He paused, breathless. He was destroying a career and enjoying every moment of it.
‘You said a few moments ago that we had missed the opportunity of a decade in losing Pavel. I’ll extend that. We’ve lost the opportunity of a lifetime. I saw him work, albeit briefly, with Bennovitch and it was staggering. Their worth to the West would have been incalculable. But I completely refuse to accept any responsibility or blame for losing that opportunity. You ordered the debriefing to be speeded up and you stipulated the manner in which it would be done. I merely followed those instructions — under protest.’
When the meeting had begun Ebbetts had been pale, white-faced almost, and completely under control. Now he was flushed with anger and Adrian noticed that his earlobes were bright red, as if he were wearing earrings. He was suddenly seized with the desire to laugh and immediately recognized the tip of hysteria. Consciously he controlled it. Don’t let me break down now, he thought, there’ll never be another moment like this and I don’t want it dismissed as the outburst that precluded a nervous breakdown.
Another thought came, completely sobering him. If he collapsed, then Ebbetts would have a reason for destroying the record of the meeting.
‘Have you forgotten who I am?’ began Ebbetts, pompously.
‘No, sir, I have not. Neither have I lost sight of the fact that I have been impertinent and also disrespectful to your office. For that, I apologize.’
‘But not to me?’
Adrian hesitated. The opportunity was there and if he took it, he could retreat. For what? I’ve finished running, he decided. He stayed silent.
‘I see,’ said Ebbetts, stiffly. The colour was leaving his face now. He spread his hands, another practised move, and said, ‘All right. Then let’s examine the facts.’
Suddenly Adrian felt scared. He was more intelligent than Ebbetts, he was sure of that. But he did not think he was cleverer. Neither did he think he could match him in debate, certainly not a debate that would centre around a weakness in his argument, the ulterior reason for which Pavel had defected. In a point by point examination of the facts, Ebbetts would win.
‘I will concede,’ started the Prime Minister, ‘that your hunch about his deciding to go back to his own country has proved correct. The point I have been making and which I feel is brought out in these transcripts’— he patted the papers in front of him — ‘is that because of your lamentable handling of the man, the idea of returning was allowed to build up in his mind. Look at the first interview. Your confirming his fears about his family, rather than trying to subdue them …’
Adrian sighed. ‘How many more times do we have to go over this? There was a point in doing that, a point which I think is also shown in the transcript. I have already said Pavel was an intelligent man. The only way to conduct a debriefing of a man of that intellect is to gain his respect and the only way to do that is to be honest with him. He knew what would happen to his family if he stayed here. His questions to me were little more than rhetorical. For me to have dismissed them as unfounded would have destroyed any hope of establishing a relationship.’
Ebbetts nodded. ‘But that’s no explanation for your arrogance,’ he said, definitely. ‘You set out, consciously, to dismiss Pavel’s importance in his own eyes, importance you now admit is unrivalled in the West …’
‘But I didn’t,’ protested Adrian, exasperated, ‘I’ve explained that, too. I had to dominate the examination. If I’d let Pavel lead, it could have taken months to reach the limited points we got to in less than a week. He was so over-confident …’
‘Over-confident!’ sneered Ebbetts. ‘Crying at your second meeting … refusing to go out for exercise until it was dark. Is that your idea of over-confidence?’
Suddenly Adrian laughed. It was an odd, disjointed sound that jarred in the quietness of the room.
Ebbetts stared at him, the beginning of a smile on his face, imagining the hysteria that had frightened Adrian earlier.
‘Dodds?’ he said, doubtfully, ‘are you all right?’
The question was perfectly pitched, showing just the right degree of solicitude.
Adrian laughed again, the sound controlled now, shaking his head.
‘Oh my God,’ he said. ‘How brilliant. How incredibly, utterly brilliant.’
The three men looked blankly at him. Even the secretary, sitting at the end of the table, had stopped writing and was staring.
‘I know it,’ he said, softly. ‘The reason. I know the reason. It was obvious all along, and we missed it.’
He straightened, looking straight at the Premier.
‘We’ve just witnessed the most incredible attempt ever made by the Soviet Union to liquidate a defector,’ he announced.
Ebbetts was serious now, head cocked, alert.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘How could the Russians get to Bennovitch?’ asked Adrian. ‘How could they possibly get to the man, discover what he’d told us and liquidate him? There was no way, no way at all. Except by offering a bigger bait and we took it, like amateurs, like stumbling, idiotic amateurs. For the past week all we’ve thought about was Pavel and Pavel never intended to stay here. They knew we’d put them together …’
He paused, allowing himself the sarcasm. ‘Perhaps not as quickly as we did, but they knew we would link them. And we sat and let them talk and I thought they were working out some new problem that had arisen and all Pavel was doing was determining to what degree we’d progressed with Bennovitch’s debriefing …’
He thought back to Pavel’s remark in the car taking them to London for the meeting with the embassy official, the clue that had been given him and which he’d ignored — ‘they just glitter there, the winning posts for a race of giants.’
‘You pinpointed it,’ he said to Ebbetts. ‘You said it and even now you don’t realize it. The stars. It’s the stars.’
The room was completely silent. Everyone sat motionless.
‘Pavel didn’t go out only at night because he was scared. He went out at night because only then was there any point in his doing so.’
Ebbetts shook his head.
‘You’re not making sense …’
‘Stars,’ shouted Adrian. ‘That’s what he wanted to see, stars. What was Pavel before he entered space science? What did he read at university? It was all there for us to see, in his history, but we missed it. He studied navigation, with the emphasis on stellar navigation. Pavel knew just where he was in England within minutes of walking out into the garden at Pulborough on the first night, just by looking upwards. And he knows where Bennovitch is being held, by the same method. It was dark when we left Petworth after the meeting and we paused by the car and I thought he was just getting a breath of air. But he wasn’t. He was checking the star reference again. Put against the timed distance it took to drive back from one house to the other, which he simply had to time by checking his wrist watch and the aerial description of the house which he got from the helicopter, which they’ll compare with satellite shots of southern England, the Russians will by now know exactly where Bennovitch is being held. He’s got the aerial picture and the triangular fix, London, Pulborough and Petworth.’
He stopped, unable to understand why the others in the room were not as excited as he was.