by Alan Judd
Charles followed downhill, keeping well to the side of the track. When the railway footbridge was in sight he stopped and listened. Hearing nothing, he walked casually to the bridge and leant against it in time to see Viktor, dressed in his suit again, roll up his plimsolls inside his tracksuit, put them in the boot of his car and drive off.
Jim and Sue turned into the car park at speed a few minutes later. ‘He’s gone belting off towards the motorway,’ said Jim. ‘Different man now.’
It was a rapid journey back to London and Jim had to do ninety to stay in touch. He speculated aloud about what Foxtrot Alpha might have been up to. Had he had a clandestine meeting, emptied or filled a DLB, recce’d something or been part of a plan, with the three others who had left the embassy at about the same time, to draw off surveillance? Or had he genuinely been using some free time to look for a present and go for a run? He did go for occasional runs, they told Charles, but usually in the mornings. The fact that something had happened excited them. It made the shift worthwhile.
‘Now he’s running for home as fast as his legs will carry him,’ said Jim.
‘It may not be home,’ said Charles.
Viktor cut south onto the M4 via Slough, then crawled through the rush-hour traffic towards Belgravia. Charles told them where he thought they were going. ‘You’ll need someone on foot before he parks so that we can see whether he goes into his girlfriend’s flat. Also, there’s a Greek restaurant opposite. Useful to know if it’s open.’
The crew of Red Four Three went on foot in Claire’s street before Viktor reached it. There were no free parking places so he had to drive round to an adjoining street just, unfortunately, as Jim was entering it. ‘Down,’ said Sue sharply. Charles ducked beneath the seats. Viktor, protected by his diplomatic plates, parked in a residents’ parking bay. They were past him before he got out.
A minute or two later they heard from Red Four Three that, clutching the flowers, he had been let into Claire’s flat. The Greek restaurant was open but empty.
‘He’ll be some time,’ said Charles. ‘I’ll go and sit in the restaurant window. We’ll see each other when he comes out.’ The sight of himself sitting watching Claire’s door should be sufficient to make the point. ‘It’ll probably be a long evening. You can knock off if you like. I’ll sit it out.’
He didn’t really anticipate a long wait because Viktor would have to account for his time, to his wife as well as to his colleagues. Yet he obviously felt he had time to visit Claire, which suggested that the afternoon’s excursion had been official. He would doubtless say it had taken longer than it had. Charles wondered whether Claire had rung in to say Viktor was coming, as she was supposed to do. It must have been arranged, if it was arranged, before he left the embassy, since he had made no calls while out.
He bought a classic car magazine in the newsagent’s, took a window table in the restaurant and ordered the first of a number of Greek coffees, medium sweet and with the consistency of silt. Later he supplemented them with pitta bread and taramasalata. It was too early for dinner but he wanted to give the impression he would become a serious customer. His position was prominent, directly opposite Claire’s door. If she came to it, or looked out of her window, she would probably see him; but there was likely to be no better chance of silently making the point to Viktor.
An hour and fifty minutes later her door opened and Viktor came out alone. He looked preoccupied, as if emerging from the dentist and feeling with his tongue for the absent tooth. Claire was not at her window. Viktor turned in the direction of his car. Charles hesitated between tapping on the window and going out, leaving his jacket over the chair to show that he intended to return and pay. Either could precipitate the forbidden conversation, but with Viktor at last within reach, he didn’t care.
Before he could move Viktor looked directly across. Charles raised his hand, palm outwards, his elbow still on the table, careful now to show no sign of getting up. Viktor stood facing the restaurant, hands by his side. Charles lowered his hand and nodded, unsmiling. For a few seconds they stared at each other across the road. It was exactly as the office required: Viktor knew that they knew, no words exchanged, and Claire, to judge by her window, seeing nothing. Nevertheless, it was with relief rather than concern that Charles watched Viktor advance slowly across the road. They would have the conversation he wanted and he could honestly say it was at Viktor’s initiative, not his.
Viktor stood by the table, hands still by his side, ignoring, or just possibly not noticing, Charles’s proffered hand as he rose. His features were pale, his manner controlled and quietly hostile. After a few moments, he pulled back the chair and sat. ‘So, Charles, what will you do to me?’
‘Nothing.’
‘So why are you doing this?’
‘To let you know that we know.’
‘Why do you do that, if you are to do nothing?’
‘To see what you will do.’
Viktor spoke quickly and quietly. The exchange had already taken them into new waters. They were talking now as professional to professional. Honesty was not only best policy; there was no point in anything else.
‘And if I do nothing?’
‘We do nothing.’
A waiter laid cutlery before them and looked enquiringly at Charles. Charles ordered a bottle of retsina.
‘Why do you do nothing?’
‘We don’t blackmail.’
‘But you will ask questions, knowing my secret. And you make sure that I know, like this. What is the difference?’
‘The difference is that nothing will happen to you if you don’t want to answer.’
There was a pause. Viktor’s tension lessened a little. ‘So, Charles, what do you want to know?’
‘Anything you want to tell me.’
He shook his head. ‘Please, please. They will have given you questions before you came.’
‘They did not. They did not even ask me to speak to you. But I know what their questions would be about.’
‘So why don’t you ask me?’
‘I’d rather talk about other things.’ The waiter brought bottle and glasses. Charles did not bother with the proffered tasting. He raised his glass. Viktor drank without comment. ‘Shall we move away from the window? She might see us.’
‘Why does it matter?’
‘Or your own people might.’
Viktor smiled with something of his former wryness. ‘Charles, I have taken so many stupid risks that I don’t care about this one.’
‘Will you go on seeing Chantal? It must be dangerous for you. Your own people –’
Viktor drained his glass and shook his head. ‘It is not possible for me to talk about this question. Nor about my marriage. Anything else, external things, objective things, but these I – no. It is an emotional matter for me, perhaps like you and your father. You know, Charles, I am sorry for that. I had to do it but I did not like it and I thought all the time how I would feel if it had been my father. I am glad you have not taken the money, though it would have been good for me if you had. I can say this now. I hope we can be frank.’
‘Did he really do it? Is it true?’
Viktor looked puzzled. ‘I think so, yes. Well, it is certain as far as I know. I have never seen his file but the Centre sent a summary when I was ordered to respond to your approach. It was like other file summaries.’
‘And he was an ideological agent?’
‘His sense of socialist reality was awakened by the struggle against fascism and developed by his admiration of the Russian soldiers of the Great Patriotic War – it was a phrase like that.’
Charles refilled their glasses. ‘But was there anything in his own words about his motivation? Any quote from him?’
‘I think there was not. It was a summary, you see.’
‘I can’t believe it, Viktor. I can’t believe that is really how he thought and felt.’
‘Maybe not. It is a standard sort of phrase. You see it in many files, especial
ly files of cases that began a long time ago. You see, the Centre used to like to tell the Party bosses that its agents were ideologically pure and that they worked for political reasons even though they took money as well, most of them. Indeed, the truth was that the Centre was happiest when they did take money. At one time, though, it was necessary for the agent to have the correct ideological motivation in order for the case to be considered a complete recruitment, so case officers would often put it in the files when it was not always true. Or not always the only truth.’ He drained his glass again. ‘But you don’t ask me about what he did.’
Charles almost did not want to know. The thought was enough; detail later, perhaps. At the moment every word of confirmation was an arrow in his heart.
‘You really, truly, as an English gentleman’ – Viktor used the phrase without irony, as of a known quantity – ‘are not intending to take advantage of my situation?’
‘No.’
‘You know, Charles, I can hardly believe that.’ He laughed briefly and paused, but Charles said nothing. ‘You could destroy me and have me sent home in disgrace and for punishment, but you don’t. You could try to blackmail me into working for you, but you don’t. So, what do you want of me? Why are you doing this? What is the point? Is it only that you want to know about your father? Or is it that – no, it is not, is it? – that you wish after all to be like your father –?’
Charles shook his head. The waiter came again to take their order for food. He knew Viktor must be taking a risk by staying out, but the risk was already embarked upon and it was becoming awkward not to order. Without asking Viktor, he ordered two kleftikos.
‘What will you do about Chantal?’ he asked again.
‘What will you do – arrest her?’
‘Of course not. She’s committed no offence.’
‘Then you will make her report on me. You will talk to her and I understand what such talk would mean.’
‘We don’t make people do things. We can’t force anyone to help us. It’s not like your service. People help us if they choose.’
‘You mean, only if they come to you and offer? You would wait for Chantal to come to you?’
‘Quite often.’ He emptied the last of the bottle into Viktor’s glass, recalling his father’s dictum about the essence of lying and the bleak self-assessment that must have underlain that perception. ‘Does she know your posting must end soon?’
‘She wants money – diamonds – to remember me by. She has become greedy. I can’t do that, I haven’t that money. I told her. And I do not want it from you. But nor do I want anything to happen to her. She is not a bad woman. I know what she does. I know that. But still I have feeling for her.’ He put his fist over his heart, almost as in a Soviet military salute. ‘Perhaps, Charles, you do not understand that?’
‘I think I understand.’
‘That means you do not. Not really.’
When the kleftikos arrived Charles ordered another bottle. He was probably slightly drunk but the effect would not come until later, when he had no need to concentrate. Viktor showed no sign of having drunk anything, and ate with appetite and indifference.
‘And how is’ – Charles hesitated over Viktor’s wife’s name – ‘how is your wife?’
‘She will be very happy to be at home in Moscow with our daughter. It is very hard for her to be separated.’
‘And you?’
‘I will be happy to be with our daughter again.’ He put down his fork. ‘Excuse me, Charles, you are not trying to persuade me to defect, I hope.’
‘It never entered my head.’
‘It should have. You are a professional intelligence officer. You should seek to exploit every weakness, to learn everything about your main enemy.’
‘I meant that I had never detected in you any willingness to forsake your country and your family, so I had not thought of trying to persuade you.’ He poured more wine. ‘Anyway, I’m resigning, so my professional interest is limited.’
‘Why are you resigning? This is a serious matter. Why are you smiling?’
‘I am resigning because of what you told me about my father. I have reported it and it has now become a security investigation. That will take a long time and will probably never tell me what I most want to know – why he did it, how, morally, he could have gone on doing it. Because of my father they don’t want me to pursue this case – your case, you – but talking to you is the only hope of really finding out about it. I’d rather do that and leave than stay and not be able to do it. It would always hang over me.’
Viktor pushed aside his plate and leaned forward with his arms on the table, assuming a ponderous formality that might, in other circumstances, have seemed funny. ‘Charles, may I say something to you? We are enemies and friends. Perhaps we shall never meet again, perhaps we shall be friends for life. I am grateful, whatever. I hope we may continue friends somehow. But there is something I have to say to you. I can be friends only with someone for whom I have respect and, since we are of the same profession, this includes professional respect. For you to resign for these reasons is bourgeois individualism and professional negligence. If you are serious, you must be above merely personal concerns. Your duties to your service and your country are more important. It is also negligent not to be more interested in what I have been doing here. I am not going to tell you, of course, but you should be interested, you should try to find out. It should not be for me to lecture you on this here, Charles, in your own country.’
It would have been a grave error to smile. Charles inclined his head, and continued in Viktor’s tone. ‘I accept what you say, Viktor. I argue in my defence only that in not asking you to tell me what you were doing I was paying you the compliment of assuming that you would not.’
‘You are correct.’
‘Even though I could argue that in some ways – one way – you are negligent of your duty, too.’
‘I have broken rules, I confess. I allowed my feelings and desires and my – my search for excitement to carry me away. Then I came to love her a little. Not completely, with all my heart, but enough, you know. She is not a bad woman. But when I go home from here I shall never do such a thing again. That is it. It is not like your resignation, which is for ever. And it is not like betrayal.’
A sliding scale, Hookey had called it. Great sin was reached by many small steps rather than one big one, St Paul had written. ‘Is that how Tanya and Natasha would see it?’
This time Viktor bowed his head. When he looked up his face was softer and sadder. ‘You cannot imagine, Charles, what your father was helping us with when he died. It was important. I would like to tell you but I cannot.’
Holding his gaze, Charles decided to take the risk. They were on all fours with each other and there might never be another chance. Hookey might be angry but he would welcome the confirmation. If Viktor knew nothing, then nothing would have been given away. If he was involved as Hookey thought, then he surely could not report what Charles had said without explaining the circumstances. ‘What is the Russian for “legacy”?’
The softness of Viktor’s expression hardened. ‘If you know enough to ask this question, I think you do not need me to tell you the answer.’
‘We need to know whether it is happening.’
‘What will you do to Chantal?’
‘I told you, nothing.’
‘Perhaps one day we will speak again but only if you are still in your profession.’ He stood abruptly and held out his hand. ‘The word is “nasledstvo”. Goodbye, Charles.’
7
Whenever Mary had to repeat herself on the telephone, irritation made her speak faster. ‘Because, as I’ve said, he’s away on business and his girlfriend who’s my friend and who has a key, her mother’s just been taken ill and she’s got to go to King’s Lynn, but she’ll leave her key with Christina, the neighbour downstairs who’s only going to be there during the middle part of today because she’s doing up a cottage in Wales and she’s
expecting you to call. At the flat, that is, not in Wales, and no one’s asking you to go to King’s Lynn. Honestly, Charles, you seem rather dense this morning and not at all grateful for everyone running around on your behalf.’
Charles, summoned naked from his bed by her early call, clung to the phone as if it were a rope on a rock face. ‘No, I am, very grateful, just not quite with it when I answered.’
‘Only if you don’t decide today he’s going to put it with the agents and it’ll probably go like a shot and even if you did buy it it would be more because of their commission. Did you talk to the building society, as you’d said you were going to?’
‘I’m waiting to hear from them.’
‘So you’ll go today, then?’
‘Could you give me the address again? Someone must have walked off with my bit of paper.’
Shaving in the now fully-lit bathroom, he tried to remember which building society she’d recommended. It was academic, anyway, since, if he were shortly to have no job, there’d be no mortgage. But the idea of buying a flat, especially if it were easy and he didn’t have to go looking, was appealing. With Roger away on the exercise, having the existing flat to himself that morning was a novel pleasure. Having his own would be even better, albeit that his uncertain future made such a stake in life seem irrelevant.
Reporting to Hookey that morning was not easy, partly because he had to do so without Hugo knowing since Hugo was not indoctrinated into Legacy. For most of the morning Hookey was in meetings; budgetry and personnel matters took more time than anything operational.
Later, looking as if it had been a bad enough day already, Hookey heard Charles out with a minatory lack of expression. When Charles had finished he stayed slumped back in his chair, speaking quietly. ‘You did precisely what you were instructed not to do.’
‘Yes, though I didn’t seek it.’
