Patriots

by Kevin Doherty

  Gorbachev looked at him in silence for a moment.

  ‘I commend your decision,’ he said at last. ‘And the general’s dedication. This operation is crucial to the future of Russia and the USSR.’

  Chebrikov allowed no outward sign of his relief to show. ‘Thank you, comrade General Secretary,’ he said stiffly.

  Ligachev stirred and glanced from Chebrikov to Zavarov.

  ‘We have mentioned the final phase,’ he said. ‘Will you both be ready for it?’

  Chebrikov was confident. ‘In the next few weeks my people will be sent to Tripoli with the next batch of comrade Marshal Zavarov’s military advisers. There they will await my signal.’

  Ligachev turned to Zavarov. ‘And the fleet?’

  Zavarov also was ready. ‘On manoeuvres in the Mediterranean. Within a couple of days of the Gulf of Sidra, perhaps less. We have a few stragglers from the American Sixth Fleet watching us, but nothing could happen quickly enough to block us.’

  Now, their account complete, Chebrikov turned back to Gorbachev.

  ‘In brief, comrade General Secretary,’ he summarised, ‘all aspects of the operation to date have been satisfactorily executed, and all future aspects have been prepared for. We’re in fine operational status.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s premature or complacent,’ added Zavarov, ‘to mention that it’s demonstrated how effectively our military and intelligence services can work hand in hand.’

  The marshal and the KGB chief fell silent. Ligachev settled back in his chair, through this change in position tactfully yielding control of the meeting back to Gorbachev.

  If any of them had been hoping for grand words or some other measure of congratulation from their leader, they were disappointed.

  ‘Then I await developments,’ he said. ‘You’ll keep me informed.’

  That was all. Without another word, he picked up his file of papers and rose abruptly to his feet. The others hurriedly followed suit.

  ‘Good day, comrades.’

  He’d left the room before they’d even finished returning his farewell.

  *

  ‘We’re not on dry land yet, Viktor Mikhailovich,’ Zavarov said to Chebrikov. Now that there was no one to stop him, he was fumbling for a cigarette. He found one and lit it. ‘Better pray he doesn’t get to hear about your little difficulty in the London rezidentura.’

  ‘The young cipher clerk?’ Chebrikov batted the cloud of cigarette smoke away; he seemed to be dismissing Zavarov’s anxieties at the same time. ‘I’ve already told him about that. It’s nothing more than a minor inconvenience. I’m not worried – why should Mikhail Sergeyevich be?’

  ‘A minor inconvenience? Then obviously you haven’t told him what Serov is reporting – that your cipher clerk may have wrecked everything by his exposure of Serov’s sleeper. I’ll wager you didn’t spell that out to him. And while we’re on the subject of Serov, I didn’t like all that fishing Mikhail Sergeyevich was doing about him.’

  Ligachev was frowning across at them.

  ‘Enough!’ he whispered. ‘Find a deaf office if you want to talk. Not here. And you, Georgi Fedorovich – put that cigarette out. Nowadays walls don’t just have ears – they have noses too.’

  Chuckling quietly, the three men stood up as the valets, magically appearing at that moment, stationed themselves behind their chairs and shook their outer coats open for them.

  Zavarov dropped his cigarette into his water glass as he left, and thought happy thoughts about the Zil’s well-stocked liquor cabinet.

  44

  London

  Knight’s priority was the Spetznaz photographs: to lodge them in a safe place; and to get them copied.

  A pharmacy in Victoria provided the solution to both. The manager was wary at first: he wasn’t used to down-and-outs bringing him business. But Knight produced the remains of the money that Riley the journalist had lent him and agreed to pay in advance. Many of the prints in the yellow lunch box depicted nothing that was in itself alarming: faces, locations and vehicles that were all quite innocuous unless their context was known. Even the close-ups of the Libyan, Abukhder, were scarcely recognisable from the mugshots that had appeared in the newspapers. The exceptions were the photographs of the Windlesham bombing, worthy of any sensationalist tabloid. They constituted a risk that Knight had already decided he had to take; he could see no way out of it.

  The pharmacist confirmed that he could copy the prints without having the negatives, and that he had no problem if Knight took a week or two to collect them; they would wait safely and anonymously until then in his photographic drawer. So Knight handed the prints over, paid a small fortune, and loitered as inconspicuously as he could outside the shop for half an hour or so, watching to see if the pharmacist examined the prints. He didn’t; he went to lunch and his female assistant took over.

  For a week thereafter Knight followed the same routine. He slept in Cardboard City, he ate Salvation Army meals to eke out what was left of the money, he thought about using some of what he saved to pay for showers at public baths, but never did. As for the days, he passed them not in hospital waiting areas but in a variety of public libraries, any that would let him sit in peace at a table in their reference sections. Here he wrote in a lined A4 pad, making many false starts and copying to start again. He referred to the notes he’d made at the retreat house, now giving them their true meaning through what he’d learnt from Serov. What he wrote he kept on him at all times, wrapped in a plastic food bag, and each evening he burnt the rejected material in a brazier down by Charing Cross Pier.

  Each evening he also phoned Marion Clarke. She was waiting for his call and he never had to give his name. The calls were always brief because she had no news for him.

  But on the sixth evening she said: ‘There’s a chance it might be tonight. A good chance. If he does make it, it won’t be until sometime after midnight.’

  Dear God, he thought; she’d done it.

  *

  Midnight came and went, cold and windy in the concrete labyrinths of Cardboard City. The place was packed with its usual clientele, the usual noises echoed back and forth. Knight sat in a corner by himself, his mackintosh buttoned tight about him, a few layers of cardboard between him and the numbing floor.

  At one o’clock there was a flurry of movement along the tunnel. Knight sat abruptly forward, staring and listening hard. A low murmur of voices reached him, completely different voices from those which usually punctuated the night.

  He rose to a crouch and strained to see what was going on. The dim security lights set into the tunnel’s ceiling were next to useless. All that was clear was that people, he had no idea yet how many, had congregated at the far end. Their silhouettes blocked out the glow that was usually visible from the river and embankment.

  The movement and murmur of conversation drew nearer. It was a stop–go kind of progress as the group, four strong as he could now see, halted occasionally to chat among themselves; there was the occasional gruff interjection as they brought one of the tunnel’s awake or more sober residents into their conversation.

  The four men were walking two in front, two behind as they approached. Knight reckoned that the man for whom he was waiting would be one of the pair in front. The two behind would be his personal bodyguards.

  They stepped into clear view at last and there was no longer any doubt. Knight rose to his feet and stepped quickly over to the man in the Barbour jacket.

  The royal visitor showed no alarm, but his bodyguards sent cardboard bedding flying left and right as they leapt forward to seize Knight.

  ‘You must be Mr Knight,’ the man said calmly. ‘Mrs Clarke has told me about you. You have a remarkable story that you would like to tell me, I believe?’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Knight said.

  *

  First to be called the following morning was the Conservative Party chairman. After him were the leaders of the three main parliamentary Opposition parties. The Lord H
igh Chancellor made the phone calls personally. The Liberal leader, at his home in the Borders, was flown south by RAF jet, the others, all based in London or the Home Counties, were fetched by police cars to Westminster.

  The constitutional crisis that brought them together had thrust a critical role on the Lord Chancellor. His was the oldest office in the kingdom, older than the Norman Conquest. As President of the Supreme Court of Judicature, the nine judges in the House of Lords who made up the final court of appeal in the land, he was also the lord of the Law Lords themselves: there was no higher legal authority. In the matter of calming the constitutional waters that the government’s senior ministers had stirred up, there was no one else on whom the task could fall.

  On that Saturday the four politicians came to his office behind Chancellor’s Court in the Palace of Westminster and listened with growing repugnance and dismay as the truth behind Ibn’s assassination unfolded.

  ‘Why?’ asked the Conservative chairman, his shoulders sagging. ‘Why on earth did they do it?’

  The Lord Chancellor peered at him over the top of his gold-rimmed glasses. ‘They couldn’t risk letting the Saudi Arabian coup go ahead.’

  ‘But they only knew about it because the Soviets fed it to them as part of the set-up. Our intelligence people and the Americans’ have been played for idiots.’

  The Lord Chancellor nodded. ‘I cannot deny that. They felt that they had two choices: tell the Saudis or sort it out themselves. They judged that the first was no good – King Fahd would merely have executed his renegade prince, the Ibn fellow, or flung him in prison. Ibn was already a focus for fundamentalist forces – he would have become a martyr for his cause. They concluded that the only safe thing was to remove him permanently and arrange to put the blame on Gadaffi. So they kidnapped the young Libyan, Abukhder, and constructed what they hoped would be enough circumstantial evidence to make his guilt obvious.’

  ‘Killing him in the process,’ the Liberal said.

  ‘Sadly, yes. One more death among many. The intention was that the other Arab nations would despise Gadaffi for assassinating one of their own. That would negate his plan to be some sort of chieftain of them all. Also, with Ibn out of the way, there could be no question of the Saudi Arabian coup going ahead.’

  ‘And all the time they were doing everything the bloody Soviets wanted. The cretins.’

  ‘Nothing to add to that,’ the Lord Chancellor said mildly.

  ‘The government must resign.’ It was the Labour leader this time. The others turned to stare at him.

  ‘If it won’t do so voluntarily, it must be dissolved.’

  The Conservative made to reply but the Lord Chancellor held up his hand to stop him. ‘Dissolved? How?’

  ‘Crown prerogative.’

  The Lord Chancellor let out a long sigh and shook his head. He had said nothing about how the facts behind Ibn’s killing had reached him: nothing about Edmund Knight nor the man who had met with him and then dragged the Lord Chancellor from his bed, demanding this meeting and the decisions that had to be made at it. They were matters that no politician needed to know; politicians had done enough already.

  ‘Involving the Crown would be a legal quagmire,’ the Lord Chancellor said. ‘The Crown wouldn’t want to be brought into something like that. It could be accused of unwarranted interference with the democratic process. Leave the Crown out of it.’

  ‘A straight vote of censure, then. One of us will move a censure debate, the others will back him. The whips will be powerless in the face of national opinion and pressure from the media. We’ll carry the vote easily.’

  Content to have won his previous point, the Lord Chancellor sat back as they debated this suggestion. It was the Social Democrat who brought it to a conclusion.

  ‘No.’ Quiet though it was, the single word silenced the others. ‘No, we won’t have a vote of censure. National opinion? Media pressure?’ The Democrat shook his head. ‘No. What this government has done is beyond all excuse; but if we expose it we’ll undermine not just it but the country’s standing in the eyes of the civilised world. The standing of our allies as well. The Soviets have duped us – we’d be a laughing stock if what has happened wasn’t so obscene. The same goes for the intelligence services, America’s and our own. If we disclose anything, we’ll make it impossible for them to function with any effectiveness ever again. There’ll be an outcry here for greater controls, for making the intelligence services more accountable – demands for select committees, public enquiries that will rumble on for years and cost millions and accomplish nothing, increased oversight that will simply cripple our intelligence services – fools though they’ve been, they’re our fools and we need them sorely – and God knows what else.’ He shook his head sombrely again. ‘That’s a high price to pay for vengeance on a rogue prime minister and a few madmen. The simple fact is, neither Washington nor ourselves must ever let this get out.’

  The Lord Chancellor nodded, letting them know that he found this a satisfactory conclusion. Now there was just one more point to cover, one more safeguard to arrange.

  ‘One last thing,’ he began. ‘Best you should know everything. The fact is, we’re in an odd legal position ourselves. Concerning this meeting.’

  They looked at him, waiting.

  ‘The government of the day hasn’t been dissolved or suspended. Nor, as we’ve discussed, is it likely to be. Yet we must take certain actions – executive actions – on its behalf. But it has not given us the authority to do so.’ He sat back in his big wooden chair and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his baggy trousers, where they drummed up and down on his thighs for a moment while he chose his words. ‘Technically, it is conceivable that we are all committing treason.’

  The silence that followed lasted for the best part of a minute. Then the Labour leader began to laugh.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  The Chancellor shrugged. The laughter petered out.

  ‘You’ve boxed us in,’ the Liberal said bitterly.

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘We’re damned if we reveal what you’ve told us or what action we agree on, and damned if we don’t.’

  ‘Congratulations, Lord Chancellor.’ This now from the Labour man, whose face was crimson with rage. ‘You must be proud. You’ve served your nation well this day.’

  ‘There’s something I want to ask,’ the Social Democrat said slowly. ‘We’ve heard some insane things today. I hope you’ll understand this question in the light of them.’ He paused. ‘Bill Clarke’s death. That was about the same time as all of this was going on. I – all of us, probably – heard some outlandish stories that were circulating in the Bar and the Tea Room –’

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake!’ The Conservative was shaking his head despairingly. ‘You don’t give any credence to those slanders, do you?’

  ‘What I give credence to is neither here nor there – particularly after today. Could I just ask – Clarke’s death wasn’t anything to do with this, was it?’

  The Lord Chancellor took his glasses off slowly and slipped them back in his pocket. Then he folded his hands and stared hard at all of them.

  ‘That would be a foul suggestion for anyone to make,’ he said coldly. ‘We have had enough unpalatable fare on our plates this morning without looking for more. William Clarke died in a road accident – I have no evidence whatever to the contrary.’

  The Conservative settled comfortably back in his chair.

  The Democrat shrugged indifferently. ‘Just wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth.’

  ‘Gentlemen,’ the Lord Chancellor said. ‘We come now to the matter of the further action on which we must agree. It concerns our Libyan friend, Gadaffi. According to my information, the worst is yet to come. We must decide on what we are going to do to prevent it and what assistance we require from our American colleagues. Now that we’re clear where we all stand, shall we turn to that?’

  No one dared raise any objections.
/>   *

  Gaunt was phoned that weekend as well; not, however, by the Lord Chancellor.

  What he heard seemed at first to please him.

  ‘Given himself up?’ he repeated with relish. ‘That’s excellent –’

  His features froze.

  ‘Who did you say? Who did he give himself up to?’

  As the answer was repeated, he sat slowly down in his study chair.

  ‘What kind of complications?’

  He listened very hard for several minutes. His long head fell gradually forward until his chin touched his chest and he was staring at the rosewood surface of his desk.

  When at last he spoke again, his voice, despite having said so little, was hoarse.

  ‘I’ll leave at once, Prime Minister.’

  His hand trembled as he replaced the phone. When he raised his face, it was pale.

  He didn’t leave at once, as he’d promised. He sat on for five or ten minutes, staring across the room at nothing.

  *

  In the comfort of his hotel suite in central London, Serov welcomed the call that came through to him.

  ‘I’ve found my way in,’ the voice on the line said. ‘I’m progressing matters exactly as we discussed. I expect you to honour your terms in the same way.’

  There was no more. Serov hung up.

  ‘I knew you were resourceful, Boyar,’ he said.

  Events were drawing to their conclusion. Precisely as he had planned them. It was a time for congratulation.

  But he felt no pleasure; only the impending sense of loss. He poured a stiff bourbon and unlocked one of his suitcases. Within was the steel-lined briefcase that he’d packed before leaving his Moscow apartment. He sprung the combination locks and opened it flat.

  The photograph album lay beneath a clutch of telexes and bank statements that spilled across the table as he drew the album out and spread it open.

  The bourbon stung his throat; he knocked back another large mouthful and began to flick through the pages. Katarina, Galina, Katarina, then only Galina. Blonde hair, green eyes. Devastating.