The Scarlet Papers

About the AuthorMatthew Richardson studied English at Durham University and Merton College, Oxford. After a brief spell as a freelance journalist, he began working as a researcher and speechwriter in Westminster, and has also written speeches for senior figures in the private sector. He is the author of My Name is Nobody and The Insider. Matthew RichardsonTHE SCARLET PAPERS Contents PART ONE Chapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5The Scarlet Papers 1946 1946 The Target1946 The Bump1946 The American1946 Operation Hercules1946 The Cabin1946 Aunt Maria1946 Section IXPART TWO Chapter 6Chapter 7Chapter 8Chapter 9Chapter 10Chapter 11Chapter 12Chapter 13Chapter 14Chapter 15The Scarlet Papers 1964 1964 The Fourth Man1964 Moscow Rules1964 Mr Madison1964 Broadway1964 Old Friends1964 The Cambridge Spies1964 Jericho Memories1964 New College1964 Kensington1964 ExfilPART THREE Chapter 16Chapter 17Chapter 18Chapter 19Chapter 20Chapter 21Chapter 22Chapter 23Chapter 24Chapter 25Chapter 26Chapter 27The Scarlet Papers 1992 1992 The Archivist1992 Mr Mitrokhin, I Presume1992 The New Chief1992 Blackheath1992 Professor Hegel1992 The Military Man1992 The Centre Cannot Hold1992 The Cousins1992 The Garden Meeting1992 Survival1992 The End1992 Fallen AngelPART FOUR Chapter 28Chapter 29Chapter 30Chapter 31Chapter 32Chapter 33Chapter 34Chapter 35Chapter 36Chapter 37Chapter 38Chapter 39Chapter 40Chapter 41Chapter 42Chapter 43Chapter 44Chapter 45Chapter 46The Scarlet Papers 2010 2010 The Return2010 Robert2010 Carlton Gardens2010 Vienna2010 Caspar2010 The Walk2010 Spy Games2010 The Fort2010–present The WatchersPART FIVE: One Year Later Chapter 47Chapter 48Chapter 49Chapter 50Chapter 51Chapter 52Chapter 53Chapter 54Chapter 55Chapter 56Chapter 57Chapter 58Chapter 59Chapter 60Acknowledgements ‘Like one Who having into truth, by telling of it, Made such a sinner of his memory, To credit his own lie’ William Shakespeare, The Tempest Part One 1It all started with the card.Max looked at it again as the taxi neared Holland Park. It had been waiting in his office, sent through the internal university postal system and deposited among the usual confetti of flyers and coursework. It was one of those old-fashioned calling cards, like a prop from a period drama. The instructions were handwritten in light blue ink and were stylishly formed but brutally clear.Tomorrow 11AM. Take a cab and pay in cash. Tell no one. Dry-clean thoroughly. Scarlet King. (PS ATLAS)If it had been any other card, on any other day, he would have binned it. But the name had stopped him. He looked at it now and almost mouthed the three syllables.Scarlet King.Yes, that wasn’t a name dismissed lightly.The taxi stopped abruptly, dodging a passing cyclist. The cabbie cursed, stabbing the radio off and leaning back. ‘All right here, mate?’‘Thanks,’ said Max. He took a crumpled twenty-pound note from his pocket and handed it over. ‘Keep the change.’‘Ta.’The cab pulled out and was soon snarled by late-morning traffic. Max walked on and tried to focus, his head still elsewhere. Scarlet King was a legendary, almost mythical name in the intelligence community. Once upon a time, she’d been the top Russian expert at MI6 and even lined up to be the first female Chief. There was no public photograph available of her – which hadn’t stopped numerous tabloids and broadsheets trying – and her name never appeared in government records. She was that tantalizing thing for all intelligence historians: a real-life ghost.Why, of all people, would Scarlet King want to see him? Why today?There was no mistake about the envelope either: ‘Dr Max Archer, Associate Professor of Intelligence History, London School of Economics’. The address was written in a different hand from the card, black rather than blue. The card had arrived yesterday. Hence the fruitless last twenty-four hours trying to make sense of it all. Max had consulted library books and reference tomes and old papers to try and catch a glimpse of Scarlet’s name: the post-war years, the mole-hunts of the sixties and seventies, Gorbachev and Thatcher, the fall of the Berlin Wall. But there was nothing.Max picked up his pace, debating again whether this was some kind of trap. He’d heard all the scare stories. Who hadn’t? The Russians and the Chinese were known to target academic conferences. The ritual was always the same: the complimentary wine, the fuzzy head, the blackmail footage and the threats to post it on YouTube, all horribly compromising and career-ending. But that was for physicists, geneticists and other high-value academics on the wish-list of Beijing and Moscow. What could the MSS or the SVR want with a forty-two-year-old intelligence historian?No, he was almost sure this wasn’t a trap. He pushed his nerves away, tried to focus.Max took out the card again and paused over that penultimate line: Dry-clean thoroughly. It was spy speak for counter-surveillance, shrugging off a watcher. He’d spent a further hour in his office yesterday with a hard-copy map of West London trying to plot the route and feeling mildly ridiculous, a mid-career academic pretending to be a spook.Now there was nothing for it. He decided to try the simplest method first. He bent down and pretended to tie his shoelace, allowing him vital seconds to map out who was around him. One elderly woman with a small dog. Two young men jogging with earbuds in. There was a traffic warden and, to complete the set, a young woman pushing a pram. Could one of them be a tail? The idea was ridiculous and yet somehow eerily plausible. Especially when Scarlet King was involved. Spies didn’t advertise themselves. All of them could be threats, or none. Max finished retying the lace and then resumed walking. He spent the next few minutes glancing into shop windows, doubling back, turning suddenly into side streets and then – the final piece of showmanship – idling in a local newsagent and checking each person following him in, feeling even more ridiculous than before. By the time he arrived at the destination, he calculated that it had taken him nine and a half minutes for a walk that should have lasted two.For once in his life, he was even slightly ahead of schedule.He reached the address and saw the house. It was one of those stately London mansions now converted into flats, with its classical symmetry, fluted pillars and a sense of