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NORMALLY, the embassy staff would not have been working on a Saturday—least of all, on a hot summer Saturday when they could have been off on a sylvan weekend—but the president’s death had produced a welter of extra work and weekend labors were required.
If Hugo Gray’s car had started that morning, many men who later died would have stayed alive and the world would have taken a different course. But ignition solenoids are a law unto themselves. After frantically trying to get a reaction, Gray ran after the red Rover as it neared the barrier of the enclave and tapped on the window. Celia Stone gave him a lift.
He sat beside her as she swerved out into Kutuzovsky Prospekt and headed past the Ukraina Hotel toward the Arbat and the Kremlin. His heels scuffed something on the floor. He stooped and retrieved it.
“Your takeover bid for Izvestia?” he asked. She looked sideways and recognized the file he was holding.
“Oh, God, I was going to trash it yesterday. Some old lunatic threw it into the car. Nearly frightened the life out of me.”
“Another petition,” said Gray. “They never stop. Usually it’s for visas, of course.” He flicked open the black cover and glanced at the title page. “No, it’s more political.”
“Great. I’m Mister Bonkers and here is my master plan to save the world. Just give it to the ambassador.”
“Is that what he said? Give it to the ambassador?”
“Yep. That, and thanks for the beer.”
“What beer?”
“How should I know? He was a nutcase.”
Gray read the title page and turned over several more. He grew quiet.
“It is political,” he said. “It’s some kind of manifesto.”
“You want it, you have it,” said Celia. They left the Alexandrovsky Gardens behind and turned toward the Stone Bridge.
Hugo Gray was going to give the unwanted gift a quick skim and then ease it into the wastepaper basket. But he read ten pages, rose, and sought an interview with the Head of Station, a shrewd Scot with a mordant wit.
The Head’s office was swept daily for bugs, but really secret conferences were always held in the bubble. This strange confection is usually a conference chamber suspended from reinforced beams so that it is surrounded on all sides by an air-filled gap when the doors are closed. Regularly swept inside and out, the bubble is deemed unbuggable by hostile intelligence. Gray did not feel confident enough to ask they adjourn to the bubble.
“Yes laddie?” said the Head
“Look Jock I don’t know whether I m wasting your time. Probably am. Sorry. But something odd happened yesterday. An old man threw this into the car of Celia Stone. You know? That press attaché girl. It may be nothing …”
He petered out. The Head regarded him over the top of his half-moons.
“Threw it into her car?” he asked gently.
“She says. Just tore the door open, threw it into the car asked her to give it to the ambassador and was gone.”
The Head of Station put out his hand for the black-covered file with Gray’s two footprints on it.
“What kind of man?” he asked.
“Old, shabby, stubbled. Like a tramp. Frightened the hell out of her.”
“A petition, perhaps.”
“That’s what she thought. She was going to throw it away. But she gave me a lift in this morning. I read some of it on the way. It seems more political. The inside title page has the stamp of the logo of the UPF. It reads as if written by Igor Komarov.”
“Our president-to-be. Odd. All right, laddie, leave it with me.”
“Thanks, Jock,” said Gray, and rose. The intimacy of first names even between juniors and senior mandarins is encouraged inside the British Secret Intelligence Service. It is deemed to encourage a sense of camaraderie, of family, underlining the us-and-them psychology common to all services in this strange trade. Only the chief himself is referred to as Chief or Sir.
Gray had reached the door when his boss caused him to pause, his hand on the doorknob.
“One thing, laddie. Apartments in the Soviet era were shoddily built and the walls were thin. They remain thin. Our Third Trade Secretary this morning is red-eyed with lack of sleep. Fortunately his lady wife is in England. Next time, could you and the delightful Miss Stone be just a wee bit quieter?”