Jon Stock - Games Traitors Play

By the time Marchant had reached the bottom of the escalator, there was no sign of the Russian. He tried to turn left, but the crowds were almost spilling onto the tracks. He had lost him. He pushed his way to the platform edge. First, he looked left down the long line of people waiting for a train, then to the right. Twenty yards away, a pair of shoes was sticking out beyond everyone else’s. He had found his man.

Marchant moved as quickly as he could through the crowds, feeling the warm wind of an approaching train on his face. Thirty seconds later, he was positioned behind the Russian. It was definitely Valentin. He must have decided to drop off his tail, suspecting that he had been spotted, and was now standing with his legs apart on the platform edge, trying to steady himself against the crush of people swarming in different directions.

A member of the station staff asked over the Tannoy for people to move to the far end of the platform. He was unable to disguise his concern. The station was overcrowding. Marchant glanced at the tourists around him, holding anxiously to their suitcases, and then looked again at Valentin, who was only inches away. His hairline was edged with a thin strip of pale skin, suggesting that he had had his hair cut between leaving Sardinia and arriving in London.

It would be very easy to make it look like an accident, Marchant thought as the train approached, sounding its horn. For a moment, he pictured Valentin rolling onto the live rail, looking back up at him. His father had seen a jumper once, said it was the rancid smoke that had shocked him the most. The image of Valentin’s burnt body wasn’t as unsettling as it should have been. Which friend of his father’s did they want him to meet? And why did they talk about him in that familiar way? He realised now how angry he was, how humiliated he felt by the events in Sardinia. Uncle Hugo had been sent to rescue him. Christ, he wasn’t a new recruit any more. He was thirty, with five years’ experience under his belt, a promising career ahead of him.

A couple of seconds before the train reached the point where they were standing, Marchant looked over his shoulder. ‘Hey, stop pushing,’ he shouted, and grabbed Valentin’s arms as if to steady himself. Then he shoved the Russian forward as hard as he could.

‘Betrayal requires a great leap of faith,’ Fielding said, looking out of the window of his office. Marchant was standing beside him, watching the Tate-to-Tate ferry head down the river, trying to understand what Fielding had just told him.

‘You’re sure it’s Primakov who wants to see me?’ he asked.

‘Who else would it be? A good friend of your father suddenly turns up in London after years out in the cold. It’s hard to imagine that they’d want you to meet anyone else.’

Marchant didn’t reply. Before the approach in Sardinia, he had forgotten all about Primakov, but the mention of his name began to sharpen blurred memories. The Russian had been a regular visitor to their house in India, a short man always arriving laden down with gifts for the children, peering over the top of them. It was so long ago. There had been an Indian toy, a mechanical wind-up train that went round a tiny metal track. His mother had taken it away because of its jagged edges.

‘There’s something I need to show you,’ Fielding continued. ‘A document that you would never normally see, not unless you become Chief — an appointment that would first require North America to sink beneath the sea.’

The CIA hadn’t stopped his father becoming Chief, Marchant thought, ignoring Fielding’s attempt at humour. Instead, they had waited until he was in office before humiliating him. Fielding stepped out of the room and told Ann Norman and his private secretary that he didn’t want to be disturbed, then closed the door and went over to his desk. But he didn’t sit down. Instead, he turned to the big safe in the corner behind him.

‘Give me a moment,’ he said, and bent down in front of the combination lock. Marchant instinctively looked away, out of apparent politeness, then watched in the window reflection as Fielding punched in some numbers — 4-9-3-7 — into a digital display and turned a large, well-oiled dial beneath it. His brain processed the movements in reverse: one and a half turns clockwise, two complete opposite turns, a final quarter-turn clockwise. Everyone who had ever been in the Chief’s office had wondered what secrets the safe held, which British Prime Ministers had been working for Moscow, which trade union leaders had been Russian plants.

‘Let’s sit over there,’ Fielding said a moment later, like a don about to discuss a dissertation. In his hand he held a brown Whitehall A4 envelope. He gestured towards two sofas and a glass table at the far end of his office, below the grandfather clock that Marchant had yet to hear ticking. Before he sat down, he placed the envelope on the table and put both hands on the small of his back. ‘The combination changes twice a day, by the way,’ he said, stretching, ‘should you ever think of opening it.’

‘I’d expect nothing less,’ Marchant said, trying to hide his embarrassment. He sat down on the edge of the sofa, watching Fielding unpick the quaint brown string that kept the envelope closed at one end. In addition to the normal security stamps on the front, Marchant saw another one, in faded green, that read ‘For C’s eyes only.’

‘I don’t need to stress the classified nature of what I am about to show you,’ Fielding said.

‘God’s access?’ Marchant asked. Fielding nodded. Product didn’t come more secret.

‘Your father was one of the most gifted officers of his or any other generation. We both know that. He recruited more valuable assets behind the Iron Curtain than anyone else. But the most prized of them all was Nikolai Primakov.’

‘I remember him from Delhi. At least, I remember he used to bring us presents.’ Marchant could also recall big smiles and warm laughter, but he couldn’t trust his memory. Why hadn’t there been the normal household caveats about Primakov, given that he was from a hostile country? After the family had left India for the final time, he had never seen the Russian again, although his father talked of him often.

‘The two of them were well known on the South Asia circuit, celebrated sparring partners who were also close friends.’

‘How did that work?’

‘Such overt friendships were more common in the Cold War. Vasilenko and Jack Platt in Washington, Smith and Krasilnokov in Beirut.’ Fielding paused. ‘Only a handful of people know that Primakov eventually succumbed to your father’s overtures and became one of ours. This is a brief summary of the case.’

He handed Marchant an A4 document that had been typed rather than printed out from a computer, an indication that it was an only copy. Marchant tried to hold it between his hands, but realised they were shaking, so he put the sheet of paper onto the glass table and read. It was a series of bullet points, explaining how his father had recruited Primakov in Delhi and how the Russian had returned to Moscow and eventually risen to become head of K Branch (counter-intelligence) in the KGB’s First Chief Directorate. It made impressive reading, but something didn’t stack up. Officers other than Chiefs would have been involved in the running of Primakov, heads of stations, Controllerates back in London.

‘The version in front of you is for general reading,’ Fielding said. ‘It’s the copy new Prime Ministers see when they come to office. This one is a bit more confidential. South of the river only.’

He slid another sheet of paper across the glass table. Marchant recognised his father’s handwriting at once, the green ink faded but legible. He read fast, taking in as much as he could, trying to ignore his hands, which were still trembling. It soon became clear why no one other than fellow Chiefs had read the document. In it was an admission by his father that made Marchant swallow hard.