The Envoy (7 page)

When Kit got back to his flat it was one o’clock in the morning. Unlike the other embassy staff, he lived in a working-class
borough
of the East End. In fact, it was ‘a manor’ controlled by a well-known family of villains. It suited him perfectly. Kit paid ‘the brothers’ a few pounds a month ‘to keep an eye on his place’ – and they did so with a vengeance. The Manor was full of eyes and ears that instantly picked up anything out of place. That brand of surveillance and assurance of safety was better than anything Scotland Yard’s Diplomatic Protection Squad could offer. But the villains and Cockney neighbours who kept an eye on Kit and his flat had no idea that he was a diplomat. As far as they were
concerned
he was François Laval, a Canadian shipping agent from Montreal.

The flat, in a rabbit warren of run-down streets, was a safe house that he paid for with his own money – in Canadian dollars. Kit’s ‘official address’, where everyone at the embassy supposed he lived, was on the top floor of a Georgian terrace in Pimlico. He had sublet it to a junior doctor who, because of her hospital schedule, was seldom there. The doctor knew that she was
paying
less than half the going rent. In exchange, she had to follow a script if anyone turned up looking for Kit or made enquiries. She had to give the impression that she was a secret girlfriend – possibly one that was cheating on her husband – and pretend to be very embarrassed and a bit angry too. Meanwhile back in the East End, anyone who snooped around looking for ‘the Canadian geezer’ was in for a nasty surprise. The Montreal shipping agent was a perfect cover – it explained his American accent and fluent French – and his irregular comings and goings. And ‘the
b
rothers
’, of course, assumed the shipping agent stuff was ‘pure porkie’ and that Kit was a fellow villain engaged in smuggling.

Kit loved his bolthole. As soon as the got in, he took off his tie and draped it around a plaster death mask of Baudelaire that he’d found in a junk shop on the rue Saint Jacques, not far from the Panthéon. He poured a brandy and bade a toast to the pale mask of the French poet.

The room shook as a train rumbled past. Kit’s flat backed on to a railway embankment. All the embassy staff on similar pay grades rented smart townhouses in Kensington, Chelsea or Hampstead, but Kit preferred the rough edges and accents of the East End. He liked to get away from people like himself: educated, arrogant, privileged assholes.

Most days, the couple in the downstairs flat were the only sane people he ever met. The husband was a reserve centre forward for a first division football club. He had to supplement his
football
wages by working as a draughtsman and a signwriter. He also played the clarinet and went to Labour Party meetings – mostly to complain about Gaitskell wanting ‘to sell out the workers’. His wife, an immensely strong and shrewd woman, had become a seamstress in a fashion house after leaving school at fourteen. The proprietors noticed that she had an eye for colours and began to trust her with commissioning designs. Kit found the wife reserved and a little suspicious, but the man was always friendly and open. He called Kit ‘old china’. What’s that mean? China plate? Must be slang for mate. Kit smiled: ‘We’re mates.’ They had two kids under five – and the wife was pregnant again.

Kit lit the gas fire and settled in an armchair with his brandy. He liked the neighbourhood; he even liked the brothers. Sometimes he met them for a drink at the Blind Beggar – they never let him buy a round. Maybe they were cultivating him as a future gang member. The thought was flattering. The brothers were bad guys, very bad, but certainly weren’t the worst. A new gang was
surfacing
in Stratford who, it seemed to Kit, were truly evil. The brothers, of course, were evil too, but they compensated with a certain sleek beauty and style. The new gang had no beauty, no style: nothing but raw psychopathic cruelty. Their idea of a ‘don’t try that again warning’ was to nail their victims to the floor with six-inch nails and cut off their toes with bolt cutters. In any case, their protection rackets were nudging too close to the
Manor – and there were dark rumours down at the Blind Beggar.

There was something about dangerous men that was queerly thrilling. Kit found this thrill in the presence of the two younger brothers, both of whom were boxers of almost professional
standard
. When you looked into their eyes there was nothing there; nothing but black bottomless wells of emptiness. Not the faintest glint of fear, humour or doubt. If they decided they had to kill you, they were going to kill you. Asking for mercy or forgiveness was as pointless as feeding a dead cat. Kit was beginning to
understand
that the Brits were a hard people – capable of violence as well as endurance. But they were quiet about it. North and South Americans were violent too, but in a more affable way. Once, when he was a boy, a drunk had stumbled from a bar in Managua and embraced him hard. The drunk breathed rum fumes into his face and spoke Spanish with a strong Nica accent. He whispered into Kit’s ear: ‘What’s the difference,
chico
, between cutting up a gringo and cutting up an onion?’

Kit was frightened. He looked around for his parents, but they were buying something from a flower stall a hundred yards away. He was so terrified that he feared wetting himself. He tried not to tremble and to be polite. ‘I don’t know,
señor
, what is the difference?’

‘When you cut up a gringo, you don’t cry.’ The drunk then threw his head back and roared with laughter before
disappearing
back into the bar.

It was a turning point. Ever since that day, Kit had felt deep shame. He had nearly peed himself: he was a coward. When he went back to boarding school, he gave up cross-country running for American football and learned to box. He had to prove that he wasn’t a coward after all. And volunteering for the OSS had been part of the same pattern. Kit knew deep down that it wasn’t just the Kennedy confrontation that had caused him to volunteer for the Agency – he had been heading that way in any case.

The induction course for new agents was just as much about forming the minds of the recruits as it was about imparting
spycraft
. You were first told that the United States government will
never
‘order or authorise assassination in a clandestine
operation
’. Kit remembered the intense look on the instructor’s face as he said those very words. The instructor then paused and examined the eager upturned faces of America’s future spy elite. ‘And, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘that – along with “the cheque is in the post” and “I promise I won’t come in your mouth” – is one of the world’s three biggest lies.’ What the ban on assassination really meant was that you
never
write anything down. All planning and coordination must be mental and deniable.

Later they learned to refer to killings as ‘wet ops’. The ideal assassination, of course, was one that could be passed off as an accident. And the most efficient form of ‘accident’ is a fall of more than seventy-five feet. (‘Elevator shafts, stairwells, unscreened windows and bridges will serve. Bridge falls into water are not reliable. Ideally, try to ensure that no wound or condition not attributable to the fall is discernible after death.’)

Kit’s first attempt at a ‘wet job’ took place in Germany during his last posting. Horst had turned out to be a double agent:
double
in the sense that he seemed to be taking money from both the Stasi and the CIA. It was impossible to turn him over to the West German authorities: a court process would have
compromised
agents in the field. Kit and a major from the US Army Intelligence Corps decided to take Horst for a drive along the Rhine in Horst’s own car at two in the morning. The German’s hands and feet were bound and he must have thought they were planning to kill him by making it look like he had fallen asleep and driven over a cliff – and he was determined to make sure it didn’t happen that way. As they were driving along an
autobahn
, Horst’s car sputtered to a stop. ‘Fuck,’ shouted Kit, turning to Horst in the back seat, ‘your fucking gasoline gauge doesn’t work.’

Horst smiled: he had been waiting for Kit to find out.

‘What are we going to do?’ said the major.

‘Listen, Roger, would you mind walking back to the village to chase up some gas – or a telephone – while I look after this piece of shit.’

Kit listened to the major’s feet as they crunched away into the darkness. After five minutes Kit got out of the car to have a pee. Just as he started pissing, a voice began to shout from the other side of the autobahn. ‘
Horst, kommt hier – macht schnell
!’ Somehow Horst had managed to undo the ropes that were
binding
his feet and hands. Before Kit could even do up his flies, Horst was out of the car and running towards the voice.

Kit shouted, ‘Fuck,’ and took off running after his prisoner. He was still ten feet behind when Horst climbed over the autobahn guardrail to get across the central reservation to reach whoever was calling to him from the opposite lanes. Except there wasn’t a central reservation: they were on a viaduct. Neither Kit nor his German counterpart from the BfV, the West German FBI, heard the body land on the gravel streambed two hundred and fifty feet below. They waited for five seconds; then the BfV colleague called across the dark void. ‘Kit, you still want me to drive around to pick up you and Roger?’

‘Yes, please.’

It was textbook perfection. The police and local press reported it as a ‘tragic accident’ – motorist ran out of fuel and fell to his death while seeking help. Two days later workmen were busy raising the barriers to prevent such an accident from happening again. There were, however, other repercussions. Kit’s cover was blown – and he was never sure how. In the end, there were more deaths and Kit had to leave Germany – which was one of the
reasons
he preferred sleeping in a safe house in the East End.

‘How long is Brian going to be away?’

‘I don’t know.’ Jennifer looked out to sea and the wind blew a twist of hair across her mouth. ‘He couldn’t say for certain – at least a week, maybe two.’

Kit skipped back as a breaker crashed and surged over the shingle. The wind was blowing the tops off the waves. ‘Bracing,’ he said.

‘I love it. It clears the head.’ Jennifer pointed to a black hull that was rising and plunging against the stiff south-westerly gusts.

Kit tightened his jacket against the cold wind. ‘What’s this
desolate
place called again?’

‘Dunwich. It used to be one of England’s biggest cities, but it fell into the sea. Coastal erosion.’

‘It is spooky here.’ Kit suddenly halted and pointed to the top of the sandy red cliff, ‘Look at that.’

‘Oh, no!’ Jennifer turned away and shut her eyes. ‘I’m not going to look.’

Kit continued to regard the ribcage of a human skeleton that hung like a tree root out of the cliff face. ‘Should we tell anyone?’

‘No, it happens all the time. It’s the last remaining corner of the churchyard. One more winter of cliff-fall and all the graves will be gone.’

‘When Caddie was in her first year at medical school, they gave her a brown wooden box containing an entire skeleton. None of the bones were stuck together – it was like a jigsaw puzzle.’

‘I remember. She used to ask me to pick bones at random out of the box and hold them up so she could guess what they were. I hated it – but I wasn’t going to show her I was chicken.’

‘Remember that time she took us to the medical museum at Johns Hopkins – all those bottled foetuses …’

‘Please, Kit, that’s enough … not at a time like this.’

Kit wondered what she meant, but didn’t ask.

‘Have you got much more work to do?’ said Jennie, changing the subject.

‘I’ve got to go back to the airbase tomorrow – boring ODA stuff.’

‘ODA?’

‘Office of the Defense Attaché. It’s not even my job – the
assistant
attaché who should be doing it has the flu.’

‘Have you got to count the atom bombs?’

‘God no, it would take too long. No, I’ve got to give a talk on the Status of Visiting Forces Agreement.’ Kit paused and pretended to look cross. ‘Who told you we’ve got atom bombs in the UK?’

‘No one, just a guess. So what is this visiting forces thing?’

‘It has to do with legal jurisdiction in matters concerning US military and indigenous personnel.’

‘Indigenous personnel?’

‘That’s anyone who isn’t an American. In this case, the British.’

‘So Brian is an “indigenous personnel”.’

‘That’s right.’

‘And when I have my ba…’ Jennifer stopped and faked a cough to cover her verbal slip.

Kit took in what she had almost said, but pretended not to have noticed. Nonetheless, the half-spoken word hit him like a hammer between the eyes. He began to shake all over, but hoped that if Jennifer noticed she would think he was shivering because of the cold.