He felt quite light-headed when he located the rest of the government party and entrusted the security-sealed envelope to the courier for transmission to the East Berlin embassy and then the diplomatic bag to London next day.
He had a five-day holiday, he realised, suddenly, sitting in the hotel bar that evening. He looked around the drab room. Hardly the place he would have chosen to spend it.
In the far corner, Bolton was in his accustomed role, the centre of a raucous group and involved in a story which needed much hand-waving.
Harrison smiled and nodded, but the tractor-salesman pointedly ignored him.
The C.I.A. cover for the Fair was through a legitimate firm of timber exporters based in Vancouver, British Columbia. From their observer, five stools further down the bar, had already gone the report of the unexpected presence that day of General Kalenin, following Ruttgers’s alert to all Warsaw Pact stations to react immediately to the appearance of the man whose face they knew after twenty-five years’ anonymity.
‘Bolton’s bloody angry,’ reported the Australian with the stall adjoining the British office equipment exhibit, nodding along the bar.
‘Why?’ asked the C.I.A. man, politely. The Australian’s tendency to drink beer until he was sick offended the American.
‘Reckons the bloody man screwed up an order from that important-looking Russian delegation that came through this morning.’
The C.I.A. man looked towards Harrison with growing interest.
‘Who is he?’ asked the American.
The Australian, who had served in Vietnam and retained the vernacular like a medal, wanting people to recognise it, moved closer and affirmed, ‘I reckon a spook … a bleedin’ pommie spook. From the questions he’s been asking the exhibitors, he knows fuck all about trade.’
‘Excuse me,’ said the C.I.A. man. ‘Reports to write for head office.’
Four days later, Harrison set off alone in a hired Skoda, driving slowly, unsure of the way, wishing within an hour of departure he had curbed his boredom and returned in convoy with the main British contingent.
He was moving along the wide, tree-lined highway about twenty miles outside of East Berlin when he first became conscious of the following car in his rear-view mirror. It was too far away to determine the number of occupants and Harrison kept glancing at the reflection, expecting it to overtake. It appeared to be keeping a regular distance and Harrison experienced the first jerk of fear. Immediately he subdued it; his trade cover was perfect and he carried no incriminating material whatsoever. There couldn’t be the slightest danger.
So occupied was he with what was following that for those first few seconds Harrison thought the traffic ahead had slowed because of an accident. Then he realised it was a road block. He recognised soldiers as well as People’s Police and saw that in addition to the vans that completely closed the highway, strips of spiked metal had been laid zigzag in front of them, to rip out the tyres of any vehicle that didn’t slow to less than walking pace to negotiate the barrier.
Then he realised the following car had closed behind him. There were only five yards between them now and he could see five men jammed uncomfortably in the other vehicle.
‘Oh my God,’ said Harrison, aloud.
In the first few seconds of unthinking confusion, he braked, accelerated, then braked again, so that the car leapfrogged towards the obstruction. Two soldiers in front of the spikes motioned him to stop and men began fanning out along either side of the road. The recollection of the burning Volkswagen and the dull, thudding sound that the bullets had made, hitting the body, forced itself into his mind and again he braked, sharply and with design this time, trying to spin the car in its own length so that he could be facing back up the road. The vehicle stuck, halfway around, the bonnet pointing uselessly towards the bordering field. To his right, Harrison saw the following car had anticipated the manœuvre and turned across the road, blocking any retreat.
Harrison was sobbing now, the breath shuddering from him. There was no reason why he should be detained, he assured himself, his lips moving. No reason. Or excuse. Don’t panic. Act in the outraged manner of any important government official irritated by being stopped. The car episode was easily explained; just dismiss it as lack of control in an emergency situation in a hired car.
He thrust out of the vehicle and began walking purposefully towards the road block, protest disordered in his mind. But then he saw the uniforms and fear got control of him and he stopped. His mouth opened, but no sound emerged. And then he ran, stupidly, first towards the waiting soldiers, then sideways, trying to leap the ditch.
There was no sound of warning before the firing, which came almost casually from a machine gun mounted on a pivot near the driving position of the leading armoured car. Harrison was hit in mid-air and dropped, quite silently, into the ditch he was trying to leap.
The driver and one of the men from the following car walked slowly up the road, hands buried into the pockets of their leather topcoats, breath forming tiny clouds in front of them as they walked. For several minutes they stood staring down into the ditch, alert for any movement that would indicate he was still alive. Only Harrison’s legs were visible, the rest of him submerged in the black, leaf-covered water. His foot jerked spasmodically, furrowing a tiny groove in the opposite bank. It only lasted a few seconds and then it was quite still.
‘It’s not possible to spin a Skoda like that,’ said the driver, as they turned to go back to their own vehicle.
‘No?’
‘No. Something to do with the suspension and the angle that the wheels are splayed.’
‘Must be safe on ice, then?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘We won’t tell Snare,’ decreed Cuthbertson. He stood at the window, watching a snake of tourists slowly enter the Houses of Parliament. They were Japanese, he saw, armoured in camera equipment and wearing coloured lapel pins identifying them with their guides, who carried corresponding standards in greens and reds and yellows.
‘All right,’ agreed Wilberforce.
‘It would be quite wrong,’ justified Cuthbertson, turning back into the room. ‘He’d go to Moscow frightened. A frightened man can’t be expected to operate properly. It’s basic training.’
‘Need he go at all?’ asked Wilberforce. ‘Surely Harrison’s report is pretty conclusive.’
‘Oh yes,’ insisted Cuthbertson. ‘He’s got to go. I’m convinced now, but we need to know the conditions that Kalenin will impose. And if he’s made his own escape plans. A man like Kalenin won’t just walk into an embassy and give himself up.’
‘Yes,’ concurred Wilberforce. ‘I suppose you’re right.’
They remained silent while Janet served the tea. It was several minutes after she had left the office before the conversation was resumed.
‘Was it a surprise?’ asked Wilberforce, nodding to the door through which the girl had left the room.
‘What?’ demanded Cuthbertson, pretending not to know what the other man was talking about.
‘To discover from the security reports that Janet was having an affair with that man Muffin.’
‘Not really,’ lied the Director. ‘I gather he has a reputation for that sort of thing. Rutting always has been the pastime of the working class.’
He shook his head, like a man confronted with a distasteful sight.
‘Imagine!’ he invited. ‘With someone like that!’
‘What are you going to do?’ asked the second-in-command. ‘He’s married and she’s the daughter of a fellow officer, for God’s sake.’