Legacy

by Alan Judd

  Anna put her hand on Charles’s other arm. ‘Hugo, you can’t. He’s in the middle of his meal. Why don’t you wait till we’ve finished?’

  ‘Won’t take a second. Come on.’

  Anna’s mouth set firmly as she looked at her husband, but she said nothing. When Charles caught her eye she raised her eyebrows and smiled her crooked, shy smile. Its crookedness made it seem personal and beguiling, a secret shared.

  The table was a handsome oval leaf with turned legs. ‘Mahogany,’ said Charles.

  Hugo was delighted. ‘Very understandable mistake. Very understandable.’ He clutched Charles’s arm, blinking rapidly. ‘Experts have made it. Actually, cherry. Most unusual, isn’t it?’ They returned to the kitchen. ‘I was right, darling. He got it wrong.’

  ‘Darling, you are clever.’

  Charles left later than intended and drove back across the river to South Kensington. He had meant to ring Roger and warn that he would be back at the flat, since he suspected use of his room when he was away. He heard the noise of the party as he approached the building. When he opened the flat door he found a man he didn’t know pinning a woman against the wall and urging her that it wasn’t very far. They both held empty glasses.

  ‘It is far,’ she said, staring into his eyes.

  The man shook his head. ‘It isn’t far.’

  She nodded. ‘It is far.’

  The atmosphere was thick with candle and cigarette smoke. There was music and dancing in Charles’s bedroom. His bike was in the hall, with coats over it. The tiny kitchen was crammed and there was more music from Roger’s room along the corridor. He knew two of the people in the kitchen, David Brook and Alastair Devauden, young postgraduates from the course.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ shouted David above the music. ‘We’ve been looking for you.’

  Roger came out of his room, smiling and sweating, drink and cigarette in one hand. He laid the other on Charles’s shoulder. ‘Sorry about this, old chap. Bit impromptu. Some people I was at university with pitched up. Wasn’t planned. I’ll clear your room. Have a drink.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m going back.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Just dropped in to get something.’ Charles was annoyed; he liked Roger but resented invasion, although he didn’t really mind driving back to his mother’s. The woman who had been arguing by the door pushed past them both, pursued by the man. It was the sort of party he had always hated, yet, in his student days, would always have attended. Saying ‘no’ became easier with age. Now, he was more grateful that he had an alternative than concerned to show his annoyance. There was also the consoling secret of what he had to do in the morning. ‘Really, that’s all I came for.’

  Roger’s eyes shone with drink. ‘You’re a rotten liar, Thoroughgood, but thanks. I’ll get it cleaned up tomorrow. You’ll be able to eat off the carpet. Promise.’

  Darkness crumbled into gloom the next morning and the drizzle felt like a permanent condition of life. It was still not properly light when Charles reached London and sat in the car in Queensgate. Lack of traffic made him notice how dirty and run-down everything was, from the uncollected rubbish on the pavements to the cracked and peeling paintwork of the buildings and the few, slouching young men who dragged themselves along in purgatorial gloom. This, too, seemed a permanent condition of life. London was becoming a Third World city. He imagined the flat filled with post-party detritus. The only good thing about the morning so far had been the pleasure of the uncrowded drive; his father’s old Rover, emblem of a better mannered world, had quietly ushered him into the city. His mother and sister had been in bed when he returned the night before and were still there when he left.

  As soon as it was properly light he jogged up Queensgate. There was already a surprising number of joggers and runners, many wearing smart tracksuits and grossly over-developed plimsolls called trainers, which were becoming fashionable. Others wore natty shorts and competition vests. So far from blending with them, his muddy rugby shirt with the number 12 hanging off, baggy shorts and army boots which looked absurdly large for his legs, made him feel laughably conspicuous.

  ‘You won’t have any surveillance with you,’ Hugo had said. ‘You should be able to find him easily enough in the park. Won’t exactly be teeming with runners at that time of morning and it’ll be immediately obvious if he’s with a colleague, in which case go home. If we put a team out to help you we’d have to pay overtime.’

  It may not have been teeming but at any one moment there were a dozen runners in view, more as time went on. They ranged from the knock-kneed and wide-elbowed – the two seemed to go together – to serious-looking people in Olympic-lookalike strip and overweight middle-aged men who ran at a pace somewhat slower than they walked. Viktor – Charles had to make a positive effort to think of him as that rather than as Lover Boy – generally jogged within Kensington Gardens but sometimes strayed farther into Hyde Park. Charles had to pursue the widely scattered runners in order to confirm that each was not Viktor, and soon covered a good deal more ground than most. His legs, though not actually stiff from his hard run the day before, felt heavier than normal. By the time he approached the slight, neat-looking figure with short fair hair and little-used bottle-green tracksuit by the Round Pond, he felt nothing of the desired surge of energy for the encounter. He yawned, a nervous reaction that used to afflict him before army parachuting and gave a misleading impression of relaxation. Quite suddenly he felt he had barely enough energy to put one foot before another.

  He was almost sure it was Viktor running clockwise around the pond, slowly, a genuine jog rather than a run, gazing at the water. Charles headed anti-clockwise, hoping that Viktor would not break off for the Soviet Embassy before they met since that would involve a too deliberate-looking, and perhaps exhausting, chase to overhaul him. ‘By the time I caught up,’ he imagined reporting, ‘he was too near the embassy and I was too exhausted to speak. We exchanged glances. I think he recognised me.’

  As they drew closer he became more certain of Viktor’s neat controlled figure and of his almost delicate features, hardened by a suggestion of order, purpose, discipline. He reminded Charles of a self-conscious and newly promoted young army officer, a subaltern made early captain and adjutant.

  They closed with surprising rapidity over the last few yards. In Charles’s imagination the actual encounter had become infinitely postponable by another day, hour, minute or second. He would always have time to reconsider what exactly he was going to say just before he said it. When it happened it was like military parachuting: you found yourself through the open door and out into the slipstream while still trying to anticipate, leaving your fear behind because there was no longer time to indulge it. As in the course exercises, he fell back on what he’d mentally rehearsed then put aside because he was sure he could improve upon it.

  ‘Viktor?’

  They both stopped. The grey eyes, though not fearful, were alert and wary, as if it had been one of the park squirrels that had spoken.

  ‘Viktor – I’m sorry, I’m not quite sure of your surname – Korlov? Koslov? Koslov, yes. We were at Lincoln together. I’m Charles Thoroughgood.’ He held out his hand, knowing how difficult it was to refuse a proffered hand. Viktor took it passively, saying nothing. ‘Lincoln College, Oxford. Four or five years ago. We used to talk sometimes.’

  ‘Yes, Charles, I know you. I am surprised. This is a very great coincidence.’ His diction, precise and deliberate, was slightly slurred by the attractive liquidity of his native Russian. He looked only a little older, but firmer, than when Charles had known him.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Charles asked.

  ‘I am a diplomat with Soviet Embassy in London. I am second secretary. And you? What are you doing? Do you live near here?’

  ‘Another coincidence. I am in the British Foreign Office, but I’ve only just joined.’

  ‘Yes, another great coincidence.’ Viktor’s smile, though not unfriendly,
was as careful as his manner. ‘Which is your department?’

  ‘I’m awaiting assignment. I’m still on the induction course. Perhaps it will be Hawaii, who knows? Or maybe Moscow. Though I have no Russian.’

  Viktor shrugged. ‘It is no matter. You would learn it.’

  ‘It would be nice to see you again. Perhaps we might meet, if you are allowed.’

  ‘I have to seek permission.’

  ‘Of course. May I ring you? Have you a telephone number?’

  ‘You must ring Soviet Embassy.’

  Charles had a Foreign Office number he could use but Viktor seemed conveniently incurious. Charles was already elated; an agreement to meet again was the most he could realistically have hoped for. ‘It won’t be a problem for you if I ring?’ Hugo had told him to say that, since it could represent the beginnings of joint conspiracy.

  Viktor shrugged again. It seemed that shrugging was part of his conversation. ‘It is not a problem. Why should it be?’

  ‘Of course not, no. I just didn’t know how things were in your embassy, that’s all.’

  ‘It is not a problem.’

  Charles’s legs were lighter on the run back across the park. He thought about showering and changing in the flat, then decided it would be wiser not to see it. He considered, too, driving to Hugo’s house, but instead set the Rover’s Viking head towards the M4. His mother was up when he reached home.

  ‘It’s unlike you to run early in the morning,’ she said.

  He was brimful with his achievement and would have enjoyed describing it to her. He was already persuaded that it had the potential to be a great case. Russian penetrations – real, long-term, heart-of-the-bureaucracy penetrations, not peripheral pinpricks – were notoriously hard to come by. He lingered with Mary for an hour after breakfast, by the end of which he was also persuaded he remembered James.

  That afternoon he walked with his mother down through the woods of Pheasant’s Hill to Hambleden and back up the valley through Skirmett and Turville to Fingest. ‘The essence of England walk,’ his father used to call it, invariably adding that it was sad that the essence was now so untypical. The skies had cleared and for Charles, that late autumn afternoon, combining the rural and domestic idyll with excitements in London made him feel he was at last breaking through to the sort of life he had long imagined himself living.

  4

  The telephone was answered, as before, by a woman whose English was a parody of deliberation. ‘Please . . . wait.’

  The wait was at least as long as that during his first vain attempt to ring Viktor. He was in Hookey’s office, seated at the side of the cleared desk and using a telephone with a Foreign Office number. Hookey was slumped in his high-backed, swivel armchair, his head and nose barely above his desk, smoke curling gently from his pipe. He stared expressionlessly at Hugo, who sat with papers and clipboard on his crossed legs, frowning and making lists with his fat Mont Blanc pen.

  Eventually the woman returned. ‘Please, your name again.’ There was another long pause. ‘Mr Koslov is not available.’

  ‘Would you please tell him I rang?’

  ‘Who is ringing, please?’

  He spelt his name for the third time. For the third time, she repeated it back to him, then the line went dead.

  Hugo scribbled a final note to himself and looked up. ‘That’s clear, then. Either he’s reported it and the security narks have warned him off or he hasn’t and he’s hiding from you. Question is, whether we try one more time or whether that would look too much like the pursuit it is. Don’t want to provoke a protest from the ambassador or get him into trouble.’

  Charles was disappointed. The case seemed to be slipping through his fingers, yet he still believed in his impression that Viktor was willing to meet.

  ‘Not necessarily.’ Hookey spoke with his pipe in his mouth, causing it to jerk up and down and turn the rising smoke into irregular puffs of morse code. ‘They often take time to decide. They could be asking Moscow for traces of Charles, to see what’s known about him. They dislike being bounced into decisions. We’ll try one more time, and once only. More would be suspicious. But leave it a week.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Hugo. ‘They’re bound to trace. Give it a week.’ He straightened one leg and pulled carefully on his trouser crease.

  ‘Meanwhile,’ Hookey continued, ‘see the tart again. Ask her more about what he feels for her, what the relationship is so far as he’s concerned. We’ve no real idea of that and it could be crucial to the case. Also, make sure she goes on being nice to him. We don’t want her to drop him now she knows he’s not rich. And, Hugo, make sure MI5 are kept informed.’

  ‘No, but they are, very much so. They’re in the loop. In the loop.’ Hugo nodded as if the phrase pleased him. ‘It’s in the middle of their patch, you see, the Soviet Embassy here. We have to. And I think we should.’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ said Hookey quietly.

  Charles returned to the typing room on the first floor where a dozen or so young men and women, all unknown to him, were picking their way through a training programme under the sharp-eyed supervision of a large, bejewelled woman who moved ceremonially amongst them. The students were of a mixture of grades and departments but all intelligence officers, like Charles, were supposed to be able to type. Some on his course had joined early for ‘special training’, only to find that rather than the arts of disguise, assassination, sabotage, secret writing or seduction, they were given typing and language training. Charles and others who had not joined early had seemed likely to escape instruction altogether until Hugo hit on the idea.

  ‘We need a reason for your visits to HO that won’t broadcast to the world that you’re doing a case for us,’ he said. ‘Catching up on typing training should be perfect. And to ensure that it’s not you alone I’ll ask Hookey to get the head of training to fix it so that everyone on your course who hasn’t had it gets hauled across for the odd hour in their lunchtimes and that sort of thing.’ He grinned as he adjusted his tie in his office mirror. Bureaucratic manipulations gave him pleasure. ‘You’d be pretty unpopular if they knew it was all for your benefit. Strikes me we sometimes spend more time working out how to keep our secrets from each other than from the enemy. But typing’s jolly useful, you’ll find.’ He summoned his secretary for dictation.

  There being no privacy in the training department, finding somewhere from which to ring Claire that day was not straightforward. Hugo’s office couldn’t be used because there was a meeting in it, his secretary’s couldn’t be used because she was expecting a call and Hookey was too important to bother. Eventually, Hookey’s secretary evicted two young officers from their office, which meant they had first to lock away their papers and then stand in the corridor while Charles, after due apologies, made the call from behind their closed door. After that, talking to Claire was straightforward: of course, she would love to have supper with Monsieur Lovejoy and, yes, she thought she could manage that night but it would have to be late because she was tied up – ‘if you see what I mean’ – until nine. He was to call for her.

  The flat had been reasonably well cleaned after the party, which suggested that Roger must have had female assistance. Charles’s bike was undamaged and his mattress appeared not to have been danced on, or too obviously subjected to anything else. His arrangement with Claire, though, meant that he couldn’t go that evening with Roger and others to a wine bar in Battersea that someone’s sister had opened. Wine bars were spreading. Charles had talked about them with Roger. They liked them. Charles had even said he felt they were his spiritual home, or something equally pretentious. Now, confronted with the unexpected offer, he could not immediately say why he couldn’t go.

  Roger laid his forefinger alongside his nose. ‘Say no more – NTK, need to know. All this spying business is getting to you, Charles. Especially this new case you’re on.’

  ‘What case?’

  ‘You tell me. No, don’t – NNTK, no need to know. But ev
eryone knows you’re doing a case for HO. It’s obvious, all these disappearances. Either that or it’s a bit on the side, knocking off someone’s wife. But I defended you. That’s not our Charles, I said – too honourable.’ He poured the last of a bottle of white wine.

  ‘An affair would be a good cover for espionage,’ said Charles. ‘Need for clandestinity, absences, no explanations, odd hours, secret telephone calls and all the rest. And the other way round, of course.’ Mentions of extra-marital affairs seemed to have proliferated since the image of Anna had been in his mind.

  ‘Espionage itself is a sort of legalised illicit affair. Gives people a kick. Partly why we do it.’ Roger sipped his wine and pulled a face. A former university chemistry lecturer, he seemed neither to demand nor to expect very much of life, coping with it on intellectual tick-over, the motor within rarely extended. He had the easy generosity of the lazy clever, and an attractive, good-humoured pessimism. ‘D’you fancy Rebecca, by the way – given that she suffers the disadvantage of being unmarried?’

  ‘No – well, yes, in a way. Not seriously. Why?’

  ‘I don’t. Everyone else seems to, especially that prat, MacLydd. He’ll be there tonight. Can’t leave her alone, always in and out of her office, always trying to chat her up when no one’s around. I’d make a move myself just for the pleasure of screwing him up if it weren’t against my principle.’

  ‘You have a principle?’

  ‘Just the one. Never shit on your own doorstep. Amazing how often people disregard that.’

  ‘I’d assumed it was ambition with MacLydd. Trying to ingratiate himself and find out what’s going on.’

  ‘Same thing. Desire and ambition are in him most determinedly commingled. That’s not bad, is it? Shakespearean, nearly. But he’d fancy a bus if it had influence.’ Roger lit another cigarette from the candle on the table. ‘Bloody candles bloody stink. In the good old days everything must have stunk of candles and shit inside and horseshit and shit outside.’