The Envoy (11 page)

Vasili didn’t reply and kept a straight face. He wasn’t going down that dark alley with anyone who wasn’t a very senior
colleague
. It was the sort of thing you only talked about in the hushed offices of the Lubyanka in Moscow. Kit knew this, but liked teasing the Russian. To lighten the tone, Kit asked, ‘How many of your embassy staff are
not
KGB?’

Vasili pursed his lips and looked thoughtful, ‘Just over half – but who knows about the other half? Maybe they’re just
pretending
to be cooks and drivers, but are really undercover KGB spying on us. Who knows? KGB is not, my friend, so much a job title as an existential concept.’

An essential part of Kit’s job was transcribing these
conversations
. If they weren’t too juicy, he dictated them to a
security-cleared
shorthand typist. But he had a feeling this was one he’d have to type himself. He knew that Vasili had to do the same – and not put a foot wrong. The tightrope that Vasili walked didn’t have a safety net. There were fifteen members of the original Bolshevik government. By 1940, ten of them had been executed and four others had died. That management culture permeated the entire state apparatus. The NKVD, the predecessor to the KGB, had arrested almost twenty million and executed seven million. And yet, thought Kit, the survivors of all that terror were so infinitely human. How could they love music, poetry, art – and friendship too – with such passion? Was it because the abyss was always there and each minute had to be caressed and savoured like a precious wine? Compared to them, thought Kit, we are so shallow,
so
insipid. Did Donald Duart Maclean see that too?

‘You and your friends,’ said Vasili, ‘aren’t so close any more.’

‘Thanks to you guys. But we’re not getting divorced, we’re
staying
together for the kids.’

‘You mean like Little Boy and Fat man – you’re staying togetherfor the bombs.’

‘Don’t be silly, we don’t share that stuff any more. After Comrade Burgess and Comrade Maclean, we wouldn’t trust the Brits with a recipe for chocolate chip cookies.’

‘Vasili looked slightly confused; he’d learned English English.‘What are cookeesh?’

‘They’re what the British call
biscuits
.’

‘So they are the same thing.’

‘No, not the same. The recipes are different.’

‘Are the American recipes better?’

‘Much more advanced, let’s say.’

‘And why,’ said Vasili, ‘won’t you tell the British how to make these better cookeesh?’

‘Cookeees.’ Kit paused and made eye contact. ‘I’ve already told you – their sous chefs can’t be trusted with kitchen secrets. So the Brits are going to have to find their own recipes.’

Part of Kit’s job was misinformation. He knew that Vasili would assume that he was lying about the US-UK rift – the
hidden
‘truth’ being the contrary, that Anglo-US military
cooperation
was improving. But it had, in fact, become even worse under Eden. It was bluff, double and triple bluff. In the intelligence world, ‘truth’ and ‘factual reality’ seldom coincide. The Cambridge spies were
underused
by the Russians because, for years, the KGB had believed that the members of the spy ring were perfidious
triple-dealing
Englishmen who had been planted by the British Secret Service. The officers handling the Cambridge ring had risked being shot by their KGB bosses because the secrets they gleaned from the spies were too good, too perfect, to be ‘true’. If
everything
adds up and is confirmed by other sources as true, it doesn’t mean ‘truth’ – it means a vast conspiracy to deceive.

‘Good whisky,’ said Vasili, and drained his glass.

‘By the way,’ said Kit, ‘do you still see our friend, Monsieur Poêle?’ Mister Pan, Peter Pan, the statue in Kensington Gardens. It was the place where Kit and Vasili exchanged information via dead drop spikes. There was, from time to time, intelligence that was mutually beneficial to both superpowers – to the detriment of a third. The exact spot was next to a little-used path between the statue and the Serpentine. The dead drop spike is a metal
container
about the size of a fountain pen. One end has a sharp spike for sticking in the ground, the other a little green loop for
retrieving
it. The hollowed out spike is used for concealing messages or microfilm. If Kit had something to pass on, he would go for a walk in the gardens and suddenly discover that a shoelace needed tying – and then press the spike into the soft grassy turf with the palm of his hand. The sign that dead drop mail was waiting was a piece of chewing gum stuck on the armrest of a bench near the park entrance.

‘I haven’t seen Monsieur Poêle for some time. Is he well?’

‘He’s feeling a bit under the weather.’ Kit waited to see if Vasili had got the joke: rain, snow, pigeon shit. Finally, it registered and the Russian groaned. ‘He might,’ said Kit, ‘appreciate a visit.’

‘Have you heard,’ said Vasili, ‘the one about my friend Boris?’

‘No.’

‘Boris hasn’t been feeling very well lately – and he’s been
making
some mistakes, so he’s called back to Dzerzhinsky Square to see the chief. The chief says, “How are you feeling, Boris?” Boris says, “To be honest, I’m not feeling too good today.” “Well, Boris,” says the chief, “would you like to hear the good news?” “Yes,” said Boris, “what’s the good news?” “The good news, Boris, is that you feel better today than you will tomorrow.”’

The next day Kit woke with a hangover and a letter from Jennifer. She encoded the first part, BCIU QAWG NCIK, which Kit decoded to, IVEF OUND BOAT. The rest of the letter was
written
in the clear. 

Kit was pleased that Jennifer remembered how to use the code. He re-read the letter, the words ‘crisis on Orford Ness’ rang a very loud alarm bell. What were they up to? Kit knew he was expected to penetrate the security on Orford Ness, but didn’t know how it was possible. He wasn’t allowed to use anyone acting under ‘official cover’ – this excluded all US military and government employees. Kit thought about Driscoll, but knew that an Irish navvy with an IRA background had as much chance of getting an AWRE security clearance as a KGB officer in full dress uniform.

Kit carried Jennifer’s letter over to the sink, lit a match, burned the letter and washed the ashes down the drain. Then he struck another match to light the gas cooker so he could boil a kettle for tea. I must be turning into a Limey, he thought. Kit took the lid off the tin of leaf tea, but waited for the water to boil so that he could ‘warm the pot’. Making tea was the English equivalent of a Tridentine Mass. But what about Stanley, thought Kit? A site like Orford Ness must be begging for electricians.

Facial appearance is only part of an effective disguise; there’s also walking, gestures and voice. But, thought Kit, the most
important
part of a disguise is sharing the attitude and thoughts of the person you are impersonating. If you could do that, it changed you far more than a false moustache or a fake limp. In a corner of his bathroom mirror, opposite the Maclean statement, Kit had taped another quote:
The essential character of a nation is not determined by the upper classes, but by the common people, and that the common people of all nations are true brothers in the great family of mankind.

Kit stared at the words. He secretly admired the man who had said them, but it wasn’t an easy belief for him to take on. The words were from the unpublished autobiography of Paul Robeson, the black American singer. Kit’s admiration for Robeson had to be ‘secret’, for part of his job was stopping the
autobiography
from being published. Robeson’s book, banned in the US, was now doing the rounds of publishers in London. Robeson had fallen foul of HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Committee, for saying things like ‘our basic democratic rights are under attack under the smokescreen of anti-communism .’ Consequently, Kit’s bosses, the US State Department, had taken away Robeson’s passport and issued ‘stop notices’ at all ports and border crossings.

It hadn’t been difficult to find a corner of the South Lambeth Goods Depot that was quiet and abandoned – particularly if you parked there at lunchtime. Kit’s favoured place was next to a pair of derelict water tanks next to a siding that was never used; years of stale grass had grown and turned rank between the rails. A sparrow hopped between the sleepers foraging for seeds. Kit opened his briefcase and took out his make-up box. He set up a mirror on the car dashboard and within five minutes had turned himself into an American of mixed race. For a second or two Kit admired himself in the mirror: the dark skin improved his looks. He then locked the car and set off on foot to his agent rendezvous. Kit found himself humming a song he’d picked up from Stanley, ‘Meet Me in Battersea Park.’

Kit arrived at the usual park bench and sat down. He checked his watch: Stanley was running late. That was unusual, the Londoner always got there first. The bench was on the edge of the park and looked out over the Thames. On the other side of the river a
red-coated
Chelsea pensioner limped along the embankment. The pensioner finally found a bench and sat down. He leaned on his stick and stared across the water. Kit felt that the pensioner, with a leg full of shrapnel from Ladysmith or Mafeking, was watching his every move. Kit opened a copy of the
Manchester Guardian
– it was part of his cover – and started reading an article about the implications of Khrushchev’s speech denouncing Stalin. All change, thought Kit, all change.

Kit looked at his watch again: six minutes late. Maybe Stanley wasn’t going to show. And in any case, he might not fancy a job in Suffolk. Kit looked across the river; the pensioner had been joined by another and they were talking. The paranoia began to ease and Kit folded the
Guardian
: the newspaper was a prop, part of the cover story he had put on to deceive Stanley. Kit knew that Stanley, despite his criminal activities, was both a patriot and a man of the left. He would never have touched a job if it meant working for a foreign power, especially the Americans. Therefore, Kit had devised a cover story that included an English wife, a friendship with Paul Robeson and connections with British socialism. Kit never mentioned a political party by name, but let Stanley make his own assumptions. The targets of his break-ins – bomb budget figures and the Tory PM’s health records – would be valuable assets to any of the government’s socialist opponents. Wouldn’t it be funny, Kit thought, if the left wing of the Labour Party ended up getting blamed for the burglaries? He could
imagine
Allen Dulles slapping his thigh and howling with laughter.

There was the sound of someone kicking a football on the field behind the bench. Then the voice of a child, ‘Come on, Grandad,
please
try to get the ball.’