The Envoy

by Edward Wilson

  The path to the boathouse hadn’t been used for years. There was marsh and river on one side, and sandy hills with heather on the other. It was the sort of place where children built dens and swore secret oaths. The boathouse itself had been built on one of a number of tidal islands. To get to it, one had to negotiate a series of single and double plank bridges that leapfrogged from one dry clump to another.

  When Kit got to the boathouse, he checked his watch. He was five minutes late. He wondered if Jennifer would turn up. The call from the phone box had been reckless; it broke all the rules. It was likely that Jennifer’s phone had been tapped – and she was now being interrogated by the Ministry of Defence security police. But supposing there had been a phone tap, why weren’t the security guys at the boathouse too? On the other hand, what if it was only Brian – and the only thing he had discovered was marital unfaithfulness? What would he do? Would he shout at her? Beat her up? Lock her in the house? Kit closed his eyes, but couldn’t block out the horror cinema of the mind: the torn clothing, the bleeding lip, the screams, the pounding fists. But maybe Brian wasn’t like that. Maybe he would just brood his hurt as a silent inner lump. Kit pushed the rotten curtain material back from the door window and looked up the hill, to where the trees faded into heather. There she was: running and bounding down the path like a schoolchild released from a tedious lesson. She’s so beautiful.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ she said, ‘I got lost.’

  ‘What did you tell him you were doing?’

  ‘I didn’t have to tell him anything. He left the house a few minutes after you rang?’

  ‘Did he say where he was going?’

  ‘No, but he took the car. He seemed in a grump – he often is these days.’

  ‘Did you bring your passport?’

  ‘Here it is.’ She handed it over. ‘Are we leaving soon, now?’

  ‘Not now, on Friday – but when I tell you where we’re going, you might not want to come. And I won’t blame you if you change your mind.’

  Jennifer put her arms around Kit and kissed him on the mouth. ‘I’ll go anywhere with you.’

  ‘Even Russia.’

  Jennifer brushed a hair from the side of her mouth and stared at her cousin. Then she smiled, ‘You are joking.’

  ‘No, Jennie, the only way we can be together is if I defect. My life isn’t my own. I know too much. They can’t risk my blabbing – or being kidnapped and forced to blab. Even after you retire, all your travel plans have to be approved. We belong to the State – until death do us part.’

  Jennifer looked at the floor. ‘I suppose I knew that all along.’

  ‘And I’ve been a bad boy for a long time. It started with lies and omissions – and it’s ended with treason. I’ve betrayed my country. They could hang me.’

  ‘Kit?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you do this for me?’

  ‘Not just for you, but for me too – for my conscience.’

  ‘What is your conscience?’

  ‘A tangle of feelings and intuitions – it might be wrong. But it’s my choice and the important thing is to choose.’

  Jennifer put her hands on her cousin’s shoulders. ‘Look, I’m almost as tall as you.’

  ‘It’s wrong for me to ask you to come with me. Don’t come.’

  ‘Being the same height makes kissing better.’

  Kit felt her mouth open against his and her tongue dart into his mouth like a demented serpent. She seemed more hungry and passionate than she had ever been before. Kit spread the sheet on the floor of the boathouse and they made love. Afterwards, when they still lay entwined, she said something to Kit – in a whisper – that disturbed him. It was a secret admission that, at first, made Kit give a nervous half-laugh. But when her words finally sunk in, they sent cold shudders up his spine. ‘Kit,’ she whispered, ‘sometimes … sometimes, I might want you to hurt me a bit.’

  Afterwards, Kit pinned the sheet to a wall in the boathouse. ‘What are you doing?’ asked Jennifer.

  ‘We need to take photos for our new passports.’

  ‘Does this mean that we’ll have to live forever and ever in Russia?’

  ‘Not necessarily, the East bloc is big – East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria. There are many beautiful places – another world to discover. I hope someday that we’ll be able to live in France. In any case, it will be easier for you to travel than me – you’re not a traitor. You’ll see your parents again.’

  ‘I wonder what Mom and Dad will think of all this.’

  ‘The important thing for them is that you’re alive. Your life is the most important thing they have.’

  ‘And my happiness – and I can only be happy with you. Hold me.’

  Kit put his arms around her. ‘You’re shaking. What’s wrong?’

  ‘A shadow. I felt a cold shadow brush across my neck.’

  After Jennifer had gone back to the house, Kit waited until it was dark before he went back to his car. The paranoia demon was back again and he felt eyes burning into his back. Darkness made it better. He had one more job to do before he returned to London – and he didn’t want anyone to see him doing it.

  Kit drove into Orford and parked the A30 in a quiet lane near the main square. He could see the tower of Orford Castle as a black silhouette against the blacker sky behind it. The Castle had been built in the twelfth century on the orders of Henry II – the same king who had ordered the goons to whack Thomas à Becket. Kit was sure that Henry hadn’t meant the murder to be taken personally. It was about political independence: an English line in the sand against the power of Rome. Becket must have understood too. He was a seasoned player and knew the rules. The next morning the monks had to turn out with mops and buckets to clean up the blood, skull fragments and brain tissue that had sprayed all over the place.

  Kit left the car and walked towards the castle. It had stood guard over the Suffolk coast for eight centuries, so it ought to manage looking after a much smaller package for another few decades. Kit put his hand in his coat pocket and felt the dead drop spike. The film that Kit had passed on to Vasili was the less important of the two. It was the one that confirmed that the Russian H-bomb was indeed on Orford Ness – and contained details and drawings of how the British were going to build their own version. It was a valuable piece of intelligence, but it contained no names, no agent network to be rolled up – and then tortured and shot in the basement of the Lubyanka. The second film, with its death sentence name list, was inside the dead drop spike that Kit was about to bury in the shadow of Orford Castle. He hoped it would stay there forever.

  After Kit had dead lettered the passports and photographs in Brompton Oratory, he had been brush-passed a note by a woman who had almost knocked him down. She was reading a tourist map and pretended not to have seen Kit. ‘Enschuldigen Sie, bitte … I mean excuse me.’ For a second, Kit really believed that she was German, but as soon as she had gone on her way, he found a folded note in his hand. He slipped it into his pocket and continued walking until he found a phone kiosk. Kit went into the kiosk and got the note out, as if it were a phone number, so that he could read it without looking suspicious. Basic tradecraft. He read the note with the phone in his hand: ‘2200, Thurs. Tote dat barge on Abe’s idea ’til yr cookin’.’ It wasn’t Vasili’s writing, but whoever it was, wanted a rendezvous on the Grand Union Canal towing path near the gas works.

  It was a dark and ugly place. There were railway sidings beside the gas works. The huff and wheeze of the shuttle engines and the clanking noise of metal on metal echoed like sounds from hell. The canal was a black greasy streak that stank of oily rot. The only sounds of life were the scurrying of rats in the undergrowth. From time to time, a rat belly-flopped into the canal for a midnight dip in the unspeakable filth. The grey walls of Wormwood Scrubs Prison loomed above the gas works: the prison, with its loom of white light, seemed warm and welcoming in comparison.

  Kit checked his watch; his contact was f
ive minutes late. He felt frightened, but didn’t regret coming without a gun. There was no point in shooting his way out of a jam. If he had to do that, it meant it was all over and he was as good as dead anyway. Nonetheless, Kit kept himself hidden in the shadow of a chain link fence overgrown with convolvulus and rosebay willow herb.

  It was a quarter past ten when Kit spotted a figure coming along the path. It was a tallish man who cast a swift and graceful silhouette against the white tombstones of Kensal Green Cemetery on the opposite side of the canal. For a few seconds, Kit wasn’t sure that the figure was human – it seemed so quick-footed and smooth. As it came closer, it suddenly disappeared into the shadow of the fence. Kit instinctively reached deep in his pocket for the revolver that wasn’t there. He heard the voice, before he saw the man. ‘Kit, you’ve disappointed us.’ It was Jeffers Cauldwell.

  ‘You talk shit, Jeffers, I’m the biggest fish the Sovs have ever bagged and you know it.’

  ‘The film you gave to Vasili is less than diddly squat.’

  ‘It’s a lot fucking more than you gave them. Don’t play a game, Jeffers, that you don’t know how to play. You’re not even a junior varsity bench warmer.’

  There was a faint pause, less than a second, before Cauldwell continued. ‘Where’s the other film, the one with the names?’

  ‘There isn’t one.’

  ‘That’s a lie and you know it. You’re not stupid, Kit, you wouldn’t be doing this if you hadn’t taken out an insurance policy and stashed it away. All defectors do it.’

  ‘Name one.’

  ‘Maybe I ought to tell Vasili that you’re doubled, that Allen Dulles is sending you to Moscow as a plant full of misinformation and bullshit.’

  ‘No more games, Jeffers – just hand over the passports.’

  ‘Where’s the other film?’

  ‘It’s in my brain – with a hundred other rolls of film – and they’re all going to stay there until Jennifer and I are safe in Moscow.’

  Cauldwell put a hand in his jacket pocket and handed over the documents. ‘I suggested your cover name be Zoltan R. Krumpecker III, but Vasili said it would attract too much attention.’

  Kit looked at the new passports. ‘So I’ll have to be happy as Timothy Robin Wells, and Jennie will be Constance Wells. Good.’

  Cauldwell smiled and said, ‘No hard feelings?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘It’s a scary business, isn’t it?’ Cauldwell put a hand on Kit’s shoulder. ‘If they catch us, we get extradited to New York. That means a roasting in the electric chair – like the Rosenbergs. You’ll find that the Russians are more civilised. They just shoot you.’

  When Kit got back to his flat, he poured himself a brandy and began to rehearse his final moves. The next morning he would pick up the car from the Manor Road garage and drive to Suffolk. His plan was to take single-lane country roads to make sure that he hadn’t grown a tail. Kit wondered what he should do when he met up with Jennifer. The plan was to rendezvous at the boathouse at midday. If Brian was at home, her alibi was to be a shopping trip to Orford Quay for fresh fish. Kit had told Jennie not to pack a bag: it would be too conspicuous. They could buy whatever she would need en route. It would be like choosing her wedding trousseau. Kit knew that everything was going to be fine. He picked up the forged passports and examined them again. They were perfect. The Russian craftsmanship was far better than anything the CIA produced. Kit finished his brandy and smiled. Now that they had false passports for a new life, why go to Moscow? Instead of Gatwick, he and Jennifer could detour to Harwich or a channel port. The obvious problem was that the KGB knew the names and passport numbers. If Kit double-crossed his new masters, they would leak the passport details big time. It wouldn’t be long before every immigration officer from Brindisi to Calais would join the hunt. On the other hand, it wouldn’t happen immediately. It would take at least five days, maybe even a couple of weeks, before their passport details filtered down to frontier control level. Would that be long enough to buy new documents? The KGB were not the only forgers in Europe. Kit knew a half dozen of the best: Utrecht, Antwerp and Liège. Why, he thought, was this a craft at which the Low Countries excelled? Perhaps it was the tradition of Rembrandt, Vermeer and Van der Hals. They were consummate artists.

  Kit poured another brandy. Double-crossing the Sovs was a tempting idea, but maybe it was wrong. Maybe their system, despite all its faults, was better. At least they had a vision – a vision based on reason and hope rather than superstition and greed. Maybe that’s what turned Burgess and Maclean? And yet, part of Kit knew that what they did – and what he was doing – was deeply wrong. When you become an officer of the State – military, diplomatic or espionage – you sell your soul. The first thing you learn as a student of Foreign Policy is that nothing else matters except the survival and dominance of the State – ‘the national interest’. It was more than an idea, it was sacred dogma. If the national interest required burning the faces off the children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, you grilled those young faces until the soft tissue sizzled and caramelised into black ash. And now there was a bomb a thousand times more savage: his father had been one of its first victims. The State was a cruel cradle.

  It was a beautiful Suffolk morning when Kit arrived at the boathouse. It was September, but the weather was warmer and clearer than it had been all summer – as if autumn had turned into spring. The reed beds were golden in the too bright sunlight. In a few weeks, the local thatcher and his apprentice would pole a flat-bottomed boat up the river and begin harvesting the reed. Kit knew both of them. They drank in the same pub where Brian and his henchmen went after work.

  Kit checked his watch. It wasn’t as early as he thought: Jennifer should be arriving any minute. He looked up the path towards the heather and tried to conjure Jennifer’s figure emerging into the light. He wondered what she would be wearing and whether her hair would be free or tied back. He kept looking at his watch – then, after a while, stopped looking. She was already late, but only five minutes. Kit kept staring up the path, straining to see movement. His heart leapt when he saw a wood-pigeon flushed from a fir tree at the top of the hill. Was she coming that way? He waited with his heart pounding. How long would it take her to walk from that tree? Five minutes? Kit began to count the seconds without looking at his watch. He’d begun to hate the lying minute hand. Kit stopped counting when he got to seven hundred. She was now twenty minutes late. He began to feel beads of panic sweat chilling his spine. Kit left the boathouse and started walking up the path. He had chosen the boathouse to provide shelter in case of rain or suspicious eyes – but now the only thing that mattered was meeting Jennifer and getting her to the car.

  The wood that went up the back garden had been planted with giant Wellingtonia firs and redwoods by a Victorian lord. The non-native trees towered over the oak and silver poplars like freak aliens from outer space. The gardening lord had also introduced rhododendron that had now gone berserk, but provided cover for Kit as he worked his way to the edge of the garden. Kit kept deep in the shadows as he studied the house. There was washing on the line, but all else seemed quiet and empty. Brian’s car was nowhere to be seen. ‘Shit.’ Kit swore under his breath. ‘I bet she’s gone another way, by the road.’ Kit had noted that the wood was full of pheasants. The shooting season was about to begin. It was obvious: Jennifer had gone by road to avoid running into the gamekeeper. Kit swore at himself for leaving the boathouse and began to retrace his steps.

  As soon as Kit emerged from the heather, he could see that the boathouse was empty, but something was different – someone had left the door open. So Jennifer had been there! He ran down the slope and across the plank bridges. He knew there would be a note – and it was easy to find it. She must not have had paper or anything to write with, so she had scrawled across the wall in block capitals with lipstick. I WAITED BUT YOU WEREN’T HERE. GONE BACK TO HOUSE. MEET ME THERE. J XXXX. Kit breathed deep and closed his eyes with relief. ‘Stupid me,’ he
whispered, ‘and poor you.’ He then ran back to the road to where he had left the car in a lay-by. He needed to get to the house as quickly as possible. She was obviously alone, but Brian could turn up at any moment.

  When Kit got to the house, he parked his car on the road. He didn’t want to risk being blocked in on the drive. The washing was still hanging out to dry and everything seemed as still and quiet as it had before. He checked the drive: there was still no Brian. Kit walked around to the kitchen door and opened it slightly. ‘Jennifer,’ he said. There was no reply, he called more loudly, ‘Jennie, where are you?’ He looked on the kitchen table. There was a copy of the East Anglian Daily Times open to the sports pages: Ipswich Town had signed a new centre forward. Kit had an impulse to pick up the paper and read the article. He wanted to be in a world where people did normal things – like hanging out the washing and following a team. Kit paused and looked around for the kettle. That’s what the English always do in a crisis, they have a cup of tea. It seemed to work for them, but Kit knew it wasn’t going to work for him. He came from a society driven by strong coffee and raw nerves.

  Kit leaned on the back of a kitchen chair and listened to the silence. There must be a million different types of silence. There’s the sweet silence of a summer garden on a still night. There’s the adrenalin pumping silence before a battle’s first shot. There’s the punched-hard-in-the-stomach silence of a lover at the moment of betrayal. There’s the silence of the stethoscope. But this one, Kit knew, was the worst silence of all: when the silence is listening to you.

  Kit walked out of the kitchen into the darkness of the inner house. A bath tap was dripping and there was a copy of Wisden Cricketers’Almanack on Brian’s desk. There was a musty smell of stale perfume. Kit knew that he wasn’t alone. He stood in front of the bedroom door, the marital bedroom. On the other side was the private place of hushed pillow secrets, semen-stained sheets and knotty engenderings.