The Trinity Six

by Charles Cumming

  The ceremony lasted three-quarters of an hour, more than enough time for Gaddis to consider how best to make his approach. He knew, from a brief conversation with Annie, that dinner was planned for five o’clock. He had no seat at table, of course, which meant that there was, at best, only an hour left to him before Wilkinson would disappear indoors for at least five hours of speeches, Wiener schnitzel and disco dancing. Therefore, just after four o’clock, he made his way outside into the crisp sunshine of the park. Kath was at his side, resplendent in canary yellow, talking about ‘how spiritual the service was, even though, you know, they hadn’t gone for anything religious’. Meanwhile, the newly minted Mr and Mrs Matthias Drechsel were being photographed on the steps of the Kursalon, their occasional demonstrations of public affection met with whoops and cheers from the gaggle of family and friends gathered around them.

  ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ said Kath, capturing a kiss on the camera of her mobile phone. ‘They look so in love, Sam. Don’t you think? Doesn’t Cath look beautiful?’

  Robert Wilkinson was standing a few paces from the bride, studiously avoiding eye contact with a woman whom Gaddis took to be his ex-wife. Beside him, an emaciated geriatric of at least eighty, her face puffed with collagen and smothered in make-up, was attempting to engage him in conversation. Wilkinson looked bored. Kath took several more pictures, waved at somebody in the distance, then offered Gaddis a cigarette as she lit up under the shade of a chestnut tree.

  ‘Not for me,’ he said. ‘I’m just going inside for a moment. See you in a bit.’

  He had decided that there was only one failsafe option open to him. He could not approach Wilkinson directly, at least not in person in the broad daylight of an October afternoon with his daughter getting married and the Secret Intelligence Service watching him from every orifice of the Stadtpark. Besides, there was every possibility that Wilkinson would simply call security and have Gaddis escorted from the premises. No, he would have to rely on a third party. He would have to get a message to him before the guests sat down for dinner.

  To that end, he found a bathroom on the first floor of the Kursalon, locked himself inside a cubicle and took out the notebook and pen. He began to write.

  Dear Mr Wilkinson

  I was the man who telephoned you at your home in New Zealand ten days ago. I apologize both for my tactlessness on that occasion and for contacting you on this, of all days, but it is vital that I speak to you about Katya Levette. I believe that she was murdered by agents of the Russian FSB.

  It was a wild claim, almost entirely without basis in fact, but Gaddis needed some way of grabbing Wilkinson’s attention. He continued, composing the words carefully:

  Since then, three individuals with links to Edward Crane have been murdered. A journalist named Charlotte Berg, a nurse, Calvin Somers, and a German doctor, Benedict Meisner. Somers and Meisner were present at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, in 1992, when Sir John Brennan (using the alias Douglas Henderson) faked Crane’s death and set him up with a new identity – Thomas Neame. I was given your name by Ludmilla Tretiak. As you know, her husband, Fyodor, was also murdered by the FSB because of his association with Crane.

  I have had detailed conversations with Edward himself and, with his blessing, plan to reveal the truth about ATTILA. I know, from speaking to Holly, that you had made a similar arrangement with Katya regarding your own memoirs, which she was unable to fulfil. All of the files that you gave to Mrs Levette are now in my possession.

  I will be at Kleines Café in Franziskanerplatz this evening from 10 p.m. and again tomorrow morning from 10 a.m. You may also reach me at the Goldene Spinne Hotel on Linke Bahngasse. I am registered under my own name. Again, I apologize for intruding on this important day for your family, and for failing to present myself in person, but you can understand that I am wary of who may or may not be watching. There was no other opportunity nor method of contacting you.

  Sincerely

  Dr Samuel Gaddis

  He read the letter back three times, but was reluctant to cross anything out or to make changes to the text for fear of conveying the impression of an undisciplined mind. Instead, having added the telephone number of his hotel, he folded the note in half and, after brief consideration, wrote ‘Mr Dominic Ulvert’ on the front. Emerging from the bathroom, Gaddis saw one of the members of the string quartet coming out of the reception hall and decided that he would make as good a messenger as any.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Ja?’

  ‘Do you speak English?’

  The musician was in his early twenties and carrying a violin in a black case. He was smothered in acne. In a thick Austrian accent he said that he spoke ‘some’ English and waited for Gaddis to respond, his head bobbing from side to side.

  ‘I wondered if you could do me a favour?’

  ‘Of course, sir. What, sir? Yes.’

  ‘Would you come with me?’

  He took him to a window offering a view out on to the bridal party. The photographer was now arranging the guests into a family group. Wilkinson, still looking bored and out of place, was seated two chairs to the right of Matthias Drechsel.

  ‘Do you see the man with the pale cream waistcoat and the dark blue tie? He has grey hair, sitting in the front row on the left-hand side.’

  It took a few moments to explain the phrase ‘pale cream’ and to ensure that the musician had correctly identified Wilkinson.

  ‘He is the father of the bride, ja?’

  ‘Yes. That’s right.’ Gaddis produced a smile of entreaty. ‘When they have finished the photographs, would you be kind enough to pass him this note? I have to rush off and I don’t want to disturb him. We haven’t seen one another for a long time and—’

  The young man saved Gaddis the effort of amplifying his lie. ‘No problem,’ he replied, as if he performed similar tasks every day. ‘I do this for you.’

  ‘You’re very kind.’

  Moments later, the musician was trotting down the steps of the Kursalon, violin case in hand, as the family photographs were drawing to an end. He approached Wilkinson immediately and engaged him briefly in conversation. Gaddis, who had followed him outside, returned to the chestnut tree where he found Kath talking to Dan.

  ‘Hello there, stranger,’ she said. ‘I thought we’d lost you.’

  He turned to see the musician handing Wilkinson the note. Their encounter did not seem in any way unusual: he might even have been presenting an invoice to the father of the bride for the string quartet’s services. The musician then said something to Wilkinson and pointed up at the window of the Kursalon where Gaddis had been standing only moments earlier. Wilkinson, who had now seen the name on the front of the note, swept his gaze, in a barely disguised state of alarm, through three hundred and sixty degrees, searching for whoever had employed the musician as an errand boy. Gaddis turned around so that his back was facing him.

  ‘I can’t find your name on the table plan,’ Kath was saying.

  ‘That’s why I went inside,’ he replied. It was the last lie he would have to tell. ‘Truth is, I’m not feeling all that good. I just pulled out.’ He felt a sudden rush of anxiety, as if he could sense Wilkinson coming towards him. ‘I’ve asked them to take my name off the list. I’m going to head back to my hotel.’

  ‘You are?’ Kath looked crestfallen.

  ‘Afraid so. I might pop back later. Make sure you save me a dance.’

  Gaddis turned and walked away into the park. In doing so he bumped into a tourist carrying a 35mm camera around his neck. Gaddis’s arm knocked against the telephoto lens and he felt obliged to apologize.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, then, in German: ‘Entschuldigung.’

  Karl Stieleke did not respond.

  Chapter 41

  Gaddis had chosen the Kleines Café from a photograph in a Phaidon guidebook to Vienna which had been left by a guest in the dining area of the Goldene Spinne. The photograph suggested that the café was the sort of low-key,
inconspicuous place that Gaddis was looking for, and so it proved. Visiting Franziskanerplatz early on Saturday morning, he had discovered a small, pedestrianized square, about half a mile west of the Radisson, with a fountain at its centre, birds hopping in and out of the water and local residents reading newspapers over cups of coffee in the sunshine. The Kleines Café occupied the corner of the ground floor of a recently renovated building just a few metres from the fountain. There were two entrances: one leading into the square itself, where half a dozen tables were set out in neat rows; and a side exit, in the lower section of the café, which led out on to a cobbled street running downhill into Singerstrasse.

  Just inside this back entrance was a single, mirrored booth. It was here that Gaddis established himself at nine o’clock on Saturday evening. He felt that it would be the perfect place to talk to Wilkinson: there were no other seats or tables close by, only some cardboard boxes and empty kegs of beer. In a re-run of his convoluted journey to the Estacio Sants in Barcelona, he had taken a circuitous route to the café, trying to shake off any potential surveillance by using three different modes of transportation – foot, taxi, train – in a journey which had lasted almost an hour. He was certain that he was not being followed.

  He ordered a beer from the manager and waited. He had a new Yeltsin biography to read, cigarettes to smoke, and felt quietly confident that Wilkinson would appear as soon as he was no longer required at the wedding. But Gaddis had not counted on the sheer volume of customers who began pouring through the back door at around half-past nine. It turned out that the Kleines Café was one of the most popular bars in Vienna: by ten, it was impossible to see the exit from Gaddis’s seat at the booth, despite the fact that he was only a few feet from the street. He counted at least thirty people crushed into the tiny lower section around him and assumed that there were at least twice as many in the main body of the café. If Wilkinson walked in, there was a real possibility that he would fail to spot Gaddis.

  He need not have worried. At twenty-past ten, Gaddis looked up to see Wilkinson peering over the head of a plump Viennese banker who was wearing wire-rimmed glasses. He nodded at him, to establish his identity, and Wilkinson pushed his way through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd before settling on the opposite side of the booth in a seat which Gaddis had been jealously guarding since nine o’clock.

  ‘Let me guess,’ he said, his weight jogging the small circular table as he sat down. ‘You didn’t think I would come.’

  ‘I’m certainly glad to see you,’ Gaddis replied.

  It was hard to read Wilkinson’s mood. His normally impassive face was touched by an odd sense of mischief. Wilkinson had changed out of his morning suit into a pair of brown corduroy trousers, a shirt, and a dark V-neck jumper. He removed the same tattered Barbour that had witnessed the unsolicited visit of Christopher Brooke and set it on the bench beside him.

  ‘You have quite a nerve, Doctor Gaddis. I was warned about you.’

  ‘You were?’

  ‘Certain people are reluctant for us to speak. Certain people are concerned that we might cause trouble. How do you get a whisky around here?’

  He wondered if Wilkinson was a little drunk from the festivities. He had been expecting criticism for making the phone call to his home in New Zealand, but the veteran spy seemed to be in a relaxed, forgiving mood. Had he taken any precautions in coming to the café? Had he paid any attention to the surveillance threat?

  ‘I’ll go to the bar,’ Gaddis told him. ‘How do you take it?’

  It took ten long minutes to make his way through the crowds, to order two Jamesons on ice and to return to the table. He found Wilkinson flicking through the Yeltsin book.

  ‘Any good?’

  ‘Not particularly.’ Gaddis sat down and put the whisky in front of him. ‘Cuttings job.’

  There was music playing, lounge jazz, but set at a volume which made conversation relatively straightforward. They would not need to raise their voices above the music and the babble of the crowd. After a brief exchange about the wedding, Wilkinson asked Gaddis for what he called ‘some background’ on his relationship with Katya. His manner was still unexpectedly amiable and co-operative and Gaddis interpreted the question as a broader request to lay out everything he knew concerning ATTILA. To that end, he set about telling the entire story of his involvement with Crane, including Charlotte’s initial research and sudden death, the murders of Calvin Somers and Benedict Meisner, as well as the revelation that Tanya Acocella was an MI6 officer who had masqueraded as an archivist at Kew. Throughout this long process, Wilkinson interjected only rarely, either to clarify a detail or to ask for a phrase to be repeated on account of a sudden noise in the bar. He did not appear to be unduly surprised by anything Gaddis was telling him and remained, for the most part, inscrutable in his reactions. When, for example, Gaddis related what had happened at Meisner’s apartment in Berlin, he merely nodded sagely and muttered ‘I see’ while staring at the ice in his glass. It was increasingly apparent to Gaddis that he was being sized up, rather in the way that a father takes his time to consider the strengths and weaknesses of a prospective son-in-law. Clearly Wilkinson had yet to decide whether or not to divulge the wealth of information he possessed to a writer he did not know or trust. As a consequence, he had about him the slightly overbearing self-confidence of a man who knows that he can walk out on a situation at any moment, at no personal cost.

  ‘So you subsequently discovered that Neame and Crane were the same man?’

  Wilkinson’s question had no obvious tone of condescension, but the implication was clear: Gaddis, a supposedly bright, intelligent academic, had been hoodwinked by an old-age pensioner.

  ‘What can I tell you?’ he replied, holding his hands up in a gesture of mock surrender. He had decided that the most sensible strategy was to be as candid and as honest as possible. There was no point in trying to finesse a man of Wilkinson’s experience. ‘I was duped by a master liar. My only consolation is that I probably wasn’t the first person to fall for Crane’s silver tongue.’

  ‘No,’ Wilkinson replied steadily. ‘You certainly weren’t. Nor, I imagine, will you be the last.’ He took a sip of his drink and appeared to catch the eye of a blonde American woman who was standing close to their table. ‘But it makes absolute sense that Eddie would have wanted to get his story out in that way. After all, he’s spent his life being two people.’

  It was strangely exhilarating to hear Wilkinson speak of Crane so intimately, but any hope Gaddis held that the conversation would now turn to his recollections of ATTILA were quickly snuffed out.

  ‘You said in your note that you think Katya was murdered.’ Wilkinson was a physically imposing man and when he stared directly into Gaddis’s eyes, Gaddis had to remind himself not to look away. ‘What is your evidence for this?’

  ‘A pattern of behaviour,’ he replied uncertainly. It was the first unconvincing thing that he had said all night.

  ‘I have to say that I disagree with you.’ There was a finality to Wilkinson’s reply which brooked no argument. ‘If the FSB had been on to Katya, they would have followed my files to your house and you’d be dead by now as well.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Gaddis said, though he knew that Wilkinson’s assessment was completely correct.

  ‘Where are the files, by the way?’

  ‘At my house.’

  ‘Your house?’ Wilkinson’s sang froid briefly deserted him. ‘Under lock and key, I hope? In some sort of safe?’

  It was the first hint of his willingness to co-operate. There was clearly something hidden in the files, something of value to him.

  ‘No safe would be big enough,’ Gaddis replied, trying to calm things down. ‘The boxes are just piled up in my sitting room.’

  Wilkinson appeared to bury a rebuke. Instead, in a more controlled voice, he said: ‘Well, it’s unlikely that they’ll be there for very much longer.’

  ‘Why do you say that? I’ve had them for weeks. If SIS wante
d to get hold of them, they’d have broken into my house long ago.’

  Wilkinson shook his head. ‘The Office aren’t the ones you should be worrying about. Platov is the one who will want the files.’

  ‘Platov?’ Gaddis leaned forward. ‘With the greatest respect, there’s very little in the files that would be of any interest to anyone, even in academia. I found nothing about ATTILA, certainly nothing about Sergei Platov.’

  ‘That’s because you don’t know what you’re looking for.’

  Gaddis felt a wave of excitement. Wilkinson looked as though he had finally made the decision to divulge what he knew.

  ‘So what am I looking for?’

  Wilkinson paused. He stared again at the ice in his empty glass. Gaddis took it as a hint that he wanted another drink.

  ‘More whisky?’

  ‘Sure.’

  This time it took just five minutes of battling through the crowd before he could return to the booth. The clutch of customers, including the American woman, who had been standing beside their table, were now pressed in even closer. They were using the near-side of Gaddis’s table as a place to rest their glasses and bottles of beer. Wilkinson appeared completely oblivious to their presence; he might as well have been sitting alone in a box at the opera.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said, passing the Yeltsin biography back across the table. ‘Cuttings job.’