At Close Quarters

2

Just before midnight the British Airways Boeing 737 touched down at Sheremetyevo, modern and miserable and the gateway to Moscow.

An hour later, Customs and Immigration on high quality go-slow, young Holt met his girl.

"Pretty damn late, young man."

" They had to hold the flight so I could say goodbye to my lady."

"Pig" Jane pouted.

And she came to him and grabbed him and hugged him and kissed him.

The Second Secretary stood back and looked at his watch and coughed and shuffled, and wondered whether the Foreign and Commonwealth Office had got itself intothe business of love-broking, for crying out loud, He had to cough twice more, and there was a ring of petal pink smudges around young Holt's mouth.

"Fifteen pairs, r i g h t… Just the same as usual. Fifteen atExtra Large, with gussets… Just as long as you don't forget… and give my love to Hermione… Bye, darling, keep safe."

The ambassador put down the telephone, and looked up. God, and the boy seemed young. Not tall and not short, but with an impact because of the set of his shoulders and the sturdiness of his hips. The sort of boy who would have captained the Fifteen at Marlborough, an adult's body and a youngster's face.

He had been in the room through the latter part of the ambassador's call and had stood midway between the door and the desk as if on a parade ground and at ease, relaxed and yet formal.

"So, you're young Holt. Welcome to Moscow, Mr Holt."

"Thank you, sir."

"None of that formality. I'm not 'sir'. We're a family here. I may be the patriarch, but not a frightening one, I hope. What's your first name, Mr Holt?"

"It's Peter, sir, but I'm generally just Holt."

"Then we have a bargain. I'll call you Holt, and you don't call me 'sir'. Done?"

"Thank you, Ambassador."

"You're a stickler for etiquette, young m a n… " Did he not look young? The smile was that of a teenager, bright and open. He liked his naturalness. He reckoned a man who could smile well was an honest man.

"… What do you think of the job they've given you?"

"It seemed to me that private secretary to the ambassador was about the best first posting that a Soviet specialist could expect."

"I was where you were three weeks before the Cuban missile crisis broke. I loved every day of my year here – and I hope you will… No, I wasn't talking in code on the phone. My wife's had to go back to London, mother not well, and she may be stuck there for a couple of weeks. We have a tradition of always bringing back some presents for our staff, the Soviet staff. Money doesn't matter to them, so we try to get them merchandise that's hard to come by here. You won't have seen the ladies who clean our apartment, cook for us, but they're all former Olympic shot putters, so it's Marks amp; Spencer's tights that keep the cobwebs out of the corners and the pots scoured. We're a small compact unit here. We all have to pull our weight. It is as Interesting and fascinating a posting for me as it is for you, but it's only by damned hard work that we stay afloat. There are no passengers in this embassy. Now I have to move on to the facts of life for you in the Soviet Union. Everything you have been told in London about the hazards of illicit contacts with the local population is true. We call it the honey trap. If the KGB can compromise you, then they will. If you don't believe me then go and talk to the Marines, the American Marines, at their embassy, they'll tell you how sticky a honey trap can be. Our security officer will brief you at much greater length, but my advice is always, always, always be on your guard."

"Understood."

The ambassador liked the reply, couldn't abide waffle.

"Miss Davenport showed you in, she's my personal assistant, but you as my private secretary will be responsible lor keeping my schedule workable. You're my trouble-shooter if things need sorting out, and you'll and I have a very short fuse when the planning goes awry."

" I hope it won't come to that."

"In twelve days we're heading for the Crimea, that's something of a bonus for you, getting out of the rat cage no quickly. We're away for five days, based on Yalta.

You'll find it all in the file that Miss Davenport will give you – pity there couldn't have been a hand-over from your predecessor."

"I understood he has pneumonia."

"We flew him out. Always get a man out if he's lick, standard procedure… I'd like you to go through the file and check each last detail of the programme. I don't want to be pitching up at a hotel where the booking isn't confirmed, and I don't want to be in a black tie when our hosts are in pullovers."

''I'll get on with it."

The ambassador's head ducked, but his eyes were still on Holt. There was a glimmer of a smile at his mouth. "I hear you're engaged to be married."

Holt couldn't help himself, blushed. "Not officially, it'll happen sometime."

"She's a lovely girl, our Miss Canning, broken all the bachelors' hearts here, a touch of romance will lift our spirits. You'll both be in demand. But I expect it to be a circumspect romance."

"Yes, Ambassador."

"Nose to the grindstone, Holt."

Holt took his cue, left the room.

The ambassador was Sir Sylvester Armitage. When he had been young he had cursed his parents for the name they had christened him with, but as he had risen through the ranks of the Diplomatic Corps, as the honours and medals had gathered in his pouch, so the given name had achieved a certain distinction. A tall, bluff man, working crouched over his desk with his suit jacket hooked to the back of his chair, and his braces bright scarlet. He had warmed to young Holt, and if young Holt had won the heart of Jane Canning then there had to be something rather exceptional to be said for him. He had a silly idea, but enough to make him laugh out loud. He loved the hill stream freshness of youth. He loved romance, which was why he spent all he could afford on scholarly works on the Elizabethan poets. He had meant it; he generally said what he meant.

A youthful romance inside the embassy that looked across the river to the towers of the citadel of the Kremlin would hurry them all towards the Moscow spring, and young Holt had seemed to him the sort of man who could keep it circumspect.

He gave a belly laugh as he jotted the note on his memory pad.

He had always been young Holt.

The name had stuck to him from the time he was first sent from his Devon home near Dulverton to the south of the county and boarding school. Something about his face, his appearance, had always been younger than his age, He'd lost his first name at school, and there was always enough of his school contemporaries staying during the holidays to call him by his surname. His parents had picked the name up from the boys who came to stay. At home he was just Holt. At University College, London, three years and an upper second in Modern History, he was just Holt. Nine months in the School of East European and Slavonic Studies, language learning, he was just Holt. Two years in the Soviet department of the FCO and still just Holt. He didn't discourage it. He rather liked the name, and he thought it set him apart.

For the whole of the first morning in the outer office attached to the ambassador's, Miss Davenport watched him Large owl eyes, and her attention distracted sufficientlt for her to make more typing errors in 140 minutes than she would normally have managed in a month. Holt had looked once at her, wondered if she was in the running for a set of Lady Armitage's tights, and discarded the thought as cheap.

She brought him three cups of coffee as he unravelled the file for the visit to Yalta. If his predecessor had stayed the course then Holt would have been glad of a gentle run in to his duties. But it was a mess, had only been taken so far, had missed two necessary weeks of knocking into shape. Holt reckoned the file could have been part of the aptitude test they'd given him at FCO after the entrance exam. He attacked the problem, and wished Miss Davenport didn't smoke. Holt was a smoker and trying to kick it and the Camel fumes were rich temptation.

He wrestled the Crimea programme into shape, so that he could dominate it. First flight to Simferopol.

Helicopter transfer to Yalta, check in at the hotel, hire car booked with Intourist. Lunch at the City Authority with the chairman and the deputy chairman, and then back to the hotel for an hour's break before meeting the local newspaper editors. Dinner at the hotel, the British hosting, and the guest list including the same chairman and deputy chairman and the legion of freebooters they would have in tow. That was day one… day two in Sevastopol, day three in Feodosija, and the ambassador had said that if he was coming all that way he was damned if he was going to be prevented from walking the length of the Light Brigade's charge – his predecessor's note on that was underlined twice.

Another note in the handwritten scrawl of his predecessor. The ambassador intended to lay a wreath at any British military cemetery that was still fit to visit.

"Stormed at with shot and shell, While horse and hero fell, They that had fought so well Came thro' the jaws of Death, Back from the mouth of Hell." Good for Sir Sylvester if he was going to remember Cardigan's heroes with a poppy wreath, but there was no sign of the cemetery yet. That he would have to do himself.

Holt worked late that first day, and he didn't see Jane.

Only a cryptic message on his internal phone to state that she was going straight from the office to the Oklahoma rehearsal, that he should get his beauty sleep.

For young Holt the first week flew. He would have sworn he had learned more from life in the capital of the Soviet Union in that one week than he had gathered togetherin two years shuttling paper, and calling it analysis, on the Soviet Desk at FCO.

He went with the ambassador to the Foreign Ministry and was present at a preliminary planning meeting with the Secretariat of the Deputy Foreign Minister for the arrival in Moscow the following month of the Inter-Parliamentary Union from London. He attended a reception thrown by the Foreign Trade crowd for a Scots firm working on the natural gas pipeline across Siberia. He explored the Metro. He was taken out to dinner with Jane, by the Second Secretary Commercial andhis wife. He was invited to supper, with Jane, by the first Secretary Political and his wife. He went to the disco, with Jane, at the British Club. He drove out of the city, with Jane, in the British Leyland Maestro that he had been allocated, to the embassy's dacha for aweekend picnic with her boss, the military attache, and his wife. That he was determined to be circumspect, and that Jane had the curse, were the only drawbacks.

At the end of that first week he had the programme for Yalta beaten, also the draft of the programme for thel Members of Parliament when they flew out, and he had persuaded Miss Davenport to restrict his coffee ration to two per day, and he had seen the wisdom of the ambassador.

Because of his girl, he was the centre of attraction in the confined oasis that was the embassy community. Of n u r s e he didn't touch her, not in public, not where anyone could see. But they were light in the darkness.

Their laughter and their fun and their togetherness were a lift to the embassy personnel who had endured the short day, long night misery of the Moscow winter.

At his morning meeting with the ambassador, Holt presented the programme for Yalta.

" There's one problem. Lady Armitage isn't back so her aircraft seats are extra; should we cancel them?"

"Wouldn't have thought so."

"Whom would you like to take, Ambassador?"

"I'd like to have a hostess for our receptions, and I would like to take the most competent Russian linguist on my staff. To you she may, among other things, just be personal assistant to the military attache, to me she is a very highly regarded member of the t e a m.. . "

"Jane?" A flood of pleasure.

The ambassador's voice dropped, "Miss Davenport has hearing that puts to shame the most sophisticated state security audio systems.. . I fancy that a few days out of the clutches of our colleagues' wives would not distress you."

"That's very good of you."

"She's coming to work, and don't forget to make double sure that you've booked an extra single room for every hotel we're staying in."

"Will be done."

"Holt, it's a good programme, well presented. I learn more about the life blood of the Soviet Union from these visits than from anything else I do. And, most important, we are on show. We are the representatives of our country. You'll give Miss Canning my respects and request her to accompany us, having first checked with the military attache that he can spare her. You will fix the hotel accommodation, you will sort out the necessary travel permission for her from the Foreign Ministry… Get on with it, Holt."

"Darling, nothing's what it seems… Ben's not an agony aunt … "

"He talked about us getting out of the clutches of the embassy wives."

They were in the bar of the British Club, not up on the stools where the noise was, where the newspaper men and his buisness community gathered, but against the far wall. She was on her second campari and soda, and there was a strain about her that was new to him.

He drank only tonic water with ice and lemon because besides cutting out cigarettes he had forsworn alcohol from Monday to Friday and he was suffering.

''Don't be silly, Holt, don't think he's taking me to Yaltajust so that we can have a cuddle in the corner without anyone knowing."

''Why is he taking you, then?"

''Put your thinking cap on, Holt. I'm a hell of a good linguist. At East European and Slavonic I actually had abetter mark in the oral than you did. Had you forgotten that? I 'm in Moscow. I'm personal assistant to the brigadier who is the military attache. An excuse has been found to take me down to the Crimea."

He stared at her. She was taller than he was. She had fair hair to her shoulders. She had gun-metal grey eyes that he worshipped. She wore a powder blue blouse and a severe navy blue suit.

''Asi said, Ben's not thinking of you and me, Ben's thinking of the job."

"And at Sevastopol there i s… "

''I don't want to talk about Sevastopol, nor do I want to talk about what's at Simferopol – I want to have a drink at the end of a vile day."

He was bemused. "I honestly didn't know that that was your line."

"When do you tell a bloke? First date? First time in bed? First night after you're married? Bit late then, Leave it… Raise your glass to Ben – curse is over tomorrow, poor darling…"

His elbows were on the table, his chin rested on his knuckles. He didn't know whether to be shocked or proud. He'd always thought of Jane as a souped-up secretary, and now he had lit upon the truth that there wasenough toher line for her to be required in the Crimea. Bloody hell. She was probably on a higher grade than he was.

"To Ben," she said. Holt raised his glass, clinked hers. "To adjoining rooms in Yalta." Under the table she squeezed his knee.

"Why do you call the ambassador Ben?"

Her voice sunk, and he had to crane to listen, and from the bar it would have seemed like sweet nothings from the love birds.

"Remember the guy who tried to plummet the El Al, spring of '86? He was organised by Syrian Air Force Intelligence. Name of Nezar Hindawi. Nasty man, put his lady on a plane with three pounds of Czech-made explosive in the bottom of her hand baggage, timed to detonate over Austria. The Syrians didn't just burn their fingers, they were scorched right up to their armpits. Shouted like hell, but they were caught still smoking when Hindawi rattled off his confession. So we broke off diplomatic relations, big deal, told the Syrians that if they didn't behave like gentlemen then they were going to get booted out of the club. They were pretty upset, big loss of face, and they started doing their damnedest to get our ambassador back. They made their first overtures right here at a reception in the Kremlin. One of their diplomats sidled up to Sylvester and gave him the glad news that the El Al had all been a dreadful mistake, the wild fantasies of a couple of bottle washers, that Syria was dead against terrorism.

What their little man didn't know was that Sylvester's beloved daughter was booked on that very same flight.

He's got a big voice, right? Well, half the Kremlin heard him dismiss these fervent Syrian protestations of innocence with repeated and thunder-clap replies of

'Bloody Nonsense'. You'd have thought he was a Guards sergeant at drill. Stopped the show, he did, they heard him all over the room. 'Bloody Nonsense…

Bloody Nonsense Then your instructions are Bloody Nonsense', Just like that."

''Spirited stuff.''

''Everyone heard him. First world chaps and Second, and Third world, they all heard him. Within days he wasknown all over the place as Bloody Nonsense Armitage. It came down to B. N. Armitage, and from that to Ben. In this little-minded town he's Ben, half the time to his face,.''

''So our man in Moscow won't be taking his summer holidays in Damascus."

''You're very clever tonight, my darling."

''I wish I'd known how clever you were," Holt said.

''Cleverer even than you think. Clever enough to get Rose and Penny tickets for the ballet tomorrow. Will you by any chance be free for dinner?"

He would like to have kissed her, but circumspection ruled and he simply smiled and gazed at her lovely grey and laughing eyes, and their wretched bloody secrets.

''So you're young Holt. I was going to look you up, but you've beaten me to it. What can I do for you?"

It was his first visit to the secure section of the embassy. Next to the diplomatic section the largest in the building was that of the security officers. The former policeman and army officers were a group apart, he had already recognised that. They had staked out their own corner in the British Club, and they had the ingrained habit of closing down their conversations when anyone came within earshot.

Jane had pointed that out to him and said they were probably talking about the price their wives had paid for potatoes on the market stalls, or why the Whitbread draught had gone cloudy, but they still went silent.

The security officer's face was florid, a jungle of blood vessels, and his head was lowered as he sat at his desk so that he could see over tiny half-moon spectacles. He wore a thick wool shirt, loud checks, with twisted collars, and a tie that was stained between the shield motifs. Holt took him for a regular army half colonel on secondment to the security services in London, and on double secondment to FCO.

"I was letting you settle in for a bit. So much to learn, eh? I find if I rush in with the heavy security lecture the new chaps tend to get a bit frightened, best wait, eh? Sit down."

They were in the heart of the building. Holt thought that further down the basement corridor would be the Safe Room. He had heard about the Safe Room in London, the underground steel walled room where the most sensitive conversations could be conducted without fear of electronic eavesdropping. He was disappointed that he had not yet been invited to attend a meeting in the Safe Room.

"My wife was saying only last night that you must come round to supper, you and Miss Canning – super girl, that. My wife'll be in touch with Miss Canning, that's the way things get done here."

Holt reckoned that he had spotted the security officer, allocated him his responsibility, by the second day he had been in Moscow. It was his little game, but he was still searching through the faces for the top spook, the guy from the Secret Intelligence Service who was Jane's real boss – might be the one in Trade with the Titian beard who looked like a naval officer, could be the one in Consular who always kissed Miss Davenport's hand when he came to see the ambassador.

"I'm a busy man, youngster, so what's troubling you?"

''No crisis"

''Bea bit soon for a crisis."

''It'sonly that I'm going with the ambassador and Miss Canning to the Crimea on Saturday, and I wondered if there was anything I should know."

''About what?"

''Well about security, that sort of t h i n g… " He felt absurdly pompous. He should have stayed at his desk, The security officer looked sternly at him. "Just the obvious, What you'd naturally assume. You don't discuss anything of a confidential nature in your hotels, nor in any vehicle. You don't accept invitations late at night to a Soviet household – what they'd have told you in London. Your rooms might be bugged. There will probably be a KGB operative with you as chauffeur or interpreter, a natural assumption. But His Excellency and Miss Canning know the form. Should be rather a nice trip Good idea of H.E. to take in the battlefield, wish I was with him, if you could walk down that field with a metal detector, God, you'd make a fortune…"

''There's nothing else I should know?"

''Like what?''

''Well, I just wondered…" Holt stopped, making a fool of himself.

''Ah,, I get you." The security officer beamed, all avincular. "You wondered about security, your own security, eh?"

''Just that."

''This is not Beirut, young man. H.E. does not have minders in Russia. This is a very peaceable country.

Hurts me to say it, but H.E. can walk the streets of any city in the Soviet Union, any time of day or night, and have less prospect of getting mugged, assaulted, stuck up than in a good many cities at home. This isa highly policed country. The moscow posting iscategorised as Low Risk. I'm not a bodyguard, the personal security of the staff here is about bottom of my agenda, and that's the same with every western embassy in town My job, young Holt, is to protect the confidentiality of this establishment, to block KGB attempts to compromise and recruit our staff, and that takes the bulk of my time. Right?"

"That's all I wanted to know."

"Good – well, as I say, my wife will be in touch with Miss Canning."

"You're very kind."

Holt left. He dreaded being summoned for the full security briefing. He thought it would be as hideous as the promise of dinner with the man and his woman.

"A penny for them, lover."

She lay on her side, and her clothes were on the floor and the street lights gleamed through the thin curtain, and her fingers played with the hairs on Holt's chest.

What to tell her? To tell her that he had been rotten in bed, again, because he couldn't get it out of his reinforced concrete skull that this lovely girl of his worked with the embassy spook? To tell her that hi thought spooking was a shoddy, grubby way of life? To tell her that he had thought Bloody Nonsense Armitage was doing them a favour, when in reality he had con trived an opportunity for a well-qualified operative to run a trained eye over the port facilities of the Soviet Navy at Sevastopol, and over the cap badge insignia of the troops in the garrison town of Simferopol?

He turned to face his Jane. He took his stranger in his arms. Over her shoulder he could see the travellinj clock – and no bloody time, because in half an hour the other girls would be back from the Bolshoi. No time to tell her. Body to body, and his head was buried in the softness of her breasts, and he ached with his love for her. He could think it out, he could work it through but it would take him an age. He had thought he knew everything about her, every mark of her mind and her body, and he knew nothing. What he thought he owned was not his. Clinging to her, holding her for the comfort.

He fell away. Her head and the silk of her hair were on his arm.

"Just a bit tired, that's a l l… "

She kissed him, wet and sweet and belonging.

"Stay safe, darling."

"What else?" She laughed at him, head back, hair falling.