The Envoy (32 page)

Kit was surprised how easy it was to continue as if nothing had changed. He had been missing from the embassy for two days, but no one seemed to have taken much notice. Kit’s only
interrogator
, the DCM, was on leave – and the rest of the staff assumed, as always, that Kit must be engaged on the spook side of his job. Perry handled daily routine more conscientiously than his boss. Meanwhile Ethel, Kit’s secretary, covered his absences with
convincing
lies and credible excuses. No one, of course, dared
speculate
or whisper about Counsellor Fournier’s whereabouts. In one way, it was comforting to know that his office functioned
without
him. On the other hand, it was worrying. How long could he be missing before anyone would notice something was wrong? A week? Ten days? Kit had a chilling premonition of his body putrefying in a shallow grave while Ethel mouthed into the
telephone
: ‘Thank you for calling, but Counsellor Fournier is
temporarily
out of the office. He should be back soon and will return your call.’

Kit was impressed by Perry’s development as a diplomat and a political analyst. The deputy had such an excellent grasp of the unravelling Suez crisis that Kit allowed him to brief Ambassador Aldrich on the situation. Meanwhile, Kit had to prepare his own briefing – a top secret one – for Allen Dulles. Dulles was due to arrive in London in two weeks. It was going to be a difficult
briefing
. Kit was now working for two masters and couldn’t lie to either. It was a tricky business. In Germany, Horst hadn’t been the only agent who had tried working for both sides. There was another one who provided wonderful intelligence on the
political
opposition in East Germany. The stuff was fastidious in detail and totally reliable. It was so good the Russians wanted it too – so the agent gleefully sold his wares to both sides. His death hadn’t been a pretty one – the hammer blows kept falling, but he refused to die. The agent was now part of West Germany’s transport infrastructure.

The reverberations of Jeffers Cauldwell’s disappearance were more nuisance than problem. The embassy was overrun with young intense counter-intelligence officers: CIA, FBI and Military Intelligence too. Kit was interviewed five times and kept to the script. Ironically, the counter-intell types seemed more interested in Cauldwell’s sexuality than his ideology. It had recently been confirmed – thanks to a Home Office dental pathologist – that the body found on Shingle Street beach in Suffolk was that of Henry Knowles. There was an open verdict as to whether the death was suicide or murder. Some thought that Knowles had killed
himself
in such a bizarre way because he wanted to make it look like murder. The general assumption was that it was only a matter of time before Cauldwell’s body turned up too – probably in equally bizarre circumstances. The counter-intelligence officers seemed to dismiss Cauldwell as too ‘lightweight’ to have been engaged in serious espionage. After all, he was only a ‘cultural
attaché’ – and
, as such, had no access to top secret information of relevance to national security. The visiting officers wanted to close the case and get back to an American summer. Meanwhile, thought Kit, Jeffers Cauldwell is holed up in a KGB safe house somewhere in Greater London waiting for London’s CIA Chief of Station to tell him where the Brits have stashed the missing Soviet H-bomb.

August was going to be a lousy month. July had ended with the lowest barometer reading ever recorded in a British summer. On the twenty-ninth, there had been violent gales on the south coast that had cancelled the yacht races at Cowes – and there were even winds of seventy miles per hour that had swept through London. The gale had struck London while Kit had lain
comatose
with acute recurrent malaria – as if the howling winds had been protesting his rape. It was the sort of thing that happened in a Shakespeare tragedy, dopey Lear out on the blasted heath. But Kit knew that it was just a coincidence because neither he nor his anal virginity was as important as a British king. Kit knew that the game was important – so important, that a misplaced card might mean the nuclear annihilation of millions of people – but that he was just a blundering bit player.

The worst thing was that he didn’t know – in the purest moral and ethical sense – what was the right thing to do. Nuclear bombs were immoral and illegal weapons of indiscriminate and mass destruction, but countries had the right to defend themselves against these weapons – and, ultimately, the only way to do so was to have nuclear weapons of your own. But maybe that wasn’t completely true. There was no way that the Soviet Union could attack Western Europe – the Russians were fully stretched
controlling
Eastern Europe. And Khrushchev’s speech denouncing Stalin’s ‘grave abuse of power’ had changed everything. In fact, it was doubtful for how much longer Moscow could control the Soviet Union itself. All the intelligence analysts and Soviet
specialists
knew this – but it had to be kept secret. If the ordinary people knew the facts, they would kick their rulers out of office and put them in jail. The arms race was a profiteering racket run by big business, a massive confidence trick. Everyone in the power elite knew this – except for the cretins who believed their own
propaganda
. Eisenhower knew it, and even said so in public: ‘Beware the unwarranted influence of the military-industrial complex.’ It was like Satan warning people about sin – it didn’t matter, they never listened. But Kit had a job to do. He had to find a missing Soviet hydrogen bomb. But what then?

Kit arrived in Suffolk on a day of thunderstorms and hail. Bad omens for a brief sailing break. When he stopped at Jennifer’s
cottage
to pick up his oars and oilskins – which he kept in a garden shed – the hail lay six inches deep on the ground. Kit crunched through the ice to the kitchen door. He looked through the
window
and was surprised to see Brian sitting at the table – it was early afternoon on a weekday. Brian seemed unaware of his
presence
. The scientist was staring at a pencil-drawn sketch
containing
various coils and formulae. There was a slide rule on the table and an open briefcase full of files with yellow security tags. Kit knew at once that he was staring at an intelligence goldmine. He backed away from the door – sure that Brian hadn’t noticed his eavesdropping – and walked back to his car. There was a noisy farm tractor labouring down the lane. In order to mask the sound of his own engine, Kit waited for the tractor to pass the cottage before he turned the ignition key. He knew that someone was watching him. He looked back to the house. Jennifer was staring at him from her bedroom window. Kit put a finger to his lips; he sensed that Jennifer had nodded agreement; he put the car in gear and slunk away behind the tractor.

The Jolly Sailor was a good observation post. From a table by the window Kit could observe all traffic going to and from Orford Quay – and, more importantly, to the ferry to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment on Orford Ness. The pub was full of fishermen and farm workers sheltering from the
unseasonable
weather. Kit knew he was an object of curiosity, but used his newspaper to avoid eye contact. He finished an article about the evacuation of British dependents from Egypt and then began the correspondence page. ‘Letters to the Editor’ are, as any
intelligence
officer knows, a more valuable source of information than the actual news articles. These pages provide, not only insight into what the ‘educated classes’ are thinking, but also contact names. It’s a good way, once you’ve sifted out the cranks, to find
useful
agents. There were several letters complaining about the way Eden had compared Nasser to Hitler and Mussolini. Kit
recognised
the names of many of the anti-Suez correspondents – two were founding members of CND.

Kit folded the paper and pretended to begin the crossword, but was really eavesdropping on the conversations around him. He knew one of the men at the next table because he worked on the estate that owned Jennifer’s cottage. His name was Jack and he was head groom. Farming on the estate was now mechanised and there were no more working horses – only nimble Arab polo ponies, big hunters and point-to-point thoroughbreds. But Kit knew that Jack’s first love were the Suffolk Punches, those great grey giants of the plough. He had once overheard Jack describe the Suffolk as, ‘A horse with a face like an angel and a backside like a farmer’s daughter, the gentlest animal I’ve ever known.’ Kit liked hearing Suffolk people talk. You had to listen carefully, for their voices were soft and quiet. There was a ghostly stillness about them. Often, sitting in his boat on a gentle evening, Kit would be startled by a head suddenly appearing next to him as a fisherman or eel catcher passed close by leaning on silent muffled oars. They seemed to always be watching – the silent guardians of the sea frontier. Kit was a watcher too – but he hardly looked up as Brian’s new Austin Devon motored by on the way to the Orford Ness ferry. Kit finished his drink and headed back to see Jennifer on her own.

‘I’ve got something for you.’

Kit took a Hershey bar out of his jacket pocket. ‘Look at this, American chocolate – I scooped up a dozen bars at the airbase.’

‘I thought that you didn’t like chocolate.’

‘I don’t. But I know that you do – your only vice.’ Kit hid a smile as he handed over the packet. They had taken advantage of a brief sunny spell to have tea in the garden.

‘You spoil me.’

‘Have the rest of them.’ As Kit pulled the Hershey bars out of his pocket, something metallic clattered on to the patio stone. ‘Damn, where’s it gone?’

Jennifer bent down and picked up a small rectangular object with aluminium casing. ‘What’s this,’ she said, ‘a make-up case?’

‘It’s a camera.’ Kit seemed embarrassed.

‘It seems an awfully small camera.’

Jennifer’s hand shook as she held it, as if it were something about to explode. ‘Do you take pictures of me when I’m not looking?’

‘No, it’s for copying documents.’

‘Oh.’

Kit put the Minox III spy camera back in his pocket.

Jennifer looked across the garden into the dark wood dank with summer rain. The silence was eerie. There was no birdsong, only the chitter of swallows as they swooped and wheeled. She poured the last of the tea and gestured at the sky. ‘Do you think those birds are evil spirits?’

‘No, I think they are beautiful.’

‘Don’t be naive, Kit, you know as well as I do that evil can be beautiful – devastatingly beautiful. That’s why the nuns made us cover our bodies.’ Jennifer undid a button of her dress and looked inside. ‘Do you think my breasts are nice? I think Brian wishes they were bigger. They plumped up nicely when I was pregnant, but now,’ she put a hand inside her bra, ‘they seem to have shrunk back to small apples.’ She left the button undone and looked again at the diving swallows. ‘They come all the way from Africa. Can you imagine how? They’re so tiny. It must be witchcraft that brings them all that way.’ Jennifer touched Kit’s arm and whispered. ‘Our cleaner is a Norfolk woman. She says that at the end of summer, when you see the swallows all perched together on the church roof, it’s because they have to decide who in the parish has to die before they come back in the spring.’