It would be strange, though, to see Henry shift back to his old self, no longer the tweedy, slightly abstracted academic, but once more the incisive interrogator, asking carefully thought-out questions, preparing traps several moves ahead, mentally noting every word and gesture, giving as much weight to the unsaid as the said. He had been a natural. His students must be terrified of him.
A very obedient Volkov had arrived at Oxford station accompanied by his host, who was visibly glad to see the back of him. Lytten was there to collect him; he had very carefully made sure not to tell anyone when he was arriving or where.
He took a taxi back to his house. Volkov sat quietly beside him as the taxi turned into Beaumont Street, then went north.
‘Who am I going to meet?’
‘A man called Sam Wind. Are you ready for this?’
He didn’t seem nervous at the prospect; perfectly calm, in fact. Lytten wasn’t. ‘Be at my house at ten,’ he had told Wind. ‘I have something for you.’
‘Really? What?’
‘You may find it interesting.’
But he had said no more. Only to Portmore had he been forthcoming. ‘I’ll bring him to my house for a preliminary interrogation and then hand him over to you.’
‘Why not send him straight here?’
‘I’m going to ask Sam to come, just to see how he reacts. Kill two birds, if you see what I mean.’
‘I see. Then be careful how you proceed.’
Wind was delighted when he arrived and Lytten gave him a quick summary. ‘How wonderful! I’m looking forward to this. If he’s what he says he is then it will be a serious success. Do you have any idea,’ he said, ‘how long it is since we had a decent defector? We just get the dregs these days.’
‘Do you want me to stay with you, or would you prefer to talk to him by yourself?’
‘Certainly you must be there. He’s yours, after all.’
Lytten nodded. ‘Bear in mind the problem of understanding him. We talk in German, but that is hardly one of your skills, and not really one of his either. I have asked Angela Meerson to come along to help.’
‘Oh, good God! That lunatic.’
‘I thought she’d be useful.’
‘She always made me feel a bit uncomfortable. What does she do now?’
‘Nothing. She lives a simple life. She amuses herself in the usual sort of arty way that women find to pass the hours, I think. Collects all sorts of odd things; some seem to have found a permanent storage place in my cellar. For the most part she lives in France. It is lucky I could get hold of her.’
Wind glanced around the dingy hallway. ‘Do you never get bored living up here?’
‘Oh, no,’ Lytten replied with a smile. A slightly sad smile. ‘Why should I? I have my colleagues and my students to keep me entertained, and my friends to keep me on my toes. I know exactly what I will be doing on every day, weeks in advance. All around me is calm and predictable, unless you show up. What more can any man ask? You concern yourself with Armageddon and revolution. I concern myself with whether Hetherington will manage a decent second, and with a few curious lines in As You Like It. I believe firmly that my work is the more important.’
‘You’ve changed a great deal, you know.’
‘No,’ Henry said. ‘I’m the same. It is the world that has changed. I might put the same point to you. You know this is all a foolish game. I had a policeman here yesterday, Special Branch, all fired up about finding subversives down in the Morris factory. There aren’t any. Even if there were they’d be too incompetent to do anything. So what’s it for?’
‘Bombs are real.’
‘They are, and will be used or not, whether I do something or sit quietly reading my books. Shall we begin?’
‘I think we should start with your telling us the story of your life. Just to get the ball rolling, so to speak...’ That was Wind talking. They were in Lytten’s study, the big room at the front of the house, the room which, had it been a family abode, would have been the drawing room, with its large bay windows, high ceilings and elaborate Victorian fireplace. And books, nearly every wall covered in them, huge piles on the floor and the furniture, disguising the fact that the room had been neither painted nor properly cleaned for many a long year.
Volkov’s English seemed poor, his German tolerably good, but conversational when precision was badly needed. Angela’s occasional contributions, in contrast, were clipped, efficient and faultless; somehow she managed to provide a translation so well and quickly the others almost forgot she was there.
‘I was born on 23rd April 1917 in North Ossetia and I am — or was, rather — a full-time officer in the GRU. I wish to apply for asylum, and I am willing to pay for it with such information as I possess.’
‘Why us? Why not the Americans?’
‘I approached the Americans last year. I never received any response. I imagine that the crudeness of my approach convinced them that it must have been some sort of trap. So I decided I would have to go through someone who knew me.’
‘You will understand, I am sure, that we will assume the same as the Americans.’
‘I am quite content to be considered more cunning than I actually am.’
‘We will, you realise, become very much more specific later on. For the time being I see no reason why we cannot treat this as a conversation between colleagues.’
‘As you wish. I have many stories. Which do you want?’
‘The truth.’
‘They are all true.’
‘Then tell us them all.’
‘Very well. The first is that my career has stalled. So I am defecting out of bitterness and angst. I should have been promoted many times over, to a much higher level than colonel, but have been bested at office politics by people less able than I am. I will, at the appropriate moment, give you the names of those I know in the GRU hierarchy, what they do and how they do it, in order to have my revenge.’
‘That is a good reason.’
‘No. It is not,’ Volkov said. ‘Many people are in that position, no? I imagine even MI6 has office politics, with winners and losers. Do you worry every time someone is promoted that the losers will run off to the Soviet Union? Of course not. That is no reason. Anyone who came to you with such a story would either be a fool or a liar.’
‘Give us another one.’
‘Love. In the 1930s I fell in love with a beautiful woman, funny, intelligent, delightful. She was everything to me. We were to be married. Except that one day she said the wrong thing to the wrong person. She disappeared. I had to pretend not to know her. I married someone else, but I have never forgiven them.’
‘I see.’
‘No you don’t. That happened nearly twenty years ago. Who would wait such a long time? A third reason, then. I have lost faith. I do not believe in the onward inevitability of history. I do not believe that the proletariat will triumph. To put it another way, if the Soviet Union is the ultimate expression of mankind’s future, then I want no part of it.’
He smiled faintly. ‘A good reason, no? One which appeals to you, as patriotic Englishmen? You may take that one, then. It is true, after all. So is this: I am getting old, I wish to do something worthwhile, so the world, if it remembers me, will think favourably of me. I have no God and no beliefs. I can only serve the future. I wish to give a gift to the future. You are the only people who can make use of it.’
He leaned forward. ‘There is danger coming. I know. Time is short.’
‘Go on. Astonish us.’
Volkov pointed at Angela. ‘Not with her in the room. You I trust, Henry, and you, Wind, I must trust. But not this woman. I do not know her.’