Fatal Ally

by Tim Sebastian

  ‘Harry, you’re twenty years older than me.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Yes, no … I don’t know.’

  ‘Please Mai, let’s find out what it is we have … I’ll resign, we’ll get away from here … we need time.’

  ‘No Harry.’ She tried to push him away. ‘No … I have a job to do. You know this better than anyone … you sanctioned this, you ordered it …’

  ‘I sanctioned what?’

  ‘You don’t get it, Harry. You don’t read all the documents, do you? The details. The names. The guys who’re going to travel thousands of miles round the world and do what you sent them to do. You have no idea who we are, do you?’

  ‘We?’

  She reached up and ran her fingers through the thin, grey hair.

  ‘I’m the one who’s going to do it, Harry. I’m your team leader. Syria. There’s nobody else …’

  Hours later and they had both cried.

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘You’re supposed to know everything.’

  His face drooped. She remembered the steely, pedantic national security adviser, who spat blunt warnings on the TV talkshows to America’s enemies – a velvet hammer, the same label that they’d attached to the former Secretary of State, James Baker. But this wasn’t the same man.

  She had sat opposite him on the bed, clasping his face in her hands. ‘You’re too important to fall apart, Harry. You need to get me out of your system.’

  ‘I don’t know how to do that,’ he told her.

  LONDON

  Margo could hear the loud voices as she entered the flat. Jimmy and his friends, tinny music from the seventies, plenty of giggling.

  She pushed open the living-room door – there were three of them slouched across the sofa, and another on the floor; pizza in boxes, beer in bottles. A couple of them shouted hallos, Jimmy waved and suddenly she was glad of the music, the distraction, the prospect of nothing more threatening than booze and calories.

  She went into the bedroom to change, Jimmy right behind her. ‘Sorry about this … We were all working late, needed to chill a little …’

  ‘It’s fine.’ She managed a watery smile. ‘It’s your home too. Really. I’m glad they’re here and I’m starving, so don’t eat everything … go on, I’ll be out in a minute.’

  She shut the door behind him and sat on the bed. Perhaps, after all, he’d be a little more realistic about the way things were; realize he’d been selfish and immature. With luck they’d simply draw a line in the sand and do what everyone else did with the difficult stuff – shelve it and move on.

  She didn’t think it was a deal-breaker. Didn’t believe he’d make it into one.

  It was only three minutes before her mobile rang. She was still on the first slice of pizza; Jimmy’s assistant Lisa was talking about her mum’s leukaemia; someone was going out for more beer.

  But she couldn’t leave it unanswered. Even when Jimmy shouted after her ‘tell ’em you’re busy,’ she knew she couldn’t say no. Not if someone was dangling at the end of a rope – not if she was holding it.

  There was no number on the screen, just Manson’s late, tired voice in her ear. ‘You need to come in. Car’ll be with you in five.’ Nothing else.

  As she left, Jimmy was moaning, ‘Oh for God’s sake, can’t they ever leave you alone?’ He came out onto the landing, crestfallen, the smile and the warmth had drained away. ‘What’s the point of talking? None of this is going to change, is it?’

  She got into the lift. ‘Please understand, Jimmy. I’m trying to hold it all together. It’s important.’

  ‘Why? What’s so important? Can’t tell me, can you? Of course you can’t.’

  She looked away as the doors closed; she didn’t need these scenes. Maybe she didn’t need Jimmy either.

  ‘We’re bringing it forward. Our man’s getting nervous.’

  Margo sat down uninvited in front of the desk. A single desk lamp burned. Half of Manson’s face was in darkness. Behind him, she could see restless London with the stream of headlights along the Embankment.

  ‘Why’s he nervous?’

  ‘I don’t know. Moscow station says he’s different from the last meeting. Jumpy. Looking over his shoulder. Says he can’t wait two weeks.’

  ‘Could be just an attack of nerves. He’s been out of this for a while. You lose your edge and then suddenly the fear jumps out at you from nowhere.’

  Manson looked up from his papers. ‘Know this, do you? Personal experience?’

  She ignored him. ‘I’m going in and I’m going to get him.’

  ‘Impossible.’

  ‘Listen to me. He’s panicky and if he’s left to his own devices, there’s a risk he won’t make it. I’ll babysit him. Just in case.’

  ‘What about the Americans?’

  She shrugged. ‘We don’t have a choice. I’ll have to tell them his name. All I can do is leave it till the last minute.’

  By the time she reached the flat, Jimmy had gone to bed and his guests had left. The sitting room stank of pizza and beer; she opened the windows wide, letting the cold night air do its work.

  Moscow was three hours ahead, and she wondered if Mazurin was asleep, if there was ice on his window panes, if his nerve was holding.

  She tried to picture the little apartment that he lived in – it would be the usual Russian disaster zone. Not the kind of chaos that happens, but the kind you have to work at. Papers and pictures strewn wherever there was a surface – floor or ledge or sofa, it made no difference. Where Brits might keep the important things safe and tidy, a Russian’s priority would be to lose them, to prevent them at all costs from falling into the wrong hands. Somewhere under a floorboard or screwed into a light switch or behind a picture, Mazurin would have hidden something of enormous value. And the chaos of the room would be designed to mask it.

  As she stared out of the window Margo could feel the sense of loneliness and isolation that would be tightening around him, squeezing, until sometime soon, he would find it hard to breathe.

  She knew it, because she felt it herself.

  WASHINGTON DC

  Harry Jones was home by nine in the white clapboard house near Chevy Chase, with the basketball ring in the yard, and the tidy lawns and the tidy snow-covered flowerbeds, because even if you were national security adviser, the neighbours got antsy if your house didn’t look nice. Or if your curtains were the wrong colour, or your kid said bad words at school.

  Good neighbours, all of them, he thought, but they only cared about the little things.

  He could have sat them all down, he thought, and told them just what America was doing in their name and with their tax dollars. About the special interrogation units that hadn’t closed, even after the president had promised they would; about the history of supporting death squads in Central America – those nice guys who murdered nuns and priests; about targeted assassinations and cyber wars and they’d probably tell him that it all sounded very important and they hoped they’d see him at Bible class on Sunday.

  They had their beliefs and their certainties. The rest didn’t matter.

  As he came in the nurse was waiting for him in the hallway.

  ‘She hasn’t had a good day, her cough’s been really bad. She wouldn’t take any food.’

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  The nurse nodded.

  ‘I’ll go up and see her in a moment.’

  ‘She’s asleep for now. Best not to wake her.’

  He wandered into the den and turned on the reading light by the desk. He couldn’t help the tears when they came. Tears for his wife Rosalind and her failing health, tears for the way he had betrayed her while she was ill, tears for being powerless to stop himself falling in love with a woman twenty years his junior, now lost in Syria.

  He wiped his eyes and climbed the stairs, pushing open the door of her bedroom, lit only by a nightlight in the corner.

  As he bent down to look at her face, he was
struck by its fragility. The skin seemed like paper that might tear at any moment. There were tiny rifts and fissures that he hadn’t seen before. And yet they all told a story that he had known for some time; that while she lay there, the disease had begun sensing victory and would pursue her relentlessly to the end.

  Only sleep brought her some peace. So different from the times when she was awake, battling the terrible coughing and the pain that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

  He was in awe of Rosalind’s strength. He couldn’t imagine what it took her to smile and joke, to ask him about his day and his work, to make sure the housekeeper bought his favourite fruit and put his beer in the fridge.

  She still remembered birthdays and friends. On the good days she would call her family, even sit out on the porch, wave to the neighbours. And on the bad days, she groaned and cried and wheezed her way through the hours and he would hold her tight and wonder if she would live till nightfall, and sometimes, yes sometimes, overcome by his powerlessness to help her, even hope that she wouldn’t.

  Two years of this, two years when his heart was broken and broken again with each new day.

  He knew why he’d done it. He knew why a woman who could penetrate the darkness around him, had lifted his heart and helped him to carry the pain.

  It didn’t excuse it, could never excuse it.

  Harry Jones had nothing to say in his own defence. Not even to himself.

  ‘You gonna stand there like some teenage wimp or you gonna give me a kiss.’

  He was startled for a moment, hadn’t seen her eyes open, could hardly hear the words, slurred and cracked from the dryness in her throat.

  He bent down and kissed her forehead, stroking her cheek.

  ‘Wanna dance?’ Her eyes looked up at him.

  ‘Sure,’ he whispered. ‘You’ve always been a great dancer.’

  She tried to smile. ‘You were better. But I had a few other things to teach you.’

  He grinned and she managed to wink. The memory of a far-off summer day in a field in Maine and the glorious, unabashed experiments of youth seemed to float between them. And then, just as suddenly, it was gone.

  ‘I remember,’ he said.

  ‘Me too.’

  It was after ten p.m. when Harry heard the car draw up outside. He knew it was the evening intelligence digest, brought by armed courier from the White House – a brief summary of what had changed in the key issues of the day, a collection of signposts, red flags – whatever the paranoid late shift in the National Security Council thought Harry should see, before he dared shut his eyes.

  At the door, he thanked the military aide and took the locked briefcase into the den. Upstairs he could hear the nurse moving around, clearing and tidying. Outside in the neighbourhood, lights began to go out, dogs got a final walk, front doors were bolted.

  A Washington day, dying down.

  But the briefcase contained no bedtime story. A corruption scandal, about to engulf an Arab head of state, unusual military movements in East Africa. A key informant in the Pakistani government telling his intelligence handlers that Islamists had now penetrated the country’s nuclear rocket command. And a former British agent in Moscow, due to defect on his way through the US. Priority signal from CIA London and with it, a request, by them to question the man, against the express wishes of the British.

  Tiresome, thought Harry. Extremely tiresome. Allies were often more trouble than the enemy.

  He took off his glasses and yawned. The rest of the file was the usual arse-covering exercise, packed with trivia to make it seem more substantial.

  And then it hit him. He sat up quickly, extracted the single sheet from his folder and read it again.

  I must have been so tired not to realize what this is.

  A former British agent, getting out of Russia. Snap transmission from London. Heading to New York and then to the UK.

  Jesus.

  The name was missing in the file – but the man was said to have been active, high-level Intelligence for long periods of the Cold War. A traitor to his own country, who would surely drink himself to death wherever he landed up. No one in the West owed him anything.

  Harry read and re-read the few lines with mounting excitement.

  He knew very well what it meant. More importantly, he knew how to use it.

  He got up from his chair and stared through the window. An unfriendly moon in a frozen sky stared back.

  Harry Jones had been presented with a way out for the woman he loved, who was lost in the killing zones of Syria.

  It didn’t occur to him for one second not to take it.

  LONDON

  ‘I’ve got to go abroad for a few days.’ Margo stood in the doorway, still wearing her coat and holding her briefcase.

  Jimmy took in the adversarial stance. She was expecting trouble, ready to go out again if it all went badly.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I thought we might visit Mum and Dad before I go.’

  ‘Have you told them what you do?’ He read the look before she opened her mouth. ‘Yes, of course you have. Silly of me. I was the only one who was kept in the dark.’ He stood up. ‘Cup of tea?’

  She followed him into the kitchen.

  ‘How long are you going to go on feeding this grievance?’

  He turned back from the tap and switched on the kettle. Tall, curly-haired, scruffy – he was a million miles from the complicated young men at Vauxhall Cross. The reason she had chosen him.

  ‘It’s not a grievance. I’d feel the same, if you’d just got the job and you were telling me straight away. I understand why you didn’t tell me until now. I’m just not sure I understand you anymore. Why you’d do a job like this …’

  ‘A job like what?’ She couldn’t help the edge in her voice, the niggle deep down.

  He put a teabag into her cup and poured the hot water. ‘Why don’t we sit down and do this?’

  They went into the living room and sat at opposite ends. She kept her coat on, just as she had on that first day at school. The coffee table stretched like a border between them.

  ‘What do you mean by a job like that?’ She shot him an unpleasant look.

  ‘I meant a job where you keep secrets, where I’m excluded, where I have no knowledge and nothing to contribute.’

  ‘So you want every part of my life, laid out according to your terms.’

  He shook his head. ‘I want to marry you … I want to be the closest person in the world to you. With this job, I’ll know less about you than the people you work with. How can that be right?’

  ‘It isn’t just about you, Jimmy …’

  ‘I didn’t say it was.’

  ‘Some things involve commitment outside of a marriage. You need to understand that. Only someone who is close can understand that. I can’t tell you everything, because they’re not my secrets to tell. I’m a vehicle, Jimmy. You think a postman’s wife expects him to steam open all the letters and tell her what’s inside. They don’t belong to him – just as the cases I handle don’t belong to me. They’re not mine to give out. If I did, I’d go to jail …’

  ‘So there’s no middle ground here, you won’t even try to let me in …’

  ‘Let you in where?’ She could feel her face getting flushed, feel the irritation rising. ‘Jimmy, for God’s sake, you talk about this as if it’s a playpen where anyone can come in and have a go …’

  ‘So this is how it’s going to be from now until—’

  ‘Until I’m fifty-five. That’s when they throw us out. Twelve years to go – unless’ – she tried to smile – ‘unless they fire me first.’

  He didn’t smile back, sat there tight-lipped, eyes fixed on the coffee table, right foot tapping the rug. Irritated, hurt, out of his comfort zone. She took in all the signs. He’d closed up the shop for now. Wouldn’t come out until much later, till he’d sorted through all the things she’d said and found a new line.

  ‘Listen to me.’ She went and sat beside him
but he wouldn’t look at her. ‘Do I have doubts about what I do? Of course I do. Like everyone. Don’t you? Very serious doubts and fears, because if I make a mistake someone might lose their life, and if I make a very big mistake then thousands of people might die. So you see, the stakes are very high indeed.’

  ‘You don’t have to talk down to me … I can work that out for myself.’

  ‘I need you to understand that Jimmy.’

  ‘I don’t know where I fit in your life – or even if I fit at all.’ He shrugged.

  ‘But I’m still the same person.’ She tried to smile. ‘Still like pasta and holidays in Italy, long jumpers, red Minis. What’s changed, Jimmy?’

  He got up and stood over her. ‘I’m going for a walk. I’ll call you.’

  She could see the lights going out, the door closing.

  ‘Please yourself.’

  MOSCOW

  Five years since he was last inside the KGB’s headquarters at the Lubyanka and Arkady hadn’t recognized a single soul. Where were the old receptionists, the scowling doormen, the drivers, the dvorniki who hung around the courtyards, weasel-eyed, watching and reporting? The secretaries – sekretutki – they’d been called, halfway between typist and prostitute, and frequently required to be both.

  Five years and they had changed them all.

  He stamped the snow from his boots and took a seat in the drab vestibule. There was a time when such changes could have been easily explained. Plenty of the disappeared would have been jailed or transferred to the wastelands for seeing something they shouldn’t have seen, for taking bribes from the wrong officials, for a loose word or a bad joke, or being too close to someone whose star had crashed.

  Nobody ever fell on their own in the KGB. Once the primary victim had been located, they would delight in going after his associates. Business before pleasure, they used to say. The wider the net, the more fun they’d have. Like the waiter who’d once served the guilty in a restaurant, the hairdresser who’d cut their treacherous curls, the Aeroflot clerk who’d dared to issue them a ticket, the taxi driver … God alone knew where that lust for blood had led them.