The Tamarind Seed (28 page)

Could the defector know anything about him? Fergus had said quite truthfully that he didn't know. No minor official, or junior officer would have access to his level of secrets. They had nothing to fear from the lower ranks. But a senior Soviet official might well know of the existence of an agent within the Western diplomatic circle, without any clue to his identity. But once alerted, as he said, the Intelligence services would be digging like terriers. Without question, he would be in serious danger if a full scale investigation began. It had taken two years to uncover MacLean, he reminded his wife. Slow they were, but sure in the end. The first thing he had to do was find out details of the defection, particularly the position and, if possible, the identity of the Russian.

He had telephoned Loder while his wife stood waiting, biting her lips till the lower one was stinging and raw. Then she had asked the question again.

‘Now what are you going to do? Your precious policeman won't see you—my God, you don't suppose …'

‘No, no,' Fergus reassured her. ‘Don't get panicky; nothing's happened yet. These things take a long time. It could be weeks before this Russian comes over. But I have to find out who it is.'

Margaret stood in the sunny room, which was considered one of her decorating triumphs. A magnificent Casteels painting dominated it, a superb flaunting peacock in the foreground of the picture. She always used it for smaller parties; someone had once pleased her by saying it was a reflection of her personality. She looked at Fergus, standing by the fireplace, tall and a little too thin, sipping Tio Pepe while the ground cracked open under his feet.

‘And if you do find out?' She hadn't thought beyond a confused idea of resignation, a return to England and then exile somewhere where there was no extradition treaty. It was all a muddle, quite without direction. But suddenly she saw the only practical solution.

‘I shall warn the Soviet Embassy and have him stopped,' Fergus said. ‘Apart from myself, I should do that anyway. Whoever it is, he's turned traitor. He deserves everything he'll get.'

Margaret Stephenson said nothing. He was completely serious; there was no suggestion of a joke, or any ironic reference to himself in that last remark. He meant it in all sincerity.

‘From your point of view,' Fergus said quietly. ‘It's this Russian or me. And you've already decided about that. So you had better leave this to me and I'll deal with it. Thank God we got the warning in time. I'm going back to the office now, and I'll see the Ambassador. Don't worry; it'll be all right.'

After he had gone, she noticed that the sherry glass was still half full. For the first time in her life she went upstairs and was physically sick.

‘I can't believe it,' Judith said. ‘I can't believe we'll be out of here on Friday.' Sverdlov had his arm round her. He had called her later that night at the apartment and suggested talking her to a club to spend the evening with him. Judith hadn't wanted to go, she felt exhausted. Nancy was out on a date; she had settled in front of the TV but after a time the banality of the programmes got on her nerves and she had switched it off. Sverdlov had sounded so cheerful that it annoyed her to hear him. As a compromise from the nightclub he suggested, she said wearily that he could come to the apartment for a drink.

As soon as he came through the door her angry feelings disappeared. Telephones were deceptive. He looked sallow and exhausted.

‘What was all that about a nightclub?' she said. ‘You look dead beat. Come in and sit down.'

‘I didn't know I could come here,' he said. ‘I wanted to see you; I thought a little music might be good for us. But this is better. Much better.' He turned her face up and kissed her.

She gave him a drink and made coffee for them. He glanced round the sitting room. They were together on the big upholstered sofa which Nancy had ordered custom built. ‘This is very comfortable,' he said. ‘And you make good coffee. This is better than going out. I think we are both tired; especially you. This has been a strain for you. I'm sorry.'

‘It doesn't matter,' Judith said. She hadn't wanted to see him, now she was glad that he had come. She was glad to be beside him and the arm which circled her was warm and gave a sensation of comfort. ‘I just want the next two days to be over, that's all. I want to see you on the plane for England.'

‘Will you miss me?'

‘Yes,' Judith said. ‘Yes I will miss you. But that's not important. What matters is to get you safely out of here and out of Barbados. Feodor, are you still sure that's the best way to do it?'

‘It's the best way,' he said. ‘Please believe that. And it's the least dangerous too. I wouldn't take you with me, if there was any real risk. Just so Mr. Loder takes care of the other end.'

‘He will,' Judith said. ‘Everything is fixed, he assured me of that. He's a poisonous man, but I'm sure he's good at his job.'

Sverdlov looked down at her. ‘And you don't despise me for what I'm doing? You don't think I'm a traitor and a coward? It's not very English and stiff upper lip, is it, to run away?'

‘Well if you feel like that, go home and let them shoot you.' She pulled away angrily. ‘Sometimes you make me so furious talking like that after all the hell we've gone through in the last week—and just when everything is fixed up!' She was surprised when he laughed.

‘You have become very fiery, do you know that? I love fiery women. What am I going to do in England without you?'

‘I don't know,' Judith said. She was still angry; she had never been so irritable in her life. Alternatively she could just as easily have burst into tears. He seemed to know this, because he stopped teasing her. He lit a Russian cigarette and gave it to her; they sat in silence for a few moments. Then it was Judith who spoke.

‘I was thinking today, if I hadn't walked out on Richard I'd never have gone to Barbados and met you; what would you have done when this blew up? Would you have still come over?'

‘I am not sure,' Sverdlov said. ‘I can say yes now, because that is how it has worked out. But without meeting you, I might have done the other thing; taken the easy way. Certainly I would never have let my own people arrest me. No show trial, Judith, no execution as a traitor. If I'm going to die, it won't be as a political lie for someone else to tell the Russian people. Truth has a value; I think I have learned that from you.'

‘So has faith,' she said. ‘I've been praying for you. And you can laugh if you like.'

‘I am not laughing,' Sverdlov said. ‘I need all the allies I can get. Even your non-existent God. Don't be angry again. I am glad you prayed. Maybe there is a God. Maybe there really was a Tamarind tree that defied nature because of one man's innocence. You believe these things; I don't. Perhaps believing then has made you as you are. If that's so, then I can't quarrel with them. If I said that I loved you, would you believe me too?'

‘I'd rather you didn't say it,' Judith said. ‘Please, don't say it.'

‘All right,' Sverdlov said. ‘I will take it back so I can say it another time. I am going back to our offices to get some sleep.'

‘You know you can stay here,' she said. ‘There's an empty bed.'

‘No,' Sverdlov said. ‘That's not how I want to stay with you. I will go back. Will you kiss me? For luck tomorrow?'

‘Oh God,' Judith said. ‘I have an awful feeling that we're going to need it.'

CHAPTER NINE

It was the Ambassador who sent for Fergus. The coded telegram had come in from London in the early hours; it was handed to the Ambassador as soon as he came into his office, marked top priority. He read it first, before looking at the rest of his official correspondence, and when he put it down, he grimaced. It contained the kind of news that a man in his position most disliked; a major security operation was about to take place from his Embassy. His full co-operation was requested in terms that were very courteous, but unmistakably authoritarian. Loder, the clever intellectual sleuth Who had been wished on him from Ml6, was given unlimited powers and everyone within the Embassy was requested to assist him in whatever way he asked. The request, if such it could be called, also applied to British companies and citizens who might refer any such question back to the Embassy. In other words, Loder could ask for the moon, and if he did, it was to be given to him.

The Ambassador was a career diplomat, trained in public service, intellectually and socially equipped beyond the expectation of ordinary men. He had an old-fashioned regard for his responsibilities and an intense loyalty to his colleagues in the Service. He resented anything which could bring a taint of low intrigue or vulgar scandal upon his Embassy or anyone connected with it. The request from London stated that Loder was empowered to receive a defector from the Soviet Union, and that accounted for the arbitary
carte blanche
which had been issued to him. The Ambassador knew that this accorded with the information passed to him by his own air attaché. He had sent that scurrying in Loder's direction, hoping that it was no one of importance and that the Embassy need not be directly involved. Now it appeared that whoever the man was who had decided to seek asylum, he rated the maximum priority. However much he wished to avoid it, the Ambassador could not keep the stench of espionage out of his Embassy. Diplomacy was a profession of honour and skill; he regarded spies and spying as a squalid occupation in which no gentleman could possibly indulge in peace time. Most of all he detested it because it had seduced members of his service into unforgivable treason and disgrace, thereby subjecting everyone else to the scrutiny of the Loders of the world. He dealt with the most urgent matters for the first hour, and then sent for Fergus Stephenson.

He had a high opinion of him as a diplomatist and a warm regard for him personally. He liked his wife, who went out of her way to charm, and had never made the mistake of allowing her personality to overpower his own wife in their public roles. He thought of Stephenson as a man from the same mould as himself, and it never occurred to him to omit a single detail of the ‘green' telegram or of his conclusions about its significance. He had to acquaint the Minister with the facts, because he might well be called upon to act upon them. The Ambassador had accepted an invitation to spend a long weekend in California. Responsibility for helping Loder, as for anything else that might happen over the three days, would rest with Fergus Stephenson.

‘I can't say how much I dislike this sort of thing,' the Ambassador said. ‘I should make a personal protest. We are not part of the Intelligence organisation, and they have no right to drag us into their unpleasant escapades. It's certain to come out that this whole thing was masterminded from my Embassy, and I shall be thought to be a party to it! I shall make a protest anyway, but it won't do any good.'

‘It's a very emphatic telegram,' Fergus remarked. ‘This Russian must be a very important member of their team. They should have had the courtesy to let you know his name. I think that's something I personally resent—this feeling of being told to help while not being completely trusted.'

‘I don't want to know anything about him,' the Ambassador said. ‘When Dick Paterson started telling me about all this, I quickly cut him short. Defectors and double agents aren't my affair. He seemed rather excited about it; I suppose he thought it would be a feather in his cap to act as go-between for this Russian. I told him to turn the whole thing over to Loder.'

And it was then, while the Ambassador was talking, that the veil dropped for Stephenson. When he first heard the story from his wife, the initial shock she had given him over the telephone when she mentioned his lighter was still operating; he had been numbed by it; it was as if a part of his brain was in suspended animation. Richard Paterson knew of a Russian defector. He had taken that in, while the framework surrounding that single fact was lost in a few unimportant details of Rachel Peterson's jealousy, her breaking down in tears. He had concentrated on the fact, without realising that the key to it all was to be found in the details. Paterson had been told of the defector by his mistress, the girl friend he used to visit in New York, until he, Stephenson, had warned him off at Loder's instigation. Because the woman was mixed up with a Russian. He had discussed it all with Loder over one of their early lunches together; Loder had told him the name of the man whom he suspected of trying to recruit this girl—what was
her
name—Farrant, Farrow—that made the defector Sverdlov. Feodor Sverdlov, Colonel in the Soviet Army, assistant to the old K.G.B. General Golitsyn. The truth screeched at him; he broke out into a massive sweat all over his body. Sverdlov, the man suspected of being the real head of the Russian Intelligance in the United States. The most important member of the whole Embassy. The man to whom ‘Blue's' confidential files would go directly from the controller. He felt if he didn't get out of the room he might pass out.

The Ambassador noticed nothing. He went on talking while Fergus struggled to keep calm and he managed to mutter something that could be taken for an answer.

He heard the Ambassador say, ‘Well, my dear chap, I'm going off to the Vanderholdens' for the weekend, so I shall leave this wretched business in your hands. You'll have to let Loder have whatever he needs, but I needn't ask you to keep the Embassy as far in the background as you can.'

‘Of course,' Fergus heard his own voice saying. ‘Don't worry about that.'

He left the Ambassador's office and slipped into a general staff cloakroom on the way back to his own room. He washed his hands, damping his face with plain water, dried, and looked at himself in the glass. He looked jaundiced, his eyelids peeled back from the eyeballs. Sverdlov. No wonder London was sending ‘greens' which would have authorised Loder to take over the Embassy if he felt like it. No wonder Loder was too ‘busy' to have lunch so he could try to pump the information out of him. No wonder. Sverdlov was bigger than Penkovsky; he made even a defector like Dalmytsin look like an office boy. If he came over to the British he could bring down half the Soviet Intelligence networks in the West. At that moment, facing personal disaster, Fergus saw beyond it to the catastrophic consequences to his chosen ideological system. It would be a major blow to Soviet prestige in the world, apart from causing havoc in their Intelligence organisation.