The Envoy (12 page)

‘Now, listen Albert, I’ve got to have a talk with this gentleman.’

Kit heard tiny footsteps brushing through the grass at the back of the bench, then a child’s voice whispering in his ear. ‘Mister, would you like to play piggy in the middle? You can be piggy.’

Kit turned and faced a boy who looked about four. He wasn’t used to children and felt awkward around them. Before he could think of something to say, Stanley came to the rescue.

‘Albert, you young tearaway, let that poor man be.’ Stanley then knelt down and pointed into the distance. ‘Look, Albert, you see those two elm trees over there. Pretend they’re fullbacks – I want you to dribble back and forth between them practising that two-step move I showed you.’

Kit watched the child trot off towards the trees. It all seemed so strange – child, grandparent, park, play. What, thought Kit, was the name of this strange planet? The sounds of organ music and laughter from the funfair carried across the greensward. The park was dotted with prams: punctuation points of life. How, thought Kit, do you find the code word that lets you in?

Stanley called out to his grandson. ‘Use both feet – that’s it!’ Then turned to Kit and said, ‘They’re on to me.’

‘How do you know?’

‘They tried to put the frighteners on me – bastards.’

‘Who were they?’ Kit was playing dumb.

‘It was them. You always know it’s them – they stick out like bleeding thumbs.’

Kit knew that by ‘them’ Stanley meant the security services. In the underworld you called a gang or a villain by name, but the heavy hands of the State were always ‘them’. It was as if they were evil spirits and saying their name aloud – MI5, Special Branch, SIS – would invoke a curse. ‘What happened?’ said Kit.

‘They were waiting for me when I came out of the Bread and Roses – parked in a big Humber. But I ignored them and
continued
on my merry way – and the car starts following me at
walking
pace. When I turn into Elmhurst Street, the Humber turns too, and two blokes jump out and start to walk on either side of me. But I just walk along whistling with my hands in my pockets pretending they’re not there. They didn’t like that – and about three seconds later, they lift me up and throw me against an iron railing. It hurt and I’ve still got the bruises. So I say, “What that’s for?” And one of ’em says, “Shut it, Stanley.” For a while, they just kept staring at me. Then the other one said, and he had a voice just like a vicar, he says, “We’re disappointed in you, Stanley, we never thought you would do something like this. We strongly advise that you stop.” And that was it – the driver turned around and picked them up – and I haven’t seen them since, but I think they’re watching. That’s why I brought Albert – they know I wouldn’t bring the kid if I was on a job.’

‘Have you ever worked for them?’

‘Might have.’ Stanley seemed embarrassed. ‘Nothing much, did the phones at the Egyptian Embassy.’

‘I’m sorry it turned out this way.’ Kit reached into his pocket and took out a roll of pound notes.

‘What’s that for?’

‘It’s a token of appreciation, a bonus, for what you’ve done.’

‘I don’t want it. I liked working for you. It felt good to get at those bastards – they just want to keep us down.’

Kit shoved the roll of notes into Stanley’s coat pocket. ‘Just take it.’

‘What’s the matter? You seem angry.’

‘I’m not angry at you.’ Kit stared at the river. The tide had changed and there were brown whirlpools heading seawards. He wondered if it was possible to choke to death on self-loathing. Stanley was a villain and safe-cracker, but one that knew all the words of ‘The Red Flag’ and ‘The Internationale’. Kit remembered Stanley telling him how he had fought the Fascists on Cable Street and had his skull cracked in a baton charge by mounted police. The duping of Stanley required more than a trick of spycraft; it required an acid of bleak cynicism that corroded the soul.

As Kit walked past the Roosevelt Memorial, he noticed that the daffodils were in full bloom. A reminder that in one month the Russian light cruiser,
Ordzhonikidze
, would dock in Portsmouth Harbour bringing First Secretary Khrushchev and Premier Nikolai Bulganin to Britain for the goodwill visit. As soon as Kit got to his office he sent for the most recent underwater
espionage
files – not the sort of stuff you can take home to peruse of an evening over a glass of wine. Even in the embassy itself, he had to sign a dated and timed top secret document receipt.

The previous October the
Sverdlov
, another Soviet light cruiser, had been to Portsmouth for the Spithead naval review. Both British and US Navy intelligence were surprised by the ship’s manoeuvrability and wanted to find out her secret. The
underwater
espionage was a joint CIA-MI6 operation, codenamed SM/ CLARET, that involved both British and American divers. MI6 had enticed Commander Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb out of his boozy retirement for a fee of sixty guineas, a quaint unit of British
currency
worth twenty-one shillings. It hadn’t taken Kit long to learn that ordinary people exchanged pounds, but gentlemen traded in guineas. But it was only afterwards that Kit discovered that ‘the gentlemen’ from MI6 hadn’t told their boss, the Prime Minister, what they were doing. It was a totally unauthorised op. It didn’t take Kit long to realise that MI6 had used the CIA as
camouflage
. If something had gone wrong, they would have blamed the Americans for spying in British waters. The ensuing shit storm would, of course, have destroyed Kit’s career.

In the end, it nearly did go wrong. The Russians got suspicious and sent a swimmer over the side. But fortunately, the divers had already accomplished their mission. They discovered two
propellers
set in sunken recesses in the forward hull. The
Sverdlov
was one of the first warships that had been fitted with bow thrusters. The extra props were not only useful for dockside manoeuvres, but would help the cruiser to take evasive action under fire. Kit knew it was a significant intelligence find and was certain that British Naval Intelligence was leaning on MI6 to find out more.

Kit flicked through the SM/CLARET file. One of the CIA divers reported that Crabb wasn’t fit enough to do this sort of work: he was overweight, a slow swimmer and consumed too much
oxygen.
Apparently, Crabb had had some difficulty with his
breathing
apparatus and was forced to surface. ‘This,’ wrote the CIA man, ‘probably accounted for the crew becoming alerted.’ Kit closed the file. Poor Crabb, he thought.

In the end, Kit received a verbal reprimand for the
Sverdlov
affair. The reprimand wasn’t for spying on the Russian ship, but for having used ‘official cover’, American CIA trained frogmen. The real message from his bosses in Washington was:
Don’t leave any fingerprints and provide tons of ‘plausible deniability
’. There was a whole manual, and a very secret one, entitled ‘Embassy Directed Covert Operations in a Host Country’. During SM/ CLARET Kit had violated almost every guideline on ‘
compartmentalisation
’ and ‘anonymity’. His mistake had been to trust his British counterpart. Meanwhile, the Brit was wiping MI6
fingerprints
off the spy mission, but leaving all of the CIA’s. It was a brilliant example of ‘dry-cleaning’. Kit felt no resentment: it was all part of the game. But next time it was going to be his turn – that’s why he had hired Driscoll.

The next file that Kit looked at was US Naval Intelligence stuff: the folder was packed with 8x10 glossy photos. Many had been snapped by adrenalin fuelled helicopter crews hovering just a few feet over Russian ships. Assholes, thought Kit. A
miscalculation
, a sudden gust of wind, a rotor catches a piece of rigging – and a Soviet ship’s drenched with blazing aviation fuel and dead Americans and dead Russians burning all over the decks. What happens next? Are we all crazy? Kit began reading the ship details.

The
Ordzhonikidze
is an Admiral Sverdlov class cruiser. She displaces 17 thousand tons and is 689 feet in length
. Kit did a quick calculation – nearly ten swimming pool lengths. Could Crabb still manage it?
The
Ordzhonikidze
carries 12 six-inch guns and 12 four-inch guns
– as, thought Kit, any fool can see from the
photos
. The important questions are the mysteries that lie beneath her hull. What sort of sonar does she have? Had they replaced the old Tamir and Mehta systems? Could they now detect US nuclear submarines and destroy them with nuclear depth charges? What sort of torpedo tubes does she have? Are there underwater ports for sowing mines? Could these mines be nuclear? And why was the ship so fast – was the stern propeller of some new design?

Kit pushed the file aside and leaned back in his chair. The
bottom
of that ship, if not the Holy Grail, was still an intelligence treasure trove. He knew for certain that the Brits were going to try again: the temptation was too strong to resist. And it would have to be another unauthorised operation. The Prime Minister would never sanction it: the risks of a serious diplomatic incident were too great. Especially as the UK was leaning towards a policy of détente with the Soviet Union – and a botched spying incident would blow it. And wouldn’t, thought Kit, it serve them right. He had begun to feel good again. He had left the sickly twists of
conscience
behind. He was back in a professional world where there were no innocent bystanders, just willing players wearing team strips. Being hurt and hurting others was part of the game.

MI6 hadn’t approached Kit about the
Ordzhonikidze
. They knew they couldn’t expect a CIA cover story for a second dive. But Kit still felt annoyed about being left out. The stuff on the
bottom
of that ship was the bread and butter of intelligence
gathering
. And what were the Brits going to do with the
Ordzhonikidze’s
secrets? They didn’t have the resources to build countermeasures. There were only two horses in the arms race. There was no point in the op if they didn’t share the intelligence with the Americans.

Kit picked up his desk calendar and looked again at the dates. The timeframe was limited to three days and all the main
players
– including Crabb and his handler – were known. Kit knew that they would stay at the Sally Port Hotel again. And he knew, roughly, where Crabb would begin his swim – there were only three places in the crowded dockyard where a diver could get in the water unobserved by a ship docked on the Railway Jetty.

The only light in the office was a desk lamp, but the ghostly glow of the London night crept through a window and lurked on the carpet. Kit looked into the shadows and decided that the Driscoll op needed another twist. He opened a desk drawer, peeled off a piece of flash paper – when your contact burns it, there’s no ash – and began to write the message. When he was finished, he unscrewed a dead drop spike and popped the note into its hollow core.

Kit walked over to the bookshelf and took down his copy of
USSR Biographies
. The volume was only ‘confidential’, so he didn’t have to keep it in the archive vault. ‘Who the fuck,’ he said aloud, ‘was Ordzhonikidze?’ He flicked through the volume: Ordzhonikidze, Sergo 1886-1937. Kit wished he hadn’t bothered. It was depressing reading. The ship’s namesake had been a lifelong and loyal friend to Stalin. At first, Ordzhonikidze had been well rewarded and rose quickly through the ranks to govern the Ukraine. In 1936 his
loyalty
came under question. Rumours spread. A year later he was dead. A death certificate, stating suicide, was signed by the Health Commissar himself, Dr Kaminsky. A short time later, Kaminsky was arrested and executed. I suppose, thought Kit, you were damned if you did and damned if you didn’t. And then, a dozen years later a keel is laid down in Leningrad shipyard – Stalin still very much alive – for an umpteen-gun, seventeen-thousand ton cruiser to be named the
Ordzhonikidze
. If, thought Kit, there is a God, I bet He’s just like that.

It was well after dark when Kit left the embassy. He found his way out through a service entrance in the back and had to dodge around ranks of stinking dustbins. He emerged into a dimly lit close called Three Kings Yard. He turned left into Upper Brook Street, also dark and deserted except for a single black taxi. Kit walked west to Park Lane where there was brightness and
traffic
, then turned right towards Marble Arch. He looked across the road. Speaker’s Corner was quiet – all the loonies were back on the ward. The Corner was, however, a great idea. It was a quaint heritage thing that gave simpletons the illusion that freedom of speech really did exist in 1950s England. But where, thought Kit, can I get a copy of
Ulysses
or
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
?

Or, even better, get a journalist to write about ‘The Man in the Mask’? It was Kit’s favourite scandal. Once or twice a month, a cabinet minister attended a dinner party at a very exclusive address. The podgy minister, aside from the black leather mask that hid his identity, was completely nude. He served the rest of the guests naked and ate his own dinner out of a dog’s bowl. For some time, Kit had been trying to discover the identity of the masked minister, but no luck. This was one mystery on which Establishment ranks were closed and lips were sealed. Not even his honey trap minister would talk about that one.

When Kit got to Bayswater Road there were a number of
well-dressed
couples laughing in haw-haw voices and trying to hail taxis. Kit walked westwards against the convivial evening flow. Hyde Park, dark and deserted, stretched out on his left. Kit
suddenly
felt cold, as if an icy dead hand had slipped under his shirt and caressed his spine. He turned up his collar, something wasn’t right. Kit stopped at Lancaster Gate. He looked north into the twisting labyrinth of streets. The pale Georgian terraces, scabbed and peeling, stooped in genteel seediness. He wondered if the hotel was still there – and the odd-shaped room where he had been very happy, and then very sad. The twisted memory
vanished
, something else wasn’t right. Kit knew that he was being followed.

Kit hadn’t seen his trail, he had
felt
him. When he was a trainee at ‘the farm’, Kit had been taught never to stare at the back of a person you were keeping under observation. There was a strange sixth sense inherited from our animal ancestors. We might not see, smell or hear the predator, but we feel that stalking eye
crawling
up our exposed spine to the back of our necks.

Kit walked the few remaining yards to where Elms Mews angled into Bayswater, then looked at his watch and shook his head. He was pretending that he was waiting to meet someone. Kit folded his arms and tapped his foot in pretend impatience. Meanwhile, he glanced back the way he had come. About fifty yards away, a young man of middle height was reading a bus timetable. Kit waited five more minutes, then checked his watch again. The young man was now reading a menu in a
restaurant
window. Why, thought Kit, don’t you just wear a flashing sign saying you’re on a surveillance op. Kit was certain that the young man was a watcher from A4 – the MI5 branch
responsible
for trailing suspicious foreigners around London. Kit felt the red mist descending. How
fucking dare
they put a tail on him? It wasn’t just a breach of diplomatic etiquette; it was a personal insult too – not so much to be under surveillance, but to have the task assigned to some incompetent office junior. OK, asshole, let’s see how you handle this one?

Kit crossed the road and set off into Kensington Gardens. The path towards the Peter Pan statue was poorly lit, but was wide and straight so his tail shouldn’t have any trouble keeping him in view. Kit listened to a cacophony of alarm calls from the various waterfowl on Long Water. The Romans, he remembered, used to keep geese as sentinels. Kit reached into his coat pocket and found the dead drop spike. He stopped, peered around as if to make sure he was unobserved; then stepped off the path and bent over as if to press the dead drop spike into the earth. Instead, he palmed the spike up his sleeve, and set off briskly towards the Serpentine. When Kit was sure he was no longer being followed, he doubled back using the thick waterside foliage as cover. As Kit suspected, his trail was on his hands and knees searching the grass with a pocket torch. The fool had fallen for one of oldest tricks in the book: faking a dead drop in order to shake a trail.

Kit sat down beneath a rhododendron and waited. He
wondered
how long it would take Blanco’s boy – for he was now more sure than ever he was from El Blanco’s stable – to realise he’d been duped. The CIA’s nickname for Dick White, the Head of MI5, was El Pene Blanco – or just El Blanco. In any case, Kit knew that his watcher had made a serious professional mistake. Once you’ve been assigned a surveillance target, you don’t do
anything
else. You stick to him like shit on a poodle. If the target leaves a briefcase of nuclear secrets in a taxi, you don’t run after the taxi – you keep trailing your man. Unbroken surveillance, ‘eyeball’, is sacred. If your target plucks a baby out of a pram and throws the child in the river, don’t jump in to save the kid. It’s just a cheap trick to shake your trail.