Cold War, I discovered that Mischa’s father had worked for the KGB. SIS and Christopher had always believed that he was simply a middle-ranking civil servant in Moscow, but through my old contacts at the Agency — I quit in ’92 — I was able to find out that Dimitri Kostov had operated within a First Chief Directorate section known as Department V. Department V was a relatively new section of the KGB created in the late sixties to replace the Thirteenth Department of the FCD, which organized what we used to call ‘wet jobs’. Assassinations, for want of a better word. Nominally Department V was tasked only with carrying out acts of sabotage, but under the control of Andropov there’s strong evidence to suggest that assassinations continued.
My fear is this. When Mischa was blown, SIS was concerned that he may have divulged your father’s identity to the Soviet military prior to his execution. Christopher was taken out of Afghanistan as a precaution and reassigned to China. His career never recovered and when SIS was overhauled under McColl in the early 1990s, he was pushed out. Something very similar happened to Mischa’s father, almost like a mirror. When it was discovered that his son had been betraying secrets to the British, Kostov was discharged from the KGB and sent to Minsk to process employment records. He turned to drink, lost his wife, and only came back to Moscow after the putsch when his old KGB friends, most of whom were running the country in one guise or another, were able to find him work.
That’s what I know. Kostov had numerous aliases — Kalugin, Sudoplatov, Solovyov — and I’ve never been able to track him down. Time and again I would talk to your father about the possibility of Kostov coming after him but he just wouldn’t talk about Mischa. He felt like he’d killed a man, sent him to his death. And coupled with the guilt he felt about you and Mark, the pain was often hard to bear.
Your father was a proud man and would just laugh off my concerns. ‘How would Kostov ever find me?’ he used to say. ‘He doesn’t even know my name.’ I was just a conspiracy theorist, another paranoid Yank who couldn’t let go of the job. But nobody’s identity was secure — a list of SIS officers worldwide was posted on the Internet about five years ago. Your father’s name was on that list.
I would urge you to take this information to the police if I thought they would be permitted to act on it. I tried to alert SIS to the problem a long time ago, but my bridges are burned there now. Everything falls on deaf ears.
It frustrates me to end on such a downbeat note but I loved Christopher and his loss has affected me. Please contact me at the address stated if you want to talk through any of what I’ve written here today. Together I believe we can solve this situation and maybe help to put the past behind us.
Yours sincerely,
Robert M. Bone
When he had finished reading the letter, Ben continued to stare at the base of the final page, as if expecting further words to appear. For some time he remained like this, a cross-legged figure in the centre of the room, unsure of how to proceed. Oddly, there was still an instinctive part of him that wished to remain ignorant of his father’s past, a stubborn refusal to grapple with the truth. Under different circumstances, he might even have scrunched up Bone’s letter and thrown it petulantly into the nearest bin.
That, after all, was how he had survived for the best part of twenty-five years.
But almost every sentence Bone had written, every one of his recollections and theories, had been revelatory, clues not simply towards the solving of a murder, but vital pieces in the jigsaw of his father’s life. Ben immediately wanted to share the letter with Mark, and yet a part of him enjoyed the buzz of privileged information. This was the breakthrough the police had been searching for, but it was also a secret glimpse into a world that his brother could only have guessed at.
30
Mark called Bob Randall from a phone booth in the ticket hall of Leicester Square underground station. He lost his first twenty-pence piece in the teeth of a broken callbox, but reached the contact number at his next attempt. A man answered, sneezing as he picked up.
‘Can I help you?’
‘This is Blindside.’
‘Hold the line.’
Taploe was put through in under ten seconds.
‘Randall,’ he said.
‘We may have a problem.’
‘Elaborate, please.’
‘I just got to the office. Macklin’s breakfast was cancelled. Lunch as well. It looks like he’s going to be there all day. I told him I was going out for a coffee so I could get to a phone and tell you.’
‘I see. So do you still want to go ahead?’
‘Do you?’
‘There’s no problem at our end. The network will go down at 11 a.m. as arranged. We have the team standing by waiting for your call. But you sound unsettled.’
Mark had not wanted to betray any of his anxiety. Think of Dad, he had said to himself. What would my father do? He braced his foot against the wall of the callbox and said, ‘I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. I just thought you should know.’
‘Well, I’m pleased to hear that. So let’s press ahead. This is information that we need. Now, where are you?’
‘Leicester Square tube.’
‘Well, it’s almost half-past. Get backto the office. We’ll expect to hear from you within the next forty minutes.’
‘Sure.’
‘And Mark?’ Taploe said.
‘Yes?’
‘Don’t forget the coffee.’
‘What?’
‘You told Macklin you were going out for a coffee. Make sure to bring one back to work.’
Half an hour later Mark was sitting in an armchair in his office when he heard the distinct rumble of a Macklin ‘Fuck’ coming through the walls. Another voice — Kathy’s — cried out, ‘What the hell happened?’ and then a door opened in the corridor.
‘Why’s the fucking email not working?’ Macklin shouted. ‘Where’s Sam?’
‘Maternity leave,’ somebody said.
‘Fucking great.’
He swerved into Mark’s office, a shirt button popped open on his belly. Mark lowered the magazine he was pretending to read and tried to look distracted.
‘Your computer working, mate?’ Macklin asked him.
‘Mine just crashed as well,’ Kathy said, coming in behind him.
Mark stood up with perhaps an exaggerated non-chalance and walked across to his desk. Hitting a key at random, his stomach a swell of nerves, he prayed for total system failure.
Granted.
The small, frowning face of an Apple icon appeared on screen and nothing Mark could do would remove it. Turning to face Macklin and Kathy he said simply, ‘Shit.’
At the reception desk, thirty feet away, Rebecca, a temp who had replaced Sam as office manager, answered a telephone call just as her own computer froze irreparably. She had been in the middle of writing a frank and erotic email to a one-night stand and was worried that it would now be discovered on the system.
‘Well, that’s fucking great, isn’t it?’ Macklin was saying. ‘I had twenty fucking messages downloading and now they’re all shot to fuck. Some cunt in the Philippines, probably, a prepubescent anorak who thinks it’s a fucking laugh infecting every computer in the civilized world with Macintosh Clap. Doesn’t he have something better to do? You know, watch football, play Virtual Cop or something?’
