The Envoy (39 page)

When Kit got back to his flat, he poured himself a brandy and began to rehearse his final moves. The next morning he would pick up the car from the Manor Road garage and drive to Suffolk. His plan was to take single-lane country roads to make sure that he hadn’t grown a tail. Kit wondered what he should do when he met up with Jennifer. The plan was to rendezvous at the
boathouse
at midday. If Brian was at home, her alibi was to be a
shopping
trip to Orford Quay for fresh fish. Kit had told Jennie not to pack a bag: it would be too conspicuous. They could buy
whatever
she would need en route. It would be like choosing her
wedding
trousseau. Kit knew that everything was going to be fine. He picked up the forged passports and examined them again. They were perfect. The Russian craftsmanship was far better than
anything
the CIA produced. Kit finished his brandy and smiled. Now that they had false passports for a new life, why go to Moscow? Instead of Gatwick, he and Jennifer could detour to Harwich or a channel port. The obvious problem was that the KGB knew the names and passport numbers. If Kit double-crossed his new
masters
, they would leak the passport details big time. It wouldn’t be long before every immigration officer from Brindisi to Calais would join the hunt. On the other hand, it wouldn’t happen immediately. It would take at least five days, maybe even a couple of weeks, before their passport details filtered down to frontier control level. Would that be long enough to buy new documents? The KGB were not the only forgers in Europe. Kit knew a half dozen of the best: Utrecht, Antwerp and Liège. Why, he thought, was this a craft at which the Low Countries excelled? Perhaps it was the tradition of Rembrandt, Vermeer and Van der Hals. They were consummate artists.

Kit poured another brandy. Double-crossing the Sovs was a tempting idea, but maybe it was wrong. Maybe their system, despite all its faults, was better. At least they had a vision – a vision based on reason and hope rather than superstition and greed. Maybe that’s what turned Burgess and Maclean? And yet, part of Kit knew that what they did – and what he was doing – was deeply wrong. When you become an officer of the State – military, diplomatic or espionage – you sell your soul. The first thing you learn as a student of Foreign Policy is that nothing else matters except the survival and dominance of the State – ‘the national interest’. It was more than an idea, it was sacred dogma. If the national interest required burning the faces off the children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, you grilled those young faces until the soft tissue sizzled and caramelised into black ash. And now there was a bomb a thousand times more savage: his father had been one of its first victims. The State was a cruel cradle.

It was a beautiful Suffolk morning when Kit arrived at the
boathouse
. It was September, but the weather was warmer and clearer than it had been all summer – as if autumn had turned into spring. The reed beds were golden in the too bright sunlight. In a few weeks, the local thatcher and his apprentice would pole a flat-bottomed boat up the river and begin harvesting the reed. Kit knew both of them. They drank in the same pub where Brian and his henchmen went after work.

Kit checked his watch. It wasn’t as early as he thought: Jennifer should be arriving any minute. He looked up the path towards the heather and tried to conjure Jennifer’s figure emerging into the light. He wondered what she would be wearing and whether her hair would be free or tied back. He kept looking at his watch – then, after a while, stopped looking. She was already late, but only five minutes. Kit kept staring up the path, straining to see movement. His heart leapt when he saw a wood-pigeon flushed from a fir tree at the top of the hill. Was she coming that way? He waited with his heart pounding. How long would it take her to walk from that tree? Five minutes? Kit began to count the
seconds
without looking at his watch. He’d begun to hate the lying minute hand. Kit stopped counting when he got to seven
hundred
. She was now twenty minutes late. He began to feel beads of panic sweat chilling his spine. Kit left the boathouse and started walking up the path. He had chosen the boathouse to provide shelter in case of rain or suspicious eyes – but now the only thing that mattered was meeting Jennifer and getting her to the car.

The wood that went up the back garden had been planted with giant Wellingtonia firs and redwoods by a Victorian lord. The non-native trees towered over the oak and silver poplars like freak aliens from outer space. The gardening lord had also introduced rhododendron that had now gone berserk, but provided cover for Kit as he worked his way to the edge of the garden. Kit kept deep in the shadows as he studied the house. There was
washing
on the line, but all else seemed quiet and empty. Brian’s car was nowhere to be seen. ‘Shit.’ Kit swore under his breath. ‘I bet she’s gone another way, by the road.’ Kit had noted that the wood was full of pheasants. The shooting season was about to begin. It was obvious: Jennifer had gone by road to avoid running into the gamekeeper. Kit swore at himself for leaving the boathouse and began to retrace his steps.

As soon as Kit emerged from the heather, he could see that the boathouse was empty, but something was different – someone had left the door open. So Jennifer had been there! He ran down the slope and across the plank bridges. He knew there would be a note – and it was easy to find it. She must not have had paper or anything to write with, so she had scrawled across the wall in block capitals with lipstick.
I WAITED BUT YOU WEREN’T HERE. GONE BACK TO HOUSE. MEET ME THERE. J XXXX
. Kit breathed deep and closed his eyes with relief. ‘Stupid me,’ he whispered, ‘and poor you.’ He then ran back to the road to where he had left the car in a lay-by. He needed to get to the house as quickly as possible. She was obviously alone, but Brian could turn up at any moment.

When Kit got to the house, he parked his car on the road. He didn’t want to risk being blocked in on the drive. The washing was still hanging out to dry and everything seemed as still and quiet as it had before. He checked the drive: there was still no Brian. Kit walked around to the kitchen door and opened it slightly. ‘Jennifer,’ he said. There was no reply, he called more loudly, ‘Jennie, where are you?’ He looked on the kitchen table. There was a copy of the
East Anglian Daily Times
open to the sports pages: Ipswich Town had signed a new centre forward. Kit had an impulse to pick up the paper and read the article. He wanted to be in a world where people did normal things – like hanging out the washing and following a team. Kit paused and looked around for the kettle. That’s what the English always do in a crisis, they have a cup of tea. It seemed to work for them, but Kit knew it wasn’t going to work for him. He came from a society driven by strong coffee and raw nerves.

Kit leaned on the back of a kitchen chair and listened to the silence. There must be a million different types of silence. There’s the sweet silence of a summer garden on a still night. There’s the adrenalin pumping silence before a battle’s first shot. There’s the punched-hard-in-the-stomach silence of a lover at the moment of betrayal. There’s the silence of the stethoscope. But this one, Kit knew, was the worst silence of all: when the silence is listening to you.

Kit walked out of the kitchen into the darkness of the inner house. A bath tap was dripping and there was a copy of
Wisden
Cricketers’Almanack
on Brian’s desk. There was a musty smell of stale perfume. Kit knew that he wasn’t alone. He stood in front of the bedroom door, the marital bedroom. On the other side was the private place of hushed pillow secrets, semen-stained sheets and knotty engenderings.

Kit turned the door handle and pushed the door open. The light from the bay window flooded the room and made Kit blink. Jennifer was lying on the bed with a white sheet pulled up to her neck and her eyes half-open. Her arms – white, slender and bowed like a wish bone – were lying on the crisp surface of the sheet. A single red rose lay across her cupped hands. The sunlight streamed through lace curtains and cast sombre patterns of grey flowers across her face. Kit whispered her name, ‘Jennifer.’ Each syllable palpable and heavy with longing. There was a musky smell in the room – and for a second Kit remembered Pepita lying in her coffin amid a riot of tropical flowers. You buried quick down there. A plump bluebottle fly landed on Jennifer’s cheek. Kit winced as the fly crawled across the still luminous surface of her eye.

Kit moved into the room. He was desperate to hold her and to brush flies away from her face. He was dizzy with grief and his foot became entangled with a blanket that must have fallen from the end of the bed. As Kit bent down to free himself, he heard
someone
moving behind him – then a voice from the corridor. ‘Take him, Johnnie.’ Kit had heard that voice before. It was one that he would never forget. It belonged to the guard who had ordered Driscoll’s beheading. There was a sharp pain above his right ear, a sudden reek of chloroform – and then all was blackness.

‘How’s your head?’ He was a nice man with a rugby-playing accent. He had brought Kit a pot of tea and a tray of digestive
biscuits
. ‘Can you stand up and try walking around the room?’

‘Could I have some clothes, please?’

The man handed Kit a dressing gown from a cabinet beside the bed. Kit stood up and put it on. The gown was grey and had blue trim; there was a Royal Air Force crest over the breast pocket.

‘Do you feel any dizziness?’

‘No.’

‘Double or blurred vision?’

‘No.’

‘Have a little stroll.’

The room was functional and bare. The walls were painted institutional green and there were no paintings or books. The
unusual
thing was the hexagonal shape, as if the room were located in a tower or castle turret. There seemed to be windows in four of the walls, but they were covered by locked shutters. Presumably, thought Kit, to stop him jumping out. The closed shutters meant that it was impossible to tell the time of day. They had taken his watch, but his visitor was wearing one that said nine o’clock. Still, Kit had no way of knowing whether it was a.m. or p.m. He guessed there was another reason for the shutters: induced disorientation. It was a standard interrogation technique. Take away a person’s perception of time and you rob him of his last reality anchor.

‘How do you feel?’

‘Fine.’

The man took an instrument out of a black bag and shone a light into Kit’s pupil. He continued the eye and ear examination for some time. Kit wondered if he was trying to find his soul. At the end of the medical examination, the man had a look at Kit’s head wound. ‘Nasty haematoma, but no evidence of skull
fracture
or concussion. You’re very lucky. Those fellows are animals.’

‘Can you tell me anything else?’

‘No.’

‘Fine.’

‘Good. I’ve got to go now, but if you experience nausea or vomiting, let someone know immediately.’

‘How?’

‘Shout loudly and rap on the door. Someone will hear you.’ The man smiled, then got up and left the room. Kit heard two long heavy bolts slide into place on the other side of the door.