“I’m with you,” she said decidedly. “Any ideas in the meantime? About Conroy, for instance?”
He gave a short laugh. “Damn few! Conroy could still turn out to be almost any of the men or bodies left in hospital at Minsk, but I haven’t done with Wicks and Fawcett yet. They’re still our most likely customers.”
Seventeen
Shaw awoke to find a bright sun lightening the drawn curtains of his bedroom. He glanced at his watch. Time for a quick lunch… he’d only had around three hours sleep but physically he felt fine now; even the headache induced by that electric light had gone.
His anxieties, on the other hand, were greatly increased; Andreyev had complicated matters very considerably. From now on he, Shaw, would obviously be under the eyes of a plainclothes security man, a counter-espionage agent of the KGB, wherever he went. Somewhere in this hotel there would be a snooper; watching him at meals, in the lounge, in the bar… waiting to pass him on to an outside man the moment he left the building. Yet at the same time, there was undeniably another side to it; the fact that he had been told by Andreyev to make contact with the Embassy was in itself going to make it much easier for him to maintain contact with Jones. He must count his blessings. As to what Andreyev had told him about the Chinese in the Lake Baikal area, it sounded the grossest fiction to suggest that the British Embassy had anything whatever to do with that. The Chinese were still a vital part of world Communism, however uneasy might be the relationship with Russia from time to time, and they didn’t enter into deals with the West. By the sound of it, it was just another security bee agitating the KGB bonnet.
It wasn’t until he was dressing that Shaw suddenly ticked over to the fact that Lake Baikal wasn’t all that far from Kyakhta. According to Treece, Kosyenko was due to go on to Kyakhta after his return to Moscow from Leningrad… and Kyakhta was on the Mongolian border!
Shaw was finishing a hurried lunch when he saw Virginia about to sit at a table by herself. He called his waiter over. He said, “The young lady — over there. Will you ask her to join me, please?”
“Certainly, grazhdanin.”
The man moved away across the dining-room and spoke to the American girl. Shaw watched with appreciation as she made her way to his table with long-limbed grace. She was looking tired still, but less so than he had expected. He smiled and said, “Sit down, Virginia. You looked lonely over there!”
“I felt it,” she admitted as she took a chair. “Being on one’s own in Moscow isn’t too good for the nerves.”
“At a guess,” he murmured, “I’d say neither of us is exactly on his own. Or her own. From now on, we’ll have a tail — so watch it.”
Her eyes showed sudden anxiety. “Meaning?” He bent across the table, smiling into her eyes. As if murmuring intimate messages, he said, “Andreyev’s enrolled me among the spies. I’m kind of unofficial KGB… that may sound funny to you, but it’s no joke, believe me.” He gave her the details briefly. “You don’t release this to anyone, not even your Embassy. Just trust me. Meanwhile I want you to support our story in every particular, just by being the inquisitive tourist. I believe there’s quite a lot to see. See it! Lenin’s tomb, the Kremlin itself, the Agricultural Exhibition, the University, the wonders of the metro… that ought to keep you busy enough to begin with!”
She made a face at him across the table. “What about our friend?” she asked, nodding towards the door. “How do you get his cooperation?”
Looking up Shaw noticed that Hartley Henderson had come in. He said quietly. “That’ll be simple enough. I’ll have a word with him soon. After that I’ll be busy. If you’re around we’ll have a drink this evening, Virginia. Make it seven o’clock in the lounge if I don’t contact you before then.”
Shaw waited in the foyer, turning the pages of Pravda. In due course, Hartley Henderson came out of the lounge, where he had been drinking coffee with a couple of Russians. He made for the main entrance. Shaw got up, folded his paper, and waylaid Henderson.
Henderson beamed. “Cane! Well, well — so you decided to do yourself proud after all?”
“It’s only once in a lifetime. Er… are you going anywhere special?”
Henderson flicked his cuff back and glanced at his watch. “I’m meeting Worth-Butters, as a matter of fact. He’s asked me to look him up in the Embassy. Couldn’t manage lunch. I’m—”
“I see,” Shaw cut in. “Would you take me along?”
Henderson looked almost startled, the shaggy brows riding high. “To see Worth-Butters, d’you mean?”
“That’s right.”
“Well,” Henderson said in considerable doubt, “I don’t know… he’s a pretty big bug, you know. I — er — I don’t really—”
“I spent last night,” Shaw said quietly, “with a pretty big bug myself. A pretty big Russian bug… and I’ve got something to report that’ll pin Sir Hubert’s ears right back to his head — if you’ll excuse the expression. I really think you’d better take me to him. I assure you, he’ll be most upset if you don’t.”
“Well, I really don’t know.” Henderson had gone quite gray. “I could ring him, I suppose—”
“No telephoning, if you don’t mind. I’ll explain everything myself to Sir Hubert in the Embassy — and it’d be better if we don’t both go along together. I can’t go into details here, but I’ve been asked to obtain certain information. I’m sure to be followed, and I’ll have to shake off whoever’s on my tail as best I can.” He was realizing just how difficult his role was going to be from now on. Being a mere double agent would be child’s play compared with this.
Shaw was well accustomed to shaking off tails and he was expert at it, but in fact there was no point in doing so in this case, now Henderson had set off on his own. The Russians would naturally be expecting him to obey his orders. He had gone no more than a couple of hundred yards from the hotel by the time he had identified his tail. She was a square-shaped, plain young woman with dark hair drawn back into a bun at the nape of her neck and a well-scrubbed face, innocent of any make-up whatsoever. She had the appearance, the earnest air, of a student. She tailed him right to the Embassy and then walked on stolidly, swinging a leather handbag, as Shaw went through the gateway which was guarded as usual by two Russian police. Very soon now, Andreyev would get the report that Shaw was in action; and Andreyev would believe very firmly that Shaw wouldn’t double-cross him with his supposed wife and child already in the custody of Russian agents in England.
Sir Hubert Worth-Butters was quite different from the picture Shaw had formed of him as a result of Henderson’s conversation; though there was about him an underlying strength and self-sufficiency, he was a quiet and reserved man, impeccably dressed; tall and thin, with a high, domed forehead and an intelligent face. After a few minutes’ chat with Hartley Henderson, who introduced Shaw, Worth-Butters handed his friend over to a Second-Secretary.
When Henderson had gone Worth-Butters said in a precise, no-nonsense kind of voice, “Sit down, Shaw. Now — we know all about you, of course, though I must stress that we have, and will have, no part in you activities whatsoever. The orders were that you would not contact us except through Jones. I have agreed to see you only because I’m told you’re an experienced man. I have paid you the compliment of taking it for granted you wouldn’t act foolishly or on impulse, in short that you wouldn’t come here unless the matter were urgent and vital.” He paused, looking keenly into Shaw’s face. “I use the word vital in its literal sense. I hope I’m right?”