The Envoy (17 page)

‘Thanks.’

Cauldwell walked to the door. ‘By the way, Kit.’

‘Yes?’

‘Have you ever killed anyone with your bare hands?’

‘No.’

‘I have.’

Cauldwell had gone before Kit had the chance to search the cultural attaché’s face for the trace of a joking smile.

Kit had taken the train to Portsmouth via Brighton. He shared the compartment with a French au pair who was returning to Nantes for Easter. Kit put on his East End ‘legend’: that he was a
Québécois
who worked for a shipping firm in London. He was feeling nervous about what he was going to have to do and wanted light relief. In fact, the adrenalin rush of an op always excited him and made him a little silly. Kit had really begun to like being François Laval. As he entertained the au pair with
stories
of Laval’s life and travels, Kit began to prefer his fictional self to his real self. The escape from self was like an intravenous shot of mood changing drug. Between Brighton and Worthing they caught a glimpse of the sea. Kit offered the au pair a shot of brandy from his hip flask. The drink seemed to widen her eyes and swell her lips. The sea was gleaming in the April sun. Kit started and the girl joined in:

They embraced and kissed as the train passed through a tunnel. Kit felt her mouth open beneath his: her tongue was groping and hungry. Emboldened Kit began to slip his hand up her dress – there was no resistance – until he felt the damp inviting warmth of her sex. Maybe this was what he really wanted. He was more intoxicated by his disguise than the brandy. For one glorious
liberating
moment, he was François Laval: a normal man with
normal
desires.

As the train slowed on the station approach, the au pair smiled and confided that their meeting was a great coincidence. They both had the same first name. Hers was Françoise. Later, as they parted on the platform, she looked at Kit in a strange way. ‘Who are you?’ she said. ‘You don’t have a Quebec accent, you have a normal French accent.’ As Kit watched her disappear in the crowd bustling towards the ferry, he felt the fake François Laval fall from his shoulders and turn into dead ash.

It was a short walk from the station to the Sally Port Hotel. Kit had booked two rooms – even though he might only need one. Driscoll was arriving under his own steam in a Humber van. Kit hoped he’d remembered to swap the number plates and would drive carefully: a police check would thwart the whole thing. The plan was to meet in a lorry park late that afternoon. Driscoll would change into his frogman suit in the back of the van – and then Kit would drive him to the King Stairs at least an hour ahead of Crabb and his handler. It was going to be an awkward social situation – like turning up to a dinner party to which you had pointedly not been invited.

Kit checked into the Sally Port under the name of Paul Martin. It was best to use simple names for cover legends: ones that didn’t stick in the mind or were easy to pin down. The world was full of Martins and Browns and Wilsons – surname anonymity. In Vietnam it was even better. Eighty-five per cent of the population had the family name of either Nguyen or Trinh – so you knew people by their first names, which weren’t their first names at all, but their last names. A spy needs to know the culture. And in the spy trade, names are the most
valuable
currency of all – more valuable than nuclear secrets. You might have the recipe for
hydrogen
bomb cookies, but you can’t bake those cookies unless you have the engineering and industrial base to build the right oven. But names were gold dust – that’s how Burgess and Maclean had done so much damage, they knew the names. And the irony is that no one has
more
names than a spy.

The window in Kit’s room faced north-west and gave a good view of the harbour. The
Ordzhonikidze
and two
accompanying
destroyers had docked that morning. The cruiser was lying alongside South Railway Jetty with her stern facing the harbour entrance. The two destroyers,
Sovershenny
and
Smotryaschy
, were rafted beside her like nursing pups. Most of the
Ordzhonikidze
was hidden from Kit’s view by cranes and warehouses, but her masts and aft gun turrets were visible. Kit took a pair of
binoculars
out of his travelling bag for a quick look. There was nothing much to see: her rotating radar dishes had been
covered
with grey tarpaulins. A useless security precaution, for US Navy reconnaissance aircraft had already provided the agency with high resolution photographs of every diode and bolt – and the Russians knew it. The tarpaulins were just theatre props to impress the Brits.

Kit focused the binoculars on South Railway Jetty. He was surprised it hadn’t been cordoned off from the public. Crowds of sightseers were freely strolling along the quay – many strewn with cameras and taking snaps. The
Ordzhonikidze
had become an instant tourist attraction. Kit shifted the glasses back to the cruiser. A sailor with black hair and a gymnast’s body was waving and blowing kisses to someone on the quay. He wondered if it might be his French au pair. No longer his.

He could almost hear her singing to another man. And why shouldn’t she? Kit felt a pang of jealousy and longing. He wasn’t a proper man; he was nothing more than an eunuch of the State, like the sterile workers in an ant colony. At some point, the State had ceased to be an ideology or even a nation. It was a way of being that consumed – not the ordinary soldiers and sailors, they were free to blow kisses – but the State’s own masters.

Driscoll was slumped in the driver’s seat of the van reading a
tabloid
newspaper. The Irishman was wearing a donkey jacket and a flat cap. He looked every inch a genuine English workman. Kit thought, however, that the flat cap wasn’t quite right. Brits of Driscoll’s generation went bareheaded to show off their pomaded quiffs. Kit was carrying a heavy black leather bag. He shifted the bag to his left hand and tapped on the van’s window. Driscoll reached over to open the passenger door.

Kit got in. ‘Everything OK?’

‘Yeah.’

Kit looked around the lorry park. The state of the vehicles was a sad reflection of the British economy: some were from the 1920s. There was even an old Thorneycroft lorry with solid tyres and an open cab with a wooden door. The driver was muffled up with scarves and had a pair of goggles dangling from a piece of string. The ancient lorry seemed to be used for hauling coal and the driver’s face was coated with black dust. He was probably waiting to pick up a load from the docks. It reminded Kit of that blustery day with Jennifer on Dunwich beach and the collier
beating
down to London. A moment of purity. And now he was in a filthy van that reeked of sweat and stale tobacco. Kit watched the Thorneycroft driver unscrew a thermos and pour himself a cup of tea while making furtive glances in their direction. ‘Anyone speak to you?’

‘No.’

‘Good.’

Driscoll looked at the driver. ‘He gave me a nod, but backed off. The one good thing about Brits is that they keep their
distance
. They can tell when you don’t want to talk. The Irish don’t care – they’ll talk your leg off even if you’re not listening.’

‘Bad for security.’

‘I know.’

‘Listen,’ said Kit, ‘there’s a change of plan.’

‘I don’t like the sound of this.’

‘I want you to do the business when the flood tide is at its strongest.’

‘Shit, do you think I’m some sort of Olympic swimmer?’

‘You won’t have any problem getting there.’

‘But how am I going to get back?’

‘You’ll manage, but if you can’t, I’ve marked some alternative ex-filtration points on your chart.’

‘It’s a stupid state of tide to do a job like this.’

‘I know, but I want to keep you as far away from Crabb as possible.’

‘So I won’t have to kill him.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Good. He may be a Brit officer, but I don’t like killing other divers – we’re like brothers, but you wouldn’t understand.’

‘You’re right, Driscoll, I don’t understand anything.’

Kit couldn’t tell Driscoll the whole truth about the dive. He couldn’t tell him that the Russians knew that Crabb was going to be spying and supposedly doing worse things to their ship. Likewise, Kit had deceived Vasili. He had told him nothing about Driscoll. The whole point of Kit’s double deception was to
convince
Vasili and the Sovs that the mines had been planted by Crabb. Kit knew that the Russians would be expecting Crabb at slack water because the ageing diver wasn’t fit enough to do the job at any other time. Kit reasoned that the Russians would be least vigilant when the tide was running strongest: they couldn’t maintain constant guard underwater, not enough divers and oxygen tanks. Therefore, a hard running tide was Driscoll’s best chance of escaping capture or being killed.

‘You want me,’ said Driscoll, ‘to have a look at the bottom of the hull for sonar and mine laying ports?’

‘You won’t have time. You’ve got to get in and out really quick.’ Kit undid the black leather bag. ‘The only thing I want you to do is put these on the hull.’

Driscoll stared at two identical lumps bulging in their black waterproof covers. ‘I didn’t think you were serious. You made me think we weren’t going to go that far.’

‘Will you do it or not?’

‘I’m not sure. You’re asking me to do something which is just too fucking serious. I don’t want to cause another world war.’

‘We’re not going to sink that ship, and there wouldn’t be a war even if something went wrong and we did.’ Kit hoped he wasn’t giving away too much. ‘Look, the purpose of this op is to ruin Britain’s reputation as a responsible world power. With any luck Russia will break off diplomatic relations and the British
government
will fall – and that would be a big step to a united Ireland. I thought that’s what you guys want.’

Driscoll lifted one of the limpet mines out of the bag. ‘Mark ones. The timers have a maximum delay of seventy-two hours – we should put these on just before she sails, otherwise she might sink in the harbour.’

‘Don’t worry, the timers have been altered. I’ve already set them.’

Driscoll picked up a mine. ‘They’re heavy on land, but light as a feather in water.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘You’re not a diver, are you?’

‘No.’

‘Limpets have neutral buoyancy, which means they almost float. Otherwise, the magnets wouldn’t be strong enough to hold them to a hull.’

Of course, thought Kit, the clear logic of destruction and war. If only we organised our lives and loves as cleverly as we organised the killing of others. ‘I think,’ said Kit, ‘you’d better get changed. I’ll drive.’

Driscoll still had the mine in his hand and was looking at it as if it were an evil genie. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’

As Kit helped Driscoll get into his diving suit, something else began to bother him. He realised that the diver’s first loyalty was to Irish Republicanism. And although there had been a falling out with one IRA commander, Kit suspected there may have been reconciliation with another. The movement was riven with sects and factions – a fact exploited by the British. Could Driscoll, thought Kit, have passed on something about the dive? And what if his new IRA unit had been infiltrated by MI5?

The tide was flooding hard when they reached King’s Stairs. It would be another three hours before slack water. Kit was certain that Crabb and his handler would wait until the tide had begun to slacken. He was sure that Crabb would follow the same routine as when they spied on the
Sverdlov
. A quick swim up to the ship on the waning flood, then back again on the new ebb. It was
effortless
: just a matter of drifting with the changing current – perfect for an elderly frogman. Also perfect for any Soviet divers waiting in ambush.

Kit parked as near the harbour steps as he could. It was broad daylight, but it didn’t matter much if they were seen. It was
normal
to see divers carrying out underwater maintenance on the crumbling jetties in the spring after the winter gales. In any case, Driscoll was out of the van and into the dark swirling waters in less than half a minute. Kit watched the black-masked head bob through the rotting piles of the King’s Stairs jetty. Driscoll, thought Kit, looked more like a seal than a human. He wondered if he’d ever see him again.