Dirty Tricks, page 13
‘That wouldn’t surprise me,’ Quinn said, making a note to find out if this were so. ‘How the hell anybody ever fell for that part of the Helsinki Agreement I’ll never understand, especially after the blatant way the exercise subterfuge was used to take Czechoslovakia by surprise in 1968. You weren’t here then, Angela, but we repeatedly warned the Foreign Office – and Number Ten – that the huge build-up on the borders of Czechoslovakia was not an exercise but mobilization for an attack. The Foreign Office refused to believe it.’
‘Are they fools, villains or both?’ Angela inquired.
‘You may well ask. Whatever they are they still think they are dealing with gentlemen. Some of the Russian generals may be gentlemen, but they’ll still do whatever those ruthless old bastards in the Politburo tell them. They daren’t do anything else.’
He picked up a piece of paper and held it rather far in front of him, being vain enough to be still delaying the inevitability of spectacles. ‘Ah, here’s the report from the private detective on the Prime Minister’s movements yesterday. He’s a good chap that!’
He pursed his lips as he perused it. ‘Hm, can’t see anybody here who could be the courier … But there must be one. Henderson couldn’t be such a fool as to contact any Soviet Bloc agent directly.’
Being aware of the incredible weaknesses and stupidities of so many men in high places through reading their dossiers, Angela was not so sure. ‘He might have no alternative if the KGB is turning the heat on him.’
Quinn shook his head and scowled. He did not like being contradicted even when seeking counsel. ‘What time did you ask John Falconer to call?’ he asked.
‘He’s due any time now. You asked me to telephone him as soon as you had seen the bag from Moscow.’
‘Good. I’m looking forward to his reaction. Is Ed Taylor coming with him?’
‘I gather not … ’
‘Just as well. There are some things he shouldn’t know.’
‘But don’t you think Falconer will tell him?’
‘No way,’ Quinn said decisevely. ‘The essence of tact lies in keeping your mouth shut, and Falconer is noted for it. Need to know, my dear! Need to know!’
Angela continued to busy herself cutting out ministerial answers to Parliamentary questions from Hansard and looking more than usually attractive as the sun streamed through the high window onto her hair. It was her duty to spot any statements which might have relevance to Intelligence affairs and to paste them in a special book. In the rush of recent events she had fallen behind with the task. Quinn had requested a thorough search of the last three weeks’ issues, suspecting that some of the extreme left MPs might have been required by Soviet Intelligence to ask questions devised to produce answers of use to Moscow in the current crisis.
As her scissors snipped away crisply Quinn could not help asking, ‘What happens to all the discarded Hansards?’
‘They go through the shredders. Everything does. That’s your instruction,’ Angela replied without looking up.
‘Pity,’ Quinn grunted. ‘They should all be used for fuelling the central heating. It would be a fitting end for them.’
‘How come?’ Angela asked, realizing that her master wished to make one of his sarcastic comments and would not like to be deprived of the opportunity.
‘Because it would be re-cycling hot air.’
Falconer’s arrival was announced on the intercom and Angela showed him in.
‘Morning, John,’ Quinn said briskly. ‘I’ve got news for you. Your hunch about the PM was dead right. I fed him some disinformation and, sure enough, I’ve just had it played back to me from Moscow. Almost verbatim!’
‘ “Uncle Vanya” didn’t lose much time did he?’ Falconer said with a satisfied smile.
‘He never does. And he even sent his usual Russian joke.’ Quinn picked up ‘Uncle Vanya’s’ message and read, ‘ “Could a horse gallop from Leningrad to Moscow? Answer – No, because it would be eaten on the way.” Another jibe at the chronic meat shortage. Not up to his usual standard but the rest of the message is spot on.’
‘As a matter of interest, Mark, what did you feed Henderson that made him react so swiftly?’
‘Oh, it had to be something really hot and I came up with a beauty. I told him that I had secured information, which I had confirmed, that your National Security Council had taken a firm decision to use precision-guided neutron weapons immediately the Russians approached the West German frontier in force, and that these were already stockpiled in position. I larded it up with some convincing collateral Intelligence … ’
It seemed that Falconer could scarcely believe his ears. ‘For Christ’s sake, Mark, that’s not disinformation. It’s true. The Council took exactly that decision four days ago.’
Quinn affected a look of intense surprise. ‘But my dear fellow, how was I supposed to know that? I assure you that it’s an absolute coincidence. Or is it? I suppose it could be parallel thinking. Perhaps in my mind I worked out what your chaps might be likely to do … ’
‘Wasn’t it irresponsible in the extreme to feed anything as sensitive as that into Moscow? Christ knows what the reaction in Washington will be if they get wind of it there.’
Quinn shrugged. ‘I didn’t feed it in. The Prime Minister did. But what the hell was I to do, John? We’d agreed that action was crucially urgent and the idea just presented itself. It was a case of having to fight fire with fire. In any event, it seemed to me that the information – disinformation, I should say – might make the Russians think twice about attacking. So it couldn’t do much harm. You know, John, I thought our purpose – yours and mine – was to prevent war. If we can put the fear of God up the Kremlin what harm’s done?’
‘Well, for a start, Mark, if this gets back to Washington they’ll think I leaked it to you. Very few people knew about it. At this stage even the NATO commanders think that the weapons in their stockpiles are ordinary tactical nukes which were sent back to the States for the usual routine maintenance and then returned.’
‘Come to that, John, why didn’t you tell me? Then I wouldn’t have used it. I think we were entitled to know about such an important decision. After all, we are the meat in the sandwich.’
‘Oh come off it, Mark!’ Falconer exclaimed, almost angrily. ‘You know very well there are some secrets we have to keep from each other. And in this case there were pressing reasons. In the first place how could we tell you when we were sure that your Prime Minister was working for the other side?’
‘Well it’s no good crying over spilled secrets.’ Quinn asserted. ‘Our priority now is what we should do about Henderson.’
‘Have you any idea how he gets his information to Moscow so quickly?’
‘None. I got the report of his movements from his private detective this morning. It covers every minute. There’s nobody he saw who’s a possible starter.’
Quinn passed the list of contacts to Falconer who ran his eye down it.
‘I suppose we’ll have to eliminate Her Excellency, Mrs Jane Jansen,’ he said. ‘I don’t mind telling you that I had her past pushed through a fine sieve when she was attacking us. If there had been anything at all the Press would have had it, pronto. Ed had an informer at her dinner last night – one of the Embassy servants – but he had nothing relevant to report.’
‘Maybe they were able to talk privately when the servant wasn’t there,’ Quinn suggested.
Falconer shook his head. ‘No, he planted temporary bugs all over the place and had a pocket recorder. He got the lot. The conversation couldn’t have been more prosaic.’
‘There’s no telephone evidence either,’ Quinn said. ‘Yet there just has to be a courier.’
Falconer paused and stared at Quinn through his thick lenses. ‘There is a runner on this list you may not have considered. Someone Henderson spends a lot of time with.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘His doctor.’
‘Sir Alan King-Lander! But that’s impossible. He’s a most distinguished physician … with a worldwide reputation … ’
‘What else do you know about him?’ Falconer asked.
Quinn gave a rather helpless shrug. ‘I know next to nothing, though I suppose we have something on file. I know he’s a close personal friend of the PM, but I’m never invited to functions at Number Ten so I’ve had no opportunity to meet him.’
‘Exactly! So you could have a blind spot about him, Mark. He’d make the perfect courier wouldn’t he? Henderson sees him in the absolute confidentiality of the doctor-patient relationship. Then anyone can go to visit him at his consulting-rooms under the same conditions without raising suspicion. Has he ever been positively vetted?’
‘I’d be sure he hasn’t,’ said Quinn, who was somewhat thrown by the suggestion. ‘It’s never occurred to anyone, so far as I know, to PV any Prime Minister’s doctor. If it was anybody’s job it would be MI5’s, and that shower in Curzon Street wouldn’t be telling us about it. But why should he be regarded as an official subject to vetting any more than the PM’s other close friends. He doesn’t see papers … ’
‘Shouldn’t see papers,’ Falconer corrected. ‘You are not going to like this, Mark, but we’ve had King-Lander under heavy surveillance for some time.’
‘The hell you have! To what degree?’
‘The full treatment. We’ve bugged his consulting-rooms. The National Security Agency did it for us,’ he said, referring to the American Intelligence-gathering organization so noted for its reluctance to reveal its functions in Britain, or elsewhere, that its initials were alleged to stand for Never Say Anything. ‘They are our experts here on electronic surveillance and I didn’t want to embarrass Ed by bringing our mission into it. It would have worried him stiff. You know how sensitive the Agency is here after all that row about spying on your Trade Unions. Anyway Ed doesn’t really have the facilities.’
‘Too bad,’ Quinn said sardonically.
‘It wasn’t very difficult,’ Falconer continued, ignoring the barbed comment. ‘They induced one of the American drug companies to send the doctor a rather elaborate desk diary, which is more elaborate than it looks, and we followed up by getting one of our operatives referred to him for a second opinion. He managed to plant a back-up bug on the bottom bar of his dressing-screen!’
‘Belt and braces!’ Quinn observed.
‘Yes, they’ve worked well. Belt and braces always do.’
‘Have you anything definite yet?’ Quinn asked.
‘Nothing positive but some very significant negative responses. I’ll explain what I mean later. Meanwhile I can assure you that King-Lander is not quite what he seems. For a start that’s not the name with which he was christened. He was Adolf Gländer with an umlaut over the “a”. He changed his name for professional reasons – to give it more authority. It seems that in your country a hyphen helps.’
‘It does.’
‘His parents emigrated from Leipzig before the war. They weren’t political refugees and they weren’t Jewish. The father was a locomotive engineer and was offered a good job in Darlington. Adolf, their only child, won scholarships to the grammar school there, and then to Cambridge. He was very bright and a tremendous worker. He’s never looked back. He deserves his eminence.’
‘You have checked out on him haven’t you, John? Has he any relatives behind the Iron Curtain?’
‘Distant, but they do exist.’
‘And his politics?’
‘Confirmed Socialist, not a Communist, but likes the goodies of life. A bon viveur.’
‘Is that all you have?’ Quinn asked, suspecting that Falconer was holding back the prime information.
‘No. King-Lander’s a widower and he is susceptible to the ladies. He visited Moscow twice for international medical conferences, and was set up by the KGB.’
‘The usual compromising photographs?’ Quinn inquired.
‘Yeah. I feel sorry for him because he had no idea then that he would ever become a Prime Minister’s doctor. So why shouldn’t he have amused himself?’
‘Another of the KBG’s long shots!’ Quinn commented. ‘They have so many that some are bound to come up. But the number of intelligent men who fall for the sex frame-up never ceases to amaze me. When did they start putting the heat on him?’
‘The first time he visited Moscow with Henderson. He yielded so easily to them that I suspect he’d crack if you interrogated him.’
‘Interrogate him!’ Quinn said. ‘I wouldn’t dare touch him.’
‘Well you may change your mind when you’ve seen the situation for yourself. Or rather heard it. We have a small room opposite his consulting-rooms in Harley Street, hired in the name of a phoney acupuncture specialist. I think you’ll enjoy listening to what goes on.’
‘When can we do that?’ Quinn asked eagerly.
‘I happen to know that this evening should be propitious. Sir Alan has an interesting patient coming to see him, a rather frequent one – a woman.’
‘I can’t wait, John … ’
‘Good, but we’ll have to be careful. Ed and I are being tailed around London, and we’re fairly sure that it’s not by our friends from the KGB. Could it be MI5?’
Quinn smiled deprecatingly. ‘Anything’s possible with that lot. I suppose it could also be Special Branch … ’
‘Well, whoever it is we’ll have to take precautions. Can you pick me up by car outside the Dominion Theatre in Tottenham Court Road at 5.30 pm? Ed says its opposite a tall building called Centre Point. If they are tailing me I’ll have hoped to have shaken them off by then.’
‘I’ll be there,’ Quinn said.
‘By the way, Mark,’ Falconer added, almost as an aside as he prepared to leave, ‘I’m afraid we won’t be handing that KGB defector over to you.’
‘Kovalsky? Why not?’
‘He’s dead. Murdered. Here’s a cutting about it from the Washington Post.’
Under the small headline, ‘Unknown man found shot’, Quinn read a brief account of how a middle-aged white man shot in the chest and head had been found in a downtown Washington hotel. The bullets had been fired from a nine millimetre calibre pistol. No clues to his identity had been found and nobody had come forward with information about him, though he was known to have had one friend who had booked him into the hotel. Checks of his fingerprints against the files of the FBI had proved negative, so his remains, labelled ‘John Doe’, had been transferred to the morgue for eventual cremation if checks with Missing Persons Bureaus also failed …
‘How did you let it happen?’ Quinn asked uncharitably.
‘Some foul-up by the case officer. I’m having him sorted out. It’s a damn nuisance. Kovalsky was really valuable. The fact that the KGB went to such lengths shows that.’
‘You’re sure it was the KGB, John?’
‘Who else could it be? Robbery was no motive. He still had money on him. And remember it was the second attempt.’
Quinn nodded, though he was not impressed. ‘Well let’s hope he’d already spilled all his material.’
‘I’m sure he had,’ Falconer said emphatically. ‘You couldn’t stop him talking.’
‘M’m, I suppose we could take his murder as further evidence that his information about the Prime Minister was right.’
‘I’d certainly interpret it that way, Mark. I don’t have to tell you that I don’t want anybody else knowing that we’ve bugged the Prime Minister’s physician. And that applies particularly to Mrs Jane Jansen. She and King-Lander are more than friendly, by the way.’
‘Is that right? Do you think she might have put the dogs on you?’
‘It’s not impossible,’ Falconer replied. ‘She certainly knows I’m here and she’s being very nosey about it.’
He looked at his watch. ‘It’s time I was off. I’m going to see the Derby for the first time. Anything I can back for you? Are you a betting man?’
‘In every big race I always back Jock Strap,’ Quinn replied with a flicker of a smile.
‘Jock Strap? Surely there’s no such horse.’
‘That’s right. I don’t like private activities over which I have no control. It’s too much like my daily work. And I don’t like losing money to bookmakers.’
‘Well let’s hope I don’t. See you on the dot at 5.30.’
As soon as Falconer had left the room Quinn picked up his green telephone. ‘Take the tail off those two Americans,’ he ordered. ‘It’s blown.’
As Quinn set up the machine and earphones to translate the ‘Uncle Vanya’ tape, which he always regarded as being too precious and too secret to be handled by anyone else, Angela asked quietly, ‘Why did you ask me to leak “Uncle Vanya’s” identity to Ed Taylor?’
‘Reasons, my dear. Reasons,’ he replied. ‘I never do anything without good reason. Like the reason I am now going to the washroom is all that caffeine in your coffee.’
As soon as he had left the room Angela put one of the earphones to her ear, let the tape run for a few seconds, then wound it back. She did not understand Russian but she was quite certain that the voice on the tape was not that of an old man, as she knew Rakitin to be.
Chapter Nine
On that same June morning, which was as brilliant in Moscow as in London, Anatoli Borisenko, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Chairman of the Praesidium, posts which made him virtual dictator, was feeling the physical limitations of his seventy-two years. However, he was in no mood to admit them. He had always been a glutton for effort and, apart from his routine bleats about the weight of paper-work, was pushing himself without complaint so that none should see that his appetite either for hard work or power had declined. That is none save Rakitin, his personal assistant. To hide his true condition from him would have entailed more energy than it was worth, and it did not matter for his trust in Rakitin, who had been with him so long, was absolute.
After a brief bout of chronic bronchitic coughing, which invariably blued up his sagging, hang-dog features, Borisenko patted his chest and breathed deeply and wheezily.
