The Diplomat's Wife

by Ridpath, Michael

  Phil ignored her. He needed Lothar’s answer. ‘If you don’t tell us, Lothar, Emma will shoot you.’

  ‘Emma is going to shoot me anyway, Philip. Aren’t you, Emma?’

  Emma nodded.

  Lothar took a deep drag of his cigarette. ‘It was always going to happen some time. I have cheated death for forty years. I’m an old man now. And I am glad it’s you and not some KGB hit man in the middle of the night.’ He raised his hand. ‘But before you do it, let me repeat. Your brother was a good man. I am sorry he is dead.’

  Emma stared. There wasn’t hatred in her expression, or even anger. But there was determination.

  And Phil knew his grandmother well enough to know that when she was determined to do something, she did it.

  She pulled the trigger. And then she pulled it again, and again.

  Fifty-Seven

  Heike heard the three shots, as did the startled pigeons perching in the trees on the hillside, who took to the air in a flurry of beating wings and rustling branches.

  She and Rozhkov had stationed themselves a few metres above the road, looking down on the villa. They had hidden the BMW behind the wall of an empty construction site between the TR6 and the villa, having managed to keep tabs on Emma’s car all the way from Bavaria, maintaining at least two kilometres’ distance. They hadn’t had much sleep on the way; they had had to spell each other keeping watch over the hotels in France and Valencia where their targets had spent the night, in case they decided on another departure in the early hours.

  ‘Who shot who?’ said Rozhkov.

  ‘Maybe she’s killed Lothar,’ said Heike. ‘Sounded like three shots from the same gun.’

  ‘Or maybe he shot the two of them.’

  ‘Has anyone heard it?’ The nearest neighbouring house was fifty metres down the hill, but that looked shut tight as a drum. The gunshots had been fired within the building, which had muffled them somewhat.

  ‘We have to assume someone will call the police,’ said Rozhkov. ‘Let’s get down there. If they come out of the front door, shoot them.’

  Heike followed the KGB agent down to the road, her gun hanging by her side, so it couldn’t be seen from anyone at a distance.

  Still no sound of an alarm being raised, or sign of a curious neighbour. But all it needed was for one person to pick up the phone and call the police.

  They opened the gate, and crouched behind a bush, waiting for someone to emerge. From there they couldn’t see clearly into the villa through the windows, although Heike thought she spotted something move inside.

  ‘Did you see that?’ she whispered.

  Rozhkov nodded. ‘All right. We’re going in. Shoot to kill. Let’s make it fast.’

  * * *

  ‘Jesus!’ said Phil, his ears ringing from the gunshots in a confined space as he watched the blood pour from Lothar’s chest.

  His grandmother had just shot someone. Again. That’s not what grannies were supposed to do.

  And with Lothar had gone all hope of finding Swann’s mole.

  Emma slumped back into the armchair, still holding the gun.

  ‘What now?’ said Phil, leaping to his feet.

  ‘Leave me here,’ said Emma. ‘I’ve done what I came to do. I’ll explain that you had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘No,’ said Phil. ‘No. We’re going to get out of this like we did in Talloires. Get up, Grams!’

  She didn’t move.

  ‘Up!’ He hauled her to her feet.

  Phil scanned the room. ‘I think we’ve barely touched anything since we’ve been here.’ Lothar had opened the front door for them, and the living-room door had been open. He hadn’t given them anything to drink. All they would have touched was the fabric of the sofa and the chair Emma was sitting in. Phil wasn’t sure, but he thought fingerprints needed hard surfaces to come out clearly.

  ‘Someone might have reported the shots. We need to get going before the police come.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Philip,’ said Emma.

  Phil ignored her and moved through to the hallway, where there was a window looking up to the road. He saw two figures, a man and a woman, running across the road, guns hanging down by their sides.

  He recognized the woman.

  Heike.

  He dashed back into the living room. ‘KGB!’ he said. ‘Come on, Grams! They’ve got guns. You might be happy to die, but I’m not.’

  He knew that would snap her out of it.

  ‘There may be a way out of the back garden,’ she said. She moved over to a window. ‘Yes – there’s a gate.’

  ‘Let’s go!’

  They found the back door and hurried through it, across the garden and out of the gate at the back. They scrambled down the path into the woods.

  * * *

  Rozhkov went first, flinging the front door open and storming into the villa, Heike following, her gun raised. Adrenaline was pumping in her system. There were armed foreign agents in there; if one of them turned out to be Phil, she would shoot him, if Rozhkov didn’t shoot him first. Their orders were clear. Phil, Emma and Lothar all had to die. The KGB’s agent in Britain had to be protected at all costs.

  The body of an old man was slumped in an armchair, blood oozing from his chest through the torn fabric of his shirt and cardigan. The lenses of a pair of glasses hanging from his neck were spattered with blood.

  That must be Lothar.

  His eyelids flickered open.

  ‘Where have they gone?’ Rozhkov shouted at him in German.

  The man managed to shake his head.

  Rozhkov shot him between the eyes.

  More noise.

  ‘Check the bedrooms!’ Rozhkov ordered.

  Heike moved through the villa, her weapon raised.

  She kicked open first one door – a guest bedroom – and then another.

  Lothar’s bedroom. Heike scanned the room for possible hiding places.

  Behind the bed and a wardrobe. She checked. Nothing there.

  She glanced out of the bedroom window. The view was spectacular. A steep wooded slope dropped down to a quiet cove of blue and green.

  There was a small garden behind the villa. It was enclosed by a high white wall, to which all manner of shrubs and vines clung. A small black gate stood in one corner.

  Open.

  She could just make out a footpath winding among the trees, heading down to the cove.

  ‘Rozhkov!’ she shouted. ‘They went out the back!’

  She joined Rozhkov as he found a back door from the kitchen out into the garden and followed him through the gate.

  The path was steep, but they took it as quickly as they could. Phil might be difficult to catch, but they should be faster than Emma. She noticed Rozhkov limping a little as if he had twisted an ankle, and so she squeezed past him.

  A hundred metres or so below them, the trees briefly opened up, revealing the path. She kept her eyes on the spot and, sure enough, she saw a flash of yellow as first Emma and then Phil ran along it. Emma was moving fast for a grandmother, certainly as fast as the limping Rozhkov.

  Phil stopped and glanced upwards. For a second, he stared right at her; then he was gone into the trees.

  She rushed on.

  She was pretty sure she was catching them up. They were getting close to the foot of the hill and the cove, which was rimmed with a narrow pebbly beach.

  She emerged from the trees at a spot about twenty metres above the shore. Emma was running headlong through the pebbles. There was no sign of Phil.

  Emma slipped and fell.

  Heike stopped, and raised her gun, fighting to control her breath. The range was only about fifty metres, but that was difficult with a handgun, especially if you were panting as heavily as she was.

  She could hear Rozhkov behind her.

  ‘Shoot her,’ he commanded.

  * * *

  Despite her age, Emma was moving fast. But probably not as fast as the two KGB agents.

  They
came to an opening in the trees and Phil looked back. He saw one of the agents staring at him.

  Heike.

  They needed a plan. Phil had one.

  He caught up with Emma.

  ‘Give me your gun, Grams!’

  ‘Why?’ she called back.

  ‘Just give it to me.’

  She paused and handed Phil her gun. In a rushed couple of sentences, he explained his plan.

  He could hear them behind him. He was searching for the perfect spot. They didn’t have much time – the beach was nearing. Once out on the beach, they would be sitting ducks. Emma would be a sitting duck.

  He found his spot and pushed himself into a bush.

  Twenty seconds later, Heike appeared in front of him, breathing heavily. She paused and looked out over the beach, where Emma was running.

  Phil could hear the sound of her colleague scrambling down the path a few yards above him.

  He raised the revolver, cocked it as quietly as he could, and pointed it at Heike’s back.

  Just for an instant, an image of Heike’s lively smile, of those glittering blue eyes, leapt to the front of his mind. But only for an instant. Heike was about to shoot his grandmother. And she would shoot him too, if she got the chance.

  He had to time this right. He had to take out Heike’s KGB colleague as well.

  Two seconds later, the man arrived next to Heike, limping.

  The man spotted Emma on the beach. ‘Shoot her,’ he commanded in German.

  Phil squeezed the trigger.

  The bullet hit Heike between her narrow shoulders from ten yards. The recoil surprised Phil.

  He steadied himself and moved the barrel of the pistol towards the other guy, who was turning towards him and raising his own gun.

  Phil shot him in the head.

  And then he shot Heike again, just as Emma had done, to make sure she was dead.

  And then he was out of bullets.

  Part Six

  Epilogue

  Fifty-Eight

  July 1979, Buckinghamshire

  * * *

  Phil sipped his pint of Brakspear with pleasure. It was good to be back in a proper English pub, especially if it was the Three Castles.

  He had arrived a few minutes early for his meeting with Mr Swann. He wanted to have time alone with a pint to try to process what had happened over the last couple of weeks.

  It would take much longer than ten minutes to process; it would take a lifetime. He was still buzzing from the adrenaline of it all. He had avoided death not once, but twice. He had saved his grandmother’s life. He had plunged into the world of spies and spying.

  He was also grateful for getting to know Emma better. Not only his grandmother as she was now, but also as she had been forty years ago, as a young diplomat’s wife.

  He had left England a schoolboy, less than three weeks before. He didn’t feel like a schoolboy now.

  He had slept with a woman for the first time in his life.

  And then he had shot her.

  He had had no choice about Heike and her colleague; it was self-defence, and defence of his grandmother. But he had had his first bad dream the night before. He knew it would be the first of many; perhaps a lifetime’s worth.

  Emma had killed someone in cold blood. Murdered him. Sure, she had a reason to kill him – to avenge her brother’s death – but revenge wasn’t a justification for murder. This woman, whom he had grown to love over the last couple of weeks, was a murderer. What was he going to do about that?

  Nothing. Until the tumour got her. Then he would think about it.

  They had left the two bodies where they had fallen and hurried back up the path, which forked left to where they had parked the car. They heard the sound of a police siren as they were driving down the hill, and just managed to pull off into a driveway before a small Guardia Civil police car sped up the road towards Lothar’s villa. They didn’t pass any other police cars as they headed out of Jávea, pausing to dump the gun in a rubbish bin off a side road. There were plenty of GB registered cars on the Spanish roads in July, so they felt less conspicuous than they had elsewhere.

  As soon as they had reached Dover, Phil rang the number Swann had given him. He was put right through. He told Swann that Lothar was dead and that he didn’t have the name of the mole, and he agreed to meet him the following lunchtime at the Three Castles.

  He had come clean about Swann to Emma; after all that had happened, she didn’t seem to hold it against him.

  After much thought, she had asked Phil about Mr Swann’s teeth.

  The return home the evening before had been difficult. On the one hand, it was wonderful to be once again surrounded by the security and minor irritations of his family. On the other, he and Emma had told lie after lie to his parents, with his sister Mel looking on sceptically. She knew something was up.

  ‘Phil!’

  Phil recognized Mr Swann immediately, still wearing a suit, still with tufts of hair sticking out above his ears. Phil wondered whether he looked the same to Swann as he had the last time they had met. Or whether killing someone changed you on the outside as well as the inside.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’ Phil asked politely. He was flush with cash; Emma had paid him the three hundred she had promised for accompanying her. He had earned it.

  ‘That’s all right. I’ll get it,’ said Swann.

  He was back with his own pint within a couple of minutes.

  ‘You have been in the wars, haven’t you?’

  ‘You’ve heard?’

  ‘One KGB agent killed in Annecy, another and a Stasi agent killed near Valencia, plus a former West German diplomat in France. And, of course, a retired NKVD agent from before the war. Are there any I’ve missed?’

  ‘I don’t think so. We didn’t kill Kurt,’ Phil said. ‘And I’m sure you heard that Freddie Pelham-Walsh was run over in Berlin. That wasn’t us either, but I’m pretty certain it wasn’t an accident.’

  ‘So am I. So, Lothar is dead, and he took the name of the mole with him?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Phil.

  ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask my grandmother?’

  Phil looked up behind Swann, who turned to see Emma coming towards him.

  ‘Hello, Kenneth,’ she said.

  Swann scrambled to his feet. ‘Emma? I wasn’t expecting to see you.’

  ‘I thought it unfair to leave Philip to explain everything. And I suspected it would be you.’

  ‘How?’ said Swann.

  Emma touched her front teeth. After much thought, she had asked Phil whether his Mr Swann had a gap between his front teeth. Phil had confirmed he had.

  Just like Kenneth Heaton-Smith.

  ‘Well, you are easily recognizable after all these years,’ said Swann, as Phil still thought of him.

  ‘Are you still working for MI6?’ Emma asked.

  ‘That’s not the sort of question I can answer.’

  ‘Don’t be coy, Kenneth.’

  Swann nodded. ‘They drag me out of retirement every now and then.’

  ‘“They” being C?’

  Swann nodded again. ‘After you spoke to Freddie a few months ago, Freddie came to C. C drafted me in because I had a good relationship with you going back a long time. It was good, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose it was,’ said Emma. ‘At least I helped you.’

  ‘And your country. For which I am very grateful.’

  ‘But why did you approach Philip and not me? And why did you ask him to keep quiet about it?’

  ‘We suspected that you were sympathetic to the Russian point of view before the war,’ Swann said carefully. ‘Rightly or wrongly, we were concerned that you still might be.’

  ‘Wrongly,’ said Emma.

  ‘I can vouch for that,’ said Phil. ‘As can those bodies of Russian agents we left about the place.’

  He was surprised to hear himself talking so casually about the people he and Emm
a had killed, but he meant to defend her from the British secret service as much as the Russian one. He was committed now.

  ‘So you think there is another mole? Beyond Anthony Blunt.’

  Swann winced at the mention of the name. Phil had never heard it before.

  ‘Anthony is Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures,’ Emma explained to Phil. ‘And for many years it’s been widely known that he was a spy for the Russians.’

  That didn’t sound like a particularly sensitive job to Phil. Did this Blunt bloke keep the Kremlin up to date with the pictures hanging in the royal toilet? He was coming to realize that the British establishment was a very curious beast.

  ‘It’s not widely known,’ said Swann. ‘That, young man, is still a secret. But yes, Emma, C has a suspicion that there is yet another spy hiding somewhere. He thinks he was recruited by Lothar before the war.’

  ‘I see,’ said Emma.

  ‘But Lothar didn’t tell you who?’

  ‘No,’ said Emma. ‘Phil did ask him. Phil is a loyal citizen; he seems to do what you tell him. But Lothar refused to say who it was.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘I shot him,’ said Emma. ‘Lothar killed my brother Hugh before the war. I needed to put that right.’

  ‘Meanwhile, we lost any chance we had to find the spy.’ Swann’s tone was calm and matter-of-fact, belying the frustration he must have been feeling.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Emma, not sounding in the least bit sorry.

  ‘Do you have any idea who it might be, from back then? Anyone you knew whom you think Lothar might have recruited?’

  Phil had been asking himself the same question. He was anxious to hear Emma’s answer.

  Emma seemed to take the question seriously. ‘The only person I can think of is Freddie,’ she said. ‘But I am sure that has occurred to you.’

  ‘It has. We think Freddie dabbled for the Russians for a couple of years before the war, but the Nazi–Soviet Pact in 1939 put him off. He helped us extensively after the war. That’s not the man we are looking for.’