"A what?"
"It was a bit of German he had in his head. Frei sein ist Knecht. To be free is to be a vassal."
"Is that all?"
"All what?"
"Is that the full range of his motivation or were there more practical considerations?"
"He was lured by the glamour. We told him there wasn't any, but that only whetted his appetite. He saw himself as some sort of heretic Templar knight, paying his tribute to orthodoxy. He liked having two fathers, even if he never said so—the KGB and us. If you asked me to write it all down you'd have a string of contradictions. That's Larry. That’s joes. Motive doesn't exist in the abstract. It's not who people are. It's what they do."
"Thank you."
"Not at all."
"And the money?"
"I'm sorry?"
"The money that we paid him. The substantial tax-free income. What part did the money play in his calculations, do you suppose?"
"Oh, for God's sake, Marjorie, nobody worked for money in those days, and Larry never worked for money in his life. I told you. He called his pay Judas money. He's money illiterate. A financial Neanderthal."
"Nevertheless he got through an awful lot of it."
"He was feckless. Whatever he had he spent. He was a touch for everyone with a sob story. He had one or two expensive upper-class habits, which we encouraged because Russians are snobs, but in most ways he was totally unmaterialistic."
"Like what?"
"Like buying his wine from Berry's. Like having his shoes
"I don't call that unmaterialistic. I call it extravagant."
"That's just words," I flung back.
For a while no one spoke, which I took as a good omen. Marjorie was making yet another tour of her unvarnished fingernails. Barney was looking as if he would prefer to be safely back among his policemen. Finally Jake Merriman, emerging from his unnatural trance, straightened himself, smoothed his hands over his waistcoat, then ran a finger round the inside of his stiff white collar to free it from the ties of flesh that threatened to engulf it.
"Your Konstantin Abramovich Checheyev has milked the Russian government of thirty-seven million quid and rising," he said. "They're still counting. Friday last, the Russian ambassador here sought parley with the foreign secretary and presented him with a file of evidence. Why he chose a Friday when the secretary was just leaving for his dacha, God alone knows. But he did, and Larry's hoofprints are all over the file. Daylight, premeditated banditry, Tim Cranmer, by your ex-agent and his former KGB controller. Odds are, Checheyev got word that the balloon was about to go up and hightailed it to Bath to advise Larry to do a runner before the ambassador made his demarche Are you trying to say something? Don't."
I had shown no sign of this that I knew of, so shook my head, but he was already talking again.
"It's a simple enough racket they were working, but don't let's knock it for that. Very few Russian banks are empowered to transfer money abroad. Those that are tend to have close links with the former KGB. A U.K.-based accomplice sets up a bogus U.K. company—import, export, you name it—and bangs in bogus bills to his mates in Moscow. The bills are authenticated by crooked officials, mafia linked. Then they're paid. There's a gloss I like particularly. It seems the Russian legal code hasn't yet got round to addressing such modern eccentricities as bank fraud, so nobody gets hammered and everyone who might make a stink gets a cut instead. Russian banks are still in the ice age, profits are an abstraction nobody takes seriously, so in the immortal words of Noel Coward, whistle up the caviar and say, 'Thank God.'"
Another hiatus while Merriman raised his eyebrows at me in invitation, but I remained silent.
"Having landed the cash, Checheyev did what we'd all do. He buried it in a string of no-see-um accounts in Britain and abroad. In most of these enterprises your old friend Larry functioned as his intermediary, bagman, and red-toothed accomplice: registering the companies, opening the accounts, presenting the bills, stashing the loot. In a minute you're going to tell me it's all in Checheyev's weaselly imagination; he forged Larry's signature. You'll be wrong. Larry's in it up to his nasty neck, and for all we know, so are you. Are you?"
"No."
He turned to Barney. "How far down the line are the rozzers?"
"Commander, Special Branch, is reporting to the cabinet secretary at five this evening," Barney said, having first cleared his throat.
"Is that where Bryant and Luck come from?" I asked.
Barney Waldon was about to confirm this when Merriman cut rudely in: "That's for us to know and him to guess, Barney."
But I had my answer: yes.
"Rumour has it that their investigations are getting nowhere fast, but that may be bluff," Barney went on. "The last thing I can do is show undue interest. I've told Special Branch it's not our problem; I've put my hand on my heart to say it's not. I've told the Met, I've told the Somerset Constabulary. I've sold them the Lie Direct." It seemed to bother him.
Merriman again: "So don't you go spoiling our game, Tim Cranmer, do you hear? If they catch Larry and he claims he worked for us, we'll deny it and go on denying it right up to the trial and out the other end. If he says he worked for you, then Mr. Timothy Cranmer, ex-Treasury, gets dropped down a very deep hole. And in the new spirit of openness, dear boy: If you so much as open your mouth, God help you."
"Is their ambassador presenting Checheyev as a bona fide Diplomat?"
"Ex-diplomat. Yes, he is. And since we never raised a finger of complaint against Checheyev in the four years he was in London, for the obvious reason that we wanted to keep the intelligence flowing, we're taking the same position. If anyone breathes the word spook, the Foreign Office will have vapours."
"What about Checheyev's relationship with Larry?"
"What about it? It was legit. Checheyev was a cultural attaché, active, popular, and effective. Larry was a pinko intellectual has-been who accepted regular freebies to Mother Russia, Cuba, and other unsavoury corners of the globe. Now he's a quietly flowing don in Bath. Their relationship was mural and proper, and if it wasn't, no one's saying so." Merriman had not taken his eyes off me. "If the Russians ever get the idea that Larry Pettifer worked for this service—had been, for the last twenty and more years, as you have repeatedly reminded us, our most obedient servant—there will be an earthquake, do you follow me? They've already given your nice friend Zorin the summary heave-ho—alcoholism, passive conspiracy, having his head up his arse—he's under house arrest and by all accounts stands a good chance of being shot at dawn. It's extremely nice of us not to have done the same to you. If they ever take it into their tiny minds—the police, the Russians, either or both: it's the same thing in this situation, since the police are flying blind and we propose to keep them that way—that this service, in cahoots with one or other of the Russian mafias, elected at a time when the Russian economy is dying of the common cold to con it out of thirty-seven million quids' worth of the best ..." He gave up. "You can finish the sentence for yourself. Yes, what is it?"
It was the eternal refrain in me. Even in my turmoil, I could not hold it back: "When was Larry last seen?" I said.
"Ask the police, except don't."
"When did Checheyev last visit Britain?"
"No Checheyev entered Britain in the last six months. But since it was received wisdom that Checheyev was never his name in the first place, it would be fairly surprising if he came back as somebody he'd never been."
"Have you tried his aliases?"
"May I remind you that you're retired?" He had had enough of small talk. "You're to do nothing, young Tim Cranmer, d'you hear? You're to sit in your castle, perform your good works, churn out your vintage pipi, act natural and look innocent. You're not to leave the country without Mummy's permission, and we've got your passport, though these days that's not the guarantee it used to be, alas. Your not to make the smallest move towards Larry by word, deer gesture, or telephone. Not you, not your agents or instruments, not your delicious Emma. You're not to discuss Larry or his disappearance or any part of this conversation with anyone at all, and that includes colleagues and connections. Does Larry still flirt with Diana?"