Philip Kerr - The Other Side of Silence

No one spoke. Anne looked furtive now, even a little desperate. The trouble was that everyone believed her lie, which meant she could hardly contradict mine without compromising her own.

“Why on earth would I hold something back now?” she said. “It makes absolutely no sense. He’s making this up to try and make me look bad in your eyes and to save his own skin. That much is obvious.”

“Anne French is telling you she doesn’t know this man’s name,” I said. “But I have to tell you now that she and I have had more than one lengthy conversation about him. While we were in bed. So I’m afraid she’s lying when she tells you she doesn’t know what I’m talking about.”

“What? That’s a load of crap,” said Anne.

“Is it?” I asked smugly. “Look, the last time I saw her I had absolutely no sense that she was experiencing any crisis of conscience about her actions. None at all. She was cool and very collected. If I’d had even half an idea that she was going to betray Hennig and me I’d have put a bullet in her head without a moment’s hesitation.” I frowned and wagged a finger in her direction. “When last I met with Anne French all of her questions were about Sir John Sinclair and MI6, not MI5. Was it possible that proving that Roger Hollis was a Russian spy would help to put our man in the clear again? That kind of thing.”

“Tell me you’re not going to believe any of this Fascist bastard’s nonsense,” said Anne.

“I don’t know,” confessed the monk. “Really I don’t. It’s a most intriguing picture you paint, Herr Gunther. It is as if you really do have the names of two men who have spied for the Soviet Union in MI6. Do you? I wonder.”

“Look,” said Anne, “it’s perfectly obvious he’s just going to give you the name of Sir John Sinclair or Patrick Reilly. Or that other queer who was at the hotel. The art curator. Blunt. He’s bluffing you, like this was a game of bridge. There is no Soviet agent in MI6, I tell you. At least none that we know of.”

“Look, we all know that there’s an easy way to prove who’s telling the truth here,” I said. “We should both agree to write down two names at the same time. Then you can decide for yourself what her real intentions are here, gentlemen. To help, or to hinder. If these names are not under some suspicion in the British secret service, then I’ll be the one facing a midnight boat trip, not her. I’ve already put up my hands to everything of which I’ve been accused. So, I’ve nothing at all to lose, have I? Can this beautiful lady honestly say the same?”

The monk handed me a pencil and a sheet of paper. “Very well,” he said. “I’m going to do what she’s been urging me to do for several minutes. To call your bluff. Write it down, Gunther. Write down the names. But woe betide you if you’re wrong, my German friend.”

“With pleasure.”

I tore the sheet of paper in half, wrote the name JOHN CAIRNCROSS, and handed it to the monk.

“This first man has already confessed to being a Soviet spy,” I said. “However, his name is not yet known outside of MI6. So I couldn’t possibly have known about him unless someone in the HVA had told me. Agreed?”

The monk read the name and passed it to one of his colleagues.

I prepared to write the second name, uncertain now of how to spell it. English has such peculiar, idiosyncratic spellings. The Christian name was short and obvious. But the surname was something else, like a type of felt hat beloved of English gentlemen. If I made a muck of it I was a dead man, without question. For a second or two I considered beginning the name with an “F” but changed my mind and, praying that Maugham had not mentioned to the spymasters my having listened to the conversation of Sinclair and Reilly while I was up on the roof, I wrote it with a “Ph,” like Philip. When I finished, I handed the paper back to the monk. On it was written the name KIM PHILBY.

“I suspect,” I said, “that restoring the reputation of this second man was, perhaps, what this operation was always all about.”

The monk looked at the name without betraying a flicker of recognition and then showed it to his two colleagues, whose reactions were equally gnomic.

“Now then, Miss French, I wonder if you’d mind doing the same as Herr Gunther,” said the monk, handing her the pencil and another piece of paper. “Take your time. But write down the names of anyone who was spying for the KGB in MI6, if you can.”

Anne stared at me for a moment with tight-lipped malevolence. Her early cool demeanor was gone; she’d even started biting her thumbnail.

“I already told you,” she said evenly. “Are you deaf? I don’t know the name of any Soviet agents in MI6.” She tossed the pencil away and crushed the paper into a ball, which she now threw at me. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know, can I? He’s lying. Neither of us knows the name of any Soviet agents in MI6.”

“Anne French ought to be the one person you people can trust because she’s already betrayed the HVA’s Hollis operation to you,” I said. “And, of course, it’s perfectly understandable that you should trust her. Christ, I know I would. Anyone would. At great personal risk she’s told you everything about Othello and in considerable detail. That’s undeniable. Did you hear me deny it for very long? No. I’ve confirmed it and so has Harold Hennig. Well, more or less. But if I have supplied the names of two men who’ve been Soviet agents in MI6 and she says she can’t, then where does that leave your opinion of her? And of me? Clearly she’s demonstrated her loyalty to her own country and to you, and yet she says she knows nothing at all about any Soviet agents in MI6. It’s puzzling.” I looked at her and smiled kindly. “You might as well tell them, Anne. I really don’t think that either one of those names is going to be such a surprise to them.”

“Fuck you,” she hissed.

“You already did, sweetheart. In bed. Several times. And then in here. But do let me know if I’ve forgotten somewhere else.”

The thugs from Portsmouth took me back to the red room, only this time they didn’t chain my hand to the radiator, or leave the light on, or even hit me, for which I was grateful. So I wandered round the room for a while, for the exercise, stood at the window, opened it, and then pushed at the louvered shutters. I was glad of the fresh air, but the shutters themselves didn’t shift a centimeter, not even with all my weight against the center gap. It was dark outside and I had no idea what time it was. I could hear and smell the sea and I longed to be outside. I felt sick and terribly tired. My jaw still ached and I was longing for a bath.

“Be careful what you wish for, Gunther,” I said to myself. “They might take you for a bath in the sea. The kind of bath for which you won’t need any soap. Just a pair of concrete overshoes.”

I went to the red room’s door, held my breath, and listened. I could hear nothing but silence, but I didn’t doubt that they were probably talking about me; I’d given the Englishmen a great deal to discuss. And even if they didn’t believe a word of it, at least I’d managed to upset Anne French. That alone would have been worth the effort. After a while I lay down on the floor by the window and closed my sore eyes. I’m not sure how long I slept but it was still dark when I awoke and for several pleasant minutes I stayed there with no knowledge of who or where I was. According to Betty Cornell’s Popularity Guide , you should always be yourself, but a lifetime’s experience had taught me differently. With my background, being yourself can easily get you killed. Minutes passed and I got up and made a token effort to push the shutters again, but they were just as unyielding as they’d been before. So I walked back to the radiator and managed to find what was left of the water they’d given me earlier. I drank it and returned to the door and listened. This time something was different. The house remained silent but now I felt a cool draft of air on my feet and when I dropped down onto my stomach to peer under the doorway I felt it on my face, too. A door was wide open somewhere. The front door perhaps. And an old prisoner’s instinct told me that if the front door was open then maybe another was, too. I stood up, grasped the brass handle, turned it gently, and pulled. The red room door was unlocked and opened with barely a creak. At the end of a long, unlit corridor I’d paid little attention to earlier, the main door was standing wide open. I waited for several long, frigid moments to see if someone came in, but I had a strong feeling that no one would and that the British had gone. I walked to the front door as quietly as I could and stepped outside onto the terrace, into the overgrown front garden, still half expecting that someone would emerge from the shadows and hit me, or worse, put a bullet in me. But nothing happened except I learned where I was. The house was situated somewhere on the slopes of Mont Boron, just to the south of Villefranche and overlooking Nice, to the west. It was a typical three-story bastide with peeling yellow walls and blue shutters. There were no lights on in any of the windows and no cars parked on the drive. The place looked deserted, almost derelict. For a moment I considered making a run for it down the graveled drive. Instead, curiosity got the better of me and I went back inside the big house. The room with the cobwebbed chandelier was deserted now except that my shoes lay on the table, next to my watch, a packet of cigarettes and some matches, and a set of small keys on a ring. I put on my shoes, grabbed the keys, and started to explore. Gradually it became even more obvious that the house was empty. I even risked switching on some lights, and it wasn’t long before I found Harold Hennig, chained to a radiator in one of the larger bedrooms up on the first floor like some forgotten prisoner in the Bastille. I decided that if I looked anything like him I was in bad shape. He was unshaven and had a blue eye the size of a beetroot from when he’d been slugged.