The Defector (44 page)

“Good lads. We didn’t let any passengers through. The KGB aren’t passengers. We know nothing and we say nothing, and we can’t get into trouble. Remember; we’ll lose our seaman’s cards if anything gets out. Back to your posts! ” He wiped his sweating face with his sleeve and hurried away. Loss of his card meant that he would be unable to serve on any ship again. He could be sent to any place in the interior as a punishment, and put to any work. His men would suffer the same. Nobody was going to say anything when the KGB were involved, at least until the KGB asked the questions. He was not just being careful, he was being loyal. He went down to the mess deck and swallowed a vodka; it made him sweat even more but it steadied his nerves. In the cabin Harrington turned angrily on the captain’ If they’re not on board,” he said, ‘then they’ve somehow got ashore. And you’ve let two dangerous criminals wanted by the security police escape from your ship. I wouldn’t like to be in your place, Captain, when we get back to Yalta! “

“They could possibly have jumped overboard,” the captain suggested.

“But they would have been seen if we were near the harbour. Perhaps they did it at sea.” He looked hopeful.

“If they did, they would have drowned. The currents here are very strong outside the coastline.”

“That’s what you hope,” Harrington snapped. He turned away in fury. They wouldn’t have committed suicide by trying to swim ashore when they had no reason to think they would be detained on the ship like-everybody else. If they jumped after the announcement prohibiting disembarkation, they would certainly have been seen. The ship was already docked; it was an impossible alternative. They must have got past the goons on the gangway; there was no other explanation. He lit a cigarette, his hand visibly unsteady. They had gone. That was the only fact. And because Davina Graham’s bag had been stolen when she left it behind in the toilet, he had wasted all this time in making the captain check his credentials with Moscow. The lack of his red card had prevented him having Davina and the other two arrested as soon as the ship docked. As soon as it became obvious that apart from the one precaution, Volkov hadn’t arranged anything to secure them, he had been frantic;

and while he argued with the sailor at the bridge and searched for Davina’s bag with his vital authority hidden in it, Irina Sasanova and her lover had slipped ashore. By what means nobody could tell, but they had vanished. Volkov had lost one of his major bargaining counters but at least there was one left. He turned back to the captain.

“I want to speak to Moscow, ship to shore,” he said.

“And there’s a woman on board I want arrested. She was concerned with these criminals. At least we won’t lose her!” He threw Davina’s passport on the table.

“Bring her in and have the Intourist man interpret for you. She doesn’t speak Russian. I’ll tell him what to ask her. And get that phone link through as soon as possible! I want a person-to-person call with Comrade General An-tony ii Volkov, Department of Internal Security.” While Harrington waited, he gave a short sharp briefing on how Davina Graham was to be interrogated. And he remembered her telling him once, over a cosy dinner, that she had always been terrified of enclosed spaces. As soon as she saw the seamen coming towards her, Davina knew she was going to be arrested. She waited for them;

they seemed to be moving in slow motion, like characters in a film running at half speed. Her heart gave a series of rapid beats, as if it were lurching in her chest. The dread that overcame her was like paralysis; she didn’t shake or move; she sat motionless and watched them coming nearer and finally stopping in front other. She didn’t understand the Russian words, but there was no mistake about the hands pulling her to her feet, and closing in on either side of her, propelling her towards the companionway. They took her to a cabin, and there were two men inside. One wore the uniform of a ship’s captain and the second was the Intourist guide responsible for passengers. The guide spoke in German.

“Your passport and visa where are they?” The tone was harsh, the faces round her coldly hostile.

“My husband has them.” The speech had been rehearsed often enough. She knew it was all lies and useless but there was nothing else to say.

“Your name, and details.” She said, “Gertrude Fleischer; my husband is Heinz Fleischer. We are citizens of the German Democratic Re public, on holiday at Livadia. What is wrong? Why have you brought me down here? ” And then because it seemed the obvious thing to say,” Where is my husband? “

“Under arrest,” the Intourist interpreter snapped.

“Why do you not keep your passport and documents with you? Why do you say your husband has them? Why don’t you carry them in your own handbag?” The handbag. That’s what they were after. The bag she had told Harrington must have been stolen, because it wasn’t in the toilet. It had vanished, like Sasanov’s daughter and the tutor. He swung away from her without a word of explanation. She stayed where she was, and then the seamen came. She wet her lips quickly with her tongue; they felt cracked and dry. She had been warned not to do that if she were questioned, it was a sign that the suspect was lying. But she wet her lips and answered.

“It’s a good thing I didn’t keep them in my bag. My bag was stolen this evening when I left it in the ladies’ toilet.”

“And you didn’t report it?” the guide sneered at her.

“You didn’t report a theft immediately? Did you lose money? Why are telling lies, Frau Fleischer? Don’t you relize you could be in serious trouble.” He paused, and she felt the captain staring hard at her. Now she was begining to shake; she knew she was looking frightened because there was a brief exchange of satisfied looks between the two men. And where was Harrington? Spying on them from the next-door cabin waiting for her nerve to give way? The questions were only a form of provocation. They knew who she was and why she was on board the ship. Harrington had told them. They would go on threatening her and accusing her of lying until she gave them all the satisfaction of breaking down.

“I’ll see you damned,” she murmered to herself.

“I’m Gertrude Fleischer until that bastard comes face to face with me and says I’m not’ - and she squared her jaw and said in her most obstinate voice! “I am not lying. Why don’t you send for my husband? He has my passport and all my papers. ” Fear can take the form of reckless boldness; her legs trembled under her, and her heart was flying round like a loose bird, hammering to get out; she folded her arms over it, as if to keep it close, and stared back at her interrogator. She didn’t know it, but she looked very like her father as he stood on the bridge of his cruiser in the last war, and set course for the enemy. The Intourist guide spoke briefly to the captain. He nodded. When the man turned back to her there was open menace in his expression. He advanced a step towards her;

he stabbed his forefinger at her, almost touching her face.

“If you won’t cooperate with me, and the ship’s captain,” he said very loudly, ‘then you will be handed over to the security police when we reach Yalta. We are returning there immediately. You will be locked up till we dock and they come to take you away. ” The place where she spent the next three hours was an old locker; it had no ventilation apart from the crack under the door, and no light. She felt round the walls with her hands and started taking long deep breaths to stop herself from panicking and screaming. There’s no such thing as claustrophobia. It’s just a cupboard. They’re trying to frighten you into admitting that you’re not Getrude Fleischer, and the minute you do that they’ll really have you. They’ll break you in pieces to find out how Irina and the boy escaped. And they haven’t caught them, don’t you realize that otherwise they wouldn’t need to do this to you. They’d have you all in together and gloat so steady yourself. Look, there’s a light shining under the door. Sit on the floor and get close to it. That’s it, crouch down so you can see the light. You’ll forget it’s dark and so small in here because you can imagine the corridor outside. You’ll hear someone pass in a minute. Alright then, cry, curse, talk to you self Do what you like but stop thinking about the space. Breath deeply, make your heart stop racing;

it can’t if you take deep breaths. Remember, that’s what women are taught in natural child birth and they are able to relax and stay calm. Think about Sasanov no, don’t think about him or you’ll start thinking about his wife and what’s going to happen to you. If you hold your breath long enough you can make yourself faint. Dear God, why don’t I just pass out There, someone’s walking past you, you can hear them. Maybe they’ve come to let you out. When they did let her out, she blinked, her eyes stung by the light. She walked quite steadily along the passage in the bright artificial light, and in’ through the door into the cabin. And then she saw it wasn’t a cabin but a closet, low ceilinged and tiny. As the door slammed and the light went out, she heard herself scream before she buckled at the knees and fainted. Igor Kaledin sipped his glass of hot tea. They had brought the samovar to Volkov’s office, with cheese and savouries, and a bottle of Polish brandy. The blinds were drawn and a clear light fell over his shoulder onto the papers piled in front of him. The rest of the office was in soothing semidarkness. He had spent the whole day there, hunched over the records of Antonyii Volkov’s seven years of tenure, piecing together the plan he had devised to give him Kaledin’s post in the Politburo. The fact that he was dead didn’t deflect the old man’s anger; the fact that his death had caused a chain of circumstances due entirely to his treasonable secrecy was what enraged Kaledin. There had been no chain of command, no fail-safe for an emergency, such as his murder in a girl’s flat. Danton’s message had gone unanswered until it was too late to do anything effective about it. And by the time Kaledin had unravelled the identities of the people it referred to, the ship itself had docked, and, as the latest report handed in by Major Tatischev confirmed, two of the fugitives had got away and made their rendezvous. People had seen them on the marina, boarding the yacht with the Polish colours at its masthead. Just as Harrington’s frenzied conversation on the ship-to-shore telephone had explained to him. The yacht had put to sea and though they sent search planes to look for it, it was like hunting a pea in a feather bed. They would never be found, and doubtless the submarine that took them on board was well on her way to Turkish waters. Far from bringing Sasanov back, Volkov’s only accomplishment was to comfort him in his exile, by sending him his daughter. There was, of course, the Englishwoman; she was under arrest on the Alexander Nevsky. Harrington had assured him that she was valuable, very valuable. Kaledin had listened with irritation to the traitor’s attempts to retrieve the situation. She would be valuable as an exchange, in due course, but not for Sasanov. Volkov’s analysis stressed his devotion to his daughter and his wife. The woman was his lover, Harrington insisted. Kaledin shrugged the information aside. Men didn’t give themselves up to save a woman they’d known for a few months. Sasanov had not made any move when his wife was arrested. The British wouldn’t let him; they had obviously held out this rescue attempt as the bait to keep him on their side. The higher his hopes the greater the reaction when they were disappointed. If Volkov had succeeded and the daughter joined the wife in the Gulag, whilst the British agent answered questions in the Lubyanka, then Sasanov might have proved useless to his British hosts, and a deal could have been arranged. A man’s commitment to his own safety, even to the ideals which had made him defect, wouldn’t have stood up to that test. Especially not a man of sensitivity, like Sasanov, with his conscience rubbed raw by the death of Jacob Belezky. He had been a brilliant officer, but always hampered by his capacity for human feelings, when those feelings were out of place. Volkov had contrived a masterpiece of Intelligence work, aided by Danton the Mole. His superior sat and drank his tea and pondered on how to make use of it. Major Tatischev waited in the shadows, perched on an angular modern chair. He didn’t dare to interrupt or even to clear his throat while the second most powerful man in Soviet Russia sat in the swathe of light from the lamp behind the desk, drinking tea and brandy, looking like an aged tortoise gently falling asleep. Tatischev sneaked one hand over to his wrist and pushed the sleeve back. It was past midnight.

“Major?” He jumped to his feet.

“Yes, Comrade DirectorGeneral.”

“There is a morning plane to Simferopol, isn’t there?”

“Yes, Comrade Director General. At nine in the morning.”

“You will catch it,” Kaledin said.

“You will go to the Alexander Nevsky and see Danton. This is what you will tell him.” The message came through from Turkey late on Sunday morning. It reached Grant just as he was going down to lunch in Hampshire. It came by special courier from the office in London, where the duty decoding officer phoned through for a dispatch rider as soon as he read it. Grant read the message. It was a long one and it told him that at least part of the escape had been successful. Irina Sasanova and the university tutor were safe in Turkey and would be flown home that evening. Davina Graham had not got away; Peter Harrington was a Russian spy and an officer of the KGB. His identity card was in the young couple’s possession. Grant folded the message and slipped it in his pocket. He was already five minutes late for lunch and he was meticulous about time. They hadn’t tried to carry on with the debriefing since Friday. Sasanov was showing signs of great tension and anxiety; his concentration had suffered, and it was a waste of time. Kidson played. chess with him and parried his demands for news. But they couldn’t be fended off much longer. He knew they would soon hear of the success or failure of the operation. Grant was sorry about Davina Graham. His regrets were quite impersonal; he had lost an agent and a colleague and he felt the blow. His imagination did not dwell on what was happening to her. Instead it concerned itself with Peter Harrington, safe in Russia with his masters, joining the elite little band of Foreign Office traitors living in Moscow, awarded with dachas and special privileges for betraying their own country. Grant would have liked very much to resuscitate the old wartime assassination department. But Harrington would never suffer for what he had done. Grant opened his door and hurried down to the dining-room. He apologized to his colleagues for being late. As they left the room he stopped Sasanov.