The Factory (6 page)

He was completely adjusted to the darkness when Tanya came into the church but he still missed her actual arrival. She entered from the street so softly that the door did not creak and her footsteps were so quiet she was halfway towards the confessional before he located her. There was no indication of tension or obvious nervousness, but he was aware of her bowed head, beneath its covering scarf, moving as she looked about the church. There was a momentary hesitation at the box and then she slipped inside, pulling the curtain closed after her.

Whitehead did not wait. He went quickly to the door, checking as he did that no one had followed her in, and checked again on the street. There were three parked cars but all were empty and there was no sign of anyone lurking. He stayed close to the door and when she left she started to pass directly in front of him. He said softly: ‘Tanya. I've come to help you.'

She gave a startled cry of fear and if he hadn't snatched out to grab her arm she would have run. She gazed at him, eyes wide with fright, a terrified animal caught in a poacher's trap. She started to tug her arm away.

‘Freedom!' said Whitehead urgently. ‘Recognize the word: Freedom!' and abruptly she stopped struggling.

There'd been a curt message from his wife that she was extending her vacation but Samuel Bell still left Ann's apartment, wanting time by himself in his empty north London house. In some ways it was a personal test, to see how much and how quickly he missed Ann after spending a longer than usual period with her. He also wanted to be quite alone, to think. He'd made a bad mistake at every level, trying to uncover the traitor by himself. He should have initiated a proper investigation weeks ago, irrespective of the personal embarrassment it might have created for him. There was a simple answer to one personal problem, if he divorced Pamela and married Ann. Except that he was not sure he wanted to. What about the other problem? He was appropriately at the drinks cabinet, adding yet again to his whisky glass, when the question posed itself. Not an alcoholic yet, he comforted himself. Close, but not over the edge. Time he did something about it, though: cut down a little. Bell escaped the decision with drunken ease: time enough to start thinking about cutting down on the whisky when more important things were resolved. Like the traitor. And Peter Whitehead getting one of their best agents out of a Soviet province. That's when he'd think seriously about it.

Tanya Kulik was still scared. Reassured but still scared, blinking up at him rapidly and constantly staring around, as if she thought he was tricking her in some way and that the KGB squad would be arriving any moment.

She did, however, do as he asked, taking him quickly away from the identifying church, along a series of alleys until they came to a shadowed, insect-buzzing café with booths in which they could sit, virtually hidden.

Whitehead ordered coffee for both of them and then in addition calming vodka. After the drinks were served Tanya said, uneven-voiced: ‘What do you want?'

Instead of replying Whitehead took the British passport from his pocket, still in its original wrapping, and offered it across the table. The woman looked down at it, frowning. ‘What is this?'

‘Your escape,' said Whitehead simply. ‘All the stamps and visas are in order. You can travel to Moscow with me and I'll get you safely back to London. They want to care for you there: a job, somewhere to live. It'll all be taken care of.'

‘I've already said no.'

Whitehead's stomach dipped at the alternative, not believing he could carry out the Director General's order. He said: ‘You've got to.'

‘No! We don't know if there's any cause to worry.'

‘Why give the warning then?'

‘So that you'd be prepared if it did happen: give thought to a replacement.'

‘Why do you think you might be blown?'

Tanya looked away, down into her coffee cup, nibbling her bottom lip. ‘Two informants have disappeared. And a courier.'

‘They've been picked up,' insisted Whitehead at once.

‘Not necessarily,' said the woman, in weak defence. ‘Two were seamen: that was why they were so good, because they could travel. The courier, too. He worked for the railways. All of them could be away on unexpected trips.'

‘How often before have there been unexpected trips that took all three away at the same time?' demanded Whitehead.

Tanya remained looking away from him. ‘Never,' she admitted.

‘It's over,' he persisted. ‘They'll talk. If they haven't yet they will soon. They'll be questioned by psychologists, and chemicals and drugs will be used and they won't be able to stop themselves talking, no matter how hard they try. You've got to get out.'

‘You don't understand,' said Tanya, her voice indistinct.

‘What is there to understand!' demanded Whitehead with growing impatience. ‘You haven't any choice.'

‘I can't!'

Dear God, don't let me have to make a decision, thought Whitehead. He reached across the stained tablecloth and said: ‘You haven't an argument: any reason to fight against it. I know how you feel for your country. How difficult it is to leave it. But you must. It's madness to stay. Suicide.'

‘You don't understand,' she said again.

‘You're not making sense, Tanya. You're being stupid.'

She looked directly at him at last, her eyes filmed with tears. ‘I'm trapped,' she said.

‘Trapped how?'

Tanya stayed staring at him for several moments, apparently reaching a decision. At last she got to her feet and said: ‘Come.'

It seemed a long walk, keeping once more to narrow alleys and roads, but then Whitehead realized they were frequently backtracking on themselves while Tanya checked for any pursuit. He had instinctively been checking as well and was sure they weren't followed. Despite the detours he realized they were gradually coming closer and closer to the waterfront. The house they finally entered was very near the harbour: Whitehead could hear gulls and the groan of ships' sirens.

The door from the street led directly into a kitchen and Whitehead started back in instant alarm at the sound of movement when he entered. At once he was embarrassed at his reaction to the child who stood before him. She was a girl, blonde and very pretty, with large, serious eyes. Whitehead guessed her to be about twelve years old.

‘It's all right,' said Tanya to the girl. ‘He's a friend. It's all right.'

To Whitehead she said: ‘This is my daughter, Natasha.'

The way to relieve the headache would have been to take a drink – maybe two – from the bottle in his bottom left-hand drawer but the Director General held back from doing so, challenging his own resistance and determined to endure the discomfort. He still looked up irritably when his deputy, Jeremy Thurlow, entered the room from his adjoining office. ‘What is it?' demanded Bell.

Thurlow, a stick-thin, unemotional man, put a sheet of paper on the desk in front of the Director General. ‘It's the communication code agreed between the NATO countries for the forthcoming defence ministers' meeting in Brussels. Our interception people picked it up being relayed to Moscow.'

‘It's low priority,' pointed out Bell. ‘Every attending country has a copy. It could have come from a dozen sources.'

‘It was being relayed from the Soviet embassy here,' rejoined Thurlow, ‘so it came from London. There were three copies in England. We had one of them.'

‘Which leaves two other sources from which a leak could have come,' retorted Bell. When the hell was he going to get a lead to who was doing it?

The fish was surprisingly good but the only vegetable was potato, old and black. Conversation was difficult, although Whitehead's Russian was fluent. Occasionally, defiantly, Natasha addressed her mother in Latvian, although halfway through the evening the child looked curiously at him and said: ‘You're not a born Russian, are you? You learned the language somewhere, like I have to learn it at school.'

‘I'm from a long way away,' avoided Whitehead.

The coffee, after Natasha had gone to bed, was very weak and came from a tin, not fresh. Tanya said: ‘You mustn't worry about her telling anyone you've been here. Your not being Russian is a protection.'

‘Why didn't you tell London about her?'

Tanya shrugged. ‘It didn't seem important, not until now.'

‘What else have you held back?'

‘A lot, I suppose.'

‘So tell me now.'

Tanya sighed, both hands around her coffee cup. At last she said: ‘Vadim … he was Natasha's father … was the real nationalist. He would have been a recognized leader now, if he'd lived. But he didn't. The KGB arrested him about six years ago, before the Gorbachev changes. He was tried on charges of endangering the state – their state, not ours – and he was exiled to Siberia. He'd never been strong. He only lasted two years. I never saw him, from the day he was sentenced. That is why I took over, even offered myself to London. To get revenge, however I could. I never thought anything could happen to me, like it did to Vadim. That was stupid, I know. It just didn't …' Her voice trailed away.

‘… so now you're trapped,' picked up Whitehead, agreeing to Tanya's own assessment. There was no question of his shooting her: objectively he accepted there never had been.

‘Aren't I?' she said, almost defiantly.

As he had in the café, for emphasis, he reached across the table for her hand; it was hard and calloused, the hand of a woman who worked. Whitehead said: ‘Tanya, now listen to me. I told you in the café what would happen to the others. How they'd eventually break and identify you. And when you're arrested and undergo the same sort of questioning you'll talk, too. You'll give all the names you know and they'll give all the names they know and it'll go on until everyone is rounded up so that there isn't a network any more. Until it's smashed. But for you it won't end there. Whatever the new freedoms, there'll be a trial, like there was with Vadim. And you'll lose Natasha. Lose everything.'

Tears were flooding down Tanya's face. Pleadingly she grasped his hands in return and said: ‘I know! I know all of that. But what can I do? You surely don't expect me to run with you on the passport you brought in! Actually abandon her!'

‘No,' accepted Whitehead soothingly. ‘I don't expect you to do that.'

‘What then? Tell me what to do, to keep us both safe!'

Whitehead wished he knew. The idea of taking Tanya out on a British passport was desperate enough: it would never have succeeded trying to get Natasha out the same way so it hardly mattered that the woman had not told them of the child's existence. He said: ‘I need to think.'

‘So you haven't a plan?' she accused at once.

‘No,' he said honestly. ‘Not at the moment.' The Director General had warned it might be an impossible mission, he recalled. It had become just that.

The idea came as Whitehead made his way back through the narrow side roads of Liepaja from Tanya's house to his hotel. It was a desperate one – but then everything about what he was now trying to achieve was desperate – and at that time relied upon so many uncertainties that considering it any further, in detail, was pointless. Back at the hotel, lying on damply cold sheets behind windows that rattled with the passing of every vehicle, he tried to think of something better, something that had a greater chance of success. And couldn't. Impossible, he thought again, able in his mind to hear the tone of voice in which the Director General had spoken.

He'd asked Tanya to meet him in the morning, not knowing when they parted if there would be any practical reason for the encounter, but he was glad of the precaution because now he needed all the time available, and if the KGB were closing in upon Tanya that was becoming more limited by the minute. She had chosen the place, that part of the harbour where a seawall stretched out to form an inner protection for the fishing boats and trawlers against the Baltic storms.

She was there ahead of him and as he approached Whitehead was aware of a lot of passing people acknowledging and recognizing her. He was pleased: there'd been too many for there to be a KGB entrapment in a place like Liepaja, with everyone knowing everyone else.

‘Well?' she greeted him. She leaned on the wall, actually gazing out towards the West.

‘The two informants who were seized? They were fishermen, you said?'

‘Yes,' agreed Tanya doubtfully.

‘What's your support, among sailors?'

The woman shrugged, counting the options. ‘Sporadic. Disloyal: loyal. Bad: good. Why?'

‘What chance would we have, the three of us, you, me and Natasha, getting away from here by boat? Managing to cross the Baltic to Sweden?'

‘None,' said Olga, positively and at once. ‘Have you any idea of the net that Soviet naval patrols put between us and the West? It's absolute. Do you imagine I wouldn't have thought of it, if it were possible?'

‘No,' admitted Whitehead. ‘But net against what?'

‘Against a boat – anything – crossing to Sweden!' said the woman, exasperated. ‘What are we talking about?'

‘Many boats,' said Whitehead simply.

‘I don't understand,' she protested.

‘The Soviet patrols are against
one
vessel, obviously making for the West. What about a small fleet of fishing vessels, apparently trawling in no particular direction but all the while actually moving gradually westwards? And not right to Sweden: the island of Gotland is much closer.'

Tanya looked at him doubtfully. ‘Too many people,' she said. ‘I told you. Some we could rely on, some we couldn't. Someone would expose us.'

‘Give me a figure,' demanded Whitehead. ‘How many fishing boat captains could you trust absolutely? Don't bother about the crews.'