Legacy (20 page)

It was easy, too, to imagine how useful a recruited government surveyor might have been in selecting sites. ‘But could Lover Boy have been my father’s case officer in England? I
mean, he’s my age, and my father – well, he might –’

‘Doubt it. You’ve seen yourself that his looked like a 2CD case with a 2CD case officer who followed him around the world. He might have been handed over for local running here but
didn’t Lover Boy give you the impression that what he knew of your father’s case was drawn from a written briefing from the Centre? That suggests that he was not the case officer and
that they never met. But he may have had a supporting role without necessarily knowing who your father was until they told him after he’d met you. You’ll give it a go, I hope? Good.
More whisky?’

It was late when he walked back to the mess. Through the windows facing the rose garden he could see a few survivors propped up at the bar or slumped in chairs, talking, no doubt, the inevitable
shop – who was posted where, how so-and-so of all people had been made controller, whether it was true about old what’s-his-name and his secretary. Not wanting to be dragged in, he
crossed the garden to return to his room via an outer door. The night was mild, with almost no breeze, and a half moon shimmered on the Solent. He recognised immediately the figure leaning against
the battlements.

‘I thought you must have gone to bed,’ said Anna.

‘I’ve been with Hookey.’

‘What did he say to the news of your leaving?’

‘He said to wait.’

‘As I said to Hugo when he thought he was going to. Sometimes wish I hadn’t.’

‘You don’t like being an office wife?’

She turned towards the sea. ‘I’m not sure whether it’s being a wife I don’t like, or whether it’s being married to the office. Both have their compensations, of
course.’

‘Did you know you were marrying the office?’

‘Oh yes, right from the start, from before he joined. The office is the great romance of his life, not me.’ She folded her arms on top of the wall and rested her chin upon them.
‘It’s so beautiful, isn’t it? There always seems to be more weather here. I don’t know why we don’t all live by the sea, all the time.’

‘Get a posting to a sea-port.’

‘I’m not sure I could bear another three years as an embassy wife. All those coffee mornings, those interminable bridge evenings, those dreadful dinners for people you’d never
dream of talking to, just because they might be useful or because you owe them. I suppose it’s the same with any job that’s at all political. And having to be nice to the head of
chancery’s awful wife who’s forever trying to queen it over you. All for the sake of your husband’s career. And the school fees. We might be better off in a beach hut in West
Wittering.’

‘So it’s a toss-up between which of us leaves what – or who – first?’

She straightened and pushed back her hair. ‘Oh, it’s not that dramatic. I shouldn’t complain. I go through these moods sometimes, like everyone else. We’re very lucky,
really.’ She glanced at the bar window, where by now only Hugo and a couple of others remained. Her mouth set firmly. ‘I think he’s had enough shop. They won’t have talked
about anything else, not a thing. When you think of all there is in the world to talk about – and they just go on about each other. D’you know why I’m down here? Because I’m
talking to a spouses’ course tomorrow about being a diplomatic spouse
en poste
. They’ll probably all leave.’

They were standing closer now. ‘How did you meet?’ he asked.

‘Me and Hugo?’ She laughed as at a joke. ‘In a pub the first time, with a lot of others. Then at a charity ball. He was the only man around who didn’t seem all
wishy-washy and overcome by flower-power and all that. Also, he could dance. It may surprise you but Hugo’s a good dancer. Ballroom, of course, nothing informal for Hugo. I love it too but
you hardly ever meet a man under fifty who can do it. Now d’you mind if I ask you a personal question?’

‘So long as it’s not about my dancing.’

She indicated the pipe and tobacco pouch he was holding. ‘Why do you smoke that?’

‘Well, I like it – that is, I sometimes like it, other times it makes me dizzy. It’s an acquired technique and taste, I suppose. I’m not very good at it yet.’

‘But why acquire it?’

‘I wanted a habit. Other people have habits. I didn’t see why I shouldn’t, so I thought of this. At least it’s not cigarettes or morris dancing. And my father smoked one.
I took it up after he died.’

‘I’d have thought that might now be a reason for not. Anyway, it doesn’t suit you. You’re not old enough.’

‘It doesn’t lend me gravitas?’

She smiled. ‘What do you want with gravitas, Charles? What are you trying to be? You still cut your hair as if it’s the fifties. You’ll be going for walks with a tweed hat and
stick soon. You don’t have to be your father. Not yet, anyway.’

‘I do walk with a stick. And I have a tweed cap. Both his. Nostalgia, I suppose. I like nostalgia.’

‘Keep that for your old age. You should be doing things now about which you can feel nostalgic then, when it’s too late for anything else.’ She took a step away.
‘I’m sorry. Who am I to lecture you on your life? Especially with what you must be going through. I was shocked when Hugo told me but not surprised, if you see what I mean. Not that I
knew your father, of course, but I sensed that something intimate was wrong with you, something horrid – and made worse by other people talking about it like this. Time I dragged the other
half of my own life off to bed.’

‘I’d talk about it all night.’

She smiled and shook her head. ‘Yes, but we can’t, Charles. Can we? Sadly. Very sadly. Sweet dreams. ’Night.’

He watched until the door closed on her, then turned and faced the sea. A few minutes later the lights went out behind him, but he remained, leaning in the battlements where she had leant.
Farther along the wall, someone lit a cigarette.

D
uring a wet rush-hour morning a week or so later a London bus hit a car which hit a drunk, causing traffic to back up in all directions from
Notting Hill Gate. Drivers were ill-tempered or wearily resigned, the hunched pedestrians morose and indifferent. Charles sat in the back of a Ford Cortina parked in Pembridge Square, off the
Bayswater Road where it led past the Soviet Embassy. The mild exhilaration consequent upon being part of, and apart from, the workaday world, had faded.
The Times
was now refolded on his lap
as he watched congregations of starlings in the bare plane trees. Conversation had lapsed and the only human sounds were the occasional crackling, staccato announcements over the VHF surveillance
net, such as ‘Red Four Two off. Out.’ Jim, the driver, rested his arm on the door and stared straight ahead. Sue, in the front passenger seat, read a paperback. Charles opened one of
the windows a little. It began to rain again.

Charles no longer paid any attention to the people walking past. At first, everything had been interesting; now, there was only waiting. The high spot of the morning had been when two drab
youths had tried fiddling the lock of a newish but dirty and bird-spattered XJ6 Jaguar parked a few cars ahead. They ran off when Jim put his fist on the hooter.

‘Would you have called the police if they’d broken in?’ Charles asked.

Jim grimaced in the mirror. ‘Difficult one, that. On the one hand, we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves. On the other, we hate seeing the bastards getting away with it. If it
was serious we’d tell control to get on to the police and give them descriptions.’

‘You wouldn’t follow them?’

‘Not when we’re on a job like this, no. Unless it was murder or something.’

‘Or they were good-looking,’ said Sue.

An hour and a half later, after the humiliation of his first ever attempt at
The Times
crossword, a walk in the rain had become an exciting prospect. ‘Any chance of a stretch of
legs?’ he asked.

Jim looked at his watch. ‘You two have a cup and smoke. We’ll park round the corner.’

They went to a café with red plastic tables and a notice advertising breakfast all day. Jim parked across the road in sight of it and checked with control via a microphone concealed in
the sun-visor. ‘You wired up?’ he asked Sue as she and Charles got out.

She nodded. ‘No need to call, just flash us. We’ll see you.’

They sat in the window with frothy cappuccinos. The background music was non-stop Rod Stewart. She lit a cigarette and Charles, for the sake of doing something different, accepted one. ‘Is
surveillance always as exciting as this?’ he asked.

‘Sometimes even more exciting. You can spend a whole week not getting out of the car. Targets drive more than they used to. That’s why everyone’s always keen on a bit of
footwork, if there’s any chance of it. Car seats make backache an occupational illness.’

SV, MI5’s surveillance section, appeared to comprise men and women in roughly equal numbers. Some of the men, such as Jim, were ex-soldiers with Northern Irish experience, while some of
the women, such as Sue, were long-legged, attractive girls with the accents of Benenden or Roedean. Sue had been to the former, he discovered. When he surmised that she might have failed selection
because her appearance would stand out in a crowd she accepted the compliment as a straightforward matter of fact, with no flicker of flirtation. Her blue eyes were curiously flat and
expressionless.

‘So long as you’re not a dwarf or an absolute giant,’ she said languidly, ‘looks don’t really matter. You can change them quickly, especially women, headscarves and
all that. It’s more a question of attitude and adaptability. The rest is trailing.’

She shared a flat off Sloane Square with two other girls, who thought she helped run her sister’s modelling agency, and did three twelve-hour shifts a week, though she was on call for some
of the rest. She had no career ambitions, the pay was reasonable, hours flexible, company congenial and the work sometimes – present appearances apart – exciting.

‘Passes the time till I find someone rich enough to marry me,’ she said.

‘How rich?’

‘Quite seriously rich. Enough for a generous alimony. I suppose he’d have to be foreign or someone in the City. Got any friends there?’

‘I’ll have a think. So long as you and I have a meal for every one I introduce.’

‘Okay.’ She smiled as she put out her cigarette.

‘Meanwhile, if our friend doesn’t come out to play, we sit here all day?’

‘And half the night, and all tomorrow and the next day and so on if you’re really keen, until he does. Then he’ll probably be with someone or we’ll lose him or
we’ll be hauled off on some higher priority as soon as he pokes his nose out of the door.’

Hookey had done his work with MI5. Charles was to show himself to Viktor when Viktor was seeing Claire, but no words were permitted with either, pending the security review of the case.

‘No words,’ Hookey had chuckled, ‘but sign language I leave to you. It wasn’t mentioned.’

They knew from Chef that Viktor was due to leave the Russian Embassy for some part of that day, so a team of four cars and ten surveillants was pulled off from watching the military
attachés, who had been particularly active lately.

‘One of their periodic obsessions with government buildings,’ said Sue. ‘Probably in response to some regular reporting requirement, we’re told. They even send a KGB
officer out to buy
Janes’ Fighting Ships.
No doubt they stamp “secret” all over it before sending it back to Moscow.’

When they returned to the car Jim left them to have his cup of tea, after which the three of them sat in it until lunchtime, when each crew took a break in turn. They had to move around the area
in order to avoid traffic wardens. Charles wondered how his fellow students were doing on Danish Blue, the extended overseas exercise, for which each had had to work up his own legend. Gerry and
Rebecca had so arranged it that no one knew he was not on it; there was some suggestion he might have been going to Reykjavik. A week in Reykjavik was beginning to sound an attractive
proposition.

The radio crackled. Sue and Jim went from a comatose state to rapid response while Charles struggled to catch up. Jim started the engine. ‘Just in time,’ he said. ‘That bloody
warden’s on his way back.’

Sue noted and quoted numbers and nicknames, her voice procedure quick and precise with no trace of her earlier languor; a league above, Charles reflected, his own rusty army procedure. After a
couple of minutes she turned to him. ‘Static Ops report Foxtrot Alpha heading west in the Ford Escort he normally uses. Red Four Two and Three are with him. We and Four are hanging back in
case he’s only gone west in order to do a U-turn. OPs also report three of our usual targets leaving at the same time, all mobiles. Could be a ploy to test our responses and frequencies, work
out the call-signs we give them and so on. Or it could be that one of them’s genuinely up to something and the others are providing diversionary cover, pulling us in all
directions.’

‘Or coincidence,’ said Jim. ‘Your friend Foxtrot Alpha could be visiting the Foreign Office and there could really be Foxtrot Alpha else going on.’

‘How do you know they monitor your signals?’

‘Lyalin told us when he defected, before we kicked out the 105. The Residency used to send people out just to check on their symbols and make sure they’ve still got our frequencies.
We’ve got more secure comms since then, all this frequency-hopping and that sort of thing, but you have to assume they’re advancing, too.’

Charles was in mid-question when Sue cut him short. ‘Roger. On our way. Out.’ She turned to Charles. ‘He’s definitely going west. We’re joining the
others.’

The rain had stopped but the routes to Shepherd’s Bush and beyond were still busy. “Where is he?’ asked Charles as they approached the Shepherd’s Bush roundabout.

‘On the A40, still going west. You won’t see him, we’re too far back. Three’s on him, Four’s ahead and Two’s – not sure where Two is –’

‘Gone to the dogs at the White City, knowing them,’ said Jim.