Deep Blue

by Alan Judd

  Only when he reached the room door did he realise that the key must be in Josef’s pocket. It was impossible to search him without putting him down. He knelt as slowly as he could but lost control, so that Josef slipped from his shoulders with a prolonged crumple, his head banging against the doorpost. Charles tried to keep the body propped up in a sitting position but it slumped to the side. No one who saw it would now believe it was a drunk.

  Searching Josef’s pockets felt almost as intimate as the failed kiss of life. The keys were in his left trouser pocket, difficult to retrieve because they were attached to a piece of polished wood. When he opened the door Josef fell in. He stepped across the body and tried to drag it in by the shoulders but it was too heavy for his weakened state. He took the still-warm hands and pulled it across the thick carpet, inches at a time. As he closed the door he heard the lift and voices in the corridor. He leaned against the wall, panting and sweating.

  Chapter Twelve

  The 1980s

  ‘So the hotel called the police, not you?’

  ‘I just called reception, told them he seemed to have had a heart attack and asked for an ambulance. I couldn’t just leave him because his wife would know he was meeting me and it would look suspicious if I scarpered. Then the whole story might have come out. But I didn’t mention the police.’

  ‘But they arrived first and started quizzing you, who you were, what you were doing in the room, that sort of thing, and you said you were having a drinking session with your old friend when he just keeled over?’

  ‘I’d emptied a bottle and a half from his bar down the sink and taken a swig or two to make sure I smelled of it. Also messed up the room a bit.’

  ‘And all went well until one of them asked what he was doing taking an expensive room like that when he lived not far away and you said it was to meet you and maybe other friends and they thought that was a tad unlikely and started enquiring more deeply?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not surprised. And then the next day the shit hit the fan.’ Hookey tapped the copy of Le Monde on his desk, open at the page showing a small photograph of Charles over a story headlined, BRITISH DIPLOMAT IN HOTEL DEATH FRACAS.

  ‘Presumably leaked by the police or someone in the hotel,’ said Charles.

  ‘Obviously.’ Hookey’s tone was as dry as sandpaper.

  Although recounting the experience was nothing like as bad as living through it, Hookey’s cool questioning again made Charles feel the inadequacy of his off-the-cuff cover story. Had the ambulance arrived sooner the police might not have lingered and then strayed beyond taking Josef’s details to Charles himself – why were they meeting here, was it really for nothing more than a drinking session, where was he staying, had he come to Paris just for this, what was his job? Instinct and training persuaded Charles to stick to his story about keeping in touch with an old friend of whom he was fond; however unlikely, it couldn’t be proved wrong. As for the rest, checkable truths were the best answer; Angus Copplestone or the ambassador could vouch for him at the embassy. Reluctantly persuaded, the police nonetheless took away his passport and would not allow him back to his hotel until he had made a statement at the police station. He was not under arrest – quite – but was under investigation and not to leave Paris until the cause of death had been satisfactorily established. Once allowed back to his hotel, he worried less about the French judicial system, with its assumption of guilt, than the reactions of the embassy and the Foreign Office. He rang Yvette to find her tearful and incoherent, having already heard from the police. They had also questioned her about Charles. There was no question of ringing Hookey on an open international line.

  ‘So the next morning you pitched up at the embassy at sparrow’s fart and Angus Copplestone let you into the station to send your de-you telegram to me,’ said Hookey.

  ‘Not exactly. The station wasn’t open but Alex, the head secretary, arrived first and opened up the comms for me.’

  ‘Which rubbed salt into Angus’s wound, finding you communicating with Head Office on a case on his patch he not only didn’t know about but couldn’t even find out about because a decipher-yourself telegram leaves no record in the station. Then he had to say nice things about you to the French police and then confess all to the ambassador.’

  ‘And all because I’d disobeyed him by not terminating an agent.’

  ‘Terminated instead by the Almighty.’ Hookey swivelled his chair to gaze out of the window. ‘Then the press coverage. More salt for Angus.’

  ‘Just the one article.’

  ‘So far. As it is, sufficient for the Chief to be summoned by the Permanent Under-Secretary to explain to the Foreign Office. And for Angus to make a formal complaint to me via his controller. All this on top of our already having to seek retrospective clearance for your offer of defector status to a senior Russian official. What you might call a first-class bloody cock-up, don’t you think?’

  Charles nodded his acknowledgement, though he couldn’t help feeling it was slightly unfair: agents didn’t usually die in meetings. But he was inhibited from defending himself by the obvious inadequacy of his cover story; he should have gone prepared with a better one. Reputations in MI6, for good or ill, were easily won and hard to lose. This wasn’t going to do much for his. Hookey’s laugh, abrupt as a bark, startled him.

  Hookey swivelled away from the window, grinning. ‘Cock-ups always give pleasure, schadenfreude all round, that’s why everyone loves them. Except whoever has to carry the can, of course. Important thing is that you kept our friend Badger – that’s his code-name now, by the way, he’s got one now – out of it. A case-saving – perhaps for him a life-saving – effort. You did the right thing. Well done.’

  Surprised by a wave of relief, Charles realised he had been more worried than he had acknowledged to himself.

  ‘Let’s hope he’ll show his appreciation long-term,’ Hookey continued. ‘Now that you’ve made it possible there still is a long-term. That cryptic remark he made about blue something – what was it?’

  ‘Deep Blue. He said, “The KGB have a plan. They will put it somewhere and make confusion to kill and frighten people.” ’

  ‘Doesn’t get us very far, does it? Sounds more like a pop group. Maybe some new weapon we’ve got, missile system. There was one called Blue Streak but that got dumped years ago. Something they think they can pinch, obviously. You should tell MI5 about it. They want to see you, anyway. Left a message.’

  ‘So it’s OK to tell them about Badger?’

  ‘Not at all. Say it’s in a report from one of our Sovbloc cases you know nothing about, that I told you because we’ll report it in writing to them in due course. I’m dining with Director K tonight, anyway. I’ll sort it out with him.’ He stood and took his coat from the wooden hat-stand. ‘Great pity you were detained in Paris while Badger was here. According to the sawbones, the operation is do-able, he’s given Badger some pills and will let us know as soon as they sort out a date. That’ll make two mighty big favours Badger owes us. Just hope you’ll get a chance to see him again and find out about that blue thing.’

  ‘Fancy a coffee?’ Sue stood and hitched her bag over her shoulder. ‘Let’s go out.’ She turned to the two women who shared her office. ‘Anyone want anything?’

  Neither did. ‘Daft having to leave an MI5 office in order to talk about something confidential,’ she said as they descended the Gower Street stairs. ‘Maggie does Poles and Ruth does Czechs and they really shouldn’t overhear anything about Russian Illegals. Not that there’s normally much to hear. Anyway, I needed to stretch my legs. If I spend all day in the office I feel groggy by the end.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘Don’t see how, you’re never there. I’ve never once rung Century House and got you. You do really work there, don’t you?’

  ‘I go there most days, if that’s what you mean.’

  They crossed the Euston Road to a backstreet café where background noise and tabl
e separation were about right. He told her about the Deep Blue warning. It meant nothing to her but she promised to report it and get back to him. Then she leaned across the table and lowered her voice. ‘Your recent ex, the one you were telling me about, did you say her name was Micklethwaite, Janet Micklethwaite? With a brother in Hartlepool?’

  ‘I don’t know. She has two brothers, one a geologist in Canada whom I’ve never met and one a semi-dropout. Dropped out of university, trained as a teacher, dropped out of teaching and lived in some sort of commune, became very political, then went back to teaching, supply teaching, last I heard. Family was pleased about it, I remember Janet saying.’

  ‘Called James? And did she say where he’s working?’

  ‘Called Jim at home, Jam to his friends. Teaching somewhere, not sure where.’

  Sue sat back and looked seriously at him, as if assessing him for a job or trying to decide whether he could be trusted with a loan. She was not beautiful, he thought, nor pretty like Janet, but her features were clear and regular and her straightforwardness and energy appealing. ‘You know him, anyway?’ she asked.

  ‘Not well; we met a few times when he came down here to stay with her or see his parents. Aggressively left-wing and pleased with himself. Probably thought the same of me, apart from the left-wing bit.’

  ‘So you don’t know him well enough to get in touch with him? Would you be prepared to get in touch with her again?’

  ‘Last time you were saying I shouldn’t. You’re going to have to tell me more.’

  ‘Three nights ago Mr Turnip went out by himself and made a call from a callbox. We know this because the tech-op picked up her saying, “Isn’t it time you made the call?” and him saying, “Another thirty minutes.” Then she says, “You won’t use the one round the corner?” and he says, “No, the King’s Road one, the one we used before.” We worked out he meant not the one nearest your flat but the pair on the King’s Road going back towards Sloane Square, so we did a check on the numbers dialled from those two. One was out of order, surprise, surprise, but the other showed a call to Hartlepool at about the time he would have got to the callbox. There was also another call to the same number exactly a week before. The number is registered to James Anthony Micklethwaite. It’s an unusual name and I suddenly remembered what you’d said about Janet. Huge coincidence, if it really is him.’

  ‘So you want me to find out about him through Janet?’

  ‘Well, what he’s up to, where he works and whatever. I mean, we can get a lot through the social security computer in Newcastle but she might know stuff that’s not recorded. Quite understand if you don’t want to get in touch with her, of course.’

  ‘But for Queen and country, I suppose?’

  ‘Not asking you to . . . you know . . . resume the relationship again. Just, if you can have a chat for old times’ sake, as it were. Although it’s a bit soon for that, I admit.’

  They talked office gossip over two more coffees. As they were leaving, she said, ‘You will do it, then?’

  ‘Don’t give up, do you?’

  She smiled. ‘Not when I want something.’

  He met Janet a few nights later in a sawdust-and-wine bar in Battersea called Angela’s and Peter’s, neutral territory. Ringing to set it up had not been easy.

  ‘What’s the point, what is there to say?’ she had asked.

  ‘I know, I know, it’s just that – well, it would be nice to be on friendly terms. No need for a Cold War. Jaw-jaw better than war-war.’ It was not the first time he had manipulated his private life in the interests of the professional but repetition didn’t make it easier.

  As it turned out, there were no arguments or silences, with both talking energetically about anything but themselves. Her asking after his mother and sister made it natural for him to ask about her family.

  ‘And Jimmy, what’s he up to now?’

  She sighed and looked at the sawdust as if to discern some pattern in James’s life. ‘Well, he’s working again, anyway, in a comprehensive in County Durham. God knows how, it’s meant to be quite a good school. He’s even renting a house rather than squatting. Rejoining bourgeois society, though no one dare say that, of course.’

  ‘Maybe there’s a good woman behind him.’

  ‘We’d be the last to know. He lives alone. Mother went to see him. She said the flat was reasonably tidy, almost decent. No sign of a feminine hand.’ She smiled. ‘Like your flat.’

  He sensed a resumption would be possible, that perhaps she wanted it, which made him feel worse. ‘No sign of Swiss Roll, then?’

  Swiss Roll was the family nickname for a woman James had brought home whose dietary principles prevented her from eating anything Janet’s mother produced except some Swiss rolls forgotten in a cake tin. She had come only once.

  ‘She went back to Greenham Common, where he found her. You know, that all-women anti-nuclear protest camp in Berkshire.’

  ‘I didn’t know he was involved with that.’

  ‘I don’t know how much he was. He hung around it, anyway. All his friends were on protests of one sort or another. I could never understand what they lived off.’

  ‘Us, I guess.’ It was an incautious remark, a reminder of their disagreements about the welfare state. Janet was fond of her brother, despite disagreeing with him, and it was dangerous to link the two subjects. ‘Good luck to them,’ he added, insincerely.

  ‘Actually, he mentioned you last time I spoke to him. He’s still got a book of yours that I lent him, the one by that Austrian about an army officer who gets married or something.’

  ‘Beware of Pity. Great novel by—’

  ‘I never read it. Don’t suppose he has. But it’s a hardback, first edition in English. Quite old.’

  ‘Well, I could drop in and pick it up. I’ve got to go to North Yorkshire, not far from County Durham. Supposed to be learning about radar installations.’ He plucked that out of the air, confident he could cite the early-warning station at Fylingdales if pressed. He had glimpsed it through swirling snow on an army escape and evasion exercise on the moors, huge golf balls clustered on a hilltop. It had been so cold that most escapees had longed for capture, regardless of the indignities of interrogation.

  Janet opened her handbag. ‘I have his number here.’

  ‘Sorry to dump this on you,’ Mike said cheerfully the following morning. ‘But I’m off on leave tonight. Got so much left from my posting that I’ve got to use it or lose it. Harold said he would help you out if he could but he can’t because he’s busy.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘Liaising. You must admit you’ve had it pretty easy since you got here, always off on some Master Race jaunt or something.’

  Charles couldn’t deny that. He had come to regard his sojourns in EC Liaison as rest periods during which making a few changes to the MI5 draft of the Security Liaison Policy paper Sue had sent over counted as work. But the pleasant monotony had been spoiled this morning by Mike’s revelation that he was expected to shepherd a Greek liaison visit around the UK.

  ‘Programme’s already mapped out by the head of station, H/Athens. He can’t be here himself to do it, more’s the pity. All you have do is bear-lead them for four days, day and a night here in London, day and a night down at the Castle, day and a night up North visiting a power station in County Durham.’

  ‘Why a power station?’

  ‘Nuclear power station, security of. They want to know how we protect them. This one’s in Hartlepool, one of the more hospitable ones, apparently. Keen to show people round. FCO often use it.’

  The coincidence was useful, given what Sue had asked him to do, but he didn’t want his visit to James to be tied to a liaison visit. ‘Surely MI5—’

  ‘Tried that. They’re full up with liaison-and-training visits, which is what they always say. Ditto MOD.’

  ‘The Foreign Office . . . ?’

  ‘Greeks won’t wear it. They want us. H/Athens is very keen for us to push the bo
at out because he’ll get better results from liaison. There’s only three of them, a bloke from military security and a man and woman from their MI5 equivalent. It’ll be a cinch. All you have to do is open doors and eat and drink and be nice. Telegrams are all here somewhere.’ He gathered up a pile of telegrams and dumped them in Charles’s in-tray. ‘Makes sense for you to have everything as I’m away from tonight. Greek ones are in there somewhere. I’ll tell the girls to bring everything to you whether you’re copied on it or not so you don’t miss anything. Ask them what to do if you don’t know anything. Better than waiting for Harold.’

  ‘Where is Harold?’

  ‘Liaising. What he always does. Between ourselves, I think he liaises in detail with a woman from the Italian Embassy. Nice work if you can get it.’

  It was hard to imagine Harold liaising energetically, but perhaps that was where his energy went. ‘When does Angus Copplestone become our new controller?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Good luck.’

  Charles’s phone rang. ‘Got a moment?’

  Charles hurried up to the twelfth floor, to find Hookey’s door closed. ‘On the phone,’ said Maureen. They talked until the light on her own phone went off but she still made no move. Charles heard a security cupboard door close and the spinning of the combination lock. ‘Just putting his papers away,’ she said.

  ‘Has he always been this security-conscious?’

  ‘He shared an office with George Blake at one time.’ She went to Hookey’s door, opened it a little to check, then opened it wide for Charles. ‘Tea or coffee?’

  ‘He won’t have time,’ Hookey called out.

  He didn’t wait for Charles to sit. ‘I’ve briefed Director K on Badger. He’ll now be formally indoctrinated. And we discussed this other case of theirs you’re helping with, the two Illegals. Suspected Illegals. They don’t know what they’re up to and don’t have enough on them to have them arrested but they’re pretty sure they’re not what they’re pretending to be. Nor do they have the resources to keep them under surveillance indefinitely. I understand the Illegals have made clandestine contact with someone connected with you – girlfriend’s brother or something? – and want you to go and sniff him out. Meanwhile, Badger’s heart man now tells me he could summon him over for his op any day, provided he can get out of Moscow, so we want you to be permanently on call to get alongside him and ask him about this Deep Blue thing before he goes under the knife. Last thing we want is for him to snuff it without telling us. We’ll get notice that he’s travelling when he applies for his visa, but not much, which means you’ve got to be instantly available. OK?’