Faithless (35 page)

             
"No, they're not allowed on the ward. Too many loons like me." She flicked ash again. Her demeanour changed and some of the bitterness faded. "It is scary sometimes. Sometimes there's fights. Sometimes the nurses have to restrain patients. I mind my business and keep away from the psychos. I've even made some friends here would you believe? Poor wee souls like myself."

             
"Do you think you're feeling better?"

             
She nodded. "A bit. They have me on that Prozac. And once a day a nurse comes and listens to me rabbit on. It might even work - this so called therapy. Who knows?"

             
He reached out and held her hands. "I do care about you Karen. You know that."

             
She looked at him with cold, empty eyes. "Do you?"

             
He didn't respond. She said, "That's fair enough. I'm pretty hard to love. I don't even like myself very much."

             
He tried to mollify her. "Why do you say that? Everyone who knows you likes you. Angie and Joe were asking after you."

             
"Ask back. I like them too."

             
Suddenly, she started to cry. She wiped her eyes with the back of her right hand - the cigarette hanging from her fingers as she did so. But one hand wasn't enough to staunch the tears. She bowed her head and the tears dripped onto the table. Behind them no one noticed, too fixated on the sorrows of fictional people on the TV. "I'm sorry John. I've not been much fun to live with."

             
He took her hands. "You've not been well. You're ill. You're getting better."

             
She folded her fingers through his. "You're a good man. Many another would have left me for someone else by now."

             
He leaned down and kissed her fingers but he couldn't meet her eyes. "We'll move back to Edinburgh, I promise."

             
"I know your work is important to you. I'll get better here. Things will improve."

             
"You need more people around you. Maybe we could move closer to Joe and Angie. And my friend Alastair from A2A keeps asking if we'd go round for supper."

             
"That would be nice. I always liked Alastair and Zofia - no pretensions to them."

             
"But we'll go back to Scotland. I just need a year or two here. Just for my career, so I can get a good job when we go back."

             
"I said I'll be ok here."

             
"No, we'll go back. There's just things I promised myself I'd achieve in my work here. It'll give me an advantage in the jobs market. I could get a job as an Assistant Director - then maybe that would help me get something like head of security at one of the banks like the Royal Bank of Scotland. I don't know."

             
She wasn't listening."I've been a bitch to you John with my moods and my tantrums. And I know the sex life hasn't been much. Maybe I can ask one of the doctors here if I can get sex therapy? Just to teach me how to do it again." She smiled bitterly.

             
"I just want you to get well."

Later as he walked out back to the car, John was filled with such self loathing that he stopped halfway down the corridor and banged his forehead against the painted wall. A nurse was coming down
the corridor and she looked long and hard at him. But she didn't stop and she didn't say anything. She probably felt she had enough troubled souls to look after  without rescuing another. He walked out to the car and drove home. He knew he no longer loved Karen. A love has to be fed to live, and theirs had starved to death. As he drove, Ailsa came into his mind. He thrust her away, but unbidden she always returned and will alone could not turn his heart from her.

A week later the phone call from Vinogradov came. It was answered by one of the secretaries. She was new to the world of intelligence and still excited by it, unlike the other girls who talked about boyfriends and parties and going on holiday to Ibiza. She ran through to where John was at his desk drinking coffee and looking at the wall as if it were a window. She sounded very keen, "A man asking for Mr McIntosh. He sounds foreign. Is that for you John?"

             
John nodded. "Thanks Liz." He went through to the secretaries' office and heard Vinogradov's voice. He sounded nervous. "I'm in a phone booth. I don't have long. I want to meet you."

             
John had prepared for this. "When?" he said.

             
Vinogradov replied, "On Wednesday. I can be free so they don't miss me for two hours. From 12 noon."

             
John said, slowly and clearly, "Get the Tube to Warren Street Station. I'll be waiting at the station entrance reading a car magazine. Though you already know what I look like. Follow me and I will take you to a safe house. We will have counter surveillance so don't worry if you spot anyone. They'll be ours. We'll look out for yours."

The indoctrination list for the operation was was small and they didn't want to risk using A4 for counter surveillance so while John waited reading Autocar at entrance to Warren Street Under
ground Station, Rob from K4, Philip, now TCI/3 over at SIS and Ailsa were distributed discreetly at points to the station and the route to the safe house. They had borrowed some radio earpieces from A4 without explaining why. At five past twelve John saw Vinogradov come up the escalator. He lingered long enough to make sure Vinogradov saw him then tucked his magazine under his arm, looked at his watch and walked off round the corner. He saw Philip standing on the other side of the road as if waiting to hail a taxi but he did not make eye contact. He walked down Warren Street without looking back and saw Rob examining the menu in the window of a Nepalese restaurant. Then he turned left and walked into and across Fitzroy Square down Grafton Way and eventually into Fitzroy Mews. John felt in his pocket for the key to the safe house. He heard Philip's voice crackle over the radio. "He's clean."

             
John opened the door and nodded to Vinogradov who hurried across to the door. Once in John closed the door behind them and waited for a few minutes until there was a knock. He opened it and let Ailsa in. Then they all went upstairs.

             
"Do you want a cup of tea?" said John in English.

             
Vinogradov was sweating. "No. Was I followed?"

             
"Not by your people. No."

             
Ailsa smiled and extended her hand. "Welcome Mr Vinogradov."

             
He shook it without smiling. "Mrs Parker. The journalist."

             
She nodded. "Miss actually." John looked and saw she'd removed her wedding ring.

             
"Can we be quick?" asked Vinogradov.

             
"Of course."

             
"You have specific questions?"

             
John nodded. "I want to know about KGB activities here in the UK. Miss Parker here wants political information - what's going on in Moscow? What are the Politburo thinking? Is that right Miss Parker?"

             
"Perfectly, thank you Mr McIntosh," she said. "I'm going to get myself a glass of water. It's too hot in here. Anyone want one? Can you open the window Richard?"

             
It was a second before John realised she meant him. He went over and opened the window slightly. There was not much street noise - a dog barking, a child shouting in Arabic.

             
"I'm going to record this Mr Vinogradov," said John and got a cassette tape recorder from the wooden chest of drawers in the corner of the spartan room.

             
"Can I smoke?"

             
"Sure."

             
"Also call me Volodya. I want to feel as if I am among friends."

             
"Of course," said Ailsa. "You can call me Izzy. This is Dick."

             
If Vinogradov realised she was making a joke, he didn't smile.  He lit up his cigarette and took a few nervous drags.

             
"Firstly," said Ailsa, "we need to talk about why you're here with us."

             
He met her gaze. "Why I am betraying my country?"

             
"I don't see it like that. I see that you are doing a heroic thing to help the cause of freedom both in Russia and the West," she said.

             
He shrugged, happy to allow her to persuade him of his virtue. "I hope so.  To answer your question - my father was a KGB officer. The job brings prestige and privilege. You know all the nomenklatura aim for this kind of work - foreign travel, access to hard currency; a feeling of elitism. So naturally he wanted me to follow in his footsteps. Also the work is exciting. It is like being in a cheap novel - all the secrets and as you say in English, cloak and dagger."

             
"We do," said Ailsa.

             
Vinogradov went on. "When Kruschev began to reveal the secrets of Stalin's crimes that was one thing. But when I was at the First Chief Directorate I saw some of the old files. Many had been destroyed but it became clear that the KGB was not the sword and shield of the Party. At least not in a heroic way. I saw it was involved in mass murders of anyone who spoke against Stalin. Not against Communism, but against Stalin. I was still a Socialist in those days. Then I had trips abroad and I saw that people in the West seemed happier. They certainly had what we wanted - shiny pretty things, big cars, foreign holidays. So, I am convinced that the Western system works better," he looked at them for confirmation.

             
"You said you are no longer a Socialist. Tell me how that happened," asked John.

             
"I think people are wicked by nature," said Vinogradov. "Is there an ashtray by the way?"

             
John went to get him one from the top of the chest of drawers.

             
Vinogradov tapped off a long column of ash into it. "Socialism requires a belief that people are not motivated by their own interests. But they are. So, if you have a system that centralises power;  the greedy and self serving exploit it so that people who should be in prison end up ruling. They are murderers, criminals, sadists, perverts - Beria, Stalin and the other lesser known psychopaths. The system is flawed. The leaders irredeemably  corrupt. It cannot be reformed."

             
"Not even by Mr Gorbachev with his perestroika?" asked Ailsa

             
"He will fail. The vested interests will rise up against him."

             
"You seem very sure about that," said John.

             
Vinogradov nodded. "Believe me. I know the Soviet Union far better than you."

             
"And that is why this is so important that you are talking to us," said Ailsa. "You are doing an immensely brave thing for the good of many millions of people in your own country and ours. We really want you to stay in place in your job and keep meeting  us."

             
"I realise this," said Vinogradov. "But one thing is most important. And this is the safety of my wife and children. They are now here in London. I want you to promise me you will make plans to take them and look after them, should I be executed."

             
"We will do that," said Ailsa.

             
"That is my demand. Without this, I will do nothing for you. I want a letter from your Foreign Secretary - signed to say you will take care of my wife and children. You will put their names in this letter."

             
"I will speak to my superiors," said Ailsa. "I am sure we can do it."

             
"Without it you will never see me again. Many will think I have betrayed my country, but I will never betray my wife and children."

             
John spoke up. "I wondered if you could give us something on the structure of the KGB residency in London?"

             
Vinogradov said, "Do you have paper?"

             
John reached him some paper and a pencil. Vinogradov took them and began sketching a diagram of the hierarchy of the KGB at the London Residency. He wrote names down in Russian. "This is the Resident. He is Gelashvili. I hate him - he thinks he is so ideologically pure." He pointed at the paper with his pencil. "Then there are Line X. He is Line N. Line KR, and Line PR. This man is the KGB driver and this man the KGB cypher clerk."

             
"My turn," said Ailsa. "So, we are all aware of the heightened rhetoric between the Soviet Union and the USA about strategic nuclear weapons. Tell me what you think Moscow really believes. Under all the bluster and posturing - what's their real position?"