‘That seems a very long time ago. Another lifetime.’
Jonathon rubbed his chin, as if he was hesitating about what he was going to say next.
‘Dominic was my friend. My best friend. Of course, you know by now that he worked for the Security Service, but have you stopped to wonder how he was recruited?’
‘I thought you got the tap on the shoulder at university,’ said Abby, with her limited knowledge of the world of espionage.
‘I recruited him,’ replied Jonathon with a certain amount of pride. ‘Dominic was the star of his year at Trinity. Clever, charming, going places. I was a postgraduate when we met, but I had already joined the service.’
Abby watched his face become more animated as he was lost in the memories of his youth.
‘I spotted his potential the very first time I met him in the college bar. I knew we had to get in there before the Russians did, and Dominic came on board quite readily – the world of intelligence was perfect for him and he didn’t shirk away from the plans we had for him.’
‘Which were what?’
‘We wanted him to be recruited by the Russians, right from the get-go. Dominic Blake – double agent. You can imagine how much he loved the danger and adventure of it all, and he played his hand brilliantly. A communist-leaning girlfriend here, a left-wing polemic in the student rag there. And the KGB came calling.’
‘I thought Capital was a right-wing magazine?’
‘That was later. That was cover for his Russian allegiances and a double bluff for us.’
‘I know Victoria Harbord was his handler.’
‘A very smart woman,’ nodded Jonathon.
‘She thought you had been turned by the Russians and that you betrayed Dominic.’
Soames smiled as he shook his head.
‘Nobody trusted anyone in those days,’ he chuckled. ‘And with good reason after the Cambridge Spies. But yes, I had a powerful position in Whitehall by then, and the Russians did try to turn me on a number of occasions. Two heterosexual attempts, one homosexual.’
He saw the look of confusion on Abby’s face and smiled.
‘That was a common ploy. Getting someone to seduce you, and then using it as leverage against you. I’m afraid my sex drive was never particularly high. Ask my wife Michaela.’
‘So you didn’t tell the Russians that Dominic was a double agent?’
‘I would never have done that. I loved him like a brother,’ he said passionately.
He seemed to switch into a more efficient, statesmanlike mode.
‘The Russians had their doubts about Dominic. We were never sure how much they knew about him, whether they knew for sure he was a double agent. Besides, there was a bigger threat.’
Abby frowned. Jonathon started to cough, and she went to get him a glass of water.
‘Have you ever heard of the missile gap?’ he asked, taking a sip from the tumbler she handed him.
She shook her head.
‘The Cold War was based on the assumption that both sides could blow the other to kingdom come. By the end of the fifties, the Americans thought they were lagging behind the Soviets, who were showing their might with all their space technology, and Kennedy made promises to change that when he came into office. But the Americans had overestimated the Russian nuclear capability.’
He took a breath before he continued.
‘Dominic was friends with a Russian intelligence officer called Eugene Zarkov. Zarkov knew that Dom was working for the KGB, and he shared some highly sensitive information with him about the Soviets’ true number of weapons and how he suspected it fell far short of what the Americans had. This information put both Zarkov and Dominic in danger.’
‘Why?’ said Abby. ‘Danger from whom?’
Jonathon didn’t speak for another few moments.