'We nearly bust the old engine getting across the North Sea, full power, then offloaded the catch at Peterhead, and went on down south to home. My wife's cousin is a policeman there. I told him the bones of it and an inspector from Special Branch came round to the house to see me. I'd taken the envelope off the Marie Eugenie and it was under the mattress of the spare bed. I didn't tell the Branch man any more than I'd said to her cousin. He wanted to take it. No way. I said I'd deliver it personally because that's what was asked of me. So the Branch man made the arrangements and here I am.'
He pushed the envelope hard across the table.
'Well done, Fred,' Ponsford said. 'I cannot, even if I wished to, fault your actions. Alice will see you out, and your travel expenses will be met. Good sailing in the future, but not to Murmansk.'
'Thank you, Mr Harris.' Mowbray leaned forward and shook the trawler skipper's roughened hand.
Harris asked, 'What did he mean, in this day and age, about risk?'
Mowbray smiled comfortingly. 'Nothing for you to worry about. As I'm sure you will, put the whole matter out of your mind. Leave it to us.'
When the door had closed behind him and the beat of his heavy shoes had been lost in a distant corridor, the three men stared at the envelope. It lay sandwiched between a coffee cup and the plate of biscuits.
As the senior man it was Bertie Ponsford's privilege to snatch up the envelope. In his hand he seemed to weigh its significance and its bulk. He tore open the flap and spilled a sheaf of papers on to the table. The naval officer stood back, knowing his time would come. The top sheet of perhaps fifty pages was covered with a handwritten scrawl and on its reverse side were two pen-drawn maps. The pages scattered on the primroses were printed or typed, or were covered in photocopied diagrams.
Mowbray felt his pulse pound. He was in his sixty-first year but he recognized the excitement he had known on his first overseas assignment for the Service thirty-four years earlier. The handwritten page was given to him. He read, and the adrenaline coursed through him, as it had in the old days.
Dear Sirs,
It is a good friend who is contacting you, a friend who has become your ally for the cause of truth, honesty and justice. I have embarked on this course of struggle, having thought long and hard of the consequences. I have made a mature decision to reach out towards you for your hand.
I have at my disposal materials on many subjects of interest and importance to your government and I wish to pass these materials to you. I enclose details of the dead drops you should use, and maps of their locations, and later we should meet face to face.
I ask that, in working with me, you observe all the rules of professional tradecraft. Protect me.
I wish you long life and good health.
Your Friend.
Mowbray's mind blurred with the images of a man whose face he could not picture, burdened with fear, isolation and the bitterness that had caused him to write this letter. He blinked.
Ponsford had shuffled together the remaining sheets and had passed them to the naval officer, who slumped down at the table with them and retrieved a pair of half-moon spectacles from his breast pocket to study them.
'Well, what does our customer think?' Ponsford boomed.
'Of course, I'll need more time.' The naval officer shrugged.
As if talking to an idiot, Ponsford repeated the question, more slowly. 'But, what do you think?'
'It's submarine material. I'd say it's a taster. Kilo-class submarines are the best part of twenty years old, but good for refitting. These top pages are about what they're doing to reduce hydrodynamic noise. Then it goes on to describe their progress in the concept of coaxial contra-rotating propellers. It's technical, it's detail, it's interesting. What's undeniable, he has access. I'd say he's a staff officer, probably a captain, third rank, and well placed.'
Mowbray didn't know about hydrodynamics, nor about coaxial contra-rotating propellers. He smiled icily. 'Is it new?'
The naval officer grimaced. 'I'd say it's new, and I'd say that it's confirmation of what we believed but could not have been sure of. Is "valuable" good enough?'
Ponsford said that 'valuable' would be satisfactory.
It was arranged that they would meet again in a week, when the customer from naval intelligence had had more time. Briefcases were filled, Alice's notepad was back in her handbag, coats were retrieved from hooks.
Mowbray bit at his lip — each year the Service spent millions — tens of millions — around the world seeking to bribe, suborn, trick, deceive military officers of potentially hostile powers into sharing their nation's closest secrets, and the money always trickled down the plughole. The ones that mattered, always, were the 'walk-ins', who just pitched up without warning or invitation. In more than three decades with the Service, Mowbray had seen millions disappear without reward and now, in the twilight of his career, a 'walk-in' had appeared. He ground his hands together, cracked and flexed his fingers, and savoured the moment.
A frown had settled on the naval officer's forehead. 'I am just trying to work out what sort of man he'd be. A little piece of scum, I suppose. I have to say, if he was one of mine I'd reckon slow garotting was too good for him.'
'But he's not one of yours, he's one of theirs,' Mowbray, tart, interrupted. 'We don't talk about scum, we talk about an asset.'
'Why? Why would he betray…?'
Mowbray stood to his full height, took the stature of a lecturer, pontificated as if to a class of recruits. 'We call it MICE. Every agent from the other side that we run is governed by MICE. That's Money, Ideology, Compromise or Ego. MICE is the formula that governs each last one of them, and frankly I don't give a damn which motivates our "Friend". See you in a week.'
Half an hour later, after the naval officer had left and after arrangements had been agreed with Bertie Ponsford, Mowbray stood on the pavement, Alice beside him, searching for a vacant taxi that would run them out to Heathrow and the plane back to his Station, Warsaw.
Alice had come up with the codename, the only time she'd spoken. The skipper had described how fast he'd gone to his safe to bury the package. It was her habit only to speak when she had something relevant to say, and that was a principal reason that he'd demanded of Personnel that she be transferred to Poland with him. Ferret, she'd said, was from the fourteenth-century old-French word furet, which in turn originated from the Latin and was literally translated as 'thief'.
It was a warm afternoon and the summer sunshine had brought smiles to the faces of the pedestrian hordes who jostled them for pavement space. He did not feel the sunshine. A cold seemed to cling to him because he reflected on a man, with neither a face nor a name, who had put trust in him. Protect me. The thief among the files of the Northern Fleet would be Codename Ferret. The cold bit at his bones. At his side, Alice waved down the taxi. He shuddered. Unless he was protected, and they rarely were, a bullet to end the pain of torture was the only long-term future of an asset. He settled heavily on to the back seat of the taxi.
…Chapter One
Q. Where is the home of the Russian navy's Baltic Fleet?
A. Kaliningrad.
It wasn't there.
Gabriel Locke, twenty-eight years old and in the last year of his first overseas posting, straightened, pushed out his legs in front of him, eased back on the bench and looked around him.