The Dark Chronicles (7 page)

I looked over at the dirty black river and wondered about Sasha’s definition of beauty.

‘Forgive me if I don’t share your sympathy for him,’ I said.

‘Oh, don’t be so self-pitying, Paul! You have enjoyed more than
your share of luck tonight. You weren’t spotted by Henry Pritchard, for example. Although, of course,’ he added, ‘you will now have to be especially wary of him.’

Yes. Yes, I would. ‘
The control, at one remove from the action, may be able to offer the agent fresh insight into problems he faces in the field.
’ It was from the Service manual, but I imagined Moscow had some similar gibberish printed up. I resisted the urge to tell him that it had already occurred to me that I might now have to be especially wary of Pritchard.

‘Still, I don’t think there’s any need for you to worry yourself unduly,’ Sasha was saying. ‘Slavin will be dispatched tomorrow.’ He gave a short chuckle.

I told him that nobody was going to lay a finger on Slavin, and after he had recovered from the savagery with which I had spat this out, he politely asked me why not. He even managed a sliver of bewildered amusement in his tone – I didn’t like that. I wanted him scared.

‘Volkov,’ I said. ‘It’ll look too much like it.’

Konstantin Volkov had walked into the British Consulate-General in Istanbul in 1945 and asked to defect. He’d had information that would have blown Philby, but Philby had wangled his way into getting the job to fly out to interrogate him, and he’d taken enough time doing it for his handler to send some goons in to take the Russian and his wife back to Moscow. This was now known, thanks in part to Philby himself, who had published a slippery little volume of memoirs revealing just enough to push my colleagues into further paroxysms of paranoia. If Slavin suddenly disappeared, it would be clear he had been silenced by the double, and as the only men who knew about Slavin’s allegations were Lagos Station and Heads of Section, that would narrow the field considerably. I had to get out to Nigeria as soon as possible, because I couldn’t run the risk of someone else interrogating Slavin before me. But if anything happened to him, either while I was there or on my way out there, it would narrow the field to just one.

‘You’re safe,’ said Sasha. ‘Didn’t you come through with flying colours last time? Nobody would ever seriously suspect you.’ He patted the leather upholstery pointedly. ‘Your cover is impeccable.’

‘You’re making me blush,’ I said. ‘But my last experience of being questioned was notably different, I think, don’t you? I hadn’t, for example, just killed the Head of the Service. If Slavin is mysteriously shipped off in bandages moments before I arrive in Lagos, I’ll either spend the rest of my life in Pentonville or end up dangling from the end of a rope.’

‘Let us be perfectly clear, Paul. What is it you are asking of me?’

‘Keep your thugs away. Let me deal with Slavin.’

He took a sharp intake of breath, and gave a quick shake of his head. ‘It is far too dangerous.’

‘Reassuring to hear that you care, but I’ll be the judge of that.’

‘It’s impossible.’

‘It’s non-negotiable.’

He gave me a long look. ‘They won’t let me.’

‘Then don’t tell them.’ I leaned a little on the last word – his incessant passing of the buck was beginning to irritate me.

‘I can’t do that. There is another option, you know—’

I gave him a cool look. ‘The flat in Moscow? Pissing away the rest of my life on cheap vodka like Philby and the others? No thanks.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t help you. I wish I could, I really do, but it’s not in my power—’

I took the next corner, up a ramp to a space in front of someone’s lock-up, ‘Millwall FC’ scrawled across it in blue spray paint. I pulled the brake and drew the Luger, then faced my comrade down the barrel.

He’d shut up now.

I leaned forward and placed the nose against his forehead.

‘It’s in your own interest,’ I said. ‘If they take me into the rubber room – which I can guarantee you they will if anyone touches Slavin before I get there – I’ll give them everything I have on you before I bite down on the capsule.’

His expression remained blank – he didn’t think I had enough on him for it to matter.

‘They mightn’t find you, of course,’ I said. ‘You mightn’t even be here by then.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If I come under suspicion, Moscow will almost certainly recall you.’

It had a more benign ring to it than ‘dispatched’, but it amounted to the same thing. His breaths had started coming short and fast now, and I thought I could see the logic gradually penetrate.

‘All right,’ he said, finally. ‘You’re on your own.’

‘When’s your next report?’

Hesitation. I twitched my finger a fraction.

‘The second, barring emergencies.’ He managed a smile, and I liked him a little for it. It brought to mind the Sasha I had known and worked with for so long.

But, then, that Sasha was a liar.

The second: that was ten days away. We drove on in silence for a few minutes, and then I pulled up at a yard filled with blackened barges. A sign on a wall proclaimed that ‘
DOGS LOVE VIMS’
. The dirt in the air from the coal-loading wharf upstream was everywhere, impregnating the lamp-posts and the buildings, and the smell of tar and water was suddenly pungent. ‘Your chief’s body,’ Sasha said suddenly, as I drew to a halt. ‘You didn’t say what you had done with it.’

I’d been wondering how long it would take him. I nodded at my coat behind his head. He glanced back over his shoulder and swore violently in Russian. ‘You’re going to dump him in the river.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘We are.’

*

I parked the car close to the edge and we carried the body down, wrapped in the blanket. I took the arms, Sasha the feet, and we shuffled along to the end of the lock, stopping every couple of
minutes – he kept complaining that it was tricky to keep a firm hold. Finally we were there, and we lowered Chief onto the moist gravel.

Sasha clapped his hands together, looking for a moment as though he would make a comment about the recent cold snap. I prayed he wouldn’t – I didn’t want to lose control altogether.

I began scouring the ground for stones and suggested he do the same. When I had a handful that were large enough, I stuffed them into Chief’s pockets.

We carried on doing this for a few minutes, not saying anything. I think Sasha was afraid to – in silence, it was easier to pretend we were doing something else, so he busied himself with selecting the best stones for the job, delegating their placement to me. It was as though he were a child building a sandcastle, searching for decoration for one of the turrets.

When Chief was pretty much laden, I took his house-keys from my coat and placed them in his top pocket. No harm in being tidy. I signalled to Sasha. Chief’s face and hands already looked grey in the yard’s sulphurous light. Had I not pulled the trigger, he’d have been stirring his cup of cocoa and shuffling into bed about now – having just heard all about my involvement in Father’s mission from Pritchard, and had me arrested for treason as a result.

I stopped looking at him and told Sasha to do the same; it wasn’t making things easier. We lifted him again, shimmied to the edge and started swinging him until we had a reasonable rhythm and some height. Then I counted to three, and we heaved forward and let him go.

*

I was enveloped in a fog of cigarette smoke as I walked into Ronnie Scott’s. Once I’d made my way through it, I saw that the support band was still on – three earnest young men sweating for their art in matching orange brocade suits – and the place was packed.

I usually savoured the atmosphere, but tonight I had to find Vanessa, and fast. I was close to half an hour late and I wasn’t sure what kind of mood she would be in – our afternoon of lovemaking might have left her feeling the snub even more.

We hadn’t visited the club since the previous summer, and it had expanded in the meantime, but I remembered that she liked to sit as close to the stage as possible, so I bypassed the bar and made for the candlelit tables up front. There was no sign of her. I scanned the crowd desperately: a handsome Indian gent in a pinstripe suit and white turban; a party of young women, all sporting the same outlandish hairdo; an elderly man enraptured by the band, playing along on an imaginary piano – every face in London, it seemed, but one. Perhaps she was in the lavatory, or had left a message with one of the waitresses. I was walking towards the bar, when I felt a tug at my sleeve.

‘So there you are,’ she whispered in my ear. ‘I was about to give up hope!’

Her hair was down and her body poured into the turquoise shantung dress I’d bought her at Dior a few weeks earlier on a spree. She’d embellished it with a cream organza shawl and a necklace of ivory bones that showed off her tan. Her eyes were a little hooded, and one shoulder sloped oddly: she was either drunk, or high, or both.

I felt the tension leave me. ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ I said, raising my voice so I could be heard over a saxophone solo. She laughed gaily and offered me her hand. I took it and she led me away from the stage, towards her table.

‘Yes, well, I’m sorry, too. Where on earth have you been? Killing Russians again?’

I forced a smile. ‘Not quite. But something came up.’

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’ve been quite happy, really. I bumped into one of Daddy’s friends and he’s been entertaining me in your absence – such a charming man, and so knowledgeable. I believe he’s also in your game?’

The tall, slender figure was seated at her table between a half-finished bottle of chilled Riesling and a plate of chicken curry, his jacket resting on his knees and his eyes fixed on me.

‘Why, hello, Paul,’ said Pritchard, with a wintry smile. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’

I woke to see the word ‘
BECHEROVKA’
swimming in front of my eyes. My first thought was that I was still at Chief’s house, but then the ringing in my ears and the coating on my teeth brought it all back.

Pritchard had left the club soon after my arrival. He hadn’t mentioned that he had been at Chief’s, though in a way I’d found that more troubling. But strangely enough, despite the fright he’d given me, I had almost been sorry to see him go, as I hadn’t had much to say to Vanessa. I’d hung on at the club with her for another hour, wearing a death’s-head grin and sweating inside my coat as the music spiralled out of control, before finally feigning tiredness and suggesting we leave.

I’d hailed her a cab – the longer I spent with her, the worse it would be. She hadn’t been pleased, of course, but she’d taken it reasonably well and hadn’t asked any questions. I had told her I’d call her in the morning, then I’d hopped in the car and driven back to South Kensington.

After parking near the flat, I had taken the bag from behind the back seat and thrown it into the bins behind an Italian restaurant. On impulse, I’d fished out the bottle of Becherovka and taken it up to the flat with me, hiding it under my jacket so the porter wouldn’t see.

I’d slept very little, spending most of the night going through what had happened and getting to the bottom of the bottle. Now, as the dawn light fell on overturned chairs and shattered glass, I
stripped and forced myself to work through the old fitness regimen. By the end of it, I was dripping in sweat and my mind was focused on the morning ahead. I had three objectives. Visit Station 12 and pick up my copy of the Slavin dossier – I didn’t want to have to explain why I hadn’t already received it. See if Chief’s file on Anna was in Registry – as a Head of Section I had full clearance, although one didn’t usually ask to see material related to Chief without a very good reason. I had several. But above all, I had to make sure I was sent out to Nigeria. I had no idea what else Slavin might have up his sleeve, and I needed to hear it before anyone else.

Resolved, I took a bath, shaved and put on a fresh suit. After a scratch breakfast, I packed an old canvas hold-all with a few clothes and took the lift downstairs. I left a message for George to give the car the full treatment, outside and in. Then I hailed a cab and asked the driver to take me to Lambeth.

*

‘Gentlemen!’ William Osborne’s stentorian tones put a sudden stop to the murmuring around the table. ‘I think it’s time we settled down and got this show on the road, as our American friends like to say.’

He gave a slightly unconvincing chortle, and his waistcoat expanded in the process. Unblessed by the breeding or charm that had smoothed the waters for others, Osborne had clawed his way to becoming Head of Western Hemisphere Section by virtue of his prodigious intellect. A highly capable administrator, he had been widely expected to take over as Deputy Chief last year, but the job had instead gone to John Farraday, a smooth Foreign Office nob with no previous experience of the spy game but a penchant for hosting lavish dinner parties. Osborne had managed to isolate him within weeks, and nobody was in any doubt who really ran things when Chief was away. But he didn’t have the title, yet – and it was by no means a certainty that he’d get it.

This meeting was held every Monday morning at this time, and
was known as ‘the Round Table’, although none of us were knights and the table was, in fact, rectangular. Farraday had just arrived and taken his place in his usual corner; he was now busily checking that his cuffs were protruding from his jacket sleeves by half an inch. Seated immediately to his right, and directly facing me, was Pritchard. In a crisp, narrow-cut pinstripe suit and woven silk tie, he didn’t look in the least as though he’d been sipping Riesling in a Soho jazz club less than nine hours ago.

After the war, Pritchard had joined MI5, where he had eventually become Head of E Branch: Colonial Affairs. When it had finally become clear to the Whitehall mandarins that it was suicidal to have intelligence officers posted in former colonies with no official links to the Service, which was responsible for all other overseas territories, E Branch had been taken over, and Pritchard had moved with it. Coming from Five, and being a Scot to boot, had initially made him a deeply suspected outsider, especially as many of the Service’s old guard had been forcibly retired at the same time he joined. However, he was also a decorated war hero, independently wealthy, and staunchly right-wing, and within a few months of his joining the Service he had been taken up as a kind of mascot by its rank and file: their man on the board. While in Five, Pritchard had been converted to the Americans’ idea that British intelligence was still penetrated by the KGB, and he’d devoted a great deal of time and energy to examining old files and case histories in the hope of catching another mole. He’d brought this zeal with him to the Service, and it had made him a lot of high-ranking friends. Chief and Osborne had initially been all in favour of Pritchard’s ‘hunting expeditions’, as his periodic attempts to uproot traitors were known, but now felt that he and his clique were stoking an atmosphere of paranoia and distrust. I tended to agree.