The Tightrope Men / The Enemy (38 page)

Cutler jumped like a startled frog. An hour later, when I was unfreezing my bones in a hot bath and feeling sorry for Henty who was still tagging Ashton, the telephone rang to announce that he was waiting in the hotel foyer. ‘Ask him to come up.’ I dried myself quickly and put on a dressinggown.

He brought two men whom he introduced as Askrigg and Debenham. He made no apologies for his previous attitude and neither of us referred to it. All the time I knew him he maintained his icily well-bred air of disapproval; that I could stand so long as he did what he was told and did it fast, and I had no complaints about that. The only trouble was that he and his people were lacking in professionalism.

We got down to business immediately. I outlined the problem, and Askrigg said, ‘A full-time surveillance of two men is a six-man job.’

‘At least,’ I agreed. ‘And that’s excluding me and Henty. Ashton and Benson know me, so I’m out. As for Henty, he’s done enough. He spotted Ashton for us and has been freezing his balls off ever since keeping an eye on him. I’m pulling him out for a rest and then he’ll be in reserve.’

‘Six men,’ said Cutler doubtfully. ‘Oh, well, I suppose we can find them. What are we looking for?’

‘I want to know everything about them. Where they go, what they eat, who they see, do they have a routine, what happens when they break that routine, who they write to - you name it, I want to know.’

‘It seems a lot of fuss over a relatively minor industrialist,’ sniffed Cutler.

I grinned at him, and quoted, ‘ “Yours not to reason why, Yours but to do or die.” ‘Which could happen because they’re probably armed.’

That brought a moment of silence during which Cutler twitched a bit. In his book diplomacy and guns didn’t go together. I said, ‘Another thing: I want to have a look inside Ashton’s apartment, but we’ll check their routine first so we can pick the right moment.’

‘Burglary!’ said Cutler hollowly. ‘The Embassy mustn’t be involved in that.’

‘It won’t be,’ I said shortly. ‘Leave that to me. All right; let’s get organized.’

And so Ashton and Benson were watched, every movement noted. It was both wearisome and frustrating as most operations of this nature are. The two men led an exemplary life. Ashton’s was the life of a gentleman of leisure; he visited museums and art galleries, attended the theatre and cinemas, and spent a lot of time in bookshops where he spent heavily, purchasing fiction and non-fiction, the non-fiction being mostly biographies. The books were over a spread of languages, English, German and Russian predominating. And all the time he did not do a stroke of what could reasonably be called work. It was baffling.

Benson was the perfect manservant. He did the household shopping, attended to the laundry and dry-cleaning, and did a spot of cooking on those occasions when Ashton did not eat out. He had found himself a favourite
drinking-hole which he attended three or four times a week, an
ölstuga
more intellectual than most because it had a chess circle. Benson would play a couple of games and leave relatively early.

Neither of them wrote or received any letters.

Neither appeared to have any associates other than the small-change encounters of everyday life.

Neither did a single damned thing out of the ordinary with one large and overriding exception. Their very presence in Stockholm was out of the ordinary.

At the beginning of the third week, when their routine had been established, Henty and I cracked the apartment. Ashton had gone to the cinema and Benson was doing his Bobby Fischer bit over a half-litre of Carlsberg and we would have an hour or longer. We searched that flat from top to bottom and did not find much.

The main prize was Ashton’s passport. It was of Israeli issue, three years old, and made out in the name of Fyodr Antonovitch Koslov who had been born in Odessa in 1914. I photographed every page. including the blank ones, and put it back where I found it. A secondary catch was the counterfoil stub of a cheque-book. I photographed that thoroughly, too. Ashton was spending money quite freely; his casual expenses were running to nearly £500 a week.

The telephone rang. Henty picked it up and said cautiously,
‘Vilket nummer vill ni ha?’
There was a pause. ‘Okay.’ he put down the receiver. ‘Benson’s left the pub; he’s on his way back.’

I looked around the room. ‘Everything in order?’

‘I reckon so.’

‘Then let’s go.’ We left the building and sat in Henty’s car until Benson arrived. We saw him safely inside, checked his escort, then went away.

Early next morning I gave Cutler the spools of film and requested negatives and two sets of prints. I got them within the hour and spent quite a time checking them before my prearranged telephone call from Ogilvie. It had to be prearranged because he had to have a scrambler compatible with that at the Embassy.

Briefly I summarized the position up to that point, then said, ‘Any breakthrough will come by something unusual - an oddity - and there are not many of those. There’s the Israeli passport - I’d like to know if that’s kosher. I’ll send you the photographs in the diplomatic bag.’

‘Issued three years ago, you say.’

‘That’s right. That would be about the time a bank account was opened here in the name of Koslov. The apartment was rented a year later, also in the name of Koslov; it was sublet until four months ago when Ashton moved in. Our friend had everything prepared. I’ve gone through cheque stubs covering nearly two months. Ashton isn’t stinting himself.’

‘How is he behaving? Psychologically, I mean.’

‘I’ve seen him only three times, and then at a distance.’ I thought for a moment. ‘My impression is that he’s more relaxed than when I saw him last in England; under less of a strain.’ There didn’t seem much else to say. ‘What do I do now?’

‘Carry on,’ said Ogilvie succinctly.

I sighed. ‘This could go on for weeks - months. What if I tackled him myself? There’s no need to blow my cover. I can get myself accredited to an international trade conference that’s coming up next week.’

‘Don’t do that,’ said Ogilvie. ‘He’s sharper than anyone realizes. Just keep watching; something will turn up.’

Yes, Mr Micawber, I thought, but didn’t say it. What I said was, ‘I’ll put the negatives and prints into the diplomatic bag immediately.’

Two more weeks went by and nothing happened. Ashton went on his way serenely, doing nothing in particular. I had another, more extended, look at him and he seemed to be enjoying himself in a left-handed fashion. This was possibly the first holiday he’d ever had free from the cares of the business he had created. Benson pottered about in the shops and markets of Gamla Stan most mornings, doing his none-too-frugai shopping, and we began to build up quite a picture of the culinary tastes of the
ménage
Ashton. It didn’t do us one damned bit of good.

Henty went about his own mysterious business into which I didn’t enquire too closely. I do know that he was in some form of military intelligence because he left for a week and went north to Lapland where the Swedish Army was holding winter manoeuvres. When he came back I saw him briefly and he said he’d be busy writing a report.

Four days later he came to see me with disturbing information. ‘Do you know there’s another crowd in on the act?’

I stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve got a bump of curiosity,’ he said. ‘Last night, in my copious spare time, I checked to see whether Cutler’s boys were up to snuff. Ashton is leading quite a train - our chap follows Ashton and someone else follows him.’ I was about to speak but he held up his hand. ‘So I checked on Benson and the same is happening there.’

‘Cutler’s said nothing about this.’

‘How would he know?’ said Henty scathingly. ‘Or any of them. They’re amateurs.’

I asked the crucial question. ‘Who?’

Henty shrugged. ‘My guess is Swedish Intelligence. Those boys are good. They’d be interested in anyone with a
Russian name and even more interested to find out he’s under surveillance. They’ll have made the connection with the British Embassy by now.’

‘Damn!’ I said. ‘Better not let Cutler know or he’ll have diplomatic kittens. I think this is where we join in.’

Next morning, when Ashton took his morning constitutional, we were on the job. Ashton appeared and collected the first segment of his tail who happened to be Askrigg. Henty nudged me and pointed out the stranger who fell in behind. ‘That’s our joker. I’ll cross the road and follow him. You stay on this side and walk parallel, keeping an eye on both of us.’

By God, but Henty was good! I tried to watch both him and the man he was following but Henty was invisible half the time, even though I knew he was there. He bobbed back and forth, letting the distance lengthen and then closing up, disappearing into shop entrances and reappearing in unexpected places and, in general, doing his best not to be there at all. Two or three times he was even in front of the man he was shadowing.

It was one of Ashton’s book mornings. He visited two bookshops and spent about three-quarters of an hour in each, then he retired with his plunder to a coffee-house and inspected his purchases over coffee and Danish pastries. It was pretty funny. The coffee-house was on the corner of a block. Askrigg waited outside while, kitty-corner across the street, his follower stamped his feet to keep warm while ostensibly looking into a shop window. The third corner held Henty, doing pretty much the same, while I occupied the fourth corner. My own wait was made risible by the nature of the shop in which I was taking an intent interest. Henty was outside a camera shop. Mine sold frilly lingerie of the type known pungently as passion fashion.

Out came Ashton and the train chugged off again, and he led us back to where we had started, but going home by the
Vasabron just to make a variation. So far the whole thing was a bust, but better times were coming. Our man went into a tobacconist’s shop and I followed. As I bought a packet of cigarettes I heard him speaking in low tones on the telephone. I couldn’t hear what he said but the intonation was neither English nor Swedish.

He left the shop and walked up the street while I followed on the other side. A hundred yards up the street he crossed, so I did the same; then he reversed direction. He was doing what he hoped was an unobtrusive patrol outside Ashton’s flat.

Fifteen minutes later came the event we’d waited for - his relief arrived. The two men stood and talked for a few moments, their breath steaming and mingling in the cold air, then my man set off at a smart pace and I followed. He turned the corner which led around the back of the Royal Palace, and when I had him in sight he was dickering with a taxi-driver.

I was figuring out how to say, ‘Follow that car!’ in Swedish when Henty pulled up alongside in his car. I scrambled in, and Henty said in satisfaction, ‘I thought he might do that. We’ve all had enough walking for the day.’ I’ve said he was good.

So we followed the taxi through Stockholm, which was not particularly difficult, nor did he take us very far. The taxi pulled up outside a building and was paid off, and our man disappeared inside. Henty carried on without slackening speed. ‘That does it!’ he said expressively.

I twisted in my seat and looked back. ‘Why? What is that place?’

‘The bloody Russian Embassy.’

I expected my report on that to bring action but I didn’t expect it to bring Ogilvie. I telephoned him at three in the afternoon and he was in my room just before midnight, and four other men from the department were scattered about the hotel. Ogilvie drained me dry, and I ended up by saying, ‘Henty and I did the same this evening with the man following Benson. He went back to a flat on Upplandsgatan. On checking, he proved to be a commercial attaché at the Russian Embassy.’

Ogilvie was uncharacteristically nervous and indecisive. He paced the room as a tiger paces its cage, his hands clasped behind his back; then he sat in a chair with a thump. ‘Damn it all to hell!’ he said explosively. ‘I’m in two minds about this.’

I waited, but Ogilvie did not enlarge on what was on either of his minds, so I said diffidently, ‘What’s the problem?’

‘Look, Ashton hasn’t given us what we expected when we sprung him from Russia. Oh, he’s done a lot, but in a purely commercial way - not the advanced scientific thought we wanted. So why the hell should we care if he plays silly buggers in Stockholm and attracts the attention of the Russians?’

Looked at in a cold and calculating way that was a good question. Ogilvie said, ‘I’d wash my hands of him - let the
Russians take him - but for two things. The first is that I don’t
know
why he ran, and the hell of it is that the answer might be quite unimportant. It’s probably mere intellectual curiosity on my part, and the taxpayer shouldn’t be expected to finance that. This operation is costing a packet.’

He stood up and began to pace again. ‘The second thing is that I can’t get that empty vault out of my mind. Why did he build it if he didn’t intend to use it? Have you thought of that, Malcolm?’

‘Yes, but I haven’t got very far.’

Ogilvie sighed. ‘Over the past months I’ve read and reread Ashton’s file until I’ve become cross-eyed. I’ve been trying to get into the mind of the man. Did you know it was he who suggested taking over the persona of a dead English soldier?’

‘No. I thought it was Cregar’s idea.’

‘It was Chelyuskin. As I read the file I began to see that he works by misdirection like a conjuror. Look at how he got out of Russia. I’m more and more convinced that the vault is another bit of misdirection.’

‘An expensive bit,’ I said.

‘That wouldn’t worry Ashton - he’s rolling in money. If he’s got something, he’s got it somewhere else.’

I was exasperated. ‘So why did he build the safe in the first place?’

‘To tell whoever opened it that they’d reached the end of the line. That there are no secrets. As I say - misdirection.’

‘It’s all a bit fanciful,’ I said. I was tired because it was late and I’d been working hard all day. Hammering the iceslippery streets of Stockholm with my feet wasn’t my idea of pleasure, and I was past the point of coping with Ogilvie’s fantasies about Ashton. I tried to bring him to the point by saying, ‘What do we do about Ashton now?’ He was the boss and he had to make up his mind.

‘How did the Russians get on to Ashton here?’

‘How would I know?’ I shrugged. ‘My guess is that they got wind of a free-spending fellow-countryman unknown to Moscow, so they decided to take a closer look at him. To their surprise they found he’s of great interest to British Intelligence. That would make them perk up immediately.’

‘Or, being the suspicious lot they are, they may have been keeping tabs on the British Embassy as a matter of routine and been alerted by the unaccustomed activity of Cutler and his mob, who’re not the brightest crowd of chaps.’ Ogilvie shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose it matters how they found out; the fact is that they have. They’re on to Koslov but have not, I think, made the transition to Ashton - and certainly not to Chelyuskin.’

‘That’s about it. They’ll never get to Chelyuskin. Who’d think of going back thirty years?’

‘Their files go back further, and they’ll have Chelyuskin’s fingerprints. If they ever do a comparison with Koslov’s prints they’ll know it wasn’t Chelyuskin who died in that fire. They’d be interested in that.’

‘But is it likely?’

‘I don’t know.’ He scowled in my direction but I don’t think he saw me; he was looking through me. ‘That Israeli passport is quite genuine,’ he said. ‘But stolen three years ago. The real Koslov is a Professor of Languages at the University of Tel Aviv. He’s there right now, deciphering some scrolls in Aramaic.’

‘Do the Israelis know about Koslov? That might be tricky.’

‘I shouldn’t think so,’ he said absently. Then he shook his head irritatedly. ‘You don’t think, much of my theories about Ashton, do you?’

‘Not much.’

The scowl deepened. ‘Neither do I,’ he admitted. ‘It’s just one big area of uncertainty. Right. We can do one of two things. We can pull out and leave Ashton to sink or swim on
his own; or we can get him out ourselves.’ Ogilvie looked at me expectantly.

I said, ‘That’s a policy decision I’m not equipped to make. But I do have a couple of comments. First, any interest the Russians have in Ashton has been exacerbated by ourselves, and I consider we have a responsibility towards him because of that. For the rest - what I’ve seen of Ashton I’ve liked and, God willing, I’m going to marry his daughter. I have a personal reason for wanting to get him out which has nothing to do with guessing what he’s been doing with his peculiar mind.’

Ogilvie nodded soberly. ‘Fair enough. That leaves it up to me. If he really has something and we leave him for the Russians then I’ll have made a big mistake. If we bring him out, risking an international incident because of the methods we may have to use, and he has nothing, then I’ll have made a big mistake. But the first mistake would be bigger than the second, so the answer is that we bring him out. The decision is made.’