Foxx stayed up long enough to greet Jordan. Put on a brave enough face to bring a twinkle to his wicked blue eyes.
When she’d gone upstairs, Jordan said, “Why you haven’t married that woman is beyond me.”
Troy said, “Let’s not waste any time. If I could answer that question I would, but I can’t and won’t. Perhaps being married already might have something to do with it?”
“I forget.”
“And I can’t. So …”
“So?”
“So, where were you?”
Jordan shrugged off his coat and sank into the sofa, not bothering to conceal the weariness showing on his face.
“I got pulled. Right at the last minute. I was actually heading for the door when I got the call. I was told someone else was taking over. And that was it. Bill Blaine’s name wasn’t mentioned till later.”
“You didn’t ask why?”
“Freddie, that may be the way the Yard works, but when Five ask you to do something you don’t ask questions. If you do, you will rapidly get a reputation as a troublemaker. Now, we’re both well aware that that has long been your reputation, but I’d hate it to be mine. Sending Bill made sense in its way. The Cambridge lot were his subject. He’d known half of them when he was up at Cambridge himself. I talked to him about his time at Cambridge on odd occasions. He was usually little short of vitriolic. Self-deluding, fair-weather Marxists—or if he was feeling particularly bilious, a bunch of poofs who were in it for the rough trade.”
“Well, that certainly describes Guy.”
“How long did Bill get with him?
“No more than a couple of hours. He was shot as we were walking back to the embassy.”
“Five were very keen that Bill talk to him. Did he comment?”
“No.”
“Did he leave any notes?”
“Probably not. He’d not have talked to Guy with a pencil in his hand, surely? If it had been me, I would have left the note-taking until I got back to my hotel—but Blaine didn’t get the chance.”
“So Five have nothing?”
“Not a sausage.”
“Except … they have you.”
“Jordan, I don’t think I’m following you here.”
“It looks like a set-up.”
“I suppose it does. Guy pretends he wants to come home, Five send out Blaine for the de-brief. The KGB bump him off, and Bob’s your uncle. One British agent less.”
“Quite.”
“But for the fact that I was expecting you—not Bill Blaine. Nobody was expecting Bill Blaine.”
“I honestly don’t know what to make of that. Nevertheless, from Five’s point of view you are the last person to see Blaine alive, and apart from him, the last person to talk to Burgess. That alone makes you interesting to Five. The fact that Burgess seems to have asked for you in the first place makes you little short of fascinating.”
“Why do I suddenly think ‘fascinating’ is a sinister description?”
“Because they want to talk to you. I think that was predictable. What’s not predictable is that they have brought Jim Westcott out of retirement to question you.”
Westcott was MI5’s master of interrogation—the spycatcher. The man they’d set to tackle the atom spies, Klaus Fuchs and Karel Szabo.
“Good God. Are they really barking so loudly up the wrong tree?”
“Yes. They’ll approach you tomorrow. Try to act surprised. In the meantime, don’t expect to see any mention of this in the papers. It’s had a D-notice slapped on it.”
“For Christ’s sake, why?”
“It’s a no-win situation. Vienna has only just stabilised, and I hate to say this, but hanging on to the pretence of its neutrality matters more than the life of one secret agent. If we hit one of theirs we get into a tit-for-tat battle. If we complain at diplomatic level we expose the illusion. The government is far more concerned to keep doors open than go back to what we had up till ‘55. We need a neutral ground where we can do business with the Russians. Somewhere a damn sight less hostile than Berlin. Of course we could snatch Burgess—”
“No, you couldn’t. He’s back in Moscow.”
“But that would be to rack up the tension … and besides, I doubt very much whether anyone really wants him back after this.”
“So, the KGB get away with murder?”
“More or less. The investigation will be left to the Vienna police, who, needless to say, will not solve the death of one innocent English cultural attaché … victim of a mindless killing … and blah de blah.”
“It could have been you.”
“Yep. Someone just walked over my grave.”
“Are you familiar with that English turn of phrase which has always had me slightly baffled. I can think of no equivalence in Russian. ‘Consume one’s own smoke’?”
“Very English, very public school, and very accurate. That’s exactly what we’re being told to do. Let one of our own be murdered and just stick out the stiff upper lip.”
All this required thought and booze.
Troy looked under the sink for the bottle of green-tinted Polish vodka he kept for Kolankiewicz’s visits.
Jordan knocked his shot back in one and held out his glass for another.
“Just the ticket, eh?”
Troy said, “How much do your people know?”
“About what?”
“Let’s start with my wife.”
“Nothing to my knowledge. Jim may well ask you, after all, her absence is a little odd. But you married an American. I’d stick to that line if I were you.”
“And the Czechs?”
Jordan sniffed at his vodka, leaned back, and breathed out at length. This was tricky for both of them. In 1948, four Czech assassins had come for Troy. They were the four principal reasons he had stuck Méret Voytek on a cross-channel ferry. Troy had killed them all and called on Jordan to clean up the mess. Ever since, they had had an implicit understanding never to mention the incident again. Jordan had disposed of the bodies. Troy had no idea how, and until now had never thought he would need to ask.
“No, they don’t know about that either. I’m often amazed at how many secrets one can keep in an organisation dedicated to prising them open. As far as Five is concerned, I took out the Czechs. I even went to the trouble of splashing a bit of blood around in that crummy hotel they’d been staying at in Fulham.”
“And the cleaners?”
“They were my men. Loyalty still counted for something in those days. One is dead now, the other two have retired. There’s nothing to worry about there.”
“I’d love to have nothing to worry about, but I’m not sure I share your confidence.”
“As I said. Try to act surprised.”
Troy paused.
“Jordan—why kill Blaine? It doesn’t make sense. The Russians must have approved of Burgess going to Vienna or he would not have been there. Hence, they knew the possibilities, and may even have engineered the one that came to pass. But why shoot the messenger?”
“Perhaps because they could?”
“They could have taken Blaine out on the streets of London. A discreet hit as he crossed some London park at dusk. A bullet to the head and pop! They didn’t need to lure him or you to Vienna with Burgess as bait.”
“I don’t know, but it does seem as though Burgess asking to come home was just a ploy.”
“I talked to Guy. Far, far longer than Blaine did. It wasn’t a ploy. He wasn’t faking. He wanted to come home and he believed Moscow would let him.”
“And how believable is that? Does Moscow show mercy?”
“Dunno. Perhaps he picked up too many young comrades in too many public lavatories. Perhaps they feared he’d corrupt an entire generation and destroy the Soviet Union more effectively than an atom bomb. Gives a whole new meaning to ‘Fat Man’ and ‘Little Boy,’ doesn’t it? Or it may be Guy just bored them, and they’d sooner he bored us back here.”
Jordan sniggered at the truth of this. Knocked back his second shot.
“As I said, Freddie. Just try to act surprised.”