The Oktober Projekt (8 page)

Three

A Cool Reception

London, November

Nick’s
stay in Moscow ran to five weeks and he was handed over in a simple
ceremony on the Latvian border at Terehova. Met not by an all singing
delegation from London, but a one woman British Embassy, a senior member of the
Foreign & Commonwealth Office dispatched explicitly for his repatriation;
Clare Lostock was his entire official reception committee. In her early
fifties, she had neat straight grey hair, a full figure she covered in an
elegant expensive jacket, tailored blouse, and knee length skirt. With a no
nonsense face that had made her desirable in her youth, Lostock had a surface
elegance that wouldn’t have been out of place on the front cover of a business
magazine. Her eyes and mouth however suggested a different side, a woman who,
in the right company, knew how to have fun. Recoiling at Nick’s appearance,
resembling what her mother would have called a common tramp, Lostock formally
received Nick on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government. As a respected FCO
troubleshooter, Lostock was accustomed to bringing home damaged goods, which
Nick on that day surely was.

‘We are going straight to the airfield,’ she briskly announced,
not wishing to stare at the CO8 officer slouched beside her in a totally
dishevelled sate.
 

‘Great,’ said Nick, shrugging off his lethargy.

As part of her strict mandate, Lostock never uttered another
word during the drive to the Latvian Air Force base at Rēzekne where a
Royal Air Force BAe 125 executive jet waited. She even scolded the flight
attendant, a Leading Aircraftman from Cardiff who had the temerity to enquire
if Nick would like a second glass of orange juice during the flight.
 

Touching down at RAF Northolt a Ford Galaxy its windows tinted
grey, swept out to park by the aircraft steps.
 

‘Thanks for all the help,’ said Nick as Lostock officially
handed him over to two of the Service’s security officers, its very own
praetorian guard. As one of them opened the Galaxy’s rear door, Nick impishly
kissed Lostock’s cheek before they could hustle him into the car.

‘My pleasure,’ said Lostock to the back of the speeding Galaxy.

Sandwiched between his two minders, Nick sat back as snatches
of countryside slipped by; trees stripped of leaves the grass a dismal autumn
green as the Galaxy headed for Hertfordshire.

‘Do I get a clue where we’re going?’

‘Aspley.’ One of his minders answered, his scowl saying he
didn’t care to be troubled again.

Aspley Grange overlooked Berkhamsted with a proprietary air. A
rambling Victorian Gothic house built for a brewing baron as a symbol of his
social status, it became government property in the 1920s in lieu of unpaid
taxes. The extensive walled estate was dominated by the large house with its
added mansard roof, a wing with its own chapel, all set within secure grounds.
Housing intelligence staff during the Second World War, it had been in Service
hands since the 1950s, acquired in a surreptitious deal, or so the legend went.
From three-quarters down its serpentine drive, Nick saw the chapel’s spire
rising above the trees, to its right the castellated turrets covering an older
part of the house. Instead of stopping by Aspley’s grand entrance the Galaxy
crunched round the wide drive, turning fast off the gravel onto a tarmac avenue
by a complex of uninspired annexes added sometime in the Eighties.
 

Jerking to a stop outside a two-storey block, Nick’s minders
ushered him inside fast, a troublesome guest who had to be brought in by the
servants’ entrance. Inside, the bare breeze block walls had been tastefully
rolled in cream emulsion, intensifying the strip lighting as it bounced back
off floor tiles, buffed to a reflective gleam. Above the acoustic door to Suite
1, a pair of lights, one red, one green were set in the wall; as one of Nick’s
minders directed him inside with a stiff, straight arm, the red light blinked
on. Sitting at a table Nick waited until the door gently closed, its lock
rotated home. There were cameras tucked high into each corner and a two-way
glass directly opposite the table in a far wall. Nick had been in the
interrogation block on numerous occasions, during training and when CO8 had
brought in defectors who, according to a Service euphemism, underwent ‘active
debriefing.’
 

The first interrogator to arrive was Bill McEntee, an avuncular
figure who reminded Nick of a history master with his round, calm indefatigable
face that carried a permanent lopsided grin.

‘How are you Nicholas?’ McEntee asked, crossing to the table,
his brown brogues scuffed at the toes gliding along.

‘I’ve been better Bill,’ said Nick as McEntee sat himself down,
unfastening his tweed jacket, dusting a speck of dust from his lapel. ‘Thought you’d
retired?’

‘Kept me on for the specials,’ McEntee said, taking out a small
wireless receiver from his pocket, looping it over his ear. ‘Technology,’ he
said, as though it was a disease, pressing it firmly in to his ear. ‘Moscow
rough?’

‘Could have been better,’ answered Nick, knowing his debriefing
had just officially begun.

McEntee nodded slowly, as though requiring a good deal of time
to digest this basic fact. During this moment of contemplation, the door slowly
opened and Vincent Soleby entered.
McEntee’s
usual long time partner, he was thin and tall and moved slowly, a studious man
dressed in a shabby cardigan, brown trousers and a white shirt. He had a
creased, lined face and a thick mane of white hair encircling a bald head. With
his square metal glasses, he gave the appearance of a senior college fellow
whose natural field might have been philosophy, which is in fact what he had
once practised before entering the Service.

‘Nick,’ Soleby said, in a terse acknowledgement, slipping a
manila bound dossier out from under his arm, throwing it onto the table with a
slap.

‘Vincent.’ Nick felt a little bubble of concern rise. Soleby
and McEntee, two of the Service’s most revered thumbscrews were not here to
shake his hand. ‘I thought you were taking it easy, writing scholarly texts?’

‘Mmm,’ Soleby replied, undoing the green string holding the
dossier together, spreading the manila cover flat. ‘I am, but they call me in
from to time to time, a complete bother,’ he said, scanning a typed report.

‘Shall we begin?’ proposed McEntee, for the benefit of a
technical officer taking care of the cameras and recording, plus today’s
observers; Hawick, watching proceedings unfold with Blackmore tucked
comfortably away behind the two-way glass.

‘Very lax of you Nick,’ Soleby stated, staring right into
Nick’s eyes, ‘Not being able to keep a check on one of your troops, allowing
her to moonlight like that.’

‘What was Wynn working on?’ McEntee wondered.

Nick, completely thrown, couldn’t fathom where they were
leading him.

‘She wasn’t working on anything,’ said Nick, feeling his nerve
return. ‘She was on soft duties at the Mad House.’

‘Mmm,’ said Soleby, licking his finger to get to a particular
sheet in the dossier.

‘What has she done? Not filled in her return to work papers? Not
pulling her weight? Insulted someone from over the river?’ Nick asked, digging
for a clue.

McEntee, taking instruction
from Blackmore through his earpiece receiver, shook his head solemnly. ‘No,
Nick, she’s gone and got herself killed, that’s what she’s done.’

‘How?’ Nick slumped deep in the curved plastic chair, his arms
laced across the table as the stinging mustard and grey walls seemed to move a
foot closer.

‘Then you have an almighty mess-up in Moscow,’ Soleby said,
pushing the dossier aside, closing its cover after apparently having seen
enough.

‘Operation Salvage, run us through it Nick,’ suggested McEntee,
his lopsided smile offering encouragement.

‘Am I under caution?’ asked Nick, playing up for the
microphones.

‘Don’t think so,’ McEntee said, getting to his feet.

‘Not as far as I know,’ added Soleby.

‘Moscow,’ McEntee reminded Nick, standing away to the right.
With his hands buried deep in his jacket pockets, tightening the tweed over his
broad shoulders, he threw endless assumptions on sloppy procedures at Nick.

‘They were waiting for us,’ said Nick.

‘Someone must have tipped them the wink then,’ proposed McEntee
sourly.

Soleby then took the initiative, his long arms clasped behind
his head, asking Nick in a dozen different ways if he was working for Moscow
and showed ill concealed disbelief as Nick avoided every point through his
controlled evasive replies.

‘Come on Nick, we’re only trying to get to the truth,’ McEntee
said after each blank answer, stroking his round chin.

‘We’re not dunderheads,’ said Soleby, a muscle in his face
ticked frantically up and down.

‘Who did you discuss the operation with? Someone not of our
parish or our calling perhaps?’ McEntee speculated, doing a brisk circuit round
the room. He was familiar with every inch of this suite; the broken out piece
of blue floor tile that his heels regularly caught, the dimpled fluorescent
strip light cover where dead flies collected.

‘No one except Alistair.’

‘Consorting with the enemy, Nick, that what you were doing?’
wondered Soleby, his muscle ticking away. ‘What about with your wife? Break the
rules in order to please her? Tell her because you’re not seeing eye to eye?
That what you did?’ said Soleby.

‘We barely talk.’

‘Break your entry routine?’ McEntee wondered, pushing off from
his spot against the wall with his hands.

‘No.’

‘Suspect anything on the drive in?’ McEntee continued, taking
up the chase.

‘Everything seemed fine.’

‘And you changed the plates?’

‘Yes.’

‘Standard precaution?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why’d you change them again?’ Soleby broke in, shaking
the blood back into his wrists, hands and fingers. ‘Had an inkling, gut
feeling, sixth sense? Because those on the car the Russians recovered from the
Crimea Bridge didn’t match the set you took in. That’s a worry for us.’

They were good, very good conceded Nick. Astute, smart and
persistent; in other circumstances or a different time in the past, Nick would
have congratulated them on their exceptional performance, how they functioned
as a team and bought them a drink in the Senior Officers’ Bar in Aspley’s main
house. Now it was simply a question of how long he would survive.
   

‘It’s something I do if I believe we’re entering a difficult
theatre of operation.’

‘So you’re saying your actions were justified?’ Soleby asked.

‘Weren’t they?’

‘That’s what we’d like to hear, your version, your
justification,’ said McEntee.

He told them the events surrounding the collection without
elaboration, including the little accountant’s sudden decision to defect there
and then, his concern that his superiors were onto him. But he never came close
to detailing their detour to Lubov’s apartment or what he carried in the sole
of his boot.

‘Do you mind if we backtrack slightly?’ wondered Soleby.

‘Clearance for the operation came from RUS/OPS?’
 
McEntee asked.

‘You and Parfrey working for Moscow?’ Soleby asked. ‘A pair of
traitors helping each other out?’ But this was one question too far bringing
Nick flying out of his seat.

Hitting the alarm circling the suite in a continuous wide
strip, McEntee held himself against a section of wall, and Soleby made off for
a neutral corner as two minders rushed in.

‘Perhaps Mr. Torr could have a drink while we take a break,’
McEntee said as Nick dropped back into his seat, arms folded, staring in fury
at Soleby who made it out through the door first.

When they returned Nick had drunk a small bottle of warm
mineral water and his mood had barely improved.

‘Think Lubov’s bleating for a defection justified an
unauthorised extraction? Endangering not only your own life, but that of a
fellow officer?’ Soleby asked.

For a second, Nick thought they were going to bring a charge
under health and safety as a means of ending his career. ‘Thinking on my feet,’
said Nick.

‘Course you were,’ McEntee smiled and shook his head.
‘Who decided to crash the roadblock?’ he
demanded.

‘I did and Alistair went with it.’ It seemed a hundred years
ago instead of more than a month when they’d set off for home.
 

‘But he’s not here to verify that is he,’ Soleby chided Nick.

 
‘They were waiting
for us,’ said Nick, rubbing the crooked bone in his nose, unable to forget
Foula’s limp arms flailing as the bullets tore into the Lada.

‘Did Lubov provide any insight into what his material might
be?’ Soleby asked.

Here it was thought Nick, the central question and he wondered
which way he should take them. ‘He didn’t have time to provide a sample,’ said
Nick as a starter for ten.
A profitable exchange we will all benefit from
, Nick recalled.
Four for silver, five for
gold, six for a secret never to be told.

‘So why did Lubov have the sudden urge to jump ship?’ McEntee
asked.

‘Something had spooked him,’ replied Nick, placing the sole of
his boot as flat as it would go. ‘He would reveal all once he was safely back
in London.’

‘So if Lubov had, in your words, not mine, Nick, “no time to
provide a sample”, why on earth did you proceed to attempt to crash your way
out?’ Soleby wondered his long face puzzled.

‘I didn’t have time for him to apply for a visa,’ said Nick
sourly.

‘Whether crashing out was the right decision is a moot point,’
McEntee said. ‘Either way, there you are, making for the border with what could
be a hot asset in the back, Foula riding shotgun. I understand you were in a
vulnerable position Nick. But what I can’t square is Lubov’s sudden decision to
up sticks and leave.’