The Envoy (38 page)

‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ she said, ‘I got lost.’

‘What did you tell him you were doing?’

‘I didn’t have to tell him anything. He left the house a few
minutes
after you rang?’

‘Did he say where he was going?’

‘No, but he took the car. He seemed in a grump – he often is these days.’

‘Did you bring your passport?’

‘Here it is.’ She handed it over. ‘Are we leaving soon, now?’

‘Not now, on Friday – but when I tell you where we’re going, you might not want to come. And I won’t blame you if you change your mind.’

Jennifer put her arms around Kit and kissed him on the mouth. ‘I’ll go anywhere with you.’

‘Even Russia.’

Jennifer brushed a hair from the side of her mouth and stared at her cousin. Then she smiled, ‘You are joking.’

‘No, Jennie, the only way we can be together is if I defect. My life isn’t my own. I know too much. They can’t risk my blabbing – or being kidnapped and forced to blab. Even after you retire, all your travel plans have to be approved. We belong to the State – until death do us part.’

Jennifer looked at the floor. ‘I suppose I knew that all along.’

‘And I’ve been a bad boy for a long time. It started with lies and omissions – and it’s ended with treason. I’ve betrayed my country. They could hang me.’

‘Kit?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you do this for me?’

‘Not just for you, but for me too – for my conscience.’

‘What is your conscience?’

‘A tangle of feelings and intuitions – it might be wrong. But it’s my choice and the important thing is to choose.’

Jennifer put her hands on her cousin’s shoulders. ‘Look, I’m almost as tall as you.’

‘It’s wrong for me to ask you to come with me. Don’t come.’

‘Being the same height makes kissing better.’

Kit felt her mouth open against his and her tongue dart into his mouth like a demented serpent. She seemed more hungry and passionate than she had ever been before. Kit spread the sheet on the floor of the boathouse and they made love. Afterwards, when they still lay entwined, she said something to Kit – in a whisper – that disturbed him. It was a secret admission that, at first, made Kit give a nervous half-laugh. But when her words finally sunk in, they sent cold shudders up his spine. ‘Kit,’ she whispered, ‘
sometimes
… sometimes, I might want you to hurt me a bit.’

Afterwards, Kit pinned the sheet to a wall in the boathouse. ‘What are you doing?’ asked Jennifer.

‘We need to take photos for our new passports.’

‘Does this mean that we’ll have to live forever and ever in Russia?’

‘Not necessarily, the East bloc is big – East Germany,
Czechoslovakia
, Bulgaria. There are many beautiful places – another world to discover. I hope someday that we’ll be able to live in France. In any case, it will be easier for you to travel than me – you’re not a traitor. You’ll see your parents again.’

‘I wonder what Mom and Dad will think of all this.’

‘The important thing for them is that you’re alive. Your life is the most important thing they have.’

‘And my happiness – and I can only be happy with you. Hold me.’

Kit put his arms around her. ‘You’re shaking. What’s wrong?’

‘A shadow. I felt a cold shadow brush across my neck.’

After Jennifer had gone back to the house, Kit waited until it was dark before he went back to his car. The paranoia demon was back again and he felt eyes burning into his back. Darkness made it better. He had one more job to do before he returned to London – and he didn’t want anyone to see him doing it.

Kit drove into Orford and parked the A30 in a quiet lane near the main square. He could see the tower of Orford Castle as a black silhouette against the blacker sky behind it. The Castle had been built in the twelfth century on the orders of Henry
II – the
same king who had ordered the goons to whack Thomas à Becket. Kit was sure that Henry hadn’t meant the murder to be taken personally. It was about political independence: an English line in the sand against the power of Rome. Becket must have understood too. He was a seasoned player and knew the rules. The next morning the monks had to turn out with mops and buckets to clean up the blood, skull fragments and brain tissue that had sprayed all over the place.

Kit left the car and walked towards the castle. It had stood guard over the Suffolk coast for eight centuries, so it ought to manage looking after a much smaller package for another few decades. Kit put his hand in his coat pocket and felt the dead drop spike. The film that Kit had passed on to Vasili was the less important of the two. It was the one that confirmed that the Russian H-bomb was indeed on Orford Ness – and contained details and
drawings
of how the British were going to build their own version. It was a valuable piece of intelligence, but it contained no names, no agent network to be rolled up – and then tortured and shot in the basement of the Lubyanka. The second film, with its death sentence name list, was inside the dead drop spike that Kit was about to bury in the shadow of Orford Castle. He hoped it would stay there forever.

After Kit had dead lettered the passports and photographs in Brompton Oratory, he had been brush-passed a note by a woman who had almost knocked him down. She was reading a
tourist
map and pretended not to have seen Kit. ‘Enschuldigen Sie, bitte … I mean excuse me.’ For a second, Kit really believed that she was German, but as soon as she had gone on her way, he found a folded note in his hand. He slipped it into his pocket and continued walking until he found a phone kiosk. Kit went into the kiosk and got the note out, as if it were a phone number, so that he could read it without looking suspicious. Basic tradecraft. He read the note with the phone in his hand: ‘2200, Thurs. Tote dat barge on Abe’s idea ’til yr cookin’.’ It wasn’t Vasili’s writing, but whoever it was, wanted a rendezvous on the Grand Union Canal towing path near the gas works.

It was a dark and ugly place. There were railway sidings beside the gas works. The huff and wheeze of the shuttle engines and the clanking noise of metal on metal echoed like sounds from hell. The canal was a black greasy streak that stank of oily rot. The only sounds of life were the scurrying of rats in the undergrowth. From time to time, a rat belly-flopped into the canal for a midnight dip in the unspeakable filth. The grey walls of Wormwood Scrubs Prison loomed above the gas works: the prison, with its loom of white light, seemed warm and welcoming in comparison.

Kit checked his watch; his contact was five minutes late. He felt frightened, but didn’t regret coming without a gun. There was no point in shooting his way out of a jam. If he had to do that, it meant it was all over and he was as good as dead anyway. Nonetheless, Kit kept himself hidden in the shadow of a chain link fence overgrown with convolvulus and rosebay willow herb.

It was a quarter past ten when Kit spotted a figure coming along the path. It was a tallish man who cast a swift and
graceful
silhouette against the white tombstones of Kensal Green Cemetery on the opposite side of the canal. For a few seconds, Kit wasn’t sure that the figure was human – it seemed so
quick-footed
and smooth. As it came closer, it suddenly disappeared into the shadow of the fence. Kit instinctively reached deep in his pocket for the revolver that wasn’t there. He heard the voice, before he saw the man. ‘Kit, you’ve disappointed us.’ It was Jeffers Cauldwell.

‘You talk shit, Jeffers, I’m the biggest fish the Sovs have ever bagged and you know it.’

‘The film you gave to Vasili is less than diddly squat.’

‘It’s a lot fucking more than you gave them. Don’t play a game, Jeffers, that you don’t know how to play. You’re not even a junior varsity bench warmer.’

There was a faint pause, less than a second, before Cauldwell continued. ‘Where’s the other film, the one with the names?’

‘There isn’t one.’

‘That’s a lie and you know it. You’re not stupid, Kit, you wouldn’t be doing this if you hadn’t taken out an insurance
policy
and stashed it away. All defectors do it.’

‘Name one.’

‘Maybe I ought to tell Vasili that you’re doubled, that Allen Dulles is sending you to Moscow as a plant full of
misinformation
and bullshit.’

‘No more games, Jeffers – just hand over the passports.’

‘Where’s the other film?’

‘It’s in my brain – with a hundred other rolls of film – and they’re all going to stay there until Jennifer and I are safe in Moscow.’

Cauldwell put a hand in his jacket pocket and handed over the documents. ‘I suggested your cover name be Zoltan R. Krumpecker III, but Vasili said it would attract too much attention.’

Kit looked at the new passports. ‘So I’ll have to be happy as Timothy Robin Wells, and Jennie will be Constance Wells. Good.’

Cauldwell smiled and said, ‘No hard feelings?’

‘None.’

‘It’s a scary business, isn’t it?’ Cauldwell put a hand on Kit’s shoulder. ‘If they catch us, we get extradited to New York. That means a roasting in the electric chair – like the Rosenbergs. You’ll find that the Russians are more civilised. They just shoot you.’