Moscow was to have been Cecil Wainwright’s swansong as an intelligence officer, the concluding grading guaranteeing him an index linked pension of?15,000 a year upon which he had decided he could live comfortably in the already purchased and paid for bungalow on the outskirts of Bognor, the dark-room already installed and equipped for the hobby of photography that he intended to pursue. Wainwright was a sparse-haired, precise man whose delight in detail made him an efficient fact gatherer and extended to always sharpened pencils and always filled fountain pens to record those details. He had begun in army intelligence in Germany, which meant he saw the bestiality of Bergen, Belsen and Dachau and learned through the interviews with the maimed and crippled survivors in preparation for the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal of the torture ability of the Gestapo.
Wainwright was a brave man because he was a coward and tried not to be. He had been terrified by what he saw and heard in Germany and terrified further by the accounts that had leaked from Russia – long before his posting there – of precisely the same things happening under Stalin and his successors: terrified because Wainwright knew there was no way – if ever he had to confront it – that he could withstand torture. Fully aware of the fear – which he saw as cowardice – he had always rejected any idea of transferring from the service to a branch where the demand for him to find out – and worse, show – just how scared he was might never arise.
He had lived for three years in Moscow, had six months to go before the Bognor retirement and had, as the days and weeks been ticked off from the carefully consulted calendar, begun to convince himself that it was a personal test he was never going to have to confront or an admission never to be known by anyone.
He actually squealed, in fright, when the car pulled up alongside him on the north side of the museum and he realised, in the initial seconds of being manhandled into the back and surrounded by a grappling mob of men, that he hadn’t got away with it and that it had happened – the biggest terror – after all.
He recognised Lefortovo, as they swept through the gates, and Wainwright had to sit tight-buttocked and with his legs pressed together against any immediate, personally embarrassing collapse. He knew he’d mess himself – always known it – when the pain started, the agony that would make him scream and weep – but he determined to hold out as long as possible, just like he’d refused to give in all these years.
There is a procedure about interrogation – a method of obtaining the most, quickest – and it begins by letting the victim’s own fear work against him. Wainwright’s high-voiced demands for an explanation or for access to the British embassy were ignored. He was put into a windowless room, a tiny metal-shuttered grill set into the steel door, without lavatory facilities and with only a box-like table and two chairs beneath a harsh, ceiling-mounted light. Wainwright’s hopeless abandonment was accentuated by the reflection of his loneliness in a large mirror set into the wall facing the door, in which he was reflected from whatever part of the room he attempted to occupy, and unseen behind which, because it was a two-way mirror, Kalenin and Berenkov sat waiting for the interrogation to begin.
They watched Wainwright sit, stand, sit, then stand again, come directly up to the mirror and stare into it, as if he suspected its proper function and instead closely study his own face, for indications of strain. He walked tight-legged, the discomfort obvious and twice actually felt down vaguely in the direction of his bladder, as if to hold himself would suppress the need. Once, with the apparent need to reassure himself, he went intimately through everything in his pockets, examining things of which he should have already been familiar, carefully returning each item to the pocket from which he took it in the first place. He sat, stood, then sat again. The need to urinate appeared to become increasingly more urgent.
‘I almost peed myself,’ remembered Berenkov. ‘Funny reaction. Nearly always happens.’
‘Did you?’ asked Kalenin.
‘Managed to stop it happening.’
‘Don’t think he’ll be able to,’ judged Kalenin. ‘This shouldn’t be too protracted.’
‘I’m surprised the British left him on station,’ said Berenkov.
‘Who knows how anyone will react, until the arrest actually happens?’
‘It’s time we had some luck,’ said Berenkov.
‘Sampson did well,’ said Kalenin, in reminder.
‘I was wrong,’ repeated Berenkov. ‘It was right to use him: I shouldn’t have argued against it, from the beginning.’
The interrogation continued its defined course. The interrogator, whose name was Koblov although Wainwright was never to know it, burst suddenly into the room, an impatient man in a hurry, walking by the British diplomat without bothering to look closely at him, just nodding curtly and saying ‘Sit down.’
Wainwright made a valiant effort. He straightened, striving for the stance of outraged importance, and said, ‘My name is Cecil Wainwright. I am accredited to your Government as the first secretary to the embassy of Her Britannic Majesty, Queen Elizabeth. I am covered by full protocol of the Vienna Convention. I demand a full explanation of your conduct and access immediately to the British embassy.’
‘Sit down,’ repeated Koblov.
‘I said I demand an explanation,’ said Wainwright, still upright.
‘Sit down!’ shouted Koblov.
Wainwright did.
From a brief-case Koblov extracted a purposely thickened file, moving to another stage of questioning, the impression of knowing everything, so that the questioning becomes only a formality, the need for confirmation. Without bothering to look up, he dictated. ‘Your name is Cecil Roy Wainwright. Your accredited position as first secretary is, in fact, a cover for your true function as an agent, actively working against the free interests of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. You are, in fact, the resident for MI-6. Throughout your period in Moscow you have carried out your function as a spy…’ The Russian turned the page, the attitude still one of impatience. He picked up the fifteen messages listed against Wainwright’s name, which had been typed out, in English, in their entirety, including the decipherment of both the mathematician cryptologists and Sampson. Koblov offered Wainwright the first and said, ‘This was transmitted from the British embassy on May 6th. It is classified, restricted information concerning the governing Politburo of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics…’ Koblov dealt the second message. ‘This was transmitted on May 18th, further information about the composition and attitudes of the Soviet Government, concerning the attitude of the Soviet Government towards NATO aggression in Europe…’ Koblov maintained the attack and the delivery, a dealer holding all the marked cards, taking Wainwright in chronological progression through the messages he had transmitted.