The Factory (23 page)

The room to which Elizabeth Porter had been taken to wait for her statement to be prepared was on the sixth floor of the Factory, so there was a drop of over a hundred feet to the pavement. She had died instantly.

According to the escorts, a man and a woman both as white-faced from shock as Thurlow had been, Elizabeth Porter had sat very quietly on a chair she chose by the window from the moment she had entered the room, showing no sign of distress after the breakdown in the Director General's office. She had accepted a cup of tea, but drunk little of it. She'd been asked if she wanted anything, any contact made with her family, for instance, and refused the offer. She'd appeared distracted, deep in thought.

The window by which she sat had been ajar but latched: the escorts had scarcely been aware of it. When Elizabeth made her move she'd been very quick, everything obviously thought out in advance. She'd had the window open and was already climbing on to the sill before they'd properly realized what was happening. The male escort had succeeded in getting to her but only to clutch her arm. Her weight made it quite impossible for him to hold on the moment she jumped. She'd made no sound at all as she fell.

‘In some ways this could be the best way for it to have ended,' said Andrews cynically. ‘We know who did it. So we can mark the case closed, confident that the traitor has been exposed. And now we can avoid the embarrassing publicity of a trial. I know it would have been held in secret, in camera, but the bare outline would have been released and that would have been unfortunate. Now the public will never be aware how deeply our intelligence service was penetrated.'

‘Perhaps you're right,' accepted the Director General.

*

‘It must have been horrible,' said Ann. She shuddered.

‘It was,' agreed Bell. He thought again, as he often did, how beautiful she was. His divorce from Pamela had become final the previous week and he and Ann were to be married in a fortnight. They'd already rented a villa in the hills above Nice for the honeymoon. Bell felt that his finally solving the crisis at the Factory was an omen: that from now on everything was going to be wonderful. Certainly his personal life was already that. He thought of the last few weeks, when he had been living with Ann, as the happiest and most contented time he'd spent for years.

‘Poor Elizabeth.'

Bell looked curiously at the girl beside him. ‘How can you say that, after all the harm she did? People died, because of her!'

‘I can't, I suppose. It's just difficult not to feel sorry for her. Why did she do it?'

Before answering Bell got up from the couch, made drinks for them both and brought them back. ‘One of the oldest reasons there is, according to her confession. It was sexual blackmail. Remember how plain and awkward she was; it seems at Oxford she had an affair with another student, a Czech. It was the love affair of her life: the only one, in fact. It broke up when they left university but she met him again here in London, after she came to work at the Factory. And the affair began again. Then came the blackmail demand. Compromising photographs of her in bed with a member of the Czech intelligence service. She seems to have loved him, too. So she started leaking information. Just small things at first. Once it began, of course, it got bigger and bigger, until Czech intelligence passed her over to the KGB …' Bell hesitated, looking sideways once more to the girl he was so shortly going to marry. ‘Did you ever know her, when you were at Oxford?'

‘No,' said Ann. ‘She was several years my junior, don't forget.'

‘Of course,' remembered Bell at once.

In fact Ann remembered Elizabeth Porter very well, as she remembered everyone she'd ever targeted for KGB recruitment.

It had been her job, after all: the one for which her KGB-agent father had trained her from the time she was very young, little older than fifteen. Ann had loved her father: admired him. For thirty years he had operated undetected in England: thirty years during which he'd married an unsuspecting Englishwoman and made a public career as a photographer. But spent as much time preparing Ann for what had ultimately become her career.

He'd made it seem like a game at first: let's play spies. Ann discovered that she liked playing spies; was good at it. And her father had been a fine teacher, actually convincing her when she became old enough to debate and argue on some of the ideology.

Elizabeth Porter had been one of the last Ann had picked out at university, during her graduation year, precisely because the younger girl was so plain and awkward and therefore vulnerable to a romantic approach. The Czech's name had been Jan and he'd never known, although he was an agent as well, how Ann had brought him and Elizabeth together through intermediaries.

There had been no way of guessing at university, of course, that Elizabeth would get a job at the Factory. The expectation, from her tutor guidance and from carefully eavesdropped conversations, was that she would try for a career in the diplomatic service, which would have been good enough. Her getting a job in intelligence had been an incredible bonus, because of the protection it immediately provided for Ann.

On Moscow's instructions she had succeeded in getting an appointment at the Factory two years before Elizabeth Porter's arrival. And as soon as the girl began work, Ann set out to weave the cover for the information she was herself already leaking to Moscow.

Ann's controller agreed the idea of preparing Elizabeth as the unwitting but always available sacrifice. And it had proved a wise precaution, particularly after Ann had realized that Samuel Bell, with whom she had cultivated their love affair as she had cultivated everything else in her life, had come to suspect there was a traitor within the department.

From her unrivalled position as Bell's personal assistant Ann had been able to monitor everything that had happened during the hunt for the Soviet mole, always one step ahead, always prepared to divert the slightest risk of suspicion away from herself and on to Elizabeth. It was Ann who had actually suggested Elizabeth have the eventual give-away codename of Charles. And then shown the touch of superb espionage brilliance by having the same codename assigned to herself as well, to create the double bluff that had worked so successfully.

The warning cable that had ultimately led Bell to Elizabeth Porter had never been delivered to the girl by the Russian embassy. Because it wasn't intended to alert her but to protect Ann, the real and important agent whom Moscow and the KGB were determined to guard at all times.

But Ann was sure that not even Moscow would have guessed that Elizabeth's sacrifice would be so complete as to commit suicide, to avoid the humiliation of a trial and the admission of how she had been tricked by her lover.

It couldn't be helped or grieved over, decided Ann, the complete professional. The important consideration, the only consideration, was that she personally remained absolutely protected. Which she would be.

Because of her impending marriage to Samuel Bell she had resigned the department but she was convinced she would still be able to continue leaking to Moscow. Bell, a fool she could manipulate more successfully than she was able to manipulate most other people, trusted her completely and talked indiscreetly about far too many things. And it appeared he was going to be allowed to carry on as Director General, so there would be much to pass on to the eagerly listening KGB.

In fact, reflected Ann, everything had worked out quite satisfactorily: far more satisfactorily than she could ever have hoped.

‘I love you so much,' said Bell from his seat beside her.

Ann forced the smile. ‘I love you too,' she said. That was going to be the only problem, maintaining the pretence of loving him when in fact she despised him. She supposed she shouldn't worry; she'd managed well enough for a long time now. I would be better if he drank more, as he had before. She'd have to encourage him to start drinking again: he was much easier to handle, talked far more freely, when he was drunk.

A Biography of Brian Freemantle

Brian Freemantle (b. 1936) is one of Britain's most prolific and accomplished authors of spy fiction. His novels have sold more than ten million copies worldwide, and have been optioned for numerous film and television adaptations.

Born in Southampton, on the southern coast of England, Freemantle began his career as a journalist. In 1975, as the foreign editor at the
Daily Mail
, he made headlines during the American evacuation of Saigon: As the North Vietnamese closed in on the city, Freemantle became worried about the future of the city's orphans. He lobbied his superiors at the paper to take action, and they agreed to fund an evacuation for the children. In three days, Freemantle organized a thirty-six-hour helicopter airlift for ninety-nine children, who were transported to Britain. In a flash of dramatic inspiration, he changed nearly one hundred lives—and sold a bundle of newspapers.

Although he began writing espionage fiction in the late 1960s, he first won fame in 1977, with
Charlie M
. That book introduced the world to Charlie Muffin—a disheveled spy with a skill set more bureaucratic than Bond-like. The novel, which drew favorable comparisons to the work of John Le Carré, was a hit, and Freemantle began writing sequels. The sixth in the series,
The Blind Run
, was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Novel. To date, Freemantle has penned fourteen titles in the Charlie Muffin series, the most recent of which is
Red Star Rising
(2010), which brought back the popular spy after a nine-year absence.

In addition to the stories of Charlie Muffin, Freemantle has written more than two dozen standalone novels, many of them under pseudonyms including Jonathan Evans and Andrea Hart. Freemantle's other series include two books about Sebastian Holmes, an illegitimate son of Sherlock Holmes, and the four Cowley and Danilov books, which were written in the years after the end of the Cold War and follow an odd pair of detectives—an FBI operative and the head of Russia's organized crime bureau.

Freemantle lives and works in London, England.

A school photograph of Brian Freemantle at age twelve.

Brian Freemantle, at age fourteen, with his mother, Violet, at the country estate of a family acquaintance, Major Mears.

Freemantle's parents, Harold and Violet Freemantle, at the country estate of Major Mears.