Albatross (5 page)

‘Not necessarily,' Davina said quietly. ‘I'm not going to give up without a fight.'

‘You never did.' The reply came through in a mumble. ‘But you won't win against the Mandarins. Nobody does.'

She hadn't heard the nickname for the power figures in the Establishment for a long time. It dated Harrington to the early postwar days.

‘I can win,' she said, ‘if I can show something that
can't
be brushed aside.'

He raised his head and narrowed his eyes to focus on her face. He was growing short-sighted and outlines weren't clear any more. Clever bitch, he thought, giving me a heart attack first. My Christ, I've lost my touch, falling for that bad-news trick. There's no official cover-up. She's trying to force the pace, that's all, get me to give something for nothing.

‘You don't have to believe me,' Davina said. ‘It's up to you. I can walk out of here, and that'll be the end of it. And you'll serve out your sentence. Not twenty-four years, because you'll get remission. But long enough.'

‘Blackmailing?' he hissed at her.

She shook her head. ‘No. I stand to lose as much as you, in a way. The Service even more so. I need you, Peter, or I wouldn't be here. And you need me. That's not blackmail, that's fact.'

‘Give me a cigarette,' he said. ‘All right – now. Let me ask you a few questions first. Where did you get the tip-off?'

Davina put the recorder on the desk, snapped the switch down and it began recording. ‘It came from outside. We had an operative with military training. He joined me on a mission last year. And he noticed some funny coincidences. He began compiling a report, noting things that didn't add up, and which, frankly, none of us would have seen. It needed a fresh eye, Peter. At the end, what he'd done was put a lot of pieces of jigsaw together with one big missing piece. But it made a picture all the same.'

‘Made up of coincidences, though,' Harrington objected. ‘No hard facts.'

‘No,' Davina admitted. ‘But you know yourself that facts can be misleading. This was a sequence of events. Starting with Sasanov and you and me.'

He sucked on the cigarette; he had regained his composure. The habit and training of his whole life reasserted itself and his mind started running ahead of Davina's voice. Himself and her and Sasanov. The Russian Intelligence disaster of the decade. So nearly reversed and neutralized. Except for Davina Graham – that was the obvious reason. And yet there was a shading, a grey area that tantalized his instincts.

‘I'd like to look at this report,' he said. He could see by her expression that the suggestion was dismissed. ‘Listen to me, Davy,' he said. ‘I'm not up to anything. I don't give a fuck about who wins the Intelligence war. All I want is to get out of here; live out my life in some nice neutral place like Switzerland. I'm fifty-four, and I feel a fucking hundred. Let me see that report.'

‘Why?'

‘Because all I know is the codename: Albatross.' His voice rose. ‘If I knew who he was I'd tell you, in exchange for a pardon. Or a deal with Moscow, like Lonsdale. I
wouldn't
hold out – I wouldn't drag this on for week after week for my own sake. I'm starting to go mad in here, now that you've stirred things up!'

She believed him. She believed the pitch of desperation in his voice, and the twitching hands fumbling with the packet of cigarettes. And he had lost weight since she had seen him a fortnight ago. He was telling the truth. He knew there was someone, but he didn't know who it was. They would need his brain working in cooperation with hers if the missing piece of Colin's jigsaw was to be found and fitted into place.

‘I'll get a copy of the report for you,' she said. ‘I'll be back the day after tomorrow. And by the way, don't be surprised if you're moved.'

He gaped at her for a moment, and then a sly smirk passed over his mouth.

‘Moved? To an open prison?'

‘I don't know,' Davina answered. ‘But it's a bit too tight in here. Day after tomorrow, Peter.'

‘I'll be here,' he managed a joke.

‘Goodbye,' she said, and opened the door to let the prison officer take charge of him.

Frieda Armstrong was drinking tea with her colleague Miss Collins.

‘If there's one thing that really annoys me, it's the way Miss Graham comes and goes and never lets me know! I had three personal calls for her this morning and I couldn't tell any of them where she was or whether she would be in the office at all today.'

‘Doesn't she keep an engagement diary?' Miss Collins suggested. She helped herself to a chocolate biscuit. She loved sweet things. Frieda was very careful of her figure; she dressed well and Miss Collins envied her style.

‘No, she doesn't,' the older woman snapped slightly. ‘And that's very unprofessional. I think I'll mention it to her.'

‘Mr Walden said she was meeting a client,' Miss Collins said, pleased to know something Frieda didn't.

‘Very likely, but she didn't leave a note of it. I don't know why Mr Walden engaged her in the first place. She's not really necessary.'

Miss Collins sipped her tea and didn't say anything. She thought exactly the same as Frieda Armstrong, but she didn't dare say so. ‘She's got rather a curt manner,' she remarked instead. ‘I've noticed it even with Mr Walden.'

There was a little spark in Frieda's eye. ‘Well, I was fairly short with her callers. One of them said she was her sister; she asked me where she was and when she'd be in and could she reach her, as if I was her secretary or something. I said I really had no idea and hung up.'

‘Quite right too,' Miss Collins said. ‘There's Mr Walden's buzzer. Shall I go while you finish your tea?'

‘No,' Frieda said firmly. ‘I'll see what he wants.' She hurried out and the younger woman looked after her for a moment and then took another biscuit. Poor Frieda, she said to herself. She's been in love with him for years, and he's never even looked at her legs. He's given mine a glance or two. She smiled to herself. She wasn't going to fall into the older woman's fantasy; waiting on the boss hand and foot, shielding him from every little worry and inconvenience when she could, and letting her own life slip away. Miss Collins had a man friend and a definite objective which included a nice little flat in Fulham and a change from single status. He liked her plumpness, too.

The phone rang in the Marylebone flat. Lomax could hear it ringing as he unlocked the front door. He reached it just in time.

‘Colin? Hello, it's Charlie. How are you?'

How he had disliked her on first meeting, he remembered. The self-confident voice still irritated him. Davina's beautiful, spoilt sister, married to John Kidson after two divorces. The hell of it was that he had grown to like her very much indeed over the last six months. ‘I'm fine. Just back from a brisk mile walk – no, I'm not joking. Yes, I'll be one of those fellows you see running round Hyde Park soon.' Her infectious laugh gurgled over the phone; she had a jolly, rather loud laugh. ‘No, Davina's not here. Try her office.'

At the other end Charlie Kidson said, ‘I did. A very disagreeable person answered me. Snapped my head off and said she'd no idea where she was or when she'd be back. Tell her to ring me when she comes in. I want to make a date for dinner, Colin. Just the four of us. We haven't seen you for far too long. Bye.'

Lomax put the phone down. Somebody had better sort out the Arlington Agency end. Even Charlie had sounded surprised, and in Colin's opinion she wasn't bright enough to be suspicious. He decided to have a word with Humphrey Grant. No point in worrying Davina. He said that privately about a lot of things. It was the nearest he could get to protecting her and assuming his natural role in their relationship. He had come close to dying for her once. He loved her so much he wouldn't have minded doing it again. Except that he wanted to live with her instead. He wanted to bind her to him, tether her with a couple of children, build a life for both of them in which the world of secrets and violence was only a memory.

But he had helped to put the net into her hands, and they were both too dedicated and professional to hand it back. First catch the traitor, the Russian implant that had grown in the body of the SIS like a silent cancer. Men and women had been betrayed to death and the labour camps. Davina herself had suffered torture; an innocent woman had been tormented and killed in Mexico, and the same sly hand had helped to guide her to her fate.

The man had to be caught. Then it would be time for Colin to lay claim once and for all to Davina Graham. In the meantime something had to be done to tighten up the situation at Arlington Street. It wouldn't do if Kidson himself or the brigadier tried to contact her and the response was similar to Charlie's – they would quickly scent something was amiss. He called Grant's private number; it was nearly seven and Davina must be caught in the West End traffic to be so late.

‘Hello?' Grant's voice was brittle and staccato. He never gave his number or identified himself until he knew who was calling.

‘Lomax.' Colin was equally laconic on the phone.

‘What's wrong?' Typical of Humphrey to assume the worst.

‘Nothing, except your cover. The agency doesn't deal with inquiries very well. It needs tightening up that end.'

‘I'll speak to Walden,' Humphrey promised. ‘Is Davina back yet? No, no, I don't want her telephoning me. I'll meet her in the usual place tomorrow if she's any news. You ring me if she has. Just confirm the appointment for tomorrow.'

‘Right.' Colin hung up. He poured himself a whisky, shrugged aside the still recurring urge to smoke a cigarette, and switched on the TV. He didn't watch the programme, he looked at the flickering figures on the screen and dimly heard the sound of voices, while his thoughts ranged far away from the small sitting room. The first clue had appeared when he was studying the dossier on Davina Graham, long before he met her and they went to America together.

He had been trained to pick up details, however insignificant or irrelevant they seemed. The Special Air Service had trained his body and conditioned his mind to fight the enemy; but from there he had gone into the secret world of army undercover agents who penetrated the IRA in Northern Ireland. He was operating in that section when he won his George Cross. London knew the calibre of the man when they recruited him. A rare combination of brute strength and skill, with a considerable flair for intelligence work. It was a tiny piece of grit that lodged in his mental eye and worried him.

Six years ago Colonel Ivan Sasanov of the KGB had defected to the West. Davina Graham had been selected as his ‘minder', a job that required tact and patience and had always been allotted to a man. He remembered the comments made about her at the time. Dedicated, highly intelligent, efficient. Reserved. No men friends and no intimates in the Service. No friends to tempt her into indiscretion. He had read farther back, right to the beginning of her recruitment and training, and found one brief reference to a colleague who had been friendly to her soon after she joined. Peter Harrington. Taken the new girl out to lunch once or twice, and to the local pub for a drink. No follow-up. Harrington was posted to Washington. The contact was so superficial it hardly merited a mention. Two, three years passed, and then the grit flew into Lomax's eye. When Davina was given the job of looking after the most important Russian to defect to the West, Peter Harrington was recalled in disgrace from his job and posted to Personnel in London.

And the consequences of that move were Service history now, and Harrington would be close to seventy before he saw the outside world. That was the start of Lomax's uneasy feelings, and they intensified as he had read on. He heard the front door open and sprang up to greet her.

He was out in the little hall and Davina was in his arms exchanging the long kisses that were more eloquent than any words of love. Sasanov had swept away her inhibitions; Lomax had taught her tenderness and subtlety in their sex lives. There had been a long abstinence when he was little better than an invalid after Mexico. Now, nearly back to full health, he was an ardent and demanding lover, needing reassurance that nothing had changed.

They didn't eat till late that evening; she slept in his arms and he woke her with food on a tray. Davina sat up and smiled sleepily at him. ‘Darling – you spoil me. Do you know, you're a much better cook than I am?'

‘Of course I am,' Lomax grinned at her, climbing back into bed with his own supper plate. ‘Men are always better than women – even at so-called women's work. All the great chefs are men.'

‘Shut up and eat your omelette, you beastly chauvinist. It's delicious!'

When they had finished, he reached up and gently pinched the lobe of her ear. ‘You can make the coffee.'

‘Charlie phoned today,' he said later. ‘She wants us to have dinner; just the four of us, she said.'

‘I suppose we'd better go.' Davina frowned slightly. ‘I haven't seen John for ages.'

‘Don't you want to?' Colin asked.

‘Not particularly. I don't want to pick up with anyone from the office at the moment. He'll start asking questions about Arlington and how do I like the job, that sort of thing.'

‘You'll cope perfectly well,' he insisted.

She shook her head a little. ‘You don't know John. Seeing through people when they're lying is his stock-in-trade. And he mustn't suspect anything, Colin. You know that.'

‘It isn't him,' Lomax said slowly. ‘It can't be.'

‘Why not?' She turned towards him. ‘The Chief, Humphrey, John. They're the only three important enough to qualify. One of them is a Soviet spy.'

‘Hardly Humphrey, who put you on to the investigation,' he retorted. ‘That's straining credibility too far.'