the endless cycle of Russian double-double games who has had his hour and been tossed away. And now he has decided it’s time to press his help button.
*
The noisy kids have removed themselves to the buffet car. Alone in my corner seat I call Sergei on the mobile phone we gave him and get the same orderly, expressionless voice I remember from the handover ceremony with Giles back in February. I tell him I am responding to his call. He thanks me. I ask him how he is. He is well, Peter. I say I won’t be arriving in York before eleven-thirty and does he need a meeting tonight or can it wait till morning? He is tired, Peter, so maybe tomorrow will be better, thank you. So much for ‘top urgent’. I tell him we will be reverting to our ‘traditional arrangement’ and ask ‘Are you comfortable with that?’ because the agent in the field, however dubious, must always have the last word on matters of tradecraft. Thank you, Peter, he is comfortable with the traditional arrangement.
From my ill-smelling hotel bedroom I again try Florence’s Office mobile phone. It is by now after midnight. More electronic howl. Having no other number for her, I call Ilya at the Haven. Has he received any late word on Rosebud?
‘Sorry, Nat, not a dicky bird.’
‘Well, you don’t need to be so bloody flippant about it,’ I snap at him and ring off in a huff.
I might have asked him whether by any chance he has heard from Florence, or happens to know why her Office mobile is cut off, but Ilya is young and volatile and I don’t want the whole Haven family in a ferment. It is incumbent on all serving members to provide a landline number where they can be contacted out of hours in case no mobile phone signal is available. The last landline number Florence registered was in Hampstead, where I recall that she also likes to run. Nobody seems to have noticed that Hampstead didn’t exactly tally with her claim to live with her parents in Pimlico but then, as Florence assured me, there’s always the 24 bus.
I dial the Hampstead number, get the machine and say I am Peter from Customer Security and we have reason to believe her account has been hacked, so for her own protection please to call this number soonest. I drink a lot of whisky and try to sleep.
*
The ‘traditional procedure’ I am enforcing on Sergei dated from the days when he was being treated as a live double agent with a serious prospect of development. The pick-up point was the forecourt to York city racecourse. He was to arrive by bus, armed with a copy of the previous day’s Yorkshire Post while his case officer waited in a lay-by in an Office car. Sergei would dawdle with the crowd long enough for Percy Price’s surveillance team to decide whether the encounter was being covered by the opposition, a possibility not as far-fetched as it may sound. Once the home team gave the all-clear Sergei would saunter to the bus stop and examine the timetable. Newspaper in his left hand meant abort. Newspaper in his right hand meant all systems go.
The procedure for our handover ceremony as masterminded by Giles had by contrast been rather less traditional. He had insisted it take place in Sergei’s own lodgings on the university campus, with smoked salmon sandwiches and a bottle of vodka to wash them down. Our wafer-thin cover if we should have to account for ourselves? Giles was a visiting professor from Oxford on a headhunting expedition and I was his Nubian slave.
Well, now we are back to the traditional procedure, with no smoked salmon. I have hired a clapped-out Vauxhall, the best the rent-a-car company can offer me in the time. I drive with one eye for the mirror and no idea what I’m looking for, but looking all the same. The day is grey, fine rain is falling, more forecast. The road to the racecourse is straight and flat. Perhaps the Romans raced here too. White railings flicker past on my left side. A beflagged gateway appears before me. At pedestrian speed I nose my way through shoppers and wet day pleasure-seekers.
And sure enough there at the bus stop stands Sergei amid a huddle of waiting passengers, examining a yellow timetable. He clutches a copy of the Yorkshire Post in his right hand and in his left a music case