Red Joan (30 page)

Ah yes, Joan most certainly remembers reading about that.

Kierl was arrested later that night. The following morning he confessed to the crime of sending information to the Soviet Union. A windfall. There were protests at the time that the sentence was too harsh. He hadn't been giving secrets to an enemy, after all. Russia was an ally at the time. Although, by 1946, this position was a little more ambiguous.

Joan looks at Ms. Hart. Her head thrums with exhaustion. There is no let-up from the relentless run of questions. She looks at her watch. Forty-seven hours until her name is released to the House of Commons, and until William's cremation. Forty-eight hours until she has to make her statement to the press. She supposes that this is why they are mentioning Kierl now. To prepare her for what will happen to her.

‘Yes,' she says eventually, and her voice is thin and uneven. ‘It did scare me a little.'

 

When she arrives at the laboratory, everyone is already there. They are gathered in Max's room, standing, talking, reading aloud snippets from the newspapers. Donald is shouting something about the blasted Ruskis. Karen is positioned at the door, gesticulating to Donald that he needs to pipe down. Joan drops her bag at the cloakroom and goes in. Max is standing behind the desk, his shirt crumpled and his hair standing up in clumps, his eyes ringed by shadows. Their eyes meet across the room and there is, for a brief moment, a hint of the closeness they have lost, ignited by this reminder of their trip to Canada, before he coughs, looks away, and raises his hands in an attempt to get everyone's attention.

‘You all know why we're here,' he says. ‘You've all read the papers.' He dips his head and rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. ‘I don't know what to say. I feel . . . ' He stops.

‘Pissed off?' Donald ventures.

Max nods, but he does not smile. ‘That'd be putting it mildly.'

Silence hangs in the room. There is the atmosphere of a siege, of being listened to, which means that nobody quite knows what to say. Eventually Karen speaks. ‘Did they come here too? Were we under investigation?'

Max looks up. ‘I expect so.' He raises his hands again to calm the chatter this response provokes. ‘I think we all need to just get on as normal, as much as we possibly can. There's going to be a bit of press attention and I believe the police are on their way here now, but it will pass. It'll be worse at the laboratories in Brum.'

‘Everything's worse in Brum,' Karen interjects from the doorway.

‘So we just carry on as if nothing has happened?' Donald asks irritably.

‘Well, nothing has happened, as such,' Arthur says. ‘They still can't make the bomb based on the information he's given them. We haven't even done it yet.'

‘No. But what's the point in making it if they're going to have it too? Stalin will blow us all up before we get the chance to stop him.'

‘All right, all right, Donnie. That's enough gloom and doom for today,' Karen calls out. ‘Joan, come over here and let's do the tea.'

Max smiles gratefully at Karen. ‘Fine, meeting closed then. Motto for the day is to be cooperative when the police turn up, show them we've got nothing to hide, and keep buggering on. I think that's all we can do.' He pauses. ‘And be extra vigilant, extra careful. I want cupboards locked, no documents left out overnight, no idle talk. All those war mottos still apply to us.'

‘Right, boss.'

There is a palpable release of tension as everybody turns to leave and resume business as normal.

Oh, what an effort it is for Joan to move slowly, to give the impression that she is as stunned as the rest of them (which she is, in a way), and that she has no reason to rush. But it is hard to stop herself from moving fast. She feels giddy and out of control, as if she is careering downhill and the grass is slippery underfoot, too steep to stop. It is almost a reflex, this urge to put her hands out to protect herself. There are so many things she needs to do. Get to the meeting room. Find that brown envelope that she has already addressed to the fictitious plumber and then left, stupidly, carelessly, on the sideboard under a tray, stuffed full of duplicated documents. And then there is the camera, tucked away in the tea tin, just as it always is. Yes, she knows they are unlikely to look in there, but if they did it would be quite a find: a small camera containing a roll of film with close-up snaps of the reactor design.

‘Joan, would you mind staying here for a minute?'

Her heart stops in her chest. ‘I . . . erm . . . have some things to sort out.'

‘This won't take a minute.'

She has no choice. She stops, letting the others file past her while her thoughts flit between the envelope of documents and the camera. How can she have got so careless? So reckless? Did she think she was invincible? She waits for everyone else to leave and then closes the door and goes to sit in the chair opposite Max. He is sitting at the desk, idly doodling on a file with his fountain pen.

‘So, our friend Kierl was more of a slot-machine than we thought,' he begins, glancing up and giving Joan a rueful half smile before continuing with his doodle. ‘That's quite a windfall.'

Up close, his skin is as oyster-shell pale as she remembers. The memory brushes uneasily against her thoughts of the envelope and camera. ‘What did you want to ask me?'

He looks up, his mind evidently distracted, because a few seconds pass before he is able to speak. ‘I've been asked to submit a report of our thoughts on Kierl in Canada. Any conversations we had with him, any comments he made, any allusions as to his contacts.' He pauses. ‘I've done an initial draft which I'd like you to read over.' He pushes a piece of paper across the table to her. ‘It doesn't really say anything they don't already know, but just add anything you can think of.'

Joan nods. ‘Right.'

‘It needs to be finalised as soon as possible so before midday would be ideal. Just think about anything he might have said. I'm not expecting anything dramatic.'

‘I hardly spoke to him.'

‘I know.' Max pauses. His eyes are fixed on the doodle in front of him and he doesn't raise them to meet hers when he speaks. ‘There's something else as well.'

Joan takes a shallow breath. ‘Yes?'

‘I've been given a list of potential suspects identified in Canada who might have been Kierl's contact.' He taps the table with his pen. ‘One of the names on it, Leo Galich, was associated with you when you started here. I'm afraid I have to ask: did you see him when we were in Canada?'

Joan's heart freezes in her chest, starting again with an almost painful thump. Does he already know? Is that why he's asking? Could he have spotted Leo following her into the ladies' lavatory? No, she thinks, Max wouldn't have recognised Leo then. Even if he has seen a photograph now, it wouldn't make any difference. Slowly, she shakes her head.

Max is watching her carefully. ‘He was the one though, wasn't he?'

Her tongue feels as if it has become swollen with air, a great ball of puffed-out flesh. ‘The one what?'

‘The one you mentioned on the boat. The one who didn't ask.'

It takes Joan a few seconds to figure out this reference, and when she does the realisation is devastating and sweet all at once. She nods. ‘Yes, but it was a long time ago. I'm surprised you remember that.'

Max takes a shallow breath. ‘I still think he's an idiot, by the way.'

There is a pause as their eyes meet, and for that moment she wishes with all her heart that she had never got into this in the first place because she is suddenly so unbearably tired and scared that she fears she might weep.

Max seems to see this in her face as his expression registers mild alarm. ‘I haven't mentioned Leo Galich in our report,' he says quickly, ‘and it doesn't sound like there's any need to. Would you agree?'

Joan nods, grateful that he cannot read her quite as well as she once thought, or that he trusts her enough not to try. ‘Thank you,' she whispers. She stands up, feeling the soft burn of Max's eyes still upon her. ‘I'll have the report back to you before lunch.'

She hurries from his office to the kitchen and shuts the door behind her. Her heart is pounding. She is not cut out for this. She leans back against the door as she lifts the false bottom of the tin and extracts the camera, slipping it from the palm of her hand into the depths of her handbag. She knows it is not safe there, or not safe enough. She will have time to come up with a better plan later, although she does not know what.

The door handle turns behind her and Joan jumps away from the door.

A voice calls out to her: ‘Would you like some help with the tea?'

She jumps and spins around. It is Karen. Of course it is Karen. Who else would it be?

‘I'm fine.' Her expression is glassy. She is holding the tin and the kettle is not yet on, and she sees Karen's eyes flick from the tin to the counter. ‘Just refilling the tin.' She looks away, and then up again, suddenly aware of the perilousness of her position, of the need to act normal. ‘It's rather unsettling, isn't it?'

Karen nods. She edges in conspiratorially. ‘I don't know if it's all the stress of this, but I'm having terrible cramps today.'

Joan smiles sympathetically, and as she does, she sees that this is it. This is her chance. It's her cover. Sonya was right. She fills the kettle with water and then turns to Karen. ‘I'm really sorry to ask,' she begins tentatively, ‘but do you have any spare sanitary towels? I've been caught short . . . '

‘Of course. I'll leave a box in the lavatory for you.'

 

The police arrive just before noon. They enter the laboratory quietly, dressed in plain clothes and without any fuss. Joan is in the meeting room with the door closed when she hears unknown voices in the corridor. She does not look up. There is no time. She must finish what she has begun.

She has a system. It is an imperfect system but she can think of no better way of hiding the extra duplicates, seeing as they cannot be destroyed. Not here. Not today. She files them instead with their counterparts, having decided that it would be enough of a defence to claim she had copied a batch of documents twice by mistake the previous day. It is not something she has done before, but nor is it an implausible mistake. To the untrained eye, most of the documents produced by each scientist are very similar to all the others already produced. If spotted, this duplication would no doubt be put down to a lapse in concentration, or even to a presumption of Joan's lack of knowledge. And surely that is not a bad thing.

She is moving fast. Her fingers are deft and precise, and the small hairs on the back of her neck are standing up straight. Her handbag is propped up against the table leg, half obscured but still visible. She hears footsteps in the corridor outside the room. They stop, turn around, retrace their steps. Quickly, she slips the papers into their respective files until the envelope on the sideboard is completely empty.

The footsteps come closer again, and this time they do not stop. The door handle turns. ‘Sorry to interrupt, miss, but the professor said you were in here.' A policeman is standing in the doorway. ‘I need to take some of these files.'

Joan stands aside and gestures for him to take whatever he wishes.

He steps forward and starts to read the labels on each file. He nods and gestures to another policeman to come and collect the ones he has selected, which he does, filling his arms with them and causing him to lean backwards as he walks to counterbalance their weight. He stops when he sees the envelope and puts the files on a table. He picks up the envelope, shakes it, and then peers inside before putting it back down, picking up the files again, and walking out.

When he has gone, the first man turns back to Joan. ‘Is that your bag?'

Joan glances down to the bag at her feet. She nods.

‘Mind if I take a look?'

‘Of course not.' She picks it up and hands it to him. Dampness spreads across her back. He takes her purse and opens it, checking through the scruffy roll of receipts in the rear compartment. He shakes out a neck scarf, a novel, an umbrella, a lipstick. He picks each item up in turn and inspects it, turning it over and running his fingers along any seams capable of concealing anything.

‘Apologies, miss,' he says. ‘Routine, I'm afraid.'

He opens the bag wider. It is almost empty, except for one item which seems to be wedged against the bottom of the lining. He lifts the bag up and turns it upside down, and then he shakes it until the tiny Leica camera falls out.

Only it is no longer camera-shaped. It is a camera in disguise. It is a camera broken by a stiletto heel in the ladies' bathroom, ground into small pieces, and then hidden inside ten sanitary towels, each one slit open, packed, and then folded neatly, symmetrically, back into its original packaging. The man picks up the box and inspects it, not immediately realising what it is. He frowns as he reads the packaging and then reddens as he realises what it is, apologises, and puts it back in the bag.

 

That was too close. It was reckless, stupid. She is cycling fast, her cheeks hot and her whole body shaking at the thought of how near they came. She feels as if she has just been pulled back from falling under a train, two hands on her shoulders, yanking her back. She passes the station and carries on along identical roads with their small terraced houses, war-worn and flaky with flowers curling on the windowsills, until she reaches her road and turns in with relief.

There are cars parked on her street which she doesn't recognise, but then again, why would she? She hardly ever looks. It is only when Sonya reminds her that this is one of the precautions she ought to be taking that it even crosses her mind to look out for them. What should she be looking for in any case? A man in a mackintosh smoking a cigar and looking suspicious?