A Spy's Life

by Henry Porter

  ‘You spied for that regime,’ she said. ‘What does that make you?’

  He looked at her with a new understanding. ‘How did you know what I did?’

  ‘You just told me.’

  ‘I didn’t say anything about that. I said that they just threatened to send the material to my superiors. I didn’t tell you how I reacted.’

  At that moment a door opened and an officer from the Polish border police asked for their passports.

  ‘You are both travelling to Warsaw, sir?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Harland. ‘A business trip – one or two days.’

  He examined the passport again.

  ‘This passport was issued three years ago. The photograph is much older, no? You are more young in the photograph, Mr O’Donnell.’

  Harland smiled ruefully and coughed.

  ‘Vanity, I’m afraid. I liked that picture.’

  The man seemed to accept this and turned to Eva.

  ‘Have a pleasant journey,’ he said.

  23

  A HALT IN POLAND

  They remained in silence for half an hour. Harland wished he had something to read because his eyes kept returning to Eva’s rigidly averted features. She knew more than she’d let on – he was sure of that. But he didn’t want to have it out with her now.

  Quite suddenly the train slammed on its brakes. Eva got up and angled her head to look forward out of the window. Harland went into the passage and opened a window on the right side of the train. They turned to each other. Eva left the compartment and hurried back to the doors at the end of the carriage. She wrenched open the windows on both sides of the train and peered up the line.

  ‘There’s a station about a kilometre in front of us,’ she said.

  Harland went to join her and leaned out of the window. The wind hummed in the electric cables overhead. He could just make out a row of white lights ahead of them and off to his right one or two clusters of orange lights that he supposed were villages. There was nothing obviously wrong, but he knew from the German travel schedule, issued with the tickets, that the expresowych wasn’t due to stop until they reached Wroclaw in half an hour’s time. What lay ahead was little more than a halt for local trains. He thrust his head out of the window and squinted. Now two or three pairs of lights were scything through the darkness towards the station. The first pair stopped and were extinguished. Harland turned round to tell Eva to fetch the bags, but she’d already done so and was looking out of the opposite window. They waited.

  The train began to ease forward, the wheels groaning with inertia. They travelled a further hundred yards but without picking up much speed. It was obvious they were going to coast into the station ahead of them for an unscheduled stop. He went through the possibilities. The engine might be malfunctioning; the line ahead of them could be blocked; or the railway was suffering from a routine delay. But it did seem odd that the cars had turned up at that exact moment.

  ‘What do you think?’ he shouted over to Eva.

  Without saying anything, she tried the door handle and found the automatic locking system was on. ‘Can you get out of this window?’ she said.

  She put the bag over her shoulder, gathered up a short blue duffel coat and swung one leg up in a balletic arc so that it rested in the top of the window. ‘Like this,’ she said.

  ‘That’s all very well,’ said Harland, ‘but don’t you think it would be better to get out this side where there’s no track?’

  ‘It was for demonstration purposes,’ she said with a sarcastic grimace. ‘Perhaps we should stay on the train. You don’t look in very good shape, Bobby.’

  He poked his head out again. There were figures on the platform ahead of them. ‘No, I think we should leave. We can catch another train at the station or thumb a ride.’

  ‘In this weather? I don’t think so,’ she said.

  She went first and with very little effort wriggled her legs through the window and then turned round so she could lower herself to a step below the door. She held the window with one hand and worked the handle of the door from the outside. It opened a fraction. She smiled up at him, then dropped from the train, squatted for a fraction of a second and rolled into the darkness, like an expert parachutist.

  Harland opened the door, grasped the vertical hand-rail and felt for the step below. Then he leaned back and slammed the door shut. The hand-rail allowed him to crouch down within two or three feet of the ground. He found he could hang there quite comfortably with his bag over his shoulder and so he decided to get nearer the station before launching himself into the dark. About two hundred and fifty yards from the end of the platform the train’s brakes began to grind again. He shifted his bag from his shoulder and leapt, hugging it with both hands. His jump was not as neat as Eva’s. He misjudged the distance and hit a mound of snow which sent him sprawling into a frozen ditch. He picked himself up, brushed the snow off and looked round to see Eva jogging towards him, taking care to keep out of the light thrown from the carriages.

  She made her way to his side. The last coach passed and left them bathed in the glow from two red tail-lights. As the train juddered to a halt so that only the engine and the first coach reached the platform, four figures moved from the covered section of the station and boarded. Harland thought he saw uniforms.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Eva said.

  ‘I think they’re police.’ It was clear to him that the train had been ordered to slow down so that it wouldn’t arrive at the station before the cars did. But it didn’t make sense. Anyone who wanted to avoid them would simply jump down beside the track, as they had done.

  They moved forward fifty yards to a piece of ground covered in rusting oil drums and concrete sleepers. Magnetic tape from a discarded cassette was caught in the branches of a stunted thorn bush and shimmered like Christmas streamers. They squatted behind the bush and waited. Harland was aware of two policemen moving towards them along the track. They were sweeping the snow with the beam of a torch, looking for footprints. They reached the last carriage and stopped. A man’s voice called out to them from the other side of the train, where the same operation was apparently in progress. Then both men looked up as a head appeared at the door of the last carriage. They exchanged a few words during which Harland registered a note of dejection. Eva bent to Harland’s ear and whispered that she’d heard that they had searched the train and found nothing.

  The train eased forward with the police officers following and peering to see if anyone was hiding under the carriages. It drew level with the platform and stopped, whereupon the roof and the gaps between the carriages were searched. Eventually all the police officers assembled on the platform. There was a good deal of shrugging and gesturing and stamping of feet. Harland knew they’d given up on what was a hopelessly flawed plan. He rose a little, peered over the bush then edged round it and began to make his way towards the platform. Eva hissed at him to stay back, but he took no notice. She swore and scuttled after him, her blue duffel coat rasping over the surface of the frosted snow.

  There was an officer in the middle of the group who turned from his men to someone hidden in the shadows. A lot of toing and froing ensued and now passengers were leaning out of the windows demanding to know why they were being delayed. A rail official came up and gesticulated, and then the man from the frontier police who had checked their passports joined in, insisting that the rail authorities hold the train at the station. He’s been well paid, thought Harland.

  ‘They’re going to have to let it go,’ said Eva.

  ‘Well, let’s go with it.’

  ‘Get on again?’

  ‘We can’t stay here,’ he hissed. ‘No cars, no roads – nothing. There’s bugger all here.’

  Without consulting her further, he crouched down and slipped over the tracks into the shadows on the other side of the train. Eva followed so quietly that for a few seconds Harland didn’t know that she had joined him. She moved very close to him and stood, looking up at the d
oor of the last carriage, her shoulders rising silently.

  His plan was to step up and open the door as the train began to move off. But he saw the lights of another train approaching rapidly from the opposite direction and decided to make his move when it passed them. The murmur which preceded the express grew to a roar. It thundered through the station dragging a cloud of ice particles in its slipstream. Harland jumped up and wrenched the door handle downwards, but it wouldn’t shift. He thought it might be frozen and reached up again to hammer it up with his fist. Nothing.

  Just at that moment the wheels protested and moved a few inches on the track, paused then moved some more.

  ‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’ Harland spat out the words.

  Eva glanced at him and gestured with her head to the right. She dropped back behind the last carriage and jogged beneath the tail-lights. He followed because he didn’t want to be left standing like an idiot in the middle of the tracks. There was about a carriage distance between them and the end of the platform. Just as the last few feet of the carriage passed the platform, he understood what she planned. She crouched and flipped herself over the rail and landed in the blackness under the concrete lip of the platform. The projection offered about two feet of shelter but much more shadow. A second later Harland dived too, but made a hash of it. The strap of his bag got snagged on a bolt that held the rail to a sleeper and he was forced to let go and roll over the bag. Eva’s hand darted forward, released the strap and pulled the bag towards her. The train had travelled almost the length of the platform before they settled themselves under the concrete lip, knees clasped tightly to their chests.

  Suddenly there was quiet. Most of the voices receded into the station buildings. But the sound remained of two or three pairs of footsteps moving randomly above. One pair came close to the edge about ten feet to the left of where they were huddled. The person seemed to be standing there in contemplation. Harland looked at Eva. She had put her finger to her nose and was lifting her head. He understood she’d picked up the scent of his heavy cologne.

  Then came the voice, the voice of Oleg Kochalyin in the stillness of the deserted station. Eva flinched. Harland put his hand up to her mouth.

  ‘We’ll leave,’ Kochalyin said in Russian. ‘They’re not here. Get the engine started.’ There was no reply, just the scurrying of a pair of feet hastening to carry out an order.

  He stood there for a few moments longer. Then he was gone and after a minute there was the cough of an ignition, followed by the whine of a helicopter engine. Harland realised that Kochalyin must have arrived at the station some time before the police. There was no mystery in this. It wouldn’t have been difficult for him to work out which train they had taken from Dresden. The problem must have been to galvanise the Polish authorities to stop the train and have it searched. He wondered what story he’d used to persuade them to do this.

  The noise of the engine reached a pitch behind the station buildings and then the helicopter lifted into the air with a sudden roar. It paused over the station and shot off westwards down the track.

  ‘What do we do now?’ asked Eva, shivering.

  ‘It’s still early. We’ll get on the next train, whichever way it’s going.’

  Most of the lights on the platform were turned off and they were able to move away from beside the track. An hour later a slow service going east pulled in and they boarded for the next station down the line where they changed to a faster train to Warsaw. Late that night they boarded an overnight service for Pozńan and Berlin. A bribe of fifty dollars bought them the last free couchette. Before they left, Harland found a phone and put a call through to The Bird to tell him that Zikmund Myslbek had been killed that morning. The Bird already knew but wanted to hear the details. He said that Macy was extremely upset: he’d known Zikmund for over twenty years. Then Harland phoned Harriet to say that he was on his way back with Eva. She was cautious on the phone and said that the patient had had one or two unexpected visitors, but he was doing well. Harland bombarded her with questions but she refused to answer.

  He returned to the couchette to find Eva sitting on the lower of two bunks scrubbing her trousers with a nailbrush. She didn’t look up.

  ‘How is he?’ she asked.

  ‘She says he’s doing well – improving.’

  ‘Nothing more than that?’

  ‘No, she couldn’t talk.’

  She turned her head up. The closeness that had come so naturally when they were relying on each other a few hours before had evaporated.

  ‘I think you have to explain all this to me,’ she said.

  Harland waited.

  ‘And you too – you have to tell me about Kochalyin and what you were doing in Prague in November ’89.’

  She looked puzzled.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Well, let’s have something to eat and and we can talk.’

  They went to the restaurant car and ordered as the train left the station – soup, lamb and potatoes, and a bottle of rough red wine.

  Harland drained a glass.

  ‘You say I don’t have a right to know your story. I disagree because the entire course of my life was affected by our … our meeting in Rome.’

  ‘Mine too was changed,’ she said sharply. ‘I bore the child – remember!’

  ‘Well, at any rate I’d very much like to know about your relationship with Kochalyin, especially after your divorce. I want some answers first, then I’ll tell you why.’

  ‘It’s simple. I had to marry him because that was the only way we could survive. I told you that no one understands those days. Looking back now, we know that it all ended in ’89, but in the early eighties communism looked as though it would last for centuries. The system seemed impregnable and we had to make arrangements accordingly. Oleg was my arrangement.’

  ‘He was obsessed with you?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you could say that.’

  ‘And he was your mother’s lover before?’

  She looked at him defiantly.

  ‘I will tell you my story, not hers.’

  ‘If you needed him, why did you divorce in ’88?’

  ‘These things are difficult.’ A look of pain swept through her face.

  ‘Was it the sex?’

  ‘You’re so crude, Bobby. Of course it was the sex. I could not love him. He knew about you and he blamed you for my failure to respond to him.’

  ‘But you kept on good terms with him?’

  ‘Oleg is not a normal man. He never knew his parents. They died soon after the war. He was an orphan and he plunged himself into our little family. He recognised certain things in my mother – her lack of parents for one – and in his weird, obsessive way he decided to become the man in our household. He spent much time away and so it was bearable. You ask about the sex. I will tell you. There was none – at least there was no conventional sex.’

  ‘He was sadistic?’

  ‘It’s not so simple. Yes, he had those tendencies. He was abnormal – tormented.’

  ‘Did he beat you?’ Harland didn’t want to know but something made him ask.

  ‘Bobby, you aren’t going to understand this. This man was distorted. He showed affection to me and my mother and Tomas, the only time perhaps in his life. But I could not return it. And when he understood that that exchange wasn’t going to happen, he found gratification in other ways. There was a darkness in him. I don’t know how I can express it any other way.’

  ‘Humiliation?’

  ‘Yes.’ She was embarrassed.

  ‘But I don’t understand why he remained in touch with you after your divorce. It’s been nearly fourteen years. And for all that time he kept you in some style.’

  She looked at him coldly.

  ‘Because I know him. I know his secrets; I know him like no one else can. I hold part of him. It was important for a man like Oleg, who is so much a mystery to himself, to feel that someone knew him.’

  ‘And Tomas?’
/>   ‘That was part of Oleg’s idea of himself as a father. We did not have children – there was no chance of that. But Oleg wanted to give Tomas what he did not have himself. It mattered to him that Tomas did not have a father. It was one of the very few normal parts of him. That was another reason why he kept in touch with us after the divorce.’

  ‘And did you tell him that I was in Prague that November?’

  ‘No, why would I do that?’ She paused. ‘Bobby, I wanted to see you. Why would I tell Oleg? Besides, I did not know where he was. He was obsessed with keeping his movements secret. That was the way he lived. He phoned us, or made arrangements through an intermediary. Why do you ask about that time in 1989? What does it matter now?’

  He smiled weakly. ‘Were you working for the StB then?’

  ‘No, I worked until 1988. This was not active service, as you said before. I never served as an illegal after Rome.’

  ‘Why the training in Russia?’

  ‘I had been suggested for a job with a high-security clearance and the Russians wanted to test me. So I was sent on this training course which at the same time was a type of examination of my trustworthiness.’

  ‘In what field was this new job?’

  ‘Signals Intelligence.’

  ‘Ah!’ exclaimed Harland. ‘Code-breaking – that makes sense.’

  She looked at him strangely.

  ‘And you were based in Prague for this?’

  ‘Yes – after training I got clearance and worked in Prague.’

  ‘Tell me about the operation.’

  Her brow knotted. The habit of secrecy dies hard, thought Harland. He poured her some more wine.

  ‘We were concerned with acquiring cipher material from the Western embassies in Prague. We were breaking their codes and for this we needed cipher material.’

  ‘But the Soviets ran the Sigint operation in the Eastern Bloc,’ said Harland. ‘All the friendly agencies, like the StB, fed into a central pool. As far as I remember, this was all part of the KGB’s Sixteenth Directorate. Surely you didn’t attend the training school of cryptanalysts as well?’