XPD (11 page)

Stanislav Shumuk consulted the steel pocket-watch he kept in his waistcoat pocket. He was dressed in a grey flannel suit, its Moscow-style tailoring baggy compared with Edward Parker’s beautifully fitted, hand-stitched suit. Parker had arrived thirty minutes early for the meeting, having flown in the previous evening from a convention in Kingston, Jamaica.

Shumuk put his watch away. ‘What time was Grechko expected?’

‘Downstairs they said he was booked on the Braniff non-stop flight that arrives at two o’clock.’

‘For a meeting arranged for 2.30,’ said Shumuk, ‘I regard that as inconsiderate.’

Parker nodded. He knew it was no use suggesting that they begin talking without Grechko. Shumuk had a reputation for keeping to the rule book.

It was Edward Parker’s first sight of the renowned general, whose mouth was turned down in a permanent sneer and whose face registered disdain for everything from the fine old engraving of Karl Marx to the jungle of potted plants which filled the sun-drenched windows. The only thing that won Shumuk’s approval was the tiny cups of strong black coffee that the Mexican kitchen maid brought to them every fifteen minutes or so.

It was after three o’clock when Yuriy Grechko arrived. Anticipating the mood of his superior, he was agitated and nervous. Mounting the stairs two at a time was rash: Mexico City’s altitude forbids such exertions and Grechko came into the room gasping and red-faced. When Parker shook hands with him he noted the damp palm that Grechko offered, and there was no doubt that Shumuk noted it too.

Stanislav Shumuk opened his briefcase and began to sort through his papers. The other two men watched him. There was only a few years’ difference in age between Edward Parker and Shumuk but they represented two different generations. ‘Stash’ Shumuk had been a combat soldier with the Soviet army – or the Red Army as it was still called then. He was one of the young officers who had taken NKVD detachments forward during the first big German attack in the summer of 1941. They had had to stiffen Red Army resistance, and they had done it by means of the firing squad. Colonels, generals, even political commissars had fallen to his bullets during those grim days when the Germans advanced as far as Moscow’s suburbs.

The reputation his execution squads had gained for him then had done his career no harm. After the war he had applied the same single-minded determination to his studies at Moscow University before returning to become deputy chief of the Training Section and later to chair the First Main Directorate’s Purchasing Committee for a year. Shumuk had changed very little from that tall, young NKVD lieutenant in the badgeless uniform, his shoulder bruised blue from rifle recoil and his face impassive. He had the same toneless voice in which he had read the death sentences, the same unseeing pale grey eyes, the same shaved skull, and the same trim waistline that came from a daily routine of strenuous exercises.

Shumuk looked up and studied his two colleagues, and there was no admiration in his gaze. He decided that they were mentally, morally and physically inferior to him. Yuriy Grechko, with his expensive western clothes, curly hair and soft mouth, was decadent, if not depraved. He had been corrupted by western living and the sheltered life of the diplomatic service; and he should never have been appointed to the vital position of legal resident in the USA. He was too young, too inexperienced and too lacking in stamina. Shumuk decided to say so in the report. Edward Parker was little better: he had spent the years between 1941 and 1945 not in resisting the Fascist hordes but in guarding some remote Red Army supply depot from a Japanese invasion that never came. Now, while his wife and grown-up daughter worked as booking clerks for Aeroflot and struggled to make a living in one of the less salubrious suburbs of Sverdlovsk, Parker was sharing his bed with some Japanese woman and living in a vast house in Chicago. The woman was a long-term Party member, of course, and the whole arrangement had been approved if not instigated by Moscow Centre, but Shumuk was old-fashioned enough to find it distasteful.

He lit a cigarette. He was old fashioned about cigarettes too; he preferred this coarse Makhora tobacco. Waving the smoke away impatiently with thin bony fingers, he noticed Edward Parker’s nose twitch. He must have detected the aroma of the tobacco; did it remind him of his youth, as it did Shumuk?

Little wonder then that the meeting was bitter and recriminatory. Shumuk started by announcing that he had already decided to pull Parker out, and proposed giving him until the end of June to get his networks prepared for regrouping. Parker would report in person to Moscow Centre on Monday, 2 July.

There was a moment’s hushed silence before Yuriy Grechko attacked this plan. It was obvious to everyone present that there was little chance that Grechko would survive such a drastic reshuffle as would surely follow the change in illegal resident. The arguments continued for over two hours. Grechko and Shumuk had clashed before, in the Dzerzhinsky Square building, and this time the discussion degenerated into what was little more than a shouting match. It was Edward Parker who decided the matter. He explained that he had gone to Los Angeles simply because his agent needed him there. As resident, such a decision was rightfully his to take. Furthermore, he told them, he was using an agent who might refuse to work with any new resident that Moscow assigned to the job. It had taken him years to build relationships with some of his top men. It was pointless to discuss the advisability of having him back in Moscow unless the KGB was prepared to start building up what would be badly damaged networks.

It was a power-play of course. Shumuk knew that; so did Grechko. Grechko was sweating; Shumuk’s grey face twitched as it used to when he was running his agents through the German lines in the last few months of the war, trying to make contact with the remnants of the Communist Party in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Not many of those agents survived but the work had been done. Hungary and Czechoslovakia were now workers’ democracies, their stability a tribute to the secret political police that Shumuk had helped install there. He was proud of that, as he was of the Order of Alexander Nevsky which his wartime contribution had earned for him.

The harsh words and shouting died suddenly; as if by common consent, the contest was finished. Grechko wrung his hands and Parker sat down in a heavy oak armchair which was placed in the window amongst the luxuriant plants.

It was all right for the other two, thought Parker. Shumuk was concerned only with the paperwork on his desk in Moscow, and as for Grechko, if it all went wrong, Grechko need fear little more than being declared PNG, persona non grata. Only Parker faced the prospect of twenty years in a federal penitentiary, the sort of sentence which would ensure that he died in prison.

‘In the Ukraine,’ said Shumuk primly, ‘we have a saying: there are some nightmares from which the only escape is to awaken.’

The other two men looked at him but did not reply. Their hostility was unmistakable. Shumuk said, ‘I’ll grant you another month.’ He brandished his papers again. He had not referred to the papers from his case, noted Parker, never quoted them or read them. He used them simply to toy with; the Soviet Union was overprovided with men who liked shuffling official papers. ‘It’s against my better judgement,’ added Shumuk. ‘We’ll leave it another month, but it’s against my better judgement.’ He put the papers into his case and locked it using the combination lock. Then he glanced scornfully at the two men and went strutting from the room like a dowager duchess.

‘
Apparatchik
!’ said Grechko bitterly, although he was not a man much given to criticizing the bureaucratic tendencies of his superiors.

Parker who had spent twelve years absorbing the mores and manners of North America said, ‘He’s a horse’s ass, Grechko, and you know it.’

Grechko smiled nervously. ‘Tell me about this man Kleiber in Los Angeles,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Is he reliable? Do you know anything about him? Will he continue to work with us?’

Parker shrugged, drank the dregs of his cold coffee and shrugged again.

Grechko waited for some further reaction but none came. The shrug could mean that Kleiber was reliable or that he was not. It could mean that Parker did not know, or that he did not intend to discuss the matter.

Chapter 10

The job in California did not prove to be the sun-drenched poolside sinecure that Boyd Stuart’s girlfriend Kitty had predicted. A couple of weeks later – still devoid of suntan – he was sitting in a grimy office on Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles, talking to an earnest young Englishman.

This near to the freeway, the boulevard is a six-lane highway strung with overhead wires, littered with palms and generously provided with gas stations and religious meeting halls. The buildings are low and hastily finished. In June they are hot and the noise of the heavy traffic loud and unceasing.

The Secret Intelligence Service in London had made contact with Lustig Productions’ new man, Max Breslow. They had found a young commercial attaché in the British embassy in Washington who had once had dealings with Breslow about a previous film production. Now he had been urgently sent to Los Angeles in order to bump ‘accidentally’ into his old acquaintance in the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Stuart’s visitor was wearing a dark blue flannel blazer with regimental buttons and a motoring-club badge on the pocket. His hair was long and straight and so was his nose. Even without the accent and the clothes, there would be no mistaking him for anything other than what Jennifer called ‘Eton and Harrods’.

‘There would in fact be considerable advantages if this fellow actually made the film in England,’ said the visitor. He looked round the dingy little office which the department had provided for this meeting. It was his first experience of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service.

‘Spare me all that sales talk,’ said Boyd Stuart wearily. ‘Just tell me about Max Breslow.’ From somewhere at the back of the building there came the sound of someone practising scales on an out-of-tune piano.

‘Not just the government allowances that all films can get, but special tax deals can be arranged if he uses British crews and British studios.’

This was the right man to send, noted Stuart approvingly. No one could doubt this lad’s pitch was anything but sincere. He wondered how much they had confided in him before sending him. ‘How old is Breslow? What’s he know about the film industry?’

‘He’s old enough to set up a film,’ said the young man with a smile. He poured himself some more tea from the teapot on the desk. ‘He’s a businessman. He’s put together a couple of small productions in New York using front money from Germany and then sold them to television on the strength of the rough assembly. He’s got good contacts in Germany.’

‘Television?’

‘Television here in America, but cut into a feature film for Europe and Asia. It’s done quite a lot nowadays.’

‘Only two films?’

‘Only two here but he’s produced a dozen or more cheapies in Europe, mostly in German studios. He works with an executive producer who stays with the movie while Breslow goes after the money boys.’ He drank some tea and then said, ‘Breslow isn’t an old-time movie mogul. He’s not a Goldwyn or a Cohn. You won’t meet any stars sipping champagne round his pool. He doesn’t live in Beverly Hills or Bel Air. He has a modest little condominium somewhere out near Thousand Oaks on the way to Ventura and shares his pool with a few neighbours. No, Breslow is not a movie man. You only have to talk to him for five minutes to discover that. He couldn’t distinguish a zoom lens from a Coke bottle, and he’s perfectly willing to admit it.’ The young man stretched his feet out and propped his teacup and saucer on his chest. Doubtless it was a mannerism copied from some elderly tutor, a rich uncle or an ambassador, thought Stuart. ‘You can see if you agree. I’ve fixed an invitation to dinner for you chez Breslow tomorrow. He thinks you represent a firm with money to invest in films.’ The piano exercises paused for a mercifully long time, then started from the beginning once more.

‘Breslow’s in his fifties … a well-preserved sixty perhaps. I’m not trained for the cloak-and-dagger stuff.’ The visitor smiled but, getting no response to his smile, continued. ‘Quite tall, lots of hair, no sign of going grey. Good firm handshake, if that’s anything to go by, and very friendly.’

‘Has anyone put him on the computer?’

The visitor drank his tea and looked at Stuart. In Washington they had hinted that he was going to meet one of the SIS’s best agents but the young man found Boyd Stuart older, wearier and far less polished than he had expected. ‘Ah well,’ he said, ‘that’s something I’m not supposed to know about, but I’d say it’s rather unlikely.’

‘Why unlikely?’

‘My briefing was rather circumspect, old chap, but I gathered that nothing is so far being communicated to our American friends. And we both know that anything that goes through the Bonn computer will be known in Washington within twenty-four hours.’

Stuart nodded and concluded that his visitor was less idiotic than his manner would indicate. ‘Have some more tea,’ he said, ‘and tell me what else you got out of him.’

‘You brought this with you, I suppose,’ said the visitor, watching the tea being poured. ‘It’s a damned funny thing, I buy the self-same brand of English tea in my supermarket in Washington and it never tastes the same.’

‘You think he’s going to make the film?’

‘He didn’t seem to be in a great hurry.’

‘I heard he has a script.’

‘It’s still not right, he says.’

‘Where is the front money coming from?’

‘He says it’s all his own.’ The visitor scratched his chin. ‘I think he’s fronting for someone. I don’t know what you’re up to with this fellow but I’d advise caution.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘That your Porsche outside?’ It was a casual question. Too casual.

Stuart laughed. ‘What a hope! Back in London I spend most of my spare time on my back under a 1963 Aston Martin.’

The young man came to life. ‘A DB4! You lucky dog. In Washington, I’ve picked up a Sunbeam Tiger fitted with an American V8 engine but one of the bearings is giving me trouble. It’s all in pieces at the moment … That’s one of the reasons I cursed the orders that brought me here to the coast. You should see my garage – bits of the engine all over the place. If my wife goes in there and trips over one of those bowls in which I’m soaking the valves …’ He pulled a face to indicate the pain it would cause him. ‘Not yours, eh, that Porsche?’