A Spy's Life Read online

  Harland looked at him mildly. ‘Not guilt, Walter, just a change of interest. The reason I went to those places was that I could speak Russian. As you can imagine, the Red Cross didn’t have too many Russian speakers in those days. And, you know something? We did some good in those places, which is what I liked about the job.’

  Vigo returned a knowing smile and then sighed. ‘But let’s just go back to the matter in hand, if you wouldn’t mind – this thing you had with Griswald, this association, this alliance. He must have given you a hint of what he was doing. You see, we know he was bringing something to New York of great value. When I saw you were on the same flight I said to myself that this information might be the sort that Griswald would share with an old and reliable friend such as Bobby Harland.’

  ‘The answer is no. I really haven’t the first idea what he was up to. I guessed that it was important – in fact, he said so. But really I can’t tell you any more than that.’

  ‘But I have a steer that you did indeed know about it all.’

  Harland remembered Guy Cushing in The Hague and wondered whether Vigo had prevailed upon him to bump into Griswald and find out what he could at the Toison D’Or. Harland was certainly not put off by the nauseous look that came into Vigo’s expression when he first mentioned Cushing. It was quite possible that Cushing had been keeping an eye on Griswald for some time. He must owe Vigo all sorts of favours after his unceremonious expulsion from the Service, which was said at the time to be a lenient punishment. Yes, he would owe Vigo, and Vigo would have pressed for repayment. That was Vigo’s way.

  ‘Walter, you asked me why I left the Service. It was partly to stop wasting my life on this sort of crap. Let me be clear about this. Griswald and I collaborated at one time and I really was genuinely fond of him, but our lives developed in different directions. The steer you have is a bad one.’

  Vigo said nothing.

  ‘The other thing you’re forgetting,’ Harland continued, ‘is that the crash appears to have been an accident, which stands to reason. If you were to sabotage a plane, you would arrange for it to blow up at twenty-eight thousand feet, not at fifty feet as it was coming in to land.’ He pulled his napkin from his lap and began to work his way out of the booth. ‘Walter, I can’t give you the answers to your questions because they’re too damned silly.’

  ‘There’s no need to leave, Bobby,’ said Vigo, holding up both hands. ‘Please do stay. I’ll explain as much as I can. You see, we believe that Griswald had benefited from an unusual source.’

  ‘What kind of source?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to say, but I can tell you that the source is random in focus and sometimes oddly juvenile. We are anxious to learn a little more about the source and so naturally I came to you, believing that perhaps Griswald had told you about it.’

  Harland felt his temper rising. ‘Look, I had absolutely no connection with Griswald. He wouldn’t tell me what he was doing. You must understand that. Why don’t you ask this bloody source?’

  Vigo considered this while adding sour cream and caviar to the mound of chopped egg on one of the blinis. When he had finished, he picked up the pancake, squeezed the sides gently and placed it in his mouth. Silence ensued. Then he spoke. ‘I can’t talk to this source because at present it’s anonymous.’

  ‘Look, somewhere along the line there’s a physical entity who you can grab by the throat and demand he tells you what he’s talking about.’

  ‘In this case we can’t. Things aren’t nearly as simple as they used to be and this is a very delicate, not to say dangerous, situation.’

  ‘Are you getting this all off the Web? Some crackpot intelligence site?’

  ‘No, it’s rather more specialised information – designed for the trade only, I suspect. I believe Griswald was in receipt of a bespoke service, if I may call it that.’

  The trade only! Bespoke service! He wished Vigo would stop talking like a fucking butler. He looked at him and wondered vaguely if he had any concept of life outside the Secret Intelligence Service.

  ‘But this source is some kind of friendly voice?’ ventured Harland.

  ‘I couldn’t say.’

  ‘Then what the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘I can see you’re sceptical about all this, but I assure you that we believe it to be important.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sceptical, but I was also thinking that it’s a long time since I’ve had a conversation like this when I haven’t the first idea what is being said to me.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Bobby, you do yourself a disservice. As you well know, you are rather good at all this. Don’t tell me you’ve been converted by the happy-clappy folk at the UN, because I won’t believe you.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Harland snapped. ‘Out there, there are vast problems of poverty and with the environment. These problems are getting worse and they need people to think about them. When it comes down to it, the intelligence community – as it is laughably called – does damn all to help.’

  Vigo sat back to examine Harland with ironic amusement, his eyes popping with superiority and malice.

  ‘I see the philosopher spy is in the grip of a moral imperative – or is it a categorical imperative? I am never sure. However, before you get too carried away, let me just point out that a great number of people at the UN belong to the community you so despise. No less than a fifth of every national mission at the UN is devoted to the unlovely practice of your former trade. They’re ferreting around, snooping, poking, prying, stealing, poncing and generally doing their level best to find out what each other is up to. They may wear national costumes and talk humanitarianism while queuing at the vegetarian counter in the UN cafeteria, but let me tell you that a good many of them are spies, and pretty second-rate spies at that.’

  Harland drank some wine and decided not to reply. Time to go.

  ‘Look, Walter, I’m not much company. I wish I could help you about Griswald, but I can’t. And now I really do think that I should go to bed. I’m still feeling pretty done in.’

  He got up.

  Vigo looked disappointed. ‘Yes, of course. I quite understand, Bobby. It’s been a pleasure to see you. I hope you haven’t minded our talk. You can probably see that it’s important to me. I hope also that you’ll understand if I have to call on you again.’ He composed himself and smiled. ‘What are you doing for Christmas? Going back to dear old England or staying here?’

  ‘No plans yet.’

  ‘Well, keep in touch. And Bobby, all of what we’ve talked about aside, I’m really very pleased to see you alive.’

  Harland shrugged and thanked him for the meal. He went to collect his coat at the front desk. The girl at the coat check had some trouble finding it. As he waited he cast a look back at Vigo in the booth. His hands were just visible, leafing through the catalogue of incunabula. Then a man appeared, perhaps from a table on the opposite side of the restaurant, and went over to say something to him. Vigo did not raise his head to look at the man.

  Harland walked down 48th Street towards the East River, relieved to be out of Vigo’s oppressive company and also a little angry with himself for allowing Vigo to nettle him. He was sure that the stuff about Prague, dropped like an iron bar into the conversation, was there to menace him. Of course, Vigo didn’t know anything about Prague, but he must have had suspicions at the time which he had resurrected now to use as a lever. Well, he could forget it! There was no way he was going to succumb to a clumsy threat like that.

  Try as he might, he couldn’t stop turning over the conversation in his mind. What was it Griswald knew that Vigo was so desperate to get hold of? It had occurred to Harland beforehand that the mini-disc might just carry something, if only because the choice of music was patently not Griswald’s. The next day he would take it to Sally and ask her if she thought it had any special significance. He would also see if she knew what her husband was working on. The Griswalds had an unusually close relationship and he was sure that Al kept few
secrets from her.

  But what about Vigo? What the hell were his motives? On reflection, Harland felt he’d almost been sitting with someone who was playing Vigo, rather than Vigo himself. The humour and effortless speed of mind had been replaced by a pantomime version of the original – an indication perhaps of his desperation. There was no doubt that the problem was consuming all Vigo’s considerable resources because he was well informed about the crash. Maybe he had a line into the FBI? But it was more likely he was getting this stuff from someone in the UN, someone who was being kept informed of the progress of the investigation.

  Harland turned right at Second Avenue and kept walking simply for the pleasure of the bracing night air and the glittering vistas of midtown Manhattan. His mind was clearing and with that came a burst of optimism, which had been waiting to break out since he left the hospital. He had survived, dammit, and that was all that mattered. He stopped at a Korean deli and bought himself a small container of freshly squeezed orange juice to clear his mouth of the thick, musty taste of the wine. He undid the top as he waited for the store assistant to change his twenty-dollar bill and swilled the juice in his mouth before swallowing it. Then something occurred in a deep part of his consciousness. An old nerve ending tingled which made him look round through the doorway and catch sight of a man on the other side of Second Avenue. He had stopped and was fiddling with one of the newspaper vending machines that are on every corner in midtown. Harland understood that he had been followed from the restaurant. He took his change and lingered to the side of the doorway, waiting for a cab with an illuminated sign to draw up to the lights. The man threw one or two glances his way, then withdrew a newspaper from the machine and ostentatiously started leafing through it.

  Bloody amateur, thought Harland as he walked smartly from the doorway and flagged down a cab. What the hell did Vigo think he was playing at, sending his idiot footpads to follow him?

  5

  THE WOODEN HAT

  The young man waited to catch sight of Harland outside the Flynt Building in Brooklyn Heights for much of the day. But the wind was blowing straight off the East River and several times he had been driven inside by the cold, first to find refuge in a bar and then in the cinema on Henry Street. After the movie, he decided to find out whether Harland was expected back that day. He talked to the surly Russian porter at the Flynt and discovered he’d missed him. Harland had returned from hospital and gone out again. At 10 p.m. the young man returned to his post behind some recycling bins across the street from the building. He would give it an hour and if Harland didn’t show he’d go back to the hotel.

  Ten minutes later a cab drew up and a man in a long overcoat got out and walked slowly to the building’s entrance, patting his pockets for keys. As he reached the door, he paused and shot a glance quickly up and down the empty street. It was then that he caught sight of the man’s face. Although he was thirty yards away and the light was not good in that part of the street, he was certain that the tall, slightly stooping figure was Robert Harland. But now that the moment had arrived, he found his mind tripping over itself in an effort to choose the right words. Hell, he’d had enough time to think of what he was going to say, but he couldn’t find a coherent sentence in his being. And so he watched while Harland pulled the door open and passed into the lobby.

  He was just pondering how long he should wait before asking the porter to call up to Harland’s apartment when another cab coasted to a halt at the end of the street and two men got out. Instinctively he withdrew further into the shadows behind the bins. He saw one of the men jog a little way down the street, stop and hold up his hand to shield his eyes from the light of the street lamp. He seemed to be interested in the cab which had dropped Harland off, and was only now moving away. After a few seconds the man retreated and disappeared with his companion into Henry Street.

  Harland could never enter the Flynt Building without marvelling at his good fortune in landing the apartment when the previous tenant left for Rome. He made for the elevator, raising a hand cheerily to the young Russian who served as the weekend doorman. Boris grunted something but did not look up from the mini TV balanced in his lap.

  When he unlocked the door of his apartment he would sometimes go in without turning on the lights, take a drink from the fridge and look at the view for a few minutes. The room was large and airy, and all along one side was an uninterrupted view across the East River to Wall Street and the World Trade Center. But now he flicked the switch because the answerphone light was blinking. He pushed the play button and heard the machine announce in its hesitant, half-feminine voice, ‘You have … five … new messages.’ The first caller hung up without speaking. The next three were well-wishers from the UN, and then came Harriet, again insisting that he should spend Christmas in London.

  As he listened to her, his eyes ran over his desk. Something was wrong. The letters he’d picked up from the mailbox that afternoon had been placed in a different order. And the bill from the electricity company, which he’d left on top of his laptop so he wouldn’t forget to pay it, had been moved to the side and turned over. Also, the lid of the computer was fractionally open. He knew he had left it shut tight.

  He looked round the apartment. Nothing else seemed to have been disturbed. He went back to the computer and turned it on. All the files on his water report were in order and appeared not to have been tampered with. His e-mail, however, had been downloaded from the Internet provider and read. Some sixteen messages that he had not seen before were displayed in the inbox. None was in the bold type that indicated an unopened message.

  His first thought was that Vigo had arranged for the search, knowing he was safely at dinner with him. His hand rose to feel the lump of Griswald’s wallet in his jacket and the hard edge of the disc’s cover. That was the only thing Vigo could want unless he was convinced that Harland’s laptop contained some clue to Griswald’s secret. Still, it didn’t seem quite right to him. A professional team from SIS would have stolen into the apartment and gone through his things without leaving a trace. They certainly would not have made the mistake of opening his e-mail and then leaving the computer open and in sleep mode.

  He left the apartment and went down to the lobby where he found Boris who was leaning back in his chair, distractedly pulling a strand of gum from his mouth.

  ‘Did I have any callers when I was out, Boris?’

  ‘World and fucking wife try reaching you,’ he said without turning round. ‘Too many people looking for you come here.’

  ‘Too many people? What do you mean – the media?’

  ‘Many people. Not media.’

  ‘Well, who then?’

  Boris’s sallow features looked up at Harland. ‘Two men from UN. I show them apartment.’

  ‘What! Which men from the UN?’

  ‘They have ID and documentations. They take nothing. I check.’

  ‘You mean you let some strangers into my apartment.’

  ‘They have documentations; they have ID.’ Boris stood up and thrust his hands out with the exaggerated innocence of a footballer caught fouling. ‘Like the woman she come yesterday.’

  ‘Which woman?’

  ‘The woman who take clothes to hospital.’

  ‘Yes, that was my secretary who you gave a spare set of keys to. But who were these men? What did they look like?

  ‘One tall with grey hair, like Bill Clinton. Other man, younger. They stay in five minutes. I wait outside door. Then they go.’

  ‘This isn’t bloody Russia, Boris. You don’t have to do what everyone tells you just because they flash an identity card at you. Why didn’t you say something when I came in just now?’

  ‘You deen aks me.’

  Harland briefly marvelled at Boris’s mastery of street idiom.

  ‘How on earth was I supposed to know that you had let a couple of complete strangers into my apartment? I think we’re going to have to talk to the building manager about this, Boris.’ He turned to the lift.r />
  ‘You deen aks me about kid neither!’

  ‘What kid, for heaven’s sake?’

  ‘A man like my age – maybe more young. He speak Russian and English like me. Smart kid. He say he come back later.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Tall like you, Mr Harland. He wears big jacket and hat – like this.’ Boris clamped his hands over his head.

  ‘A woollen hat?’

  ‘Yes, a wooden hat,’ said Boris triumphantly.

  ‘Did he say what he wanted?’

  ‘He say he see you when you come back.’

  ‘Fine, call me if he appears. But don’t let him come up to the apartment. Have you got that?’

  The moment Harland closed the apartment door behind him, the buzzer went. Boris was on the other end, now evidently anxious to help.

  ‘Kid with wooden hat is in street. I see him now. He come in building … No … He stand outside door. Now go away.’ The commentary trailed off.

  ‘I’ll come down.’

  He got downstairs to find Boris lurking at the side of the front door. Without bothering to hide himself, Harland peered through the glass and saw the figure across the street.

  ‘Are you sure it’s the same man?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Boris definitely. ‘I tell him fucking get lost?’

  ‘No, let’s see what he wants.’ Harland opened the door and saw the man more clearly. He had moved into the light of the street lamp and was looking in his direction, stamping his feet in the cold. Harland moved out into the wind and called out.