The Defector (31 page)

“Then he started talking about my father,” Irina went on.

“How he had been so sick before he went to England. And he was watching me all the time. Then he said,” You know, I don’t believe he’s dead after all.

“I didn’t say anything. I was too dulled, too hurt to respond to it. He said it again.

“I think he’s in the West. Now if you could persuade him to come home, then I can promise you, your mother would be released immediately.” He knows I’m in communication with my father,” she said slowly, ‘and he was offering me a bargain. Get him back and your mother goes free. He had her sent to Kolyma.” The tutor bent his head and gave a low groan of despair.

“Then we’re all lost,” he said.

“He’s just waiting to arrest me, and then the others. How does he know? Did you tell him? Did you?” His tone was fierce. She looked at him steadily.

“No,” she said.

“I didn’t tell him anything. He knows my father is alive and hiding in the West. He knows we’ve had word from him, but that’s all. My mother hasn’t told him anything because of me. But the way he said it,” If you could persuade him to come home. ” … Somebody has told him.”

“What did you say?” Poliakov was not convinced; he was very white and his hand trembled. He muttered to himself, “My God, they could be waiting outside for us now.” The girl was calmer than he was.

“I said I’d do it,” she told him.

“I asked him to tell me what to do, how to get a message to him. He just smiled and didn’t answer. I asked again, because I thought he wanted me to beg. Then he said,” You’ll get the opportunity. I’ll tell you when it comes. ” Then he went out of the flat and left me… What am I to do? I’m frightened to meet you again; he’ll have me watched.”

“Yes, he will,” the tutor said.

“And the other students have been gossiping first about me and now about the car that comes for you. There is too much talk, Irina. Listen; I’ll leave a note in your essay book in two days’ time, after the lecture. That will tell you where to find me. “

“Have you got news from my father?” She looked so anxious and pathetic that he only just prevented himself from telling her about the new contact in the British Embassy. But in all societies ruled by tyranny, the first casualty among its people is trust. He shook his head.

“Nothing,” he said.

“But we’ll hear something soon. Be patient.” He squeezed her hand again.

“Be very careful.”

“I will,” she said.

“Volkov won’t do anything to me. He’s going to use me to destroy my father.

I’m safe for the moment anyway. But you be careful, won’t you, Comrade?” He nodded.

“I’ll leave first,” he said.

“There’s a back entrance through the washroom. I’ll slip out there. Can you pay the bill?”

“He gives me money,” she said flatly.

“I can pay.” He nodded to her again, and hurried away from the table to the toilets at the rear. The back door opened out onto a narrow street. He paused in the doorway, looking up and down, but there was nobody in sight. He walked away from the place as fast as he could. Volkov knew. How much did he know? If he knew about Sasanov’s message to his family, then he must know the channel that transmitted it. He broke into a cold sweat of fear again. Why hadn’t he acted? Why was he playing his cruel game with Irina and her mother, unless it was genuine, and he really did intend to blackmail the defector into returning. Poliakov shook his head as he hurried by, his lips moving in frantic arguments with himself. It was too difficult, too complex for him to see the truth. He was an intellectual, a liberal. Only the mind of a spy could unravel the sinister motives of another spy. He went into the bookshop on Red Square and left a bus ticket in the volume of Russian poetry, the signal for the meeting with Spencer-Barr the following day. Sasanov was alone; Kidson had provided cigarettes and vodka and the snack meal he had wanted instead of dinner. Then he left the Russian with the photocopy files sent down from London. Sasanov had read them through once, to get an impression of the contents. Now, with a halo of cigarette smoke hanging in the air overhead, he was reading page by page and making notes. There was Davina Graham’s personal file. He read that, and occasionally he frowned. It didn’t bring her to life. It was a collection of facts that suggested a cold spinster, uninterested in men because of an early disappointment, a de-sexed woman with a man’s intellect. Words like reliable, meticulous, occurred regularly in her first-year chits;

she became ingenious, inspired, and finally’a potentially brilliant operator on home ground’. That was last year, before she was put in charge of him.

“Most unlikely to become involved with the subject.” And reading that, Sasanov smiled. Then the investigations began after the Halldale fire. Her friendship with Peter Harrington was analysed; the dates, places and times of their few meetings were recorded, their own statements cross checked Harrington’s name was accompanied by a coding for his own file. That was there too. There was her account of their stop at the motel, which had saved both their lives. The cross-check showed that she had omitted hiring the room for sex purposes. Her weekly reports to the Brigadier had not been included. Sasanov understood their reluctance to let him read about himself. Even his interview at the Garrick Club had been abstracted. From the moment Halldale was attacked, Davina had been under close surveillance by her own people. Every telephone call was monitored;

there had been bugs hidden in the little flat. The tapes were not included, but they were referred to when their relationship and her concealment of it was discussed. Suspicion had centred on her at one time;

investigators hurried back to check her past at university, even the faithless fiance was scrutinized for pro-Soviet leanings. Sasanov muttered impatiently as he read. What a waste of time. All they were investigating was a woman in love. To his surprise the last interviews with Grant and the Brigadier had been included. He did not know that they had edited out the signing of the official undertaking and the earlier references to it. He read her spirited defence of his interests and her reproaches to the Brigadier when he reneged on his promise to let Sasanov go. He paused, seeing her in imagination. He knew exactly how she would look, and the tone of her voice. She had a resolute courage. He knew it well. The details of her role in Russia followed immediately afterwards. His frown grew deeper. Once he exclaimed out loud. He closed the file and dropped it on the ground. His face was grim. He began the long, thick dossier on Peter Harrington, which went back for nearly twenty years. There were a dozen such dossiers to be read;

the personal files of every member of the security staff at Halldale, the investigators’ reports on the fire itself, the Sussex police investigation of the accident to the van driver; the nurse who had mentioned a devoted grandson, who used to take her out, and suddenly stopped visiting about the time of the fire. It would take days to read through everything in detail and to sift through the evidence and the conclusions in his search for a clue a clue to the Soviet agent who had discovered that he was hiding in the nursing-home. Sas anov lit a cigarette. The fire was a typical Moscow Centre operation. The man who attacked the van driver on his way to Halldale Manor had been on a motorcycle. That much the injured man had told the police before he died. Tracks were found by the road, and marks in the ditch indicated that the machine had been hidden there. The tracks were clear on the direction back towards London, and then lost on the main road. No trace of the killer had been found. Police information didn’t point to an underworld contract; the nature of the bomb ruled out ordinary criminal activity. Only the Centre people had access to that kind of weapon. So the Brigadier’s men were hunting for one man, while the Scotland Yard Special Branch were searching for another. Sasanov opened the file on Peter Arthur Harrington, aged forty-eight, and began to read it very carefully. On the floor below him, Kidson and Grant were having their own private conference. They had just spoken to the Brigadier on the telephone. Neither looked very pleased.

“Why couldn’t the Americans have waited?” Kidson asked.

“What’s the point of coming down here right in the middle of it? It could easily throw him off balance; do they realize that?”

“They wouldn’t care,” Grant said.

“We’ve let them know there’s top-grade information coming, and they bloody well won’t be satisfied with what we choose to give them. They’re insisting on hearing it for themselves.”

“I suppose we couldn’t keep it quiet,” Kidson grumbled.

“Not after the Chief saw the Prime Minister,” Grant said.

“She insisted on telling the Americans, and naturally they want one of the Cousins to sit in. Serves us right for electing a woman. They’ve no real judgement.” He pursed his thin lips in disapproval. Kidson hid his smile. Poor old Robespierre. If he had his way the world would be populated only by men.

“I think we’d better warn him,” he said, indicating Sasanov above.

“I’ll drop a hint tomorrow. I wonder if he’ll find anything we missed? He’s keen enough wouldn’t have dinner, just wanted to spend the evening working-through our files. “

“It’s a good opportunity for him to throw suspicion on one of our own people, isn’t it,” Grant muttered.

“I’m beginning to have doubts about him, Kidson. He’s blowing Soviet foreign policy for the next ten years, but that’s not enough. He wants to expose a top Russian agent at the same time. And I don’t believe that business about the wife for a moment. If she’s gone to the Arctic Circle, she’ll be dead long before we could negotiate any exchange with the Russians. He knows that as well as we do. But the Brigadier is playing along with him. He’s even tried to convince me that he believes Sasanov’s motives are entirely genuine.”

“I’m beginning to think they are,” Kidson answered.

“I’ve said from the start, he’s in a state of high tension. It’s not the usual way, but then he’s broken all the rules so far. He’s not as cold-hearted as you might expect, in spite of what he’s been. We know through the dissidents that he did try to help Belezky. We also know that he’s a very affectionate husband and father. And he cares more about Davina Graham than you think. She seems to have had quite an effect on him. We know she made a fool of herself and she’s not the impressionable type. “

“She’s a frustrated career girl,” Grant snapped.

“All Sasanov did was drop his trousers and she thinks it’s love. If I’d been in the office at the time, I’d never have advised the Chief to send him off with a woman.”

“Then he mightn’t have come round at all,” Kidson pointed out.

“What matters is, he has. He’s given us everything; more than we expected, and at twice the usual rate. He may know it’ll be too late to save his wife, but he needs to try, to hope. And he’s worried sick about Davina Graham. I don’t find his eagerness to dig up our Mole as suspect as you do.” Grant stood up.

“Time to go in to dinner,” he said.

“I wonder who he’ll pick out?” Kidson held the door open for him and they walked out into the corridor towards the private dining-room.

“God knows,” he said. A burst of laughter drifted through from the big room where the officers in training had their meals.

“But it gives me a very uncomfortable feeling.” Spencer-Barr paid regular visits to the bookshop, and the surly assistant had become more friendly. He bought a lot of books, and spent time wandering round the shelves. He was establishing a habit. He knew the significance of the bus ticket, and he bought the book of poetry. The following afternoon at three o’clock he was back at the counter, asking if he could change it for something else. The assistant gave him a credit slip and he moved away to the bookshelves at the back. Poliakov arrived five minutes later. They placed themselves in a corner where the shelves angled, with a view of anyone approaching. Spencer Barr listened while the tutor explained what had happened to Irina.

“We’re all in terrible danger,” he concluded.

“Volkov is using the Mother as bait to get the Father to return. The Daughter says he knows there’s been communication between them. But he doesn’t know the details. That makes no sense to me.”

“I’m afraid it makes some rather nasty sense to me,” Spencer-Barr said.

“If he had information from his own end, it would naturally include you, because you’re the link between the Daughter and the Father. If he doesn’t know about you, it’s because he’s getting information from the West, and the informant there doesn’t know the details.”

“Oh, my God,” Poliakov groaned.

“I don’t understand this someone in the West is giving information about us to the KGB? Can that be true?”

“It looks like it,” the Englishman said.

“Unless, of course, he’s more interested in getting the Father to come back, and then he’ll pull you and your friends in when he’s ready.” He saw the Russian turn white, and said brutally, “That’s probably the case. The main point is he knows the Daughter can get word to the Father. That’s going to complicate our plan, because he’s going to hang on to her till he’s ready to put her in action. And you’re quite sure she’s not working for him, and stringing you along at the same time? ” Poliakov said, “I’m certain. I believed her. She isn’t betraying us.” He cleared his throat a little, and looked embarrassed.

“I think she’s in love with me,” he said.

“Then you’d better play on it,” Jeremy said.

“Sleep with her if you can. In the meantime I’m going to refer this back to London. I think we’ll have to speed up our operation and get the Daughter out ahead of schedule. I should get an answer in the next two days.” He pulled out a textbook on collective farming.

“This is the postbox. I’ll leave a message when I’ve heard from London.” He pushed the book back onto the shelf.

“I shouldn’t think anyone’d want to read that rubbish,” he said.

“Considering you have to buy your grain from the capitalist West. Meet me the next day at the Science Exhibition. Same time as today. I’ll go first.” He walked away, leaving Poliakov to waste a few minutes before he left the shop. The young man was still pale, and sweat shone on his forehead; he wiped his face and tried to still his nerves. He hated the arrogant foreigner, so safe behind his diplomatic immunity, so openly contemptuous of him for being afraid. And he hated him for degrading Irina Sasanova.