That evening Charles Mawby immersed himself in the technology of weapons code named Snapper, Swatter and Sagger that could destroy a NATO Main Battle Tank at a range of two thousand metres,and read the evaluations of the potential of its untried successor. He buried his mind in blueprint studies that showed skeleton mechanisms with appended titles for Hollow Charge Warhead, and Gyroscopic Controller, and Guidance Wire Spool. He assimilated a paper on the theory of the tactics that the Warsaw Pact would employ with infantry operated anti-tank-war- heads to halt a NATO armoured counter-thrust. He browsed in a Central Intelligence Agency report that detailed the career of a young German scientist attached to rocketry in the Second World War who had not run fast enough to escape the advancing Russian invasion, who had been carried back to the Motherland as a spoil of war and put to work, who had married a local girl and risen through proven ability and intellect to the position of director (Technical Research) at Padolsk, fifty miles south of Moscow.
And Henry Carter was taking Otto Wilhelm Guttmann's son deep into the Surrey countryside, and they were going to start in the morning, gently to prize open the can that held the boy's knowledge of his father's work.
She'd done them well, very well, little Lizzie Forsyth. They'd probably have given her a medal if anyone could think up the wording of the citation.
No talking in the car. George following his headlights and concentrating because they had now left the main roads and were into the rabbit warren of lanes that threaded the Surrey hills. Carter resting and far into his seat and with his eyes closed and his breathing even. Willi Guttmann peered through the dirty glass of the side window and out into the night's blackness.
Willi thought of a girl called Lizzie. He thought of a bar called the Pickwick where the decor was English and where she sat at a stool and bought him drinks that were warm and unfamiliar and that burned his throat, and where her friends gathered and the talk was noisy and happy.
He thought of visits to the cinema after Conference had finished in the afternoon and where moist fingers were held before the rush to be back inside the Residence doors before the last sitting for supper. He thought of the night after the girl who shared a one-bedroomed box of a flat with Lizzie had flown back to England for a job interview and he had been invited back for a toasted cheese sandwich and coffee. He thought of loving Lizzie through the snow carpeted months of February and March in a Swiss city where the idyll had lasted until the meeting when he had seen the strained eyes and the pale cheeks that warned of her day's weeping. He thought of her telling him she was late, had never been late before, and was he going to walk out on her, was he flying back to Moscow at the end of the month. He could not fight a girl in anguish, could not pull the wings off a fallen butterfly. And his father should not know. His father who was an old man and who had caused him no pain should hear only of an accident. Grief was less lasting than the shame of having reared a traitor. There was no retribution that they could bring against the father of a drowned son, no loss of privileges.
He thought of Lizzie with the soft, warm mouth. Lizzie with her arms around his neck in the sitting room of the home of the British Consul.
Lizzie in tears as the Englishman had said that she could follow in three weeks or four to England. Gentle, darling, sweet Lizzie.
The car swung off the tarmac lane and the lights caught at high iron gates that had been opened and a squat lodge house, and the wheels ground on shallow gravel, and high trees dwarfed them, and thickset bushes spilled over the edge of the driveway. He saw the house, its pale stone bright in the lights, before George swung the wheel and braked viciously so that the man beside him started and grunted and was awake.
Before Willi could feel for the handle, George was out and opening the door and after he had stood for a moment and tried to see about him there was a hand on his elbow and he was guided towards a porch where a dull lamp shone.
'Mrs Ferguson said she'd leave some cold cuts out, Mr Carter,' George said as he ferreted in his pocket for the front door key.
'You go along with George, Willi. There's something to eat for you, and he'll show you where you're sleeping. I expect you'll want a good hot bath too . . .'
The boy walked across the polished floor of the hall, past the painting of a stag at bay, past a wide table on which was set a vase of bright daffodils, past an oak staircase and a panelled wall. Behind him he heard a door close and when he turned he could no longer see Carter. George pushed him forward towards another door. He had lost something, felt bereft, because the last link with Geneva had been taken from him.
George sat him down at a table with a blue plastic cloth over it and took the metal cover off a plate displaying a yellowish piece of chicken and three curled slices of ham.
'I expect Mrs Ferguson didn't think we'd be so late,' George said.
Willi felt the tang of the lake water in his mouth, behind his teeth. He was very tired, his eyes hurt and his knees trembled, and a kaleidoscope of memories from far back and far away burned in his mind.
Chapter Two
The house, close to the village of Holmbury St Mary, was set in a wooded valley west of the Surrey county town of Guildford. It was used by the Secret Intelligence Service, and not infrequently, for the reception of east bloc defectors. Eight bedrooms, two bathrooms, six acres of grounds, a gargantuan annual heating bill, a formidable schedule of roof repairs. A defector with knowledge of the internal machinery of Defence, Foreign Affairs, the Politburo or Security in Moscow might expect to spend months here hidden from the scattered community that lived beyond the high fence and the thick encircling hedgerow. The accommodation and the matters of catering and cleaning were in the hands of Mrs Ferguson, an unobtrusive housekeeper who kept a myopic, shuttered mind on the events and personalities around her.
It was a warm, close evening, unseasonably so, but Carter had worn his raincoat and a woollen scarf for a walk around (he lawn with Charles Mawby. The big man was down from London, and he'd been expected.
Inevitable that he'd come himself after the low-key material that had been sent to the capital in transcript each evening. Mawby down from Century House to play the dragon and breathe some fire into the question and answer sessions of the debrief of Willi Guttmann.
'Putting it indelicately, Henry, he knows bugger all.'
'Barely worth the airfare, Mr Mawby,' Carter said mildly. He was aware that some of those in the Service who carried his own grading felt able to address the Assistant Secretary on first name terms. Sometimes it rankled that he had never received an invitation to do so.
'If we're lucky we get one of them a year. Either damned good or bloody useless.'
'I suppose we always hope for the platinum seam, what we're digging into here is barely fool's gold.' Carter often carried in his coat pocket a dried out crust taken surreptitiously from the kitchen. He ground a piece of bread to crumbs in his pocket and threw them discreetly in the direction of a pair of chaffinches, and saw with pleasure how their greed surpassed their caution.
'I'm supposed to report to Joint Intelligence Committee in the morning.'
'You'll not have much to tell them, Mr Mawby. I suppose his Foreign Ministry material is marginally interesting.'
'It's boring, uninformed and not new.'
'We were very thorough, the fellow you sent down here and me, the fellow with armour and missiles and warheads sprouting from eyes, ears, God knows where else. Very thorough, but the boy just stone-walled us.
"My father doesn't talk about his work", that's the hub of it, and the boy's sticking to it.'
'I'm going to put the rod across his back, Henry.'
Carter sighed. It was against all the precepts of a debrief that you hurry. 'If that's what you think right, Mr Mawby.'
'The rod across his back.' The fleck of daisies in the lawn brought a tremor of irritation to Mawby's mouth. The weeds in the rose beds buckled his lips in annoyance. 'It's a damned shame they can't keep these places the way they used to be able to.
When I first came here there were a couple of gardeners full time, absolute picture the place was, really rather a pleasure to be here for a few days. Bloody mess now . . . Get him up, Henry, get him out of his bed, and we'll have another go.'
Mawby swung on his heel, gouged a muddy smear in the wet grass, flailed the insects besieging his face, frightened the chaffinches into flight.
'I'll do that, Mr Mawby,' said Carter.
From the darkened outline of the house a light burned in a window set under the eaves. That's where the boy would be, Carter thought, probably dressed, probably gazing at the wall, probably close to tears because of failure to please and win approval. He'd be sitting there moping the time away till lie was ready for sleep. Even odds, if he could turn the clock back, he'd be heading for Geneva and then the Aeroflot to Moscow. But Willi Guttmann was wanted as a jewel for Charles Mawby and had been offered as a subject for consideration by the Joint Intelligence Committee in the morning.
'Bad luck, young Willi,' Carter said quietly to himself. ''I think you jumped the wrong way.'
The Ambassador who was the Permanent Representative of the Soviet Union at the Conference for the Committee on Disarmament sat in a comfortable chair close to the woodfire. He had not asked the KGB
officer to be seated. As a career diplomat he had no love for the security man whose job entitled him to wander roughshod across the protocol and rank of the delegation.
'I cannot see any mystery in this matter,' the Ambassador said.
'I have not spoken of mystery,' Valeri Sharygin said. 'I have said only that it was extraordinary for Guttmann to go to the lake on such a night, in such weather. For an experienced sailor it was peculiar behaviour.'
'Perhaps he had been working hard, was taking what opportunity was presented to him.'
'His job was the least demanding of any here. You know the position of his father?'
'I have read Guttmann's file. I don't remember anything exceptional.'
'In the area of military technology, research and development, his father is a man of considerable stature, an Honoured Scientist of our country although of German origin.'
'Where are you taking me?'
'I don't know, Comrade Ambassador, but by now there should have been a body. In two days I have to return to Moscow ... I will be asked many questions . ..'
'Are you saying that the boy wasn't drowned?'
'Perhaps there was an accident. Perhaps the boy took his own life for reasons that we do not know. Perhaps we have been deceived.'
'The suspicion you can manufacture is a credit to you.'
'Thank you, Comrade Ambassador. I apologise for having disturbed you.'
Valeri Sharygin returned to his bedroom in the newly built annexe across the compound from the main building of the Residence. Beside his bed was the locked suitcase containing the wordly possessions of Willi Guttmann.
George had come for him. Willi had been sitting on his bed, shoes and socks off, shirt unbuttoned to the waist. No knock at the door, just the flooding impact of the frame of the minder in the doorway, and the summons for him to make himself decent again because he was wanted below. They had never called for him in the evening before. Always a morning session and another after lunch, and then supper with George watching over him and then his bedroom. George was perpetually with him in the house. When they walked in the corridors George was there.
When he went to the lavatory George seemed to stop reluctantly at the door and when the business was finished and the bolt withdrawn he would be waiting. George was the one who brought him a mug of tea in the morning, and took him to his room in the evening and wished him good night and asked him whether he had everything, when he had nothing. George with his jacket buttoned and whose left breast pocket was bulged and distorted. He was a captive, and his freedom to be with Lizzie must be bartered. He knew that the currency he offered was stale and not valued.
George ushered the boy into the ground floor room that was bare of ornaments and pictures and comfort. Thin hair- cord carpet. Thin cotton curtains. One wooden table and half a dozen upright wooden chairs.
Carter was sitting at the
table,hands clasped, face impassive not meeting his eyes. There was another man there, shorter, younger in his shirt sleeves and with his tie loosened. Instantly menacing, wide and aggressive eyes.
'You'd better sit down, Guttmann. I've come from London because we're not happy with you, not happy at all with the help that you've given Mr Carter.'
''I've done my best. Mr Carter will tell you . . .'
'Then your best has got to get better.' Mawby had his elbows on the table, his full and close shaved chin in his hands.
' I have told you everything that I can.' Willi was defiant, surprised at his bravery. 'I told Mr Carter everything about the working of the delegation . . .'
'And for that do you think we sent a man to Geneva to help you?
We've brought you to this place for that drivel, you believe that?'
'I want to be with Lizzie, that's why I came.'
A slow smile from Mawby. 'Lizzie's a long way off for you, Guttmann. She's light years distant, and unless you're talking to us the gap stays open.'
From an inside pocket Mawby took a postcard sized photograph, glanced at it and then tossed it onto the table where Willi could see it.
The boy recoiled. The same picture that was in an album at home. Four men in a line together with their arms around each other's shoulders; one was taller than his companions and had a face wrapped in privacy, not wearing the bold grin of the others. 'Lubeck, January 1945. Your father making warheads for the Nazis. Otto Wilhelm Guttmann. Born in Magdeburg in 1912. Expert in short range missiles. Taken to the Soviet Union in 1945. Married Valentina Efremov Guttmann, killed in a car accident in 1968 . . .' Mawby reeled off the information, referred to no notes . . . 'One daughter, Erica. One son, Willi. Technical Director of Research at Padolsk for the last seven years. Expert now in MCLOS, that's Manual Controlled Line of Sight. Developing the successor to the AAICV, we call it Sagger over here. That's what we brought you here for,
Guttmann. That's what we've got to be talking about if you're to find yourself between Lizzie Forsyth's thighs again.'
'Bastard.'
'Good boy, Willi. Now you're understanding me,' Mawby chuckled with satisfaction.
For four hours, with Mawby wielding the pickaxe and Carter handling the scalpel, they kept at him, dogs in a pit with a dying bear. Willi shouting and Willi whimpering, alternating courage and submission. A bright light in his face, the rattle of the questions from behind its beam, and never the answer that they sought.
'My father didn't bring work home to the flat.'
'At home he hardly ever talked of Padolsk.'
'If he had to work then he had a room in the flat where he would go.
Right from the time I was a child I was never invited into that room.'
'When I disturbed him and he was working, then he was angry. I didn't do it.'
'He never spoke of difficulties and solutions.'
'Maybe he talked with my sister. Erica is at Padolsk with him, she is his secretary there. He never talked with me.'
'I hardly saw him after I went to the Foreign Ministry. Before that I was at the University of Kiev. I have a room at home, but I was working or at night classes for languages.'
'When we went to Magdeburg, when he went home for his holiday in the summer, then we were close. Two weeks in the year, and then we did not speak of this AAICV that you talk of.'
'I don't know ... I don't know about his work . . . believe me, I don't know.'
Mawby looked at his watch, rapped his fingers on the table. Willi heard the door open. He stood up and saw George standing inside the room. A pitiless, cold face, and there was the nod for him to follow.
Surely now they would believe him? Surely they would realise the truth of his ignorance. He tried to remember Lizzie's face and could not, tried to feel her hands on his skin and c
ould not, tried to lhear her words from the pillow and could not.
In his room after he had fallen onto the bed Willi heard the key turn softly in the lock and the diminishing footsteps of George. The tears welled in his eyes and dribbled on his cheeks. He was their prisoner and their pawn and he buried his head in the blankets.
The exalted company would have deterred a less confident man than Charles Mawby.
He stood at the end of the mahogany table in the third floor room of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that overlooked Horseguards, and from his handwritten reminders told the story of the flight of Willi Guttmann and of the sparse information that the defection had provided.
He was listened to patiently by the Deputy-Under-Secretary who headed the Service, by the Major General who commanded the Directorate of Service Intelligence and who took copious pencilled notes, by the Permanent-Under-Secretary who chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee and lit a chain of matches to fire his pipe, by the Director of the Security Service who gazed out of the window.
The Joint Intelligence Committee met every fortnight and it had been the opinion of the Deputy-Under-Secretary that the success in bringing over the Russian boy was a matter for moderate congratulation. As he heard Mawby out, he increasingly regretted his decision to offer Guttmann for the agenda.
'.. . so from our point of view it's been an interesting but frustrating start, the debrief. The boy is obviously extremely fond of his father, and says it's reciprocated. He may in his answers be trying to protect him in the same way that he sought to spare him from punishment through the planning of the escape. After personally questioning him last night I tend to regard his lack of knowledge as genuine. I think that's it, gentlemen.'
Mawby sat down.
'But we are hoping there will be more to come,' the Deputy-Under-Secretary countered the tepid response to the Service's efforts. 'We're getting into a very sensitive area, close to a sensitive man.'
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