sir,” he says. “You must trust me.” “All right,” I said. “If you’re serious, meet me here again in twenty-four hours.” That gave me time to have him checked out, to get a car ready, a safe house wired for sight and sound.’
‘And did he show?’
‘Of course he showed.’ Wilkinson looked bewildered by Gaddis’s naivete.
‘And you interviewed him?’
‘Yes.’
‘In the presence of John Brennan?’
A nod of appreciation. ‘Very good. In the presence of John Brennan, yes. Now see if you can riddle me this one. When asked to demonstrate that he was serious, guess whose name Platov gave us to prove his bona fides?’
‘ATTILA,’ Gaddis said, with a rush of exhilaration. The last piece of the puzzle had clicked into place.
‘Precisely. He betrayed Eddie to the Brits, blissfully unaware that ATTILA had been one of ours all along.’ Wilkinson leaned back in his chair. ‘That’s when I made my one and only mistake. I brought the interview to an end, implying that we needed more time to process the implications of Crane’s betrayal. I left Platov with the impression that we would be in touch — same time, same place, the cinema on Kantstrasse — and immediately arranged to have dinner with Eddie. Told him over a bowl of onion soup that some greedy KGB thug who fancied an easy life in the West had been prepared to give him up.’
‘And how did Eddie take that?’
It was the first time that Gaddis could remember referring to Crane as ‘Eddie’. He felt faintly ridiculous, like a schoolboy trying to be cool in front of one of the senior boys.
‘Not well,’ Wilkinson replied. He was shaking his head slowly, regretfully. ‘Eddie Crane was a complex animal who didn’t take too kindly to acts of betrayal. His entire life had been a delicate balancing act between East and West, a process of convincing highly intelligent people that he was somebody other than the person that he really was. I suppose, when you look at it, he had lived in fear of exposure for most of his life. Exposure during the war, exposure in the wake of Burgess and Maclean, and of course, exposure in the last, great phase of his career.’
Wilkinson stopped in mid-flow, perhaps to organize his thoughts. He soon picked up where he had left off.
‘Eddie, against his better judgement, decided to exact his revenge. Before we’d had a chance to properly evaluate Platov, to decide whether or not we wanted him to come across, Eddie went to see his KGB controller-’
Gaddis interrupted. ‘Fyodor Tretiak.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And told him that Platov was attempting to defect?’
Wilkinson nodded. It was as though they were now streaming the same information.
‘Tretiak, of course, was very low budget and deserved to have been posted to a backwater like Dresden. Rather than go to Moscow with this alarming piece of information, he confronted Platov in person and young Sergei managed to convince Tretiak that the whole thing had been a set-up. “I had no intention of defecting, Comrade Fyodor. This was a high-level influence operation on a British officer organized by Moscow Centre.” The whole thing was then forgotten. Tretiak didn’t report the matter to his superiors and Platov vanished. London, of course, was furious that Eddie had prevented us getting our hands on a KGB asset, but let him off on the grounds that he was a star. We weren’t to know that the whole Communist system was going to go tits up in less than two years anyway.’
Gaddis reached inside his jacket for a cigarette. Wilkinson saw the packet and winced.
‘Do you mind if you don’t? I know nobody in continental Europe obeys the bloody smoking ban except the law-abiding Brits, but if you feel like killing yourself, please feel free to do it out on the street.’
‘I’m fine,’ Gaddis said, replacing the packet. ‘Dozens of people in MI6 must know about this. How come it’s never leaked out?’
‘Not dozens.’ Wilkinson was scanning the review quotes on the back of the Yeltsin biography. ‘We’re not a country club. What you might call the “circle of trust” was actually very small. Apart from myself, Eddie and Brennan, the only other name in the loop was Colin McGougan, who was “C” until 1994. He’s dead now. Far as I know, nobody else had an inkling about Platov. He was small potatoes. The file was sealed and we went off in new directions.’
‘But you could finish Platov’s career at any point.’
Wilkinson reached across the table and held Gaddis’s forearm. It was like the passing of a secret from one generation to the next. ‘What do you think I’m doing now?’
‘You want me to destroy it?’
‘Precisely. I know how you feel about him. I’ve read your book.’
Gaddis knew that he was being flattered. ‘Fine. But I would also be avenging you.’
Wilkinson allowed himself a brief moment of reflection. ‘All right, yes. Platov tried to kill me, I demand some measure of vengeance. Is that childish? I handed Katya the scoop of her life and she drank it into the grave. Now I’m passing it to you.’
Gaddis had known for some time that the offer was coming. And now he had it. He had what he had been waiting for. He was the perfect conduit for the story, just as Charlotte had been the perfect vessel for Crane. And yet he felt cornered.
‘Look,’ Wilkinson picked his words carefully, ‘of course it’s not all about revenge. I believe that Platov is dangerous. I think he’s bad for Russia, I think he’s bad for Britain. The world, as they say, would be a very much better place without that monster in the Kremlin. So I’m asking you to tell the truth about the so-called saviour of modern Russia. I’m asking you to reveal that by 1992 Sergei Platov had been spotted by our good friend Mr Yeltsin’ — Wilkinson tapped the biography — ‘and had developed some serious political ambitions. He went full bore into politics and was fast-tracked to the very top. So, the last thing he needed was men such as Fyodor Tretiak, myself and Eddie Crane roaming the quiet countryside telling anybody who would listen that the risen star of Russian politics, the man anointed by Yeltsin, had tried to defect to the West during the death spasms of the Cold War.’
‘How does Brennan fit into all this?’ Gaddis asked.
‘Oh well, that’s a lovely sub-plot.’ Wilkinson almost laughed. ‘Platov hired some of his pals in organized crime to bump me off. I’d developed some fairly unsavoury contacts in St Petersburg over the years, and those same cronies were able to make it look as though I’d been on the take. It was ingenious, simple and effective. I give him credit for that. But Brennan, rather than listening to my pleas of innocence, believed the rumours and cut me loose. Unlike Eddie Crane, who got a brand-new identity and a slot in a nursing home, I was offered no protection, no assistance what soever from SIS. As far as the Office was concerned, I was a traitor to the cause.’
‘Hence New Zealand,’ said Gaddis.
Wilkinson nodded. ‘Hence the reason I live at the side of a hill, surrounded by sheep, looking over my shoulder, wondering when one of Sergei’s henchmen is going to come round the corner.’
‘And why has Brennan never been touched?’
Wilkinson shrugged. ‘Must have come to some sort of an arrangement with Platov.’
‘What kind of arrangement?’
‘Search me.’ Wilkinson looked genuinely baffled. ‘John was always very good at looking after his own interests.’
Gaddis shifted the direction of the conversation. ‘Do you have evidence of the meeting in the safe house? A recording of Platov attempting to defect? Is that the smoking gun, or did Brennan destroy everything?’
‘Not quite everything.’ Wilkinson was clearly pleased that Gaddis had arrived at the heart of the matter. ‘You said earlier that you had found nothing in the files.’
‘That’s right. Nothing. Nothing at all.’
Wilkinson looked at his hands. ‘What’s the lovely Eric Morecambe line? “You’re playing the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order”?’
‘Something like that.’ Gaddis wondered what he was implying.
‘What’s your poison?’ Wilkinson asked abruptly. ‘High time I bought us a round of drinks.’
‘Can you wait two minutes while I go to the bathroom?’ Gaddis didn’t want to lose the table if Wilkinson went to the bar. ‘When I get back, you can put them in the right order.’
