Our Game

"It's not my theory; it was what the police seemed to be suggesting."

"So you don't think Checheyev's presence in Bath is of any significance?"

"I don't have an opinion in this, Marjorie; how can I have? Larry and Checheyev were close. I know that. They had a mutual admiration society going. I know that. Whether they still have is quite another question." I saw my chance and took it. "I don't even know when Checheyev's visits to Bath are supposed to have taken place."

But she refused to take the bait. "You don't think it possible Larry and Checheyev have entered into a business arrangement, for instance? Of any kind? Never mind what?"

Wanting someone to share my irritation, I again glanced at Barney, but he was playing possum.

"No. Absolutely not," I said. "As I told the police, several times." And I added, "Out of the question."

"Why?"

I did not like being made to repeat myself. "Because Larry never gave a hoot about money and had absolutely no head for business. He called his Office pay his Judas money. He felt bad taking it. He felt—"

"And Checheyev?"

I was getting sick of her interrupting me too. "Checheyev what?"

"Did he have a business head?"

"Absolutely not. He rejected it. Capitalism ... profit ... money as motive—he hated all of it."

"You mean he was above it?"

"Below it. Whatever."

"Too truthful? Too honest? You accept the Larry view of him?"

"It's the pride of the gortsy that money buys nothing in the mountains. Greed makes a man stupid, they say." I was quoting Larry again. "Manhood and honour are all that count. It's probably romantic nonsense, but that was the line he pushed with Larry, and Larry was duly impressed by it." I'd had enough. "I'm not a feature in this, Marjorie. Larry's retired, so's Checheyev, so am I. I thought you should know that Checheyev had visited Larry in Bath and that Larry had disappeared. If you didn't know already. Why is anybody's guess."

"But you're not anybody, are you? You're the expert on the Larry-Checheyev relationship—whether you're retired or not."

"The only experts on that relationship are Larry and Checheyev."

"But didn't you invent it? Control it? Isn't that what you've been doing all these years?"

"Twenty-odd years ago I engineered a relationship between Larry and the KGB head resident of the day. Under my guidance Larry trailed his coat at him, played hard to get, finally said yes, I'll spy for Moscow."

"Go on."

I was going on anyway. I didn't know why she was goading me, and I wasn't sure she knew. But if she wanted a lecture on Larry's case history, she could have it. "First came Brod. After Brod we had Miklov, then Kransky, then Sherpov, then Mislanski, finally Checheyev, and Zorin as boss but Checheyev as Larry's handler. Larry found his own way to each of them. Double agents are chameleons. Good doubles don't act their parts, they live them. They are them. When Larry was with Tim, he was with Tim. When he was with his Soviet controller, he was with his Soviet controller whether I liked it or not. My job was to make sure we were getting the best end of the deal."

"And you were confident that we were."

"In Larry's case, yes, I was."

"And you still are."

"In my retirement, recalling events in tranquility, yes, I still am. With doubles you assume a certain wastage of loyalty. The opposition is always more attractive to them than the home side. That's their nature. They're constant rebels. Larry was a rebel too. But he was our rebel."

"So Larry and his Russian case officers could have got up to anything they liked and you wouldn't have been the wiser."

"Not so."

"Why not?"

"We had collateral."

"From?"

"Other live sources. Audio surveillance. The flat of an intermediary. A restaurant we'd bugged. A car we'd nobbled. Whenever we got microphone coverage, it tallied stitch by stitch with Larry's version. We couldn't fault him. All this stuff's on file, you know."

She gave me a flinty smile and resumed her study of her hands. The momentum seemed to have gone out of her. It occurred to me that she was tired and that it was unfair of me to imagine she could read twenty years' worth of files in one weekend of crisis. She took a breath.

"You refer in one of your last reports to Larry's 'remarkable affinity' with Checheyev. Would that include areas you might not know about?"

"If I didn't know about them, how can I answer your question?"

"What did it include?"