‘Mother’s name was Katya. She was working on a history of the KGB when-’
‘Katya Levette!’ Charlotte reacted with mock horror. She shook her head and said: ‘Commonly regarded as the world’s worst hack.’
‘How so?’
She waved a hand in front of her face. ‘Not worth going into. Our paths crossed once or twice. She was constantly telling me how wonderful I was, but clearly looking for a quid pro quo. I think her daughter sent me an email after she died, saying how much Katya had admired something I’d written about Chechnya. Then offered me a load of old junk from her research papers.’
‘A load of old junk,’ Gaddis repeated, with a thump of despair.
‘Well, not junk.’ Charlotte looked sheepish. ‘Actually, I palmed her off on you. Told her to give them to a proper historian.’
‘Gee thanks.’
‘And now she’s been in touch?’
Gaddis nodded. ‘She didn’t mention that I was getting them second-hand. She told me how much she’d admired my Guardian article about Sergei Platov.’
Paul smothered a laugh. ‘Flattery will get you everywhere.’
Gaddis poured himself a glass of wine. Skirting around the dirty weekend in Chelsea, he explained that Holly had come to Daunt Books and offered him the KGB material on a plate.
‘A beautiful girl turns up like that, willing to hand over several hundred documents about Soviet intelligence, you don’t exactly turn a blind eye. How was I to know Katya was a fruitcake?’
‘Oh, she’s beautiful, is she?’ Charlotte asked, animated by the opportunity to tease him. ‘You never said.’
‘Holly is very beautiful.’
‘And she came to the launch? How come I didn’t meet her?’
‘Probably because you’d told her to get stuffed,’ Paul replied.
Charlotte laughed and picked at a chunk of candle wax on the table. ‘And now this girl is texting you at half- past ten at night. Is there something you’re not telling the group, Doctor Gaddis? Does Miss Levette need a bedtime story?’
Gaddis took a Camel from her open packet. ‘You’re lucky,’ he said, deliberately changing the subject. ‘Right now I’d sell my grandchildren for your Cambridge story.’ He lit the cigarette from the candle. Paul grimaced and waved a hand in front of his face, saying: ‘Christ, not you as well.’
‘The sixth man? Why?’
‘Financial problems.’ Gaddis made a gesture with upturned hands. ‘Nothing new.’
There was a strange kind of shame in being broke at forty-three. How had it come to this? He took the cigarette smoke deep into his lungs and exhaled at the ceiling.
Charlotte frowned. ‘Alimony? Is the fragrant Natasha turning out to be not quite as fragrant as we thought?’
Paul poured water into a cafetiere of coffee and kept his counsel.
‘Tax bill. School fees. Debts,’ Gaddis replied. ‘I need to raise about twenty-five grand. Had lunch with my agent today. He says the only hope I have of working my way out of the situation is to write a hack job about Soviet intelligence. Doesn’t even have to be under my own name. So a sixth Cambridge spy is the perfect story. In fact, I’ll steal it off you. Bury you under the floorboards to get my hands on it.’
Charlotte looked genuinely concerned. ‘You don’t have to steal it,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you co-write a book with me? We can even use some of Katya’s magic files.’ Paul grinned. ‘Seriously. I’ll break the Cambridge story as an exclusive, but after that someone will want a book. You’d be perfect. I don’t have the patience to sit down and compose two hundred thousand words about a piece I’ve already written. I’ll want to move on to the next thing. But you could put ATTILA in context. You could add all the juice and flavour. Nobody knows more about Russia than you do.’
Gaddis declined outright. It would feel wrong to be piggybacking on Charlotte’s triumph. She was drunk and the booze was making promises she might not, in the cold light of morning, be willing to keep. Yet she persisted.
‘Sleep on it,’ she said. ‘Christ, sleep on it while you’re sleeping with Holly Levette.’ Paul plunged the coffee. ‘I’d love to work with you. It would be an honour. And it sounds as though it will get you out of a nasty situation.’
Gaddis slotted his mobile phone back in his jacket pocket and took Charlotte’s hand. ‘It’s an idea,’ he said. ‘No more than that. You’re incredibly kind. But let’s talk more in the morning.’
‘No. Let’s talk now.’ She wouldn’t let pride and British etiquette stand in the way of a good idea. Polly, her buckled legs seized by arthritis, came hobbling into the kitchen and lay at her feet. Charlotte leaned over and fed a piece of bread into her mouth, saying: ‘Do you think it’s a good idea, Pol?’ in a voice for a child. ‘ I think it’s a good idea.’
‘OK, OK.’ Gaddis’s hands were again raised, this time in mock surrender. ‘I’ll think about it.’
Charlotte looked relieved. ‘Well, thank God for that. Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth.’ She stood and found three cups for the coffee.
‘And you say ATTILA is presumed dead?’ It was a first, conscious signal of Gaddis’s desire to explore things further.
‘Yes. But this Neame guy is slippery. Says he hasn’t seen Crane for over ten years. I’m not sure I believe that.’
‘Crane? That’s his name?’
‘Edward Anthony Crane. Wrote everything down in a document which Neame claims to have partially destroyed. Says the document also contained a revelation that would “rock London and Moscow to their foundations”.’
‘You mean over and above the fact that our government has covered up the existence of a sixth Cambridge spy?’
‘Over and above even that, yes.’
Gaddis was staring at her, staring at Paul, trying to work out if Charlotte was being duped. It was too good to be true and, at the same time, impossible to ignore. ‘And he hasn’t said what this scandal involved?’
Charlotte shook her head. ‘No. Not yet. But Thomas was Crane’s confessor. His best friend. He knows everything. And he’s willing to spill his guts before he pops his clogs.’
‘Not to mix metaphors,’ Paul muttered.
‘They would both be about the same age,’ Charlotte continued. ‘Ninety, ninety-one. Contemporaries at Cambridge. What do you think are the chances of both of them still being alive?’
‘Slim,’ Gaddis replied.
Chapter 5
Alexander Grek had been watching the Berg residence for five hours. He had witnessed Paul returning from work with two bulging Waitrose carrier bags at 18.45. While smoking a cigarette at 19.12, he had seen Charlotte at the first-floor window, recently emerged from a bath or shower, closing a set of curtains after securing a towel around her chest. Just after eight o’clock, an unidentified white male — early forties, dishevelled hair, carrying two bottles of red wine — had entered the property. Grek assumed that the man was coming for supper.
The unidentified male left the building at 23.21. He was approximately six feet tall, about eighty kilos, wearing a corduroy jacket with a leather satchel slung over his shoulder. The man shook Paul Berg’s hand in the doorway of the house. He then embraced and kissed Berg’s wife, Charlotte. Grek had a long-lens camera on the passenger seat of his car, but was unable to take a photograph of the man’s face because he walked backwards from the front door, moving towards the street while continuing to converse with his hosts. Having reached the pavement, the subject walked in the direction of Hampstead High Street, away from Grek’s vehicle.
Grek decided to stretch his legs. He followed the subject the length of Pilgrim’s Lane and observed him hailing
