The Defector Read Online Free PDF Page A

intrigued him. Over the last five months he had grown very close to her. And very aware of her as a woman, instead of an opponent trying to win him over to the West. Thinking about her diverted his mind; he dreaded the night hours when the issues of his life confronted him, and he was defenceless against his own doubts. When he left Russia it had seemed so clear in his mind. He had left his homeland and his family because the death of his friend Jacob Belezky had broken his heart and the ties of loyalty to his own political system. As Davina had reminded him, he had lost faith in the Soviet system and his part in maintaining it. Jacob’s death was a culmination of doubt and revulsion which had been eroding his ambitions and poisoning his life for the last four years. He had used his power to arrange his own escape; the months preceding his trip to London had been endurable because he saw an end in sight. But he had been one of the best Intelligence officers in the complex hierarchy of the KGB. He wasn’t going to give his old enemies what they wanted until he had time to plan ahead for himself and his family. His family were the bargaining-counter that he intended to exchange for the information Brigadier White was waiting for. Not a second-rate network in Norway or a few spies scattered in the outer circles of NATO; they had merely bought him time to think. But the detailed plans for Soviet operations against the oil kingdoms of the Middle East. The longer he kept the Brigadier and his people waiting, the stronger his position became. Yet now he wondered whether it was a’ position that he really wanted. Life in the capitalist West:
    plastic surgery, an assured income for life, a manufactured identity among strangers, a home in a country so different from his own. He could still go back. The propaganda value of his return in disillusionment from the West would balance out the trivial information he had given away. The British wouldn’t murder him or keep him if he declared his intention to return. They didn’t operate like that. They even allowed their own traitors to escape. Unless he was a willing collaborator, he was useless to White’s Intelligence Service. He finished the cigarette, got into bed and switched off the light. He lay in the darkness, thinking. He was no longer sure of his own motives. Longing for Russia plagued him, uncertainty about his wife and daughter gave rise to paranoid suspicions that they were dead or arrested, and the news was being kept from him. If it hadn’t been for the challenge of Davina Graham he might already have decided to go back long before the spring came. He settled down to sleep, but his mind roamed restlessly. He hadn’t slept well for some weeks. The luminous dial on his watch showed a few minutes before three, when he drifted into an uneasy doze, and he woke just after dawn. He drew back the curtains to watch the sun rise, and opened his window to the joyously singing birds. The sound made him heavy and sad. Another day walking with her through the grounds. Eating lunch, talking, reading the English newspapers. The evening creeping over him like a shroud. He was dressed and pacing the garden in the dew, when Davina looked out of her bedroom window and saw him. She put a call through to the Brigadier at his private number, and woke him an hour before his breakfast. He was irritable and uncooperative.
    “You told me this yesterday if you’re worried I’ll send someone down.”
    “I am worried,” she said.
    “I want to try an experiment. He needs to get away from here: he’s going crazy shut up with me all the time. As I told you, last night he was talking about going home. And I don’t think it was a bluff. Will you give me permission to take him home for the weekend?”
    “What? Good God, Miss. Graham, what an extraordinary idea! Why should that amuse him?”
    “Because he needs freedom,” she said.
    “He knows nothing about life in England. He feels lonely and