The Trinity Six Part 21

Moments later, the musician was trotting down the steps of the Kursalon, violin case in hand, as the family photographs were drawing to an end. He approached Wilkinson immediately and engaged him briefly in conversation. Gaddis, who had followed him outside, returned to the chestnut tree where he found Kath talking to Dan.

'h.e.l.lo there, stranger,' she said. 'I thought we'd lost you.'

He turned to see the musician handing Wilkinson the note. Their encounter did not seem in any way unusual: he might even have been presenting an invoice to the father of the bride for the string quartet's services. The musician then said something to Wilkinson and pointed up at the window of the Kursalon where Gaddis had been standing only moments earlier. Wilkinson, who had now seen the name on the front of the note, swept his gaze, in a barely disguised state of alarm, through three hundred and sixty degrees, searching for whoever had employed the musician as an errand boy. Gaddis turned around so that his back was facing him.

'I can't find your name on the table plan,' Kath was saying.

'That's why I went inside,' he replied. It was the last lie he would have to tell. 'Truth is, I'm not feeling all that good. I just pulled out.' He felt a sudden rush of anxiety, as if he could sense Wilkinson coming towards him. 'I've asked them to take my name off the list. I'm going to head back to my hotel.'

'You are?' Kath looked crestfallen.

'Afraid so. I might pop back later. Make sure you save me a dance.'

Gaddis turned and walked away into the park. In doing so he b.u.mped into a tourist carrying a 35mm camera around his neck. Gaddis's arm knocked against the telephoto lens and he felt obliged to apologize.

'Excuse me,' he said, then, in German: 'Entschuldigung.'

Karl Stieleke did not respond.

Chapter 41.

Gaddis had chosen the Kleines Cafe from a photograph in a Phaidon guidebook to Vienna which had been left by a guest in the dining area of the Goldene Spinne. The photograph suggested that the cafe was the sort of low-key, inconspicuous place that Gaddis was looking for, and so it proved. Visiting Franziskanerplatz early on Sat.u.r.day morning, he had discovered a small, pedestrianized square, about half a mile west of the Radisson, with a fountain at its centre, birds hopping in and out of the water and local residents reading newspapers over cups of coffee in the suns.h.i.+ne. The Kleines Cafe occupied the corner of the ground floor of a recently renovated building just a few metres from the fountain. There were two entrances: one leading into the square itself, where half a dozen tables were set out in neat rows; and a side exit, in the lower section of the cafe, which led out on to a cobbled street running downhill into Singerstra.s.se.

Just inside this back entrance was a single, mirrored booth. It was here that Gaddis established himself at nine o'clock on Sat.u.r.day evening. He felt that it would be the perfect place to talk to Wilkinson: there were no other seats or tables close by, only some cardboard boxes and empty kegs of beer. In a re-run of his convoluted journey to the Estacio Sants in Barcelona, he had taken a circuitous route to the cafe, trying to shake off any potential surveillance by using three different modes of transportation foot, taxi, train in a journey which had lasted almost an hour. He was certain that he was not being followed.

He ordered a beer from the manager and waited. He had a new Yeltsin biography to read, cigarettes to smoke, and felt quietly confident that Wilkinson would appear as soon as he was no longer required at the wedding. But Gaddis had not counted on the sheer volume of customers who began pouring through the back door at around half-past nine. It turned out that the Kleines Cafe was one of the most popular bars in Vienna: by ten, it was impossible to see the exit from Gaddis's seat at the booth, despite the fact that he was only a few feet from the street. He counted at least thirty people crushed into the tiny lower section around him and a.s.sumed that there were at least twice as many in the main body of the cafe. If Wilkinson walked in, there was a real possibility that he would fail to spot Gaddis.

He need not have worried. At twenty-past ten, Gaddis looked up to see Wilkinson peering over the head of a plump Viennese banker who was wearing wire-rimmed gla.s.ses. He nodded at him, to establish his ident.i.ty, and Wilkinson pushed his way through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd before settling on the opposite side of the booth in a seat which Gaddis had been jealously guarding since nine o'clock.

'Let me guess,' he said, his weight jogging the small circular table as he sat down. 'You didn't think I would come.'

'I'm certainly glad to see you,' Gaddis replied.

It was hard to read Wilkinson's mood. His normally impa.s.sive face was touched by an odd sense of mischief. Wilkinson had changed out of his morning suit into a pair of brown corduroy trousers, a s.h.i.+rt, and a dark V-neck jumper. He removed the same tattered Barbour that had witnessed the unsolicited visit of Christopher Brooke and set it on the bench beside him.

'You have quite a nerve, Doctor Gaddis. I was warned about you.'

'You were?'

'Certain people are reluctant for us to speak. Certain people are concerned that we might cause trouble. How do you get a whisky around here?'

He wondered if Wilkinson was a little drunk from the festivities. He had been expecting criticism for making the phone call to his home in New Zealand, but the veteran spy seemed to be in a relaxed, forgiving mood. Had he taken any precautions in coming to the cafe? Had he paid any attention to the surveillance threat?

'I'll go to the bar,' Gaddis told him. 'How do you take it?'

It took ten long minutes to make his way through the crowds, to order two Jamesons on ice and to return to the table. He found Wilkinson flicking through the Yeltsin book.

'Any good?'

'Not particularly.' Gaddis sat down and put the whisky in front of him. 'Cuttings job.'

There was music playing, lounge jazz, but set at a volume which made conversation relatively straightforward. They would not need to raise their voices above the music and the babble of the crowd. After a brief exchange about the wedding, Wilkinson asked Gaddis for what he called 'some background' on his relations.h.i.+p with Katya. His manner was still unexpectedly amiable and co-operative and Gaddis interpreted the question as a broader request to lay out everything he knew concerning ATTILA. To that end, he set about telling the entire story of his involvement with Crane, including Charlotte's initial research and sudden death, the murders of Calvin Somers and Benedict Meisner, as well as the revelation that Tanya Acocella was an MI6 officer who had masqueraded as an archivist at Kew. Throughout this long process, Wilkinson interjected only rarely, either to clarify a detail or to ask for a phrase to be repeated on account of a sudden noise in the bar. He did not appear to be unduly surprised by anything Gaddis was telling him and remained, for the most part, inscrutable in his reactions. When, for example, Gaddis related what had happened at Meisner's apartment in Berlin, he merely nodded sagely and muttered 'I see' while staring at the ice in his gla.s.s. It was increasingly apparent to Gaddis that he was being sized up, rather in the way that a father takes his time to consider the strengths and weaknesses of a prospective son-in-law. Clearly Wilkinson had yet to decide whether or not to divulge the wealth of information he possessed to a writer he did not know or trust. As a consequence, he had about him the slightly overbearing self-confidence of a man who knows that he can walk out on a situation at any moment, at no personal cost.

'So you subsequently discovered that Neame and Crane were the same man?'

Wilkinson's question had no obvious tone of condescension, but the implication was clear: Gaddis, a supposedly bright, intelligent academic, had been hoodwinked by an old-age pensioner.

'What can I tell you?' he replied, holding his hands up in a gesture of mock surrender. He had decided that the most sensible strategy was to be as candid and as honest as possible. There was no point in trying to finesse a man of Wilkinson's experience. 'I was duped by a master liar. My only consolation is that I probably wasn't the first person to fall for Crane's silver tongue.'

'No,' Wilkinson replied steadily. 'You certainly weren't. Nor, I imagine, will you be the last.' He took a sip of his drink and appeared to catch the eye of a blonde American woman who was standing close to their table. 'But it makes absolute sense that Eddie would have wanted to get his story out in that way. After all, he's spent his life being two people.'

It was strangely exhilarating to hear Wilkinson speak of Crane so intimately, but any hope Gaddis held that the conversation would now turn to his recollections of ATTILA were quickly snuffed out.

'You said in your note that you think Katya was murdered.' Wilkinson was a physically imposing man and when he stared directly into Gaddis's eyes, Gaddis had to remind himself not to look away. 'What is your evidence for this?'

'A pattern of behaviour,' he replied uncertainly. It was the first unconvincing thing that he had said all night.

'I have to say that I disagree with you.' There was a finality to Wilkinson's reply which brooked no argument. 'If the FSB had been on to Katya, they would have followed my files to your house and you'd be dead by now as well.'

'Possibly,' Gaddis said, though he knew that Wilkinson's a.s.sessment was completely correct.

'Where are are the files, by the way?' the files, by the way?'

'At my house.'

'Your house house?' Wilkinson's sang froid sang froid briefly deserted him. 'Under lock and key, I hope? In some sort of safe?' briefly deserted him. 'Under lock and key, I hope? In some sort of safe?'

It was the first hint of his willingness to co-operate. There was clearly something hidden in the files, something of value to him.

'No safe would be big enough,' Gaddis replied, trying to calm things down. 'The boxes are just piled up in my sitting room.'

Wilkinson appeared to bury a rebuke. Instead, in a more controlled voice, he said: 'Well, it's unlikely that they'll be there for very much longer.'

'Why do you say that? I've had them for weeks. If SIS wanted to get hold of them, they'd have broken into my house long ago.'

Wilkinson shook his head. 'The Office aren't the ones you should be worrying about. Platov is the one who will want the files.'

'Platov?' Gaddis leaned forward. 'With the greatest respect, there's very little in the files that would be of any interest to anyone, even in academia. I found nothing about ATTILA, certainly nothing about Sergei Platov.'

'That's because you don't know what you're looking for.'

Gaddis felt a wave of excitement. Wilkinson looked as though he had finally made the decision to divulge what he knew.

'So what am am I looking for?' I looking for?'

Wilkinson paused. He stared again at the ice in his empty gla.s.s. Gaddis took it as a hint that he wanted another drink.

'More whisky?'

'Sure.'

This time it took just five minutes of battling through the crowd before he could return to the booth. The clutch of customers, including the American woman, who had been standing beside their table, were now pressed in even closer. They were using the near-side of Gaddis's table as a place to rest their gla.s.ses and bottles of beer. Wilkinson appeared completely oblivious to their presence; he might as well have been sitting alone in a box at the opera.

'You're right,' he said, pa.s.sing the Yeltsin biography back across the table. 'Cuttings job.'

Gaddis smiled. He set the drinks down and tried to restart the conversation.

'You were saying . . .'

'Saying what?'

'That I wasn't looking at the files in the right way. That I didn't know what I was looking for.'

Wilkinson tipped his head back. 'Oh yes.' He seemed almost surprised by the topic of conversation. He tapped the photograph of Yeltsin, rapping it with the back of his hand. 'You've written a biography of Platov, haven't you?'

Gaddis drank. 'It was more of a comparative study of Platov and Peter the Great, but-'

Wilkinson didn't let him finish. 'Tell me what you know about Platov's career in the KGB.'

Was this another test? Gaddis would have to be careful. Wilkinson, the Head of Station in Berlin in the warmest years of the Cold War, would know far more about Platov's brief engagement with the secret world than any historian at UCL.

'I know that he was ambitious,' he began. 'I know that those ambitions were frustrated. Platov had a far higher estimation of his own abilities than his masters at the Lubyanka.'

'That's certainly true.'

'He felt that he deserved one of the plum jobs in the West. Was.h.i.+ngton. Paris. London. Instead, he got Dresden, a backwater in East Germany. Which, I imagine, is where you first b.u.mped into him.'

Wilkinson looked up. His heavy, pale face was still.

'What makes you think I knew him?'

'Oh, you knew him,' Gaddis replied.

It was a risk, but it paid off. Wilkinson took a long, hard look at the crowd, grinned and turned to Gaddis. There were secrets coming.

'Platov's only trump card in East Germany was ATTILA,' he began, 'a moribund, seventy-year-old British spy sitting on the board of a bank in Berlin. He took a long, hard look at his life. He took a long, hard look at his career. He knew that the Soviet system was on its last legs and that Mother Russia had lost the Cold War.'

'That's not the official version.'

'Of course it's not.' Wilkinson lowered his voice. Even with the noise of the bar, he was concerned that he might be overheard. 'As far as all you journalists and academics are concerned, young Sergei was an unwavering patriot.'

'So what's the truth? What did he do out there? What happened to Platov that he would be prepared to murder countless innocent men and women in order to cover it up?'

'You want to know?' Wilkinson breathed in very deeply. His eyes were suddenly black in the darkness of the booth. 'You want to know the reason why your friend was killed, the nurse, the doctor, Tretiak? You want to know why Eddie Crane had to become Thomas Neame, why Platov's cronies planted a bomb under my car? Well, I'll tell you.' He was smiling now, because he was going to enjoy the look on Gaddis's face when he told him. 'The president of Russia, a man with eighty per cent approval ratings from his country-men, a patriot credited with restoring Russia's economic might and sense of national pride, tried to defect to the West in 1988.'

Chapter 42.

'He what what?'

Gaddis was dumbfounded. Of all the things he had been expecting to hear from Wilkinson, this was not it.

'February of '88. What we call a walk-in.' Wilkinson was looking up at the blonde American. He obviously had an eye for a pretty girl. 'Sergei Platov wanted to live in a nice big house in Surrey and he was prepared to give us whatever we wanted in order to get it.'

'Christ. If that came out, he'd be finished. His political career would be in tatters.'

'Precisely.' It wasn't as though Wilkinson was unaware of the implications. 'The saviour of modern Russia your latterday Peter the Great exposed as a hypocrite who sold out his country in her hour of need and tried to flee to the West with a suitcase full of Russian secrets.'

'And he came to you? You were the man he approached?'

Wilkinson nodded. It was plainly a source of considerable personal pride. The group of Americans who had been pressed up against the table had finished the last of their drinks and now began to file out of the cafe, the blonde going with them. Gaddis overheard one of them saying something about 'finding a club that goes all night'.

'I was in Berlin,' Wilkinson continued. 'A freezing b.l.o.o.d.y winter. Platov followed me into a cinema on Kantstra.s.se. There was a film playing to a half-empty house. The Searchers The Searchers, if memory serves. I used to like going there in the evenings. My marriage had broken up. I was spending rather a lot of time on my own, you know?' Gaddis nodded. He knew. He was at last able to reconcile the image of Wilkinson as a sensitive, romantic soul the man revealed in the letter to Katya with the brusque spook in front of him. 'Suddenly, taking a seat right next to me, is a little man, taut and tough as a rat. Later, of course, we discovered that Comrade Platov was something of an expert in judo. I'd never seen him before. Too far down the food chain. But he hands me a piece of paper letting me know that he's an officer in the KGB and wishes to defect to the West. I read it while he was sitting there, then looked straight at him and told him to f.u.c.k off.'

'You what?'

'I thought it was a bluff. One of their boring little games. But Sergei was insistent. "You must believe me, sir," he says. "You must trust me." "All right," I said. "If you're serious, meet me here again in twenty-four hours." That gave me time to have him checked out, to get a car ready, a safe house wired for sight and sound.'

'And did he show?'

'Of course he showed.' Wilkinson looked bewildered by Gaddis's naivete.

'And you interviewed him?'

'Yes.'

'In the presence of John Brennan?'

A nod of appreciation. 'Very good. In the presence of John Brennan, yes. Now see if you can riddle me this one. When asked to demonstrate that he was serious, guess whose name Platov gave us to prove his bona fides bona fides?'

'ATTILA,' Gaddis said, with a rush of exhilaration. The last piece of the puzzle had clicked into place.

'Precisely. He betrayed Eddie to the Brits, blissfully unaware that ATTILA had been one of ours all along.' Wilkinson leaned back in his chair. 'That's when I made my one and only mistake. I brought the interview to an end, implying that we needed more time to process the implications of Crane's betrayal. I left Platov with the impression that we would be in touch same time, same place, the cinema on Kantstra.s.se and immediately arranged to have dinner with Eddie. Told him over a bowl of onion soup that some greedy KGB thug who fancied an easy life in the West had been prepared to give him up.'

'And how did Eddie take that?'

It was the first time that Gaddis could remember referring to Crane as 'Eddie'. He felt faintly ridiculous, like a schoolboy trying to be cool in front of one of the senior boys.