The Factory

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘Not my department,’ Bell tried to avoid. ‘We’re involved overseas.’

  ‘I can’t risk a link with people he’s already been associated with, can I?’ argued Hoare. ‘It’s got to be an agency that’s been completely uninvolved until now. Which means you.’

  George Fowler was a plump, rosy-cheeked, usually smiling man who looked the sort of person who entertained with conjuring tricks at children’s parties, which he sometimes did: he had four grandchildren and ran a scout troop near his home in Richmond. He was one of Bell’s longest serving and most trusted operatives.

  Fowler wasn’t smiling today. He listened grave-faced as the Director General recounted his lunchtime meeting with the Foreign Office diplomat and at the end said: ‘And all I’ve got is two weeks!’

  ‘I know it isn’t going to be easy. I wish it were.’

  ‘Are we going to warn the Russians?’

  ‘Only if we have to. Britain is still officially responsible for Soviet security while they’re in the country, whether we tell them or not.’

  ‘Any leads at all?’

  The Director General shook his head. ‘I can’t think of any, apart from the girl.’

  ‘Shidak’s armed?’ queried Fowler.

  Bell anticipated the reason for the question. ‘You should be, too,’ he agreed.

  ‘What if it comes to a confrontation?’

  ‘Kill him before he kills you,’ ordered Bell at once.

  The girl who opened the door to him reminded Fowler of his own daughter, just after she had left university and embraced causes like nuclear disarmament and environmental protection. Alice Irving wore a long skirt and an enveloping sweater. Her hair was a tangle of ringlets, which was a carefully contrived style, not neglect, and there was no make-up. She regarded him hostilely, an automatic reaction to authority.

  ‘I’ve told the police everything I know,’ she said. She remained at the door of the flat in London’s Wandsworth, not inviting him in.

  Fowler gave her one of his best smiles and said: ‘I really want to find him. I’d appreciate your going through it again, although I know it’s a bore.’

  ‘Maybe he just got fed up with me,’ said Alice, depressed.

  ‘I don’t think that’s likely, do you?’ flattered Fowler.

  The girl smiled, despite herself. ‘I suppose you’d better come in.’

  The interior of the apartment was like his daughter’s had been, too. There was just one main room, a coverlet thrown over the bed to provide a daytime couch and posters of pop stars and better-known political prisoners like Nelson Mandela on the walls. Off the main room was an open door to a kitchen and a closed one which he presumed led to the bathroom. He accepted the offered coffee, sat in the one easy chair and said: ‘According to one report I’ve had Shidak collected guns?’

  Jane nodded. ‘Yes.’

  Fowler looked around the room. ‘Where? There’s not a lot of space.’

  The girl reached beneath the bed and hauled out a large suitcase. ‘Here.’

  ‘People who collect things usually like them to be displayed,’ said Fowler.

  ‘He didn’t seem to want to do that,’ she said. ‘He didn’t actually call it his collection. He said it was for protection: because of who and what he’d been in Russia, before he came here.’

  Fowler nodded towards the case. ‘Is it empty now?’

  In answer Alice opened the case. It contained a twelve-bore shotgun and a target pistol. There were also boxes of ammunition.

  ‘And he took the M-16 and a Colt automatic? With ammunition?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said the girl. ‘He always had bullets for them and I can’t find them now.’

  ‘It’s against the law in England to have guns like that,’ reminded Fowler. ‘They can’t be bought in shops. Where did Shidak get them, as well as ammunition?’

  Alice shrugged. ‘I never knew. He had them before we started living together.’

  ‘Is this your flat? Or his?’

  ‘Mine. Before he moved in here he used to live in a room in Fulham.’

  ‘By himself?’

  ‘I think so. I never asked questions about his life before we were together, apart from what he chose to tell me about Russia. He never asked about mine.’

  ‘Did he belong to a gun club: a place where he could practise firing guns?’

  The girl nodded again. ‘Two. One in Harrow, another in Hampstead.’ She got up and rummaged through a drawer, finally straightening holding two membership cards. ‘Here are the addresses,’ she said.

  ‘Those his things?’ questioned Fowler, indicating the drawer.

  ‘Some of them.’

  ‘What about his clothes?’

  Alice pointed to a closet against the far wall. ‘All there.’

  ‘So he’s hardly walked out and left you, has he? He would have taken his clothes, surely?’

  ‘That’s what I keep telling myself. I suppose you want to look through the drawer?’

  ‘If you don’t mind.’

  ‘There’s nothing there. I’ve looked.’

  While Alice was making fresh coffee Fowler examined the drawer. It held a Russian passport, some assorted bills all of which appeared to have been paid, a theatre programme, a membership card of an organization calling itself the Free Russia Society and a bank book showing a surprisingly large credit balance. Fowler was closing the drawer when he saw a cardboard pack of matches and on impulse opened it. Before Alice returned from the kitchen he slipped it into his pocket.

  ‘Nothing, was there?’ she said when she came into the room.

  ‘No,’ agreed Fowler. ‘What about the Russian passport? Did he have a British one?’

  ‘No,’ said the girl at once. ‘He is still legally Russian, with residency permission here. He applied for British citizenship about three months ago but these things take time.’ She hesitated. ‘He will come back, won’t he? He hasn’t left for ever.’

  ‘No,’ said Fowler thoughtfully. ‘I don’t think he’s left for ever.’

  ‘I heard you come to bed last night,’ said Pamela Bell at breakfast. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire neighbourhood heard you, as well.’

  ‘I didn’t bother with the light coming up the stairs,’ said Bell. He and his wife had occupied separate bedrooms for several months.

  ‘Darling!’ she said, without affection. ‘You were so drunk I doubt if you could have seen anything anyway.’ She hesitated and added: ‘If you’re not careful with your drinking you’re going to have a problem. If you haven’t got one already, that is.’

  Bell said nothing, trying to drink his tea without spilling it and wishing that his hands didn’t shake so much.

  Fowler managed to visit on the same day both of the gun clubs to which Valentin Shidak belonged and got remarkably similar reports from each. Shidak was practically the best shot at each. He practised regularly, at least once a week at both. And both regretted his lack of interest in competition shooting, because each would have liked him in their team, but he’d refused every time he was asked. The secretaries of both laughed at him when Fowler asked if Shidak had ever talked of owning an M-16 rifle or used it at their clubs.

  ‘That’s an assault rifle and illegal in this country!’ said the official of the Harrow club. ‘It would probably blow the back off our shooting range!’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Fowler. ‘It probably would.’

  He had to wait until the evening to find everybody in at the one-room-per-occupant house in Fulham in which Shidak had lived before moving in with Alice. Three people had moved in after Shidak left. The remaining three remembered the man from his notoriety as a Soviet dissident but none appeared to like him very much: all three were quick to deny any friendship. He’d often carried a long case which could have contained a rifle but he’d never discussed guns with any of them.

  It was impulse, a sudden inspiration, which made Fowler run a check on Alice Irving and what he learned added to his growing unease. He p
olitely apologized for returning to her apartment and said he regretted not having anything positive to tell her but asked if she’d help with a few more questions. She confirmed that Shidak owned a car, a four-year-old Nissan, and that he had an American Express credit card.

  ‘One last thing,’ said Fowler at the door as he prepared to leave. ‘Did Shidak know who your father was?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  Fowler avoided a reply. ‘And how did you meet?’

  ‘My last term at Oxford University. He came up to give a series of lectures on modern history. That was my subject so I went to a couple, with a friend. She introduced me to him, after one of his talks. He was a very exciting speaker.’

  ‘You remember who the friend was, who introduced you?’

  Alice frowned. ‘Of course. She only lives three streets away. Why?’

  ‘All part of building up a picture,’ said Fowler, again avoiding a direct reply.

  The Director General called Fowler to his office at the end of the first week of inquiries, listening grave-faced as the field agent gave an account of his investigation. When Fowler finished, Bell said: ‘So what’s the conclusion?’

  ‘I don’t have one, not yet,’ said Fowler. ‘But I think there’s cause for serious concern.’

  ‘All circumstantial,’ mused Bell, more to himself than the other man.

  ‘Explain the Gower Street address inside the match folder of Ml5, Britain’s counter-intelligence service,’ challenged Fowler. ‘And they did use him as a consultant in the early days. I checked.’

  ‘Isn’t that the explanation?’ suggested the Director General. ‘A reminder of an address where he did some work?’

  Fowler shook his head in refusal. ‘Everyone stopped using Shidak a year ago,’ he reminded. ‘And M15 before that, at least two and a half. Who keeps for two and a half years a match folder with an address of an organization that doesn’t use him any more?’

  ‘No one,’ agreed Bell. ‘Not even a fanatical Russian.’

  ‘But maybe that’s it!’ said Fowler confusingly. ‘Maybe that’s exactly what this fanatical Russian was supposed to have done!’

  Fowler tried to narrow the hunt for Valentin Shidak through the official channels open to him. Using government authority – although not identifying that authority as coming from an intelligence organization – he gained cooperation from both the bank whose address he’d taken from the book in Alice Irving’s apartment and also from American Express. The breakthrough came from the bank. Fowler found a cheque written three days earlier for petrol from a garage in Harrington Road, South Kensington: although it was supported by a cheque guarantee card number the garage attendant had added to the cheque the number of Shidak’s Nissan. With a district to concentrate upon Fowler pressed American Express to have recent charges in the area checked, whatever the purchase. American Express records are computerized and within two hours they came back with charges at two restaurants within half a mile of the garage where Shidak had bought his petrol.

  To give the request the proper authority, the Director General personally approached the London Police Commissioner for foot and car patrols in the Kensington area to look for the four-year-old Nissan, with strict instructions to every officer that under no circumstances were they to do anything more than locate the car.

  While that was being done, Fowler traced Alice Irving’s friend who had introduced her to the Russian at Oxford. The girl’s name was Cathy Hillier and she remembered the occasion easily because she’d thought Shidak was a brilliant speaker, too. And had been jealous because she’d imagined the Russian was interested in her, but after the first lecture he’d asked her to introduce him to Alice.

  ‘So it was Shidak who sought Alice out?’ pressed Fowler.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ smiled the girl, who was auburn-haired and very slim. ‘Broke my heart for at least a week!’

  Fowler smiled back easily. ‘How did he say it?’ he asked. ‘Did he point Alice out and ask you to introduce him? Or did he already know her name? Say something like “please introduce me to Alice or please introduce me to Miss Irving”?’

  Cathy frowned with the effort of recall. ‘I don’t really remember,’ she apologized. ‘I think he knew of her by name but I don’t really remember. There’s nothing wrong, is there?’

  ‘No,’ assured Fowler. ‘Nothing wrong at all.’

  As he was getting into his car outside the girl’s flat the car-phone rang. Shidak’s Nissan had been followed by an unmarked police car along Kensington High Street into Hornton Street, where it had parked. The one occupant, a man, had gone into a block of flats there.

  Fowler brilliantly masterminded the arrest of Valentin Shidak, minimizing the risk of a dangerous public shoot-out and just as importantly any unwelcome publicity.

  It was fortunate that Shidak was living in a purpose-built block of flats, because it enabled them to contact within an hour the owners and obtain the passkey both for the block and for Shidak’s apartment, which they discovered he had rented for six months. As well as back-up from Fowler’s own department there was support from armed Special Branch police officers who were clearly impatient to storm the block. Fowler forbade any move, insisting they remain in watching cars and vehicles until long past midnight, when the streets became empty of people and hopefully Shidak had gone to bed and to sleep.

  Which he had.

  Fowler led the four-man arrest squad, reluctantly agreeing to two of them carrying high-velocity shotguns although he contented himself with a pistol.

  Shidak’s apartment was on the fifth floor and they climbed to it up the stairs, avoiding the lift, whose noise might have alerted the Russian. At the door Fowler stood to one side, gently inserting the key, with an officer on the other side with bolt-cutters ready to sever instantly any security chain. The door was chained but Fowler opened it so gently that it made no jarring sound and the chain parted with the smallest of clicks.

  They were actually entering the bedroom before Shidak awoke, driving his hand beneath the pillow. Before he could grasp the Colt automatic Fowler’s pistol was at the base of his skull, pressing the Russian’s head further into the bedding.

  ‘If you move to get that gun out, I’ll Art,’ said Fowler calmly. ‘You could never get it free in time. Your head will be blown right off.’

  Shidak remained motionless.

  Fowler said: ‘You’re a bloody awful assassin, you know.’

  It took a lot of persuasion before the Director General agreed to the interrogation being dealt with as Fowler suggested, and Bell ordered conditions even then, insisting that before Fowler made his announcements the questioning had to concentrate upon there being a Russian spy actually within British intelligence. Bell made that part of the inquiry vague, because he was trying to contain the suggestion getting out that he feared the source actually to be within his own department.

  ‘What if he confirms it? Identifies somebody?’

  ‘Then we don’t handle it your way at all,’ said Bell. ‘We keep him. Use him.’

  ‘Do I tell him that?’

  ‘No. He’ll just lie. Stall for time. He either knows or he doesn’t.’

  Shidak didn’t. He was bewildered by Fowler’s questions and said he didn’t know what the man was talking about. Fowler persisted under the restraints imposed upon him for three days before the Director General finally accepted that yet again he was not going to get the lead he was so desperately seeking.

  ‘So I tell him?’ said Fowler.

  ‘Tell him,’ agreed Bell.

  The interrogation was not conducted in a police cell or prison because they did not want any information whatsoever of Shidak’s arrest to become public. The Russian was held in a heavily guarded safe house owned by the department in Surrey, about fifteen miles from London. During the days since his arrest and the pointless questioning about a Soviet spy deep within British intelligence, Shidak’s confidence had returned and he greeted Fowler on the fourth day with an attitu
de verging upon conceit.

  ‘More about unknown spies today?’ he said as soon as Fowler entered the room.

  ‘No, not any more,’ agreed Fowler easily. ‘Let’s talk about you today.’

  ‘I don’t choose to talk about anything,’ said Shidak. He’d refused to give any explanation for leaving Alice Irving or for his being in Kensington with the automatic and rifle or for having a map marked with the route the Russian delegation were going to take for two official functions during their visit to London, which began the following day.

  Fowler picked up the map now, holding it in front of the man, and said: ‘Why are those routes marked?’

  ‘I’ve never seen that map before.’

  ‘It’s covered with your fingerprints.’

  ‘Planted.’

  ‘What about the M-16 and the Colt automatic?’

  ‘I know nothing about any M-16 and a Colt automatic’

  ‘They’ve got your fingerprints all over them as well.’

  ‘Planted again.’

  Fowler smiled, unperturbed. ‘Those guns are illegal. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘I’ve told you I know nothing about any guns.’

  ‘We could prosecute you for their possession, of course. But that’s all we could do: the only provable crime you’ve committed. And that’s not much, considering you intended assassinating a visiting Soviet politician, is it?’

  Shidak snorted a contemptuous laugh but said nothing.

  ‘What would you get?’ continued Fowler. ‘Heavy fine, perhaps. A jail sentence, but not for long. A few months at the most, and even that wouldn’t happen if you got yourself a good lawyer. No, not much at all.’

  ‘Is this monologue going to continue for long?’ sneered the Russian.

  ‘A while yet,’ said Fowler, refusing any anger. ‘Let’s look at all the other things which intrigue me but which don’t fit any more. Alice Irving, for instance. Pretty girl, intelligent. Considers herself a protester against authority: the sort of girl who’d look up in awe at someone like yourself, someone who’s supposed actually to have confronted the entire authority of the Soviet Union. And a general’s daughter. No ordinary general, either: the deputy commander of NATO. That’s why you sought her out at Oxford and later seduced her, wasn’t it? It was a very important part of the plot, wasn’t it? Disgracing the deputy commander in NATO?’