Thursday. The day after tomorrow. The Vienna Rezident visited his whore on Thursdays, without a security escort.
Thursday.
Shelley realised he would have to hurry to catch his train.
Eldon had lost patience with him, but Aubrey could not begin to exercise any control over the situation. He had, instead, to hold his hands together in his lap to still their tremor. He was desperately tired, lost in a maze of protestations and evasions and denials. He was increasingly edgy and uncertain. It was the third day of his interrogation by Eldon — his 'debriefing' as they persisted in labelling it, with manifest irony — and they had no intention of lessening the pace or increasing the time-span. He was to be worn down as quickly as possible, made to admit, agree…
To confess and confirm, Aubrey reminded himself as he watched Eldon's darkened, handsome features. Yes, the man had lost patience; but his anger was groomed and fresh-looking, not shirtsleeved and weary. It might be no more than pretence, but Aubrey did not think so. Eldon believed in his guilt, and he was now angry that the old man opposite him wriggled and lied and evaded evident truths — the facts of the case. During the past few days, Aubrey had seen the glow of Eldon's righteous indignation. He was passionate in his loyalty and honesty. He despised traitors, and he was convinced that Aubrey belonged to that detestable species. His passion made him the most dangerous adversary Aubrey could have encountered, and revealed how well he had been chosen by Babbington. Eldon was Aubrey himself, but younger and stronger.
"Sir Kenneth," he observed in a clipped, even tone which yet managed to sound repressed, held back, "you have lied and prevaricated for two days. You ignore evidence that points to your complicity — you deny everything, you answer only the questions you choose." Aubrey summoned an ironic bow of the head. Eldon's eyes glittered. "You have, in fact," he continued, "no friends or allies — anywhere…" Aubrey realised that the anger had at first flared up like a spot-fire but was now under control and being used by Eldon. "Of course, we monitored all your calls yesterday." Eldon employed a smile.
The information did not surprise Aubrey, but to be reminded of it weighed on his weariness like an immovable stone on his chest. Increasingly desperate telephone calls, all the previous afternoon. Grasping at straws, or lifelines. The Foreign Office, the Cabinet Office, the PM's office. All had fended him off or turned him aside. Each individual, each department; not at home. Only Sir William Guest had received his call in person. That in itself had alerted Aubrey. Contempt, rejection, dislike had come down the telephone line to Aubrey; seepages from his life-support system, fatal damage to it. Sir William had abandoned him as all the rest had done.
And this man knew it, this dangerous, clever man opposite him. Eldon knew and approved, and felt his own obligation to produce the admissions and agreements which would confirm the evidence against him.
He could not hold Eldon's gaze, and dropped his eyes. His feet shuffled irresolutely on the carpet, a signal which Eldon did not fail to notice. Aubrey was daunted — frightened, yes, he could even admit to that — by his sense of isolation. He was unnerved by the subtlety and cleverness and completeness of the trap into which the KGB — Kapustin! — had led him.
"It isn't quite like 1974, is it, Sir Kenneth?" Eldon enquired silkily.
"I don't understand—" Aubrey blurted, startled.
"We should have had you in 1974," Eldon said, his hand closing slowly into a fist on his knee. "We must have been within a hair's breadth of exposing you then."
"What—?"
"Bonn, dammit!" Eldon snapped, his impatient contempt revealing itself again. "In April — after they arrested Gunther Guillaume. You recall the fuss?"
"That was a ridiculous rumour," Aubrey protested.
"It lacked proof, but not credence. Someone in your service tried to tip off Guillaume just before the Germans got him. I became convinced of that during my enquiries."
"You were forced to clear every member of the SIS staff at the Bonn embassy," Aubrey retorted, feeling a landslip of confidence within himself. Another old bogey now to be laid at his door. It was true, there had been rumours that an officer in British Intelligence had tried to help the Russian double, Guillaume, to escape the net closing around him. Gunther Guillaume had been Willy Brandt's closest adviser during his period as Chancellor of West Germany — and Guillaume had been a Russian spy. His arrest had caused Brandt's downfall. Eldon had been part of the
MI5 team of investigators who had been drafted to Bonn at the end of April to enquire into the truth of rumours that there was a British double-agent in league with Guillaume. Nothing except the innocence of Aubrey's officers in Bonn had been proven.
"We were evidently looking in the wrong place, Sir Kenneth. You were not, yourself, subject to investigation."
"No, I was not."
"Evidently a crucial omission."
"It was never more than a foolish rumour."
"I wonder."
"I was in Bonn at the request of both the END and the BfV — you know the circumstances. German security and intelligence required — oh, information, instruction, coaching, call it what you will. They were afraid that the World Cup in Munich that year might end up entertaining the same kind of tragedy that attended the Olympic Games in 1972. They did not want more dead on their hands. Representatives of almost every Western intelligence agency were in and out of Bonn that year in advisory capacities."
"And that's all there was to it?" Eldon enquired with heavy irony.
Aubrey nodded tiredly. "It was all you could yourself claim at the time." He waved a hand in dismissal. "Guillaume is back in the East now — all the matter seems to be good for is more mudslinging. Put it aside, Eldon. There was no double-agent in my service helping Guillaume to avoid arrest."
"It's a matter we shall go into again — very thoroughly," Eldon warned.
"Really?" Aubrey remarked contemptuously. "However, for today, perhaps we should return to the events of 1946?"
Aubrey realised that the subject of 1974 had been broached to soften him, to expend yet more of his dwindling resistance and energy. This was to be the meat of the repast — Berlin, 1946.
"Very well, Eldon," he replied at last. Sunlight was reaching across the room, catching motes of dust and turning them to gold. "Very well. Proceed."
Eldon inclined his head in a mocking gesture of thanks. "You arrived in Berlin, attached to the Allied Control Commission, as an SIS officer — in April '46, yes?" Eldon made a business of consulting his notes. His briefcase lay, open-mouthed like Aubrey's Pandora box, next to him on the sofa.
"That is correct."
"Robert Castleford was, at that time, a senior civil servant transferred from Whitehall to the Commission, and had no links whatsoever with SIS?"
"Again, correct. He did not. He was not a member, nor an associate member, of the intelligence service." Aubrey's lips pursed as he finished speaking, and Eldon's eyes gleamed.
"It seems to me that even now you speak with some disparagement, Sir Kenneth? But, of course, there was friction between yourself and Robert Castleford from the very beginning, was there not?" Without waiting for a reply, he continued: "You resented the authority of any — civilian? You resented any interference with your work. With your rather high-handed methods, you crossed swords with Castleford more than once. Your various encounters are a matter of record."