“You seem very sure of that,” Tansey-Williams said. “Why?”
Callows shrugged uncharacteristically. “Gut feel.”
Tansey-Williams walked to the window and looked out over the light traffic, negotiating the drizzle dampened streets. He had a real respect for Callows’ gut feelings, a respect developed over the last sixteen years.
“Done then. Clamp this right down,” he said. “I want it rated as top priority. What have you initiated?”
“I’ve given it to John Burmeister, but he’ll need help. A sniffer. I’d like it to remain a Milburn task for the present. If the mole is in here, it will be easier to keep quiet.”
“Did you ever meet Henry Arnold?”
Callows shook his head, his eyes interested.
“Retired a year ago. Ex Department ‘C’. Pragmatic, clever. Probably the best sniffer we ever had.”
“Never even heard his name,” Callows said. “I had someone else in mind...”
“I’ll get him recalled and attached to Milburn. Young he is not, but a mind like a steel trap. Exactly what you are looking for.”
The following morning, Arnold agreed to return to work, ostensibly to begin compiling the official history of the service during its 1939-45 birth pangs. Century House, short of space for the tiresome request, sent him over to Milburn where, somewhat surprisingly, they seemed to have an office free. Armed with a clearance to enter all filing areas, he began shuffling the corridors, perpetually pushing his spectacles back up his long nose and humming to himself. It was during the afternoon of the first day that he asked to see the references to ‘Long Knives’, reasoning that whoever had accessed the file had either directly or indirectly triggered the contact with Moscow Centre.
The normal staff at the Midhurst wringer had been supplemented overnight by an Acton Fairy. Another was due that evening. Mrs Hogan occasionally caught a glimpse of him as he walked a seemingly irregular patrol through the grounds of the house. She looked back to Simonov. All of the previous morning’s confident bluster was gone – and now his answers were dragged out painfully.
“Yuri, we know you aren’t cleared for access to information like that. Your material comes in from the Directorates. That I accept. But in that material you certainly would not learn of the existence of a KGB operative inside our little gang, would you?”
“I was mistaken,” he said softly.
“No you weren’t, Yuri. You believed it and you still do.” She stopped to let that statement sink in for a moment before continuing. “Who are you protecting? Someone let it slip, didn’t they? Someone told you. A friend?”
He said nothing, his watery eyes staring at the wall behind her head. Very occasionally a spark of real strength surfaced but now it seemed smothered in fear. I’m losing this, she thought. Ease off with the pressure and let’s try something a little more basic.
“Well, let’s have a cup of tea, shall we? We have been working hard, you know. Perhaps its time for a little relaxation.”
He looked up at her.
“Shopping?” he asked.
“Not today, Yuri. The man outside wouldn’t like that. Perhaps tomorrow.” She paused. “But there are things you can do here.”
She stood and walked to look out the window.
“You are a man. A man in your prime,” she said flatteringly. “In Moscow you must have had you pick of the girls. Perhaps we can organise some company for you?”
He looked up at her quickly, a slightly shocked look on his face.
“No not me, Yuri,” she chuckled, “but we have some nice girls, speak Russian, make borsch, talk about troika rides in the snow... would you like that?”
He looked away again.
Well, well, she thought, let’s try the other.
“Of course, if you’d like to chat with someone who has been there recently, someone sympathetic, one of our young chaps only got in last week.”
He looked up quickly, his eyes now displaying interest.
Gotcha! she thought triumphantly.
“He would be very sympathetic, Yuri. Would you like that?”
“Well, maybe,” he mumbled. “Would he be…”
“Very sympathetic, Yuri. I think you know what I mean. He’s only twenty four, blonde and very athletic. He’s very nice. But we would have to talk first, Yuri...”
“It’s difficult,” he began. “I don’t…”
“It was your lover, wasn’t it, Yuri? The friend. He told you.”
“He didn’t love me,” Yuri said bitterly. “He’s run off with someone else. He just used me. Used to make me do things after he had been with others.”
She walked over and sat down next to him on the couch. “Men are buggers, aren’t they?” she agreed, the pun going right over his head. “They just have no feelings.”
Yuri Simonov began to talk.
The central files had been computerised for some years but the service still maintained vast storage areas for the items that could never be stored on disc. Faded news clippings, photographs and letters that could never be electronically enhanced sufficiently joined the tons of case files that needed a mainframe just to index the information.
Arnold sat with the operator, who accessed his terminal and found nine references to ‘Long Knives’: seven of them to the original group in pre-war Germany, with reference notes to the hard copy vault; one to the notes of an investigation handed over by MI5, dealing with neo-Nazis in Clapham; and one file that had been purged.
“What does this mean?” he asked the operator.
“Oh, normally it means the data has been dumped... but that can’t be right. We don’t purge anything here. Must be a glitch. “
“A what?”
“A glitch. A fault in the software.”
“I’d like you to unglitch it,” Arnold said, his eyes narrowing, the smell of the quarry becoming strong.
“I’ll have to get an engineer,” she replied, “but even then a purge is sometimes just that.”
“Tell me,” he said, “who can get at this machine. To purge.” He pronounced the last word with distaste.
At 6.17 that evening, a courier left with the day’s tapes and transcripts and Mrs Hogan – feeling tired but good – began her drive home to Guildford. The cook had prepared steak and kidney pie and, just before
