Autumn in Oxford: A Novel

by Alex Rosenberg

  “Is that where Beatrice Russell comes in?” Tom was beginning to see how this might work. Liz had fallen silent.

  “Yes. She’ll drive you two to Dover or Folkstone or maybe Harwich. You should be out of Britain on fake passports by the time the people watching my place in St. John’s Wood lose patience and charge in.”

  Now both Liz and Tom spoke, each asking different questions.

  Tom said, “What passports?”

  Liz asked the question she had swallowed a few minutes before. “What about you?”

  “Whose question first?” Alice asked as she slid behind her desk. There she opened the central drawer, from which she withdrew two British passports. With a double-edged razor, she began removing a picture from one of them, and then using a tweezers carefully teased up the eyelet rivet holding it down to the page.

  “You look like you’re a professional, Alice,” Liz observed.

  “These are my parents’ passports. They were very young when they married and still young when they died. On the Andrea Doria two years ago. Bodies never recovered; passports were being held by the purser of the ship.” Liz and Tom needed no reminder. The Italian liner had sunk two summers before, after colliding with a Swedish ship, the Stockholm, in the North Atlantic. Alice set Tom’s freshly dried and trimmed photo into place. “Your picture should just about have drip-dried sufficiently to move to the dryer, Liz,” she said absently as she concentrated on gluing Tom’s photo and resetting its eyelet rivet. “No death certificates in the United Kingdom. These passports should be good for years.” She took out a bottle of India ink and an old-fashioned steel-nibbed pen. “The date stamp over the photo shouldn’t be very difficult for a dab hand.” She finished it and held it out the length of her arm. “Pretty good.” She passed it to Tom and returned to the darkroom to move Liz’s photo to the print dryer.

  Now my question, Alice, thought Liz as Alice returned. “We might make it, but only because you are walking into a deathtrap for us. How are you getting out?”

  “Oh, I’ll have a much surer way out than you two. Remember how you introduced yourself to Feklisov, Liz, as Mrs. Carton? Well, ‘It’s a far, far better thing that I do . . . ’” She laughed out loud. “I’m the Sydney Carton of this story, except not so heroic.”

  “What are you talking about?” Liz was angry. Tom was silent, trying to piece the conversations together.

  “Right; you’ve seen my arm, Liz. Don’t bother to deny it. Rather nice of you in fact never to mention that you suspect I’m some sort of dope fiend.” She pulled up her sleeve for Tom, who looked at the track marks of injections. “Liz’s noticed them more than once. She thinks I’m an addict.” She turned to face Liz. “Well, you’re right.” She turned her arm, showing the tracery of veins and injection sites to Liz. “I’m dying. Inoperable uterine cancer. Detected about eighteen months ago. It’s starting to give me a lot of pain. The doctors told me that would be the sign that the terminal part of the disease had begun. My GP put me on morphine—self-administered—three days before you walked into my office, Liz. This case was the best thing you could ever have done for me.”

  “You’ve been rushing round for me for weeks while you’ve been . . . dying? And in pain?” Tom was appalled.

  Now Liz understood that first response Alice had made to her predicament: “Excellent!”

  “Doing exactly what I’ve wanted to do. You were my last client, and I’ve been absorbed every minute. Just the sort of thing I love doing. It’s made the time pass so quickly I’ve hardly needed any of the morphine the last week. I owe you two a great deal.”

  “For what?” Liz still sounded angry.

  Alice turned and grabbed both of Liz’s arms. “Try sitting round waiting to die, with no family and nothing in your life but the psychological need to work.” She relented and smiled. “Then you two came along. Suddenly I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself. I had an answer to the question of what I wanted to do with my last days.”

  The doorbell rang. Alice rose. “That must be Beatrice.” As she left the office, she turned back. “I’ll have the last laugh!”

  Liz and Tom sat staring at each other after she’d gone. They had no words at first.

  Then Tom spoke. “Do you believe her?”

  Liz nodded. She went on, resignation replacing the anger in her tone. “I’ve seen some signs of it—along with the injection tracks. All business, she’s been. No sign of interest in anything else. Besides, that’s the kind of person she is. Nothing but straight talk.” They rose and came out of the small office.

  Beatrice Russell was sitting on the small chesterfield in the waiting room of the office, with Alice across from her. Her wet mackintosh and dripping umbrella were beside her, along with a briefcase like Liz’s. Russell looked up at Liz, saw Tom, smiled, and then rose. She took a step towards Tom and held out both hands. “You’re Tom Wrought. I feel I know you quite well, though we’ve met just the once, in August or September, wasn’t it?

  “Yes, that’s right.” He held her hands while he said, “Thank you.” She knew what he was thanking her for and smiled.

  Alice brought everyone back to business. “I’ve put Beatrice in the picture. In a few minutes, I will change and go. Then you three’ll go out the back. Beatrice will drive you to a channel port and then return the car to the Oxford railway station car park. Approximately where had you parked it, Liz?”

  “Always the same place, under the light stanchion closest to Botley Road.”

  Alice looked at Beatrice Russell. “Good; see that you repark it there if you can, dear.” The latter signalled her understanding. Alice picked up the bag from Burton’s and headed towards her office. “Now excuse me whilst I finish Liz’s passport and change.” She closed the door.

  The three sat in the waiting area. No one knew what to say. Liz and Tom were silently contemplating Alice Silverstone’s mortality. Beatrice Russell was worried about losing Liz. Noticing an electric kettle on a sideboard, she looked at the other two and brightly said, “Tea, anyone?” Both shook their heads. “Well, I need a cup.” Russell moved to the counter and busied herself with the impedimenta. By the time the cup was ready to drink, an urchinlike figure in a tweed flat cap had emerged from Alice’s office. He—it looked like a young man—was wearing a corduroy jacket over grey pants, men’s oxfords, with a woollen tie under the collar of a blue twill shirt. Alice’s hair was hidden in the cap.

  Tom looked her up and down. “Newsboy? Jockey? Bookie’s tout?”

  “Thanks.” Alice smiled briefly and passed Liz her passport. “Now, Tom, Liz, let’s work out our script. Remember, you’re talking from 88 Hamilton Terrace, and I am talking from Red Lion Square. I will call you, but you must answer first, as though you called me. You say something like ‘Hello, is that you, Miss Silverstone? When will you get here?’ I’ll say, ‘I’m at my office. I’ll be there in thirty minutes.’”

  “I understand. Shall I pass you on to Liz? That’ll convince whoever is tapping the line that she is with me in St. John’s Wood.”

  “Good idea. I’ll ask to speak to you, Liz. You get on the phone, and I’ll ask you to feed the cat.” She looked at Liz. “There is no cat.” She thought for a moment and went back to her office. Coming back out with a wad of bank notes, she handed them to Liz. “It’s a fair bit of money. I won’t be needing it.”

  Liz began to count it. “There must be five hundred pounds here.” She’d never held that much cash in her hand.

  “Actually six hundred and seventy-five. Wish I had more. It’s going to have to tide you over for a while. You see, I won’t know where you will be. I don’t want to know. And I probably won’t have time to get you more.” Tom was about to remonstrate. But one knowing, bleak glance from Liz silenced him. “Alright. I’m on my way.” She turned to Russell. “As soon as we’ve finished talking on the phone, Beatrice, you’ll have to start driving them to the coast. You want to time your arrival to catch a ferry at the last minute. Here’s a Thomas Cook’
s Continental Timetable.” Alice handed Beatrice a softcover book that looked like a pocket phone directory.

  She was about to open the front door of the office when the doorbell began to ring. It was a short ring. They froze. Then another, longer, insistent. Alice shrugged her shoulders and went to the door. Opening it, she saw Alexandr Feklisov standing on the step, holding an umbrella against the heavy rain, smiling.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Please let me in. It is important.” Feklisov spoke in a calm, low voice. Alice stepped back and opened the door. He shook out his umbrella and placed it in the stand next to the door, took off his hat, and came into the middle of the vestibule. None of the others said a word.

  Hearing no greeting, he began, “I have been looking for you for most of the day, Miss Silverstone. I managed to follow you to Brixton Prison. But then you never came out.” He gave Alice a look of admiration.

  “I never spotted you either, going there.” Alice’s grin was almost conspiratorial.

  Feklisov bowed slightly. “I spent a long time watching the prison gate before I realized what you had done.” He turned to the others. “I’m afraid you can’t delay much longer. I think the Americans are already here in the quarter, uh, the neighbourhood.” Then he looked at Tom, put out his hand, smiled, and said, “Mr. Wrought, I am very glad to meet you. Alexandr Feklisov, Soviet commercial attaché. We have never met, but we had mutual acquaintances back in New York City.”

  Tom put out his hand, and Feklisov grasped it firmly. It seemed to Tom to be an American handshake. Then he said, “Should I be glad to meet you, Mr. Feklisov?”

  “Oh, yes. If you and Mrs. Spencer want to get out of here with your lives.” He turned to Alice. “What was your plan?”

  “Surely you don’t expect me to tell you, Mr. Feklisov?” She looked surprised. “You shouldn’t even want to know if you are really here to help.”

  “I am sorry, Miss Silverstone. But you don’t understand. I am a professional at these matters. You are, what? Perhaps a gifted amateur?” Without menace he continued, “We could have rolled you up anytime we wanted, no?”

  Alice wasn’t going to trust him. How much to tell? she wondered. Well, he’s here in front of us. He can certainly track us to St. John’s Wood if he wants. Maybe he’s got other people in the square or in the alley with a car. “Well, Mr. Feklisov, we’re going to make everyone think we’re at my place. That’ll give Tom and Liz a chance to escape.” She laid out her plan.

  “It is ingenious, I will grant. But it probably won’t work.”

  Alice looked at him intently. “Why not?”

  “First, you are relying on the notion that the people tapping the line can’t detect the direction of the vocal signals. If they can tell that you are in St. John’s Wood while Mr. Wrought and Mrs. Spencer are here, the scheme will immediately collapse.” The three others were silent. “Of course, you may be lucky. If it is the Americans and they are operating alone, it may work. If it is the British, at the post office telephone banks, they can probably tell the signals’ directions.”

  Liz asked the obvious question. “Do you have a better plan?”

  Feklisov ignored her question. “You have a more difficult problem.” Feklisov looked at Liz. “The Brits—Hollis, MI5—know what kind of a car you drive, and they have your MOT.” He looked towards Tom and explained, “The licence plate numbers. If MI5 already here or the Americans here tell them, well then, you two”—he nodded towards Liz and Tom—“will probably be stopped before you get to the coast. Even if they don’t stop you, they will find your car and know where you have gone.”

  Tom and Liz nodded. Alice sounded resentful of his objections. “Any other problems, Mr. Feklisov?”

  “Yes, actually. Your passports. You’ll need them to board a ferry. You’ll need them at even the meanest hotel on the Continent. If they are not detected at a channel port, MI5 will certainly be able to reach into France or Belgium, Holland, anywhere, and start tracking you from the hotel police forms.”

  Here Alice smiled. “We’ve got that covered, Mr. Feklisov.”

  “Good.” He grinned back. “Don’t tell me more.”

  “No fear.” Alice was sarcastic. “More problems?”

  “One more. And it is a very serious problem.” The others were silent. “Besides the Brits and the Americans, there is a third service interested in you, Mr. Wrought, and now interested in your friends too. My service, the KGB.”

  “But you said you came to help us.” Liz was ashen.

  Alice was, however, defiant. “Besides, if you betray us, or harm us, everything about the Krogers will come out.”

  “True, but the Krogers are not my people’s concern at all. Just now they don’t even know that you have blown the Krogers’ cover.”

  “Why not?” Alice was surprised.

  “Because I have not told them.” The others seemed slightly stunned. “Moscow Centre is concerned about saving its mole in MI5 and its channel to the FBI. They need them in our war against the CIA. They will certainly want to dispose of you if that will save Hollis. And by now Hollis has told the Residentura you are at liberty.”

  Beatrice Russell interrupted. “Residentura, what is that?”

  “Oh, it’s the intelligence unit at each Russian embassy,” Feklisov explained. Beatrice nodded. “I am the head of the London Residentura, but there are several others in it.”

  “I don’t follow, Mr. Feklisov.” It was Alice again. “If we don’t survive, the Krogers will certainly be blown by the records I’ve left. So, you’d better call off your people at least.”

  “But you don’t understand, Miss Silverstone. As I said, the rest of the Residentura doesn’t even know about the Krogers’ problem. We’ve been ordered to dispose of Mr. Wrought because he knows about Hoover’s alliance with us against the CIA. But if we succeed, your dead bodies—Mr. Wrought’s and Miss Silverstone’s—will eventually lead a good policeman to the Krogers. It is difficult to hide three bodies, especially if other people are looking for them, and the CID has many very good policemen.”

  “So, you’re willing to betray your own service, Mr. Feklisov?” Alice asked the lawyer’s obvious question. “Why?”

  “The Krogers are important to me, more important to me than my service’s double agent in MI5, Sir Roger Hollis. That’s one reason why I want to help you get out.”

  Tom was listening. “Is there another?”

  Feklisov wasn’t listening. He was going on. Evidently he needed to talk. “I’ve known Peter and Helen Kroger for more than twenty years. I knew them in America when they were the Cohens. When you work with people that long, they begin to mean something to you. We were young together, in Spain before the war. Then we worked for ten years in New York. I don’t want to see them in prison here. They don’t want to go back to the Soviet Union. So I am going to do what it takes to keep them out of the hands of your people as well as ours.”

  Alice was icy. “We don’t belong to MI5.”

  “Or the FBI,” Tom added quietly.

  “Which brings me to the other reason I’m going to help you, Mr. Wrought.” Looking at Tom, the Russian’s eyes glistened slightly.

  Is he going to cry? The thought passed through Liz’s mind.

  Feklisov’s voice quavered slightly. “You may put it down as a private gesture of revenge, Mr. Wrought. Or, if you like, a large reward for a small favour you have done me.”

  “What is that, Mr. Feklisov?”

  “In your newspaper article, you’ve let the world know that J. Edgar Hoover is the killer of an innocent woman and the maker of orphans. This is my personal and private gesture of thanks to you for telling the world. I was Julie Rosenberg’s control, so I knew it. Hoover knew it. Now the world may come to know it.”

  Tom looked suddenly world-weary. “Don’t bet on it.”

  “It’s the best I can do for their children.” Then he looked at Liz. “And for yours, Mrs. Spencer.”

  The three others exchan
ged glances. Beatrice Russell searched the faces of the other two. She could see that they now believed the Russian spy. Somehow she could not yet bring herself to do so. But no one was asking her, and she decided to keep her own counsel.

  “So, you’re really going to help us?” Liz spoke with real warmth.

  “What are you going to do?” Alice was insistent.

  “Increase their chances of escape quite considerably.” He looked at Tom and Liz. “That is what I am going to do, Miss Silverstone.”

  All three uttered the same word. “How?”

  “Here is what I propose. We shall use all of your plan.” He looked at Alice to reassure her. “But we shall complicate it. You will leave dressed as you are—quite fetching, actually—for St. John’s Wood. When you call, Mr. Wrought and Mrs. Spencer will have that reverse conversation with you, Miss Silverstone. They will pretend to be there, in St. John’s Wood, while you pretend to be here. Perhaps it will briefly delay whoever is listening. Then Mrs. Russell and I will exchange coats and hats with Mrs. Spencer and Mr. Wrought. We will leave by the front door, turning off the lights. We will walk round to the lane where Mrs. Spencer’s car is parked and drive it to Oxford. Ten minutes later, you two”—he looked towards Tom and Liz—“will leave by the rear, dressed in my coat and hat and Mrs. Russell’s, and find my car.” He pulled out an ignition key. “It’s a black Wolseley, parked two streets from here, in Jockey’s Field, next to Grey’s Inn. You will drive this car to whatever channel crossing you prefer.” He put up a hand. “Don’t tell me which.” He saw a look of relief on their faces. “The car has been scrubbed by my service and cannot be traced to any actual person. When the police find it, there will be no link to me—or you.” Finally, he looked round. “Agreed?”

  Everyone nodded.

  Alice broke the silence. “Now it’s time for me to leave.” It was going to be alright. Tom and Liz would make it. As the realization dawned and the uncertainty waned, Alice’s emotions were being overtaken by other sensations. She could feel the burn inside spreading as her anxiety receded. She knew she had to get back to Hamilton Terrace for the morphine. Pulling down her flat cap, Alice shook Tom’s hand, hugged Liz, and clasped the hands of Beatrice Russell. Finally she took Feklisov’s hands in hers and said, “Thank you,” adding “comrade” with an inflection of doubt. Feklisov pulled her to him with a hug that lasted several seconds. Then Alice slipped out the door.