The Tamarind Seed (23 page)

‘One piece of information,' Sverdlov went on as if the vulgar interruption had not taken place. ‘Something more useful to your country than all the lies my predecessors have told you about Soviet security methods. What do you want, Mr. Loder—the names of a dozen expendable agents working in Europe, the key to a code which will be changed twenty-four hours after I've gone—or information about who is betraying Western top security secrets at this moment? If that doesn't interest you, then stop the cab, and I will get out.'

He turned and for a moment the two men looked at each other in the semi-darkness. Loder wanted Sverdlov; he wanted him so badly that his headache had become a full scale bombardment of anxiety pains. But he wouldn't have given the bastard an inch; he would have played it indifferent and made him crawl, made him beg for safety. Within five minutes of Sverdlov getting into that cab he knew that nothing would produce that effect on this man. He was ready to come over, but it would have to be with a pretence of self respect. Otherwise Loder felt convinced that he would try to make it on his own or even indulge in a bout of Russian fatalism and take what was coming to him.

He wondered what exactly Sverdlov had to fear that he was ready to change sides. Certainly not the type to do it for money—nor was he the idealistic kind, seeing himself as the saviour of twentieth-century civilisation. Sverdlov was in danger; those were the words used. Danger from his own people. But on what grounds, for what crime?

Loder didn't really care, but it gave him a means of avoiding the direct challenge issued by the Russian.

‘Of course we'd be interested,' he said. ‘But there's one thing you'll have to come across with before we go any further. Why do you want asylum?'

‘I believe I am going to be put on trial when I go home,' Sverdlov said. ‘And then executed. As for a crime, I have certainly committed one. I neglected to change my political attitude in time. I am a moderate, Mr. Loder. There are a number of us in Soviet Government; I think we are all about to be liquidated. Beginning with my department, as usual.'

‘Nice for you.' Loder couldn't resist it. The mills of God, he thought with satisfaction. Hungary is catching up on you at last, you bastard. Now you're on the receiving end for a change. ‘Nothing else? They'll do their best to discredit you, so we might as well get the picture right.'

‘I am not a drunkard, or a dope addict, and I like to go to bed with women, not men.' For a brief second Judith could sense that his attention had turned to her. ‘I do not gamble or steal money. Mrs. Farrow will give me a character reference.' She saw him smile at her in the poor light. She had heard every word, but it was unreal; however plainly they talked, the meaning seemed to escape her, like the conversation carried on in dreams.

Loder lit a cigarette. ‘You talk about a top grade agent,' he said. ‘I'll need more information than just that.'

‘There isn't much more I can tell you,' Sverdlov answered. ‘I don't know his identity, but I have seen his reports and his photocopies; I will promise to bring original documents with me. You can probably identify him when you see what he has been providing. Like the secret truce talks between Egypt and Israel.'

Loder swallowed smoke. He stopped playing his little game.

‘You can bring these papers with you? That's definite?'

‘That is the bargain,' Sverdlov said quietly. ‘You'll find it is a very good one. I will make, what do you call it—a deposit for full payment. He has a code name. “Blue”. I have been thinking about what this means, and to me it is nonsense. But you have this saying, True Blue.' Judith started, and for a second she opened her mouth to interrupt, to remind him that she had mentioned the phrase. But Sverdlov was going on, and she said nothing.

‘The Americans don't have this saying,' he said. ‘So I believe our agent is an Englishman. I will give the papers to you when I am on board the plane for London.'

‘Okay.' Loder said it with finality. ‘We'll do a deal with you. You bring the information and we'll see you safe and snug for the rest of your life. Now, Colonel Sverdlov, how, when and where do you go? You'll have to work out your own details; all I need from you is a time and a place. We'll take charge of you from then.'

‘I shall make my arrangements this week,' Sverdlov said. ‘How do we communicate?'

‘Through Mrs. Farrow,' Loder answered. ‘You seeing her won't rouse suspicion; any new contact might do just that. Are you being watched?'

‘How would I know?' Sverdlov had relaxed; Judith could tell by the sound of his voice. ‘For all you know, one of our men could be driving this cab. For my sake, I hope that he isn't. Stop him at Mrs. Farrow's apartment. We'll both get out there.'

‘As it happens,' Loder said, ‘the driver's one of mine!'

Sverdlov took Judith by the arm, and then he asked the taxi driver what was owing, and gave him the fare. He even included a tip. Loder was invisible in the far corner.

‘Attention to detail,' Sverdlov said to her. ‘Maybe your Mr. Loder is right; if I am being followed, then I have to pay the taxi cab and see you to your door. And to make it seem right, I must kiss you good night.'

‘It's going to be all right,' Judith whispered. ‘Please stop, Feodor, let me talk for a minute. It is going to be all right, isn't it?'

‘Yes, I think so. I think he is a clever man and he will not make any mistakes. And I never make a mistake; don't you know that? As for you, do you know what you are now? A letter box. A live letter box, because you're not a hollow tree or an ashcan by a door …'

‘What are you talking about?' She tried to dodge the endless kissing. She even pushed but he took not the slightest notice.

‘You're my channel of communication. My letter box for Mr. Loder.' A long and especially determined embrace followed this remark. ‘I will telephone you tomorrow. Will you come and live with me in England?'

‘No, of course not. Don't be silly.'

‘Why are you so miserable?'

‘I'm not miserable; I'm just worried. I'm not like you, I can't see everything as a joke!'

‘But if it isn't funny, then it must be sad,' Sverdlov said patiently. ‘If I am caught and taken home, then it will be sad. Sad for me and even for you, because I think you will be sorry. Until then, it is funny. Making love to a letter box is one of the great jokes of the world.'

When Judith had gone inside the apartment building, Sverdlov spent the next hour walking. It was a fine night; within five minutes he had left the quieter residential block off Park Avenue and was in the brightly lit and busy street itself, mingling with the crowds who poured along the broad sidewalks.

Sometimes he paused to look in the department store windows. The displays were colourful and original; he had never bothered to look at them dispassionately before, or to compare them with the dismal uniformity of the State enterprise GUM, which displayed its goods as if it were inviting the purchaser to commit a crime.

He had never minded criticism, provided it served a purpose and was not a peevish carping in disguise. He had found a great deal wrong in his own society, and rather enjoyed upsetting Elena by saying so; he had never found enough to make him prefer another country's mode of living. He was a Russian; he thought and felt and behaved like a Russian. He had never wanted to leave his home and he didn't want to leave it now. But equally he was determined not to die in it.

Traitor was a word which other people used too freely, usually to describe somebody whose opinions differed from their own. Men he had worked with would apply that word to him, if he was successful and escaped. Probably in his own mind he would apply it to himself at moments. Only a fool supposed that self-elected exiles felt no nostalgic qualm, no savage pang of disillusion. But Sverdlov knew the working of his own machine. Suspicion was followed by sentence as night followed day. The State had taken the place of the Deity and with Divinity it had also to assume omnipotence. Like God, it was incapable of error. Walking along the glittering street, mixing with the American crowds going home from the movie theatres and the restaurants, Sverdlov faced the prospect of living in exile for the rest of his life. And not only in exile, but in hiding.

An assumed name, a series of moves from one place to another, months of living under protection before it was assumed safe enough to settle somewhere permanently, with only a minimal watch being kept. And even then there was no certainty. His people would go on looking for him; it would be regarded as a crusade to find and punish him. And Loder's government would not be easy on him, not once he had committed himself to their custody. He used the word custody on purpose. In many senses the defector was the prisoner of those who offered him protection. He had no place else to go and they could exert as much pressure on him as they liked. The most obvious being the threat to hand him back. It wouldn't be easy and it wouldn't be happy. He accepted this. But considered as an alternative to months in the Lubiyanka, being destroyed as a human entity capable of reason or resistance, Sverdlov did not hesitate. He would not shuffle out like a dummy to be shot for the crime of thinking differently. He began to walk at a faster pace, pushing against the stream of the crowd. Soon the streets would be empty. The respectable people enjoying an evening out were all hurrying for the shelter of their homes before the city became a late night jungle, where violence, robbery and death were the marauders. Only the bravest or the most desperate risked the subway trains late at night.

He could not have lived in America, except as a last refuge when every other avenue had closed against him. And he had told Judith the truth when he described it as his country's major enemy in the West. The English would be tolerable. Sverdlov knew they were capable of great ruthlessness; the conquest of one sixth of the earth's surface by a shrimp sized island was not achieved without a due regard for force.

It was surprising what a man of Loder's type could do if circumstances pushed him. But the British were not a major power, and they were too clever to pretend they were. What he had to offer was more than enough to satisfy them; the traditional rivalry between the British intelligence and the CIA would ensure that they didn't break their promise and make a present of him to the Americans. As soon as he thought of going over, he had thought in terms of Britain. Probably because of Judith Farrow. He was not far from his Embassy but he was tired; he waited on the sidewalk until a vacant cab appeared. He jumped in and dropped back against the seat. She was in a separate compartment of his life. He never thought about her in connection with his work. He needed her help and he would make full use of it, but he kept her apart, unconnected with issues which were irrelevent to her and what she meant to him. It had always been so; he had tried very hard to segregate Elena from the political world in which they lived, to shut her away from his career, to keep a private compartment in his life where nothing outside was allowed to enter. But she had refused to accept this. No two people had a right to such privacy; it was an offensive cult of the individual. Individuals were part of each other because they were part of the State. It was not possible to have a relationship from which the larger issues and responsibilities were excluded.

And exclusion was what Sverdlov wanted. That was why it was possible for him to hold Judith Farrow in his arms and ridicule the fear and uncertainty of his situation by a joke. She was separate, and for those few minutes when they were together, so was he, from all of it. She was the only woman he had ever known with whom he could sustain this private existence.

He reached his offices just before eleven. His return was the first item on the surveillance report which Stukalov's men began on him that night.

It was not the first time Loder had exceeded his authority; it was certainly the only occasion when he felt sure there would be no protest from above.

He caught a plane at eleven, at the same time Sverdlov went through the door of the Embassy Building on 98th, and passed the short flight eating a candy bar which he had bought at Kennedy and making notes in his pocket book. Sverdlov. The top man in the K.G.B., in the United States. He couldn't believe his luck; but as if the man himself were not enough, there was the unexpected bonus, the diamond stuck in the nugget, so to speak, of his knowledge of the Soviet agent. His chief had described this unknown traitor as a major threat to the safety of the Western powers; at that moment top level security men in NATO were chewing their nails over this new development. None of them had a clue who it was; they only knew that the beast was moving through the paper jungle, and by a miraculous coincidence they had picked up its spoor. But Sverdlov could provide enough information, documentary proof which was the most impressive kind for high authority, to help them trap and catch it. Blue. True Blue. It might be a lead or it might not; he was inclined to agree with the Russian's assessment that only an Englishman would have chosen the code name. On the other hand it was a tortuous explanation, likely to present itself to Sverdlov; the truth could be quite different and much simpler. There might be a particular network using colours as their recognition; ‘Blue' could be one of them. There might be Green, Yellow, Brown … He picked up his car from the park at Washington Airport and drove straight back to the Embassy. The night staff would be on, dozing and playing rummy till eight o'clock in the morning. Rummy, that old war-time game long out of favour, had become an Embassy staff craze. Everyone played it. Loder thought it was a dreadful game. He never played anything but contract bridge. He went up to cyphers and gave the duty officer a telegram to code and send off to London immediately. When he went back to bed he knew it was a waste of time to try to sleep. He couldn't stop thinking; his mind was going like one of those mechanical racing cars he had bought his son for Christmas. He made himself a cup of his special tea, ran a hot bath and dropped into it. Lucky Jack Loder. Someone had said that when he got the Washington post. How right they had been.