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He learned about the Heaviside Layer, an atmospheric blanket of ionized air molecules that would reflect radio waves and let them "skip" across great distances; the layer was only about sixty miles above the earth during the day, with the sun pressure forcing it down, but at night it sprang up to a height of two hundred miles and split into two layers, and though transmission was clearer and stronger at night, signals could sometimes get caught between the layers and bounce along for thousands of miles before finally escaping to earth. The skipping effect was necessary for long-distance transmission, but Hale's instructors spoke of the Heaviside Layer with a sort of irritated respect, for its capricious billows and varying height often scattered signals and caused fading in the reception. Illicit spy broadcasts were referred to as les parasites, flickering covertly between the bandwidths of official transmissions, but sometimes his instructors seemed to use the French term for the knots of turbulent activity in the nighttime Heaviside Layer.>"I follow you. I'm not a longtime Soviet plant, obviously, since they'd know that wasn't so. Mossad? Have I secretly been a Zionist all along?"
"I'm afraid you're just a crook, Andrew. Our new, unimpeachable evidence indicates that when you were in Kuwait from '46 to early '48, you were involved in betraying British Petroleum interests in the Persian Gulf by selling strategic secrets to the Americans at Standard Oil, and a couple of murdered Bedouin guides now appear to be on your conscience; and you used your cover post as Passport Control Officer to sell forged British passports to fugitive Nazi war criminals stranded in Oman. Oh yes, and you took money from a now deceased Russian illegal to break a couple of Soviet agents out of a Turk prison and smuggle them safely back across the Soviet border; the illegal kept no records, it can't be disproved. There's a good deal more, you'll be briefed in Kuwait."
Hale was frowning as he listened to this, his lips pressed tightly together. "Right," he said finally. So much for all the good work I did do there, he thought. This will be the version preserved in the Registry Archive files. "The murdered Bedu," he said, correcting Theodora's pronunciation, "probably aren't a helpful element, but very well. None of that old stuff will get me into the papers, though."
"No, something immediate is doing that. You remember Claude Cassagnac, the MI5 consultant."
"Yes," said Hale in a tight voice. "Fondly." It occurred to him that this would be the version she would get. Even if he managed to find her in Beirut, he could hardly tell her the true story and thus compromise this operation-Macmillan had personally cleared it, and it was Hale's unlooked-for chance to finally right the big defeat of his espionage career, and in some sense justify the deaths of the men he had commanded on Ararat.
Across the table, Theodora's withered old face was expressionless, his eyes blank as slate. "Cassagnac called you on the telephone at your college this morning, it appears, and gave you an old SOE code proposing a meeting; that covers any clumsiness you might have exhibited during the call, you see. The two of you met at your house in Weybridge about two hours ago, and he told you that all of these old crimes of yours had been discovered; he wanted you to accompany him back to Century House-that's the SIS headquarters now, we're not in Broadway anymore-and give yourself up, so that you could at least avoid a publicized arrest. Among the elect there will be hints that he wanted you to participate in this Philby affair as an advisor, that you might have been able to ask for immunity in exchange for telling us everything about Philby and Ararat in '48. You resisted Cassagnac."
"What-have-you-done?" whispered Hale. "Is he dead?"
"He's been shot," snapped Theodora, "with a gun of yours, in your house, I can tell you that. And-"
"That's a .45! Dum-dum bullets! And he must be as old as you are!"
"And!" Theodora repeated. Again he looked at his watch, raising his frail fist to do it. "And right about now, a minute and a half ago, technically, you are shooting a policeman not two miles from here, with the same gun, just to help cover it in case you were recognized on the train or in the park. I don't know if he's dead either."
Hale's mouth was open.
The old man slumped in his chair and flapped a pale hand at Hale. "Ah, lad, run you now to your old haunts in Kuwait, as you would if you were on the run from SIS-which you are, absolutely; by nightfall you'll be on the Middle Eastern watch list for forcible detainment, and Dick White is able to prove he wasn't even in London today. Run to the ambiguous leave-behind networks and spare identities you must certainly have established during your posting there, like every other agent-runner. The Russians will find you, you'll be approached by a recruiter; and we-want you to be persuaded by them."
This is the version she will get, Hale thought again. He remembered Claude Cassagnac telling the two of them, in a vaulted cellar near the Seine in 1941, It is the indispensable agents who are always the first to be purged...Claude, Claude! thought Hale now. Did you finally get trapped into becoming indispensable?
Hale took a deep breath and let it out. "If I'm to sell myself to them as a-a koti-ahngleeyski, a turncoat, they'll expect me to give them my whole story-our Ararat plans, everything. What script do you want me to give them?"
Theodora stared at him dubiously. "I won't tell you now." After a full second he gave a decisive nod. "It would be redundant-you'll be told that in Kuwait, that much certainly, even if the briefing falls through and our agent has to write it on his forehead and walk past you on the street. I warn you that you won't like it; you'll probably doubt its validity and want confirmation, which won't be possible. So this right now, what I'm saying, is your confirmation-in-advance. If you hate it, it's the genuine instructions, have you got that?"
Hale felt sick. Good God, he thought. Who or what on earth does he want me to betray?
"Have you got that?" Theodora repeated.
No confirmation possible, Hale thought; if it's abominable, it's genuine. And whatever it is, it's so abominable that he's evidently afraid I'll bolt if I learn it right now. "Yes," he said hoarsely.
"Very good. A lorry out front will take you to a stolen car in Hammersmith. There's a great deal of money in the glove box, and an airline ticket out of Heathrow, and a passport, in the name of Andrew Hale; that's unhandy, I know, but it's a nice indication of haste. Inside the passport is a Kuwait address, and a name; go there untraceably to hear all the details of this and to pick up your equipment. And when you get back-probably by the end of the month!-we'll set you up with a complete new identity anywhere you like, and you can even have the OBE I promised you once. Hell, you're old enough for a Commander of the British Empire now."
Hale got shakily to his feet, not sure he was being dismissed. He wanted to find out one more thing here, first. It had to do with the wild birds that subsisted on the suet hung from his oak tree, as much as anything.
"Put the moustache and glasses on again," said Theodora. "You can toss them when you're in the lorry-your picture won't be released to the press until after your flight has taken off."
"Chipping Campden," said Hale, mumbling as he pressed the wilted moustache back onto his upper lip.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Chipping Campden, in the Cotswolds, is where I'd like to retire. I haven't been there since I was thirteen-I'm forty now. Nobody'd recognize me, and I presume I'll have been reported dead somewhere."
Theodora stared at him, and Hale wondered if he had asked for too much to be able to detect anything valuable in the old man's response.
"No, Andrew," Theodora said. "You're going to be in the papers, remember? Reporters will be all over that place. Remote England, if it's to be England at all, right?"
"I suppose." He had indeed overplayed it; but if Theodora had agreed to so insecure a proposal, Hale would have been sure the old man intended to have him killed at the end of this operation. Now he could only speculate.
The old euphemisms echoed in his head: resolve his status, establish the truth about him, give him the truth. He recalled a dinner in Berlin in '45 at which Philby himself had said, of an erratic agent who seemed bound for resolution, "There is truth to be found on the unknown shore, and many will find what few would seek."
She had been at that dinner too, as an agent of the French Direction Generale des Services Speciaux, the headquarters of which had still been in Algiers then, so recently had the war ended; and of course she had loved Claude Cassagnac too.
In Broadway he had heard rumors that the 1935 motorcycle crash that had killed T. E. Lawrence had not been an accident-a black van had been seen passing him just before his crash, and witnesses were told not to refer to it in the inquest. Lawrence had supposedly found some ancient Biblical scrolls in a cave south of Jericho in 1918, by the Dead Sea, and been an unreliable agent ever since deciphering the primitive Hebrew texts; Knew too much, had been the laconic verdict. Makes a man unpredictable.
