The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [109]
‘I’ll go to the bar,’ Gaddis told him. ‘How do you take it?’
It took ten long minutes to make his way through the crowds, to order two Jamesons on ice and to return to the table. He found Wilkinson flicking through the Yeltsin book.
‘Any good?’
‘Not particularly.’ Gaddis sat down and put the whisky in front of him. ‘Cuttings job.’
There was music playing, lounge jazz, but set at a volume which made conversation relatively straightforward. They would not need to raise their voices above the music and the babble of the crowd. After a brief exchange about the wedding, Wilkinson asked Gaddis for what he called ‘some background’ on his relationship with Katya. His manner was still unexpectedly amiable and co-operative and Gaddis interpreted the question as a broader request to lay out everything he knew concerning ATTILA. To that end, he set about telling the entire story of his involvement with Crane, including Charlotte’s initial research and sudden death, the murders of Calvin Somers and Benedict Meisner, as well as the revelation that Tanya Acocella was an MI6 officer who had masqueraded as an archivist at Kew. Throughout this long process, Wilkinson interjected only rarely, either to clarify a detail or to ask for a phrase to be repeated on account of a sudden noise in the bar. He did not appear to be unduly surprised by anything Gaddis was telling him and remained, for the most part, inscrutable in his reactions. When, for example, Gaddis related what had happened at Meisner’s apartment in Berlin, he merely nodded sagely and muttered ‘I see’ while staring at the ice in his glass. It was increasingly apparent to Gaddis that he was being sized up, rather in the way that a father takes his time to consider the strengths and weaknesses of a prospective son-in-law. Clearly Wilkinson had yet to decide whether or not to divulge the wealth of information he possessed to a writer he did not know or trust. As a consequence, he had about him the slightly overbearing self-confidence of a man who knows that he can walk out on a situation at any moment, at no personal cost.
‘So you subsequently discovered that Neame and Crane were the same man?’
Wilkinson’s question had no obvious tone of condescension, but the implication was clear: Gaddis, a supposedly bright, intelligent academic, had been hoodwinked by an old-age pensioner.
‘What can I tell you?’ he replied, holding his hands up in a gesture of mock surrender. He had decided that the most sensible strategy was to be as candid and as honest as possible. There was no point in trying to finesse a man of Wilkinson’s experience. ‘I was duped by a master liar. My only consolation is that I probably wasn’t the first person to fall for Crane’s silver tongue.’
‘No,’ Wilkinson replied steadily. ‘You certainly weren’t. Nor, I imagine, will you be the last.’ He took a sip of his drink and appeared to catch the eye of a blonde American woman who was standing close to their table. ‘But it makes absolute sense that Eddie would have wanted to get his story out in that way. After all, he’s spent his life being two people.’
It was strangely exhilarating to hear Wilkinson speak of Crane so intimately, but any hope Gaddis held that the conversation would now turn to his recollections of ATTILA were quickly snuffed out.
‘You said in your note that you think Katya was murdered.’ Wilkinson was a physically imposing man and when he stared directly into Gaddis’s eyes, Gaddis had to remind himself not to look away. ‘What is your evidence for this?’
‘A pattern of behaviour,’ he replied uncertainly. It was the first unconvincing thing that he had said all night.
‘I have to say that I disagree with you.’ There was a finality to Wilkinson’s reply which brooked no argument. ‘If the FSB had been on to Katya, they would have followed my files to your house and you’d be dead by now as well.’
‘Possibly,’ Gaddis said,