‘I will tell you that if the High Command of the Soviet Union thinks, for a single minute that we and our allies will sit back and allow the Red Army to invade and rape Iraq and Iran without exacting a terrible cost on it in terms of men, materiel and morale, it is tragically mistaken. It is the policy of my government to resist tyranny; and while I live we will never surrender. I say to the men in the new Kremlin — wherever that foul new incarnation may now be located in southern Russia — that no matter what ground your tanks seize we will never rest until you are expelled from it. You may defeat us in one battle, you may defeat us in many battles but we will never, ever give in. You are responsible for the abomination of Red Dawn, for the despicable use of nuclear weapons against civilian populations in Turkey, Greece, Cyprus and Egypt. You are criminals responsible for the obliteration of Tehran! After that atrocity I warned you that a further use of nuclear weapons would result in an all-out strike against your remaining centres of population. I have not yet received an unequivocal acknowledgement of this warning. I demand that the Soviet High Command provide such an unequivocal acknowledgement not later than midnight on 27th May, or face the consequences.’
Andropov waved to his man at the tape recorder.
The reels stopped turning.
The silence was instantly oppressive.
“Is that woman insane?” Andropov asked sourly.
Frank Waters had no idea why the second-in-command of the KGB was asking him that question. He had never met the woman in question and one simply did not discuss a lady in company; it just was not done. Was nothing sacred with these people?
The barbarians were at the gate!
“No, sir,” he said curtly.
“She talks about consequences? What consequences?”
Frank Waters chuckled. He could not help himself chuckling. Suddenly, he realised what he was doing in this bunker in Chelyabinsk and it more than somewhat tickled his sense of humour.
“Comrade Yuri Vladimirovich,” he explained, his words hastened by the knowledge that both the big KGB policemen were itching for an opportunity to kick him around the room. “For my sins I have had a fair bit of experience of how a lady tends to react when she belatedly discovers that she has been taken for a ride.”
Andropov’s broken face creased into a contorted frown of incomprehension.
It was time to speak plainly.
“I have never met the lady,” Frank Waters went on, struggling not to smirk, “but I rather suspect that the ‘consequences’ she has in mind are of the most violent imaginable kind.”
Chapter 37
Joanne Brenckmann did not think she had ever met a prospective Head of Station of British Intelligence before. Although, the more she thought about it she realised she could have met dozens of ‘spooks’ without ever knowing it. What made today’s encounter all the more surreal was that the woman in front of her seemed so ‘normal’, so ‘pleasant’ and on the face of it, ‘open’.
Unlike his wife the Ambassador was not in the least surprised that Rachel Piotrowska had decided to pay a ‘courtesy call’ on him prior to leaving for Philadelphia.
“My wife does not know what to make of your visit, Miss Piotrowska,” he smiled as his guest settled in an armchair in his private rooms. This was to be a ‘private consultation’ in the fine old tradition of such meetings.
Walter Brenckmann studied the woman over the rim of his coffee cup.
With her straw blond hair cut short like a man’s and wearing a tailored jacket over a man’s white shirt — top button undone — and grey slacks the shapely spy had made herself seem androgynous to casual observers. She wore no jewellery, scarcely any makeup.
“No?” Rachel smiled, her grey eyes gently amused. “Well,” she prefaced, looking to Joanne Brenckmann. “The United Kingdom’s relations with the United States are going through a rocky patch, there’s no denying that. But,” she shrugged apologetically, “if we’re not the best of allies at the moment we certainly aren’t any kind of enemies. More like two old friends who have had a bit of a falling out, that’s all.”
Her lilting accent was now that of a long time Polish exile; the Englishness of recent years was just a memory for she was not longer that person. Clara Pullman had died in Malta, Clara and each and every one of her former courtesan alter egos.
“I am not,” she went on, “going to Philadelphia to spy on America or Americans.” She was tempted to add ‘unlike that idiot the CIA have posted to Oxford who has already been caught twice trying to bribe civil servants at the Ministry of Defence’. A scheme was in hand to get him sent home; he was a menace. Dick White had in mind an entrapment exercise, a good old-fashioned scoop for the press in which the CIA man or one of his senior associates was found in bed with ‘inappropriate’ male or female company.
“Oh,” Joanne Brenckmann murmured, totally confused by Rachel’s apparent candour.
“I am going to Philadelphia to make sure that nothing is lost in translation between the Administration, its intelligence agencies and the UAUK. Granted, I will have certain responsibilities vis-à-vis the National Security Department desk at the Embassy in Philadelphia, and of course, I will be liaising with the various military attaches assigned to the Embassy. But I will not be recruiting ‘spies’ in America, and I will not be engaging in any activity inimical to the constitutional rights of American citizens.”
“You’ll be spending a lot of time on the cocktail party circuit then?” The Ambassador’s wife observed sympathetically.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Rachel agreed.
Joanne Brenckmann was starting to wonder what sort of country she and her husband would return to when their stint in England ended. They had only been away three months and yet things at home already seemed to have changed irrevocably for the worse.
It looked as if Jack Kennedy was going to sweep aside his opponents in the race to be re-nominated as the Democratic ‘runner’ for President; the Administration’s volte face, suddenly embracing America First as its battle cry shouting ‘let the British stand on their own two feet’ and declaring that America would have no part in defending ‘any part of the old British Empire’ had turned the tide and brought sections of the Democrat main stream back onboard the Kennedy bandwagon.
Richard Nixon, at one time the likely Republican candidate for the Presidency had been swept away — crushed between Jack Kennedy’s Damascene conversion to the ‘America First’ crusade and the rising tide of support for Nelson Rockefeller’s independent version of the isolationist bandwagon in the north and Governor George Wallace’s equally independent racist, segregationist very nearly secessionist brand of hellfire white supremacism in the south. John Cabot Lodge, that most honourable doyen of the Great Old Party of Lincoln and Eisenhower presently cut a sad figure; notwithstanding he looked a shoe-in for the Republican nomination he was already a no-hoper, running at below ten percent in national polls. People were already speculating that a Rockefeller-Wallace ‘America First’ or ‘Independent Republican’ or even ‘Independent Democrat’ ticket — however unlikely or outlandish it sounded — would almost certainly ‘walk into the White House’ on 4th November. If that happened Joanne knew that she and Walter would be on the next plane home and it would only be a matter of time, in the present political climate, before they were both hauled up before some newly convened Kangaroo court or reformed House Un-American Activities inquisition to defend their ‘outrageous and unpatriotic’ pro-British proclivities.