A View from the Square

  A View from the Square

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  The General Povin trilogy

  About the Author

  Also by John Trenhaile

  Copyright

  Cover

  Table of Contents

  Start of Content

  For Francis, my friend, with love

  To live a life is not so simple as crossing a field.

  Russian proverb

  Chapter 1

  Gerald Gilchrist came out of the Brasserie Monopole, buttoning his coat collar against the wind, and glanced quickly up and down the street for a taxi. He was late. In the poky little annexe off the Rue Théodore, Harding, his boss, would already be looking at the clock and wondering where the hell he’d got to. How long before he resorted to amber procedures? Gilchrist couldn’t remember. Stung by the thought he began to walk rapidly in the direction of the lake, every so often looking over his shoulder in search of a cab. The weather was against him. He looked in vain.

  While he was at lunch it had begun to snow, so that by the time he reached the quai the soles of his shoes were saturated with slush and his feet were starting to go numb. No point in a taxi now; a few minutes’ brisk walk would bring him out behind the cathedral and from there it was only a stone’s throw to the office.

  But ahead of him the bridge was blocked. Motorcycle police had sealed off both the carriageway and the pavement, and a large crowd was already gathering. Gilchrist swore and looked at his watch. Harding would be seething now. Nothing for it, though. Over the past few days the inhabitants of Geneva had learned to live with street blockades.

  He wandered across the quai so as to distance himself from the crowd and stared out over Lac Leman. Flat, grey… featureless. Like his future.

  In the year after Cambridge they had said, Come and work for us. Finish your training as an accountant, the languages are fine but we like our people to have additional skills, something extra, then… Then Geneva. First posting. In the grey, snow-flecked light of mid-afternoon the memory of the relief he had felt seemed grotesquely unreal. Not Moscow, not Jiddah, not, oh thank God, praise Allah, Tehran…

  Switzerland. A state of mind, isn’t that what somebody had called it? For Gerald Gilchrist it was synonymous with disillusionment, long-term depression, ennui.

  He turned away from the lake to face the bridge. The first car in the convoy cruised slowly across the Rhône, a small red and gold pennon fluttering over its bonnet. Somewhere behind a siren howled briefly and was silenced. Russians. Blinds across the rear windows. That meant the Deputy Prime Minister himself, probably Beletsky as well – the elderly general from the Ministry was rumoured to be on his way up, his years of SALT experience paying off at last. Gilchrist glanced at his watch. Two forty-three. Four-car motorcade, Soviet Deputy Prime Minister and entourage, travelling north-west, probably from or to a plenary session of the conference, to or from the mission, with its high wire fence and white sentry cabin in the woods. Perm any two. That should make them sit up in London. That’d shake them.

  The footway was open again, the crowd dispersed, but inexplicably Gilchrist’s sense of urgency was gone. Even the thought of Harding implementing amber procedures failed to lift his mood. He turned back to the lake, placed his arms on the wall in front of him, and gazed down at the restless, grimy water. Snow was trickling into his collar, his feet had turned to stone, he was late past all excusing, and suddenly he didn’t care about any of it. He didn’t give a fuck.

  He became aware of a presence near by. Another man had come to stand against the wall, hands folded on the parapet, eyes fixed on the water. If he was conscious of Gilchrist he did not show it, but continued to stare downwards as though intent on fathoming the depths of the murky lake. Something about his profile disconcerted the young Englishman. The ears were long and pointed, like a devil’s. Instinctively he began to detail what he could see of the man’s face… rough, tanned skin, age early sixties, grey hair streaked with white, eyes… impossible to tell. Gilchrist widened his sphere of observation. Expensive camelhair overcoat, kid gloves, no hat. Something made him look over his shoulder and see a BMW 735i parked (illegally) by the kerb. The back door was open, revealing a slice of the comfortable interior and the lower portion of a woman. Gilchrist couldn’t see her face. It seemed as though the man with large ears had told the chauffeur (Gilchrist belatedly noticed the chauffeur, a hard-faced man wearing a grey fedora) to stop while he took some fresh air. What a place to choose, right on the quai. But then if you were rich, and careless…

  Gilchrist straightened up abruptly and began to walk towards the Pont du Mont Blanc. He was not rich, nor were any of his colleagues in the cramped offices behind the Rue Théodore. They were supposed to be united by a common motive – love of country. Patriotism means a lot to us, they had said. Even today. Come and work for us…

  In Gilchrist’s book, patriotism meant a one room apartment in Châtelaine, a moped, a seat in an office designed for single occupancy but shared with two others, £6875 per annum, foreign residence allowance (subject to periodic review) and sundry perquisites such as the occasional lunch in the Brasserie Monopole. In Geneva his money went nowhere. Normally he could not have afforded to eat in a restaurant but this was the third day of the SALT conference of Foreign Ministers and Gilchrist, like everybody else in the annexe, had been ordered on to the streets with instructions to listen for the buzz. What buzz? he had asked. Any buzz, snapped Harding. Here’s twenty francs. I want some change, mind. You’re always complaining that I treat you like a bloody accountant. (This was true. Gilchrist did the weekly accounts and made up the yellow sheets for London Audit. No one else in the annexe was qualified to do it.) Get out on the streets for a change and do some work.

  The memory of the man with the BMW obstinately refused to fade. Gilchrist stopped and looked back. The wall stretched away, unoccupied, into the dense white drapes of snow, and the car had gone. Something about the face… He frowned, trying to recall the details which seemed so familiar. Grey hair. Early sixties. Ears…

  He quickened his pace, eager for the fuggy warmth of the annexe. The snow was coming down harder now. Harding would be livid; he ought to have been back an hour ago, and he had nothing of interest to report. All the places on his list had been crammed with journalists covering the conference, but they talked about nothing except expenses and trouble with the telex machine. Not like Tilsen. Gilchrist screwed up his face. Tilsen shared his office and was a couple of years older. Yesterday he had come back with a ‘buzz’ that Krilenko’s wife was a colonel in the Second Main Directorate of the KGB, and Harding thought enough of that to cable London Station. But then Tilsen had been fully trained, Gilchrist reminded himself. The remainder of his own training was alwa
ys promised for next month, after the vacation season, in the winter sometime… Harding was meant to take an interest in the youngsters sent out from London, find out their strengths and weaknesses, make recommendations for their future deployment. A bird’s eye view of an operational section, that’s what he was supposed to be giving Gilchrist. But Harding had favourites and Gilchrist was not among them, so he didn’t count.

  Panic.

  Suppose Harding had already contacted the Embassy? Wasn’t that the first step? Gilchrist broke into a run, heedless of the other pedestrians around him, shouldering his way to the edge of the road. He started to cross without looking. A horn sounded, very loudly and very close. He jumped back in fear, catching his heel on the kerbstone as a prelude to an ugly backwards sprawl. The crown of his skull landed on the pavement with an audible crack but no one stopped to help him. Gilchrist strove to sit up, cursing all things Swiss, while he massaged his throbbing head. His sight was muzzy. The pain was enough to make his eyes prick with tears – pain and the cold and anxiety together.

  He became aware of a car which had parked opposite the scene of his mishap. The car which had caused it in the first place. Gilchrist started to scramble up, seized with a ridiculous desire to pound on the smooth plate glass, protest, demand compensation for this unwarrantable negation of his own importance.

  And then he saw that it was a BMW 735i, the back nearside window of which was lowered so that the occupant, a man with large pointed ears and grey hair streaked with white, could look down on him…

  For what seemed like a long time they stared at each other, Gilchrist’s anger giving way to sullen resentment and then, under the cold scrutiny of the other man’s narrow eyes, irrational trepidation. The eyes were blue, Gilchrist noticed, blue and strangely penetrating, as if their owner spent much time straining to pierce thick shadows which only he could perceive. In his concussed state they seemed to glow, expand and contract to a steady rhythm.

  Then the man sat back and his lips moved; the driver’s grey fedora dipped in brief acknowledgement, the tinted window hummed upwards and the car drove off with a swish of wet snow to spatter the already soaking bottoms of Gilchrist’s trousers. To his astonishment he found he was trembling. He shook himself roughly and stared after the car for just long enough to memorise the number before once again breaking into a run.

  A few moments later he pushed through the swing doors and started to pound up the creaking stairs to the fourth floor. There was no ascenseur and the rent was reduced on that account. Because of the noise made by the stairs his prospects of evading Harding were nil. The door to the Head of Section’s office was open. Gilchrist squared his shoulders and tried to hurry past, but Harding was on the alert.

  ‘Come in here, Gilchrist.’

  Gilchrist entered, praying silently that Harding had not yet implemented the dreadful amber procedures for missing personnel. The office oppressed him at the best of times; today it seemed insufferable. Everyone else was forced to make do with stick-like modern office furniture but Harding had set out to make his room Louis Quinze. As an effect it failed dismally – an incongruous, stuffy, wasteful whim authorised by Gilchrist’s predecessor (under protest), disallowed by a furious London Audit, then reinstated on appeal to some nameless authority with whom (or so the rumour went) Harding had trained at Gosport. It was the largest room in the annexe, also the most uncomfortable.

  Despite the stuffy heat Harding wore his jacket, as always. He sat with his hands folded neatly on the blotter in front of him. The light bounced threateningly off his gold-rimmed spectacles, and his face wore that mean look of rejection which Gilchrist associated with his bank manager at home. People said Harding consciously modelled himself on the Head of the Service, but since Gilchrist had never seen Sir Richard Bryant that meant nothing to him.

  ‘It’s difficult enough to run the annexe, Gilchrist, without having my junior staff come in at all hours. No explanation to offer, hein?’

  Harding always sounded German when he used this interrogative; but then perhaps he felt it went well with his status as Head of Geneva Section.

  ‘No product either, I dare say. Hein?’

  Gilchrist said nothing. For some reason he could not concentrate.

  ‘It’s very easy for word to get round a small organisation like this, you know. “Gilchrist doesn’t toe the line and Harding doesn’t seem to care.” Hein?’

  Gilchrist said nothing. He dimly registered that so far there had been no mention of the ominous ‘procedures’, but beyond that he was scarcely aware of Harding at all.

  ‘It may not seem much to you. Taken by itself it may seem quite a little thing. But you see, Gilchrist, it goes on your quarterly register. It goes against you.’

  The mysterious, seemingly unconnected thoughts which had been swirling around inside Gilchrist’s head since his accident chose this moment to come together and form a conclusion. He looked up and saw that Harding’s lips were parted, ready to speak.

  ‘Could I look at the PB, do you think? Just for a moment.’

  This request took Harding aback. He had been warming to the theme of office efficiency, long a favourite of his, and he did not expect to be interrupted. It was on the tip of his tongue to say so, but something kept the words unspoken. The ‘PB’ was the Portraits Book, a gallery of some 30 or 40 photographs, numbered but otherwise unidentified, with which everyone in the annexe was supposed to be familiar. Even junior staff like Gilchrist were meant to look at it once a week, to keep up with any changes. It was an office joke. Harding knew that. No one had ever asked to see the Geneva PB before, not in his time.

  He deliberated a moment longer. Then he rose without a word, went to the safe in the corner of his office, unlocked it and took out the Portraits Book.

  Gilchrist quickly scanned page one, turned over and almost at once gave an exclamation. Harding leaned forward in spite of himself.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Number Seven.’ Gilchrist swivelled the book round for Harding’s benefit. ‘I saw him today. Twice.’

  There was a moment of silence so profound that Gilchrist wondered if he had inadvertently said something shocking. For a frightful second he thought that perhaps Number Seven must have died years ago, and he had just made the most monumental fool of himself… Then Harding asked in a very low voice, ‘You’re sure?’ And with a sensation of the most blissful exhilaration Gilchrist knew that it was all right, that it didn’t matter any more if he was late, and Tilsen could look to his laurels…

  ‘Quite sure.’

  He rapidly explained what had happened, not omitting the quick glimpse he had had of the woman inside the car. Harding seemed troubled. He could not quite convince himself. Gilchrist looked down and saw his fingers toy with the thick pages of the PB, curling the top corners this way and that. He looked up again to find Harding’s face very close to his own. There was doubt in his eyes, and something larger than doubt. Distrust, maybe. A reluctance to believe.

  ‘You really are certain, Gerald?’

  Gilchrist blinked at this unexpected, unprecedented use of his Christian name.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The pointed ears, the hairstyle, the eyes, everything… ‘Yes, sir.’

  It carried conviction. Harding recognised the truth. He shut the PB with a snap and returned it to the safe. ‘That’ll be all,’ he said as he resumed his seat. ‘Oh, one more thing…’

  Gilchrist, already at the door, turned back into the room. His chief was sitting at the desk writing on the one-off pad, a hand shading his eyes and supporting his head at the same time.

  ‘Don’t be late again,’ said Harding, but without rancour.

  Gilchrist escaped, thinking, not unreasonably, that he had been lucky, and that he would hear no more of this afternoon’s work. But it was not quite the end. He was dating Cheryl, the girl in charge of ciphers and cables on the floor below, and that evening, between mouthfuls of pizza and sips of red wine, she confided in him something which quite r
estored his sense of mission for the best part of a week: that just before tea time Harding had picked up the phone (‘direct scrambler, no messing about’) and asked for a priority Green line straight on to C’s desk, routed through Crowborough (‘Cheltenham not bloody good enough now’), and then spoken for a quarter of an hour.

  But not even Cheryl knew what Harding had said to Sir Richard Bryant – which was that there had been a positive but so far uncorroborated sighting of PB/7 in Geneva, with a woman, apparently unsupervised; that according to Harding’s most recent up-date key, PB/7 was General Stepan Ilyich Povin, Head of the KGB’s First Main Directorate and Chief of Foreign Intelligence; and finally that as all the circumstances of the sighting suggested the most extraordinarily suspicious, urgent and dangerous come-on, would London kindly advise?

  Chapter 2

  At the back of the darkened room a pin-point of light showed briefly and was extinguished; then the silence was broken by the harsh whisper of an electric fan. A beam lanced out, expanding, diversifying into many silver-white streaks until it reached the far wall where it formed a dull, smudgy rectangle. Shadows passed through the beam, severing its integral rays, and the smudginess slowly dissolved into high resolution colour.

  Against the burr of the fan a voice spoke from the darkness.

  ‘The Boeing E-3A Sentry, comrades. Known to the West as AWACS.’

  The voice was quiet but it compelled attention. Every eye in the room was focused on the projected image of a large grey aeroplane with a curious round disc mounted on pylons towards its tail. The voice spoke again.

  ‘Adapted from the commercial airliner called Boeing 707, the AWACS has a crew of seventeen and is powered by four Pratt & Whitney TF 33-100 A turbofans capable of developing a maximum airspeed of six hundred mph. The AWACS can remain on station at its normal operational height of forty thousand feet for twelve hours without refuelling, although it is equipped with in-flight refuelling facilities for use when necessary.’