in the UK in 1992.
‘Everybody thinks the entire history of Soviet espionage was contained in Mitrokhin.’ Charlotte lit a cigarette and looked utterly content. ‘But there was a ton of stuff he didn’t get his hands on. Including this.’
Paul put his knife and fork together. Charlotte’s husband was a tall, patient man, impassive to the point of diffidence. A successful City financier – hence the seven-figure, five-bedroom house in Hampstead – he loved Charlotte not least because she allowed him to blend into the background, to maintain the privacy he had worked so hard to protect. He was so inscrutable that Sam could never work out whether Paul viewed him as a threat to their marriage or as a valued friend. It was almost a surprise when he joined the fray, saying:
‘Come on, who’s your source?’
Charlotte leaned forward into an effectively conspiratorial cloud of cigarette smoke and looked at both men in turn. Her husband was the only person she could entirely trust with the information. Gaddis was a loyal friend, of course, a man of tact and discretion, but he also possessed a streak of mischievousness which made sharing a secret like this extremely risky.
‘Stays between these four walls, OK?’ she said, so that Gaddis was aware of what it meant to her. He felt a sudden thrust of envy, because she seemed so convinced of her prize.
‘Of course. Four walls. Won’t breathe a word.’
‘Can I tell Polly?’ Paul muttered, placing his hand on Charlotte’s back as he stood to clear the plates. Polly was their arthritic black Labrador and, in the absence of any children, their most cherished companion.
‘This is serious,’ she said. ‘I’m sworn to secrecy. But it’s so mind-boggling I can’t keep my mouth shut.’
Gaddis felt a historian’s excitement at the prospect of what Charlotte had uncovered. The sixth man. Was it really possible? It was like finding Lucan. ‘Go on,’ he said.
‘Let me start at the beginning.’ Charlotte filled another glass of wine. Paul caught Sam’s eye and frowned imperceptibly. She was a functioning alcoholic: a bottle of wine at lunch, two at dinner; gins at six; a couple of tumblers of Laphroaig last thing at night. None of it ever seemed to affect her behaviour beyond a certain decibel increase in the volume of her voice. But the booze was undoubtedly beating her: it was putting years on, adding weight, black-bagging her eyes. ‘About a month ago I received a letter from a man called Thomas Neame. He claims to be the confidant of a British diplomat who spent his entire career, from World War II to the mid-1980s, working as a spy for the KGB. I made some basic enquiries, discovered that Thomas was kosher, and went to meet him.’
‘Went where?’ Paul was oblivious to the comings-and-goings of his wife’s career. Often she would disappear for weeks on end, pursuing a story in Iraq, in California, in Moscow.
‘That’s secret number one,’ Charlotte replied. ‘I can’t tell even you where Thomas Neame lives.’
‘Trust is such a wonderful thing between husband and wife,’ Gaddis muttered. ‘How old is this guy?’
‘Ninety-one.’ Charlotte gulped more wine. Her skin had darkened under the low lights of the kitchen, her mouth now ruby red with lipstick and wine. ‘But ninety-one going on seventy-five. You wouldn’t fancy taking him on in an arm wrestle. Very tough and fit, sort of war generation Scot who can smoke forty a day and still pop to the top of Ben Nevis before breakfast.’
‘Unlike someone else I know,’ said Paul pointedly, looking at the cigarette in his wife’s hand. Charlotte’s years of reporting overseas had weakened, rather than strengthened, what had once been an iron constitution. Both Paul and Gaddis worried about this but could no more have curtailed her lifestyle than they could have biked to the moon.
‘And how does Neame know that his friend was a spy?’ Gaddis asked. ‘How come it hasn’t leaked out before?’
His phone rang before Charlotte had a chance to respond. Gaddis plucked it from the pocket of his jacket and looked at the display. It was a text from Holly Levette.
NIGHTCAP …?
He was possessed by two contradictory impulses: to polish off his wine as quickly as possible and to grab a taxi south to Tite Street; or to come clean to Charlotte about his quest for a headline-grabbing story of his own.
‘Do you know this woman?’ he said, holding up the phone, as if there was a photograph of Holly on the screen. ‘Holly Levette?’
‘Rings a bell.’
‘Mother’s name was Katya. She was working on a history of the KGB when—’
‘Katya Levette!’ Charlotte reacted with mock horror. She shook her head and said: ‘Commonly regarded as the world’s worst hack.’
‘How so?’
She waved a hand in front of her face. ‘Not worth going into. Our paths crossed once or twice. She was constantly telling me how wonderful I was, but clearly looking for a quid pro quo. I think her daughter sent me an email after she died, saying how much Katya had admired something I’d written about Chechnya. Then offered me a load of old junk from her research papers.’
‘A load of old junk,’ Gaddis repeated, with a thump of despair.
‘Well, not junk.’ Charlotte looked sheepish. ‘Actually, I palmed her off on you. Told her to give them to a proper historian.’
‘Gee thanks.’
‘And now she’s been in touch?’
Gaddis nodded. ‘She didn’t mention that I was getting them second-hand. She told me how much she’d admired my Guardian article about Sergei Platov.’
Paul smothered a laugh. ‘Flattery will get you everywhere.’
Gaddis poured himself a glass of wine. Skirting around the dirty weekend in Chelsea, he explained that Holly had come to Daunt Books and offered him the KGB material on a plate.
‘A beautiful girl turns up like that, willing to hand over several hundred documents about Soviet intelligence, you don’t exactly turn a blind eye. How was I to know Katya was a fruitcake?’
‘Oh, she’s beautiful, is she?’ Charlotte asked, animated by the opportunity to tease him. ‘You never said.’
‘Holly is very beautiful.’
‘And she came to the launch? How come I didn’t meet her?’
‘Probably because you’d told her to get stuffed,’ Paul replied.
Charlotte laughed and picked at a chunk of candle wax on the table. ‘And now this girl is texting you at half-past ten at night. Is there something you’re not telling the group, Doctor Gaddis? Does Miss Levette need a bedtime story?’
Gaddis took a Camel from her open packet. ‘You’re lucky,’ he said, deliberately changing the subject. ‘Right now I’d sell my grandchildren for your Cambridge story.’ He lit the cigarette from the candle. Paul grimaced and waved a hand in front of his face, saying: ‘Christ, not you as well.’
‘The sixth man? Why?’
‘Financial
