Lion's Run

Lion’s Run

A Kenneth Aubrey and Patrick Hyde Novel

Craig Thomas

This one is for

Babs and George, Chris and Tony, Joy and John, Beryl and Nev,

for all the good times

CHARACTERS

Aubrey, Sir Kenneth de Vere: Director-General, SIS (British Intelligence)

Babbington, Sir Andrew: Director-General of MI5

Bayev, Karel: KGB Rezident, Vienna

Beach: SIS operative in Vienna

Cass, Philip: SIS field operative

Castleford, Robert: Former British Intelligence operative in WWII

Eldon, Colonel:: Counter-Espionage Branch MI5 

Elsenreith, Clara: Wartime friend and colleague of Kenneth Aubrey 

Georgi: Guard at Hradčany Castle (KGB communications centre)

Godwin, Tony: SIS, Prague

Grey, Mrs: Kenneth Aubrey’s housekeeper

Guest, Sir William: Senior Privy Councillor; security and intelligence coordinator in the Cabinet Office; Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee; Godfather of Margaret Massinger

Hyde, Patrick: SIS, field operative

Kapustin, Dmitri: Deputy Chairman and Inspector-General of First Chief Directorate, Operations and Personnel, KGB

Koslov, Pavel: KGB Rezident, Soviet Embassy, London (Russian Cultural Attaché)

Massinger, Margaret: Wife of Paul Massinger, goddaughter of Sir William Guest:

Massinger, Paul: Emeritus Professor of King’s College, London; Ex-CIA officer

Metkin, Grigori: Soviet defector (KGB)

Miandad, Colonel Zahir: Pakistani Bureau for the Border (Pakistani Military Intelligence)

Mohammed Jan: Pathan mujahideen chieftan

Nikitin, Aleksandr: President of the Soviet Union & General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party

Oleg: KGB agent, London

Parrish: Head of Vienna Station

Petrunin, Tamas: KGB Rezident (Head of Operations), Kabul, Afghanistan

Phillipson: Retired British Intelligence officer

Shelley, Peter: British Intelligence (SIS), Chief Officer, East European Desk 

Stepanov, Lieutenant: Officer at Hradčany Castle, KGB communications centre

Voronin: Deputy Rezident, KGB, Vienna

Wilkes: SIS, Senior Field Officer, Vienna Station

Woode, Ros: Friend of Patrick Hyde

Zitek: Computer engineer at KGB comms centre

Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,

Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,

A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:

Those scraps are good deeds past: which are devoured

As fast as they are made, forgot as soon

As done.

Shakespeare: Trolius & Cressida, III, iii

PRELUDES

I have done the state some service and they know it:

No more of that.

Shakespeare: Othello, V, ii

Quick—

Remember what they told you, the front cover of the file first. A proper sense of occasion, and the laying out of your wares …

Camera joggle. Remember that. You must be in a hurry, and nervous … It must all be slightly out of focus, especially at the beginning.

The electronic flash flared onto the paper he could see through the lens, a small sunburst but much whiter than sunlight. Teardrop, the file proclaimed in the Cyrillic alphabet. The other words and reference numbers signified its importance, and the fact that it was consigned for immediate incineration, its contents having been transferred to tape and stored in Moscow Centre’s principal security computer.

Teardrop. A man’s history. A special history.

He turned the cover of the file, exposing the first of the pages it contained. A digest. Photograph that, they had said. No matter the urgency or the effects of your fear, you would have obtained at least that much in the way of bona fides. The earliest date was 1946, the last as recent as a month before, and the file was still not closed.

Camera joggle, he reminded himself. It had already become too mechanical, too skilled and unhurried. Pages one to five without a break, without a tremor. Perhaps practice did not make perfect. How many times had he done this…?

Make certain the grey metal shelving appears in the top corner of some of the shots. Authenticity. Skip pages …

He flicked over the seemingly ancient sheets, the torn-out pages of notebooks, the letters, the carbons of signals received, splaying them like cards against the background of the buff folder and the dusty floor of the cold records basement. No need for induced joggle, induced fear; he was shivering with cold now.

Live through it—they will ask you about these moments, again and again … they will ask, seeking to verify, to prove …

Fear—footsteps? He tried to imagine the hostile ring of bootsteps in the concrete, strip-lit corridor outside the door. Flick on the pages. Flash, flash, flash—white light glaring on the passing, momentary sheets of paper. His knee would be at the edge of one shot—he congratulated himself for that simple, homely, authentic touch. Part of the series of interrogations from 1946. Then he flicked on quickly, the pages now becoming very distressed, spread untidily on the concrete between the racks of grey metal shelves …

Then it was no longer 1946, it was the last two years … Joggle the camera—but not too much …

Remember what you feel at each moment, associate feelings and experiences with some of the pages …

What was that? A meeting in Helsinki last year. Footsteps on the concrete outside, halting…? He managed to frighten himself in the darkness, his eyes still dazzled from the last exposure.

On again, flash, flash …

The last page. No, not the last one nor the penultimate, not even the one before that …

Then he had finished. He shivered with the cold and the returning darkness. His legs, up to the bent knees, were invested with an aching cramp. He could hear his own breathing. It might, after all, have all been real—all his emotions.

He sighed aloud.

Well done, came a voice from the darkness. So he had been convincing, he told himself, his body jumping at the sudden words. You’d like a drink now, I expect?

The last white sheets in the Teardrop file had acquired a faint, snow-reflected gleam as he recovered his night vision. Yes, you are committed now, he told himself. Your fate is in these pages, with his.

Him. The subject of the Teardrop file.

Yes, he replied, clearing his throat in the echoing dark. I would like a drink.

Patrick Hyde watched Kenneth Aubrey as he and the Russian left the ferry in the wake of holidaymakers intent on reaching the gates of the zoo. Hyde disliked the fact that Aubrey was not wired for sound, in deference to the Russian’s unaccustomed nervousness. He felt cut off from his superior, hampered in his task of protecting Aubrey.

He waited until the ferry was empty of passengers. There did not appear to be any contradiction between Deputy Chairman Kapustin’s given word that he was alone and Hyde’s own surveillance. If there were KGB bodyguards, they were unusually unobtrusive. Hyde strolled down the gangplank and along the quay towards the pine trees that masked the Korkeasaari Island Zoo. Behind him, across the breeze-ruffled, gleaming water, Helsinki was white and pink and innocent in the summer afternoon.

Hyde was still irritated by the fact that Aubrey had forbidden him to search Kapustin for a weapon or a microphone. Aubrey’s face, as he unwound the lead from his waist and unclipped the microphone from his shirt, had been smug with trust. Hyde’s blunter sensibilities did not enable him to trust Kapustin, even though these meetings were almost two years old.

Nothing new. A long, unfruitful courtship. Kapustin, by his words but not his actions, wished to defect to the West. A full Deputy Chairman of the KGB, Inspector-General of First Chief Directorate, Operations and Personnel. The glittering prize which dazzled Aubrey.

Ahead of him, fifty yards away against the backcloth of summer shirts and bright dresses, Aubrey and Kapustin strolled towards the turnstiles at the entrance to the zoo. A lion roared in the distance. Children gasped or squeaked with anticipation. Nothing dangerous moved beneath the heavy, aromatic pines, yet Hyde could not relax. There was no danger, nothing more than his persistent, recurring sense of wrongness. Everything was wrong about this—what, perhaps the tenth or even fifteenth meeting between Aubrey and Kapustin? Kapustin the reluctant virgin. Kapustin vacillating, refusing to commit himself, worried about the money, the new identity, the place of residence. Leading Aubrey by the nose.

A red and yellow ball rolled across the path at Hyde’s feet. A small boy in shorts, freckled and palely blond, chased it, then trotted away towards his parents, picnicking beneath the trees on wooden benches where sunlight poured down on them. Midges hung in the air like visible motes of their laughter.

He queued behind Kapustin and Aubrey, then kept twenty yards back as they walked the narrow paths between goat pens. A llama watched Hyde with the superior stare of a civil servant and bison grazed against a high mesh fence.

Wrong, he reminded himself. Disgruntled, too. Fed up with acting as Aubrey’s bodyguard on this periodic tour of European capitals. The meetings were arranged to coincide with Kapustin’s visits of inspection to the Soviet embassies of Western Europe—Berlin, Vienna, Bonn, Stockholm, Madrid, London, Helsinki. Each time, Kapustin supplied high-level gossip, Politburo insights, evidence of shifts of power and opinion—and excuses for not coming over. Demanding twice the money or twice the security, perhaps even twice the flattery.

Kapustin and Aubrey had halted in front of a monkey cage. Small, furry, whiskered faces watched them; small hands clutched towards them through the bars. Harsh voices demanded and insulted. Aubrey appeared earnest; Kapustin, taller and heavier, seemed to lean over him, a schoolmaster over a pupil trying to rush at a solution. Aubrey’s expression was a mirror of the cross, pinched face of the Capuchin monkey that watched the two men through the bars. Hyde watched the crowd around them, watched the cameras and the eyes. Nothing.

The exasperation was clear on Aubrey’s face beneath the straw trilby. Kapustin gestured broadly, a noncommittal shrug. Hyde moved closer to the barrier in front of the cage. A small grey monkey skittered away from him along a branch that led nowhere, as if he represented a palpable threat.

Double agent? We are not asking you to be that, Dmitri, Aubrey was saying in a quiet, urgent voice. "Why do you persist with the idea? It was your request—you contacted me, Dmitri. Directly. Personally."

As if I were waking a sleeper? Kapustin murmured. Quite. Aubrey refused to smile at the remark. Ever since then, you have toyed with us, with me.

I apologise. Kapustin watched Hyde for a moment as the Australian drifted closer, his eyes looking away from the monkey cage. In the distance, the lion roared again. Then Kapustin returned his attention to Aubrey. You have been very helpful; you have done everything … he murmured.

My duty, no more than that, Aubrey observed stiffly. What you offered could not be ignored. But why hesitate now—again and for so long?

I cannot decide between you and the Americans.

Money? Is that it?

Would it be money with you?

No. The situation would not arise.

Obviously not, now that Cunningham is to retire.

You know, of course.

You are confidently expected to take his place as the Director General. You will, of course?

Aubrey brushed at the air with his hand. That’s irrelevant.

Your real work can begin then.

Perhaps. Listen to me, Dmitri. The period of courtship is over. Your decision is awaited. You must decide. You must act …

Hyde drifted away from the two men. Their voices became lost in the screeching of the monkeys and the noise of children. The same conversation, the endless tape-loop of persuasion and hesitancy. Kapustin playing with Aubrey, wasting everyone’s time. Elaborate verbal games, continual amusements …

Hyde let the thought go in the babble of a school party of pigtailed girls and crop-headed boys, bustled past him by an efficient schoolmistress. A blob of vanilla ice-cream appeared on his brown corduroy trousers. He grinned and wiped it away. The idea of ice cream appealed to him as he vented his irritation on the two old men behind him.

Teardrop. Kapustin’s codename, suggested by the Russian himself at that first meeting in Paris. He looked back. The two men were surrounded by the shuffling party of schoolchildren. The strident voice of their teacher lectured them. The image of Aubrey and Kapustin was harmless, even risible. Nothing would come of Teardrop. Hyde did not expect the KGB Deputy Chairman to defect—not this year, not next year nor the year after that. Aubrey was still not even certain of the man’s motives for wishing to defect. A vague disillusion seemed insufficient to explain him. Teardrop. It didn’t mask some personal tragedy, as far as SIS could establish. It meant nothing, just a codename.

Mechanically, Hyde watched the cameras and the eyes, then the paths and the trees. Nothing. He yawned, felt bored, and wished for action.

Kapustin and Aubrey passed him then, returning to the gates, deep in urgent conversation. Unimportant. Nothing. Teardrop was a waste of everyone’s time.

Slowly, unalert, he began to follow the two old men.

This is now the actor, from yesterday? Kapustin asked in the darkness at the back of the room. The film whirred in the projector. Cigarette smoke drifted in the beam of white light that reached towards the wall screen.

Yes, Comrade Deputy Chairman.

The cloud shadows don’t look right to me. You’ve got the time of day OK, and the glare of the sun. But there was more of a breeze today. There aren’t enough shadows.

Kapustin watched his own back moving away from the camera, accompanied by a figure apparently that of Kenneth Aubrey. The actor bore little facial resemblance to the Englishman, but from this viewpoint he was identical. The walk was good, very good, the attitude of the shoulders and the head slightly on one side, like a listening bird. The straw trilby was habitual summer wear with Aubrey, and it was fortunate he had worn it that afternoon.

We’ll make a computer comparison, Comrade Deputy Chairman, the leader of the technical team offered. We can do something about the shadows, I’m certain—even if there aren’t any tomorrow when we do the inserts for real.

Mm. Kapustin watched the film for a moment longer, then said: Show me the film from this afternoon.

The projector slowed into silence. A second projector alongside it threw images at the screen, then he and Aubrey were again walking away from the camera, identically with the rehearsal they had staged the previous afternoon. Sunlight, yes. Clothing to be copied, naturally. Manner. The actor would have to be rehearsed. There was an irritation about Aubrey that was infrequently displayed but was here now, on this piece of film, shaping his body, moving his limbs. The Australian drifted along the path behind them, hands in his pockets, apparently bored.

OK, sir? the team leader asked at his elbow. Kapustin nodded.

Not bad.

We can solve the problem. The film quality will look identical, once the computer’s finished setting up its comparisons. The man was less ingratiating than proud—of his skills and his equipment and reputation, presumably. We’ll be able to stitch in anything you want, as long as the actor’s right.

He will be.

Yes, sir.

Kapustin and Aubrey were now standing in front of the monkey cage, engaged in what was evidently an urgent conversation. The distance the cameras had had to adopt because of Hyde’s presence assisted the deception. No one could blow these images up enough to lip-read. They could identify Aubrey when he was full-on or in profile, but they’d not be able to lip-read what he was saying. It was good. On the tapes, they could make Aubrey say anything they pleased. Out of his own mouth, apparently, he would condemn himself.

It looks good, Kapustin murmured, tapping his teeth with his thumbnail. The smoke from his cigarette caught the gleam from the projector. Yes, good … he luxuriated. He could almost hear in his mind the doctored, edited, stitched-together conversation that would accompany the film. When Aubrey had agreed, at Kapustin’s pretence of nerves, not to be wired for sound, it had been difficult for the KGB Deputy Chairman not to pat his own tiny microphone in self-congratulatory pleasure at the Englishman’s trusting naivety. At the recollection of it, Kapustin chuckled quietly. Let me have a look at the next bit of rehearsal film, he said.

The projector slowed and stopped. The other projector threw an image of Kapustin and the actor onto the screen. Yes, the film was necessary, he told himself. Of course, Aubrey was officially logged to meet Kapustin in Helsinki, and the film was not necessary as proof that they met. But—

Kapustin smiled. The actor had paused. He passed a package to Kapustin. There was guilt in the angle of the head, the set of the shoulders. Kapustin, on the screen, acted gratitude and almost immediately satisfaction, followed by assertiveness; command. The tiny scene was over in perhaps six or seven seconds. It unmistakably portrayed Aubrey as a double agent; a traitor.

Teardrop.

OK—satisfactory so far. Let’s go to the tape, shall we?

The lights came on. The image on the screen faded, as if seen through a curtain of light or snow, and then the projector was switched off. Kapustin studied the young, eager, competent faces that turned towards him like plants towards the sun. He was their sun. His own technical team. His special Teardrop team.

What do you want, sir?

The boat, first. The ferry. What did you get there, and what have you done with it?

You’ll like it, sir. The young man grinned. There was suddenly complete silence in the room as he switched on the cassette players. Japanese; expensive. Commercial tapes of rock music lay heaped beside it on the table, amid the mikes and leads and in front of the reel-to-reel recorder and tape editor. His young men had been buying in Helsinki.

I’d better, he said good-naturedly; fatherly.

Seagulls, then voices. The team-leader handed him a typed transcript. In underscored letters were the questions and observations he had previously recorded, and which had been edited into his conversation with Aubrey. Kapustin listened intently.

It is increasingly difficult for me, Aubrey insisted from the speakers. Seagulls, water, wind, the noise of the ferry’s engines. He had gone on, in reality, to explain to Kapustin that his vacillations were irritating London. Aubrey was having difficulty persuading his colleagues that Kapustin was serious about defecting. Now, with an inserted question regarding Cabinet papers and the minutes of the Foreign Affairs Committee, it appeared evident that Aubrey was providing his KGB control with highly secret information.

Aubrey was a traitor. Kapustin smiled, tapped his teeth, and listened.

I realise that, he heard himself saying, but this information is very important. Beneath the words he could hear his own heartbeat, fainter than the pulse of the ferry’s engines. You must try … he insisted.

I am doing everything asked of me! Aubrey replied with querulous and frightened anger. At least, it could have been fear. Where had that conversational snippet come from—Paris, Vienna, Berlin? This year, last year?

No, he announced. Switch off. The team leader appeared stoical, other and younger faces were crestfallen, one or two distinctly irritated in the hot, smoky room. Sorry, lads—my heartbeat’s not exact in the inserts. And there’s something about the perspective of Aubrey’s voice—he’s got to be a little nearer.

What about the background sound? someone asked.

"That’s OK—no difference. That’s good. I’m sorry, but Finnish Intelligence is going to be given this when the time is right, and the first thing they’re going to suspect is that it’s a fake. They’re going to try to find what’s been put in and what’s been taken out. I can hear it. It’s not good enough. OK—run on to the zoo …"

The cassette tape whirred, then the Play switch clicked again. The lion roared as if on cue. The monkeys chattered at the children, the children at the monkeys. Kapustin listened.

Your real work can begin then, he heard himself saying. No more than my duty, Aubrey replied stiffly. Then he continued: I’ve waited patiently—for a very long time, Dmitri—now it’s within our grasp …

Again! Kapustin snapped, clipping the excitement from his voice.

Rewind, then Play. He listened. Snippets of conversation from Berlin, from Vienna, from Rome. Background filtered out, new background supplied. The zoo. He listened. All that chatter—he had not believed they could do it. They wanted it to disguise the initial filtering out of traffic, of wind or rain. Yet he had disbelieved them. Until now. This was …

Marvellous, he breathed. A collective sigh of relief seemed to fill the room. Lion, monkeys, children. A seamless, flowing background, natural, lifelike; undoctored.

It had happened. This was the best it had ever been, on all the tapes they had doctored. The best in the last two years. The most crucial moment; the moment of betrayal, the springing of the trap. Aubrey was Teardrop—was, for certain, Teardrop. Aubrey was a traitor to his service and his country. It was there, on the tape.

Teardrop unmasked.

Again, he whispered, luxuriating in his sensations of complete, infallible success. Again.

There was a video projection screen at the far end of the first floor of the shop. On it, in somewhat blurred colours, a ballet dancer impersonating Squirrel Nutkin bounced across a leaf-carpeted glade to the inappropriate accompaniment from wall speakers of a disco tune. The image caused him to smile, then he turned his back on the screen and went up the stairs to the cassette department. He was early for his appointment, for this final contact in the HMV Shop in Oxford Street.

He had come out of Bond Street tube station into a hot September afternoon that made the whole of crowded, sweltering Oxford Street seem to smell of frying onions from an invisible hot-dog stall. Ground floor, he had been told. At four precisely. At four, you come over. A pity you couldn’t have been posted to Washington or even New York—but, from Oxford Street we can get you the couple of blocks to the embassy in Grosvenor Square. The HMV Shop’s always good and crowded. That’ll be the pick-up point. Be early, move around the shop. We’ll want time to look for any tail. Be careful.

He should not have felt real tension, he knew. There should be only the feelings he had practised and learned in readiness for this moment. Remember, they will expect fear, tension, sweating. Just as with the file, you must be sure of your emotions. They must be correct—what is expected in a defector on the point of going over. The smell of frying onions after the smell of hot dust in the tube station had revolted his stomach. It was an image to hold, to bring out later like a pressed flower. A proof of honesty.

A young-old boy with pink hair, eye makeup and an earring sat lounging behind the cash desk. Grigori Metkin moved slowly along the racks of cassettes, appearing to browse, finger running along the shelving, following the alphabet of pop singers and rock bands that were, almost without exception, unfamiliar to him. His eyes sought and found his shadow from the Soviet embassy, intently studying the bargain-priced cassettes. He carried two green Marks & Spencer bags. There was nothing Russian about him. He was dark and pot-bellied enough to be an Arab or an Iranian. Metkin glanced at his watch. Two minutes before four.

A man in a light suit brushed past him and stared knowingly into his face. There was the merest hint of an encouraging smile, then he was gone. After a moment, Metkin followed him down the stairs. On the video screen, to the accompaniment of Bach supported by the alien groundswell of electric guitars from the floor below, Raquel Welch, in an animal-skin bikini, was fleeing from a dinosaur. Again, Metkin smiled. Then, as he looked back from the stairs leading to the ground floor and the wailing guitars, he saw his shadow with the green bags coming unconcernedly after him. For the briefest moment, he understood intensely what he was leaving behind and the dangers of his new role; his stomach became hollow and weak.

The man in the light suit was waiting for him. There was a second man, then a third. All in well-tailored suits, perhaps intending to advertise the sartorial benefits of America to him, their newest recruit. The conflicting noises of three or four different hit records seemed to increase in volume as he hesitated on the bottom step. The sunlight glared outside the doors of the shop.

Make it good, he thought. Make it convincing, he remembered. Where was his instructor now, from which Oxford Street window would he be watching this? Then Metkin saw a flicker of recognition on the face of one of the Americans. His shadow had given himself away. The light suit moved towards him, and a strong brown hand grabbed his arm. The man’s other hand began reaching into the breast of his jacket. A second American had moved swiftly towards the doors. Metkin could smell the frying onions again. He felt nauseous.

Come on, come on, the American urged. Men in patterned shirts, all highly-coloured, moved towards himself and the CIA officer. The necessary counter-activity, the threat that the prize might yet be snatched away. The American bustled him to the doors, his right hand still inside his jacket as if seeking a missing wallet. "Come on—"

Sunlight, hard and dusty, collided with Metkin as he emerged. He bumped into an Arab woman and knocked over her child. He recognised that he would possess all the necessary emotions to recall under debriefing interrogation. A cry from behind them. Three suits, one next to him and two guarding the black limousine. The rear door was opened. He was bundled in like a bag of washing. The American who had pushed him, the one in the light suit, slid into the seat next to him.

Look around, look frightened, he remembered. He saw the sweating, angry faces gather on the pavement. The Arab woman picked up, dusted off her child. The patterned shirts retreated, then disappeared as the car turned out of Oxford Street. The Americans were arguing.

Neither of you picked those guys up—neither of you!

Sorry—

Thank them, he remembered, thank them profusely …

Thank you! Thank you! he exclaimed breathily, feeling the sweat run freely beneath his arms, on his chest. Oh, thank you, thank you …

The American next to him smiled, then nodded. You’re safe now, pal. Safe.

And suddenly, ahead of the car, the weather-stained white concrete of the US Embassy, surmounted by the eagle with its spread wings. To Metkin, it possessed the appearance of a prison and the associations of a minefield. Safe? His danger was only just beginning—

Their hands moved in and out of the pool of light that fell upon the desk, making skirmishes at the heap of photographic blow-ups. The ceiling of the darkened room was washed with pale light, much of it filtering through the uncurtained windows from the moonlit snow lying deep on that part of the Virginia countryside. Their shadows bobbed and swelled and lessened on the ceiling.

How much of this can you verify? The Deputy Director of the CIA sounded reluctant to believe and yet equally reluctant to adopt a sceptical attitude.

A lot of it.

From Metkin, our defecting friend?

No. He knows nothing about this. He grabbed it as a bargaining lever. It was too secret for him to handle. But, look here— Hands shuffled the gleaming, frequently over-exposed pictures, then tapped one of them. We know this style of classification and secrecy grading has never been used by the KGB. It belonged to the NKVD, at least thirty years ago. And this … The hands shuffled once more. The Deputy Director was struck by their confident, trained movements. The hands were indeed dealing cards—a bad hand. … this is his handwriting alright. It’s been checked again and again. A lot of experts have seen it. It’s been scanned and examined by computer. It may be almost forty years old, but it’s his handwriting.

I see. The Deputy Director looked into the shadowy corners of his spacious office, then at the silvery snow-gleam on the ceiling. His shadow and that of his companion seemed hunched and diminished and sinister, crouching over the photographs on his rosewood desk. He could smell his cigar butts still in the ashtray—no, they were on the pile carpet, upended there by a movement of the sheaf of blow-ups. I see, he repeated, at a loss.

The history fits, too. As far as we can check, all these 1946 dates can be corroborated.

What about the recent dates—the last two years?

It all checks out. At least, as far as we can go without asking London directly.

Then all this was garbage about a KGB Deputy Chairman wanting to defect…?

We think so.

What else do you think?

Aubrey’s been a sleeper for more than thirty-five years. Two years ago, when he was within an ace of the top job, they woke him up.

You say you haven’t talked to London?

No, sir. We need to talk to Babbington—to MI5, sure—but that’s the Director’s decision, not ours.

OK. The Deputy Director’s finger tapped at the blow-up of the file’s summary sheet, near the bottom. On the ceiling, his shoulders seemed to move spasmodically in unison, as if he were vomiting. "You believe this defector—and this?"

"We’ve tried him every way. Even under drugs and hypnosis. He comes up smelling of roses every time. Same story. As a cipher clerk, he’d heard the rumours everyone else had heard. Important files about to be incinerated—topmost secrecy. He knew it could be his ticket on the first-class gravy train, so he took his Japanese camera to work—and found Teardrop.’

Aubrey’s an old man now …

And he’s just become Director-General of British Intelligence.

Dammit, Bill, I know that …

Well, sir?

The Deputy Director’s large hands once more rearranged the sheaf of photographs, but this time irresolutely. Hell, I don’t know—I just don’t know!

"Sir, I’d stake my reputation on the fact that Teardrop is a genuine highest security file from Moscow Centre. More than that, these reference numbers on the cover show that it has been transferred to their main security computer. Also, access is limited to the Chairman and six Deputy Chairmen of the KGB. No one else, with the exception of Nikitin himself, can get to see it. These pictures come up genuine under every test we can make. The story they tell—however appalling—holds up under investigation … Once more, the pictures were dealt like cards, fanned open across the whole desk. One or two slid to the carpet, out of the pool of strong white light. And it all means that Kenneth Aubrey is a Soviet agent. It means he’s the Soviet agent of all time!"

And he’s just been made head of British Intelligence. The Deputy Director sighed once, but the sound became a stifled belch. OK—we’ll take this to the Director first thing in the morning.

Very well, Kapustin. Let it begin in earnest. The destruction of Kenneth Aubrey—and with him, the destruction of British Intelligence … I use Comrade President Nikitin’s own words, Kapustin. Does he exaggerate?

He does not, Comrade Chairman.

You promise that such claims will not have been exaggerated, in the outcome?

"I do, Comrade Chairman. President Nikitin was right, as you were, to place Teardrop in my hands. It will work. I give you both my word on that."

Then let’s drink to it, mm?

A pleasure.

"We will wish Sir Kenneth Aubrey, KCVO, a Happy New Year—eh? A very Happy New Year!"

One by one, the rows of windows of the Belvedere Palace in Vienna turned from bronze to orange in the setting afternoon sun, as if invisible servants were going from room to room lighting great chandeliers. Kenneth Aubrey and the Russian were almost in darkness as they patrolled the terrace of the Upper Belvedere beneath the great windows; two shadowy, unsubstantial and isolated figures. Patrick Hyde sat perched on the stone plinth beneath the enigmatic, crouching statue of a sphinx. Its companions ranged away from him along the terrace, each of them staring out of Maria Theresa faces and from beneath eighteenth-century hair down towards the city. Hyde looked up at his sphinx as Kapustin continued his explanation to Aubrey. Yes, the smile on that face was alluring as much as mysterious; lewd, even, as it retreated into cold winter darkness. Appropriate to the conversation that he could tinnily hear through the earpiece of the portable recorder in the pocket of his dark overcoat. This time, Aubrey was wired for sound and Kapustin seemed unworried at the prospect. In a pause in the halting, almost embarrassed explanation, Aubrey exploded with anger. Hyde had never heard him so enraged, so undiplomatic, so unreserved before.

You cannot tell me now that you refuse to come over? his voice asked in mocking, venomous disbelief. After more than two years, you simply cannot mean that!

The silence hummed. The KGB Deputy Chairman, Teardrop, was backing away. Hyde had known it for more than half an hour now; ever since the first moments of the meeting. Almost from the moment Kapustin had greeted Aubrey and Hyde had drifted to a more useful surveillance distance, he had sensed a new and even more reluctant mood.

And it was a woman. An inducement to remain in the Soviet Union that Aubrey would be incapable of understanding or accepting.

I—I do mean that, my friend, Kapustin explained. I—am sorry, but I can say it in no other way. I—cannot come with you.

Everything is arranged! Aubrey stormed. "You agreed everything at our last meeting. It was to be next week, dammit!"

Hyde watched the two almost indiscernible figures reach the far end of the terrace, turn and begin towards him again. The orange colour of the windows was now uniform, as if the early sunset had stalked after them along the terrace. Hyde saw the pale blotch of Wilkes’s trench coat drifting like a patch of fog behind the two men. He and the rest of Vienna Station were in control of security. Once more Hyde felt himself, as Aubrey’s travelling companion and minder, flatteringly unused; wasted. He rubbed his ungloved hands. His breath smoked in the last of the light. To the east, the pale sky darkened towards purple. The gardens of the Belvedere glittered with yesterday’s snow.

But, this woman— Aubrey persisted. You say you have known her only for a matter of a few months …

That is correct.

"Then, then—then I do not understand!"

You have never been moved by such a passion, my friend?

Bring her with you! Aubrey blurted out. Listening, Hyde shook his head.

I cannot. She—has a family. I do not need to tell you what former colleagues of mine would do to them, with them, were the two of us to emerge in the West. No, my friend, it cannot be …

Dammit, you’re sixty-one—!

Hyde smiled and tossed his head. Aubrey, the man devoid of sexual passion, simply could not comprehend. Deputy Chairman Kapustin would not come out to play, now or ever. To Hyde, it was a matter of indifference. The cold impinged more keenly. Only for the loss of Aubrey’s coup was he regretful. And even that wasn’t important—Aubrey already had it all; knighthood, director-generalship, honour and glory, world without end. And perhaps after this he would return Hyde to the field, to proper work.

And should know better? Kapustin asked mockingly. Evidently I do not.

You could be blown—

I do not think so. And you, my friend, you would not betray me just for disappointing you. I am truly sorry. There is much in the West that I still covet, and much at home that sickens and disgusts me. But—I am in love …

Hyde heard Aubrey’s snort of derision and saw Kapustin spread his arms in a gesture of pleasurable hopelessness. Aubrey’s stunted figure beside him, now that they were close again, looked feeble and old and bemused.

Then this is our last meeting. We have nothing more to say to one another. Aubrey’s voice was still hurtfully contemptuous.

It would appear so. You have been patient and you have been secure. When I came to you, I asked a high price. You have, eventually, granted it. You have satisfied me in the matter of a new identity, a new life. And now that I have everything, it means nothing to me. I can no longer go down these steps— They were standing just above Hyde now, at the head of a flight of stone steps. Hyde’s sphinx seemed to smirk with superiority and a sense of power in the gloom. Frost had begun to glitter on her face. —with you; or get into one of your cars parked outside the palace gates. London is an impossible distance away. Washington is another planet—for me, at least.

Very well. I shall report the matter …

Ah, yes. You will give a most withering description of my sudden—weakness? Kapustin laughed. To Hyde, the KGB Deputy Chairman sounded like an actor, overplaying his role.

I—it’s simply that I do not understand, Aubrey admitted.

Hyde jumped down from his stone perch. It was almost dark now, the time of maximum danger when everything was shadowy and confusing and suspicious. Sunset is a trap; someone had once told him. He picked out Wilkes in his ghostly trench coat, and two of the others. And no enemy activity. Teardrop could move about western cities much as he liked. That kind of seniority was what had made him such a valuable catch, the fish of the season.

And Aubrey had lost him, failed to land the catch …

Goodbye, my friend.

Goodbye.

The two men shook hands briefly and stiffly, and then Kapustin came down the steps and passed Hyde without a glance in his direction. Aubrey descended much more slowly, as if greatly tired. His face, in the frosty almost-dark, was abject with affront and failure.

Sorry, sir— Hyde began.

God in Heaven, what’s got into the man? Aubrey exclaimed.

Sex, that’s all it is, Hyde replied with assumed disgust.

I found the whole business—so hard to believe, Aubrey complained. And kindly don’t mock me, Patrick.

Sorry, sir.

"But to have lost him—! Aubrey burst out again as Wilkes approached. The senior field officer of Vienna Station backed away at the tone of Aubrey’s voice. Two years since he first approached us—two years of meetings, negotiations, arrangements, assurances—of courtship, dammit!"

And then he dumps you for another woman, Hyde could not resist observing, immediately regretting that he had done so. Aubrey turned to face him, his eyes gleaming like chips of ice in the last of the light. Then the old man shrugged.

If he had arranged the whole charade for my personal embarrassment, Aubrey remarked, "he could not have had more success. My enemies—on both sides of the Atlantic—will say of me that I am finally too old to cope. Washington contains few people I have worked with in—sensitive matters. They will be delighted at Langley with our success here! Aubrey’s pale features twisted in irony. Sir Kenneth Aubrey, KCVO, Director-General of SIS, falls flat on his face. How pleased so many people will be to hear of it! The Cabinet Office and MI5 will have a field day … He sighed as he choked off the sentence, then waved his hand towards Wilkes’s hovering form, dismissing him. Back to the hotel, Patrick," he murmured tiredly.

OK, sir.

Their footsteps crunched on the gravel of the path as they moved down the slope towards the high hedges that bordered the more formal and enclosed part of the gardens. The huge ornamental pool in front of the Upper Belvedere was a sheet of glassy ice. A sliver of moon had appeared above the horizon, and the first stars were like gleams of frost. Hyde realised that Aubrey was still wired for sound. He could hear his breathing and his heartbeat faintly in his earpiece. He took the plug from his ear and thrust it and its cord into his pocket. Kapustin, usually so wary of recordings of his conversations with Aubrey, had seemed indifferent on this occasion. Doubtless, out of a sense of fair play, Aubrey would order him to wipe this tape. Kapustin was dead to Aubrey, the matter closed as finally as a mortuary drawer.

They reached a shorter flight of steps, then the tall hedges and trimmed firs and statuary of the lower gardens. Hyde touched Aubrey’s elbow, offering him his support on the slippery steps. Aubrey did not refuse the assistance. The weight of his arm was bird-like, fragile. Wilkes was twenty yards away, on another gravel path, and his three men were farther off, forming a screen. Aubrey’s breathing was almost like a crackle of static close to him …

The recorder clinked on the gravel as Hyde dropped it. Crackle of static?

Sorry, sir—dropped the bloody tape, Hyde said in an unnecessarily loud voice. Aubrey clicked his tongue in disapproval. Shut up, Hyde thought. Quiet …

Wilkes’s shoes on gravel. Hyde scrabbled one hand over the path as if searching for the recorder which he had already retrieved from near his left knee. The gravel was sharp and cold through his corduroy trousers. His woollen scarf felt damp against his mouth as he held his breath.

Come along, Patrick … Aubrey sighed impatiently. Shut up—crackle of static, and nearer than their own men … Radio—two-way?

Aubrey took a step towards him—footsteps as Wilkes drew nearer. Other footsteps, a small party of men. Wilkes hurried close to Aubrey.

What—?

Where the hell had Kapustin gone? Hyde hadn’t even watched him leave the gardens of the Belvedere. Damn—

Hyde’s hand reached into his coat.

Sir Kenneth? It’s Andrew Babbington— one of the approaching knot of men—four, no, five of them—called out.

Babbington? Aubrey replied confusedly, moving towards the group. Babbington—Andrew, what are you doing here?

Hyde remained on one knee, his hand gripping the butt of the Heckler & Koch the embassy had issued him that afternoon. Its shaped plastic was warm from his body. He could not ignore the crackle of static.

Then Aubrey said: It is you—what is it?

Crackle—legs, there, beneath the trees. He saw them through a diseased, thinned part of the hedge. Wilkes and the others had closed up now, forming a group of men in dark overcoats and light trench coats, surrounding Aubrey. Must be an emergency? The legs he could see through the hedge rose to a dark, bulky coat. He could not see the man’s face. Aubrey had been joined by the Director-General of MI5 and the Vienna Head of Station. It had to be an emergency—highest priority.

The legs remained still. Did the body have a familiar shape? Another pair of legs arrived silently. Two watchers. Hyde got to his feet and moved slowly and quietly off the gravel path. His hand held the recorder and its lead and the earpiece. He thrust the recorder into his pocket and the plug back into his ear.

… it’s extremely embarrassing, Sir Kenneth, someone was murmuring deferentially. Parrish, Head of Station in Vienna.

I simply do not understand why you are here, Andrew, Aubrey snapped as Hyde again bent low by the hedge. The two watchers had not moved. Their stance betrayed their interest in the group on the path. They were unaware of him.

Mr Babbington—I’m sorry, Sir Andrew has given me very precise instructions, Sir Kenneth. I’m very sorry … Why wasn’t Babbington speaking for himself? Why the hell was Babbington in Vienna anyway? MI5 was internal security, not intelligence. He was on Aubrey’s patch. I must ask you to accompany us, Sir Kenneth.

Why, may I ask? Aubrey asked waspishly. And why won’t you speak for yourself, Andrew? What is it? What is the matter?

Hyde slipped along the grass verge, his back brushing the tall hedge. A statue loomed, and the hedge opened in decay behind it. He slipped through into the deeper darkness among the trees.

… this is very awkward for me, Sir Kenneth, Parrish was protesting. Very awkward for all of us …

Where is your man Hyde? Babbington suddenly asked. Hyde was chilled by the tone of command, the sense of urgency. It was a palpable threat. He knew it as such and was unnerved by disbelief. Ahead of him, he could see the two watchers beneath the trees. They were perhaps thirty yards from the group on the path. Who were they?

I have no idea where Hyde is,’ Aubrey said cunningly. He was here a moment ago … What do you want of me, Andrew?"

You’ll return to London in our company, Kenneth, and there you will remain incommunicado at your flat until such time …

What?

Hyde was rigid with shock, almost unaware of the watchers even though they were now moving in his general direction.

Kenneth— Babbington warned.

What is it, man? What in the devil’s name are you talking about? Aubrey stormed.

Treason, Sir Kenneth, Babbington replied coldly. Hyde gasped with incredulity. Aubrey—?

What did you say?

"Sir Kenneth, I must warn you that there are grounds for the strongest suspicion there are matters which must be investigated …"

Footsteps to Hyde’s left, coming through the trees. Noises on gravel, farther off.

Kapustin … Kapustin …

He recognised the man. He had been the first watcher he had spotted beneath the trees. He hadn’t left the gardens—he had known …

Known it would happen.

Hyde’s breath escaped in a cloud. Kapustin saw him then. Almost immediately, he bent his head to one side and whispered furiously into a small transceiver. Kapustin had known it would happen, that Aubrey would be …

Arrested.

Running footsteps, and the noises of Aubrey’s group moving off, as if abandoning him.

This is blatantly ridiculous, Aubrey was saying, his voice seeming to grow fainter. You know why I’m here, what this is about.

Hyde was alone. Running footsteps on gravel, closing in.

Kapustin watched him, expectant and confident. A body brushed through low fir branches, a slithering sound. Kapustin’s transceiver suddenly crackled with voices. In his ear, Aubrey continued to protest, his voice and circumstances now irrelevant. Kapustin was about to speak. Hyde felt his legs become heavy. The adrenalin coursed in his veins, but he seemed powerless to employ it.

A body blundered against him, slipping on a patch of ice in a hollow in the leaf-mould and hard earth. The collision freed him. He tugged the pistol from his overcoat and struck out, catching the man across the temple. The KGB man staggered back, clutching at the sudden rush of blood. It seeped between his fingers, ran into his eyes. Hyde heaved him out of his path and ran.

He burst from beneath the trees, skidded on the frosty, sparkling gravel then recovered his balance and fled towards the Upper Belvedere, aware that he was moving away from Aubrey and the men who had arrested him. Then he was aware only of the sheen of snow on the gardens, the glint of the frozen pool, the sparkling steps, and his breath beginning to labour as he ran up the long slope towards the darkened, deserted palace.

The air was chilly against his cheeks, his mouth gasped at its coldness, tasting and wetting the wool of his scarf. He heard footsteps behind him. On the end of its lead, the earpiece of the recorder bounced like a fusillade of tiny pebbles against his shoulder.

He saw a form converging, racing across the moonlit white lawn, and he checked then heaved his frame against that of the running man. His breath exploded, and Hyde’s shoulder lifted him off his feet, turning him into a face-down dark lump against the snow. Hyde staggered, lurched, felt the recorder drop from his pocket and heard it land on the gravel.

Then he heard a voice, seeming to come from the man on the ground, and for a moment he was unable to move.

Stop him—kill him if you have to, in unaccented English. It was no Russian voice, yet it was coming from the pocket transceiver clipped to the lapel of the unconscious man’s coat. The words were muffled by the man’s body, but they were audible on the chilly air. English, spoken by a native. Collusion, he had time to register. MI5 and the KGB. Collusion.

His eyes cast about on the gravel, but he failed to locate the recorder. Distant figures were running towards him. The recorder—!

No time!

His body began running again, even as he knew he ought to continue the search. Panic and survival controlled him. He mounted the last steps onto the terrace of the Belvedere. Again, the ghostly features of the sphinx grinned and smirked with superiority.

His hand slapped against her stone hair as he regained his balance and looked behind him. Two men below, another two converging.

Kill him if you have to …

He still realised the collusion, but it was the threat that was now predominant. They wanted him dead. He had seen and heard. He must be eliminated. Not simply isolated, left alone, but eliminated. Driven and hounded by his own fear, he ran towards the gates onto the Prinz Eugen-Strasse, towards Vienna.

Kill him if you have to …

His shoes pounded on the icy pavement. Lines of lights and parked cars stretched ahead of him down the hill towards the city. He ran on, the idea of collusion fading in his mind like the distanced noises and cries behind him.

PART ONE

FALL LIKE LUCIFER’S

‘O how fall’n! how chang’d

From him, who in the happy Realms of Light

Cloth’d with transcendent brightness didst outshine

Myriads though bright.’

Milton: ‘Paradise Lost’, BK. 1, first published in 1677

ONE

After the Fall

Paul Massinger balanced his whisky on the small table and then eased himself, left leg extended, into the deep armchair. His face creased into lines of irritated pain for a moment until he settled his arthritic hip to greater comfort. Ridiculous. Within his ageing form, he had felt so much younger since his marriage to Margaret. He had belied his fifty-nine years; defeated them. Now his body persisted in its reminders of his physical age; it was pertinent yet false, just as the elegance of the Belgravia flat occasionally reminded him, falsely, how easily he, a mere American, could be charged with having married for money. In many eyes, he knew he had at first been—still was to some people—little better than a colonial buccaneer, a gold-digger. At least, that was what other gold-diggers said. None of it hurt or even affected him. Margaret had entered his long widower-hood firmly and purposefully and opened a new door to this.

The Standard lay still folded on the arm of the chair. He dismissed the consideration that he must arrange to have an operation on his worsening hip—not yet, not yet—and pressed the button of the remote control handset. The television fluttered and grumbled to life. Margaret was not yet home. A sense of absence filled him to the accompaniment of the signature tune of the early evening news. Alistair Burnet’s comfortable features filled the screen. He heard a key in the lock, and surrendered to the small, joyous sensation at her return. He turned in his chair in order to see her the moment she stepped into the drawing-room. There was an excited tightness in his chest. His hip twinged savagely, as if envious of his emotions and the object of his attention. In the same complex moment, he was young and old.

The long fox fur coat and the matching fur hat; a high colour from the evening drop in temperature made her younger than her forty-three years. The confident, unselfconscious step … The smile faded from his lips. Alistair Burnet’s voice was that of an intruder upon the scene. She had halted abruptly in mid-step, and the colour had blanched from her cheeks. One gloved hand played about her lips. Her eyes looked hurt, bruised. Massinger turned his head towards the television set, and gasped.

A grainy monochrome picture of a man of forty or so, fair hair lifted by a breeze; half-profile, lips parted in a smile, eyes pale and intent. Handsome. Massinger did not hear what Alistair Burnet said to accompany the photograph. He did not need to hear the appalled, choked word that Margaret uttered:

Father… !

He knew it already. Robert Castleford, almost forty years dead. Margaret dragged the fur hat from her head, dishevelling her fair hair. Her mouth was slightly open, as if there were other things she wished to say; lines she had forgotten.

Massinger said, stupidly, Margaret, what’s going on…?

She moved to his chair but did not touch him, except to brush his hand as she snatched the remote-control handset from the arm of the chair. Burnet’s voice boomed in the drawing-room.

… the accusations, said to have been made to the CIA by a Russian defector now in America, involve the circumstances surrounding the death in 1946 in Berlin …

Why? was all Massinger could think to say. He looked up at his wife, but she was staring at the screen, her body slightly hunched like that of a child expecting to be struck.

"… the Foreign Office has declined to comment on the matter, and will neither confirm nor deny that any investigation of the head of the intelligence service is underway, as this evening’s edition of the Standard newspaper claims …"

Her hand scrabbled near his sleeve like a trapped pet. The crackling of the folded newspaper was followed by a deep gasp that threatened to become a sob. Massinger, suddenly, could not look at her.

D-Notice…? his mind asked irrelevantly, and answered itself almost casually, like a voice issuing from a deep club armchair of worn leather, The British have let it come out. For some reason, they want it known … Aubrey has enemies, then … He loathed his own detachment and wanted to clutch her hand. Alistair Burnet passed to another news story. Bombs in Beirut.

What—what does it say? he asked throatily. She did not reply. Aubrey, he thought. Aubrey knew Castleford in Berlin in 1946. But Castleford disappeared in Berlin … His remains were found in—in ‘51, beneath the ruins of a house. He’d been murdered, but no one ever thought …

Aubrey?

Darling, he said with ponderous, eager gentleness, what does it say?

She let the paper fall into his lap and crossed the room to the sideboard. He heard a drink being poured and breathing like that of someone close to death. Castleford’s picture was alongside the headline WHERE IS ‘C’? Beneath that, a subheading, Intelligence Furore—Who Killed Who? He could feel the pain each word must have inflicted upon her, but he could not turn his attention from the article.

Exclusive. Arrest of the Head of Intelligence, ‘C’, expected at any moment … CIA sources in London … Whitehall refuses to … Soviet embassy sources angered by the accusations of complicity in Castleford’s death … Castleford’s background, senior and distinguished civil servant, brilliant university scholar, veteran of the Spanish Civil War, until now believed murdered for some undiscovered personal reason—or—without obvious motive—done to death … information in our possession, fourth man, fifth man … Blunt and Long and the others all small fry …

Massinger checked back, tracing his finger up the column. The subject had changed. Aubrey was not merely suspected of Castleford’s murder. Russian agent, Russian agent, he read … information in our possession, Russian defector in the US, CIA file delivered to MI5, MI5 to act … arrest of ‘C’ expected at any moment, pending a full investigation of the charges …

He read on until he reached the demonic folklore, and the old devils of Philby, Burgess, Maclean and Blunt came to occupy their familiar places. Then he threw the newspaper from him, and it fluttered heavily to the pale blue velvet carpet. He turned to look at his wife.

Well? she said in a tight, strained voice. He sensed the malevolence in her tone.

Well? he could only repeat hopelessly.

"It is Aubrey they’re talking about, isn’t it? Your friend Aubrey? He could do no more than nod in admission. To think that he’s been here! Here! Sat here with us, with you… !" Evidently, she believed every word of the report.

Darling … he began, hoisting himself out of his chair with the aid of his stick. When he looked up, her face wore an appalled expression, as if his movements were some further species of betrayal. I can’t defend him, he said shakily, moving towards her. She seemed to back away slightly along the sideboard. Her large cuff slid against the crystal of a decanter, and her gold bracelets rattled against the glass. I can’t tell you anything, anything at all …

You’ve known him … for years you’ve known him—!

Not then …

"He’s your friend!"

Yes …

He murdered my father! Her face was young, urchin-like, abandoned.

"They say he betrayed your father to the NKVD … I don’t know what to say to you—it’s no more than a rumour."

They wanted it known, he reminded himself, and the future became clear to him in a moment of insight; it loomed over him like a cloud; no, more solid than that, like a great stone that would crush him if he could not learn to carry it. Only a rumour, he repeated huskily. They wanted it known. The Joint Intelligence Committee, the Cabinet Office, the Foreign Secretary, even the PM—they’ve all allowed the witch-hunt. Everyone must want Aubrey’s head. Then, he realised the truth … They believe it. They believe Aubrey’s guilty … they even believe he’s a Russian agent.

He opened his arms. She moved into them with the sullen step of reluctant surrender. Her body heaved with sobs. His neck was wet from her tears. Thirty-five years late, she possessed the emotions of a child or a teenage daughter. Her world, her certainties, had been altered and thrown into shadow.

His eyes roamed the large room. He noticed, as if for the first time, the number of framed photographs of her father that almost littered the walls, the sideboard, the occasional tables. As if the place were some weird kind of roadside shrine to a little-known saint. A portrait of the young Castleford stared down at him from one of the walls. Castleford was sacrosanct. Margaret’s mother, of course, had been mostly responsible for the veneration her daughter still felt; the unalloyed, immutable admiration of a child remained with her even now. Especially now—

Margaret had been flung back down some time-tunnel to the moment when Castleford had first disappeared, to the moment he had died.

There, there … he breathed, stroking her hair from crown to neck. There, my darling, my darling …

After all this time, she murmured, sniffing. He felt her swallow hard, and then her voice was firmer. I wasn’t prepared for anything like this—his face on the screen, suddenly to know that he had been betrayed, not just murdered, but betrayed deliberately …

He continued to stroke her hair gently. I know, I know … He glanced up, into the mirror behind them. He saw a face that had been quickly, and perhaps permanently aged. Deep lines, hunted eyes. His own features. His hip ached with the premonition of effort. He was unready, it was unfair, grossly unfair.

He knew it was false. All of it. Not Aubrey. Aubrey could not be a Russian agent. Never.

But Margaret…?

He could not answer to the