Skydancer (34 page)

The MI6 man sniffed.

‘Last time they used this crossing was three years ago,' he commented disdainfully.

Half the gate swung open. Then the Vopo pulled at the bolt on the second one and opened that, too. The way on to the bridge was now clear.

The two officers stood in the middle of the road, talking. The British major seemed to be struggling to understand what he was being told. Repeatedly he appeared to be asking for clarification.

Eventually he hurried back to the car, his shoulders hunched against the rain.

Howlett threw himself inside, splashing water everywhere. He left the door half open. Peter noticed that he looked both shocked and puzzled.

‘Well, I don't know . . . I think I understood him right, but they never mentioned this before. He said he wants us to back a Land-Rover on to the bridge. Something about a box. He kept saying
“eine Kiste, eine Kiste”.
I don't know . . .'

‘He means a coffin,' the MI6 man concluded sharply.

‘Christ!' Peter breathed.

‘Yes . . . I think you're right. I'd better get that organised,' the major stammered, and disappeared into the rain again.

‘He couldn't have misunderstood, could he?' Peter hoped.

‘Doubt it,' the MI6 man answered. ‘Sounds bad.'

‘Anderson?'

The man nodded.

Two minutes later the major was back. The engine of one of the Land-Rovers could be heard revving behind them.

‘If you would come with me now, Mr Joyce . . .' said Howlett tensely, poking his head through the doorway.

Peter felt heavy with dread. He fumbled for the handle. The driver leaned back and opened the door for him.

The rain splattering on to his hair was ice-cold. He was glad of the umbrella that Howlett held ready for him to take.

‘This way.'

A heavy gust of exhaust fumes swirled warmly around him, as the Land-Rover backed past and began
to edge its way towards the middle of the bridge. An East German policeman waved it on with his torch, the sharply upturned brim of his cap standing out against the lights behind.

A pair of headlights began to approach from the far end of the bridge, the beams see-sawing up and down as the vehicle bumped across the uneven and seldom-used surface of the road.

The two vehicles stopped within ten feet of each other. Howlett grabbed Peter by the arm to prevent him going beyond the tail of their Land-Rover. The headlamps from the other side dazzled them. For a moment nothing seemed to be happening.

‘Peter Joyce?'

The voice was high-pitched and tremulous.

Peter cleared his throat.

‘Yes, that's me.'

‘
Vorwärts bitte!
Please come forvords,' a different voice called this time, with a German accent.

‘It's okay. Go ahead,' Major Howlett reassured him.

Peter stepped forward six paces, and stopped.

‘Oleg Kvitzinsky?' he called. ‘Your turn!'

The lights of the East German vehicle were off to one side now, and had ceased to dazzle him. He could see three men ahead. Hesitantly one of them began to move.

The man was tall and burly, wearing a heavy raincoat and a felt hat. He came right up to Peter and stopped. The spill of light reflecting off the wet tarmac gave a dull illumination to his face. It had been several years since they had met in Geneva, but Peter recollected the arched brows and the eyes that looked poised halfway between laughter and tears. They looked sadder than he had remembered.

‘This was not what I planned,' Kvitzinsky stated,
only a slight accent tainting his words.

Beyond him Peter could see four men in uniform sliding something heavy from the back of the vehicle, which he could now see was a hearse.

‘This afternoon your Mr Anderson was still alive,' Kvitzinsky continued slowly. ‘It was intended that he would walk across here with me. But . . .'

Speechless with shock and anger, Peter watched as the policemen carried the coffin past. Two British soldiers helped them ease the plain wooden box into the back of the Land Rover.

‘Who killed him?' Peter rasped.

‘The
Polizei
have some papers. They will give them to your soldiers. It explains . . .' Kvitzinsky hesitated. His face was pained. ‘It explains that there was an accident, that he was out looking at the city this afternoon when there was a traffic accident . . .'

Peter felt fury boiling up inside him. With his free hand he grasped the Russian by the lapels.

‘You have the bloody nerve to just stand there and tell me . . .'

‘Don't touch me, please,' Kvitzinsky whispered. ‘They might shoot. Please. They are very nervous!'

Over the Russian's shoulder Peter could see that two of the guards had levelled their submachine-guns at him. Slowly he released his grip.

‘You are right to be angry,' Kvitzinsky went on hurriedly. ‘And of course it is not true about the traffic accident . . . but it was not our intention that he should die! You must believe . . .' he implored. ‘He took his own life . . . from a window of the HVA, the police building. I don't know why. It was after he learned that he was to be handed back to you like this. It's the truth, Joyce, but the Germans didn't think you would believe . . . so they have written the other story.'

Peter stared blankly at the Russian, unable to decide whether Kvitzinsky himself believed what he was saying. Would Anderson have killed himself? It was not impossible.

‘What do you want, Kvitzinsky? Why did you insist I came here to meet you?'

A gust of wind caught the underside of his umbrella and threatened to wrench it away. Kvitzinsky clutched at his hat to prevent it being blown off.

‘I had a proposition to put,' he said, trying to keep his voice to a whisper. ‘Now . . .' He shrugged and looked unhappily at the coffin. ‘Now you would be right not even to listen to me, but I hope you will.'

His eyes were those of a man struggling under a terrible burden.

‘You are a brilliant man, Peter Joyce, and you have a technology already which I am still dreaming of! Yes, I pay you a compliment! Your Skydancer is a very clever weapon. Of course,' he sighed, ‘I now know how I can beat it. I know how to build a defence against it, but . . .'

His lips scaled into a thin line.

In the half-light of the car headlights Peter tried to read the Russian's face, to see what new vein of trickery was being mined.

Kvitzinsky had leaned forward so that his head was under the edge of Peter's umbrella. He spoke in a soft whisper, inaudible to anyone more than a few inches away.

‘The people at the top in my country want it to be done. If I tell them it is possible, they will spend the money, buy me everything I need, steal me anything that money cannot buy. But if that money is spent on such military equipment, what will happen? Where will that money come from? You know the answer; it
is the same in your country, the same everywhere. That money will come from the people. To pay for a defence against a weapon designed never to be used, hospitals will stay crowded and short of drugs; food supplies will run out and schools will close in the bitter days of winter because there is no fuel to heat them.'

Peter steeled himself against Kvitzinsky's outpourings. He smelled trickery. There had to be a catch, and he held himself in wait for it.

‘Mr Peter Joyce,' the Russian began to plead with him, ‘you and I, we are scientists, not gunsmiths. We are here on this planet to extend mankind's knowledge for his own benefit. For his protection, yes, but . . . if we build him an impregnable fortress and then keep him inside it with nothing to eat, what do we achieve?

‘You . . . and me, I want us to try to reach an understanding. I know . . . I know from when we talked before in Geneva, in better times, I know that you are a serious and sensible man. If I build a defence against Skydancer, you will build a new weapon that can beat it, and then I . . . and so on and so on. There is no end to that. No security or peace for our families. Only fear. Joyce, listen to me. We must stop this, and now is the time to do it! No new defences, no new missiles!'

Peter stood back suddenly. He began to believe that Kvitzinsky was serious, that he was earnestly proposing a halt to one small part of the arms race, not a halt negotiated by politicians, but one unofficially agreed by scientists.

‘You can't deliver that sort of deal,' Peter answered gently. ‘Nor can I. You know that. We . . . people like us, we don't take decisions of that kind.'

The Russian's eyes narrowed.

‘We can try.'

There was the sound of footsteps. Kvitzinsky shot a glance over his shoulder; the officers from the GRU were coming up one on each side of him.

He reached into the inside pocket of his coat, and pulled out a thick brown envelope.

‘Useless!' he exclaimed in a loud voice, thrusting the envelope into Peter's hands. ‘Your attempt to trick me into thinking these were the real plans – a waste of time! You do not fool us so easily, Mr Joyce! That is what I want to tell you. We have not been taken in!'

With that, he turned abruptly on his heel and walked back towards the wall, flanked by the Soviet security men.

For a moment Peter stood stunned and confused by what he had just heard. The hearse began to roll quitely backwards, its engine purring softly. The guards in their watchtowers seemed to relax now that the confrontation on the bridge was over.

‘I think we should get moving,' Major Howlett muttered by his ear.

Peter stood for a moment longer, watching the vehicle that had delivered Anderson's corpse slip back behind the wall, Oleg Kvitzinsky walking beside it. The heavy iron gate began to close. For a few minutes there had been a contact on this bridge, a hope voiced, and then stifled.

He looked at the wall stretching away in each direction, with its wire and its searchlights, and the distant barking of its guard dogs. It was mistrust itself, cast in concrete.

Peter turned and walked beside the Land-Rover as it carried Alec Anderson's coffin slowly back into the West. Once they were off the bridge, the East German guard closed the wire-mesh gate behind
them and secured the padlock.

‘I think we have to assume it was all designed to trick us,' Field-Marshal Buxton stated. Sir Marcus Beckett nodded in agreement.

‘It's a pretty standard Soviet ploy, disinformation and all that,' Beckett added.

They had gathered at the Defence Ministry the following afternoon.

‘I think he meant it,' Peter answered, half to himself. ‘I think he was genuinely trying to make a point. I wasn't sure at the time, but I believe it now. He's not a military man remember. Kvitzinsky got roped into the weapons business because of his achievements in the civilian sector. He's an idealist – still believes in communism as a force to benefit the masses. Naive perhaps, but I'm sure he was genuinely trying to stop one little piece of the arms race.

‘He was scared to death of those security men, I'm sure of that. Covered his tracks in a hurry, in case they overheard him. That farce about giving back the plans that Alec had delivered, saying they were fakes. It wasn't for my benefit that he did that, but for the GRU men who were guarding him. It was his own goons he was trying to convince.'

Buxton and Beckett smiled knowingly at one another.

‘You mustn't underestimate the deviousness of the Russians, Peter,' the CDS warned. ‘We've accumulated quite a lot of experience of them over the years, you know. My guess is that at this very moment he's going through a copy of those plans of yours with a fine-toothed comb!'

Peter shook his head.

‘I'm sure he was going to tell his own people that building a defence against Skydancer was impossible – that was the message I got,' he insisted.

‘Well . . .' Buxton concluded, ‘time will tell.'

‘And what about Anderson?' Sir Marcus interjected. ‘You don't seriously believe that story about suicide do you? The HVA bumped him off, just the same as they did poor Mary Maclean!'

Peter nodded. They could be right about that. He thought again of those bloodstains at Mary's flat and shuddered.

‘And do they get away with it?' he asked bitterly. ‘Two people murdered, and we can do nothing about it?'

The field-marshal frowned.

‘If Metzger turns up in the West again, you can rest assured it won't be long before he's sent home in a box, too,' Buxton stated grimly.

‘There's an emergency debate in the House tomorrow,' Sir Marcus cut in. ‘The opposition have demanded it. The PM's going to say something about Alec. Berlin won't be mentioned – but he's going to say that Anderson died in a counter-intelligence operation, details of which can never be revealed, in the interests of national security.'

Peter thought of Janet Anderson. At least she could now believe that her husband died a hero. She would never know that he had been led into blackmail and into betraying his country.

It was the face of ‘the Russian' which dominated his mind, a face which was no longer just imaginary. Kvitzinsky.
Was
he just another Soviet official, saying one thing and meaning another? Or had he been pleading with him from the heart?

Supposing Kvitzinsky did keep his word? Supposing
he made no effort to counter Skydancer? Could that be the end of it? The end of one small part of the arms race?

He shook his head. How could they ever be sure what Kvitzinsky would do, or whether some other Russian would soon take his place, some scientist with an altogether different view? Maybe Buxton was right; maybe the only way to predict the future was to remember the mistrust of the past.

The following afternoon, Peter Joyce returned home from Aldermaston soon after lunch, to listen to the radio broadcast of the emergency debate in the House of Commons.

The Prime Minister made a rousing statement about the wickedness of the foreign agents who had tried to steal British missile secrets, and declared that they had failed ignominiously, thanks to the heroic actions of a number of British personnel, including Mr Alec Anderson from the Ministry of Defence.