a depressive. The woman he married last year while she was pregnant with their fourth child, sometimes attacks herself. Cuts herself. Injects herself with her own urine.’

  ‘Christ,’ said Cotton. He stared at his boss.

  ‘You’re not going to have a lot of time for women, whoever they are. They can mess you around. And you have a lot of tracking down to do.’

  For dessert Ayrtoun chose blue cheese. Cotton had the tarte Tatin. When they had both tasted what they had chosen, Ayrtoun smiled.

  ‘We have been infiltrated to an extraordinarily high level. Not just one person.’ He held up a hand and waggled his fingers. ‘Several people.’ He shook his head. ‘Were I a Soviet agent, I’d ignore all that need-to-know stuff and our formal arrangements to ensure secrecy. No need. I’d simply keep an eye on us failing to move on from gentlemanly complacency and keep passing on documents, plans and secrets with something that must feel and look very like impunity. My cover would be other people’s incompetence and another bottle of burgundy. Though claret would do, of course.’

  Cotton enjoyed the coffee, then got Ayrtoun into a taxi.

  When he got back to his hotel, the man on duty spoke to him.

  ‘Colonel Cotton?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would you like some company, sir? Terms are very reasonable at present.’

  Caught off-guard, Cotton stared.

  ‘A little Algerian, delicious. A Chinese girl, very obliging.’

  Cotton held up a hand. ‘No, no,’ he said.

  The concierge was not put off. Cotton was still hearing the literal translation. ‘One even has a black girl from Senegal, very supple. And excellent national produce, of course.’

  Cotton shook his head. ‘Very kind,’ he said in French, ‘but unfortunately I have work to do. Good night.’

  Cotton went up to his room and from there he telephoned his own flat. There was no reply. He telephoned Miss Kelly.

  ‘As discreetly as possible please, what you can find out about a man called Mair. Exports let him go a few months ago, four or five is my information.’

  MI6 was Exports, MI5 Imports.

  ‘May I do that tomorrow morning, sir?’

  ‘Of course. Sorry to have disturbed you, Miss Kelly.’

  23

  ON WEDNESDAY, 5 February Cotton ate a croissant and drank coffee for breakfast and then went shopping. He bought some razor-blades and a toilet case about the size of a National Loaf of bread. He took a taxi to Fauchon and there bought himself food to eat on the plane. In the empty case he fitted two quails, individually and beautifully wrapped, and two croissants. The paper on the quail was secured by a sticker, the croissant paper by thin ribbons. The assistant serving him commiserated.

  ‘Ô monsieur, vous êtes anglais.’ It sounded like sympathy for a chronic condition.

  By ten he was at the airport, by ten thirty, in the air and eating. He ate fresh bread and terrine of pork and pepper, what the assistant had called a soupçon of pheasant with truffles and Armagnac, and a clementine from Corsica.

  At Northolt the customs men were talking amongst themselves.

  ‘How long have you been away, sir?’

  ‘A little less than a day.’

  ‘On business?’

  ‘Government.’

  The customs man looked at him and put a chalk cross on his bag.

  Cotton walked out and got directly into the Triumph.

  ‘What have you been told to do?’ he asked Hans.

  ‘Look for a man called Mair.’

  Cotton got back to his office at about twelve thirty. He told Hans to wait, went upstairs and gave Miss Kelly a croissant and a quail.

  ‘Freshly smuggled this morning,’ he said. ‘Just a taste, I’m afraid.’

  Miss Kelly flushed. ‘Very welcome, sir.’

  She put the food in her desk drawer and brought him a file.

  Paul Mair had been born Paul Morton-Mair in Rome in 1907, and was the son of an Anglican priest. He had chosen to drop the Morton part when he reached twenty-one, had had a number of jobs, including stockbroker when he initially came down from Oxford, had even been a model in the early thirties, had then joined an oil company in 1935 ‘in an unspecified capacity to do with hospitality’ and had been recruited to MI6 in 1941, spending the war mostly in Alexandria in Egypt, but with trips to Beirut in the Lebanon and to Palestine, mostly Jerusalem. He had also visited Baghdad and Basra in Iraq, Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and Istanbul in Turkey. He spoke French and ‘some basic Arabic’.

  ‘What did he do for MI6?’

  ‘That’s a bit unspecified too, sir. I haven’t been in touch with MI6.’

  ‘Right. You have lunch, Miss Kelly.’

  Cotton went out and downstairs to the Triumph and got in.

  ‘They say Mair is very good looking,’ said Hans, as if not sure he was doubtful or envious. ‘Older man type, you know.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  Hans had no trouble with the low-down. ‘He likes slim girls, young girls. He’s a cherry picker. In 1941 a lord who shall remain unnamed had him warned off his fourteen-year-old daughter.’

  ‘Did MI6 get him for statutory rape?’

  ‘In 1941.’

  ‘Stables and doors?’

  ‘Yes. He’s supposed to have contacts in the Arab world, you know, from this pimp job he had with the oil company. Hospitality manager, something like that.’

  ‘What did he do in the Middle East?’

  ‘He had to take a little older. Wives of queers. He doesn’t like too long with one woman. An in-and-out kind of man, unless she’s very young.’

  Cotton had meant Mair’s job in the Middle East; he thought Hans probably knew that. He nodded.

  ‘Didn’t you say you’d been married?’

  ‘Just the once, sir.’

  Cotton looked over at him.

  ‘It was an arrangement,’ said Hans, ‘of mutual advantage. I have had no cause to regret it.’

  ‘Do you know where she is?’

  ‘I have reason to fear she’s in the Russian sector. Leipzig. The divorce papers came from there.’

  Cotton nodded. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘I’d quite like to meet or at least see your Robert. A Tory football director, didn’t you say?’

  ‘I don’t understand, sir.’

  ‘You’ve heard of tit for tat, haven’t you?’

  ‘Mr Ayrtoun gave me my instructions, sir.’

  ‘And what did you find out about the girl in my flat?’

  Hans made a face. ‘Theatre. Poor. You are the younger. Did you know she’s a Jew?’

  Cotton nodded.

  ‘Thank you, Hans. What’s Mair’s status at the moment?’

  Hans leant forward. ‘They have “transitory” on his file.’

  ‘Right,’ said Cotton. ‘You don’t know where he is, do you?’

  ‘No,’ said Hans. ‘I am unsure of his whereabouts.’

  ‘He could even be abroad?’

  ‘Well, exactly,’ said Hans.

  ‘Do you know what a gooseberry is, Hans?’

  Hans frowned. ‘It’s a fruit.’

  ‘Also a chaperone. A third party. A killjoy.’

  Hans grunted. ‘Ein Anstandswauwau?’ He sounded put out.

  ‘If every time I look at a girl you are going to sniff around and report back to Mr Ayrtoun, then you may also find Robert trips on something.’

  Hans blinked. ‘I obey Mr Ayrtoun,’ he said.

  ‘How do you think he’s doing?’ said Cotton. ‘He’s a b
usy man. Too much work. I thought he was looking tired. You might want to think of a plan B if you don’t have one.’

  Cotton tried Miss Kelly.

  ‘What does “transitory” mean on someone’s file?’

  She shook her head. ‘It is not a status I’ve seen or would recognize, sir. There are certain people who are called from time to time but they are usually described as “retained” or “temporarily inactive”.’

  ‘I want to know if Mair is in this country,’ he said. ‘How could I find that out quickly without using MI6 sources?’

  Miss Kelly smiled politely. ‘Are you requesting me to do that for you, sir?’

  Cotton nodded. ‘Yes, I am. If you can, of course.’

  Within half an hour Moira Kelly knocked on his door.

  ‘Totteridge,’ she said. ‘He’s in Totteridge. That’s about eight miles from here. It’s on the Tube, the Northern Line, the penultimate stop, before High Barnet. And he’s renting a house and used the name Paul Morton on the six-month lease.’

  Cotton smiled. ‘Excellent. I’m very impressed. How—?’

  Moira was pleased. ‘I tried the name Mair and thought I should include Morton and Morton-Mair. He needs a telephone. He’s too recent to be in the telephone book but there are records and bills. The telephone people are helpful, you know. His bank is Barclays. From his garage bills he would appear to have a Lagonda motor car.’

  Cotton took down the address and contacted Hans.

  ‘You believe Miss Hockey-sticks?’

  Hans’s English was coming on. ‘You’re joking,’ said Cotton.

  24

  IN TOTTERIDGE they found a large family house, a late twenties or early thirties mix of mock Tudor and Arts and Crafts. It had not snowed for a couple of days but the night felt icy and bleak when they got out of the Triumph. The curtains in a bay window were drawn and a little light showed. To the right under the garage door was a sluggish little flicker of blue. Cotton stopped and pointed.

  ‘For the Lagonda,’ whispered Hans. ‘Paraffin lamp under the car to stop freezing.’

  Paul Mair was not the kind of man to keep the path cleared. Hans slipped and grabbed at Cotton.