Archangel (11 page)

'My son will survive, Mr Millet. That is what you want to hear from me? Michael will survive. If he serves every day of the sentence passed on him. . . even if you desert h i m . . . he will survive. He would never bow to them. I know my son, Mr Millet.'

The tears dribbled on her face and made bright lines across the greyness of her cheeks and then her head was lost in her hands.

'You should go now, Mr Millet,' Stephen Holly said.

'You should not come to us again.'

Alan Millet plucked his coat from the fender and saw that the drips had made a pool on the linoleum floor. He let himself out of the front door and when he was beyond the shelter of the porch he felt the sting of rain on his cheeks.

He walked on glistening pavements, across streets where the rain spat back from the tarmac. He shivered in shop doorways as he waited for the traffic lights to give him green. He traversed this suburb of south-west London with its roads of London brick terraces and Snowcem semi-detached homes.

A strange quest for him, an eccentric Grail that he sought.

This was a place where the Soviet world was a thing of books and newspapers and television shows and magazines

- not tangible. And Alan Millet traced a path to discover how well a man might withstand the sophistication of modern interrogation at the hands of the masters of that art.

There should have been a better backcloth, something that smacked more of the dramatic and less of the bare ordinariness of these humble homes.

He met a schoolmaster, now retired.

Alan Millet sat in a front room filled with books of modern English history and photographs of small boys lined in the formations of the posed soccer team. He watched a man scratch back the memory of many years. He heard of a boy who was a loner - but not lonely, you know -

satisfied to be with himself, happy with his own company.

i don't think he needed the rest of the class, I don't think he even needed us, his teachers. A very self-contained child, if you know what I mean. Very strong in his own way, not swaggering or throwing his weight about, but a great inner strength. You'll appreciate that it's years back, that boys come and go for a schoolmaster, they're a bit phantom. But I remember this o n e . . . No real brilliance, nothing outstanding in class or sports, but there was an individuality there. I suppose you want an example from me . . . ? Well, I'll tell you this, he wasn't exceptionally strong, but none of the other lads ever fought with him. That's a pretty poor example, but none of them ever dared to rag him. There was this sort of aura round him. The other boys shied away from him, and he didn't seem to notice an absence of their friendship. . . I'm afraid I haven't been of much help to you, Mr Millet.'

There was a lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at the Kingston Technical College across the river from Hampton Wick.

Millet took the bus to the pre-war inelegance of the College close to the Thames towpath and blessed the warmth that he found on the upper deck.

The lecturer was at first impatient at being called from a tutorial session, before his vanity was fed the magical words of 'Foreign and Commonwealth Office'. He wore a bow tie, a corduroy jacket, and suede shoes and appeared to Millet to be well-distanced from any workshop floor. He sat his guest down in a cubbyhole office, mixed instant coffee with the help of a whistling electric kettle, and rambled into a monologue of his thoughts on Michael Holly.

'Academically there wasn't anything to shout from the ceilings, in fact I don't think that he found the work easy, but there was a dedication there that some of his contem-poraries of the same ability could have used. If he didn't understand something, he was reluctant to stand up and ask, instead he'd worry it out himself, sometimes I reckoned he'd been at it all night. If I asked a question of him then he'd answer seriously, but if 1 floated a question and waited to see which of the students would pick it up 1 could guarantee that it would never be Holly. He had no thought of impressing me, or anyone else for that matter. I don't think he had many friends here, certainly none that would have lasted after he took his diploma. He was never on for 'A's, not in written work or practical, but the 'B's were consistent enough. You know in a funny sort of way he was really rather prim. There was once some heroin floating round the college and there were two students who were the pushers —

that's the phrase for them I think - and they were both beaten up. I don't mean they were just knocked about a bit

. . . they were smashed, stitches and a fractured jaw for one, severe abdominal bruising for the other. You could see the scratches on Holly's knuckles for days afterwards, and no one ever said anything about it. It was just not referred to

. . . I read about the poor devil, that those buggers trumped up an espionage charge against him and he's years to serve in Russia. I hope I'm not being facetious, but they'll have a hell of a time with him . . . I'll put it another way to you, Mr Millet. He was a little bit frightening. He could make the rest of us, adults and kids, seem rather frivolous. Nobody likes that, do they?'

On to the parish priest of St Mary's and St Peter's. Tea and a plain biscuit in a brick-built vicarage's front room.

'I'm not going to be able to help you, Mr Millet. Yes, I was aware of him, but I never managed to lassoo him. He never attended worship, he never came to the Youth Hall. I thought he might have had a place at the Youth, it seemed to me that he might have been a leader if he'd had the encouragement. I tried and I failed, Mr Millet. It was a disappointment to me. Well, you're always sorry if you let slip someone you think might be a leader. How did I know he was leadership stuff? You can tell, Mr Millet, it's not something that can be hidden. All I can say is that I failed, and in this particular case I regret that failure.'

He took a train back to London, and a taxi over to Charing Cross. Then another train towards the Kent commuter belt, and Dartford. Off the train before its route reached the suburbs. At the station he asked for directions to the industrial estate, and walked it in a quarter of an hour.

Letterworth Engineering and Manufacturing Company, the sign said. Mark Letterworth was a tall man with the weight of the recession hanging heavy on his face and shoulders.

'I tell you this, Mr Millet, two or three years ago I wouldn't have had the time to sit down and chatter about a chap I haven't seen for more than a year. That I've got the time is a bloody disaster. I've the bank breathing at me, and forty-two wage packets to fill on Friday morning, and the phone isn't ringing with customers. I'll tell you this so that you know I've problems too. Not problems like young Michael's, but I've enough to be going on with. I'll tell you this too, and this is for nothing, somebody dumped that boy right in the shit, somebody dropped him in the shit from a great old height. You see I never believe in smoke without fire, and when our man is nicked on a spying charge then I say to myself that somebody got at him, somebody asked a favour of him, somebody got round him. I don't know whether you've ever been to Russia, Mr Millet, I have. I was regular there. Right? It's not the easiest of places, but business works there, and business is money, and money is wages, and wages are what keeps my work-force happy.

Understand me, Mr Millet? What I know of Moscow is that you keep your nose clean and do the work you've set out to achieve, and that way there's no hassle. I'll tell you this .. .

three times before he went, Michael asked me for time to go up to London and said he was having problems with his visa. Three trips up to London. I've never had to have more than one trip to the Consulate for any visa of mine. Somebody lined him up, and that somebody is no friend of mine, Mr Millet. I don't know what productivity you have to show in your job, in mine it's the order book. I needed that custom out of the Soviet Union, I needed it bloody badly.

We've been frozen out there, and that order was worth a couple of million sterling, and that adds up to a hefty pile of wage packets. You asked me what he was like, Mr Millet. . .

I was going to make him a director, bloody good young man, tough and fair and straight. Nobody walked over him, not me, not the customer, not the work-force. It's a bloody tragedy he's where he is, and that's the truth. The place is the poorer without him . . . that what you want to know, Mr Millet? The only thing that didn't work for him was his marriage, perhaps his wife will give, you a different s i d e . . .

don't tell me that you didn't know he was married and separated, Mr Millet . . . bit bloody thin on the ground-work, aren't you?'

Before he reached the small block of a dozen bed-sitter flats, Alan Millet knew this would be his last call.

Still the rain, all week it had rained, and his coat was barely dried out from the previous evening and his shoes were still wet and had rejected the polish he had attempted over his breakfast. This would be the last call, and after that the heat of the office at Century that he shared with two others. One more visit and the picture of the man who had taken the package to Moscow would be fuller and acceptable as a memorandum to the Deputy Under Secretary.

There had been no difficulty in finding her. A marriage certificate in London and the telephone book had done the work for him. He hadn't rung to make an appointment, better to turn up at the door and press the bell like any other cheapskate private detective. Well, he wasn't much more, was he? Padding the streets and prying into the window of a man's life, and the trail turned him towards the second-floor flat of Mrs Angela Holly (nee Wells), two miles from the home of her former husband and parents-in-law. Eight o'clock in the morning, and if she went to work then he hoped still to be in time to catch her before she locked the front door and shut out the intrusion of a man from the Service.

A radio played inside the flat, the bell tinkled under his finger.

She was very pretty.

Straight blonde hair, slender-faced and with a wide mouth of expectancy as if everything that happened that was a surprise was excitement and welcomed. A green sweater that flattered and a knitted skirt that matched. A pretty girl and one that should be with a man, not a girl who should have sat beside a solicitor in a High Street divorce court.

Millet had played the images game on the pavement outside, had anticipated a tousled woman who wore badges of failure.

And the girl was lovely, lovely and fresh and anticipating.

'Yes . . . ?'

'I'm Alan Millet, Foreign and Commonwealth ..

'Yes . .

'Can I come in, please?"

' 'Course you can, but you'll be sitting on your own all day

- I'm on my way out.'

'Where do you go?'

'Town . . . off the Strand. Boring old Building Society.'

'I'd like to come with you.'

'Please yourself . . . bring the milk in, can you? . . . I'm hell's late and that's usual.'

He picked up from beside his feet two cartons of milk and a plastic box of half a dozen eggs. At the end of the corridor leading from the front door was the kitchen, where he found the fridge. He heard her whistling to the radio beyond the half-closed door of what he presumed was her bedroom, and there was another door that could have led to the living-room. A dwelling unit, nothing more, something that was right for a girl that was alone, right for a girl who lived without a man. She blustered out of the bedroom, and swept up a coat from a chair in the corridor. Millet grinned and stepped out onto the landing and behind him the door slammed cheerfully. He took his cue from her and they half ran and half walked the couple of hundred yards to the station, and she led and he followed. He had no ticket and she had a Season, and while he stood in line at the window they missed one train and she rolled her head and her eyes and seemed to think it a joke and when the train came there was one thought only in Millet's mind. How in God's name did this go wrong?

A commuter train, a stop at each station, all seats taken by the grey-suited men who hid from each other behind their newspapers and the film of cigarette and pipe smoke.

So they stood and their hands clasped at the baggage rack above their heads, and Millet saw the eyes of a fellow traveller flit to the girl's features as if they were staring at those magazines on the high shelf behind the newsagent's counter. How could Michael Holly and this girl have broken ?

'I want to talk to you about Michael.'

A frown creased her forehead, it's three years since I've seen him, long before all this business. Did you say Foreign Office?. . . I've not seen him since the split.'

it's confidential really - but we were hoping to get him back. It hasn't worked out.'

i didn't know.'

Lunatic. A train swaying between Kingston and Norbiton and New Maiden, and a member of the permanent staff of the Service talking with a stranger about a freelance recruit who had been snaffled. They'd have his balls at Century for it.

'The Soviets have now transferred him to a Labour Camp.'

'They're ghastly?'

'Pretty dreadful.'

i don't know how I can help you. I told you, it's been a long time . . .'

He felt a pig, a bore. He was ashamed of himself, and he leant towards her, and the scent she had dabbed at her neck in the bedroom played at his nostrils.

'What broke it, Mrs Holly?'

'Foreign Office, you said? That's the business of the Foreign Office?'

For the first time he saw a nervousness from her, the hesitation of the little girl lost. He was playing the bastard because that way the inner door opened.

'I said Foreign Office, Mrs Holly. Why did it break?'

Her laugh showed a stain of fear, and the man whose elbow was lodged in Alan Millet's rib turned to the girl. She smiled and looked bravely into Alan Millet's face.

'I'll talk to you for all the time we're on this train. You don't come to the office, you don't come again to my home . . .'

'Agreed,' Millet said quietly. 'You have my word, Mrs Holly.'

'I think I love him still, I think I'll love him all my life. I've never fallen out of love with him, not when he went home, not when we were in the courts, not now after three years.