The Factory

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘No! We don’t know if there’s any cause to worry.’

  ‘Why give the warning then?’

  ‘So that you’d be prepared if it did happen: give thought to a replacement.’

  ‘Why do you think you might be blown?’

  Tanya looked away, down into her coffee cup, nibbling her bottom lip. ‘Two informants have disappeared. And a courier.’

  ‘They’ve been picked up,’ insisted Whitehead at once.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said the woman, in weak defence. ‘Two were seamen: that was why they were so good, because they could travel. The courier, too. He worked for the railways. All of them could be away on unexpected trips.’

  ‘How often before have there been unexpected trips that took all three away at the same time?’ demanded Whitehead.

  Tanya remained looking away from him. ‘Never,’ she admitted.

  ‘It’s over,’ he persisted. ‘They’ll talk. If they haven’t yet they will soon. They’ll be questioned by psychologists, and chemicals and drugs will be used and they won’t be able to stop themselves talking, no matter how hard they try. You’ve got to get out.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Tanya, her voice indistinct.

  ‘What is there to understand!’ demanded Whitehead with growing impatience. ‘You haven’t any choice.’

  ‘I can’t!’

  Dear God, don’t let me have to make a decision, thought Whitehead. He reached across the stained tablecloth and said: ‘You haven’t an argument: any reason to fight against it. I know how you feel for your country. How difficult it is to leave it. But you must. It’s madness to stay. Suicide.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she said again.

  ‘You’re not making sense, Tanya. You’re being stupid.’

  She looked directly at him at last, her eyes filmed with tears. ‘I’m trapped,’ she said.

  ‘Trapped how?’

  Tanya stayed staring at him for several moments, apparently reaching a decision. At last she got to her feet and said: ‘Come.’

  It seemed a long walk, keeping once more to narrow alleys and roads, but then Whitehead realized they were frequently backtracking on themselves while Tanya checked for any pursuit. He had instinctively been checking as well and was sure they weren’t followed. Despite the detours he realized they were gradually coming closer and closer to the waterfront. The house they finally entered was very near the harbour: Whitehead could hear gulls and the groan of ships’ sirens.

  The door from the street led directly into a kitchen and Whitehead started back in instant alarm at the sound of movement when he entered. At once he was embarrassed at his reaction to the child who stood before him. She was a girl, blonde and very pretty, with large, serious eyes. Whitehead guessed her to be about twelve years old.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Tanya to the girl. ‘He’s a friend. It’s all right.’

  To Whitehead she said: ‘This is my daughter, Natasha.’

  The way to relieve the headache would have been to take a drink – maybe two – from the bottle in his bottom left-hand drawer but the Director General held back from doing so, challenging his own resistance and determined to endure the discomfort. He still looked up irritably when his deputy, Jeremy Thurlow, entered the room from his adjoining office. ‘What is it?’ demanded Bell.

  Thurlow, a stick-thin, unemotional man, put a sheet of paper on the desk in front of the Director General. ‘It’s the communication code agreed between the NATO countries for the forthcoming defence ministers’ meeting in Brussels. Our interception people picked it up being relayed to Moscow.’

  ‘It’s low priority,’ pointed out Bell. ‘Every attending country has a copy. It could have come from a dozen sources.’

  ‘It was being relayed from the Soviet embassy here,’ rejoined Thurlow, ‘so it came from London. There were three copies in England. We had one of them.’

  ‘Which leaves two other sources from which a leak could have come,’ retorted Bell. When the hell was he going to get a lead to who was doing it?

  The fish was surprisingly good but the only vegetable was potato, old and black. Conversation was difficult, although Whitehead’s Russian was fluent. Occasionally, defiantly, Natasha addressed her mother in Latvian, although halfway through the evening the child looked curiously at him and said: ‘You’re not a born Russian, are you? You learned the language somewhere, like I have to learn it at school.’

  ‘I’m from a long way away,’ avoided Whitehead.

  The coffee, after Natasha had gone to bed, was very weak and came from a tin, not fresh. Tanya said: ‘You mustn’t worry about her telling anyone you’ve been here. Your not being Russian is a protection.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell London about her?’

  Tanya shrugged. ‘It didn’t seem important, not until now.’

  ‘What else have you held back?’

  ‘A lot, I suppose.’

  ‘So tell me now.’

  Tanya sighed, both hands around her coffee cup. At last she said: ‘Vadim … he was Natasha’s father … was the real nationalist. He would have been a recognized leader now, if he’d lived. But he didn’t. The KGB arrested him about six years ago, before the Gorbachev changes. He was tried on charges of endangering the state – their state, not ours – and he was exiled to Siberia. He’d never been strong. He only lasted two years. I never saw him, from the day he was sentenced. That is why I took over, even offered myself to London. To get revenge, however I could. I never thought anything could happen to me, like it did to Vadim. That was stupid, I know. It just didn’t …’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘… so now you’re trapped,’ picked up Whitehead, agreeing to Tanya’s own assessment. There was no question of his shooting her: objectively he accepted there never had been.

  ‘Aren’t I?’ she said, almost defiantly.

  As he had in the café, for emphasis, he reached across the table for her hand; it was hard and calloused, the hand of a woman who worked. Whitehead said: ‘Tanya, now listen to me. I told you in the café what would happen to the others. How they’d eventually break and identify you. And when you’re arrested and undergo the same sort of questioning you’ll talk, too. You’ll give all the names you know and they’ll give all the names they know and it’ll go on until everyone is rounded up so that there isn’t a network any more. Until it’s smashed. But for you it won’t end there. Whatever the new freedoms, there’ll be a trial, like there was with Vadim. And you’ll lose Natasha. Lose everything.’

  Tears were flooding down Tanya’s face. Pleadingly she grasped his hands in return and said: ‘I know! I know all of that. But what can I do? You surely don’t expect me to run with you on the passport you brought in! Actually abandon her!’

  ‘No,’ accepted Whitehead soothingly. ‘I don’t expect you to do that.’

  ‘What then? Tell me what to do, to keep us both safe!’

  Whitehead wished he knew. The idea of taking Tanya out on a British passport was desperate enough: it would never have succeeded trying to get Natasha out the same way so it hardly mattered that the woman had not told them of the child’s existence. He said: ‘I need to think.’

  ‘So you haven’t a plan?’ she accused at once.

  ‘No,’ he said honestly. ‘Not at the moment.’ The Director General had warned it might be an impossible mission, he recalled. It had become just that.

  The idea came as Whitehead made his way back through the narrow side roads of Liepaja from Tanya’s house to his hotel. It was a desperate one – but then everything about what he was now trying to achieve was desperate – and at that time relied upon so many uncertainties that considering it any further, in detail, was pointless. Back at the hotel, lying on damply cold sheets behind windows that rattled with the passing of every vehicle, he tried to think of something better, something that had a greater chance of success. And couldn’t. Impossible, he thought again, able in his mind to hear the tone of voice in which the Director
General had spoken.

  He’d asked Tanya to meet him in the morning, not knowing when they parted if there would be any practical reason for the encounter, but he was glad of the precaution because now he needed all the time available, and if the KGB were closing in upon Tanya that was becoming more limited by the minute. She had chosen the place, that part of the harbour where a seawall stretched out to form an inner protection for the fishing boats and trawlers against the Baltic storms.

  She was there ahead of him and as he approached Whitehead was aware of a lot of passing people acknowledging and recognizing her. He was pleased: there’d been too many for there to be a KGB entrapment in a place like Liepaja, with everyone knowing everyone else.

  ‘Well?’ she greeted him. She leaned on the wall, actually gazing out towards the West.

  ‘The two informants who were seized? They were fishermen, you said?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Tanya doubtfully.

  ‘What’s your support, among sailors?’

  The woman shrugged, counting the options. ‘Sporadic. Disloyal: loyal. Bad: good. Why?’

  ‘What chance would we have, the three of us, you, me and Natasha, getting away from here by boat? Managing to cross the Baltic to Sweden?’

  ‘None,’ said Olga, positively and at once. ‘Have you any idea of the net that Soviet naval patrols put between us and the West? It’s absolute. Do you imagine I wouldn’t have thought of it, if it were possible?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Whitehead. ‘But net against what?’

  ‘Against a boat – anything – crossing to Sweden!’ said the woman, exasperated. ‘What are we talking about?’

  ‘Many boats,’ said Whitehead simply.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she protested.

  ‘The Soviet patrols are against one vessel, obviously making for the West. What about a small fleet of fishing vessels, apparently trawling in no particular direction but all the while actually moving gradually westwards? And not right to Sweden: the island of Gotland is much closer.’

  Tanya looked at him doubtfully. ‘Too many people,’ she said. ‘I told you. Some we could rely on, some we couldn’t. Someone would expose us.’

  ‘Give me a figure,’ demanded Whitehead. ‘How many fishing boat captains could you trust absolutely? Don’t bother about the crews.’

  ‘Seven. Maybe eight,’ said Tanya, doubtful still.

  ‘Enough,’ said Whitehead. ‘Only they’ll know what’s really happening. And we’ll swap constantly, once we’re at sea, from boat to boat so that we’re never long enough on one vessel to incriminate anyone. If there is any Soviet naval interception it won’t be of every fishing boat, will it?’

  ‘You’re asking a lot of them.’

  ‘You’re owed a lot, like Vadim was. Make an approach, to those you can trust. For tonight.’

  ‘Tonight!’

  ‘There’s nothing to stay for except arrest and imprisonment and losing Natasha.’

  Only six agreed to help. It was late afternoon before Tanya came back from the port, dragging her feet with weariness and disappointment. She said: ‘The two fishermen I told you about? They have been arrested. Everyone’s frightened.’

  ‘Any doubts now about getting away?’

  ‘Just frightened, like the rest,’ said Tanya.

  Natasha was clearly frightened too, although they did not tell her everything and certainly not that she was leaving her home for ever. Luggage was impossible, of course. Tanya squeezed into a handbag a photograph of Vadim and another of him with herself and Natasha. With childlike intuition Natasha asked if she could take something and chose a toy bear that Vadim had bought her, the year of his arrest. At the moment of leaving, Tanya gazed longingly around the tiny house and Natasha said: ‘I don’t want to go!’

  ‘I don’t want to either,’ said Tanya. ‘We must.’

  As always they used the alleys to approach the port and they were practically at the entry gate before they came upon the arc-lighted roadblock, soldiers, plainclothes KGB men and vehicles sealing everything off.

  Tanya turned, horrified, towards Whitehead and said: ‘Someone talked: someone who refused to help today.’

  ‘It’s got to be this way,’ insisted Whitehead when he finished telling her what he was going to do.

  ‘You can’t!’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Do exactly as I say. When you get ashore at Gotland go to the British consul. Show him the British passport and tell him to contact London. Its number will be recognized. Someone will come to get you.’

  ‘Please don’t!’

  ‘Remember,’ insisted Whitehead. ‘Don’t stand and watch. As soon as everything starts, get through that gate.’

  ‘I don’t …’ started Tanya but Whitehead was already moving, briefly retreating up the alley to emerge from another exit further along the main port road, striding obviously towards the dock gate. About twenty yards from the roadblock but in full view of it he suddenly stopped, appearing uncertain. Then he turned, hesitated again, and began to run.

  ‘There!’ came a shout from someone at the barrier. ‘He’s running, there!’

  There was a moment of inactivity. Then the chase began, soldiers and plain-clothes men on foot, the roadblocking vehicles reversing and accelerating away, sirens blaring.

  ‘Come on,’ said Tanya to her daughter.

  ‘How’s Natasha?’ asked the Director General politely. He’d had tea served and took some himself, although he wanted something stronger.

  ‘Bewildered,’ said Tanya. She felt uncomfortable in such an impressive office. She thought the building ugly, though, like a factory.

  ‘We’re glad you made the crossing safely.’

  ‘We were lucky. It was a calm night and we never saw a naval patrol,’ said Tanya. She added: ‘Is there any news?’

  Bell shook his head. ‘There’ll have to be, soon. We can’t inquire, of course. That would confirm he was on an official mission.’

  ‘I pray he won’t be hurt: physically hurt, I mean.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Bell.

  ‘It’s all very plausible and I agree all your papers are in order,’ said the KGB interrogator. ‘But I don’t believe a word you’ve told me. I want to know the truth. I want to know what you were doing at Liepaja and why you staged that stupid running away trick.’

  Whitehead, who was sagged with fatigue because they hadn’t let him sleep since his seizure, tried to straighten in his hard chair. ‘Truth,’ he said with difficulty. ‘I’ve told the truth.’

  ‘No you haven’t,’ said the interrogator. ‘But I’ll find out the truth. I always do. You won’t be able to resist, not in the end.’

  Whitehead strained up to focus fully on the man. Which of them would win, he wondered.

  4

  The Assassin

  One of the many unique institutions of London is its gentlemen’s clubs. They are invariably wood-panelled, leather-chaired places in fine, historic mansions from which, until a recent Act of Parliament ruling that the sexes are equal, women were prohibited. To become a member takes years and the highest recommendation; to be refused or expelled is to be disgraced. They are roughly divided among the professions. There is a club for travellers and a club for lawyers. The club for artists and writers and actors is the Garrick, in London’s Covent Garden.

  An adequate professional description for officials of the country’s intelligence service is difficult – they certainly wouldn’t accept spy – and there are hardly enough to support the expense of a club of their own. Over the years, for reasons no one can any longer remember, they have gravitated towards the Garrick. It was here that Samuel Bell chose to lunch with Sir William Hoare, who also had a profession difficult to describe. He was attached to the Foreign Office, which controls overseas intelligence, so nominally he was a diplomat. His true function was liaison between all espionage agencies.

  ‘You talked of a problem?’ queried Bell at once. They were in the jostled bar, with pre-lunch whiskies.
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  ‘I hope I’m being overcautious,’ said Hoare. He was a stooped but immaculate man, white-haired and dark-suited, with a soft, almost apologetic voice. ‘Does the name Valentin Shidak mean anything to you?’

  For a few seconds it didn’t and then Bell remembered. He said: ‘Russian dissident. Allowed to leave the Soviet Union about five years ago. Since which time he’s lectured and broadcast on the evils of Moscow.’ Bell was glad of the recollection: recently, especially after a little too much to drink, he’d found his memory wasn’t so good.

  Hoare nodded. ‘We’ve used him, too. Two branches of our intelligence, at least.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ insisted Bell. He had an inherent distrust of defectors and dissidents.

  ‘I know,’ said Hoare. ‘I still felt you should be warned. He’s disappeared.’

  ‘Why the concern?’

  ‘The other intelligence people stopped using him about a year ago because he had become a fanatic. Very unreliable. Began talking about killing people: making examples.’

  ‘That makes me very glad I didn’t use him,’ said Bell sincerely.

  ‘In two weeks’ time there’s an official Soviet visit to London, headed by Alexei Palov. He’s an old-timer, been around long before Gorbachev came to power. Palov was high up in the Interior Ministry when Shidak was jailed. He’s always blamed Palov, personally.’

  ‘What connection can there be between Shidak’s disappearance and Palov coming here?’

  ‘Shidak lived in this country with an English girl, Alice Irving. It was she who reported him missing. She says he’d become very agitated recently, when he learned of Palov’s visit …’ Hoare paused. Then he said: ‘It’s not just Shidak who’s missing. We didn’t know it but he collected guns. Two, an American M-16 rifle and a Colt automatic, aren’t in the collection any more.’

  The Director General pushed his drink aside, for once not wanting it. ‘You think Shidak is planning an assassination!’

  ‘I’d like not to,’ said Hoare. ‘Can you imagine the repercussions if he did? Especially if it were discovered that he has had some connection with our intelligence services. We want him found and locked up, throughout the time the Russians are here.’