Only old practice kept Hale from twitching, and he narrowed his eyes to prevent Theodora from noticing his surely dilated pupils. "Spanish!" Hale said easily. "Good Year and Medium Year, those mean."
"Yes. I suspect there was a third slip that said 'Malo Ano,' Bad Year; most likely a brush-pass signal, with three possible messages, and she only knew yesterday morning which one to pass. I suppose the one she took away with her, Malo Ano, meant I'm going off now to kill Philby."
Hale's ears were ringing, and he felt dizzy. I should have spoken up when he first mentioned the two slips, he thought; they've got nothing to do with any brush-pass signal. And if I don't speak up now, I'm concealing vital information from him, concealing it from the service. "The Crown's good servant" indeed! But-is she still working for the French Secret Service, the SDECE, as an assassin now? Or could she possibly be involved in this as an independent actor? Those slips of paper were no indication that she's working with anyone, as Theodora thinks. Could her attempt to kill Philby have been personal?
To his surprise he felt an extra surge of anger toward Philby, and recognized it as jealousy.
She must actually have looked, this time-and got Malo Ano.
I need to get there, he thought. Soon.
He remembered crawling out of bed in his rented room in Weybridge on many nights in 1953 and '54, when nerves and resisted memories had made sleep impossible, and tuning the landlady's short-wave set to random points near the 40-meter bandwidth, and then just sitting there in the dark parlor listening to the indecipherable dots and dashes of code groups being transmitted from God knew where in England or Western Europe-and wondering if one of those lonely signals was originating from her finger on a sending key, far out there in the night in some boulevard garret or harbor boat.
"If I'm to be a part of the Russian team," he said evenly, "I expect I'm to do some coat-trailing myself, and fast. What is my story to be, this time, what can they hope I'll give them? What will I give them, good enough to convince them that I'm a real traitor? Why am I going to Kuwait, if Philby is in Beirut?" With all of Arabia between, he thought.
Again Theodora glanced at his wristwatch, and Hale thought the old man looked uncomfortable. "Yes. Well, we've painted them a proper picture of you too." He looked up with a frosty stare. "'Surrendered to the service,' right? 'Go to prison, in disgrace.'"
"Good God, Jimmie!" said Hale in unfeigned alarm. "What have you scripted?"
"A good way to make something look plausible is to make it appear to be just one more of an established ongoing series, right? We've been, that is, MI5 has been, exposing a lot of corruption in the secret service files lately, turning up old shamefuls like the ones the Prime Minister mentioned a few minutes ago; and the Russians are certainly aware of Profumo's imminent fall, and they probably know about the new evidence against Philby. The liberal press always headlines each new instance of it, it's been like a running serial, and Macmillan is known to hate it, and it's terrible for the country. One more would not look at all deliberate."
"I follow you. I'm not a longtime Soviet plant, obviously, since they'd know that wasn't so. Mossad? Have I secretly been a Zionist all along?"
"I'm afraid you're just a crook, Andrew. Our new, unimpeachable evidence indicates that when you were in Kuwait from '46 to early '48, you were involved in betraying British Petroleum interests in the Persian Gulf by selling strategic secrets to the Americans at Standard Oil, and a couple of murdered Bedouin guides now appear to be on your conscience; and you used your cover post as Passport Control Officer to sell forged British passports to fugitive Nazi war criminals stranded in Oman. Oh yes, and you took money from a now deceased Russian illegal to break a couple of Soviet agents out of a Turk prison and smuggle them safely back across the Soviet border; the illegal kept no records, it can't be disproved. There's a good deal more, you'll be briefed in Kuwait."
Hale was frowning as he listened to this, his lips pressed tightly together. "Right," he said finally. So much for all the good work I did do there, he thought. This will be the version preserved in the Registry Archive files. "The murdered Bedu," he said, correcting Theodora's pronunciation, "probably aren't a helpful element, but very well. None of that old stuff will get me into the papers, though."
"No, something immediate is doing that. You remember Claude Cassagnac, the MI5 consultant."
"Yes," said Hale in a tight voice. "Fondly." It occurred to him that this would be the version she would get. Even if he managed to find her in Beirut, he could hardly tell her the true story and thus compromise this operation-Macmillan had personally cleared it, and it was Hale's unlooked-for chance to finally right the big defeat of his espionage career, and in some sense justify the deaths of the men he had commanded on Ararat.
Across the table, Theodora's withered old face was expressionless, his eyes blank as slate. "Cassagnac called you on the telephone at your college this morning, it appears, and gave you an old SOE code proposing a meeting; that covers any clumsiness you might have exhibited during the call, you see. The two of you met at your house in Weybridge about two hours ago, and he told you that all of these old crimes of yours had been discovered; he wanted you to accompany him back to Century House-that's the SIS headquarters now, we're not in Broadway anymore-and give yourself up, so that you could at least avoid a publicized arrest. Among the elect there will be hints that he wanted you to participate in this Philby affair as an advisor, that you might have been able to ask for immunity in exchange for telling us everything about Philby and Ararat in '48. You resisted Cassagnac."
"What-have-you-done?" whispered Hale. "Is he dead?"
"He's been shot," snapped Theodora, "with a gun of yours, in your house, I can tell you that. And-"
"That's a .45! Dum-dum bullets! And he must be as old as you are!"
"And!" Theodora repeated. Again he looked at his watch, raising his frail fist to do it. "And right about now, a minute and a half ago, technically, you are shooting a policeman not two miles from here, with the same gun, just to help cover it in case you were recognized on the train or in the park. I don't know if he's dead either."
Hale's mouth was open.
The old man slumped in his chair and flapped a pale hand at Hale. "Ah, lad, run you now to your old haunts in Kuwait, as you would if you were on the run from SIS-which you are, absolutely; by nightfall you'll be on the Middle Eastern watch list for forcible detainment, and Dick White is able to prove he wasn't even in London today. Run to the ambiguous leave-behind networks and spare identities you must certainly have established during your posting there, like every other agent-runner. The Russians will find you, you'll be approached by a recruiter; and we-want you to be persuaded by them."
This is the version she will get, Hale thought again. He remembered Claude Cassagnac telling the two of them, in a vaulted cellar near the Seine in 1941, It is the indispensable agents who are always the first to be purged...Claude, Claude! thought Hale now. Did you finally get trapped into becoming indispensable?
Hale took a deep breath and let it out. "If I'm to sell myself to them as a-a koti-ahngleeyski, a turncoat, they'll expect me to give them my whole story-our Ararat plans, everything. What script do you want me to give them?"
Theodora stared at him dubiously. "I won't tell you now." After a full second he gave a decisive nod. "It would be redundant-you'll be told that in Kuwait, that much certainly, even if the briefing falls through and our agent has to write it on his forehead and walk past you on the street. I warn you that you won't like it; you'll probably doubt its validity and want confirmation, which won't be possible. So this right now, what I'm saying, is your confirmation-in-advance. If you hate it, it's the genuine instructions, have you got that?"
Hale felt sick. Good God, he thought. Who or what on earth does he want me to betray?
"Have you got that?" Theodora repeated.
No confirmation possible, Hale thought; if it's abominable, it's genuine. And whatever it is, it's so abominable that he's evidently afraid I'll bolt if I learn it right now. "Yes," he said hoarsely.
"Very good. A lorry out front will take you to a stolen car in Hammersmith. There's a great deal of money in the glove box, and an airline ticket out of Heathrow, and a passport, in the name of Andrew Hale; that's unhandy, I know, but it's a nice indication of haste. Inside the passport is a Kuwait address, and a name; go there untraceably to hear all the details of this and to pick up your equipment. And when you get back-probably by the end of the month!-we'll set you up with a complete new identity anywhere you like, and you can even have the OBE I promised you once. Hell, you're old enough for a Commander of the British Empire now."