Noble House

"And you're one of the leaders, tovarich! How marvelousl" Suslev let him continue, leading him on, disgusted that it was so easy to flatter him. How dreadful traitors are, he told himself. "Soon you'll have the democratic paradise you seek and there'll be peace on earth."
"It won't be long," Grey said fervently. "We've cut the armed services and we'll cut them even more next year. War's over forever. The bomb's done that. It's only the rotten Americans and their arms race who stand in the way but soon we'll force even them to lay down their arms and we'll all be equal."
"Did you know America's secretly arming the Japanese?"
"Eh?" Grey stared at him.
"Oh, didn't you know?" Suslev was well aware of Grey's three and a half years in Japanese POW camps. "Didn't you know the U.S. has a military mission there right now asking them if they'd accept nuclear weapons?"
"They'd never dare."
"But they have, Mr. Grey," Suslev said, the lie coming so easily. "Of course it's all totally secret."
"Can you give me details I could use in Parliament?"
"Well, I'll certainly ask my superiors to furnish that to you if you think it'd be of value."
"Please, as soon as possible. Nuclear bombs . . . Christ!"
"Are your people, your trained experts, in British nuclear plants too?" "Eh?" Grey concentrated with an effort, heaving his mind off
Japan. "Nuclear plants?"
"Yes. Are you getting your Brits?"
"Well, no, there's only one or two plants in the U.K. and they're unimportant. The Yanks're really arming the Japs?"
"Isn't Japan capitalist? Isn't Japan a U.S. protege? Aren't they building nuclear plants too? If it wasn't for America . . ."
"Those American sods! Thank God you've the bombs too or we'd all have to kowtow!"
"Perhaps you should concentrate some effort on your nuclear plants, eh?" Suslev said smoothly, astounded that Grey could be so gullible. "Why?"
"There's a new study out, by one of your countrymen. Philby."
"Philby?" Grey remembered how shocked and frightened he had been at Philby's discovery and flight, then how relieved he was that
Philby and the others had escaped without giving lists of the inner core of the BCP that they must have had. "How is he?"
"I understand he's very well. He's working in Moscow. Did you know him?"
"No. He was Foreign Office, stratosphere. None of us knew he was one of us."
"He points out in this study that a nuclear plant is self-sustaining, that one plant can generate fuel for itself and for others. Once a nuclear plant is operating, in effect it is almost perpetual, it requires only a few highly skilled, highly educated technicians to operate it, no workers, unlike oil or coal. At the moment all industry in the West's dependent on coal or oil. He suggests it should be our policy to encourage use of oil, not coal, and completely discourage nuclear power. Eh?"
"Ah, I see his point!" Grey's face hardened. "I shall get myself on the parliamentary committee to study atomic energy." "Will that be easy?"
"Too easy, comrade! Brits are lazy, they want no problems, they just want to work as little as possible for as much money as possible, to go to the pub and football on Saturdays—and no unpaid work, no tedious committees after hours, no arguments. It's too easy— when we have a plan and they don't."
Suslev sighed, very satisfied, his work almost done. "Another beer? No, let me get it, it's my honor, Mr. Grey. Do you happen to know a writer who's here at the moment, a U.S. citizen, Peter Marlowe?"
Grey's head snapped up. "Marlowe? I know him very well, didn't know he was a U.S. citizen though. Why?" Suslev kept his interest hidden and shrugged. "I was just asked to ask you, since you are English and he originally was English." "He's a rotten upper-class sod with the morals of a barrow boy. Hadn't seen him for years, not since '45, until he turned up here. He was in Changi too. I didn't know he was a writer until yesterday, or one of those film people. What's important about him?"
"He's a writer," Suslev said at once. "He makes films. With television, writers can reach millions. Center keeps track of Western writers as a matter of policy. Oh yes, we know about writers in Mother Russia, how important they are. Our writers have always pointed the way for us, Mr. Grey, they've formed our thinking and feeling, Tolstoy, Dostoevski, Chekhov, Bunin . . ." He added with pride, "Writers with us are pathfinders. That's why nowadays we must guide them in their formation and control their work or bury it." He looked at Grey. "You should do the same."
"We support friendly writers, Captain, and damn the other shower whichever way we can, publicly and privately. When I get home, I'll put Marlowe on our formal BCP media shit list. It'll be easy to do him some harm—we've lots of friends in our media." Suslev lit a cigarette. "Have you read his book?" "The one about Changi? No, no I haven't. I'd never heard of it until I got here. It probably wasn't published in England. Besides, 1 don't have much time to read fiction and if he did it, it's got to be upper-class shit and a penny-dreadful and . . . well Changi's Changi and best forgotten." A shudder went through him that he did not notice. "Yes, best forgotten."
But I can't, he wanted to shout. I can't forget and it's still a never-ending nightmare, those days of the camp, year after year, the tens of thousands dying, trying to enforce the law, trying to protect the weak against black market filth feeding off the weak, everyone starving and no hope of ever getting out, my body rotting away and only twenty-one with no women and no laughter and no food and no drink, twenty-one when I was caught in Singapore in 1942 and twenty-four, almost twenty-five when the miracle happened and I survived and got back to England—home gone, parents gone, world gone and my only sister sold out to the enemy, now talking like the enemy, eating like them, living like them, married to one, ashamed of our past, wanting the past dead, me dead, nobody caring and oh Christ, the change. Coming back to life after the no-life of Changi, all the nightmares and the no sleeping in the night, terrified of life, unable to talk about it, weeping and not knowing why I was weeping, trying to adjust to what fools called normal. Adjusting at length. But at what cost, oh dear sweet Jesus at what a cost… Stop it!
With an effort Grey pulled himself off the descending spiral of Changi.
Enough of Changi! Changi's dead. Let Changi stay dead. It's dead —Changi's got to stay dead. But Ch—
"What?" he said, jerked into the present again.
"I just said, your present government is completely vulnerable now."
"Oh? Why?"
"You remember the Profumo scandal? Your minister of war?"
"Of course. Why?"
"Some months ago, MI-5 began a very secret, very searching investigation into the alleged connection between the now famous call girl, Christine Keeler, and Commander Yevgeny Ivanov, our naval attache, and other London social figures."
"Is it finished?" Grey asked, suddenly attentive.
"Yes. It documents conversations the woman had with Commander Ivanov. Ivanov had asked her to find out from Profumo when nuclear weapons would be delivered to Germany. It claims," Suslev said, deliberately lying now to excite Grey, "that Profumo had been given security warnings by MI-5 about Ivanov some months before the scandal broke—that Commander Ivanov was KGB and also her lover."