by John Gardner
“Now, I can’t—dare not—put my proposals on tape. It must be a personal meeting. Face to face. I will show trust. I will meet you anywhere reasonable, in Europe, at twenty-four hours’ notice. There. That’s trust. I’ll show myself; risk myself; for I’ll come alone, with no hired guns—if you’ll do the same.
“Name the place. Give me the day. Old telephone double-talk—the day you give me will be the day before the real one. Time? Give me two hours in advance of the real time. Okay? I’ll come alone. I do not expect you to believe me as you listen to this; but we both have to trust someone. How do you pass the message? That’s easier than you think, old friend. Easy and untraceable. Just tell our mutual friend Martha Adler. She’ll know exactly what to do.”
Big Herbie snatched the headset from his ears. “Stop. Turn the car round. We must go back.”
Curry rested a hand on his knee. “It’s okay, Herbie. No panic. We’ve really got her sewn up. She’s not going to run away. I’ve heard the tape.”
“Bloody fool,” Herbie bellowed. “That’s exactly what she’s going to do. Get back there, or you’ll have one dead source on your hands. Turn round, I’m going in there. Just turn around, and don’t let your goons within a mile of her door.”
Curry sighed. “Okay, cocker, but you take responsibility.”
“I take your throat out if we don’t get back fast. Responsibility? Of course. She is my bloody responsibility.”
As the car swung violently through the Cadnam roundabout, heading back towards Lymington, Big Herbie glanced at his watch, praying they had time. It was exactly 11.45. At Heathrow, Michael Gold’s flight would just be leaving for Moscow. Silently, Herbie wished him good luck. Break an arm and a leg.
15
THE ILYUSHIN 62, OF AEROFLOT’S Flight SU242—London-Moscow—was cleared for take-off on Heathrow’s 28R runway. The four Soloviev turbofans wound up to full power, and the brakes came off.
Michael Gold, sitting in the mid-section of the Russian aircraft, felt his stomach tighten as the ground began to slide away below him. They passed over Staines’ Reservoir, and Michael tipped the seat back, reaching for his cigarettes.
His mind was clear, and the Director General’s briefing remained in his head like a tape he could switch on at will. He was visiting Moscow purely as a tourist. Around him, the other members of the group chatted excitedly. The woman sitting next to him fiddled in her handbag, checking travel documents for the eighth time since they had boarded the aircraft. In due course she would engage him in conversation, and he would have to respond. “Try not to be too aloof with the rest of the tour. But don’t get close,” the DG had cautioned. “I know it’s difficult, but it’s possible, and you mustn’t be conspicuous, either by your friendliness, or by being too stand-offish.”
They had assured him that going in a group tour would mean less chance of thorough, and inquisitive, checks at the airport. That was the last thing anyone wanted; for, while it was unlikely the Russian documents would be discovered by a normal examination, the clothes would certainly be spotted very quickly.
Everything in Michael Gold’s case was available in Russia, including the clothes on his back, and the case itself. His clothing was modest—either Eastern-Bloc-produced, or from normal Russian import stock. He carried nothing that could link him with either Beryozka, or other privileged stores.
They would be at Sheremetievo Airport by six-thirty, local time. If lucky, Michael thought, he would be settled into the Intourist National Hotel by seven-thirty. After that, the night would start in earnest.
Big Herbie broke the door down with his own shoulder, which stayed bruised for several days.
She was stretched across the bed; still breathing, but obviously near to a coma. The small bottle of tablets lay empty on the night table, and there was no note. Only the empty tumbler smelling of whisky. Herbie turned her, face down, over the side of the bed, and walked quickly to the tiny kitchen, in search of salt and warm water. Curry was already telephoning for an ambulance; but when it arrived, Herbie still held her—head back—trying to force a saline mixture down her throat. It took Curry, and the two ambulance men, to get her body from him.
Herbie insisted on being in the ambulance. Curry, after another fast call to London, followed in the car. The Director had simply told him to ‘nobble the quack’; so nobble the quack he would.
Herbie Kruger’s usual calm had disappeared, when Curry saw him at the Infirmary, which was the nearest place for them to take her. Later, they said, she would be moved to the local hospital; for the Infirmary was kept for the aged, and those whose condition was considered terminal.
“They say she’ll be okay, Herb. But why the fuss? She doubled on us. I mean, I know you were fond, and all that, but...”
“I warned him ... I told the DG.” Herbie was very quiet now, his hands moving a great deal, fingers locking and interlocking. “That’s why you had to step up the watchers, Curry. I knew it—knew she’d doubled; knew she couldn’t live with it. Christ, you know the games they play: the long arm; death in the night; no escape; and there must have been something else as well. A relative, perhaps. The bastards had some hold, or she would have told me. She came very near to it this morning; and I can guess why. If I was supposed to get the tape last night, she must have been expecting a message from me. She wept this morning. No message, so she had failed. If she had failed, they would do whatever they promised. Someone. They have someone?”
It was almost two hours before a doctor appeared. Martha had taken enough Nembutal to kill an elephant, but they’d got most of it out of her. She would sleep for twenty-four hours, and wake with a nasty hangover, and a worse depression. What about the police? Curry took the doctor to one side and, to use the Director’s phrase, nobbled him. Then they arranged for three of Curry’s ladies to stay on—he revealed they had a team of four men and five women in Lymington. One would be constantly at Martha’s bedside.
Herbie could return tomorrow. In his mind, this meant the small hours. In the car, Curry confided that they would probably bring Martha back to the clinic in London, as soon as she was fit to move.
The Moscow Flight landed ten minutes late—just after six-thirty in the evening—and the group with which Michael Gold was travelling passed through the usual formalities without a hitch: except for an interminable wait at the passport clearance desk.
Their passports had been taken from them on the aircraft. It was the Russian way, they were told. Now, as he stood in the queue, waiting for the document to be returned, for the first time Michael felt a true hint of vulnerability. A postgraduate student of foreign languages, yet he was really an innocent abroad. More than that—an innocent caught up in the clandestine trade of diplomacy.
“Gold?” The passport officer did not smile as he looked at Michael, comparing the face with the photograph. It reminded Michael of first days at school, when one went in fear of everyone in authority.
“Yes.”
“Michael Gold. He speak foreign language?” The officer’s English was not exceptional. “No. You study foreign language.” Still no smile.
In his passport, under ‘Occupation’, it simply said Student. Michael’s throat went dry. “How ... ?” he began; then thought better of it.
The officer flourished the tourist office form. “Here it says you study foreign language. What language?”
“German. French ...” Michael paused; then, in bad Russian, with a distinct English accent, “Also a very little Russian.”
The officer still did not smile. “Like me a very little English, eh?” He held his forefinger and thumb a fraction apart. “You must practise Russian while here.” He wagged a finger, “But not too much with our girls, ah?” For the first time, there was the hint of a smile, then he waved Michael on, handing back the passport. “Have good time in Russia.”
“Spaceeba—Thank you.” Still with the accent in all the wrong places.
There were some twenty people in Michael Gold’s g
roup, shepherded by a pair of Intourist guides—a thin man in his late forties, with the air of a harassed schoolmaster, and the most stunning blonde Michael Gold had ever seen. But, then, most blondes were, to Gold, stunning on first sight. Though this one was truly exceptional—more Scandinavian than Russian: tall, slender, with a tilted nose, lips that issued a thousand invitations, and large eyes, deep blue and twinkling with what could very well be mischief of the most pleasant kind. She wore Western style make-up, and the blonde hair hung, heavy, to her shoulders and bounced—like other attractive parts of her anatomy—as she moved.
The guides spoke excellent, if not correct, English. The group would be taken to change money now; then there was a bus ready to carry them to the hotel.
“It is very good. One of the best hotels in Moscow,” the girl told them, her voice pitched low, and a shade husky. Michael Gold was lost, almost immediately, in dreams of conquest.
The National Hotel, though extensively modernised, still gives one the impression of entering a Victorian railway terminus—with its marble arches; high, ornate ceiling, and huge chandeliers.
Michael was pleased to find that he automatically registered a sense of familiarity once they entered the city. The workouts at Warminster had provided him with such detailed knowledge that he could now feel Moscow embracing him like an old friend.
The Director, and his advisers, had chosen the tour well—particularly by placing him at the National; for the hotel stands on Marx Prospekt, behind the far end of Red Square. A very central base of operations.
Once again they had to stand in line. This was another chore which called for the surrender of passports. “They will be returned to you later, or in the morning.” The Intourist girl seemed to smile directly at him, and Michael imagined there was some special significance when she repeated, to each tourist, “Tonight you are free. Dinner is served until eleven-thirty, and tomorrow we all meet here, in the lobby, at nine-thirty sharp, for the first day’s tour.”
Michael smiled back—that glazed and set grin of the sexually smitten—then picked up his own case, in spite of the porter who was about to reach for it, took the token for his key, and walked across the polished hallway to the elevator. He was on the sixth floor, which he considered convenient, exchanging the token for his key at the little desk, manned by a severe looking Floor Lady dressed in black.
The room was functional, bright, and reasonably pleasant. From the windows you could see out over Red Square—GUM, the Lenin Mausoleum; with St. Basil’s clearly visible in the cold city lights.
They had told him to move as quickly as possible. “You have to spend as long as you can with him on the first night,” they said. “It’s essential he understands there’s a time limit to the operation; just as it’s most urgent for him to know the exact chess moves.” Some of the moves would obviously have to be invented by Stentor himself. “He has to set up his own modus operandi, for leaving the city without attracting too much attention.” The Director General had said Stentor would almost certainly choose the weekend, and advise Michael regarding the method of travel—whether by rail, car, or air. It would probably be air. There were plenty of regular internal flights.
Michael worked fast, unpacking, and going through the routine they had dinned into him. Putting on his overcoat, and the fur hat he had brought against the cold nights, he quietly left the room. His personal first phase had taken only seven minutes.
Out on the street it was as cold as an English mid-winter. It was not yet spring for Moscow. In a month or so it would be warm and pleasant—the so-called urban heat island effect keeping the city temperature above average.
Michael walked steadily, though not fast enough to cause suspicion; knowing exactly where to go, and pleased that he had not been asked to do this in the middle of winter—when unacclimatised lungs can become so affected by the cold, that long walks outside are impossible.
He reached the Marx Prospekt underground station, and followed the great arched underpass to the Sverdlov Square platform. When changing his money, Michael had made certain he had a few five-kopeck pieces, one of which he fed into the access machine. Three minutes later he was riding the train out to Airport Station.
Nobody appeared to take much notice of him, and he had followed all the initial precautions—doing two double-backs, and three pauses. Inexperienced he may be, but Michael considered that, so far, he was clean.
There was one nasty moment, on disembarking from the train at the Airport stop, when a uniformed policeman asked for identity papers. Michael had not wanted this to happen before doing the quick change act, but handed over the Russian passport and work documents, only to be ordered brusquely to produce a spravka—the authorisation permit, to prove that he was allowed to be away from his work in the Urals. As the officer glanced at the papers, so Michael committed the man’s face to memory. He did not wish to bump into this officer twice that night. A taxi took him to the airport.
He did the quick change in one of the public toilets of the departure area: unbuttoning his coat, pulling the neatly folded soft plastic holdall from inside his shirt, and filling it with the overcoat and fur hat. He would feel the cold through the light raincoat he had worn under the greatcoat, but that would only be a minor discomfort. Clear-glass spectacles, and a denim cap completed the effect. He walked from the convenience feeling, oddly, the complete Russian.
Michael used a public telephone booth, dialling the number he knew by heart. Stentor answered on the fourth ring.
“The situation with the Adler woman changes matters, of course.” The Director was working exceptionally late, seated, with arms folded, behind his desk. “But I still need your views, Herbie.”
Big Herbie sat directly opposite the DG; while Tubby Fincher, young Worboys, and Curry Shepherd were ranged around the room—all fairly close to the desk. The curtains were drawn, and the room illuminated from the striplight above the desk, and a couple of large table lamps. In one corner a blank TV screen glowed, linked directly to the Communications & Cryptanalysis—‘C & C’—offices, on the top floor of the building. Any Flash information would show on the screen: including an early warning of an ‘Eyes Only’ for the Director.
Big Herbie shrugged. “You know what I know. They’ve obviously got something very heavy on Martha. We go back a long way. Normally she would have told me straight out. She’s not a natural double, I’d stake anything on that. The suicide attempt. Unnatural. Something very heavy. She couldn’t live with the Judas thing.”
“I’ll buy that.” The Director was like a statue: not even a muscle moving in his face. “What really interests me is Vascovsky. You think it’s genuine? A dangle? What? You think he really believes you’d go for what he’s peddling, Herbie?”
Herbie allowed a mocking smile. “Do you?”
“Not now,” the Director volleyed back. “A few months ago ... Well... maybe. But not now.”
“I tell you the truth,”—Herbie looked around at the others, as though he was hoping someone might offer him a drink—“If I thought General Vascovsky was on the level, I would have considered it.”
There was a sharp intake of breath from Tubby Fincher. Herbie’s head whipped around. “Yes, Tubby. I’d have considered it. For the very reasons he’s given. I spend my life in the business, okay. Good. One mistake and everyone thinks I pull the pin on loyalty. Like a fucking leper, I feel—if you excuse me, sir. This job’s the end anyway. I do this and go private, right? Better tell you all now. But I’ll do the job first, and do it properly.”
“Herbie?” A note of warning from the Director.
“Who’s to stop me? Maybe I open a little shop somewhere. Sell music—records, tapes, listen to Mahler all day, and read. If Jacob Vascovsky could be trusted he’s right. Maybe he thinks I’m ripe for plucking; that I get so pissed off with the cold shoulder here, I go and listen to his bright ideas for a quiet future—what’s left of it.”
“But you don’t think he’s got those kind of pla
ns, do you?” Curry Shepherd lit a cigarette.
“You think he believes he could entice you again, Herbie?” Tubby Fincher sounded almost friendly after the outburst. “You know he’s not safe. What’s he really after?”
“You tell me.” Herbie laughed. “Plain as the nose—your nose, Tubby. Bastard wants to lift me. Like always. Playing it long; Vascovsky’s a gambler.”
The Director looked around the room. “We use the situation in any way?”
“You would let me go? If it suited a purpose you’d allow it?” Herbie sounded incredulous. Then he smiled his dopey, stupid, grin. “Of course. You let anyone do anything if there’s gain: if the scenario works, you let me go.”
“It might just be wise to set it up.” The Director kept the enigmatic and frigid expression. “Not alone, of course, Herbie—you’re not allowed to operate out of this country in any case. A dozen of Curry’s goons; maybe more, so they can’t snatch you...”
“Snatch him?” Curry queried. “We snatch Vascovsky?”
Slowly, the Director shook his head. “No. Snatching would bring down the wrath of diplomatic incident. Draw him. Draw Vascovsky off Stentor and young Michael Gold for a few days. Where’d you suggest, Herbie?”
“I have to talk with Martha first. In the morning.”
“It’s morning already, dear heart.” Curry stretched like an animal.
“Yes.” The Director still calm. “But, all things being equal, where’d you suggest?”
Herbie did an impression with his hands—a couple of scales. “Paris. I could work him in Paris.”
“And you?” The DG turned to Curry. “Could you handle Paris?”
“Always could in the old days.” Curry gave a pleasant grimace, running a hand lightly over his hair. “Used to enjoy Paris in the old days. Yes, that would be okay, as long as Herbie doesn’t try to be clever. You try that, cocker, and they’ll snatch you quick as a cat.”