Visibility (22 page)

So Kazantsev and Stensness had arranged to meet at the Peter Pan statue.

But Stensness had not shown, and nor had he made contact to explain why, or to reschedule. Given his insistence on the intergalactic significance of the whole thing, this had seemed strange.

So Kazantsev had gone to Stensness’ home address, only to find that he had moved out recently without telling him. Perhaps the omission was deliberate, perhaps not.

King’s had given Kazantsev the right address—on the Thursday evening, however, not the Friday morning, contrary to what he had said last time—but Stensness had not been at home. Kazantsev had posed as one of his colleagues from King’s, and Stensness’ housemates said that they had not seen him.

Worse, the housemates had then stayed in all evening. Kazantsev had watched from the car until midnight and then slept there, wrapped in five layers and freezing as though it were Murmansk in January.

Eventually, sometime after breakfast on Friday, the housemates had left, and Kazantsev had broken into the empty house to see if he could find anything of interest. Midway through the search, Elkington had arrived. The rest Herbert knew.

Herbert thought fast. Kazantsev had been first on Stensness’ list, at six thirty. If he was to be believed, Stensness had not shown, but still his body had been found in the Long Water. Maybe Stensness had been intercepted en route to his meeting with Kazantsev.

“You never saw Stensness after he left the Royal Festival Hall?”

“Never.”

“Sure?”

“Sure.”

“Absolutely positive?”

“You can ask it any way you like, Inspector, but the answer’s still the same.”

Kazantsev had nearly finished his food. Though he had done most of the talking, he had somehow managed to eat at a fearsome pace, too. “Now, Inspector …” The Russian speared his final piece of sausage with his fork and waved it at Herbert. “You want to know why the British preserve the monarchy? To distract the masses from the path of socialism, that’s why. The Bolsheviks had only been secure in their revolution once they had killed the Romanovs. For every Englishman a Soviet spy manages to recruit, there are fifty they miss. How will you ever have a revolution in a country where the milk is delivered to the door every morning at eight?”

“If I have you sent back to Moscow, what will happen to you?”

“If I’m lucky, they’ll relocate me. Vienna would be nice. Murmansk is more likely.”

“They won’t dismiss you?”

“There are only two ways you leave the MGB, Herbert: in handcuffs, or feet first.” He smiled. “Ach,
the hell with it. If you send me back, I have bigger problems.”

“Such as?”

“What to do with my cat, for a start. Would you like him?”

Herbert laughed. “I’m not much of a cat man.”

“That’s because you’re a cop, not a spy. All spies love cats; their devious feline mentality appeals to us more than the stupid sincerity of dogs. What about my jazz 78s? They’re quite brittle, but let me tell you, back in Moscow, we’d listen to homemade copies scratched on used film taken from hospital X-ray departments. Jazz on bones, we called it.”

“I’m not much of a jazz man, either.”

They could, Herbert thought, have been lovers killing time while one of them waited for a train.

Herbert’s next notion was in every aspect absurd, but still it nagged at him. Kazantsev, more than de Vere Green, more than Papworth, was the one man in this whole affair who could help him,
really
help him, if he was allowed to do so.

But that would never happen. Kazantsev was a Soviet spy. Cooperating with him might not have technically been treason, as Britain was not officially at war with the Soviet Union, but it would surely be seen as such.

Herbert remembered something John Harington had said. “Treason doth never prosper, what’s the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”

In other words, the end justified the means. That was certainly something a good Marxist like Kazantsev would understand.

Inevitably, perhaps, Herbert thought back to Burgess and Maclean. Whatever one’s opinion of them—and
everyone had one—there was no denying that they were both intelligent and gifted men. Perhaps their dilemma had also been that of an entire generation caught in the contradictions and confusions of postwar Britain, where everything—the country’s role in the world, the health of its economy, the state of its colonies—seemed muddled and without philosophic purpose.

True, there was an understanding on both sides of the political fence that a return to prewar levels of unemployment and poverty could not and would not be tolerated. The British were better fed, better educated, better doctored than ever before.

But how superficial was this success?

Houses were being built, but homelessness remained.

Health care was being improved, but no new hospitals were appearing.

People were being employed in their droves, but neither production nor investment were up much.

Who would not be bewildered, in such a place? Why should loyalty to the Crown be the highest loyalty? Who had not betrayed something, or someone, more important than a country? Did governments have a monopoly on what was right and sensible?

Actions could be noble, even—or especially—when they were illegal. Look at Alan Nunn May, who had passed atomic secrets to Moscow, and in doing so helped them develop their own bomb, a decade ahead of Western intelligence’s best estimates. Was he a traitor, or a savior?

Perhaps his actions would, in time, help foster and preserve détente by leveling the playing field and, in ensuring the mutuality of any nuclear destruction,
providing a more effective deterrent than a thousand North Atlantic treaties.

“Tell me a bit about yourself, Alexander,” Herbert said.

“Please, call me Sasha. We are friends now, no?” Kazantsev smiled. “Tell you about myself… Well, I’m a normal fellow, I guess, with normal hobbies. I’m married, with two daughters. I collect old locks and the wise thoughts of my friends. I’m interested in numismatics and the poetry of the Silver Age. Out of choice, I drink Moskovskaya vodka and smoke Camel cigarettes.”

“What about your parents?”

“Ah-ha! I am the true son of proletarians.” He said it with a slight flourish, as if to let Herbert know that he was not taking all this rigid communist doctrine too seriously. “My father, Sergei Grigoreyevich, was a factory accounts clerk; my mother, Elizabetha Stanislavovna, used to sew costumes for the Bolshoi. Both have passed away now, sadly. But they and their forebears left me with the best legacy a man can have in Soviet Russia.”

“What’s that?”

“Not a drop of Jewish blood in our family, not for at least three generations! Ridiculous, of course. But then all governments are, in the end. And it’s not just the Jews Moscow has a problem with. Balts and Caucasians are allowed abroad just as rarely. Whatever we say about internationalism, in the end we prefer to rely on Russians.”

“Do you enjoy what you do?”

Kazantsev puffed out his cheeks “I don’t think enjoyment is any kind of criterion, to be honest. Sometimes I think the whole thing’s a joke. I studied at the MGB college out in the woods at Balashikha. On
the wooden perimeter fence someone had scrawled in chalk:
School for spies.
So much for secrecy!

“Since you’re asking me seriously, though, I’ll say this: spying is as necessary and as disagreeable as cleaning toilets. It widens one’s understanding of human nature, that’s for sure. But at the same time it coarsens you. Could any decent person peep through keyholes and gather, crumb by crumb, information that his neighbor would rather keep to himself?”

He could have been bluffing, Herbert thought, playing the mildly rebellious cynic in order to impress him. Besides, there was nothing a Russian liked more than a good bit of maudlin philosophy. But at some stage, Herbert supposed, one had to trust.

Kazantsev went on: “Perhaps the worst is that, sooner or later, no matter how much you fight it, you come to see man, with all his joys and sorrows, all his merits and shortcomings, as nothing more than an object for recruitment. You sniff and lick at him, you ensnare and seduce, and finally you hook him …” He paused. “At least whores have the decency to demand money.”

Outside the café, Herbert returned Kazantsev’s wallet to him, press pass and all.

Kazantsev said something in Russian.

“What was that?” Herbert asked.

“I said ‘thank you’—but using the informal version of the second person,
ty.
We communists use
ty
to each other.
Vy
is for waiters and class enemies.”

Herbert could see more through his shirt when he pulled it over his head of a morning than he could outside.

The fog was three-ply, double-milled and thick-weave. Ambulancemen and women had forsaken their days off and returned to work, if only to walk in front of those vehicles ferrying the sick around—a group which they might shortly be joining, to judge from their streaming eyes and bloody feet. Passengers staggered ahead of cabs carrying their suitcases.

Herbert should have rung in to New Scotland Yard and let them know what he had ascertained over the past few hours on his trawl round the representatives of three espionage services; but he was still angry at being deceived over the funeral, even though he knew full well that, had it not been for what he had seen at the graveside, he would never have worked out the truth about de Vere Green.

Besides, what exactly would he tell Tyce? Herbert seemed to have discovered an awful lot, but when he put it all together, he didn’t seem any closer to the truth.

So he went back to Hannah’s flat in Soho, both to take his mind off the case, and to apologize for having offended her earlier, albeit unwittingly.

She was in, which pleased him, and happy to see him, which pleased him more.

“Happy birthday,” she said, kissing him on the cheek and pressing something into his hand. It was a present, beautifully wrapped in bright paper and tied with a bow.

“Can I open it?” he asked.

“Don’t be silly. Of course.”

It was a little black enamel box, about six inches by three, the lid painted in exquisite swirls of red and green. “It’s beautiful,” Herbert said, and meant it.

“You like it? That please me. It’s for your cufflinks and collar studs.”

“I don’t have any.”

“Then you buy some,” she laughed. “A man should look smart.”

“Is it from Hungary?” Herbert said.

She cocked her head. “Yes. Hungarians make lovely things.”

She had the radio on, and Herbert listened for the news.

Visibility at Kew and Kingsway was still officially nil; wind was one knot at Kew, zero at Kingsway. The high-pressure anticyclone remained immovable; the center was straight above the Thames Valley, and the thermal inversion was intact. The weather forecast talked of widespread fog and frost.

It did not mention that London was completely sealed in, its inhabitants forced to breathe choking fumes from chimneys and power stations all working full tilt to provide heat, light, and poisoned air to those below.

It did not mention smog, or people dying.

It did not say that hospitals were busier than at any time since the Blitz.

The BBC prided itself on being the best news organization in the world, so this omission could only have been deliberate. The Soviets weren’t the only ones who knew how to control public information, Herbert thought.

“We should go out,” Hannah said.

“Why?”

“My friends come back later. There is big party nearby, so they use flat to meet.”

“Won’t they want you to be there?”

Hannah shrugged. “There is key, with owner of café next door. They can get in.”

They went down the stairs, Hannah moving ahead
of Herbert with what seemed to him extraordinary assurance. Then he realized that the staircase had a handrail, the steps were all the same height, and objects were unlikely to be left where they shouldn’t have been. In other words, it was predictable.

Outside, he took her firmly by the upper part of her right arm. She stopped dead.

“Listen,” she said. “If I want help, I ask.”

“I was only trying to—”

“I know. And thank you. But you do the opposite. You grab my arm, I lose my balance—bad, when you try to direct me. I hold on to you, is better. Here.” She clasped Herbert’s arm, just above the elbow. “Ah, wool. My favorite color.”

It took Herbert a moment to realize that this was a joke. Then they started walking, with him wondering whether Hannah’s strange mixture of sunny delight and blazing defiance would somehow physically light their way through the gloom.

It was strange, Herbert thought; every time he went out into the fog, it seemed as dense as it could possibly get without solidifying into concrete. Yet still it seemed to thicken, hour by hour. It was like walking through semolina. He felt blind; Hannah was surely the one for whom these conditions were normal.

She scoffed when he put this to her.

“Oh, Herbert. You’re like all people with sight—you think only with your eyes. Stop a moment. Listen.”

He did so. It was eerily quiet.

“What can you hear?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Exactly. Me neither. Can’t see, can’t hear, the both of us. My favorite weather—what you think it is?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Guess.”

“Sunshine?”

She laughed. “You are predictable. You say ‘sunshine’ because it’s
your
favorite. You think everyone think like you. No, don’t argue, is true. OK, try another way; which weather you hate most? Apart from this fog, obviously.”

“Rain. Everyone hates the rain.”

“Not me. I love rain.”

“You do?”

“Of course. Rain makes me see. Every surface it hit, it sound different; roofs sound different to walls, shrubs to lawns, fences to pavements. It splash in puddles, run in gutters, it hiss when car makes spray. Rain is orchestra, and orchestra where I know every instrument. For me, unless I can touch, world is invisible. But rain makes everything have … have, how you say…?” She paused, searching for the right word.