The Envoy (4 page)

She was looking out to sea. Kit knew it was her, even from a
distance
. She seemed a head taller than the fishermen’s wives who milled about between the sheds on Aldeburgh beach. Simple, understated, elegant. She was wearing a headscarf, a white
turtleneck
sweater and dark glasses: American incognito via the Latin Quarter. She reminded Kit of Jack Kennedy’s wife. The Kennedy marriage was one of those mistakes that you can’t do anything about, like when Jack got starboard and port confused and steered his PT boat across the bows of a Jap destroyer. Never mind.

Kit didn’t speak until he was almost behind her; near enough to smell her perfume: jasmine, citrus and sandalwood. He
imagined
her, still half-dressed, touching the fragrance to her wrists, her neck, the backs of her knees. When he finally spoke, her name nearly stuck in his throat. ‘Jennifer.’

‘Kit.’ And then the perfect teeth smile and Left Bank
bisou-bisou
kisses. It wasn’t pretentious or affected; it was just the way she was. The fishermen’s wives continued gutting the morning catch – not staring, but watching all the same.

‘I hope you haven’t been waiting long.’

‘Not at all, you’re five minutes early. Shall we go for a walk? It’s supposed to rain later.’

‘Jennie, I live my life awaiting your commands.’ Kit offered his arm and they crunched off over the shingle to the sea. The firm pressure of her hand on his arm made his heart race and his head spin. His legs felt disconnected. It was hard work being happy – especially when you know it’s not going to last.

‘It’s always lovely to see you. I just hope the embassy is safe without you. I would hate to think that American national
interests
might be sacrificed because you’ve come to Suffolk to see me.’

‘I’m not that important.’

‘That’s not what my dad says.’

‘That’s because he’s been talking to my mom – she exaggerates.’

‘False modesty, Kit, does not suit you. Everyone knows you’re a rising star.’

‘Gosh, I didn’t know that. Can you give me a list of their names? And send a carbon to the Ambassador, please.’

‘My name would be at the top of the list.’ ‘Thank you, but praise from a host country national sometimes arouses suspicion.’

‘Oh, so you know about that.’

‘Know about what?’ said Kit.

‘That I’m a “host country national”, as you put it, that I’ve become a British citizen.’

‘You’re not citizens, you’re subjects.’

‘Don’t be silly. And don’t look at me like I’m a traitor. It’s because I’m married to Brian. And because of his position… well, you know how it is. By the way, you’ll find the walking on shingle easier if you dig your heel in first.’

‘Not a good surface for escaped prisoners – the bloodhounds and redcoats would have you in no time. I feel like Magwitch.’

‘By the way, you
are
going to stay for dinner? I’m sure we can find Magwitch a pie.’

‘Of course, I’m dying to meet Brian – the man who won
la belle reine de pays Chesapeakais
.’

‘I’m not
belle,
but Brian is very much looking forward to
meeting
you. I think you’ll get quite a grilling.’

Kit flexed his arm to squeeze his cousin’s hand close to his side. ‘Is there anything you don’t want me to say?’

‘Of course not, talk all you want. I haven’t any secrets, I hate secrets – you know that. Why are you laughing?’

‘How did you survive in the cipher section?’

‘That was different,’ said Jennifer, ‘only a job. The secrets I hate are personal ones, like hiding things from someone you love.’

‘Like adultery.’

Jennifer breathed in, as if Kit had uttered a swear word. ‘The worst thing about adultery is the secrecy. The lies are worse than the act. Unfaithfulness is worse than murder. Maybe those people who stone adulterers to death are right.’

‘You scare me, Jennifer.’

‘Why on earth?’

‘Why? You sound like you’ve converted to Islam.’

Jennifer drew her scarf across her face, then laughed and let it down again. ‘But I can show my face to you. You’re close family – and immune to impure thoughts.’

‘Well thank goodness for that. I’m glad you don’t think I’m going to…’ Kit let the sentence hang in the air.

Jennifer turned away. ‘I love the sound of sea on shingle. Just listen – it’s like dead sailors whispering, but their voices are so pebbly clear you lose the words. I can’t remember the Chesapeake Bay saying anything. The sand and marshes muffle the waves.’

‘What about the bell buoys – and the foghorn on Thomas Point light?’

‘Oh, I loved Thomas Point – that octagonal white clapboard house on stilts. I used to imagine living there. I must have been ten when I saw it for the first time. It was in June, just after school broke up. As a treat, Peter and Robert sailed me round it in
Stormy Petrel
. How they fussed over their little sister – and how I wanted to be fussed. The sky was perfect azure. I remember all those gulls nesting in the girders beneath the house and on the roof too. And my brothers were the most handsome
beaux
any girl of ten could imagine – brown, lean, golden gods. They even smelled good. Now, I’m babbling.’

‘Oddly enough, I remember Robert more than Peter. He once tried to teach me to box – it wasn’t a success. I don’t think he liked me much.’

‘Robert was an acquired taste. Of course, mother doted on Peter. Fortunately, Robert couldn’t care less – he positively enjoyed being the less favoured.’

‘You know, I spent an evening with your parents last time I was on leave.’

‘They mentioned it in their last letter. How was it – honestly?’

‘Pretty awful.’

‘I thought it might have been.’

‘Your dad was all right – but he always is. By the time
dinner
was finished, I was, of course, too drunk to drive back to our place so they put me up for the night – in Robert’s room. Out like a light, until I was woken about three in the morning by the sound of breaking glass. I got up to see what was wrong. Your mom, of course, was drunk and had knocked over a table.’

‘Normal.’

‘I didn’t go downstairs, but waited in the shadows of the
landing
in case she needed help. But she was OK – I heard her open another bottle. And then it got weird; she was talking to
someone
. I knew it wasn’t your dad because I could hear him snoring. It was Peter.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She was complaining about your living in England – and
having
married an impoverished scientist.’

‘She exaggerates. Brian, by British standards, is very well paid.’

‘That’s what she meant. In any case, your mom wanted Peter to come over and sort you out.’

‘Totally predictable. She’s a broken record on that one.’

‘Oddly enough, Peter didn’t say a thing.’

‘That’s not funny, Kit.’

‘Sorry… maybe, I wasn’t listening hard enough.’

‘Stop it.’

Kit took her by the shoulders. ‘Let me see your face, Jennie. Yes, you can’t hide it – the faintest crack of a smile.’

‘OK, I’m not immune to your black humour. But you shouldn’t make fun of other people’s grief.’

‘I stand corrected. Let’s get on to safer ground. Tell me about your husband.’

‘Brian is absolutely lovely.’

‘I thought he was a scientist.’

‘Kit, you’re starting to be a bit tedious.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Brian, as you probably know, works in the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment on Orford Ness. That’s why we moved to Suffolk from Aldermaston.’

‘I bet he’s something really important.’

‘Well, I suppose he is; he’s head of project. Brian is an excellent scientist and is admired by everyone who works for him.’

Kit lowered his voice and pressed his cousin’s hand. ‘What do you think of his work?’

‘I don’t like it – and Brian doesn’t like it either. It must be awful for him. He’s a very gentle man and part of him loathes working on the thing.’

‘Does he tell you that?’

Jennifer paused. ‘Not in so many words.’

‘Do you argue much about it?’

‘Stop being perceptive.’ Jennifer picked up a flat stone and skimmed it across a pair of waves. For a second the North Sea had turned into the Aegean. Jennifer’s body scored the grey sky with the clean lines and Attic grace of a perfect Artemis. Kit felt hopeless desire bore into his brain like a hot drill.

‘You …’ Kit looked away from his cousin. He couldn’t find words to complete the sentence.

Then Jennifer was talking. ‘Well, if you really want to know, I think the whole thing is a silly waste of money. You can’t imagine the cost.’

Kit’s mind was still elsewhere: in a faraway land of cypresses, cicadas and hills scented with wild thyme. He wanted to say, ‘Artemis, leave it all and come with me.’ Instead he simply said, ‘I don’t know the details, but I’m sure the bomb programme is costing a lot.’

But Kit did know the details, for one of his operatives had done a FININT ‘black bag job’ – Financial Intelligence burglary – at the Ministry of Supply and photographed the budget figures with a Minox spy camera. Kit was surprised at the amounts involved. The cost was staggering: the British government really wanted an H-bomb. The operative, posing as an electrical installation
inspector
, had done a marvellous job and copied over a hundred pages of expenditure estimates. Kit not only knew Brian’s salary, but also his travel and subsistence expenses. But there was one figure that left Kit totally confused. It came under a subheading titled Red Snow: the estimate was fifty-four million pounds. There were no explanatory details.

‘In any case,’ said Jennifer, ‘British tax money needs to be spent on schools and hospitals – and indoor toilets too. What do you think, really think? Does Britain need a bomb?’

‘You’ve already got one, fifty actually. It’s called Blue Danube – and it’s been in service for three years.’

‘You know what I mean, Kit, the fusion weapon – the H-bomb, the one that Brian’s working on. Do we need it?’

Kit was surprised by her admission. He wondered if his cousin was a security risk. ‘I don’t know. The problem is that Whitehall doesn’t trust Washington. The British government knows there are a lot of American generals, and politicians too, who wouldn’t mind fighting a nuclear war in Europe to get rid of the Soviets – and the sooner the better.’

‘Before the Russians deploy TU-95s and R7s?’

‘You scare me, Jennie, you shouldn’t know these things.’

‘Everyone should know them, Kit.’

They continued to walk along the shingle beach. Jennifer had got one fact wrong: the Tupolev 95 was just coming into
service
. It was the first Soviet long-range bomber capable of striking the United States. But the Pentagon was more worried about the development of the R7, a Russian intercontinental ballistic
missile
that would be impossible to shoot down. Consequently, there were crazies, like General Curtis LeMay, who were agitating for a pre-emptive strike while the US was still immune to Soviet
retaliation
. If the Russians knew that was about to happen, the US
air-bases
in East Anglia would be their first target. England would be obliterated in a nuclear holocaust.

Jennifer seemed to read her cousin’s thoughts. ‘How many British dead, Kit?’

‘Forty million – and Europe too, the people, the paintings, the music, the vines of Burgundy, the olive groves, all those lovely languages and mellow buildings. The whole fucking lot turned into a radioactive ash heap.’ He turned to his cousin, but she was walking away. ‘Jennie?’

‘I need some fish for tonight.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You get wonderful fresh fish here. Look, there’s a boat landing – it’s Billy and his uncle.’

The beach boats were clinker-built oak and broad beamed. None had cabins or shelter of any kind; they were open to rain, wind and salt spray. They weren’t elegant: they were designed for battling North Sea waves after being dragged down a shingle beach and launched into cold angry surf. According to the
season
, they long-lined, trawled, laid lobster pots or set herring nets.

Jennifer checked her purse. ‘I’ve got enough. Let’s see what they’ve got.’

As the boat ground on to the shingle, a man in a greasy smock ran forward with a cable and threaded a hook through a ring low down on the bow. Meanwhile someone started a donkey engine and the cable went taut. As the boat was winched up the beach, other men ran forward and placed boards black with axle grease under the bows to help her slide over the shingle.

‘They’re marvellous,’ said Jennifer, ‘I love them. They’re like a ballet troupe. When there’s a heavy sea running, they have to be awfully quick. If they get knocked sideways by a big wave, they can capsize. That boy, Billy Whiting, is a wonderful singer. He’s been in the chorus for two Benjamin Britten operas – and even had a solo. He’s got a wonderful temperament. I’d love to have a son like him.’

‘Jennifer, you’re crying. What’s wrong?’

‘It’s you, Kit, and all the others too. You and your bombs, you and your fucking bombs.’

‘Jennie, please …’

‘Don’t touch me. I’m all right. Let’s see what they’ve caught.’

The meal began with Suffolk slip sole
à la meunière
and went on to spring lamb with minted new potatoes and garden peas. Kit supplied the wine, vintage claret ‘re-looted’ from the cellar of a
Reichsmarschall
by the 101st Airborne, and a bottle of’33
champagne
fine
cognac from the embassy. Jennifer went to bed early: she felt tired and dizzy. After dinner, Brian and Kit took their brandies into the garden. Kit turned and looked at the house. The thatched roof and chimneys were black silhouettes dimly sketched against the night sky. ‘Beautiful place – very oldie England.’

‘It’s not old at all. It’s fake Tudor, built about 1900. It used to be a gatehouse. The lord of the manor wanted to show off and pretend the workers were picturesque as well as servile. But
fortunately
Jennifer loves it.’

‘How did you end up living here?’

‘The Ministry requisitioned it – and a lot of other houses –
during
the war. This cottage and a few others were kept on to billet staff working on the island.’

Kit looked around: there was nothing but blackness. Thick
forest
enclosed the garden on every side. ‘It certainly is … quiet.’

‘At first, I was a little concerned – I feared that Jennie might find it too lonely here. I even suggested we find a place in the village, but she assured me that she loves seclusion.’ Brian paused. ‘Could this place remind her of home, of Rideout’s Landing?’

‘The farm was isolated, but being on a river it seemed …’ Kit didn’t finish the sentence. He sensed that Brian wanted to know more about his wife’s background, but it wasn’t a past that he wanted to share. Brian had Jennifer’s body, why did he want the other stuff too. ‘In any case,’ said Kit, ‘there were always lots of people around.’

Brian sipped his brandy, then said almost apologetically. ‘Jennie doesn’t often talk about her family. It’s as if she’s cut off her past by changing countries and nationalities.’ The Englishman paused; he wasn’t used to probing the feelings of others. ‘I
suppose
it might have something to do with her brothers.’

‘She’ll never get over it.’ Kit stopped and listened. ‘What’s that noise? Stray dogs?’

‘Muntjac deer. They bark – especially when they’re mating.’

‘You’ve got your own deer park. You must feel like an Elizabethan grandee.’

‘Hardly. The muntjac are a foreign species – like the North American grey squirrel. The Victorian toffs who introduced these animals were too vain and too stupid to understand how much damage they would do to the native fauna. The grey squirrels raid birds’ nests and have driven out our native reds.’

Kit smiled at the image of American squirrels chasing British ‘reds’ and almost made a McCarthyite wisecrack. But he bit his tongue for he sensed that Brian neither liked nor trusted him – and that drink made him aggressive. Kit steered the conversation to the calmer waters of flattery. ‘You seem very knowledgeable about natural history.’

‘When I was a boy I used to love walking on the moors, places like Blackstone Edge that you’ve probably never heard of. Much of the flora was very primitive, such as club-mosses and ferns, the sort of species you would have found hundreds of millions of years ago when life was just beginning. I found it exciting to learn about them and imagine that I was a time traveller.’

‘What about Orford Ness?’ said Kit, thinking of Brian’s nuclear workplace. ‘It looks pretty desolate from this side of the river.’

‘That shingle spit may look desolate, but it’s full of marvels.’ Brian gave a rare smile, ‘The
real
secrets are plants like the yellow horned poppy with blossoms the size of soup plates – big golden banners waving against all that cold wind and salt spray. And sea pea too, exquisite little mauve flowers clinging on with deep strong roots. Places like Orford Ness and the northern moors are the real England – not the suffocating pampered gardens on the stately homes circuit.’

Kit began to realise there was more to Brian than the gruff North Country scientist. But it didn’t make Kit like him; it only made him more jealous. ‘Are there animals too?’

Brian smiled again, ‘Just the MoD security police and their attack dogs. Frightening chaps – all the locals are terrified of them. There’s also a huge colony of hares. They must have swum over and, without lurchers and shotguns to harry them, they’ve multiplied like mad. The security fellows sometimes use the hares for marksmanship practice. I’m not sure I approve, but they always give us one for the pot. I’ve developed quite a taste for
saddle
of hare. Jennifer, as you know, is a dab hand with game – not squeamish at all, almost like an Englishwoman.’

‘She used to go hunting and fishing too. We even used to eat those grey squirrels. Get Jennie to cook you a pair.’

‘A brace,’ said Brian, ‘in England we never say a
pair
of game or game birds – we say a brace.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Jennie tells me that your fathers were classmates at West Point. That’s the American Sandhurst, isn’t it?’

‘Not exactly, it’s a four-year course and you get a degree as well as a commission. In any case, our dads – both being Maryland boys – became friends.’

‘And Jennie’s father married your father’s sister.’

‘Younger sister, Aunt Janet.’ Kit wondered how much longer the interrogation was going to last. He wanted to know if Jennie had told her husband about Tombstone Frank, a shared
ancestor
who had made a living digging up bodies from Greenmount Cemetery and selling them to Johns Hopkins Medical School. Frank later improved the freshness of his cadavers by preying on drunken sailors. Kit feared that the psycho gene had been passed on, but not the entrepreneurial one.

‘And,’ Brian was still probing for something, ‘you were all brought up as brothers and sisters.’

‘Sort of, our house was seven miles away – half an hour’s bike ride or an hour by boat.’

‘Sounds idyllic – I wonder why Jennifer never wants to go back.’

‘Maybe,’ said Kit, ‘she’s afraid of ghosts.’ Suddenly, there was a rustling sound from the hedge next to the road – and then a long blood-curdling shriek with hisses. ‘Bon appétit,’ said Kit raising his glass. ‘That must have been an owl.’

‘Well done. It’s a barn owl. We studied them when we
developed
radar. The barn owl has asymmetrical ear openings – the opening in one ear is higher than in the other ear. This means they can hunt in conditions too dark even for their wonderful eyes. They pinpoint their prey by the difference in decibels. They know they’re getting closer when the volume in each ear begins to even out. On the way to Orford in the morning, just as the sun is rising, I often see them hunting in the hedgerows. A glorious sight.’

Kit didn’t know what to say. He knew that Brian was
competing
– but he wasn’t sure why.

Brian coughed and cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘about earlier on.’

‘About what?’

‘I shouldn’t have made those remarks about the USA not
coming
into the war until it was half over. Americans must be fed up with hearing that old chestnut.’

It had, thought Kit, been pretty damn insensitive. He should have seen the blood drain out of Jennifer’s face. Kit tossed back the last of his brandy. ‘In France, they say the same thing about
les résistants de la dernière heure
.’

Brian was silent in the dark shadow. Kit realised that he hadn’t understood a single word – now he was competing too. He remembered how Brian had frowned whenever he or Jennifer had swapped a French phrase or quote.

‘I wouldn’t mind another drink,’ said Kit.

‘The bottle’s in the house.’

‘By the way, Brian, your point about the war loans was a fair one. It doesn’t seem fair that we make Britain pay up, while we shovel millions of pounds of Marshall Plan aid into Germany.’

‘In the end it could destroy British manufacturing.’

Kit smiled. ‘But it could have been a lot worse.’

‘How?’

‘If Roosevelt hadn’t tricked the Japs into attacking Pearl Harbour, we might not have come into the war at all – and then we would have made even more money out of it. We could have made war loans to
both
sides.’

Brian grunted a laugh. ‘I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but Jennifer warned me about you. She said you liked to play the
professional
cynic, the devil’s advocate.’

‘Did she?’ What, thought Kit, was the game now? Something like:
Despite your kinship and shared past, Jennifer is closer to me than she ever was to you
.

‘But she is very fond of you.’

‘Thanks.’

The men turned to walk back towards the house. The light from a kitchen window began to cast shadows over their faces. Kit looked at Brian in profile and tried to analyse what attracted Jennifer to him. He was handsome in an English rough tweed sort of way: tall, raw-boned, strong jaw and big hands. In fact, Brian bore a striking resemblance to Group Captain Townsend – the RAF officer whom Princess Margaret had been forced to ditch. Brian’s hair was also curly and black, except – the light from the window struck at an angle and revealed something hidden in
normal
light – for the grey roots. Kit was mildly abashed: this blunt no-nonsense Englishman dyed his hair.

When they entered the kitchen, Kit saw that the washing-up was done and everything put away. Jennie hadn’t been tired after all. Kit wished he hadn’t come.

‘Sleep well, I’m off to bed.’ Brian was smiling again. ‘Make yourself at home – and help yourself to the brandy. It’s your brandy anyway.’

‘It’s not a war loan – it’s a gift, a genuine gift.’ Kit knew that his voice sounded brittle.

‘Thanks.’

Kit watched Brian’s back disappear into the darkness of the inner corridor. A second later, there was a faint loom of light as a door opened – then the door shut and the light was gone. He thought he heard Jennifer’s voice, but couldn’t make out the words. Kit blotted out what was going to happen next. He hoped that he could find the brandy bottle; he hoped it would help him sleep.

The daffodils were coming out around the Roosevelt Memorial in Grosvenor Square. It was a bitterly cold March morning. Kit checked his watch: twenty past seven, too early for most people on his pay grade. He liked to arrive before the others so he could check the pigeonholes and in-trays of his colleagues while they were still bleary-eyed over breakfast coffee and the international edition of
The Herald Tribune
. He didn’t like to be left out of any loop and always wanted to be au fait with other people’s agendas. Nor was he above the odd act of petty malice. If some other FSO, Foreign Service Officer – especially the commercial attaché – had been giving him a hard time, Kit would ransack the offending officer’s pigeonhole for something marked ‘urgent’ and dispose of it in the burn bag or shredder. The best thing wasn’t hearing that the officer had been told off, but watching him spend hours
afterwards
emptying his trays and drawers trying to find the missing document. Kit always asked what was wrong and offered to help.

He felt his breast pocket to check his ID. The outer embassy doors were locked until nine. The doormen were always ‘locally sourced’ Brits – indigenous personnel – because it cost too much to fly over Americans for such low-paid jobs. Most of the
doormen
were middle-aged ‘gorblimey’ types who wore blazers with British regimental badges as a sort of tribal defiance. They took their jobs very seriously and always scrutinised Kit’s ID as if it were an expert KGB forgery. The US Marine guards, on the other hand, who controlled access to inner sanctums, secure comm rooms and archive vaults, always called him ‘sir’ and waved him through. If the marines were ‘covered’, wearing their
anchor-and-globe
white peaked caps, they clicked heels and gave him snappy salutes. Kit liked the deference and thought that if, say he retired to a
palacio
in Mexico, he would keep dress-uniformed marines as servants and grooms: ‘Saddle the horses, Corporal Cracker, Doña Jennifer and I are riding to Mass and then on to the village to distribute dinner scraps to the poor.’ ‘Of course not, Cracker, not
all
the poor – only the deserving ones.’ But this was a grey London dawn and the marines weren’t there to tend his horses. Dream on,
chico
, dream on.

Kit spent the first part of the morning being the POLCOUNS, Counselor for Political Affairs. It wasn’t just ‘diplomatic cover’. The post was a real job and his pay reflected the extra
responsibility
. If the officer was up to it, holding a genuine post as a
senior
diplomat as well as being CIA Chief of Station was extremely useful: you knew what both hands were doing and why. Kit
supposed
that, after the Ambassador and the DCM, he ranked third in the embassy hierarchy. And yet he kept a very low public
profile
: his photo never appeared in the press and he was never
interviewed
. If the BBC or a journalist wanted to talk to someone from POLCOUNS, Kit always sent his deputy. Nor did he attend Royal garden parties, Ascot or Henley. He only turned up at functions that were for working diplomats and policy makers. The sort of cosy events where everyone knew everyone else and what they were up to. In general, Kit preferred the shadows because that’s where you could get things done and influence policy.