‘No, Mr Cayle, my birthday’s in October.’
The editor lifted the red house-phone, pushed down a switch and said, ‘Alistair? Harry here. How are your contacts with the secret boys?’ He listened, then nodded. ‘Man called Mayhew — could be CID or Special Branch, but more likely MI5.’ There was a pause. ‘Yes? Yes, right. That’s marvellous, Alistair. Many thanks.’
He hung up and turned to Cayle. ‘You were right. Your friend Mayhew’s one of Five’s liaison men with the Home Office. Mostly deals with counter-espionage against the Soviet bloc. You’re getting the full treatment, Barry.’
‘Hell I am. What do I do now — wait for them to come for me with the meat-wagon?’
‘I don’t think you need worry. You haven’t done anything wrong yet.’ He paused. ‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Barry. I’m going to give you a straight choice. You can either take a three-week holiday — anywhere within reason, providing it’s abroad. Or you can follow up that tip you got in Moscow about a Franco-Soviet aircraft deal.’ He held up his hand: ‘I know — it’s not your line of country, but it won’t do you any harm to diversify.’
Cayle thought: You crafty old sod! Mustn’t be seen subsidizing amateur secret missions to Moscow, or catering to the vanity of an arch-traitor; but you can’t pass up the chance of a good story, either.
The editor was keeping his options open. He said, ‘By the way, how would a Soviet citizen go about escaping to the West?’
‘Well, I’d say that if he happened to be a KGB colonel, he could probably swing something with the Frontier Police, who are a branch of the KGB. He’d probably use a fairly remote border post — somewhere down in the Soviet Asiatic Republics, and get over into Turkey or Persia.’
Harry drummed his fingers on the desktop. ‘And how would a Westerner get into the Soviet Union without a visa?’
‘You mean, legally?’
Harry nodded.
‘Well, there’s Leningrad,’ Cayle said. ‘You sign on for a day-trip over from Helsinki by sea, which you can do without a visa, and you manage to miss the boat back in the evening. The trouble with that method is, you have to surface pretty quickly, or risk being run in. In other words, the most you get is a few hours on the loose before the next boat sails.’
‘What’s the most you could get — another way?’
‘Seventy-two hours. But it’s expensive. You go to Afghanistan, check on to an Aeroflot flight from Kabul to Russia — Tashkent, and on to Moscow. Once you’re with Aeroflot’s internal services, you get an automatic forty-eight-hour transit visa, with a further twenty-four-hour extension if you miss your connecting flight to the West. In theory, you could go on getting extensions indefinitely, providing you could come up each time with a good enough excuse.’
‘How do you manage to shake off the Intourist people?’
‘Ah, well that’s the beauty of it! On the internal routes they don’t check you into an Intourist hotel at all. In Moscow you get dumped in the Aeroflot Hotel, a couple of miles out of town, with three thousand guests from all over the USSR, arriving in busloads day and night. And apart from the floor-bouncers, there are no official guides — nobody to know you’re even a Westerner, if you dress right. You just get in the lift and ride down to the Metro station, which is bang under the hotel, and take a train to anywhere in the city.’
‘And all perfectly legal?’
‘Perfectly. Providing your ticket’s in order.’
The editor was staring out of the window. ‘How would you like to take a holiday in Afghanistan, Barry?’
Cayle gave a slow, sour grin. ‘With all expenses paid?’
‘If you agree.’
‘What happened, Harry?’
‘The Russian Embassy were on to us this morning — a sort of pre-emptive call. They informed us, very politely, that there is no need for you to apply for another visa. You won’t get it.’
‘I see. Is that all they said?’
‘They did mention that if you applied again in a few months, they might get another reply from Moscow. The Foreign Desk asked them if they would contact us when they heard from Moscow, but they said, “When we hear from Moscow, you contact us”.’
‘Very funny. And no reasons?’
‘None. I suppose we can safely assume that any Westerner who’s been nosing around Philby is bad news.’
‘There was nothing in my piece that could possibly have offended either Philby or the KGB.’
‘No,’ said Harry. ‘Unless it was someone else, using their influence.’ Cayle said nothing. The editor went on: ‘I’m not in any way trying to pressure you, Barry. You must make up your own mind. But if you do decide to go, may I make a suggestion? Start your trip from somewhere other than London. Fly to Paris or Amsterdam, and then get your ticket to Kabul. And pay for it in cash.’
‘You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you, Harry?’
‘Well, I did take the precaution of applying for an Afghan transit-visa for you. It should be through tomorrow morning.’
CHAPTER 7
Cayle again checked the cars parked outside Thackeray Mansions; they were all empty, including his Mini Moke.
It was still dark, but the juggernaut traffic was already building up along Finborough Road, where he caught a taxi to Heathrow and told the driver to drop him at the British Airways entrance of Number Two Building. Here he checked in for the 8.00 a.m. flight to Paris, and bought all the morning papers.
Sir Roger was still holding his own on most of the front pages; there were photographs of him with the Queen, the PM, with sundry Heads of State, and most recently in a box at Covent Garden. The stories themselves, though
