The Envoy (14 page)

The Director saw Kit looking at the coat of arms. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘we’re going to have to get around to changing that, it’s a
little
too …’

‘Masonic?’ said Kit.

The Director smiled wanly and nodded agreement.

‘Thank you, Director White, for taking the time to see me.’

‘I’ve wanted to meet you for some time, Kit. I met your father during the war. He was, I believe, the most senior agent to jump into France with a Jedburgh team.’

‘He was a complex man,’ said Kit. He wondered if Dick White knew that his father had been one of the first to enter
Oradoursur-Glane
after a unit from the SS division,
Das Reich
, had torched the village after massacring every single man, woman and child as reprisals. The men were shot, the women and children herded into the church and burned alive.

‘I was very sorry to hear what happened.’ The Director meant his father’s death.

‘Thank you.’ Kit stared at the Director’s necktie knot so he wouldn’t have to think about his father. He was pleased to see that White used a four-in-hand. The casual simplicity of the knot warmed Kit to Director White. At prep school, the nouveau riche kids – the sons of ‘the crass commercialists’ – always tied Windsor knots. Maybe they thought it was ‘better’ because it was more difficult to tie. Ironically, Khrushchev and all the other Soviet leaders sported Windsor knots: Khrushchev’s, in particular, was always a perfect isosceles triangle, the epitome of Windsor knot art. The Russian leader, of course, hadn’t been to an East Coast prep school so he didn’t know the subtle messages of dress code – but Dick White did.

‘I also wanted you to come here so that I could apologise in person for the surveillance incident and to reassure you – and your embassy colleagues – that it will never happen again.’

‘Thank you,’ said Kit.

‘You are entitled to further details,’ the Director paused, ‘and an explanation of what went wrong.’

Kit knew that Blanco was sparring and looking for an opening. He knew that White
had
an ‘explanation’ and was looking for an excuse to provide it. Kit decided to give him one. ‘It all seemed very strange. Firstly, that your agent was acting alone – no foot backup, no second eyeball, no mobile backup.’ The terms Kit used were a tacit admission that he wasn’t just a diplomat, but it was obvious that Blanco knew this already. ‘Your man also seemed, if you don’t mind my saying so, very inexperienced.’

‘You’re absolutely right. It wasn’t, of course, a genuine
operation
– it was a training exercise.’

Kit had seen that one coming. He let Blanco continue.

‘We use live unwitting targets for training exercises, I’m sure you do too.’

Kit nodded.

‘The training officer concerned overstepped his boundaries and has been reprimanded.’ The Director paused. ‘He decided, very wrongly, to spice things up by choosing a surveillance target from a
real
embassy rather than, say, a junior bank clerk from Barclays. Unfortunately, neither the trainer nor the trainee
realised
that their actions were a breach of diplomatic protocol.’

‘I apologise for not looking more distinguished. Next time I leave the embassy I’ll wear a cocked hat and a ceremonial sword.’

The Director gave Kit a sideways look. ‘Ours always do.’

‘But then, you’re British.’

White paused and toyed with a letter opener. ‘I hope you don’t mind my saying that I’ve read your file?’

Kit smiled. ‘It’s to be expected – I’ve read yours.’

White’s next question was totally unexpected. ‘Do you like us?’

Kit thought he meant MI5 and gestured at the office. ‘Do you mean …’

White smiled and clarified. ‘Do you like the
British
?’

‘I admire the British very much – perhaps too much,
considering
my role.’

‘I thought,’ said White, ‘that what happened in Saigon in ’45 might have turned you against us. I can’t say I blame you if it did.’

Kit hadn’t expected that one. Blanco certainly knew the file. He looked hard at the Director. ‘Are you,’ said Kit, ‘inviting me to speak my mind?’

‘Please do.’

‘I thought that your General Gracey was a cretin who far
overreached
his authority. I hold him responsible for the death of my cousin Peter.’

‘I didn’t know that Major Calvert was a relation. I’m sorry.’

‘I must admit that I’m bitter about what happened – and it’s not just Peter’s death. We were sent to Vietnam to help Ho Chi Minh fight the Japanese – and he won. Or, I should say, the Vietnamese people won. But as soon as the dust settles, it’s the same old British-French colonial carve-up. The people of Vietnam were betrayed – and so were we.’

White folded his hands and looked pleased. Kit was annoyed that he had shown so much emotion, but still felt a need to explain. ‘We were very young then, I was barely in my twenties, all of us Roosevelt New Deal idealists. We thought we were the vanguard of a New World order – we all supported the United Nations charter and world government. No more war, no more exploitation of beautiful brown people just because … how does that rhyme go –
Thank God that we have got / The Maxim gun, and they have not
.’

‘And like many idealistic young men before you, you felt betrayed by those in command?’

Kit smiled. ‘I think we were entitled to. Don’t you understand the enormity of Gracey’s actions? He freed and armed Jap POWs to hunt down the same Vietnamese who, as our allies, had fought the Japanese. That paved the way for the French to come back and the nine bloody years to Dien Bien Phu.’

‘The outcome was unfortunate.’

‘And it’s going to happen all over again – there’s going to be another war.’ Kit paused and smiled. ‘But don’t worry, that one will be our fault.’

White stared hard without blinking. ‘Idealism can lead people to do strange things.’

Kit sensed that he was talking about Burgess and Maclean. But there was another elephant in the room: Kit’s act of violence to the agent who had followed him.

Kit looked away embarrassed, afraid to show his self-loathing and guilt. ‘I hope he wasn’t badly hurt.’

The Director paused as if the matter were something that was best left unanswered. Finally he said, ‘He won’t be playing tennis for a while. He broke his arm in two places. Pity about the tennis, he was one of the best amateurs in the country. In any case, we’ve sent him home on extended convalescent leave. His parents need him there.’

Kit sensed there was more to the story. He was about to offer an apology, but White cut him off.

‘There’s one other child in the family, a younger sister who adores him. She’s bright as a button, but has a disease that affects her coordination – she trips and knocks things over a lot. Oddly, she loves tennis, but is totally hopeless at it. Her brother used to spend hours gently swatting balls to her over the net, ninety per cent of which she would hit out of court or miss completely. But her brother insisted it was worth it, because when she did manage one back, her face would glow.’ The Director paused and looked at something on his desk. ‘It’s all very sad, because her disease is a wasting one and she’s become worse. They have to feed her through a tube – she’s expected to die within days.’

Kit’s mind flashed back to that night. The dots suddenly joined up. The watcher’s distressed phone call from a box in Edgware Road had nothing to do with botched surveillance; he was
phoning
home. And later the young man’s tears at the top of the
moving
stairs: Kit had nearly killed him during a moment of private grief.

The Director looked away. ‘I don’t suppose any of this is very relevant.’

Kit got up to leave.

Kit turned down the offer of a lift. Grosvenor Square was only five minutes on foot. But Kit didn’t go back to the embassy: he just wanted to walk. London seemed wild. The strong equinoctial wind from the south-west threw dust, soot and scraps of paper high across the town – a brisk spring clean after a dull
forgetful
winter. The wind whipped short sharp waves across the Serpentine and swept grey frothy scum on to the lee bank and across the footpath. Across the water, ducks bobbed in the rushes under the windward bank like gale-bound boats. Boats, thought Kit, he must see Jennifer about that boat. Being afloat was a cure for madness.

Kit, turned-up collar and hands in pockets, sat on a bench in Kensington Gardens looking at Monsieur Poêle playing a flute. The Peter Pan statue was, like Brompton Oratory, a notorious pick-up point for spies. An icon of childhood innocence and wonder despoiled by dead drops, brush-passes, honey traps, agent handlers, hidden cameras and an umbrella or two with a ricin poison hypodermic hidden in its tip. His trade turned
everything
into shit.

Kit knew that Blanco had done exactly what he had wanted. He had pressed all the right buttons: his father’s death, Saigon – and that poison toad of paranoia that mocks with yellow eyes in the depths of Kit’s own soul. Blanco is master. He knows that every spy carries a sediment of self-loathing and self-doubt – and he knows how to stir it with a big spoon. Kit closed his eyes and imagined a map of London, England and Europe. He wanted to get up that very moment and start walking: across Westminster Bridge, down the Old Kent Road, Bexley, Dartford, Canterbury, Dover – ‘
Foot-passenger, sir
?
’ ‘
Yes.’ ‘Single or return?’ ‘Single, please
.’ At some point, he would meet up with other pilgrims on the way of Saint Jacques de Compostelle – but he wouldn’t tell them his secret. Nor would his pilgrimage stop there or at Gibraltar – or Tangier or the desert beyond. Not until every drop of poison – or life – had been sweated out.

There were voices behind him. It was not a language he knew, but it was guttural and full of hard consonants. One voice seemed angry, urgent and demanding; the other disdainful. Bombs no longer fell on London, but her streets were infested with spies who were crawling out of the rubble like vermin looking for fresh corpses. Kit felt an urge to tell the arguing men to shut up, but   when he turned around they had started to walk away. Perhaps, he thought, they had gone to drown each other in the Serpentine. Kit got up to walk back to the embassy. ‘I must,’ he said aloud, ‘see about that boat.’

The Blackwater Sloop was heavier and more seaworthy than any boat Kit had ever sailed in the Chesapeake Bay. Kit liked the long keel and the big foredeck, plenty of room for hanking a jib or dealing with an anchor. ‘Let’s have a look down below,’ said Kit.

Billy Whiting stepped down into the cockpit, unlocked the hatch and lifted out the washboards. ‘She’s a bit mouldy,’ said Billy, ‘and the bilges need pumping out – rainwater mostly – she’s been laying ashore for two years.’

Kit slid the hatch cover forward, lowered himself into the cabin and sat on a side berth. There wasn’t enough headroom to stand up, but the below-decks were still spacious for a
twenty-one
foot boat. The brass fittings needed polishing, but the
woodwork
gleamed of dark varnish and white gloss paint. Everything was tidy and functional: a two-burner spirit cooker on gimbals, a folding chart table, a miniature coal stove, paraffin lamps,
barometer
, clock, a shelf for books and an old-fashioned brass voice hailer. Kit could already imagine lying at anchor in a remote creek during a still night: gentle tide trickle, curlew cry, the
piping
of oyster-catchers –
‘Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not’
. Childhood. Kit longed for childhood – and all its wonder and clean innocence. He looked up into the cockpit. Billy, framed in profile against a perfect blue sky, was staring at something on the river. Kit stood up and stuck his head out of the companionway so he could see too. A Thames barge with brown sails was tacking through the narrow bend in the river where the Alde turns west. ‘Where’s she going?’ said Kit.

‘She’s taking London bricks up to Snape, then she’ll load up with sugar beet for Reedham.’