Albatross (8 page)

Borisov commanded an internal army of a quarter of a million men. The soldiers of the KGB had the most modern weapons and sophisticated training, even at the expense of the regular armed forces. They were the instrument of the State and their function was to keep control of the Soviet people, and the Soviet generals. The powers her lover exercised outside Russia extended right across the world. Russian Intelligence abroad was no less his responsibility than a quiescent population at home. Next to Zerkhov, General Secretary of the Party and President of the USSR, Igor Borisov was the most powerful man in the country.

She came up to him and slipped an arm round his shoulder. He placed his right hand over hers and stroked the back of her wrist with his thumb.

‘What have you decided?' Natalia asked him.

‘I don't want to decide, not yet,' he said. ‘Albatross has served us well. Almost too well, because at last his existence is suspected.'

‘And the man Harrington?' There is no sound for H in Russian; Natalia pronounced it Garrington. Borisov turned back to his desk; she perched on the arm of his chair.

‘He doesn't know who Albatross is,' Igor said. ‘His last three messages confirm that. He is making time for himself until he hears from us.'

‘And this woman Graham is investigating,' Natalia said quietly. ‘She's clever, Igor. After Mexico, I think she is the biggest danger you have in the British sector. Tell me, have you thought of getting rid of her?'

‘Once or twice,' Borisov admitted. ‘She wasn't intended to survive Mexico. I thought of sending someone in against her, then she retired and it seemed pointless. We kill one of theirs, they do the same to us. Nobody benefits from that kind of thing any more. Only the savages in Bulgaria murder their opponents with poisoned umbrella tips.'

‘But the retirement was a feint,' Natalia pointed out. ‘It was a cover, so she could try to identify Albatross. If you don't want him exposed, Igor Igorovich, then surely the first thing you must do is neutralize her.'

‘Not if I can use her instead,' he answered.

She started to argue that he had tried that once before, but quickly stopped herself. ‘How? How can she be used by us?'

‘We are still controlling Peter Harrington. She doesn't know that. If he gives her what she wants, arrangements will be made to release him and we will be contacted in the usual way. But no one knows that he is in communication with us now. He can direct Davina in the way I want her to go, and in exchange he'll get his Swiss money. Don't underestimate him, Natalia. Our contact says he is a changed man from the one who made a mess of getting Ivan Sasanov back. Six years in prison have done him a lot of good. Run the fat off him, cut out the alcohol – he wants his freedom and he'll fight as hard as possible to get it now. He'll look for Albatross, don't mistake that. He'll try to find him because it's his only hope of getting out. Without telling us, of course. He'll play a little treason here and there, with both sides. But I have something in mind in which he can really be useful if Albatross is uncovered. And you can be sure that if Davina Graham doesn't find him, eventually someone else will. Suspicion is like dragon seed. The more you harvest, the more of the monsters spring out of the ground. Albatross is blown. I recognize that. It's a matter of time, that's all. I have to turn the reverse into an advantage.'

‘You will,' she said softly. ‘You always do. Can you see how?'

He looked at her and smiled. ‘What would you do, Natalia? If you were in my place, what would you do next?'

He sometimes played this game with her; it used to frighten her at first. Too clever an answer might irritate; she had learned the first lesson of success with any man was never to compete unless you intended to fail. She mustn't appear stupid, or naive. She had climbed up from the level of the mattress to confidante at the top level of his work. That hadn't been achieved without exquisite tact and timing. She knew very well what should be done, but the idea must come to him first.

‘I would try to replace Albatross,' she said after a pause. ‘But I don't know how.'

‘I have someone in mind,' Borisov murmured. He saw the expectancy on her face and shook his head. He was a cultured man, extensively read and fond of classical and mythological allusions. It amused him to give his operators names with a double allusion. Albatross, the sacred bird that guaranteed the safety of the sailor. The man who killed the bird was condemned to wear its heavy corpse about his neck.… He had changed the code name when he succeeded the old director. His people in Western Europe were all called after birds, according to their characters or situations. Albatross had an old, mundane name allotted to him when he was recruited many years earlier. Borisov had christened him after the great bird of ill omen. His wings had overshadowed the SIS for a long time. Now the moment was approaching when he would be brought down. And whoever did it must carry the heavy corpse for ever.…

‘I'll tell you when I'm sure,' he said to Natalia. ‘I want to let this germinate – you grew up on a farm, my love, you know that seeds musn't be disturbed. This is something so original, so important that I don't want to speak about it prematurely. I want to keep it inside and let it grow. Then I will tell you, and you'll be the first person in the world to know. You understand that?'

She bent and kissed him. ‘I understand,' she answered softly. ‘You are a genius, Igor; that's all I need to understand about you. I wish sometimes we could make love here.…'

Borisov was tempted by the closeness and the pressure of her breasts against his arm to pull her down to the floor. But he had made the rule from the beginning. No intimacy inside the office. She was making his head swim with desire, and the whispered suggestion was repeated often now. At first, they had never touched hands while they were in Dzerzhinsky Square. But gradually she managed to get near him, to rest a hand on his arm, to remind him of what they had done in private a few hours before. It would be easy to order a sofa for himself … easy and a fatal mistake. He broke away from her and stood up.

‘That's all, Comrade Natalia. I'll have my tea now.'

Instantly she resumed her role. She wiped the sensuality off her face and stood before him in mute respect. From the sensuous lover, she became the deferential secretary. He liked to show his power at times; she suspected that it stimulated his lust when they were private together. ‘Yes, Comrade General. I'll bring it to you at once.'

He watched her go and smiled. It was a smug little smile. He loved her; he was in helpless sexual thrall to her, He found her an extraordinary sounding board for his reflections, and capable of strange intuitive flashes that he had come to depend upon. She had established a hold over him he wouldn't have thought possible for any woman. He could revel in it, only so long as he kept that ultimate authority which put her in her place. And made it all the more exciting to take her out of it when they were alone. Replace Albatross. How clever was she? he wondered sometimes. How much actual penetrating thought went into her simple statements – or was it just the feminine instinct developed above normal? Again it didn't matter. He was the master as well as the lover. They interlocked in their relationship. He didn't doubt that she was deeply in love with him. And he admitted that he loved her with the heart, as the Russian saying went, not only with the loins. Replace Albatross. Withdraw the thorn from the enemy's flesh and slip another into the empty wound without their knowledge. It was indeed an original idea, and perhaps the most daring intelligence operation the KGB had undertaken in twenty years. He wouldn't talk to Natalia. He would wait and let the seed germinate. And when it was showing its first shoot, he would keep his promise to her. And afterwards he would keep another promise, made to Zerkhov, the head of the Supreme Soviet and of the empire of Soviet Russia and its satellites in Eastern Europe. He would go with the plan and tell Zerkhov, and Zerkhov would keep the promise made to Borisov. To support him and work with him against the man they both distrusted. Yuri Rudzenko, the Foreign Minister, opponent of Borisov and hungry for Zerkhov's crown. The capitalist enemy was ever present, like the oxygen in the air he breathed. The dissidents and Jews were like the dust in that air; they irritated the nose and throat. But the threat of Yuri Rudzenko was like carbon monoxide. Once released it meant death.

‘You're not making a lot of progress,' Grant said. They were parked by the kerb in Regent's Park. That morning it was drizzling with rain and the place was deserted except for a few passing cars. ‘And please don't light that in here – I can't stand smoking in a confined place!'

Davina hesitated. She debated the choice of telling him they could get out and walk, or putting the cigarette away. She shut the packet and put it in her bag. ‘I'm dependent upon Harrington,' she said. ‘If you want quick results, you've got to help.'

He glanced at her suspiciously. ‘How do you mean, help? I can't risk being involved in anything like this, you know that perfectly well.'

‘You are involved in it,' Davina pointed out crisply, rather pleased at the opening he had given her. ‘You're involved with me, Colin, and Tony Walden. You're wide open, Humphrey, if anyone started looking. So don't be damned silly. I want access to the filing room in the office.'

‘That's impossible.' His trap-like mouth snapped shut.

‘Why? You've got a key. You could give me a pass to get into the building. The night staff would let me in.'

‘You've retired,' he said. ‘Or had you forgotten? There is no way you can go back to the office and be seen.'

‘I've been away nearly a year,' Davina retorted. ‘Don't tell me you haven't got some new people on at night. It was only a token anyway. Nightwatchman for outside, security guard for inside the building, emergency telephone and telex operators. Look at the duty roster, Humphrey, and pick a night when the new people are on. Then give me a pass and your key to the filing room. I'll do the rest, and nobody will think anything of it. That's if you're worried about time. Otherwise I'll go on sitting in Wormwood Scrubs picking over the same ground with Harrington. It's up to you.'

He started the car and began to drive along the greasy road; the wipers hissed across the windscreen. ‘Whose file do you want? It might be easier for me to get the details for you –' He was staring ahead, peering slightly.

Davina glanced quickly away from him. He didn't want her to have access to the filing room. For someone who worried about his involvement with the investigation, his suggestion that he might copy confidential information and give it to her was reckless past belief. ‘That's an offence under Section D,' she reminded him. ‘You could go to jail for that. If you're anxious about your own position, let me take the risk. That's my job.'

‘Giving you a pass and a key is no better,' he said.

They reached the intersection leading to the Marylebone Road. She saw Lomax sitting in her car at a parking meter. ‘I'll get out here,' she said. ‘I'll wait to hear from you. There's no point going back to Harrington till I've got more information.' She banged the door shut and hurried away. He looked after her with naked dislike. Abrasive – it was an apt description of her. Unfeminine, he added, because it was perjorative, although a bosomy female filled him with revulsion. If only he hadn't needed her! If only he wasn't fighting for the brigadier's job, and seeing her as a potential rival. It made it difficult for him to speak to her without showing his hostility. She wanted a pass and a key. Very well then, damn her, she would get them. And a part of him longed for her to get caught.

3

‘Darling, would you really be in line for the job?' The fire was low, and John Kidson sat with his wife and watched the logs glowing red, emitting sudden spurts of flame before they burned out. He loved the quiet evenings they spent together, and those were rare because Charlie loved going out and equally liked entertaining at home. John was often tired, but he couldn't deny her anything. She had cooked an excellent dinner – it still amazed him that she had any domestic skills at all – settled him in with coffee and brandy, and curled up like a beautiful red cat beside him. So beautiful, he thought as he did every time he looked at her. Beautiful awake and asleep, without a touch of artifice or make-up. God's perfect creation. And he, ordinary middle-aged John Francis Kidson, without any outstanding talents or money, had married her and made her happy.

They had a small son, growing up like his mother, to Kidson's delight, with the same golden-red hair and grey eyes. She was anxious for another baby; John had persuaded her to wait. There was plenty of time, he insisted. And he had mentioned the possibility, however remote, that he might take over from James White.

‘You mustn't take it too seriously,' he said. ‘I only mentioned it because, well, it'd make quite a difference to us.'

‘You mean money? I've got money, darling – we're quite all right.'

‘I know you have,' he said gently. ‘And you know I won't live off it. So forget about that, my sweet.'

Charlie laughed. An expensive flat and a collection of very good modern pictures had been part of the settlement wrung from her second husband. She used the income to buy clothes and presents for John, and it was well invested for their son.

Typical of John to be proud about another man's settlement. He would never believe her when she said the departing husband had considered it cheap at the price.

‘All right, we won't go into that again, darling. You like to be the big strong man of the family, and that suits me too.' She bent over and kissed him on the mouth. ‘You'd like the job, wouldn't you?'

He hadn't admitted to himself just how much he ached to take over the running of the Service. For years he had accepted his secondary role as the finest interrogator and debriefer the SIS or its counterparts had ever had. He was proud of his record and it was most impressive. There was always Grant between him and further promotion, and he had come to see that as inevitable. But since lunching with his Chief, the buried ambition had come to life, and with it a lot of uneasy self-examination. Should he take White seriously when he suggested that Grant was not automatically in line? Was this more than a device to prod him into talking, when James White threw Davina into the ring? Kidson hadn't believed him; Grant did. That made Kidson think again. They had all four dined together a few weeks before. He frowned, thinking about it. A jolly evening, Charlie called it. But she wouldn't notice the undertones. To Charlie every social gathering was a stage play where she played the star role and dazzled the other guests. Even her sister and the taciturn Colin Lomax were an audience to be won over.