One o’clock in the morning. Sculby floated on the surface of sleep, half-conscious of the wind that drove down the street outside while scattered images from the day competed for attention behind his sore eyelids. He was distantly aware of being cold; that same night Judy had broken off relations for the third time, calling him (among other things) a self-opinionated pseudo-Marxist, and the wind’s sough made the lawyer doubly conscious of the empty space by his side.
He tugged the crumpled duvet over his shoulders, tried yet another position and pretended that he was at the beginning of a dreamless night’s sleep.
The undersheet was saturated with sweat from his naked body. He threw himself across to the other side of the bed and in desperation began deep-breathing exercises… one, two, three, in, one, two, three, four, five, out; one, two, three…
He started to go under. Judy was waiting for him, long blonde hair unleashed from its tight bun to cascade around her waist. She was so real that Sculby could see the little scar which fascinated him, a thin, blue line on the slant across her left breast… she turned her back to him and bent forward slowly, soft buttocks parting. Now she was on her knees. With one hand she reached back to caress the long strands of hair away from her supple back and over her neck.
Sculby moved in his sleep and awoke, sharp pain in his bladder causing him to lose the erection at once. He stumbled, cursing, to the bathroom. Everything in his familiar flat had suddenly grown a point or a sharp edge.
As he slumped back on the bed he fought to stifle his thoughts, but it was no good. That afternoon he had been wrestling with a point of Social Security law. Sculby was one of the very few people who knew anything about it, though that wasn’t saying much. The client had been denied a benefit to which she was entitled but there was a time limit for an appeal, he couldn’t remember how long. Sections, subsections and paragraphs floated before his tired eyes. He felt sick, nauseous with lack of sleep. The answer to his problem was there, in the regulations… it had to be there…
Time passed. Slowly, very slowly, Sculby’s hyperactive brain released its hold and he sank into a proper sleep.
The telephone rang five times before he could bring his jolting heart back under control. As he lifted the receiver his imagination supplied the illusory clicks and hums which signalled that in the telephone-tapping centre at Ebury Bridge Road tape-recorders had automatically switched on, activating the voice analysers which would determine whether the caller was known to MI5 or the Special Branch. Until lately he had resignedly tolerated surveillance as part of the price he had to pay for his cover as a standard-bearer for the Left. But recently he was becoming increasingly resentful of the all-seeing, all-hearing eyes and ears of The State. Sculby struggled upright in bed and strove to concentrate. ‘Laurie… you know who this is, don’t you?’
Sculby was about to acknowledge his awareness of Royston’s identity when the latter said, ‘Don’t bother to confirm. Don’t say anything. Just listen. I have to see you within the hour. Drive to Shepherd’s Bush tube station. Park under the bridge leading to the shopping-centre and wait.’
‘Hang on… Where will you be? For God’s sake…’ But the line was dead.
Sculby replaced the receiver and swung his legs off the bed, annoyed and vaguely ill at ease. Royston had hardly ever contacted him at home before in all the years of their association. Now this call came out of the blue in the middle of a winter’s night… Sculby checked the time. Two a.m.
Afterwards he found it odd that he had never thought to deny Royston’s request, roll over and go back to sleep.
Royston was waiting for him in the shadows of the footbridge over the road. As he saw the white Ford Mexico with its distinctive broad red stripe he stepped to the edge of the pavement and waved. Sculby squelched to a halt, and for a second Royston listened, hearing only the rain and the scrape of the car’s noisy wipers across the windscreen. There was no tail. All was well.
‘Do me a favour, Michael,’ said Sculby as he got in. ‘Take this and give it a wipe.’
Royston accepted the duster and removed the accumulated condensation from the inside of the windows.
‘Which way, squire?’
‘The Goldhawk Road. Make for the M4: plenty of traffic going the same way, even at this time of night, and keep to thirty. At least you weren’t followed.’
Sculby’s vague feeling of uneasiness increased. Something about Royston’s clipped instructions conveyed urgency and more than that… a kind of warning.
‘Followed? Why on earth should I be?’
Royston did not reply at once. When he spoke again it was with a question of his own.
‘How long have we known each other, Laurie?’
‘Six years.’
For the next mile or so there was silence in the car while the two men recalled their memories of that time.
‘Somewhere in England,’ Sculby’s tutor had written, ‘a tailor is even now perfecting a three-piece suit in clerical grey which will fit this young man to a “T”. All you have to do is wait outside the shop until he’s ready to buy it – which will be soon.’
Royston had believed it, then. From the very first moment he met Sculby he disliked him, but he never doubted that he would be good at the job. The tutor was right: Sculby was ready for conversion to High Toryism and faith in the Establishment. What Royston had failed to bargain for was Sculby’s delighted attachment to his chosen cover as a leftwinger. It was, as the lawyer never hesitated to point out, the perfect logical choice: a simple extension of his wayward youth lived in a world where no one really believed that the leopard changed its spots. But when his ‘cover’ began to take the form of moving against the Special Branch, stirring up feeling against the police, that kind of thing, Royston’s assessment abruptly changed. It irked a man who had fought his way up the post-Philby ladder the hard way, to see this arrogant coxcomb having it all so easy at the expense of the sovereign state. His dislike of Sculby deepened in direct proportion to the lawyer’s increasing store of experience and consequent usefulness.
Sculby, on the other hand, admired and quite liked Royston. The role of secret agent appealed to him more than to most people; that was his nature. Whenever he passed on to Royston some piece of information which a client had confided in him, it never failed to send a delicious thrill down Sculby’s spine. For him, the rules of conduct and etiquette imposed by his profession did not begin to compete with the well-being and future safety of his country. And it was Royston who had shown him how best he could serve, Royston his control, mentor, perhaps even friend. Certainly they were on the best of terms. If only he wouldn’t insist on being quite so smug about his lower-middle class upbringing, it wasn’t as if we were all still living in the sixties…
‘I ask,’ said Royston, ‘because I’m afraid I’ve unwittingly got you into something, Laurie. Something messy. And we’ve never done that with you before. So you see, we’ve got to find out how to play it from now on.’
In the silence which followed, Sculby was uncomfortably aware of his heart beating faster than usual.
‘Messy…’
He tried to make it sound neutral but the little stab of fear must have showed in his voice, for at once Royston said by way of confirmation, ‘Dangerous, yes.’
Sculby concentrated on making a left turn. Only when he had completed the manoeuvre successfully did he say, ‘You mean… professionally? It could affect my career?’
‘It could affect your life. Danger of death.’
Sculby was startled into a new awareness of his surroundings. He suddenly realised that he was exceeding the speed limit and applied the brakes, using too much pressure. Royston swore.
‘Careful. I don’t want us attracting any attention. Nice and easy, now.’
‘Sorry.’
They had reached the start of the M4. At a sign from Royston Sculby took the inner carriageway.
‘Keep your speed down to a steady fifty.’
It had stopped raining. Sculby switched off the wipers.
‘While you drive I’m going to tell you where we’re at, Laurie. But before I do I’ve got to say this. I can’t force you to do anything against your will. Equally, I can’t promise you anything fancy if you decide to stay in the game. So what we’ve really got to decide tonight, you and I, is whether you’re the same man who joined up with me six years ago, or whether things are different now. D’you follow?’
Sculby’s mouth was dry. He opened his mouth to say ‘Yes’, but only a squeak came out and he had to clear his throat quickly, hoping that Royston hadn’t noticed.
‘Mind if I smoke, by the way?’
‘Give me one, will you,’ Sculby muttered.
Royston lit two, keeping one for himself and placing the other between Sculby’s lips. Then he took a deep drag and began.
‘I’ll tell you only what you need to know. When I’ve finished, if you don’t want to go on with this, you simply forget it. Understand?’
Royston stole a look at Sculby. In the orange glow of the sodium lamps which lit the centre divide of the motorway it was impossible to see the colour of his face, but the lawyer’s eyes were staring fixedly at the road ahead and Royston had a feeling he was white.
‘Yes.’
‘Then there’s a high-ranking defector on the run from the KGB. A colonel, no less. Everyone knows him simply as Kyril. That’s not his real name, it’s what the Russians call a casename. Kyril is coming to London. He used to work here, years ago. He’s probably got money put away somewhere, and in any case he may want to do a deal with SIS. Now this Kyril used to have a girlfriend in London.’
Royston took a deep drag on his cigarette and exhaled it slowly, relishing the momentary uplift.
‘She’s called Vera Bradfield.’
Sculby said nothing. Royston allowed the information to work in him for about a mile, then continued.
‘Something else we know about Kyril is that he urgently wants to talk to Loshkevoi.’
The car swerved slightly and Royston grimaced.
‘Take it easy, Laurie. We don’t know why he wants to, and we’d dearly like to. Now you know why we’re all so interested in your client.’
London Airport dropped away to the left, lurid oasis in a desert of darkness. Sculby kept the car going at a steady fifty, navigating by reference to the chain of orange lamps which stretched away from him to the horizon.
‘We would like nothing better than to talk to the Bradfield woman. But we can’t. The chances are that she is sympathetic to Kyril and the last thing we want to do is put the wind up the people he’s due to visit. On the other hand, by leaving her alone we run the risk of passing up valuable information about Kyril’s time of arrival in this country and what his plans are. We can’t afford to talk to her. And we can’t afford not to.’
Royston allowed Sculby a long pause in which to digest this latest chunk of information. He was not an angler, but he understood the angler’s need for patience.
‘Why not just concentrate on Loshkevoi?’ Sculby asked. ‘Pull him in. Give him a right going over.’
‘Because Loshkevoi is sensitive. We’re holding our breath with you in there as it is. And in any case, Kyril is unlikely to give Loshkevoi advance warning of his plans: quite the contrary. Whereas the same can’t be said of Vera Bradfield.’
Royston waited until he was sure that Sculby wasn’t going to speak again.
‘This is the pitch, Laurie. We’d like you to make an appointment with this woman, go to visit her. Say that you have a client who’s mentioned her name. From what you told me about the other night, that’s virtually true anyway. See how she reacts when you name Loshkevoi. Pretend to be doing your best for an unco-operative client. Loshkevoi’s coy about her and won’t talk, but in the exercise of your professional duty you feel obliged to follow up every possible lead, that kind of thing. Try to see if the spare bed’s made up. Find out whether she’s expecting visitors. Whether she’s nervous, afraid even. While you’re in the house, plant a bug, something we can monitor. You’re a solicitor, she’ll never suspect you.’
‘You’ve thought it all out, haven’t you,’ said Sculby. ‘Have MI5 gone on strike, or something? I thought they employed lads dressed up as telephone engineers to do that kind of thing. You don’t need me.’
Royston could hear the anxiety in the lawyer’s voice. Was he nerving himself up to a refusal?
‘Kyril is MI6 material. You know the rules, Laurie: no inter-service poaching. Five have no need to know about Kyril, so they’re out. This is strictly London Station territory. P.4 is the only executive arm we have which isn’t obliged to operate exclusively beyond the seas. So it’s you or nobody, I’m afraid. You see, Laurie, you’re uniquely placed. That’s the trouble.’
It had begun to rain again. Sculby switched on the wipers. One of them was sticking badly: zink-zonk, zink-zonk…
‘You said it was dangerous.’
‘If Kyril does visit the Bradfield woman he’s going to find out about your appearance on the scene. And it isn’t going to take him long to discover that you’re connected with the only other person he wants to see: Loshkevoi. That’s going to make you a very interesting proposition to Kyril. He’s going to want to know where you stand.’
The noise of the wiper was getting on Royston’s nerves. Zink-zonk, zink-zonk.
‘The chances are that he’ll pay you a visit. And if he does, well, then you’re going to carry the standard, Laurie. You’ll have to play him for all you’re worth, using your wits. No one can help you. I can’t back you up. I’ve just got to trust you to do the best you can for us. Because we want Kyril. We want him more than we’ve ever wanted anyone in the six years I’ve known you. But he has to come willingly, of his own accord, if he’s to be the slightest use.’
The car breasted a slight rise and Sculby saw that there was less than a mile of sodium lighting left. After that came darkness.
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Make friends. Play him along. With your lefty leanings that shouldn’t be too difficult…’ Royston checked himself, wondering if he had gone too far. Sculby said nothing.
Zink-zonk, zink-zonk.
Ahead of them the darkness was coming up with terrifying speed.
‘But whatever you do, however it goes, you must say one thing. You must work a phrase into the conversation. “For love of the motherland.” Just that. It has a special meaning, has done for years. It enables sleepers who’ve been adrift from Moscow Centre for a long time to identify themselves as members of the KGB. That’s what you’ve got to do, Laurie, if you’re to make Kyril swallow it. Nothing less will do. Make him believe you’re on his side. Make him talk to you. Find out what the hell is going on…’
Zinz-zonk, zink-zonk.
‘…But take care. I said it was dangerous and I meant it. Kyril has killed. Not once, but many times.’
The last link in the chain of orange sodium which had lit the car’s progress from London loomed up, flashed by, was gone.