Royston’s car swung into the filling-station at the foot of the 20-storey glass and concrete office block which houses the international headquarters of the British Secret Intelligence Service. A ramp led downwards to a steel shutter which rose at his approach. Royston parked neatly and extinguished his lights. He walked to the lift, inserted a thin plastic wafer into a slot, and pressed the ‘call’ button. After a short wait the doors opened to reveal two hefty young men in shirtsleeves, pistols tightly holstered to their thighs.
They went all the way to the top floor. Once out of the lift it looked like any other big modern office; the clatter of typewriters mingled with the sound of people talking on the phone and the distant clang of filing-cabinets. C’s personal assistant was a pot-plant enthusiast, and there was a long-running office scandal about the personnel director’s relationship with one of the typists.
Today, however, Royston was not in tune with his surroundings. He never looked forward to his weekly meeting with ‘the chief’ and this morning his nerves were on edge from lack of sleep. One topic of conversation was going to dominate the discussion: Bucharensky. Royston had problems enough at the moment. Kyril was a subject he would have liked to avoid.
The first thing he noticed was a dead fish lying on a wooden board which took up the place of honour in the middle of C’s desk.
As he advanced slowly into the huge room familiar details began to impinge on him: the thick curtains at the windows, threaded with fine-spun lead wire, the lush carpet, the smooth air of affluence which pervaded the place like a perfume. Above C’s head was the usual picture of the Queen. And in front of him was the fish. C raised his eyes from it when Royston had almost reached the outer edge of the desk and treated him to a long, appraising look before returning his attention to the platter in front of him. For several moments no one spoke.
‘In Russia they have a saying…’
C’s voice, addressed to the fish rather than to Royston, was quiet and cold. Royston could not imagine it ever being raised for any purpose whatsoever, a voice devoid of passion, love or anger.
‘… “A fish rots from the head”.’
C picked up a knife which Royston had not noticed before and delicately prised away the upturned eye of the fish. Royston watched as if hypnotised. With the sharp point of the knife C eased a tiny black spot from the eye and held it aloft. A man standing behind his left shoulder bent down and took the knife from C’s hand, the black spot still impaled on its tip, before quickly leaving the room. C raised his eyes to Royston’s face.
‘The pupil. A microdot.’
C turned his head slightly.
‘Take it away.’
Another man standing behind C’s right shoulder removed the board and the remains of the fish, leaving Royston alone in the room with C.
‘I want to talk to you about that microdot. But not now. Let them decode it. Deal first with the routine material.’ Royston spoke from memory. In the next half-hour the two men covered a lot of ground without taking notes or referring to files. At last there came a break in the conversation and C sat back.
‘Bucharensky.’
Royston stiffened. ‘Anything new?’
‘You received the report from Head of Athens Station?’
Royston nodded. He could still recall the sense of crippling unreality which came over him as he took the phone from Sculby’s hand and learned of Kyril’s defection from Moscow Centre. That was days ago. A lot had happened since then, including Athens.
‘What will they do with the boy?’
‘We shall pay for his hospitalisation, then get rid of him.’
Royston shook his head. It scared him to think that other such ‘heroes’ might lurk in the lower echelons of the Service, perhaps in his own Station. Trying to take Bucharensky alone was on a par with inviting a rattlesnake into bed with you.
‘The Soviets would still have us believe that he is defecting, but if that is so a pretty mess he is making of it.’
‘But if the boy scared him off…’
‘Perhaps. Do you think he is coming here?’
Royston made a face. ‘I haven’t thought about it,’ he lied. ‘I only know what I’ve read on the float, a Russian defector wants to make contact with us. But he doesn’t have to come to London to do that.’
C sighed. ‘I’m sorry about this,’ he said. ‘But the remainder of this conversation is to be most secret. I’m going to have to ask you to sign a minute in blank.’ Seeing Royston twist uncomfortably in his chair he added, ‘If it’s any consolation to you, I had to sign just such a minute myself in Number Ten last week. I know how it rankles.’
Royston nodded reluctantly.
‘Of course.’
C was about to speak again when the door opened without a preparatory knock. Royston recognised the man who earlier had taken the knife from C’s hand. He advanced to the desk and laid a single sheet of paper before C, who scanned it rapidly before once more raising his eyes to Royston’s face. He waited until the messenger had left the room, then said: ‘You are aware, I think, that some years ago we managed to install a certain source in Moscow Centre?’
Royston knew a moment of utter stillness, a second of silence and light.
‘Source Nidus.’
‘Correct. Nidus and I have certain common interests, the nature of which I need not trouble you with. As a result a contact was made of a… personal kind. No one else is aware of his true identity. We speak to each other quite outside the usual channels of communication. You follow me?’
Royston nodded.
‘The microdot you saw earlier, of which this…’ C tapped the sheet of paper, ‘… is a translation, emanated with Nidus. His message puts beyond doubt certain matters of which I have felt reasonably sure for some time now.’
C sat forward and folded his hands on the desk in front of him.
‘Bucharensky is going round all his old haunts. He’s on the money-route. He is supposed to be carrying as bait a plan which is tied into world terrorism, including the IRA. In London, where he was once stationed, he formed an attachment with a girl called Vera Bradfield. And he’s coming here. He’s coming here soon.’
C hesitated.
‘I have given instructions to Brussels station that if Kyril is indeed on the money-route, and turns up there, they are to leave him strictly alone. It would be a waste of time when he is so obviously coming to London. As head of London Station the principal burden of neutralising Bucharensky therefore now falls on you. I have to tell you – although I regret it greatly – that Bucharensky is, or may be, aware of Nidus’s true identity.’
Royston swallowed. The silence unreeled itself like empty tape off a spool. It seemed to him that in a weird kind of way the whole of his life had hitherto been but a preparation, a training, for this moment and what was to follow.
C’s cold eyes bored into Royston’s own.
‘You realise what the Planners will tell me.’
‘Oh yes,’ Royston replied gloomily. ‘If we can’t catch him damned quickly we’ll have to kill him, won’t we. Otherwise we run the risk that the KGB might kidnap him, and then they’ll know Nidus, too.’
‘You had better make a start with the Bradfield woman. Bucharensky has another lead, however. Somebody called Loshkevoi is apparently…’
Royston looked up sharply.
‘Say again?’
‘Loshkevoi. The name is familiar to you?’
Royston felt like a traveller who desperately wants to reach some high ground in order to learn where he is.
‘It’s difficult. I don’t want to burden you… We have an operation at the moment involving Loshkevoi.’ Royston hesitated, conscious of C’s narrow gaze. Both men were well aware that C could not compel Royston to disclose operational details against his will. The ‘need to know’ convention had long ago become an inflexible rule.
‘Five are receiving unofficial assistance…’
C held up his hand and Royston was inwardly relieved; almost by accident he had found the right words to curb the chief’s curiosity.
‘Tell me only this. Does the operation involve keeping this Loshkevoi under constant saturation surveillance?’
‘It does.’
‘So that if Bucharensky comes into close proximity with him we may reasonably suppose that we shall know it?’
‘Beyond doubt.’
C nodded curtly. ‘Good. Because I tell you this, Royston. The KGB have as their number one priority the arrest of Bucharensky. If he should fall into their hands no explanation or apology will be acceptable in the place where I was recently required to sign my own minute in blank.’
C stood up and moved away from his desk, the interview at an end. As Royston went through the door he heard his chief say:
‘We are too old to live on social security, you and I.’
Royston’s face set hard. It was a true thought. Roubles, perhaps, but not the dole.