The Factory by Brian Freemantle Page B

her: objectively he accepted there never had been.
    â€˜Aren’t I?’ she said, almost defiantly.
    As he had in the café, for emphasis, he reached across the table for her hand; it was hard and calloused, the hand of a woman who worked. Whitehead said: ‘Tanya, now listen to me. I told you in the café what would happen to the others. How they’d eventually break and identify you. And when you’re arrested and undergo the same sort of questioning you’ll talk, too. You’ll give all the names you know and they’ll give all the names they know and it’ll go on until everyone is rounded up so that there isn’t a network any more. Until it’s smashed. But for you it won’t end there. Whatever the new freedoms, there’ll be a trial, like there was with Vadim. And you’ll lose Natasha. Lose everything.’
    Tears were flooding down Tanya’s face. Pleadingly she grasped his hands in return and said: ‘I know! I know all of that. But what can I do? You surely don’t expect me to run with you on the passport you brought in! Actually abandon her!’
    â€˜No,’ accepted Whitehead soothingly. ‘I don’t expect you to do that.’
    â€˜What then? Tell me what to do, to keep us both safe!’
    Whitehead wished he knew. The idea of taking Tanya out on a British passport was desperate enough: it would never have succeeded trying to get Natasha out the same way so it hardly mattered that the woman had not told them of the child’s existence. He said: ‘I need to think.’
    â€˜So you haven’t a plan?’ she accused at once.
    â€˜No,’ he said honestly. ‘Not at the moment.’ The Director General had warned it might be an impossible mission, he recalled. It had become just that.
    The idea came as Whitehead made his way back through the narrow side roads of Liepaja from Tanya’s house to his hotel. It was a desperate one – but then everything about what he was now trying to achieve was desperate – and at that time relied upon so many uncertainties that considering it any further, in detail, was pointless. Back at the hotel, lying on damply cold sheets behind windows that rattled with the passing of every vehicle, he tried to think of something better, something that had a greater chance of success. And couldn’t. Impossible, he thought again, able in his mind to hear the tone of voice in which the Director General had spoken.
    He’d asked Tanya to meet him in the morning, not knowing when they parted if there would be any practical reason for the encounter, but he was glad of the precaution because now he needed all the time available, and if the KGB were closing in upon Tanya that was becoming more limited by the minute. She had chosen the place, that part of the harbour where a seawall stretched out to form an inner protection for the fishing boats and trawlers against the Baltic storms.
    She was there ahead of him and as he approached Whitehead was aware of a lot of passing people acknowledging and recognizing her. He was pleased: there’d been too many for there to be a KGB entrapment in a place like Liepaja, with everyone knowing everyone else.
    â€˜Well?’ she greeted him. She leaned on the wall, actually gazing out towards the West.
    â€˜The two informants who were seized? They were fishermen, you said?’
    â€˜Yes,’ agreed Tanya doubtfully.
    â€˜What’s your support, among sailors?’
    The woman shrugged, counting the options. ‘Sporadic. Disloyal: loyal. Bad: good. Why?’
    â€˜What chance would we have, the three of us, you, me and Natasha, getting away from here by boat? Managing to cross the Baltic to Sweden?’
    â€˜None,’ said Olga, positively and at once. ‘Have you any idea of the net that Soviet naval patrols put between us and the West? It’s absolute. Do you imagine I wouldn’t have thought of it, if it were