The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [112]
‘And how did Eddie take that?’
It was the first time that Gaddis could remember referring to Crane as ‘Eddie’. He felt faintly ridiculous, like a schoolboy trying to be cool in front of one of the senior boys.
‘Not well,’ Wilkinson replied. He was shaking his head slowly, regretfully. ‘Eddie Crane was a complex animal who didn’t take too kindly to acts of betrayal. His entire life had been a delicate balancing act between East and West, a process of convincing highly intelligent people that he was somebody other than the person that he really was. I suppose, when you look at it, he had lived in fear of exposure for most of his life. Exposure during the war, exposure in the wake of Burgess and Maclean, and of course, exposure in the last, great phase of his career.’
Wilkinson stopped in mid-flow, perhaps to organize his thoughts. He soon picked up where he had left off.
‘Eddie, against his better judgement, decided to exact his revenge. Before we’d had a chance to properly evaluate Platov, to decide whether or not we wanted him to come across, Eddie went to see his KGB controller—’
Gaddis interrupted. ‘Fyodor Tretiak.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And told him that Platov was attempting to defect?’
Wilkinson nodded. It was as though they were now streaming the same information.
‘Tretiak, of course, was very low budget and deserved to have been posted to a backwater like Dresden. Rather than go to Moscow with this alarming piece of information, he confronted Platov in person and young Sergei managed to convince Tretiak that the whole thing had been a set-up. “I had no intention of defecting, Comrade Fyodor. This was a high-level influence operation on a British officer organized by Moscow Centre.” The whole thing was then forgotten. Tretiak didn’t report the matter to his superiors and Platov vanished. London, of course, was furious that Eddie had prevented us getting our hands on a KGB asset, but let him off on the grounds that he was a star. We weren’t to know that the whole Communist system was going to go tits up in less than two years anyway.’
Gaddis reached inside his jacket for a cigarette. Wilkinson saw the packet and winced.
‘Do you mind if you don’t? I know nobody in continental Europe obeys the bloody smoking ban except the law-abiding Brits, but if you feel like killing yourself, please feel free to do it out on the street.’
‘I’m fine,’ Gaddis said, replacing the packet. ‘Dozens of people in MI6 must know about this. How come it’s never leaked out?’
‘Not dozens.’ Wilkinson was scanning the review quotes on the back of the Yeltsin biography. ‘We’re not a country club. What you might call the “circle of trust” was actually very small. Apart from myself, Eddie and Brennan, the only other name in the loop was Colin McGougan, who was “C” until 1994. He’s dead now. Far as I know, nobody else had an inkling about Platov. He was small potatoes. The file was sealed and we went off in new directions.’
‘But you could finish Platov’s career at any point.’
Wilkinson reached across the table and held Gaddis’s forearm. It was like the passing of a secret from one generation to the next. ‘What do you think I’m doing now?’
‘You want me to destroy it?’
‘Precisely. I know how you feel about him. I’ve read your book.’
Gaddis knew that he was being flattered. ‘Fine. But I would also be avenging you.’
Wilkinson allowed himself a brief moment of reflection. ‘All right, yes. Platov tried to kill me, I demand some measure of vengeance. Is that childish? I handed Katya the scoop of her life and she drank it into the grave. Now I’m passing it to you.’
Gaddis had known for some time that the offer was coming. And now he had it. He had what he had been waiting for. He was the perfect conduit for the story,