The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [73]
‘Bob Wilkinson was Head of Station in Berlin when the Wall came down. He’d been operating in East Germany for the best part of a decade. Ulvert was one of his pseudonyms. In 1992, the FSB tried to assassinate him in London. The attempt failed, but he consequently emigrated to New Zealand, to get as far away from his old life as possible.’
‘Why did the FSB want him dead?’
‘Because of his relationship with ATTILA.’ Tanya searched Brennan’s face as she listened, still sensing that he was holding something back. ‘The Russians were embarrassed that they had been duped for so long, so they set about bumping off anybody who had been associated with Crane.’
‘Anybody? Doesn’t that constitute quite a large number of people? Crane was operational for almost fifty years.’
Brennan took her point but could not, for reasons which he hoped she would never be aware, express himself more candidly.
‘The victims tended to be senior figures who had been directly involved with Crane in the 1980s,’ he said, fudging it. ‘A KGB officer named Fyodor Tretiak, for example, had been ATTILA’s handler in East Germany from ’84 onwards. Tretiak was assassinated while walking back to his apartment in St Petersburg in 1992. Bob Wilkinson had a bomb attached to his car in Fulham and only survived because he checked his vehicles religiously as a hangover from Northern Ireland. Left shortly afterwards for Auckland, under rather a cloud, if I’m honest. Hasn’t spoken to anybody in the Service for over ten years and not likely to.’
‘What sort of cloud?’
Brennan mumbled his answer, to the extent that it was almost carried off on the wind. Tanya had to take a step towards him and wondered why he was still being so obtuse. She looked down and saw that one of his immaculate brogues was scuffed, as if somebody had scrubbed the toe with a wire brush.
‘Bob felt that we hadn’t done enough to protect him.’ Brennan seemed genuinely contrite as he recalled the incident. ‘He felt that the measures extended to ensure the safety of Edward Crane might also have been extended to him.’
‘What kind of measures?’
A smile briefly flickered on Brennan’s face as he recalled the heyday of Douglas Henderson. ‘I arranged for Eddie to die of natural causes.’
It had always been Tanya’s deepest fear that she had signed up for a organization which would stoop to murder as easily as it stooped to deceit. But she had misinterpreted what Brennan was telling her. He allayed her fears with a gesture of apology.
‘No, no. There’s no need to be alarmed.’ Tanya nodded, but she had seldom felt more uncomfortable in the five years that she had been working for SIS. ‘Eddie was already in his mid seventies. As you say, he’d given decades of loyal service. He deserved a peaceful retirement, so I had him brought into a hospital in Paddington, crossed a few palms with enough silver and, lo and behold, he died of pancreatic cancer in February 1992.’
‘Did one of the palms you crossed go by the name of Meisner?’
Brennan hesitated for a fraction of a second.
‘Meisner, yes.’ Tanya was studying him intently. What was he holding back? ‘He was the senior doctor on duty the night Crane was brought into the hospital. How did you find out about him?’
‘Gaddis mentioned his name on one of the surveillance tapes.’ It was strange, but at this moment she felt a greater loyalty towards Gaddis than she did towards her own side. Tanya knew that she was being lied to, and it irritated her intensely. ‘He’s obviously going to Berlin to meet him.’
‘You might try to keep an eye on him there,’ Brennan suggested.
‘It’s already organized.’ Tanya enjoyed the look of surprise on Brennan’s face. ‘I’m flying out tomorrow. There’ll be a surveillance team in place.’
It was a coup, no question. Brennan nodded approvingly. Tanya saw this and seized the opportunity to push for more information.
‘So what about Crane?’ she asked.
‘What about him?’
‘Where is he now? Where did he go to? What happened to him after the hospital?’
Brennan looked back towards the door. It was the question to which everybody wanted