The Diplomat's Wife

by Ridpath, Michael

  ‘Then sorry. Nothing.’

  Swann turned to Phil. ‘Do you have any clues? Any suspicions from what you have heard?’

  ‘Just Freddie,’ said Phil.

  But then someone else popped into his mind.

  ‘Phil?’ Swann had noticed.

  ‘No. I was racking my brains, but no.’

  ‘All right,’ said Swann. ‘Let’s order some lunch.’ He passed the simple pub menu card to Emma.

  ‘You two have left quite a mess behind you,’ he said as she read it. ‘Interpol has been in touch about a young man who said his name was Eustace Parsons, who was enquiring after Freddie in Berlin and claimed to be his godson. Fortunately, the real Eustace found the local police’s questions amusing, once I had assured him that you were safe. He denies being eighteen years old, or being in Berlin a couple of weeks ago.’

  Phil winced. Not his brightest moment.

  Swann continued. ‘The French police have questions about a green British sports car seen at the house where Kurt Lohmüller was killed. Nothing from Spain as yet, but we must be prepared. Don’t worry; we will protect you both. But I do need to know exactly what happened.’

  ‘All right,’ said Emma. ‘But before we go into all that, will there be any retribution, do you think?’

  ‘From the French and German police?’

  ‘No. From the KGB. I’m more worried about Philip than myself.’

  Swann smiled. ‘No. The KGB will not want to carry out a vendetta against an old lady and a schoolboy. It’s an embarrassment. They will want to forget all about it. The relevant officers will be blamed and disciplined, and it will all be swept under the carpet, I am quite sure of that. There’s a lot of stuff under that carpet, believe me, but there is always room for more.’

  Fifty-Nine

  July 1979, Cornwall

  * * *

  It was raining the whole way from Reading to St Austell, which gave Phil a chance to polish off War and Peace, the last section of which seemed to be an extended essay on Napoleonic warfare and the theory of history. Which Phil found fascinating.

  The rain cleared as the train entered Cornwall, and Phil put down his book. Emma had rung earlier in the week, angling for him to visit her, while at the same time giving no hint to her daughter that there was anything wrong with her. He had got back his labouring job on a building site starting the following Monday, so Phil had decided to visit his grandmother for a few days before then.

  He was looking forward to seeing her. He also wanted to talk to her about the idea that had lodged itself in his brain in the Three Castles.

  He thought he knew who the mole was.

  He didn’t have much evidence, he certainly didn’t have proof, but it fitted. And he needed to talk to his grandmother about it.

  She wasn’t waiting for him at the station.

  Dick was.

  He grinned and waved when he saw Phil, grabbed Phil’s rucksack and slung it into the back of the TR6.

  ‘I didn’t know you were staying with Grams?’ Phil said.

  ‘She is so secretive, your grandmother,’ said Dick. ‘Yes, I rearranged things. I’m planning to stay with her until . . .’

  ‘Until?’

  ‘Until.’

  That shut Phil up for a bit. ‘Is it close, do you think?’

  ‘She had a brain scan when she came back. The tumour has grown. Her balance is really bad now, and often she can’t grip things or do up buttons. She gets headaches, especially early in the morning, but nothing too persistent. Yet.’

  ‘Do they say how long?’

  ‘No. They don’t know. It could be any time. Or it could be weeks.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Still. She is in very good spirits. And she’s so pleased about you coming.’ Dick grinned. ‘I do like this car, by the way. It must have been fun driving it around Europe.’

  Fun? Could you call fleeing halfway across the continent from homicidal KGB agents fun? And yet.

  ‘Yes,’ said Phil. ‘It was fun.’

  ‘We’ve been talking a lot,’ said Dick. ‘About her life. About her brother – my time at school with him, university. About you even. She’s been enjoying it. And so have I.’

  They drove through the narrow streets of Mevagissey and then high up the hill overlooking the fishing harbour to his grandmother’s familiar house. He found her in the conservatory, which overlooked the garden and the white houses of the village down below. She looked pale and exhausted, but her eyes lit up when she saw Phil.

  ‘Ciamar a tha thu?’ she said in Gaelic.

  Phil screwed up his face in concentration. ‘Tha mi glè mhath.’

  She smiled. She was sitting in a wicker chair, a copy of The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch next to her.

  ‘Would you like some lime cordial?’

  Rose’s lime cordial with ice was the drink she used to fix for Phil and Mel when they came to stay in the summer as children.

  ‘That would be lovely, Grams.’

  She struggled to get to her feet.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Phil said.

  ‘Don’t worry, I will,’ said Dick.

  He returned with a glass a minute later, and then left them alone, explaining that he was going to walk out to the cliffs.

  ‘I’m so pleased you came,’ said Emma.

  ‘Dick said there might not be long to go,’ said Phil. He had learned over the last month not to beat about the bush with his grandmother.

  ‘I know. That’s why I wanted to see you.’

  ‘You really must tell Mum,’ said Phil. ‘Or let me do it.’ His mother still had no idea that her own mother was terminally ill.

  ‘No,’ said Emma. ‘Please no. You know, I’m really enjoying these last few days. With Dick. And you. I don’t want Caroline bustling about here bossing me around.’

  Phil felt sorry for his mother. He knew she would want to know, and would be furious with Phil for not telling her. But he supposed it was Emma’s right to decide whom she told.

  ‘All right, Grams. If you insist.’

  She smiled her thanks. She insisted.

  Phil realized that with Dick gone for his walk, he had an opportunity that might not reappear.

  ‘About Dick.’

  Emma gazed into Phil’s eyes, searching, finding, affirming.

  ‘You think so too?’ said Phil.

  ‘That he’s Kenneth’s mole?’ said Emma. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I can’t be sure,’ said Phil. ‘He’s the only one you knew back then who isn’t accounted for. We know it’s not Freddie, we know it’s not Kurt. Dick’s a management consultant working with international defence companies, plus he worked for some dodgy ministry during the war, so he would be well placed to spy for the Russians.

  ‘There is a chance that the mole is someone you’ve never met, but that doesn’t quite make sense. Swann must suspect that the mole is someone you knew, which is why he told me and not you about him; he was afraid you might warn whoever it is. You and Swann trusted each other. Why else wouldn’t he have spoken to you directly?’

  Emma nodded.

  ‘I know it’s not exactly proof,’ Phil went on. ‘But it’s a good guess.’

  ‘I always wondered why Kurt’s warning about the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact never got through to the Foreign Office,’ Emma said. ‘There is only really one explanation. It was never delivered. Dick never delivered it.’

  ‘Because the Russians told him not to?’

  Emma nodded.

  ‘We could just ask Swann,’ said Phil.

  ‘We could. But I’d rather we didn’t.’

  Phil had been afraid of this. ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘I don’t actually know.’

  ‘All right, how long have you suspected?’

  ‘Since Spain.’

  ‘Wait a moment,’ said Phil. ‘Did you shoot Lothar so that he couldn’t tell me about the mole?’

  Emma nodded. ‘Sorry, Philip. You took me quite by surprise when you bro
ught that up. I thought Lothar would refuse to tell you, but I couldn’t take the risk. I was always going to shoot him; that just made me pull the trigger sooner.’

  ‘But Dick’s here! He’s here with you now!’

  ‘I know. And it’s wonderful.’ She reached out to take Phil’s hand. ‘I know I have asked a lot of you, Philip. But I have just one more favour. Keep this to yourself. For me. Just so I can enjoy my last few days.’

  ‘But he’s a spy, Grams! Don’t you care? He’s spying for the Russians and they’re our enemies.’

  ‘I don’t care, Phil. I was a spy, once, remember? Dick is a good man. He is doing what he is doing because he believes in it. Because he believes that capitalism ruins the lives of the masses. Because he loves his fellow human beings. I admire that.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ said Phil. ‘Does he know you know?’

  ‘No,’ said Emma. ‘And I strongly suggest that you don’t let on that you know either. It might not be good for you.’

  Because the bastard might kill me, thought Phil. He was angry with his grandmother. Angry that after all this she would put him in such an awkward situation. Again.

  ‘Promise me, Philip. Promise me you won’t tell Kenneth about Dick? Even after I’m gone.’

  Why shouldn’t he? Why the bloody hell shouldn’t he?

  He glared at his grandmother. She held his eyes, pleading, trusting.

  Emma, Freddie, Dick, Kurt, Kay: they had all betrayed their countries at various times, all from a genuine belief that what they were doing was right for humanity. Phil disagreed with them. History had proved that they were wrong; the Soviet Union was evil.

  He might be only eighteen, but he loved his country, as so many eighteen-year-olds had done before him.

  But he also loved his grandmother.

  ‘OK, Grams,’ he said. ‘I won’t tell anyone. I promise.’

  Sixty

  July 1979, Buckinghamshire

  * * *

  The phone call Phil had been expecting came the Friday after he got back from Cornwall. He returned home from his first week on the building site filthy and exhausted. His mother was waiting for him in the hallway, her eyes red.

  ‘Grams is dead, Phil.’

  ‘Oh.’ Phil had anticipated this news, but it still stunned him.

  ‘A man called Dick Loxton has just rung. Who is he? He says he’s been staying with her.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Phil. ‘We met him in Paris. He knew her before the war.’

  ‘And he’s staying with her now?’

  ‘Yes. I saw him last week.’

  ‘And you didn’t tell me?’

  Phil didn’t answer.

  ‘He says she had a brain tumour and that she knew about it. Did she tell you?’

  ‘Not at first,’ said Phil. ‘But eventually. When we were driving through France.’

  ‘And you didn’t tell me that, either?’

  ‘She made me promise not to.’ He looked at his mother, whose face was crumpling in front of him. He felt guilty and he felt angry. Guilty that he had kept his promise to his grandmother, and angry that she had made him do it. ‘Sorry, Mum.’

  ‘Phil!’ The tears were streaming down his mother’s face now. ‘Phil, she was my mother. I had a right to know. I should be down there looking after her, not this dick.’ She spat out the last word in all its penile ambiguity.

  Phil’s father emerged from the sitting room; he must have come home early from work. He put his arms around his wife and glared at his son.

  Phil stumped upstairs, and sat on his bed in his jeans, filthy with dust from the building site. His eyes roamed around his room and settled on his copy of the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide lying on the floor.

  He thought of his grandmother beside her brother’s grave at Chaddington; sitting beside him in the TR6 lecturing him on Plastic Bertrand; showing him that church with the amazing windows in Paris; crammed in the back of the tiny taxi travelling through East Berlin. He imagined her as a young diplomat’s wife confounding all who met her, diplomats and spymasters, throughout Europe.

  He smiled. And then a blackness seeped inside him, spreading from somewhere in his chest throughout his whole body, filling every empty cranny with a darker emptiness.

  He blinked and felt a hot trail wriggle down his cheek.

  There was a knock at his bedroom door.

  He didn’t answer.

  The door opened. His mum appeared, hesitated, and then walked into the room and sat down next to him on the bed. Slowly, she put her arm around his shoulders, and he leaned into her as she hugged him tight.

  He felt her lips in his hair.

  * * *

  Phil had had enough of keeping promises to his grandmother.

  While his parents were sipping gin and tonics before supper in the sitting room, he made a murmured phone call to a London number, reversing the charges. It took a while for him to be put through to Mr Swann, or Mr Heaton-Smith, or whatever his name was.

  ‘My grandmother just died,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Swann. ‘I know you expected it, but it must be a blow.’

  ‘I have some things I need to tell you. I know who the mole is.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I need to tell you face to face.’ Phil and Emma’s proof wasn’t cast iron; he wanted to have a proper chance to explain it to Swann.

  ‘All right. I’m abroad at the moment. But I can see you at one o’clock, Sunday. Same place.’

  * * *

  Phil heard a car pull up in the little driveway outside their house. It was Saturday afternoon, and his parents were at the garden centre. Mel was in her room practising her guitar, and he was learning Gaelic vocabulary.

  He found it strangely calming. It both distracted him from his grandmother’s death and reminded him of her at the same time.

  He looked out of his bedroom window to see the familiar shape of the TR6, top down. And Dick at the wheel.

  Christ!

  Dick rang the doorbell.

  Play it cool, Phil thought. Not too cool, though. It would be natural for him to seem upset, agitated even.

  ‘Hello, Dick,’ he said as he opened the door, opting for a downbeat tone.

  ‘Hello.’ Dick flashed one of those kind smiles that had so captivated Emma. ‘I’m so sorry, Philip. I know how fond you were of her. And she was of you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Phil. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I came to deliver the car,’ Dick said. ‘Emma was very keen you should have it. And you and I need to have a little chat.’

  Uh-oh. ‘Come in,’ said Phil.

  ‘Look, it’s a lovely afternoon. Why don’t we take her out for a spin?’

  Phil couldn’t think of an answer why not. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘One moment. I just need to tell my sister where I’m going.’

  ‘I’ll wait in the car.’

  Phil ran up to Mel’s room.

  ‘Who’s that?’ said Mel, looking up from her guitar.

  ‘It’s Dick, Grams’s friend. He’s taking me out for a drive.’

  ‘Have fun.’

  ‘Mel. I’m dead serious about this. Listen closely.’ Phil looked around her room, grabbed a biro and ripped off a sheet from a pad of paper on her desk. He scribbled down a number.

  ‘If I’m not back in an hour, ring this number and ask for Mr Swann. Tell him Dick Loxton took me for a drive and I haven’t come back yet. Dick Loxton. Have you got that?’

  ‘Are you serious?’ His sister’s expression was somewhere between bemused and scornful.

  ‘Dead serious,’ said Phil.

  ‘I knew something was up,’ she said. ‘Now you’ve got me scared.’

  ‘I am scared,’ said Phil. ‘Bye, Mel.’ And he bent down and kissed her quickly on the cheek.

  ‘Wow,’ she said. He never kissed her on the cheek. ‘Bye, Phil.’

  He left the house to find Dick waiting for him in the passenger seat.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Phil
asked.

  ‘Is there anywhere we can go for a decent walk around here? There must be; the countryside is beautiful.’

  ‘I know somewhere,’ said Phil, and drove off towards one of those small valleys that cut into the Chiltern Hills.

  Dick was talking about Emma’s last few days, something about how she had been comfortable until the very end when she had complained of a severe headache and then lost consciousness.

  Phil was listening with half an ear.

  Dick was going to kill him. Take him to some remote spot and kill him.

  Phil had no idea how. He probably had a gun.

  Phil needed a plan.

  The walk was Phil’s best hope. Dick was an inch or two taller than Phil, and quite a bit heavier. Phil wasn’t sure he could overpower him, especially if Dick had a gun.

  But he could outrun him.

  So the plan was, wait till they were close to some woods, but don’t wait too long.

  And then make a run for it, into the trees.

  They were driving along a quiet road and parked in a layby near a footpath, which led up through a field to a wood.

  They got out of the car.

  ‘Emma said you and she had had a conversation when you came down last week,’ Dick said. ‘About me.’

  ‘We did,’ said Phil, avoiding Dick’s gaze.

  ‘She said you had both decided that I was some kind of spy.’

  They had crossed a stile and were climbing a low hill beside a hedge, watched by a clutch of bullocks. Behind them, a tiny village dozed in the Buckinghamshire sunshine. The field was exposed to the view of anyone looking out of the windows of their cottage. Not a great place to shoot someone undetected. Dick would have to wait for his chance.

  Phil stopped. ‘I promised her not to tell anyone, and I haven’t.’

  Dick grinned. ‘I’m sure you haven’t. You are the epitome of a loyal grandson.’

  ‘You can trust me not to tell them now,’ Phil said. And at that moment he was willing to stick by that promise if Dick could think of a way of enforcing it without killing him.

  He was scared, but he was doing his best not to show it.