Part 26 (1/2)

He stared at me, slowly waking. ”I had to give it back to Sergei. 'When we're in Moscow, Cyril,' he said, 'you shall have it hanging on your wall and framed in gold. Not here. I wouldn't put you in the danger.'

He'd thought of everything, Sergei had, and he was quite right, what with you and your HQ snooping on me night and day.”

I allowed no pause, no alteration in my voice, not even in the direction of casualness. I lowered my eyes again and dug once more in my inside pocket. I was his candidate as Sergei's replacement, and he was courting me. He was showing me his tricks and asking me to take him on. Instinct told me to make him work harder for me. I addressed myself to the notebook again, and I spoke exactly as if I were asking him the name of his maternal grandfather.

”So when did you start giving Sergei all these great British secrets?” I said. ”Well, what we call secrets, anyway. Obviously what was secret a few years ago is not going to be the same as what's secret today, is it? We didn't win the Cold War by secrecy, did we? We won it with the openness. The glasnost. ” It was the second time I had mentioned pa.s.sing over secrets, but on this occasion, when I crossed the Rubicon for him, he came with me. Yet he seemed not even to notice he was on the other side.

”Correct. That's how we won it. And Sergei didn't even want the secrets at first, either. 'Secrets, Cyril, they're unimportant to me,' he said. 'Secrets, Cyril, in the changing world in which we live, I'm pleased to say, they're a drug on the market,' he said. 'I'd rather keep our friends.h.i.+p on a non-official basis. However, if I do require something in that line, you may count on me to let you know.'

In the meantime, he said, it would be quite sufficient if I wrote him a few unofficial reports on the quality of Radio Moscow's programmes just to keep his bosses happy. Whether the reception was good enough, for example. You'd think they'd know that, really, but they don't. You never know with Russians where you're going to strike the ignorance in them, to be frank. That's not a criticism, it's a fact. He'd like my opinion of the course as well, he said, the standard of instruction generally, any suggestions I might have for Boris and Olga in the future, me being somewhat of an unusual pupil in my own right.”

”So what changed it?”

”Changed what? Be lucid, please, Ned. I'm not n.o.body, you know. I'm not Mr. Nemo. I'm Cyril.”

”What changed Sergei's reluctance to take secrets from you?” I said.

”His Emba.s.sy did. The diehards. The barbarians. They always do. They prevailed on him. They declined to recognise the course of history; they preferred to remain total troglodytes in their caves and continue with their ridiculous Cold War.”

I said I did not understand him. I said he was a bit above my head.

”Yes, well I'm not surprised. I'll put it this way. There was a lot of them in that Emba.s.sy didn't like the time given, over to cultural friends.h.i.+p, for a start. There was this internal rivalry going on between the camps. I was an impotent spectator. The doves, they were in favour of the culture, naturally, and above all they were in favour of the glasnost. They saw culture filling the vacuum left behind by the withdrawal of hostilities. Sergei explained that to me.

But the hawks - including the Amba.s.sador, I regret to say - wanted Sergei concentrating more on the continuation of old att.i.tudes, what's left of them, gathering intelligence and generally acting in an aggressive and conspiratorial manner regardless of the changes in the world climate. The Emba.s.sy diehards didn't care about Sergei being an idealist, not at all. Well, they wouldn't, would they, any more than what Gorst does. Sergei had to tread a highly precarious path, frankly, a bit for one side, then a bit for the other. So did I, it was duty. We'd do our culture together, a bit of language, a bit of art or music; then we'd do some secrets to satisfy the hawks. We had to justify ourselves to all parties, same as you with your HQ and me with the Tank.”

He was fading, I was losing him. I had to use the whip. ”So when?' I asked impatiently.

”When what?”

”Don't be clever with me, Cyril, do you mind? I've got to get this down. Look at the time. When did you start giving Sergei Modrian information, what did you give him, what for, how mucb for, when did it stop, and why, when it could perfectly well have continued? I'd like a weekend, Cyril, if you don't mind. So would my wife. I'd like to put my feet up in front of the telly. I'm not paid overtime, you know. It's strictly piecework, what they offer. One candidate's the same as another, when it comes to payday. We're living in a time of cost effectiveness, in case you haven't noticed. They tell me we could be privatised if we're not careful.”

He didn't hear me. He didn't want to. He was wandering, in his body and in his mind, looking for distraction, for somewhere to hide. My anger was not all simulated. I was beginning to hate Modrian. I was angry about how much we depended on the credulity of the innocent in order to survive. It was sickening me that a trickster like Modrian had contrived to turn Frewin's loneliness to treachery. I felt threatened by the notion of love as the ant.i.thesis of duty.

I stood up smartly, anger still my ally. Frewin was perched listlessly on the edge of a carved Arthurian stool with the Royal Navy's ensign st.i.tched into the seat.

”Show me your toys,” I ordered him.

”What toys? I'm a man, if you don't mind, not an infant. It's my house. Don't tell me what to do.”

I was remembering Modrian's tradecraft, the stuff he used, the way he equipped his agents. I was remembering my own tradecraft, from the days when I had run Frewin's counterparts against the Soviet target, even if they were not quite as mad. as Frewin. I was imagining how I would have handled a high-access walk-in like Frewin, living on borrowed sanity.

”I want to see your camera, don't I?” I said petulantly. ”Your high-speed transmitter, right, Cyril? Your signals plan. Your onetime codepads. Your crystals. Your white carbons for your secret writing. Your concealment devices. I want to see them, Cyril, I want to put them in my briefcase for Monday; then I want to go home and watch a.r.s.enal against United. That may not be your taste, but it happens to be mine. So can we move this along a bit and cut out the bulls.h.i.+t, please?”

The madness was running out, I could feel it. He was drained and so was I. He sat head down and knees spread, staring dully at his hands. I could sense the end beginning in him-the moment when the penitent grows tired of his confession and of the emotions that compelled it.

”Cyril, I'm getting a bit edgy,” I said.

And when he still didn't respond, I strode to his telephone, the same one that Monty's fake engineer had made permanently live. I dialled Burr's direct line and heard his fancy secretary the other end, the same one who hadn't known my name.

”Darling?”

I said. ”I'm going to be about another hour, if I'm lucky. I've got a slow one. Yes, all right, I know, I'm sorry. Well, I said I'm sorry. Yes, of course.”

I rang off and stared at him accusingly. He climbed slowly to his feet and led me upstairs. His attic was a spare bedroom, roof high. His radio receiver stood on a table in the corner-German, just as Monty had said. I switched it on while he watched me, and we heard an accented female Russian voice talking indignantly about Moscow's criminal mafia.

”Why do they do that?” Frewin burst out at me, as if I were responsible. ”The Russians. Why do they run down their own country all the time? They never used to. They were proud. I was proud too. All the cornfields, the cla.s.slessness, the chess, the cosmonauts, the ballet, the athletes. It was paradise till they started running it down. They've forgotten the good in themselves. It's b.l.o.o.d.y disgraceful. That's what I told Sergei.”

”Then why do you still listen to them?” I said.

He was almost weeping, but I pretended not to notice.

”For the message, don't I?”

”Make it snappy, will you, Cyril!”

”Telling me I'm reactivated. That I'm wanted again. 'Come back, Cyril. All is forgiven, love, Sergei.'

That's all I need to hear.”

”How would they say that?”

”White paint.”

”Go on.”

” 'There's white paint on the dog, Olga .' . . . 'We need a spot of white paint on the bookshelf, Boris.' . . . 'Oh dear, oh dear, Olga, look at the cat, someone has dipped her tail in white paint. I hate cruelty,' says Boris. Why don't they say it when I'm listening?”

”Let's just stick to the method, can we? All right, you hear the message. On the radio. Olga or Boris says 'white paint.'

Or they both do. Then what do you do?”

”Look in my signals plan.”

I held out my hand, commanding him with my snapping fingers. ”Hurry!” I said.

He hurried. He found a wooden hairbrush. Pulling the bristles from the casing, he shoved his big fingers into the gap and hauled out a piece of soft, flammable paper with times of the day and wavebands printed in parallel. He offered it to me, hoping it would satisfy. I took it from him without pleasure and snapped it into my notebook, glancing at my watch at the same moment.

”Thanks,” I said curtly. ”More, please, Cyril. I need a codebook and a transmitter. Don't tell me you haven't got them, I'm not in the mood.”

He was grappling with a tin of talc.u.m powder, tugging at the base, trying desperately to please me. He talked nervously while he shook the powder into the handbasin.

”I was respected, you see, Ned, you don't get that a lot. There's three of these. Olga and Boris tell me which to use, like with the white paint except it was the composers. Tchaikovsky was number three, Beethoven was number two, Bach was one. They did them alphabetical to help me remember. You get the glimpses but you don't get the friends, not normally, do you? Not unless you meet Sergci or one of his lot.”

The powder was all poured away. Three radio crystals lay in his palm, together with a tiny codepad and an eye-gla.s.s to enlarge it.

”He had all I'd got, Sergei did. I gave it to him. He'd tell me a thing, I'd add it to my life. I'd have a mood, he'd get me straight again. He understood. He could see right into me. It gave me a feeling of being known, which I liked. It's gone now. It's been posted back to Moscow.”

His rambling was scaring me. So was his feverish desire to pacify me. If I had been his hangman, he would have been gratefully loosening his tie.

”Your transmitter,” I snapped. ”What the h.e.l.l's the good of a crystal and a codepad if you can't send!”