‘Yes, it is. And I shall use that contact. If you or Chesty or any of those other blundering incompetents in the Trade Delegation contact any of the people round me with a view to checking, or any other stupid tricks, they’ll have their balls ripped off. Do you understand that, Martin?’
She almost laughed to see his face: mouth open, pipe in hand, eyes popping. He’d not seen much of that side of her: for him she usually played the docile housewife.
‘Do you?’ she said, and this time her voice was hard and spiteful. She was determined that he’d answer, for that would remove any last idea that she might have been joking.
‘Yes, Fiona,’ he said meekly. He must have been instructed not to upset her. Or perhaps he knew what the Centre would do to him if Fiona complained. Lose her and he’d lose everything he cherished.
‘And I do mean stay away from Bernard. You’re amateurs; you’re not in Bernard’s league. He’s been in the real agent-running business from the time when he was a child. He’d eat people like you and Chesty for breakfast. We’ll be lucky if he’s not alerted already.’
‘I’ll stay away from him.’
‘Bernard likes people to take him for a fool. It’s the way he leads them on. If Bernard ever suspected … I’d be done for. He’d take me to pieces.’ She paused. ‘And the Centre would ask why.’
‘Perhaps you’re right.’ Pretending indifference, the man got to his feet, sighed loudly and looked out of the window over the net curtain as if trying to see the road down which the messenger would come.
It was possible to feel sorry for the old man. Brilliant son of a father who had been able to reconcile effortlessly his loudly espoused socialist beliefs with a lifetime of high living and political honours, Martin had never reconciled himself to the fact that his father was an unscrupulous and entertaining rogue blessed with unnatural luck. Martin was doggedly sincere in his political beliefs: diligent but uninspired in his studies, and humourless and demanding in his friendships. When his father died, in a luxury hotel in Cannes in bed with a wealthy socialite lady who ran back to her husband, he’d left Martin, his only child, a small legacy. Martin immediately gave up his job in a public library to stay at home and study political history and economics. It was difficult to eke out his tiny private income. It would have been even more difficult except that, at a political meeting, he encountered a Swedish scholar who persuaded him that helping the USSR was in the best interest of the proletariat, international socialism and world peace.
Perhaps the cruellest jest that fate had played upon him was that after seeing his father thrive in the upper middle-class circles into which he’d shoved his way, Martin – educated regardless of expense – had to find a way of living with those working classes from which his father had emerged. His rebellion had been a quiet one: the Russians gave him a chance to work unobserved for the destruction of a society for which he felt nothing. It was his secret knowledge which provided for him the strength to endure his austere life. The secret Russians and, of course, the secret women. It was all part of the same desire really, for unless there was a husband or lover to be deceived the affairs gave him little satisfaction, sexual or otherwise.
From the household next door there came the sudden sound of a piano. These were tiny cottages built a century ago for agricultural workers in the Kent fields, and the walls were thin. At first there came the sort of grandiose strumming that pub pianists affect as an overture for their recitals, then the melody resolved into a First World War song: ‘The Roses of Picardy’. The relaxed jangle of the piano completed the curious sensation Fiona already had of going back in time, waiting, trapped in the past. This was the long peaceful and promising Edwardian Springtime that everyone thought would never turn cold. There was nothing anywhere in sight to suggest they were not sitting in this parlour some time at the century’s beginning, perhaps 1904, when Europe was still young and innocent, London’s buses were horse-drawn, HMS Dreadnought unbuilt and Russia’s permanent October still to come.
‘They’re never late,’ she said, looking at her watch and trying to decide upon an explanation which would satisfy her husband if he arrived home before her.
‘You seldom deal with them,’ he said. ‘You deal with me, and I’m never late.’
She didn’t contradict him. He was right. She very seldom saw the Russians: they were all too likely to be tailed by MI5 people.
‘And when you do contact them, this is the sort of thing that happens.’ He was pleased to show how important he was in the contact with the Russians.
She couldn’t help worrying about this Russian who’d tried to defect. He’d seen that she was alone and approached her in what seemed to be an impulsive decision. Had it all been a KGB plot? She’d seen him only that once, but he’d seemed such a genuine decent man. ‘It must be difficult for someone like Blum,’ she said.
‘Difficult in what way?’
‘Working in a foreign country. Young, missing his wife, lonely. Perhaps shunned because he is Jewish.’
‘I doubt that very much,’ he said. ‘He was a third secretary in the attaché’s office: he was trusted and well paid. The little swine was determined to prove how important he was.’
‘A Russian Jew with a German name,’ said Fiona. ‘I wonder what motivated him.’
‘He won’t try that stunt again,’ said Martin. ‘And the attaché’s office will get a rocket from Moscow.’ He smiled with satisfaction at the idea. ‘Everything will go through me, as it was always done before Blum.’
‘Could it have been a trick?’
‘To see if you are loyal to them? To see if you are really a double: working for your SIS masters?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘As a test for me.’ She watched Martin carefully. Bret Rensselaer, her case officer, who was masterminding this double life of hers, said he was certain that Blum was acting on orders from Moscow. Even if he wasn’t, Rensselaer had explained, it’s better we lose this chance of a highly placed agent than endanger you. Sometimes she wished she could look at life with the same cold-blooded detachment that Bret Rensselaer displayed. In any case, there was no way she could defy him, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to. But what would happen now?
Martin gave a cunning smile as he reflected upon this possibility. ‘Well if it was a test, you came through with flying colours,’ he said proudly.
She realized then, for the first time, what a stalwart supporter she had in him. Martin was committed to her: she was his investment and he’d do anything rather than face the idea that his protégée was not the most influential Soviet agent of modern history.
‘It’s getting late.’
‘There there. We’ll get you to the train on time. Bernard’s coming back from Berlin today, isn’t he?’
She didn’t answer. Martin had no business asking such things even in a friendly conversational way.
Martin said, ‘I’m watching the time. Don’t fret.’
She smiled. She regretted now the way that she had snapped at him. The Russians had decided that the two of them were joined by a strong bond of affection: that Martin’s avuncular manner, as well as his unwavering political belief, was an essential part of her dedication. She didn’t want to give them any reason to re-examine their theory.
She looked round the tiny room and wondered if Martin lived here all the time or whether it was just a safe house used for other meetings of this sort. It seemed lived-in: food in the kitchen, coal by the fireplace, open mail stuffed behind the clock that ticked away on the mantelpiece, a well-fed cat prowling through a well-kept garden. A clipper ship in full sail on the wall behind spotless glass. There were lots of books here: Lenin and Marx and even Trotsky stared down from the shelves, along with his revered Fabians, an encyclopedia of socialism, and Rousseau and John Stuart Mill. Even the tedious works of his father. It was an artful touch. Even a trained security man