The Envoy (28 page)

The restaurant was located a short walk from Lord’s Cricket Ground and Bacchus arrived wearing a white linen jacket, a bow tie and a panama hat. It was, after all, one of the hottest days of the summer. Kit had already ordered a bottle of Montrachet which was cooling in the ice bucket. Bacchus came over to the table and twisted the bottle so he could read the label, ‘Your wine tastes are pretty classy for a Yank.’

‘I’m not a Yankee, I was born south of the Mason Dixon Line.’

Bacchus shook hands and sat down. ‘It’s still a very nice wine. Most people who want to show off order champagne and know fuck all about it.’

‘I’m not showing off, I’m trying to bribe you.’

‘That’s even better. But I’m not on the Privy Council yet, so I can’t tell the latest on HM’s Suez policy.’

‘I can. Eisenhower’s just sent a very stern note to Eden, and Eden is going to ignore the warnings – or maybe he just didn’t understand the President’s prose.’

‘Really.’ Bacchus looked slightly abashed at the offhand way Kit had passed on a piece of sensitive and classified information. The disclosure was, however, carefully calculated. It was in the US interest for the opposition to know what Eden was up to – and it was important for Kit to gain Bacchus’s confidence by tossing a gem in his direction. The quickest way to gain intelligence was just to swap nuggets. ‘So Washington thinks that Eden’s going to go in.’

‘Let’s put it this way, he hasn’t ruled it out – and he doesn’t seem in a mood to take friendly advice.’

‘Maybe his gall bladder – if he still has one – is playing up again. That’s good. His government will fall and we’ll end up in power.’

Kit smiled, but didn’t comment. The view from E Street was that the Labour Party wasn’t ‘yet ready for power’. Although they were busy cultivating right-wingers like Bacchus and Gaitskell, there were still far too many dangerous left-wingers, like Aneurin Bevan and Tony Benn, in positions of influence. Not to mention the growing CND faction. ‘Have some wine,’ said Kit.

Bacchus sipped the wine slowly and rolled it around in his mouth. ‘Lovely stuff.’ He looked at the menu. ‘I think I’ll have the Cromer Crab salad.’

‘Have the lobster. This meal’s on Uncle Sugar.’

‘Who?’ Bacchus seemed confused.

‘It’s what we call Uncle Sam when the US taxpayer is footing the bill.’

‘That’s good. I’ll remember that. What’s that expression you use when someone totally fucks something up? I heard your
military
attaché use it.’

‘“He stepped on his dick.”’

‘Like Eden will do over Suez.’

‘And wearing spiked track shoes.’

‘Ouch.’

The waiter came and they ordered lobster.

‘Pity about that young candidate of yours that’s gone missing.’

‘I feel sorry for the family.’ Bacchus emptied his glass and Kit topped it up. ‘But,’ said Bacchus, ‘he wouldn’t have been good for the party.’

‘Why’s that? He looked pretty bright.’

‘Young Knowles was very bright indeed – and that made him even more dangerous. He was a protégé of the neutralist wing – and a member of that new organisation called the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. They’re getting too big for their boots.’

The food arrived and Kit ordered another bottle of wine.

‘There was something else about Knowles that worried a lot of us.’

‘His personal life?’

‘Good lord, no. We’re too grown up for that sort of thing to matter.’

Once again, Kit was reminded of his country’s emotional and sexual immaturity. He felt ashamed that he had gone along with Birch’s puerile blackmail operation – another layer of guilt.

‘No,’ Bacchus paused in thought; then speared a piece of
lobster
that he dipped in the melted garlic butter. ‘I don’t,’ he said, ‘want to say too much.’

‘I notice,’ said Kit, ‘that you always refer to Henry Knowles in the past tense. Do you assume he’s dead?’

‘I think so.’

‘Why?’

Bacchus touched his moustache and lips with his napkin before drinking his wine. Good manners, thought Kit, he knows that you shouldn’t leave a greasy stain on the rim of your
wineglass
. He probably learned that in the officers’ mess during the war – for Bacchus was not well born. ‘You were a major, weren’t you?’

‘Intelligence Corps, SEAC.’

‘I was in SEAC too,’ Kit was trying the brothers-in-arms ploy,‘ended up under Gracey in Saigon.’

‘Holding the fort for the French?’

Kit nodded.

‘Must have been a messy business.’

‘Pretty messy.’

‘I was in India during the partition massacres. Whole
trainloads
full of corpses hacked to death. Sometimes giving up a
colony
makes things worse.’

Kit wasn’t going to stoop to getting involved in a ‘white man’s burden’ argument; he’d been there too many times before. He hated imperialism and all the patronising excuses of its apologists.

‘Are you all right?’ said Bacchus.

‘Sorry, I was … thinking about things.’

‘You asked me why I thought Henry Knowles was dead.’

‘Yes.’

Bacchus lowered his voice, the wine was working. ‘Young Knowles was playing some very dangerous games. As you know, he was a frequent traveller to the Soviet Union.’

‘Wasn’t it part of his job as a musician? Orchestra tours and master classes.’

‘But there were other trips not many people know about. A very senior and left-wing member of my party is a director of a company that imports timber from the Soviet Union.’

‘A closet capitalist?’

‘Probably not. His reasoning, or excuse, is that trade links with the Soviet Union are good for international friendship and
peaceful
coexistence. But I think there’s more to it than that.’

‘You think he’s a Soviet agent?’

‘Rumours, just rumours – probably false ones. In truth, I think it’s more complex.’

‘How does Knowles tie in with this?’

‘Money. Knowles may be a Marxist, but he’s a very rich one – inherited family wealth. It was Knowles’s money that set up the timber import company and, in consequence, young Henry is also a director of the company.’

‘You’re using the present tense again.’

‘But that doesn’t mean I’ve resurrected him.’

‘How,’ said Kit, ‘does this company trade? Have they got their own ships?’

‘No, all the timber is imported on Soviet merchant navy ships. The Russians wouldn’t have it any other way – it gives them a chance to earn hard currency.’

‘What are the trade routes?’

‘The ships take on their cargo in Archangel in the far north of Russia and then sail to East Anglia. They disembark the
timber
in small ports – King’s Lynn, Norwich, Lowestoft, Ipswich – those sorts of places. You can always check with your commercial attaché. Are you OK? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘I’m fine.’ Kit smiled. He really was fine. His brain had pocketed all the reds and was now working on the coloured balls: Vasili’s apocalyptic message, Natalya’s riddles, Knowles refusing the film bribe, the U2 photos of Los Arzamas. All the balls were whirring across the green baize to thunk in their appointed pockets. Kit already knew the answer, but he still asked the question. ‘How then did Knowles’s timber import business lead to his death?’

‘Corruption.’

The next day, Kit attended a ‘Soviet Studies’ lecture at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Personnel from the US Embassy were invited to attend. The principal lecturer, an imposing woman with a severe haircut, was from the Department of Slavonic Studies at the London School of Economics. Part of the presentation was a slideshow of NKVD and KGB propaganda posters. It reminded Kit that the PSYOPS role of the KGB is much more overt than the CIA’s. Kit’s favourite poster was that of a broad-faced female factory worker. Her hair is tucked under a red scarf; she frowns severely at the onlooker with a finger over her lips. Beneath her is a message in Cyrillic script. A lean Englishman sitting next to Kit whispered, ‘I say, do you know what that means?’

‘I assume,’ said Kit glancing at the lecturer, ‘that it means keep your mouth shut.’

The Englishman sniggered. ‘Or you’ll end up like Trotsky.’

The lecturer shot a warning look in Kit’s direction before
continuing
. For a second, her resemblance to the woman on the poster was stunning. The next slide was that of the Lubyanka itself – the KGB’s Moscow headquarters. The speaker was now explaining how the KGB was a much more professional organisation than the NKVD it had replaced. Kit was bored. It was the same old stuff they’d learned as trainees. The lecturer then described how the modern KGB was divided into directorates.
The First Directorate is responsible for foreign operations and intelligence-gathering; the Second, internal political control within the Soviet Union itself. The Third Directorate controls military counter-intelligence and the political surveillance of the Soviet Armed Forces …
Kit tried not to nod off as the lecturer droned on.
The Ninth Directorate is a forty thousand-man uniformed force providing bodyguard
services
to the principal
CPSU
leaders. The Ninth also guards major Soviet government facilities – including nuclear weapons stocks
.
Other responsibilities include
…

Something made Kit sit up. He felt a live wire had come down on his head and a thousand volts were jolting through his brain.
The Ninth
! Why hadn’t he realised then? As Natalya swam away, she hadn’t been talking about Beethoven’s
Ninth Symphony
. She had been tipping him off about the Ninth Directorate. Another billiard ball careened into a pocket. This ball had a name on it and wore little round glasses: Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria, former head of the secret police. Beria was dead, but his ghost was alive and wanting revenge.

Kit didn’t stay at the Foreign Office for drinks and nibbles, but went straight back to Grosvenor Square. As the taxi hurtled through Piccadilly Circus, Kit caught a glimpse of a face in the rear-view mirror. He was shocked when he realised that it was his own. He looked like a madman. Fear and paranoia seemed to be curling around his temples like wreaths of ectoplasm. He was carrying too much. And Kit knew that he had broken the rules: he had not reported things. He had told no one what Vasili had passed on – even though it was intelligence of vital importance to national security. Nor had he mentioned his meeting with Natalya. He knew that withholding information was an extremely serious offence. But, on the other hand, who could prove it? The Russians were hardly in a position to point the finger. Therefore, he was safe as long as he kept his mouth shut. Or was he? Had he been under surveillance when he met Vasili? Had someone observed Natalya swimming out to his boat?

Kit told the taxi driver to drop him off in Berkeley Square – one of those places that Americans always mispronounce – so that he could walk the remaining three blocks to the embassy. He didn’t like people knowing that he was a diplomat. He also imagined, the paranoia again, that London cab drivers made a few extra pounds by reporting details of their passengers to the security services. It certainly happened in Moscow and Bonn. In any case, Kit liked walking in London – especially on the endless summer evenings. Few Americans realise how far England lies among the kingdoms of the north. The light summer evenings expose all, just as the winter murk hides all. As Kit scurried towards the embassy, he felt a hundred eyes boring into his back and a dozen cameras recording each guilty stride and backward glance.

As soon as Kit was ensconced in his office, he got out the maps and a pair of dividers to measure distances. It was, he thought, an awfully long fucking way. It was an enormous country – a vast land ocean. He then calculated driving times. It would have taken almost a week. Surely, it wouldn’t have been possible. There would have been a security alert, check points and searches. But who would have manned the check points and carried out the searches? The Ninth Directorate. Was the entire unit part of the conspiracy?