“Yes. But hardly credibly I think — without evidence. Without proof. Not even the Russians, Shard. Not, that is, in such a way that it would register over here. Remember, we have the letter found on the body!”
“And Tuball?”
“Tuball — I think you said — seemed to react to being asked about the number?”
“Yes, but he denied all knowledge — ”
“As he has done of everything he could, everything we were unable to prove — because of his fear of reprisals. Is that right?”
Shard nodded. “Pretty well, yes.”
“And it was after you spoke about my telephone number that he really went to pieces?”
Again Shard nodded. “Yes.”
“Then I believe we can assume he has some knowledge — and fears death because of it. And — ”
“He can talk, Hedge — to the Russians. Tuball’s safer — for you, Hedge — in Britain.”
Hedge almost purred: “Not so. Not my way. Shard, you’ll take the body as far as Einbeck in West Germany. By the time it gets there, arrangements will have been made — it’ll be expected. You’ll leave it there. The caretaking hands will be fully trustworthy and efficient. You’ll go on into East Germany, travel arrangements to be promulgated shortly, with Tuball. You won’t come back for the body till Tuball’s dead.”
“Dead? Who kills him, Hedge?”
Hedge spread his hands. “My guess, the Russians. Because they don’t want him back to give him a medal, do they? And because certain information will be fed to them — about that corpse and its possible non-arrival. Oh, he’ll die! Try to make him talk about my phone number before he does — and after that we’ll forget about it.” Once again Hedge smiled. The smile was a little happier. “I’ll call you later. Off you go now, my dear chap, and see your wife again.”
*
Why bother to tell Hedge he was a bastard? He must see it for himself when shaving. The world was full of bastards, official and unofficial. Tuball was prepared to see people die in his interest, so was Hedge. Where lay the essential difference? In the eyes of God, whom Hedge, as Shard knew, worshipped on Sundays at St. Martins in the Fields, who was the bigger villain? Who indeed? It was bloody handy, Shard thought, when the national interest coincided — or could be said to coincide, which wasn’t quite the same thing — with personal sanctity. It was bloody lucky for Hedge, too, that Beth was better. If she hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have gone to Russia, and bugger Hedge. Shard had another thought, a wicked one: it could be time Hedge really did have a woman on the side. It might make him less coldblooded.
At the hospital, Beth was just waking from a light sleep. She was a little muzzy, but obviously keeping up the improvement. Shard couldn’t tell her much, but said that, as ever, duty called. He had to go away, but would be back just as soon as he could. “I’ll worry about you,” he said.
“No, Simon. I’ll be all right. Look after yourself, darling.”
He grinned at her. “Oh, I’D do that, don’t worry!”
“You’re very precious.”
“Not half as much as you.” He kissed her, held her hand, and left, God-damning Hedge. The East German trip could end in Moscow itself, would take time — time before Tuball died. Why did they want Tuball? If they wouldn’t tell Hedge, they wouldn’t tell him. Tuball was going to die, and no-one outside the Kremlin would know the reason. But why care about a bastard like Tuball? Shard mentally condemned Tuball to the fastest possible death, for on that depended his own return to Beth’s side. Maybe he was becoming a bastard too.
Leaving the hospital, he wandered for a time. Past Old Bailey and its fine balance of justice: up Ludgate Hill to St. Paul’s, whether with or without volition he couldn’t have said. But reaching St. Paul’s he stopped and looked and then went in. He knelt for a few moments, no more, and prayed: an unaccustomed act for many years past, but oddly the words of thanksgiving were easy to find, and the act helped. Shard got up and left St. Paul’s, ran lightly up the steps to the shopping precinct and then along to the underground station, thinking ahead to the death of Tuball. He took a tube to Leicester Square, let himself into the room in Seddon’s Way and sat and waited for the next order from Hedge, while once again Beth filled his mind. The burr of the security line came as an interruption: he answered vaguely, and Hedge’s voice rattled in his ears like lead shot: “Pull yourself together. You’re going to need all the alertness you’ve got.” A pause. “You’re paying attention?”
“Of course. Get on with it, do.”
“There’s a function tonight. French Embassy, 2030 hours. Be there, please.” Shard said, “As guard, with gun?”
“Don’t joke. As guest, in tails. I’ve fixed an invitation. It’ll reach you any minute now — ”
“I think it has already,” Shard interrupted. A large envelope had just come through his letter box, with a clatter of brass flap. “I’ll be there…behind a potted palm.”
There was an exclamation of irritability and Hedge cut the call. Shard got up and retrieved the envelope from the wire basket of the letter box. Some stencilled information of interest to stamp collectors, up-to-the-minute stuff bearing the hallmark of Stanley Gibbons: in the middle, the invitation to the French Embassy — a reception to honour some Common Market dignitary, visiting London before going off on the flog to Venezuela. Any excuse for a party. Shard wondered what Hedge was cooking up now.
*
On the dot of 2030 Shard presented himself to 11 Kensington Palace Gardens and was admitted to the world of the diplomat. There was quite a lot of old-world charm and dignity, mainly from the French themselves: English faces tended to stand out as lacking both: the god of business with its money-making face, its lack of moral values and its incipient coronaries had crashed into the polite circle of diplomacy. There were in fact potted palms around the place and Shard, in a moment of impishness, stationed himself in the lee of one of them, having already spotted Hedge on the lookout for him, peering pinkly and trying not to show it while he chatted with gallantry to an elderly woman in a long black dress covering an immense bosom and much else.
Seeing him, Hedge extricated himself and sauntered over: he failed to see any joke, any intent, in the potted palm. He was looking splendid: plenty of beautifully starched shirt front, gleaming white, face of hunting pink. Miniature decorations — Hedge had been in the war, a captain in the Intelligence Corps: he’d started young.
“What’s the idea?” Shard asked.
“Man I want you to meet. Or rather — this I stress — to look at.”
“Ah. And he’ll look at me?”
“Yes. Case of mutual identification.”
“Russian — this man?”
Hedge nodded. “Correct. Assigned Tu-ball. He’s flying to Moscow tonight, after he leaves here. You don’t talk to him — not here.”
“Name?”
“P. V. Krosky. Not on the Soviet Embassy’s permanent accredited staff, but I believe he has ambassadorial rank — ”
“Believe? Don’t you know?”
“I can’t know everything,” Hedge said stiffly. His face contorted as an old gentleman in a funny sky-blue uniform creaked past: the contortion was a smile for the old gentleman superimposed on a frown for Shard. “You know the Russians — everything changes every five minutes. Anyway — Krosky’s your man, your contact.”
“Does he kill Tuball?”
Hedge raised his eyebrows. “Tuball will face trial — ”
“On what charge?”
“They didn’t say. We’re assuming that the link with Barclay and Elgood — ”
“Tuball’s been in Russia, in the past?”
“It’s likely.”
“I see.” Shard drew on a cigarette, saw Assistant Commissioner Hesseltine away across the big room, looking round cautiously as if all Frenchmen were villains and never mind the entente of the Common Market. “So Tuball faces trial, and is — ”
“Is sentenced to death. Secret trial, secret e
xecution.”
“Then how do I find out when he’s dead?”
Hedge said, “Your problem.” He started to move away, then swung back. “Next person you see me with will be P. V. Krosky. After you’ve seen enough, you can go, but not too soon. You’ll leave for Einbeck tomorrow evening — I’ll be in touch.” This time he really did go, leaving Shard behind the potted palm. Shard watched him moving through the crowd, thick, pompous, inclined to bustle, head held back, grey hair oiled dark. He saw Hedge suddenly catch Hesseltine’s eye and sheer off the other way. After that Hedge vanished for a while. When he reappeared he was looking all hot and bothered, the diplo-security cloak a trifle awry: he was with a woman, spectacled, and oddly angry looking. This could not be P. V. Krosky, and her presence had put poor Hedge in a real tizzy. His eyes glinting with controlled laughter, Shard watched his master’s antics: Hedge’s eyes were going frantically from Shard to the angry-looking woman and back again. Then a hand was lifted and placed lightly on the woman’s shoulder. She didn’t seem to be liking that gesture much, but Hedge had now made his point. Shard grinned, this time with no humour: Hedge had made a balls and P. V. Krosky was a woman, not a man.
*
Next evening at 1830 hours, in full dark with no moon but fairly high cloud, there was a convergence at an airfield on Salisbury Plain: a group captain, moustachioed and very correct, a flight lieutenant, the crew of a troop transporter, Shard, and a long, cigar-shaped aluminium canister containing Tanya Gorukin, strapped, bandaged, dry-iced and padded against disaster. And, from close custody, Tuball and his plastered leg safely strapped into a Neil Robertson stretcher with his crutches attached.
The group captain looked Shard over critically. “I’m told you’ve done this before, the dropping part, I mean?”
Shard nodded. “I have. Metropolitan Police Flying Club, para section. I’m not worried — not about that!”
“What’s the betting he is?” The group captain indicated Tuball. “Bit rough — that.”
“He’ll survive, in that strait-jacket contraption. He’s a bit rough himself.”
“Well, he’s your pigeon, I suppose. Now, you’ll be dropped a little west of Einbeck, and the reception committee will take you over — this, you know. All I can do is wish you the best of luck, Chief Superintendent.”
“Thanks.” They shook hands: Shard, his parachute strapped to his back, climbed into the aircraft. Then Tuball was carried aboard. After him, Tanya Gorukin’s aluminium shroud was hefted in, slid along the deck to a safe stowage, and lashed down tight, its ringbolts left clear for the twin parachute harness to be secured before arrival over the target.
Within minutes they were airborne, circling for height, the lights of Salisbury and the warning light on the great cathedral spire bright below them.
CHAPTER XV
The pilot’s timing was perfect and the weather was kind: the drop gave Shard no problems. He landed on soft ground, grass — a field, coming down nicely on bent legs and a backward lean. First thing: let go the harness. As he did this, he saw the moving figures, three men coming out from cover to get him in, running fast. Contact made and identification given and received, Shard signalled upward with a powerful torch: three short flashes, two long. Down came Tuball, into West German hands and guns. In his stretchered constriction, Tuball landed with a thump. In Shard’s torch, his face was ghostlike, twisted with pain and sweating as the Germans quickly unstrapped him and set him on his crutches.
Then, stand by for the aluminium container: no delays, down it came, its shape soon visible even through the night, hanging below the parachutes. Men grappled it in before it hit the grass, grappled and held it, gathered the streaming parachutes and carried the lot to a van waiting in a side road. The men, the Germans, were not talkative: in a heavy brooding silence, they drove fast and swaying for Einbeck.
*
That night, passed in what seemed to be a workman’s house, Shard shared the guard on Tuball with the West Germans, men whom he knew only as Franz, Walter and Lothar. Two of them, armed, stood watch together. Tuball, who had been in a daze all along, fell eventually into a troubled sleep. Shard watched him tossing and turning: Shard could almost feel sorry. He wondered what strings Hedge had needed to pull to bring this off — and knew that if he, Shard, should happen to fail, then Hedge would find himself in a somewhat poor position. Shard wondered if Hesseltine had any knowledge of what was happening to Tuball and decided it was unlikely: Hesseltine would have blown the thing sky-high — or he’d have wanted to, anyway, and he could have made quite a noise before the heavy hand of Security silenced him. Hedge, during the final briefing of Shard, had stressed the priorities once again: the death of Tuball was the essential thing, and if that did not occur, then the Russians, P. V. Krosky included, could whistle down the wind for Gorukin’s ice-packed corpse. Guarding the sleeping Tuball, Shard’s mind roved over the bargaining counters: Gorukin against Tuball, Gorukin also against Barclay and Elgood, Barclay’s and Elgood’s fate dependent upon both, Hedge against the death of Tuball. And Shard? Somewhere around Shard there blew an icy wind, as though from Gorukin’s corpse itself: he was sitting in a storm centre. At the moment it was quiet at the centre, with those winds howling around the perimeter, but soon he would have to venture out.
*
“The container?”
“Will remain in the outhouse, Herr Shard.”
“Sure that’s safe, Franz?”
The German nodded, and put a hand on Shard’s shoulder. “Very safe. It will never be left, until you come back across the frontier. I promise this.”
“All right, then.” Shard rubbed his hands together: it was a bitter morning, with ground and air frost, and a threat of snow evident in a lead-like sky. “I hope I won’t be gone long!”
“This hope we share,” Franz said gruffly. He watched Shard check his gun and slide it back beneath his jacket, the jacket that was now covered by a heavy sheepskin coat provided by the man called Lothar, who had also given him a Russian-style fur hat. “Come.”
Shard looked up. “All ready?”
“All ready.”
“Tuball.”
Tuball sat with his head in his hands, a condemned man without the stationary comfort of the condemned cell. In the aircraft from Salisbury, on arrival here in the Einbeck house, again in the early part of the night, Tuball had whined and pleaded, even though Shard was convinced he hadn’t really taken in the fact that he was actually going to be handed to the Russians. Tuball, Shard believed, felt it was all a big, big bluff — never mind his obvious fear, fear that was real — real enough for him to explain why: as Hedge had suspected, there had been an earlier presence in the Soviet Union.
“Drugs?”
“Yes. Not that alone, though. There was a woman who was going to talk.”
“So you killed her?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a bastard, Tuball. But you got away?”
“I made it out just in time…just ahead of the Soviet police. I don’t want to go back.”
Shard had nodded: then asked Tuball politely where he would like to go — pointed out that he faced murder charges in Britain and Australia as well as Russia. Tuball shook like a leaf when Shard voiced this reminder. But he did confirm Shard’s suspicion: “You won’t really take me across. The authorities wouldn’t have that. It’s a bluff, just to get me to talk. But I’ve nothing more to talk about, Shard.”
He’d virtually collapsed after that.
Now Shard called again, sharply: “Tuball.”
“Yes.”
“On the move. We’re heading out.”
Warmly wrapped like Shard, Tuball got to his feet, hobbling on his plaster and crutches. Shard moved behind him, hand close to his gun butt. They followed Franz out to the street, back into the van which was waiting for them with its engine running. Into the back, and off. The route now was direct: a road running through the frontier, into East Germany. Hedge and the Russian Embassy had
made their arrangements and the transit of the frontier between East and West would hold no obstacles. The great tolerance that had been evident since the thawing of the cold war days would, for Shard and Tuball, thaw further, even into friendliness and welcome: such was combined power in a mutual interest. The van travelled fast over icy roads, dangerously driven by the man Franz. Shard was a little apprehensive: he didn’t want to have this whole thing end in a road smash. But Franz proved a good driver: they reached the division between the two Germanys in excellent order, and in good time. As finality loomed right up, Tuball cracked even more: he seemed almost to give up his manhood, huddling in his corner like a child, with wide staring eyes. Tuball was facing something very new to him: no private thugs handy, just as Shard had predicted for him if he’d gone to Dartmoor, and some very nasty experiences waiting. His fear was like a physical force, reaching out towards Shard, the last possible assuager. With things yet to know, Shard was tempted into asking questions: the time for this was good, might never be better.
He leaned towards Tuball. “That telephone number…on Tanya Gorukin’s letter.”
“Yes?”
“I’ve asked you about it before. I’m asking again — for the last time, Tuball. For the last time. You’ve got three minutes.”
“It’s already too late.” Tuball’s voice was hollow, as though there was no point in hoping.
“It’s never too late, Tuball.”
For a moment, hope came back: Shard saw it in the eyes. “You can go into reverse, Shard?”
“I can.” And face Hedge’s incredulous fury! “I’m in charge.”
Tuball’s face worked strangely. “It’s a trick. You’re bluffing — even now. You won’t cross the frontier, Shard. I know you won’t.”
“Why?”
“They don’t send men with police ranks — not into Communist territory. They use agents. You know that.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t be taking the chance.”
“It’s no use anyway. I can’t tell you anything, I can’t tell you what I don’t know, can I?”
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