The One a Month Man

by Michael Litchfield

  ‘How long was Sergi mollycoddled by your lot?’

  ‘Not long. As soon as he moved to Milton Keynes, he was more or less on his own.’

  ‘I guess the same applied to Tina?’ I queried.

  ‘Even more so.’

  ‘And on that note your files are closed, I assume?’

  There was a pause that stretched like elastic having its tensility tested. It was the sort of hiatus that, unlike a vacuum, was bristling with bottled vitality.

  ‘Oh, no, not a bit of it,’ he said, eventually, a ripple of frisson lacing his voice. ‘I don’t think we should continue with this on the phone. Where can we meet?’

  8

  We went for a stroll in the park. Hyde Park.

  Spooks have been addicted to talking while walking ever since they saw it on TV and in mid-seventies movies. Reality was soon stalking fiction after authors like John Le Carre had spooks rendezvous on benches in parks, then amble along circuitous paths among dog-walkers and beside lakes, feeding ducks while sharing intrigue and conspiracy that could help to unbalance the world power-structure. Always dressed in bowlers and pinstripes, and armed with a rolled brolly. The caricature became the true character of espionage.

  However, the uniform of stockbrokers and City bankers had long ago gone to the charity shops from the spooks’ wardrobes. Sean wore jeans, russet-coloured ankle-boots, a matching leather jacket and an open-necked black, silk shirt. To complete his disguise, he even had crumbs for the amphibious birds.

  Once again I’d left Sarah in Oxford. Taking her along would have been bad form. Spooks rarely do threesomes, believing religiously in one-to-one special relationships and possessive about contacts. As with a date or an invitation to lunch, you don’t take along an uninvited chaperon.

  As for my attire, I had on my usual crumpled dark suit, scuffed shoes, a shirt that had once been white, and a yellow tie, which, sartorially, brought a splash of sunshine to the gloom within the rest of my appearance.

  ‘Pleasant day,’ said Sean, peering skywards. British spooks regularly relied on banality about the weather as a precursor to cloak-and-dagger skulduggery. ‘Any chance of my knowing why you’re so interested in the one-time Tina Marlowe?’

  ‘Sure. She was a victim of a very serious crime and could be a witness in a murder trial, if we’re lucky,’ I said, seeming to surprise him with my frankness, which he probably took for a bogus cover story. These people were not accustomed to trading in truth.

  We’d picked up takeaway coffees at the park’s café near the Serpentine. I’d paid, of course; a matter of etiquette as he was doing me a favour, which came cheaply at the price of a cappuccino. We drank as we drifted aimlessly and westwards along the towpath.

  ‘This is very embarrassing,’ he said, turning away from me.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The episode you’re delving into. You have to give me a promise.’ Now he turned to fix me with his penetrating and soulless grey eyes.

  ‘No blank cheques, Sean,’ I warned.

  He drank some more, giving himself extra thinking time.

  ‘We cannot go on with this unless I have an assurance from you,’ he persisted.

  ‘What I’ve told you is the absolute truth, Sean. My brief is to locate Tina Marlowe, whoever the hell she is today and wherever the hell she is. Nothing else. No hidden agenda. I couldn’t care a rat’s arse about Intelligence cock-ups.’

  Instantly, I knew I’d drilled into a raw nerve.

  ‘Then give me a guarantee you’ll never repeat what I’m about to tell you. If I don’t have that undertaking we’re at an insuperable impasse.’

  ‘You have my word. Satisfied?’

  He stopped, took a few steps to the edge of the lake, finished his drink and placed the plastic container on the ground, between his feet, before taking from a jacket-pocket a small cellophane bag, filled with breadcrumbs. In silence, he began sprinkling the crumbs into the murky water. Swans, as elegant as tall ships, glided gracefully towards us, leaving brown ducks, equivalent to bovine, chugging tugs, bobbing in their wake. I knew that it would be counter-productive to rush Sean, so I stood quietly beside him, waiting until he was ready to open up.

  ‘You said something about a cock-up,’ he said, eventually.

  ‘I was only speculating,’ I said, truthfully. ‘Educated guesswork.’

  He aimed another handful of crumbs over the flotilla of swans to the straggling ducks.

  ‘Well, you were spot on. About a year after Sergi Cornikov was set up in Milton Keynes, one of our officers happened to be dining in the restaurant of a West End hotel.’

  ‘And he ran into Sergi?’ I speculated.

  ‘Wrong. He saw Tina. She was dining with someone he recognized immediately. A government minister.’

  ‘Who?’ I said, perhaps a shade too eagerly, my interest overtly salacious.

  ‘On a need-to-know rule of thumb you don’t need to know,’ he said, peremptorily.

  ‘Spoil sport!’ I said, hoping to lighten him up, failing, of course. ‘Did Tina recognize the Intelligence officer?’

  ‘No, she’d never met him. He’d been involved only behind the scenes in her case. Our man wasn’t working. He was with his wife. It was their wedding anniversary, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the politician and his dinner-date.’

  ‘That must have gone down like salmonella with his wife.’

  Still no smile.

  ‘They were very animated together. Both very tactile. They knocked back two bottles of wine. Large brandies with coffee. In his report, the off-duty officer described Tina as looking like a “princess”.’

  ‘Not like a tart?’

  ‘Top whores are as clever at concealment as top-flight Intelligence officers.’

  ‘And there speaks a man who’s in the know!’

  A wisp of a self-congratulatory smile flickered momentarily, like a candle in the wind. This was a mountain-climb for me.

  ‘Was any of their conversation overheard?’ I added, genially.

  ‘Apparently not. The officer upset his wife by insisting they stay in the restaurant until Tina and her escort shifted.’

  ‘Then they followed, like a Mr and Mrs Clouseau?’ I said, immediately regretting my flippancy.

  Sean grimaced. ‘Tina and the minister didn’t leave the hotel. Instead, they headed for the lifts.’

  ‘So she was back to her old tricks,’ I said, the double entendre wasted on Sean.

  ‘Our conscientious off-duty man made a call.’

  ‘To base?’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it. His rank entitled him to pull someone out of bed.’

  ‘Not Tina or the errant minister, though,’ I said, once more misusing my mouth.

  ‘Our man at the hotel waited to be relieved.’

  A very rude retort popped into my head, but I managed to keep that one suppressed. I’d already gambled enough with my irreverence.

  ‘Not the best of ways to round off a wedding anniversary evening,’ I observed, visualizing the scene: stiff upper-lipped spook in dinner-suit, wife in evening gown, the pair skulking behind a mock-marble column in the atrium, under glittering chandeliers. Very spoof James Bond.

  ‘His wife lost her rag and left him to it.’

  ‘Bravo!’ I said. ‘Women’s lib rattled yet another musty male cage.’

  Sean still wasn’t amused. ‘Do you want this story or don’t you?’ he said, petulantly.

  ‘Sorry,’ I apologized.

  ‘Yes, well, a surveillance op was mounted.’

  ‘On Tina or the minister?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘So two were pulled out of their sacks?’

  ‘Male and female. The man was assigned to Tina, who exited the hotel at around 4 a.m., taking a cab to an address in Church Street, Kensington.’

  ‘Classy neighbourhood. What about the politician?’

  ‘He left the hotel about half an hour later.’

  ‘Obviously had trouble getting hi
s socks back on.’

  Sean’s groan was all in his eyes and expression. ‘He went by taxi to his flat in Westminster.’

  ‘Which wasn’t his family home?’

  ‘His main home was in his constituency.’

  ‘And where was that?’

  ‘How naïve do you think I am? Identifying his constituency would be tantamount to naming him.’

  ‘Not even a good try, was it?’ I ridiculed myself.

  ‘Agreed. However, let’s stick with Tina because that’s your brief, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘She was renting in Church Street.’

  ‘Expensive.’

  ‘Yes, very, even for a basement flat.’

  ‘What about her Brighton pad?’

  ‘She’d given that up within a few weeks of being housed there; her job, too. Inquiries were made discreetly in Brighton.’

  ‘Some gratitude for all the state’s generosity!’

  ‘It gets better.’

  ‘Don’t you mean worse?’ I said.

  ‘The more intriguing it becomes, the better it is for us. On the afternoon following her tryst with the minister, Tina went to another hotel in the West End for a rendezvous of some significance. Can you guess with whom?’

  Frivolity again led me astray. ‘The US president? Mickey Mouse? The Pope?’

  ‘Have you always been such a pain?’

  ‘Ever since I was born. Nothing more painful than childbirth. Ask any mother.’

  He sighed exasperatingly. ‘Waiting for Tina at the hotel was our dear old friend Sergi.’

  ‘A husband-and-wife reunion,’ I said, trying to remain inscrutable, though with mentally raised eyebrows.

  ‘While talking in the lounge, they also had afternoon tea.’

  ‘Very British,’ I said. ‘A real salad-days scenario. How long were they together?’

  ‘More than an hour. Then they stood, shook hands again, and she departed. He hung about for five minutes or so before also leaving.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘We had only one man at the hotel. He followed Tina to her Kensington flat. The whole case had to be reopened and reassessed. At a case conference, it was decreed that there should be round-the-clock surveillance on Tina and Sergi, and that the government minister should be watched as much as possible, though that wouldn’t be so easy.’

  ‘Was the surveillance to incorporate electronic eavesdropping?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I’m asking.’

  ‘There was bugging, yes. Don’t forget our deal on this; nothing goes beyond this moment.’

  ‘Everything you’re telling me is ring-fenced. It stays here.’

  Poor old Sean was still as cautious as a tightrope-walker without a safety net. ‘It was essential we bottomed out as quickly as possible what was going on. Three days after Tina’s tea-time meeting with Sergi, she took a call from a man who introduced himself as a friend of a government minister, whom he named. He said that she came highly recommended and wondered whether she would dine with him.’

  ‘And she said?’

  ‘She’d be delighted to, but obviously needed to know who he was.’

  ‘And who was he?’

  ‘Again I’m not divulging.’

  ‘OK, but did he tell her?’

  ‘He said to call him John and hoped she’d be content with that, for the time being.’

  ‘Did your people identify the caller from his voice?’

  ‘Oh, yes, there was no doubt about that. There’s much more, though, to this than you might be imagining. They arranged a date for that evening in the Ritz. She asked him if she should go “prepared for a late night”.’

  ‘I just love those euphemisms,’ I said. ‘Top-drawer whores have a way of sanitizing everything. They’re alchemists, trying to gold-plate everything about their tatty lives. What was his answer?’

  ‘He said that, in his job, he was accustomed to all-night sessions, to which she replied, “I understand. I’ll come prepared. Are there any special requirements?”’

  ‘And were there?’

  ‘He said that anything of that nature could be negotiated over dinner, rather than on the phone.’

  ‘Rather late for circumspection,’ I commented.

  ‘Even more significant is what followed. As soon as that call was over, Tina phoned Sergi, giving him chapter and verse, seeking instructions.’

  ‘So Sergi was handling her?’

  ‘Totally.’

  ‘For blackmail?’

  ‘Not conventional blackmail. It became transparent that Sergi had never really been serious about wanting to defect. In essence, he was still working for the Soviets. Their protests about his marrying an English girl and settling in the UK were pure theatre. He was acting under orders, a puppet of the KGB.’ This didn’t take much computing and I was instantly ready with my next volley of questions.

  ‘Was he still slumming it in Milton Keynes?’

  ‘Very much so.’

  ‘And his place and phone were bugged?’

  Sean simply nodded, almost indiscernibly. ‘Soon after Tina had agreed to the dinner-date at the Ritz, she called Sergi, outlining her itinerary – and, importantly, asking him for suggestions re the way she should play it. She’d become a sister, that much was indisputable.’

  Again he fell back on the international jargon of spooks: a sister was a female agent whose job was to seduce and sleep with targets.

  ‘What directions did he give?’

  ‘He said not to press him on anything, that she should allow him to make all the running and allow the conversation to take its natural course. He knew the minister would immediately become suspicious and guarded if a whore began asking questions about, say, nuclear physics.’

  ‘Just a little bit!’ I laughed. ‘Even if the whore had been to Oxbridge.’

  ‘Sergi’s guidance to her was instructive for us. He said, “Just compromise him; that’s all we need. Do that and we have him on a leash for life.” He told her to do anything possible to entice him to her flat. Not to fuck at the hotel, which wouldn’t have been wired.’

  ‘Did she succeed?’

  ‘Without much effort. Around midnight, after several bottles of wine, including champagne, enticement was unnecessary and hidden cameras captured them fucking. Tina’s flat had been secretly entered and searched at some stage. No damage caused. Everything left as found. She’d never have realized there had been a forced entry. The peeping-tom cameras were located; state-of-the-art gear; professional equipment. Unless Tina was an electronics wizard, she’d never have been able to install such sophisticated hardware. Neither could she have operated it by herself.’

  ‘What happened to the compromising pics?’

  ‘The first part of my answer is conjecture: they were probably filed away in the Soviet Embassy, with the idea of using them for political – not financial – blackmail. The prime minister was tipped off. Two politicians were confronted and demoted. Returned to the backbenches.’

  ‘Making them worthless currency for political blackmail,’ I said, demonstrating that I had paid full attention.

  ‘The pics did surface, however. They were given gratis to a Sunday scandal-sheet, as a means of discrediting not just the two MPs but also the government; depicting Western decadence, etc. The MPs didn’t stand for re-election at the next General Election, so the Soviet spy network had achieved a limited return on its investment.’

  ‘Was Tina a known radical?’

  ‘No. Her philosophy was that of the capitalist; a free marketeer. The Soviets were putting business her way. You could say that they were her agents, finding her work, for which she was paid twice.’

  ‘By the Soviets and her sleeping partners,’ I said, perversely impressed.

  ‘A nice little earner,’ Sean agreed, almost admiringly. ‘She was in it purely for the money. The Soviets were masters of honeytraps. Tina was perfect for their range of black arts. The last thing they w
anted was someone with a left-wing extremist political agenda because someone like that is driven by ideology and is one-dimensional and might as well be wearing a badge of allegiance. She needed to be intelligent, attractive, mercenary, self-disciplined, a free-thinker, flexible, manageable, ruthless and amoral, but most definitely not an overt tart. With Tina, all the boxes were ticked.’

  ‘Was any action taken by our side?’

  Sean gave this question more consideration than any of my previous ones.

  ‘It all ended very abruptly,’ he said, cagily.

  ‘Is that a yes to my question?’

  Sean avoided eye contact. ‘Sergi was discovered dead in his home, an empty bottle of pills on his bedside table. An empty bottle of scotch on the floor.’

  ‘He’d overdosed?’

  ‘Well, that’s what the coroner said.’

  ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

  He just shrugged.

  ‘No suicide note?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘So it wasn’t suicide?’

  ‘Don’t think so.’

  ‘Accidental?’

  ‘Hardly. The pathologist had a problem. The OD was massive: barbiturates, which are an old-fashioned drug, rarely prescribed nowadays; not too much in those days, either. The margin between a safe and a fatal dose too narrow. Oddly, there was no residue in his stomach.’

  ‘So how did he explain the mystery?’

  ‘Only one explanation: the fatal dose was injected straight into the bloodstream.’

  ‘So if self-administered, there must have been a used needle nearby.’

  ‘But there wasn’t.’ Now he eyeballed me as an evil, bittersweet smile trickled slyly across his enigmatic face.

  ‘So the OD couldn’t be matched to the empty drugs-bottle?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘How about the booze? Any evidence of alcoholic poisoning?’

  ‘He would have passed a breathalyzer test.’

  ‘As mysterious as Marilyn Monroe’s death, eh?’ I suggested.

  ‘But without the headlines. There wasn’t one reporter at the inquest. The press didn’t follow it up, even when the coroner recorded an open verdict.’

  ‘Sergi was murdered?’ I concluded, in the form of yet another question.

  ‘That’s one possibility.’