The Enemy

CHAPTER TWENTY

I expected my report on that to bring action but I didn't expect it to bring Ogilvie. I telephoned him at three in the afternoon and he was in my room just before midnight, and four other men from the department were scattered about the hotel. Ogilvie drained me dry, and I ended up by saying, 'Henty and I did the same this evening with the man following Benson. He went back to a flat on Upplandsgatan. On checking, he proved to be a commercial attache at the Russian Embassy.'

Ogilvie was uncharacteristically nervous and indecisive. He paced the room as a tiger paces its cage, his hands clasped behind his back; then he sat in a chair with a thump. 'Damn it all to hell!' he said explosively. 'I'm in two minds about this.'

I waited, but Ogilvie did not enlarge on what was on either of his minds, so I said diffidently, 'What's the problem?'

'Look, Ashton hasn't given us what we expected when we sprung him from Russia. Oh, he's done a lot, but in a purely commercial way-not the advanced scientific thought we wanted. So why the hell should we care if he plays silly buggers in Stockholm and attracts the attention of the Russians?'

Looked at in a cold and calculating way that was a good question. Ogilvie said, 'I'd wash my hands of him-let the Russians take him-but for two things. The first is that I don't know why he ran, and the hell of it is that the answer might be quite unimportant. It's probably mere intellectual curiosity on my part, and the taxpayer shouldn't be expected to finance that. This operation is costing a packet.'

He stood up and began to pace again. 'The second thing is that I can't get that empty vault out of my mind. Why did he build it if he didn't intend to use it? Have you thought of that, Malcolm?'

'Yes, but I haven't got very far.'

Ogilvie sighed. 'Over the past months I've read and reread Ashton's file until I've become cross-eyed. I've been trying to get into the mind of the man. Did you know it was he who suggested taking over the persona of a dead English soldier?'

'No. I thought it was Cregar's idea.'

'It was Chelyuskin. As I read the file I began to see that he works by misdirection like a conjurer. Look at how he got out of Russia. I'm more and more convinced that the vault is another bit of misdirection.'

'An expensive bit,' I said.

'That wouldn't worry Ashton-he's rolling in money. If he's got something, he's got it somewhere else.'

I was exasperated. 'So why did he build the safe in the first place?'

'To tell whoever opened it that they'd reached the end of the line. That there are no secrets. As I say-misdirection.'

'It's all a bit fanciful,' I said. I was tired because it was late and I'd been working hard all day. Hammering the ice-slippery streets of Stockholm with my feet wasn't my idea of pleasure, and I was past the point of coping with Ogilvie's fantasies about Ashton. I tried to bring him to the point by saying, 'What do we do about Ashton now?' He was the boss and he had to make up his mind.

'How did the Russians get on to Ashton here?'

'How would I know?' I shrugged. 'My guess is that they got wind of a free-spending fellow countryman unknown to Moscow, so they decided to take a closer look at him. To their surprise they found he's of great interest to British Intelligence. That would make them perk up immediately.'

'Or, being the suspicious lot they are, they may have been keeping tabs on the British Embassy as a matter of routine and been alerted by the unaccustomed activity of Cutler and his mob, who're not the brightest crowd of chaps.' Ogilvie shrugged. 'I don't suppose it matters how they found out; the fact is that they have. They're on to Koslov but have not, I think, made the transition to Ashton-and certainly not to Chelyuskin.'

'That's about it. They'll never get to Chelyuskin. Who'd think of going back thirty years?'

'Their files go back further, and they'll have Chelyuskin's fingerprints. If they ever do a comparison with Koslov's prints they'll know it wasn't Chelyuskin who died in that fire. They'd be interested in that.'

'But is it likely?'

'I don't know.' He scowled in my direction but I don't think he saw me; he was looking through me. 'That Israeli passport is quite genuine,' he said. 'But stolen three years ago. The real Koslov is a Professor of Languages at the University of Tel Aviv. He's there right now, deciphering some scrolls in Aramaic.'

'Do the Israelis know about Koslov? That might be tricky.'

'I shouldn't think so,' he said absently. Then he shook his head irritatedly. 'You don't think much of my theories about Ashton, do you?'

'Not much.'

The scowl deepened. 'Neither do I,' he admitted. 'It's just one big area of uncertainty. Right. We can do one of two things. We can pull out and leave Ashton to sink or swim on his own; or we can get him out ourselves.' Ogilvie looked at me expectantly.

I said, 'That's a policy decision I'm not equipped to make. But I do have a couple of comments. First, any interest the Russians have in Ashton has been exacerbated by ourselves, and I consider we have a responsibility towards him because of that. For the rest-what I've seen of Ashton I've liked and, God willing, I'm going to marry his daughter. I have a personal reason for wanting to get him out which has nothing to do with guessing what he's been doing with his peculiar mind.'

Ogilvie nodded soberly. 'Fair enough. That leaves it up to me. If he really has something and we leave him for the Russians then I'll have made a big mistake. If we bring him out, risking an international incident because of the methods we may have to use, and he has nothing, then I'll have made a big mistake. But the first mistake would be bigger than the second, so the answer is that we bring him out. The decision is made.'