The Diplomat's Wife

by Michael Ridpath

  They followed it on what was to be a long journey north, and then west, and then south through France.

  To Spain.

  PART FIVE

  SPAIN

  Chapter 56

  July 1979, Jávea, Spain

  Lothar’s house stood at the end of a road which wound up a hillside of rock and surprisingly green forest. The blue of the Mediterranean flashed between the trees as they drove.

  Emma studied the local map they had bought in the old coastal town of Jávea, a few kilometres to the north. After their picnic manoeuvre in Bavaria, they had driven for the rest of the day and holed up in a hotel near Lyon in France. The following night, they had stayed in Valencia, so that they could meet Lothar at a reasonable hour in the morning.

  They drove past the villa slowly. It was a single-storey building with a red-tiled roof behind a low white wall rimmed with purple flowers. There was indeed a stone lion grinning at them by the iron gate on the short driveway leading down to a garage.

  ‘Turn around and park a bit further down the hill,’ said Emma. ‘We don’t want to make the same mistake we did in Talloires – leaving the car outside the house.’

  They had passed a few other houses on the road, and a number of building sites. It was a beautiful spot; something the local developers were clearly taking advantage of. Phil turned around at the end of the road, drove down the hill past the villa and parked in a lay-by next to a footpath leading down to the sea.

  They walked back up the road. It was scarcely ten o’clock but the July sun was already beating down hard from a blue sky. Phil wore shorts and a T-shirt, and the sweat was beginning to form. Emma looked fresh in a yellow sundress and seemed to be taking the climb in her stride, clutching her handbag. The tumour was leaving her alone, at least for now.

  Several hundred feet beneath them, they glimpsed a cove surrounded by lush green vegetation, a rocky headland rearing up on the far side. This was all much greener than the rest of Spain through which they had driven. It wasn’t the sun, sand and beach umbrellas Phil had been expecting; Emma’s road atlas had shown Benidorm not far to the south.

  Phil was wondering how he could persuade Lothar to divulge any clues about who Swann’s mole might be. He had thought of trying to recruit Emma to help him, but that would involve admitting he had been keeping his conversation with Swann from her the whole time. She wouldn’t like that.

  The key thing Swann had wanted to know was where Lothar lived. Phil would at least tell him that, and then MI6 could take it from there.

  They reached the house and opened a small iron gate through which a stone path led down to the front door. With a nervous glance at Phil, Emma pressed the bell.

  They waited a full minute before the door was opened by a tall, stooped man with a stick. He looked at Emma and Phil with intense dark blue eyes over half-rimmed spectacles tied to a cord around his neck. His hair was thick and white, his face strong, but crumbled around the edges by age.

  ‘Lothar,’ Emma said, simply.

  ‘Emma? Emma Meeke?’

  ‘That’s me,’ Emma said in German.

  For a moment a cloud of surprise passed over the old man’s face, followed by a grin. He opened his arms, his stick clasped in his left hand.

  Emma hesitated and then stepped forward. He embraced her with his arms and with his charm, which was almost palpable.

  ‘I should say this was a surprise, but that would be understating it. This is a shock. A good shock. Come in, come in.’

  He led them through to a sitting room, whose windows looked down through trees to the sea and the cove. The walls were covered in brightly painted pictures – modern art from the early part of the century, Phil thought. Some looked like Matisses. Maybe they were Matisses; Phil remembered Kay had said Lothar had become an art dealer.

  Lothar lowered himself into what was clearly his favourite armchair, an ashtray and a novel in Spanish by Gabriel García Márquez on a side table within easy reach.

  Phil perched on a sofa opposite, and Emma on a wing chair.

  ‘You found me. How on earth did you find me? Let me guess. Kay?’

  ‘That’s right. We just saw her in East Berlin. She said she had tracked you down here a few years ago. She also said she hadn’t told her former employers where you are.’

  ‘I’m very glad to hear that. I thought I could trust her. I am surprised she told you, but then you and she always had some kind of connection, however unlikely that may seem.’

  ‘You mean Hugh?’ said Emma.

  ‘Hugh. And a belief that the world could be a better place.’

  Phil could see how Emma had trusted this man so completely. Even in his eighties, for that was how old he must be, he oozed reliability and strength. His steady voice, his steady dark blue eyes, his sense of calm purpose.

  ‘This must be your son. He looks a lot like Hugh.’

  ‘Grandson,’ said Emma. ‘And he does, doesn’t he? I brought him with me on a little trip around Europe to revisit old times. He has been most helpful.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that,’ said Lothar with a smile at Phil. ‘I do hope he’s the only person you brought with you.’

  ‘We weren’t followed, if that’s what you mean. I believe the KGB are interested in our movements, but Philip cleverly led them astray. They think you live in Greece.’

  ‘So they are still looking for me,’ said Lothar, frowning now.

  ‘I believe so,’ said Emma. ‘What have you been up to? I thought you had been shot in Moscow, until I met Kay about fifteen years ago; she said you were still alive. And when we saw her last week, she said you were living here, but she didn’t have a chance to say much more. She was being careful.’

  ‘Good,’ said Lothar. ‘I almost did return to Moscow back in 1938. It was actually Kay who persuaded me not to go, but I didn’t want to endanger her by letting her know I had listened to her. It was safer for her if she believed I had gone.

  ‘I took on a new identity and disappeared to Switzerland, to Zurich. You probably never knew this, but I was for a time a cobbler, a forger of identity documents. I was pretty good at it. There was work in Zurich for people like me during the war. And after the war, I discovered that there was a lot of wayward art floating around Central Europe, prised loose from museums and castles. Some of it was real, some of it was forged, a lot of it had been stolen. It turned out I had the necessary skills to untangle all that, and I set up a business in Geneva dealing in art. Quite a successful business.

  ‘That was where Kay first found me, sometime in the sixties, and I had to retire in a hurry. Franco’s Spain was a good place in those days for people like me to disappear to. Still is, really.’

  He nodded thoughtfully to himself. ‘Then Kay found me a few years ago. I persuaded her to tell her bosses I had left, and she assured me she would. I trusted her.’ He grinned. ‘I found trusting Kay usually worked. I should probably have reinvented myself yet again and disappeared somewhere. But I was too old at that stage. If they find me, they find me. I’m surprised they still care.’

  ‘They must think you still know things,’ said Emma. ‘Things that Russia’s enemies would find useful.’

  Phil’s pulse quickened. Was there a way he could prod the conversation towards moles?

  Somehow, God knows how, Lothar noticed Phil’s interest, even though Phil could have sworn he hadn’t moved.

  His steady blue eyes latched on Phil’s. ‘Was it wise to bring your grandson along with you, Emma? There’s a risk he might hear things that are not good for him.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Emma. ‘A few days ago, I realized that this little trip was significantly more dangerous than I had expected. So I tried to send Philip back to England.’ She glanced at her grandson. ‘I failed. He’s a stubborn boy. Besides, I want him to know what I did. What we did. Before I die.’

  Lothar snorted. ‘But you are still young. What are you, sixty?’

  ‘Sixty-four. I have a brain tumour. I am
going to die. Soon.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it.’ The old man meant it; his commiseration seemed genuine and heartfelt, but also, curiously, encouraging.

  He pulled out a packet of cigarettes from the yellow cardigan he was wearing, and after offering them to Phil and Emma, who refused, lit up. Phil noticed that he was indeed missing half of his little finger.

  ‘So that’s why you have come to find me. Because you are dying.’

  Emma nodded. ‘I want to ask you about Hugh.’

  ‘Hugh.’ Lothar sighed. ‘He would have made a wonderful spy. I’m sure he would have got to the top of the diplomatic service. Ambassador to Russia one day. That would have been useful. Or he could have moved across to MI6.’

  ‘It must have been disappointing for you that he changed his mind, then,’ said Emma, calmly.

  Lothar paused. ‘Kay told you that, I suppose.’

  Emma didn’t answer. ‘When he told you he wouldn’t spy for Russia any more, it wasn’t just a lost opportunity, was it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He was going to talk to the British secret service.’

  Lothar remained silent. He waited.

  ‘And if he had talked, he would have told them about you. And about the fellow Cambridge students you had recruited.’

  No answer.

  ‘So you had him killed.’ It was a statement, not a question.

  The words hung heavy in the room.

  ‘A few years ago, I would have denied it,’ said Lothar. ‘But now? We are both old. You have a right to know. For what it’s worth, I am sorry. He was a good man. At the time I believed that helping the cause was everything. Actually, I still do believe that. The Soviets let down the cause of international communism as much as Hugh was planning to.

  ‘I’m sorry, Emma,’ he repeated.

  ‘Who did kill him?’ Emma asked.

  ‘A policeman. One of your bobbies. We had quite a few agents in the Metropolitan Police in those days, did you know that? Recruited them in the nineteen twenties after the police strike. This man used to do the occasional difficult job for me.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Does it matter? He’s long dead.’

  ‘In that case, maybe it doesn’t matter.’

  Emma thought for a moment, and then reached down for the handbag by her feet and placed it on her lap. She opened it.

  And pulled out a gun.

  A gun Phil recognized: the revolver that he thought she had slung into the woods above Lake Annecy.

  She got to her feet, cocking it and pointing it at Lothar.

  ‘What is this?’ said Lothar. ‘Revenge?’

  ‘Justice,’ said Emma. ‘For Hugh. Before I die. I’m sorry you have to see this, Philip.’

  So was Phil. Then it occurred to him that if Lothar died, so would the identity of Swann’s mole.

  ‘Lothar,’ he said.

  Lothar switched his glance to Phil. As did Emma.

  ‘One of the agents you recruited is still working, isn’t he? Deep in the heart of the British secret service. That’s why the Russians are after you. Who is he?’

  ‘Philip!’ Emma was clearly unhappy with Phil’s interruption.

  ‘I won’t tell you anything about anyone I recruited,’ said Lothar.

  ‘Where did you get that idea from, Philip?’ demanded Emma. ‘Who has been talking to you?’

  Phil ignored her. He needed Lothar’s answer. ‘If you don’t tell us, Lothar, Emma will shoot you.’

  ‘Emma is going to shoot me anyway, Philip. Aren’t you, Emma?’

  Emma nodded.

  Lothar took a deep drag of his cigarette. ‘It was always going to happen some time. I have cheated death for forty years. I’m an old man now. And I am glad it’s you and not some KGB hit man in the middle of the night.’ He raised his hand. ‘But before you do it, let me repeat. Your brother was a good man. I am sorry he is dead.’

  Emma stared. There wasn’t hatred in her expression, or even anger. But there was determination.

  And Phil knew his grandmother well enough to know that when she was determined to do something, she did it.

  She pulled the trigger. And then she pulled it again, and again.

  Chapter 57

  Heike heard the three shots, as did the startled pigeons perching in the trees on the hillside, who took to the air in a flurry of beating wings and rustling branches.

  She and Rozhkov had stationed themselves a few metres above the road, looking down on the villa. They had hidden the BMW behind the wall of an empty construction site between the TR6 and the villa, having managed to keep tabs on Emma’s car all the way from Bavaria, maintaining at least two kilometres’ distance. They hadn’t had much sleep on the way; they had had to spell each other keeping watch over the hotels in France and Valencia where their targets had spent the night, in case they decided on another departure in the early hours.

  ‘Who shot who?’ said Rozhkov.

  ‘Maybe she’s killed Lothar,’ said Heike. ‘Sounded like three shots from the same gun.’

  ‘Or maybe he shot the two of them.’

  ‘Has anyone heard it?’ The nearest neighbouring house was fifty metres down the hill, but that looked shut tight as a drum. The gunshots had been fired within the building, which had muffled them somewhat.

  ‘We have to assume someone will call the police,’ said Rozhkov. ‘Let’s get down there. If they come out of the front door, shoot them.’

  Heike followed the KGB agent down to the road, her gun hanging by her side, so it couldn’t be seen from anyone at a distance.

  Still no sound of an alarm being raised, or sign of a curious neighbour. But all it needed was for one person to pick up the phone and call the police.

  They opened the gate, and crouched behind a bush, waiting for someone to emerge. From there they couldn’t see clearly into the villa through the windows, although Heike thought she spotted something move inside.

  ‘Did you see that?’ she whispered.

  Rozhkov nodded. ‘All right. We’re going in. Shoot to kill. Let’s make it fast.’

  ‘Jesus!’ said Phil, his ears ringing from the gunshots in a confined space as he watched the blood pour from Lothar’s chest.

  His grandmother had just shot someone. Again. That’s not what grannies were supposed to do.

  And with Lothar had gone all hope of finding Swann’s mole.

  Emma slumped back into the armchair, still holding the gun.

  ‘What now?’ said Phil, leaping to his feet.

  ‘Leave me here,’ said Emma. ‘I’ve done what I came to do. I’ll explain that you had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘No,’ said Phil. ‘No. We’re going to get out of this like we did in Talloires. Get up, Grams!’

  She didn’t move.

  ‘Up!’ He hauled her to her feet.

  Phil scanned the room. ‘I think we’ve barely touched anything since we’ve been here.’ Lothar had opened the front door for them, and the living-room door had been open. He hadn’t given them anything to drink. All they would have touched was the fabric of the sofa and the chair Emma was sitting in. Phil wasn’t sure, but he thought fingerprints needed hard surfaces to come out clearly.

  ‘Someone might have reported the shots. We need to get going before the police come.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Philip,’ said Emma.

  Phil ignored her and moved through to the hallway, where there was a window looking up to the road. He saw two figures, a man and a woman, running across the road, guns hanging down by their sides.

  He recognized the woman.

  Heike.

  He dashed back into the living room. ‘KGB!’ he said. ‘Come on, Grams! They’ve got guns. You might be happy to die, but I’m not.’

  He knew that would snap her out of it.

  ‘There may be a way out of the back garden,’ she said. She moved over to a window. ‘Yes – there’s a gate.’

  ‘Let’s go!’r />
  They found the back door and hurried through it, across the garden and out of the gate at the back. They scrambled down the path into the woods.

  Rozhkov went first, flinging the front door open and storming into the villa, Heike following, her gun raised. Adrenaline was pumping in her system. There were armed foreign agents in there; if one of them turned out to be Phil, she would shoot him, if Rozhkov didn’t shoot him first. Their orders were clear. Phil, Emma and Lothar all had to die. The KGB’s agent in Britain had to be protected at all costs.

  The body of an old man was slumped in an armchair, blood oozing from his chest through the torn fabric of his shirt and cardigan. The lenses of a pair of glasses hanging from his neck were spattered with blood.

  That must be Lothar.

  His eyelids flickered open.

  ‘Where have they gone?’ Rozhkov shouted at him in German.

  The man managed to shake his head.

  Rozhkov shot him between the eyes.

  More noise.

  ‘Check the bedrooms!’ Rozhkov ordered.

  Heike moved through the villa, her weapon raised.

  She kicked open first one door – a guest bedroom – and then another.

  Lothar’s bedroom. Heike scanned the room for possible hiding places.

  Behind the bed and a wardrobe. She checked. Nothing there.

  She glanced out of the bedroom window. The view was spectacular. A steep wooded slope dropped down to a quiet cove of blue and green.

  There was a small garden behind the villa. It was enclosed by a high white wall, to which all manner of shrubs and vines clung. A small black gate stood in one corner.

  Open.

  She could just make out a footpath winding among the trees, heading down to the cove.

  ‘Rozhkov!’ she shouted. ‘They went out the back!’

  She joined Rozhkov as he found a back door from the kitchen out into the garden and followed him through the gate.

  The path was steep, but they took it as quickly as they could. Phil might be difficult to catch, but they should be faster than Emma. She noticed Rozhkov limping a little as if he had twisted an ankle, and so she squeezed past him.