by Jeremy Duns
I had been posted back to London in September, where I was given a hefty promotion within Soviet Section. I had occasionally checked the old dead drops, but to no avail. Finally, one freezing December evening someone brushed past me as I left a cinema, and my double life resumed once again.
My new contact, Sasha, was in his early forties, with a neat beard and a penchant for tweed suits and bow ties. He claimed not to know why Yuri had failed to show in Istanbul, but assured me that Moscow’s previous concerns about me were ancient history. He pumped me with questions about my work in Soviet Section, and I answered them as fully as I could. He never asked me about Turkey, and I decided not to mention the map or the arms cache.
Our meetings continued over the next few years, although after a while they became much more infrequent for security reasons. The Templetons’ garden party had given me my first indication that I might not be the only double, and that had been confirmed in ’56, when Burgess and Maclean appeared at a press conference in Moscow. A string of exposures had followed: Blake in ’61, Vassall in ’62, and then Philby’s defection in ’63, which had, in turn, led to the unmasking of Blunt and Cairncross. The newspapers were filled with talk of spy rings and third and fourth men. I was as agog as anyone at the extent of Soviet penetration.
I forced my mind back into the here and now: a prison cell, presumably somewhere in Italy. Now, finally, I too had been exposed, but I had to figure out what the hell was going on and get out of here and stop it. When I had been appointed Head of Soviet Section in ’65, I had been given access to a lot more files, but I had seen nothing about a stay-behind operation in Turkey, and I’d presumed that it had been wound down: the threat of Soviet invasion no longer seemed realistic. The idea that Severn and Zimotti’s plans were part of the same operation suggested a much larger scale than I had feared. There had been thirty arms caches hidden across Turkey in ’51. How many would there be in Italy now and, more importantly, how many men had been trained to use them? If my suspicions were right, this wasn’t just a few spooks idly plotting, placing a bomb here or there: they had a highly trained army prepared to do their dirty work.
I turned to Sarah sitting next to me in the gloom of the cell, and let my mind absorb the significance of it for a moment.
‘So this is what you wanted to tell me at the embassy?’ I said. ‘Your suspicions about Charles, the documents you found in his safe…’ She nodded. ‘But why? How could you be sure I wasn’t a part of the plot?’
She took a deep breath and smiled faintly.
‘Charles had already told me about what happened in St Paul’s: that you had chased down the sniper, discovered that he was an Italian, and were coming out to investigate. He seemed very jumpy about you, so I asked him about your history. He told me you’d been at school together, and also about what had happened in Nigeria, and after – that you had briefly been suspected of being a double. We still had files in the office from your time here, so I read up on you – your missing father and your wonderful career and so on – and suddenly it just came to me, I suppose.’
‘What did?’ I asked. But I knew what she was going to say.
‘Well, that you were a double. That you had gone out to Nigeria to stop that defector exposing you, and chased the sniper halfway across London because you had been the target, not John Farraday. As I read the files, it seemed that everyone around you ended up dead, but there you were still standing at the end of it all, and…’ She looked into my eyes. ‘I was right, wasn’t I?’
I stared back at her. It was ironic, of course: I had fooled Templeton and Osborne and everyone else for all these years, and finally with barely a glance at my file a cipher clerk in Rome had guessed at the truth.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You were right. But if you were so sure I was a double, why did you decide to confide in me?’
She raised a smile. ‘It was a risk – but I reckoned a Soviet agent probably wouldn’t be involved in a conspiracy to smear Communists. I thought you might have already guessed at what they were up to, in fact, and that that was why you had come out here, or that you were at least somewhere on the road to finding out. So I thought I could be…’ She looked for the right word. ‘Indiscreet. Not tell you, exactly, but just give you a nudge in the right direction. If you realized what was going on, you’d tell Moscow, and then they’d have to stop it.’ She shrugged her shoulders simply. ‘I’m not a Communist or anything.’
‘Neither am I. I was, once, but that was a long time ago, and I was…’ What – young? Trapped? It was time to put my excuses away. ‘And I was wrong about it,’ I said.
We sat in silence for a while then. I wanted very much to tell her that everything would be better – to make it better for her, somehow. But there was nothing that could be done. For anything to move forward, we had to get those documents. Without them, this was all smoke and mirrors: nobody would ever believe it. Even with them it might be smoke and mirrors, because several governments would be very quick to discredit them as fakes, and it might be hard to prove otherwise. But the operational details would be in there, and if Sarah were telling the truth we were faced with the slaughter of hundreds, possibly even thousands, of innocent people.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, the seed of an idea was forming: Haggard. In Italy, the operation was designed to discredit the Communists and keep them from coming to power. But in Britain, the target seemed to be the Labour government. That meant Haggard couldn’t be part of the conspiracy: he was one of its main targets. And as Home Secretary, he could act. Unmask the conspiracy to him and I had a sliver of a chance of not just stopping whatever bloodbath was being planned, but redeeming myself. My life as a double agent was over, but perhaps, if I could take on this lot and win, I could start afresh, in a new Service purged of the conspirators. A new life, a new page…
Well, it was a nice thought, but I couldn’t unmask anyone without proof. And that was tightly locked up in Severn’s safe in Rome. I squeezed Sarah’s hand gently, and as I did I felt a hardness in her fingers. Her wedding band, no doubt. Only it was sharp. I glanced down. Her other jewellery had gone, but her engagement ring, dirty and bloodied, shone dully.
That meant two things. First, Severn had not discarded her entirely. My watch and everything in my pockets had been taken from me, so it must have been a deliberate decision to leave this on her. Despite imprisoning and torturing her, it seemed he hadn’t wanted to remove this symbol of love from her body. I remembered his screams as he had brought the whip down on me: ‘Nobody touches my wife.’ Secondly, it was a weapon. Not an ideal weapon, by any means, but then prisoners with no other hope of escape can’t be choosers.
‘I have an idea,’ I said. ‘Can you run?’
She nodded slowly. ‘I can try.’
‘What would happen if… ?’ I stopped myself. It wasn’t the most gallant request I’d ever made. I tried to keep my voice even. ‘What would happen if I kissed you?’
I thought for a moment she was going to slap me, but then she saw me nodding at the walls and felt me squeeze her ring finger, and understanding dawned on her.
‘Charles… Yes, I see. But he might bring others with him.’
I held her gaze. ‘What do we have to lose? They’ll be here sooner or later anyway. Isn’t it better if it’s sooner?’
She didn’t answer for a few moments, and then I thought I saw the trace of a smile cross her pale lips.
‘“Was ever woman in this humour wooed?”’
My spirits lifted faintly: if she still had the wherewithal to make literary references, we might just have a chance. I took a deep breath, and she nodded. This was, I thought, quite likely suicide.
We stood and I moved closer to her, whispering in her ear to pass me the ring. She wriggled it off and I squeezed it onto my little finger. I made sure that the stone was facing outward: a very small, very expensive knuckle-duster.
We were inches away from each other now. I tried to keep my mind focused on the task ahead, and
brushed a wisp of hair away from her face with my fingers. My stomach began to contract as the adrenalin began pumping through me. I leaned down and touched my lips gently against her collarbone.
‘Does that hurt?’ I whispered.
She shook her head. She was breathing rapidly now, whether in earnest or acting for the cameras I wasn’t sure, and I brought my face up and gently pressed my mouth against hers. She didn’t react at first, but then her lips parted slightly, and I felt the warm moistness of her tongue…
The door of the cell slammed open, and Severn rushed in, his face dark with rage and a low roar in his throat. I lunged at him, thrashing the ring against his face with every ounce of strength I had in me. Somehow I hit home, because he cried out and reeled backwards, stumbling into the wall and falling to the ground with a thick thudding noise. I stepped forward to finish the job, but he was already out for the count: his cheek was torn open and blood was gushing down it, but his mouth was lax and his head was resting on his shoulder.
I breathed out. It had worked. Against all the odds, it had worked.
But now we had to get out of here.
I quickly searched him: he was unarmed, but I grabbed the keys from his belt. Sarah picked the ring from the floor and threw it at him fiercely, then made to kick him. I pulled her away – we didn’t have time. I opened the door and we came out into a long corridor, at the far end of which was a staircase.
We started running towards it.
XVI
The staircase led us out to a strip of concrete – we had been underground. The soles of my feet were already sore from the short run and my chest was still tight with tension. The light was bluish-grey and eerie, and I shivered as I breathed in the cool air. I could smell the sea close by. To our right, about a hundred yards away, were several Nissen huts and a line of low dark buildings, many with radio masts jutting from their roofs.
I turned to Sarah. ‘Any idea where we are?’
‘Sardinia, I think. Charles mentioned it once. A special base for political prisoners.’
Sardinia – I had spent a long weekend here with a girlfriend in the spring of ’64, a lifetime ago. Zimotti had told me Arte come Terrore were based on the island. A strange sort of a bluff, but perhaps they’d intended to lure me out here all along. Perhaps torture had always been on the cards. Precisely how long had they known I was a double – and who knew, precisely?
To our left was a gate, surrounded on both sides by a fence, the top of which gleamed in the dim light: barbed wire. There was a small hut, no doubt for guards, but they would be more prepared for people trying to come into the base than trying to leave it – if we were fast enough. I reckoned we had a couple of minutes at most before Severn recovered and started coming after us. And, in a place like this, there was no telling how many he might bring with him.
There were several small military vehicles parked on the concrete: Volkswagens. We jumped into the nearest one and I reached under the dashboard, pushing against the panel to free it and quickly locating the two wires. I bridged them and the engine stuttered into life.
‘That’s a clever trick,’ said Sarah, as I grabbed the wheel and headed for the main gate.
‘It can come in useful,’ I agreed. The engine was behind the vehicle’s rear wheels and it felt very lightweight, almost like driving a dune buggy. I told Sarah to duck and then pushed my foot down and steered to the right of the gate, straight for the barbed wire fence, the engine squealing from the strain I was putting it under. There was a screech and crunching of metal and glass as the wheels trampled over the fence and crashed through to the other side, and then the shots started coming from behind us. They went wide, but they had reacted faster than I’d expected, and they wouldn’t go wide for long.
I made to steer onto the main road leading out of the camp, but decided against it at the last moment. That would give them the advantage, as they would know where we were heading and could plan accordingly. So instead I yanked the wheel to the left. I glanced across at Sarah, and saw she had her fists curled up in her lap from the suddenness of the manoeuvre. ‘Sorry!’ I shouted, as we bumped across the ground and through a string of low shrubbery.
Glancing in the rear-view mirror, I saw that there were now several vehicles in pursuit: at least three, but there was a shroud of early morning mist so there might have been more behind them. There was a rough path through the brush straight ahead, but looking to my right I glimpsed a tiny segment of pale blue in the darkness and suddenly realized we were on a bluff overlooking water. There was our chance.
I started slowing the engine and shouted out to Sarah to jump out. She didn’t hear me, so I told her again, screaming it out. She looked at me in terror, but nodded, and on the count of three I opened my door and leapt to the earth, hoping she was doing the same.
I landed badly, a stream of stones and grit cutting into my hands and face, but I was going very fast and managed to tumble my body for several yards, lessening the impact. Sarah had already got up and was scurrying over to join me: she must have had a better landing. The Volkswagen was already beginning to veer off course, but I reckoned our pursuers wouldn’t realize we had bundled out for another second or two. We needed to get out of their line of fire in that time, and down into the rocks where they couldn’t follow us on wheels.
The surfaces of the stones were ice-cold against the soles of my feet. I started clambering down the slope, taking care not to go too fast. My body was still aching from the beating Barnes had given me, and if I slipped and fell now I wasn’t sure I’d have the strength to get up again. This was Maquis-type country, with the rocks interrupted by stiff brush, gorse and myrtle bushes. I picked out some scrub to step on, but it was spiky and I rapidly switched back to searching for stone surfaces. Sarah was just behind me and I could hear her panting with the effort.
We clawed our way down the bluff, conscious that we might be spotted at any moment. My hands were getting scratched and we were kicking up a lot of dust, which kept getting in my eyes. Above us the noise of engines died away and was replaced by the voices of men. I strained my ears to try to make out whether Severn was among them, but couldn’t hear and didn’t have time to linger. The further down we got before they realized which way we had gone, the harder it would be for them to find us. But they wouldn’t give up easily, I knew. We had to get off the island entirely.
As we approached the bottom of the slope, the water stretched out before us in a small bay, and my heart lifted a little. I couldn’t yet see any boats, but we should be able to swim far enough away to find one, or some other form of transport. But then I turned and saw Sarah staggering behind me, her chest shivering beneath the thin dress, and the panic rose in me again.
‘You go!’ she called out in a hoarse whisper. I shook my head and looked around desperately. The voices were still above us, but they didn’t seem to have figured out which way we had gone yet. A large structure, a circular stone tower, suddenly loomed out of the mist on a plateau not more than a dozen feet away from us. My first thought was that it was another hallucination, but it looked far too real and it triggered something at the back of my mind. Yes, I had seen several of these on my previous trip. I couldn’t remember what they were called, but they had been used by the island’s prehistoric inhabitants, I seemed to recall, for shelter against potential invaders.
Well, we needed shelter now. If they hadn’t seen which way we had come down the slope, we might just be in luck, as they would no longer have the chance to spot us and we’d also be able to catch our breath and perhaps get some strength back. There was, hopefully, simply too much ground for them to cover, and they would have to conclude eventually that we had got away from them. Then again, if they had already seen which way we’d gone, we might be making a fatal mistake by stopping, as they could simply come in and scoop us up.
I couldn’t hear the voices any more, so decided to risk it. I took Sarah by the arm and we headed towards the narrow entrance of the shelter, a
nd into a very dimly lit passageway. I remembered that these places were built from stones simply piled up on top of each other, and suddenly wondered how solid they were.
At the end of the passageway we came to a staircase, which we started to climb. The place was dank and cold, and the only light filtered through a few tiny windows. About halfway up I heard a faint buzzing in the background, which grew to a drone.
A helicopter was coming our way.
I looked through one of the windows. It was a camouflaged Sea King, or an Italian version of it. I turned to Sarah, who had started shaking, her breaths coming out in sobs.
‘It’s all right,’ I whispered. ‘We’ll be all right.’
But the obvious lie made her even more nervous and she started making more noise. I looked through a slat again – the helicopter had started to descend, and was now hovering a hundred feet or so away, like a giant and sinister wasp.
I took Sarah in my arms, letting her bury her head in my chest, stifling her sounds. ‘You must be quiet,’ I said, and held her as firmly as I could, willing her to stop shaking. The sweat was pouring off me now, and I prayed that the helicopter would leave. We stayed in that position for what seemed like an eternity, but then Sarah suddenly looked up from my chest. There had been a noise downstairs.
Someone had come in.
*
We sat, huddled, hardly daring to breathe, and listened to the footsteps below us. I realized we were on a level circling the exterior of the structure. It might take them a little while to figure that out, too, so perhaps once they started climbing we could cross to the other side, take the stairs back down and slip out. Only… I glanced through the slat again: the helicopter was still there, and would no doubt be equipped with machine-guns. Our only hope, then, was that they wouldn’t realize we were in here, and would leave to check somewhere else. But the footsteps sounded very sure, and were moving closer to us by the moment.
