The woman’s name was Lela Catana-Perez.
Her family had come to Malta in the 1930s, refugees from the civil war in Spain. Her father had worked in the Naval Dockyards with Peter Calleja, Samuel’s father until his retirement in 1960. The old man had died before the October War. Lela Catana had been active in the Maltese Labour Party before the war and become to all appearances an anonymous housewife in its aftermath.
Lela Catana hadn’t expected him to hit her.
She hadn’t believed what was happening to her until he’d hit her again and she was lying in a bleeding, sobbing heap on the cold stone floor with her hands cuffed behind her back.
Arkady Rykov had drawn up a chair and patiently watched her shocked brain and shuddering body come to terms with the new reality.
‘You will tell me everything I want to know,” he had declared. “If you lie to me I will hurt you very badly and you will carry the scars the rest of your life. I should tell you that before I worked for the British, I worked for the Soviets and I learned my business in the torture cells of the Lubyanka. Presumably, you’ve heard of the Lubyanka?’
The woman nodded, spat blood on the floor.
‘Down here I can break your bones, slice flesh off your face, pull out your teeth or your finger, or toe nails with rusty pliers. I suppose if I wanted I could attach electric contacts to your most private parts and make you twitch and dance until you void your bowels and bite off your own tongue. I can make your last hours on Earth a living Hell. I could rape you, of course. But you’re not really my type and even I have some scruples about these things.’ He’d thought about this. ‘Perhaps, I’ll have the boys outside rape you instead…’
The stupid bitch had made him hit her more than he’d hoped he would have to but eventually she’d talked. In the end she couldn’t stop talking. And pleading, always they pleaded…
Nobody above ground had heard Lela Catana’s screams but the Redcaps and MI6 operatives in the adjoining rooms had heard everything. They didn’t bother concealing their disgust.
How did these schoolboys ever defeat the might of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?
“She’ll live,” he’d snorted, meeting the hard eyes with his own unblinking stare. Grabbing his jacket off the chair outside the interrogation cell he snapped: “Tidy her up. I may need to interview her again.” He wouldn’t have needed to interview her or any of her comrades at all if they’d done their jobs properly. Krasnaya Zarya had handed the Calleja cell to the security authorities on a plate. If they’d put a full page advert in the Times of Malta they couldn’t have undermine and betrayed Samuel Calleja and his band of bungling zealots more completely, and yet that idiot Denzil Williams had still fucked up! If he’d done his job properly Lieutenant James Siddall wouldn’t be dead, and HMS Torquay wouldn’t be lying wrecked in two pieces on the bottom of the Grand Harbour and he wouldn’t have to be wasting time cleaning up the mess. If he hadn’t be able to persuade MI6 to send him back to Malta the preparations formulated and executed with such care and at such a cost over the last year might have come to nothing. The last thing he wanted was the British turning the archipelago upside down looking for fifth columnists, or looking under every stone to see what was underneath. “No visitors!”
The afternoon was overcast when he emerged into the daylight.
He blinked, his eyes growing accustomed to the brightness of the light after so many hours in the dimly lit subterranean world of the bowels of Fort Rinella.
“They wouldn’t let me in!” Clara Pullman complained as she clambered out of the Land Rover parked just outside the main security gate.
The former KGB man struggled to look his lover in the eye.
He dug around in his jacket pockets as if he had lost something.
“How did you know I’d be here?” He asked.
“Lieutenant Hannay told me this was where you and the boys had set up shop.”
“Oh. How did you know I would come up for air? You could have been waiting here all day?”
The woman shrugged. She was wearing a fawn cardigan over a thin summer frock. To the Maltese the mild, showery weather was winter and they went about dressed in several layers of clothing; the English and other foreigners were instantly recognisable in their summery civilian garb and tropical uniforms.
“The view is nice from here.” She inclined her head to one side. “I hate it when you shut me out of things, you know that.”
“I explained before,” he retorted, “there are things I must do alone. Things that you cannot be involved with…”
“I’m not your little woman…”
“No,” he agreed sulkily. “I need a drink. Let’s go somewhere. I have to report to Admiral Christopher later this afternoon.” Belatedly, he realised that was how the woman had actually known where to find him. The Commander-in-Chief had sent her to bring him back to Mdina.
“Perhaps,” she suggested, “you should have that drink later.”
The road rose and plunged along the rocky heights above the southern creeks of the Grand Harbour, and bumped along potholed roads between close-packed limestone houses. Away from the docks and the military camps and depots Malta had about it a tired, dusty feel even at this time of year when the rain often fell in torrential showers and the temperature never scorched. Presently, they drove into the heart of the island.
“Did you persuade the woman to talk?” Clara asked quietly, her voice almost lost in the clanking and revving of the engine and the loud rumbling of the tyres on the poorly maintained road.
“Yes,” he confirmed.
Arkady Rykov was glad to bid a brief farewell to his partner outside the Citadel of Mdina.
At the Headquarters of the C-in-C Mediterranean he was swiftly ushered into Admiral Christopher’s presence. The Fighting Admiral had none of the dismissive superiority in his manner he’d encountered in other senior British officers.
“Do we have a problem, Colonel?” He inquired, looking up from his desk and indicating the newcomer to take a seat.
“I think it is probable that the Calleja cell was operating independently, sir,” the Russian replied. A big lie was always better than a small one. “Other than a contact with a woman operative whose name he would not divulge when I met him last November, Samuel Calleja had had no contact with Red Dawn since the October War. We now have a full list of the ‘actions’ carried out by this cell. What I don’t know, and what I can have no view on, is whether there is another cell active on the Archipelago.”
“But you have an opinion of this subject surely, Colonel?”
“I believe it is likely that given there was one, apparently well-resourced and highly motivated Red Dawn cell on the islands, that it is likely there may be others.”
“What state is the woman,” Julian Christopher had authorised the use of ‘extraordinary measures’ to ‘break’ the two men captured by Major Denzil Williams’s men, and later the woman, “Lela Catana in?”