Shadow of Shadows

by Ted Allbeury

  ‘You’re quite sure that you couldn’t prosecute?’

  ‘Quite sure. If we could have the Russian to give evidence there might be a chance. But even then I couldn’t guarantee it.’

  ‘Commissioner?’

  ‘Without that witness we haven’t a shred of evidence. A public inquest would certainly end up as either “Death from unknown causes” or “Murder by a person or persons unknown”. And like Sir Alec, I’m not even sure that if we had that witness we could get a conviction.’

  Sir George turned to look at Silvester.

  ‘How much harm would it do?’

  ‘We have an agreement with—’

  ‘No. No. No. I’m not interested in that aspect. Forget Petrov. I mean harm to national security.’

  ‘It would be devastating, sir. We’d be forced to reveal things that are absolutely secret. It would put us back years.’

  ‘Would it involve loss of life?’

  ‘Almost certainly.’

  ‘What about our relationship with the Americans?’

  ‘They’d probably be delighted about what had happened way back, but we could expect no co-operation from them in the future. At least four of their German networks would go down.’

  Sir George shook his head slowly, reached for the silver cigarette case, and offered it to the others. They all refused, and sat in silence as he lit his own cigarette. He looked back at Silvester.

  ‘If not murder charges, what about high treason charges?’

  Silvester said, The same applies. I’ve been over that with the Attorney-General. Unless he pleaded guilty, and the court sat in camera, and we used Petrov, we should do just as much damage that way. Maybe more.’

  Sir George shifted in his chair.

  ‘I’m not in any way trying to spread the responsibility for this . . . er, decision. It’s mine alone. I recognize that absolutely. But it would help me . . . assist me, if any of you were to disagree with my inclination to deal with this our own way.’

  The Commissioner didn’t hesitate. ‘I go along with you. I don’t think you have any choice.’

  The Attorney-General, an essentially cautious man, as his office required, said quietly, ‘I concur.’

  Sir George didn’t wait for a reply from Silvester. He went on, ‘And we do all agree that the matter ends in this room? With the four of us?’

  The Attorney-General stood up, his black leather briefcase in his hand. ‘I couldn’t go further than I have done, George. You wouldn’t expect it. Whether you tell the Prime Minister or not is in your capable hands. You have the discretion. Every enquiry and every commission, and God knows there’s been enough of them, have left the passing of information to the PM in your hands. So far as I am concerned we have discussed a hypothetical case, and my lips are sealed, as they say. I leave it to you.’

  Sir George nodded. ‘I understand, Arthur. Thank you for your help. I much appreciate it.’

  When the senior law officer left it was the Commissioner who spoke. ‘You couldn’t expect any more from him, George.’

  ‘I agree and I meant what I said. The . . . never mind. It’s done with now.’

  ‘What are you going to do with him?’

  ‘What would you do, Colin?’

  The Commissioner smiled grimly. ‘I guess it would be short and sharp in somewhere like Tehran or Abu Dhabi.’

  ‘Right idea, wrong places.’

  ‘D’you think he knows we’re on to him?’

  Sir George looked at Silvester.

  ‘What d’you think, Adam?’

  ‘He’s been running scared ever since they found out that Petrov and Lawler had left the flat, but he’s got no idea we’re on to him. I’m sure of that.’

  The Commissioner stood up. He would read it in the newspapers in due course. Along with everybody else. And that was enough.

  ‘Can I give you a lift anywhere, George?’

  ‘No thanks. I’ve got a few things to go over with Silvester here.’ He held out his hand. ‘Thanks for the help.’

  The Commissioner nodded to Silvester and let himself out. Sir George turned back to Silvester.

  ‘You’ve made the arrangements, Adam?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘In the next two days.’

  ‘Right. You just get on with it.’ He shook his head angrily. ‘The bastard.’ He handed the file and the envelope to Silvester. ‘Take these bloody things and burn them.’

  It rated a couple of paragraphs in the evening papers and a paragraph in four of the dailies, and none of them went beyond the first brief details put on the wire by PA-Reuter.

  BRITISH DIPLOMAT CYPRUS. BRITISH FOREIGN OFFICE OFFICIAL KILLED NEAR FAMAGUSTA YESTERDAY. RICHARD NEVILLE DYER WAS VICTIM OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY IN TERRORIST SHOOTING APPROX FIVE FIGURES FIVE KILOMETRES SOUTH OF BRITISH ARMY BASE AT FAMAGUSTA. THIS AREA DISPUTED BETWEEN TURKISH AND GREEK AUTHORITIES HAS BEEN SCENE FREQUENT ATTACKS ON VEHICLES BY TERRORISTS FROM BOTH SIDES. LOCAL POLICE OPINION DYER MISTAKEN FOR LOCAL POLITICIAN. ENDS.

  A vigorous protest had been lodged by the Foreign Office with both the Turkish and Greek administrations in Cyprus who each rejected the protest and blamed the other.

  Anatoli Mikhailovich Petrov married Maria Grazyna Felinska at Chelsea Registrar’s Office on 15 September 1970, although those were not the names on their birth certificates, their National Health cards or the marriage certificate. She kept her Maria and he became Michael and his surname was Keller. German enough to explain his accent and unobtrusive enough to come easily to an English tongue.

  They settled down easily in the Sussex village. As victims of Nazi oppression, their German background was a help rather than a hindrance. There was some speculation at the vicarage and the manor house as to whether or not they were Jews. Most refugees were and they obviously made good money from the two well-managed newspaper and tobacconists’ shops that they owned in Bexhill and Hastings. If there had been any lingering doubts about the newcomers they would have been dispelled when they bought the chestnut gelding and the palomino mare from the manor house stables. From that time on they became locals. Although they were both amiable and active they kept themselves to themselves and that was considered as fitting behaviour. Maybe in three or four years’ time they would be accepted as belonging; until then, a nod and a smile and a greeting were all that was called for.

  Freedom, like great wealth, takes time to get used to but the two Alsatians were the only outward signs of their doubts. They rode, whatever the weather, over the rolling Sussex downs, visited their two shops twice a week and went to the theatres on the coast no matter what was on. The visits to the shops were social rather than commercial for both shops were run by retired policemen and their wives. SIS had seen to that. During the summer months they paid visits to the Lawlers’ in Buriton who returned the visits from time to time.

  They had talked in the early months about having children but they knew in their heart of hearts that it was only talk. They didn’t lack courage but if you knew as much about the world as they did you knew that with children you would be vulnerable. Better to be as they were. Survivors rather than inhabitants. Neither of them suffered nostalgia for Moscow or Warsaw. The names represented regimes rather than people. And Petrov would have been surprised if a visitor, walking down to the stream that ran through their garden, had connected the silver birches he had planted as nostalgia for the silver birches that relieved Moscow’s gloom every spring and summer.

  To say that they were happy would be an exaggeration but they were content, and to them the difference between the two states would have been seen as a mere problem of semantics. Once a year they travelled to Ireland to see the other Lawlers.

  Siobhan and James Lawler hadn’t married until March 1971. It had taken some months for Lawler to make up his mind about whether he would continue his career in SIS. Eventually he knew that to continue would harm his marriage in many ways. Not just the sudden departures, or the dangers
, but the cynicism that was essential for survival in that arcane world. So he opted for early retirement and a reduced pension. Silvester had done his good deed stealthily, recognizing where the younger man’s thoughts were leading him. The pension of a 37-year-old depended on his rank and, almost two months before he decided to leave, Lawler had been promoted two grades. At the time he saw it as part of his superior’s attempts to induce him to stay but Silvester wasn’t a man who looked for other people’s approval of either his good or bad deeds.

  They could have lived modestly on the pension alone but by moving to the Republic they lived more comfortably, and it gave much pleasure to Siobhan, who was typically Irish in that she constantly derided her fellow countrymen and pined for the country itself.

  Three months after they had bought the house in Cork Siobhan was offered the post of Women’s Page editor on a local paper, a job she thoroughly enjoyed. Lawler himself is part owner and active director of the most successful bookshop in the city.

  After being married to Siobhan for some time he made a happy discovery. They were walking one evening along the upper reaches of the river and stopped to look at the cascade of water around a rock formation. They had watched it for several minutes and Siobhan had pointed to the lichen on one of the flat outcrops of rock that was beginning to change colour from grey-green to orange, when Lawler turned impulsively to the girl and said, ‘I’m so lucky to have you.’

  ‘Why?’ But she smiled.

  ‘I’m so happy it’s almost unbearable.’

  She laughed. ‘How can being happy be unbearable?’

  ‘It’s the thought of what I might be doing this moment if I hadn’t met you. I’ve done a pleasant day’s work and now I’m here with you, in peaceful countryside, looking at water and rocks and wondering why a lichen should be changing colour. We’ll be going back to our house and then to the concert. If I hadn’t met you I’d still be in SIS playing games against the KGB and going back to some lonely room in a Berlin hotel.’

  The big hazel eyes looked back at him, and she said softly, ‘It wasn’t SIS made you lonely, it was the people in your private life. They ran down your batteries because they were weak and selfish. You picked lame ducks. They wore away your armour and left you too vulnerable. And as those kinds of people always do, they made it seem as if it were you who was inadequate, not them. You’re a perfectly normal man, my love, and I’m a normal woman. Just as you count your blessings, I count mine. I’m lucky to have you. We’re both lucky.’

  Lawler stood, awkward and embarrassed, and she laughed and took his hand. ‘We’d better get back to the car. Remember, we promised to pick up the Foleys.’

  As they walked back to the road, hand in hand, he smiled to himself and she said, ‘Why the smug smile, my boy?’

  ‘I was thinking of the day you came to my office at Century House and you stood staring at the thing on the wall.’

  There’s nothing to smile at there, my lad. You English are cheeky bastards. Always have been, always will be if we don’t watch you.’

  Despite what she had said Siobhan Nolan had made Lawler’s early retirement a condition of marriage, and when she’s in the right mood Siobhan Lawler sometimes admits that she might have been influenced by the faded front page of a newspaper that hung in its frame on Lawler’s office wall at Century House, whence it had come from his old office at Queen Anne’s Gate. It was the front page of the Skibbereen Eagle, and its banner headline read: The Skibbereen Eagle has its eye on Moscow’. Skibbereen, with a population of about 3,500, was in County Cork.

  There are times, when he’s tired, or home before Siobhan, that his mind goes to a small girl. The healing of that wound was not in Siobhan’s benefit, and those who could have healed the wound were not healers of wounds.