“Hello, Nickolai,” he said. “I hear you wanted to talk.” Rawls had known the man professionally, when they were working opposite sides of the street in Scandinavia. Nickolai had posed as a chauffeur for the KGB at the USSR embassy in Stockholm, and later, in Washington, until CIA people had caught him working in their embassy without a diplomatic passport. His lengthy interrogation had been a disappointment, and now they kept him on ice in Atlanta for a time when they might want to exchange him for an American agent. But time had overtaken Nickolai; the USSR was defunct, and it was extremely unlikely that he would ever be exchanged.
“Hello, Ed,” Nickolai replied. He sounded less mournful than usual. “I wish you to send a message to your people at Langley.”
“What sort of message?”
“I have something to offer them in exchange for… exchange.”
“Yeah? And what would that be?”
Nickolai’s thin mouth twitched into something resembling a smile. “I cannot tell you that, of course. Not until we have established contact.”
“And what makes you think they would want to hear from me?” Rawls asked. “I’m no more popular at Langley than you are.”
“Ah, but you have friends, right, Ed? People whose friendship is stronger than… what you were punished for.”
“Maybe, but what’s in it for me?”
Nickolai looked serious, now. “I may be able to get myself sent home and you released from this place.”
Rawls laughed heartily. “Nickolai, don’t you understand that ”home‘ isn’t there anymore? Everything has changed. The KGB, or whatever they call it now, is run by people your children’s age. Everybody you knew there is dead or pensioned off.“ He waved an arm. ”This is your home now.“
“Ed, I can make my way in the new Russia. Don’t worry about that. But aren’t you interested in getting out of here before you die?”
“Well, sure, Nickolai, but you’re going to have to convince me that what you’ve got is important enough to get us both out before I’m willing to contact anybody at all. Now tell me about it.”
“And what’s to keep you from acting for yourself and forgetting all about me?”
“Well, I guess you’re just going to have to trust me, Nickolai. After all, who else in here could do what you want?”
Nickolai sighed. “Ed, do you give me your word that you will not act just for yourself, that I go, too?”
“Yeah, sure I do. Now tell me what you’ve got. We’ve been talking too long already.”
Nickolai placed his hands on the table and interlocked his fingers. “Tell them that I can give them this fellow who’s killing your reactionaries everywhere.”
Rawls blinked and looked shocked, because he was. “And how the hell can you do that?” he asked.
“Because I know his name.”
“And how the hell do you know his name?”
“In my former profession I had reason to know this man’s work,” Nickolai said.
“You’re not making any sense, Nickolai,” Rawls said. He was alarmed, and he had to get this out of the man.
“Ed, just as your people tried to know as much as possible about our people, so did we try to know as much as possible about your people.”
“Are you saying that this guy was a Company man?”
“Precisely.”
“Did I know him?”
“No, you would have been in very different jobs.”
“How do you know for certain that the name you have is the guy they want?”
Nickolai shrugged. “I know, that’s all. When they check out the name, they will have their man. If he’s not the man, then they have lost nothing. They will not owe me-or you-until they have arrested him.”
“What’s the man’s name?” Rawls asked. “They’ll want to know that right away.”
“Of course they will, Ed, but that will have to come directly from me to them.”
“And how will you do that?”
“I’m sure you could arrange a telephone call. I will give this information directly to Ms. Katharine Rule.”
“You think the director is going to call you on the phone?”
“I suppose that depends on how badly they want this person. Tell them to act quickly, before he kills somebody else important.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Rawls said. “In the meantime, don’t you mention this to anybody else, you hear?”
“I will deal only with you, Ed, unless I become convinced that you can’t help. Then I’ll have to use other means.”
The dinner bell rang and both men got up and joined the crowd heading toward the mess hall. Rawls was frightened and angry. Unless he played this right, Nickolai could screw up his chances for a pardon.
30
THR CABINET MEETING WAS breaking up at Number 10 Downing Street, and people were filing out, putting on their coats against the driving rain outside. Ridgeway’s private secretary came and stood close to him. “General Sir Ewan Southby-Tailyour and the lady from military intelligence are waiting,” he said.
“Show them in as soon as everyone is out the front door,” Ridgeway instructed. “No, better put them in my private study now, and I’ll join them in a moment.”
“Yes, Prime Minister,” the man replied.
Ridgeway packed some papers into a dispatch box and gave them to an assistant, then he dictated replies to some letters. He dismissed his staff for the day and went through the bookcase door and into his study. The two people waiting came quickly to their feet.
“Sir Ewan,” he said, extending his hand.
“Prime Minister.” General Sir Ewan Southby-Tailyour was a handsome man with thick, white hair, wearing a beautifully cut uniform. He was the senior commander of the Royal Marines, and a former commando himself.
“Good afternoon, Carpenter,” he said to the woman.
Although he knew her name was Felicity Devonshire, the intelligence people preferred sobriquets. She was an elegant, handsome woman in her late thirties, dressed in a tweed suit designed to deemphasize her sexuality, which Ridgeway thought was a failure.
“Good afternoon, Prime Minister,” she said warmly.
“Please sit down,” he said. “I believe the sun is well over the yardarm. Please let me get you something to drink.”
“A dry sherry, please,” Carpenter said.
“A small whisky,” Southby-Tailyour replied.
Ridgeway went to the concealed liquor cabinet and made the drinks, asking with his eyebrows how much water the general wanted in his Scotch. Then he mixed himself a large bourbon with ice. The president of the United States had given him a case of Knob Creek, and he kept it in an unlabeled decanter, so that no one would know he was drinking American whiskey.
He handed the drinks around, then sat down and took a long pull on his drink. “Thank you for coming,” he said. “I hope I haven’t pulled you away from something terribly important.”
The two people made demurring noises.
“There’s something I’d like you to look into and make a recommendation on- Good God, do you two know each other? I didn’t introduce you.”
“We met on a previous occasion,” Carpenter said.
“Oh, good. Well, what this is about is Sealand.”
Carpenter seemed to stifle a smile, while Sir Ewan just looked interested.
“You both know about it?”
They nodded.
“Now I know it isn’t terribly important to us in any sort of strategic or even tactical sense-”
“Might make a nice bombing practice range,” Sir Ewan said.
“… but I’ve had a query about it from the American president.”
“Why on earth would he be interested in Sealand?” Carpenter asked.