The Envoy (34 page)

And who was O: Odile or Odette? Or did O mean she was nothing other than the O of her orifices? Or O for an object willing to be an object. Kit was back in his flat and it was just before midnight. Even though it was August, he had lit the gas fire. Was it cold? Or was he in for another bout of recurrent malaria? Kit poured himself another drink. He knew that Cauldwell had chosen the book to send him a message – a malignant message intended to undermine his sanity. It was like an MK-ULTRA experiment. Cauldwell wanted to cause disorientation.
Histoire d’O
was a drug intended to promote illogical thinking and impulsiveness in order to better manipulate and control. They wanted to shake his faith in Jennifer, like North Korean brainwashing had turned POWs. Kit poured another drink. The alcohol only made the doubt come back and grow like a torch-lit Tet dragon weaving through the streets of Cholon. Was Jennifer proud of her
bondage
and slavery? Was submission her way of showing love? He had to find out.

Kit stood up; he was unsteady on his feet. It had been a long time since he had been so drunk. He picked up a loose
floorboard
and retrieved his Smith & Wesson from its hiding place. He flicked out the chamber block to make sure it was still loaded. The rims of the six bullets glinted back at him. Good. Kit put on a leather jacket and dropped the gun into the right pocket. He
wondered
how to shoot Brian. The first two rounds would go into his sex organs. Kit would then let him suffer a while, so he could feel not only the pain, but also the realisation that he was no longer a man. How would Jennifer react to all this? Kit would have to play that by ear and instinct.

When Kit saw the signpost for Colchester he turned off the main road and stopped the car near a five-bar gate. The corn in the field on the other side of the gate had been beaten down by the summer storms. There was a rich malty smell. It was two o’clock in the morning and Kit had begun to sober up. He rolled the car window down so that the cool night air would make him even more sober. He now knew that he wasn’t going to shoot anyone – or drive any further north. How, he thought, have I got into such a state? In any case, they were trapped on an island. Kit turned the car around. When he got back to London the eastern sky had turned into an angry dawn cauldron of orange and grey. The weather was getting worse.

The letter from Jennifer arrived via the second post. The message was encoded so Kit had to find his copy of
The Portrait of a Lady
to use as a key for decoding the message. The page used as the coding key was determined by how many days had elapsed since 1 September – the day that would have been the baby’s birthday had he gone full term. Based on the note’s date of composition, Kit turned to page 343. He wished he had chosen another book: the coincidence was too cruel.

‘Poor Jennifer,’ said Kit, ‘all the gods seemed ranged against you.’ The deciphered message read: ETA ZERO ONE TWO SIX EIGHT BY SEA AWRE. Brief and telegraphic: Jennifer clearly remembered her training as a cipher clerk. The message implied that something was arriving on the sea side of Orford Ness at one o’clock in the morning of 26 August. Kit was certain that he knew what it was.

Kit picked up the book again and leafed through the pages. He had forgotten that Isabel Archer had lost a child. Those brief lines at the top of page 343 were the only reference that Henry James made to Isabel’s tragic loss in the entire novel. What reticence, what understatement – and what other lessons, thought Kit, had Henry James learned from a lifetime in England? What a strange people – and the power of their unsaid words.

It was a cold cloudy night and there was no moon. Despite the weather, there were still a few yachts on the river trying to salvage something of the season.
Louise
was on her mooring at Orford and Driscoll was slumped on a berth in the main saloon
nursing
a cup of tea laced with rum. The halyards rattled against the mast as squalls swept in from the south-west. ‘I’d better tie those off,’ said Kit. He put on an oilskin and went topside to silence the noisy lines. When he returned down below, he was dripping – and happy. Ops were dangerous for the body, but good for the soul. The adrenalin was pumping and driving the clouds away.

‘There’s something I don’t understand,’ said Driscoll.

‘What’s that?’

‘This yachting thing. Is it supposed to be fun?’

Kit peeled off his oilskin and dropped it on the cabin sole. ‘Fun? Of course it isn’t fun. Fun is for lower-class people, like you, Driscoll.’

‘Do you consider yourself a snob?’

‘Not at all. In fact, Driscoll, I have socialist leanings – and I don’t believe in inherited wealth.’

‘Have you inherited a lot of money?’

‘Quite a lot.’

‘Since you think inherited wealth is wrong, why don’t you give me yours?’

‘Don’t be silly, Driscoll, you’d just waste it having fun.’ Kit looked at his watch. ‘If we leave now, the tide will take us to the end of Havergate Island.’

‘Do you think it’s a good idea to go alone? If we both went, I could watch your back.’

‘The problem is the tender. If a guard patrol sees it pulled up on the riverbank, they’ll know they have uninvited guests. That’s why I want you to drop me ashore and then hide up.’ Kit left his oilskin dripping on the floor and put on a camouflage waterproof. He then covered his face and the backs of his hands with black greasepaint. He saw Driscoll shaking his head with disbelief. ‘I know,’ said Kit, ‘all this commando stuff doesn’t just make me look like an asshole, it makes me feel like one too. Let’s go. I’ll row back.’ As Driscoll clambered into the tender, Kit checked his kitbag one last time: signal torch, automatic with silencer, wire cutters, binoculars, two hand grenades – one for them and one for himself. The idea was to blow off his head so the body couldn’t be identified. And, of course, all the equipment – including the camouflage gear – was Russian. It was a false flag espionage op. If something went wrong, there wouldn’t be any American
fingerprints
. Of course, anyone with half a brain would know the truth. The false flag paraphernalia was a fig leaf called ‘plausible
deniability
’. It saved embarrassment for both sides.

The tender dropped down the river quickly on the tide and was soon hidden from Orford Ness by the low lying Havergate Island that split the river into two branches. Kit leaned back in the stern sheets and closed his eyes. It was very nice being rowed on a midnight river. Havergate, to their left, was a bird sanctuary with shallow lagoons. Kit hoped the Orford Ness guards wouldn’t notice the warning calls of oystercatcher, curlew and avocet that followed their boat down the river.

When they got to the end of the island, Kit reminded Driscoll of his instructions and the emergency torch signals – three quick flashes at ten-minute intervals. Driscoll pulled the oars hard to row across the tide. When the boat crunched into the steep
shingle
of Orford Ness, Kit leapt out and ran for cover in the patchy vegetation at the top of the bank. He felt ashamed: he was
enjoying
himself. Kit lay in a shingle hollow – the yellow blossoms of a horned poppy caressing his cheek. At first, the vast shingle spit seemed a barren desert of stone and salt spray, but there were many living things. The lonely sentinels of the sea frontier:
campion
, pea, kale, stonecrop, hawk’s-beard, toadflax and lavender. There was also a colony of lean hares that somehow survived and multiplied in the bleak wilderness. Kit could see them moving around. Their heads alert, still and listening.

The secret research base was a mile and a half to the north. Kit hoped that they didn’t bother sending security patrols that far beyond the perimeter fence of barbwire and watchtowers. What he feared most were dogs. He got up and began to make his way towards the base. He kept in the middle of the spit where the
shingle
hollows and vegetation provided some scant cover. After every dash forward, he knelt and listened. The only sound he heard was the soft sough of the North Sea caressing the shingle spit. He was certain that he was alone. There was no sixth sense buzz warning him of another human presence. Kit moved quickly and half an hour later he was within a hundred metres of the barbwire fence. He crawled sixty metres closer, and then towards the sea. The last cover before the open beach was a clump of sea kale. He dared not go closer – the beam of Orford Ness lighthouse swept over the area at five-second intervals. He could also hear voices from the guard tower overlooking the beach.

It had stopped raining and the wind had shifted to the north. Although the night was cold and damp, Kit was sweating. He tried to burrow himself into the shingle behind the sea kale. His view of the beach behind the barbwire was excellent and the
vegetation
hid him from the guard tower. Kit took out his binoculars and began to scan the sea horizon. To the south was the ghostly loom of Sunk Sand Lightship. A few miles offshore were the slow moving running lights of a cargo ship heading towards Harwich. Nothing else. Kit continued to scan the empty sea. He wondered if Jennifer had given him the right information. Then something very odd happened. Orford Ness Lighthouse suddenly
extinguished
– and the sea and beach were as dark and unmarked as they had been in the days of the Iceni.

Kit heard noises out to sea – and they didn’t sound very far away. They were the noises of ships’ engines. He scanned the sea again. There weren’t any lights, but there was a silhouette of a large vessel that was completely blacked out. She couldn’t have been more than half a mile away – maybe closer. Suddenly her engine died and there was the rattle of an anchor chain paying out. Kit studied her shape as she swung to the tide – which had turned and was running south. Lying at anchor, the ship was only a couple of hundred yards from Kit’s hiding place. She was a medium-sized cargo ship with her bridge and superstructure towards the stern. She belonged to the class of vessel used for transporting bulk goods: grain, iron ore, timber. Kit could see that the blackout wasn’t perfect. There were a number of crew moving around the deck carrying hand torches. The ship was so close that Kit could hear voices – Russian voices.

The ship was fully laden and rode low in the water. There were two large cranes in the bows and a number of derricks further astern. Three crew, carrying tools, were walking forward towards the large crane. Two other men were walking behind them and talking – in English. One man spoke with a heavy Russian accent; the other man was obviously English. Kit recognised the voice – it was Brian’s. The words travelled clearly across the night sea: ‘Are you sure, Viktor, that the detonator has been made safe?’

‘I’m pretty sure, but we need to remove it to make for certain. We’ve got the tools – we can do it now if you want.’

‘No, I don’t want to touch it until we get the bomb ashore and into one of those bunkers.’

Viktor turned and pointed towards the land. ‘Your
containment
bunkers are different from the ones we have at Arzamas. Yours look like Buddhist pagodas – a good design for containing blast, but maybe not so good for stopping radiation. You should have asked for help.’

‘The pagodas are fine, Viktor, they’ll do the job.’

There was the noise of an engine starting in the bow of the ship and the silhouette of a crane began to move against the night sky. Brian’s voice sounded worried. ‘I only hope your crane will do the job – I’m not sure your detonator is stable enough to
withstand
being dropped from a height.’

‘Not to worry. It’s good crane. I check cable with my own hands.’ Viktor shouted something in Russian and the crew on the crane laughed. Meanwhile, there was the slow thump of a ship’s engine approaching from up the coast.