Red to Black

by Alex Dryden

  They know much, Finn observes, but from the line of questioning, he hazards a guess that they don’t know about his meeting with Dieter or his trip to Luxembourg.

  ‘Been frisked?’ Adrian suddenly asks. ‘Have they gone through all your hidden pockets?’ he adds sarcastically.

  ‘Your boys took everything I have, Adrian,’ Finn says.

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘Nothing much except a Eurostar ticket and some money,’ Finn answers. ‘And a bag of dirty clothes.’

  He has cached the box that Dieter gave him somewhere, before returning to England.

  ‘No receipts from some nice gasthaus in the forest, then?’ Adrian says. ‘No train ticket from Frankfurt?’

  ‘Nothing, no. I was on holiday. I only keep stuff I can put against tax.’

  ‘Convenient,’ the Oxford recruit says, and receives a look from Adrian of such histrionically exaggerated admiration that it mocks the boy and reduces him, as intended, to blushing silence.

  They’re angry that he’s gone abroad against their friendly but explicit instructions. Adrian has an energy pumping off his body that would melt a small snowfield. Finn knows Adrian’s rage without observing anything. Adrian feels let down, too, he guesses.

  So Finn tells them he’s been clearing his head, walking in the Hartz Forest, near the old border, saying goodbye to his old life.

  They didn’t believe him, but what could they do.

  ‘Why didn’t you go walking in the Pennines?’ the young recruit is emboldened to ask him.

  ‘It’s not next to the Iron Curtain,’ Finn says.

  ‘Neither is the Hartz Forest,’ the recruit says, a little too quickly. ‘Not any more. Not for eleven years, since eighty-nine.’

  Finn shrugs. ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ he says.

  And then the real purpose of his abduction from Waterloo station enters the proceedings. In a carefully timed pause, Adrian, the Desk head, old friend, and Finn’s long-time ‘spiritual’ adviser, looks up at him and loosens his tie, as if they are all enjoying a balmy spring morning. He snaps the toothpick in two.

  Adrian, as Finn describes him, is a red-faced man of middling height, who wears an ordinary-looking grey suit, white shirt, red tie. Finn says Adrian wears red ties because they dampen the glow of his well-lunched face, which has the jolly ruddiness of the Laughing Cavalier, he says. Adrian is an abrupt, sharp and, on the face of it, jovial fellow, coming to the end of a long and distinguished career at the Service—with still the possibility of the ultimate promotion—and, before his Service career began, a leading figure in Military Intelligence. He’s served in the SAS in several of the British postcolonial wars in Africa, the Middle East and the Far East, but still had the time after they were all finished to rise very nearly to the top of SIS, or MI6, whichever you prefer.

  Finn told me once that early on in their relationship he’d asked Adrian what he did in his spare time at his country house. Pheasant shooting, perhaps?

  ‘When you’ve shot as many darkies as I have,’ Adrian informed him, ‘banging away at the odd pheasant doesn’t really cut the mustard.’

  But Adrian hides behind this façade of military bluster. It is an artificial construct that lulls others into a belief that his mind is less acute than he sounds. For behind the barked sentences and the politically incorrect sentiments lies a mind as sharp as a mussel shell. And Finn agrees with this estimate. Finn has a great admiration for Adrian’s intellect, if nothing else about him, and he wouldn’t have had if his boss were a fool.

  Adrian recruited Finn and there exists between them that special relationship that exists between a recruiter and his subject; like a father Adrian has sought to make Finn in his own image, but like a proud father, too, he admires the differences between them. When Adrian recruited Finn, Finn was Adrian’s shapeless clay, whom he has sought to fashion into a worthy object of his attention. If Finn has let Adrian down with his recent Moscow debacle, Adrian doesn’t show it.

  But-so easy to forget-Adrian is also completely ruthless. His generally jovial bonhomie is a convenient disguise for that. Finn was scared at the beginning of his time in the Service of getting on the wrong side of Adrian and he has cultivated a sufficient, though cunningly insubordinate, friendship with Adrian so that finally Finn believes he has manoeuvred Adrian into the role of older brother rather than father.

  Either way, he has let Adrian down now and Adrian doesn’t like anyone to let him down.

  And so now, at the house in Hackney, Adrian loosens his tie, undoes the top button of his shirt and reaches the reason for his presence at this otherwise routine telling-off of a wandering ex-intelligence officer.

  ‘You’ve been a good officer, Finn,’ Adrian says, so gently it puts Finn on his guard. ‘Very good. Exceptional. Your work in Moscow could have been done by no one else, in my opinion. Extremely sensitive stuff and well handled from start to finish. I’m very proud of you.’

  ‘Thank you, Adrian.’

  ‘Your style may not have been to everyone’s taste, but it was to mine. But that doesn’t matter. You achieved great results.’

  This time Finn doesn’t reply, but inclines his head slightly to acknowledge such unusually high praise from Adrian.

  ‘Never mind the way it all ended. It takes nothing away from your achievements, my boy,’ Adrian says.

  ‘I’m sorry for the way it ended too,’ Finn says, and in this room he means it. ‘For what it’s worth,’ he adds.

  But Adrian ignores this, either because Finn’s regret is not actually worth anything to him, or simply because he doesn’t like to be interrupted when he has the floor.

  ‘So I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Finn,’ Adrian says quietly. ‘It’s come as quite a blow.’ Adrian sweeps back his lank forelock. ‘Finn, I’m afraid Mikhail was a fraud. Has been all along, I’m sorry to say. It’s come as a great shock to everyone and I know that will include you, above all.’

  The young recruit nods slowly and looks down at the table, as if they’re mourning a colleague, as, in a sense, they are.

  Finn doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything. He is stunned. He knows exactly what Adrian is saying, who Adrian is talking about.

  ‘Yes,’ Adrian says cautiously and observes Finn closely. ‘It’s a confusing thing to hear, I agree,’ he continues, injecting a note of sympathy into his voice that fools nobody. But Adrian doesn’t look like a man who’s ever been confused, doubtful or even in two minds about anything in his life.

  ‘Mikhail has been very useful,’ he continues. ‘A very clever source indeed. And, to us, a very expensive double agent for many years now,’ Adrian says.

  Finn watches Adrian’s fingers tap irritably on the table.

  ‘I’m not saying Mikhail hasn’t provided us with good material, you understand. From time to time,’ Adrian says breezily. ‘Of course he has. That’s why he’s been so bloody successful. He gave us- you’- Adrian flatteringly nods across the table to Finn- ‘some very useful material, valuable both to us and to our friends in Gros-venor Square’ by which Adrian means the Americans. ‘But the big stuff which we- which you too, I know, Finn- set such store by, all this turns out to be the fruits of so much KGB inter-clan warfare and, to be honest, it doesn’t take much light to be shone on it to reveal the flaws.’

  Adrian pauses for his peroration.

  ‘I’m afraid Mikhail allowed this internecine intrigue in the KGB to cloud his judgement on the issues that were most important to us. Mikhail’s been fighting his corner in an internal battle for one KGB clan’s victory over another. In doing so, he’s used us, rather than the other way round.’

  Leaning back in his chair and at last stopping the tapping of his fingers by cradling his hands together across his chest, Adrian sighs.

  ‘This part of Mikhail’s intelligence-the crucial part-is, to coin a phrase, absolutely useless,’ Adrian finishes with a flourish, joining his fingers in a Gothic arch.

  Perhaps Finn is too quick in
his acceptance of what Adrian has said, or doesn’t break into the protest of anger or frustration that Adrian expects, for Adrian doesn’t take his eyes off him for a second, searching to see how the news is being received. After all, to Finn and all the other people in the room, Mikhail is the apex of Finn’s career, the source that has sustained him for so long. Finn should be devastated. Mikhail is the reason he was kept in place in Moscow for seven difficult, fraught and dangerous years. To the irritation of the Service’s chiefs, Finn was the only person Mikhail ever agreed to communicate with.

  But Adrian is sharp. He sees an uncharacteristic meekness in Finn’s calm that suggests his humble acceptance of this momentous news. And Finn sees in Adrian’s eyes that he doesn’t believe that Finn has bought the story. Adrian knows or suspects that Finn is agreeing for the sake of agreeing and that Finn’s complicity in this extraordinary story that he has just unfolded is not guaranteed.

  So he asks Finn to lunch with him, and this is something that wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been pre-planned; Adrian’s diary is stiff with lunches. Adrian doesn’t believe that Finn is really in the loop at all, that he accepts the debunking of Mikhail.

  Outside the terraced Hackney house, the two of them step into a waiting grey car that matches Adrian’s suit and are whisked towards the West End.

  ‘I didn’t want to break this to you quite so abruptly,’ Adrian says, and for once avoids in this statement his habitual abruptness. ‘But you understand it couldn’t really wait. It’s too important. It draws a line under your excellent career, Finn, truly excellent career. I know now it must seem to be a deeply unsatisfactory line. But it’s not. You’re one of the best officers I’ve ever had, and I mean that as a friend, not just your boss. Right now, I understand, it must seem a terrible blow to you. You’re thinking that those last years in Moscow were wasted. Well, they weren’t. You got hold of a lot of excellent material for us. Perhaps Mikhail was too good to be true. I should have spotted that. That was my mistake, Finn, not yours. You did everything right, everything. You mustn’t beat yourself up about it. I know you won’t, I know you’re too tough for that. You’re one of us,’ Adrian says at last, by which untrue flattery he means, Finn thinks, one of a notional group of exceptional superheroes like Adrian who, camouflaged and with their faces blacked out, go about Her Majesty’s business in the darkest, most dangerous trouble spots of the world.

  ‘Fancy a walk through the park?’ Adrian says and, without waiting for a reply, barks at the driver to drive under Admiralty Arch and drop them just before the fountain by Buckingham Palace.

  They walk up through Green Park, parallel to St James’s in the leafless grey of a London winter day. Adrian is attentive, full of friendship, says how he really wants to see a great deal of Finn, that they have more than just the Service that binds them.

  But Finn is still in shock. He says little. His defences are down. Because he knows. He knows that he is being fed a lie and Adrian knows he knows.

  They turn into St James’s and enter the white portals of Boodles.

  ‘Thank God you’re wearing a decent suit,’ Adrian jokes. ‘Some of our new recruits these days! I don’t know if they even possess one.’

  They walk through the sitting room of the gentlemen’s club to the small, cosy bar and Adrian greets several other members along the way. Adrian lunches and dines at Boodles with regularity. He lives in the country, but stays up during the week in town and Boodles is his common room.

  ‘I’ll have a glass of wine,’ Adrian tells the barman, who knows what wine he wants and in what size glass–large. ‘What’ll you have?’ he says to Finn. ‘Something strong, I should think.’

  ‘I’ll have a Moscow Mule,’ Finn says and for a moment Adrian is knocked off the treadmill of his platitudes. To Adrian, a mule is a drug mule. Is Finn referring to a man with drugs hidden up his arse arriving by plane from Russia? But Adrian swiftly conceals his confusion.

  ‘Something they feed you at one of your more louche clubs, is it?’ he says.

  Finn describes the cocktail and it causes quite a comical stir. One of Adrian’s friends from a City bank says he’ll have one too and then they tell the barman to mix a jug. And suddenly they’re in a conclave, Adrian, Finn, the banker and some other financial big shots, Adrian at the centre, a real partygoer—–a real goer, Finn thinks. He’s seen Adrian in the office chasing skirt, but he’s just as useful at rallying a bunch of all-male lunchtime drinkers around him.

  Finn is knocked off balance and can’t recover from what he’s been told. Perhaps Adrian knows he will be knocked sideways. In normal circumstances, the throng of public school City board directors only makes Finn rise to the occasion, to be as public school, as City board director as the next man. He’s lunched with Adrian here many times before, after all. But now he feels out of his depth, his focus is lost, the game is getting on top of him and he sympathises for a moment with one or two of the Service’s senior but grammar-school figures whom he normally scorns for letting themselves be browbeaten by their public schoolboy colleagues. This, perhaps, is what snaps Finn out of his shock: the need to perform, to be as good as anyone.

  ‘What about this Russian fellow?’ the banker asks Adrian, in a break in the inconsequential chat. ‘The aluminium tycoon, Pavel Drachevsky. Is he good for it? Will he make a proper company that can list here in London, d’you think?’

  ‘More Finn’s department than mine, I’m afraid,’ Adrian replies. ‘He’s been our Trade Secretary out there for donkey’s years.’

  ‘Second Trade Secretary,’ Finn corrects him, and wonders what Adrian’s cover is in Boodles, or if he even has a cover here. The crazy notion flashes through Finn’s mind that Boodles is a sort of official dining room for MI6.

  ‘What d’you think?’ the banker asks Finn. ‘We’ve got to watch these chaps now, they’ve snapped up everything of value in Russia.’

  ‘Are you an investor?’ Finn replies gamely. The throng laughs.

  ‘Wouldn’t know how to,’ the banker says. ‘But I hear Rothschild’s are nosing around this chap,’ he adds seriously, and there is clearly a reason for his interest. ‘He must be better than some of the other candidates.’

  ‘Rothschild’s have a history in Russia,’ Finn says. ‘They’re the only people who ever sued the Tsar, back in the 1860s. They got a lot of points for that.’

  ‘And won, no doubt.’

  ‘Yes, they won. Russians couldn’t believe it. The Tsar, a god, had been successfully sued. Rothschild’s balanced it out nicely by suing the Pope too.’

  ‘If Rothschild’s are interested in Drachevsky, they must be on to something, don’t you reckon?’ the banker prompts Finn.

  ‘The Russian oligarchs are still sorting out what they legally own and what they don’t legally own,’ Finn says carefully. ‘Pavel Drachevsky has half of Russia’s aluminium, but he’s sharing it with some other co-owners. One of the men connected with the company’s gone to jail. Others aren’t so easy to deal with. There’s a guy in Israel who really holds the strings. And then there’s Stepanovich, who has a finger in the pie. Maybe others. If Drachevsky can consolidate, my guess is he’ll look to London for a listing. In time. The rules are more lax here than in the States.’

  ‘That so?’ someone says.

  ‘Surely you mean “relaxed”,’ another Savile Row suit says. ‘The rules are more relaxed.’

  Everyone laughs at this.

  ‘The Russians like it here,’ Finn persists unnecessarily, and receives a warning shot from Adrian, ‘because, unlike the Yanks, we don’t ask them too many difficult questions. The City will welcome them with open arms when they start to arrive, no questions asked.’

  It is the winter at the end of the year 2000 and London is fascinated by gaining access to the oligarchs, their raw materials and their unprecedented wealth. The City of London has spotted a gold seam for several years now and, despite the occasional warnings, London wants into Russia more than ever.


  Adrian smiles warmly at his protégé’s expertise, but nevertheless takes him by the arm and they steer through the throng like joined contestants in a three-legged race.

  Once in the dining room they sit down at a white-napped table in a corner, away from other ears, and the menus are brought, Finn- and Adrian- as always admiring the waitresses the club gets on the cheap from Eastern Europe.

  Finn has potted shrimp and Adrian agrees rather than chooses. They order steak and kidney pie to follow.

  Adrian leans across the table.

  ‘Remember ninety-five?’ he says, not wasting any time, Finn notices. ‘Six years after the Wall came down? Russia was in a total mess. Yeltsin was all over the place, gangsters roamed the streets like wolves and the bubble was going to burst. Russia was going bankrupt and the Communists looked like they might win the next election, get back into power.’ Adrian doesn’t wait for a reply. ‘What they needed was hard currency to save the nation. The rich were getting their money out of Russia as fast as they could because they feared the return of the old regime.’

  ‘The KGB spirited out four hundred billion dollars, according to our estimate,’ Finn says.

  ‘Well, we like to say it was the KGB,’ Adrian says vaguely. ‘But it was business interests, organised crime, you name it. Anyway, what Russia needed was our help to save the situation. The oligarchs rallied round Yeltsin to keep him in power and Clinton got together with the heads of the world’s three biggest aluminium producers and told them to fix a price. Completely illegal, of course. But brilliant. And the right thing to do. The price was fixed so the Russians could sell their aluminium at a good price and save the economy. That’s what happened. Russia was saved from a return to Communism. Clinton rewarded the head of Alcoa, the world’s biggest aluminium company, with a job running the US Treasury. There was a hell of a stink, the FBI got involved, all the letter-of-the-law sort of people were up in arms. But Clinton was right. He saw the big picture.’

  This is a most subtle approach, Finn thinks. Adrian knows that Finn admires Clinton. Adrian has called Finn a bleeding heart liberal on many occasions and, once, even introduced him as a ‘commie student type’, to much laughter. The fact that Adrian, in his praise of the former president, actually despises Clinton for ‘avoiding the draft’ is, for the moment, forgotten.