The Oktober Projekt (9 page)

‘What made him jump ship, Nick? That is all we’re trying to
establish,’ added Soleby.

‘You know agents, they’re unpredictable.’

Whatever McEntee knew about agents, he kept to himself. ‘So
they catch you cold,’ McEntee stated, ‘trying to extract an agent. Was that
their starting point for your discussion during your time in Moscow?’

‘Discussion?’ Nick scraped back his chair, the thumbscrews
visibly tensing.

‘Did they assume that Lubov had handed over his material to
you?’ Soleby asked.

‘It crossed their minds.’

‘And did he?’ Soleby demanded.

‘No.’

‘Don’t lie, Nick,’ McEntee warned him. ‘If Lubov was the means
to end, why did they detain you for so long? Not checking the points on your
licence were they?’

‘Come on, Nick,’ Soleby cajoled him, ‘What were they looking
for?’

‘A confession.’

‘What to? An almighty cock-up?’ McEntee said, his lopsided
smile rising higher.

‘Look,’ began Nick, only to be cut-off by a flap from one of
Soleby’s enormous hands.

‘You listen, Nick,’ Soleby insisted and Nick complied as Soleby
more or less accused him of deliberately misleading them and providing them
with false information to cover his own guilty tracks.

‘From our point of view the whole operation was ill-conceived
and poorly executed,’ said McEntee. ‘You’re providing us with more questions
than answers.’

‘I made the right decisions given the circumstances at that
time. I did happen to be up to my neck in a spot of bother,’ Nick avowed,
knowing full well that Operation Salvage should have been called Operation
Shambles and he’d be having a word with Parfrey about it.

‘Who was at the party in Moscow, Nick? Who was pulling the
strings?’ Soleby ventured, scratching his arm.

‘FSB.’

‘That it?’ said McEntee, decidedly unimpressed.

‘You saying that I’ve been turned?’

‘Have you?’ retorted Soleby, leaning forward.

‘If you’re going to pursue that line of questioning, I’m
requesting legal representation.’

‘Grow up, Nick and stop wasting our time,’ proposed McEntee.

‘So you couldn’t be sure if the SVR or GRU were present?’
McEntee politely enquired.

‘They didn’t exactly wear name badges,’ snapped Nick. ‘That’s
the problem when you’re blindfolded, you’re not sure of what day it is. The
friendly beatings don’t help much either.’

‘And Lubov never passed anything over to you?’ McEntee
wondered, vexed that things were too messy.

Nick felt queasy, imagining the SIM cut into his sole was about
to come to life and give him away. Double the pressure, double the chances of
him slipping up, admitting to sins that he’d squared the circle in an
unorthodox style and they were waiting to trip him up. Sly smiles from the
thumbscrews implying they had everything they needed to bring a charge, then
suspension and goodnight Nick.

‘Lubov wanted out. Have neither of you been listening? He was spooked,
had a bad case of the jitters because he thought he’d been tagged and wasn’t
making much sense.’

‘Just like you, Nick,’ quipped Soleby.

‘Go to hell.’

‘You see Nick, we just can’t seem to understand why Viper would
be regarded as very important to his own lot or to us. According to his case
officer, he wasn’t the type to jump ship. It’s more fiction than fact,’ sighed
Soleby. ‘I would be inclined to suggest that he was just playing us along,
trying to sell us a cock and bull story for an increase in his monthly cash.’

‘I think you’re right,’ said Nick, from behind gritted teeth,
remembering the mess someone had made of the little accountant’s wife and
nephew, which was a lot of trouble for a lowly agent with nothing to sell.

‘Let’s take it from the top again,’ suggested McEntee, in an
inquisitional hiss.

Which is exactly what they did. McEntee and Soleby smugly
ignoring his explanations, going for disorientation by hurling names and facts
in random order. Varying routines, alternating roles at each session,
compounding the minutes into hours until he’d had enough as they entered the
afternoon. At half-three McEntee and Soleby sick of their own voices withdrew
for a conference, locking him in with a watery cup of tea and a Penguin
biscuit.

On their return, McEntee was flushed and Soleby seemed to have
been forced to witness the burning of books. They’ve had to admit defeat
thought Nick, and they’ve been hauled over the coals for their abject failure.

‘For the moment,’ McEntee said, the words burning his tongue,
‘You’re at liberty to leave.’

‘Ta, thanks very much,’ said Nick, up on his feet in seconds.

Collecting the dossier, Soleby stood to one side as McEntee led
the retreat gliding towards the door. ‘Catch you next time, Nick.’

‘I’ll save you some time, I’ll have my false confession already
typed up.’

‘No need for sarcasm,’ snapped Soleby following in the pocket
of air left by his colleague.

Out in the corridor Nick was held in check by a pair of new
minders. He was considering making a scene when Blackmore and Hawick turned the
corner, total displeasure oozing from Hawick’s every pore. With a backward jab
of his thumb Blackmore sent the minders retreating to a safe distance.

‘Not the sort of ruddy home coming I’d like myself,’ confessed
Blackmore, a sly smile turning up the left corner of his mouth, ‘but we need to
be sure, Nick,’ he explained, ‘seems someone’s telling us porkies and it’s a
priority we discover who.’

‘Let me get back to work and I’ll give you a name.’

‘That’s not an option,’ said Hawick, an inch from Nick’s face.

‘What are my options?’

‘If you’ve any inkling young Nicholas Torr what that ruddy
Lubov had up his sleeve, I want to know,’ said Blackmore, twisting a cygnet
ring around his little finger. ‘No one’s denying the Ruskies have given you a
rough ride, but Lubov’s claim isn’t stacking up.’

Trust me and be damned, thought Nick watching Blackmore ease
away, operating as Hawick’s whipper-in. ‘I was just there to babysit…’
 

‘That is immaterial for the present,’ snapped Hawick cutting
him off. ‘C has decided and I fully support his judicious decision,’ he
continued primly, ‘that as a matter of urgency to safeguard the integrity of
the Service, a full and frank formal inquiry will conduct a root and branch
review of your actions. Until the inquiry sits, I have instructed personnel
that you are suspended, on full pay naturally.’

‘Naturally,’ Nick answered, his fists clenched. ‘What about
Wynn, do I carry the can for her as well? ’

Hawick exchanged a glance with Blackmore. ‘You will have to
account for Wynn’s murder in Hamburg, have no doubt,’ Hawick promised him,
fizzing with authority.

And this fact alone, that Sally Wynn had died in Hamburg may
not have made Nick any wiser as to why or what Sally Wynn was doing in the
Hanseatic city, but he had the end of trail to begin searching for an answer.
‘If you’re finished, am I cleared to leave now?’

‘I most certainly am not,’ Hawick erupted. ‘First thing Monday
morning I want you back here for a formal debriefing. I want solid answers. I
want to know exactly what went on in Moscow and I want to know what Wynn was
working on.’

‘Now can I leave?’

‘Do not bother returning to Vauxhall Cross, do not return to
the Mad House, do not contact anyone currently or previously in the employ of
the Service. You are in isolation until I or C say otherwise,’ announced
Hawick, raising himself on his toes. ‘Naturally we have arranged transport for
you.’

‘What, back to Moscow?’

‘Home, we’ll be taking you home,’ Hawick said finding somewhere
for his eyes to assess.

‘Bugger off while you’ve got the chance,’ Blackmore said with a
wink, arranging the point on a silk handkerchief in his breast pocket.

‘We had these sent over from your office,’ said Hawick, handing
over a set of keys.

‘Thanks.’ Nick turned them over in his hand, the keys to his
house, his marriage and maybe his future. He’d always left them in his office
in the custody of a senior secretary to be collected on his return, up until
what had now become his official excommunication.

‘Nick,’ called Blackmore as Nick started down the corridor.
‘You need a ruddy shower and a change of clothes,’ he advised with a broad
smile.

• • •

Instead of the Galaxy that delivered
Nick to Aspley that morning, a black Toyota Prius waited for him at a side
entrance to the interrogation block. A pasty woman officer from the
interrogation staff with short straight hair sat needlessly over-revving the
engine. I bet she loves doing body searches, Nick decided sliding onto the back
seat. On the quarter-light, two large pendants warned that it was against the
law to smoke in this vehicle. Nick lit a cigarette and saw her top lip
quivering, its fine line of dark hair unsettling him all through the drive back
to London.
 

Dropped at the corner of Upper Richmond Road and Gwendolen
Avenue, he refused her offer of setting him down at his door on Ulva Road,
preferring to settle into a loafing walk, taking a winding excursion home. He
filed his way through Putney in what was left of a dull afternoon. Tomorrow
I’ll take Angie shopping, to the Tate Modern if she’s interested, give her some
room to get her head together. Tonight I’ll book a table; Chinese, Japanese,
Thai, Indonesian, or whatever his wife’s whim dictated, just the two of us
rekindling an old flame. In twenty-years they’d achieved what? An acrimonious
existence as separate as if they were divorced Nick decided, and a dead son
who’d only valued him for the presents he’d brought from his travels. After
Thomas was killed by a hit and run driver when he was five, Angela blamed Nick
for being away when she needed him the most. Everything was always laid at
Nick’s feet; he had become the blame guru.

The fickle light was evaporating and children home from school
were playing out in groups, their sharp voices slicing through the damp air
around the mellow walls of the Methodist church. Nothing else moved along the
road and he felt the adrenalin tingle as he turned his key in the barrel of the
night latch.

‘Angie?’

The hallway floor was tiled in black and white mosaics, tiny
diamonds stretching away into the large house built for a family not a broken
home. An antique coat stand acted as a semaphore for who was in and out. Angela
was definitely in. He called her name again and wondered if she had gone out,
not bothering to use the mortise lock, her latest
bête noire
.

‘Angie?’

She had a way with silence, her method of direct retribution,
of punishing him for his absences, for not being a good husband, a good father.
If Nick remained in the hallway he was safe, he could stand here all night and
not be drawn into an exchange in this mutually agreed no-man’s land. This
afternoon he knew that confrontation was unavoidable, so he set off in search
of the enemy. Opening a door to a sitting room there was no Angela but music
coming from a midi system. He guessed Tchaikovsky but couldn’t be sure; his
heart sank, another salient retaken he thought.

Wandering down to the kitchen he pulled a can of Japanese lager
from the fridge. Japanese? Where was his normal pack of IPA he reserved for his
returns after gruelling, sometimes bloody operations? He drank reluctantly from
the can, toasting the memory of Sally Wynn. He glanced in the oven where a
casserole was simmering away, and Nick wondered if it was to mark a family
reunion or a new phase in Angie’s routine minus a husband?

Nick pulled a wicker hen off the upright freezer, its base a
store for odds and ends. Flicking through empty lighters, snapped necklace
chains, broken buckles, strapless watches and drawing pins, Nick scattered the
lot over a worktop until he found one of Angie’s old mobile phones, a Nokia
7373. Slipping off his boot he pulled open cabinet drawers, found a craft knife
and worked its thin blade over the sealed slot in its sole, carefully easing
out the SIM. Unsheathing it from its plastic film, he inserted it into the
Nokia and one lone number glimmered for a Galina Myla, who, despite Nick’s
persistence, obstinately refused to answer. Unlacing his other boot he dumped
them in the kitchen bin.

‘Angie? I know you’re in.’ He was at the bottom of the stairs
not wanting to inadvertently trespass; every room now had its own lexicon for
the dissolution of their marriage.
 

A door somewhere upstairs clicked closed and Nick measured her
light footfall, fifteen steps in all to make her appearance, remind him of her
defiance.

‘What happened?’ Angela asked. ‘You look dreadful.’

She stood at the head of the stairs long slender and
attractive, a deceptive forty-one and he’d wondered if she lied about her age.
She never used make-up and her plainness revealed no happiness, no despair. Her
head was held to one side as though she needed this angle to get a better idea
of him. So many times she’d expected a different figure standing there,
fidgeting, avoiding her eyes as he, she or they explained how her husband was dead,
critical, missing, but still a credit to the Service.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said lightly not wanting her to
fuss.
 

‘I hope you got a lift right to the front door.’

‘Still got your sense of humour, then.’

‘Was I supposed to expect you back today?’

‘I tried calling to let you know but you never answered.’

She came four steps nearer, her head still cocked off centre.
She’d dyed her hair blonde and parted it down the centre whilst he’d been away.
A stark contrast to her clothes comprising of everything black: polo neck,
skirt, ribbed tights and pixie boots with broad buckles. She’s in mourning Nick
thought, we’re divorced and she hasn’t bothered to let me know.