Making Enemies (41 page)

I felt an uncontrollable anger sweep through me. Here was public hypocrisy on a scale I hadn’t met before, brazen posturing that lifted Watson-Jones out of the common ruck into a
select band
that Charlie had chosen. For a while I wasn’t sure I’d be able to sit through what he had to say. I calmed myself by thinking of what Charlie would have done. He’d have looked puzzled, agitated, he’d have fidgeted in his wheelchair, but he’d have said nothing and when it was over, he’d have gone on as if nothing had been said, the only sign of his discomfort a demand for Beryl to bring him a large gin and tonic.

My attention wandered as I tried to close my mind to what he was saying. I looked at the rows of men in dark suits, as they listened to Watson-Jones. Pale faces, pale men. Did they too share my anger?
Or would they shake his hand after the service, congratulate him on his address and walk away echoing sentiments that Charlie had chosen well, Simon was a man to watch?

There, in the pew opposite, grinning at me, was a face I knew, paler than before (‘where’d do you think I’ve been all these months, Danny?’), thinner too (‘what do you expect, on a diet of cabbage soup? You don’t get hamburgers where I’ve been’) but still recognizably the same. I smiled a genuine and delighted response.

‘The old lion is gone. Hubris, bombast, pomposity, Charlie’s lifelong enemies, may breathe a little easier today. But not for long. We will keep faith with the old warrior. We will subdue these ancient opponents just as he subdued them. We will match his vigilance and carry on the fight just as he did all the days of his life. This post-war world, with its problems and confusions, needs men of clear insight and goodness of heart like Charlie. We must do our best to live up to the ideals he represented. God bless you, Charlie, for the good you did. May your soul rest in the peace you worked so hard for and which you have so richly deserved.’

As I emerged from St Clement Dane’s and walked out into the strong morning sunlight, I heard my name called and the next moment my hand was being vigorously shaken.

‘Well, if it isn’t my old skiing partner.’

‘I didn’t expect to see you here, Glenn,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be languishing in a Soviet prison?’

Hammerson was in US military uniform, a shadow of the man I’d last seen in January, but alive and seemingly no worse for his experience.

‘The Reds got tired of me,’ he said, ‘so they let me go.’

‘It’s good to see you again.’

‘It’s good to be back,’ he said, lighting a cigarette. ‘I was sorry about old Charlie. I never knew him that well, but he had a fine reputation. I came to the service because I thought you might be here.’

‘When did you get out?’

‘Some weeks ago. Didn’t you hear what happened?’

‘No. Tell me.’

‘The Soviets agreed a swap. Me for Krasov. Our old friend decided he didn’t like America after all and asked to go back. Just as well: by then our people were sure he wasn’t kosher. So somebody worked out an exchange. Neat, huh?’

‘Very neat.’ Krasov was back in the Soviet Union, one more
operation to confuse the West over and done with. What now? I wondered. Where would he surface next?

‘I went through a debriefing,’ Hammerson was saying. ‘They thought I might have changed sides but I managed to convince them the old prejudices were alive and well. I hate the Reds even more now I’ve lived with them awhile.’

‘Let’s go and find a drink somewhere,’ I said. I was pleased to see him, I wanted to hear about his months in captivity, what it was like to have the door locked shut and your freedom removed.

‘You get used to prison,’ he replied, reading my thoughts. ‘If you don’t adapt, you go mad. The trick is to narrow your world, accept the boundaries imposed upon you, forget outside, the freedom you’ve lost. Concentrate on what you can see and hear and do, the freedom you can control. Redefine your life. It’s a world in itself, prison, with its own language, its own ethics, its own systems of communication, its own perverse morality, its own justice. The world turned inside out.’

‘What was your worst fear when you were there?’

‘That I might be forgotten. Left to rot on my own, far from home. I never knew if our people had any bargaining counters up their sleeve.’

‘Then Krasov came to your aid?’

‘I guess I’ve got a lot to thank him for. Just a pity it all took so long. I wonder if he knew he was saving my life.’

I asked whether the fact that he was American caused difficulties with his fellow prisoners.

‘When I got there I imagined the other prisoners wouldn’t accept me. I was wrong. We were all prisoners of a regime we had fallen foul of, we were all facing the same enemy. Nationality has little meaning in prison. We were all on the same side. They got to know I was American very quickly, don’t ask me how. One or two of the other prisoners spoke passable English. They would whisper to me in the exercise yard, or when we washed. What was my name? My cell number? They told me to wait, to listen out, they would have news for me. All this under the eye of the guards who never knew these communications were taking place.’

He lifted his arm above his head. ‘Look, most of the movement’s back. Not bad, eh?’

He’d spent some months in a prison hospital while they repaired his badly broken shoulder, broken ribs and torn cartilage.

‘Not a good time, that,’ he said. ‘The doctors are OK, the conditions are terrible.’

It was there, in the prison hospital, that he got his first message.

‘The word had got out that I was American. I was told by one of the guys there, a Ukrainian who’d lost a leg, to listen out for a message. It was passed to me later that day. The writer was a scientist, he said, a theoretical physicist who had held a high position in one of the institutes, God knows which. He was being held in the psychiatric ward attached to the hospital. When you are freed, he said, tell your people that the Soviets know who Peter is. That was all. The Soviets know who Peter the Great is. Now what kind of a message is that?’

*

We’d agreed to meet in the restaurant at the Great Eastern Hotel in Liverpool Street station. My father had telephoned to say he was on his way back to Cambridge and could we meet before he left. He was already there when I arrived, sitting at a corner table, reading the paper.

‘I’m sorry if I’ve kept you waiting.’

‘I was early. Do you want a cup of tea?’

A cup was already waiting for me, and the teapot was large enough for two. My father poured.

‘Now you’re here,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what to say to you.’

‘Tell me how you are,’ I asked. ‘That’s as good a place to start as any.’

‘Tired, disoriented, shaken. But alive. I suppose I should be thankful. Does that leave me in credit or not?’

‘That depends,’ I said. ‘Is the official business over?’

I had decided that was the best way to refer to the days of questioning I knew my father had undergone, and he responded to the euphemism.

‘Thank God, yes. I’m free of all that.’

I could guess what he would have been subjected to since his return from Moscow, though neither then nor later would he ever say anything on that subject.

‘Nothing further can happen?’

‘They’re not going to put me on trial or imprison me, if that’s what you mean. I’m sure they’d like to, but they can’t. They haven’t got any evidence because there isn’t any.’

The old arrogance wasn’t completely dead. Looking at him across the breakfast table, I saw a man who was exhausted and distressed by his recent experiences, but the hard edges of a few certainties still remained.

‘What happens now?’ I asked.

‘Life is meant to return to normal but I know nothing will be the same again. The suspicion that I gave secrets to the Soviets won’t go away. It will hang over me for years, a cloud of doubt that I must have used the opportunity to tell them what I knew. My life will be different, but how different we will have to see.’

‘Nothing ever changes that much,’ I said more in hope than expectation.

‘I think this time the changes will be very profound,’ my father said. ‘Did you get my letter?’

‘Yes.’

‘It was by way of an apology.’

‘I don’t want an apology,’ I said. ‘There’s no need.’

‘There are many things to apologize for. I see now how wrong I’ve been.’

‘Perhaps I was wrong too.’

‘Do you condemn me too?’ he asked. ‘For what I did?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I admired your stand. It took courage to do what you did in Moscow, only a fool would deny that. I still think you went about it the wrong way, but we’re never going to agree on that and it doesn’t matter anyway.’

‘I’m not guilty of any crime,’ he said. ‘But I’m being made to pay heavily for what a man called Rupert Corless describes as my indiscretion, my foolishness, my lack of judgement. The government won’t have anything to do with me now. They’ve sacked me from my committees. I’m no longer advising Lord Portal. I’ve lost my newspaper column. I am contaminated by my weeks in Moscow. So any influence I may have had on our future nuclear policy has been completely removed. I shall miss that.’

‘You’ll continue to teach, won’t you?’

‘Dons are given tenure for life. Ironic, isn’t it? The college would love to see the back of me, but there’s nothing they can do to get rid of me. Yes, I shall continue to teach. There’s not much else I’m fit for.’

‘Generations of young scientists will come to your lectures. If you teach them, you’ll influence them. Isn’t that the greater power? The
rest is temporary. Committees here, advisory groups there. It’s the minds of the young you want to be after. As long as they don’t take those away from you.’

‘How much wiser you are than me,’ he said. ‘That’s what Ruth told me. He knows the world, she said. Listen to him. Listen to him for your own good.’

‘How is Ruth?’

‘She survives, I think. I’m not sure what else I can say.’

And her son? I wanted to ask. My brother. What about him?

There was a garbled announcement over the tannoy system. I caught something about the train for Cambridge and King’s Lynn. The moment for asking questions was snatched away from me. Or did I simply let it slide out of reach? My father stood up and looked at his watch.

‘Thanks for coming,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’ve got better things to do with your time. What are you up to now?’

I told him that the experiment in Eccleston Street had come to a sudden end. He wasn’t surprised.

‘I could never see what you were doing there anyway. Awful propaganda stuff. You’re well out of it. What are you going to do now?’

‘I look for a job,’ I said.

‘Anything lined up?’

‘Nothing so far.’

‘What about that girl in Helsinki?’

‘Tanya?’

‘What’s happening to her?’

‘She’s here with me.’

‘She’s a doctor, isn’t she?’

‘Yes.’

‘Plenty of jobs for doctors here, especially in the light of all these changes the government’s brought in.’

There were more strangled words from the tannoy.

‘I’d better make a move.’ He stood up. ‘You’ll come and see us, won’t you? Celia and the children would like that. So would I. Bring Tanya. Who knows? With her help I might even persuade you to finish your degree.’

He smiled at that.

‘I’ll carry your case,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you into your seat.’

It wasn’t an intimate exchange. Yet something in our relationship
had altered, some small but important balance had shifted. As I followed my father out of the restaurant, I knew that this was not the last conversation we would have, but the first of many. There were other things to talk about. It might take some time to get there, but for the first time in my life I was reasonably sure we would.

Together we walked down the platform joining the crowds for the Cambridge train.