‘That’s why he’s the ID, I suppose,’ Richter said.
‘Don’t be frivolous.’ Simpson put his coffee cup down and reached for the remaining biscuit. Richter remembered the things he had selected from Graham Newman’s possessions in Moscow, opened his briefcase again and piled them up on Simpson’s desk.
‘What’s this rubbish?’
‘This rubbish, as you so charmingly put it, is a small selection of the things Newman held near and dear.’
‘I realize that,’ said Simpson. ‘More to the point, why are they on my desk?’
‘Because I don’t want them,’ Richter replied. ‘I had to think of a reason for having a quick look round Newman’s office and apartment – as instructed by you – and collecting items of sentimental value for his family seemed to be the easiest. I thought you might like to send them off to the SIS or even to Newman’s family, if he had one.’
Simpson looked at him. ‘There is a next of kin address in the file, as I’ve no doubt you noted, but Newman wasn’t married.’
‘I know he wasn’t married,’ Richter said sharply.
Simpson looked at him quizzically. ‘He was the SIS Head of Station. Nobody was stopping him getting married. It’s different with us – I never employ field operatives saddled with wives. It’s far too hampering.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ Richter said.
‘How I employ my operatives is nothing whatever to do with you.’
‘It is as long as I’m one.’
‘You’re more than a field operative. I recruited you into this organization in order to make use of your unique talents. You, Richter, are one of my secret weapons.’ Simpson smiled the way a crocodile does, showing lots of teeth and ill intent. ‘I like to think I can aim you at a problem, light the blue touch paper and stand well clear.’
Richter grunted. Simpson showed more teeth, drained the last of his coffee and stood up. ‘Leave them with me – the bits you brought back from Moscow. I’ll take care of them.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Well? Anything else?’ Simpson said and looked rather pointedly at the door.
‘Yes, of course there’s something else,’ said Richter. ‘Having established that the body in Moscow isn’t Newman, the big question is why.’
Simpson sat down again. ‘You mean why did they snatch Newman?’
‘I mean why did they snatch Newman, and why did they snatch anyone?’
Simpson smoothed back his fair hair with a small and scrupulously clean pink hand. ‘I asked the Intelligence Director the same question.’
‘And what, pray, was the Intelligence Director’s assessment of the situation?’
‘He was puzzled,’ Simpson said. ‘There would appear to be no reason why Newman was snatched, rather than any other SIS officer at Moscow Station except, of course, that he was Head of Station. He had had no access to any files of particular interest to the Russians recently, and as far as we are aware he was not involved in any especially sensitive project. Which is to say that he hadn’t been tasked by London with anything of that nature. It’s pretty quiet at the moment in Moscow, apart from the depredations of the Mafia.’
‘Basically, you don’t know?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ Simpson snapped. ‘We came to the conclusion that it might simply have been a precautionary check. The KGB did occasionally snatch a foreign service operative and pump them dry just to see if they knew anything of interest – although it wasn’t common – and it was rare for them not to return the operative afterwards, more or less in one piece. Perhaps the SVR has a more aggressive attitude.’
‘So that’s it, is it? “Goodbye, Newman. It’s been nice knowing you.”’
‘There’ll be a funeral, of course.’
‘Delightful. I meant, more specifically, what follow-up action will you be taking?’
‘Follow-up action? None. As far as Vauxhall Cross is concerned, officially the body at the Embassy is Newman, and will be buried here as Newman. The Russians couldn’t have got anything of major significance out of him because he didn’t know anything. Therefore, as SIS has not been compromised in any way, we are doing nothing.’
‘That will be a great comfort to Newman’s shade,’ Richter said, and walked out.
The outer office door was open, and as Richard Muldoon led the way down the long carpeted corridor he could see straight into the room. Jayne Taylor, the Director’s personal assistant – very personal, if some of the rumours circulating in the supergrades’ private dining room were to be believed – was talking softly into a telephone while she flicked briskly through a large leather-bound desk diary.
‘Yes,’ she murmured quietly, as Muldoon paused at the door, ‘it looks as if Friday week is about the earliest the Director can see you. Of course, if you could limit your presentation to fifteen minutes or less we could possibly fit you in before that.’
She looked up as Muldoon knocked, and her eyes widened slightly as she nodded and watched him and the other two men walk in and stand by the window. Muldoon was tall and lanky, and bore an uncanny resemblance to James Jesus Angleton, the agency’s notorious former spy-catcher, but today his normally cheerful face was clouded. Jayne Taylor turned away, and resumed her telephone conversation. ‘Look, Mike, I have some visitors right now. Could you give it some thought and call me back? Thanks, and you.’
She put the telephone handset down and looked appraisingly at Muldoon, the head of the Directorate of Science and Technology – the CIA division responsible for satellite surveillance and technical intelligence analysis.
Jayne Taylor was undeniably easy on the eye, Muldoon thought, and not for the first time. Dark hair cut fashionably short, wide-spaced brown eyes and perfect lips – an almost elfin face behind which, Muldoon knew, resided an excellent brain. Unlike most of the secretaries and assistants employed by the CIA, who were usually trawled from the high schools of Maryland, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, Jayne Taylor was a B.A. graduate of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. It was popularly believed that she was only using the CIA as a stepping-stone – just one item on her own hidden agenda.
‘Good morning, Richard,’ she said with a smile. ‘What’s this – a mutiny?’
Despite himself, Muldoon grinned. ‘Not yet, Jayne,’ he said, ‘but we have to see Walter, and we have to see him now.’
‘That,’ she replied, frowning, ‘could be difficult. He’s involved in a conference call with the National Security Agency right now that should wind up in another ten minutes or so, but he’s got appointments booked solidly all morning. How long do you want with him?’
Muldoon shook his head. ‘I don’t know. At least an hour.’
Jayne Taylor looked at him, and then at the men behind him. She knew them both. Ronald Hughes was Deputy Director of the Intelligence Division, a nondescript figure with a lined face and prematurely grey hair, who looked much older than his fifty-eight years. He had always maintained that the perfect spy was the man nobody noticed, and he seemed proof of his own maxim. Jayne assumed, correctly, that he was with Muldoon because his Director, Cliff Masters, was in Vienna until the following week.
The third man was John Westwood, head of the Foreign Intelligence (Espionage) Staff. Short, red-faced and softly spoken, he looked more like a shopkeeper than an Agency professional. All three men were unusually quiet, not even talking amongst themselves, which Jayne found disturbing. ‘You really need this, don’t you?’ she asked, and Muldoon nodded.
‘OK,’ she said, and opened the desk diary again. She scanned the page, then nodded. ‘He won’t like it,’ she murmured, ‘but William Rush will have to wait.’ She picked up the telephone and made two brief calls, then looked up at Muldoon. ‘I’ll probably catch a lot of flak for that later today – this had better be worth it.’
‘It is, Jayne, and thanks. I owe you.’
The three men sat down, waiting in apprehensive silence. None of them was looking forward to the forthcoming meeting. Eight minutes later the light extinguished on the switchboard display and the status light above the mahogany door changed from red to green. Jayne called the Director on the intercom, then looked at
