He wanted to know about the Russian scene in the ski resorts and on the beaches over there. What was London like? And Geneva? And Paris? Meeting Vladimir was like coming home to a brother who has never left home. And for all I knew Vladimir had never been anywhere but Moscow and the Cape Verde Islands. I was aware, however, that the men with the car, whom he’d told peremptorily to wait outside, could in a moment take me elsewhere, to a place where the welcome wasn’t so warm.
Vladimir ordered breakfast for us both. At one point a hotel guest entered the bar and Vladimir sharply told the barman to tell him the bar was closed. On the television, screwed to the ceiling above the bar counter, a violent Russian gangster film played out, the Russian hotel equivalent of the wallpaper classical music in a Western hotel.
When breakfast and coffee had arrived, Vladimir switched the conversation to the reasons for my return.
‘They feel the British have stepped over the line,’ he said. ‘This death has made everyone very angry.’
I was relieved that they seemed to believe the British were still involved, rather than just Finn, but I felt uneasy that there would now be a change in their approach to Finn.
‘But you are truly the returning hero,’ he said. ‘I’m told Patrushev is pleased with the way things have gone.’
His use of the past tense–‘the way things have gone’–sent a shiver through me. Was it over? Was I not required any more, would I not be ordered to return to Finn?
‘It’s good to see you, Anna. I’ve missed you.’
I kissed him on the cheek.
‘Are you married yet?’ I said.
‘No.’ He grinned, and returned my kiss.
Vladimir said that I had an unscheduled meeting with Patrushev before I was to be debriefed at the Forest. The men in the car are FSB, he said, not SVR. Then I would be taken to the Forest and Vladimir would meet me there and we’d begin work together.
But first he had thoughtfully booked me a room in which to bathe and change. Half an hour later I rejoined him in the bar where we had another cup of coffee and talked about the quiet things, an apartment he was hoping to find with his newly elevated rank, and the latest movies coming out of Russia that never made it to the West. I was grateful to Vladimir. He had made what he called my homecoming more comfortable than I had imagined it would be.
As we left the bar and walked into the foyer, I picked up a copy of the day’s edition of Novaya Gazeta which was being delivered as we waited for my coat. On an inside page there was a story about a leading Swiss banker, brutally murdered in his home. The police, it said, wanted to interview a man called Robinson in connection with the murder of Clement Naider.
I was driven the hundred yards or so to the Lubyanka and was then escorted through its forbidding entrance.
Patrushev’s office was at the top of the building and, once again, the view from inside the KGB’s fortress made me forget where I was. The Kremlin’s towers and the onion domes of St Peter’s Church–the fairy tale of Russia’s greatness–shone in the early morning light.
Patrushev welcomed me in his customary grey suit and red tie, and he smiled his thin, purse-lipped smile that was more a recognition of another’s presence than friendliness. Yuri was back, no doubt with a new promotion and a more expensive watch. He glowered in a chair to the side of Patrushev’s desk.
‘Welcome home, Colonel,’ Patrushev said.
‘It’s been a long time,’ I replied.
‘Oh, four years is not so bad,’ Patrushev said, never taking his eyes off me. ‘You’re hoping to go to Barvikha tonight?’
‘If that’s possible,’ I replied.
‘We’ll see, we’ll see,’ he said, and I felt that Yuri sneered at my hopes.
Patrushev spoke about the reports I’d made in general terms, praising their ‘level-headedness’, and told me I was a valued officer and more would be needed ‘…if I was capable,’ as he put it. ‘You must be getting tired,’ he said.
I told him I was tired, but I would do whatever was required of me.
‘Of course. Finn hasn’t told you what we need,’ he stated, and looked at me, apparently for confirmation.
‘No, sir.’
‘For your sake, perhaps, for his own sake, and for the sake of Mikhail himself.’
‘That’s exactly what he tells me,’ I agreed.
‘He said that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I’m getting too far inside his mind,’ Patrushev said. I didn’t follow his meaning.
‘Four years. He’s difficult to nail down, isn’t he?’ Patrushev said. I watched Yuri’s face and could imagine, in a picture of horror, Yuri actually nailing down Finn.
‘He may have seen Mikhail,’ I said. ‘On maybe one or two occasions. But I don’t know. They obviously have a way of communicating without meeting.’
‘You gave us the dates of these supposed meetings, but we haven’t been able to match them with any movements of senior figures here,’ he said.
‘I can’t be sure that he actually met Mikhail on those dates either,’ I said, ‘rather than simply picked up a communication from him.’
‘And his meetings with Adrian in London?’ Patrushev said. ‘Are there any more of them than you’ve reported?’
‘No. You have them all in my reports,’ I replied.
‘They meet often. Is this an attempt to make us believe that they are now just social friends? That Finn has left the Service?’
‘In my opinion, the job he does at the commercial investigation company in Mayfair is just cover,’ I said. ‘It’s very easy for him to meet with government officers behind the closed doors of this company, Adrian included. So, yes, I think Adrian hopes that we are picking up on their frequent lunches together in order to impress us that they are now just friends who meet in public from time to time and that Finn no longer works for MI6.’
Patrushev paused and watched me coldly.
‘He’s difficult to nail down in other ways, we’ve found,’ he said at last, ignoring my explanation. ‘There is the question of his childhood, for example,’ he went on and threw a closed file across the desk to me without suggesting I open it.
‘His story, the one he told you and the one we had from our other sources, does not seem to be correct. How well do you really know him, I wonder?’
I didn’t understand what he meant, but he clearly wanted me to listen to him rather than to look into the file.
‘You can look at it later. At your leisure,’ he added. ‘It seems Finn went to an English boarding school called Bedales, and was not brought up in a commune in Ireland after all. His parents lived in Berkshire, near London. His father was in the civil service, something to do with the coal industry, and his mother was a nurse. Two ordinary, middle-class parents, apparently. It’s all in the file. From this new evidence, Ireland seems to be a fiction. Is Finn a fantasist?’
This, at first, seemed a small point.
‘One of them’s fiction, evidently,’ I said. ‘Maybe this second version is his fiction,’ I continued cautiously. ‘His fiction made for him by MI6. I don’t think he’s a fantasist, no.’
‘But he was so convincing when he told you all about his Irish background out at Lake Baikal, wasn’t he? This was his story as told to you, the woman he loves.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Yes, he was convincing.’
‘If the story of his Irish upbringing isn’t true, I wonder what else he has convinced you of that isn’t true.’
He paused dismissively, as if this was a minor issue but I felt the walls were closing around me.
I reminded myself of what Finn had said years before, as we sailed on Bride of the Wind back to England. ‘They will do anything over the months, maybe years, to drive a wedge between us. That is what we must be most careful of.’