by Alan Judd
‘Tell me.’
‘My role in Operation Legacy, as you call it, is quite recent really. I knew nothing of it when I came here. Then I was told that we had an important agent who was doing secret work for another department –’
‘Directorate S – Illegals?’
Viktor nodded. ‘And this agent was run from the Centre, he had no contact with the embassy, his case officer used to travel to see him. He was recruited by the Second Chief Directorate many years before but later he was given to Directorate S to run, and then us here in London in conjunction with them. The other officers here had no idea about him, only the Resident and me. He was your father, of course. He had done many things for us for many years but now he was doing unusual work. He was trusted and he had certain skills. His new task was to find places where we could bury radios, arms, explosives or documents so that Directorate S agents who had been trained in sabotage could use them at an appropriate time. There is at least one cache here already, an old one, found by another agent and filled before your father. Only the Resident knows where. But the Centre needs more and your father agreed to find them as his last task before retirement. The last time he travelled abroad he came secretly to Russia and a senior official presented him with the Order of Lenin. He was very pleased by that.’
Charles thought he was getting used to the idea of his father’s treachery, but he felt Viktor’s words in the pit of his stomach. He was relieved that he did not have to speak.
‘I never met him,’ Viktor continued. ‘Nobody from the Residency ever did. At first we didn’t know who he was, only his code-name – Builder. The Centre would tell us what he had done, what stage had been reached, and what we had to do in support. My role at first was to only find dead letter boxes and pass the details to Moscow. They would be filled and emptied for him by someone else, I don’t know who. Another agent, perhaps a visiting Illegal. Also, I was to check any site he found. He was ordered to find one close to the west of London. You have strategic military headquarters in this area for your navy and air force, as well as communications centres and the government airfield at Northolt. Also there is Heathrow and Chequers, of course. It is a sensitive area, but very accessible. In Russia you would not be allowed within five hundred miles of such places. You are too relaxed in England.’
Charles nodded, his eyes on his father’s cap, now on the seat beside Viktor.
‘And because this site is for very delicate equipment the Centre sent your father some special instruments to test for damp and vibration and things like that. He found the site in the country close to London when he had some holiday – it was during Christmas – and could go walking and he put the instruments in immediately because it was not safe for him to keep them at home. The Centre had his message to say he had done this and describing the area of the site and his next message was to give the exact coordinates and directions. But then he died. So we knew only the area but not exactly where and what I have had to do is to try to find it.’
‘Hence Beaconsfield?’
Viktor nodded. ‘The Centre wants the instruments. We know the site is near the top of the hill, near where the footpath goes through the corner of the army camp, but I could not find it. There is no disturbed earth or any sign. And we cannot risk me or anyone going there too often. That is why I must go for my runs, you see, so that organs of British security will think I am just practising for the Olympic Games. And also the Centre must find someone to carry on the work of your father. They do not like it being done from the embassy because of your surveillance. Since Lyalin defected, it is not so easy to operate in England. That is the truth, Charles, I know that.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘So, all this was happening when you met me in the park, as if by chance. Of course I reported it to the Resident and he reported to the Centre and they surprised us by saying you had a file. Well, it was not your own actually, it was an annex to your father’s, but you have your own now, I think. And then they made an even more surprising request that I must see you again, tell you about your father and try to recruit you. Perhaps they wanted you to take his place in Legacy, as well as for other things, but until then we had no idea your father and the Legacy agent were the same person.’ He sat back and drank off his brandy. ‘Now, Charles, I think I have more than answered your question. What I have told you is worth more than twenty-five years. It is’ – he drew his forefinger across his throat – ‘so now you must do your work with Chantal. You will not hurt her very much? Even with what she has done I would not like that.’
‘We’ll pay her to go and keep quiet. Enough to make sure she stays quiet. She will not be hurt at all. We need to discuss signal arrangements, for the next week and after.’
‘And after for the rest of my life? You are serious?’
‘Completely. Not only for Legacy, which you might or might not continue to know about, but for you. In ten, twenty years’ time you might want to defect. We need a system that will get your message to us regardless of where I am or where you are. But for the next week it has to be, “Help, come and get me,” or “I want to talk” or “I’m okay.” We’ll have to be right up on you. We need to discuss this delegation you’ll be with. The Foreign Office must have their itinerary. Are they sticking to it? What about these other two you mentioned?’
Hostile intelligence officers, Gerry had said, were among the hardest to recruit, but the easiest to run. The language of covert communication was international, like the drills and disciplines common to armies. Viktor was an experienced and imaginative operator. ‘They trained you well,’ Charles said, when they finished, finding it tactful not to mention his own status.
‘How can you say so after Beaconsfield? You know, I am ashamed about that.’
They took a cab back, passing Claire’s flat on the way. They both glanced at her window. ‘I wish you more than luck,’ said Viktor. ‘This has to work.’
Charles stopped the cab before the street where their cars were parked. It was better that Viktor was not seen with anyone alongside his diplomatic registered car. They were together only briefly on the pavement. ‘So I keep the cap,’ said Viktor.
‘Until.’
‘If.’
Charles went to shake hands but Viktor ignored his proffered hand and stepped forward, arms outspread. They parted with a Russian bear-hug, cheek to cheek, and without further words.
Charles detoured his car, giving Viktor time to get away. As he went to unlock it, the door of a nearby Volvo opened and a woman got out. ‘Message from Hookey,’ she said. ‘He’s got some more brandy in his office. He’d like you to join him there. We’ll take you, so you don’t have to worry about drink and drive.’
Charles stared. ‘Sue.’
The girl from SV smiled. ‘You know how to corpse your old friends, don’t you? Twice in that café you looked straight across at our table, right at us. I had to turn my back. Jim thought you were trying to tell us you’d spotted us. You hadn’t, had you?’
‘Not a slither. Hopeless. I was too busy discussing tradecraft to practise it.’
‘Just be grateful we weren’t the Russians. There weren’t any, by the way. That’s why we were there, checking. Urgent request from your office. Better not keep the famous Hookey waiting any longer. Not that he ever leaves his desk, from what I hear.’
10
At lunchtime the following day Charles sat alone in an Argentinian restaurant just off Covent Garden. This time he had a book, intending another attempt on Middle-march. His eyes read the same paragraph over and again.
‘She must leave you feeling grateful, secretly delighted that she’s getting one over on us, determined never to see us or the Russians again and wetting herself with anxiety to get away,’ Hookey had said during the early hours. ‘That’s why she must believe it’s a loan, not a gift, so that she’ll fear that if she gets in touch she’ll be asked to repay. At the same time she must believe that you’re keen for her to get back in touch because you want her to do the same with Lover Boy’s
successor, whose reputation for sexual violence and high jinks has preceded him. And she must be convinced that there is no point in even thinking of contacting Lover Boy again, that he has disappeared into the gulag, unmentioned and unmentionable.’
They had talked for two and a half hours amidst the brandy and tobacco fumes of Hookey’s office, alone in the building save for the comcen staff, the guards and the duty officer. Hookey had made him go over every word of his encounter with Viktor, twice. He had criticised their signal arrangements, pondered how the thing should be presented to MI5, noted the two delegation members Viktor had named, chuckled at Charles’s failure to spot the surveillance, congratulated Charles on the Legacy news, chuckled again because MI5 had crawled over the grounds of the army camp at Beaconsfield with toothpicks and found nothing, speculated about the future and ruled that this was not yet a recruitment.
‘There is a growing tendency in this service to count the conscious provision of intelligence as a recruitment. It isn’t. As you should know from your course, an agent may be said to be properly recruited – and therefore be an agent – only when he or she accepts handover to another case officer, thus accepting that his relationship is with the service, not the individual. You have done extremely well with your friend but we’re a long way from that, even if you do meet again this side of the Styx.’
They spent the last half hour discussing in detail arrangements for the following week, by the end of which Charles felt drained and sluggish while Hookey continued with undiminished vigour and clarity. ‘Report to Hugo first thing in the morning, leaving out any reference to Legacy, of course. He can do all the paperwork. He likes that sort of thing. I’ll square MI5 in advance at the appropriate level so that they’ll know it has a Legacy context. If you think it’s difficult to discuss it without Legacy, put in something else – Lover Boy thinking of defecting, for example. Point is, there has to be something bureaucratic to account for our continuing concentration on Lover Boy without widening the circle of Legacy knowledge. And I mean first thing. The rest of your day’s going to be busy, like the rest of your week. I’ll get the duty officer to ring Hugo at sparrow’s fart and get him in. As for the elusive Beaconsfield cache, MI5 will have to look again. You should go with them. You might have an idea how your father might have thought. I’ll fix it.’He made another note, then clasped his hands behind his head. ‘Very useful, your resignation. Be hell to pay for all this uncleared, unauthorised activity if you hadn’t. There’ll be moderate hell anyway but not too bad because you’re the scapegoat. Equally useful, though, that you’re still on the payroll for your final month. Means I can still boss you around, eh?’ When Charles left sometime after two Hookey relit his pipe and began drafting.
Charles now saw Claire approach across the street, tottering on high heels and wearing a tight, short, white skirt. ‘Darling,’ she said theatrically, attracting the attention of everyone in the restaurant. She kissed him extravagantly on both cheeks, then dabbed at the resulting lipstick smears with a tiny frilly handkerchief. When they sat she took a mirror from her handbag and repaired her damaged lipstick while he talked about the menu.
‘I ’eard about this place,’ she said, rounding her mouth in the mirror. ‘I want to try them things that sound like tampax.’
Charles floundered for a while but eventually settled on empanadas.
‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘Sort of pancakes, aren’t they? And wine?’
‘Naturally. Of course wine. Always wine.’
He had chosen the restaurant to get her off her own ground, to make things feel different and also, in the event of it going wrong, to ensure she was away from people she knew. She was much livelier than the all but crushed and exhausted woman she had been the night before, although beneath her shovelled-on make-up there was the stretch and strain of ageing, like a taut mask of skin drawn across her skull. Her eyes had a surface shine that blocked all depth or variety of expression. Her account of her forty minutes with Viktor the night before was anodyne: he was jogging, had dropped in to tell her he loved her and give her a necklace, would call again before he left, regretted he couldn’t stay longer. She did not mention her money demand or her threat. Nor did she stop talking.
Charles waited until they were nearing the end of the first bottle. ‘I’ve got good news and bad news for you. Which way d’you want it?’
‘The good, of course. Don’t like bad news.’
‘The good is more money for you, much more. On top of what they’re paying you, they agreed with my suggestion that because of all the good work you’ve done for us they should lend you the money to go to Cornwall and have the break you wanted. The timing’s right, with Viktor going away – though we’ll come back to him in a minute – and you can have a nice long break before getting stuck in to his successor, if you’re happy to do that. It’s a five thousand quid, interest-free, no time limit loan and you don’t even have to pay it back in money. You can pay it in time spent on our behalf with Viktor’s successor. Does that count as good?’
Her eyes widened. ‘Peter, darling, you serious? As long as I like? What about the revenue – won’t they get on to me if it’s government money?’
‘They won’t know anything about it unless from you. If you talk about it, one way or another it’s bound to get back to them. The bad news –’
‘Don’t spoil it now, Pete, I don’t want to know.’
‘The bad news is that Viktor’s successor, if it’s who we think it is, has a bit of a reputation as a bedroom romper. Nothing you couldn’t handle, I’m sure, but probably like those men you were telling me about. There was some trouble during his last posting with a girl in Mexico City, though nothing was ever proved. In fact, I’m not sure she was ever found. The CIA are still looking for her, so we might hear more and it may not turn out as bad as it sounded. Interesting to see what you think when you meet him.’
She nodded.
‘More seriously, though, is what’s happened to Viktor himself. Apparently his own people had him under surveillance for most of yesterday, though we’re not sure whether they were with him on his run when he called on you. Might have been, might not. Anyway, he didn’t follow his usual routine this morning and the switchboard aren’t putting any calls through to him. The only time he’s been seen he was with a couple of security narks, minders who’ve just flown in from Moscow. They must have discovered something about him, whether that he’s been seeing you or not, we don’t know, but it could well be. Some of them were seen in Belgravia this morning, though not in your street. Could be coincidence or could be that they only have a description, no name or address.’
‘You mean they’re after me?’ Credulous fear kept her eyes wide and her mouth open. ‘What would they do?’
Charles shrugged. Her anxiety was so palpable that he felt briefly sorry for her; she was outside the service, someone to be used and carefully manipulated, then gently left when her usefulness was finished. An outsider. An outsider was what he was becoming. What she had tried to do to Viktor, however, and could still do, leant effortless conviction to his lie. ‘Don’t know. Probably just identify you as part of their interrogation of him. But you never know with these people. It’s just as well you’re going away for a while anyway. No harm in lying low for a bit.’
A naked man with a beard walked into the restaurant. There was laughter, a wolf whistle and some ragged cheering and clapping. He walked past their table to the far end, turned and walked back and out. Claire, who had lit a cigarette, watched him with unseeing eyes. ‘How soon do I have to go? When can you get the five thousand?’
‘I’ve got it with me, in cash. Plus what’s owed you. If you want to play safe start for Cornwall tonight.’ He wasn’t sure whether she was so preoccupied that she hadn’t seen the man or whether, for her, naked strange men were such an everyday occurrence that their appearance in public lacked the novelty it held for others. ‘Did you see that man?’
‘London’s full of nutters. Gla
d to be out of it, to be honest.’
Charles nodded. Just as people went on eating their empanadas despite the naked man, so in Whitehall Operation Legacy would take its place among other papers filling the in-trays of bureaucrats. It would not disrupt weekends, golf, school sports days or dinner parties – except, perhaps, Hookey’s. It was incongruity, he decided, rather than unreality that the naked man symbolised, the incongruity of everyday. Espionage was like that. He was developing a taste for it.
The money was in a parcel in a Marks & Spencers plastic bag. He got her to sign for it while they were still at the table. They parted in the street outside, she with a flurry of kisses and fervour, promising to return to London as soon as she could and to be in touch without fail, he with cautious assurances that all would probably be well, that the office would keep an eye on what the Russians were up to, that they weren’t allowed to travel as far as Cornwall without permission and that he looked forward to hearing her impressions of the notorious bedroom romper, when she got into action with him. Pretence was mutual and successful.
Charles had imagined he would begin job-hunting the following week, but couldn’t yet believe in himself doing anything else. The very idea of a CV was repugnant. CVs were inevitably dishonest and he disliked that sort of self-promotion. Perhaps he would try to transfer to the Foreign Office, if they would have him, which was doubtful. He didn’t really want to do it and they would probably detect that. Without actually becoming bitter, he felt increasingly disaffected from everything. One morning he slept late, another he did not shave. He lunched with a couple of old friends, one from Oxford who was now an ambitious barrister, another from the army now doing well in the Treasury. He could barely manage that pretence of enthusiasm that is usually sufficient to engender its reality. Always before in life there had been something to go on to, but now all that kept him moving was his determination to get at the truth about his father, and that was not a welcoming prospect. Spasms of anger gave way to troughs of despair, which in turn gave way to a longing to talk to him, to have him there, to argue with him, to seek from him the reassurance that was no longer possible. He maintained a separate, consoling imaginary dialogue with Anna, too, but there was no future there, either. He advertised the Rover in Exchange & Mart.
