‘No offence, guvnor,’ Jimmy Moser said, involving himself entirely in the test of the circuit. ‘Nothin’ wrong ’ere, not that I can see.’ And, a few minutes later, ‘This one neither, and that’s the last outlet in the living room, Mr. Editta … We’ll ’ave to test the outlets in the dark-room. I can find ’em. No need to disturb yourself.’
Editta rose quickly from his chair. ‘No. I will point them out. I—we—must be careful of my equipment.’
And so the tour proceeded. There were half a dozen outlets, one of them reinforced with what appeared to be a large battery complex. ‘Wot’s this ’ere, a juice-booster?’
‘Yes. For when I need a very bright light for the enlarger mechanism.’
‘Righto. You see a lot a those these days. But they shouldn’t cause any trouble.’ Jimmy Moser, again on his hands and knees, plying his flashlight and using the small screwdriver and his voltmeter, said, ‘Aha! I think … I think I’ve found the bugger. But I’ll need to remove the fuses to test it.’ He rose, used the flashlight to go back to the kitchen, loosened the fuses, returned to the socket from which the enlarger and its apparatus were fed, and, his head only inches from his toolbox, said bouncily, ‘If I’m right, your lights oughta go on in ’arf a mo.’
In Brian Larwill’s bedroom Superintendent Roberts spoke in a husky whisper into the walkie-talkie to the electrician in the basement. ‘Countdown, countdown. When I say go—’ his face was turned to Blackford. Blackford, his ear on the little receiver, had his arm held high. He could hear Jimmy’s voice sounding a little dimmer as he walked away from the toolbox, where the little microphone lay, to the fuse box.
‘Here we go now, hold your breath.’ The word ‘breath’ uttered, Oakes brought down his hand sharply, and Superintendent Roberts spoke into the walkie-talkie, ‘Now!’
The lights in the darkroom flashed on.
‘Well ’en,’ said Jimmy Moser, beaming with an I-told-you-so look. ‘There we are. A short circuit in that socket. The wirin’ for the booster wasn’t quite tight enough. No problem now. I’ve checked all the others—they’re all secure.’
He was putting his tools back in the box, still on his knees. His eyes were suddenly riveted on a pair of stocky brown leather shoes, inches from his face. He looked up into the face of the silent companion of Robert Editta. The man addressed Moser in terse tones.
‘Are you the electrician for this building, Moser?’
‘Our firm looks after this building, guv. I mean, and a lot of other buildings too,’ he smiled confidently.
‘Let me see your card.’
‘Pleasure. Just let me …’ He closed his toolbox, inserting his flashlight in it. He stood up, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a card.
‘’Ere you are, and at your service, anytime.’
He handed the card over to the large man, but did not wait for him to examine it, heading instead cheerfully to the door, opening it. He said then without turning around:
‘Afternoon, gentlemen.’
Below, in the crowded little bedroom, Blackford Oakes said to Superintendent Roberts, ‘That was Bertram Heath.’
21
The Russian transport landed at Sheremetyevo Airport sometime after three in the morning, and Fleetwood and Alice Goodyear Corbett did not disguise that they were very fatigued. A car was waiting and drove them to the National Hotel, where Bjorn Henningsen had been pre-registered. After establishing that all was in order, Alice, in the presence of the concierge, said a formal good-night. But he caught the little wink. She would call him at noon the following day, she said.
Alistair Fleetwood and the porter carrying his bag entered the lift. The young man languidly pushed the button marked ‘6.’ The lift rose and in due course stopped. But when the door slid open it was obvious that the lift had stopped not at the sixth floor but, so to speak, at floor five and a half. Sir Alistair breathed heavily his exasperation. The porter got down on his knees, pushed open the lift door on the fifth floor, and vaulted down to the fifth-floor landing, and signaled to Sir Alistair that he should do the same, first of all pushing out his bag, which the porter caught in his arms. There being no apparent alternative, Sir Alistair Fleetwood got down on his rump and ejected himself, feet first, through the open cavity, leaping four or five feet to the floor. The porter grabbed him on landing, which was quick thinking because otherwise Sir Alistair Fleetwood would have fallen back under the cab and down five and a half flights of lift shaft.
He entered his room wearily, tried to remember whether tipping was frowned on in Moscow, decided he might as well take the risk since his life had, arguably, been saved, so he gave the porter a rouble and inspected his quarters.
The living room was equipped with heavy furniture, two armchairs, one couch, a heavy bureau of sorts, a solid wooden desk, and three lights, none of them bright enough to suit Fleetwood. Well, he would order larger bulbs in the morning. He went into the bedroom next to the living room and looked out on the few lights then still on, in the city he had not seen since finishing his first year at Cambridge. Wearily he began to undress, first removing the beard in front of the mirror and staring fondly at his repristinated face. It had been rather exciting at first, the beard business. He had been slightly dismayed to learn from Alice that it was expected that he should wear the beard everywhere outside his own room, ‘just in case someone is around who knows you or would recognise you—remember you are a very famous man, my darling.’ Well, he would certainly not wear his beard when he was with Beria. When in the inner sanctum, he would take it off and put it in his pocket.
He woke earlier than expected. His watch showed nine o’clock. He struggled, unsuccessfully, to recall the Russian he had so doggedly, under discipline, made himself forget. He picked up the telephone and asked for room service. The operator evidently knew only a single word of English, which sounded like, ‘Outzide outzide.’ He essayed first French and then German, to no better end, and then the cinders of his Russian. He thought back to procedures followed on his first trip, put on his bathrobe, and peered outside the door. He saw, sitting at a desk opposite the lift doors and the staircase, a matronly woman, and recalled the system of mini-concierges on every floor. He grabbed the key to his suite, put it in the pocket of his dressing gown, and approached the woman: ‘Do you speak English?’
‘I understand,’ she said.
‘I wish some breakfast. Can you order it brought to my room?’
‘Downstairs,’ she replied. ‘Floor three.’
‘Yes, I am sure you have a nice dining room. But I am asking whether you can have my breakfast brought up to my room.’ He was pronouncing his words very slowly.
The woman turned her head back to the newspaper she had been reading and said, ‘Floor three, breakfast.’
With some exasperation he dressed and, eschewing the lift, walked down to the third floor. He saw, on the right, the glass door that opened onto a cafeteria. He walked in. A dozen men and women were seated here and there, some of them talking, some reading the paper, others doing nothing except eating and drinking their tea. His hand instinctively ran to his chin: yes, he had remembered to put on his beard. He picked up a tray and walked along the open platters, surveying the choice of fare. There was cheese, and bread, and a hot cereal, and ham, and what looked like goose liver, and cold hard-boiled eggs. He saw no fruit, and so took cheese, ham, a hard roll, paused over the coffee, deciding instead to take tea. He paid the bill and considered for a moment the option of taking the tray back to his suite, deciding against it lest the cashier make a fuss. And in any event, Sir Alistair Fleetwood was not used to going up three flights of hotel stairs with a tray of food as if he were a hotel waiter.
He returned to his room not in the best of moods, and wondered what to do during the two hours before hearing from Alice. He would have liked to wander about the city to view the changes during twenty years and a world war, but thought it best not to do such a thing without first checking with his guide. In the genera
l turmoil of leaving the Fernbrook, he had left behind not only his sailing clothes but the satchel with the books he always had in hand: two or three scientific treatises, a novel by Graham Greene, the current issue of The Economist, a new biography of Lloyd George, and Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim. That precious satchel, he thought, sitting in that boat! In his briefcase he had only technical papers and plans of the mini-Zirca. What would he do?
There was nothing for it but to go down to the lobby of the hotel and see what he could find on the newsstand. He walked to the lift, reasoning that the defective unit must either have been fixed or taken out of business. There were, after all, three to choose from. He pressed the button and presently the indicator showed that the lift was there, so he opened the door, entered it, and pushed the button marked ‘Lobby.’ Arriving, somewhat to his relief, he saw again the great area he had first seen the night before, except that now it was full of what seemed to be Russian businessmen, except of course that there were no Russian businessmen. But there were a lot of men in their thirties, forties, and fifties, wearing mostly ill-fitting grey suits, bustling here and there. Fleetwood heard mostly Russian, but now and again some German and some French. No-one, as he crossed the lobby walking in the direction of the concierge, was speaking in English. Too proud to use his neglected Russian, he decided that he would speak in French to the concierge, pending an update in workaday Russian from Alice Goodyear Corbett. So he asked for ‘les journaux—où se trouvent-ils les journaux?’ The concierge pointed back to the lifts, and then indicated with his finger that on reaching them, the inquirer should turn sharp left.
On reaching the newsstand, Fleetwood first eyed matter-of-factly the several rows of Russian papers and magazines, and then looked about for books and magazines in foreign languages. But in English he saw only theoretical and historical works on the Soviet Union. No magazines whatever. It was so in French—and in German. He picked up a guide to Moscow in English, paid two roubles for it, and went discontentedly back to his room. The maps in the guidebook gave the names in Russian of everything about which he read in English. He remembered with remorse Alice’s instruction, when she recruited him, to cease instantly his study of the Russian language with which he had got conversationally quite far during that golden summer twenty years ago. His resourceful mind now began the act of reconstruction, and by the time the telephone rang some of it was beginning to ooze back into memory, quickening his circulation, a feeling he had got used to over many years as he trained his powerful mind on scientific problems.
But he was happy to hear her voice, and he told her to come right up.
Dressed in heavy brown wool and a beret, she asked after his state of health and he told her that it had not been an ideal morning, but he was anxious to get on with the project. He looked at his watch: ‘At what time are we meeting with Comrade Beria?’
She hesitated. Her embarrassment was palpable. ‘I called on Comrade Abakumov—he is, as you know, State Security Minister, and the right-hand man of Comrade Beria. I must confess, Alistair, I was very much surprised. He told me that Comrade Beria has … he said that … schedule problems—that he hopes to see you before you leave but cannot undertake to make any commitment. You are to proceed immediately with the installation,’ she finally blurted out.
Alistair Fleetwood got up from his chair. He removed his beard. His complexion was white.
‘I—I find this quite inconceivable, Alice. How is it possible, what you say? I am perhaps the most eminent living scientist after Einstein. I have devised an instrument that has already done historic work for the socialist revolution. I have stopped all my own work for five weeks in order to meet Beria’s special request. I cannot believe what you are telling me.’
Alice Goodyear Corbett burst into tears. She rushed over to Fleetwood and hugged him, and cried convulsively. She too, she said, could not believe it. But—attempting to control herself—but, she said, there must be a reason. There is always a reason. And by training they had to accept the decision and—
‘My dear Alice,’ Fleetwood said. ‘I understand Bolshevik theory, and do not need your exegetical help in this matter. Here is my answer to Comrade Abakumov. Inform him that I shall proceed with the installation only after I have had a good’—Alistair Fleetwood stopped, and thought for a moment—‘only after I have had a good hour with Comrade Beria, during which I shall discuss common concerns, and public policies, and perhaps even Soviet developments. Tell Comrade Abakumov’—Alistair Fleetwood was beginning to enjoy his massive retaliation—‘tell him that I shall stay in these quarters until I have been to see Comrade Beria. And’—Fleetwood was now walking up and down the living room, his hands clutched behind him, in the manner of Napoleon—‘tell him, further, that there is not one living soul in Great Russia who can make the mini-Zirca work for him other than me. Tell him that I am here for exactly seven days, as per our arrangement.’ Fleetwood was now standing on tiptoe, his arms akimbo, looking down as though at a threatening bully. ‘Oh yes. And tell him that if on the seventh day I am not back in Stockholm, why, I shall have no alternative than to march over to the British Embassy and complain.’
She stood up and gave a short cry. ‘Alistair! Stop! Stop, I say!’ She looked about the room, her eyes hysterical. She raised her finger to her lips. She beckoned to him to go with her to the bathroom. There she turned on the water taps at full force, and in a low voice whispered hoarsely, ‘My darling Alistair! One doesn’t talk that way about Comrade Beria! Not even you can talk that way about Comrade Beria! And this business of going to the British Embassy … I mean, Alistair, don’t ever say such a thing, not even in levity.’ Alice Goodyear Corbett was weeping like a baby.
Fleetwood had calmed down, but he was not about to reverse the thrust of his comment. He put his hands on both her cheeks and pressed them together. He spoke in a low tone of voice.
‘Very well, Alice. And on no account would I make trouble for you. But my message stands. No meeting with Beria, no mini-Zirca. Now you go and tell them that. They can hardly blame what I say and do on you. If I knew how to communicate with them directly I should do so. And listen, dear Alice, when you come back, whatever you do, bring me something to read. And not something about the Soviet Union. No offence intended, you understand: the Lord knows, I am concerned with the Soviet Union, interested in the Soviet Union, obsessed by the cause of the Soviet Union, honoured to be a servant of the Soviet Union. But right now, in my present mood, I want to read something. In English. Bring me some Trollope. Or Jane Austen. Or Dickens. Hemingway is legal here, isn’t he? Well, bring me some Hemingway, then. And I am never averse to a little literate erotica, if there is any of that about. Now hurry away, my darling Alice.’
He turned off the water and led her back into the living room. She powdered her nose in front of the mirror, picked up her handbag, blew him a silent kiss and left, her countenance grave as she contemplated the heavy message she was to deliver.
22
When, three months earlier, the Office of the Director was advised that a communication had come in from someone who described himself as a ‘middle-aged Italian gentleman’ with ‘very interesting information’ which information, however, he would divulge only to the Director himself and to no one else, the request had received routine handling: the letter was turned over to an aide.
The aide wrote back to the box number designated on the letter to say that unfortunately the Director was busy, but that he, the aide, would be glad to see ‘Mr. Mussolini’—as the letter had been signed—anytime, at any reasonable place. That letter got back an urbane letter advising the aide that if the Director was not interested in knowing what the internal fighting within the Kremlin was all about, perhaps the Director should resign his position as head of the Central Intelligence Agency and perhaps become Baseball Commissioner? The aide pondered the communication, its rather special élan, and made the decision to put the whole dossier into the Director’s In box. The Director studied it, sighed, sa
id to his aide that the chances were ninety-nine out of one hundred that Mr. Mussolini was a crackpot, but—well. He told his aide to set up a meeting at a safe house.
And so it was that Allen Dulles met Mr. Mussolini. Within five minutes the Director knew that he had drawn the one-hundredth straw. The man he was speaking to was not there in jest, or to announce that he had invented an ingenious means of keeping the sun from shining over the Soviet Union until they all said Uncle.
Mr. Mussolini was in his mid-forties, tall and angular. His hair was full and black. His eyes were always amused, even when his features were solemnly set. He was well dressed; the Director—dressed in his customary tweeds—thought him even rather foppish. And there was even a hint of fragrance there. Cologne of some sort? Not the kind of thing the Director found endearing in men. But he had become resigned to it, gradually, after discovering that young members of his own immediate and non-immediate family, of inescapable masculinity, were going in for the new convention.
Mr. Mussolini spoke flawless English, accented as if he had spent years in a British public school.
Seated in the small Victorian drawing room with the two sofas, the coffee table, the fireplace, the bookshelves, the heavy oak doors, he began directly, autobiographically.
‘I was a communist when I was a young man in Padua, and I went to Spain to fight with the Loyalists. While there, I became very good friends with a young Russian. We were over two years in that long war, and we saw everything’—he paused—‘absolutely everything,’ Mr. Mussolini said, was the best way he could put it.
Mr. Mussolini had immediately volunteered, on returning to Italy, to divulge what he knew about the cynical nature of Soviet operations in Spain—‘They cared not a bit for Spanish democracy; they cared to govern Spain’—to the Italian government, notwithstanding his loathing of II Duce, its Fascist dictator. The communists were onto him, but for several years were powerless to act. Finally they caught up with him when the partisan movement had begun to prevail; and, in December of 1943, he was sentenced to execution by a partisan firing squad—from which he was saved by an unexpected directive that came in through the communist hierarchy.
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