They must have come to some kind of arrangement. Tretiak and Wilkinson were both killed. Crane knew about Dresden as well, which explains why Brennan had him sent to St Mary’s in ’92. You’ve never heard this?’
‘Of course I’ve never heard it.’ Tanya was such an accomplished liar that he could not tell whether or not her reaction was genuine. ‘Do you have any idea what it would do to Platov’s career if this became public knowledge?’
‘No shit.’ Gaddis went for another cigarette and was about to press the lighter when Tanya said: ‘Is there any chance you could not smoke? Just for five minutes? I feel like I’m driving an ashtray.’
He replaced the cigarette. ‘So why has MI6 kept it a secret? Surely once Platov rose through the ranks, his file was opened up and his defection became common know ledge? Surely Brennan or one of his predecessors must have reported what happened?’
Tanya shook her head. ‘It doesn’t work like that.’
‘How does it work?’
‘Number one, exposing Platov would have exposed ATTILA, and the Office has never wanted anybody knowing that we had another Cambridge spy on the books. It took thirty years to get our reputation back. We’re not about to throw it away again.’
‘But Eddie was a bloody hero. He was the greatest double agent in the history of Anglo-Russian espionage. Isn’t that a triumph to be celebrated?’
‘Maybe.’ Tanya was a member of the new generation of twenty-first-century spies: post-Cold War, post-9/11, post-ideological. Her attachment to the old ways was by no means an article of faith. ‘But where’s the proof of Platov’s defection? It would just be our word against his. The Russians would write it off as crude propaganda, an influence operation.’
Gaddis was silenced. ‘Influence operation.’ The secret language of the secret world. He closed the window and found himself thinking about Min. He had wondered, in the depths of the Viennese night, whether he would ever see his daughter again.
‘Wilkinson told me that he interviewed Platov in a safe house in Berlin in the presence of John Brennan.’
‘So?’
‘He said the safe house was “wired up”. Does that mean he would have recorded the interview? Videotaped it?’
‘Recorded certainly.’ Tanya was clearly intrigued. ‘I don’t know about video. If it was the late eighties, perhaps. The technology would certainly have existed to use a concealed camera in low light.’
‘What would have happened to those tapes after the interview? Would they be kept in a vault at Vauxhall Cross?’
‘Doubtful. If the tape ever made it to London in a diplomatic bag, it would have been destroyed by Brennan.’
Gaddis twisted in his seat. He was on to something.
‘There are tapes in the boxes Holly gave me, tapes in Katya’s files.’ His voice had quickened. ‘What if the interview is on one of them?’
‘Keep talking.’
‘Before I went to the bathroom, Wilkinson quoted Morecambe and Wise at me. You’re playing the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order. I thought it was just a joke at first, but he said that I wasn’t looking at the files in the right way. What if Katya’s material isn’t a paper trail? What if it’s something else? What if the smoking gun is a tape?’
Tanya braked suddenly as a van swerved out in front of her. Gaddis swore, because his nerves were still on edge. The car beside them sounded its horn and he looked across, lip-reading the driver shouting out in anger.
‘I’m not sure I follow you,’ she said.
‘What if Wilkinson made a copy of the tape and sent it to Katya along with the other documents, hoping that she would make use of it?’
‘That’s a big “if”.’
‘But just say she did.’
‘Then the Russians have probably stolen it. Or it’s lost. Or they’ve lobbed a Molotov Cocktail through your sitting-room window and burned down your house.’
Gaddis ignored the joke. ‘Let’s go there now,’ he said. ‘Let’s go to my house and go through the boxes.’
‘Not going to happen.’
‘Why?’
‘Come on, Sam. It would be suicidal. Doronin gave your description to the FSB. They’re probably sitting outside your house as we speak. The minute you show your face in Shepherd’s Bush, they’ll come for you.’
‘Then why are we on the M25 heading back into London?’
‘Because I’m taking you to a safe house.’
Gaddis felt an odd mixture of relief and despair: relief that Tanya was guaranteeing him some measure of safety; despair that he was being forced out of his home.
‘How dangerous can it be?’ he said. ‘Let’s just poke our heads round the door. I need a change of clothes anyway. All my papers are there, my stuff for work. It would take five minutes.’
‘No,’ Tanya replied.
‘So that’s it?’ He felt a sudden anger, confronted by the stark limits which would now be imposed on his life. ‘I can’t go home? That’s the directive from MI6?’
‘It’s not coming from MI6.’
‘Then who’s it coming from?’
‘Me.’
He had been on the point of extracting a cigarette, on instinct, but again returned the packet to his coat.
‘ You?’
‘Brennan wants you out of the picture.’ Tanya almost spat the words, as if she could not believe what she was saying. ‘You’re a thorn in his side.’ Gaddis could see the conflict in her, the doubt. ‘I’m going to take care of you for a few days. I’m worried that it might have been Brennan who tipped the Russians off about Wilkinson. And I didn’t apply for this job so that my boss could betray his own people to the Kremlin and put innocent lives at risk.’
There was a moment in which he thought that she was playing him again. Her words sounded heartfelt, but the stark admission was so out of character that he wondered if the whole thing was rehearsed. It was a habit Gaddis had developed, a safety valve to avoid being manipulated. But when he took her hand in his, he knew that Tanya was utterly serious. He could sense it by the way she glanced at him quickly and then looked away. She squeezed his hand back, then released it, the reassurance of a friend. Was her theory possible? It was an astonishing accusation, yet Brennan had every motive to betray Wilkinson. Gaddis turned around and looked behind his chair. Dry cleaning was folded on the back seat of the Renault, a tin of Roses chocolates spilled open on the floor. This was her vehicle, her operation. He thought of Eva, of football boots and children.
‘Let’s go to my house,’ he said, as if they were starting the conversation all over again.
‘You’re not listening to me. It’s pointless going after the tape. Your story will never come out. It will never be allowed to come out. The government will slap a D notice on the Crane book before you’ve typed the opening paragraph.’
Gaddis seized on this.
‘I don’t believe that. I think that’s just a line you’re feeding yourself to get out of what you know we have to do. Take a look at Platov, Tanya. Isn’t it time for a change of scene in Moscow, a change of personnel?’ She shook her head, but it was the reflex of a bureaucrat. ‘Look at his record. Platov has taken Russia to within a few years of outright totalitarianism. Innocent civilians are being killed to justify illegal wars overseas. Exiles are murdered in foreign cities to silence dissent. Newspaper editors with the nerve to challenge the orthodoxy are left to die in hospital. Fuck the D Notice. If we can get hold of that tape and get it broadcast, even if it’s just on the Internet, we have the power to put that scumbag out of office.’
Tanya was gliding past a convertible MG.
‘Five minutes,’ she said. ‘That’s it. That all I’m giving you. Five minutes.’
