named Robert Wilkinson? If that doesn’t work, try Dominic Ulvert. Anything you can get on them at all. Letters, minutes from meetings in which they were involved, conferences they may have attended. Anything.’
It was only the second time that they had spoken since their dinner in Brackenbury Village and Gaddis was aware that his manner was direct and businesslike. It surprised him when Josephine suggested getting together a second time.
‘I can have a look,’ she replied. ‘In fact, why don’t we have another supper? This one on me. I can bring copies of any documents I find.’
‘That would be incredibly kind.’
And suddenly Gaddis’s memories were no longer of Josephine’s strange, withdrawn behaviour on the Goldhawk Road, but of her face across the candlelit table at dinner, promising something with her eyes.
‘I’m afraid I’m busy this weekend,’ she said. ‘Next week would be easier if you’re around.’
‘Why? What are you doing this weekend?’
‘Well, thanks to you, I finally got my act together.’
‘Thanks to me?’
‘You made me feel so guilty about not visiting my sister, I invited myself to stay. I’m leaving for Berlin tomorrow.’
He reflected on the serendipity of the coincidence. ‘That’s extraordinary. I just booked a flight to Berlin this afternoon. We’ll be there at the same time.’
‘You’re kidding?’ Josephine sounded genuinely excited at the prospect; perhaps her ‘complicated’ boyfriend had not been invited along for the trip. ‘Then let’s meet up. Let’s do something at the weekend.’
‘I’d love that.’
Gaddis told her where he would be staying — ‘a Novotel near the Tiergarten’ — and they made a tentative plan to have dinner on Saturday evening.
He couldn’t believe his luck.
Chapter 26
Forty minutes earlier, Tanya Acocella had been passed a note informing her that Dr Sam Gaddis — now known by the cryptonym POLARBEAR because, as Brennan had observed, ‘he’ll soon be extinct’ — had visited an Internet cafe on the Uxbridge Road and purchased an easyJet flight to Berlin. He was due to leave London Luton at 8.35 on Friday morning, returning two days later. The fare had been charged to Gaddis’s Mastercard and he had booked two nights at a Novotel at Tiergarten as part of a package deal with the airline. Tanya had wondered why Gaddis was using a public computer, rather than the PC at his house in Shepherd’s Bush, and concluded that he was at last becoming aware of the surveillance threats posed by his interest in ATTILA.
As the sun was coming down on what had been a crystal-clear day in London, she called Sir John Brennan.
‘Do the names Robert Wilkinson and Dominic Ulvert mean anything to you in the context of ATTILA?’
Brennan had just come off the Vauxhall Cross squash court and was boiling with sweat. He asked Tanya to repeat the names and, when she did, swore so loudly that his voice could be heard by a cleaning lady in the women’s changing rooms.
‘Where the fuck is Gaddis getting his information?’ he snapped. ‘Meet me in the courtyard. Half an hour.’
While Brennan showered and changed back into a grey suit, Tanya ran a trace on Wilkinson and Ulvert, encountering the same wall of obstruction and restricted access which had characterized her earlier searches for Crane and Neame. Somebody, somewhere, was trying to prevent her from doing her job. It was the first thing that she mentioned to Brennan in the courtyard. He had closed the access door back into the building so that they were alone in an area normally populated by smokers. Nobody would disturb the Chief in such a situation.
‘Forgive me for saying this, sir, but I believe there are some things you haven’t told me about ATTILA.’
Brennan peered down at Tanya’s legs. He had pulled a muscle in his arm playing squash.
‘Perhaps there are things you aren’t telling me,’ he replied, turning around. He didn’t feel that it was appropriate for Acocella to be criticizing his methods. ‘Last time we spoke, you told me that Gaddis was investigating Harold-bloody-Wilson. Now, for some reason, he’s stumbled on Robert Wilkinson.’
‘As you said, sir, AGINCOURT was a wild-goose chase.’
‘Fair enough, fair enough.’ Brennan’s mood now changed abruptly. He had known, as he put on his suit, that he would have to come clean about certain aspects of the ATTILA cover-up. Tanya could hardly be expected to perform effectively with one hand tied behind her back. ‘I should perhaps have been more candid from the start.’
Tanya was surprised that Brennan should capitulate so readily.
‘Bob Wilkinson was Head of Station in Berlin when the Wall came down. He’d been operating in East Germany for the best part of a decade. Ulvert was one of his pseudonyms. In 1992, the FSB tried to assassinate him in London. The attempt failed, but he consequently emigrated to New Zealand, to get as far away from his old life as possible.’
‘Why did the FSB want him dead?’
‘Because of his relationship with ATTILA.’ Tanya searched Brennan’s face as she listened, still sensing that he was holding something back. ‘The Russians were embarrassed that they had been duped for so long, so they set about bumping off anybody who had been associated with Crane.’
‘ Anybody? Doesn’t that constitute quite a large number of people? Crane was operational for almost fifty years.’
Brennan took her point but could not, for reasons which he hoped she would never be aware, express himself more candidly.
‘The victims tended to be senior figures who had been directly involved with Crane in the 1980s,’ he said, fudging it. ‘A KGB officer named Fyodor Tretiak, for example, had been ATTILA’s handler in East Germany from ’84 onwards. Tretiak was assassinated while walking back to his apartment in St Petersburg in 1992. Bob Wilkinson had a bomb attached to his car in Fulham and only survived because he checked his vehicles religiously as a hangover from Northern Ireland. Left shortly afterwards for Auckland, under rather a cloud, if I’m honest. Hasn’t spoken to anybody in the Service for over ten years and not likely to.’
‘What sort of cloud?’
Brennan mumbled his answer, to the extent that it was almost carried off on the wind. Tanya had to take a step towards him and wondered why he was still being so obtuse. She looked down and saw that one of his immaculate brogues was scuffed, as if somebody had scrubbed the toe with a wire brush.
‘Bob felt that we hadn’t done enough to protect him.’ Brennan seemed genuinely contrite as he recalled the incident. ‘He felt that the measures extended to ensure the safety of Edward Crane might also have been extended to him.’
‘What kind of measures?’
A smile briefly flickered on Brennan’s face as he recalled the heyday of Douglas Henderson. ‘I arranged for Eddie to die of natural causes.’
It had always been Tanya’s deepest fear that she had signed up for a organization which would stoop to murder as easily as it stooped to deceit. But she had misinterpreted what Brennan was telling her. He allayed her fears with a gesture of apology.
‘No, no. There’s no need to be alarmed.’ Tanya nodded, but she had seldom felt more uncomfortable in the five years that she had been working for SIS. ‘Eddie was already in his mid seventies. As you say, he’d given decades of loyal service. He deserved a peaceful retirement, so I had him brought into a hospital in Paddington, crossed a few palms with enough silver and, lo and behold, he died of pancreatic cancer in February 1992.’
‘Did one of the palms you crossed go by the name of Meisner?’
Brennan hesitated for a fraction of a second.
‘Meisner, yes.’ Tanya was studying him intently. What was he holding back? ‘He was the senior doctor on duty the night Crane was brought into the hospital. How did you find out about him?’
‘Gaddis mentioned his name on one of the surveillance tapes.’ It was strange, but at this moment she felt a
