Spy Story (20 page)

I studied the map. This aircraft's electronics were primitive. Flying VFR meant he'd have to put it down before dark. The huge shape of the Isle of Man was only just visible in the gloomy ocean to port. He was not going there, nor to the airport at Blackpool, which we'd already passed. The fuel needles were flickering and still we maintained the same course that we'd steered since Castle Donington. It would be the chin of Scotland, or beyond that its nose, drooped down into the Western Isles. After the peninsula of Kintyre our track would be past the Scottish mainland. Then there were just the Islands and the Atlantic and eventually, long after the last drip of fuel had sounded the final beat of the little engine, Iceland. It had to be an island or a piece of peninsula. I just hoped that it would come over the horizon soon.

‘The only way to guarantee privacy, old chap,' said Toliver. He replenished my tumbler from a decanter of malt whisky. ‘The grass strip and the landing stage were built in 1941. This peninsula and the neighbouring islands were taken over by the military. Some were used for testing biological warfare stuff. Anthrax was the most persistent … won't be safe for a hundred years, they say. Ours was used for training secret agents: the big manor house, the high cliffs, the ruined villages – there was a good sampling of landscape.'

Toliver smiled. Once, many years before, in the sort of electioneering invective that endears politicians to all of us, his opponent had called Toliver a ‘talking potato'. It was a cruel taunt, for it made one notice the small black eyes, receding hair and oval face that were part of his otherwise boyish features.

He smiled now. ‘What I'm about to tell you comes under the contract. You understand me?'

I understood him well enough. Every time I signed that damned Official Secrets Act I read the fine print. I nodded and turned to look out of the window. It was dark but there remained a watery pink sky in the west, with a pattern of trees drawn on it. Beyond them, I knew the aircraft was pegged down tightly against the chance of winds that came off the Atlantic with a sudden and terrible fury. But I could see more reflected in the leaded window than I could see through it. The flames flickered in the open hearth behind me, and men were seated around it drinking and speaking softly so that they could half listen to the words that Toliver spoke to me.

‘It's too late to leave,' I said. ‘You'd have to be damned inhospitable for me to want to face a take-off in this … and positively hostile before I'd brave the water.'

‘Splendid,' said Toliver. ‘That's all we ask. Take a look at what we're doing – no less, no more. Should you want no part of it – no hard feelings.'

I turned away from the window. This sober Toliver was a different man from the one I'd seen the other night at Ferdy's. It had become understood between us that the dinner party was not mentioned, nor the traffic accident that might, or might not, have come after it. ‘It will make a change,' I said.

‘Exactly. Nice of Colonel Schlegel to let us steal one of his best people … even for a couple of days.' Toliver touched my elbow and turned me to face the other men in the room.

Among them I recognized Mason. I also saw the tall policeman who had been at number eighteen that night. The others called him Commander Wheeler. They were all talking softly together but the words flared up a little in good-natured argument.

‘… worse in a way – more insidious – pop music and nancy-boy actors.'

‘And most of the big international concerns are American-based.'

‘No doubt about it.'

‘You can't separate them.' It was the tall man speaking. ‘Ecology – as they persist in calling it, God knows why – trade unions, big business: all in league, even if unwittingly so.'

‘Growth,' said Mason, as if they'd had this argument before and each knew his lines.

‘The unions want money for the workers, this forces a policy of growth on the government, so industry pollutes the earth. It's a vicious circle and all of them too stupid to break it.'

‘It all comes back to the voter.'

‘Yes, it does,' said Mason regretfully.

They were robust types, with quiet voices that here and there retained a trace of Yorkshire or Scotland. I looked for some strong common denominator in the group and was irritated with myself for finding none. Their clothes were well-fitting tweeds and cords, with the leather patches and frayed cuffs so often affected by prosperous Englishmen. The group suggested to me some provincial dining club, where ambitious young men drank too much wine, and agreed that the workers would be better off without trade unions.

‘You get these damned Huns reunified and you'll start to see what's what,' said Wheeler.

‘Who will?' said Mason.

‘Everyone,' said Toliver. He couldn't resist joining their conversation, even though he'd been about to introduce me. ‘East Germany is largely agricultural. It will knock agriculture for six, and their shipbuilding will close the rest of our yards, mark my words.'

It's going to turn Europe upside down,' said another man.

‘The Yanks are behind it,' said Wheeler. ‘God knows what kind of a deal they are cooking up behind the scenes with the Russians.'

‘This Pat,' Toliver announced. Pat Armstrong – works at the Studies Centre and …' Toliver appraised me with a quick glance up and down, ‘… a man who knows how to look after himself if I'm any judge. What?' He looked at me quizzically.

‘I play a dangerous game of billiards,' I said.

There were half a dozen of them, aged from middle twenties up to Toliver. Their common interest could have been anything from chess to yachting. I was unsure whether Whitehall was behind them, or just turning a blind eye their way.

‘Commander Wheeler,' said Toliver, putting an arm around Wheeler's shoulder. ‘Our guest would probably like to be put into the picture.'

‘And he's cleared for Top Secret stuff, is he?' said Wheeler. He was a tall man, with the kind of ruddy face that comes with those dual benefits of sea-faring: open air and duty-free drinks. He had this deep flag-officer voice, and he bit down hard on his Latin roots. ‘You probably know as much about Rear-Admiral Remoziva as we do,' he said.

Toliver smiled at me and patted my shoulder. ‘I think Armstrong would agree that the Rear-Admiral would be a strategic asset for us,' he said.

‘He's not here then?' I said.

‘Not yet,' said Toliver. ‘But very, very soon.'

Wheeler said, ‘The simple fact is, if the Admiral doesn't get a kidney transplant within the next eighteen months, he'll be dead a year after.'

‘And he can't get that in the Soviet Union?' I asked.

‘The Admiral is an able statistician,' said Toliver. ‘They started a kidney unit in Leningrad a year ago last July. They are capable of it, yes. But in London we've done thousands of such operations. Ask yourself what you'd prefer.'

‘And he'd defect?'

‘To live?' said Wheeler. ‘A man will go to great lengths to live, Mr Armstrong.'

I suppose I sniffed, or grunted, or made some other noise that fell short of the enthusiasm that Toliver expected. ‘Tell me why not,' said Commander Wheeler.

‘It's possible,' I agreed. ‘But peasant family to Soviet nobility in one generation is quite a jump. They've plenty to be grateful for. One brother is planning a new town near Kiev, the elder sister chairing the Copenhagen talks, and getting more publicity than Vanessa Redgrave …'

‘The Admiral is not yet fifty,' said Wheeler. ‘He has a lot of life ahead of him if he's wise.'

‘We were also sceptical at first,' said Toliver. ‘If the emphasis hadn't been placed upon proving death …' He stopped and looked apologetically at Wheeler. ‘But I'm getting too far ahead.'

Wheeler said, ‘We divided the problem into three separate tasks. The safest place for the transfer was obvious from the start. There's only one place where we can guarantee security. He can fly a helicopter. We will rendezvous with him at a prearranged place on the pack-ice of the Barents Sea and bring him back by submarine.'

‘British submarine,' said Mason.

‘A Royal Navy nuclear submarine,' said Toliver. ‘If the Yanks got wind of it they'd spirit him away to America and that's the last we'd see of him.'

‘Next,' said Wheeler, ‘there is the problem of holding him for debriefing …'

‘And you thought of the War Studies Centre,' I said.

‘Well, it's bloody marvellous, isn't it?' said Wheeler. ‘War-game his debriefing, and put
NATO
resources against him.'

‘And programme the computer to his reactions,' said Toliver.

Dangerous,' I said.

Not as a war plan – just into the data bank,' said Toliver.

‘And what about Schlegel?' I asked.

Wheeler frowned. ‘That's set us back a month or more – but he'll be posted elsewhere. It was finally fixed today.'

‘And the Rear-Admiral will become Pat Armstrong?' I said.

‘Sorry about that,' said Toliver, ‘but you are about the right build and you'd just vacated the flat. We never guessed for a moment that you might go back there.'

‘It's quite good,' I admitted.

‘Only for a few weeks,' said Mason. ‘The tenancy of the flat and all the necessary personal documentation is in your name. There will be no trace of a new person at the Studies Centre. We've gone to a lot of trouble. Getting that damned kidney machine up those stairs and into the flat next door to your old one … I damned near got a hernia. And then when they told us you'd gone back there, and you still had your old key. We got chewed out for that, I'll tell you.'

‘And what happens to me?' I asked. ‘Do I go back and take over Northern Fleet?'

‘I say,' said Wheeler, pretending to take it seriously, ‘that would really be a coup, wouldn't it?' They all laughed.

‘We should have told you right at the beginning,' said Toliver. ‘But our rule is to check out security before information is passed. Foxwell swore on a stack of bibles that you were a sound proposition. But a rule is a rule. Am I right?'

‘And the restaurant and the girl – Miss Shaw – how does that fit in? I thought you were holding the Rear-Admiral there at one time.'

‘We know you did,' said Wheeler. ‘You're quite a bloodhound.'

‘Miss Shaw is the daughter of one of my oldest friends,' said Toliver, ‘and she's turned out first class. It's been beastly for her …'

Mason said, ‘We needed a body – a dead body – to leave at the rendezvous, to make the helicopter crash look right.'

Toliver said, ‘And it has to be a body with a diseased kidney. It gave us problems, I can tell you.'

‘Hence the cold room at The Terrine,' I said. I didn't tell him that Marjorie had recognized him at the mortuary.

‘And damned tricky,' said Mason. ‘Must be in a sitting position so that we can leave it in the wrecked helicopter.'

‘Ever tried to dress and undress a stiff?' one of the others said.

‘You try and get a pair of trousers on a sitting corpse,' said Wheeler, ‘and you might agree that it's the next most difficult thing to doing it standing up in a hammock.' They smiled.

Toliver said, ‘Sara stitched every bit of that uniform together on the frozen body. She's quite a girl.'

‘And where is the body now?' I asked. There was only a moment of hesitation, then Toliver said, ‘It's here, frozen. We have to be careful of what the post-mortem johnnies call adipocere. That's what the flesh becomes when immersed in water. It's got to look right for the Russkies when they find it.'

‘What about the hand stitching?' I said.

‘A calculated risk,' said Toliver.

‘And the uniform will be burned in the crash,' said Mason.

I looked from Wheeler to Toliver and then at Mason. They appeared to be serious. You didn't have to be living with a beautiful doctor to know that post-death discoloration was going to reveal to those same Russkies the fact that the body died full-length in a hospital bed, but I said nothing.

Toliver came round with the gin bottle. He topped up their glasses with Plymouth and put a dash of bitters into each one. Pink gins made with Plymouth. That was the common denominator, or the nearest thing they had to one: they were all ex-Royal Navy, or adopting wardroom manners with careful enthusiasm.

A message came late that night. I was told that Schlegel did not want me back in London. I was to remain with Toliver's people on Blackstone until I was ordered to the submarine base for the Arctic trip.

I didn't believe the message. Schlegel was not the sort of man who sent vague verbal messages via men not known to both of us. But I took great care to show no sign of my disbelief. I reacted only by attempting to establish my love of the great outdoors. If I was going to get out of this place against their wishes I'd need the few hours' start that only a habit of long country walks could provide.

So I hiked alone across the moorland, feeling the springy turf underfoot. I found grouse, and startled hares, and I tried the tail of Great Crag that was no more than a steep slope. I went past the pines and climbed through the hazel and birch and then bare rock, all the way up to the summit. A couple of hours of such walking gave even a vertigo-prone stumbler like me a chance to look down through the holes in the cloud. I saw the black terraces and crevices of the rock face, and beyond the gully to the loch: shining like freshly tempered blue steel. And I could see where the valley was an amphitheatre upholstered in yellow deer grass and curtained with remnants of white sea mist. I took cheese and Marmite sandwiches up with me, and found a mossy ledge amongst the ice ridges. There I could shelter and blow on my hands, and pretend I'd got there by way of the chimney and three pinnacles, of which the others spoke so proudly.