They were in those ridiculous matroyshka dolls sets that Ann seemed to like so much and in the light socket by the bed and again in the living room and every telephone was monitored, not in the instrument itself – which the Russians would have discovered attempting the inevitable bug – but back along the connecting wire. All were voice and noise activated, so the installation was automatic, feeding directly into the electronic equipment that Blair put into the office and which he intended to dismantle the following day.
The tapes were numbered and dated, because Blair was a ruthlessly methodical man. Tape one was recorded while he was in America the first time, when he’d been recalled for Paul’s initial problem. Blair picked it up and was moving towards the bag when he hesitated, changing his mind. Instead he slotted it into the machine and depressed the button, listening to the first dinner party that Ann and Brinkman had in the apartment. ‘ Christ, it hasn’t been bloody easy! ’ he heard Ann say. Then their meeting and their love – did she really think of him as all John Wayne and howdy? – ‘ Anywhere but here! If there were an embassy at the North Pole I’d happily swop it for here .’ Blair ran the tape on, sadly knowing the stop points. It was Brinkman’s voice. ‘ It’s allowed, for special friends.’ Blair snatched the tape from the machine and dropped it into the burn bag. There was a faint skein of black smoke and a brief acrid smell. The next tape was from the telephone, where the installation was better and the quality clearer.
‘ What are you doing? ’
‘ Nothing much. Nothing at all, in fact. Just sitting here. Thinking.’
‘ What about? ’
‘ I would have thought that was obvious.’
‘ Sorry. Stupid question.’
There’d been a lot of talk about regret upon the tape, Blair thought; he wondered if it were genuine.
‘ Sorry? ’
‘ Of course I’m sorry! Aren’t you? ’
‘ I don’t think so.’
‘ You haven’t got so much to be sorry about.’
‘ I don‘t think I would be, even if I had.’
The quality was slightly lower on the second section, because he’d been in the apartment then. The living room first: elsewhere later. Blair winced, in physical pain, at the bedroom sounds. And at the conversation.
‘ Don’t you think I’m a whore? ’
‘ What! ’
‘ A whore! ’
‘ Of course I don’t think you’re a whore.’
‘ What then? ’
‘ I think you’re lonely. I think you’re very unhappy. I think you’re looking for something you haven’t got: maybe can’t have. I think you’re very beautiful. And I think you are a fantastic lover.’
And more: hatefully – except that he couldn’t hate, only love – more.
‘ No, it isn’t a casual fuck. And it isn’t Romeo and Juliet, either. What’s wrong with you?’ and then quality improved, from her end at least, because it was the telephone again.
‘ It was Eddie. He’s coming home.’
Blair realised just how upset Ann had been, during that homecoming argument, when he’d announced he was staying on – ‘ You know damned well how I hate it here. How I’ve always hated it.’ But then, he’d lost his temper, as well. ‘ I don’t expect you to stay.’ Thank God she had: he loved her so much. So very much.
Brinkman had been right about warning her of talking on an open line, when she’d called the man at the embassy and told him of their row. And Ann had been so honest. ‘ Oh darling, I’m so unsure of everything.’
Suddenly impatient, Blair stopped reminding himself of the tapes, of the whispered telephone conversations and the bedroom sounds, abruptly discarding one after another into the destruct bag, stopping at one he knew better than all the others, the one he’d replayed over and over again.
‘ Do you love me? ’ Brinkman’s voice.
‘ I don’t know.’ Ann.
‘ Do you love me? ’ Brinkman.
‘ Yes, I suppose so.’ Ann again.
‘ What about Eddie? ’ Brinkman: awful, fucking Brinkman.
‘ That’s it! I love him, too.’
Blair had heard it so often that he didn’t think he could cry now but he did, not breaking down into sobs but feeling the tears move irritatingly down his face.
‘ You can’t love two people at the same time.’ The insistent Brinkman.
‘ Who says? Where are the rules that everyone obeys that say you can’t love two people? ’ A desperate Ann.
‘ You’re going to have to make a choice.’ Cocky, pushing fucking Brinkman.
‘ I don’t want to. I’m frightened.’ Poor, lovely, confused Ann.
Because everything was so carefully annotated, it was something other than a tape next in line for destruction. Blair gazed down at a piece of paper that the sad, nervous, knowingly sacrificed Orlov slipped to him in the Krasnaya Park, with Harriet Johnson’s telephone extension at the United Nations. It had been an impromptu, improperly thought-out decision openly to leave the copy like he had on the apartment desk because by then – what else – he’d known he had to destroy Brinkman. But still wasn’t sure how to hook him. Brinkman must have been desperate: certainly the questions seemed that way, a desperation not to have realised the impossibility of his ever having made a mistake like leaving around the most important part of an emerging intelligence operation. But then, Brinkman had other distractions. What a bastard the man had been!
Blair threw Orlov’s pitiful note into the bag and it was destroyed so swiftly that there wasn’t a wisp of smoke.
The American stretched, aware that he had been sitting at the desk for almost two hours and that it was getting late. Did he need any more reminders? No more. Now the need was to forget. He loved Ann so much; so very much. More than she would ever know.
There was only one tape left, the one that had been made that afternoon. Blair made himself do it, needing to hear of her uncertainty; needing to know of her love.
‘ Don’t pressure me all the time! ’
‘ You know what you want. So do it! ’
‘ Why did you ever have to come to Moscow? If you hadn’t come here everything would have been all right ’
You know that isn’t true.’
‘ I’ll decide.’
‘ When? And don’t say soon; don’t try to run away again.’
‘ A week. I’ll decide in a week. I promise.’
Now she wouldn’t have to decide – to be undecided – thought Blair, taking the final tape from the machine and putting it into the bag. The equipment was extremely efficient and there was only a miniscule amount of detritus. He shook it into the special container and sealed it, along with the remaining, exhausted phosphorus, for collection and disposal the following morning.
Blair rose, stretching again and looked at the telephone, unsure whether to call Ann to tell her he was on his way. No reason any more, he realised: no longer any need for discretion.
He collected his solitary car from the pound and eased out on to the near deserted night streets of Moscow. Where, he wondered, were all the cars with all the observers who had made themselves so obvious, so obvious that he would have aborted the mission anyway if he hadn’t decided to handle it another way.
The recall to Washington was a bonus, something he hadn’t anticipated. But everything else had gone exactly as planned. Until the absolute end, that is. It had been easy, from the intercepted conversations and Brinkman’s hurried return to England to know that the man had correctly interpreted the extension and imagined he could win. Blair wondered if the surveillance team would still be in place in New York and whether they had seen the British make contact. Had it been Brinkman, personally? The man had been away long enough; and was ambitious enough.