A Spy's Life (31 page)

He said nothing.

‘I mean it, Bobby. You’re a bastard.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He shifted in his chair. ‘I really am sorry. But I’m stuck in the middle of this thing. I can’t go back. I have to go forward.’

‘Well … you’ll need the things I’ve been holding for you. I always knew they’d be useful one day.’

She pushed him gently out of the way with her forearm, knelt down to the bottom drawer of a cupboard and pulled out a red petty-cash box.

‘You remember you had me keep everything up to date when you were with SIS?’ She looked at him despairingly. ‘You know – your covers! You got me to maintain these bloody false identities and make sure there was activity in your accounts while you were away.’

Of course Harland remembered. From the moment he entered Century House on the Intelligence Officer’s New Entry Course, he was taught how to build and maintain cover. In his time at SIS he had five or six. Each cover usually – but not always – included a false passport, a driving licence, a cheque guarantee card and one or two credit cards. It was drummed into them from the very first that these identities must have ‘hinterland’, by which it was meant a life that could be inferred from membership cards, receipts in the name of the cover, letters and so forth. It was advisable to have an ACA – an Alias Cover Address – where correspondence could be sent and someone would vouch for you if inquiries were made.

Harland was allocated a man in Wimbledon, a retired SIS officer who had settled down with a Dutch widow ten years his junior. His name was Jeavons. For a time the relationship worked well: Harland gained invaluable tips on trade-craft.

But it was a laborious business, keeping Jeavons sweet and making sure that there was enough convincing ‘wallet litter’ for the identities he used. Towards the end of Harland’s time at SIS, Jeavons lost interest and his wife took over the running of Harland’s affairs. But then Mrs Jeavons started to invent reasons for Harland to visit her, usually when her husband was out. It was plain that he had to go to bed with her, or move cover address. He opted for the latter and asked Harriet to manage things while he found someone new. It wasn’t ideal but she had married and got a new name and as ever had inexhaustible energy.

By this time he had two main covers – Charles Suarez, a construction engineer from the British community in Buenos Aires, and Tristan O’Donnell, a salesman from County Cork. Both possessed false passports from the country of origin, arranged by SIS in the days when these things were less closely monitored. His colleagues who had been issued documentation by the passport office in Petty France were required to lodge them at Century House when they were not being used. But nobody seemed to mind the abuse of a foreign passport and Harland had been allowed to keep his.

Into Harriet’s safekeeping also went the two bank accounts, one held at Coutts in the Strand and the other at the Royal Bank of Scotland in Victoria Street. Over the years, Harland had achieved a degree of realistic churn in the two accounts, using them occasionally to bank money of his own or pay off his and Louise’s household bills. From these two accounts were also paid magazine subscriptions, video library fees, annual donations to Amnesty International, Shelter and The Salmon and Trout Association. In the days when he needed the services of O’Donnell and Charles Suarez he used in spare moments to write off job applications in either name so that he would have recent letters addressed to him to keep in a briefcase.

In the late autumn of 1989, when Harland travelled as an ‘illegal’ to Prague, he went without the protection of his own diplomatic passport and instead became Charles Suarez. This had been his own decision because he didn’t want his name turning up on an immigration or customs list when he crossed from East Germany to Czechoslovakia. With his arrest, the usefulness of Charles Suarez and his carefully nurtured interests and ambitions ended. In fact, he never again saw the passport or the briefcase containing his reply from a construction firm in Reading. When he resigned from the service a few months later, nobody thought to ask him about any other identities he had cultivated alongside Suarez’s.

Harriet unlocked the box with a key she took from the desk, and fished inside. There were bank statements, a driving licence, a video card and membership to a club in Mayfair called the Regency Rooms.

‘Hal,’ he said, ‘the passport must be out of date. It’s a decade or more since I looked at this stuff.’

‘Nope,’ she said, pulling a pristine EU passport from a brown envelope. ‘In a bored moment I applied for a new one to see what would happen and they sent this back without batting an eyelid. Anyway, I somehow didn’t want Tris to turn his toes up quite yet. Look, there’s you.’ She showed him the picture. ‘Not bad. You gave me a whole strip of photos for visas. Don’t you remember?’

Harland did vaguely remember. ‘And I suppose the driving licence is current and clean?’

‘What did you expect?’

He picked up some bank statements and looked at a recent sheet for 1999. His eyes settled on a column in the right. ‘Hal! This was in credit twenty-five thousand pounds last year. Where did this come from?’

‘That’s why I didn’t want Tris to die,’ she said with a giggle. ‘He’s been quite a success on the stock market. In fact Tris is currently in the black to the tune of forty-one thousand pounds.’ She handed him the latest bank statement.

‘Jesus, is this your money?’

‘Yes, it’s all completely legitimate. I just wanted to keep certain transactions separate. Tris has two credit cards – banks kept on offering him gold, platinum and what have you, so he accepted. Last winter he paid for us all to go to Antigua, first class.’ She handed him all the papers. ‘It’s all completely kosher. If you have to go to Prague again, you can go as Tristan O’Donnell.’

‘You know Prague’s a different place now.’ He moved to touch the top of her hand but withdrew at the last moment. ‘They’re members of NATO. They’re officially part of the West. The Czechs are a civilised people and all anybody wants to do is buy Gap and eat McDonald’s.’

‘Semi-West! I read the papers. Half the corruption scandals in East Europe are traced back to Prague and Budapest. Look, I just don’t want you to be hurt – that’s all.’ She looked at him with an utterly vulnerable expression. He muttered some reassurance but knew he was pushing her away.

She rose from crouching over the petty-cash box. ‘When this is over, you really ought to talk things through with a sensible shrink. You don’t seem to be aware of what’s going on outside you much. You seem to experience fear, but have no idea about danger, no concept of risk. You used not to be like that, you know. You were more balanced.’

‘You’re probably right.’

‘I am.’

‘I’ve been thinking about Vigo,’ he said, shifting his position on the chair. ‘How bloody odd it is that he’s just gone off the radar. He went to see Tomas’s doctor and asked about him. Then nothing. What’s that suggest to you?’

‘That he no longer needs to pressurise you, that he’s found out what he wanted.’

‘How would a visit to the hospital satisfy that, unless Vigo was somehow aware of the hunt for Tomas and was keen to learn whether he was effectively silenced as a witness? I think I’ll pay Walter a visit. You know those people who brought him here for the party – the Hammicks? Do you think you could persuade them to give you Davina’s home address?’

‘We don’t have to ask them. Davina Cummings is bound to be in the LMH Annual, even if only to let all her contemporaries know what a wonderful life she’s enjoying.’

She reached up to a shelf at the far end of the room and withdrew a slender ring binder. ‘Here she is: “Davina Cummings – brackets Vigo – twenty-three, Kensington Hill Square, London W11”. Funny, I thought they lived in Chelsea. Still, the book is last year’s so it ought to be right.’

Harland made a note of the address. ‘There’s one other thing,’ he said. ‘I’ll be away for three or four days. Can you go and tell Tomas where I am and what I’m doing? He must be pretty terrified and I’m sure it would be good for him to see a friendly face. You’d better talk to the doctor beforehand. Tomas may not know how bad his condition is.’

‘Of course. After all, he is my nephew.’

He rose early and took one of the Bosey cars to Kensington Hill Square in Holland Park. The day was cold and hazy and the sun had not yet dispersed the mist in the side streets. He parked outside number fifteen and counted the doorways to twenty-three, an averagely plush residence for the area with two conical bay trees at the entrance. Although the terrace was set back from the line of the road behind a run of nineteenth-century railings, it was possible to see the doorway to the house.

He decided to make his move at eight o’clock and spent the next fifteen minutes running through the questions he had for Vigo, and intermittently musing on the price of a house in the square. Two and a bit million pounds, he thought. Davina Vigo certainly had ‘background’.

A little before eight a black London taxi passed his car and pulled up outside number twenty-three. Harland sunk a little lower in his seat and watched two men get out. As one turned to pay the driver Harland recognised his main interrogator at the Crèche, Anthony Rivers. The other was Derek Blanchard, the unlovely MI5 man. They appeared to be expected because they were let in immediately. A few minutes later a dark blue Mondeo saloon drew up and a further three men got out and went into the house. He was sure one of these was Griffiths, the thickset Celt who had approached him at the airport. And the parka? That must have been the same individual who’d followed him in Regent Street.

He waited for an hour, watching the windows for signs of activity. The more he thought about it, the more this breakfast meeting, held on a public holiday at the home of a senior member of SIS, seemed decidedly unofficial. He remembered that at the Cre`che it had struck him he was being questioned by a couple of retreads. And there was a distinctly weekend feel to the others – the men who staffed the Cre`che and had followed him so blatantly the next day. A proper surveillance operation would have used scores of men and women and however much he went through his dry-cleaning procedures it would have been virtually impossible for him to shake them off.

So Vigo was making do with limited resources, a group of individuals who came from intelligence backgrounds but who were no longer employed by MI5 or MI6 – people like Guy Cushing, who owed him. The purpose of this personal crusade baffled Harland. But plainly Vigo was at odds with his colleagues at Vauxhall Cross, and that knowledge gave Harland a lot more leverage than he had possessed when he set out that morning.

His thoughts were interrupted by a cab drawing up outside number twenty-three. Blanchard and Rivers reappeared and got in. The other three men followed them through the open door and, without looking back, climbed into the Mondeo and departed. Then a man and woman, who must have arrived some time before the others, left together. For a moment Harland wondered whether he should follow one of the vehicles, but realised that he stood to learn much more by catching Vigo off guard.

He waited ten minutes so that Vigo wouldn’t suspect he had seen his visitors, then approached the laurel-green front door and rang the bell. A few moments elapsed before Vigo’s voice sounded on the intercom.

‘It’s Bobby Harland, Walter. I thought we could have a talk.’

‘It’s not a terribly convenient moment, Bobby,’ came the voice, unruffled.

‘You’ll change your mind when you hear what I have to say.’

The entry-phone went dead and the door opened a few seconds later.

Harland noticed his clothes first: suit trousers and a tie – a silk job with a plump knot. ‘Off to work on New Year’s Day, Walter? You must have a lot on.’

Vigo regarded him with wary interest.

‘Can I come in?’

‘If it can’t wait, yes. But I do indeed have a lot on.’

He led Harland to the far end of the hall and into a small room lined with wire-mesh fronted bookcases and antique maps. All three windows were secured by impressive metal trelliswork. The floor consisted of old black and white tiles and above the carved eighteenth-century fireplace hung a bulbous convex mirror. On a Jefferson reading lectern lay a couple of closed volumes. The room had the air and silence of a scholar’s retreat.

‘So this is where you keep your incunabula?’

‘Such that I possess,’ Vigo replied tartly.

‘It’s a very soothing room. It makes me think that I should have paid more attention to where I live and what I surround myself with. I admire you for it, Walter. It’s important in your job to maintain a balance. Do you still trot off to the London Library for an afternoon’s reading?’

‘Not as much as I’d like,’ said Vigo. He was waiting for Harland to get to the point.

‘I’ve come to talk to you about Alan Griswald,’ said Harland. ‘You know you were interested to find out what he was carrying. Well, I have the information with me.’

Vigo cocked an eyebrow.

Harland withdrew the envelope and selected the print of Lipnik by the swimming pool. ‘This is Viktor Lipnik, an indicted war criminal who is believed to have been killed. Griswald knew he was alive. The picture was hidden in a code, which, I suspect, was your interest.’

Vigo looked at the photograph like someone who has been called upon to admire a child’s painting.

‘Well … thank you, Bobby. That’s most helpful of you.’

He took out the second image and showed it to Vigo, having carefully placed his thumb over Tomas’s head. ‘And this one is of Lipnik at the site of a massacre in Bosnia. Enhancement of the bottom left-hand corner shows several bodies. As you can see, it’s dated to the period of the Srebrenica massacres in north-east Bosnia.’

Vigo put his hands in his pockets. ‘It’s good of you to show me these. No doubt you’ve forwarded your find to the relevant parties.’

‘The UN and to the FBI as well. They’re looking into the sabotage of the plane’s electronics systems. Viktor Lipnik is therefore the chief suspect in the investigation.’

Vigo emitted a ruminative sound. ‘Yes, I imagine that must be the case.’