Authors: Alan Judd
Unlike you, Charles thought, but he merely nodded. Keeping him talking was what mattered.
‘And then there are people – some people, not many, certainly not in my life – whom you just know, know you can trust and – and be close to. It’s as if you’ve
always known them, like an electrical charge, positive and negative, instant recognition. You must have had the same in your life? At least, I hope you have. I don’t mean I did it straight
away, that I just came out with it. I – we – felt our way with each other over a series of meetings.’ He spooned yogurt onto his curry. ‘God, this is the real thing.
I’m out of practice with vindaloo. D’you think they do curry in prison?’
‘Bound to.’
As the weekend went on, talking by the fire after Charles’s mother had gone to bed, walking through the woods to Hambleden to get a Saturday
Guardian
from the shop –
Charles’s mother’s
Telegraph
wouldn’t do for Peter – or browsing bookshops in Marlow and Henley, Peter spoke increasingly of himself and Grigory as if they were
lovers. Charles didn’t at first ask him outright, sensing a protective wall around Grigory that, so far, would resist probing.
‘You’re sure he’s MFA and not RIS?’ he ventured after Peter described Grigory’s reaction to his offer. ‘His questions sound like an intelligence
officer’s questions.’
Peter bridled. ‘Of course I’m sure, I asked him straight out and he told me. Anyway, the questions are bound to resemble those any intelligence officer would ask because
they’re the obvious ones. How d’you think you can help, why would you like to help, is it true that you’re really MI6, what do you know that would most help us—’
‘He said “us”?’
‘What else could he say? He was talking of the Russians in general, couldn’t very well say “them”, could he?’
‘But he didn’t hand you over to the SVR? That would’ve been the normal thing.’
‘It was a personal relationship, I told you. It would have continued if he’d got cross-posted here. He tried but he couldn’t.’
‘So who’s your case officer here?’
‘I don’t know yet, as I said in the interview yesterday. They’re waiting for me to initiate third country contact, when I’m sure all is well here. The first meeting is to
be in The Hague, then I’m to be run here. I didn’t do it before because I was having doubts anyway, as I intimated yesterday. Not about the cause, why I did it, but the actual doing of
it. It’s tiring. Quite a strain.’
‘Hell of a strain.’
Peter looked grateful. ‘Until you do it, you’ve no idea how stressful it is, living a big lie. Even when you’re used to it, like me. Two big lies in my case.’
They were on a bench at the top of the hill above Fingest, with church, pub, farm and brick-and-flint cottages laid out like a toy hamlet below. The footpath wound on up through the beech trees.
Off to their right was a badger sett that Charles had known from childhood. The wooded hills and green valleys were England as it was supposed to be and mostly wasn’t. But here – just
here – it was, and for Charles this alone, apart from myriad considerations of principle and association, would have been enough to prevent him betraying his country. But he was a romantic,
he supposed, and Peter wasn’t.
‘It’s always been all right for you,’ continued Peter. ‘You belong. You always have. You belong so completely that you’re probably not even aware of belonging. I
never felt I did. Even before I knew I was gay I felt different, apart. And lonely, so very lonely. I wanted to belong, you see, I wanted desperately to be a part of what you and Matthew and Frank
and the others take for granted. So I pushed it – myself, that is – aside. And I pretended. Most of the time I coped, I was all right. Of course, it wasn’t all right really but it
was manageable, sort of, until I went to New York. Something happened there, I just went with the flow. I put myself about, you might say. Then I met Grigory and for the first time in my life I
felt I belonged, really belonged. I knew it was impossible, of course, but I feel that even if he and I never meet again – I hope we will, you know, in future, after all this’ –
he waved his arm – ‘it was worthwhile. It was something. I have been there, wherever “there” is. My life is not completely unfulfilled.’
Unlike Restless, Charles thought, our agent in the Soviet rocket troops whom you got killed.
Peter put his hand on Charles’s shoulder. ‘Sorry, Charles, this is very self-indulgent. Must be the view. I’m a hopeless romantic. You’re the opposite.’
‘I’m not so sure.’ Charles scoured the turf with the black-thorn stick his father used to use. ‘How did it come about, you and Grigory?’
Peter smiled. ‘It embarrasses you, doesn’t it? How did we meet, do you mean, or how did we come to find each other?’
‘Both.’
‘Through work. We had dealings at the UN, sat on two committees, got to know each other. Then we had lunch one day in the UN building – my suggestion, I think, maybe his – no,
he joined me at the table. Then at the end of lunch I said it would be nice to do it again and he rang me a couple of days later and we went to an Italian restaurant a couple of blocks
away.’
‘He rang you?’
‘Not over-pushy, was it? Let’s have lunch? Not like let’s have a dirty weekend in the Appalachians – though we did have one of those later. Took a lot of fixing on both
sides.’
Charles’s experience of getting Russian officials to lunch or dine alone was that they didn’t come easily unless sanctioned and almost never took the initiative, unless they were SVR
and scented a prey. ‘But when – how – did you—’
‘Get it together? Had to be in my flat, of course. Couldn’t be his because of his wife. He was quite nervous, mainly at visiting my flat without approval. I remember he said,
“You don’t know what I’m risking, coming here.” It was a big step.’
‘I meant your offer of service. How did—’
‘Oh, that just sort of emerged in discussion. I mean, I knew I was going to do it, it had been coming for some time as I said yesterday in Carlton Gardens. But I didn’t have a
formula, it just sort of happened one day. Part of a continuum, not a separate or new thing. It was a time when I was pretty disgusted by American interventions abroad, treating the world as if it
was their backyard. We both were.’
I bet he was, thought Charles. He had felt it so often, the anti-American pulse pumping through most of the spies, terrorists and extremists he’d met. The Americans didn’t always
help themselves, of course, but it was a common enough theme for him to wonder what their haters would do without them. Something against their own, presumably, because that’s what haters
did, whoever their own were. ‘So you were disgusted by America but loved New York.’
‘I know. Couldn’t help it, either way.’
He was a perfect guest, helping with the clearing up, refusing to smoke in the house, sympathising with Mrs Thoroughgood’s gardening quandaries, advising on new curtains, appreciating the
food and gently tutoring her on the unused laptop Charles and his sister had given her for Christmas. He also bought her a smart leather-bound address book in Henley to replace the tattered
cloth-bound one she had kept by the phone for forty years. Charmed, she told Peter when they were alone in the kitchen that she wished Charles would find a nice girl and settle down. When alone
with Charles she said she couldn’t understand why he hadn’t mentioned Peter before. Matthew Abrahams rang once, fortunately while she and Peter were in the garden discussing roses.
‘Bring him in to Carlton Gardens on Monday morning at ten,’ Matthew said. ‘After the rush-hour. The arresting officers will be waiting. Better there than in Head Office or a
police station, more discreet. Tell him what’s going to happen. We don’t want any nasty surprises that make him uncooperative. Now, quickly, tell me everything.’
On the Sunday evening, during a dramatic sunset after a day of broken cloud, they walked down the lane to the pub while Charles’s mother roasted the chicken. ‘They want us in Carlton
Gardens at ten tomorrow,’ said Charles, deliberately using the plural. ‘The police will be there.’
‘Face the music, eh?’ Peter took out his cigarettes. Charles accepted one, to keep him company. ‘At least no innocent person’s going to be hounded. It’s all me.
D’you think I’ll be treated leniently for having coughed up?’
‘The court is bound to take it into account, I’d have thought.’
As it did, up to a point.
T
he court also took into account what Peter did after the FBI’s New York field office had leaked his story to the press.
Staring still at Croydon’s Sunday traffic, Charles struggled to remember the details. Even at the time he caught up with them only belatedly and piecemeal. Once Peter had become an MI5
investigation and a police case Charles was – with one exception – no longer involved, not needed even as a witness since Peter pleaded guilty and made a full confession.
The exception was when Peter requested through his solicitor that Charles visit him in prison. He wanted to thank Charles in person for his ‘hospitality and understanding during the
wonderful weekend we spent together’. He was still on remand in Belmarsh which meant that MI5 and the police had to suspend their interviews until after conviction and sentence. Even so, the
request was weeks old before Charles knew of it. Eventually it was agreed on condition that Charles did not discuss the case, and that he reported back. During this time more had happened to
Grigory Orlov than Charles knew.
Getting into Belmarsh seemed almost as difficult as getting out might be. The checks, the searches, the waiting with other visitors, mainly female, the overheating, the constant locking and
unlocking of doors, the contrast between the often overweight, slow-moving staff with their bunches of keys and ponderous helpfulness and the young, aggressively indifferent, fit-looking prisoners
glimpsed through bars or at the ends of corridors, the non-stop shouts and zoo noises from the wings, the cages and high wire fences dividing the open ground, the sinister, two-storey, windowless
and segregated high security wing were sufficient to convince him that no crime was worth it. The unceasing noise and proximity of others would be hell for Peter, he thought, his only hope being
separation in the high security wing.
But Peter managed better than he thought. They met in a room with half a dozen prisoner and visitor tables, divided by mesh screens and overseen by two prison officers. Tables and chairs were
screwed to the floor. Peter, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, was already seated when Charles was shown in. Unable to shake hands, they smiled and nodded awkwardly.
‘How is it?’ asked Charles.
‘What is it the army officer is supposed to have said on escaping from Dunkirk or the Somme or somewhere – “But, my dear, the
noise
and the
people
”?
But no complaints. It’s prison, full of ordinary blokes who got caught. I’m sharing a cell with a rather nice chartered accountant, quite inoffensive but pretends he’s not guilty
of embezzlement, silly man. I think they’re being kind to me.’
Charles, curious about daily practicalities for the recently imprisoned – whether Peter’s post was sent on from his flat, whether he could pay bills, how he managed for clothing and
washing and shaving kit, whether there were books – thought a show of concern might encourage further talk. But Peter held up his hand. “Cut the social work crap. Grigory. What’s
happened to him? What do you know?’
‘I’ve no idea. If anything.’ It was almost true. The Office had briefed the FBI on the withdrawal of the officer they had liaised with in New York until they discovered his
cottaging activities and suspected they were not getting the full story on his relationship with the Russian diplomat. Confirmation that they weren’t had led them to look again at Orlov, whom
they now assessed to be an intelligence officer after all. As did the Office. The FBI also suspected Orlov might not have admitted to his own people the full extent of his relationship with the
English spy. His people would not approve of one of their own officers being a closet gay, even if he had been deployed against Peter to charm him.
‘I haven’t heard from him, you see. I’m worried he might be in trouble.’
‘But you weren’t meant to hear, were you, until you activated your contact arrangements in The Hague?’
Peter smiled. ‘Not officially, no, not as far as his people were concerned, anyway. That was when it was supposed to become a truly professional relationship, when I’d have been
handed over to the SVR to be run instead of passing on stuff through him. That’s partly what I – didn’t like. Why I decided to – you know, come clean. But also he and I had
a personal communication arrangement. Let’s call it a PCA, shall we, in honour of the Office’s love of acronyms? I activated it but he hasn’t replied.’
‘How? From here? What is it?’
‘Ask no questions and you’ll get no lies. I suppose you’ll report this, will you?’
Charles nodded.
‘Good old Charles, ever loyal. But I want to know – has anything happened to him? Do you know anything at all? Has the Office told the Americans about me yet?’
‘I’m not supposed to discuss the case but—’
‘Come off it, what else do they think there is to talk about?’
‘– but I think you should assume they have. You told the Russians what you knew about FBI coverage of them in New York, so they’d have felt obliged to.’
‘That bloody Bureau field office had better not target him. It would get the SVR looking at him and end his career. If I find they’ve done that, Charles, all bets are off. You can
take that back with you. Tell them that.’
Peter’s grey eyes were hard and flat. Charles wondered how he would react to learning that Orlov was an SVR intelligence officer after all, that their relationship had not simply blossomed
in the way he fondly thought but had been a calculated seduction, an intelligence seduction. Admittedly, the other bit, the physical bit, almost certainly went beyond what Orlov was supposed to
have done. It was a technique the Russians had used before, albeit with agents they had compromised, not one of their own officers. ‘I’ll tell them,’ he said.