The Moroccan Girl by Charles Cumming

Author:Charles Cumming
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

25

Carradine knew what Bartok was going to say before she said it. He let her deliver the coup de grâce.

“Robert Mantis is not a British spy.”

“I see.”

“Robert Mantis does not work for the Service.”

An awful, hollow feeling of shame opened up inside him. It was the secret doubt that had always nagged at him, but he had never allowed himself to face it head-on. He had wanted Mantis to be genuine. He had wanted to be a latter-day Maugham or Greene, to live as his father had lived and to experience the things he had known. Carradine had taken a business card, a copy of the Official Secrets Act and a photo ID as irrefutable proof that Robert Mantis was a British intelligence officer. He had been comprehensively duped.

“Who does he work for, then? Or is he just a conman? A fantasist?”

Bartok asked if he kept any alcohol in the room. Carradine had bought some Johnnie Walker at duty-free in Gatwick; the bottle was in his suitcase. He took it out, handed it to her and fetched two glasses from the bathroom, briefly staring at his own reflection in the mirror as though to remind himself what a fool he had been. She poured him two inches neat and encouraged him to join her in a toast.

“To honest men and women,” she said, clinking his glass.

“To honest men and women.”

Carradine was touched that she was trying to raise his spirits, but he was in shock. He tracked back to the long conversation in Lisson Grove. He wanted to work out why Mantis had made the last-minute switch to the Sheraton. He did not understand why he had set up the meeting with Oubakir in Casablanca. What was it all for? He could not make sense of any of it.

“I can explain.” Bartok sipped the whiskey and held it in her mouth, lips pursed, as though reading his mind. She swallowed it, letting out a sigh of pleasure. “Robert’s real name is Stephen Graham. He was born in London, educated at private schools in England. He went to Cambridge, married a French schoolteacher who left him for someone else.”

“He told me he was still married.”

“He told you a lot of things that were not true.” Carradine acknowledged the remark with a defeated shake of the head. “His father was an academic. From Scotland. You call this a Scotsman?”

“A Scotsman, yes.”

“Gordon Graham. His wife was Russian. This is the key. Yulia. I do not remember the patronymic. She came to England in the 1960s after Stephen’s father met her in Moscow on an academic visit behind the Iron Curtain.”

“So she defected?”

Bartok held more of the whiskey in her mouth, savoring it, indicating with quick eyes that Carradine was being impatient.

“Wait,” she said. “Whether she defected or not is not important. I believe they fell in love and she was allowed to emigrate. Stephen Graham has worked for Moscow for his entire professional career.”

Carradine slumped forward, shaking his head. The breath went out of him.

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