The Company of Strangers (37 page)

Martha was breaking Louis down, dismantling him so effectively that Andrea thought that it wasn’t a row about holidays at all. What was Martha doing here? Martha answered the question as if she’d heard it.

Martha opened the door.

She didn’t open it gently. She was making a point. She flung it open. It swung round, smacked against the wall and slammed back shut in a fraction of a second – shutter speed. The image from both sides indelibly printed. Andrea naked on the bed. Martha transfixed.

The door was not reopened. It didn’t have to be.

The silence was as crystalline as frost.

This time it wasn’t Martha’s voice that cracked like a whip. The slap must have stilled the quad. A door slammed. Louis burst into the room, tore off his trousers, wrestled her back on to the bed and pinning her wrists lunged into her and rammed her with directed, shuddering vehemence. It didn’t take long and he collapsed on top of her. She shifted under his weight. He released her wrists, rolled off her and sat with his head in his hands for minutes.

‘Fuck,’ he said, after some time.

Andrea sat on the other side of the bed, back to him.

‘I’ve always wondered how you and Martha stayed together,’ she said, as if this might be some consolation.

‘Because her father’s a senator,’ he said.

‘Was that all?’

She rolled up a stocking and pulled it on, another.

‘There’s somebody I’ve been wanting you to meet for some time,’ he said.

His words nauseated her. It was as if he’d been preparing her, bringing her to the right psychological pitch for some
bad news. He went to the sink, washed himself, towelled between his legs. He pulled on his undershorts, trousers, flipped the braces over his shoulders, looking at her all the time, contemplating the new situation.

She reached for a cigarette and some tissues, wiped herself between her legs, lit the cigarette. She dressed without washing. She needed to soak for a week to get rid of this sordidness.

He made tea in his study. They sat at his desk. He stirred his tea a long time for a man who didn’t take sugar.

‘Who do you want me to meet?’ she asked.

‘Someone in London.’

‘In London,’ she said on automatic, now that the situation was changing she didn’t want it to.

‘We can’t continue here.’

‘You mean
I
can’t.’

He went back to stirring his tea.

‘This is an opportunity, a unique opportunity.’

‘For you to get rid of me,’ she said. ‘I know bad news, Louis. I don’t need it sweetened.’

‘This is a job,’ he said. ‘And I know you’ll be good at it.’

1970, London.

They went to London on separate trains. Andrea had a nasty British Rail breakfast, cardboard toast and grey coffee. She smoked instead and wanted it to be pink gin time. Louis still hadn’t told her who she was going to meet and he was no clearer on his cryptic remarks about the unique opportunity. This was what they had become. Not telling. Not talking. Circlers of each other. Unequal lovers. Bad maths. Mere satisfiers of each other’s strange psychosexual needs.

Louis’s intensity emanated from one source – his cock. What he admired in her was not what stirred him. He never talked about her beauty, her brain, her mystery as he had done before in those days which a madman might have called their courting. He was driven by the sex, but she had no idea what the connection was in Louis’s head that was running his desire. As for herself, she didn’t want to think about herself – a pair of scaley claws scratching about in the dust.

The train came into King’s Cross Station. As it shunted to a halt and she reached for her bag she nearly grasped something about Louis, a nuance which wouldn’t come back to her, but which had something to do with control. She went to the RAC club in Pall Mall as instructed and asked for Louis Greig. The man at the desk gave her an envelope which contained a very long list of instructions.
Go to Waterloo, take a train to Clapham Junction, then a bus to Streatham, another train to Tulse Hill, a bus back to Brixton and on and on. She set off on the interminable journey, annoyed with Louis for not telling her so that she could have worn flatter heels. She thought about the instructions as she made her way to Waterloo and found herself instinctively checking her tail. The instructions had the quality of spycraft about them. And on the bus from Tulse Hill to Brixton the man sitting next to her leaned over and said:

‘Ours is the next stop.’

They got off on the Norwood Road and went into Brockwell Park. Her new companion took her to the bowling green in the middle, nodded her towards the clubhouse and disappeared. She was unaccountably excited as she tried the loose Bakelite handle of the clubhouse door. The interior was unlit and dark on what was now an overcast late November afternoon. In the weak light by the window, Louis sat with his back to the wall next to a thickset man in a dark, heavy overcoat and a grey-brimmed hat with a black band. She trod the wooden boards to where the men were sitting. The smell of creosote filled her nostrils. They were talking in low voices and she realized they weren’t speaking English. They were talking in a language which she thought she should understand, it had the same sounds as Portuguese.

Louis and the man stood up and the light caught their faces. Andrea realized that this man must be a Russian. He took off his hat. His hair had the quality of wire wool.

‘This is Alexei Gromov,’ said Louis. ‘He’ll tell you where to go afterwards.’

He shook hands with the Russian and left, his retreating feet sounding like those of the first lord vacating the stage for the tragedians’ big scene. Her heart was pounding in her chest, her system so shot through with adrenalin that
breathing became a concentrated act and sweat formed on odd patches of her body.

Gromov’s face had the stillness of someone accustomed to very cold weather, as if evolution had made the nerves retreat from the surface, to make life more bearable. His eyes seemed deep set in his head, not wary, but viewing with the advantage of cover. He showed her to a chair which he positioned so that her face was in the weak daylight and his head was backlit.

‘We’ve been following your career with interest,’ he said slowly in English.

‘I’m not sure I’ve ever had one.’

‘Politics is a belief. You might not practise it all the time, but it’s always there.’

‘You mean we communists never suffer from disillusionment?’

‘Only if you’ve decided against the human race. Communism is of the people, for the people, by the people,’ he said, opening his hands in front of him.

‘And the state?’

‘The state is merely structure,’ he said, boxing his hands this time.

‘Can’t you be disillusioned by mere structure and still be for the people?’

Gromov found himself down an alleyway he didn’t want to be in. He wasn’t an ideologue, he’d never been strong on dialectic, and anyway it wasn’t the purpose of the meeting. Greig had warned him of her cleverness, but seemed to have made a massive assumption about her commitment.

‘We had heard that you were very committed to the cause,’ he said.

‘That depends on who you’ve been talking to.’

‘One of our guests in the Soviet Union. A Portuguese guest.’

‘I’m not sure that I know any.’

‘Comrade Alvaro Cunhal.’

‘I don’t believe we ever met.’

‘You planned his escape. A very bold and daring strategy.’

‘I planned it, yes, but not alone,’ she said, and for some reason it triggered off an old strain of anger. ‘Do you know who planned that with me?’

‘I think it was João Ribeiro, wasn’t it?’

‘Do you know what happened to him?’

Gromov shifted in his seat, the ride still uncomfortable, silently cursing Greig, who’d said she was psychologically prepared for the work.

‘He left the party, didn’t he?’

‘They kicked him out, Mr Gromov. After nearly forty years of active, anti-fascist resistance, after some of the best operations ever planned against the
Estado Novo
, they kicked him out. Why
was
that?’

‘The report said there’d been a security breach.’

‘No. It was structure, Mr Gromov. Structure kicked him out.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘The central committee thought he was getting too big for his boots. They thought he was threatening their positions in the party. So they planted their innuendo and rumour and João Ribeiro, one of the best, most loyal servants to the cause was removed from his office in the party. He ended up in prison and lost his job, Mr Gromov.’

‘I’m not sure I understand.’

‘Ask the central committee of the Portuguese Communist Party of 1961–2.’

‘I can see you’re angry.’

‘He’s a good and trusted friend. The PCP treated him badly.’

‘I promise you a full investigation,’ said Gromov, having no intention.

‘Now tell me what you want,’ she said, surprised at herself, angry and forceful now that she was out of Louis’s orbit.

Gromov’s hands were fists turned in on his knees. He’d lost the initiative in this meeting and he badly needed to get it back if this woman was to do what he wanted.

‘We are entering a critical phase in our relationship with the West,’ he said.

‘And with the East, now that China’s got the H-bomb.’

‘It’s not relevant to our relationship with the West.’

‘Except that you’re surrounded and you’ve made the West nervous after the Prague Spring.’

Maybe he should have asked Louis to stay and bring this wretched woman under control. She was impossible.

‘In order for us to proceed into the next phase, the negotiating phase, we need to ensure that we have the very best quality information.’

‘You want me to spy for you,’ she said. ‘You want me to give up my life, my research, my…’

‘Love affair?’ he asked. ‘No, not necessarily. You’d only be in London.’

Love affair. That unbalanced her. How much detail had Louis given him? Those words. Love and Affair. They didn’t really describe what was going on between Louis and her. But he’d said love affair and that meant that Louis must have said the same. She found herself suddenly on the downward spiral, clutching at the ludicrous to find hope.

‘We want you to go and work for the British Secret Intelligence Service,’ said Gromov, leaning in on her, seeing he’d hit home with something, but not sure what. ‘If you are still sympathetic – no, I mean if you still believe in what
we
are trying to achieve, then we would like you to contact your old friend, Jim Wallis.’

‘Jim’s in Administration.’

‘That is very good,’ said Mr Gromov thickly, as if advertising cakes.

‘Does that mean your aim is for specific or general intelligence?’

‘You unnerved me earlier, Miss Aspinall.’

‘I apologize if I was over-aggressive.’

‘I thought you might have suffered an ideological shift,’ said Gromov, thinking that’s better, this is the tone.

‘My argument was with the central committee of the PCP of 1961–2.’

‘Some people when they come into some money, property…experience a change of view,’ said Gromov, turning the knife now that it was in, punishing a little. ‘From being in the street they are suddenly up high, looking down.’

‘I’ve spent more than half my life in Portugal and its colonies under the dictatorship of Dr Salazar. You should have no fear of the bourgeoisie claiming me.’

‘Yes. It is good, perhaps, that you have seen things from a different perspective.’

‘I’m surprised Louis didn’t put your mind at rest. If you didn’t know already, he would have told you that I’ve lost a son and a husband to a fascist, capitalist, imperialist and authoritarian state.’

‘It is refreshing to find someone both intellectually and emotionally motivated. I am sorry I doubted you. I don’t know how I could have done, given your pedigree.’

The significance of that final word did not penetrate at first. She found herself thinking what exactly her pedigree was and got sidetracked by her earlier statement about Portuguese imperialism and the colonies. Gromov watched her mind at work from behind his glacial façade.

‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ she asked.

‘Not at all.’

She scratched through the contents of her handbag,
rooting around in her mind at the same time. She found a cigarette. Gromov provided the light. The word came back again with its full force – pedigree.

‘Are you saying, Mr Gromov, that my mother used to work for you?’

‘Yes, I am,’ he said. ‘She was an excellent servant of our cause. Her position within the Company’s administration was vital.’

‘I’m not sure…I’m not sure that…’

‘She was never very clear to us about her motivation. You understand that some people who work for us are anxious to establish their reasons. It assuages their feelings of guilt. Your mother was not one of these. She was never a clandestine member of the Communist Party, for instance, like you were.’

‘How was she recruited?’

‘Kim Philby recruited her during the war.’

‘Did he shed any light on her motivation?’

‘Only that it was for very deep emotional reasons, which she was not prepared to divulge,’ said Gromov. ‘This is our preferred motivation. Those who do it just for the money…well…they are already demonstrating an untrustworthy capitalist tendency. We remunerated your mother for the considerable risks she undertook but she told me once that luxury made her feel very uncomfortable.’

‘Was it you who laid those wreaths on her grave?’

‘Yes. One was from me, the other from Comrade Kosygin. It was a small way of honouring her service.’

‘She worked in banking.’

‘A very interesting position.’

‘I’m sure they’ve found someone satisfactory by now. It’s been four years since she retired.’

‘Just approach Jim Wallis…remind him.’

‘You said there was something specific.’

‘I don’t think I answered that question,’ said Gromov,
on a roll now. ‘But there is, yes. Something that your mother had been working on before she retired. As you know, the shared culture and language of the two Germanys makes our job of planting agents very easy and they are extremely difficult to uncover unless they are betrayed. We are in the process of entering into discussions with the West and, specifically, with the West German Chancellor, Willi Brandt. We have some very well-placed sources who are gathering excellent material to aid us with our negotiations. We have lost some of those agents, not important ones at the moment, but we don’t want to lose any more. We are also losing the odd high-level defector to the West which is causing us a lot of…embarrassment. The problem is that since Philby left the Company our knowledge at an operational level has been very poor.’

‘But not nonexistent. You do have people?’

‘Your mother was one. Her retirement was a great blow. In spycraft, as in business, money is everything. It pays for things. You follow the money trail and you find out who it is paying.’

‘That sounds simple.’

‘Except that your mother traced every penny and concluded that the traitor on our side was either not receiving funds or receiving funds from a different source within the British Intelligence Service. We have since discovered that there is no separate source of funding for overseas operations.’

‘So, you have a traitor who is not motivated by money.’

‘It’s even rarer than that, Miss Aspinall,’ he said, which irrationally annoyed her for the second time. ‘We have a traitor who is operating without expenses. Not many of our officers, KGB or Stasi, are prepared to fund treacherous operations out of their own pockets. These officers are privileged, but they are paid in Ostmarks and roubles, which don’t go very far over the Wall.’

‘So he gets his money from somewhere.’

‘Possibly
she.
We are not even that far down the road.’

‘By the sound of it you think whoever it is, is in Berlin.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’ve looked at all your agents with access to West Berlin, checked their backgrounds and nothing’s come up?’

‘It’s a long process.’

‘But you’ve been doing it.’

Gromov shifted a foot, his first noticeable movement.

‘It’s in progress.’

‘But easier and quicker through me?’

‘You will be rewarded.’

‘My reward will be to see João Ribeiro restored to his position on the central committee…if he wants it.’

‘It will be done,’ said Gromov.

‘The other thing is, Mr Gromov, that this will be the only operation I will perform on your behalf. I have ideological faith but I do not have the same quarrel with my country that my mother did. I also suspect that this is the end of my research project at Cambridge. I imagine that I will have to tell Jim Wallis that it didn’t work out. It will be a burned bridge. I’ll need work. Admin within the Company may not be such a bad job, but I don’t want to be a permanent
spy
there.’