You might if British interests were all that concerned you, McColl thought, and of course, defending those interests was the point of Cumming’s job. McColl’s time in India had convinced him that British rule was, at best, a mixed blessing, and he also thought it highly likely that the collapse of the Russian economy owed as much to the Whites and their Western allies as it did to Lenin’s incompetence. But then, as Caitlin had always argued, and as his own experience had finally taught him, most people couldn’t see past their own nationality. Even those who tried.
“The deal was signed in March,” Cumming continued, “and as far as we can tell, they’ve been true to their word. We had a man with the Indians in Tashkent, and he recently reported that they’ve all been shipped back to Moscow. There’s a third jamboree scheduled for the end of June, and they’ve been told they’ll all be attending. Which is all to the good. But the other thing he reported is not. It seems that one of Kell’s people has sounded out at least one member of this group for another project, but—and here’s the interesting part—without revealing that he’s a British agent. We don’t know why or what the project might be, and Five refuse to enlighten us. They claim that our people in Moscow can’t be trusted, so neither can we. And when I pointed out that Moscow was definitely not on their patch, they claimed that their business there was all to do with India, and that they were simply trying to nip potential trouble in the bud before it actually crossed the border, so to speak. Which was credible as far as it went, but I still didn’t like it.
“And then we learned two other facts about this supposedly Indian business. One was that Russians were involved. Not at the official level, or not as far as we can tell. Lenin’s volte-face on trading with the West hasn’t pleased all his friends, particularly as it seems part of a general backpedaling that a lot of Bolsheviks find almost treasonous. I’m told that men like those might see encouraging foreign revolutionaries as a way of shaming their own leaders.
“And finally, last but not least… I don’t suppose you’ve forgotten Aidan Brady?”
“No,” McColl said dryly. Aidan Brady, the Irish-American firebrand whom he’d met in 1914 at a workers’ rally in Paterson, New Jersey. Who had fatally stabbed a riot cop on the following day, and had left McColl himself for dead in a Dublin dock some four months later. Who had turned up again like the worst of bad pennies on that day in Kalanchevskaya Square. No, McColl hadn’t forgotten Aidan Brady. “You don’t forget a man who tries to kill you twice and blows a small boy’s head off in the process.”
Cumming gave him a sharp look. “He was caught in Ireland a couple of months ago. In a village not far from Queenstown. He obviously felt at a loose end when the Russian Civil War ended and decided to join the war in Ireland.”
“So where is he now?”
“Back in Russia.”
“Why the hell wasn’t he tried and hanged?”
Cumming made a face. “Because Five decided they had a use for him, I suppose.”
“And it was Five that sent him back to Russia?”
“Yes.”
“And you think it’s likely that he’s involved in this Indian business, whatever it is?”
“Why else send him to Moscow?”
“But once he’s out of their reach, what’s to stop Brady just disappearing? That doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it doesn’t. None of it does. Which is why I want you to go. Because you know Brady, because you know Moscow, and because I daren’t send one of my own. I’ve been told, in no uncertain terms, to let Five get on with whatever it is they’re doing.”
“And yet,” McColl said, smiling for the first time.
“And yet,” Cumming agreed. “This is between us. I get you out of here, and you find out what the hell’s going on. I’ll see what I can do about arranging some help, but basically you’ll be on your own. And reporting only to me.”
“Won’t people wonder why you’re springing me?”
“I shall say you’ve been granted a full pardon on account of your past services to the Crown. Which you yourself could have brought up in court, if you hadn’t considered yourself bound by the Official Secrets Act.”
“Sounds feasible.”
“Why didn’t you bring them up?” Cumming asked unexpectedly.
McColl thought about it. “It didn’t feel right. Like stepping over corpses.”
“Does this?”
“No, not when a bastard like Brady’s involved.”
“Do you need more time to think about it?”
“No, I’ll go. Do you know if Caitlin Hanley’s still in Moscow?”
Cumming offered a thin smile. “I had a feeling you’d ask that, so I made some inquiries. The answer is yes. She works for the Bolshevik women’s organization—I forget the name. She edits their magazine, among other things. But I don’t think…”
“No, neither do I,” McColl said. “Just curiosity. That flame went out a long time ago.”
“She was always your Achilles’ heel,” Cumming mused. “You were—how shall I put it?—one of my most reliable men until the two of you tangled yourselves in knots. I hope she was worth it.”
He sounded almost mystified, which McColl didn’t find surprising—Cumming wasn’t the sort of man to let a woman come between him and his work. “She did save my life in Dublin during the Rising,” McColl said wryly. “And probably again in Moscow.”
And even if she hadn’t, he thought, she had made his life worth living.
McColl was released a week later, walking out through the Wormwood Scrubs gates on a sunny mid-June afternoon. The days inside had felt appreciably longer once he knew he was getting out, and the sense of relief at finding himself on a London street was even sweeter than he’d imagined. He had half expected to find someone from the Service waiting to pick him up and was pleasantly surprised that he could simply walk off down the road. A small sum of money had been left at the gate for a meal and bus fare, but by the time he’d exhausted his joy in space and movement, he was almost at the address off Baker Street that Cumming had commandeered for McColl’s temporary home.
The flat was on the second floor of a four-story house, at the end of an old Victorian mews. A Secret Service hidey-hole, McColl assumed, for the use of itinerant agents and anyone Cumming might want to keep under wraps. McColl let himself in with the key he’d been given, and found he already had company: a bespectacled young man with wavy blond hair who languidly rose from an armchair and offered his hand. “Julian Bracegirdle,” he said. “I’m here to get you up and running.”
He reminded McColl of several former Service colleagues—adenoidal, entitled, but reasonably benign. Indulged by nanny, damaged at school and Oxbridge, finally loosed on the world. The empire’s hollow spine.
McColl told himself to rein it in and give the man a chance.
Bracegirdle wasn’t a waster of words. McColl would be leaving for Russia on the following Tuesday, taking ship from Harwich to Esbjerg, a train to Copenhagen, and a second ship up the Baltic to Helsinki. The arrangements for getting him into Russia were still being made, and he would probably learn what they were only once he reached Finland. Over the next few days he would be exhaustively briefed on the situations in Russia, Central Asia, and India, and on the particulars of his mission. And no, there would not be time for him to visit his mother in Glasgow before he left, but the flat did have a telephone. He could have the rest of the day to enjoy his newfound liberty—there were five one-pound notes on the mantelpiece—and a car would come to fetch him at 8:00 a.m.