Boris Karavenoff used the space available for seat numbers 14B for his communications with Moscow. He had, without the slightest difficulty, hooked the Intercontinental computers into the international airlines network, by tapping into the wires running from a branch booking office. Using an identically programmed silicon chip to the one I had in my pocket, he could, whenever he liked, book a seat 14B on any flight of any airline in the world. A short coded signal would inform an Aeroflot ticket desk in Moscow of the relevant flight, and the information, naturally in code, would be recorded; the reservation would then be cancelled, and the information would be gone from the teletype screens and the computer memory banks for ever. The process was reversed if Moscow wished to pass a communication to Karavenoff. The solution to part one of Dr Yuri Orchnev’s cryptic puzzle had emerged.
Psychologists say that almost all criminals, petty or major, have a secret desire to confess their crimes, almost as an act of bravado. Under skilful interrogation the criminal can be made to open up like an enthusiastic schoolboy, to cheerfully pour out everything he knows and, while talking, to develop an obsession not to miss out a single detail. Right now Boris Karavenoff was in this frame of mind; provided I could get off this island alive I was going to have one hell of a report to make back to London.
The one subject on which he knew nothing was the man up on the roof; he seemed genuinely surprised that there was someone there and pointed out that it could as easily be himself as me that the man was after. I nodded agreement, although I knew that wasn’t true — if it was, Karavenoff and his chum would have been dead long before I’d arrived. I asked him about Sleeping Beauty in the kitchen: he was a computer programmer in the US Defence Bureau; Karavenoff pointed up at the ceiling; in a sunken light socket. I could clearly see a camera lens. ‘Automatic,’ he said, ‘comes on with that light.’ He pointed up at one of the bulbs that was glowing brightly — just a little too brightly for normal room lighting. It was a routine blackmail setup.
I broached the subject of the great mystery writer and nocturnal sharpshooter, Dr Yuri Orchnev. Karavenoff didn’t know much about him, other than that he was a fairly senior member of the KGB computer technology team in Moscow.
What he did know, however, was something I had spent six years under Fifeshire’s instructions trying to verify: that there was a Russian agent in a very senior position in British Intelligence. Orchnev had had communications with him via the British Embassy in Washington on a number of occasions during the last year. His true identity had never been revealed to Karavenoff; he knew of him only by his code name. It was the Pink Envelope.
15
I was concerned that Karavenoff’s friend would wake soon — I hadn’t hit him hard; I was also concerned to tackle the fiddler on the roof before he got bored and left his perch, but in Karavenoff I had hit a mine of information and I didn’t want to stem the flow. Whether or not everything he told me was true, I did not know, but I had a feeling it was, and since he didn’t know what I knew I figured that, lying there stark naked and defenceless, he was unlikely to risk telling many lies.
I cast my mind back to the note from Orchnev to Fifeshire. ‘As you may already be aware the colour scheme of this missive is not irrelevant.’ I tried to work out to whom it could be referring — perhaps even to Fifeshire himself — although I found that hard to believe. I pumped Karavenoff hard on the Pink Envelope, but he knew little more than what he had already told me: he was based in Whitehall, had been there a long time and was in a very powerful position. I believed Karavenoff — his work concerned America rather than Britain. There was no reason why he should have known any more.
I brought up Orchnev again. Karavenoff racked his brains, then came up with a piece of information that slotted one enormous piece of the puzzle into shape for me: Orchnev had been under secret observation by the KGB for some time. He had very recently attempted to contact the head of the CIA in Washington. Somehow a Russian agent inside the British Embassy in Washington had intercepted this letter, and for some reason it had been passed over to England to the Pink Envelope. Karavenoff had no idea what it was all about. I, however, was starting to have a damn good idea.
There was a long silence. I offered him a cigarette, and we both smoked. He lay there, lanky, skinny, covered in goose pimples, his small penis shrivelled in its skin; he looked vulnerable and lost.
‘What are you going to do now?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Kill me?’
He’d asked a damn good question. I had no intention of killing him but right now I wasn’t going to let him know that. I decided to see if he had any bright ideas before putting mine forward. I carried on smoking in silence.
‘I guess what I’ve told you this evening is the end of Charlie Harrison, whatever happens.’ He looked at me nervously, his eyes crystal clear with fright.
I didn’t want to put any ideas into his head by telling him what he was saying assumed rather optimistically that I would be getting off this island alive.
‘I’ll get fifteen, maybe twenty years in penitentiary,’ he continued, ‘All for what? Nothing, that’s what. You rob a bank, you take a few hundred grand. You get ten years, five off for good behaviour. You do five years inside, you come out, you got half a million bucks stashed away to make up for it. What do I get? Fuck all. After twenty years I come out, get deported back to Russia. I’ll get tried over there for failure, then slung out to the back of beyond to spend the rest of my days doing something that uses my technical knowledge to the minimum — probably make me a telephone repair man.’ He gave a wry grin.
I looked at him. ‘If they want you back they’ll get you back quicker than that; they’ll trade you for some American they have.’ It had the right effect. It made him look even more nervous still.
‘Why would they want me back?’
‘It wouldn’t be to make a national hero out of you, that’s for sure.’
‘I came over to do a job; nobody told me it was going to take fourteen years. Hell, that’s a big chunk of anyone’s life. A goddam big chunk.’ There appeared to me to be a distinct lack of enthusiasm for Soviet ideology in the tone of his voice. ‘I’ve grown fond of this place; truth be known, I always had a hankering to come to America. When the job came up I jumped at it. I figured if I was smart, I’d get to stay here for ever; everything was just pretty damn fine — until you walked in through the door.’ He looked as though he were about to burst into tears.
‘There’s another way,’ I said.
‘I know,’ he said. We looked very straight at each other for the first time. ‘Would they accept me?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t work for the CIA. I don’t work for the Americans at all.’
‘You got a British accent. I thought it was strange. You work for the Brits?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
At least he had the decency to smile. ‘As the Americans say, sometimes it just ain’t one’s day.’
I looked at the floor and stubbed out my cigarette thoughtfully. ‘Not necessarily. Our love for the US isn’t that high at the moment.’
His eyes opened a little.
‘If you want to play ball with me, I’m not going to be in any hurry to turn you over — not now and maybe not ever.’ For the first time since our brief association had begun, the cloud of abject misery lifted, a little, from his face.
When I finally left the bungalow it was fast closing on midnight and the last ferry out before morning. I had trussed up and gagged Karavenoff and the Sleeping Beauty, and turned the place upside down to make it look like a burglary, to give Sleeping Beauty an explanation for the unpleasant headache he would have in the morning.