Agent Running in the Field (11 page)

‘Only paper?’

‘Please. It is very important paper.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

He is unmoved by my terseness. Perhaps he was expecting it. Perhaps he’s always expecting it. Perhaps he despises me, as I suspect he despised Giles.

‘Do you have anything on your body, in your clothes or anything else apart from the paper in the music case that I should know about? Nothing that films, records, does anything like that?’

‘Please, Peter, I do not. I have excellent news. You will
be happy.’

That’s enough business till we get there. With the din of the diesel engine and the rattly bodywork I’m scared he’s going to
come out with stuff I can’t hear and my Office smartphone can’t record or transmit to the Haven. We’re speaking English and we’ll speak it until I decide otherwise. Giles had no Russian worth a damn. I see no value in letting Sergei know that I’m any different.
I have chosen a hilltop twenty miles out of town allegedly with a fine view over the moors, but all we can see as I heave the Vauxhall to a halt and switch off the engine is grey cloud below us and driven rain whipping across the windscreen. By the laws of tradecraft we should by now have agreed who we are if we’re disturbed, when and where we’ll meet again, and does he have any pressing anxieties?
But he’s put the music case flat on his lap and he’s already undoing the straps and pulling out a brown A4-size padded envelope, unsealed.

‘Moscow Centre has communicated with me at last, Peter. After one whole year,’ he declares with something between academic disdain and clotted excitement. ‘It is evidently momentous. My Anette in Copenhagen wrote me a beautiful and erotic letter in English
and, underneath in our secret carbon, a letter from my Moscow Centre controller which I have translated into English for you’ – upon which he affects to make me a presentation of the envelope.

‘Hang on a minute, Sergei.’ I have taken possession of the padded envelope but haven’t looked inside. ‘Let me get this straight. You received a love letter from your lady friend in Denmark. You then applied
the necessary compound, raised the secret under-text, decoded it and translated the contents into English for my benefit. All by yourself. Single-handed. That right?’

‘That is correct, Peter. Our combined patience is rewarded.’

‘So
when
did you receive this letter from Denmark exactly?’

‘On Friday. At midday. I could not believe my eyes.’

‘And today is Tuesday. You waited until yesterday afternoon
to contact my office.’

‘All weekend while I worked I was thinking only of you. Night and day I was so pleased I was developing and translating all at once in my mind, wishing only that our good friend Norman was with us to enjoy our success.’

Norman for Giles.

‘So the letter from your Moscow handlers has been in your possession since Friday. Have you shown it to anyone else in the meantime?’

‘No, Peter. I have not. Please look inside the envelope.’

I ignore his request. Does nothing shock him any more? Does his academic standing place him above the ruck of common spies?

‘And while you were developing and decoding and translating, did it not occur to you that you are under standing orders to report any letter or other communication you receive from your Russian controllers
instantly
to your handling officer—?’

‘But of course. This is what I did exactly, as soon as I had decoded—’

‘—before any further action is taken by you, us or anyone else? Which is why your debriefers took the developing compound from you as soon as you arrived in Edinburgh a year ago? So that you
couldn’t
do your own developing?’

And when I had waited long enough for my not entirely simulated anger
to subside and still received no answer beyond a sigh of forbearance at my ingratitude:

‘What did you do for the compound? Pop into the nearest chemist’s shop and read out a list of the ingredients so that anyone listening would think, ah great, he’s got a secret letter to develop? Maybe there’s a chemist’s shop on the campus. Is there?’

We sit side by side, listening to the rain.

‘Please,
Peter. I am not stupid. I took a bus into town. I made purchases at many different chemists. I paid cash, I did not engage in conversations, I was discreet.’

The same self-composure. The same innate superiority. And yes, this man could well be the son and grandson of distinguished Chekists.

*

Only now do I consent to look inside the envelope.

First out, two long letters, the cover letter and
the carbon under-text. He had copied or photographed every stage of development and the printouts were there for me to see, neatly ordered and numbered.

Second out, the Danish-stamped envelope with his name and campus address in a girlish Continental hand on the front, and on the back the sender’s name and address: Anette Pedersen, who lives in Number Five on the ground floor of an apartment
house in a suburb of Copenhagen.

Third out, the surface text in English, running to six closely written sides in the same girlish hand as the envelope, lauding his sexual prowess in puerile terms and claiming that merely thinking about him was enough to give the writer an orgasm.

Then the raised under-text with column after column of four-figure groups. Then the version in Russian, decoded from
his one-time pad.

And finally his own translation of the Russian
en clair
text into English for my personal benefit as a non-Russian-speaker. I frown at the Russian version, discard it with a gesture of incomprehension, take up his English translation and read it two or three times while Sergei affects contentment and flattens his hands on the dashboard to ease the tension.

‘Moscow say you are
to take up residence in London as soon as the summer vacation begins,’ I remark casually. ‘Why do they want you to do that, do you think?’

‘
She
says,’ he corrects me in a husky voice.

‘Who says?’

‘Anette.’

‘So you’re saying Anette is a real woman. Not just some man in Centre signing himself as a woman?’

‘I know this woman.’

‘The
actual
woman? Anette. You know her, you’re saying?’

‘Correct,
Peter. The same woman who is calling herself Anette for purposes of conspiracy.’

‘And how do you arrive at this extraordinary discovery, may I ask?’

He suppresses a sigh to imply that he is about to enter territory where I am unequipped to follow him.

‘Each week for one hour this woman lectured us at sleeper school for the class of English only. She
prepared
us for conspiratorial activity in
England. She
related
many interesting case histories to us and gave us much advice and courage for our secret work.’

‘And you’re telling me her name was Anette?’

‘Like all instructors and all students, she had only a work name.’

‘Which was what?’

‘Anastasia.’

‘So not Anette?’

‘It is immaterial.’

I grit my teeth and say nothing. After a while he resumes in the same patronizing tone.

‘
Anastasia
is a woman of considerable intelligence who is capable also of discussing physics without simplicity. I described her in detail to your debriefers. You appear to be ignorant of this information.’

It was true. He had described Anastasia. Just not in such precise or glowing terms and certainly not as a future correspondent calling herself Anette. As far as the debriefers were concerned
she was
just another Moscow Centre apparatchik dropping in on sleeper school to burnish her image.

‘And you think the woman who called herself Anastasia at sleeper school personally wrote this letter to you?’

‘I am convinced.’

‘Only the under-text, or the surface letter too?’

‘Both. Anastasia has become Anette. This is a recognition signal to me. Anastasia our wise instructor from Moscow Centre has
become Anette my passionate mistress in Copenhagen who does not exist. Also I am familiar with her handwriting. When Anastasia was lecturing us at sleeper school she advised us on European manners of handwriting without the influence of Cyrillic. Everything she taught us was for one purpose only: to assimilate with the Western enemy: “Over time you will
become
them. You will
think
like them. You
will
talk
like them. You will
feel
like them and you will
write
like them. Only in your secret hearts will you remain one of us.” Like me, she too was from old Chekist family. Her father, also her grandfather. Of this she was very proud. After her last lecture to us she took me aside and told me: you will never know my name but you and I are of one blood, we are pure, we are old Cheka, we are
Russia, I congratulate you with my soul on your great calling. She embraced me.’

Was this where the first faint echoes from my operational past began to ring in my memory’s ear? Probably it was, for my immediate instinct was to redirect the conversation:

‘What typewriter did you use?’

‘Only manual, Peter. I use nothing electronic. This is how we were instructed. Electronic is too dangerous.
Anastasia, Anette, she is not electronic. She is traditional and wishes her students to be traditional also.’

Exercising well-honed skills of self-control, I affect to ignore Sergei’s obsession with the woman Anette or Anastasia
and resume my reading of his decoded and translated under-text.

‘You are to rent a room or apartment for July and August in one of three selected districts around North
London – yes? – which your controller – you say this former woman lecturer – then proceeds to itemize for you. Do these instructions suggest anything to you?’

‘It was how she taught us. In order to prepare a conspiratorial meeting it is essential to have alternative locations. Only in this way can logistical changes be accommodated and security observed. This is also her operational maxim.’

‘Have you ever been to any of these North London districts?’

‘No, Peter, I have not.’

‘When did you last visit London?’

‘For one weekend only in May.’

‘With whom?’

‘It is immaterial, Peter.’

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘A friend.’

‘Male or female?’

‘It is immaterial.’

‘So male. Has the friend got a name?’

No answer. I continue my reading:

‘While in London for the months of July and August you will
assume the name of Markus Schweizer, a German-speaking Swiss freelance journalist, for which you will be provided with additional documentation. Do you know a Markus Schweizer?’

‘Peter, I know no such person.’

‘Have you ever used such an alias before?’

‘No, Peter.’

‘Never heard of one?’

‘No, Peter.’

‘Was Markus Schweizer the name of the friend you took to London?’

‘No, Peter. Also I did
not take him. He accompanied me.’

‘But you speak German.’

‘I am adequate.’

‘Your debriefers said more than adequate. They said you were fluent. I’m more interested to know whether you have any explanation for Moscow’s instructions?’

I have lost him again. He has lapsed into an Ed-like contemplation, his gaze fixed on the teeming windscreen. Suddenly he has an announcement to make:

‘Peter,
I regret that I am not able to be this Swiss person. I shall not go to London. It is a provocation. I resign.’

‘I’m asking you
why
Moscow should wish you to be the
independent German-speaking freelance journalist
Markus Schweizer for two months of summer in one of three selected districts of North-east London,’ I persist, ignoring this outburst.

‘It is in order to facilitate my murder. Such
a deduction is clear to any mind familiar with Moscow Centre practice. Maybe not you. By providing Centre with an address in London I shall be sending them instructions regarding where and how to liquidate me. That is normal practice in the case of suspected traitors. It will be Moscow’s pleasure to select a most painful death for me. I shall not go.’

‘Bit of an elaborate way of going about it,
isn’t it?’ I suggest, unmoved. ‘Dragging you to London just to kill you. Why not bring you to a deserted place like this, dig a hole, shoot you and put you in it? Then leak it to your friends in York that you’re safely home in Moscow and job done? Why aren’t you answering me? Is your change of heart in some way connected with the friend you won’t tell me about? The one you took to London? I have
a feeling I’ve even met him. Is that possible?’

I am making a leap of intuition. I am putting two and two
together and making five. I am remembering an episode that occurred during the convivial handover with Giles in Sergei’s university lodgings. The door opens without a knock, a cheerful youth with an earring and a ponytail pops his head round and starts to say ‘Hey, Serge, have you got a—’
then sees us and with a suppressed ‘whoops’ closes the door softly behind him as if to say he was never there.

In another part of my head, the full force of memory has struck home to me. Anastasia alias Anette, and whatever other names she favours, is no longer a fleeting shadow half remembered from my past. She is a solid figure of stature and operational prowess, much as Sergei himself has
just described her.

‘Sergei,’ I say in a gentler tone than I have used so far, ‘why else might you not want to be Markus Schweizer in London for the summer? Have you planned a holiday with your friend? It’s a stressful life. We understand those things.’

‘They wish only to kill me.’

‘And if you
have
made holiday plans, and you can tell me who your friend is, then maybe we can come to a mutually
acceptable arrangement.’

‘I have no such plans, Peter. I think actually you are projecting. Maybe you have plans for yourself. I know nothing about you. Norman was kind to me. You are a wall. You are Peter. You are not my friend.’

‘Then who
is
your friend?’ I insist. ‘Come on, Sergei. We’re human. After a year on your own here in England, don’t tell me you haven’t found somebody to pal up with?
All right, maybe you should have notified us. Let’s forget that. Let’s assume it’s not all that serious. Just someone to go on holiday with. A summer partner. Why not?’