She sat still and breathed deeply until the tide of her ire receded. The brigadier leaned back.
‘Well, White?’
‘With respect, sir,’ Rachel said slowly, ‘I interviewed Kulagin for two weeks. He was not an agent provocateur. I stake my professional reputation as an interrogator on that. Yes, I believe it was not his intention to cooperate fully with us, but if there is even a chance that the intelligence he shared is genuine, we must act upon it.’
‘Well, there you have it. It cannot be possibly be genuine.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Bloom was vetted. We know his people. I personally know his people. It simply isn’t possible that he is a traitor.’
‘As I have been saying for years, sir, this is exactly our problem—discounting the potential depth and breadth of Soviet penetration of the Service. Counter-subversion is all well and good, we can follow the money trails of the British Communist Party or the Luddites all we want, but if you are denying even the possibility of a real threat—’
‘White. Stop. Please.’
Rachel swallowed. Her throat felt like a raw wound.
‘If you are denying it, well, that is just … incompetence.’ As she spat out the last word, her voice died.
‘You have just proven my point, White,’ Harker said. He smiled faintly, and his voice was warm and understanding. ‘You know, when I was in India, I once had an officer whipped for speaking to me much the same way you just did. Good practice, that. Would do a world of good here, make no mistake. But I would not be a gentleman if I did not appreciate your limitations.
‘Kulagin chose you as his target since he was able to play your pet obsessions, you see. All these hysterics—’ The brigadier tutted. ‘That has always been my concern with you, White. This is difficult, nerve-wracking work, and I will say you have done well with the odd Irishman and Luddite and the like. Remarkable, really, given your natural limitations. But when I last reviewed your record, it looked to me like you did your best work in the Registry. A supporting role would be better suited for your sensibilities, at least temporarily. Shorter hours, less of a strain on your nerves. I am sure Joe would agree, don’t you think?’
Rachel was speechless. The world spun around her.
‘I believe there is an opening in the Finance Section. Miss Scaplehorn could really use a person of your calibre.’
‘I would rather resign,’ she croaked.
‘You have that option, of course. However, in that instance we would have issues with your pension and Ticket. That would be extremely regrettable.’
‘I—I—’
‘No need to say anything, White, you have to allow yourself time to heal. Why don’t you take a few days off and then report to Building F on Thursday? Dismissed. And give my best to dear old Joe, will you?’
* * *
Rachel strode along the main corridor of Wormwood Scrubs. Voices, footsteps and metallic ectophone ringtones echoed constantly from the walls of brick and concrete, drowning out the confused chorus of her thoughts. She could not face her tiny cell of an office—hers not much longer—and so she grabbed her coat and made her way to a side exit that opened into a small square, formerly the prison’s exercise yard.
The cold air cleared her head. The early evening sky was overcast. She could not see past the high red-brick walls, but the capital’s lights turned the clouds into sheets of amber and purple. She imagined that was how London looked from Summerland. What was it like to be Peter Bloom, to see the celestial city above and know that he was weakening its foundations with every action, every thought?
Her career was one thing, but a mole in the Summer Court—it was a wound in the very heart of the Service. Maybe that was why Harker refused to believe it. It defied his conception of natural order. And yet it made sense. The recent operations in Spain had been minor disasters. They still had no good assets in Russia itself, and a mole was a simpler explanation for that than an omnipotent Presence.
‘Hullo, Rachel.’
Roger Hollis stood at the yard entrance, wearing a dapper charcoal-grey raincoat and carrying a small bouquet of flowers. He had what one could charitably call a dour face, wavy brown hair and a boyish complexion in spite of his thirty-two years of age.
‘Roger? What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be making tea for your new chief in Blenheim?’
For all her resentment of Harker, Rachel had to admit that there was something unfair about the fact that the Domestic Sections—F, V, A and others—were squeezed into the Scrubs, whereas the Foreign Intelligence and Summer Court Liaison Sections had the resplendent Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire to themselves.
‘Oh, I drop in from time to time—to see old friends.’
Rachel smiled. It was an open secret that Roger’s former secretary Kathleen Wiltshire in Section V was his mistress.
‘Anyway, I came by and heard that you were in the lion’s den today, didn’t find you in your office and remembered this was your escape. How did it go?’
‘Did Allen say something? I swear that man gossips more than the secretaries.’ Rachel sighed. ‘I came away with a faceful of lion dung. It looks like I am to assist Finance with their sums from now on.’
‘You are not serious.’
Rachel smiled wryly. Roger tended to have a calming effect on her. They had been friends since a tennis match that Laura, one of her school friends, arranged a few years ago in an attempt to integrate her into the society of her peers, and—Rachel suspected—in a poorly hidden attempt at matchmaking. Nothing ever happened between them, but she recognised something familiar in him. Beneath the arrogance and boyish charm, there was a void that needed to be filled, and that had drawn him to the Service.
‘There was an incident with a source,’ she said. ‘Somebody had to take the blame.’
‘Well, that seems unusually thick, even for old Jasper.’ Roger cleared his throat and the sound turned into a hacky cough that had persisted since a bout of tuberculosis in Hong Kong. It was worse than Rachel remembered.
He wiped his lips with a handkerchief. ‘Why don’t you come in from the cold and tell me all about it?’
* * *
Rachel’s office had been converted from a two-person cell. It was windowless and she tried to spend as little time in it as possible, preferring to work in the senior staff room or the library. As a result, her small desk was mainly a parking lot for memos and copies of files, covered in yellowing piles of paper with a musty smell. She sat on the edge of her desk, offering Roger her chair.
Without naming Kulagin or going into the details of the operation, she explained the situation.
‘Basically, my worry is this: if we do not do something quickly, this mole is going to disappear deep into its hole and take our vegetables with it. I am positive that as we speak, the NKVD is thinking about how to get their man out and do as much damage as they can in the process. I won’t be able to prevent that while filing expense forms for Miss Scaplehorn.’
‘What do you have in mind?’ Roger asked.
‘Well, we both know a few Young Turks in the Summer Court—Burgess, Pickering, Symonds, that lot—and some of them still attend the Harrises’ soirées. I could simply drop a hint that there is a cuckoo in their nest.’
Roger leaned back in the chair. ‘Did our misbehaving defector provide a name?’
A terrible, paranoid thought struck her with the chill of the night air. Roger could go to Harker, tell him that she was planning to go over his head. It would be the logical thing to do. She looked at him, considering. His eyes glinted black in the flickering light of the unadorned lightbulb in the ceiling. Then he coughed and was her friend Roger again.