The Deceiver (5 page)

A young corporal entered from the outer office. She did not address him, just pointed to the ashtray with her fingertip. He quickly removed it, left the office, and returned it cleaned a few seconds later. She nodded. He left again and closed the door.

There had been no talk, no banter. Major Vanavskaya had that effect on people. In earlier years some of the young bucks had noticed the shining short-cropped blond hair above the crisp service shirt and slim green skirt and had tried their luck. No dice. At twenty-five she had married a colonel—a career move—and divorced him three years later. His career had stalled, hers taken off. At thirty-five she wore no more uniforms, just the severe tailored charcoal-gray suit over the white blouse with the floppy bow at the neck.

Some still thought she was beddable, until they caught a salvo from those freezing blue eyes. In the KGB, not an organization of liberals, Major Vanavskaya had a reputation as a fanatic. Fanatics intimidate.

The Major’s fanaticism was her work—and traitors. An utterly dedicated Communist, ideologically pure of any doubts, she had devoted herself to her self-arrogated pursuit of traitors. She hated them with a cold passion. She had wangled a transfer from the Second Chief Directorate, where the targets were the occasional seditious poet or complaining worker, to the independent Third Directorate, also called the Armed Forces Directorate. Here the traitors, if traitors there were, would be higher-ranking, more dangerous.

The move to the Third Directorate—arranged by her colonel-husband in the last days of their marriage, when he was still desperately trying to please her—had brought her to this anonymous office block just off the Sadovaya Spasskaya, Moscow’s ring road, and to this desk, and to the file that now lay open in front of her.

Two years of work had gone into that file, although she had had to squeeze that work in between other duties until people higher up began to believe her. Two years of checking and cross-checking, begging for cooperation from other departments, always fighting the obfuscation of those bastards in the army who always sided with one another; two years of correlating tiny fragments of information until a picture began to emerge.

Major Ludmilla Vanavskaya’s job and vocation was tracking down backsliders, subversives, or, occasionally, full-blown traitors inside the army, navy, or air force. Loss of valuable state equipment through gross negligence was bad enough; lack of vigor in the pursuit of the Afghan war was worse; but the file on her desk told her a different story. She was convinced that somewhere in the army there was a deliberate leak. And he was high, damned high.

There was a list of eight names on the top sheet of the file before her. Five were crossed out. Two had question marks. But her eye always came back to the eighth. She lifted a phone and was put through to the male secretary of General Shaliapin, head of the Third Directorate.

“Yes, Major. A personal interview? No one else? I see. … The problem is, the Comrade General is in the Far East. … Not until next Tuesday. Very well then, next Tuesday.”

Major Vanavskaya put down the phone and scowled. Four days. Well, she had already waited two years—she could wait four more days.

“I think I’ve clinched it,” Bruno told Renate with childlike delight the following Sunday morning. “I’ve just got enough for the freehold purchase and some more left over for decorating and equipping it. It’s a wonderful little bar.”

They were in bed in her own bedroom—it was a favor she sometimes allowed him because he hated the “working” bedroom as much as he hated her job.

“Tell me again,” she cooed. “I love to hear about it.”

He grinned. He had seen it just once but fallen for it completely. It was what he had always wanted and right where he wanted it—by the open sea, where the brisk winds from the north would keep the air crisp and fresh. Cold in winter, of course, but there was central heating, which would need fixing.

“Okay. It’s called the Lantern Bar, and the sign is an old ship’s lantern. It stands on the open quay right on the Bremerhaven dock front. From the upper windows you can see as far as Mellum Island—we could get a sailboat if things go well and sail there in summer.

“There’s an old-fashioned brass-topped bar—we’ll be behind that serving the drinks—and a nice snug apartment upstairs. Not as large as this, but comfy once we’ve fixed it up. I’ve agreed on the price and paid the deposit. Completion is at the end of September. Then I can take you away from all this.”

She could hardly keep herself from laughing out loud. “I can’t wait, my darling. It will be a wonderful life. … Do you want to try again? Perhaps it will work this time.”

If Renate had been a different person, she would have let the older man down gently, explaining that she had no intention of being taken away from “all this,” least of all to a bleak and windswept quay in Bremerhaven. But it amused her to prolong his delusion so that his eventual misery would be all the greater.

An hour after Bruno and Renate’s conversation in Cologne, a black Jaguar sedan swept off the M3 motorway and sought the quieter lanes of Hampshire, not far from the village of Dummer. It was Timothy Edwards’s personal car, and his Service driver was at the wheel. In the back was Sam McCready, who had been summoned from his habitual Sunday pleasures at his apartment in Abingdon Villas, Kensington, by a telephoned appeal from the Assistant Chief.

“Without the option, I’m afraid, Sam. It’s urgent.”

He had been enjoying a long, deep, hot bath when the call came, with Vivaldi on the stereo and the Sunday newspapers strewn gloriously all over the sitting-room floor. He had had time to throw on a sports shirt, corduroy trousers, and jacket by the time John, who had picked up the Jaguar at the motor pool, was at the door.

The sedan swept into the graveled forecourt of a substantial Georgian country house and came to a halt. John came around the car to open the rear passenger door, but McCready beat him to it. He hated being fussed over.

“I was told to say they will be round the back, sir, on the terrace,” said John.

McCready surveyed the mansion. Timothy Edwards, ten years earlier, had married the daughter of a duke, who had been considerate enough to drop off his perch in early middle age and leave a substantial estate to his two offspring, the new duke and Lady Margaret. She had collected about three million pounds. McCready estimated that about half of that was now invested in a prime piece of Hampshire real estate. He wandered round the side of the house to the colonnaded patio at the back.

There were four easy cane chairs in a group. Three were occupied. Farther on, a white cast-iron table was set for lunch for three, Lady Margaret would doubtless be staying inside, not lunching. Neither would he. The two men in the rattan chairs rose.

“Ah, Sam,” said Edwards. “Glad you could make it.”

That’s a bit rich, thought McCready. No bloody option was what I was given.

Edwards looked at McCready and wondered, not for the first time, why his extremely talented colleague insisted on coming to a Hampshire country house party looking as if he had just been gardening, even if he was not staying long. Edwards himself was in brilliant brogues, razor-creased tan slacks, and a blazer over a silk shirt and neckerchief.

McCready stared back and wondered why Edwards always insisted on keeping his handkerchief up his left sleeve. It was an army habit, started in the cavalry regiments because on dining-in nights cavalry officers wore trousers so tight that a bunched handkerchief in the pocket might give the ladies the impression they had put on a touch too much perfume. But Edwards had never been in the cavalry, nor in any regiment. He had come to the Service directly from Oxford.

“I don’t think you know Chris Appleyard,” said Edwards, as the tall American held out his hand. He had the leathery look of a Texan cowhand. In fact, he was a Bostonian. The leathery look came from the Camels he chain-smoked. His face was not suntanned, just medium rare. That was why they were lunching outside, Sam mused. Edwards would not want the Canalettos covered in nicotine.

“Guess not,” said Appleyard. “Nice to meet you, Sam. Know your reputation.”

McCready knew who he was from the name and from photographs: Deputy Head, European Division, CIA. The woman in the third chair leaned forward and held out a hand.

“Hi, Sam, how’re you doing these days?”

Claudia Stuart, still at forty a great-looking woman. She held his gaze and his hand a mite longer than necessary.

“Fine, thanks, Claudia. Just fine.”

Her eyes said she did not believe him. No woman likes to think a man with whom she once offered to share her bed has ever completely recovered from the experience.

Years earlier, in Berlin, Claudia had had a serious crush on Sam McCready. It had puzzled and frustrated her that she had gotten nowhere. She had not then known about Sam’s wife, May.

Claudia had been with the CIA’s West Berlin Station; he had been visiting. He had never told her what he was doing there. Actually, he was recruiting the then Colonel Pankratin, she learned later. It was she who had taken him over.

Edwards had not missed the body language. He wondered what was behind it and guessed aright. It never ceased to amaze him that women seemed to like Sam. He was so … rumpled. There was talk that several of the women at Century House would like to straighten his tie, sew on a button, or more. He found it inexplicable.

“Sorry to hear about May,” said Claudia.

“Thank you,” said McCready. May. Sweet, loving, and much-loved May, his wife. Three years since she had died. May, who had waited through all the long nights in the early days, always been there when he came home from across the Curtain, never asking, never complaining. Multiple sclerosis can act fast or slow. With May, it had been fast. In one year she was in a wheelchair and two years later gone. He had lived alone in the Kensington apartment since then. Thank God their son had been at college, just summoned home for the funeral. He had not seen the pain or his father’s despair.

A butler—there would have to be a butler, thought McCready—appeared with an extra flute of champagne on a salver. McCready raised an eyebrow. Edwards whispered in the butler’s ear, and he came back with a tankard of beer. McCready sipped. They watched him. Lager. Designer beer. Foreign label. He sighed. He would have preferred bitter ale, room temperature, redolent of Scottish malt and Kentish hops.

“We have a problem, Sam,” said Appleyard. “Claudia, you tell him.”

“Pankratin,” said Claudia. “Remember him?”

McCready studied his beer and nodded.

“In Moscow we’ve run him mainly through drops. Arm’s length. Very little contact. Fantastic product, and very pricey payments. But hardly any personal meets. Now he has sent a message. An urgent message.”

There was silence. McCready raised his eyes and stared at Claudia.

“He says he’s got hold of an unregistered copy of the Soviet Army War Book. The entire Order of Battle. For the whole of the Western front. We want it, Sam. We want it very badly.”

“So go get it,” said Sam.

“This time he won’t use a dead-letter box. Says it’s too bulky. Won’t fit. Too noticeable. He will only hand it over to someone he knows and trusts. He wants you.”

“In
Moscow
?”

“No, in East Germany. He begins a tour of inspection soon. Lasts a week. He wants to make the hand-over in the deep south of Thuringia, up near the Bavarian border. His swing will take him south and west through Cottbus, Dresden, Karl-Marx-Stadt, and on to Gera and Erfurt. Then back to Berlin on Wednesday night. He wants to make the pass Tuesday or Wednesday morning. He doesn’t know the area. He wants to use lay-bys—road pull-offs. Other than that, he has it all planned how he’ll get away and do it.”

Sam sipped his beer and glanced up at Edwards. “Have you explained, Timothy?”

“Touched on it,” said Edwards, then turned to his guests. “Look, I have to make it clear that Sam actually can’t go. I’ve mentioned it to the Chief, and he agrees. Sam’s been black-flagged by the SSD.”

Claudia raised an eyebrow.

“It means that if they catch me again over there, there’ll be no cozy exchange at the border.”

“They’ll interrogate him and shoot him,” added Edwards unnecessarily. Appleyard whistled.

“Boy, that’s against the rules. You must have really shaken them up.”

“One does one’s best,” said Sam sadly. “By the way, if I can’t go, there is one man who could. Timothy and I were discussing him last week at the club.”

Edwards nearly choked on his flute of Krug. “Poltergeist? Pankratin says he’ll only make the pass to someone he knows.”

“He knows Poltergeist. Remember I told you how he had helped me in the early days? Back in ’81, when I brought him in, Poltergeist had to baby-sit him till I could get there. Actually, he liked Poltergeist. He’d recognize him again and make the pass. He’s no fool.”

Edwards straightened the silk at his neck.

“Very well, Sam. One last time.”

“It’s dangerous, and the stakes are high. I want a reward for him. Ten thousand pounds.”

“Agreed,” said Appleyard without hesitation. He took a sheet of paper from his pocket. “Here are the details Pankratin has provided for the method of the pass. Two alternate venues are needed. A first and a back-up. Can you let us know in twenty-four hours the lay-bys you’ve picked? We’ll get it to him.”

“I can’t force Poltergeist to go,” McCready warned. “He’s a free-lance, not a staffer.”

“Try, Sam, please try,” said Claudia. Sam rose.

“By the way, this ‘Tuesday’—which one is it?”

“A week from the day after tomorrow,” said Appleyard. “ Eight days away.”

“Jesus Christ,” said McCready.

SAM MCCREADY SPENT MOST
of the next day, Monday, poring over large-scale maps and photographs. He went back to his old friends still on the East German desk and asked a few favors. They were protective of their territory but complied—he had the authority—and they knew better than to ask the Head of Deception and Disinformation what he was up to.

By midafternoon he had two locations that would suit. One was a sheltered lay-by just off East Germany’s Highway Seven, which runs in an east-west line parallel to Autobahn E40. The smaller road links the industrial city of Jena to the more pastoral town of Weimar and thence to the sprawl of Erfurt. The first lay-by he chose was just west of Jena. The second was on the same road, but halfway between Weimar and Erfurt, not three miles from the Soviet base at Nohra.