Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy

Chapter Fifteen

Mann gave Mrs Bekuv no time to say goodbye to her husband: that was all part of his scheme. We sat in Mann's little office — originally intended for the duty nurse — and heard Andrei Bekuv walk down the corridor, calling his wife's name.

Mann sat hunched over a desk in the corner, watching the dark storm-clouds come racing in from the Atlantic. The rain beat upon the windows and the morning was so dark that Mann needed the desk light in order to read. He looked at me and winked as Andrei Bekuv came back.

'Here we go,' said Mann softly.

Andrei Bekuv was silhouetted against the brightness of the corridor lighting as he opened the door and looked in on us.

'Where is my wife, Major Mann? She wasn't at breakfast, and she's not swimming. Do you know where she has gone?'

'We've moved her to Baltimore,' said Mann without looking up from the papers he held under the desk light.

'When? When was this?' said Andrei Bekuv. He was jolted, and he scowled and looked at his watch. Bekuv was a creature of habit. Breakfast at seven, coffee at ten, a light lunch at one, dinner at seven thirty, in time for him to finish his meal and be in the armchair, with hi-fi tuned, ready for the evening concert. He insisted that the supply of vitamins in his medicine cabinet be replenished without his having to ask for them, and he liked decaffeinated coffee, served demi-tasse, in the evening, with fresh cream. And he liked to know where to find his wife.

'When?' repeated Bekuv.

'Oh, some time early this morning.' Mann turned the desk clock round to see it better. There was a barometer fitted into it and Mann tapped that. 'They should be there by now. Do you want to phone her?'

'Yes,' said Bekuv.

Mann picked up the phone and went through a pantomime of asking for a number in Baltimore. He thanked someone at the other end. And then hung up. 'Seems like we can't get through to Baltimore from here.'

'Why not?'

'I didn't think to ask. Do you want me to call the operator again?'

Bekuv came into the room and sat down. 'What game are you playing now, Major Mann?'

'I might ask you the same question, Professor Bekuv,' said Mann. From the clutter of papers and objects on the desk in front of him, Mann selected a large brown envelope. It contained something lumpy. He passed the envelope to Bekuv. 'Take a look at that, for example.'

Bekuv hesitated.

'Go ahead, take a look at it.'

Bekuv handled the envelope as if it might explode. I wondered afterwards if he guessed what was inside it. If he did, he was in no hurry to see it again. Finally, he ripped the edge of the envelope far enough to slide the contents out. There was a transparent plastic evidence bag with some typewritten labels attached to it. Inside the bag there was a flick-knife.

'The police sent that over here yesterday afternoon, Professor Bekuv. It was found near the steps of the church, during a search made during the early hours of Christmas morning. You remember Christmas morning?'

'It's the one used to wound my wife,' said Bekuv. He didn't open the bag. He dropped it back into the envelope as if it might have carried traces of some fatal contagion. He tried to pass the envelope back to Mann but the major would not accept it from him.

'That's right,' said Mann.

'What's it supposed to mean?' Bekuv demanded.

'Supposed to mean?' said Mann. 'I'm glad you said supposed to mean, because there's often a world of difference between what things mean, and what they are supposed to mean. For instance,' said Mann, 'that's the knife that caused your wife's wounds. Whether she was trying to knife you with it, or preventing you knifing her with it, or whether you were both trying to cut each other, or even turn it on yourselves, I wouldn't be too sure.'

'A man assaulted us,' said Bekuv.

'Yes, sure, that's the other theory isn't it? Didn't I mention that one? Forgive me.'

Bekuv looked at his watch. Whether he was thinking about his wife arriving in Baltimore, about his ten o'clock coffee or simply indulging in displacement activity that helped him gather his wits, there was no way of telling.

Mann picked up some papers from his desk, read for a moment or two and then said, 'Those gloves your wife was wearing… a shop in Fifth Avenue sells them for twenty-eight dollars a pair and advertises them as real kid, but in fact they make them from the skin of sheep. Now, that's the kind of dishonesty I hate. How about you, Professor?'

The professor did not commit himself: he grunted.

Mann said, 'Sheepskin. To make a pair of gloves like that, the tanning process removes the epidermal layer…' Mann was reading from the paper '… to expose the corium minor or grain layer. It is the nature of this grain layer that enables a scientist to distinguish the age, sex and species of animal from which the skin originated.'

Professor Bekuv said, 'I'm not interested.'

'Hold on, Professor. I'm not through yet. It gets better. Did you know that 'the grain pattern from any piece of animal skin is as individual to that animal as a fingerprint is to one individual man?'

'What of it?'

'I'll tell you what of it,' said Mann. He put the papers back on his desk, turned to Bekuv and smiled. 'The police forensic lab took leather prints off that knife. They say it was wielded by your bride. They say her Fifth Avenue gloves left prints on that knife as clear and as evidential as if she'd used her bare hands.' Mann picked up another evidence bag that contained the gloves, and dropped it back on to the desk again. 'The police say your wife knifed herself, Professor. And they say they can prove it.'

Bekuv looked away.

'Anyway.' said Mann, breathing a sigh. 'The fact of the matter is that the investigation is closing as far as you are concerned. My people have lost interest in you — you've cost the American taxpayer too much money already. You'll be allowed to live wherever you like — within reason — but you'll have to find a place for yourself… the same goes for getting a job. No chair at N.Y.U. You will have to read the vacancies in the papers. For the time being the two of you are being kept separate but that's for your own protection. My people say that there will be more chance of your K.G.B. squads killing you if you are together. Next year, of course, the danger will have subsided a little. By then there will probably be no objection to your living under the same roof again.'

'Now wait a minute…" said Bekuv.

'Sorry it had to go this way, Professor. As your wife understood so well, this could have been a big one for us.' He smiled to show that he held no ill feelings. 'You'll be able to keep the hi-fi and the recordings and stuff of course.' He picked up papers from his desk and tapped them edge-down on the desk to tidy them.

It was only then that Bekuv seemed to become aware of my presence in the dark corner of the office. He turned to me. 'Is Miss Bancroft with my wife?' he asked.

'That's right,' I said. 'She'll be with her for a little while.'

'How long,' he said. 'I don't want my wife to be with Miss Bancroft.'

'No one tells me anything, Professor,' I said.

Mann said, 'Your wife wanted Miss Bancroft along for company.' Bekuv nodded. Mann had been making a great play of rummaging round his desk and, as Bekuv turned to leave, he suddenly produced a flimsy sheet of paper, waved it and said, 'Oh, this is something for you, Professor. It's a copy of a letter to your wife.'

He passed it to him. It was a carbon copy of a letter. There were a couple of official rubber stamps on it and a paper-clip. Bekuv took it without a word, and moved over to the window to read it by the grey morning light. He read it aloud in his careful English…

'Dear Mrs Bekuv, This is to confirm our conversation of yesterday. As promised, I have applied for the necessary documents in connection with your immigration and naturalization. You will appreciate that, although you have been admitted to the U.S.A. under the special provisions granted to certain government agencies, your continued stay and permission to take up gainful employment must remain subject to the usual procedures. Yours truly…'

'Just a lot of legal evasions and doubletalk,' pronounced Bekuv when he finished reading.

'I quite agree,' said Mann, who had invented it and typed it.

Professor Bekuv put the flimsy copy back on to Mann's desk. Bekuv had been close to the security business long enough to understand such a message.

'You're going to send us back to Russia?' said Bekuv. He walked across the room and opened the door a fraction so that there was a bar of blue fluorescent light cutting him into two halves. 'Either we do exactly as you demand, or you will send us back to them.'

Mann didn't answer but he was watching Bekuv's every move.

'This letter is just the beginning,' said Bekuv. 'It is typical of you, Major Mann. You'll let your official government departments carry out the execution for you. Then you will be able to say you had no hand in it.'

'You've got it a little bit wrong haven't you, Professor? The U.S. immigration department has no executioners on its payroll. These executions you want to make me responsible for will be carried out after you return. They'll be carried out by your little old K.G.B. comrades. Remember the K.G.B., Professor? Those wonderful people who gave you the Gulag Archipelago.'

'You have never lived in the Soviet Union, or you would know how little choice a man has. The K.G.B. ordered me to work for them — I did not volunteer to do so.'

'You're breaking my heart, Professor.'

Bekuv stood in the doorway, with the door to the corridor open just an inch or two. Perhaps he wanted to let enough light into the room to be able to see the expressions on our faces.

'Is that all you have to say, Major Mann?'

'I can't think of anything else, Professor… except maybe farewell.'

Bekuv stood in the doorway for a long time. 'I should have told you about the place in Ireland… I should have told you earlier.'

'You jerk,' said Mann. 'Three people died.'

'I was with the trade delegation in London,' said Bekuv. 'It was years ago. I had to meet a man from Dublin. I met him only once. It was at Waterloo Station in London. He had some documents. We used the copying machine on the station.'

'The maser programme?'

'We were falling behind,' said Bekuv. 'This man brought drawings and calculations.'

Mann pulled the desk light so that it shone on to a bright blue blotter. Under the light he arranged a row of photos. One of them was a passport picture of Reid-Kennedy. 'Do you want to come here a moment, Professor.' Mann's voice was precise and quiet, like that of a terrified parent coaxing a small child away from an electrified fence.

'He wasn't a scientist,' said Bekuv, 'but he understood the calculations.' He walked over to the desk and looked at the photos arranged neatly like winning tricks in a bridge game. Mann held his breath until Bekuv placed a finger on the face of Reid-Kennedy.

Mann shuffled the pictures together without commenting on Bekuv's choice. 'And the K.G.B. were running the operation?' '

'Entirely,' said Bekuv. 'When the maser programme was given a shortened development target, the K.G.B. became responsible. I'd been reporting to the K.G.B. since my time in university and I was a senior man in the maser programme. It was natural that the K.G.B. chose me. When the scientific material started to arrive from America, the K.G.B. told me that I would get it first, and that the department would not be notified.'

'That gave you a chance to shine,' said Mann.

'It was the way the K.G.B. always did such things. They wanted their own people promoted, and so they gave their own men the best of the foreign intelligence material.'

'And no one suspected? No one suspected when you went into the lab next morning and shouted eureka?'

'It would have been a reckless fool who voiced such suspicions,' said Bekuv.

'Jesus,' said Mann sourly, 'and you corrupt bastards have the nerve to criticize us.'

Bekuv didn't reply. The telephone rang. Mann picked it up and grunted into it for a minute or two before saying goodbye.

'Why don't you take a coffee break, Professor,' said Mann.

'I hope I've been of help,' said Bekuv.

'Like a good citizen,' said Mann.

'I will be happier,' Bekuv said, 'when I can read what those duties are, on the back of a U.S. passport.' He didn't smile.

'We're going to get along just fine, Professor,' said Mann.

Neither Mann nor I spoke until we heard Bekuv go into his room and switch on the radio. Even then we observed all the usual precautions for not being overheard.

'It was her all the time,' said Mann. 'It was Mrs Bekuv. We had it the wrong way round. We thought he was clamming-up.'

I said, 'Without his wife, he'll be singing his way through the hit parade by weekend.'

'Let's hope so,' said Mann. He went over to the light-switch and put the lights on. They were fluorescent tubes, and they flickered a dozen times before filling the room with light. Mann searched the drawers of his desk before finding the box of cigars his wife had 'given him at Christmas. 'Makes you wonder what kind of hold she had over him,' said Mann. He lit the cigar and offered the box to me. Already half the contents had been smoked — I declined.

'Perhaps he loves her,' I said. 'Perhaps it's one of those happy marriages you never read about.'

'I hate those two Russian bastards,' said Mann.

'Having his wife join him was the worst thing that happened to this investigation,' I said.

'Right,' agreed Mann. 'Just a little more help like that from Gerry Hart, and I fall down dead.'

I looked at my watch and said, 'If there's nothing else, I've got a call booked to London.'

Mann said, 'And it looks like another trip to Florida tomorrow.'

'Oh, no!' I said.

'That phone call just now — the C.I.A. duty-officer at Miami airport. Reid-Kennedy just got off the London direct flight. His chauffeur met him with the Rolls — looks like his old lady was expecting him.'

'What time do we leave?'

'Give the Reid-Kennedys a little time to talk together,' said Mann. 'What about the six a.m. plane tomorrow morning. Leave here at four thirty.'