Legacy (22 page)

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, especially 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.’

W
henever 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.’

‘You allowed it to happen. You permitted it. I shall now have to explain to MI5 and to the Chief, whose backing I had to secure, that what I assured everyone we would not do, we have done.
Are you still intending to resign?’

‘Yes.’

‘That will make it easier. Speak to Personnel and draft your resignation letter soon.’ There was silence. ‘More importantly,’ continued Hookey, ‘we have to consider
whether your gratuitous mentioning of Legacy will have compromised our knowledge of the operation, and therefore also the existence of a very sensitive source. I appreciate that you think Koslov
won’t report it because that might lead to his having to account for more than he wants in terms of his relations with you and the tart, but that’s only an assumption. His professional
concern, or his patriotism, might get the better of his instinct for self-preservation. Or he might disguise the circumstances. Or they might have already become suspicious of him – there are
some indications of this, Hugo tells me, from MI5 – and they might get it out of him. If any of those happens, it could be disastrous.’