A Spy's Life (6 page)

‘How do you know it’s empty?’ asked Harland, smiling to himself.

Vigo laughed. ‘I admit to the assumption, unwarranted perhaps, that your personal life is in its usual state of disarray. Otherwise I imagine that someone would be collecting you and that you wouldn’t be waiting for a car.’

A fast recovery, thought Harland. Maybe he wasn’t losing his touch after all.

‘But forgive me, if I’m wrong,’ said Vigo. ‘Look – it would be lovely to see you. Why don’t we have an early dinner? Shall we say Noonan’s Steakhouse at seven? It’s at Lexington and forty-eighth Street. I’ll book – it’s on me.’

Harland was about to decline, but then thought that an evening by himself was precisely what he did not need. He was feeling rested and, besides, he was curious to know what Vigo wanted. He’d bet his life that there was a very specific reason for the call. Walter Vigo always had a purpose, even if at first he did not declare it.

4

PHILOSOPHER SPY

Harland was late at Noonan’s, arriving at twenty past seven. As he waited to check the old blue overcoat he was using as a substitute for the one lost in the crash, he looked around the restaurant and decided it was an odd place for Vigo to choose: a phoney club atmosphere; hearty back-slapping men, and women with the expensive, caramelised look of over-decorated pâtisserie. No, Noonan’s was not at all Vigo’s natural habitat.

The maître d’ gestured to a booth in the far corner of the restaurant and told him that Mr Vigo had been there for some time. He found Vigo tucked into the booth, with his back to the rest of the diners. The fingers of one hand rested on the stem of a vodka martini, while the other held down the pages of a Sotheby’s auction catalogue.

He rose as Harland approached and proffered his hand. ‘Bobby, what a pleasure to see you – and looking so well too. Slide in there and let’s get you a drink.’ He examined Harland in the light of the lamp over the table. ‘Let me look at you. Gracious, there’s not a scratch on you. You’re a bloody miracle and a famous miracle at that. I suppose you know that every daily newspaper in the world published the picture of your rescue.’

‘I’m beginning to appreciate that,’ said Harland regretfully.

‘You’re going to become one of those icons of photography, an exquisitely comic fate for an ex-spy, don’t you think?’ He paused to irradiate Harland with a smile. ‘Now, what are you going to have to drink, Bobby – champagne?’

Harland accepted and reminded himself to guard against Vigo’s we’re-all-in-it-together bonhomie.

Vigo clapped his catalogue shut and held it up for Harland to see. ‘Incunabula!’ he proclaimed. ‘Isn’t that a marvellous word? It refers to all books printed before 1501 – just a few years after Caxton’s press.’

‘Yes, Walter, I think I knew that.’

‘But do you know what it means in Latin? I learned the other day that incunabula are swaddling clothes – I suppose it’s the idea of the very first stage in any given development.’

Vigo hadn’t lost his pedagogical style. And physically he hadn’t changed much either, although Harland knew that he must have passed his fiftieth birthday. He had the same polished skin, the same prominent, fleshy nose and slightly popping eyes. Even his hair, a unique mass of tight curls that bunched at his collar like the improbable locks of a wig, seemed as thick and vigorous as it had been when Vigo had come to lecture Harland’s SIS intake at the Fort training school on Euro-communism. But he had gained weight around the shoulders and chest, and his face had thickened at the jaw, which added to his appearance of substance. A stranger might have taken him for a professional connoisseur, an art dealer or wine merchant. But there was nothing refined about Walter Vigo, nothing ponderous or precious about him. He could mix it with the best and, when circumstances required, was capable of demonic application. As he sat beaming across from Harland, he seemed more than ever to project a massive and protuberant cleverness.

Harland’s champagne arrived. Vigo ceremoniously raised his own glass. ‘Here’s to your survival, Bobby. Good health.’ He drained the martini, never letting his eyes leave Harland’s. ‘From what I hear, it was a remarkable feat. You were half-dead when they got to you.’

‘I was lucky, the others weren’t. It’s as simple as that.’

‘Yes, but surviving in those conditions. That took some guts – not that there was ever any question about your personal courage, Bobby. We know that. We know what you did in Germany and Czechoslovakia. And I hear you’ve been in some pretty tight situations since you left us.’

‘As I say, I was lucky.’

‘I suppose in one sense you were. I mean happening upon that phone. What an extraordinary piece of fortune that was. And you knew the man whose phone it was.’

‘Yes, it was Alan Griswald’s.’

Vigo was certainly on top of things. Almost none of this had been released to the press. Harland realised that the information would have been quickly picked up by the SIS contingent at the UK mission who had any number of friends in the UN.

‘Ah yes, of course. Alan Griswald. Now we’ve come across him before, haven’t we?’

Harland wasn’t going to help. ‘Have you, Walter? I wasn’t aware of that.’

‘Yes, where did we meet Mr Griswald before?’

‘He was in Europe – Vienna and Berlin. Also in the Middle East.’

‘Oh yes, Alan Griswald. CIA to his boots, a good soldier, a good solid Cold War warrior. I remember him. He had a wife … um?’

‘Sally.’

‘Yes, Sally. Poor woman. Of course there were many other casualties, but it means a great deal more when you know someone. Griswald retired from the Agency. What did he go on to do? Was he involved with the UN?’

‘He was working for the War Crimes Tribunal. I saw him in The Hague last week. I was there for the World Water Convention. We bumped into each other outside the convention centre and then both of us walked slap-bang into Guy Cushing – you remember the man in the Far East Controllerate who had the money problem? Pushed out because of his debts and the gambling thing?’

‘Of course,’ Vigo said unenthusiastically. ‘Yes, Cushing.’

‘Guy works for the UN chemical weapons agency in The Hague. We all had dinner that evening in the old town – a place near the Palace. Griswald didn’t say much about what he was doing because Guy was there. He said that he had been engaged in some follow-up work for the Tribunal. I didn’t know what that meant. He said he was going to Washington and we loosely arranged to hook up because I was going to be in Rockville, which is no distance from DC. That’s how I came to be on the plane.’

‘Yes, I heard that from someone.’ He signalled for another martini. ‘Any idea whether he was going to see his former employers at Langley, Virginia? That’s not far from DC either.’

‘No,’ said Harland, now certain that this was not a friendly fixture. He thought suddenly and rather guiltily of Griswald’s wallet. Griswald had gone on about some big breakthrough he had made and on the cab journey to the restaurant Harland distinctly remembered how he had patted his breast pocket and said that he had found everything he needed for a hell of a case. ‘One day,’ he had said, ‘I’ll tell you the whole goddam frigging story and you, Bob, will be especially interested.’ That was the trouble with the last few days, Harland thought. He was so bloody vague; things were coming back to him, but very slowly.

‘So, then you flew back on the UN plane to New York,’ continued Vigo gently. ‘Had you seen each other in Washington?’

‘No, in the end it wasn’t possible.’

‘But you had arranged to fly back together on the UN plane.’

‘Not really. Vigo told me the time of the departure and said where they’d be. I thought I had missed it by a long time, but then I found them in the airport and took the ride.’

‘Anyone else on the plane that I’d know?’

‘I don’t think so, but they haven’t all been identified.’

‘How many remain unidentified?’

‘One – a man.’

‘Odd, that. I mean you would think he would have been missed by now. What did the investigators say to you? They’ve been to see you?’

‘Yes, I’ve seen them twice. I went out to the airport today – went over the crash scene.’

‘Did they have any ideas about this individual?’

‘Not that they told me.’

The maître d’ appeared at their booth. Harland ordered soft-shell crab and lamb chops, Vigo lobster bisque and blinis of almas caviar – the roe of an albino beluga sturgeon. Vigo told the man to bring the wine they had discussed before Harland arrived.

‘How’s your sister?’ he asked, suddenly snapping a bread stick. ‘You knew Harriet was at Oxford with my wife, Davina. Davina always says that she was far and away the most able of her generation at LMH. What’s she doing now?’

‘She’s married to Robin Bosey, the advertising man. You may have heard of White Bosey Cane. That’s his agency.’

‘Oh yes, I know exactly who you mean: always in the papers; designs his own clothes, works for the Labour Party.’ A flicker of disdain swept through Vigo’s eyes. ‘And she’s happy with
Robin
?’

‘I think so. She does some financial consultancy, but brings up the children mostly. She had three, the last one four years ago.’

‘Seems an awful waste of such a good mind – I mean Harriet sitting at home and being married to a man like Bosey. You’re frightfully close, aren’t you? I believe she was a great support when you had that terrible year. What with Louise leaving and your getting ill, it must have been an extremely difficult period for you, Bobby. That’s all all right now?’ Harland nodded and smiled at Vigo’s parenthetic concern for his health.

‘What a year that was, eh?’ mused Vigo. ‘Stumps drawn on the great game. Enemies and friends wearing the same suits and driving the same cars and suddenly we had to look very hard indeed to understand the new patterns of play. It was unsettling, and yet deeply stimulating at the same time. The people who suggested that the twentieth century ended in those months are absolutely right. Look at what else happened – the technical revolution and the leap to globalisation. It took some time, I have to confess, for us to get the point that digital information was infinitely more fluid than the information that’s written down on a piece of paper, placed in a file and locked up in a steel vault. Secrets developed wings of their own. Things that had been stationary became fleet of foot; those that were solid and impenetrable became porous. Secrecy was no longer an absolute condition, but something that was measured in degrees.’ He stopped to taste the wine that the maître d’ had brought, nodded and waited as it was poured. Harland picked up his glass, reflecting on the fact that he’d need the drink to get through the evening. ‘But, of course,’ continued Vigo, ‘what was our weakness was everybody’s weakness. There were new lines of attack, new pathways to explore and new friends to be made. You’ve missed a lot, Bobby. It’s been challenging for the old lags who’ve clung on.’

Vigo had certainly clung on. Harland had heard the details from a colleague who was brushed aside in his ascent. Vigo had served for a brief period in Washington. In 1995 he had manoeuvred to take over the newly formed Controllerate responsible for the Middle East and Africa. Five years later he had become Controller, Central and Eastern Europe. Recently he had got an even grander position which required a special title which no one could remember, but which seemed to incorporate security and public affairs.

‘But you’ve done very well for yourself, Walter. I hear you’re a great power in the land. You must be going for the top job?’

‘No, no. I am sure that won’t come my way. Robin Teckman may be asked to stay on for three more years, which means that his successor will be chosen from the generation below me. Tim Lapthorne or Miles Morsehead are the obvious candidates. I’m content with my lot and there’s much to do in the years that remain to me in the Service.’

Harland remembered Lapthorne and Morsehead, two bright stars of the early eighties’ intakes. Morsehead was the obvious choice. From an early moment in his career he had managed to seem bold and reassuring at the same time.

‘You’re sounding like a politician, Walter,’ he said.

Vigo ignored the remark. The food arrived and he set about drawing up the bisque to his lips in a fluent scooping motion. ‘Of course,’ he said eventually, ‘you would have gone a long way up the ladder yourself, Bobby, if you hadn’t bailed out. You’ve got what it takes – intelligence, imagination, discipline, charm. You were good at winning people’s confidence, a very light touch with the most difficult of characters. Remember that Russian diplomat in Turkey you persuaded to drive over the border with a chunk of the new Soviet armour welded into his car engine? What was his name?’

‘Tishkov – Avi Tishkov.’

He paused and glanced around the restaurant with an air of someone experiencing public transport for the first time.

‘Why did you go?’ he said emphatically. ‘Why? There was no need, surely? We would’ve made certain you had time to recover properly. You were marked for the top, Bobby.’

Harland opened his hands in a gesture of appeal. ‘When you’ve had a brush with cancer, you think through your life and see it in a different light. It’s a terrible cliché, but it’s true. I decided to do something else. That was all. What I didn’t appreciate at the time was that Louise was thinking along the same lines.’

‘Yes, discipline,’ mused Vigo, failing to follow the trail about Louise’s departure. ‘That really is your foremost quality. You never gave in to what I would guess was an essentially turbulent nature. It was that tension between impulse and control that made you a good agent. You watched yourself as carefully as anyone else. You became a philosopher, a thinker, because that way you would survive. I admired you for that thoughtfulness and the way the habit of weighing things extended into your work. Yet I have to say that I feared what would happen if you let go of the reins. That would be the end of the philosopher spy, I was always sure of that, the end of the man who talked Descartes to some poor Polish trade official and induced him to donate all his country’s economic information to our data bank.’