Skydancer

by Geoffrey Archer

  Buxton studied his glass of wine thoughtfully.

  ‘It’s not inconceivable,’ he conceded.

  ‘So, to go rushing in and blame the whole thing on an emotional woman has to be shortsighted, don’t you think? At least get the PM to wait a few days before saying anything to the House.’

  ‘Not sure I can do that,’ Buxton mused. ‘He thinks he’s obliged to tell them something. But I might be able to persuade him to keep the details to a minimum. And anyway, come to think of it, if there is substance to your theory, it wouldn’t do any harm for Ivan to think we’d fallen for his little trick. Might make him careless, don’t you think?’

  The waiter was hovering again.

  ‘More to eat, or just coffee?’ Buxton enquired.

  ‘Coffee, thanks.’

  ‘What about John Black?’ Peter continued as the waiter moved away. ‘He seems to be closing the investigation. He maintains there’s no evidence that it was anything but suicide.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Buxton dropped a spoonful of sugar crystals into his coffee.

  ‘I suppose . . .’ Peter persisted. ‘I suppose they are clean now? MI5, I mean. The Soviet infiltration seemed pretty extensive. There was something odd in what John Black said to me.’

  ‘That business with the photograph, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. He insisted that picture wasn’t in the flat when he interviewed her – yet there was something odd about the way he said it. I’m sure he was lying.’

  ‘Why should he bother to lie about a thing like that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Peter frowned. ‘But let’s be fanciful for a moment. Let’s pretend that Black is a Soviet agent, and that he murdered Mary and fixed it to look like suicide. Supposing there was some sort of struggle, and the photograph was smashed. He’d have got rid of it, wouldn’t he? And of course he’d deny it had ever been there.’

  ‘Well, yes, but that’s an awful lot of supposing,’ Buxton answered doubtfully. ‘The curious thing is there is still no word from any of our agents suggesting the KGB are doing anything at all. Our men are pretty well placed, you know. They would almost certainly have heard some whisper of an operation if one was underway.’ The Chief of the Defence Staff paused, frowning.

  ‘And yet that in itself is damned odd, isn’t it?’ he then continued. ‘If I was Ivan, I’d be bloody sure to be hatching some plot to learn the secrets of Skydancer.’

  ‘That’s exactly my point,’ Peter interrupted in relief. ‘So perhaps the Soviets are deliberately by-passing all their usual intelligence people. Perhaps there’s some special team involved, and the reason we’ve heard nothing about it is that this team includes undiscovered Soviet moles inside our own security services!’

  ‘Clearly we mustn’t draw any conclusions too soon,’ Buxton determined. ‘We’ll have to keep an open mind on the matter for the time being. And that leaves a big question-mark hanging over the test launch of Skydancer. You’ve just set up a complex deception plan to counter a Soviet espionage operation which may or may not exist. If there’s no plot, you could put the original programmes back in the missiles and do a proper test. But we don’t know that for sure, so for the time being we’d better just do nothing. I’ll send the boat back out into the Atlantic just to confuse the Russians, then we’ll just sit tight and see what pops its head up out of the trench. Agreed?’

  A waiter approached table. ‘Excuse me, sir, your secretary is on the phone,’ he told Peter.

  Peter made his apologies and followed the waiter out of the room.

  The message was a summons to the Defence Secretary’s office.

  In Moscow snow was swirling in great determined gusts round the city squares and along the broad boulevards. It was still early for such intense snowfall Oleg Kvitzinsky reckoned, as he eased his Mercedes saloon into the parking area behind his apartment block. The tyres crunched tracks in the virgin whiteness as he drew to a halt.

  He had just returned from the headquarters of the GRU, and could feel a deep depression settling over him. General Novikov had been abrupt and dismissive at his doubts about the intelligence organisation’s competence. Novikov was an old-style soldier, a Party hard-liner who would never willingly accept criticism. The general considered Oleg a mere scientist, not qualified to comment on his methods.

  At the lift entrance he gave his customary smile to the old woman who pressed the buttons. Like all those who acted out this menial role in Moscow, she was a KGB freelance who earned money by reporting the comings and goings of citizens, and taking particular note of any visiting foreigners. Oleg found it painful that the organisations which were essential to providing information for his own work should also find it necessary to spy on him.

  As he opened the door to his apartment he saw Katrina waiting for him. She was standing in their living-room, framed by the light of the picture window, staring out at the view of Moscow – its stylish pre-revolutionary architecture contrasting strongly with modern concrete slabs and factory chimneys. She turned to face her husband, and folded her arms. She had a round face and thick black hair expensively set in a bouffant style that was chic for Moscow but which would look cheap and clumsy in the West. The intensity of her dark eyes was further defined by thick mascara. As Oleg crossed the room, he saw her heavily lipsticked mouth was clamped firmly shut in an expression of brooding unhappiness.

  ‘Hello, my little dove,’ he began sarcastically, knowing he was in for a further round of niggling criticism.

  ‘The Ivanovs are going to Geneva again tomorrow!’ she burst out, unable to contain any longer the source of her unhappiness.

  ‘Are you surprised?’ he countered, struggling to remove his heavy overcoat. ‘Igor is an adviser on our mission to the United Nations.’

  ‘Well, why can’t you get a job like that?’ she called after him as he returned to the hall to hang up his coat.

  ‘Katrina, don’t ask questions to which you already know the answers!’ he called back with forced patience.

  Until two years ago, Oleg had nothing to do with military affairs, specialising instead in the extension of the use of computers and industrial robots in the Soviet Union’s heavy engineering plants. Such a senior civilian post had given him the right to foreign travel and, much to Katrina’s satisfaction, he had taken full advantage of it. Switzerland, West Germany, Japan and the USA had all been frequent destinations on their overseas itineraries.

  But all that had ended when he was summoned by the Academy of Military Sciences to take control of the Ballistic Missile Defence modernisation programme, which had found itself in deep trouble because of lack of coordination between the missile makers and the electronics and radar industries. Working for the military had its attractions – funds were almost unlimited, for example – but its great disadvantage was the refusal of the authorities to allow military scientists to travel to the West for fear they could be compromised, kidnapped or seduced away with the secrets they held inside their heads.

  His salary had increased dramatically with this military job, and they now had the use of one of the finest apartments in Moscow – but Katrina was increasingly miserable. She had moulded her lifestyle round the acquisition of Western possessions for the home. She had once cultivated friends who had similar tastes and ambitions, but now she felt increasingly like a leper, rejected socially because her access to these foreign pleasures had been cut off.

  Having removed his snow-scuffed boots, Oleg slipped his feet into a pair of sheepskin moccasins bought in Canada, and headed for the heavy oak sideboard where the drinks were kept. He pulled out a bottle of Scotch whisky and poured a two fingers’ measure into a cut-crystal tumbler. Without turning round, he swallowed it in one gulp. As the spirit burned his throat, he shook his head like a dog that has just emerged from a swim in the river, and refilled his glass.

  ‘Aah!’ he sighed. The alcohol was already beginning to numb his nerves, and he turned to face his wife with a tolerant smile on his lips.

  Kvitzinsky wa
s forty-six, and had a pleasant face with a long, thin nose and those arched brows and childlike Russian eyes that always looked poised halfway between laughter and tears. His bald scalp was covered by long strands of straight hair combed up from the side and carefully held in position by a light coating of hair-oil.

  ‘Irina showed me a photograph of the dress she’s going to buy in Geneva,’ Katrina persisted. ‘It was in Vogue magazine. She’s started dieting again to fit into it.’

  ‘Well, at least that’s something you won’t have to worry about,’ Oleg laughed. Katrina had been fighting a losing battle against fat in recent years.

  ‘I could lose weight if I had a good reason to,’ she retorted sourly.

  ‘Then do it for me,’ Oleg whispered half-audibly into his glass.

  ‘I heard that! Even if I looked like a Hollywood film-star it wouldn’t make any difference to your capabilities!’ she snapped back. Seizing a glossy magazine from the glass-topped coffee table, she dropped angrily into an armchair with her back to him. ‘And don’t get drunk tonight. We’re going to the dacha tomorrow, remember?’

  He had forgotten that, but was not going to admit it. The way things were going, he would not be able to leave Moscow that weekend, but he decided to keep that news to himself for the time being.

  Peter Joyce. Peter Joyce. He muttered the name of the British scientist over and over again in his head. What had Joyce been doing on board that British submarine the previous day? General Novikov had received a report from Florida that the scientist was seen making last-minute alterations to the test missile. But had he been altering the warheads so that the forthcoming test would be deliberately misleading, or simply making the final adjustments that any complex weapon system demanded? Oleg desperately needed to know.

  Kvitzinsky clearly remembered meeting this Peter Joyce three years earlier, at an international scientific symposium in Geneva, on one of his last visits to the West before taking up the military post. The British scientist had impressed him greatly, with his strong determined face and secretive eyes. It would not be easy to get the better of Peter Joyce, he had concluded. The GRU’s incompetence at the start of their operation was certain to have put Joyce on his guard. Getting hold of the Skydancer plans would not be simple now.

  Kvitzinsky had been bitingly critical of the GRU at the start of his meeting with the general, angrily accusing his agents of incompetence. The intelligence chief had rounded on him harshly for so readily believing what he heard on the BBC. The plan was proceeding steadily, he insisted. What had happened was only a small hitch which had required minor changes to the schedule. Those adjustments had now been carried out, and the complete plans for Skydancer should be in Moscow within a few days, he had assured him.

  ‘I shall believe that when I see it,’ Oleg now muttered to himself pessimistically, savouring the whisky growing warm in his grasp.

  Through the forgiving haze of the spirit he looked across the room to where Katrina sat, still pointedly ignoring him. Her freshly coiffured hair and cream dress, patterned with large peach-coloured roses, made her look like a woman dressed for a party but with no party to go to. She was a picture of discontent.

  It was not just the prohibition on travel to the West which had created her unhappiness, as Oleg knew only too well. The cause was far more basic than that. Katrina was unsatisfied in the most fundamental way a woman can be.

  They had been married now for over ten years, but were childless. Their marriage was barren, and in the Soviet Union, where children symbolise the future and the justification for all the struggles and hardships of the present, being childless was not a happy state.

  Oleg insisted to his friends that the fault lay with Katrina. In truth, medical examinations had revealed nothing wrong with Katrina at all. She blamed Oleg for their failure to conceive, but he had refused to undergo medical tests himself.

  Her nagging suspicions had seriously undermined his libido, and now that age and excess had taken their toll of her once shapely figure, he found it increasingly difficult to produce a useable erection. When he was totally sober the task had become almost impossible. After an invigorating intake of alcohol, he could usually succeed, yet with one glass too many he would slip back into impotence.

  But tonight he had no sexual expectations, and no intention of limiting his intake of comforting liquor.

  ‘Oleg?’ Katrina had finally put down her magazine and was trying to smile.

  ‘Mmmm?’

  ‘Why don’t you take me out to dinner? I feel like going out. What about the Tsentralny? We haven’t been there for months.’

  It was a trap, and he knew it. He should have realised that as soon as she had started demanding the impossible – a visit to Geneva. It was a game played many times before, but which never failed to take him by surprise. Dutifully he played the counter-move she expected.

  ‘We’ll never get in there this evening. They’re always full,’ he replied wearily.

  ‘I telephoned this morning,’ Katrina smiled triumphantly. ‘I booked a table. I thought it would make a nice change.’

  He shrugged his inevitable consent. He knew what it meant: the evening had been prearranged, and they would be meeting other couples who were Katrina’s friends rather than his. The conversation would revolve around Paris and New York, and he would have nothing to say because he had not been anywhere recently apart from Novosibirsk in Siberia – and he could not even mention that, because his work there was top secret.

  It was going to be a dreadful evening. He knew he would get very drunk indeed.

  In the kitchen of the old farmhouse in Berkshire, Belinda Joyce held open the door of her deep-freeze, trying to decide what to cook her children for supper. It would have to be fish fingers – she could not concentrate enough on anything more elaborate.

  Something had transpired that day which gave her a strange creepy feeling: Helene Venner had disappeared.

  She had first met the woman three years earlier, when Belinda was already establishing her skills as a lathe-operator at the craft co-operative. Helene had joined as a potter, producing attractive hand-made jugs and bowls which sold well to American tourists in a souvenir shop in Oxford. They had taken an instant liking to one another, sharing the same jaundiced view of the vested interests of big international companies and of the nuclear arms race.

  Belinda had quickly recognised that Helene had lesbian tendencies, and knew that Helene found her desirable. To start with she was mentally quite attracted to the idea of sex with another woman, just as an experiment, but in the end her deep-seated disinclination had proved insurmountable. Even so, their friendship remained firm and intimate.

  It had been Helene who encouraged her to join ATSA, or Action To Stop Annihilation, Helene who had helped her co-ordinate her loosely gathered anti-nuclear thoughts into a coherent thread, and Helene who tried to persuade her to steal secret papers from her husband so that they could be leaked to a left-wing newspaper.

  Yesterday Helene had not turned up for work. Today she was again absent, and there had been still no phone-call to explain. So Belinda had called round at the terraced cottage she rented in the village, but found no one at home. A neighbour who held a key let her in to the house. Every trace of Helene was gone: the cupboards were bare, the bed stripped of linen; even the fridge had been emptied. The place was spotlessly clean, as if it had been scrubbed to remove any sign that she had ever lived there.

  Belinda could not make herself believe Helene would just disappear without a word. She would surely have said something if going away of her own choice. So at first she wondered whether her friend had been kidnapped. But then she reflected on the line of questioning John Black had pursued, and began to consider that his talk of subversive left-wing groups plotting to undermine the fabric of the nation might not be entirely fanciful after all. Had Helene Venner been a spy? Surely not. Yet with growing disquiet Belinda remembered how close she had come to being physically seduced by Helene, and
began to wonder whether such an act had been designed to achieve her final mental seduction as well.

  The sound of a bicycle bell jerked her thoughts back to the present.

  ‘Oh Christ! Back already,’ she cursed, pushing the fish fingers under the grill.

  By the time she next had a moment to herself, the early evening news was coming on television. The lead story concerned the Prime Minister’s statement that afternoon to the House of Commons that ‘following the untimely death of a female employee of the Ministry of Defence, the source of the leak of secret documents from the Ministry seems to have been uncovered. There is no evidence of any loss of secret material to a foreign power.’

  ‘He doesn’t know about Helene Venner,’ Belinda thought. ‘Nobody knows about Helene, except me.’ Suddenly she longed for Peter to come home.

  At that very moment he walked in. Belinda turned towards him anxiously, and the sight of his ashen face and crushed expression brought her to her feet.

  ‘What’s the matter, Peter? What’s happened now, for God’s sake?’

  ‘I’ve been suspended,’ he croaked. ‘I’ve just spent the afternoon being bollocked by the Defence Secretary, Mr Michael bloody Hawke, and he’s suspended me from duty until further notice!’

  Chapter Five

  JUST BEFORE SUNRISE a US Navy tug positioned itself to ease the smooth fat shape of the submarine away from the quayside. The grey, pre-dawn light cast no shadow, and the overall-clad dock-hands looked almost faceless to Commander Carrington as he peered down at them from the top of the fin. The anonymous figures unhooked the mooring lines from the bollards and cast them into the water. The seamen on the narrow casing of HMS Retribution hauled the sodden ropes from the sea and stowed them securely under a steel hatch.