Gentleman Traitor

by Alan Williams

  ‘To wait here,’ the man repeated; he stepped back and closed the door, and Cayle heard the sound of a key.

  It was an odd room. There was a tiled floor, a small window with frosted pebble-glass but no bars, a camp-bed with a grey blanket, a table and two chairs, a plain overhead light, and a half-partition leading to a basin with one tap and a lavatory without a seat. It was spartan and military: not so much a cell as the sort of room a commanding officer might use on manoeuvres or at the front. It was clean and there was no smell.

  Cayle tried the tap on the basin. The water was icy. He took off his jacket and shirt, and sluiced down his face and the back of his neck and dried himself on a corner of the blanket. Then he looked at his watch — the only thing they’d left him besides his clothes. It was 3.45. He felt dirty, unshaven, and dog-tired.

  He turned out the light, dragged off his shoes and trousers, and lay down under the blanket and dropped into a dreamless sleep.

  Cayle was woken by someone shaking his shoulder. He blinked up at the light and saw a tall man standing by the bed. He wore a dark-blue suit, white shirt, dark tie; his mouth was straight and without expression. He said: ‘It is time for you to wake up, Mr Cayle.’ His English was relaxed and almost without accent.

  Cayle said stupidly, ‘What time is it?’ — then looked at his watch. It was a few minutes before six. ‘I’ll be with you in a moment,’ he added. He went behind the partition and shook his head under the cold tap.

  The Russian said, ‘I’m sorry we don’t have a towel to offer you. This room is not often used.’ He waited until Cayle was ready, then opened the door and let him go out first, switching the light off after them.

  ‘Is it far?’ said Cayle.

  ‘No, not far,’ the Russian said. He walked briskly, with the movements of a man who kept himself fit. They came to another padded door which led into a wider, higher corridor with dark panelling and a green and white chequered marble floor. Cayle guessed that they had entered the older half of the building — the one that had been the offices of an insurance company in Czarist days, before it became part of the Lubyanka Prison and administration headquarters of the Committee of State Security.

  They reached a tall porticoed door. The Russian tapped gently and turned the brass knob. Holding the door half-open, Cayle heard him say, ‘He’s here, sir,’ in his controlled meticulous English.

  Cayle did not catch the reply. The Russian opened the door further and Cayle went in.

  It was a large room with curtains half-drawn across a window overlooking the square. There was a lot of highly polished buhl furniture, including a heavy ornamental desk and a black marble lamp with a red and gold tasselled shade. Behind the desk, in a wing-chair upholstered in green velvet, a man sat with his head half turned to the window, and the lamp cast a pink glow across his profile, with its thin prominent nose and wing of silver hair. He turned enough to give Cayle a faint, apologetic smile. ‘Come in — do sit down.’

  Cayle was used to surprises in his job. He only wished he were more presentable: being unshaven and still half asleep was no fit way to meet a man who until a few days ago had been a senior member of the British Foreign Service. Sir Roger Jameson-Clarke looked a little tired, a little pale, but otherwise he displayed the same patrician poise that he had shown in the Ritz and the ‘Squadron’.

  ‘Now, Cayle. Perhaps you’d like to tell us what you’ve been up to in the last few days?’

  CHAPTER 17

  ‘The city is situated on more than two hundred islands,’ the girl said. ‘Each island is linked by a bridge. There are altogether six hundred and one bridges.’ She spoke with the enthusiasm of an air hostess telling her passengers to fasten their seatbelts. ‘The city was constructed on a great marsh and its first foundations stood on wooden piles driven into the mud. These foundations also contain the bones of half a million slave-labourers.’

  The driver swung the wheel, and she put up her hand to shade her eyes against the Arctic glare that reached in below the smoked upper panes of the coach windows.

  ‘On our left we now see, in the middle of the river, the Fortress of St Peter and St Paul.’ The driver changed gear with a noisy lurch and several of the passengers woke up. The girl steadied herself against the engine-block and said, ‘The Fortress was used as a prison for many famous people. The most famous was Lenin.’

  ‘Which famous prisoners are in there now?’ asked a man in a yellow gaberdine suit near the back.

  ‘Today it is used as a museum,’ the girl replied. ‘Now, to our right we see the Hermitage —’

  The man in the gaberdine suit put back his head and yawned. ‘Is this why they made us bolt our lunch? What do they think we are — a goddam Rotary outing from Burlington, Illinois?’

  ‘Perhaps they have problems at the airport,’ said his companion, a lean young Frenchman with wiry black hair and a lot of complicated camera equipment piled beside him in the gangway.

  ‘You boys expecting to get anything out of this?’ asked the man in the gaberdine suit; he had the flat ambiguous accent of an American who has lived a long time out of America.

  ‘There could be a crash,’ said the Frenchman.

  ‘There are no plane crashes in Russia, Yves. Everybody knows that.’

  ‘The plane is French,’ said Yves, smiling. ‘And French planes are surely allowed to crash?’

  ‘You’re a cynic,’ said the American. ‘You’d love that plane to crash.’

  ‘Normally, perhaps. But please, not when I am on it!’

  Outside they drove past an old man taking his dog for a walk. The dog was small and fat, like the man, and wore a leather coat strapped round his belly, and fur earmuffs. A couple of photographers in the coach took pictures of it. They were now crossing the frozen Neva and the girl was pointing out the golden needle of the Admiralty spire. Near the far bank a hole had been cut in the ice and a group of men in bathing trunks and rubber caps were lowering themselves in, watched by a small crowd. Several journalists in the coach laughed. ‘Some way to work off a hangover!’ one of them shouted. The girl broke off and said, ‘They are champion swimmers of the Leningrad Sports Federation. They practise like that all the year.’

  ‘I must say, she’s a good-looker,’ said the American. ‘And I guess she makes out all right too! That hat looks like mink.’

  ‘They say these Intourist guides all have lovers in the Ministries or the KGB,’ said Yves. ‘I don’t think they are available, except under special circumstances.’

  The American snickered. ‘You got a one-track mind, Yves. Sex and disaster.’ He leaned out and called to the girl: ‘When do we go to the airport?’

  She frowned. ‘You want to go to the airport already?’

  ‘Well, that’s what we’re all here for!’ he cried.

  The girl spoke quickly with the driver, who swung the wheel, throwing the girl completely off balance this time, so that she slipped sideways and fell against the door. Her apple cheeks flushed darkly, and she clutched at her white fur hat, righted herself and smoothed down her black coat. ‘If it is your wish,’ she said, with dignity, ‘we will go to the airport.’

  They drove back across the river and re-joined the shabby elegance of the Nevsky Prospekt, running wide and straight into the horizon. The girl sat down beside the driver and most of the journalists dozed.

  They entered the airport at a far corner, away from the international passenger terminal. The gate was manned by grey-uniformed Frontier Police who came aboard and checked their special passes issued by the Press Office of the Foreign Ministry.

  ‘Please, from here there must be no photographs,’ the girl said, as the guards stepped down and the bus began to move forward again, down a muddy avenue into a sprawling complex of breeze-block huts.

  The afternoon sky was icy blue, with no wind, and across the Gulf of Finland lay the faint smudge of Kronstadt Island.

  The VIP lounge in the International Terminal was packed and noisy. At around three o’clo
ck fleets of official cars began drawing up outside; and at 3.20 there was a flutter of interest as the Troika-Caravelle prototype crept into view, escorted by uniformed outriders who snarled in and out under the wings and round the stout silver fuselage.

  There were a few late arrivals from the Press, who had evaded the official coach-tour from the Europeiiski Hotel and made their way in their own cars or by taxi. One of them, a plump raddled-faced man in a greasy musquash hat, had come sensibly equipped with a hip-flask.

  At 3.30 there was more mild excitement as a short, very fat bearded man in a vicuna coat stepped forward and introduced himself to the cameras as M. Charles Pol, the French entrepreneur responsible for the Troika-Caravelle deal; and at 3.45 the loudspeaker began to crackle out boarding instructions in Russian, French and English. The embarkation was a wearisome affair, with two Frontier Police scrutinizing all passes once again. The only formality that had been dispensed with was the searching of hand luggage, which in this case consisted entirely of camera equipment, belonging mostly to the French contingent.

  Charles Pol was the last to board the plane, waddling across the tarmac and up the embarkation steps, with the little Russian girl in the white mink hat trotting at his side, carrying his briefcase. He lowered himself into a reserved seat at the back of the plane, while the girl walked slowly up the aisle, glancing along each of the rows of triple seats. She passed the raddled-faced journalist with the hip-flask, who was now taking a long drink. He looked as though he needed it: his hands shook and his eyes were watering from the cold. She gave him a quick smile, and he lowered the flask and nodded. Beside him, the American in the yellow gaberdine suit said, ‘Miss, when do we get the champagne?’

  ‘Refreshments will be served when we are in the air,’ she replied, and walked on, no longer looking along the seats, until she reached the head of the plane where she switched on the cabin intercom. ‘Gospoda!’ she announced: ‘Mesdames et messieurs. Ladies and gentlemen.’ She translated into the three languages: ‘Welcome aboard this inaugural flight of Troika-Caravelle One-One-Two, an aircraft which testifies to the combined skill and friendship existing between the French Republic and the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics. Our pilots are Captain O. D. Prokovsky and Capitaine J. P. Duhamel —’ She then began reading from the handout, translating each paragraph into the three languages, in the same passionless voice that she’d used on the coach.

  The plane was a long-range twin-jet, with a high payload against a low fuel consumption, and a short landing capability, making it ideal for internal Soviet air-routes. It was also highly manoeuvrable at low altitudes, which recommended it as a radar-hopping military transport — though this secondary advantage was not mentioned in the handout, or by the girl. She concluded by announcing that the flight would last fifty minutes, heading due west over the Gulf of Finland, then south over the city of Tallinn and back along the coast of Estonia to Leningrad.

  The fact that the aircraft bore no markings nor national emblem aroused no particular interest. Indeed, most of the journalists had written their copy before leaving the hotel.

  Five minutes after take-off, with Kronstadt rising like a grey bubble out of the flat mist of water seven miles below, a couple of Russian airhostesses came down the aisle with trays of pâté de foie gras sandwiches and glasses of French champagne. In a gangway seat half-way down, the raddled-faced journalist had taken out his hipflask again and poured it into his glass. The American in the gaberdine suit smiled approvingly: ‘That’s something every working journalist in Russia should carry, like a soldier carries a gun. What is it? Brandy?’

  The man nodded and offered him the flask.

  ‘Just a sniff,’ said the American. ‘Brandy and champagne give me heartburn. I’m more of a whisky man myself. Name’s Roskoe,’ he added. ‘Ken Roskoe, Atlantic Syndicated News. I don’t think we’ve met?’

  ‘Fielding,’ said the man, putting away the flask.

  ‘You’re British?’

  The man hesitated, as though with a slight impediment of speech. ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Which paper?’

  ‘The Observer.’

  ‘The London Observer?’

  Fielding nodded and sipped his champagne cocktail.

  ‘Don’t the Observer have another man out here?’ said Roskoe. ‘I’ve run into him a couple of times. Kind of studious type — speaks very good Russian.’

  ‘I’m freelancing,’ Fielding said carefully: ‘For a supplement on air travel.’ The loudspeaker broke in with the Russian girl’s voice telling them that they were now approaching the narrowest point of the Gulf of Finland where the coast could be seen on both sides. They were flying at an altitude of 12,000 metres, at an air-speed of 800 kilometres an hour.

  ‘I just wish they’d cut that crap!’ Roskoe muttered. ‘Show us a film or let us sleep — that’s the way I like to travel.’ But Fielding seemed already to have taken him at his word: he had finished his drink, tilted his seat back and closed his eyes. His foie gras sandwiches lay untouched on the tray in front of him.

  At the back of the plane, across the aisle from the little Russian girl, Pol was beginning to sweat, despite the ample air-conditioning. Ten minutes later a tall blond man with a camera-case slung over his shoulder got up and walked leisurely up the aisle, through the curtain leading to the forward cabin.

  The Russian pilot was at the controls, leaning back against the headrest and watching the dark-blue horizon ahead. Beside him, the French co-pilot sat smoking and chatting to the interpreter in the jump-seat behind. Both pilots had their earphones hanging loose round their necks. The interpreter was sitting adjacent to the Russian navigator, who was bending over a chart covered with a plastic overlay on which he was measuring distances with a pair of dividers. He made a note in the log beside him, as the blond man slipped in and closed the communication door.

  He was a slim pale man and his corn-coloured hair was tight and curly like a lambswool rug; his eyes were dead, and there was a clean white scar down one cheek that gave his face a stiff lopsided expression. He stepped up behind the Russian pilot and with an effortless movement drew a gun from his camera-case and touched the barrel against the base of the man’s cranium. He spoke in quiet pedantic French: ‘You will change course immediately and proceed north. Our destination is the Finnish coast — the peninsula of Bjornvik, south of the town of Lovisa.’

  The communicating door opened again and shut quickly. One of the French photographers stood just behind the blond man, away from the crew. He had the body of a wrestler, and the gun in his hand had an unusually wide blunt barrel.

  Capitaine Duhamel looked at them both and repeated the navigational instructions to Captain Prokovsky, speaking calmly in French through the interpreter. When he had finished, the blond man said: ‘No one is to move, except to carry out their duties. Do not attempt to make a mistake. I have a good knowledge of navigation and have studied this area with care.’

  The interpreter relayed the message without expression. He was a big middle-aged man in a shapeless suit. Captain Prokovsky leant forward to move the controls, and even in the confined space the interpreter made a swift lunge, one broad hand with the fingers held rigid slicing down at the blond man’s wrist. There was a loud thud above the hum of the engines, and the interpreter’s head flopped back from his shoulders with a curious splashing sound; his knees struck the floor, he rolled over, slid down the back of Captain Prokovsky’s seat, leaving a slimy red smear along the grey covering, thumped down at the navigator’s feet and lay still.

  The navigator gave a shout in Russian and came to his feet, as the wide-barrelled gun swung round and aimed at his belly. Both pilots had turned and now recognized, in the French ‘photographer’s’ hand, the still experimental anti-personnel pistol for use against hijackers: the flat plastic bullet, with its lobbing trajectory, has a high velocity but a short range incapable of penetrating the skin of the fuselage, while having the same effect on the human body as t
he internationally proscribed dum-dum.

  The blond man said: ‘Capitaine Duhamel, I am ordering you both again to change direction. If you have not done so within ten seconds, my colleague here will blow off your leg at the knee.’

  The French pilot’s cigarette had gone out, and he sat motionless next to Captain Prokovsky. The blond man now turned to the navigator: ‘Understand French?’

  It was Captain Prokovsky who replied, without moving his head: ‘We understand. We do as you order.’ His hands moved across the controls, and the blond man had to steady himself with his free hand against the back of the dead interpreter’s seat, as the plane started a sharp whining turn. The blond man leant forward and began studying the bank of flickering luminous needles in front of the pilots; he knew which dials to look for, and checked their readings against the chart on the navigator’s table. When he was satisfied that the new course was correct, he nodded to the French gunman and went back through the communicating door into the passenger-cabin.

  The sudden turn of the aircraft had upset most of the glasses of champagne, and the stewardesses were hurrying about the aisle with napkins. The blond man switched on the intercom and began speaking in French: ‘We are altering course. Our destination is temporarily changed. You will fasten your seatbelts and not move.’ His words were the signal for four men, who had all been identified at the airport as accredited French correspondents, to stand up at regular intervals down the cabin and face the passengers, with their dum-dum pistols held loosely at the ready. They were muscular Mediterranean types with that alert yet somehow emotionless look that is common to the rougher kind of policemen, to professional hoodlums, and to the more hardened breed of journalist.

  The blond man spoke again over the intercom, this time in English: ‘You will remain calm. The plane has been commandeered, but no harm will come to any of you, providing you behave and obey orders. If anyone leaves his seat or attempts to take a photograph, he will be shot. The guns that my colleagues are holding do not leave clean or superficial wounds.’ While his French had been adequate, his English was perfect, with a flat clipped accent which several British correspondents recognized as South African.