After he was back in England he still sent a few cheap cosmetics to Kristina, but without the diplomatic bag there was no possibility of sending more antibiotics. Despite the fact that he was sent home for chronic drunkenness he was given a security clearance and a job at the Underwater Weapons Establishment at Portland naval base, a secret installation employing over 20,000 people and concerned only with submarine and antisubmarine research. When Harry Houghton joined the establishment, HMS Dreadnought, the Royal Navy’s first atomic submarine, was being fitted out with its American atomic plant. But Portland’s main task was to improve NATO’s underwater defence programme in detecting and destroying enemy submarines. He joined the base in 1951, and lived in a village just outside Portland itself with his wife Peggy.
6
Molody stood looking across the street at the hotel. Somehow it didn’t look like the photographs he had been shown. But it was the right name and the right address: Hotel Latham E. 28th Street. He couldn’t remember what made it seem different and he walked across the road, into the hotel lobby and took the elevator to the seventh floor. And then walked up the stairs to the eighth.
For a moment he hesitated as he looked at the number on the door. 839. That was the room number all right. And the name on the card was the name he expected—Martin Collins. He looked both ways up the corridor and then pressed the bell.
The man who opened the door was thin-faced and balding and he recognised him straightaway. He had been shown photographs of the man in Moscow. The man recognised him too, nodded impassively and stood aside to let him in.
For a moment, after the door was closed, they stood looking at each other. They had never met before or communicated in any way, but they were Russians in a strange, dangerous country and instinctively their arms went round each other and they kissed cheeks like old friends meeting.
Collins looked at the younger man, his observant eyes taking in the details of his face, his hands still on the young man’s shoulders.
“How long are you staying in New York, my friend?”
“As long as necessary, as short as possible.”
“There are a few people I want you to meet while you are here. They could be useful to you some day if things go wrong over here.”
“Are you expecting trouble?”
“No.” Collins smiled. “But after ten years you bear it in mind. Have you eaten today?”
“Yes, comrade, but I’d appreciate a drink.”
Collins would have preferred vodka but he always kept to whisky, Jamiesons, to go with his Irish name. He poured them generous glasses before he sat down.
Molody looked around the large almost empty room. A single bed, a heavy, wooden artist’s easel alongside a small table and a stool and canvases leaning against the walls.
Molody looked back at his companion. “Does it make you a living?”
Collins frowned. “It is my living, comrade, I’m an artist. Anything else I forget. My name is Collins, my father was Irish and I’m a New Yorker.” He shrugged. “You have to be convinced. If I don’t believe it why should others believe it? It’s the most important thing you can remember.”
“You mean having a good cover?”
“No. I mean never having a cover.” He waved his hand at the room. “This is not cover. This is me. My life. It’s real. Neither you nor anybody else could convince me otherwise. This is reality. If there is anything else then it is a small secret in my mind. Like a married man with a mistress or a man who likes being whipped. Anything else is a small secret vice in the back of my mind. You must work out for yourself what you want to be and then be it. Every minute of every day.” He put down his glass. “What do you want to be?” He smiled. “Fulfil your dreams my friend.”
Molody laughed. “A millionaire.”
“So be it, comrade, make money, be a businessman. It’s no more difficult than being an artist. Do it as if that is the only thing you care about. Don’t pretend. Be a tycoon.”
“Who are the people you want me to meet?”
“Do you know Jack Sobell?”
“I don’t know him. I’ve seen his file.”
“And?”
“Moscow instructed me to avoid him. He’s under suspicion.”
“So I understand. But he had two people working for him before he fell out of favour. A married couple. The Cohens. First-class agents. Experienced, disciplined and committed. The man was a teacher here in New York. Had an excellent record, but Moscow moved them from Sobell’s control to another ring that was eventually exposed. When the Rosenbergs were betrayed I managed to warn the Cohens in time for them to go underground. They are intending to go to England. I’ve kept them back so that you could meet them.”
“Would Moscow approve?”
Collins smiled. “You are independent now, comrade. It is up to you to decide. All that Moscow wants from you is results. How you get them is up to you. Who you use is up to you. You cut the cord with the Centre when you boarded the ship in Murmansk.”
“When can I meet them?”
Collins looked at his watch. “In an hour. You know the zoo in Central Park?”
“No. But I can find it.”
“Fine.”
Collins gave him a password, pointed out the meeting point on a large-scale map and instructions on how he should be contacted again if the chalk mark was on the wall of the toilet at the cinema. He was to check for the mark every day.
