Charles Cumming - The Trinity Six

‘Let me start at the beginning.’ Charlotte filled another glass of wine. Paul caught Sam’s eye and frowned imperceptibly. She was a functioning alcoholic: a bottle of wine at lunch, two at dinner; gins at six; a couple of tumblers of Laphroaig last thing at night. None of it ever seemed to affect her behaviour beyond a certain decibel increase in the volume of her voice. But the booze was undoubtedly beating her: it was putting years on, adding weight, black-bagging her eyes. ‘About a month ago I received a letter from a man called Thomas Neame. He claims to be the confidant of a British diplomat who spent his entire career, from World War II to the mid-1980s, working as a spy for the KGB. I made some basic enquiries, discovered that Thomas was kosher, and went to meet him.’

‘Went where?’ Paul was oblivious to the comings-and-goings of his wife’s career. Often she would disappear for weeks on end, pursuing a story in Iraq, in California, in Moscow.

‘That’s secret number one,’ Charlotte replied. ‘I can’t tell even you where Thomas Neame lives.’

‘Trust is such a wonderful thing between husband and wife,’ Gaddis muttered. ‘How old is this guy?’

‘Ninety-one.’ Charlotte gulped more wine. Her skin had darkened under the low lights of the kitchen, her mouth now ruby red with lipstick and wine. ‘But ninety-one going on seventy-five. You wouldn’t fancy taking him on in an arm wrestle. Very tough and fit, sort of war generation Scot who can smoke forty a day and still pop to the top of Ben Nevis before breakfast.’

‘Unlike someone else I know,’ said Paul pointedly, looking at the cigarette in his wife’s hand. Charlotte’s years of reporting overseas had weakened, rather than strengthened, what had once been an iron constitution. Both Paul and Gaddis worried about this but could no more have curtailed her lifestyle than they could have biked to the moon.

‘And how does Neame know that his friend was a spy?’ Gaddis asked. ‘How come it hasn’t leaked out before?’

His phone rang before Charlotte had a chance to respond. Gaddis plucked it from the pocket of his jacket and looked at the display. It was a text from Holly Levette.

Nightcap…?

He was possessed by two contradictory impulses: to polish off his wine as quickly as possible and to grab a taxi south to Tite Street; or to come clean to Charlotte about his quest for a headline-grabbing story of his own.

‘Do you know this woman?’ he said, holding up the phone, as if there was a photograph of Holly on the screen. ‘Holly Levette?’

‘Rings a bell.’

‘Mother’s name was Katya. She was working on a history of the KGB when-’

‘Katya Levette!’ Charlotte reacted with mock horror. She shook her head and said: ‘Commonly regarded as the world’s worst hack.’

‘How so?’

She waved a hand in front of her face. ‘Not worth going into. Our paths crossed once or twice. She was constantly telling me how wonderful I was, but clearly looking for a quid pro quo. I think her daughter sent me an email after she died, saying how much Katya had admired something I’d written about Chechnya. Then offered me a load of old junk from her research papers.’

‘A load of old junk,’ Gaddis repeated, with a thump of despair.

‘Well, not junk.’ Charlotte looked sheepish. ‘Actually, I palmed her off on you. Told her to give them to a proper historian.’

‘Gee thanks.’

‘And now she’s been in touch?’

Gaddis nodded. ‘She didn’t mention that I was getting them second-hand. She told me how much she’d admired my Guardian article about Sergei Platov.’

Paul smothered a laugh. ‘Flattery will get you everywhere.’

Gaddis poured himself a glass of wine. Skirting around the dirty weekend in Chelsea, he explained that Holly had come to Daunt Books and offered him the KGB material on a plate.

‘A beautiful girl turns up like that, willing to hand over several hundred documents about Soviet intelligence, you don’t exactly turn a blind eye. How was I to know Katya was a fruitcake?’

‘Oh, she’s beautiful, is she?’ Charlotte asked, animated by the opportunity to tease him. ‘You never said.’

‘Holly is very beautiful.’

‘And she came to the launch? How come I didn’t meet her?’

‘Probably because you’d told her to get stuffed,’ Paul replied.

Charlotte laughed and picked at a chunk of candle wax on the table. ‘And now this girl is texting you at half-past ten at night. Is there something you’re not telling the group, Doctor Gaddis? Does Miss Levette need a bedtime story?’

Gaddis took a Camel from her open packet. ‘You’re lucky,’ he said, deliberately changing the subject. ‘Right now I’d sell my grandchildren for your Cambridge story.’ He lit the cigarette from the candle. Paul grimaced and waved a hand in front of his face, saying: ‘Christ, not you as well.’

‘The sixth man? Why?’

‘Financial problems.’ Gaddis made a gesture with upturned hands. ‘Nothing new.’

There was a strange kind of shame in being broke at forty-three. How had it come to this? He took the cigarette smoke deep into his lungs and exhaled at the ceiling.

Charlotte frowned. ‘Alimony? Is the fragrant Natasha turning out to be not quite as fragrant as we thought?’

Paul poured water into a cafetiere of coffee and kept his counsel.

‘Tax bill. School fees. Debts,’ Gaddis replied. ‘I need to raise about twenty-five grand. Had lunch with my agent today. He says the only hope I have of working my way out of the situation is to write a hack job about Soviet intelligence. Doesn’t even have to be under my own name. So a sixth Cambridge spy is the perfect story. In fact, I’ll steal it off you. Bury you under the floorboards to get my hands on it.’

Charlotte looked genuinely concerned. ‘You don’t have to steal it,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you co-write a book with me? We can even use some of Katya’s magic files.’ Paul grinned. ‘Seriously. I’ll break the Cambridge story as an exclusive, but after that someone will want a book. You’d be perfect. I don’t have the patience to sit down and compose two hundred thousand words about a piece I’ve already written. I’ll want to move on to the next thing. But you could put ATTILA in context. You could add all the juice and flavour. Nobody knows more about Russia than you do.’

Gaddis declined outright. It would feel wrong to be piggybacking on Charlotte’s triumph. She was drunk and the booze was making promises she might not, in the cold light of morning, be willing to keep. Yet she persisted.

‘Sleep on it,’ she said. ‘Christ, sleep on it while you’re sleeping with Holly Levette.’ Paul plunged the coffee. ‘I’d love to work with you. It would be an honour. And it sounds as though it will get you out of a nasty situation.’

Gaddis slotted his mobile phone back in his jacket pocket and took Charlotte’s hand. ‘It’s an idea,’ he said. ‘No more than that. You’re incredibly kind. But let’s talk more in the morning.’

‘No. Let’s talk now.’ She wouldn’t let pride and British etiquette stand in the way of a good idea. Polly, her buckled legs seized by arthritis, came hobbling into the kitchen and lay at her feet. Charlotte leaned over and fed a piece of bread into her mouth, saying: ‘Do you think it’s a good idea, Pol?’ in a voice for a child. ‘ I think it’s a good idea.’

‘OK, OK.’ Gaddis’s hands were again raised, this time in mock surrender. ‘I’ll think about it.’

Charlotte looked relieved. ‘Well, thank God for that. Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth.’ She stood and found three cups for the coffee.

‘And you say ATTILA is presumed dead?’ It was a first, conscious signal of Gaddis’s desire to explore things further.