waiting in the outer section. It was a house rule that after five o'clock nothing short of the death of Stalin, the chopping of Krushchev or the declaration of war between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the People's Republic of China should cause him to be interrupted before he indicated his willingness to receive visitors. Parker Smith was keen on rules, had learned them in his army days and not forgotten them when he transferred from Intelligence Corps, Ministry of Defence, to the civilian wing of the government's espionage service, the SIS.
With his jacket left in his own office, and his tie loosened, collar button undone, Charlie Webster was waiting, far back in an armchair, and idling through the previous day's Financial Times. Not really the type we're used to, and more's the pity, thought Parker Smith. The totally committed man, and with more experience up front than the rest of the Section put together. He'd noticed the way the others kept their distance from Charlie Webster, didn't mix with the older man from the different background, put him on the outside. Hadn't read his personal file, had they? Would have treated him like a king if they had.
'Come on in, Charlie.' He liked the way the man straightened in his chair, left the newspaper folded on the coffee table, pushed up his tie before entering the inner sanctum. Take a chair, and what can I do for you?' It was a good office for talking. Parker Smith had the rank and the Civil Service grading to be able to choose, within a stipulated budget, his colour schemes – kept them soft, a gentie sky blue and a rich cream, full length net curtains, two quietly abstract paintings, and a sprouting philodendron in the corner; none of your Annigoni prints of HM in Garter robes, nor any 'Myself Meeting Winston Churchill' photographs.
'It's this, sir. Something or nothing, I'm not sure yet, but could be amusing. I put in a 'B' category to you this afternoon, about Kiev. Perhaps I shouldn't have bothered you… It's just that a policeman has been shot, and there's silence in the local rags and on the wireless. External picked it up and pushed it in my direction. If the Soviets had been trumpeting it I wouldn't have bothered. But they haven't, and that's what made it a bit unusual to me. Seemed it could mean there's something political there.'
'I read it,' said Parker Smith. 'What's the source evaluation?'
'Not bad. One of the businessmen's pick-ups from a long- termer, passed on by the handlers.
We've had this chap's stuff before, and not had reason to doubt it.'
Parker Smith bowed his head faintly in acknowledgment. One of the crosses the Department had to bear was that its source of hard news came more often than not courtesy of the active wing of SIS that occupied floors below.
There's not much to add to the report I handed in, except that a bit more has come in from the Moscow end. It's a bit convoluted, but it's more fast. Seems a British student on exchange post-grad studies at the University got into a bit of a panic, left his passport on a bus in Kiev, and rang into the Embassy in Moscow for guidance. Seems he told them that the talk there was of truck-loads of militia moving into the city late this afternoon and that there'd been an attack on a policeman. It's very fresh this: he was only talking to the Embassy a couple of hours ago. He said all this was mixed up with a rumour running the rounds at the University, and only a rumour, that a Jewish youth had been taken into custody. The kid said that the students were saying all these three factors were related. He's just an ordinary student, nothing special, not one of ours. But it all comes at the right time to go with the other stuff.'
' Interesting, Charlie. But still doesn't up it to 'A' category.'
'Be pretty hard for anything the bloody dissidents do to manage 'A' quality, sir.'
'But it's nice to know. Nice to know the bastards have their own little bit of Belfast. I don't envy the little blighters up the sharp end if they get their hands on them.'
That's not really why I want to see you this evening. It's just that if what we have already is genuine, then we could be into something much deeper.' Parker Smith was listening. It was what he wanted to hear, what the Department existed for, drew the Treasury funds to discover. 'Ever since I came to work here it's struck me that one day the Soviet Jews are going to get lively.
We've been through all the primary stages – press conferences, hunger strikes, trying to stir the pot up to get themselves shipped out to Israel, the botched-up job of the Leningrad hi-jack when they didn't have a gun between them and were riddled with informers and didn't even make it on to the plane before they were picked up. We've had all that kind of thing, but that was the older generation at work. It's the same the world over. All these things start with the thinkers and not the hard boys running the show, and they're too fragmented to have any unity, and there's failure.
But there comes a change, when the toughies get involved. I've damn all of nothing to base this on, but if you have – and it's only an assumption – but if you have a specific target – shooting, and you have troops coming in – paramilitary anyway – and you have a Jewish boy picked up, then you have a pattern. There's a load of 'ifs' about the whole scene, but should there be the connection that I'm drawing, then things could get very interesting.'
' I think what you're saying, Charlie, is that it doesn't really matter how the Ukrainians and the Georgians and that crowd up in the Baltic spend their evenings, but that if it was Jewish, then the flavour would be richer, the spices would be in the pot. We'd have an international scene.'
'Something like that, sir. And I thought you'd like to know.'
The conversation was over. Anyone else and Parker Smith would have given him more encouragement, but it didn't work like that with Charlie Webster. Always at his best when he had to convince people, and seemed to lose interest once he had. Strange chap, not really part of them, but a good man to have around.
Charlie let himself out and walked back to his own office to collect his coat and briefcase. The bag had nothing in it beyond the morning paper, and he'd long done the crossword, but his wife liked him to carry it, had the EIIR monogram on it and she liked that to be seen. Couldn't take any of the office papers home – all classified and restricted – but he liked to humour her. He'd be in time for the 8.52 from Waterloo,
CHAPTER FOUR
A tin of stewed meat, sliced open and the contents eaten cold and messily, dribbling on to their shirt fronts, and a loaf of bread were their food as the two men waited out the night hours in the forest hut. They also had a litre of beer to wash it down with, to deaden the taste, but this they left unfinished. They needed a clear head in the morning, David had said, and Isaac had watched as the screw-top was replaced on the bottle-head. But the beer had been good, had chilled their bodies and smoothed their throats, sore from their incessant talking. Like talismen they had laid out, where both could see them, their achievements of the afternoon. Close to David's right hip lay the bundle in which he had brought the guns, the protective wrapping artfully pulled back so that the metal shapes could be properly admired. By Isaac's crossed ankles was the thin paper envelope that bore the Aeroflot insignia, and in which were placed the strips of paper, printed and ballpen-scrawled, that were their tickets to Tashkent. Both packets were worthy of study, comprising the power and the subtlety necessary for their escape. And what awaited them now was nothing as tangible as they had accomplished, just a promise: Yevsei's promise.
With the end of the meal they were left with nothing to succour them but the sight of each other's face, the sound of each other's words. Frequently Isaac looked at the door, as if anticipating that it could open without warning, that the girl would be back, spilling out her success. It was irritating to David, who preferred to keep his own company, and who sat quite still, breaking the mood only once to throw the empty meat tin into a darkened corner, far into the shadows made by the single, flickering candle.
'How long do you think, how long till she comes?'
David shrugged, disinterested.
'Can she come in the night?'
'You know the bus times as well as I do. There is no other way she can reach us.'
' It's just this waiting. Everything we have done today, and still not knowing whether it's meaningless..
'There is nothing we can do but wait.'
'Doesn't make it any easier.' Isaac laughed, nervous, cramped.
'Why should it be easy?'
' I didn't say it should be easy. I just meant..?
'There is nothing in a flight such as ours that can be easy. If it were then there would be many like us. We would not be alone.'
