The Trinity Six Part 17

They were crawling around the M25, boxed in by lorries and bored men in vans. Gaddis thought of Peter pulling him around the Hampshire countryside with a Sean Connery satnav for company and felt a sting of guilt that he would now be out of a job. 'What if Crane tries to contact me?' he asked. He hadn't thought through the question; he had merely wanted to provoke a reaction in Tanya. But the thought gave him a glimpse of an idea. Had MI6 seen the hushmails? Might he still be able to communicate with Crane via an encrypted message?

'Crane won't try to contact you,' Tanya replied, but there was no conviction in her voice.

'How can you be sure?' Gaddis was beginning to believe that he could save the book. It was extraordinary to him, but in spite of everything that had happened, he was determined to finish what he had started. 'You think a man like that isn't capable of deceiving MI6?'

'I think Edward Crane is capable of anything.'

'Precisely.' He looked out of the window. He needed to give the impression that his interest in ATTILA was over, to lie with the same finesse that Tanya had shown in deceiving him. 'Anyway, you have nothing to worry about. I understand my situation. If he calls, I'll ignore him. I'd rather wash my hands of the whole thing.'

'You would?'

'Sure. What am I going to do, run the risk of getting shot by the FSB?' Tanya acknowledged the inevitability of Russian involvement with a brisk nod. 'I understand the terms of our deal.'

He looked at her face, tiredness beginning to colour her eyes. It was strange, but it felt wrong to be deceiving her. The events in Berlin had forged a strange kind of bond between them.

'I'll go back to UCL,' he said. 'The book won't get written. With any luck this will be the last time we ever see one another.'

Chapter 31.

They dropped him at his house in Shepherd's Bush and Gaddis found it just as he had left it a little more than a day earlier.

But, of course, it was no longer the same house. It was now a house with tapped phones, a house with bugged rooms, a house with a computer that spoke to faceless geeks at Vauxhall Cross and GCHQ. He opened the curtains in the sitting room and looked out at the cars parked on the street. There was a van directly opposite his front door, a van with blacked-out windows.

This is my future, he thought. This is the price of consorting with Edward Crane This is the price of consorting with Edward Crane.

In an act of petty defiance, he walked outside, banged on the panelling of the van, said: 'Make mine with two sugars,' then went down to Uxbridge Road, entered a phone box and dialled Peter's number. The connection was dead. No message or sound. Just a void at the other end of the line. Hungry and strung out, he took a Tube to UCL, dealt with his post and emails, then bought a new jacket at a store on Great Marlborough Street from a teenage shop a.s.sistant who popped bubbles of gum as she ran his credit card through the till.

He needed cash. He needed a new mobile phone. He needed to find a way of living his life which would restore some degree of privacy to his punctured existence. Nowadays everything left a trail: there would be number plate recognition on his car; alerts on his Oyster card; triggers every time he used a bank account. Gaddis would have to a.s.sume, at least in the first few weeks of his arrangement with Tanya, that MI6 would continue to watch him, to ensure that he did not break his word. His calls, his emails, his movements around London would all be monitored by an army of watchers whom he would never sense, never identify, never see.

He took out 900 from an ATM on Shaftesbury Avenue, the daily limit on his three accounts now that Nat West had wired him the proceeds of yet another 20,000 personal loan. He bought a monthly Travelcard. He paid cash in a shop on Tottenham Court Road for a Nokia mobile, registering a new SIM with the address of a flat in Kensal Rise which had been his temporary home following the split with Natasha. He planned to alternate between the phones, reserving the new number for any conversations or text messages relating to Crane. He would not give it out to any of his friends not even to Natasha or Holly for fear that their own phones were compromised.

Holly. He wanted the opportunity to check her story, to ask her why she had handed over her mother's files. Was it, as she had insisted at the time, because Katya Levette had admired Charlotte's reporting, or had there been another, more sinister motive? He simply did not believe Tanya's claim that Holly was an innocent party.

He called her from the lobby of a vast Gothic hotel on Southampton Row. She was free for dinner, which again aroused his suspicion. Why would a beautiful twenty-eight-year-old actress not be doing something on a Sat.u.r.day night? Why was Holly Levette always available to see him, even at short notice? It was as if she had been deliberately planted into his life as another pair of eyes, another layer of surveillance to add to Josephine Warner and the spooks of Berlin.

She showed up at his house at half-past eight. Gaddis had spent the early part of the evening carrying the KGB boxes downstairs and piling them at one end of his open-plan kitchen. Holly was wearing a pair of cork-soled platform shoes, a vintage dress from the 1940s and, to judge by the strap of her bra, a set of extremely expensive underwear. She did a double-take when she saw the files blocking the door to Gaddis's garden and looked at him as if he had gone mad.

'Spring cleaning?'

'Research,' he said. 'They're the boxes you gave me. Your mother's files.'

Her reaction only fed his growing sense of suspicion. Her hands went up to her face, closed together as if in prayer, and she let out a stagey gasp of relief.

'Thank G.o.d you've reminded me. I've had six of the b.l.o.o.d.y things clogging up my car for the last two weeks. Do you want them?'

It seemed an uncanny coincidence. 'There are more more files?' files?'

'It's never ending. We missed about a dozen boxes in the bas.e.m.e.nt when you came over the first time. Next time you stay, will you take them?'

He scanned her face for the lie. Why would she have waited more than a month to offload more information from her mother's archive? Why now? Had Tanya spoken to her since they had landed at Gatwick? It felt like a plan to test the seriousness of his promise to jettison Crane.

'I'll help you carry them in,' he said.

Holly was parked fifty metres from Gaddis's front door. The van across the street had disappeared. She unlocked the boot of her car and pa.s.sed him the first of six small s...o...b..xes, piling four of them on top of one another so that he was obliged to stagger back into the house with a wobbling column of cardboard secured under his chin.

'What's in these?' he said when he had piled the boxes on the kitchen table.

'No idea,' Holly replied.

They managed to avoid the subject for the next two hours, talking instead about Gaddis's trip to Berlin 'A fantastic city. Wish I could have stayed longer.' and an audition Holly had done for a part in a new television series 'Another b.l.o.o.d.y medical drama. Why don't they just turn the BBC into a hospital?' Towards eleven o'clock, full of wine and conversation, they went to bed. To deny any eavesdropping spooks the dubious pleasure of listening to his pillow talk, Gaddis went into his office, loaded iTunes and slid the volume control beyond halfway.

'Are you all right?' Holly asked as he came back into the bedroom. 'Why are you putting music on?'

'Thin walls,' Gaddis replied.

She looked at him. 'You're being a bit weird tonight, Sam.'

'Am I?'

'Very. Is everything OK?'

'Everything's fine.'

He thought of Harold Wilson, of all people, a Prime Minister so convinced that MI5 were out to get him that he resorted to holding sensitive conversations in bathrooms with the taps running. If only he could tell Holly what was going on. If only he could come clean about Meisner, Somers, Charlotte and Crane. Then again, perhaps she already knew all about them. Perhaps he was sleeping with a Russian a.s.set.

'How did your mother die?'

'Wow. You really know how to sweet-talk a girl into bed.'

'Seriously. You've never told me. I had the feeling the two of you weren't close.'

Holly stopped undressing. She was standing barefoot in the middle of his bedroom with a strap of vintage dress halfway down her arm.

'We had our problems. Mothers and daughters, you know?'

iTunes shuffled to 'It Ain't Me Babe'. Gaddis thought about going into his office to change it, but wanted a reply to his question.

'She had cancer?' he asked.

'No. What makes you say that?'

'I just wondered how she died.'

Holly's face jagged in irritation. 'Why the sudden interest?'

She was losing patience. If he wasn't careful, she would grab her toothbrush from the bathroom, put on her platform shoes and drink-drive back to Chelsea.

'Forget it,' he said. 'I don't know why I asked.'

He did know why he had asked, of course. He wanted to know if the circ.u.mstances surrounding the death of Katya Levette had been in any way suspicious. He wanted to know if she had been murdered by the FSB. Was there something in the files that he had not yet discovered, a smoking gun in a s...o...b..x? Had Katya unravelled the riddle of Dresden and paid the price with her life? The theory made no sense, of course: if the Russians had wanted to silence her, they would surely have destroyed her research as well. But Gaddis was in a mood of such persistent suspicion that he could not see the folly of his own thinking.

'She was an alcoholic.'

Holly's declaration caught him off-guard. He had been switching off a light in the corridor and had come back into the room to find her sitting on the edge of the bed, unzipping her dress with a melancholy slowness.

'I didn't realize.'

'Why would you?'

He walked across the room and knelt on the ground in front of her. He reached out his hand and stopped her in the act of undressing. 'I'm so sorry.'

'Not your fault,' she said, smiling and ruffling his hair. He felt embarra.s.sed and guilty. 'If somebody wants to drink themselves to death, there isn't much anybody can do about it.'

She continued to take off the dress. It was like an act of defiance against her mother, preventing her from ruining their evening. Gaddis saw the loveliness of her body and reached to touch her stomach. He knew that she had no intention of milking his sympathy, of playing the scene for emotional effect. It was one of the things that he most liked about her: she was an actress entirely incapable of melodrama.

'Come to bed,' she said, unb.u.t.toning his shirt. The sweet moisturized scent of her skin was a balm. She began to smile. 'Just one thing.'

'What's that?'

'Can we please please turn off the Bob f.u.c.king Dylan?' turn off the Bob f.u.c.king Dylan?'

Three hours later, Gaddis was still awake. Being with Holly had done nothing to calm him. She was asleep in a peaceful curled ball beside him, but he was agitated in a way that he had not known since the worst periods of his divorce. He had barely slept since Berlin, yet the act of closing his eyes seemed to power up his imagination. He was haunted by images of Benedict Meisner, infuriated that he would have to shelve his work on Crane, determined to bring Charlotte's killers to justice.

At about quarter-past two, abandoning any hope of sleep, he went downstairs, poured himself a gla.s.s of wine and with nothing better to do began to go through the files which Holly had brought over in the car.

It was the same old story: there was nothing of consequence in any of the boxes. Downing two paracetamol, Gaddis turned his attention to the original files which he had examined only cursorily two months earlier. This time, he found the odd item which he had missed on first examination of the material: Anthony Blunt's death certificate, for example, and a copy of his Will. There was the transcript of an interview with Sir d.i.c.k White, conducted by an unnamed journalist in 1982. Gaddis was briefly intrigued by this, but of course found no reference to ATTILA, nor any mention of Edward Crane. In another box, he found a photocopied obituary of Jack Hewit, the former MI5 officer who had been Guy Burgess's lover, as well as a newspaper review of Michael Straight's memoirs. There was also an entire folder dedicated to newspaper cuttings about Goronwy Rees and Vladimir Petrov. Katya had plainly intended to write a book about the relationship between British Intelligence and the KGB in the post-war era, but there was nothing as far as he could tell which was not already in the public domain.

Just after four o'clock he poured himself a third gla.s.s of wine and smoked a cigarette on the sofa. Holly's handbag was on the floor at his feet. It was open and some of the contents had spilled out on to the carpet, perhaps when she had retrieved her toothbrush. He was sure that she was asleep; if she woke up wondering what had happened to him, he would be able to hear her footfalls on the staircase. He just wanted to be certain that she was who she said she was. He just wanted to put his mind at rest.

So he reached for the bag.

In the main section he found a well-thumbed copy of A Doll's House A Doll's House, another of The Time Traveller's Wife The Time Traveller's Wife and an issue of the and an issue of the NME NME. He put all three on the sofa beside him and rummaged deeper. He was amazed by how much noise he was making. He found a broken seash.e.l.l, an unopened packet of Kleenex, a tangle of headphones, a packet of the contraceptive pill up-to-date, thank G.o.d and the browned core of a half-eaten apple. He laid these out on the floor. He then found what were surely keepsakes: a small amethyst stone; a length of silk wrapped up into a tight bundle and tied with a piece of string; and a postcard of the Eiffel Tower from Katya Levette, addressed to Holly, postmarked 1999.

What he wanted was her diary. He found it in a separate, zipped-up section of the bag and checked the entries for August and September, looking for anything unusual, for evidence of a double life. But there were just times of auditions, dates of parties, shorthand reminders to buy milk or to pay a bill. His own book launch was marked with the simple note: 'Gaddis event / Daunt Holland Park' and their subsequent meetings were also touchingly mundane: 'Dinner S 830'; 'S movie Kensington?'; 'Lunch S Cafe Anglais'. On the morning of Charlotte's funeral, Holly had written, in block capitals: 'SAM FUNERAL CALL HIM!' and he remembered that she had rung him at the house in Hampstead to make sure that he was all right. He felt wretched for not trusting her.

But still he was not done. Feeling around in the lint and the crumbs at the bottom of the handbag, he found Holly's wallet and proceeded to unload its contents, item by item, on to the sofa. The credit cards were all in her name. There were frayed photographs of giggling friends in pa.s.sport booths, loyalty cards to Sainsbury and Tesco, a dry cleaning receipt from a shop on King's Road and a mini statement from an ATM in Hammersmith. He did not know what he was expecting to find. A number for Sir John Brennan? A business card belonging to Tanya Acocella? On the basis of what he had seen, there was no suggestion that Holly was anything other than an outof-work actress with an overdraft and an erratic social life.

Eventually, he gave up the search and replaced the wallet, more or less as he had found it, in the bag. In a second side pocket he found two sets of keys, a packet of Rizlas, a small tube of lip salve and an electricity bill, in Holly's name, which was registered to the address in t.i.te Street. There was also an email from a woman in Australia which Holly had printed on to A4 paper. It was a letter between friends, full of news and gossip, and Gaddis felt ashamed to have read it.

He lit a second cigarette. He replaced the bag on the floor and looked around for Holly's mobile. It was charging up on a plug beside the kettle. Without removing the flex, he checked her incoming and outgoing calls, her text messages, even the cookies on her Internet browser, but there was nothing at all to arouse his suspicion, only a man called 'Dan C' to whom Holly had sent a dismayingly flirtatious text message responding to an invitation to the theatre. It's no more than I deserve, he thought. At least Dan won't go through your stuff.

He was at last beginning to feel tired. Time for bed. He put the phone back on the counter, emptied the ashtray, put his gla.s.s in the dishwasher and re-corked the wine. Two of Katya's s...o...b..xes were still open on the table and he gathered up the loose pieces of paper in a half-hearted attempt to tidy up.

That was when he saw the letter. A single sheet of powder-blue, watermarked stationery with an address die-stamped at the top: Robert Wilkinson Drybread Road (RD2) Omakau 9377 Central Otago New Zealand

Chapter 32.

It was a love letter.

My darling KatyaThis is the last of the material I promised to send to you. If you look carefully, perhaps you will find something that catches the public's attention. Keep your eye on Platov. He is the prize. I cannot say any more than that.Life on the property is much the same. I walk, I read, I feel a very long way from home. Mostly I do not mind that feeling. I see Rachel all the time, because she lives just a few hours away, and she has given me two wonderful grandchildren. I don't even seem to mind Rachel's husband as much as I once did perhaps I am mellowing with age.But I miss Catherine and I miss you, my darling. I think of you constantly. I am not a sentimental man. You know this about me. But sometimes I cannot stand to think that I will never hold you again, that you will never sleep in my arms, that we will be forever apart. I have made so many mistakes and now it feels almost too late.I regret so much, not least choosing a career over the possibility of a greater happiness with you. But you have heard all this from me so many times before. What use are regrets? I only ask that you give some thought, one last time, to the possibility of coming here, to New Zealand, even if it is just for a week or two. I promise that you will like it.Good luck with the book, Katty. I have tried to help you and only wish that I could have done more.With all my love, as alwaysRobert x At the end of their first weekend together, Holly had mentioned to Gaddis that her mother had once had a boyfriend in MI6 who had leaked material to her about the KGB. This was surely him. Wilkinson was the source of the archive. The letter was dated 5 May 2000. But what had he meant by the lines in the first paragraph? 'Keep your eye on Platov. He is the prize.'

It was almost half-past four in the morning. Gaddis read the letter again, trying to work out the precise nature of the relationship between Wilkinson and Katya Levette. Had they been married? Christ, was he Holly's father father? Only Holly would be able to provide the answers, but he could hardly wake her in the middle of the night. His questions would have to wait until morning.

'What are you doing?'

She was standing on the far side of the room with scrunched eyes and sleep-twisted hair, a section of it stuck to her face. He was startled by the sound of her voice and put the letter on the table, as if he had been caught reading Holly's private correspondence. She was wearing his dressing-gown, the cord hanging loose at the side.

'Did I wake you?'

'No. I just needed a gla.s.s of water. You weren't there. I wondered what had happened to you.' Her eyes were squinting against the light. 'What are you doing up? What time is it?'

Gaddis looked beyond her, at the handbag on the floor, and felt a pang of remorse. 'About half-four,' he said. He was wide awake again, the soporific effects of the wine and the paracetamol long since worn off. 'Who's Robert Wilkinson?'

'What?'

Her head had fallen to one side. She looked startled.

'So you know him?'

'Bob? Of course I know him. He was Mum's boyfriend. How did his name come up?'

'I found a letter.' Gaddis held it up in his hand, inviting her to read it. But she was still half asleep and said: 'Can't I see it in the morning?'

He shook his head. 'No. It's important. Did he give your mum this stuff?'

He indicated the files on the table. It was surely too much of a coincidence that a letter from Robert Wilkinson should have been hiding all that time in a s...o...b..x in the boot of her car. Why had she brought it over today, of all days? Holly was frowning, her half-open eyes still resisting the bright light of the kitchen.

'Sam, it's the middle of the f.u.c.king night. You've had this stuff for weeks weeks.'

'Not this.' He tapped the letter with the print of his index finger. 'This came today.'

'Come back to bed,' she said. 'Bob was just in love with Mum. Obsessed by her. I'll tell you about him in the morning.'

'What do you mean, "obsessed"?'

She walked forward and grabbed his arm. 'In the morning morning.'