against the deteriorating weather and closed the door. ‘Sir John is concerned that you may be establishing a relationship with a British academic named Sam Gaddis.’
‘Establishing a relationship? What the fuck does that mean?’ Wilkinson knew, instantly, that SIS had bugged Gaddis’s call. Years of carefully cultivated anonymity had been obliterated in an instant by a reckless academic in a London phone box.
‘Doctor Gaddis has discovered the truth about ATTILA. We believe that he knows you were running Edward Crane in East Germany in the 1980s. The Service is worried that you may be passing information to Gaddis of a sensitive nature, in breach of your commitment to the Official Secrets Act.’
Wilkinson took a step forward. He was in his early sixties, stocky and imposing. His face, particularly in the fading light of a chill spring evening, had a quality of ruthlessness which had scared braver men than Christopher Brooke.
‘What’s your name, young man?’
‘My name is Christopher. I’m Head of Station in Canberra.’
‘And you’ve come all the way from Australia to tell me this, have you, Chris?’
Brooke thought of his pregnant wife, of the Qantas cabin sprayed for insects, of freeze-dried in-flight meals and the interminable roads of Central Otago. He said: ‘That is correct.’
‘And don’t they teach you to keep civilized hours at Fort Monkton any more? What do you mean by showing up here at dusk? You could have been anybody.’
Brooke had been informed that Wilkinson was ‘paranoid up to the eyeballs about Russian assassins’ and assumed that he would now regain some of his composure, safe in the knowledge that his surprise visitor had not been sent by the FSB.
‘I apologize for startling you,’ he said, extending a hand. ‘Nobody in the local community had heard of you. I had great difficulty locating your address. It’s only fractionally less remote round here than the Sea of Tranquility.’
Wilkinson produced a grunt of indifference. ‘Is that your idea of a joke? Is that how you soften people up nowadays? A little galactic irony? A little lunar wit?’
Brooke could see that it was a lost cause. He put the extended hand back in the pocket of his parka and decided to abandon any pretence at camaraderie. He wanted nothing more than to be driving back to Dunedin, getting a good night’s sleep and catching a flight home to Canberra. He wanted to be away from this gun-wielding maniac. He wanted to be filing a report for Brennan, drinking a bottle of Pinot Noir and eating Thai green curry with his wife. But he had a job to do.
‘Here’s the situation,’ he said. ‘Why don’t I just get it off my chest, because it’s fairly obvious that this isn’t going to be a civilized conversation? I wasn’t expecting a home-cooked meal, Mr Wilkinson. I wasn’t expecting a bed for the night. But if you want to do this out here, then we’ll do it out here.’ Right on cue, a wind came gusting across the plain, rattling the leaves of the willow trees. ‘As I understand it, Gaddis is threatening to blow the lid off two of the most closely guarded secrets of the Cold War, secrets that my colleagues — yourself included — have done a very good job of covering up for the past sixty years. The Chief has asked me to remind you that there are — to use his word — anomalies in the final years of Mr Crane’s career which would have massive repercussions on our relationship with Moscow if they came to light. Now I don’t happen to know what those anomalies are. But, I am reliably informed that you do.’ He saw Wilkinson’s face lift in the failing light and heard a short sniff, which he took to be a gesture of assent. ‘Sir John has always been deeply concerned that retired intelligence officers should not feel the need to sell their life stories to the highest bidder.’
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘I think you understand what I mean. The Service is aware that you disclosed sensitive information to a Mrs Katya Levette at various stages of your career, as a means both of leaking politically damaging stories to the British press and as a channel for your own autobiographical recollections.’
‘You want to be careful with that smooth tongue of yours,’ Wilkinson said, shifting the gun into his right hand. ‘It could get you into trouble.’
The rain was falling heavily now and Brooke pulled up the hood of his jacket.
‘Is it not the case that you and Mrs Levette discussed the possibility of ghosting your memoirs?’
Wilkinson had heard enough. He moved against the rain until he was face-to-face with Brooke, studying him rather as a crocodile might size up a snack for lunch.
‘Let me tell you something. I woke up three days ago and made myself a cup of tea. The telephone rang and I answered it. This Doctor Gaddis was on the other end of the line. He was calling me from London, from a phone box, asking questions about Eddie Crane. I’d never heard of him. You see, I didn’t realize that ATTILA was suddenly public knowledge. I also had no idea how an opportunistic British academic had managed to track me down. Let me assure you that I had absolutely no intention of discussing my career with him. I would assume that our private conversation was scooped up as a favour to the old country by local liaison. Is that the case?’
‘I have no idea what role, if any, the GCSB has played in all this.’
‘No?’ Wilkinson watched the rain sluicing down Brooke’s face. ‘I bet you don’t. You’re only Head of Station in Canberra, after all.’
He raised a hand when Brooke attempted to respond.
‘Wait. I haven’t finished.’ He was angry now, livid at the invasion of his privacy and infuriated that his relationship with Katya was once again being dragged through the mud. ‘Please tell Sir John — he was just “John” when I knew him, but he was always keen on going places — tell Sir John that I will do whatever the hell I like in my retirement. If that includes talking to out-of-their-depth academics in London, so be it. You see, I remember how things ended. I remember a bomb under my car. I remember experiencing the distinct feeling that the Service would have preferred it if Bob Wilkinson had been blown up by Sergei Platov and thrown into the skies above Fulham.’ Brooke was wiping rainwater out of his eyes. ‘You look confused, Christopher.’
‘You’ve lost me,’ he replied. ‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘No,’ said Wilkinson. ‘I expect you don’t.’ Another gust of wind came buffeting across the plain. ‘But Sir John Brennan knows exactly what I’m talking about. Be sure to tell him that I understand the definition of loyalty. He never looked out for me, so why should I look out for him? If this Gaddis wants chapter and verse on ATTILA, perhaps I’ll give it to him. It’s time the whole story came out anyway. Christ, the British government would probably benefit if it did. Wouldn’t you like to see the back of that maniac?’
‘Which maniac?’
‘Platov,’ Wilkinson replied witheringly, as if Brooke had laid out his ignorance for the world to see. ‘They really haven’t put you in the picture at all, have they? You really have no idea what the hell is going on.’
Chapter 35
Late on Thursday afternoon, Sam Gaddis was squeezing through a pavement crush of students outside the School of Eastern European and Slavonic Studies when he spotted Tanya Acocella on the opposite side of Taviton Street. She was wearing a beige raincoat, leather boots and a beret which brought out the stark white bones of her face. He thought that she looked tired, but felt the irritating pang of attraction nonetheless; he had to remind himself to look annoyed as he crossed the street to speak to her.
‘I don’t suppose this is a coincidence.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Walk with me?’
She was taking a risk, being seen with him. Brennan could have eyes all over UCL. A simple surveillance photograph of the two of them together, fed back to Vauxhall Cross, would reveal that she had ignored the Chief’s order to abandon contact with POLARBEAR.
‘I wondered how you were getting along,’ she asked.
Gaddis took the question at face value and said that he had been ‘fine, absolutely fine’ since the shootings in Berlin.
‘We’ve managed to come to an arrangement with the German authorities. They’ve put a squeeze on coverage of the incident in the media. The police won’t be looking for a second gunman. The man who killed Meisner, the man you shot, was a Russian named Nicolai Doronin. MI5 had been observing him for several months. The Germans
