She was still muttering to herself when the train pulled out. Kim Philby had climbed into the upper berth, too tired even to undress. Except when he was woken to show his ticket, he slept the six hours to Rostov-on-Don.
CHAPTER 14
Cayle woke in a plain wooden room. Beside his head the joins in the planking oozed a syrupy pinesap. There was a single naked bulb hanging from the ceiling, a shuttered window, and a stove like an igloo built of boiled sweets that roared softly in the corner.
He was alone, lying on a bed with a bright woollen blanket over him and a bolster under his head. He was fully dressed, except for his boots; and the tops of his socks and the back of his trousers were damp. His mouth felt as though he were wearing a mask, and when he moved his lips he could feel dried blood flaking off his chin. He tried to sit up and a pain jarred through his neck, making him want to vomit. He lay back, swallowing bile and trying to steady the lurching patterns under his eyelids.
He didn’t hear the door open, and had no idea how long the man had been standing there. He stood close to the bed and said, ‘Feeling better?’
‘Ah shit.’ Cayle made another effort to sit up, and subsided again with the pain. ‘Where the hell — where is this?’
‘Lie still,’ the man said. His face was a pale blur. He turned and left the room, closing the door without a sound.
He’d spoken English, thought Cayle: with no accent. Like the men in the car. In the heart of Mother Russia. And without moving his head, he looked at his watch. 3.17. He tried remembering how long they’d been on the train — one, one and a half hours? — leaving Moscow at eleven. Over four hours ago.
He touched his jacket pocket and felt his wallet in place; he put his hand in and found his passport was there too. If it wasn’t for his bloody neck —
This time he heard the door open, and a second man came in. He was wearing a belted leather coat and he stood for what seemed a long time looking down at Cayle with the dispassion of a doctor doing his rounds. Cayle looked back at him with a swollen smile. ‘Hello, Sergeant. Bit far from your manor, isn’t it?’
Dempster pulled up a chair and sat astride it with his arms resting along the straight wooden back. He lowered his chin on to his hands so that his shoulders were level with his ears, and said, ‘Feel up to answering some questions?’
‘You’ve got a bloody nerve!’ Cayle gave up grinning: it was too painful. ‘Suppose I ask you some questions?’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as why a couple of hoodlums from the SB are running loose behind the Curtain, indulging in assault and kidnapping against friendly nationals. I mean, it wouldn’t look good if it ever got out.’
‘It won’t get out,’ said Dempster quietly. ‘I owe you an apology,’ he added, after a pause. ‘There’s been a balls-up.’
‘Oh that’s rich, Sergeant! You mean, you and your mate were planning to snatch the fat Frenchman, and got me instead?’ He was trying to think quickly. It was Philby who had arranged his ticket, he remembered: and had presumably arranged the tickets for Pol and Galina Valisova. And had Cayle’s ticket been bought in Philby’s name? The implications were too vast; they became scrambled in his brain and exploded with a slamming headache. He gripped the sides of the bed and gulped with nausea. ‘Keep going, mate, and they might even give you a job tracing parking tickets.’
‘Don’t start getting cheeky again, Cayle. Not out here, we’re too far behind the lines.’
‘Too far for what? Knocking me off and burying me somewhere peaceful under the pine-trees?’
For a long half-minute Dempster just sat and stared at him. ‘You were almost right, Cayle,’ he said at last. ‘We didn’t want you. We wanted Philby. According to our sources, he was booked on the same train, same compartment.’
‘I should change your sources.’
‘Working out here isn’t easy,’ Dempster said patiently. ‘We budget for a certain margin of wastage. Such as you.’
‘Thanks. What do you want?’
‘Everything you know — beginning with those few points we wanted clearing up in London, before you bolted. A mistake, that — on our part. I should have asked you to surrender your passport.’
‘And if I hadn’t?’
Dempster shrugged. ‘You’re familiar with Section Six of the Official Secrets Act? Conspiracy to commit an offence under the Act. I could have got you for covering up about your meeting with Jameson-Clarke.’
‘You may think so. But not the big boys. Not the men with the quiet ties who run your Majesty’s bloody Britannic Government while warming their arses round the old club fire. They’re not stupid, Dempster. They’d never have sent you out here to start playing rough. I wonder who did?’
There was another pause, while Dempster just looked at him. Finally he said: ‘Let me tell you something, Cayle. Just because you’ve walked into what looks to you like an important story, don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re important. You’re not. You’re dispensable, chum. Remember that.’ He sunk his chin still lower and began sucking the knuckle of his broad flat thumb. ‘Let’s start again with that lunch at the Ritz.’
For almost an hour, although it seemed much longer, Cayle talked. He told everything from the beginning, and Dempster listened without moving, almost without speaking, except to elucidate some small detail. He took no notes, made no threats. But if he believed Cayle, and was
