The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [57]
‘Came to us.’ ‘Came to us.’ Why would Neame put himself at the centre of that process?
‘But Golitsin came over in ’61,’ Gaddis replied. ‘Eddie kept going for another twenty-five years. Didn’t the Soviets smell a rat when, one by one, their agents in the West started being exposed? Lonsdale? Vassell? Blake? Didn’t they think it was a little fortuitous that ATTILA was still out there, alive and well and working for Mother Russia?’
Neame remained impassive.
‘My dear boy, I think you’d be better off directing these sorts of questions at a member of the KGB. I have no idea what they were thinking. I should imagine the Soviets had thousands of agents all over the world. Just because one or two of them were exposed in Europe doesn’t mean they were going to doubt a source who had been working for them since before the war.’
‘Then why has Crane’s story never come out? If the Russians still think ATTILA was one of theirs, they’d love to have rubbed London’s nose in it by now.’
‘Ah.’ Neame seemed pleased that Gaddis had joined the dots. ‘My own particular theory is that Moscow discovered ATTILA was a double agent shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union.’
‘As late as ’91? What makes you say that?’
‘Think about it, Sam. Think about the date.’
It took a few seconds for Gaddis to make the connection.
‘St Mary’s. MI6 faked Eddie’s death in early 1992.’
‘Precisely. Because they were worried that the KGB was going to come after him.’
‘Eddie told you that?’
‘Of course Eddie told me that. When your best friend informs you that MI6 are planning to fake his death, you tend to ask why. Eddie said that ATTILA had been blown in Moscow and that anybody associated with him was being systematically bumped off.’
Gaddis acknowledged the logic of this, but found a flaw in what Neame was saying.
‘OK, but by the same token, why haven’t the British told their end of the story? As you said, ATTILA was one of the great intelligence coups of the Cold War. Why didn’t London take the opportunity to humiliate Moscow?’
‘Because of the war years. Edward Crane had been a Soviet agent. You don’t go making that sort of thing public, especially after the Blunt fiasco. Besides, this was a new era in Anglo-Russian relations. Why rock the boat? SIS likes to keep its secrets. It’s in the spying game, not the PR business. What Eddie always wanted to know was who blew his cover. How did the Russians eventually find out?’
Gaddis thought for a moment that Neame expected him to know the answer, but saw that he was going to continue speaking.
‘This was as far as I came with your friend, Miss Berg,’ he said. He caught Gaddis’s eye and appeared to be genuinely troubled by her loss. ‘She was trying to find out the answer to that question when she died.’
‘And did she?’
‘She was your friend, Sam. You tell me.’
There was a long silence. Gaddis felt that Neame was still holding something back.
‘Tom?’
‘Yes?’
‘You look like you want to tell me something. Is it about Charlotte?’
Neame looked up at the bar then down to his shaking, mottled hands. The whites of his eyes were glassy, free-floating, as if he was struggling to focus. ‘There is a woman in Moscow by the name of Ludmilla Tretiak. She is the widow of ATTILA’S third and final KGB handler, Fyodor Tretiak. I had suggested to Charlotte that she try to find her.’
‘And did she?’
Neame looked back at the bar. ‘I have no idea. Ludmilla was a lead that Eddie had wanted to follow before he was forced underground. All I did was to warn Charlotte about her.’
‘Why?’
‘Tretiak was murdered in St Petersburg in 1992.’
‘The same year that Eddie met his maker at St Mary’s.’
‘Precisely. That always struck me as too much of a coincidence. If Ludmilla suspects that her husband was killed by the KGB, she might want to talk to somebody about it. Which means that there are bound to be people watching her. Even now.’ Neame cautioned Gaddis with a resigned smile. ‘If you seek out her out, Sam, take the appropriate precautions. That’s all I’m saying. Make sure