The Factory

by Brian Freemantle

  Ivanov trailed to a halt, head forward on his chest, and Bowles thought how frail he looked. Abruptly he resumed: ‘My father guessed what was going to happen. Pleaded with the Tsar to try to escape but his heir, the Tsarevich Alexei, was too ill. And then there was the Tsarina and all the daughters: too many to get away. But the Tsar ordered my father to go. To sneak away and try to guide the White Russian army to where they were being held, at Ekaterinburg, so they could all be rescued. My father did not want to go but the Tsar ordered it …’

  Once more Ivanov stopped talking. Bowles was desperate to interrupt, to ask questions, but knew it would be a mistake to break the narrative.

  ‘… The Tsar gave my father things,’ resumed the old man. ‘Mementos … some jewellery, to finance our life here. And the letters. My father always thought the Tsar knew what was going to happen and entrusted him with the correspondence to stop it being seized …’

  ‘Your father escaped?’ asked Bowles, risking a question at last.

  Ivanov nodded again. ‘And made his way to the White Russian army. It was too late, of course. By the time he reached them, the Tsar was dead. The Tsarevich, too. My father got here, eventually. Lived here all our lives, except when the Nazis came, during the last war.’

  ‘The letters,’ reminded Bowles.

  ‘There were a lot, between the Tsar and your King,’ said the Grand Duke. ‘Copies of what the King had written to Lenin, too. The King offered to ransom our entire royal family, finance the revolution, for their freedom. Which wasn’t all he offered. Lenin was fighting the Germans, too, don’t forget. The King talked of finding a way to supply arms to the Bolsheviks: there was even a suggestion it might be possible secretly to send army units, to fight alongside Lenin’s soldiers.’

  Bowles felt physically hot at the thought of the uproar such revelations would cause if they were ever made public. He said: ‘This was the correspondence you wanted to hand in to our embassy?’

  ‘I am a very old man,’ said Ivanov. ‘I wanted them to be safe. Properly safe. I knew the KGB were looking for me.’

  ‘KGB!’ exclaimed Bowles, hotter still with discomfort.

  ‘You know what the old Russian community here is like,’ said Ivanov. ‘You’ve tried to penetrate it. I knew the KGB were looking for me, the moment it began. That’s why I decided to run. To hand the letters over for safekeeping and then hide. But your man at the embassy wouldn’t listen to me so I ran with them. Then the Russians did what you did: began leaving messages, knowing I would get them. Only their messages were more specific. I have relations still in the Soviet Union, you see. A niece, from that part of the family who didn’t run but embraced the revolution. Some cousins, people like that. For years the niece has been trying to emigrate but been prevented. The KGB’s offer was simple. The correspondence I had, in exchange for my niece.’

  ‘And you agreed?’ queried Bowles.

  ‘I handed over all the letters a week ago,’ admitted the old man.

  Jeremy Thurlow attended the meeting at the Factory with the Director General. Both men let Bowles give a full account of the Paris interview before speaking. Then Bell said: ‘We’ve checked back as far as we can. The royal archivist confirms that King George was engaged in a lot of personal correspondence with the Tsar, after he abdicated and was held by the Bolsheviks: there are even copies of some of the letters. And there was a Grand Duke Ivanov in the Russian court who went with the Tsar to Ekaterinburg …’ He groped into a folder, producing a photograph.

  It was not as clear as any in the Neuilly apartment but it was good enough. ‘That’s definitely the man,’ confirmed Bowles.

  ‘So it all fits,’ said Thurlow wearily. ‘Can you imagine what the KGB are going to do with this!’

  ‘And all we can do is sit around and wait for the bombshell to explode,’ said the Director General, even more wearily. ‘I’d like to kill that embassy counter clerk: kill him with my bare hands.’ At least, he thought, the mistake had not been made internally, within the department.

  When it did happen, a month later, it was not at all how any of them had expected, however: there was no explosion at all.

  The approach by the Soviet embassy in London was discreetly made to the British Foreign Office who responded just as discreetly: because of their earlier involvement – and warnings of impending embarrassment – the Director General and senior executives at the Factory were informed of every move. It was a limited ceremony, in one of the smaller reception rooms at the Foreign Office. The Soviet ambassador was accompanied by only two other Russian officials. The Foreign Secretary’s party was made up of five people. The Queen was represented by her principal private secretary and the Curator of the Royal Archives. There was champagne and handshakes and the bundle of correspondence that the Grand Duke Ivanov had produced at the Paris embassy was finally handed over. The Soviet ambassador made a short speech about items of great historical importance being restored to their rightful ownership, under the new Soviet policy of friendship and openness. The Foreign Secretary said the return of the King’s private letters was a supreme example of that friendship. The Queen’s principal private secretary expressed the thanks of the British royal family.

  ‘Who would have believed the Russians would do a thing like that!’ said Thurlow. ‘Actually giving it back.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Bowles. ‘I don’t believe for a moment.’

  The door to the Neuilly apartment was opened by a woman of about forty-five. She wore no make-up and her hair was carelessly arranged. The dress was old and bagged with wear but Bowles’ strongest impression was that she lacked so much the command of either the Grand Duke or Duchess.

  ‘You must be the niece,’ he said.

  There was movement behind the woman before she could reply. Ivanov said: ‘I didn’t expect to see you ever again. You know, then?’

  ‘I’d still like to hear it from you,’ said Bowles. He wondered how the scientists’ examination of the correspondence was progressing in London.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ said Ivanov.

  This time there was no offer of tea and Bowles sat without invitation.

  Ivanov looked at his niece and said: ‘I still did not have a choice.’

  ‘I believe you,’ said Bowles sympathetically. ‘How many of the letters are genuine?’

  ‘The one I left at the embassy,’ said Ivanov. ‘That had to be, of course. To convince everyone. And five more, in the bundle.’

  ‘All the others, supposedly to Lenin about ransom and financing the revolution and supplying troops and weapons, are forgeries?’ anticipated Bowles.

  ‘All of them,’ confirmed Ivanov. ‘They approached me as I told you they did, leaving messages with the Russian community that it involved my niece. I had to go to the embassy with a lot of letters but leave only the genuine one, as bait. The attitude of your clerk made it easy. I was to allow myself to be traced by you, after an interval, and tell you all the lies about Lenin and the King offering assistance. Then my niece could come out …’ The old man smiled at the woman, who was looking worriedly between them. ‘Which they did,’ he concluded.

  ‘When?’ asked Bowles.

  ‘Last Wednesday.’

  The day of the Foreign Office ceremony, remembered Bowles. Everything had been very neatly slotted together. ‘How did they learn you had letters in the first place?’

  Ivanov nodded in the direction of his niece again. ‘She told them, during one of the emigration interviews. It was a well-known family story. For some reason she thought it might impress them …’ He hesitated, the usual command slipping away. Weak-voiced he said: ‘What’s going to happen to us … to her …?’

  Bowles smiled, rising. ‘Nothing,’ he promised. ‘You’ve told me what I wanted to know …’ He looked to the frightened woman. ‘Enjoy your new life in the West.’

  ‘Six,’ said Bowles. ‘According to Ivanov the one he gave the embassy was genuine and there were five more in the bundle.’ Learning
the precise number had been the reason for the Paris trip.

  ‘That’s what the experts say,’ nodded the Director General. ‘All the forgeries have been weeded out. Destroyed.’

  ‘Wasn’t it brilliant!’ said Bowles admiringly. ‘Imagine getting us so excited that we’d have put KGB disinformation forgeries actually in the royal archives.’

  ‘Why didn’t you believe it?’ questioned Bell.

  ‘A man brought up in the autocratic tradition of a Russian Grand Duke doesn’t get dismissed by a counter clerk,’ said Bowles. ‘And that Russian community treats him like a Tsar: they’d have hidden him for ever, if he’d demanded it. And if it had happened the way he said it did the first time, he wouldn’t ever have wanted to meet me, would he? He didn’t owe Britian an explanation. Giving us one was an admission that a Russian Grand Duke had bowed to the communists. His pride would never have allowed him to do that, unless he was forced into it.’

  10

  The Interrogation

  Alistair Deedes felt a constant excitement. But properly so, alert, conscious of everything around him, fully realizing the dangers and doing nothing to attract attention to himself. But still excited. It had started on the plane, on the way to Moscow, at the complete awareness that at last he was going to operate in the Russian capital. He’d often wondered, after he’d been admitted to the espionage service and then on through the training schools, if he would ever get here: most intelligence officers went through their entire careers and never saw the place. But he was doing so, now. It wasn’t important, wasn’t necessary, for the career he’d chosen, but Deedes had very much wanted to. For him it was a personal thing, like being selected to play in the first team. The need for constant security always made it difficult for a group of intelligence officers to talk in anything but the most general terms about what they had done but Deedes had recognized the respect, sometimes even awe, with which anyone was held if they casually mentioned having worked in Moscow. He’d felt it himself, every time. Now he wouldn’t have to, not any more. From now on he’d get the respect, from others. He’d joined a very rare and exclusive club. It would have been good to have a tie, like his rugby club tie, marking him out as slightly different from the rest.

  Everyone at the embassy had been very friendly towards him. Not the ambassador, of course: there always had to remain a distance there, to avoid any diplomatic embarrassment if he were picked up by the authorities. Deedes accepted the caution, even though he knew in his case it wasn’t going to happen. But everyone else had been friendly, offering any help he might need, giving tips on how to move around and get things done in Moscow. Andy Pugh particularly. Pugh was the intelligence station chief at the embassy, a pipe-smoking, slow-talking old-time professional who appeared to have worked everywhere and know everything. Pugh had taken him to the Bolshoi and the State Circus and on a steamer trip up the Moskva River. The man had taught him how to eat and drink like the Muscovites did, at street stalls or in the buffets at Belorussian and Kazan and Kiev railway stations, to avoid the interminable wait in normal restaurants. The man had even invited him into his home, a flat in the diplomatic compound of Moscow, where his pleasant fresh-faced wife had cooked beef and said it was to remind him of England.

  Deedes had also moved around by himself, of course, because it was necessary for the mission he had to accomplish. He wished he knew more about that: that there had been a fuller briefing. The staggering disclosure by the Director General that there was a traitor back in the Factory made sense of his instructions to follow a certain route on a certain day and await an approach from someone who would know him without the need for him to know them, but Deedes still felt uncomfortable with it. Would it be a man or a woman? How would the vital information, the identity of the London spy, come? A verbal message, just a name? Or a document? Deedes hoped it was verbal, a few words easily memorized, and not a document. A document would be incriminating, a positive espionage link until he was able to pass it on. Through the embassy diplomatic bag, he supposed. Idly he wondered why someone at the embassy – Andy Pugh, for instance – hadn’t been able to make what amounted to a simple collection. The unknown traitor, Deedes remembered at once. The Director General was obviously keeping it an operation quite apart from the resident embassy officers. Deedes felt a flicker of satisfaction: it elevated what he had to do beyond a simple collection, after all.

  ‘Did you know there was a ski jump school in Moscow?’ asked Pugh, at the beginning of the week. ‘It’s fun to watch. How about the two of us going tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m going to be busy tomorrow,’ refused Deedes. It would be a Tuesday, the day he had to make the meeting with his unknown contact.

  ‘I understand,’ said Pugh at once, too professional to ask any questions.

  The route Deedes had to follow was a recommended visitors’ tour through the Kitaly-Gorod district of Moscow and chosen precisely for that reason, along roads and to landmarks where Westerners were always about, providing groups into which he could merge protectively unnoticed.

  It was a cold day, not yet winter but fast approaching, and Deedes wore the fur-lined boots he’d bought especially, and his heavy topcoat. He briefly considered wearing his brightly patterned rugby scarf but decided against it, because it was too identifiable and marked him out. He finished everything off with a fur-lined hat with earflaps that could be pulled down, something else he’d bought specially. There would have to be more purchases, Deedes reflected as he set out from the Historical Museum, the commencement of the recognized tour. After today’s meeting there would be no reason for him to remain in Russia: he could be back in England by the weekend. So there would be home-going gifts to buy, particularly for Elizabeth, whom he was going to marry in four short months. Deedes had looked around on his other outings and not seen anything that really appealed: he guessed it would be a piece of jewellery from the gold shop on Gorky Street.

  There were tourist parties following the same route, bodies of people stopping and starting to their guides’ commentaries. Deedes stayed loosely on the edge of several, gradually moving across Red Square, gazing not at what the guides were pointing out but in the direction of Dzerzhinsky Square where the KGB had their central headquarters. So close, Deedes thought. Not more than a few hundred yards from the command centre of the biggest espionage organization in the world: an espionage centre he was that very day going badly to hurt, by discovering their London spy. What would they give, to know he was so close!

  The contact point was the onion-domed cathedral of St Basil, promptly at eleven o’clock in the morning. There were still ten minutes to go when Deedes arrived. He attached himself to another tourist group and pretended to listen to the lecture, gazing down at his guidebook but not bothering to read it.

  ‘Mr Deedes?’

  Slightly ahead of time, thought Deedes immediately. He looked at the man. He’d spoken English but there was an accent and he had a square, Slavic face. The clothes and the earflapped hat were Russian, too. Deedes smiled and said: ‘Yes,’ ready for the beginning of the coded exchange he had to finish to complete the introductions.

  Instead the man said: ‘There is a squad of ten men, positioned so that you are absolutely encircled. They have instructions to shoot if you do anything stupid, like trying to run. But not to kill you: to wound. Please don’t try to run, Mr Deedes. There would be panic, with so many people around. Some of them might be inadvertently wounded. Killed even. We don’t want that, do we?’

  ‘No,’ said Deedes.

  ‘Good,’ smiled the man.

  Andy Pugh, the resident intelligence chief who had obeyed London’s instructions to follow Deedes on every solitary outing, witnessed the arrest from his concealment just inside the entrance to the cathedral. He waited until Deedes had been bustled unprotesting into the unmarked police car and then hurried back to the embassy, to alert London.

  ‘I have the right to call in an independent investigation without reference to you,’ t
hreatened Jeremy Thurlow. ‘Since we lost Harding, we have had one operative killed. One positive defection. Two other operatives seized, before this latest arrest of Deedes. At least five operations have been destroyed. You know and I know that we’ve been penetrated by the Soviets. And we both know why you’ve done nothing about it. Because of your drinking and because you’re sleeping with your personal assistant and you know you’ll be fired when it’s discovered by an outside investigation.’

  ‘That’s a good-enough summary,’ agreed the Director General. He was glad that he hadn’t drunk too much the previous night. He felt very clear-headed. ‘I’m surprised it’s taken you so long. I’ve been waiting.’

  ‘Waiting?’

  ‘Why haven’t you exercised the right before now?’

  ‘I …’ started his deputy, then stopped, understanding. ‘You suspect me!’

  ‘I suspect everybody.’

  Thurlow flushed, furious. Stiffly he said: ‘I am giving you official notice, which I am not required to do but which I am doing, because of our past but now apparently ended friendship, that when I leave this room I intend at once to demand an investigation that should have been initiated by you months ago.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Bell sadly. ‘It should have been, shouldn’t it? You’re right, too, about why I didn’t call for it.’

  The two men, who had once been close colleagues, stared at each other, each wanting the other to speak first. It was Thurlow who spoke: ‘I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to destroy you.’

  The Director General didn’t respond for several minutes, the decision swirling in his mind. Finally he said: ‘I wanted Deedes to be arrested: that he has been, incidentally, is a confirmation we hardly needed that there’s a Soviet spy here in the Factory.’