The Trinity Six Part 2

'This isn't about money money, Sam.' There was no admonishment in Charlotte's tone, just the bluntness for which she was renowned. 'This is about history history. I'm talking about a legendary KGB spy, codenamed ATTILA, who matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in the 1930s. A man every bit as dangerous and as influential as Maclean and Philby. A mole at the heart of Britain's political and intelligence infrastructure whose treason has been deliberately covered up by the British government for more than fifty years.'

'Jesus.' Gaddis tried to hide his scepticism. It surely wasn't plausible that a sixth member of the Trinity ring had escaped detection. Every spook and academic and journalist with the slightest interest in the secret world had been hunting the sixth man for decades. Any Soviet defector, at any point after 1945, could have blown ATTILA's cover at the drop of a hat. At the very least, Cairncross or Blunt would have given him up at the time of their exposure.

'Where are you getting your information?' he asked. 'Why was there no mention of ATTILA in Mitrokhin?'

Vasili Mitrokhin was a major in the KGB who pa.s.sed detailed accounts of Russian intelligence operations to MI6 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The doc.u.ments were published in the UK in 1992.

'Everybody thinks the entire history of Soviet espionage was contained in Mitrokhin.' Charlotte lit a cigarette and looked utterly content. 'But there was a ton ton of stuff he didn't get his hands on. Including this.' of stuff he didn't get his hands on. Including this.'

Paul put his knife and fork together. Charlotte's husband was a tall, patient man, impa.s.sive to the point of diffidence. A successful City financier hence the seven-figure, five-bedroom house in Hampstead he loved Charlotte not least because she allowed him to blend into the background, to maintain the privacy he had worked so hard to protect. He was so inscrutable that Sam could never work out whether Paul viewed him as a threat to their marriage or as a valued friend. It was almost a surprise when he joined the fray, saying: 'Come on, who's your source?'

Charlotte leaned forward into an effectively conspiratorial cloud of cigarette smoke and looked at both men in turn. Her husband was the only person she could entirely trust with the information. Gaddis was a loyal friend, of course, a man of tact and discretion, but he also possessed a streak of mischievousness which made sharing a secret like this extremely risky.

'Stays between these four walls, OK?' she said, so that Gaddis was aware of what it meant to her. He felt a sudden thrust of envy, because she seemed so convinced of her prize.

'Of course. Four walls. Won't breathe a word.'

'Can I tell Polly?' Paul muttered, placing his hand on Charlotte's back as he stood to clear the plates. Polly was their arthritic black Labrador and, in the absence of any children, their most cherished companion.

'This is serious,' she said. 'I'm sworn to secrecy. But it's so mind-boggling I can't keep my mouth shut.'

Gaddis felt a historian's excitement at the prospect of what Charlotte had uncovered. The sixth man. Was it really possible possible? It was like finding Lucan. 'Go on,' he said.

'Let me start at the beginning.' Charlotte filled another gla.s.s of wine. Paul caught Sam's eye and frowned imperceptibly. She was a functioning alcoholic: a bottle of wine at lunch, two at dinner; gins at six; a couple of tumblers of Laphroaig last thing at night. None of it ever seemed to affect her behaviour beyond a certain decibel increase in the volume of her voice. But the booze was undoubtedly beating her: it was putting years on, adding weight, black-bagging her eyes. 'About a month ago I received a letter from a man called Thomas Neame. He claims to be the confidant of a British diplomat who spent his entire career, from World War II to the mid-1980s, working as a spy for the KGB. I made some basic enquiries, discovered that Thomas was kosher, and went to meet him.'

'Went where?' Paul was oblivious to the comings-and-goings of his wife's career. Often she would disappear for weeks on end, pursuing a story in Iraq, in California, in Moscow.

'That's secret number one,' Charlotte replied. 'I can't tell even you you where Thomas Neame lives.' where Thomas Neame lives.'

'Trust is such a wonderful thing between husband and wife,' Gaddis muttered. 'How old is this guy?'

'Ninety-one.' Charlotte gulped more wine. Her skin had darkened under the low lights of the kitchen, her mouth now ruby red with lipstick and wine. 'But ninety-one going on seventy-five. You wouldn't fancy taking him on in an arm wrestle. Very tough and fit, sort of war generation Scot who can smoke forty a day and still pop to the top of Ben Nevis before breakfast.'

'Unlike someone else I know,' said Paul pointedly, looking at the cigarette in his wife's hand. Charlotte's years of reporting overseas had weakened, rather than strengthened, what had once been an iron const.i.tution. Both Paul and Gaddis worried about this but could no more have curtailed her lifestyle than they could have biked to the moon.

'And how does Neame know that his friend was a spy?' Gaddis asked. 'How come it hasn't leaked out before?'

His phone rang before Charlotte had a chance to respond. Gaddis plucked it from the pocket of his jacket and looked at the display. It was a text from Holly Levette.

NIGHTCAP . . .?.

He was possessed by two contradictory impulses: to polish off his wine as quickly as possible and to grab a taxi south to t.i.te Street; or to come clean to Charlotte about his quest for a headline-grabbing story of his own.

'Do you know this woman?' he said, holding up the phone, as if there was a photograph of Holly on the screen. 'Holly Levette?'

'Rings a bell.'

'Mother's name was Katya. She was working on a history of the KGB when-'

'Katya Levette!' Charlotte reacted with mock horror. She shook her head and said: 'Commonly regarded as the world's worst hack.'

'How so?'

She waved a hand in front of her face. 'Not worth going into. Our paths crossed once or twice. She was constantly telling me how wonderful I was, but clearly looking for a quid pro quo. I think her daughter sent me an email after she died, saying how much Katya had admired something I'd written about Chechnya. Then offered me a load of old junk from her research papers.'

'A load of old junk,' Gaddis repeated, with a thump of despair.

'Well, not junk.' Charlotte looked sheepish. 'Actually, I palmed her off on you. Told her to give them to a proper historian.'

'Gee thanks.'

'And now she's been in touch?'

Gaddis nodded. 'She didn't mention that I was getting them second-hand. She told me how much she'd admired my Guardian Guardian article about Sergei Platov.' article about Sergei Platov.'

Paul smothered a laugh. 'Flattery will get you everywhere.'

Gaddis poured himself a gla.s.s of wine. Skirting around the dirty weekend in Chelsea, he explained that Holly had come to Daunt Books and offered him the KGB material on a plate.

'A beautiful girl turns up like that, willing to hand over several hundred doc.u.ments about Soviet intelligence, you don't exactly turn a blind eye. How was I to know Katya was a fruitcake?'

'Oh, she's beautiful, is she?' Charlotte asked, animated by the opportunity to tease him. 'You never said.'

'Holly is very very beautiful.' beautiful.'

'And she came to the launch? How come I didn't meet her?'

'Probably because you'd told her to get stuffed,' Paul replied.

Charlotte laughed and picked at a chunk of candle wax on the table. 'And now this girl is texting you at half-past ten at night. Is there something you're not telling the group, Doctor Gaddis? Does Miss Levette need a bedtime story?'

Gaddis took a Camel from her open packet. 'You're lucky,' he said, deliberately changing the subject. 'Right now I'd sell my grandchildren for your Cambridge story.' He lit the cigarette from the candle. Paul grimaced and waved a hand in front of his face, saying: 'Christ, not you as well.'

'The sixth man? Why?'

'Financial problems.' Gaddis made a gesture with upturned hands. 'Nothing new.'

There was a strange kind of shame in being broke at forty-three. How had it come to this? He took the cigarette smoke deep into his lungs and exhaled at the ceiling.

Charlotte frowned. 'Alimony? Is the fragrant Natasha turning out to be not quite as fragrant as we thought?'

Paul poured water into a cafetiere of coffee and kept his counsel.

'Tax bill. School fees. Debts,' Gaddis replied. 'I need to raise about twenty-five grand. Had lunch with my agent today. He says the only hope I have of working my way out of the situation is to write a hack job about Soviet intelligence. Doesn't even have to be under my own name. So a sixth Cambridge spy is the perfect story. In fact, I'll steal it off you. Bury you under the floorboards to get my hands on it.'

Charlotte looked genuinely concerned. 'You don't have to steal steal it,' she said. 'Why don't you co-write a book with me? We can even use some of Katya's magic files.' Paul grinned. 'Seriously. I'll break the Cambridge story as an exclusive, but after that someone will want a book. You'd be it,' she said. 'Why don't you co-write a book with me? We can even use some of Katya's magic files.' Paul grinned. 'Seriously. I'll break the Cambridge story as an exclusive, but after that someone will want a book. You'd be perfect perfect. I don't have the patience to sit down and compose two hundred thousand words about a piece I've already written. I'll want to move on to the next thing. But you could put ATTILA in context. You could add all the juice and flavour. n.o.body knows more about Russia than you do.'

Gaddis declined outright. It would feel wrong to be piggybacking on Charlotte's triumph. She was drunk and the booze was making promises she might not, in the cold light of morning, be willing to keep. Yet she persisted.

'Sleep on it,' she said. 'Christ, sleep on it while you're sleeping with Holly Levette.' Paul plunged the coffee. 'I'd love love to work with you. It would be an honour. And it sounds as though it will get you out of a nasty situation.' to work with you. It would be an honour. And it sounds as though it will get you out of a nasty situation.'

Gaddis slotted his mobile phone back in his jacket pocket and took Charlotte's hand. 'It's an idea,' he said. 'No more than that. You're incredibly kind. But let's talk more in the morning.'

'No. Let's talk now now.' She wouldn't let pride and British etiquette stand in the way of a good idea. Polly, her buckled legs seized by arthritis, came hobbling into the kitchen and lay at her feet. Charlotte leaned over and fed a piece of bread into her mouth, saying: 'Do you you think it's a good idea, Pol?' in a voice for a child. ' think it's a good idea, Pol?' in a voice for a child. 'I think it's a good idea.' think it's a good idea.'

'OK, OK.' Gaddis's hands were again raised, this time in mock surrender. 'I'll think about it.'

Charlotte looked relieved. 'Well, thank G.o.d for that. Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth.' She stood and found three cups for the coffee.

'And you say ATTILA is presumed dead?' It was a first, conscious signal of Gaddis's desire to explore things further.

'Yes. But this Neame guy is slippery. Says he hasn't seen Crane for over ten years. I'm not sure I believe that.'

'Crane? That's his name?'

'Edward Anthony Crane. Wrote everything down in a doc.u.ment which Neame claims to have partially destroyed. Says the doc.u.ment also contained a revelation that would "rock London and Moscow to their foundations".'

'You mean over and above the fact that our government has covered up the existence of a sixth Cambridge spy?'

'Over and above even that, yes.'

Gaddis was staring at her, staring at Paul, trying to work out if Charlotte was being duped. It was too good to be true and, at the same time, impossible to ignore. 'And he hasn't said what this scandal involved?'

Charlotte shook her head. 'No. Not yet. But Thomas was Crane's confessor. His best friend. He knows everything. And he's willing to spill his guts before he pops his clogs.'

'Not to mix metaphors,' Paul muttered.

'They would both be about the same age,' Charlotte continued. 'Ninety, ninety-one. Contemporaries at Cambridge. What do you think are the chances of both of them still being alive?'

'Slim,' Gaddis replied.

Chapter 5.

Alexander Grek had been watching the Berg residence for five hours. He had witnessed Paul returning from work with two bulging Waitrose carrier bags at 18.45. While smoking a cigarette at 19.12, he had seen Charlotte at the first-floor window, recently emerged from a bath or shower, closing a set of curtains after securing a towel around her chest. Just after eight o'clock, an unidentified white male early forties, dishevelled hair, carrying two bottles of red wine had entered the property. Grek a.s.sumed that the man was coming for supper.

The unidentified male left the building at 23.21. He was approximately six feet tall, about eighty kilos, wearing a corduroy jacket with a leather satchel slung over his shoulder. The man shook Paul Berg's hand in the doorway of the house. He then embraced and kissed Berg's wife, Charlotte. Grek had a long-lens camera on the pa.s.senger seat of his car, but was unable to take a photograph of the man's face because he walked backwards from the front door, moving towards the street while continuing to converse with his hosts. Having reached the pavement, the subject walked in the direction of Hampstead High Street, away from Grek's vehicle.

Grek decided to stretch his legs. He followed the subject the length of Pilgrim's Lane and observed him hailing a cab outside a branch of Waterstone's bookshop. The taxi headed south. Grek lit a cigarette and walked back towards his vehicle. Halfway along the street, clamping the cigarette between his lips, he urinated at the base of a chestnut tree concealed from the street by a tarpaulin-covered skip.

Murders, he had long ago concluded, broke down into three distinct categories. They could be political, they could be military, and they could have a moral characteristic. Alexander Grek did not concern himself with conventional morality. His work was either military or political, and usually defensive. Tonight's plan, for example, had the laudable goal of preventing graver consequences for his government. Grek was not an a.s.sa.s.sin in the formal sense. He could not be hired. As a young man, he had been trained by his country's domestic intelligence service commonly known as the FSB and, following his retirement in 1996, had run a small, highly successful security company with offices in London and St Petersburg. In such circ.u.mstances, a man learns a great deal about the business of death. Yet Grek considered himself, first and foremost, a political animal. The ATTILA investigation was a threat to the state. That threat must therefore be removed. He was simply responding to his patriotic duty.

Setting down a half-empty bottle of mineral water, he pulled a woollen hat low over his head, exited the vehicle and walked across the street. Pilgrim's Lane was deserted. Grek moved towards the eastern side of the house and picked the simple lock on the wooden gate which led into the garden. He had oiled the hinges the previous night so that the gate opened without a sound. He was now in a narrow channel in which were kept a bicycle, some garden tools and several rusted cans of paint. He looked up at the house to ensure that no lights were on in the upper floors. He then walked across the garden.

During the day, Charlotte Berg worked in a converted shed at the southern end of the property. She used a laptop computer which, at night, was kept inside the house. The shed contained a cheap colour printer, an outdated telephone and fax machine, some filing cabinets, a battered wooden chair and one or two photographs of sentimental value. To Paul, she would argue that it was better to keep the shed unlocked rather than to fit a padlock, which might convey the impression to any potential burglar that the office contained something worth stealing. Grek opened the shed, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him.

Sodium fluoracetate is a fine white powder, derived from pesticide. Odourless and inexpensive, it is commonly used as a poison to control the spread of rats in sewers. Grek had 10mg, in liquid form, in a vial which he now removed from his jacket pocket. The tiny surveillance camera, fitted in a light above Berg's desk, had shown a small bottle of Evian, half-finished, beside the printer. Grek picked it up, poured the colourless liquid into the water and sealed the cap. Sufficient moonlight was coming into the room that he was able to remove the camera without the need for a torch. He also withdrew a listening device from the underside of Berg's desk. He placed both items, and their tangle of wires, in the pockets of his jacket. When he had finished, Grek studied the paperwork on the desk. A telephone bill. An invoice for some painting and decorating. A copy of the second volume of The Mitrokhin Archive The Mitrokhin Archive. Nothing which seemed to refer directly to ATTILA.

A noise outside. Something within three or four metres of the shed. Grek dropped to his knees. He heard the noise a second time and recognized it as an animal, possibly a fox. The Berg's dog, Polly, had no access to the garden at night and would presumably be asleep indoors.

Grek stood up slowly. He opened the door of the shed and walked back along the garden. He checked the street as he emerged from the shadows of the house and crossed Pilgrim's Lane when he was sure that he was not being observed. He unlocked the car, emptied his pockets on the pa.s.senger seat and pulled out in the direction of Hampstead High Street.

Chapter 6.

Gaddis was in his study at UCL when he received the call. The number had come up as 'Unknown'.

'Sam? It's Paul.'

'You sound terrible. Is everything all right?'

'It's about Charlotte.' His voice was strangely apologetic. Even at this wretched hour, he somehow managed to maintain a sense of decorum. 'I'm sorry to have to be the one who tells you. She had a heart attack this morning. She's gone.'

Gaddis had had three such telephone conversations in the course of his life. When he was sixteen, his older brother had been killed in a car crash in South America. At Cambridge, a close friend had hanged himself on the eve of Finals. And, just before his fortieth birthday, he had learned that Katarina Tikhonov had been a.s.sa.s.sinated at her apartment in Moscow, the victim of a contract killing tacitly approved by Sergei Platov. He remembered each conversation, each occasion, very clearly, and his distinct reactions to them. He found himself saying: 'What? A heart attack?' because he needed words with which to douse the nausea of shock.

Paul replied simply: 'Yes,' then, almost immediately, because this was just one of a dozen calls he would have to make: 'Nothing more to be said now.'

'Yes, of course. I'm so sorry, Paul.'

'I'm sorry for you, too.'

Gaddis went to the floor in a slow crouch, with the strange and vivid sensation of his bones expanding, his skin stretching, as if his body wanted to escape itself. The news did not at first seem coherent, but then generated a grim logic. Charlotte drank too much. Charlotte smoked too much. Charlotte's heart had given out. He stood and leaned on his desk. He was concerned that a student or colleague might knock on the door of the office and walk in. He locked it from the inside and, needing fresh air, went to the window, struggling with the latch until it opened suddenly, the noise of building works bursting into the tiny, cramped room. And Sam was ashamed of himself, because within minutes of absorbing what Paul had told him, he was thinking about Edward Crane. With Charlotte gone, it would no longer be possible to co-write the book. He would have to find another source of income, another way of paying off his debts. He felt utterly bereft.

Charlotte had apparently gone to her office in the morning, typed a few emails, read the Guardian Guardian online. At some point, probably between ten and eleven o'clock, she had come back into the house to make some toast, bringing the wastepaper basket from the office. Paul had found her on the floor of the kitchen, Polly whimpering at her side, the toast popped. No autopsy had been carried out. The doctors and coroner had both agreed that Charlotte had suffered a ma.s.sive heart attack as a result of a genetic coronary weakness allied to an unhealthy lifestyle. online. At some point, probably between ten and eleven o'clock, she had come back into the house to make some toast, bringing the wastepaper basket from the office. Paul had found her on the floor of the kitchen, Polly whimpering at her side, the toast popped. No autopsy had been carried out. The doctors and coroner had both agreed that Charlotte had suffered a ma.s.sive heart attack as a result of a genetic coronary weakness allied to an unhealthy lifestyle.

In the ensuing days, Gaddis helped Paul to arrange the funeral. He wrote a eulogy, at the family's request, and drew up the Order of Service, which he arranged to have printed at a small shop in Belsize Park. It helped to have practical tasks to occupy his mind, to lift his constant sense of despair. He felt that he was a support to Paul, who had withdrawn into an almost impenetrable privacy. Day and night, Sam's mind shuttled back and forth across more than two decades of memories: the first years of his friendship with Charlotte at Cambridge; their brief love affair; then the span of Sam's eight-year marriage to Natasha, and the long-running tension between the two women. Sam reflected that there was now n.o.body in his life certainly no woman with whom he had a comparable friendship. Over the previous ten years his group of friends had thinned out, either side-tracked by the demands of small children, or living with partners with whom he felt no real affinity. It was part of the journey into middle-age. Charlotte had been one of the few longterm friends who had survived this period and who remained as a link to his past.

The funeral took place eight days after her death, with a wake at the house in Hampstead. By then, time had partly numbed Sam's sense of grief and he was capable of putting on a front of charm and fort.i.tude, acting almost as a host in the absence of Paul, who spent most of the afternoon upstairs in his room.

'I just can't face them, you know?' he said, and Gaddis realized that there was nothing he could do to comfort him. Sometimes people are just better left to grieve. Polly was with him, as well as a dozen photographs of Charlotte, strewn across the bed. 'Are you all right?' he asked Gaddis. 'Are you surviving down there?'

'We're surviving,' Gaddis said, and rea.s.sured him with his eyes. 'Everything's fine.'

By six o'clock, only half a dozen people remained. Colleagues who had known Charlotte from her days on The Times The Times had long since returned to their offices, filing copy on deadline for a morning edition which would not wait. Acquaintances from every nook and cranny of her life had paid their respects and dispersed into the late afternoon. When Paul came back downstairs, only a few members of the close family remained. had long since returned to their offices, filing copy on deadline for a morning edition which would not wait. Acquaintances from every nook and cranny of her life had paid their respects and dispersed into the late afternoon. When Paul came back downstairs, only a few members of the close family remained.

Gaddis had briefly given up smoking in the early part of the year, but was at it again, twenty a day since her death. Life, as Charlotte had proved, was indisputably too short. He smiled as he thought of that, lighting a Camel at the bottom of the garden and realizing that he was alone for the first time in almost twelve hours. A couple of caterers a teenage boy and girl, both dressed in black were clearing gla.s.ses from window sills at the front of the house. Polly was watching them, stretched out on the gra.s.s, scratching behind her ear with a bent, arthritic paw.

In the fading light of the early evening Gaddis opened the door of Charlotte's office and stood in the room where his friend had been working on the morning of her death. The shed was as she had left it. Her laptop was on the desk, some doc.u.ments had spooled out of the printer, a copy of The Mitrokhin Archive The Mitrokhin Archive was open on the floor. Sam sat at the desk. He was snooping, no question, pretending to himself and to anyone who might walk in that he was convening with Charlotte's spirit. But the reality was tawdry. He was looking for Edward Crane. was open on the floor. Sam sat at the desk. He was snooping, no question, pretending to himself and to anyone who might walk in that he was convening with Charlotte's spirit. But the reality was tawdry. He was looking for Edward Crane.