The old man’s hand was soft and damp as Gaddis shook it. His walking stick was resting in the crook of the wall behind his chair and he still carried about him the same smell of lavender which had drifted between the pews of Winchester Cathedral.
‘There’s a tunnel from the nursing home. Certain residents refer to it as the Great Escape. How’s Peter?’
Gaddis considered mentioning the Rooney shirt, but thought better of it.
‘I didn’t know he was such a joker,’ he replied instead. ‘Sent me here with Sean Connery as a tour guide.’
‘I’m not sure that I follow you.’
Gaddis privately conceded that it was an unhelpful way to have started the interview and spent the next three minutes trying to explain that actors’ voices could be downloaded on to sat-navs via the Internet. Neame looked utterly baffled. The ‘good doctor’ might as well have been speaking in Swahili.
‘I really don’t understand all this new-fangled technology,’ he said. ‘Peter’s the one who keeps himself up-to- date. I’m very lucky to have him.’
‘Where did you find him?’ Gaddis asked, because it wasn’t every day that a ninety-one-year-old resident of an old people’s home had an expert in counter-surveillance at his beck and call.
‘State secret,’ Neame replied, tapping the side of his nose. His mood was relaxed and amenable. He looked well-rested, not a day older than seventy-five. ‘Let’s just say that Eddie introduced us shortly before he went into hiding.’
There was something too convenient in this answer, but Gaddis was certainly not going to accuse Neame of lying. It was perfectly possible that the two men were still in regular contact and that Crane was using Neame as a willing go-between, drip-feeding information as and when it suited him. Equally, Crane could have hired Peter from the private sector to give his old friend an extra layer of protection.
‘Talking of new-fangled technology,’ Gaddis said, ‘would you mind if I took your photograph?’
Neame hesitated. ‘In principle, no, but it must only be for the book. You mustn’t show the picture to anybody before publication. That’s absolutely vital for my security.’
‘I understand,’ Gaddis replied with a smile.
It was a cynical move, not least because he planned to take the picture with nothing more sophisticated than the camera on his mobile phone. No lights, no make-up, just a shot of Crane’s best friend drinking a pint in an English pub. He was rather touched as the old man steadied himself, adjusted his jacket and flattened down his hair, then held a steady gaze as Gaddis lined up the shot.
‘Don’t say cheese.’
The photograph looked perfectly good, but Gaddis took a couple more for luck. Every meeting with Neame could be his last; he might never have the same opportunity again.
‘Can we talk a little more about Oxford?’ he said, when he had put the phone away. He had ordered a pint of lager from the bar and had a list of questions to get through before Neame grew tired.
‘Of course.’
‘I’m still interested in the identity of AGINCOURT.’
‘Aren’t we all.’
‘In Spycatcher, Peter Wright suggests that-’
Neame did not even allow him to complete the sentence.
‘For goodness’ sake, Sam. Please don’t take anything that man says seriously. Wright was an absolute charlatan. Eddie couldn’t stand him. Always playing people off against one another. Obsessed by money, obsessed by petty vengeance. If the government had handled Peter with even a modicum of common sense, he would have evaporated into anonymity.’
‘So you knew Wright as well?’
Neame looked confused. ‘Did I know him?’
‘It’s just that you called him “Peter”. As if you were on first-name terms.’
Neame frowned, dismissing the theory with a slow shake of the head. ‘You’re mistaken.’
Was he? Always with Neame there was the feeling that he was holding something back, dissembling, protecting Crane from exposure. He wondered if they had worked together at SIS. ‘So where does that leave us?’
‘ Us?’
‘I mean, how can I find out more about the Oxford Ring?’
‘Well, there’s very little about it in Eddie’s memoirs. I’ve told you all I can remember.’
The bluntness of this reply tested Gaddis’s goodwill.
‘Mind if I check that?’
Neame smiled. ‘Patience,’ he said, and Gaddis felt the irritation rise still further. It was so hard to be anything other than compliant and reasonable with a man of such advanced years, but he longed to be freed from the shackles of respect for the elderly.
‘Patient for what?’
‘I really have absolutely no idea about AGINCOURT. Eddie said he climbed fairly high in the Labour Party in the sixties and seventies. But that was all a long time ago.’
‘The Labour Party?’
Neame looked up. Beneath his eyes were patches of discoloured skin, years marked on the face as black stains. ‘Labour, yes.’
‘It’s just that you didn’t mention that in the cathedral.’
‘And?’
‘It’s helpful, that’s all.’
‘Well, he was hardly likely to be a Tory, was he? We’re talking about a working-class Yorkshireman, a Communist.’
Suddenly, some of the energy seemed to go out of Neame, like the fading grandeur of a once great house, and he was left looking breathless and tired. As if to confound this impression, he reached down to the floor and, with considerable effort, lifted a flimsy plastic carrier bag up on to the table.
‘I wanted to give you something,’ he said, stifling a cough.
‘Are you all right, Tom?’
‘I’m all right.’ Neame’s half-smile was almost paternal in its affection. Gaddis looked down at the bag and realized, with an excitement close to euphoria, what it contained.
‘Is that what I think it is?’
He was convinced it was the memoirs: there was something in the looseness of the plastic, the weightlessness of it as Neame had lifted the bag to the table. When he again glanced down, he could see the stapled corner of what looked like a manuscript. There was not much of it, just a few pages, but it was surely at least a part of the prize he craved.
‘Call this an act of faith,’ Neame said, encouraging Gaddis to open the bag. ‘It’s also evidence of my faltering memory. I’m afraid I have proved quite incapable of memorizing the details of ATTILA’s behaviour during the war.’
‘His behaviour during the war.’ Gaddis repeated the phrase without inflection, because he now had the stapled manuscript in his hands and was focused solely on what it contained. To his disappointment, he saw that it was merely three pages of hastily scrawled notes, written on fresh sheets of A4. The handwriting was identical to that on the notes which Peter had handed to him in Waterstone’s. In other words, Edward Crane hadn’t been anywhere near it. ‘What is this?’
‘A brief summary of what Eddie admits to having passed to the Soviets.’ Neame was looking beyond him, at the bar. ‘The extent of his treachery.’
Gaddis didn’t understand. Crane had continued working for MI6 until the 1980s. He had betrayed his country for the better part of fifty years. How could these three flimsy pages constitute the full extent of his treachery? He was suddenly sick of questions and dead ends, sick of being misled. He didn’t care if Neame was feeling unwell. He wanted answers.
‘Tom, I thought this was-’
‘I know what you thought it was.’ Neame was again touching the knot on his wool tie, as if doing so would somehow preserve the dignity of their discussion. ‘I’m not ready to give you that yet. But have a look at what there
