‘What about Peter?’
‘He was found dead, yesterday,’ disclosed Bell. ‘Drowned in the Bosporus – down which all the armaments must have come from the Soviet Union. Appropriate, don’t you think? His name wasn’t Peter, by the way. The best identity that can be established is Ali Simnel: he was an extreme Palestinian revolutionary who abruptly became a capitalist when he decided he liked money better.’
9
Treasures of the Tsar
The old man had presence, an inherent command of his surroundings. He had once been tall but age had bowed him and there was clearly difficulty when he walked, although he tried hard not to shuffle. He had a full head of hair, now pure white: his clothes were well kept and pressed but the style was old, of a previous, much-loved era.
He sat gratefully at a pavement café on the corner of the Avenue Hoche, almost where it joined the Rue du Faubourg St-Honoré. The man’s aura brought a waiter immediately. He chose coffee and cake, which he ate delicately, as if he wanted the enjoyment to last. He did not, however, appear to be someone pleasurably passing a warm June morning on one of the most fashionable boulevards of Paris. All the while he stared along Faubourg St-Honoré, as if seeking something or expecting someone to approach him from its direction. No one did. The cake and the coffee finished, he remained for a few more minutes at the café table, his shoulders squaring slightly like a man making a decision. Then, abruptly, he covered his bill with coins, rose and headed with some vigour into Faubourg St-Honoré.
The British embassy is a grand, impressive mansion although the public reception area, to which people coming in off the street are directed, is a less imposing side building. The old man seemed disappointed. For once the inherent command did not work. The counter clerk before whom he presented himself rudely continued writing, even when the man moved to make his presence obvious. Finally he rapped on the counter imperiously, making the clerk look up.
‘My card,’ announced the old man, presenting the square of pasteboard with a bow, showing the formal politeness of a time long past.
The clerk took it without interest, scarcely looking at it. ‘Yes?’ He resented the old man rapping his desk for attention.
‘I wish to see someone in authority.’
‘What about?’
‘That is to discuss with them.’
‘I have to know,’ insisted the clerk. ‘To make sure you see the right person.’
‘I have some important correspondence.’
The clerk sighed: Paris seemed full of people coming in off the street with letters complaining about the state of the world or pollution of the atmosphere or the price of butter now that Britain was in the Common Market. He said: ‘Why not leave it with me and I’ll see it gets to the proper person?’
‘I wish to discuss it personally.’
‘What’s the subject?’
The old man hesitated, as if he were about to refuse. Then he said: ‘The revolution.’
The clerk sighed more deeply this time: he hadn’t had a rambling old fool warning of world revolution for a long time. ‘The man who deals with that is off today.’
‘I must see someone! It’s extremely important!’ The old man became red-faced in his agitation.
‘Just leave it. We’ll get back to you.’
‘You don’t understand,’ said the man. ‘The other side are after them.’
‘Sure,’ placated the clerk gently. ‘We’ll stop it happening. I promise.’
There was a further hesitation. Then, reluctantly, the man took a thick packet from his pocket. The envelopes were very old and dirty, held together by an elastic band. He took just one from the bundle and passed it over with obvious reluctance. ‘I’m not parting with any more until I see someone in authority.’
‘All right,’ said the clerk, relieved at how easily everything was being resolved.
‘And I want a receipt. It’s extremely valuable.’
Impatiently the clerk scrawled ‘Received: one letter’ on a piece of notepaper headed with the British government seal. ‘There you are then. I’ll make sure it gets to the proper person.’
As the old man went out the clerk’s telephone rang, distracting him with a conversation about displaying British tourist information on the public area notice-boards. It was not until the end of the conversation that the clerk looked from the British government seal on the unused notepaper and then to the cracked and aged letter and saw another seal. As he replaced the receiver he bent closer and realized the envelope was imprinted with the British royal cipher. Nervously, carefully because of the age of the paper, he withdrew what was inside but did not bother to read beyond the first three paragraphs. Then, at last, he concentrated upon the visiting card and saw the name: Grand Duke Aleksandr Nikolaevich Ivanov.
The clerk looked up and said to himself: ‘Oh my God!’
Paul Bowles arrived from London on the mid-afternoon plane. The embassy-based intelligence chief, Daniel Wiggins, was at the airport with a car, so they could talk on their way back into Paris.
Wiggins said at once: ‘I hope I haven’t overreacted to this.’
‘You did right, sounding the alarm so soon,’ assured Bowles. ‘If we hadn’t thought it important I wouldn’t be here.’
Bowles was one of the newest recruits to the Factory and this was his first overseas assignment. He was an elegantly dressed, sophisticated man who thought it was appropriate that his initial job should be in Paris, which he considered an elegant, sophisticated city. He said: ‘What else have you done, so far?’
‘Nothing, apart from alerting London,’ said Wiggins. ‘I thought it should be handled at the very top.’
Anxious to avoid responsibility, Bowles decided: he knew Wiggins had only a year to go before retirement. He said: ‘Where’s the letter?’
‘In my office safe.’
‘Who’s seen it so far?’
‘The desk clerk took it to the cultural attaché, after realizing what it was,’ said Wiggins. ‘The attaché brought it to me.’
‘Outline the contents, briefly,’ ordered Bowles, as their car reached the autoroute that encircles the French capital.
‘It’s dated May 1917, and addressed to Tsar Nicholas, although he’s referred to as Dear Cousin. There’s an offer of British military intervention – we had units with the White Russian Army, you’ll remember – and also there’s some suggestion of a direct, safe-passage approach, to Lenin himself. There’s also a guarantee of sanctuary, in London.’
‘And signed personally by the King?’
‘The entire letter was handwritten. The signature is simply George.’
‘Which is how English royalty sign themselves,’ mused Bowles.
The counter clerk, whose name emerged as Patrick Harper, had been suspended from duty and was waiting nervously in Wiggins’ office when they arrived. Bowles had the clerk go through the entire encounter with the Grand Duke at his own pace and then took him through it again a second time, relentlessly questioning.
‘Those were his precise words: the other side are after them?’
‘Yes,’ confirmed Harper.
‘Didn’t you ask him what he meant?’
‘At that stage I thought he was an old crank: we get a lot of them.’
Bowles breathed out irritably. ‘How old was he?’
‘Quite old. In his seventies: maybe in his eighties.’
‘Aristocratic’
‘I suppose so.’
‘And there were definitely more letters?’
‘Quite a bundle. Maybe a dozen. It could have been more. They were held together by a band.’
‘And you let him go?’
‘I didn’t realize at the time …’ Harper began, but Bowles refused him.
‘You know what you’ve done today? You’ve read … held in your hands … an incredible piece of history, a handwritten letter from the King of England in 1917 to Tsar Nicholas, whom the Bolsheviks killed, just one year later. And you let go the man who
had God knows how much more. You’re a fool, Harper. An absolute bloody fool!’
Samuel Bell consoled himself with the thought that he was not sacrificing Alistair Deedes as he’d sacrificed others in the search for the Soviet mole buried deep within the Factory. It would be unpleasant, harrowing maybe, but there would be no positive prosecution the Russians could bring against the man and so they’d have to release him in the face of British diplomatic pressure, after interrogation. That was all that mattered, the interrogation.
Deedes entered the office quietly. He was a large man, almost as big as the Director General himself. He was wearing a rugby club tie, with a matching blazer badge. The man sat, as invited, and listened with open-mouthed astonishment as Bell disclosed the existence of a Soviet informant within the department who had wrecked at least six British operations.
‘I know who it is,’ lied the Director General. ‘I need one final piece of evidence, which you are going to Moscow to collect. That’s all you have to do. Go to Moscow, make a meeting with our own informant and bring back what he gives you. Understood?’
‘Understood,’ said Deedes.
Bowles had experienced a strange feeling, an impression of awe, handling the royal letter: of being so close to such dramatic and such recent history. He’d been right to criticize the counter clerk as harshly as he had: Harper had been a fool, treating the old man so contemptuously. Thank God it was so easy to repair the damage. He had the Grand Duke’s address in the Neuilly suburb, off the Avenue du Roule, from the card the man had left at the embassy. All he had to do was present himself, apologize abjectly for Harper’s rude stupidity and recover the rest of the correspondence Ivanov was apparently offering. Bowles, who was fascinated by the Russian revolution, was looking forward to the encounter: how, he wondered, had Ivanov been involved?
An airliner came in low on its way to land, and briefly Bowles looked up at it through the windscreen of the car he was driving to Neuilly. Wiggins, the embassy intelligence man, would be well on his way to London by now, the one precious letter in the briefcase chained to his wrist. Bowles had not the slightest doubt that it was genuine but he still wanted the paper, ink and handwriting examined by experts, to ensure that it was not a forgery or a hoax. Bowles didn’t intend to risk the slightest mistake on his first assignment.
The Grand Duke’s home was rather as the counter clerk had described the man himself, fading and slightly frayed former grandeur. It was in a very narrow cul-de-sac off the Avenue du Roule, a warren of apartments reached from a central courtyard around which the rambling, crumbling house was built. Bowles guessed the apartments were more impressive and expensive the higher they went: the Grand Duke Ivanov’s home was in the basement. There was a place for a name plate beside the door but the holder was empty. He knocked, softly at first, and then, when there was no reply, more loudly. There was still no response. Bowles pressed his ear to the door. There was no sound.
He climbed back up to the ground level and found the concierge’s office under a central archway.
‘Gone,’ said the woman shortly when Bowles inquired. ‘Left this morning.’ She was fat and old and dressed entirely in black.
‘Gone where?’
The concierge shrugged. ‘They didn’t say.’
‘You’re expecting them back, though?’ asked Bowles with hopeful expectancy.
‘They carried suitcases: both him and the Duchess.’
‘Have you any address at all: somewhere they might stay with friends?’ pressed Bowles.
The woman shook her head. ‘The previous people asked that,’ she said.
‘Previous people?’
‘Two men, in a black diplomatic car. The accents were Russian. I can recognize it, from knowing the Grand Duke.’
The other side are after them, remembered Bowles.
Wiggins reached him at the embassy, from the Factory in London. The experts had no doubt whatsoever: the letter of King George V was unquestionably genuine. The Curator of the Royal Archives had confirmed it.
Paris became the favourite European city for refugees from the Russian revolution in 1917. Most of the original emigrés had died since settling there but their children and younger relations remained, creating community after community and a host of societies and clubs and meeting places.
As Bowles set out on his search for the old man he discovered that the Grand Duke Aleksandr Nikolaevich Ivanov was known to all of them: by some he seemed to be regarded almost as a Tsar-in-exile. There was a tone of respect in every voice and some people to whom Bowles spoke actually referred to the man as His Highness. Without exception, all at first were hostile to any inquiry, creating a protective silence around Ivanov and his wife. Bowles was never impatient, never aggressive. His approach was invariably the same. The Grand Duke had contacted the British embassy. They wanted to talk, to discuss the reason for that. If there were a problem involving the Grand Duke, they were prepared to help. They were friends. Each encounter – in crowded, smoke-filled clubs adorned with photographs of the long-dead Tsar or in bars where people nostalgically sang sad folk songs or sometimes, even, in crowded, cheap apartments – ended with Bowles leaving a card of his own, with the request that the number be passed on in the hope of reaching Ivanov and persuading the old man to call.
Throughout Bowles remained in Paris, to be immediately available if Ivanov responded to the search that he had to know, from the closeness of the exiled Russian community, was being conducted for him. There was secure communication, between Bowles and the Director General, through the embassy. Samuel Bell talked of intense government and royal pressure to recover whatever Ivanov possessed: both feared that in his anxiety to get his Russian relation to the safety of England, King George might have been indiscreet or undiplomatic and that public revelation of the letters could be highly embarrassing.
‘I don’t know what else I can do that I haven’t already done,’ said Bowles during one of their telephone conversations.
‘We’ve got to recover that correspondence,’ insisted the Director General. ‘It’s imperative: I don’t care how it’s done.’
It was a month before the Grand Duke Ivanov called the number Bowles had distributed throughout the Russian community.
‘I appreciate very much your calling,’ said Bowles.
‘It’s too late,’ said Ivanov. ‘Everything’s gone.’
‘You’re sending young Deedes into Moscow?’
The Director General looked up at his deputy’s question. Jeremy Thurlow knew something was wrong deep within the department: Bell wondered how long it would be before the man bypassed him, going directly to someone in higher authority to demand an internal inquiry. Bell said: ‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘I thought we might have discussed it first,’ complained the deputy.
Bell was curious if the other man had ambitions to succeed him as Director General: he’d never given any indication but Bell guessed the man probably did. ‘It’s pretty low-level stuff. Collecting some material.’
‘What sort of material?’ persisted Thurlow.
‘Some indication of how the Russians have become so well informed about us lately,’ said the Director General, refusing to be specific.
‘Deedes is being pretty open about the trip, around the department,’ said the deputy.
Because I told him to be, thought Bell: the snare he’d devised this time had several levels. ‘Do you think that’s unwise?’
‘Yes,’ said Thurlow. In open challenge he added: ‘I think everything in this department … morale, security, efficiency, everything … is collapsing into a complete disaster.’
The meeting was at the Neuilly apartment to which Bowles had first gone. Like a lot of the Russian homes Bowles had visited, it was a shrine to the past. There were several icons on the wall and a bright brass samovar, the traditional urn in which the Russians brew tea. But mostly there were photographs – dozens, maybe even hundreds of them. All were of the last Russian royal family, in p
alaces and at balls and on lake and river trips. There were pictures of the Tsar in every conceivable uniform and sometimes not, just in the loose peasant smock and trousers that the man had enjoyed wearing when he was relaxing. As he studied the gallery, Bowles isolated quite a few pictures of the Tsar and Tsarina aboard a yacht with King George V during a visit to England long before the revolution. There were also some of the Tsar with a person who looked like Grand Duke Ivanov, but Bowles was uncertain. The age made it impossible anyway.
The Grand Duke and Duchess appeared to have dressed for the meeting. He was immaculate in black, she in a long white afternoon dress, buttoned high to the neck. They offered tea, although not from the samovar, which Bowles accepted. He waited to be invited before sitting, wanting to accord them the respect they might once have had. When he began talking he first apologized for the old man’s treatment at the embassy.
Ivanov waved his hand dismissively. ‘It was hurtful, but as it’s turned out perhaps fortunate.’
‘You had other letters, sir,’ prompted Bowles. ‘A large bundle, the clerk remembers.’
Ivanov nodded. ‘Gone,’ he said shortly.
Bowles felt a stomach dip of apprehension: the other side are after them, he thought. ‘How?’ he asked. ‘How have they gone?’
‘I had no choice!’ said the old man defensively. ‘Anyone would have done what I did!’
‘Tell me,’ coaxed Bowles.
Instead of replying directly Ivanov pointed to the photographs featuring the Tsar and the man in whom Bowles thought there was a resemblance. ‘My father,’ said Ivanov, solving the uncertainty. ‘Ours was once one of the most famous and powerful families in Russia. Not just courtiers to the Tsars: confidants, friends. Most of the court ran, when the revolution happened. Not my father. He sent me and my mother here to safety, but he stayed: was close to the Tsar throughout his imprisonment, before they took him away to be killed …’
The Factory Page 13