The Moscow Option

The café was only marginally warmer than it had been outside: the mist of customers’ breath mingled with cigarette smoke and steam from bowls of shchi. A transistor radio in the window blared out a folk song from Radio Moscow, the balalaikas keening like a troop of drunken bagpipers.

We walked through the tables looking for a free one. The furniture was in the same style as the architecture: a hideous hand-me-down modernism that, at a guess, was an attempt to look Scandinavian. They couldn’t even get that right.

There were three tables with good views of the door, and after considering all three I indicated to Sarah that we should take the smallest of them. It was the furthest from any other occupied tables, and it was positioned in a small alcove of its own, meaning it was not in direct light and we could talk more easily.

We installed ourselves in the metal chairs, and looked around. There was a queue at the counter, but just as I was about to get back up again and join it a waitress passed by and I managed to attract her attention with an ingratiating smile. I ordered a couple of coffees and sigarety to secure our presence for a while, and as she sidled away I turned to Sarah. She was running her fingers through her crop of hair, her large blue eyes surveying the room, and for a moment she looked as she had done the first evening I’d met her: poised, elegant and without a care in the world. But then I saw that her jaw muscles were making tiny fluttering movements beneath her cheeks, and realized she was trying to stop her teeth chattering.

‘It’s good to see you again,’ I said quietly, keeping my tone neutral for the benefit of anyone watching us. ‘I’m sorry things turned out this way. I should never have let you come with me to the embassy in Rome.’

She looked across at me and gave a wan smile. ‘You couldn’t have stopped me.’

I looked into her eyes and saw fatigue and fear in them, but also pride. Well, she had outrun me at the start, surprising me. Then again, she was a good ten years younger than me, so perhaps she was the better field agent and I was teaching her to suck eggs. She had certainly proven herself in Italy. But I was getting ahead of myself. I’d known her barely a week, and most of that had been while we’d been confined together by her husband and his neo-fascist chums.

She nodded fractionally, and my exhilaration that she had recovered was replaced by a surge of fury. I reached out to touch her hand, then thought better of it. The last thing she needed was people touching her. I didn’t want to know what they had done to her, exactly, and I certainly wasn’t going to ask her to recount it and live through it again here. But they would pay for it. Yuri would pay.

The waitress returned and placed two mugs of black coffee, a packet of twenty cigarettes and a box of matches on the table. I paid her with some of the coins I’d stolen, and she wandered off again.

I picked up the matchbox, which showed a picture of the Urals and proclaimed ‘The best holiday is a motor tour’. I lit a cigarette for Sarah and then one for me, and inhaled it deeply into my lungs, luxuriating in the rich glow. After a few puffs, I took a sip of the coffee. It tasted pretty foul, but it was hot and strong, and this cheered me a little, because I knew that within half an hour the caffeine would be making its way through my bloodstream along with the nicotine, and would boost my energy and alertness. I had a feeling I was going to need it.

Yuri would have ordered his men to comb through the neighbourhoods surrounding Detsky Mir looking for us. He would be utterly furious that we had managed to get away. Had he told the Supreme Command yet, I wondered? Perhaps not, in the hope he could find us before anyone became too concerned. But every minute we were free was a problem for him, because eventually he would have to tell them, and Brezhnev would hit the roof.

At any rate, we were now the target of a manhunt, and it would only become more concerted as time went on and more resources were allocated to it. Once they found Vladimir, some of the men would be even hungrier to find us, because there was nothing like personal motive to get the blood pumping, as Vladimir had discovered to his cost. But perhaps there was a silver lining. If we managed to survive long enough, they might have to draw men from the nuclear strike preparations . . . No, that was probably too hopeful. The opposite might happen instead: Yuri and the others would realize I was planning to try to stop a strike from going ahead, and Brezhnev might start thinking about ordering it now to retain the chance of taking the West by surprise. By fleeing, I may have hastened the very event I was trying to stop.

I put my mug down and looked up at her. ‘I’m afraid not. We’ve got a crisis on our hands. Brezhnev and his generals believe the West is on the verge of launching a nuclear attack, and they’re preparing to get their retaliation in first.’

She stared at me for a moment, then took a long drag of her cigarette as she considered it.

I quickly told her about the meeting in the bunker, the B-52s, the mustard gas ‘attack’ and the U-boat. She took it all in, listening intently, her jaw tight but her expression giving nothing away.

‘They haven’t used it, and won’t. They think it would warn the Americans they’re on to them, and lose them a strategic advantage.’

‘I don’t know that, either,’ I admitted. ‘But it might not be long enough.’

‘I see.’ She stubbed out the remains of her cigarette in the ashtray and straightened her back in her chair. ‘So what are we going to do? Do I take it that the case between your feet contains Yuri’s documents from the meeting, and that you hope they offer firm enough evidence about what’s going on to stop this?’

She was a pretty cool customer, I reckoned. I could see how she’d survived the last six months.

‘Yes. But it depends on precisely what’s in the case. Do you think you can hold the fort for a few minutes while I find a lavatory to look through it?’

I nodded, giving her as encouraging a smile as I could muster, and then stood up and looked around for the toilets.

I found a room at the back of the establishment, and after waiting for it to be vacated, jumped in and locked myself in it. It was a tiny space, with a lavatory almost pressed against the basin and a grimy window looking out onto the street, protected by a thin grey cotton curtain.

I seated myself on the lavatory and looked at the case: to my horror, I saw there was a combination on it. I pressed the clasps down, hoping that Yuri had not thought to lock it for a ride to the Lubyanka, but it was fastened shut.

I sat there for a moment, wondering how the hell I was going to break a six-digit combination, when I looked at the numbers again. The left-hand numbers read 446, and the right-hand ones read 683. But the 3 was not completely in the frame, the tip of the 2 below it just visible. Could it be that that frame was a little looser than the others, and that in all the movement since I’d grabbed the case in the car, that number had simply shifted? I looked at the numbers again, and saw a pattern: 44 66 8 . . . 8? I clicked the 3 several notches around until the 8 was in the window, then pressed the clasps again.

Thank Christ. Resting inside, snug as a bug, were several sheaves of documents, most of them stapled together. I took the lot out and started sifting through them. The first was a threat assessment, prepared by the GRU, on the supposed attacks on the bases in Estonia and the B-52 flights. It looked to have been written by Yuri, and reiterated a lot of information I’d heard in the meeting. There were maps of the affected bases and a report on the incidents there.

The index case was a 22-year-old lieutenant who had come back from one of the observation posts on the shoreline of the Paldiski base, having picked up an ‘amber lump’ that had washed ashore. Within a few hours he and some of his colleagues had experienced violent and repeated vomiting, and he and one other had lost their sight. A detailed chemical analysis concluded that the chemical involved was an unknown form of mustard gas that was much more viscous and powerful than had been seen previously.

The bloody fools. It fitted Winterlost precisely: these were classic mustard gas symptoms, and it had been contracted by touch to boot. It had to be a leak from the U-boat. I turned to the conclusion of the threat assessment:

There can be little doubt that the West has launched a chemical attack on our bases in Paldiski and Hiiumaa. The purpose seems to be to put them out of action in advance of a surprise nuclear strike. As we have repeatedly advised – see the attached document, which we regard as still current – this is in keeping with our estimate of strategy among some of the hardline generals in the West. Our assessment at this time is that we must consider launching a nuclear strike, perhaps within the next twelve hours.

Within that timeframe, we will endeavour to bring to the Defence Council a clearer intelligence picture of the West’s actions. Time is against us, but we have agents in place in the West who may have access to information about nuclear intentions and planning. Agents HOLA and ERIC have provided us with a very clear picture of the British development of nuclear research since the Great Patriotic War. We have issued secured instructions through our residency in London to initiate immediate contact with both.

Our colleagues in HVA also have an agent, MICHELLE, who is providing them with material from the British Director for Operations of NATO’s General Secretariat. We also have several agents with experience of nuclear strategy in the West close at hand in Moscow, notably SONNY and INDEPENDENT, and it may be worth questioning them both for further insight into the strategies and actions we now face.

The document was undated, but must have been written within the last few hours. My codename was INDEPENDENT, and SONNY was Philby. But who the hell were HOLA, ERIC and MICHELLE? Cairncross and Nunn May had both confessed, so none could be them. It seemed the GRU had at least two more doubles who remained unexposed in Britain and had been in operation since the war. The HVA was East German military intelligence, and if they had direct access to NATO’s British Director for Operations, the Soviets should know pretty much everything Britain and NATO were planning in this field and be able to act accordingly.

But they didn’t know everything. They hadn’t seemed to know about Corsham, for instance, and they had brought me in to ask me very specific questions they didn’t have the answers to. Some of this was doubtless down to the time factor. It could take an entire day to set up a meet with an agent – more if they couldn’t get away from the office for a convincing reason. So even if ERIC, HOLA or MICHELLE knew about an impending attack, they might not be able to send any information about it in time. And while Brezhnev and his generals were waiting to hear from these agents, the pressure would be increasing. On top of which, even if reports came in from all three agents that they were not aware of any plan to attack, that wouldn’t mean Brezhnev would discount the possibility altogether – very few people were informed of such things. Indeed, if you did know about an impending nuclear attack, you would probably be at a PYTHON site by now.

In all, this read more like a political statement, perhaps to position the GRU in Brezhnev’s eyes as a better source of information than the KGB. And they certainly seemed like very impressive sources, but in this case, probably not highly placed enough to help.

The next file was the strategy document Yuri had referred to. It had been written by Ivashutin, the GRU head, and was dated 28 August 1964. It was five years old, but still seemed to represent their current thinking. I flicked through it, and my eyes lit on a paragraph towards the end:

The imperialist states are engaged in preparations for a war that is not at all defensive. The substance of their military doctrine is a surprise nuclear attack and offensive war against the socialist countries.

My jaw clenched. I had told them this wasn’t the case. In the winter of ’63, Sasha and I had met at the cemetery in Southgate and I’d sat on a cold bench for hours while he’d questioned me about Britain’s stance towards nuclear war. I’d been in Prague when the Cuban crisis had happened, and had been unable to leave the British embassy compound, so I’d spent most of the fortnight in the basement with Templeton and the rest of the staff, monitoring the radio and the cable traffic. But once the crisis was over, Moscow had wanted to know what the thinking was in Whitehall in the aftermath. I explained that from everything I’d heard, the Cuban crisis had scared the living shit out of everyone, even more than Berlin had back in ’48, when Brooman-White had told me we were heading for atomic war. I had told Sasha in very clear terms that the last thing anyone in Whitehall or Washington wanted was to start a nuclear war. There might be a couple of cigar-chewing American generals who occasionally brought up the idea of a surprise attack, but there was no chance of such a thing ever happening and it was certainly not the West’s military doctrine – far from it, in fact.

So either Sasha had failed to pass this information on to Moscow, or he had and it had been discounted. This was very worrying, because if this was the principle they were working from it meant they were much more likely to launch a strike. They had discovered what they thought were preparations for a surprise nuclear attack, confirming their mistaken view that the West was intent on making such a move. Brezhnev had already responded by priming missiles. He hadn’t yet put them in the air, but if this was the way they viewed the West’s intentions, how long would it be before he did? Glancing through the document, it seemed Ivashutin was ignoring the fact that retaliating before missiles landed in the Soviet Union wasn’t going to stop them landing. Or was he? I turned back and started reading from the top. As I did, I realized that the Soviets had a completely different conception of nuclear war than had ever been imagined in the West:

Strategic operations of nuclear forces will be characterized by unprecedented spatial expanse. They will instantaneously cover all continents of the earth, all main islands, straits, canals, i.e. the entire territory of the countries-participants of the aggressive coalition. However, the main events in all probability will take place in the Northern hemisphere – in Europe, North America and Asia. In this hemisphere, essentially all the countries, including the neutral countries, will suffer destructive consequences of massive nuclear strikes to some extent . . .

After that cheerful preamble, Ivashutin veered into bizarre territory. While he admitted it would be impossible to defeat the West in a conventional war because of their greater military might on the ground, he then argued that nuclear weapons, far from being a deterrent, in fact provided the Soviet Union with the opportunity to reverse this situation:

With the nuclear weapons currently available in the world, one can turn up the earth itself, move mountains and splash the oceans out of their shores. Therefore, the tasks that can be set for the strategic operations of nuclear forces in response to an aggression are realistic, even though they may seem to be based on fantasy.

The most aggressive forces of imperialism engaged in preparing a thermonuclear war against the socialist countries count on their ability to effectively paralyse socialist countries with an unexpected first strike, destroy their nuclear forces and thus achieve a victory while having saved their countries from a devastating retaliatory nuclear strike. However, there are very few people left – even among the most rabid imperialist military – who would believe in the feasibility of such plans. In the age of an unprecedented development of electronics, it is impossible to achieve a genuine surprise strike. The very first signs of the beginning of a nuclear attack by the imperialist aggressor will be discovered, which would give sufficient grounds for launching a retaliatory strike . . .

It made no sense. On the one hand, Ivashutin claimed the West had a military doctrine of a surprise attack. On the other, he thought such an attack would always be detected early enough, and that very few in the West now believed it even possible. Either way, the situation he outlined was very close to the one they now faced, which I supposed was why they had included it in the papers for the Defence Council.

Let us suppose that the United States is actually capable of destroying the Soviet Union several times over. Does this mean any kind of military superiority? No, it does not, because the USSR possesses such strategic capabilities that ensure a complete destruction of the United States in the second strike. It does not matter how many times over the United States will be destroyed. One does not kill a dead person twice or three times.

He seemed to be arguing that a nuclear attack would destroy the West, but have little impact on the Soviet Union. That was familiar enough propaganda – the kind that could be read on a regular basis in Pravda – but this was a top secret document by the head of military intelligence about their strategy for nuclear war. If they couldn’t even be honest with themselves in such a document, there was a serious problem. Was it that they couldn’t admit the reality of the situation to each other for political reasons – or were they completely blinded to it? Worryingly, it seemed like the latter was a real possibility. Discussing the West’s military bases, Ivashutin concluded that the major ones were in the US, Britain and West Germany, and most could be destroyed by medium-range missiles and bombers in a first launch.

But it was a section titled ‘Ground Forces’ Operations’ that stopped me in my tracks. It discussed ground troops overtaking enemy territory and ‘cleaning up the consequences’ of nuclear strikes.

Nuclear weapons will incur damage on troops by shock wave, light emission and radioactive emission. These are very dangerous factors, and it is very difficult to protect oneself against them. Still, we can soften the impact of nuclear explosions. Tanks, trenches, dugouts, shelters, natural hills – all give good protective cover from the shock wave; they will substantially reduce the damage. One has to protect the eyes as well as face and open parts of the body from light emission. Each soldier should have dark eyeglasses, or a mask with dark glasses, and gloves. A closed car, tank, gas mask or an overcoat will help protect from the penetrating radiation . . .

‘Zones of contamination’ would be passed through by helicopters and ‘protected vehicles’ such as tanks, while ‘clearing teams’ would put out fires with explosions and cover radioactive ground with new soil. Roads would be cleaned with the help of ‘street-sweeping vehicles operated from a distance’.

It seemed the Soviets believed that they could carry out an extensive ground war following a nuclear one. This was delusional. They wouldn’t be able to send troops through the West after nuclear missiles had been launched, whatever precautions they took – there was no protection at all from that kind of contamination and I knew it, having read the Strath Report and several like it. As well as watching the footage, I’d also read the reports from Grapple X, our hydrogen bomb test on Christmas Island. At the flashpoint, the servicemen kneeling twenty miles from ‘Ground Zero’ facing in the other direction had been able to see the bones in their hands through their masks. The resulting fireball had been over a mile across, and the blast had scorched much of the island’s earth. In a nuclear war, most of Europe would be a ‘zone of contamination’.

I closed the folder and took a breath. I walked over to the tiny window and pulled the curtain back a fraction, but it didn’t seem to look out onto anything, and the window was glued shut.

I had also pulled back the curtain on the world, I felt. The last few months had shown me more vividly than I could ever have imagined what a sham my life had been – now I saw that the whole of the Cold War was a hollow little sham. The document was amateurish, childish propaganda – and so misguided it was terrifying. The head of Soviet military intelligence thought they could send troops across Western Europe following a series of nuclear strikes, wearing dark glasses and with their coats wrapped tightly to avoid the contamination, the way ahead cleared by street-sweepers. Either he was lying to his superiors or, more likely, he was completely deluded. They could have recruited an army of double agents and they still wouldn’t have a clue. Service, Five and JIC reports might get things wrong, but they were never worded in terms of outright propaganda. It was obvious that the Russians simply didn’t have the mindset to understand the West. And that made the risk of war greater.

The fact that there could be no victors in nuclear conflict was the deterrent on which the whole fragile situation rested. But it seemed that some in the Soviet Supreme Command thought they could win such a war. If Ivashutin convinced Brezhnev of his view, he would be much more likely to order a strike.

Whitehall’s INVALUABLE exercise had, in fact, been completely worthless. The scenario we had gone through had envisioned a gradual build-up of tensions, whereby a hawkish faction in Moscow had taken control of the Politburo and had begun flexing their muscles. But this was a much more frightening prospect: a war resulting from misunderstanding, acted on too rapidly.

Yuri had estimated the Soviets might have to consider launching a strike within twelve hours. But how many hours ago had he estimated that? In the meeting, he’d said that the B-52s would enter Soviet airspace at around noon if they continued on their current path. But would they continue on that path, or would they break off and circle again, as they had done earlier? How close would they have to get to Soviet airspace before Brezhnev acted? An hour away, perhaps two? Or would he hold off a little longer than that?

I stuffed the papers back into the case, locked it, and flushed the toilet. I walked over to the mirror and examined myself quickly. I didn’t look too bad, considering. My suit was ragged and half-sodden, there were dark circles under my eyes and I was as pale as a monk, but none of these things were all that out of place in this part of the world.

I filled the basin with lukewarm water and splashed my face thoroughly, thinking through the take from the case. The documents proved what was happening – but they had to reach the right hands. I needed to find a way to show this material to the Service at once, because they could get into direct signals with London through their protected line, and from there someone could contact the Americans and get them to bring down their planes before it was too late.

But neither Sarah nor I could go anywhere near the embassy, because the moment we entered the gates we would be on British territory, and they would find a way to take us back to London and no doubt lock us both up. The embassy was also guarded, as all embassies were here, by Soviet sentries. I picked up the case and unlocked the door.

I nodded. ‘More than enough. But I can’t go to the embassy because they won’t trust me, so I want to bring them here. I think we’ll have more leverage.’

‘Yes, but I think I’ll be able to get through quicker – nothing like the name of a traitor to prick up the ears. Do you mind?’

She didn’t exactly smile, but her cheeks dimpled fractionally. ‘Staying in the warm while you risk being picked up on the streets? I think I can manage.’

‘Watch for any new arrivals, and get out fast if you see anything suspicious. If you’re not here when I get back, I’ll meet you at the main entrance to Detsky Mir in an hour from now.’ I thought it unlikely that Yuri would think to send men back there. ‘Agreed?’

Without thinking about it, I leaned down and kissed her lightly on the forehead. She didn’t flinch, and I kept my lips there for a moment longer.

I walked quickly through the streets, scanning the corners and the reflections for signs of uniforms or anyone tailing me. At one point I saw a traffic policeman and crossed the road to avoid him, but otherwise the way was clear. The first public telephone I came across was broken, the guts of the box ripped out – so much for the crime-free Soviet Union. But there was another one further down the same street, and it was in working order. Having read the instructions, I shoved a fifteen kopek coin in the slot and picked up the receiver, then dialled 09 for information: Moscow’s only telephone directory is held at the Central Post Office and that was in Kirov Street, a long way away. I asked the operator for the number for the British embassy, presuming that the authorities couldn’t be monitoring every call in the city immediately. After a few seconds I was given the number, and I dialled it. It rang for some time, but finally someone picked up.

Nasal quality to the voice. Didn’t sound promising. One of those officious bastards.

He got me to repeat the question as the line wasn’t clear. There was a moment’s hesitation, then: ‘I’m sorry. Mr Fletcher-Peck is no longer with us.’

Of course he bloody wasn’t. The very fact that I knew he was the Head of Station meant they’d posted him back to London. Sasha hadn’t got round to asking me the names of all known British agents, but no doubt he would have done soon enough. I’d effectively ruined Fletcher-Peck’s career. Well, it wasn’t the first, and now wasn’t the time for a fit of remorse.

‘I’m sorry, sir, he’s not in the office at present. If you would like to leave a message, I’m sure—’

He paused, and I held my tongue. He would know my name, and I had to hope that he couldn’t risk ignoring it.

‘Yes, but do it from a telephone well outside the embassy, and please do it quickly. I’ll wait here.’

I gave the number and replaced the receiver, then started pacing around the cubicle. There was no sign of any of Yuri’s men. Yet. How long would it be before the message went out to every militsiya patrol in the city? All calls to and from the British embassy would be monitored as a matter of course, but the Station staff knew that and so rarely said anything of great interest on the internal lines. Under normal circumstances, the transcripts of the embassy’s calls probably went to the KGB only once a week, if that, unless something notable was said. But if Yuri had thought on his feet, and if the bureaucratic wheels had turned fast enough, he would have given the order to report all calls to and from the British embassy at once. He could already have given that order, in fact, as they might be listening out for when the Service scrambled its staff to the cellars and senior officers said goodbye to their families.

And so I’d told them to call back from an outside telephone. In Prague, we’d always had at least one car on standby for situations such as this, and several call-boxes within a five-minute drive that we felt were not listened to with the same level of scrutiny as those inside the embassy. The calculation was that all telephones in the Soviet Union were likely to be bugged, but that it was impossible for the authorities to monitor every single conversation in the hope of catching discussions between foreign agents.

I couldn’t remember precisely what Moscow Station’s telephone set-up was, and wished I’d asked Sarah before leaving the café. I hoped the call-boxes they used weren’t too far away, because I couldn’t wait here long: every moment that passed gave Yuri more time to think of his next move. One of those would probably be to step up surveillance on the British embassy and follow anyone who left it, so if they didn’t take the usual precautions they might find themselves tailed by a KGB or GRU car, which would then radio back which call-box to listen in on, and then the whole thing would be . . .

I looked up to see an elderly woman in a plastic coat glaring at me. She had already taken her money out of her purse and was trying to push past me. I told her I was still using the telephone, and she gave me a dirty look.

‘I don’t have all day to wait for you to receive calls, young man,’ she said, and made to step into the cubicle. I stepped in front of her, barring her from reaching it.

Thank God. It was a new voice – a little lower in register, a little more authoritative. I nodded at the old woman, indicating that the call was the one I’d been expecting, and she stepped back, muttering curses before turning on her heel and stomping off down the street.

‘Hello,’ I said into the receiver. ‘Thank you for calling back. Are you outside the embassy?’

‘Victory,’ I said. ‘It’s a café on Neglinnaya. In half an hour’s time. Tell him to come alone.’

I walked quickly back to the café, watching for tails again but also weighing up the response I’d received. I had taken a risk using the word ‘Clasp’. It was the codeword to signify ‘the beginning of a period of tension’, usually meaning an impending nuclear strike. Or at least it had been the codeword – they might well have changed it now. It was risky, because I wanted the British to be aware that the Soviets were considering a strike so they could defuse the situation, not so they could panic and launch their own strike as a result.

But, I decided, that was rather unlikely. They would need a lot more than a phone call. During the Cuban crisis, when the Service had been running Penkovsky, Moscow Station had given him an emergency signal to use if the Soviets were about to launch a strike. He was to call a special number, breathe down the phone three times, hang up, and then do the same a minute later. The missile crisis passed, but a few weeks after it Cowell received just such a call. Protocol dictated he alert London at once, but he guessed that Penkovsky had been caught and had revealed the code under torture, so did not press the panic button.

This had comforted me in one way, but troubled me in another. The Service had done its best to avoid discussing Penkovsky’s motives ever since, preferring to focus on the fact that he had helped avoid the Cuban crisis escalating to war. The possibility that the Soviets had genuinely wanted to provoke an attack from the West had been quickly discounted – it was suicidal. It seemed to me that what had most likely happened was that Penkovsky had told his interrogators that the code meant something much less dangerous. But he had known full well what it meant. In which case, he had decided that the world should end in nuclear war, and had tried to trigger it. If he had made the call a couple of weeks earlier, or made it to someone more jittery than Cowell, it might have happened.

I reached the Victory, but realized the moment I came through the door that something was wrong. The table where I’d left Sarah was vacant. She’d gone.

‘Over here, darling!’ said a lilting voice in Russian, and I turned towards it and saw her seated at a table on the other side of the room. I rushed over.

‘Nothing. This table just came free and I realized it offered better protection from the windows.’ I looked across and saw that she was right: it still had a view of the door, but we couldn’t be seen from the street as easily. I slid into the seat next to her, my heart still thumping in my chest from the thought that she’d been captured.

I told her about the phone call, and asked her if anything had happened since I’d left. She gestured to a group of labourers who had come in and taken over a nearby table, and I looked them over. Their overalls were smeared with tar, their hands were deeply calloused and several had missing or rotten teeth. They were genuine. Apart from them, there were fifteen other people in the café: two were waitresses and the rest customers. There were probably a couple of people in the kitchen making the food, so that would make it seventeen. Of the remaining customers, five were grouped together and had the ragged jumpers, scarves and slightly febrile, furtive look of students. The remainder were either sitting alone or in pairs, including a couple of old men hunched over a chessboard. All had been here when I’d left, so were nothing to worry about. It was anyone new that we had to watch now: the Head of Station might think to send an advance party. They might want to try to use the occasion to kidnap us – especially me. The chance to capture a double didn’t come along too often.

I looked around, searching for an alternative exit. I couldn’t see one: no staircase or back door, and the window in the lavatory had been glued shut. There would probably be a way out to the street through the kitchen, but finding that in an emergency might prove difficult. I took a sip of coffee, my hand shaking a little as I lifted the mug. Had I just made a dreadful miscalculation in telling the Service where to find us? I wasn’t sure if it would be much more preferable to being captured by Yuri’s men.

A sound came from somewhere to the right, and I jerked my head towards it. It was laughter: one of the students had told a joke and it had gone down especially well. Several of the young men were throwing their heads back in hysterics, but on the other side of the table sat a slender girl smoking a cigarette, with just the hint of a smile on her lips. She was pretty: a brunette in a dark sweater and pleated woollen skirt. The young man who had told the joke kept glancing in her direction, but I could have told him he was wasting his time, because she didn’t like him, she liked his friend with the beard. As if sensing my appraisal, the girl suddenly swept a coil of hair back with her fingers, turned her head and stared straight at me, exhaling smoke through her mouth. I turned away at once, and caught Sarah looking at me.

The music that had been playing on the radio halted abruptly and a news bulletin began, discussing plans for the centenary of Lenin’s birth the following year. I’d seen posters for it plastered along the street, proclaiming ‘Lenin is more alive than the living’.

It was nine o’clock on the morning of Monday, 27 October, which made sense – my reckoning had been that it was the 25th, but I must have underestimated the time they’d held me under with drugs when I’d first arrived. It gave me a perverse pleasure that I’d been within two days of being right, despite them checking everything around me every evening to make sure I didn’t make notches in the wall with my fingernails or any such thing. I’d counted in my head, and I’d kept it intact enough to count nearly six months to within two days.

I listened to the bulletin as I continued to survey the room, waiting for any mention of fugitive prisoners wanted for murder. None came, but I didn’t think that would be the case with the next bulletin – if we were still alive by then. The programme wound up and another began, about a factory that was producing more than its quota purely because of its passionate devotion to Lenin.

‘They didn’t mention the attacks,’ Sarah said. ‘I suppose that’s to be expected?’

I nodded. ‘It’s not like Cuba, when it was the Americans who accused them of mischief. This time it’s they who have detected a threat, or think they have, and their reaction will be the utmost secrecy.’

‘Presumably that means there won’t be any warning, either. If they decide to strike, they’ll just do it.’

‘What if he doesn’t come?’ she said. ‘The Head of Station, I mean. What’s our contingency, our “Plan B”?’

‘He’ll come,’ I said, with more conviction than I felt. What if he decided it was a trap? I ran my hands across the surface of the table. Resting on top of it were salt and pepper pots, a dirty glass that looked like it still had a couple of inches of vodka left in it, presumably missed while clearing up the previous night, and a chipped ceramic ashtray. I picked up the latter and placed it on a free table nearby, because I knew the KGB installed microphones in such things. It was unlikely they’d done it here, because they were usually interested in restaurants frequented by foreigners, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I tipped ash into my empty coffee cup instead.

‘The Americans are out,’ I said. ‘They’d simply call the Service and ask for their take on it. The same goes for all the other Western embassies.’

‘So it’s this or bust? What about one of the Eastern embassies – China, for instance?’

‘No, I think that’s more likely to exacerbate the situation, don’t you? The only thing I can think of is that we could try to get to the U-boat ourselves. If we could prove that the injuries at these bases are the result of a leak rather than an attack, it might be enough for them to draw back. If we got hold of the leaking canisters, we could get the Soviet embassy on the islands to signal Moscow that the mustard gas in them is of the same type that was found in the “attacks” on their bases fifty miles away.’

She looked unconvinced, as well she might. It wasn’t just a matter of getting out of the country: we probably wouldn’t even be able to get out of the city. We were being hunted by an army of dedicated professionals: I knew from reviewing the Penkovsky operation that Moscow was home to around 20,000 KGB agents.

‘Not sure. But I think if we can show that at least one part of this is an accident, it will make them reconsider. I think it’s the combination of the events in Estonia and the B-52 flights that has persuaded them they’re about to be attacked. Take away the attacks on the bases and the B-52s aren’t enough to wage a nuclear war over. The Americans may be playing silly buggers or trying to scare them, but by themselves the B-52s aren’t conclusive.’

‘That’s not a contingency plan,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s a prayer.’

I didn’t reply. Behind the counter, one of the waitresses swore at a battered coffee-maker. My eyes flicked back and forth between the occupants of the room and the door, a dilapidated affair with paint sticking to the frame and a small bell that tinkled whenever anyone passed through it. It rang again now, and a girl emerged through the smoke and the steam. She was young, pretty and very Russian-looking, but that didn’t mean much: you could find Russian-looking girls in England, and if you did you might decide to recruit one of them and post her here. But the girl immediately greeted the older woman behind the counter with a cheery wave and removed her quilted jacket, beneath which was a waitress’s uniform.

It must now be at least twenty minutes since I’d made the call to the embassy. Twenty minutes more of Brezhnev and the others discussing warhead positions . . .

I looked up at Sarah, and realized my knees were jerking under the table. I willed them to stop.

One of the waitresses, an older woman in a stained red smock with a kerchief wrapped around her head, waddled out from the kitchen with a tray of pastries and placed it in front of the chess-players, who set aside their game to tuck in. After months of eating nothing but thin soup and seeing nobody but my guards, there was something so normal about the scene that I suddenly wondered if I hadn’t imagined the whole thing: the bunker, Brezhnev and all the rest. The normality was also depressing. This was daily life in Moscow, and it looked to be roughly akin to Britain during the Blitz. How could I have ever believed this was a society that could bring equality to all, to the extent that I’d chosen to betray my own country? Freedom, justice, peace for mankind . . . Why had I fallen for such a ludicrous fairy tale?

Anna, of course. She’d fed me with the romantic dash of Lermontov and Tolstoy and the rest of them – all perfect fodder for a twenty year old – before filling my head with Marx, presenting his nonsense in the same beguiling manner. I had a sudden memory of her leaning over my hospital bed, administering a poultice to the wound around my left kidney. I had winced as she’d pressed it, and she’d smiled down at me with those beautiful flashing eyes of hers.

‘My poor boy,’ she had said, her lips forming a pout of mocking, flirtatious concern.

I replayed the memory in my mind, as I had done many times before, narrowing it down to that one despicable gesture. Because my wound had been a real one, and it had been deliberately administered in order to have me hospitalized so that she could nurse me back to health and, while doing so, seduce me, after which she had been prepared to feign her own death – all of it part of Yuri’s elaborate honey-trap operation to recruit me. And that moment, that gesture, showed a level of calculation and, I thought, pleasure in deceiving me that turned my insides out.

‘My poor boy.’ What a sick, twisted little bitch she had been. But what a sad, pathetic waste my life had been as a result of falling for her . . .

The bell above the door tinkled again, and I looked up to see a man in a long grey coat walk in, struggling with a large umbrella. I turned away, for one horrid moment thinking it might be Smale from London, but then my skin started prickling and I glanced back and the horror returned because, of course, it was him.

Christ, that was all we needed. I forced myself to keep my gaze on him. He’d managed to collapse the umbrella and was shaking excess rain from his coat as though trying to rid himself of fleas. He hadn’t changed an iota since I’d last seen him, filling in forms for me to travel to Rome in that cramped corner office of his on the third floor of Century House.

He began making his way past tables towards the counter, and I almost expected someone to stop him, he looked so out of place. It was around freezing outside, but I knew from the amount of times the milk had curdled in my cell that it had been an Indian summer and nobody else in here was really dressed for winter – a few wore coats, but most were in jumpers and jackets. Smale, on the other hand, was wearing a fur-collared overcoat, scarf, gloves and an astrakhan ushanka, looking like an extra from Doctor Zhivago. Except that everything else about him said England: the bony little nose, the fish eyes, the pursed lips – even the way he was walking, his back a little hunched. He belonged in that building in London and nowhere else, and I was having trouble absorbing the information.

He was now hovering near the counter like a constipated pheasant – he had seen us but was pretending he hadn’t, and seemed to be deciding what to do next. After a few moments, he joined the queue and I ground my teeth as I watched him progress with it, his podgy pink face almost painfully conspicuous among the sallow complexions of the other customers. He reached the front of the line and ordered, and I held my breath, watching for a flicker of suspicion on the face of the waitress, but she didn’t flinch, turning to the samovar without hesitating. She poured tea into a glass, and he took it, paid and then shuffled into the centre of the room with his tray, ostensibly looking for somewhere to sit. With studied carelessness, he stumbled into the back of the chair opposite mine, and asked loudly if it was free. His Russian was good: perhaps he’d gone for a top-up with Craddock.

I nodded. He thanked me and placed the tray on the table, then removed his coat and draped it over the back of the chair. I clenched my jaw at the sight of his beautifully starched white shirt, which looked like Jermyn Street, and which he had paired with a dark-green woollen tie. I suppose I should have been grateful it wasn’t an Old Harrovian one and that he hadn’t brought a bowler hat with him for good measure. He seated himself, crossing his legs. He had surprisingly small feet, which were squeezed into a pair of Lobb brogues. Most of the shoes worn by those around us didn’t even have complete soles. I resolved to ignore all this, and just hope to God that anyone whose eyes rested on him would presume he was a Party official or one of the nachalstvo slumming it for breakfast. He’d managed to get past the waitress, at least. Oblivious to my concerns, he lifted the glass of tea by one of its filigreed handles and took a dainty sip of the hot liquid, staring sightlessly ahead.

He’d come and, it seemed, he’d come alone. It was possible he had people stationed outside, but nobody else had entered the place after him and I didn’t think anyone who had come in earlier was a likely candidate. So I should have been pleased. But Smale presented greater problems than I’d anticipated, and it wasn’t just his damn-fool get-up. He’d always disliked me, even when I’d been the Service’s boy wonder. Now he would hate me, and with good reason. It wasn’t just that I was a traitor to my country: it was personal.

They had sent him out here under diplomatic cover even though I was in Moscow and knew he was with the Service. It wasn’t overly dangerous, as the Russians were perfectly capable of working out for themselves who the spooks were in the embassies, just as the Service knew who the Soviets had under diplomatic cover in London. But, if asked, I would nevertheless have been able to run my finger down the list of embassy staff and pick him out as a Service officer. That was why London had sent Fletcher-Peck out earlier: he’d not been around in Blake or Philby’s time. He had also been bloody useless, which was perhaps why they had decided not to use that tactic again. This time Smale had drawn the short straw, and if I knew Smale that was going to rankle, because quite apart from the unpleasant sensation of knowing his cover could be blown at any moment by a double agent, it meant he was never going to be Chief: he had already been marked down as disposable, and therefore a second-tier officer at best.

In short, he was probably one of the last people in the world who would be prepared to give me a fair hearing. But I had to get him to listen to me, and act on what I had to say, and I had to do it very fast.

‘Thank you for coming,’ I said. ‘I know it can’t have been an easy—’

‘Was he worth it, then?’ he broke in. He was talking to Sarah. ‘Quite a price to pay for a quick roll in the hay, isn’t it? Or were you betraying us earlier, as well?’

Christ. It was worse than I’d feared. He clearly had no idea what had happened.

‘I’ve never betrayed anyone,’ Sarah said quietly, but Smale wasn’t listening, having turned back to me.

‘And it’s a bit early for vodka, isn’t it?’ He waved at the glass on the table and wrinkled his nose. ‘You all seem to drink yourselves to death. Pity you can’t take the honourable way out and just use a gun.’

‘That’s not my—’ I stopped myself. There was no time to get into arguments. I had to placate him. His opening comments indicated a level of contempt that I recognized as not just personal but institutional. It looked like the initial shock had worn off and I had become a totemic name in the Service, along with Philby and the rest.

‘Did you come alone?’ I asked him, and he looked at me as though I had accused him of stealing the bishop’s silverware.

‘Of course. That was your stipulation.’ He wanted to nail down that he was the honourable professional and I the dirty Commie traitor. If it made him feel better, fine. Anything was fine, as long as I could get him to listen.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I appreciate it. I would like your help, Hugh. I really need you to get a message to London.’

‘So you’re the new hotline,’ he hissed, ‘is that it?’ He sat back again, pinching his nose. ‘I must say, it’s very poor form bandying emergency phrases around – even for you. Did you really expect us to take that at face value? In case you’ve forgotten, you no longer work for us – in fact, never did. And now we’ll have to alter all our security procedures. Perhaps that was the idea. Very tedious. We’ve only just changed all the dead drops as a result of your coming over. The boys weren’t too pleased with me for ordering it, as it wasn’t so long ago they had to do the same on account of Blake.’

He was talking at rather than to me. His eyes were locked in a supercilious gaze, and I suddenly realized what was happening. He thought this was a showdown. I’d seen something similar in the aftermath of Philby’s defection in ’63: almost everyone in the Service who had crossed paths with him had developed the notion that they had played a crucial role in the saga. Sometimes this took the form that they had ‘just known something wasn’t right about him all along’; but a few had been deluded enough to think that they’d presented some sort of threat to Philby.

Smale had either forgotten or was ignorant of the fact that I had simply asked to meet the Head of Station here, and that until he’d walked through the door I hadn’t known that was him. He had persuaded himself I’d asked him here because of our scant history together in the same office. And so he was listening to me with one ear, trying to figure out what angle I was playing, while in his mind’s eye he was already drafting the chapter of his memoirs in which he related the curious incident in which he met the notorious double agent Paul Dark and his accomplice Sarah Severn in a seedy Moscow café.

I had to try another tack quickly. I had to find a way to make him see he wasn’t going to live to write My Life in Shadows: Three Decades as an Arse-Licking Creep in British Intelligence if he didn’t respond to what I was telling him.

‘Please listen,’ I said, as quietly and gently as I could – manners maketh man. ‘This is a genuine emergency, and it’s not about me. Yes, I made the dreadful mistake of working for the Soviets, and I wish I could turn back time and put it right. But, unfortunately, I can’t. I’m very sorry for it, but I know that no apology or confession I make can change anything. Some mistakes can’t be undone. But Sarah has never worked for the Russians, and I no longer am – in fact, they’re chasing both our hides right now.’ I saw the open disbelief on his face, and pressed on. ‘But none of that matters. I’m talking about the possibility of very imminent nuclear war, so please can you try to set aside your understandable animosity towards me for a couple of minutes and hear me out?’

His face was very still apart from his eyes, which flickered all over me. Contemplating, weighing. The hubbub around us seemed to be in another room as I focused on him, and he on me. Finally, he cocked his head a little to one side.

‘It’s unfortunate for rather a lot of people that you can’t turn back the clock,’ he said, and gave his tea a ceremonial stir. ‘Because quite a few of them are dead. But I’m listening.’

I leaned down and picked up the attaché case. ‘The documents in here will provide all the evidence you need,’ I said. I briefly explained about the mustard gas in the U-boat, the ‘attacks’ on the bases, the B-52 flights, the Soviets’ interpretation of these events and Brezhnev’s order to prime the missiles. Then I took out Yuri’s threat assessment and placed it on the table.

He read it in silence, then pushed it back towards me and took another sip of tea.

‘Very interesting,’ he said grandly. ‘Thank you for showing it to me. But you must understand, old chap, that I can’t simply take all of this on trust. This document could be forged. We will have to analyse it, verify it against other sources and so on.’

‘There’s no time for any of that,’ I said. ‘And there’s no earthly reason for me to be forging Soviet military documents. You need to get a message to London now so we can stop this going any further. Is Osborne still in charge?’

‘Whoever is Chief needs to get the PM to call Brezhnev and tell him there’s been a serious misunderstanding and there’s no attack being planned. And the PM also needs to get hold of Nixon, sharpish, and get those B-52s back on the ground.’

He pinched at the knee of one of his trouser legs, realigning the crease so it was perfectly vertical, then looked up, his face expressionless. ‘But you do see that I can’t just take your word for all this, even if you have brought along a briefcase filled with official-looking documents. I couldn’t take anyone’s word for it, but especially not yours. You must see that?’

Sarah nodded towards the window. A car had pulled up outside the café: a yellow Volga with a blue stripe along the side and a siren on its roof. Militsiya. A man in a blue coat and a peaked cap was at the wheel, and another was in the passenger seat.

Had someone in the café reported our presence? The waitress? The old man by the door? They couldn’t have followed either of us here – too much time had elapsed since Detsky Mir and my phone call if that had been the case. But had enough time elapsed for Yuri to have issued an alert to all available patrols with Sarah’s and my descriptions? Despite its name the militsiya were simply the civilian police, subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Could the wheels of Soviet bureaucracy be so well oiled that the GRU had reached every patrol car in the city since I’d killed Vladimir?

The car had parked, and the man on the passenger side had got out and begun walking towards the door of the café. Were they after us, or simply stopping for a bite to eat on their patrol?

I made a decision. I replaced Yuri’s document in the case and closed it, then picked a fork off the table and held it stiff behind my back.

I handed the case to Sarah. ‘Take this and follow me,’ I said. I pushed my chair back, then lowered my head and walked smartly towards the counter, because that was the opposite of what he would expect and then I could get a blow in, surprise him, and double-back. The man pushed his way through the doors and strode confidently in to the café. As he approached the counter, our eyes met for a moment. My fingers tightened around the shaft of the fork as I prepared for the flicker of interest that would mean I would strike, but he ignored me and strode past, his eyes on the menu pinned up on a board behind the counter.

He wasn’t here for us. I looked back at Smale, who was leaning forward but hadn’t moved from the table. He didn’t believe me about the threat, that much was clear, and I didn’t know what it would take to budge him, if anything. It might take hours, but another militsiya man could walk in here in five minutes, and the next one might be looking for us, or be armed with our descriptions. And even if Smale did listen, there was no way to be certain he would get the message to the Americans fast enough to avert disaster.

The moments were slipping away. I had no idea how others might act, or how quickly. But the only other option was to try to get to Åland, to try to get back to the U-boat and prove that the leak originated from the canisters in it. That would mean finding a way past the roadblocks, and all the men hunting us . . . but it also meant we would have less interference. The only interference we would face would be from those trying to kill us.

Sarah was looking at me, waiting to see what I was up to. All my instincts were telling me we would be wasting time staying here trying to convince Smale any further. Sometimes all we have is our instincts. I motioned to Sarah and pushed open the door, stepping into the street and walking briskly, not looking back. The rain was coming down hard, and I stepped around a puddle in front of the Volga.

The man behind the wheel looked up in surprise as we reached him. As Sarah opened the rear door, I opened the one on the passenger side, leapt into the seat and placed the fork to his groin.