"Spy Sinker" - читать интересную книгу автора (Deighton Len)

4

Kent, England. March 1978.

'We live in a society full of preventable disorders, preventable diseases and preventable pain, of harshness and stupid unpremeditated cruelties. 'His accent was Welsh. He paused: Fiona said nothing. 'They are not my words, they are the words of Mr H. G. Wells.' He sat by the window. A caged canary above his head seemed to be asleep. It was almost April: the daylight was fading fast. The children playing in the garden next door were being called in to bed, only the most restless of the birds were still fidgeting in the trees. The sea, out of sight behind the rise, could be faintly heard. The man named Martin Euan Pryee-Hughes was a profile against the cheap net curtains. His almost completely white hair, long and inclined to waviness at the ends, framed his head like a helmet. Only when he drew on his curly pipe was his old, tightly lined face lit up.

'I thought I recognized the words,' said Fiona Samson.

'The Fabian movement: fine people. Wells the theorist, the great George Bernard!… The Webbs, God bless then – memory. Laski and Tawney. My father knew them all. I remember many of them coming to the house. Dreamers, of course. They thought the world could be changed by writers and poets and printed pamphlets.' Without looking at her he smiled at the idea, and she could hear his disdain in the way he said it. His voice was low and attractive with the sonorous call of the Welsh Valleys. It was the same accent that she'd heard in the voice of his niece Dilwys, with whom she'd shared rooms at Oxford. The Department had instructed her to encourage that friendship and through her she'd met Martin.

On the bookshelf there was a photo of Martin's father. She could see why so many women had thrown themselves at him. Perhaps free love was a part of the Fabian philosophy he'd so vigorously embraced when young. Like father like son? Within Martin too there was a violent and ruthless determination. And when he tried he could provide a fair imitation of his father's famous charm. It was a combination that made both men irresistible to a certain sort of young woman. And it was a combination that brought Martin to the attention of the Russian spy apparatus even before it was called the KGB.

'Some people are able to do something,' said Fiona, giving the sort of answer that seemed to be expected of her. 'Others talk and write. The world has always been like that. The dreamers are no less valuable, Martin.'

'Yes, I knew you'd say that,' he said. The way he said it scared her. There often seemed to be a double meaning – a warning – in the things he said. It could have meant that he'd known she'd say it because it was the right kind of banality: the sort of thing a class-enemy would say. She infinitely preferred to deal with the Russians. She could understand the Russians – they were tough professionals – but this embittered idealist, who was prepared to do their dirty work for them, was beyond her comprehension. And yet she didn't hate him.

'You know everything, Martin,' she said.

'What I don't know,' he admitted, 'is why you married that husband of yours.'

'Bernard is a wonderful man, Martin. He is brave and determined and clever.'

He puffed his pipe before replying. 'Brave, perhaps. Determined: undoubtedly. But not even his most foolish friends could possibly call him clever, Fiona.'

She sighed. They had been through such exchanges before. Even though he was twice her age he felt he must compete for her. At first he'd made sexual advances, but that was a long time ago: he seemed to have given up on that score. But he had to establish his own superiority. He'd even shown a bitter sort of jealousy for her father when she'd mentioned the amazing fur coat he'd given her. Any fool can make money, Martin had growled. And she'd agreed with that in order to soothe his ego and pacify him.

Only lately had she come to understand that she was as important to him as he was to her. When the KGB man from the Trade Delegation appointed Martin to be her father-figure, factotum and cut-out, they'd never in their wildest dreams hoped that she would wind up employed by the British Secret Intelligence Service. This amazing development had proceeded with Martin monitoring and advising her on each and every step. Now that she was senior staff in London Central, Martin could look back on the previous ten years with great satisfaction. From being no more than a dogsbody for the Russians he'd become the trustee of their most precious investment. There was talk of giving him some award or KGB rank. He affected to be uninterested in such things but the thought of it gave him a warm glow of pleasure: and it might prove an advantage when dealing with the people at the London end. The Russians respected such distinctions.

She looked at her watch. How much longer before the courier came? He was already ten minutes late. That was unusual. In her rare dealings with KGB contacts they'd always been on time. She hoped there wasn't trouble.

Fiona was a double agent but she never felt frightened. True, Moscow Centre had arranged the execution of several men over the previous eighteen months – one of them on the top deck of a bus in Fulham; killed with a poison dart – but they had all been native Russians. Should her duplicity be detected, the chances of them killing her were not great but they would get her to tell them all she knew, and the prospect of the KGB interrogation was terrifying. But for a woman of Fiona's motivation it was even worse to contemplate the nun of years and years of hard work. Years of preparation, years of establishing her bona fides. Years of deceiving her husband, children and her friends. And years of enduring the poisonous darts that came from the minds of men like Martin Euan Pryce-Hughes.

'No,' Martin repeated as if relishing the words. 'Not even his best friends could call Mr Bernard Samson clever. We are lucky you married him, darling girl. A really clever man would have realized what you are up to.'

'A suspicious husband, yes. Bernard trusts me. He loves me.'

Martin grunted. It was not an answer that pleased him. 'I see him, you know?' he said.

'Bernard? You see Bernard?'

'It's necessary. For your sake, Fiona. Checking. We make contact now and again. Not only me but other people too.'

The self-important old bastard. She hadn't reckoned on that, but of course the KGB would be checking up on her and Bernard would be one of the people they'd be watching. Thank God she'd never confided anything to him. It wasn't that Bernard couldn't keep a secret. His head buzzed with them. But this was too close to home. It was something that she had to do herself without Bernard's help.

'I suppose you know that they have given me this direct emergency link with a case officer?' She said it in a soft and suggestive voice that would have well suited the beginning of a fairy story told to a wide-eyed and attentive audience of five-year-olds.

'I do,' he said. He turned and gave her a patronizing smile. The sort of smile he gave all women who aspired to be his comrades. 'And it's a fine idea.'

'Yes, it is. And I shall use that contact. If you or Chesty or any of those other blundering incompetents in the Trade Delegation contact any of the people round me with a view to checking, or any other stupid tricks, they'll have their balls ripped off. Do you understand that, Martin?'

She almost laughed to see his face: mouth open, pipe in hand, eyes popping. He'd not seen much of that side of her: for him she usually played the docile housewife.

'Do you?' she said, and this time her voice was hard and spiteful. She was determined that he'd answer, for that would remove any last idea that she might have been joking.

'Yes, Fiona,' he said meekly. He must have been instructed not to upset her. Or perhaps he knew what the Centre would do to him if Fiona complained. Lose her and he'd lose everything he cherished.

'And I do mean stay away from Bernard. You're amateurs; you're not in Bernard's league. He's been in the real agent-running business from the time when he was a child. He'd eat people like you and Chesty for breakfast. We'll be lucky if he's not alerted already.'

'I'll stay away from him.'

'Bernard likes people to take him for a fool. It's the way he leads them on. If Bernard ever suspected… I'd be done for. He'd take me to pieces.' She paused. 'And the Centre would ask why.'

'Perhaps you're right.' Pretending indifference, the man got to his feet, sighed loudly and looked out of the window over the net curtain as if trying to see the road down which the messenger would come.

It was possible to feel sorry for the old man. Brilliant son of a father who had been able to reconcile effortlessly his loudly espoused socialist beliefs with a lifetime of high living and political honours, Martin had never reconciled himself to the fact that his father was an unscrupulous and entertaining rogue blessed with unnatural luck. Martin was doggedly sincere in his political beliefs: diligent but uninspired in his studies, and humourless and demanding in his friendships. When his father died, in a luxury hotel in Cannes in bed with a wealthy socialite lady who ran back to her husband, he'd left Martin, his only child, a small legacy. Martin immediately gave up his job in a public library to stay at home and study political history and economics. It was difficult to eke out his tiny private income. It would have been even more difficult except that, at a political meeting, he encountered a Swedish scholar who persuaded him that helping the USSR was in the best interest of the proletariat, international socialism and world peace.

Perhaps the cruellest jest that fate had played upon him was that after seeing his father thrive in the upper middle-class circles into which he'd shoved his way, Martin – educated regardless of expense – had to find a way of living with those working classes from which his father had emerged. His rebellion had been a quiet one: the Russians gave him a chance to work unobserved for the destruction of a society for which he felt nothing. It was his secret knowledge which provided for him the strength to endure his austere life. The secret Russians and, of course, the secret women. It was all part of the same desire really, for unless there was a husband or lover to be deceived the affairs gave him little satisfaction, sexual or otherwise.

From the household next door there came the sudden sound of a piano. These were tiny cottages built a century ago for agricultural workers in the Kent fields, and the walls were thin. At first there came the sort of grandiose strumming that pub pianists affect as an overture for their recitals, then the melody resolved into a First World War song: 'The Roses of Picardy'. The relaxed jangle of the piano completed the curious sensation Fiona already had of going back in time, waiting, trapped in the past. This was the long peaceful and promising Edwardian Springtime that everyone thought would never turn cold. There was nothing anywhere in sight to suggest they were not sitting in this parlour sometime at the century's beginning, perhaps 1904, when Europe was still young and innocent, London's buses were horse-drawn, HMS Dreadnought unbuilt and Russia's permanent October still to come.

'They're never late,' she said, looking at her watch and trying to decide upon an explanation which would satisfy her husband if he arrived home before her.

'You seldom deal with them,' he said. 'You deal with me, and I'm never late.'

She didn't contradict him. He was right. She very seldom saw the Russians: they were all too likely to be tailed by MI5 people.

'And when you do contact them, this is the sort of thing that happens.' He was pleased to show how important he was in the contact with the Russians.

She couldn't help worrying about this Russian who'd tried to defect. He'd seen that she was alone and approached her in what seemed to be an impulsive decision. Had it all been a KGB plot? She'd seen him only that once, but he'd seemed such a genuine decent man. 'It must be difficult for someone like Blum,' she said.

'Difficult in what way?'

'Working in a foreign country. Young, missing his wife, lonely. Perhaps shunned because he is Jewish.'

'I doubt that very much,' he said. 'He was a third secretary in the attaché's office: he was trusted and well paid. The little swine was determined to prove how important he was.'

'A Russian Jew with a German name,' said Fiona. 'I wonder what motivated him.'

'He won't try that stunt again,' said Martin. 'And the attaché's office will get a rocket from Moscow.' He smiled with satisfaction at the idea. 'Everything will go through me, as it was always done before Blum.'

'Could it have been a trick?'

'To see if you are loyal to them? To see if you are really a double: working for your SIS masters?'

'Yes,' she said. 'As a test for me.' She watched Martin carefully. Bret Rensselaer, her case officer, who was master-minding this double life of hers, said he was certain that Blum was acting on orders from Moscow. Even if he wasn't, Rensselaer had explained, it's better we lose this chance of a highly placed agent than endanger you. Sometimes she wished she could look at life with the same cold-blooded detachment that Bret Rensselaer displayed. In any case, there was no way she could defy him, and she wasn't sure she wanted to. But what would happen now?

Martin gave a cunning smile as he reflected upon this possibility. 'Well if it was a test, you came through with flying colours,' he said proudly.

She realized then, for the first time, what a stalwart supporter she had in him. Martin was committed to her: she was his investment and he'd do anything rather than face the idea that his protegee was not the most influential Soviet agent of modern history.

'It's getting late.'

'There there. We'll get you to the train on time. Bernard's coming back from Berlin today, isn't he?'

She didn't answer. Martin had no business asking such things even in a friendly conversational way.

Martin said, 'I'm watching the time. Don't-fret.'

She smiled. She regretted now the way that she had snapped at him. The Russians had decided that the two of them were joined by a strong bond of affection: that Martin's avuncular manner, as well as his unwavering political belief, was an essential part of her dedication. She didn't want to give them any reason to re-examine their theory.

She looked round the tiny room and wondered if Martin lived here all the time or whether it was just a safe house used for other meetings of this sort. It seemed lived-in: food in the kitchen, coal by the fireplace, open mail stuffed behind the clock that ticked away on the mantelpiece, a well-fed cat prowling through a well-kept garden. A clipper ship in full sail on the wall behind spotless glass. There were lots of books here: Lenin and Marx and even Trotsky stared down from the shelves, along with his revered Fabians, an encyclopedia of socialism, and Rousseau and John Stuart Mill. Even the tedious works of his father. It was an artful touch. Even a trained security man was unlikely to recognize a KGB agent who was so openly familiar with the philosophies of the dissidents, revisionists and traitors. That was Martin's cover: a cranky, old-fashioned and essentially British left-wing theorist, out of touch with modern international political events.

'It's my son Billy. His throat was swollen this morning,' said Fiona and looked at her watch again. 'Nanny should be taking him to see the doctor about now. Nanny is a sensible girl.'

'Of course she is.' He didn't approve of nannies and other domestic slaves. It took nun back to his own childhood and muddled emotions about his father that he found so difficult to think about. 'He'll be all right.'

'I do hope it's not mumps.'

'I'm watching the time,' he said again.

'Good reliable Martin,' she said.

He smiled and puffed his pipe. It was what he wanted to hear.

It was a long-haired youth who arrived on a bicycle. He propped it against the fence and came down the garden to rat-a-tat on the front door. The canary awoke and jumped from perch to perch so that the cage danced on its spring. Martin answered the door and came back with a piece of paper he'd taken from a sealed envelope. He gave it to her. It was the printed invoice of a local florist. Written across it in felt-tip pen it said: 'The wreath you ordered has been sent as requested.' It bore the mark of a large oval red rubber stamp: 'PAID'.

'I don't understand,' she said.

'Blum is dead!' he announced softly.

'My God!' said Fiona.

He looked at her. Her face had gone completely white.

'Don't worry,' he said soothingly. 'You've come out of it as pure as the driven snow.' Then he realized that it was the news of Blum's death that had shocked her. In a desperate attempt to comfort her he said, 'Our comrades are inclined to somewhat operatic gestures. They have probably just sent him home to Moscow.'

'Then why…?'

'To reassure you. To make you feel important.' He took a cloth from the shelf and wrapped it carefully round the bird cage to provide darkness.

She looked at him, trying to see what he really believed, but she couldn't be sure.

'Believe me,' he added. 'I know them.'

She decided to believe him. Perhaps it was a feminine response but she couldn't shoulder the burden of Blum's death. She wasn't brave about the sufferings that were inflicted upon others, and yet that was what this job was all about.

She got home after half-past eight, and it was only about ten minutes later that Bret Rensselaer phoned with a laconic, 'All okay?'

'Yes, all okay,' she said.

'What's wrong?'

Bret had heard something in her voice. He was so tuned to her emotions that it frightened her. Bernard would never have guessed she was upset. 'Nothing's wrong,' she said carefully, keeping her voice under control. 'Nothing we can speak about.'

'Are you alone?'

'Yes.'

'Usual time: usual place.'

'Bernard's not here yet. He was due back.'

'I arranged something… delayed his baggage at the airport. I wanted to be sure you were home and it was all okay… '

'Yes, goodnight, Bret.' She hung up. Bret was doing it for her sake but she knew that he enjoyed showing her how easy it was for him to control her husband in that way. He was another of these men who felt bound to demonstrate some aspect of their power to her. There was also an underlying sexual implication that she didn't like.