‘It doesn’t work, you know,’ he said, arriving at the words slowly.
‘What doesn’t work?’
A pleasure boat, packed with partygoers, was sliding on the current. ‘The Platov deal. What happens when he’s eventually turfed out of the Kremlin? What happens when he loses power? That’s when they’ll come for me.’
‘I doubt it.’ He was glad that there was conviction in her voice. ‘Platov is a tsar. You should know that. He’ll reign for as long as his health holds up. Why else did he change the constitution? Twenty years? Thirty? There’ll be no change in Moscow during that time. And afterwards, he’ll have his reputation to think about. He’ll know that the tape still has the potential to obliterate his political legacy. He wouldn’t be dumb enough to come after you.’
It was a comforting thesis and Gaddis was too worn out to argue against it. He reached into his coat and took out one of the disks. It was a final demonstration of his faith in Tanya Acocella.
‘I want you to keep one of these,’ he said. ‘Keep it safe.’
‘I will.’ She put the disk in her pocket but did not thank him for his act of trust. Instead, she produced a document of her own, a clipping from a daily newspaper. It was folded twice and slightly torn in one corner.
‘Did you see The Times?’
Gaddis shook his head. ‘Been a bit busy with one thing and another. House arrest until three o’clock this afternoon, then I had to run some errands.’
She smiled. ‘Take a look.’
Gaddis took the clipping and opened it up. It was a page from Saturday’s Times. There was a circle of red biro halfway down. BIRTHS, MARRIAGES AND DEATHS NEAME, Thomas Brian, died peacefully on 26 October aged 91 after a short illness. Private funeral service at Magdalen Hill Cemetery, Alresford Rd. Family flowers only. Any donations to Marie Curie Nurses.
He passed it back to her.
‘Where have I seen that before?’
‘You don’t believe it?’
‘I don’t believe it.’
There was no more left to be said. It was time to go back to Holly. He wanted to telephone Natasha in Spain. He longed to speak to Min.
‘We’ll call you into the Office in a couple of days,’ Tanya said. ‘There’s the money to sort out.’
‘Ah yes, the money.’
He went towards her and they embraced. Tanya squeezed his chest, as if reluctant to let go.
‘Thank you,’ he said, kissing her on the cheek. Her skin was soft and cold. ‘For everything. Without you-’
‘Don’t mention it,’ she said, already turning to leave. ‘I’ll see you in a few days.’
Chapter 59
On the orders of Sir John Brennan, Thomas Neame had been moved from the Meredith nursing home on the outskirts of Winchester to a retirement village in the suburbs of Stoke-on-Trent. His name had been changed to Douglas Garside. He was denied Internet access and a mobile phone. He was largely confined to a two-bedroom house which he was obliged to share with a fifty-eight-year-old Scottish spinster named Kirsty who cooked his meals, washed his clothes and occasionally drove him to the local multiplex to watch whatever costume drama or arthouse hit had managed to force its way north from London.
Kirsty was ex-MI5. She had been told all about Peter, all about the trouble in Winchester, and had given Edward Crane so little wriggle room that, on at least two occasions, he had thrown her ‘filthy bloody food’ across the kitchen in a blizzard of crockery and threatened to ‘burn her in her bed’ if she didn’t stop ‘watching him like a hawk twenty-five hours a day’. Three times, he had rung Brennan direct (from a phone box near the local fish-and- chip shop) to complain that he was being treated ‘worse than a member of the ANC on Robben Island’. Crane entertained frequent dreams of making a break for Hull by taxi, where he knew that he could catch an overnight ferry to Rotterdam. It would have been a glorious homage to his old pal Guy Burgess, but SIS had left him with no passport, no money, and with no contact details for any of the agents — many of them long since dead — whom ATTILA had known during the Cold War.
‘You just cause too much trouble, Eddie,’ Brennan had explained. ‘We can’t afford to take the risk.’
It was a BBC documentary about the Taleban that had caught Crane’s eye. The modern fanatic, he learned, had resorted to Moscow Rules. Your average Islamist freedom fighter didn’t use a mobile phone, didn’t communicate by email. They were too easy to trace. Instead, he had adopted more old-fashioned means: the letter, the dead drop, the go-between. All of which gave Edward Crane an idea.
He had read several articles in the broadsheet press by a stalwart of Radio 4’s evening schedules whose views on everything from Sergei Platov to Salman Rushdie were taken as gospel by a spellbound and grateful British public. The broadcaster in question had written books, appeared on talk shows, even lectured at the Smithsonian.
Edward Crane decided to write him a letter. Sir, As an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge, in the 1930s, I studied alongside a man named Edward Crane who was a close friend of Guy Burgess and who later worked at Bletchley Park with John Cairncross. For reasons which are perhaps obvious, I can say very little more at this stage. Only that Edward Crane became a close personal friend throughout my life, to the extent that he gave me a copy of his memoirs shortly before his death. These memoirs reveal that Crane was a Soviet asset every bit as successful as his more celebrated comrades in the so-called ‘Ring of Five’. I would like to find a publisher for Crane’s memoirs. A broadcaster and historian of your standing, prepared both to validate the book’s authenticity and to make its existence known to a wider public, would be of incalculable value. I do hope you will consider visiting me in Stoke, where alas I am confined to barracks in a retirement village, battling on at the age of 92. Should you wish to contact me, please send a message to the PO Box listed above. Since this letter is personal to you, I would be grateful if you would respect its confidentiality. Yours sincerely Douglas Garside
Crane sealed the envelope, found a stamp in the kitchen, walked out into a damp Staffordshire morning and dropped the letter into a post box less than a hundred metres from his front door.
Kirsty didn’t see a thing.
