Gently he guided her back to Polyakov, and why she was so sure he was Karla’s hood, a graduate of Karla’s special school.
‘It was Remembrance Day,’ she sobbed. ‘We photographed his medals, ‘course we did.’
Year one again, year one of her eight-year love affair with Aleks Polyakov. The curious thing was, she said, that she had her eye on him from the moment he arrived: ‘ “Hullo,” I thought. “I’m going to have a bit of fun with you.” ‘
Quite why she thought that she didn’t know. Perhaps it was his self-sufficiency, perhaps it was his poker walk, straight off the parade ground: ‘Tough as a button. Army written all over him.’ Or perhaps it was the way he lived: ‘He chose the one house in London those lamplighters couldn’t get within fifty yards of.’ Or perhaps it was his work: ‘There were three cultural attachés already, two of them were hoods and the only thing the third did was cart the flowers up to Highgate cemetery for poor Karl Marx.’
She was a little dazed so he walked her again, taking the whole weight of her when she stumbled. Well, she said, at first Toby Esterhase agreed to put Aleks on the A list and have his Acton lamplighters cover him for random days, twelve out of every thirty, and each time they followed him he was as pure as the driven snow.
‘My dear, you’d have thought I’d rung him up and told him: “Aleks Aleksandrovich, mind your p’s and q’s because I’m putting Tiny Toby’s dogs on you. So just live your cover and no monkey business.” ‘
He went to functions, lectures, strolled in the park, played a little tennis and short of giving sweets to the kids he couldn’t have been more respectable. Connie fought for continued coverage but it was a losing battle. The machinery ground on and Polyakov was transferred to the B list: to be topped up every six months or as resources allowed. The six-monthly top-ups produced nothing at all, and after three years he was graded Persil: investigated in depth and found to be of no intelligence interest. There was nothing Connie could do, and really she had almost begun to live with the assessment when one gorgeous November day lovely Teddy Hankie telephoned her rather breathlessly from the Laundry at Acton to say Aleks Polyakov had blown his cover and run up his true colours at last. They were splashed all over the mast-head.
‘Teddy was an old old chum. Old Circus and a perfect pet, I don’t care if he’s ninety. He’d finished for the day and was on his way home when the Soviet Ambassador’s Volga drove past going to the wreath-laying ceremony, carrying the three service attachés. Three others were following in a second car. One was Polyakov and he was wearing more medals than a Christmas tree. Teddy shot down to Whitehall with his camera and photographed them across the street. My dear everything was on our side: the weather was perfect, a bit of rain and then some lovely evening sunshine, he could have got the smile on a fly’s backside at three hundred yards. We blew up the photographs and there they were: two gallantry and four campaign. Aleks Polyakov was a war veteran and he’d never told a soul in seven years. Oh I was excited! I didn’t even need to plot the campaigns. “Toby,” I said – I rang him straight away – “You just listen to me for a moment, you Hungarian poison dwarf. This is one of the occasions when ego has finally got the better of cover. I want you to turn Aleks Aleksandrovich inside out for me, no if’s or but’s, Connie’s little hunch has come home trumps.”‘
‘And what did Toby say?’
The grey spaniel let out a dismal sigh, and dropped off to sleep again.
‘Toby?’ Connie was suddenly very lonely. ‘Oh, Tiny Toby gave me his dead fish voice and said Percy Alleline was now head of operations, didn’t he? It was Percy’s job, not his, to allocate resources. I knew straight away something was wrong but I thought it was Toby.’ She fell silent. ‘Damn fire,’ she muttered morosely. ‘You only have to turn your back and it goes out.’ She had lost interest. ‘You know the rest. Report went to Percy. “So what?” Percy says. “Polyakov used to be in the Russian army. It was a biggish army and not everybody who fought in it was Karla’s agent.” Very funny. Accused me of unscientific deduction. “Whose expression is that?” I said to him. “It’s not deduction at all,” he says, “it’s induction.” “My dear Percy, wherever have you been learning words like that, you sound just like a beastly doctor or someone.” My dear, he was cross! As a sop, Toby puts the dogs on Aleks and nothing happens. “Spike his house,” I said. “His car, everything! Rig a mugging, turn him inside out, put the listeners on him! Fake a mistaken identity, search him. Anything, but for God’s sake do something because it’s a pound to a rouble Aleks Polyakov is running an English mole!” So Percy sends for me, all lofty,’ – the brogue again – ‘ “You’re to leave Polyakov alone. You’re to put him out of your silly woman’s mind, do you understand? You and your blasted Pollywhatsisname are becoming a damned nuisance, so lay off him.” Follows it up with a rude letter. “We spoke and you agreed,” copy to head cow. I wrote “Yes repeat no” on the bottom and sent it back to him.’ She switched to her sergeant-major voice: ‘”You’re losing your sense of proportion, Connie. Time you went out into the real world.” ‘