‘You believe it,’ said Cayle.
Hann took a cigarette out of a black leather case and sat examining the end without lighting it. ‘I’m not saying whether I believe it or not. My job is to collect information — not to evaluate it.’
Cayle finished his drink and stood up. ‘Oh I know, Hann, you’re in the clear — you’re just the errand-boy. You don’t have to worry about your own skin — just the reputations of a mouldering old gang of starch-shirted mandarins who fell for the great Marxist day-dream of the Thirties and didn’t have the guts to come clean while the damage was being done. Because remember, those bastards aren’t just accomplices to treason, before and after the fact. They’ve also got blood on their hands. Philby had a lot of men killed, one way and another, and the old boys you’re supposed to be protecting allowed him to get away with it.’
‘I think I’ve heard enough,’ Hann said quietly; he sat with his cigarette burning away between his fingers, the ash beginning to curl like a grey claw. ‘I shall be making a full report on what you’ve told me, and will pass it on to the appropriate authorities. Meanwhile, I suggest you contact your own Embassy and make arrangements to return home before you get yourself into any more trouble.’ He stood up and came round the desk. ‘By the way, your friend Leonard Maddox was killed last night.’
‘Killed?’
‘He was run over by a truck behind the Bolshoi.’
‘Hit and run?’
‘As a matter of fact it was,’ said Hann. ‘How did you know?’
‘I heard some people talking about it in the hotel.’
‘Yes, nasty business. He lived with an Englishwoman here, and we’re having some difficulty tracing her. But again, not much of a story.’
‘I’m not thinking of writing anything yet. The big story hasn’t begun.’
‘Good afternoon, Mr Cayle.’ Hann waited until the door closed, then reached for his glass and found it was empty. He poured himself another, looked at the telephone, hesitated, then downed his whisky in a gulp.
Downstairs the commissionaire checked Cayle’s departure at 1.12 p.m. in the Embassy log.
CHAPTER 16
At 1.25 the taxi dropped Cayle outside the Hotel Rossija, on the south side of Red Square. He had chosen this hotel because it was the largest and most anonymous of all the hotels in Moscow: four gargantuan slabs of plate-glass and concrete forming an unlovely rectangle the size of the Kremlin, with accommodation for 15,000 guests. It was an excellent place in which to get lost and stay lost.
He went through the obligatory routine of handing in his coat to the cloakroom attendant, then joining one of the many queues for the travel desk. Half an hour later he faced a girl who looked like an out-of-work ballerina: sharp cheek-bones, long neck, too much eye-shadow. He handed her his passport and asked her to make him a reservation on the next flight to Leningrad. She opened his passport at the three-day visa, made a quick note on a pad beside her, and said: ‘If you would wait over there, sir, please.’ She nodded at a row of leather chairs, all of them occupied. ‘You will be informed in fifteen minutes if there is a reservation.’
Cayle thanked her, without getting a response, and sauntered away in search of the sauna and barber-shop. Both were full, with long queues outside; and in the downstairs restaurant every table was taken. The three bars were crowded to the doors. He wandered finally into the Beriozka, where rows of American and Scandinavian tourists were poring over trays of amber, painted wooden dolls, mink and musquash, and machine-made peasant blouses. The only caviar was the red brand which came in tubes, like shaving cream.
Twenty minutes later he was back at the travel desk, going straight to the head of the queue. The girl looked up at him, gave a sideways nod and two men stepped forward. They stood very close to him, one on either side, without actually touching him.
‘Mr Kay-eel? You will come.’ He was a couple of inches shorter than Cayle, with a round pale face pitted and spongy like fresh bread, and black hair combed flat across his scalp. His companion was taller, broader, with a slack mouth and colourless eyes. Both wore suits of grey artificial fibre that were too tight at the shoulders and too loose round the legs.
The small one nodded in the direction of the main entrance, and the three of them began to move in a close trio across the crowded floor. Near the doors Cayle said, ‘I’ve got a coat — a new one.’
Both men ignored him. A group of tourists came in, laughing and unslinging cameras. None of them glanced at Cayle or his escort. He began to feel rather lonely and unimportant.
Outside there was an icy mist and the crust of the snow was turning soggy. A grey truck was double-parked next to the taxi-rank. A man in a fur-lined military cap and bulky blue overcoat sat at the wheel. A second uniformed man sat in the back, with a short-muzzled machine-pistol slung across his waist. Cayle sat in front, between the driver and the smaller of the two plainclothes men. The other got in the back, and without a word they started off.
There were no sirens, no militiamen halting the traffic. They passed the long queue outside the Lenin Mausoleum and stopped for the lights at the corner of the GUM store. Cayle didn’t bother to ask where they were going. They crossed into Svedlova Square, between the Bolshoi and the Metropol, and started up Karl Marx Prospekt, keeping with the traffic in the outside lane. The
