The Avenue of the Dead (7 page)

Davina lit a cigarette. Hickling produced a jug of iced martini and poured four glasses. He set one down beside Colin Lomax.

‘No Scotch? I hate that rot-gut.'

‘No Scotch,' Hickling said. ‘Take it or leave it.'

The glass disappeared behind the paper. It reappeared seconds later empty.

‘Ugh,' came from the centre pages. Nobody took any notice. It was only Davina who minded his comments. They were designed to irritate. Hickling and Neil seemed to think some of the things he said were funny.

She turned to Neil. ‘Tell me what she said this afternoon.' Her expression was chilly. She wanted a serious report. Lomax wasn't going down at all well.

‘She made an appointment to see me this afternoon,' Neil said. ‘We went for a drive. Stopped at a motel and had a couple of drinks.'

‘Why a motel?' she interposed.

‘It's on the banks of the Potomac. There's an outside bar with a nice view. A lot of people go there. We didn't go inside,' he added, seeing her look. ‘There's nothing like that as far as I'm concerned.'

‘No business of mine if there is,' she said. ‘I just want to know the score. What did she say?'

‘The same old thing, more or less,' he answered. ‘How unhappy she was, how lonely, and how she wished people would believe her when she told them she was in danger. All good, melodramatic stuff. That's the trouble with her – she's difficult to take seriously. And very often by the time she gets to me she's half pissed from lunch.'

‘When she talks about danger,' Davina said, ‘what kind of danger? Has she ever been specific?'

‘Yes,' Neil said flatly. ‘Several times. Says she's convinced Fleming is going to murder her.' He glanced at Hickling who nodded. ‘She's hinted that she knows something about him. I tried to get details but she clams up. It's all hints and intuition – if you press her she starts to cry, or acts up.'

‘Tell me,' Davina said quietly, ‘do you believe her?'

‘No,' the young man said. ‘I don't. I think she's a lush who can't face being out of the spotlight. Personally, Fleming has my sympathy.'

‘I imagine he has a lot of people's,' she remarked. ‘How many other confidants has she got? Women friends, men friends beside yourself?'

‘Nobody close,' Hickling answered. ‘Acquaintances, superficial social stuff but no real friends. Women don't take to her, and the men are scared to mess with her because Fleming's got such a big job. Nobody wants to get in wrong with him or the Oval Office. They're that close.'

‘I see,' Davina said. She sipped a little of the martini and grimaced. Lomax was right; it was rot-gut. ‘She must be very lonely then. That doesn't help if you're turning a bit paranoid.'

‘You'll see for yourself.'

‘I'll try, anyway,' Davina said. ‘Starting with lunch tomorrow.'

‘Don't have the steak,' Lomax mumbled out loud. ‘It's like old shoe leather.'

‘Mr Lomax,' she said, her tone very curt, ‘I don't think you've ever been to the Unicorn in your life. Goodnight everyone.'

The paper came down a few inches. ‘Goodnight, Miss Graham.' When the door closed, he lowered the paper to his knee. ‘My God – that's a bossy female.'

Hickling laughed. ‘She doesn't appreciate your sense of humour.'

‘So I notice,' Lomax retorted. ‘And how do you like taking orders from a woman?'

‘From that particular woman I don't mind. And off the record, I'd be a bit more tactful if I were you. Watch the sexist attitude, or you might find you've made a fool of yourself.'

‘It doesn't worry me if she gets her jackboots out. As far as I'm concerned women are a bloody nuisance. If they're not strutting around trying to pretend they're better than we are, they're getting in the way when there's trouble. They should stick at home and mind the babies!'

He got up, stretched, looked at each in turn and said, ‘If you think I'm a male chauvinist pig, you're damned right!' He went out of the office and didn't close the door quietly.

‘Well,' Browning said, ‘That's going to be a happy partnership! Why ever did they send him out here? He ought to be leading the charge of the Light Brigade!'

‘He's got quite a reputation,' Hickling answered. ‘Very highly decorated for service in Northern Ireland, all undercover stuff. I've met the type before; they can't settle to civilian life and they grouse about everything. I wouldn't have picked him, though. There must be easier triggermen about.'

Browning looked at him. ‘Is that what he is? Why send him here for Christ's sake?'

‘To look out for Miss Graham. I sometimes think my service invented oil and water so they could try and mix them. The sparks'll fly between those two before long. Come on, let's shut up the shop and I'll buy you a drink.'

Lomax made himself something to eat and settled down to watch the television. American TV offered a bewildering variety of channels and programmes. He poured himself a whisky and distractedly pressed the buttons one after the other on the little control panel.

He had been hostile to the idea of his assignment from the moment it was suggested. He had argued unsuccessfully that someone else could do the job far more effectively than he, but his own reputation and skills were used against him with Humphrey Grant's special blend of logic. Davina Graham was one of their most important operatives. A brief outline of her role in the defection of Sasanov had followed. She had to be watched and protected at all times, and by a man who would pass as a member of the embassy Staff and be able to mix in Washington circles, without, as Grant put it, his revolver bulging under his coat. For this particular mission, intelligence as well as muscle was required. It was an opportunity for Lomax to prove to the Service that he was worth more than a desk job in London.

He hadn't known what to expect when he drove down to Marchwood to meet her, but the impression gained from Grant had hardly predisposed him in her favour. The affluence of the splendid house offended his stern Presbyterian morality. And from the first sight of Davina Graham he felt antagonized. He liked women to be feminine and uncompetitive; Davina was positive and self-possessed in a way that challenged his sense of masculine superiority. He had reacted by being rude and she was promptly rude in return. There was no give at all, no concession to upper-class concern for appearances; he had shown her no manners and she had treated him not as a man, but as a subordinate striking a stupid macho attitude.

She didn't want him in Washington any more than he wanted to be there, and she had made it very clear from the start that she regarded him as an encumbrance foisted upon her by London. His only resort was to annoy her as much as possible, to parry that infuriating chill in her manner by sending up whatever she might take seriously. And this goaded him still more, because it was not what he had been assigned to do. Making her dislike him, if only because it forced her to recognize him as a human being, showed a weakness on his part.

And Grant had been specific on that point. Unlike the armed forces there was no place for personal relationships in the SIS, either friendly or antagonistic. The more Lomax considered it, watching the glittering Hollywood spectacular on the small screen without seeing anything, the less he felt himself suited to the job or the Service. He finished the whisky and snapped the off button down on the panel. The screen sank to a vanishing point of light. He said aloud. ‘You've been given a job to do. Get on and bloody well do it.' He phoned Hickling's private number.

‘Listen, I've been thinking about what you said. Maybe I've been a bit rash – yes, with La Graham. If I'm going to work with her, I'd better know a bit more about her. It may make her a bit easier to take. No promises, mind you –' He pulled out a cheery laugh for Hickling's benefit. ‘Can I come round and take a drink off you? Fine, half an hour, thanks very much.'

He muttered a mild curse and picked up the evening paper.

Four thousand miles away, spring had come early to Moscow, and while Washington slept under the stars, the golden towers of the Kremlin churches gleamed in the afternoon sunshine. The weather was perfect, warm enough to bring the crowds out in cotton dresses and shirt sleeves. The office of the Chairman of State Security was in the KGB complex on Dzjerzinsky Square. From its windows on the third floor, Igor Borisov had a view down Marx Prospekt to Revolution Square. Best of all, he loved the interplay of light and colour on the red-walled palaces, the gilded onion towers of the great cathedral of St Basil, the glittering skyscrapers of the modern city beyond. He had a deep reverence for old Russia; to him her ancient buildings, the monasteries and churches, the eighteenth-century town houses and country palaces of Tsarist days were priceless jewels in the crown of Russian architectural and artistic genius.

He loved the Kremlin, and as a young officer working for Antonyii Volkov he had spent his free hours wandering round the museums, learning about his country's past. He had found in the dark painted halls of the Tsar's palace a history of Russia which was not in the state history books. He had a secret affinity with that past, its glories and its mysteries, which no one suspected.

He was a Russian who saw his political ideology in terms of a fanatical nationalism. No one suspected that either. After he became Kaledin's assistant his ambition had burgeoned from a bud to a flower, but the flower was a fierce carnivore, devouring whatever came in reach. He knew that the old director wanted to propose his own successor. He knew that his chances of being elected by the Politburo were stronger as time passed, and he worked more and more closely with Kaledin. He also knew that a spectacular intelligence coup would tip the balance in his favour.

It had taken a long time and infinite patience to bring the traitor Ivan Sasanov to justice. The need to punish him became more urgent as Soviet policy in the Middle East was frustrated by his betrayal. Years of careful planning, of positioning agents, millions spent on bribes and sophisticated networks were wasted as the West moved ahead of them on Sasanov's information. And not just information. For two years he had guided and interpreted for London and Washington, and he had been beyond their reach. The Politburo waited, smouldering with rage, and the killers of the KGB stood poised like dogs straining at the leash for the order to speed off in pursuit. The director had given his candidate the task of finding and punishing the arch-traitor. That was how the Secretary General Brezhnev spoke of him. Not by name, but by that epithet. If Igor failed, his chance of succeeding Kaledin was gone for ever. Success would secure him the office on the third floor, and the second most powerful position in Russia. And so the bomb had exploded in the neat little surburban street in Perth. Sasanov's crime was punished, and the direction of Soviet intelligence operations throughout the world would undergo a subtle change.

Borisov worked a twelve-hour day. He had inherited Kaledin's palatial dacha in the Zhukova complex reserved for Russia's ruling elite. His wife and children were revelling in the cars, the Western clothes and luxury goods available, and the lovely retreat in the forests outside Moscow. There would be a discreet villa on the Black Sea for summer holidays; life for his family was rich with privilege. Borisov reorganized his departments by replacing some of the more entrenched Kaledin men with young, ambitious officers, preferably with some foreign service behind them. Then he set himself to travel the tortuous and complex routes through international espionage and internal security initiated by his predecessor. He attended the weekly meetings of the Politburo, and wisely listened more than he spoke. And he learned. He learned about the men who governed Russia, and smiled secretly to himself remembering that now he was one of them. He studied their dossiers, and their moods, and he made no obvious enemies in the first six months. He devoted himself to the major KGB operations, and delegated the minor ones to officers he considered loyal to him, because he had promoted them.

Among the six principal assaults against Western security which he decided to run personally was the one concerning Edward Fleming in Washington.

‘What a lovely house,' Davina said.

‘You are kind,' Liz Fleming responded. ‘It is nice, isn't it? This is such an attractive part of Washington.'

Davina sat down and accepted a drink. The strength of it surprised her and she sipped it before putting it down. She complimented Liz on the colour schemes and furnishings, watching the jerky movements, the nervous responses with the voice pitched a little too high and the smile a shade too bright. Her hand, with its big sapphire ring, was curled tightly round the pre-lunch vodka, and it shook as it brought the glass to her lips. She was beautifully dressed in dark blue, with a silk shirt and modern jewellery; sapphires matched the superb engagement ring. The first impression was of a strikingly beautiful woman in her late thirties. The second was of a nervous wreck. Davina said, ‘You haven't changed, Liz. You look just the same as the last time I saw you.'

‘Oh? When was that?' She swallowed almost half the vodka; Davina wondered whether it was anything like as strong as the one she had been given.

‘At Heathrow airport, some years ago. You didn't see me but I saw you and I recognized you at once. You disappeared into the VIP lounge.'

‘Well,' Liz Fleming shrugged, ‘it's nice of you to say I look the same – God, sometimes I feel a hundred and one.' She felt the vodka warming the pit of her stomach – it wasn't the first that morning. She felt relaxed and able to assess Davina Graham's clothes and general appearance. She looked younger than she'd expected; a dark green linen dress, expensive shoes, an air of confidence that gave her poise. Beautiful legs.

‘How long have you lived here?' Davina asked.