Gavin Lyall - The Secret Servant

It was quite dark by now, the sky sharp with stars. The stable-yard rambled downhill into a small vegetable garden and then a field where they must once have grazed the horses. In a few seconds, Maxim's thin town shoes were soaked in freezing dew. Zuzana had on strong, well-polished ankle boots. They walked hand in hand.

Once they were clear of the buildings, she said: "It was not easy to find out, you understand. I could not wait in the corridor – those carriages were never so crowded – to go into the lavatory after each one to see if the message was gone. And the real man would have known me before I knew him. So I had to take some time. I would go in early to see if the message had gone, like that I knew he came on before East Croydon…" Gradually she had eliminated the other regulars, bringing it down to one man.

And that man must be the man; a spymaster can use cut-outs, messengers who are no great loss when pinched, but a traitor can trust nobody. He has to collect his own post.

"Did you find out his name?" Maxim asked incautiously. But she wasn't to be hurried. They had reached the bottom of the field, where an overgrown stream glinted slow and sullen in the starlight. Zuzana shivered, folded her arms as if to cradle her breasts, and rocked gently against the quiet cold, sniffing at the sky.

"It will snow," she said suddenly. "Here you almost never have snow. It will be beautiful, like at home… He was I think fifty years old, or some more, about 185 centimetres in height, he is bald in the middle with grey hair…" the description rambled on, but it was by a trained observer and it added up to a complete man.

But what man?

"You didn't get his name?"

"Did you want me to ask him?"

"Once you'd spotted him, you could have followed him from Victoria, to see where he worked."

"He was in the trade. He was in both our trades, he would have noticed me. And… they took me off that drop. I think they had some new joes in by then, and he was too important…" Her voice was flat and mumbly.

Maxim asked: "Have your people got a photograph of me yet?"

"Oh yes, of course."

"So you must have photos of everybody you know in British security?"

She didn't say anything.

"And you've had nearly two years to look through them, haven't you?"

"It was not easy, you must have a reason-"

"In two years you couldn't think of a reason? Who was the man you described just now? – your favourite uncle? You never worked out which man was the contact, did you?"

"I had to have something!" she shouted. "I had to bring something over! I had brought the Veverka file. I had it in my bag, but…"

Like a voice over his shoulder, Maxim could hear the Ashford instructor saying. "They all do it, they all build themselves up to make themselves more of a catch. If one says he's a KGB major, you can bet he's just a captain. If he tells you he can name six illegals, don't count on getting more than three. Just accept that you're going to be lied to, don't lose your cool, and at least you'll get all that there is to get."

I did brilliantly, Maxim thought bitterly. My first defector and the only cool thing about me is my feet.

He put his arms around her, awkwardly, since he wasn't used to her height and she was as stiff and unhelpful as a lamp-post. "I'm sorry. It's all right. You've given us quite enough to find him anyway. And the file, the baboons won't have got it. The police probably picked it up, so that's all right."

She relaxed and leant against him. "The police, of course. Yes. But what will they do to it?"

"I'll ring in and make sure we get hold of it. Come on." He put an arm round her shoulders and they started back up the field.

After a while, she said carefully: "There is something I can do for you, something else. I cannot say what, but soon."

"Fine." Maxim wasn't really listening. "Do you want to wait in the room?"

"I will wait. Can I have the gun again?"

He gave it to her along with the key, and this time waited until he heard the door lock before going up the yard.

He walked briskly out to the telephone box, since he wasn't going to trust the motel switchboard. But telephone boxes, taxis and parking spaces are never empty when you need them. He waited, almost dancing with the pain in his feet, while two girls made a long giggly call, and then another.

At last they rushed out in a flurry of long coats and laughter, not even noticing him.

Number 10 came on as a matronly voice saying: "You should have told us where you are, Major. We've had more than one-"

"I'm not anywhere," Maxim said. "Just find me George Harbinger."

He told George about the motel, then about Zuzana's work as a cut-out and her little white lies. George took it better than he'd expected, just muttering. "Bloody woman." But he would have had far more experience of defectors' habits, if only indirectly.

Then Maxim told him about Veverka and the file. "That must have been what the wild bunch were after. There doesn't seem any reason why they should think she's even heard of the contact in security."

George grunted dubiously. "Has she said anything about why she's Seen The Light?"

"Just that she's tired of a repressive regime repressing its citizens, or something."

"Bullshit. She tried to identify that contact just so that she'd have something in the bank if she ever decided to come over. Every agent pinches some little secret, just in case. I suppose when you start in that work, you soon realise there may be only one safe place for you: the other side."

"Actually why she came," Maxim said, "is that they just took away her first command. She just grabbed the file, out of spite, and ran. Or that's my guess."

"She doesn't sound all that bright… What's that noise? Have you got the Brigade in there with you?"

Maxim realised he'd been stamping his almost numb feet on the floor of the box. "Sorry. She's no master-spy, but at least we know the Tyler letter's probably still around."

"I'm not at all sure I like that. We'll go into a huddle about it when you get back."

"When's that going to be?"

"Ring me in an hour or so. Oh – there's one other thing, Harry, and I don't think you should mention it to her. Wing-Commander Neale's dead. I asked the fuzz to put a guard on him but I was too late, blast it. Some of your roughnecks seem to have got in and worked on him a little. I believe it was his heart that gave out, so they probably didn't mean to kill him."

"They certainly meant to kill her."

"Yes, well,.. Keep in touch."

"Is the news about Neale on the radio?"

"I imagine so…"

Suddenly it wasn't just Maxim's feet that were cold. He ran all the way back to the motel, slowing down just for respectability as he entered the arch into the stableyard. The bedroom was dark, and there was no answer to his gentle knock and whisper. He tried the handle and the door opened. He knew then that she'd gone; a few seconds later, he knew the gun had gone with her.

The receptionist hadn't seen her go. "To tell the truth, I haven't seen her at all, have I? She's a foreign lady, your wife, isn't she?"

"Yes." Maxim was turning away when he realised what that meant. "She made a telephone call from the room, then?"

She could hardly deny it, but wasn't going to admit she'd tried to listen in. She must have been around fifty, with the thin bedraggled look of a bird with a broken wing. "She did make a call to London, yes."

"Just now?"

"Oh no. Nearly an hour ago, I should say."

"Can you give me the number, please?"

She was looking it up when the first shot sounded. It hardly registered on her; to Maxim it was a bomb.

Zuzana was certainly no master spy. She had rung her office as soon as the radio had told her of Neale's death: an almost purely emotional reaction, seeking revenge. But she remembered enough of her training to pretend that she had heard nothing and offered to discuss her own return to the fold provided nobody went near the Wing-Commander. They had promised that straight off, so she knew that when they came to meet her it would be in bad faith but perhaps without too much suspicion. But she had no time to scout the meeting-place she suggested: the porch of the church glimpsed as she and Maxim drove in. And her worst mistake was not to get there first: she had overestimated the time they would take.