by John Lawton
“Oh no. Too risky. He’ll meet us halfway. East Berlin, Joe. Your old stomping ground.”
“He’s in the Russian Compound?”
“No. I gather he’s installed himself at the Adlon.”
“Well . . . the compound probably doesn’t have room service. But at least we know one thing about him now. General Faker is a hedonist.”
In Berlin in ’63 Burne-Jones could have left Wilderness to his uncertain fate. He had not. He had rescued him, declined to promote him a second time, but had reiterated the “Fuck up one more time, Joe, and I’ll let them have you.”
The thought of Staaken or Glienicke was grim, the outposts of nowhere, the ends of the earth . . . but Berlin . . . Berlin as a whole, Berlin in all its unwholesome sectors . . . he still had very mixed feelings about Berlin. But he had just heard “you’re wasted behind a desk” and if Berlin was what got him out from behind a desk . . . well, Burne-Jones would never get him behind one again, and if crossing walls and bridges was the price of his freedom, then he’d pay readily. His own freedom was worth so much more than Masefield’s. Geoffrey Masefield was incidental to the plot. For that matter so was Comrade Liubimov—Bernard Alleyn.
“Start with Alleyn.”
“Eh?”
“Nip along to the Scrubs and talk to Alleyn. We never got what you might call a full confession out of him in ’59. There’s more he could tell us. There are names he could name. Particularly as we’ve just dangled freedom in front of him. The thought that we might bring him close to exchange and then change our minds might change his.”
“But we won’t change our minds, will we? We want our Geoffrey back.”
“Of course we won’t, but he doesn’t know that.”
“Alec, he was interrogated by Jim Westcott. If Westcott couldn’t get him . . .”
“Westcott was Five’s man. This is our op. Masefield is our man. As you say, getting our Geoffrey back is what matters. I’d rather Five handled none of it. Too many cooks and all that malarkey. Just spend a couple of days at the Scrubs. Have a bit of a chat. Get to know him. After all this could take quite some time. It would be as well to know the man. Masefield’s life may well depend on him.”
§104
Wilderness had been in prisons before. Many times in a capacity loosely similar to this, several times on the other side of the bars. Military glasshouses during his early days in the RAF, two nights in a Finnish jail after a slight misunderstanding with a traffic cop, a couple more in a police cell in West Berlin until Burne-Jones came riding to the rescue and a week in Spanish custody until threats of a “diplomatic incident” prevailed on General Franco’s government. He’d left without his gun and with his passport stamped “Deportado—indeseable.”
The Scrubs was better than all the others, except perhaps Finland, but no less depressing. He had often wondered whether the preference for two glossy, but muted colours on the wall—dark brown in all its limited variations, an optional black stripe, lots of bottle green—was a matter of Victorian taste or a form of punishment in itself.
A prison officer escorted Alleyn into the room. Alleyn looked fit and healthy, as though the diet agreed with him even if the prison-blue uniform did not. He looked much as he had in the photographs published at the time of his trial. If there was such a thing as prison pallor, Alleyn had a touch of it. What he had had in abundance was six years of bed, board, and all found.
The officer stood by the door with his hands behind his back.
Wilderness turned to him.
“Was there something?”
“Standing orders, at all times the pris . . .”
Wilderness held out his warrant card.
“You know damn well who I am. So bugger off.”
The man glared at Wilderness but left all the same. Locking Wilderness in with Alleyn. Then he stood on the other side of the glass observation panel, looking in. Rooms like this were most often assigned to meetings between prisoners and their solicitors, who could be seen but not heard.
Wilderness had anticipated this. He chewed gum for twenty seconds while Alleyn stared in silence, then he picked up the copy of the Guardian that was lying on the table, took the wet “spadge” from his mouth and glued the front page of the newspaper over the glass.
“He might think I am a danger to you,” Alleyn said.
“Really, Mr. Alleyn? I doubt that somehow.”
“I’ve sat here with countless men from MI5 over the years. You’re . . . different. You’re not the same . . . class.”
“How do you know? I’ve not said half a dozen words.”
“I learnt long ago that an Englishman betrays himself in his first sentence.”
“Well,” said Wilderness. “You’d know all about betrayal, wouldn’t you?”
Alleyn was actually blushing—embarrassed.
“I’m sorry. I meant ‘reveals’ not ‘betrays.’ I really shouldn’t—”
“Let’s begin again, shall we? No, I’m not MI5 and you know why I’m here. Joe Holderness, MI6. I’m here to get you out.”
Alleyn’s cheeks lost their flush, his sangfroid resuming. He coughed into his right fist. Looked up at Wilderness.
“Am I worth it? Is one Alleyn worth a Masefield, Mr. Holderness?”
“That would appear to be the current rate of exchange.”
“Have you ever met Mr. Masefield?”
“A couple of times.”
“I wonder if he enjoyed Moscow as much as I enjoyed England?”
Wilderness had no real idea if a “debrief” should have a set pattern. It probably shouldn’t ramble like this. He still thought Burne-Jones was wrong not to get in a professional interrogator . . . but if he wanted Five kept at arm’s length, so be it. He would just have to follow where Alleyn seemed to be leading, and hope to seize the rudder occasionally.
“What have you enjoyed most, Mr. Alleyn?”
“I can answer that. But first a favour. In here I am Alleyn, if only because they can’t pronounce Liubimov, followed by a number. Whilst I am grateful for the explicit courtesy of an almost forgotten title, would you mind if we got onto first-name terms? I would consider it a great kindness.”
He was looking straight at Wilderness, blinking his blues eyes a little. Completely serious.
“After all, we may be here some time. And after that who knows? Perhaps a journey overseas, as fortune-tellers always say when they’ve read your tea leaves.”
It wasn’t outrageous, although Burne-Jones would probably have found it so; it was quirky and perhaps if there were ice to be broken, the man had broken it.
“All right. As I said, my name is Joe.”
“Delighted to make your acquaintance, Joe.”
Quirky was inadequate, this was parodic. They weren’t in Wormwood Scrubs, they were in an early Noël Coward or using one of the pages Oscar Wilde had abandoned on the study floor.
“And to answer your question. My family. The greatest source of delight I have ever known. Kate, my wife. Our daughters Beatrice and Cordelia. Do you have children, Joe?”
What did the answer matter? What did it matter if Alleyn returned home and Liubimov told the KGB everything he knew? If the KGB didn’t know everything worth knowing about Wilderness after more than fifteen years as an SIS agent then they were idiots.
“As it happens I also have two daughters.”
“How old are they?”
“Year and a half or so. They’re twins.”
He might as well volunteer the names. Alleyn would only ask if he didn’t.
“And they’re called Joan and Molly.”
“And you see them every day.”
Wilderness probably did see his kids every day. Most days he was a commuter on the Northern Line, exactly like half a million other office workers. He kept a Browning .25 automatic in the wife’
s underwear drawer—that might be the only difference—but saw no point in betraying himself to Alleyn as just another desk jockey.
“No. You know the nature of my work. The demands.”
“Of course, of course.”
A pause, as they finally got to the point.
“I have not seen my girls for six years.”
“I know.”
“In fact, I don’t even know where they live now.”
It was a hostage to give to fortune. One Wilderness would not give. He knew where Kate Alleyn had taken her daughters, he knew what alias she was using, and he would not be the one to tell him.
§105
Wilderness’s kids were at what he had dubbed the slug stage of growth. Crawling around on the floor, much tottering, some walking, and messy at both ends.
Judy had gone back to work less than a month ago. A reliable nanny and a reliable father, who made damn sure his son-in-law got no overseas postings—not so much as a wet weekend in Warsaw in over two years—and her life fell neatly back into place.
Wilderness watched from the bathroom doorway, a vodka and tonic in hand, as the nanny buffed them dry with a towel after their bath and they made noises which, if so disposed, he might interpret as giggles.
Alleyn’s kids would be teenagers now. For all that Alleyn seemed to want to identify with him—grasping at any similarity in their lives as though he’d been thrown a line—he was a good ten years older than Wilderness, their lives at different stages from the start and Alleyn’s suspended in the timeless skylessness of Wormwood Scrubs for the last six years. Wilderness could not imagine his own daughters as teenagers, though their personalities were clearly emerging, glimpses of the girls-teenagers-adults they might become. Joan was much like Judy, and Molly much the quieter—point a camera at them and Joan reacted instinctively as though she were in the spotlight and Molly stared at it with a quizzical expression on her face . . . “What is that thing and how does it work?” . . . the catwalk model and the quantum physicist.
He had not wanted children, if only because he never thought about having children, and already he could not imagine life without them. And with that he could not imagine what Alleyn was going through.
He might find it in himself to feel sorry for Alleyn but he’d rather not. He might find it in himself to tell Alleyn what he wanted to know, but he’d rather not.
Alleyn was his ticket out of England, and that was all . . . a ticket back to Berlin, the sooner the better . . . but Berlin was just the launchpad. He’d deliver Alleyn back to this Bogusnik bloke, and then . . .
§106
Wilderness got little out of Alleyn that Jim Westcott had not in 1959. Wilderness told Burne-Jones that he should get Westcott out of his (second) retirement and put him in with Alleyn one more time.
“He’s clingy.”
“Eh?”
“He talks to me as though I’ve been sent to him . . . I dunno . . . as some sort of therapist.”
“You mean like a masseur?”
“No, like a fucking psychiatrist. And he identifies with me at every turn . . . the shrinks call it transference.”
“Weeeeell . . . you’re both spies . . . and you both went to Cambridge . . .”
This latter had not occurred to Wilderness, and to have it pointed out now was not helpful. Just one more topic to avoid.
“Alec, I’ll get nothing out of him. He won’t name names. Let’s stop now.”
Burne-Jones declined. Instead Wilderness went on playing audience/buddy/analyst as Alleyn veered directionless between revelation and reminiscence.
Revelation: He’d passed the battle plan for Suez to the Russians forty-eight hours ahead of the botched invasion. What Khrushchev knew Nasser knew by the time the first British parachute blossomed over Sinai.
Revelation: Khrushchev had been told about the impending Bay of Pigs invasion before Kennedy. Although quite how Alleyn had known about this nearly two years before it took place served to shroud this revelation in yet more mystery.
Revelation: He had passed the entire tech specs of the UK Blue Streak missile programme to the Russians just before his arrest, which might have had something to do with it being cancelled the year after.
Reminiscence . . . on and on and on . . .
“Joe?”
His use of Wilderness’s first name had become habitual. It made Wilderness wince inwardly—too pointed to be casual, too contrived. The effusive friendship of a friend who wasn’t a friend.
“Did you take time for a honeymoon, Joe?”
Where the hell did that come from? He was bowling googlies.
“No,” Wilderness replied. “And I blame your lot for that. I’d been married two days when you started playing silly buggers on the Finnish border.”
Honesty and tone of voice were no deterrent.
“I did. Not immediately, of course. Whit Week 1948. A warm gust of spring after a long winter. We had saved enough for a journey. I would have loved to go abroad, to travel on the Continent, but that wasn’t possible. Currency restrictions made it so awkward. And I was under orders not to leave England. I’d passed every check, every level of vetting imaginable, and still they panic at the thought of me facing Customs and Excise at Dover. No . . . we decided on the Isle of Man . . . almost like leaving England but not quite. A long train ride out of Euston, and a longer sea crossing from Liverpool to Douglas. Then a touch of unanticipated magic . . . a narrow-gauge steam railway down the east coast to Port St Mary.”
Wilderness resisted the temptation to tell him to get on with it.
“It was the week I loved best. I have never felt more at peace. You will appreciate, peace is hard bought doing what I did . . . I have known so little peace. The Russians wanted me to meet with an agent while I was there . . . it was perfect, they told me . . . absolutely no chance we would be observed . . . I said no. Was I not entitled to some privacy? Slightly to my amazement, they backed off. I think that was one of only three or four times in thirteen years that they did leave me alone when asked. Most of the time it was regular meetings to report nothing . . . the mere motions of spying . . . no substance . . . after all if I’d . . . where was I? . . . ah, yes, Port St Mary.
“Kate and I spent a week in a rented cottage overlooking the bay. Two rooms under a stone roof. No electricity . . . one cold tap . . . cooking on paraffin . . . Kate always slept until I brought her breakfast . . . I rose up with the lark in the morning . . . my God that’s a quotation isn’t it? and I’ve no idea from whom . . . and I sailed out with the lobstermen to haul in the pots.”
Imagine, Wilderness thought, a travel piece from the Sunday Times magazine read out loud by a colossal bore.
“We ate fish caught with my own hands . . . we walked hand in hand around the crags at the southern tip of the island . . . watched puffins nesting on bare cliffs . . . I gathered wild flowers unknown anywhere else on earth . . . sandworts and hellebores . . . long since lost to the mainland. I pressed them into the flyleaf of the book I was reading, D. H. Lawrence’s Love Among the Haystacks. Years later I used to open the book, and the colours of the petals had seeped into the paper so it was permanently stained red and yellow. I still had that book when your people came for me. I hate to think that it might be lost. That Kate might have sold it. Do you have something like that in your life?”
Wilderness didn’t think he had. He had learnt to live without life’s “souvenirs”—he found his mind needed no prompting by trinket and trivia. And he remembered hanging the key to the Berlin tunnel on a rusty nail in Erno Schreiber’s apartment.
“My elder daughter was conceived in that cottage . . .”
Wilderness’s daughters had been conceived in subterfuge and trickery and red rings on the calendar. He was not open to the romance of conception.
“In our first passion.”
That was i
t. The last fucking straw. “Our passion”? Bollocks. He’d get Burne-Jones what he wanted even if it meant reducing this bastard to a puddle on the lino.
“Bernard, I am not insensitive to the tragedy that is your life.”
“Tragedy, Joe?”
“You have dubbed it tragic. You may never have uttered the word, but that is how you see your life. Let us not argue over that. While I am not insensitive, do you know how many men have died as a result of information you passed to the KGB?”
Did Alleyn straighten his spine, sit a tad more upright in the face of the accusation? Did he feel the punch?
“Do you?” asked Alleyn.
“I could hazard a guess.”
“I needn’t.”
The spine relaxed once more, the head dipped, and he spoke without looking at Wilderness.
“I know the facts. None. They have told me all along that it would be none.”
He lifted his head to look at Wilderness. Not the firm stare of denial. A nervous gambler with a bluff hand.
“No one has died,” he said.
His cheek twitched; there was uncertainty in the eyes that usually told only sadness. It was no time to spare the rod.
“Silesia?”
“What of it? They all returned, by ship out of Odessa as I recall.”
“And the eleven RAF officers who never returned, who died in a gulag in Siberia and got buried in unmarked graves?”
Alleyn was staring again, blinking rapidly.
“The Courland operation in 1950?”
Not a word.
“Berlin in 1953. Budapest in 1956. Vienna in 1959. Probably the last man you killed.”
“I . . . I . . .”
Wilderness waited, but the sentence had no ending.
§107
Judy crawled into bed at nearly midnight after a BBC late. Wilderness had relieved the nanny in time for tea, had bathed the girls and put them to bed.
“And how was Comrade Alleyn today?”
“Try asking about your daughters instead.”
“No need, they are fed and bathed and snoring like drunken navvies. I peeked in to see for myself. You’re good at this dad lark, but I draw the line at putting Guinness in the baby’s bottle.”
