The Dark Chronicles Read Free

don’t quite see how it relates to the situation in Nigeria.’
    ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Didn’t I mention? The nurse Slavin’s claiming recruited the double – it’s this same damned Maleva woman!’
    I stared at him uncomprehendingly. ‘But how can that be?’ I asked. ‘I mean, if she was shot in the chest…’
    ‘I know,’ he said. ‘And it had me stumped for a bit. But SOE had a section for camouflage and make-up techniques – perhaps the Russians had similar expertise.’
    ‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘But what about her pulse? Presumably she wasn’t just lying there with her eyes closed, holding her breath.’
    Chief took another sip of liqueur. ‘That had me stumped for longer. In the end I rang Bill Merriweather and asked him how he would have done it.’ Merriweather was our man at Porton Down, the Ministry of Defence’s chemical laboratory – back in ’56, he’d developed a nerve gas to use on Nasser. It would have worked, too. ‘He told me about a discovery someone on his team made a fewyears ago. Using a very strong tranquillizer called haloperidol, they found a way to stimulate what he referred to as “a temporary state of death”. The Russians have apparently been using the stuff on uncooperative prisoners for years, but if it’s administered correctly, it can induce catalepsy, which looks like death even to a trained eye. Bill thought there might be other drugs that could produce the same effect.’
    ‘I see,’ I said, although it all sounded a little fantastic. ‘But I don’t understand why you think this is the same woman Slavin is referring to. He doesn’t mention what name she was going under in 1945…’ I picked up the folder again and found the place on the page. ‘“During and after the war, Irina Grigorieva, currently the assistant third secretary at the embassy here in Lagos, worked as a nurse in the British Zone of Germany. There she fell in love with a British officer, according to her the one true love of her life. She succeeded in recruiting this man into the NKVD…” It doesn’t say which hospital she worked at, and there must have been dozens in the Zone. Lagos Station’s photograph of her is also a little blurred – what makes you so sure she’s this Maleva?’
    ‘Instinct,’ he said. ‘Instinct and experience. I’ve spent half the afternoon examining her photograph – I can’t be one hundred per cent certain it’s her until I check its counterpart in Registry tomorrow morning, but I’m fairly close to that. It has to be her.’
    He was looking at me expectantly. And that was when I saw what had been staring me in the face since he had answered the door. Why he’d called me out here tonight instead of leaving it until tomorrow morning. Why he was drinking more than usual. And why I had to act now.
    ‘You needn’t worry, sir,’ I said.
    His broad face reddened immediately, and I knew I’d hit the mark. ‘Worry? What makes you think I should do that?’
    ‘You’re quite right about the interview,’ I said. ‘Whoever translated it got it wrong. In the original Russian, Slavin quite clearly states that the double was recruited while involved in some sort ofblack operation in Germany at the end of the war. It sounds like he might have been part of Father’s junket and become entangled with this woman. Did Father give you any idea how many people he had out there with him, if any?’
    Chief shook his head. ‘He didn’t tell me anything at all about the operation – just that it was vital it continued.’
    ‘All right. Still, the fact that you were openly working at British headquarters clearly rules you out as the double. I’ll explain the whole thing to Henry as soon as he gets here. When was it you said he was coming over, again?’
    ‘Henry? Nine.’
    I glanced at my watch. It had just gone half eight. Pritchard might even be early, knowing him.
    Chief was taking a congratulatory draught of Becherovka: he was in the clear now. He must have