Goodbye to an Old Friend

by Brian Freemantle

  And yet?

  Adrian edged through the early afternoon traffic, towards Westminster Bridge, unable to isolate the doubt in his mind. Or remove it.

  Binns was waiting for him in his office, characteristically hunched, his face expressionless. Adrian lowered himself into his usual chair and then remembered his cuffs, lowering his arms uncomfortably by his side. Sir Jocelyn did not appear to notice.

  ‘You heard the tapes?’

  Binns nodded.

  ‘And?’

  Sir Jocelyn did not reply. ‘Others heard them, too,’ he said and Adrian detected a curtness in his voice. ‘Even the Prime Minister sat in.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘They thought you handled the interview appallingly.’ He slowed, then added, quickly, embarrassed almost, ‘So did I.’

  Adrian was shocked. He’d realized the way that the interview had gone and anticipated the criticism that his attitude would arouse among some people. But he never expected it to extend to the Permanent Secretary. Sir Jocelyn was his friend. Adrian felt let down.

  ‘You?’ he said, the surprise showing.

  ‘Yes,’ said Binns and because of the stress, the impediment began to clutter the conversation. The nerve jumped near his eye, the indicator of stress.

  ‘… antagonized the man … he’s hostile now … resentful … won’t help …’

  ‘But that’s not true.’ Halfway through the protest, Adrian’s voice cracked, so that it finished on a whining note.

  ‘Pavel is hostile,’ said Adrian, coughing. ‘For years he’s led a favoured life, treated with special respect. I had to handle him like that, don’t you see?’

  ‘No,’ said Sir Jocelyn stiffly. ‘No, I don’t. And neither do the others.’

  ‘Then they’re stupid,’ said Adrian, surprised at his own vehemence, aware he was including Binns in the condemnation.

  ‘I’ve got to antagonize him, humiliate him, to a degree. If he feels that he is controlling the interview, then it will be pointless and the debriefing will take months. If he’s allowed control, real control, not just that which I contrive to allow him, then all we’ll learn is what he wants us to know, not what we want to learn.’

  ‘The Prime Minister wants you taken off the debriefing,’ announced Binns, abruptly.

  Adrian stared out of the window, following a flock of pigeons, aware that his eyes were misted and that he couldn’t see very well. He wondered if the bird with the broken beak were among them.

  ‘I said they want you taken off the Pavel debriefing.’

  ‘I heard,’ said Adrian, with difficulty. Then, his voice growing stronger, he said, ‘Are you going to suspend me?’

  Binns hesitated. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘The recordings sounded bad, but considering the explanation you’ve given, there seems some sense in your attitude. Pavel was arrogant.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘The decision was left to me,’ said Binns. ‘I think you should continue.’

  As Adrian slowly released his sigh, the other man added, ‘At least for one more meeting.’

  ‘One last chance?’ said Adrian, surprised at his own sarcasm.

  Binns held out his hands, an expression of helplessness. ‘You can’t begin to appreciate the pressure of this thing,’ he said, apologetically. ‘We’ve got the whole Russian space programme for the next decade, here in our hands. We daren’t make the slightest mistake.’

  ‘If you replace me,’ said Adrian, desperately, ‘then you’ll be making just such a mistake. Handle Pavel gently, in the early stages, and you’ll get nothing, nothing that he doesn’t want you to get.’

  Binns frowned. ‘You’re talking as if he’s not genuine … as if he’s not serious about defecting …’

  ‘Oh, he’s genuine,’ corrected Adrian, immediately. ‘I’ve no doubts at all that he is Viktor Pavel.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Adrian, knowing it sounded inadequate. ‘Something is not right.’

  ‘But what? There must be something.’

  ‘His attitude,’ said Adrian. ‘Didn’t it strike you as odd, the way he sounded on the recording?’

  Binns smiled, apologetic again. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘a good deal more attention was devoted to your attitude.’

  ‘Then that was an error,’ said Adrian, primly. ‘Play it again.’

  Binns pressed a button set into a console on his desk and the sounds of that morning’s interview echoed round the room. They both sat, unspeaking, for a long time and then Binns stopped the track.

  ‘Well?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s too confident,’ said Adrian. ‘Think of it. A top scientist, a man in an honoured position, able to make almost any demand and know it will be met, someone who knows that his defection will cause untold hardships to the wife he adores and the children he idolizes, suddenly decides to turn traitor and cross to the West …’

  ‘But he explained that,’ cut in Binns. ‘He’s a scientist, a man to whom research is all-important …’

  ‘He’s not,’ snapped Adrian, his turn to interrupt. ‘Pavel’s no white-haired eccentric with his head in the clouds. He’s a very clever, very dedicated man. He’s the sort of person who never makes a sudden, unconsidered move. And he’s not frightened.’

  ‘Frightened?’

  ‘Yes. Frightened,’ said Adrian. ‘What’s the feeling they all have when they come across, the very first thing that registers when you go in for the first time and speak to them? It’s nervousness. It’s the uncertainty of not knowing what’s going to happen to them, the doubt about whether we’ll accept them or whether we’ll torture them, like their propaganda says we do. If a car backfires they leap eight feet into the air, imagining it’s an assassin’s bullet. You can smell the fear on them, like sweat. Everyone has it, everyone I’ve ever debriefed.’

  ‘Except Pavel?’

  ‘Except Pavel,’ agreed Adrian. ‘Listen to that tape again. He’s measuring me, flippantly almost. That man was playing a mental game of chess, a game he was far too confident of winning.’

  Binns toyed with a paperweight, arched forward in thought.

  ‘But what’s the point?’ he asked. ‘Just for the sake of argument, let’s accept these suspicions of yours. What on earth can it achieve?’

  Adrian shook his head, aware of the flaw. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I just can’t think of an explanation. All I feel is the doubt.’

  ‘I’m not going to get very far with the Prime Minister tomorrow, trying to explain a vague feeling devoid of evidence.’

  ‘I know,’ accepted Adrian. ‘And I know it makes my attitude look stupid.’

  ‘The Minister will dismiss it as pique because someone got the better of you for the first time in a debriefing.’

  ‘Do you?’ jumped in Adrian, quickly, anxious for the answer.

  ‘No,’ said Binns, ‘no. I don’t. I accept completely your explanation for the way you conducted the meeting.’

  ‘But not my surmise?’

  ‘Give me some proof, anything, some lie the man tells. Then I’ll try and see it. At the moment, I think we’ve got a genuine defector who is perhaps covering the nervousness you regard as so important with a great show of confidence.’

  He paused. Then, reminding Adrian of the psychology training, he asked, ‘Isn’t over-confidence one of the surest signs of an inferiority complex?’

  Adrian nodded. ‘I accept there’s nothing you can relay to the P.M.’ he said.

  The Permanent Secretary glanced at the clock and stood up and then, as Adrian had anticipated, said, ‘Why don’t we have a drink at my club, to cover the finer points?’

  ‘Do you mind if I don’t?’ said Adrian, immediately noticing the change in attitude of his chief, the withdrawal of a shy man who has been rejected.

  ‘No,’ said Binns, immediately, sitting down again awkwardly. ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘I’ve got to see someone …’ began Adrian, recognizing the emptine
ss of the statement. He blurted out, ‘Anita has asked me to see her.’

  Binns’s attitude evaporated.

  ‘You’ll go down to Pulborough tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes – I expect there’ll be some technical questions waiting for me in the office.’

  ‘This time tomorrow then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Adrian …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know … perhaps I’m the only one who does … how much the breakup of your marriage to Anita means. But remember who you are and what you’re doing. What you’re involved in at the moment is far more important than your personal life. It’s the most important thing you’re ever likely to get involved in and that’s a sweeping statement considering the people we’re called upon to debrief. I’ll try and see to it that you’ve got enough time to devote to Anita and whatever meetings you’ll need to finalize things with her. But you have no choice. If a meeting with Anita clashes with something I want you to do, then the meeting with Anita must suffer.’

  He stopped, breathless after his lecture.

  Adrian was silent for a moment, analysing the doubt that had been placed in his superior’s mind by the taped interview and the reaction to it of government ministers’. Was it justified? Did Anita mean more than two Russians who had a lot of space secrets? He left the questions unanswered in his mind.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me that,’ he said, stiffly. ‘I’m aware of my responsibilities, to you and to the department. And I recall the undertakings I gave when I joined the service.’

  Binns smiled, anxious to thaw the feeling between them.

  ‘I don’t doubt you,’ he said, placatory. ‘I’m just sorry that personal pressure should come at a time like this.’

  Adrian walked down the corridor to his own office, the realization growing of how close he had come to being removed from the debriefing. Sir Jocelyn did doubt him, of course, which is why he felt he had to give the warning. So the possibility still existed that he would be reassigned. He wondered if the hollowness were hunger or something else, the accusation of failure at one thing he had always been fragilely confident of doing well.

  The office was empty when he entered and he looked at the clock. Miss Aimes had left forty-five minutes early. He sighed and wrote ‘Miss Aimes’ on the jotter, knowing he would not raise it with her the following day. Perhaps she would see it on the reminder pad and know he intended to and behave differently in the future. He knew she wouldn’t do that, either. ‘Soon,’ he promised himself, ‘I’ll do something soon.’

  The questions were in the safe and he glanced at them, noting the similarity to those posed to Bennovitch. He returned them, for collection the following morning on his way to Sussex and then stood, ready to leave the office.

  At least Miss Aimes hadn’t seen him wearing yesterday’s shirt. Anita would, though, because he didn’t have time to change and now the shops were closed, so he couldn’t buy another one.

  As he walked from the room, he looked hopefully at the window-sill, just in case. It was deserted.

  ‘They took him out by a roundabout route,’ said Kaganov. ‘He went by road to Versailles and then to Brussels, by helicopter.’

  ‘And by NATO helicopter to England,’ finished Minevsky, expectantly.

  The chairman nodded.

  ‘So he’s there,’ mused Heirar. He sounded relieved.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How long before we seek consular access?’ asked Minevsky.

  ‘I’ve decided to delay it,’ said Kaganov. ‘I thought we’d wait a further twenty-four hours, giving a full three days.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Minevsky, ‘It would probably be better.’

  Heirar nodded, in silent agreement.

  Chapter Four

  Adrian was early, so he wandered past the flat and then down a side road, finally completing the block. He was still ahead of time. He looked inside and saw the hall porter staring at him, so he entered.

  ‘Twenty-eight,’ he said.

  ‘The two girls,’ said the man. ‘Miss Sinclair and Miss Harris.’

  The two girls – how ordinary and natural it sounded. She’d readopted her maiden name, he realized.

  ‘Yes,’ said Adrian.

  ‘They expecting you?’

  The porter was bristle-moustached and trying to portray the role of guardian of young innocents in London. Adrian noticed that the Military Medal ribbon on his uniform was stitched on upside down. It would be cruel to tell him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll check,’ announced the porter, challenging Adrian to argue.

  ‘Yes,’ said Adrian, ‘you’d better.’

  The commissionaire replaced the house phone and said, ‘Miss Harris says you’re to go up.’

  My wife. The contradiction echoed in Adrian’s mind, like a shout. Not Miss Harris, my wife.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  The apartment block impressed him with its luxury. The other woman must have money. Adrian anticipated the meeting as the lift ascended, Anita guiltily shrewish the other woman mannish, probably in tweeds, hair cropped short, standing protectively over her.

  No one replied when he rang the bell first and so he pressed again, his hand shaking. His finger slipped off the button. Anita answered and Adrian stood looking at her, suddenly gagged with embarrassment.

  ‘Hello Adrian,’ she said.

  ‘Hello.’

  Happiness radiated from her, like warmth, her face clean, polished almost, demure in a black sweater and contrasting oatmeal skirt. He felt a surge of emotion and wanted to kiss her. She was a slender girl, thin almost, black hair bobbed short to cup her unusually pale face. For years her doctor had treated her for anaemia before accepting her colouring as natural and only since she had been living with the other woman had she accepted the advice that Adrian had offered soon after their marriage and stopped spending half an hour a day on careful makeup.

  He felt her eyes flicker over the crumpled suit, rippled with its concertina creases, and the collapsed shirt. Miss Aimes would have looked like that, the smug, knowing glance. She stood aside for him to enter the flat, a comfortable, lived-in place. There wouldn’t be seats that ended halfway along his thigh, numbing his legs. He sat down and discovered he was right.

  Each sat tensely, alert for the other, searching for words.

  ‘I’m not coming back,’ announced Anita abruptly.

  ‘No,’ said Adrian.

  ‘I’ve thought about it and considered everything. There’s only the two of us to consider. No one will be hurt,’ she said.

  No one? What about me? Am I no one? That mental shout of protest again.

  Aloud he said, ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So we’ve just got to accept what’s happened.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake Adrian,’ she shouted, suddenly, so unexpectedly that he jumped. ‘Why the hell don’t you say something? I’ve just told you I’m never going to come back, that I’m going to live here with another woman. Isn’t there any reaction? Don’t you want to hit me? Don’t you want to call me a whore or a queer or something? Must you accept everything that ever happens to you without protest?’

  Adrian looked at her, helplessly, thoughts refusing to coalesce.

  ‘I’m … I’m sorry …’ he tried, but she burst in.

  ‘you’re sorry. What the hell do you mean, you’re sorry. I’m the one who should be apologizing, not you.’

  Adrian could think of nothing to say.

  ‘I want a divorce,’ said Anita, after a pause.

  ‘I thought you would,’ said Adrian. ‘I’ve made some inquiries already.’

  ‘Will it be difficult?’

  Adrian shook his head. ‘Not really. It’ll just take time. Could be as long as three years, maybe more, because we haven’t been living apart for very long.’

  ‘What have I got to do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I’ll make all the arrangem
ents. Just get a solicitor and let me know who he is, so our solicitors can start communicating.’

  ‘Will there have to be grounds, evidence … details about what’s happened?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so, not in open court. Our solicitors will have to know, of course.’

  ‘If it’s necessary to provide grounds, would you do it?’ she asked, suddenly, her attitude meek and pleading now.

  ‘What?’ he frowned, unsure of the question.

  ‘If there have to be grounds, like adultery or something, couldn’t you pay a prostitute or something like that?’

  He looked at her, shocked, not because of her presumption, but her assumption that he would go with a whore.

  ‘Well, will you?’

  ‘I’ve told you, it’s not necessary, the only reason for divorce now is the irretrievable breakdown of a marriage. And ours certainly qualifies.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But if you’re wrong, you’ll provide the grounds?’

  He’d never completely realized the depth of her selfishness before.

  ‘Yes,’ he said wearily. ‘Yes, I’ll provide the grounds.’

  She nodded, satisfied. Bottles were in a trolley shaped like a miniature horsecart, near the window. She saw him looking at them.

  ‘Oh, would you like a drink, or something?’

  ‘No, no thank you.’

  ‘Some food? When did you last eat?’

  She looked at his clothes, again recognizing the neglect. ‘No, really. I couldn’t eat a thing,’ he lied. ‘I had a meal before I came here.’

  The door lock grated and they stopped, both looking expectantly at the entrance. Adrian saw a tall, willowy girl enter, long blonde hair looped to her shoulders. She was small-busted but surprisingly attractive. She wore a brown cashmere sweater under a Chanel suit and had hardly any makeup on. Adrian thought she was quite lovely.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, smiling, her teeth perfect. ‘Hello.’

  Adrian was confused, mentally prepared for tweeds and mannishness, suddenly confronted by such obvious femininity. Did that mean that Anita was …?