Hidden Man (26 page)

‘I’m sorry,’ Ben said, licking peanut salt off his fingers. ‘What does any of this have to do with Kostov?’

‘I’m coming to that, old boy.’ McCreery reacted as if Ben were being impatient. ‘I’m trying to paint a picture of blatant American incompetence which feeds into the Mischa situation.’

‘So Mischa
did
exist?’

‘Oh, absolutely. He must have existed. Yes.’ McCreery scratched the back of his neck. ‘Now at one stage your father helped to set up an organization called Afghan Aid, which nominally worked on medical and agricultural projects for refugees. However, it also provided support for Ahmed Shah Masood, a far more sensible and moderate muj leader who was later to command the Northern Alliance. You may recall that he was assassinated immediately prior to September eleventh.’

‘Yeah, I remember reading about that.’

‘Well, he was another favourite of Thatcher’s.’

‘I see.’

But then silence. Ben had been expecting McCreery to elaborate further, to steer his little history lesson towards Mischa, but the monologue appeared to have ended. Perhaps the guarded spook who had spoken with so little candour at his father’s funeral was simply pre-programmed never to divulge useful information.

‘Is that it?’

‘Is what it?’

‘Well, what about Mischa? Did my father recruit him or not?’

McCreery actually laughed at this to the point where Ben might have lost his temper.

‘What’s funny, Jock?’ he said. The use of his first name felt oddly impertinent, regardless of the fact that they had spent most of the afternoon together.

‘Well, I’m simply not in a position to talk about
that in much detail. It’s very much still under wraps. You can understand -‘

‘No, I
don’t
really understand. Forgive me for saying so, but this is exactly what happened at the crematorium. A few carrots dangled in front of the congregation, and then you withdraw. MI6 have access to a well of memories that for some reason must remain secret, because that is what the State has decreed. Now I respect that, Jock, I really do, but I need to know about Kostov. I need to know whether Bone is telling the truth. So far all you’ve given me is a potted history of Mrs Thatcher’s affection for a couple of guys whose names I can’t pronounce.’

McCreery gave an affectionate shrug that appeared to suggest compliance.

‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘You’re absolutely right. Old habits die hard. And if I appeared evasive at the funeral service, it was only because I was in the presence of one or two people who would not have taken kindly to
Spycatcher
from the pulpit.’ McCreery laughed at his own joke. ‘If you want to know about Mischa and Dimitri Kostov, I can tell you, but only with the cast-iron guarantee that any information divulged will go no further than this table.’

‘Of course, Jock…’

‘That means even Mark.’ McCreery looked very insistent about this. ‘And Alice, of course.
Particularly
Alice, as a matter of fact, in view of her chosen profession.’

‘I can guarantee that.’

McCreery looked around, as if to be sure that any further conversation would be muffled by the swirl of noise in the pub.

‘Are we OK to talk about this here?’ Ben asked.

‘I think so.’ He leaned forward. ‘Mischa Kostov was a source for the Americans. An agent of the CIA.’ McCreery’s voice was a ham actor’s whisper. ‘The story Robert Bone relates is accurate in as much as it refers to an actual relationship between a Western intelligence service and a member of the Soviet armed forces. But I would recommend that for every mention of your father’s name you substitute that of a Cousin whose identity I am afraid I am not at liberty to divulge. Suffice to say that he was a close friend of Mr Bone. His mentor, in a manner of speaking.’

McCreery shuffled forward and frowned. He seemed troubled by his leg.

‘Mischa’s father, Dimitri, was indeed a KGB agent whose aliases included Vladimir Kalugin and - I think I’m right about this - Leonid Sudoplatov. He was not, however, a member of Department V, and certainly never carried out Kremlin-sponsored executive actions. That’s absolute nonsense. The other rather important thing to bear in mind about Dimitri Kostov is that he died in 1997.’

Ben was halfway through what must have been his fifteenth cigarette of the afternoon when the lower part of his mouth just seemed to fall away, issuing a broad cloud of uninhaled smoke out in front of his face.

‘Kostov is dead?’

‘Yes. As is Mischa, though in rather more violent circumstances. Exactly as Bone attests, he was shot in Samark and by order of court martial sometime in the late 1980s.’

‘So my father never had anything to do with him?’

‘Nothing at all. The Yanks lost him. He was their joe.’ McCreery picked the letter up from the table. ‘Which makes Bone’s suggestion that Mischa was like a son to Christopher particularly unpleasant in the circumstances.’

‘Yeah, I could have done without that,’ Ben admitted, eating a crisp.

‘I’m sure you could.’

‘So who
did
kill my father?’

It was the only question left to ask.

McCreery paused. ‘Between you and me - and again I would askthat this is something we keep strictly
entre nous
- the Office has been working very closely alongside Scotland Yard to unravel that very question. Right now, we’re looking at one or two irregularities with regard to your father’s relationship with a Swiss bank.’

Ben shook his head. ‘What does that mean?’

McCreery shuffled forward and seemed troubled by his leg.

‘Shortly before he died, Christopher was doing some work for Divisar on behalf of a private bank in Lausanne. There may be a connection there. We’re also looking into a series of telephone calls that he
made to a Timothy Lander in the Cayman Islands.’

‘That’s not a name I’ve heard before. How come the police haven’t told us about it?’

‘As I was saying, that part of the investigation is still very much under wraps.’

‘So you’re claiming that almost everything in Bone’s letter is faked-up to deflect attention away from the fact the CIA lost an agent in Afghanistan nearly twenty years ago?’

McCreery wiped away an imaginary speck of dust from the surface of the table and said, ‘To all intents and purposes, yes.’

For the last time, Ben took hold of the letter and began going through it, picking out the facts.

‘So it’s bullshit that Dad worked for British Intelligence for twenty years?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘And he never went to Berlin?’

‘No, he was in Berlin, but declared, and only for eighteen months. That was immediately after he left your mother in the mid-1970s.’

Ben flicked through three more pages until he found what he was looking for.

‘And what about this?’ He stabbed the letter with the end of his thumb. ‘Was he ever assigned to China?’

‘Never went there in his life.’ McCreery finished his whisky. ‘And Bone didn’t quit the Cousins in ‘92, either. He was thrown out after the Kostov cock-up, turned to the drink and became a teacher. Humanities, if I’m not mistaken. Now there’s an irony.’ Taking
the letter back from Ben, he added, ‘Just look at the way he phrases certain things as a means of disguising his guilt. It’s bloody amateur hour. Here, on the third page.’ McCreery quoted from the text. ‘
I never met Mischa, of course, but I know he was a sweet kid
. Don’t you see, Ben? That’s a blatant bloody lie. The sheer
nerve
of the man. And what does he say later on? That he interrogated a Soviet soldier
independently
of Christopher and Mischa? Total cock and bull. The Soviet soldier
was
Mischa. How else do you think Bone knows so much about the Russian military?’

‘All right, all right,’ Ben said quickly. He felt compelled to add: ‘It’s not that I don’t believe you. I just want to get to the bottom of who killed Dad. That’s it. Everything else is irrelevant…’

‘… and I can understand that.’

‘But Bone’s not a sadist. He bears no grudge against me. Why pull me aside at the funeral and then write six pages of bullshit about Kostov and MI6? Why involve me at all?’

‘Alice,’ McCreery replied instantly.

‘Alice?’

‘Think about it. She works for a major newspaper. Bone’s hoping she’ll leak the story to the news desk and embarrass the Brits.’

‘But she would never do that.’ It was a statement that lacked conviction.

‘Bob’s not to know that, is he? This is not a benevolent individual we’re talking about. Bone and Masterson were two of the most unsavoury characters I’ve
ever had the misfortune of coming into contact with in over thirty years of intelligence work.’

Ben seized on the mistake.

‘Masterson is the mentor?’ he said. ‘The one who actually recruited Mischa?’

‘Oh dear.’ A pantomime of embarrassment played across McCreery’s face. He touched his mouth with his hand. ‘I shouldn’t have revealed his name. That was an error. I apologize.’

‘Don’t worry about it, Jock. I’m not going to tell anyone.’

‘Good. Good. Well, look, I must catch that train back to Guildford.’ McCreery was standing, fetching his stick. ‘In the meantime, if I could just hang on to the letter and take a longer look at it, that would be most helpful. We’ve already lost one and you can imagine that we don’t want this sort of thing lying around…’

Ben hesitated. To refuse would seem odd. He made a mental note of Kostov’s aliases for the benefit of Alice’s contact in Customs and Excise and said, ‘Of course. Be my guest.’

McCreery looked pleased. He pocketed the letter, saying, ‘Your other one’s bound to turn up.’

‘Sure it is.’

‘And look, I don’t need to tell you again that the fewer people that know about this, the better.’

‘I understand that.’

Ben was also on his feet, watching McCreery pull a windcheater over his head. He had the sudden but
irrefutable feeling that he was being palmed off. The mood of their conversation had changed markedly.

‘Have you spoken to Bone since you received it?’ McCreery asked.

‘No,’ Ben said, falling in behind him as they walked to the door. ‘He didn’t leave a number. Just a PO Box address in New Hampshire.’

‘I see.’

It was as if McCreery was more than just late for a train. He seemed hurried, his job done. Out on the street they turned to one another.

‘Well it was super to see you, it really was.’ The charm in his eyes, all the warmth and friendliness engendered in the course of the afternoon, had evaporated. Now McCreery looked distant and removed.

‘Yeah, it was good to see you too, Jock.’

‘And good luck with your art,’ he said, employing a term that Ben detested. ‘Don’t worry, old boy, don’t worry,’ he called out, hobbling around the corner. ‘We’ll get to the bottom of this thing, you’ll see. It’s all just a question of
time
.’

37

‘Something’s not right, brother. Something is not
right
.’

Ben was pacing in the kitchen at Elgin Crescent, sections of Wednesday’s
Guardian
scattered across the floor.

‘The letter goes missing from my studio, your version never even shows up. Jock says it’s crap from start to finish, then insists I keep the contents to myself. Somebody, somewhere, knows something that we don’t. Somebody, somewhere is covering something up.’

Seated calmly at the kitchen table, Mark smiled to himself and invited Ben to sit down.

‘I’d prefer standing,’ he said.

‘Fine. Then why don’t you begin at the beginning? Why don’t you just tell me what this Yank actually
said
.’

It took Ben fifteen minutes to describe the contents of Bone’s letter in microscopic detail. He was flustered but remained concise. He told Mark about Mischa, he told him about Kostov. His brother listened carefully, but in the manner of a card player who knows he holds the ace.

When he had finished, Ben said, ‘You don’t look like this is making any impact on you at all.’

‘I don’t?’

‘No. You don’t.’

‘Well, where did the letter come from?’ Mark asked. Ben looked at him.

‘That’s all you have to ask? That’s the one thing you want to know? Where it
came
from?’

‘Well it’s a start.’ Mark was aware that he sounded smug, that he was playing the old hand and professional spook, but it was fun watching Ben flounder around in a misconception.

‘You’re not interested in Sudoplatov?’ his brother asked. ‘You don’t want to know about Kalugin?’

Mark tilted back in his chair. He put his hands behind his head and grinned again.

‘What the fuck is so funny?’

Not for the first time, Mark weighed up the possibility of telling Ben about Blindside. Just to see the look on his face; just to put him in the picture.

‘Nothing’s funny,’ he said. ‘I promise you, nothing’s funny at all.’

‘Then why are you looking at me like I’m a fucking idiot?’

‘Because if Jock says the letter’s a crock of shit written by a drunk who got thrown out of the CIA then I’m inclined to believe him. If Mischa was an American failure, if Kostov actually
died
in 1997, then what the fuckare you getting so upset about?’

‘I’m not upset,’ Ben said.

‘Yes you are.’

‘I’m just annoyed.’

‘About what?’

Mark wondered if some of the tension between them had been precipitated by the will. Ben had asked for his share of the money, but had done it grudgingly, as if the request put him in Mark’s debt. He noticed that he didn’t answer his question.

‘Look,’ Mark said, trying to make him feel better. ‘Did this Bone guy leave an address?’

Ben’s reply was sarcastic.

‘No. This Bone guy did
not
leave an address. Just a PO Box number in New Hampshire.’

‘Exactly.’

Ben looked at him as if he had lost control of his senses.

‘
Exactly?
’

Mark stood up. He had weighed up the odds. So what if Ben found out about Kukushkin and Randall, about Tamarov and Tom? Where was the harm? An electric combination of vanity and common sense persuaded him to breakcover. He drained the coffee he had been drinking, half a cup in a single gulp and said, ‘Is that locked?’