Kit turned the door handle and pushed the door open. The light from the bay window flooded the room and made Kit blink. Jennifer was lying on the bed with a white sheet pulled up to her neck and her eyes half-open. Her arms – white, slender and bowed like a wish bone – were lying on the crisp surface of the sheet. A single red rose lay across her cupped hands. The sunlight streamed through lace curtains and cast sombre patterns of grey flowers across her face. Kit whispered her name, ‘Jennifer.’ Each syllable palpable and heavy with longing. There was a musky smell in the room – and for a second Kit remembered Pepita lying in her coffin amid a riot of tropical flowers. You buried quick down there. A plump bluebottle fly landed on Jennifer’s cheek. Kit winced as the fly crawled across the still luminous surface of her eye.
Kit moved into the room. He was desperate to hold her and to brush flies away from her face. He was dizzy with grief and his foot became entangled with a blanket that must have fallen from the end of the bed. As Kit bent down to free himself, he heard someone moving behind him – then a voice from the corridor. ‘Take him, Johnnie.’ Kit had heard that voice before. It was one that he would never forget. It belonged to the guard who had ordered Driscoll’s beheading. There was a sharp pain above his right ear, a sudden reek of chloroform – and then all was blackness.
‘How’s your head?’ He was a nice man with a rugby-playing accent. He had brought Kit a pot of tea and a tray of digestive biscuits. ‘Can you stand up and try walking around the room?’
‘Could I have some clothes, please?’
The man handed Kit a dressing gown from a cabinet beside the bed. Kit stood up and put it on. The gown was grey and had blue trim; there was a Royal Air Force crest over the breast pocket.
‘Do you feel any dizziness?’
‘No.’
‘Double or blurred vision?’
‘No.’
‘Have a little stroll.’
The room was functional and bare. The walls were painted institutional green and there were no paintings or books. The unusual thing was the hexagonal shape, as if the room were located in a tower or castle turret. There seemed to be windows in four of the walls, but they were covered by locked shutters. Presumably, thought Kit, to stop him jumping out. The closed shutters meant that it was impossible to tell the time of day. They had taken his watch, but his visitor was wearing one that said nine o’clock. Still, Kit had no way of knowing whether it was a.m. or p.m. He guessed there was another reason for the shutters: induced disorientation. It was a standard interrogation technique. Take away a person’s perception of time and you rob him of his last reality anchor.
‘How do you feel?’
‘Fine.’
The man took an instrument out of a black bag and shone a light into Kit’s pupil. He continued the eye and ear examination for some time. Kit wondered if he was trying to find his soul. At the end of the medical examination, the man had a look at Kit’s head wound. ‘Nasty haematoma, but no evidence of skull fracture or concussion. You’re very lucky. Those fellows are animals.’
‘Can you tell me anything else?’
‘No.’
‘Fine.’
‘Good. I’ve got to go now, but if you experience nausea or vomiting, let someone know immediately.’
‘How?’
‘Shout loudly and rap on the door. Someone will hear you.’ The man smiled, then got up and left the room. Kit heard two long heavy bolts slide into place on the other side of the door.
The food was English nursery stodge: Shepherd’s Pie, Lancashire Hotpot, Toad in the Hole, over-boiled vegetables and lumpy steamed puddings. Although Kit ate very little, the plates continued to appear three times a day. At least it gave him a sense of time passing. After the first ‘day’, Kit asked the agent who brought his food if he could have some books. When the next meal came two Dickens novels – The Old Curiosity Shop and Little Dorrit – were on the tray next to the bangers and mash. There was also an anthology of Victorian poetry. Kit tried reading the novels, but the print was too small and the sentences too long. In any case, he found it difficult to concentrate. When he looked at a page, he didn’t see the words – only images of Jennifer. It was worse than mourning. Mourning meant tears and relief, but what Kit felt was a stunned paralysis that locked every feeling in constant remorseless pain.
Kit thought it was odd that they left him alone with his food and cutlery. True, the table knives weren’t very sharp, but the forks were. It would hurt a lot, but Kit was sure that he could dig out a wrist vein with a fork prong. If that didn’t work, he could break a plate or a glass into sharp shards. The pain would be nothing compared to what was going on in his brain. Kit probed his left wrist with a sharp prong. Just do it, he thought, just do it.
Kit calculated that the visit came on the third day of his imprisonment. He knew that it was going to happen – they weren’t going to try to stuff him with roly-poly pudding and treacle tart forever. Kit knew it was about to begin as soon as he heard the bolts being pulled back at what wasn’t a normal feeding time. There were also muffled voices. On previous occasions, the doctor or tray-bearing agent had come alone. Kit thought he recognised one of the
voices. It was a mandarin accent. The inflection was a world away from the London street urchin voice of the MoD security guard who had coshed him. The door opened a crack. The familiar voice said, ‘I’ll see him alone this time.’
The door opened fully and a man entered whom Kit knew only too well. He had fluffy white hair and was wearing a black lounge suit that was perfectly cut. The visitor put a small leather attaché case on a chair, then greeted Kit with a handshake and a warm smile. ‘Counsellor Fournier, how do you do? Do you remember me?’
Kit nodded. ‘Fine, thank you. And how are you?’
‘Still settling in to my new job.’ The visitor touched his hair. ‘Do your colleagues still call me El Blanco?’
‘I think we can now safely say that they’re ex-colleagues – and if they call you that, it’s very rude of them.’
‘It doesn’t much matter. We have our own nicknames – many of which are far more offensive. Would you like a drink? Beer, whisky?’
‘I don’t know. Is it after six o’clock?’
‘It’s about ten in the morning, but you deserve a drink after being banged up here for so long.’
‘Whisky, please.’
While his visitor stepped out of the room to order the drinks, Kit recollected his last meeting with El Blanco. At the time Blanco, Sir Dick White, had still been head of MI5. A few weeks later, in the wake of the Ordzhonikidze debacle, White had taken over MI6 – a promotion owing partly to Kit’s dirty tricks in Portsmouth Harbour. Kit wondered if that was why Blanco had preserved his life.
The whisky arrived with a pitcher of water and a bowl of ice. Blanco poured generous drinks and said, ‘To your health.’
Kit drained the whisky without ice or water. ‘Before we begin,’ he said, ‘I want to make one thing absolutely clear.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘I didn’t kill her.’
‘We know you didn’t, but the Suffolk constabulary are not so sure.’
‘Did the MoD goons do it?’
‘No.’
Kit poured himself another whisky – and tried to stop his hand from shaking. He suddenly realised that MI6 must have known what she was doing – that’s why White was being so ‘nice’. Kit drank the whisky quickly and said, ‘Don’t fuck with me anymore.’ He looked directly at Blanco, but the Director didn’t flinch. ‘You knew that she was passing on secrets – and you ordered your own guys to kill her.’ Kit tried hard not to cry in front of Blanco.
What Blanco did next was so unexpected, so un-British. He reached out and put his hand over Kit’s. ‘I didn’t want to hurt you. I was hoping you wouldn’t have asked questions – just accepted her as being dead. It’s OK, cry. Don’t be ashamed of your grief.’
Kit wiped his eyes and stared into space. ‘She was what I had instead
of God, instead of country.’ He paused and looked at White. ‘Try to understand – I didn’t believe in it any longer. That’s why I became a traitor.’
Blanco nodded.
‘We gave up everything so we could be together, and we almost pulled it off. But your boys got there first – and you had to kill her because she got involved in the game and broke the rule called “national security”. The one rule you dare not break, the live centre rail. Fair enough, that’s the way it has to be. The State is more important than any individual life.’ Kit smiled and looked at White. ‘I used to believe that too. But tell me, would you have killed your own wife, your own daughter, if she had broken that rule?’
‘No, of course not. And I didn’t kill Jennifer either.’
Kit poured himself another whisky. ‘You’re as convincing as a pig’s bladder on a stick. We used to call it “plausible deniability”. Then who did kill her?’
‘No one killed her; she wasn’t murdered. It was an accident.’
Kit put his face two inches from Blanco’s and shouted. ‘Stop lying to me!’
‘I’m not lying to you, Kit, but …’
‘But what?’
‘But she did.’
Kit laughed. ‘Oh, so you think she got cold feet – that she wouldn’t have come with me?’
Dick White stood up and lifted the whisky bottle. ‘I think I need a drink now too.’ The Director poured himself two fingers of whisky and walked over to one of the shuttered windows. ‘I think we need some light in here.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out a key ring. The Director unlocked and folded back the shutters while Kit stared into his whisky glass. ‘Have a look, Kit, the view is spectacular, one of the best in England.’
The windows overlooked the point where the River Deben emptied into the North Sea. Longshore drift had created a long shingle bank that stretched a half-mile into the sea. The strong ebbing tide from the river crashed through breaches in the shingle. There were long lines of boiling white water where the river ebb collided with the sea waves. On the opposite bank were two squat Martello towers where ghost guards still kept a lookout for Napoleon’s invasion fleet.
Kit joined White by the window. ‘So this is where you brought me, so near.’ Kit pointed across the river. ‘That’s Felixstowe Ferry over there – two pubs and a cafe. It’s a good place to land – a steep clean shingle hard. And over there,’ he gestured to a salt marsh behind the village, ‘are the liveaboards. Those boats and barges never leave their mud berths. There must be twenty or so people who live on them all year round. Fishermen, poor families, old single men; there’s an artist too who makes things out of driftwood and scrap.’
‘You seem to know the area well.’
‘You’ve brought me to Bawdsey Manor. We’re on the top floor of a mock castle turret. This place is a Victorian folly that was built by a rich man who fell in love with this view. The RAF took it over in the 1930s and turned the whole estate into a secret research establishment. This is where you developed radar. They still do secret stuff, but I’m not sure what. In any case, it’s a good safe house to stash people like me. You’ve got total isolation and layers and layers of no-questions-asked security. Why have you stopped telling me about Jennifer? You said she lied to me.’
‘I don’t think it would be fair – fair to you – to say more.’
‘But, in the end, you intend to tell me whether I want to know or not. There’s no need to dissemble. I know the game you’re playing. You’re giving me the long slow torture, like the Romans did to La Sainte Blandine at Lyons – and for the same reason, you want me to renounce my faith.’
White smiled. ‘That’s where they used, how do you say, la chaise de fer rougie au feu.’
‘That’s right, the red hot iron chair. We’ve got one like that in America, and that’s where I’m going to be roasted if you hand me over – I know that game too. But let’s get back to Jennifer. Tell me about her lies.’
‘With both barrels?’
‘Both barrels.’
‘Jennifer was recruited by MI6 the same year she married Brian. She was a loyal and true agent – as she was, in her fashion, a loyal and true wife. You fell, Kit, head over heels into the oldest ensnarement trick in the espionage textbook – the honey trap. Would you like to see her agent reports on your lovemaking?’
‘No.’
‘In any case, things didn’t work out as we had planned. The intelligence that Jennifer fed to you was intended, in the first case, to be passed on to the Americans.’
‘You wanted them to know about the Orford Ness H-bomb?’
‘Of course, there’s no use in having these things if the people you want to influence don’t know that you have them. For obvious reasons we couldn’t go public about this device, but we certainly wanted Washington to know we had an H-bomb. And, of course, all the secrecy shrouding the Orford Ness project was bound to exaggerate our re-emergence as a world-class player in the arms race.’ Blanco paused. ‘Don’t you see, Kit, these bombs are just as much status symbols as weapons? And we urgently needed H-bomb status to be taken seriously over Suez. And, of course, had we openly bragged about having one, then no one would have believed us.’
Kit finished his whisky. Truth is a chameleon that only shows its true colours when no one is looking.
‘But then you went and spoiled things by not telling Washington that we had the big one. That’s what Jennifer wanted you to do – that was her job.’
Kit looked away and shook his head. ‘No, it wasn’t …’
‘Yes, it was. At first, she thought your defection story was a cover ploy to gain her sympathy. She thought you were still working for the Americans. Jennifer thought she could trick you into thinking that her love for you was so passionate that you could persuade her to do anything, even to spy on her husband. Jennifer thought it was all bluff and double bluff on both sides. Then the penny dropped. Jennifer realised that you weren’t bluffing, that you really were planning to defect. She was shocked – we all were. We thought you were one of the hardest agents that Washington had ever sent out – a rising star headed for the cabinet or the NSC. In any case, when we realised you had been doubled we had to change our operational plan.’
‘I need another drink.’
‘In any case, we were cock-a-hoop when you gave Jennifer that Minox spy camera. We already knew that you were having unauthorised meetings with the KGB Chief of Residency, but still weren’t sure what game you were playing.’ Blanco refilled Kit’s glass. ‘So we called a meeting with Jennifer who convinced us, after some hefty questioning, that you really were going to defect. We were disappointed that our intelligence ruse – the covert nuclear message to Washington – had foundered, but we quickly realised there was another opportunity within our grasp. If we had failed to send a true – or true-ish – message to Washington, we could instead send lots of false ones to Moscow. We convened another meeting, a largish one, with several old colleagues from Five, including the Head of B Branch, and the Permanent Secretary who chairs JIC – that’s how important it was. The purpose of the meeting was to rewrite Jennifer’s script – and more importantly, to come up with a list of names.’
Kit looked into his glass. The dots were linking up. ‘So you fed her false information to pass on to me, hoping that I would hand it over to the Sovs.’
‘Precisely, but for some reason you failed to pass on the most valuable piece of artful misinformation, the microfilm with the names. Why not, Kit? Didn’t you want to ingratiate yourself with your future employer?’
‘I didn’t want blood on my hands – all those midnight retributions in the cellars of the Lubyanka.’
‘But, Kit, not any of the names on your microfilm were the ones guilty of selling us that bomb. It was a misinformation op. All the names we provided were loyal KGB agents whom we wanted to smear – one of the names was your friend, Vasili. I’m not sure that any of them would have been executed, but a few careers would have been ruined and a good ma
ny top secret security clearances cancelled. It would have caused organisational chaos. They do it to us all the time. They keep trying to frame Kim Philby as the “third man”, but we’re wise to their game of bluff and counter-bluff.’
Kit looked hard at White. More dots were joining up: the message was as bleak as an unclaimed corpse. ‘If I had handed over that film, and its list of fabricated traitors, it wouldn’t have been long before the Russians spotted me as a doubled plant.’
‘That’s almost certainly true. They probably would have sent you back to America as part of a spy exchange.’
‘To life imprisonment or the death penalty.’
‘It’s a rough trade, Kit. You know that better than anyone.’
Kit went back to the table to pour himself another whisky. ‘Yeah, I know. And I know that the only reason Jennifer made love to me was because she was under operational instructions. Her lovemaking was tradecraft, her job as an intelligence officer.’
‘I didn’t say that. She might have had other reasons too. Jennifer liked sex. And so did Brian. He’s dead you know.’
‘Good.’
‘We don’t think so. He was an extremely talented scientist and administrator – and also one of ours.’
Kit stared into his drink. He felt the nausea of total confusion and deracination. ‘So, Brian didn’t kill Jennifer either.’
‘Brian didn’t murder Jennifer, but he was responsible for her death. It was an accident. We’ve just had the post-mortem report – from the chief Home Office pathologist working under the Official Secrets Act. The cause of death was postural asphyxia.’
‘I don’t know what that is.’
‘It’s the same reason people died when they were crucified. The body finds itself trapped in a position where the air passages are blocked or the diaphragm is unable to support lung function. The fact that Jennifer was tape-gagged contributed to her asphyxiation.’
The Envoy Page 30
