The Corporal's Wife (2013) (7 page)

‘A pleasure still to be wanted at the cutting edge, Miss Ross – and, of course, there’s transport. Vehicles for hiring. Yes, soon as I’m off this call, I’ll get matters in hand.’

He rang off and took a deep breath. He was sixty-nine, and had been dumped when old Hector Kenning had gone home, vacating the Station Desk. He was a fixer, made things happen. He lived in a world of discounts, favours and obligations, and earned money from the embassy where his wife worked, from the Americans and the Belgians. Sometimes policemen and criminologists from Europe or South America, with jobs at the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime across the Donaukanal, needed a contact who couldn’t be traced and he’d do the cut-out. Sidney could be everybody’s friend. He imagined that the local crowd, at the British embassy, were outside the loop, probably happy to stay there but resented an invasion of their territory. He sipped his drink, and heard her cough into her phone as she told a night-duty clerk at the Canadian embassy she had flu.

‘I don’t know what it is, my love, but it sounds a cracker, and the budget seems open. Happy times.’

He kissed her. She hugged him. The book of contact numbers was in a floor safe. He extracted it. Hardly a car moved on the street below his apartment window, barely a pedestrian on the pavement. It was a good address, and reflected his ability as a facilitator. It would be a big one and would bring back the old days, the best, most triumphant times. What he loved about ‘a big one’ was that you never knew where it would end. It was as unpredictable as the roulette wheel in the casino on Kärntner Strasse.

First he arranged the ‘safe house’, remote and discreet.

Tilting his chair, he enjoyed a matchless, privileged view. Tadeuz Fenton, leader and manipulator, with the enviable record of almost never backing a losing cause, would have considered it his right to look out over the river, and the barges or pleasure boats far below. In the distance, mist-shrouded, stood Parliament, where his nominal bosses sat. He told them, as a rule, only what they needed to know and extracted authorisations with sometimes jaundiced presentation of facts. In his world he was supreme, and the director general, burdened by demands from ‘customers’ – the new-speak jargon of the ministries across the Thames – for insights and intelligence on the intentions of the Islamic Republic, allowed him a loose rein. From the door, Mandy Ross told him what she had agreed with the fixer, Sidney, and remarked on the prices quoted, which were close to exorbitant.

‘Cheap at the price for what’s coming our way. A snip.’

He smoothed his hair, which was important to his persona: it was sleek and silver, the parting ramrod straight. He always wore a tie, but would loosen his shirt’s top button on arriving at work. When Sara hung his jacket in the cupboard, the knot would come down an inch, no more, and would stay central. He was half Polish and half English, but he had been reared in the arms of the Secret Intelligence Service.

Tadeuz Denya, a former Polish Army officer, a refugee from successive regimes of Nazism and communism, lucky to find work in a basement as a translator, had made pregnant an archive section manager, Lilibet Fenton, of a good family. Neither abortion nor marriage was considered. The Pole had been transferred to GCHQ, Cheltenham, and had – it was rumoured – prospered there. The archivist had borne the child, gone back to work as soon as she could and fronted up the scandal. As a young man, Tadeuz had joined straight from a red-brick campus. The lesson of his birth was wariness. He did not support failure, or take the arm of the isolated. He had heard it said of him that his touch ‘turned base metals to gold’.

He was brought, by Dunc Whitcombe, a thin file titled ‘Reza Joyberi (Brig), al-Qods, IRGC’. He demanded paper, said there was value in a sheet in the hand that added provenance. A single photograph was included that showed a young man in filthy combat gear, clutching an assault rifle in a marsh wilderness. It was dated 1984, close to three decades old.

‘Dunc, a man who takes care not to be pictured over thirty years is a man climbing fast. Anonymity is survival. He has the rank of brigadier, considerable importance, but doesn’t draw attention to himself. He’s a high-value target. The ones who parade themselves are the cardboard cut-outs and don’t concern me. I like what I see.’

He had the pages across his desk and read briskly, making marks with a sharpened pencil on the text’s margins.

Sara Rogers had pushed open the door and was half out of her coat. She said she’d waved off PK and his babysitter team from Heathrow – ‘An odd bunch but they’re what we have’ – and that ‘the corporal, if that’s what he is’, was on Akrotiri, waiting for the lift with the escort to the drop-off. She kicked off her shoes and headed for the coffee machine.

He laughed. ‘Maybe we should treat ourselves to a plate of biscuits. It’s first class. I want to say, not that it’ll ever be minuted, how well you and Mandy have done in getting all this up and flying. The favours pulled in have been of the best quality. To get those lifts from the air force – blood from a stone – was superb. We have someone very close to a man of huge power and influence in that unpleasant regime – that threatening regime. We’re getting an open door for very little expenditure, and it comes with minimal danger to our own interests. It has the stamp of something good. Petroc and his people will flush the stuff out of our little man and we can sit back to enjoy the view. There’ll be much riding on it, including the prestige of the Service, and we’ll not be found wanting. No blow-back, high value and – I repeat – minimal danger to us. The sun’s shining.’

Rain ran down the plate-glass windows and blurred the buildings across the river, but Tadeuz Fenton beamed.

The cell was the last one down the corridor of the detention block. As a concession, the door was left open and he’d been brought a hot meal and a soft drink, neither of which he had touched. Two RAF policemen stood guard, one at the door and one at the block’s entrance: immaculate, armed, silent, intimidating. Katie had been offered time in the mess, and had refused it. She sat on a hard chair and could see into the cell past the hip of the guard. She had a beaker of tea – had wanted nothing else. The aircraft that would fly them on was an HS-125 CC3 executive jet, with a crew of three and room at the back for six passengers. Usually, she was told, it was at the disposal of an air vice marshal. It would take her and him, with two more of the RAF police detachment, the thirteen hundred miles – about three hours in the air – before she dropped him, then started her return journey to the Gulf.

Little impressed her, but this did. First, a diverted transport, and now luxury to the end-point. She knew he was regarded as ‘useful’ but such treatment was usually reserved for a ‘top of the range’ captive.

He sat on the bed. It was not her job to befriend him or offer comfort. She saw her role as keeping him wrong-footed, off-balance psychologically.

His face was in profile to her. His mouth twitched and he licked his lips. His breathing came in spurts broken by sighs. She couldn’t see his eyes because his hands masked them. She wondered what, now, governed him – the aftershock of the tart and his inability to ‘do the business’, or the disorientation of the flight out, not knowing what awaited him? Her opinion: the sooner they had him in the company of those waiting for him, and PK, the better. Couldn’t happen soon enough.

His feet and hands were still now and his thighs were no longer trembling. There were no more tears. She reckoned he’d toughened up. He’d be hard work, as he slowly regained his control.

A radio crackled, was answered. There was the thud of boots in the corridor. They went out into the fresh sunlight to a car and were driven to the small jet. He seemed to hesitate and there was a moment of defiance in his face but he would have known she would go for his eyes with her fingers and his balls with her knee, that the uniforms would club him into submission. He went up the steps.

She followed. He was like a man recovering from an anaesthetic – PK’s problem, not hers. She hoped to be back in Dubai in the early hours of tomorrow. An Australian girl, a first secretary, was hosting dinner in the evening. Her job would be done and forgotten.

‘What a pleasure to meet you, Mr Kenning. I’m Sidney. I was very fond of your uncle – he’s keeping well, I hope?’

‘Very well, thank you.’

Petroc Kenning had come through the arrival gates and the man, light on his feet, had skipped forward and put down the marker. Might as well have said, ‘You can trust me, and it would be wise to listen to me because I was with your uncle when he ran this station.’

The background brief had said Sidney was an able smoother of paths. The smile was confidential, an insider’s. A wave of tiredness engulfed Petroc, and a yearning to sleep. He had failed to get any answer either in Vauxhall Cross or at the airport to his calls to Spain. He knew less about defectors and how to treat them than could be written on a half-sheet of foolscap: no other section on the third or fourth floors had seemed to offer that expertise, and Tadeuz Fenton had waved away his anxieties with ‘Pretty straightforward. Follow your nose and it’ll all be spilling out in your lap.’

Sidney limped and pain creased his face. ‘Don’t worry, Mr Kenning – it’s arthritis. The pills take care of it.’

‘Good to hear it.’

‘I’ve fixed the house.’ The old accent, east London, had lasted well after half a lifetime abroad.

‘Excellent. I look forward to getting there.’

Petroc knew he could have been warmer to his uncle’s old retainer. His voice had been clipped, poor behaviour in a team leader, but he didn’t care. He turned. The babysitters followed him. The Service employed eccentrics and seemed to find niches for them. First, there was Auntie – he was at least fifty, smelt of talc and sounded like an Ulsterman. Behind him was Father William, in his mid-forties, with a shock of white hair and a west Middlesex whine. Last through was Nobby, red-haired and quietly spoken.

Petroc did brief introductions. His phone rang. He veered to the side, looking for an oasis of quiet.

He heard a distant voice: ‘I think you called me. I’m Rollo. Your message said you were short of tactics. I’m happy to help. Shoot.’

‘Dross or precious stuff. Never get excited until you know the answer to that, and ask the questions with rigour – first priority. I have to warn you that the signal where I am isn’t great, but the battery’s charged and I’m happy to help, Petroc. I’m rather flattered that Hector spoke well of me.’

He had a quality telescope on a tripod, and useful binoculars hung at his neck. Rollo Hawkins sat on the low wall of the viewing platform and his wife, Stephie, was crouched on a collapsible three-legged stool behind him, with a rucksack at her feet that held hot chocolate in a Thermos and sandwiches. Both were well wrapped against the cold of the coming night. If they hadn’t spotted them by then it was unlikely they’d be successful, but there were still young enthusiasts around them, with similar gear, whose eyesight would be keener. Barely an evening passed, last light, when Rollo and Stephie were not at the platform, on a hill and dwarfed by the mountains, in the hope of seeing bears. It was their obsession. Their target was the European brown bear, and there were estimated to be some thirty living in the area. Rollo and Stephie knew most of them by sight, had their own names for each one, and thought themselves blessed. He had been the foremost SIS expert in the handling of defectors.

His teeth chattered, and he gulped a mouthful of chocolate. ‘Photographs and videos from the drones and audio eavesdropping all have a place, but nothing beats the HumInt factor. Human intelligence rules. I always tell the Yankees that their technology seldom equals the results provided by a man who’s on the ground or has just been there. Any defector – let’s call him Joe – with trusted access to the heart of the enemy’s secrets, is to be taken seriously, but first the question must be answered. Is he overrated because he originates from a covert source? Could the material he brings have been taken from magazines, from what is already in the public domain? Is the “trusted access” indeed special? And the question cannot be sidetracked. Could he be, in our vernacular, a
plant
, or might he be judged a
dangle
, in Agency talk? Was he introduced by your opponents to provide disinformation that will deflect correct analysis? Is he infiltrating to find out what you know, what you wish to know? The question must be answered: is he unimportant and talking only good talk, or is he sophisticated, committed and a fraud? Assume you can answer my question. He’s the genuine article. Most who came to us or to the Americans – they used me frequently and still do – from the Soviet Union were drunks or womanisers and greedy. Always worth going back to MICE. Money’s straightforward; Ideology is rare, but valuable; Ego is tedious but leads to massive resentment from the Joe – but you tell me, Petroc, that you’re in the realms of Compromise. You have a man who is
shitting
himself – is frightened of you. He is disoriented, confused, and at first is prepared to bend to the duress you’ve put him under. For how long will he be more terrified of you than of whatever world is behind him? You must use that time well, Petroc. You flatter him. Respect him. The Joe is Iranian, you say. You promise wealth, a new life. And, believe me, you’ll suck out what you need in the first hours and days. You go to it all the hours that God gives. Petroc, call me again any time. You’ll have heard all this before, a high-flyer like yourself, but sometimes it’s worth having core points reiterated. A pleasure to help . . . We’re not favoured tonight but I hope Stephie and I’ll be rewarded tomorrow. The bears are eating well and putting on fat for the winter hibernation. Good luck.’