So the depression was registering, even in Russia, thought Adrian. He wondered if anybody else had noticed it from the transcription of the tapes.
‘I have a favour to ask,’ said Pavel.
‘What?’
‘I have written Alexandre a letter. Would you see that he gets it?’
Adrian hesitated. ‘I will have to read it,’ he said, doubtfully. ‘And then, the decision will not be wholly mine.’
‘Of course.’
The Russian held out the unsealed envelope and Adrian took it.
‘I’d like to read it now,’ said Adrian.
‘Please.’
It was a short note, without any introduction, barely covering half a sheet of paper:
Forgive me for what I have done. But my family mean more to me than life itself. I shall care for Valentina. I promise you that. Goodbye, dear Friend.
‘Will he be allowed to have it?’ asked Pavel.
Adrian looked up. ‘I don’t see why not.’
‘Today?’
‘That might not be possible,’ replied Adrian, cautiously.
‘As soon as you can?’
‘I promise.’
‘Thank you.’
A security man entered and Pavel got up eagerly. He seemed surprised when Adrian got into the car with him.
‘You’re not coming to the embassy?’ he said.
‘No. I’m just travelling part of the way.’
The enclosed vehicle edged out into the traffic and began the northward journey. Pavel sat quite relaxed, the case between his legs, the raincoat across his lap. He kept looking at his watch, as if eager for the journey to be completed.
Going home to die, thought Adrian. Going home to die and he was impatient about it. Still the uncertainty nagged at Adrian’s mind.
‘Viktor,’ he said, abruptly.
The Russian looked at him.
‘Do you know, I doubted you from the very beginning.’
Pavel just stared.
‘I never believed you had any intention of permanently defecting,’ continued Adrian. ‘I said so, in my first report.’
‘Were you believed?’ asked Pavel, guardedly.
‘No,’ Adrian shook his head. ‘No. I was overruled.’
‘And now you’re vindicated?’
‘I wish it were as simple as that,’ said Adrian, smiling. ‘No, I’ve not been vindicated.’
Pavel frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’m not sure that I do, completely,’ said the Englishman. They drove for several miles without speaking. Then Adrian said, ‘Was it genuine, Viktor? Did you intend to defect?’
Pavel took a long time to answer and when he did so, he looked directly at Adrian.
‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘if I could get my family out of the Soviet Union, I would choose to work here.’
‘That wasn’t the question.’
‘But that is my answer.’
The car slowed and Adrian saw they had reached the spot where he was to leave.
‘I’m getting out here,’ he said.
‘You’ll see Alexandre gets the letter?’
‘I’ll do my utmost.’
‘It’s important.’
Adrian nodded. He hesitated, half out of the car, then turned back, aware of the impatience of the security cars in front and behind.
‘I’m right, aren’t I, Viktor? You never intended to stay?’
The Russian stared at him, expressionless.
‘Goodbye,’ he said.
‘Goodbye.’ said Adrian.
He stood in the side-road that had been selected as a safe disembarkation point. There were motorcycle policemen at either end and he would be overlooked from several windows, he knew. The Rover pulled away, rejoined the traffic stream and disappeared from view after a few moments. I’ll never know, thought Adrian. Now, I’ll never know.
Chapter Twelve
They sat in the small room again, off the Cabinet chamber, and met as before, Ebbetts and the Foreign Secretary on one side of the table, Binns and Adrian on the other.
Between them lay the transcripts of every conversation that had been held with the two defectors, an unnecessary reminder of failure. But this time there was an anonymous secretary sitting at the far end of the table, notebook and pen before him.
History will have its records, thought Adrian. When the archives are opened in thirty years’ time the blunder of failing to keep two of the most important defectors ever to leave Russia working together as a team would be shown to be that of Adrian Dodds, thirty-five, a senior debriefing officer at the Home Office.
He wondered if that were the sole reason for this afternoon’s summons, the need to get the blame established for later reference. Was he getting too cynical? Perhaps. Then again, perhaps not.
Ebbetts sat hunched in his chair, tapping the papers before him with a thin gold pencil, like a conductor trying to get a choir to sing in tune. His tune, thought Adrian. Ebbetts would have to be the composer, ensuring everyone got the words right.
The Foreign Secretary kept darting glances sideways, awaiting cues. Adrian suddenly thought how much better Sir William would be as premier than Ebbetts.
Ebbetts began speaking slowly, almost as if he were mouthing carefully rehearsed lines.
‘In all my years as a politician,’ he said, ‘including those as Foreign Secretary when we previously held office, I do not think I have ever encountered a worse example of ineffectual, stupid blundering than it’s been my misfortune to witness over the last two weeks. I’ve made this clear at the previous meeting, Dodds, and I’m going to say it again, just to get the record straight …’
He paused, glancing sideways almost imperceptibly at the secretary, ‘… that I hold you completely and utterly responsible for the failure to get Pavel to stay in this country.’
‘… utterly responsible …’ echoed Fornham.
Ebbetts extended his hand, palm upwards, theatrically. ‘We held in our hands the greatest opportunity for a decade, perhaps longer. If we could have successfully debriefed Pavel and Bennovitch together, there is nothing we could not have known about the space plans of the Warsaw Pact countries for years to come.’
He slapped the extended hand down on the papers.
‘It’s all been thrown away,’ he said.
‘… thrown away,’ intoned the Foreign Secretary.
Adrian was breathing evenly, feeling quite composed.
He was surprised that there was no nervousness. Seven, maybe eight days ago there would have been. His hands would have been wet with anxiety and the words would have jumbled incoherently in his mind, like leaves in a wind. But not any more. He didn’t need a lavatory, either. If Ebbetts wanted the record straight, then let it be.
‘When we met in this room, a few days ago,’ he started out, ‘I warned you that I did not think Pavel’s defection was genuine …’
‘… a stupid impression,’ Sir William cut in.
‘… a stupid impression that proved to be one hundred per cent accurate. As we are getting records straight, let another thing be noted. I said then that there was an ulterior motive in Viktor Pavel’s defection and I repeat it again …’
‘What ulterior motive?’
Ebbetts, the practised politician, saw the weak spot and struck at it.
Adrian swallowed. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ignoring Ebbetts’s expression of disgust. ‘But I would have known. I would have known if I had been allowed to conduct the debriefing properly and under my own terms of reference instead of being forced to rush the two men together, grab what we could from them and then offer them like bait to America, all for political expediency.’
‘That’s impertinence,’ snapped Ebbetts, looking again at the secretary.
‘Dodds, really …’ began Sir Jocelyn, from his right.
‘Impertinent, maybe,’ admitted Adrian. ‘But true. Completely and utterly true. Pavel wasn’t a stupid man. He was, I think, one of the most intelligent men I have ever met. It was ridiculous, laughable even, to expect that we could get anything from him in two or three days, like a country policeman questioning a child stealing apples. I should have had a month with the man, at least, a month with just the two of us together, before we even considered linking him with Bennovitch.’