The Dark Chronicles (82 page)

‘That’s not enough to approach him,’ she said. ‘What if you read wrong? He’ll just turn us straight over—’

‘There’s more. For the last few years, Maclean has worked as an editor at
International Affairs
, which is the Soviet Foreign Ministry’s journal. That’s really a seal of approval from the big boys in the KGB. Moscow Station sends the journal to London in the diplomatic bag every month, and I used to read the bloody thing from cover to cover. Maclean writes articles on foreign policy under a pseudonym, but in the last couple of years his veneer of Party dogma has slipped. Obviously, there’s only so much you can say in such a journal, but my impression is that although he’s still a firm Communist, he’s bitterly opposed to Brezhnev’s gang. On top of that, various reports have trickled in over the last couple of years
claiming that, unknown to the KGB, he has been frequenting intellectual circles, and perhaps even visited the homes of suspected dissidents.’

I listened to the sound of the radiator humming beside me.

‘Perhaps we should try Andropov’s
dacha
,’ she said. ‘I hear he’s also visited suspected dissidents.’

‘Not the time for humour,’ I said. ‘I’m not saying he’s another Sakharov, but faced with these documents, he might help us. Final point, and I hope this one will convince.’

‘Me, or you?’

‘Both. All the defectors keep very much to themselves, but occasionally they’re allowed to see a journalist or an old acquaintance. Maclean has had very few visitors from the West since he arrived, but those who have met him have given an increasingly strange picture. A couple of years ago, an old friend of his from Cambridge was due to come out here as part of some delegation. I got wind of it and invited him out to dinner a couple of weeks before, and discreetly suggested he try to renew the acquaintance. As soon as he got back, I took him out again, and over pheasant and port he told me he’d managed to meet Maclean for about an hour between meetings – and that it had been very odd. Maclean had generally steered clear of controversial topics, but at one point he’d suddenly asked this chap if he was “a sleeper they had never got round to waking up”.’

‘“They”, not “we”.’

‘Exactly. Maclean defected nearly twenty years ago, but still doesn’t identify himself completely with the Soviets.’

Silence again. It was slender, I knew: the friend could have been exaggerating, or not recalled the wording correctly. But we had to find a way out of this city.

‘Are you sure about this?’ she said. ‘If you’re wrong—’

‘Of course I’m not sure. But I think it’s a better bet than approaching strangers.’

She breathed in. ‘What about Yuri?’ she said. ‘He might suspect us of doing just this – Brits sticking together.’

‘I’d
be surprised. We only just came up with the idea ourselves, and it’s hardly the most obvious move. And we know something about Maclean he doesn’t.’

‘All right. We need to find the journal’s offices, I suppose?’

‘Yes. There should be a map in the glove compartment.’

I turned the key in the ignition and began reversing towards the main road.

An office block loomed in front of us, immense and grey, a couple of cars parked on the street directly in front. I couldn’t remember where Maclean lived, but I’d read the masthead of
International Affairs
a hundred times or more, and the address was always printed at the foot of the page: ‘14 Gorokhovsky Pereulok, Moscow’. Despite the anonymity of the building, this was a plush neighbourhood in one of the oldest parts of the city – we’d passed several eighteenth- and nineteenth-century palaces on the way.

We hadn’t passed any
militsiya
patrols or GAZ-23s, but Yuri and his colleagues would be searching hard for this car, so logic dictated we lose it as soon as possible. Sarah was too young to pass for a senior female official in the fiercely male Soviet military environment, and if we went together that might confuse matters, so after a brief discussion we decided it was probably safer that she stayed in the car than risked being stopped on the street. I parked a few streets away outside a block of flats, and left her huddled under the blankets in the back, clutching the attaché case. We agreed that if I hadn’t returned within twenty minutes she would try to make a break for the border alone.

There was a
militsiya
man on guard by the entrance: probably an undercover KGB officer assigned to the building in general, and Maclean in particular. I’d considered telephoning from a call-box, but had decided it was too risky. He might simply call his handler
the moment he replaced the receiver, and I’d be picked up the moment I arrived at the arranged meeting point. No, if I wanted his cooperation, I would have to see him face to face. He might be under surveillance by the KGB, but after nearly two decades in the country I reckoned that the protection would be relatively light.

The
militsiya
man watched me as I approached, squinting, perhaps to see if I was someone he knew. He had a sergeant’s shoulder-boards.

‘Greetings, comrade!’ I said, raising my hand, and hoping blood wasn’t seeping through the glove.

‘Good morning, comrade. What can I do for you?’

‘I’m here to see the Englishman, Frazer. Is he in his office?’

He frowned at the mention of the name, and my stomach tensed as I waited to see if the gamble would pay off. Maclean might no longer work here, or be on holiday, or be using another name, or be in Minsk…

‘Is there a problem?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I said, ‘I just need to ask him some questions. One of the other Englishmen has gone missing, and head office thinks this fool might know about it. I doubt it, but I’ve been sent to ask just in case.’

He considered this for a moment. ‘That sounds like one of Vilshin’s ideas.’

I smiled. ‘No, this came directly from Andropov, would you believe?’

He whistled. Then his eyes narrowed. ‘This is the first I’ve heard of it.’

‘It’s only just happened, and I was told to inform you about it. Everyone is in a panic, and it seems that when Andropov tells Vilshin to jump, he asks how high. Well, what would I know? It’s my first week in this job – just came down from Leningrad.’

‘Ah, I thought I didn’t recognize you. Who were you working for up there?’

‘Chap called Ledov. Even worse than Vilshin, I can tell you!’

‘That would take some doing. But it sounds like you catch on fast – it’s just as you say. Listen, can you wait here?’

‘Gladly. But don’t be too long, comrade – I don’t want to freeze my balls off out here! Nobody told me it would be so cold down here.’

He smiled. ‘Just wait until next week. I’ve heard it’s going to get a lot worse. Hang on, I’ll be back soon.’

He disappeared, and I wondered if he was going to make a quick telephone call to headquarters to check on my story. The uniform and a bit of blarney seemed to have done the trick, but the longer he took the worse it would be, because it might suddenly occur to him that he hadn’t even asked me for my name or my papers. If this went wrong, we’d reached the end of the road. The
militsiya
man appeared at the door again. And looming behind him, looking rather anxious, was a very tall man in a shabby suit and a spotted bow tie.

Maclean.

*

I told the KGB man I would take Maclean for a walk for about an hour. He nodded and wished me well, and I gestured to Maclean to lead the way. We walked off down the street together, me and this giant whom I had read so much about but never met.

‘What’s this about?’ he said suddenly, his voice surprisingly high-pitched. ‘I have some important work I need to do this afternoon.’

‘Paul Dark,’ I said, indicating that he take the side street on the right.

He looked up at me, confused. ‘Dark? But I never had anything to do with—’

He staggered back on his heels.

‘I thought you were in custody.’

‘I was.’

He reeled away from me, his hands outstretched.

‘Get away!’ he spat out in English. ‘I don’t want to get involved—’

I leaned over and grabbed at his bow tie, pulling him towards me and then turning him round and shoving him in the direction of the car. ‘Get in,’ I said quietly, showing him the Makarov.

*

They were both watching me: Sarah sitting upright in the back, and Maclean folded into the passenger seat as though he were an elaborate penknife. Looking at him close up, he seemed unbelievably old – the rakish cad from the wanted posters sent out by the FBI in 1951 was long gone. What was left of his hair was swept back in an almost Edwardian style, and there were enormous circles under his eyes. The eyes themselves were clear, though, so he just might have stopped the drinking. But when he opened his mouth, I was shocked to see that he had several teeth missing. All that remained that was familiar from the pictures I’d seen of him was the aristocratic sneer. He reminded me of an ancient butler in a Bela Lugosi film, answering the door of the haunted house to the innocent enquirer.

Well, I was no more innocent than he.

‘I know we’ve never met,’ I said, ‘and you have no reason to trust me. But we do have something in common, I think. Please hear me out. Then, if you want to walk away, do.’

‘We don’t have anything in common,’ he spat out. ‘You were never one of us. You did it because you fell for a woman.’

I took a deep breath. ‘This isn’t about what we’ve done with our lives, or why. It’s about the here and now.’

‘I’m perfectly happy with what I’m doing here and now, thank you very much. I
worked
for the cause I believed in – you were too busy playing cloak-and-dagger games for kicks.’

‘I was Deputy Chief of the Service,’ I said, regretting it the moment the words came out of my mouth. Maclean turned his head away, no doubt delighted at having exposed my petty egoism. But I could have told him there were no kicks to be had in being tortured, imprisoned and shot at. I looked out of the window, and wondered
how to explain the situation, and if I’d get any more of a hearing than I had done with Smale. I decided to dive in.

‘Listen. Early this morning, I was taken to a bunker somewhere beneath this city. Brezhnev, Suslov, Andropov, Ivashutin and the rest of the gang were all there, chewing their cuticles off.’ He was watching me now, silent, the hooded eyes very still. ‘The lot of them are convinced the Americans are about to launch a nuclear strike from B-52s. As a result, Brezhnev is planning to launch a full-scale attack on the United States. Annihilation will ensue.’

Maclean shifted his bum and squinted at me to check I wasn’t having him on.

‘This isn’t a prank,’ I said. I turned to Sarah and she handed across the attaché case. I clicked it open and found the threat assessment, then held it out to Maclean. ‘Take a look yourself.’

He hesitated for a moment, then took the papers. He sat reading them in silence for a few minutes, then looked up at me, his forehead wrinkled with lines.

‘This isn’t real,’ he said, handing the papers back. ‘It can’t be.’

‘Do we look like we’ve been in prison manufacturing forgeries?’ said Sarah.

He went quiet. ‘But it’s just bluff, isn’t it? Surely they can’t seriously be contemplating a nuclear strike?’

I replaced the papers in the case, closed it, and placed it between my feet.

‘What would you do if you were in their shoes?’ I said. ‘You have hard electronic and human intelligence showing the Americans are flying nuclear-armed B-52s straight towards your border, and at the same time there has apparently been a chemical attack on two of your heavily guarded naval bases, one of which is where you keep your nuclear submarines. Would you just sit tight and wait, hoping that the West isn’t about to launch a surprise attack and wipe you out? Or would you get your retaliation in first?’

He thought about it for a few moments, then said: ‘I hope I’d wait a little while, just in case.’

I nodded. ‘And that’s precisely what they’re doing. But I’m afraid a little while is all we’ve got. Because if the planes continue their path towards the border, Brezhnev will decide an attack is imminent, and he’ll launch a strike.’

‘But why on earth would the Americans keep flying their planes towards the border?’

‘I’ve no idea why they started doing it in the first place. The worst-case scenario is that they are in fact planning to launch an attack. If so, there’s bugger all we can do and that’s the end of it. But everything I know about military strategy in the West tells me that a surprise nuclear attack is not something we’re interested in carrying out, for obvious reasons, and so it can’t be that. Unfortunately, the Soviets don’t believe me. I can’t go into details because we don’t have time, but the fact is that they’re
wrong
about the chemical attack. The Americans may be playing silly buggers of one sort or another, but part of the puzzle simply doesn’t fit and I’m damn sure they aren’t planning to launch a nuclear strike.

‘The Service’s representatives here have shunned us and we’re now being hunted by the KGB, GRU,
militsiya
and everyone else. If I’m wrong, and the Americans really are intending to attack, it doesn’t matter a damn to you or anyone else that we’ve escaped, because this country and several others will be reduced to dust in a few hours. If I’m right, though, we might just be able to stop it happening. But we need to get to Finland to do that, and there are roadblocks all over this city to stop us from getting out. So you have to make a choice very quickly, I’m afraid. Either realize I’m telling the truth and try to help us get out of Moscow any way you can think of, and fast. Or guess that I’m lying, and tell us to go hang. But if you do that, you’d best be bloody sure of it, because you’ll be risking nuclear Armageddon. You’re our last hope, Donald. Please don’t walk away.’

I stared at him. I hated begging, but now was no time for pride. We needed this man’s help, and it had to come willingly or we’d get nowhere.

He had looked away again, and was tapping one foot against the side of the door. He bit a nail, then perhaps remembered my crack about cuticles and broke off. Finally, he looked up at me.