by Adam Hall
He was too valuable to lose.
‘Are you drawing a capsule?’
‘Yes.’
He got his keys and unlocked a cabinet on the wall and took down a phial, pressing hard to undo the safety cap and shaking out one of the small grey cylinders with the red band. ‘You need a container too?’
‘Yes.’
Another cylinder, bigger, heavy steel, uncrushable.
‘All right, sign this, would you?’
Signed.
Travel Section: ‘Do you need maps?’
‘No. I’ll get them locally.’
She gave me the passport. They always give you one with a number that has actually been issued.
‘Whose was this?’
She looked surprised. ‘I don’t know.’
He didn’t need it any more - but of course he could’ve retired, could’ve retired.
They weren’t ready for me in Final Briefing so I went down the circular staircase with the worn plum-red carpet and the mahogany banisters and the scuffs on the wall where people had come down in a hurry, bouncing off the curve. The only man in the Caff was Decker, a new recruit to this echelon from ten months’ training in Norfolk; he was sitting at the counter chatting up Daisy, and when he laughed it sounded hollow, so I suppose he was going out on his first assignment and sweating ice.
Puddle of tea on the first table I came to, there is always a puddle of tea on the table in this bloody place, though God knows why because Daisy’s always got a dish-rag in her hand, I’ve never seen her without it.
‘Hello, love.’
Blue eye shadow, caked rouge and bright brass hair, body like a barrel, I do wish they’d get a woman in here you could actually look at while your nerves are running a temperature: it’d help bring it down.
‘Tea, Daisy.’
‘You want a bun?’
‘God, one of those?
‘I keep tellin’ them, but it’s all they seem to order.’
She mopped up the puddle and rolled away, lopsided, rheumatism, poor old baggage.
Very well, then, we have to work something out, don’t we? Into the breach dear friends, let nothing us dismay, so forth, a matter of life and death - actually, yes, quite possibly, my life and death, if I get it wrong.
And a matter of conscience. Shepley and the Bureau and Yasolev might well be setting me up for extinction as a means to an end, but did that justify my accepting the mission and letting them think I was going through with it on their terms and not mine? Because if I were going out there for them I’d have to work solo and find my own safe-house and go to ground at whatever stage of the mission if I needed to, without consulting them. They were ‘Sugar, love?’
‘No.’
She slopped some tea into the saucer, par for the course.
‘Thank you.’
They were going to put the whole energy of the Bureau behind me and the whole of Yasolev’s department of the KGB but I couldn’t work like that and they knew it, or Shepley did, the Bureau did. So why did they choose me for this one?
Why did they choose me, Daisy old dear? With three boards running in the signals room it meant there were five other shadow executives hanging around between missions, five others with my ranking and experience and capability, and three of them - Fletcher, Wainwright, Piers – preferred to work with a whole back-up system of supports and contacts in the field. So why didn’t Shepley choose one of them?
Scalding hot tea, just how I wanted it - there’s a degree of eroticism in wanting to burn your lips, a nice bit of titillation for the mucous membrane, soothes the nerves. Good old Daisy, it’s always piping hot, but listen, what am I going to do?
I could assume they thought I was the best man for the job but even if it were true, Shepley knew the way I liked to work, solo, and he must have given it some thought and he wasn’t your common or garden moron. Did he realise that if I took on this one I’d work my way through it alone, deceiving them, and was he prepared for that? It’d salve my conscience, wouldn’t it, Daisy old love, but a bit too easily.
The alternatives, then: I could go into Quickstep and work solo without their knowing it and risk blowing up the mission by leaving myself exposed, vulnerable, isolated, or I could go across to the phone over there and call Shepley and tell him no, it still wouldn’t work, he’d have to get someone else.
Got a laugh like a barmaid, shaking with it over there by the tea urn, enough to bring her wig off; we secretly believe, you know, that it’s really a wig.
And let this be known, my friend: if I walked out of here without going near that phone it would mean that in the name of pride and vanity this shadow executive was ready to go behind the Curtain and try to work through a mission within a mission, already cut off from the people who were running him and already cut off from his Soviet collaborator. And still bring it off, still reach the objective.
The word for this, I truly believe, is megalomania.
Sitting in my sweat, hunched over the table, hands round my cup of tea, torn this way, torn that, a solitary spook goaded by ambition and pricked by conscience and frightened, oh my God if you knew how frightened.
I don’t remember how long it was, how long it took, but the dregs of the tea were cold in the cup and I felt old before my time.
‘That’s all right, dearie. On me. I don’t see you in here very often.’
A woman who knew how to love.
I kissed her dry rouged cheek and walked out past the telephone and into the mission, alone.
Chapter 5
CAT
Steel everywhere, everywhere you looked, steel and concrete and blank walls and the stink of latrines and Lysol, the jingle of keys and the plodding of boots and the creaking of leather belts, echoing, every sound echoing along the corridors and the metal galleries under the high shadowed roof.
‘Wait here, sir, please.’
The sound of keys again, a huge bunch of them hanging from his belt, the trappings of power, of one man’s dominion over another. Let me tell you something: I wouldn’t last more than a couple of weeks in this kind of place without going mad or getting out, one way or another; with a hacksaw blade or a filched key or a bedsheet, one end round the bars and the other round my neck. That’s why I can’t stand zoos.
‘Right-o, sir, just follow me.’
A tone of cheerfulness, business as usual, we don’t like it any more than you do, so forth.
Another door clanging shut behind us, and I wanted to turn and look back.
Cell Block D. 26-50.
‘Here we are, sir.’
We stopped. The guard went in first, then I followed.
‘Scarsdale, here’s Mr. Ash to see you. Now I’ll be waiting outside. You need me for anything, sir, you just give me a call.’ His voice lowered to give a semblance of confidence, though the man in the cell could still hear him.
‘He’s not violent,’ they’d told me in Final Briefing.
That was only an hour ago; I’d come here straight from the Bureau and the car was waiting for me outside.
Shepley had given me Pauling, a dry, thin, former executive who’d been taken off the active list because he’d got too close to the edge a couple of times and it had fried his nerves.
‘In fact he’s rather mild, though you may find him obstinate. His name’s John Bryant Scarsdale and he’d been with MI5 nearly six years before he was caught at Victoria Station with a brown paper shopping bag full of photocopies one night when someone tipped them off.’ Pauling was reading from a file. ‘Tried at the Old Bailey in November last year, convicted on all nine charges. Lord Lansworth said, and I quote, “It is quite plain to me that you are a dangerous man. You have disclosed the identities of certain British agents working in Moscow, and it has quite probably led to their death or imprisonment. That, of course, is quite apart from the irreparable damage you have done to your country’s safety.” Unquote. Some of the stuff found at his flat in Croydon was so sensitive that even the Attorney General,
who prosecuted the case, didn’t have the security clearance to see it.’
Pauling tugged a drawer open and shook a pill from a box and palmed it into his mouth. ‘You know what happened, of course, with MI5 a while ago - people complained that they were an upper-class club, and the PM told them to draw recruits from all walks of life. It didn’t work with Scarsdale. His father was a factory worker and he didn’t feel at ease in the company of what he called “toffs” - now isn’t that a lovely old-fashioned word? That’s what turned him bolshie, it seems. He told his interrogators that the Soviet system appreciated people like him, with “an honest, working-class background.” Do you want to take notes?’
‘No. What did they think of him in Moscow?’
‘It’s rather interesting. He did a specific job for them, which I think was quite valuable. He gave them a list of the known Soviet agents in Britain, so that they’d know who their unknown agents were. But he fumbled the ball on other assignments, and unintentionally got one of their embassy contacts arrested when he was taking a brush pass from Scarsdale in the Piccadilly Hotel. They finally got fed up and tipped us off about him. I - ‘
‘The Bureau?’
‘No, the Secret Service. Scarsdale had asked to meet a Soviet agent in Zurich when he was on a cheap tourist trip, and they thought we were trying to plant him on them as a double. That’s how he was picked up at Victoria station with a bag full of photocopies: the KGB made a fake rendezvous and never turned up. Now that’s about all we’ve got on him, but - ‘ the phone rang and he reached for it ‘- but you can check with Records if you like. Excuse me. Hello? Yes, sir.’ He passed me the phone. ‘Mr. Shepley.’
‘Quiller,’ I said.
‘Yes, I’ve given some thought to your idea of releasing Major-General Solsky. It’s a big risk, but I like your thinking and I’m going to agree to it. You’re still of the same mind?’
‘Yes. It’s going to make our credit good, if we need to cash in.’ I didn’t tell him that a hostage was even less useful now, because if they got me into a corner I’d be better off vanishing into a safe-house than relying on mutual trust.
‘Very well. I’ll talk to him personally and tell him why he’s being released. Is your clearance going well?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘Do you want to see me again before you leave?’
‘Not really.’
‘Then I wish you Godspeed.’
When I put the phone down Pauling handed me a briefing wallet. ‘Colonel Viktor Yasolev’s personal dossier. About your cover - it’ll be watertight, as long as the KGB play straight. They’ve got a lot of influence, of course, with the East German secret police, but they’re still alien overlords and they can’t trust the HUA. However, there’s a reliable captain in Berlin whose name is Karl Bruger. Your own cover is that of an HUA captain on leave of duty, and you’ll pick up your identity papers over there from Cone, who’s directing you in the field. If at any time your cover is questioned, Captain Bruger will support you.’
‘Fair enough.’ Bruger, not Yasolev. That was my own doing: I’d said I didn’t want any overt connection with the KGB while I was working the mission.
‘Any other business?’
‘No.’ I’d got all I needed from Clearance.
‘Good luck with Scarsdale.’
Short, round-shouldered, his body sunk into prison denims a size too big, standing in a kind of crouch as if he’d just been hit, didn’t expect me to shake hands, already seemed to have forgotten the customs of polite society, was waiting for me to speak, his eyes wary.
‘How long have you been in?’
He didn’t seem to have heard, or perhaps he’d lost track of time and didn’t remember. He looked pinched, cold, abandoned.
‘Month.’
A month. And it had done this to him.
‘How long are you in for?’
His face flinched.
‘Thirty years.’
Never make it.
‘It’s good of you to see me,’ I said.
‘What?’
He didn’t seem to realise he could have refused, that he had any rights at all, any claim even to his own soul. In the middle of life he’d had what amounted to a terrible accident, and it had flung him into this place and left him here, forsaken, while the world went on its way. A dangerous man, the lord chief justice had called him. And his own most ruthless enemy.
‘I believe you had some dealings with Hood.’
His breath came out with a jerk as if I’d hit him, and he turned away but left his eyes on me obliquely, watching me from cover. It was so difficult to talk to him that I’d decided to get down to basics, but it’d been too fast.
‘I brought you some Mars bars.’ I held out the bag. ‘They said you’re partial, like me.’
He watched the bag as if it had a snake in it. A man had started hinging in one of the cells along the gallery, ‘My Wild Irish Rose’, I believe it was. Others began shouting at him, and a guard blew a whistle and the man stopped. I wondered why they didn’t like it; he had quite a good voice. Perhaps it was too much for them, the thought of a rose, a woman, in a place like this; it could break their hearts.
‘Hood?’ Scarsdale had turned his head back to look at me full in the face again, a tension in him that I could feel in my nerves.
Very gently I said, ‘We want to know where he is.’
In a moment his eyes moved downwards, aware of the paper bag. ‘Mars bars?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You brought them for me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘They said you liked them.’
He took the bag and dropped it onto the bed. ‘Are you from the Foreign Office?’
‘Yes.’
He turned away suddenly and put his stubby white hands into the pockets of the denims. ‘I wouldn’t meddle with him if I were you.’
‘We just want to know where he is.’
‘He’s in - ‘ and he stopped, watching me. ‘Why should I tell you that?’
‘We might be able to do something in return.’
In a moment, ‘Well it’ll cost you more than a few Mars Bars.’
There was life coming back into him, a sense of the outside world. I’d given him back his personhood; I wanted something he had.
‘If you feel like telling me all you know about Hood, I’ll find out what we can do for you.’
‘No, it’s the other way round. You tell me what you can do for me, then I might give you the information. And I’ve got a lot.’
‘I can’t take your word for that. Not with your record.’
It broke him up and he buried his face in his hands and swung to and fro and I thought, shit I’m going too fast again. He’d started to get tough and it had looked as if we could talk business.
‘Christ sake go easy on me,’ he said, or something like that, his face still buried. ‘I don’t know how much longer I can stand it in this place.’
He’d never grown up; he’d just thought it was a game, playing at spies, getting his own back on those bloody toffs. Thirty years. He must have gone white in the dock when he heard that.
‘We could knock something off your sentence,’ I said. ‘It depends how valuable the information is to the country.’
He straightened up and took his hands away but couldn’t look at me. ‘I know a lot about him.’
”Then try this. We know where he is. Do you?’
His head turned slowly until he was looking at me, his eyes red. ‘East Germany.’
‘What part of East Germany?’
‘Berlin.’
I got out the mini-Sanyo. ‘Put it all on tape and I’ll play it to my superiors. They’ll see what they can do for you.’
He watched me for a while, his body shivering the whole time, his mouth slack, half open. ‘Tell them they’ve got to spring me first. Or they won’t get another word.’
‘You’ll have to be practical, Scarsdale. You’re too
dangerous to the country.’
It sounded almost like a laugh. ‘What, now? You think I’d risk being put back in here?’
Probably not. But if Shepley could get him out, it’d only be for as long as it took him to give us all he’d got on Hood; then they’d start hounding him and pick him up on a trumped-up charge and slam him back inside. That had been the end of his life, that night on Victoria station.
‘I don’t think you’d risk being put back in here, no, but it’s not up to me. Let’s try one more question. Why has Hood gone to East Berlin?’
He went on staring at me and finally shook his head. ‘That’s the main thing, though, isn’t it? That’s what you’re dying to know. But you’ll have to spring me first.’ Still shivering, couldn’t stop. ‘And tell them they’ll have to be quick, because I don’t know how long I’m going to last in this place, I really don’t.’
Three street lamps, darkened windows, shadowed doorways, and the bleak perspective of the road. In the last hour we’d seen a couple of taxis, half a dozen private cars and a police patrol.
‘Fill you up?’
‘No. You finish it.’
The sweet smell of cocoa inside the Vauxhall. Pauling had run the engine for a few minutes to bring some more heat in, but we’d had to open a window.
‘It was extremely difficult,’ Shepley had told me. ‘No one can be “sprung” from prison without a retrial or the Queen’s pardon, and we haven’t enough time. I need hardly warn you that this is ultra-classified.’
They’d had to brief the warden and two guards. It was to look like a carefully-planned job, with another inmate helping Scarsdale and a getaway car cruising past a side gate.
Pauling reached for the phone and dialled. ‘What’s the hold-up, do you know?’
A starved grey cat was coming down the pavement, going into a crouch when it picked up the sound of Pauling’s voice from inside the car, moving at a half-run now, ears flattened, amber eyes burning; then it was gone.
‘The warden got cold feet,’ Pauling said, and put the phone down. ‘They’ve got the Home Secretary out of bed and Mr. Shepley’s gone to see him.’
‘Christ, we’re going to be found frozen to death in the morning.’
