The Cambridge Theorem

by Tony Cape

  “Yes, yes that’s correct,” said Hawken. “I have been thinking. Dr. Poole, a botany chap, is away at Harvard on sabbatical this term and you could use his rooms to conduct further inquiries, if you feel that is necessary. I suspect Dr. Davies is in his rooms. I could arrange for you to speak with him now, if you wish.”

  Smailes assented, and walked over to the window overlooking the court as Hawken made phone calls. The scene was perfectly normal. Two young women locked in earnest conversation were moving hurriedly past a group of Japanese tourists, all wearing identical tan raincoats. A stout man with a walking stick was gesticulating at the large clock above the porter’s lodge and haranguing them. Hawken joined him.

  “Well then, that’s all fixed. I’m sorry if I seem a little business-like about all this. But someone has to take the larger view.”

  Smailes ignored the remark. “Those young women there—I noticed them outside Bowles’ staircase too. Are there women students at this college?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so,” said Hawken, resuming his tone of wintry displeasure. “Three years ago. Couldn’t hold out any longer, although God knows, I was in favor of doing so. Not that I object to female students, of course. Frightfully bright, some of them. But they have their own colleges, and I never saw any point in mixing things up. Bloody distracting for the men, if you ask me.”

  “Would seem more natural to me,” said Smailes casually. “It’s mixed out there in the world, too.”

  “Well, indeed, Sergeant Smailes. But St. Margaret’s is in the business of serious scholarship, and personally I have never felt that the presence of women enhanced that aim.”

  “You mean men study better if they’re celibate?” asked Smailes in disbelief.

  “Damn it man, if any chap from this college wants a woman, he can bloody well go up to London and buy one, as we all did,” Hawken exploded.

  Smailes gaped at him but could find no reply. There was an awkward silence as Hawken strode back across the room to pick up Smailes’ coat.

  “Just a couple of things, Dr. Hawken,” said Smailes, not knowing in quite what tone to proceed. “Did you see the note the young man left?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “It was in his typewriter. It said ‘They came back.’ Do you know what he meant?”

  “No I’m afraid I do not. As I have told you, I did not know this young man very well,” said Hawken.

  He took his coat from Hawken’s outstretched hand. There was no longer any ceremony in Hawken’s manner.

  “I will show you Dr. Poole’s rooms. Dr. Davies is on his way over.”

  “One last thing. Will you try and determine if anyone saw Bowles last night? We always try and find out as much as we can for the report to the coroner, and for the family.”

  “Certainly. I will ask Mr. Beecroft to see to it right away.” He led the detective out of the room.

  The old spy shifted his weight again on the hard chair and felt nervously for the carbon copy of his memo in his inside pocket. It was unnecessary, since he knew its contents by heart, but he wanted to be prepared if a particular word or phrasing were queried. He had met the chairman many times during the fourteen years of his tenure, but not usually alone, and not usually in the famous third floor office of the Lubianka. He was aching for a cigarette, but forced his attention elsewhere, to survey the conference room that formed an outer office of the chairman’s suite. At intervals along the green baize of the huge table were small crystal goblets, each containing a sheaf of perfectly sharpened pencils. On the wall opposite the windows was the large, mandatory portrait of Lenin. Above the double walnut doors by which he had entered was a modern, rectangular clock, also of walnut. The time was almost ten twenty. The only other persons in the room were the uniformed guard at attention by the double doors and the rodent-faced assistant seated impassively at the small desk just outside the door to the private office.

  He touched the memo with his fingertips and cleared his throat. He was proud of it. He had always had a mature ease with written expression, and had begun and ended his career in the West as a journalist. He had taken considerable pains to learn the nuance of Russian prose, and could now write better in his adopted language than many native officers. He had long dispensed with translators, and now employed only Rufa to review his grammar and syntax. He looked at the handsome panelled door to the chairman’s private office and smiled. When the chairman had taken charge in the late sixties, the only means of entry to his inner sanctum was through a shkaf, a contraption that resembled an antique wardrobe. The entrant stepped into the shkaf and total darkness, then an assistant activated the mechanism that opened the panel into the inner office. His first order as KGB chairman had been to have the shkaf demolished, and replaced with an ordinary door. It had been a symbolic beginning, for in the ensuing years the KGB had been transformed from a backward troupe of louts and criminals into an elite corps that now attracted the most talented of Moscow’s graduates. For all the puzzling contradictions of his character, the chairman was a man of vision, a vision which might yet work a profound transformation on Soviet society.

  The assistant responded to a barely audible buzz on his handset and rose to open the panelled door. The ugly little man turned and silently gestured for the old spy to enter.

  His nervousness left him as he strode quickly to accept the proferred handshake from the second most powerful man in the Soviet Union. The tall, stooped figure in a dark business suit smiled slightly as he stood behind the huge desk and indicated a chair with a courteous hand. The men sat down in silence, and the chairman resumed his contemplation of the memorandum in front of him. The Englishman crossed his legs and looked around the room.

  The office was a reflection of the enigma of the man himself. The only adornments were the large portrait of Feliks Dzerzhinsky above the marble mantel, and a beautiful wooden statue of Don Quixote on his desk. Side by side, the images of the fearsome founder of the Cheka, Lenin’s secret police, and the hopelessly pure chevalier, the emblem of humanity’s unquenchable idealism. Is this how the chairman saw himself, a fabulous knight tilting against endless brutish realities of the police state? He was compounded of contradictions; daring and conservative, enlightened and pitiless, a man who wrote poetry to his friends and family and imprisoned dissidents in psychiatric hospitals. The silver hair and black-rimmed glasses made him seem kindly and professorial, but his reputation for cruelty made him universally feared. He stopped reading and looked up.

  “You present an eloquent case, comrade colonel,” he said, making fastidious distinction between the spy’s status, which was general, and his rank, which was colonel.

  “I serve the Soviet Union,” the old spy replied, and both men smiled. It was the standard declamation, usually barked at attention when receiving a decoration or promotion. The old spy pronounced the formula in his quiet, self-deprecating way, and the chairman nodded in appreciation.

  “Indeed, most well. But I fear in this case your suggestion seems unorthodox.” The chairman’s bland expression did not change.

  The old spy maintained an even and unassertive tone. “To use Department Five cannot work at this stage. Cambridge is a closed society. Our response must be suitable for such an environment. All we are talking about is a surveillance operation.”

  “And if enforcement is needed?”

  “There has been some training.”

  The chairman relaxed his gaze and scanned the memorandum again. The old spy felt a trace of concern that he was perceived as merely squeamish, his gentleman’s objection to mokrei dela, to wet affairs, being well known.

  “Some. But our comrades are most proud of their accomplishments at the Sorge Institute. They do not still wear baggy suits and speak English like Cossacks.”

  The old spy felt discomfitted by the accusation, but stroked his cheek and said nothing.

  “Do you know what will be said at First? They will say that our British comrade grows sentimental with his years, that
he thinks of his university days and his judgement becomes clouded.”

  “Why would they know?”

  “They will know,” said the chairman quietly.

  Again the old spy chose to say nothing, knowing that the chairman’s decision was made, and that this interview was merely a formality, a warning that if the mission were approved and failed it would be tagged deliberately to him.

  “I have given the question much thought, and I believe I am right. Conrad’s identity must be protected at all costs.”

  “Except from our gebist?” asked the chairman, using the slang term for agent, and invoking the inevitable question of consequences.

  “If the danger passes, our gebist should be amply rewarded. Would we not do the same for our Sorge Institute comrades?” The rejoinder had no effect on the chairman’s expression, and he knew he could take the matter no further. But he felt if the chairman acceded, he would be acknowledging an implicit condition. Again silence spread out between them and the chairman flicked to the second page of the report.

  “It is agreed. We will make this our initial response. I will instruct Veleshin to make arrangements. Do you wish to be involved with briefing?”

  Suddenly flushed with surprise and embarassment, the old spy’s lifelong stammer, long quiescent, returned. “I th…think not. The t…travel, at my age. Perhaps a word with C…Comrade Veleshin.”

  “Of course.” Unexpectedly, a warm smile lit up the impassive Slavic face. “A brilliant analysis, comrade colonel, as I have come to expect from you.”

  “Thank you, Comrade Andropov,” he said, still embarassed, but luxuriating in the unaccustomed praise.

  “Come, no need for such formality.”

  “Thank you, Yuri Vladimirovich.”

  “Thank you, Igor Andreyevich.” Both men exploded in laughter at the use of the preposterous alias that the KGB had given him all those years ago when he had first arrived, an alcoholic and nervous wreck, from Beirut.

  “Thank you, Kim. Thank you, Comrade Philby.”

  He rose and returned the chairman’s hearty handshake. With the chairman one could never be sure, but Kim Philby felt they understood each other.

  Chapter Three

  POOLE’S ROOMS were two courts away from the main court, overlooking the River Cam and the Cambridge Backs. The detective sergeant looked down at the sluggish green water flowing between the brick banks. The boat yards would not open until Easter, the following week, and the river was empty of life except for a lone duck. He could just decipher a slogan that had been painted on the bricks in foot-high white letters, long faded. “VIETNAM HOT DAMN” it said, in ugly capitals. He looked further across the expanse of lawn which swept across to Queens Road and down towards Kings College.

  Derek Smailes watched the tranquil scene and felt the centuries-old antipathy of the town towards the gown. He loathed the University, the arrogance and patronage that Nigel Hawken personified. The acres of lawn and pasture along the river had once been the center of a busy market town, before the University arrived and had commandeered everything. Now its ivory towers squatted like a gothic lizard along the river and on the center of the town, usurping the best land and commercial property, dictating terms to the elected officials of the council. It was Cambridge’s largest employer but paid its workers poorly and instilled in them a fawning subservience that infuriated Smailes. The porters’ uniforms were a mockery of his own service. Even when they had helped the college authorities in some tight spots, during the student riots of the early seventies, Cambridge police were always made to feel as if they were a distasteful last resort, representatives of the barbarism of the outside world. The tension between the town and the University had erupted into open violence on numerous occasions in history, although not during his time on the force. The most he had ever seen were isolated cases of grad-bashing, when the local skinheads broke a few teeth on Saturday nights. Like many Cambridge policemen, he secretly sympathized with the local toughs. Who was this kid Bowles anyway? Some neurotic, overprivileged brat with too many brains and too little sense. He would be glad to conclude this investigation and get back into the real world.

  He took a look around Poole’s rooms, or rather Poole’s room. It was a more modest version of Hawken’s offices; a sofa which looked as if it might convert into a bed, armchairs, coffee table, desk, telephone and bookshelves. He walked over and examined a shelf. It seemed Dr. Poole had the complete works of Desmond Bagley, in a book club edition. Smailes turned up his nose.

  He wondered if his irritation with St. Margaret’s College wasn’t in part due to his resentment at never having been to University himself. He could have gone, he knew it. He was always near the top in English, and would probably have gotten high enough marks in the languages to get accepted at a redbrick. Not Cambridge. He wouldn’t have wanted to attend this place anyway. Moral tutors indeed. And Hawken, tooling up to town for a woman. It was all quite disgusting.

  But despite his lack of formal education he had always been a bookish man, which unhappily Yvonne had resented from the start. It had seemed unimportant at first. There had been the excitement of sexual discovery, the strange miracle of Tracy’s birth, the sense of a shared predicament as they entered the unknown territory of marriage and adulthood. Sure, there had always been things they didn’t talk about, which Smailes accepted as part of the trade-off of marriage. You hang up the hunting cap, you get square meals and regular sex, and you talk about things that don’t interest you. But he had never been one to go out with the lads, and when Tracy was small and down for the night, he preferred to sit with a book in the kitchen than watch television night in and night out. Yvonne began to see it as an implicit criticism, which it wasn’t. He just preferred Thomas Hardy to stories about the neighbors during the commercials.

  When he looked back, he figured it was during the early imprisonment of his marriage that his fascination with America had really taken hold. It had begun much earlier, in his boyhood, when he would choose to accompany his Uncle Roy up to the Alconburys base just north of town rather than go with his Dad to the dog track. His mother’s brother Roy was employed as a handyman by the U.S. Air Force and would let Derek ride up with him and carry his toolbox when he worked the weekend shift. Roy would become engrossed fixing the massive steam kettles in the kitchen or tinkering with the refrigeration units in the PX, and Derek would be free to roam around. The base was a chunk of an exaggerated alien culture just miles from his home, and he would marvel at the strange accents and mannerisms, and the shocking profusion of goods on sale in the PX store. Roy would give him American coins so he could play Johnny Cash and Bobby Darin on the jukebox as he roamed the aisles along with the air force wives and their kids, or as he pressed his face against the windows to watch the huge-finned cars sailing noiselessly by on the wrong side of the road. Best of all he liked to watch the planes, the fighters and bombers and the giant transports, and the airmen themselves, which he could when Roy worked in the barracks near the runway. For young Derek Smailes, the American fliers had a mythic status. With their crewcuts and flight overalls and the bowlegged way they walked weighed down by their equipment, they were the real cowboys, infinitely more impressive than their silly counterparts on television. He would daydream about faking an accent and enlisting when he was old enough, and was broken-hearted when Roy lost his job during a budget review and their trips had to come to an end.

  To be a fan of America was not to make yourself particularly popular at Cambridge police station, Smailes was aware, where the old resentment from the war years could still be felt. Younger officers too felt that America was a bad influence on British youth, promoting violence and drugs, and in general, people could find angry things to say about the U.S., no matter how transfixed they were by its television programs. But for Derek Smailes, the fascination was both enduring and involuntary.

  The United States became a safety valve for his imagination, a place of deserts and forests and cities, of cornball de
cency and shocking excess, a place where things happened. He was particularly attracted to a certain kind of American renegade. He liked Jack Nicholson, who grew defiantly fat and bald as Redford and Hoffman ate grape-fruit and pursued romantic lead roles. He liked Mailer, who threw punches on the cusp of journalism and literature. And he liked Willie Nelson, above all, who reminded him of the country singers he had listened to on the PX jukebox as a boy. He would have given anything to be able to sing like that. As he grew older, he realized his Americanisms had become part of an adopted style, a way of defying respectability and the expectations around him.

  Perhaps there had been an aloofness in his attitude during his marriage. He had been accused of superiority too often in his life to be able to simply shrug the claim off. But he had tried, he felt. He had done all the things you were supposed to do when you were married. But his heart wasn’t in it, and Yvonne realized it intuitively early on, which maddened her. By the end of the second year she had begun to brandish the time-worn weapons of marital decay—silence, overspending and the withholding of sex. Smailes might have been able to handle the first two, but in combination with the third, they were a lethal strategy. In bed she wielded enormous power over him. He had always been crazy about her physically, her creamy skin and slightly feral smell, the way she turned her head and stabbed timidly with her pelvis, her girlish pleasure. She began to turn away from him deliberately, rejecting all his ploys. He was stricken by her cruelty. He had tried his best.

  His capitulation came about inexorably. Janet in the typing pool started to smile at him a little more than she need to, he would linger to joke just long enough to let her know he understood, he was interested. He often worked late when he was on special squads, so it was easy to telephone Yvonne with his excuse the night Janet agreed to go for a drink with him after work. She lived out near Cherry Hinton and they would go there where he thought no one knew him, sly preliminaries in the pub before they would saunter in past her frowning flatmates and copulate like the blazes on her frilly bed. But he knew he was doomed, and was almost relieved when a former school friend of Yvonne’s spotted them in the pub and called her up. He didn’t attempt to deny anything, and his remorse came more from the realization that he was no better then the rest of his sex than from any real feeling of failure.