“You are Counter Intelligence?” she asked.
“Yes, and I need help now. Mrs Holloway in Registry said that you and Teddy and Henry Arnold were a formidable team in the’60s.”
“Ah yes. That old busybody!” she exclaimed, remembering. “And Henry. What an old woman he is! How is he?”
“He’s dead, Miss Kreski,” Black answered. “There are others dead too. That’s why I’m here.”
She took it all in in a second, her expression never changing.
“That is reason enough. Put the kettle on, young man, and I shall tell you the tale of my Teddy, my clever Teddy Morton.”
She spoke for two hours, much of it history and much of it shambling anecdotes, but all of it building a picture for Black.
“So you rated him well?”
“Better!” she said sternly. “He was formidable!”
“And the file? Where do I go from here?”
“Now, you may be lucky and you may see the master’s work yet. He never did anything important without backups. My first lesson to him and one he never forgot. This file was never closed by the sound of it, so somewhere he would have a copy, somewhere he could get at it when he felt the urge to think. You know, he never lost a game of chess. Never one. I used to sit with him and we would play. He did crosswords incessantly. I never saw him admit defeat ever. No. If this file was open, then he hadn’t finished with it.”
“But he was retired…”
“Teddy? No! Just having a break. He could no more walk away from a thing like this than walk away from a chess game or a damaged icon. He painted like he thought, like he played chess. With clarity and precision and a perseverance that was frightening.”
It was now dark outside and, looking around, he asked if there was anything he could do for her before he left.
“There is one thing.”
“Name it.”
“I have a rather vulgar but very English passion that is hard for me – well, with my arthritis and the fish and chip shop all down those long stairs…”
He smiled and, twenty minutes later, he was unwrapping her dinner over the sink.
It was when he handed her the plate and the tomato sauce bottle that she looked up at him.
“Is this the Square file you are concerned about?”
“The what?” he asked quickly
“Something Square?” She waved a fork, cursing her memory lapse.
“No,” he answered disappointedly. “Long Knives.”
“Probably the same thing,” she said with a flick of her ancient wrist.
“You know of it?”
She studied him for a moment, her fork poised over a piece of fish. “He was here before he went to Australia. We played chess. We talked. He thought he had the pieces of something. Something big. In America. In West Germany. And maybe, he thought, even here. It might be he was right. But it was all very vague.” She shrugged as best she could with old tired shoulders. “Be careful, young man. I am old it doesn’t matter for me anymore. But you be careful. This Square, if this is your Long Knives… be careful.”
When he had gone, she sat and thought about it and wondered if she had helped or confused him.
CHAPTER FOUR
With Gabriella Kreski’s warning fresh in his mind – and the deaths of seven people a horrific reality – Adrian Black decided to ignore normal investigation recording procedures and clamp the lid down tight. He would run a file, but he would hold it. There would be access for no other. He would report confidentially to Sir Martin Callows, and ask the D D-G to limit involvement to essential staff only. With luck, that would be John Burmeister, William Warren, the head of ‘A’, the Soviet desk at Century House and possibly the Director General.
When he arrived back in London, he went straight into his office, threw his coat on the hard chair in the corner and began reading the personnel file of Edward Morton, looking for a link. In his long experience with people he knew that very few men truly lived alone. Everyone had someone, or something they trusted. Edward Morton had one and he must now find it. He debated briefly going back to Gabriella Kreski’s with a search warrant but dismissed the idea almost immediately. If she had a copy of the file then he would never find it. The woman had almost invented most of the accepted hiding places that the trade used and, besides, he didn’t want to alienate her.
The file was thick with cross references to vetted acquaintances and people at Cambridge – and he began with those, but only after circling the reference to a daughter in red. By midnight he had made a list of people he wanted to talk to, most of whom were either in Cambridge or nearby. Even those who had retired still seemed to be unable to throw off the gown sufficiently to move away.
He picked up the phone and dialled the internal extension of the deputy head of section ‘D’, the real reason for Milburn, the Acton Fairies. The man was still at his desk and Black gathered up his coat and walked down the stairs to his office.
Jonno Smith was a street smart ex-field operative who had risen up the ranks slowly and was finally given the section’s day to day management by Callows after being run over by a Renault while on a job in Spain. He was one of the few Fairies whose snap judgements were impeccable – and now, with a twisted spine, he had to make them from a desk.
“Hello,” he said cheerfully, “come to audit my expenses or is this social?”
“Social… sort of,” Black answered.
The grinning ex-fairy pulled open his bottom drawer and hauled out a bottle of Scotch. Black nodded.
“Need a man Jonno,” he said taking the proffered chipped glass, “but it must be a back door job. No-one to know.”
“Breaking rules?” Jonno answered. “Sorry sport. See the boss…”
“No,”
