Chapter 11
'So, how will he cope there?'
'He'll cope but it will be hard for him.'
'Why hard for him?'
'Because he won't lie down, that's not his way.'
'But you think he can cope, whatever that means?'
'They won't destroy him, he won't be on his back with his legs in the air.'
Alan Millet had been waiting for a week to see the Deputy Under Secretary, but that was the cross of carrying Grade II rank. The DUS could call you in and utter an instruction from the mountain summit, and you'd run your backside sore and ferret the facts he wanted, then you couldn't get back in to report. All the previous week Millet had badgered Miss Frobisher for fifteen minutes of DUS's time, and she'd put up a wall that the likes of Alan Millet couldn't scale.
He'd reckoned she didn't approve of Grade II men having direct access to the DUS. It would not have been acceptable under the former regime at Century. A Grade II man would report to a Principal Officer or at most to an Assistant Secretary, never to the Deputy Under Secretary direct.
And Miss Frobisher, damn her, believed that old ways were best ways. And chaos she caused, because the DUS was snapping his orders through and the young men couldn't get back to him with their answers. Millet had been forced to play the old-fashioned game. An early morning rise, an early morning train into London, and he was loitering outside the DUS's door a quarter of an hour before Maude Frobisher would be sharpening her pencils and dousing her hyacinth bulbs. A hell of a way to run a Secret Intelligence Service…
But Millet had seen his man, arranged the time of a morning meeting and braved Miss Frobisher's anger when he had presented himself.
'I tell you this, Millet, and I tell you frankly, I wouldn't have sanctioned any of this Holly business if I'd been in the driving-seat. No way that it would have landed on this desk and been approved.'
'A suggestion was made, sir… not at my level, at Assistant Secretary level… the suggestion was accepted. I was told to get on with it.'
'I'm not blaming you, lad, I'm just stating the fact. I've read your report.'
'I don't think we really knew that much about Holly when we roped him in.'
'You seemed to have known bugger-all of nothing.'
'Something like that, sir.'
'And that's past history.'
'Past history, as you say… I don't suppose, sir, that it's much help to anyone at this stage but, as you will see from my report, everyone I spoke with reckons that Holly is a fighter
The Deputy Under Secretary slammed his hand onto his desk.
'For God's sake, Millet, we're not talking about an under-age kid playing in a big boy's football game. We're talking about a man who is serving Stria Regime in a Correctional Labour Colony of the Soviet Union. They don't piss about there. Psychological torture, physical torture, nutritional deprivation, sleep deprivation. That's just for starters, Millet, and they can get better and nastier just as soon as they want to.'
Millet fidgeted in his chair.
'I can only repeat, sir, what I wrote in my report.'
'Am I supposed to be impressed?' The Deputy Under Secretary sighed in theatrical exasperation. 'You talk with a retired suburban schoolmaster, with a lecturer from the Technical College, with a small time businessman who's going broke fast, with a secretary from a Building Society.
Humdrum little people, and you reckon they can tell you how a man is going to cope at Camp 3, Barashevo…? Am I supposed to be impressed?' i was impressed.' There was a singe of anger in Millet's voice.
'And when they throw the book at him, he's going to keep his mouth shut?'
'I think so.'
'When they go to work?'
'I think so.'
'They're not very gentle, Millet… Michael Holly, whom you picked off the street, he can stand up to that?'
Millet hesitated. He tried to picture an interrogation room with a shining light and the turning spool of a tape-recorder. He tried to imagine the bruised lip and clenched fist.
'I don't know, sir.'
'Neither do I.'
'I suppose we didn't think it would come to this.'
'I'm sure you're right.' The Deputy Under Secretary spoke with a soft compassion. The lilt of the Brecon hills made a music of his words. 'For what the Service has done to Michael Holly, the Service should feel a great sense of shame.'
Millet bridled. 'Of course everyone was very sorry when he was picked up.'
'I'll tell you something, so that you'll learn the way I intend to run Century and the Service. I don't believe that sitting behind this desk gives me the right to play with people's lives unless the very security of our nation depends on it. I'm not a chess man, Millet, I don't like seeing grubby pawns knocked off the board and rolling on my carpet. The recruitment of Michael Holly was shabby, inexpert. You're wondering why we've gone longer than the fifteen minutes you asked for, I'll tell you… I care on two counts about Michael Holly. I care that a young engineer faces fourteen years in the Soviet Union's camps. I care also that we may face embarrassment and humiliation that we will have brought down on our own shoulders. You understand me?'
'Yes, sir.'
It was the fragile co-operation that existed between the Security Service and Century House that had provided the name of Michael Holly.
When a British subject booked a flight reservation to Moscow, his name came to the attention of Security, and Security passes that name to Century. The field man in Moscow was never happy on drops and dispersals – too risky. All the diplomats were subject to surveillance, part and parcel of the job. The Second Secretary (Consular/Visa) at the Embassy would have wanted nothing to do with anything as vulgar as placing packets in rubbish bins.
Century had an old faithful, a businessman who was a regular on the British Airways Trident to Sheremetyevo, good as gold, reliable as a Jap clock. On the plane every six weeks for a three-day trip. In a briefcase stacked full with costings and sales brochures the packets went to Moscow; in the same briefcase the material of the agent returned to Century. But the old faithful had fallen ill, pneumonia with a suspicion of pleurisy, and so faithful had the courier been that his sickness left them flattened on that section of the East Europe desk that handled the agent in the Soviet capital. So Alan Millet had sifted the names on the flight reservations for the coming month and played the computer tabs and found a cross-reference on Michael Holly, and traced back through Stepan Holovich and the case-history of an Alien's file. He'd described the recruitment to his Assistant Secretary superior as a 'piece of cake'. Seemed simple enough when you were high above the Thames looking at the world from behind the sealed plate-glass of Century House. Nothing ever went wrong, did it? Michael Holly in the park on the Lenin hills and all to keep a routine and a rhythm intact. All to keep a contact with a typist who worked within the Kremlin's walls, and who saw little that was important. What she typed she reported and, for what she reported, Michael Holly had been press-ganged into the service of his country. Alan Millet could remember the afternoon that the news had been relayed from Foreign and Commonwealth to Century House, the report that a British national had been arrested in the foyer of the Rossiya hotel and that he would face charges of espionage. He remembered that as a miserable afternoon, an afternoon when he had shivered in the face of Century's central heating. 'One of yours…?' the FCO minute had drily queried.
'That's all, Millet… you'll not forget him?' The Deputy Under Secretary turned away. The meeting was terminated.
'No, sir.' if I thought you'd forget him I'd break your neck.'
Millet let himself out of the room. As he closed the door quietly he heard the lifting of a telephone.
'Maude… I'd like an appointment this afternoon with the Permanent Under Secretary at Foreign and
