Prisoners of Tomorrow (29 page)

Halfway along the corridor she came to the stairway and elevator connecting the tenth and eleventh floors. Halfway up the stairs she met Ivan, one of the case officers, and Anatoli on their way down. Anatoli was one of the technicians who monitored local British police and counterintelligence-service radio frequencies. If, for example, a sudden increase in British surveillance communications activity occurred just before an agent from the Residency was due to meet with one of his contacts, the agent would be signaled by radio to abort the appointment.

“Good morning,” Anita said to them.

“Did Enriko come in with you?” Ivan asked.

“I’m afraid not. He’ll be out until the afternoon. Is it important?”

“Popovechny wanted to talk to him. He asked me to mention it if I saw him, that’s all.” General Vadim Popovechny was the Residency’s second-in-command and also the head of Line PR, specializing in political intelligence. He was dedicated, ambitious, and injected the ideal measure of toughness into the place to complement Turenov’s more intellectual and sophisticated management style.

“Any idea what it’s about?” Anita asked.

“Sorry, no.”

“Where’s he gone?” Anatoli inquired.

“Hatfield, I think he said.”

“Oh well, see you later, anyhow,” Ivan said.

“Yes. Maybe at lunch.”

“See you later,” Anatoli said.

The eleventh floor contained the electronics-surveillance officer’s domain, which included an enormous room packed with radio and microwave receivers, recorders, computers, terminals, and equipment that communicated with satellites via antennas on the roof. Next to that were the Technical Operations and Photography labs, and then the Translation Office, which Anita entered. Grigori and Eva were already there. Anastasia had a dental appointment and wouldn’t be in until later, she remembered, and it was Viktor’s day off. “Good morning,” she said.

“Hello, Anita,” Grigori answered. He was in his late twenties, and had come out from Moscow fairly recently to spend a couple of years familiarizing himself with overseas routine before becoming active in the field.

Eva, cheerful and freckle-faced, was both physicist and linguist, and had taught English at the Foreign Intelligence School of Moscow University’s Institute for International Relations. She looked around from the screen that she was working at and grinned. “Hi. Say, I like the coat. Is it new?”

Anita took her coat off, held it up for Eva to see, then hung it on the rack inside the door. “I got it a couple of days ago in Queensway. On sale, too.”

“I love the color. And that collar has such a stylish look.”

“Oh, Viktor worked late and finished the Chalmers article, so you don’t have to worry about it,” Grigori informed her. “It’s all filed and logged.”

“Good,” Anita said. “I don’t like dealing with that heavy technical material, anyway.” She sat down at her own terminal, activated it, and entered a call to the classified section of the computer records for the file she had saved yesterday. “It’s going to be a hot day.”

“I was thinking of going for a swim in the compound at lunchtime,” Eva said.

“Sounds like a good idea. Maybe I’ll join you.” Anita produced her magnetic key and inserted it in her desk to open the drawer containing the original documents that she had been working from. She was about to say something further, then stopped and frowned down at the drawer as the lock failed to disengage. Either it was faulty, or her key had been invalidated—all the electronic locks in the building could be reprogrammed remotely from the Security Office downstairs. An instant later a message on her screen announced: illegal access code. request denied.

Anita stared perplexedly at the screen. Then she realized that Maria Chorenkov, the section’s supervisor, was standing in the doorway of her office adjoining the Translation room. “Comrade Dorkas, would you step this way, please,” she said. She was a tall, straight-bodied woman with a sharp face, thin-rimmed spectacles, and graying hair tied in a bun, who always wore thick, utilitarian stockings and drab tweedy clothes. Her voice just at this moment fitted the image. Confused, Anita followed her into the office. Behind her, Eva and Grigori exchanged apprehensive glances.

“You won’t be needing access to the records, since you will no longer be working with this section,” Chorenkov told her without preliminaries when the door was closed. “You are being transferred downstairs to the Secretariat, effective immediately. Collect your personal belongings, please. And thank you for your help during the time you have been with us.”

Anita was flummoxed. “But this is so sudden. I don’t understand . . .”

“All I know is that I have direct instructions from General Popovechny.”

“He gave no reason?”

“Not to me. And I didn’t ask.”

“But . . . Could I speak with him, please?”

“That is impossible. He will be out until tomorrow.”

Anita collected her personal belongings, mumbled a bewildered farewell to Grigori and Eva, and went back downstairs to report to the Secretariat, which provided the Residency’s clerical services. She was given the job of searching through British newspapers, magazines, specialist journals, and the public dataservice for references to certain listed topics. All the information was freely available in the public domain; it gave her the uneasy feeling that her security clearance had been suspended.

But by lunchtime she was telling herself that she had overreacted. The mundane work had to be done, after all, and somebody had to do it. Maria Chorenkov’s brusqueness and insensitivity had been typical. Tomorrow there would be a simple explanation. By midafternoon she had just about recovered from the shock, when Colonel Felyakin, the internal-security officer, called her into his office.

“You are scheduled for leave tomorrow, I see,” he said.

“Yes,” Anita replied.

“I hope you haven’t made any important plans, because it will be necessary to change your arrangements,” he told her. “A couple of people from Moscow will be here, and one of the things they want to look into involves you and your husband. Apparently there has been an administrative mix-up over the dates and durations of some of the postings, and we’d like to get it straightened out. Can you manage that all right?”

“Why, yes . . . I suppose so.”

“Thank you. Shall we say ten o’clock? Oh, and your husband also. I’ve checked, and he is due in tomorrow, anyway.”

“I’ll tell him.”

“And make sure you have your passports. We’ll need to check the dates and visas in them.”

“Yes. Ten o’clock tomorrow,” Anita repeated mechanically.

“Excellent.”

By evening Anita’s imagination had turned her fears into certainly. Somehow they were on to her. Enriko called to say he had been detained during the afternoon and would be going straight back to the embassy for an evening appointment with the Line KR chief, Colonel Shepanov. The solitude aggravated Anita’s nervousness. She paced restlessly about the apartment, smoking more cigarettes than she was accustomed to and fussing with knickknacks and ornaments that didn’t need rearranging. She poured herself a drink and sat staring unseeingly at the television for an hour, searching back in her mind over the events of the past few weeks for a hint of anything that might have gone wrong or something indiscreet that she might have said. She could find nothing, but that didn’t really amount to much. The biggest danger in this kind of business was having to depend on other people.

Every time she looked at the clock, another slice of time had been shaved off the interval that remained until ten tomorrow morning. She found herself dreading the thought of reentering the embassy. If a KGB officer’s wife had come under suspicion, it would be automatic for his reliability to be questioned too. Who were these people from Moscow who wanted to talk to them? Why the need for passports? She didn’t believe the explanation that Felyakin had given.

It was around midnight when Enriko finally appeared, having left the car at the embassy and taken a taxi. He and Shepanov had been drinking together, and although he wasn’t sufficiently far gone to be called drunk, it showed. This happened from time to time. Anita saw it as a safety valve against the stresses that made ulcers, high blood pressure, and nervous problems routine occupational hazards of a KGB officer’s life—and Enriko always had enough sense not to let it get out of hand. But whereas he usually came home bright-eyed and talkative after an evening of drinking with friends, on this occasion he returned morose and distracted. Obviously there was something heavy weighing on his mind.

“What is it?” Anita asked him.

“Nothing.”

“Look, I can see something’s wrong. But I can’t read minds. How can I help if you won’t say what’s the matter?” He just looked at her strangely for a while and wouldn’t answer.

Finally, after he had poured himself another drink and was sitting opposite her on the couch in the lounge, he said, “Shepanov is heading for trouble, you know. He has problems with his marriage, and that is leading him into a problem with drink. It’s a familiar story.”

“I’ve heard gossip around the compound about his wife and one or two names,” Anita replied. “Yes, it happens.”

“And he’s lonely away from Russia and his friends. He likes having someone to talk to. But sometimes he opens up too much and says things that he shouldn’t.” Enriko seemed to be working up to something. Anita waited. Then he took a gulp from his glass and asked suddenly, “How much do you know about that woman scientist from Novosibirsk that your former husband took up with?”

Instantly Anita stiffened. Normally her reaction would have been to remind him that they had agreed not to talk about such matters, but it was too close to the things that had been preying on her mind all evening. Instead she asked, “What do you mean? What about her?”

“Oh, I’m not interested in your personal affairs or anything like that. But what about her . . . politically?” Enriko took another drink, and for the first time Anita wondered if he really had gone past the limit. “Was her loyalty ever in question?”

Anita stared at him for a few seconds, trying to fit what he was saying in with the other things that had happened that day. “Why?” she asked. Her voice was strangely dry and hollow. “What’s happened?”

Enriko looked up to meet her eyes directly. “Shepanov told me tonight that she was arrested three months ago on charges involving illegal dissident activity. That, of course, would put Dyashkin under suspicion straight away.” Enriko didn’t have to spell out the rest. All of Dyashkin’s close associates and relatives would also be subject to investigation, and especially Anita as his ex-wife. That was something that Enriko could have done without as far as his own career prospects were concerned. “Were you ever mixed up in anything like that?” he demanded.

“Of course not. I went through enough screening before we were married. You know yourself how rigorous they are.”

“They have made mistakes, nevertheless.”

Anita felt herself grow cold and start to shake. She needed to escape for a moment to compose herself. “Let me get you a coffee,” she said.

“Anita, look at me. I ask you again—Were you ever involved in anything like that?”

She forced herself to react angrily. “I told you, no! Sober up, you’re being ridiculous. Would you like a coffee?”

Enriko slumped back on the couch. “Yes, maybe I should. . . .”

Anita got up and hurried through to the kitchen. Her mind was too agitated to think while she opened a cabinet and took out the coffee and two mugs. Then, as she stood staring at the jar in her hands, the realization came over her that if she went back to the embassy tomorrow morning, the only way she would ever leave it again would be under escort, heading for the airport to board a Moscow-bound plane. Enriko would no doubt weather through eventually. She wouldn’t last a day. Very likely she was finished already.

She stood there, gnawing at her lip, dismissing from her mind preposterous thoughts of what she could do. Then she slowly raised the jar of coffee in both hands, hesitated for a moment, and smashed it on the floor. By the time Enriko appeared in the lounge doorway, she was already past him in the hall, slipping on her coat. He looked at her uncertainly. “What was that? Are you all right? Where are you going?”

“The coffee jar—it slipped. I’m just going to get some more at the shop on the corner. Be a dear and clean it up while I’m gone, would you?” And before Enriko could reply, she had let herself out the hall door and was heading for the stairs. The apartment was only one floor up, and instead of using the front entrance, she went on down another level and left the building via a side door from the parking basement.

Anita walked several blocks, then took a cab to Knightsbridge on the south side of Hyde Park. She went into a hotel that she knew there and sat for a while, steadying herself with a drink in the upstairs bar and thinking what to do next. Then, reaching the conclusion that she had no other choice, she went to a phone booth in the lobby and called the special number she had been given by her contact at SIS.

In an operations room of the British Special Intelligence Service located in a labyrinth that had existed beneath Whitehall since the days of World War II, the duty officer who took the call consulted a supervisor, and then sent out a radio signal coded for emergency priority. Two miles away in Chelsea, the signal activated an ordinary-looking communicator in the pocket of a jacket that had been thrown over the back of a chair, underneath a pile of clothes. The unit had been set to reject incoming calls. However, it contained special-purpose circuitry that caused the standard setting to be bypassed.

Jeremy had been waiting months for this. The chateaubriand for two had been splendid, the wine impeccable, and the atmosphere enchanting. Now, with the soft strains of violins and the scent of roses pervading her bedroom, the evening was almost complete.

Daphne kissed him on the mouth and lay back, smiling seductively as she opened her robe to uncover her perfect body. Jeremy allowed his eyes to feast on the sight. “I say,” he murmured. “I’ve always had a thing about flimsy little knickers like those. Is what’s underneath as pretty as the rest?”