Spy Sinker. Len Deighton

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       4

       Kent, England. March 1978.

      ‘We live in a society full of preventable disorders, preventable diseases and preventable pain, of harshness and stupid unpremeditated cruelties.’ His accent was Welsh. He paused: Fiona said nothing. ‘They are not my words, they are words of Mr H. G. Wells.’ He sat by the window. A caged canary above his head seemed to be asleep. It was almost April: the daylight was fading fast. The children playing in the garden next door were being called in to bed, only the most restless of the birds were still fidgeting in the trees. The sea, out of sight behind the rise, could be faintly heard. The man named Martin Euan Pryce-Hughes was a profile against the cheap net curtains. His almost completely white hair, long and inclined to waviness at the ends, framed his head like a helmet. Only when he drew on his curly pipe was his old, tightly lined face lit up.

      ‘I thought I recognized the words,’ said Fiona Samson.

      ‘The Fabian movement: fine people. Wells the theorist, the great George Bernard! … The Webbs, God bless their memory. Laski and Tawney. My father knew them all. I remember many of them coming to the house. Dreamers, of course. They thought the world could be changed by writers and poets and printed pamphlets.’ Without looking at her he smiled at the idea, and she could hear his disdain in the way he said it. His voice was low and attractive with the sonorous call of the Welsh Valleys. It was the same accent that she’d heard in the voice of his niece Dilwys, with whom she’d shared rooms at Oxford. The Department had instructed her to encourage that friendship and through her she’d met Martin.

      On the bookshelf there was a photo of Martin’s father. She could see why so many women had thrown themselves at him. Perhaps free love was a part of the Fabian philosophy he’d so vigorously embraced when young. Like father like son? Within Martin too there was a violent and ruthless determination. And when he tried he could provide a fair imitation of his father’s famous charm. It was a combination that made both men irresistible to a certain sort of young woman. And it was a combination that brought Martin to the attention of the Russian spy apparatus even before it was called the KGB.

      ‘Some people are able to do something,’ said Fiona, giving the sort of answer that seemed to be expected of her. ‘Others talk and write. The world has always been like that. The dreamers are no less valuable, Martin.’

      ‘Yes, I knew you’d say that,’ he said. The way he said it scared her. There often seemed to be a double meaning – a warning – in the things he said. It could have meant that he’d known she’d say it because it was the right kind of banality: the sort of thing a class-enemy would say. She infinitely preferred to deal with the Russians. She could understand the Russians – they were tough professionals – but this embittered idealist, who was prepared to do their dirty work for them, was beyond her comprehension. And yet she didn’t hate him.

      ‘You know everything, Martin,’ she said.

      ‘What I don’t know,’ he admitted, ‘is why you married that husband of yours.’

      ‘Bernard is a wonderful man, Martin. He is brave and determined and clever.’

      He puffed his pipe before replying. ‘Brave, perhaps. Determined: undoubtedly. But not even his most foolish friends could possibly call him clever, Fiona.’

      She sighed. They had been through such exchanges before. Even though he was twice her age he felt he must compete for her. At first he’d made sexual advances, but that was a long time ago: he seemed to have given up on that score. But he had to establish his own superiority. He’d even shown a bitter sort of jealousy for her father when she’d mentioned the amazing fur coat he’d given her. Any fool can make money, Martin had growled. And she’d agreed with that in order to soothe his ego and pacify him.

      Only lately had she come to understand that she was as important to him as he was to her. When the KGB man from the Trade Delegation appointed Martin to be her father-figure, factotum and cut-out, they’d never in their wildest dreams hoped that she would wind up employed by the British Secret Intelligence Service. This amazing development had proceeded with Martin monitoring and advising her on each and every step. Now that she was senior staff in London Central, Martin could look back on the previous ten years with great satisfaction. From being no more than a dogsbody for the Russians he’d become the trustee of their most precious investment. There was talk of giving him some award or KGB rank. He affected to be uninterested in such things but the thought of it gave him a warm glow of pleasure: and it might prove an advantage when dealing with the people at the London end. The Russians respected such distinctions.

      She looked at her watch. How much longer before the courier came? He was already ten minutes late. That was unusual. In her rare dealings with KGB contacts they’d always been on time. She hoped there wasn’t trouble.

      Fiona was a double agent but she never felt frightened. True, Moscow Centre had arranged the execution of several men over the previous eighteen months – one of them on the top deck of a bus in Fulham; killed with a poison dart – but they had all been native Russians. Should her duplicity be detected, the chances of them killing her were not great but they would get her to tell them all she knew, and the prospect of the KGB interrogation was terrifying. But for a woman of Fiona’s motivation it was even worse to contemplate the ruin of years and years of hard work. Years of preparation, years of establishing her bona fides. Years of deceiving her husband, children and her friends. And years of enduring the poisonous darts that came from the minds of men like Martin Euan Pryce-Hughes.

      ‘No,’ Martin СКАЧАТЬ