James Barrington - Overkill

‘He’s got to be, hasn’t he?’ Richter said. ‘They’ve presented us with a dead body that almost everyone accepts as being the remains of Graham Newman. If they were going to ignore his diplomatic immunity and put him on show, they certainly wouldn’t have done that. It would have been a mysterious disappearance, followed a few days later by a cautious leak from TASS, then the usual diplomatic charge and denial that we all know and love. That would have been followed by a trial at which Newman would make a “voluntary” confession to whatever the Russians had in mind. And if it had been a defection, they’d be shouting about it in the world’s press, and there wouldn’t be a mangled stiff in a Moscow basement.

‘No, the only possible reason for giving us a body called Newman is that Newman is dead somewhere, and the only reason for giving us a body that looks like Newman but isn’t, is that Graham Newman’s remains are not fit for public consumption.’ Richter stopped and looked over at Simpson. ‘If you want my guess, Newman’s in the Lubyanka, and he won’t be coming out. They’ve snatched him for terminal questioning.’

Simpson nodded in a preoccupied fashion a couple of times, then stood up and walked back to the window and fiddled with the cacti on the sill.

‘And there’s something else,’ Richter said.

‘What?’

‘I picked up tails everywhere I went in Moscow, and I had an exchange of views with one of them at the airport.’

‘Who was he?’

‘I didn’t bother getting his name, but he was carrying an SVR identity card and waving a PSM pistol in my face. The SVR had obviously issued a kill order against me.’

Simpson nodded, returned to his desk, and depressed a button. ‘Coffee,’ he said.

A few minutes later there was a knock on the door, and Richter got up and opened it. Simpson’s secretary was standing outside, a metal tray in her hands. On it were two cups of black coffee, a small jug of milk, a plate with three digestive biscuits, and a bowl of sugar.

‘Thank you, Sheila.’

She put the tray down on Simpson’s desk and left the office. Simpson reached across, added milk to his coffee and watched Richter take two of the three biscuits. ‘It may interest you to know that your appreciation of the situation tallies almost exactly with the Intelligence Director’s assessment, given that the body is not Newman.’

‘That’s why he’s the ID, I suppose,’ Richter said.

‘Don’t be frivolous.’ Simpson put his coffee cup down and reached for the remaining biscuit. Richter remembered the things he had selected from Graham Newman’s possessions in Moscow, opened his briefcase again and piled them up on Simpson’s desk.

‘What’s this rubbish?’

‘This rubbish, as you so charmingly put it, is a small selection of the things Newman held near and dear.’

‘I realize that,’ said Simpson. ‘More to the point, why are they on my desk?’

‘Because I don’t want them,’ Richter replied. ‘I had to think of a reason for having a quick look round Newman’s office and apartment – as instructed by you – and collecting items of sentimental value for his family seemed to be the easiest. I thought you might like to send them off to the SIS or even to Newman’s family, if he had one.’

Simpson looked at him. ‘There is a next of kin address in the file, as I’ve no doubt you noted, but Newman wasn’t married.’

‘I know he wasn’t married,’ Richter said sharply.

Simpson looked at him quizzically. ‘He was the SIS Head of Station. Nobody was stopping him getting married. It’s different with us – I never employ field operatives saddled with wives. It’s far too hampering.’

‘I’m sure it is,’ Richter said.

‘How I employ my operatives is nothing whatever to do with you.’

‘It is as long as I’m one.’

‘You’re more than a field operative. I recruited you into this organization in order to make use of your unique talents. You, Richter, are one of my secret weapons.’ Simpson smiled the way a crocodile does, showing lots of teeth and ill intent. ‘I like to think I can aim you at a problem, light the blue touch paper and stand well clear.’

Richter grunted. Simpson showed more teeth, drained the last of his coffee and stood up. ‘Leave them with me – the bits you brought back from Moscow. I’ll take care of them.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Well? Anything else?’ Simpson said and looked rather pointedly at the door.

‘Yes, of course there’s something else,’ said Richter. ‘Having established that the body in Moscow isn’t Newman, the big question is why.’

Simpson sat down again. ‘You mean why did they snatch Newman?’

‘I mean why did they snatch Newman, and why did they snatch anyone?’

Simpson smoothed back his fair hair with a small and scrupulously clean pink hand. ‘I asked the Intelligence Director the same question.’

‘And what, pray, was the Intelligence Director’s assessment of the situation?’

‘He was puzzled,’ Simpson said. ‘There would appear to be no reason why Newman was snatched, rather than any other SIS officer at Moscow Station except, of course, that he was Head of Station. He had had no access to any files of particular interest to the Russians recently, and as far as we are aware he was not involved in any especially sensitive project. Which is to say that he hadn’t been tasked by London with anything of that nature. It’s pretty quiet at the moment in Moscow, apart from the depredations of the Mafia.’

‘Basically, you don’t know?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ Simpson snapped. ‘We came to the conclusion that it might simply have been a precautionary check. The KGB did occasionally snatch a foreign service operative and pump them dry just to see if they knew anything of interest – although it wasn’t common – and it was rare for them not to return the operative afterwards, more or less in one piece. Perhaps the SVR has a more aggressive attitude.’

‘So that’s it, is it? “Goodbye, Newman. It’s been nice knowing you.”’

‘There’ll be a funeral, of course.’

‘Delightful. I meant, more specifically, what follow-up action will you be taking?’

‘Follow-up action? None. As far as Vauxhall Cross is concerned, officially the body at the Embassy is Newman, and will be buried here as Newman. The Russians couldn’t have got anything of major significance out of him because he didn’t know anything. Therefore, as SIS has not been compromised in any way, we are doing nothing.’

‘That will be a great comfort to Newman’s shade,’ Richter said, and walked out.

Office of the Director of Operations (Clandestine Services), Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

The outer office door was open, and as Richard Muldoon led the way down the long carpeted corridor he could see straight into the room. Jayne Taylor, the Director’s personal assistant – very personal, if some of the rumours circulating in the supergrades’ private dining room were to be believed – was talking softly into a telephone while she flicked briskly through a large leather-bound desk diary.

‘Yes,’ she murmured quietly, as Muldoon paused at the door, ‘it looks as if Friday week is about the earliest the Director can see you. Of course, if you could limit your presentation to fifteen minutes or less we could possibly fit you in before that.’

She looked up as Muldoon knocked, and her eyes widened slightly as she nodded and watched him and the other two men walk in and stand by the window. Muldoon was tall and lanky, and bore an uncanny resemblance to James Jesus Angleton, the agency’s notorious former spy-catcher, but today his normally cheerful face was clouded. Jayne Taylor turned away, and resumed her telephone conversation. ‘Look, Mike, I have some visitors right now. Could you give it some thought and call me back? Thanks, and you.’