A Spy's Life

by Henry Porter

  She rose from crouching over the petty-cash box. ‘When this is over, you really ought to talk things through with a sensible shrink. You don’t seem to be aware of what’s going on outside you much. You seem to experience fear, but have no idea about danger, no concept of risk. You used not to be like that, you know. You were more balanced.’

  ‘You’re probably right.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about Vigo,’ he said, shifting his position on the chair. ‘How bloody odd it is that he’s just gone off the radar. He went to see Tomas’s doctor and asked about him. Then nothing. What’s that suggest to you?’

  ‘That he no longer needs to pressurise you, that he’s found out what he wanted.’

  ‘How would a visit to the hospital satisfy that, unless Vigo was somehow aware of the hunt for Tomas and was keen to learn whether he was effectively silenced as a witness? I think I’ll pay Walter a visit. You know those people who brought him here for the party – the Hammicks? Do you think you could persuade them to give you Davina’s home address?’

  ‘We don’t have to ask them. Davina Cummings is bound to be in the LMH Annual, even if only to let all her contemporaries know what a wonderful life she’s enjoying.’

  She reached up to a shelf at the far end of the room and withdrew a slender ring binder. ‘Here she is: “Davina Cummings – brackets Vigo – twenty-three, Kensington Hill Square, London W11”. Funny, I thought they lived in Chelsea. Still, the book is last year’s so it ought to be right.’

  Harland made a note of the address. ‘There’s one other thing,’ he said. ‘I’ll be away for three or four days. Can you go and tell Tomas where I am and what I’m doing? He must be pretty terrified and I’m sure it would be good for him to see a friendly face. You’d better talk to the doctor beforehand. Tomas may not know how bad his condition is.’

  ‘Of course. After all, he is my nephew.’

  He rose early and took one of the Bosey cars to Kensington Hill Square in Holland Park. The day was cold and hazy and the sun had not yet dispersed the mist in the side streets. He parked outside number fifteen and counted the doorways to twenty-three, an averagely plush residence for the area with two conical bay trees at the entrance. Although the terrace was set back from the line of the road behind a run of nineteenth-century railings, it was possible to see the doorway to the house.

  He decided to make his move at eight o’clock and spent the next fifteen minutes running through the questions he had for Vigo, and intermittently musing on the price of a house in the square. Two and a bit million pounds, he thought. Davina Vigo certainly had ‘background’.

  A little before eight a black London taxi passed his car and pulled up outside number twenty-three. Harland sunk a little lower in his seat and watched two men get out. As one turned to pay the driver Harland recognised his main interrogator at the Crèche, Anthony Rivers. The other was Derek Blanchard, the unlovely MI5 man. They appeared to be expected because they were let in immediately. A few minutes later a dark blue Mondeo saloon drew up and a further three men got out and went into the house. He was sure one of these was Griffiths, the thickset Celt who had approached him at the airport. And the parka? That must have been the same individual who’d followed him in Regent Street.

  He waited for an hour, watching the windows for signs of activity. The more he thought about it, the more this breakfast meeting, held on a public holiday at the home of a senior member of SIS, seemed decidedly unofficial. He remembered that at the Cre`che it had struck him he was being questioned by a couple of retreads. And there was a distinctly weekend feel to the others – the men who staffed the Cre`che and had followed him so blatantly the next day. A proper surveillance operation would have used scores of men and women and however much he went through his dry-cleaning procedures it would have been virtually impossible for him to shake them off.

  So Vigo was making do with limited resources, a group of individuals who came from intelligence backgrounds but who were no longer employed by MI5 or MI6 – people like Guy Cushing, who owed him. The purpose of this personal crusade baffled Harland. But plainly Vigo was at odds with his colleagues at Vauxhall Cross, and that knowledge gave Harland a lot more leverage than he had possessed when he set out that morning.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a cab drawing up outside number twenty-three. Blanchard and Rivers reappeared and got in. The other three men followed them through the open door and, without looking back, climbed into the Mondeo and departed. Then a man and woman, who must have arrived some time before the others, left together. For a moment Harland wondered whether he should follow one of the vehicles, but realised that he stood to learn much more by catching Vigo off guard.

  He waited ten minutes so that Vigo wouldn’t suspect he had seen his visitors, then approached the laurel-green front door and rang the bell. A few moments elapsed before Vigo’s voice sounded on the intercom.

  ‘It’s Bobby Harland, Walter. I thought we could have a talk.’

  ‘It’s not a terribly convenient moment, Bobby,’ came the voice, unruffled.

  ‘You’ll change your mind when you hear what I have to say.’

  The entry-phone went dead and the door opened a few seconds later.

  Harland noticed his clothes first: suit trousers and a tie – a silk job with a plump knot. ‘Off to work on New Year’s Day, Walter? You must have a lot on.’

  Vigo regarded him with wary interest.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘If it can’t wait, yes. But I do indeed have a lot on.’

  He led Harland to the far end of the hall and into a small room lined with wire-mesh fronted bookcases and antique maps. All three windows were secured by impressive metal trelliswork. The floor consisted of old black and white tiles and above the carved eighteenth-century fireplace hung a bulbous convex mirror. On a Jefferson reading lectern lay a couple of closed volumes. The room had the air and silence of a scholar’s retreat.

  ‘So this is where you keep your incunabula?’

  ‘Such that I possess,’ Vigo replied tartly.

  ‘It’s a very soothing room. It makes me think that I should have paid more attention to where I live and what I surround myself with. I admire you for it, Walter. It’s important in your job to maintain a balance. Do you still trot off to the London Library for an afternoon’s reading?’

  ‘Not as much as I’d like,’ said Vigo. He was waiting for Harland to get to the point.

  ‘I’ve come to talk to you about Alan Griswald,’ said Harland. ‘You know you were interested to find out what he was carrying. Well, I have the information with me.’

  Vigo cocked an eyebrow.

  Harland withdrew the envelope and selected the print of Lipnik by the swimming pool. ‘This is Viktor Lipnik, an indicted war criminal who is believed to have been killed. Griswald knew he was alive. The picture was hidden in a code, which, I suspect, was your interest.’

  Vigo looked at the photograph like someone who has been called upon to admire a child’s painting.

  ‘Well … thank you, Bobby. That’s most helpful of you.’

  He took out the second image and showed it to Vigo, having carefully placed his thumb over Tomas’s head. ‘And this one is of Lipnik at the site of a massacre in Bosnia. Enhancement of the bottom left-hand corner shows several bodies. As you can see, it’s dated to the period of the Srebrenica massacres in north-east Bosnia.’

  Vigo put his hands in his pockets. ‘It’s good of you to show me these. No doubt you’ve forwarded your find to the relevant parties.’

  ‘The UN and to the FBI as well. They’re looking into the sabotage of the plane’s electronics systems. Viktor Lipnik is therefore the chief suspect in the investigation.’

  Vigo emitted a ruminative sound. ‘Yes, I imagine that must be the case.’

  ‘Walter, I don’t seem to be getting a reaction here.’

  ‘What did you expect?’

  ‘For a start, an explanation for the in
vestigation of my past by you.’

  ‘That must be perfectly obvious, Bobby,’ he said evenly. ‘You are suspected of having committed serious offences against your country. In due course the authorities will decide what to do with you. It’s out of my hands. I am not an officer of the law.’

  Harland looked down and noted the impressions left in the seats of the two sofas by Vigo’s recent visitors. He sat down and brushed his hand over the fabric.

  ‘That’s all bollocks, Walter. The only thing the authorities knew about the charade the other night at the Cre`che was the call they got from the Secretary-General’s office. I bet you had to do some fast talking to explain that to Robin Teckman and the Foreign Secretary. No doubt, they were rather bemused by the call, but I imagine you wriggled out of it. You knew you had to let me go and to pack the place up. You see, I know that wasn’t the Cre`che, Walter. You just borrowed some bloody building to give me a working over.’

  Vigo removed his hands from his pockets and walked to one of the antique maps on the wall where he paused in rapt contemplation of a sketchy coastline of northern Europe.

  ‘And if the Cre`che was a fake,’ continued Harland, ‘Blanchard, Rivers, Griffiths and the others were operating outside the law, and – I’m certain – without the knowledge of the Director of SIS. What is interesting about this is why you have bothered with this elaborate charade. Clearly you aren’t interested in the photographs of Lipnik because nothing as basic as evidence of an appalling crime motivates you. I remember you saying that Griswald had benefited from an unusual source to obtain his evidence. So it must have been the means of communication that interested you and the possibility that Griswald had exchanged something for those images. Am I right?’

  Vigo remained immobile, then gestured to the map.

  ‘You know, it’s thought likely that this very map appears in the background of one of Vermeer’s paintings, which is as good as saying that he owned it. There’s no proof, of course, but it certainly is pleasing to have touched something that he handled. And that’s the point. But if an expert were to come along and prove categorically that the story was myth, the map’s charm would be drastically reduced.’ He turned and studied Harland. ‘It’s the same with the snapshots of this man, Bobby. Your faith in them derives entirely from their recovery from the plane crash, about which, incidentally, you persistently lied to me. But leaving that aside, you have imbued them with a special significance, ignoring the counsel of your more rational self which must have suggested that these photographs could not be crucial evidence against a war criminal, whether alive or dead. For instance, the scene showing him in uniform could equally be interpreted as the excavation of a mass grave. An officer orders his troops to uncover the evidence of another army’s crimes. How about that for an alternative caption?’

  If only Vigo knew how that interpretation tempted him.

  ‘There is the date on the image,’ he replied, ‘and the witness statements which put this man at the scene of the cleansing operation.’

  ‘Very vague and circumstantial, rather like the provenance of my map. But look, Bobby, why are you concerning yourself with Bosnia? It all happened so long ago. There have always been massacres in the Balkans and there always will be; the people are intractable and murderous by nature. They won’t change, no matter how much aid and intervention is advocated by the do-gooders at the UN.’

  Harland had had enough of Vigo’s diversion.

  ‘This is not about Bosnia, Walter. It’s about the release of intelligence secrets through the broadcast media in Eastern Europe. I know about the code and the way it’s being used against the major intelligence agencies. The reason you were keen to get your hands on these pictures was that you thought they would lead you back to the original source. But that doesn’t alter the fact that these pictures are valuable evidence and – much more important – they were probably the motive behind the crash.’

  ‘Believe what you like, but I really must be getting on. Is that all you wanted to say?’

  ‘Of course not. But I am surprised that you take the destruction of two aircraft and the loss of twenty lives so lightly. What I came here for is an assurance that your band of part-timers will not meddle in my affairs or obstruct my inquiry any longer.’

  ‘Oh, that’s another matter entirely, Bobby.’

  ‘Well, it’s one that you had better sort out, Walter, because you, Rivers and Blanchard were not acting in any official capacity and I’m quite certain that Robin Teckman would be interested to hear how you have been abusing your position. And what about Miles Morsehead and Tim Lapthorne, your two contenders for the top job at SIS? You deny your ambitions, but I know you too well. You want the power and the standard-issue knighthood. I’m sure they’d like to hear about all this.’

  Vigo spun round from another excursion along the coastline of seventeenth-century Holland. His face was distorted with temper.

  ‘You seem to have been unhinged by your experience in the police station. A nervous breakdown, they said. Wet your pants, carried from the cell blubbering.’ His tone softened, not with sympathy but menace. ‘Let me make it utterly plain that I am in a position to destroy you, Bobby. Those files from Prague produced grade A material: the real thing. You were a bloody spy for the communists. You’re bang to rights. In these circumstances you would be well advised to shut up and keep your head down. But if you persist in making wild allegations, these discoveries may well find their way into the press and then prosecution will be inevitable. You know how the press never lets go of a thing like this and you can imagine the fun they’ll have with the pictures of the comely Czech seductress. And the recent dramas in your life – a plane crash, shootings, the torture and execution of a flower girl? It’s meat and drink to those people.’

  Harland cut him off. ‘Still, your colleagues will be very interested to learn about your little group. Its mere existence will lead them to suppose that you are conspiring against them and the interests of SIS.’ He stopped, placed his fingertips together and levelled his gaze at Vigo to tell the lie. ‘You see, every one of them was filmed coming into this house this morning. Blanchard, Griffiths, Rivers – the lot. I can’t name all of them, but I’m sure it won’t take Sir Robin long. Naturally you will attempt to slide out of this one by giving them a lecture about provenance and the interpretation of images. You will perhaps explain that this is the early-morning meeting of the Incunabula Society, a seance of amateur cryptographers, a confessional meeting of the local AA chapter. The story will be ingenious, I’m sure. But they won’t believe you and moreover they’re unlikely to pursue the crazy allegations that you subsequently make about my past.’

  Vigo sat down. He was at least going to deal, thought Harland.

  ‘Why have you come here?’ His voice showed no sign of anxiety. ‘You’re a clever man, Bobby, but it seems to me that everything you do betrays your guilt. Is that all it is – guilt? Or is there something you really want?’

  ‘The links – I want the links, Walter. How does Viktor Lipnik tie in with this coded material? What does he have to do with the shooting of Lars Edberg? Why did you make inquiries at the hospital to find out about his condition?’ Harland knew some of the answers but he wanted to see Vigo’s reaction.

  Vigo placed his hands on his knees and leaned forward.

  ‘Lars Edberg,’ he mused. ‘I must say I’m touched by your devotion to him. It really is a fascinating aspect to this whole thing. I fancied I saw him at your sister’s place on the evening of the shooting, but maybe I was mistaken. Possibly it was some friend of your sister’s? Who knows? Who cares? You see, I no longer have the time to ponder your unlikely trysts beside the Thames. My interest has moved on from you, Bobby, which is why I would like you to leave now.’ He stopped and looked away. ‘I imagine you’re still at your sister’s place.’ Another pause. ‘Davina is right – Harriet has very special qualities. You can tell that instantly.’

  His massive head turned back to face Harl
and. In the sunlight which now flooded through the lancet window, Harland noticed that the rims of his eyes were red and that the lower eyelids were drooping a little. It occurred to him for the first time that Vigo was under considerable strain. ‘It would be regrettable if she became mixed up in this.’

  ‘You’re threatening me, Walter,’ Harland said with surprise. ‘You’re saying that if I send that film to Teckman you cannot be responsible for my sister’s safety. I won’t tolerate that. If anything happens to her or her family, I will kill you. It is as simple as that.’ He felt angry and foolish in the same moment.

  They rose together and looked at each other.

  ‘I will say one thing to you, Bobby. Let this go. You have no idea what you’re dealing with. If you persist, you will endanger other people’s lives.’

  Harland heard a woman’s voice call out from the stairs.

  ‘That’s Davina,’ said Vigo. ‘I think you’d better leave now, don’t you?’ At that moment Davina glided into the room. ‘Bobby was just going,’ he said to his wife’s surprised expression.

  Harland nodded awkwardly and brushed past her to the front door. Even as he closed the door behind him he knew that he had made a bad mistake in coming.

  19

  BOHEMIA

  The O’Donnell passport carried Harland into the arrivals hall of Prague airport without a hitch. The Bird had told him to look out for a driver with one of two names displayed on a board. If the name was Blucher, Harland was to walk past the man and catch a cab to the Intercontinental Hotel where he should await further instructions. If he saw the name Schmidt, he was to make himself known and the driver would take him to the meeting place.

  Harland immediately spotted a young man by a coffee stand in a worn sheepskin jacket. He was holding a board, but the name was hidden by his hand. As Harland approached, the man raised the board up to display the name Schmidt, smiled imperceptibly and led him to the car park. Outside it was damp and snow lay on the ground. Harland noticed a metallic smell in the air that he associated with the uninhibited mining and smelting of the old Eastern Europe.