‘Hello, Kenneth?’ he said, once connected. ‘It’s Frank Tibbot. Oh, not so bad. Not so bad. Getting old and doddery. Yeah. And tell me, what was your lot up to on Saturday? Two against Portsmouth? I could beat Portsmouth meself. Yeah, you can try. That’s right. Anyway, work call. I’ve got an old reg for you. Can you check it? Well, just do your best. Ta. It’s YXA 998. Old Sunbeam. Got that? Good. How long, do you think? And Ken, do you want to meet for a drink – you can give it to me then? You got it in one. All right. No, you’re right. Yes. Cheerio.’ He hung up. ‘He has to get the files from storage – if they still exist.’

‘You’re meeting for a drink?’ I said, amazed. ‘It’s urgent.’

‘You never know who’s listening, even to police lines,’ he explained calmly. ‘Especially to police lines. You don’t want to raise any suspicion, so you keep things social.’ I regretted my naivety. ‘He’s in Somerset House. I’m meeting him at two, at a pub round the corner from there.’

‘Are you sure it’s safe to go anywhere near the Strand?’ I asked. ‘Today of all days.’

He shrugged. ‘No worse than anywhere else today.’

15

The First Secretary is now making his way to Highgate Cemetery to visit the tomb of Karl Marx. It was Comrade Blunt’s leadership of the Communist Party of the Republic of Great Britain that resulted in the fulfilment of the promise that Marx and Engels made: that Communism would flourish in the land of Britain.

News broadcast, RGB Station 1, Liberation Day,
Tuesday, 18 November 1952

The stream of tanks and armoured cars, ranks of men with Kalashnikovs, girls with shining pistols and fresh-faced Pioneers holding up photographs of Comrade Blunt stretched for three kilometres along the swept-and-washed Strand, up Fleet Street, where the crowds were held behind steel barriers, and around the People’s Hall of Solidarity like a noose. Tibbot was meeting Kenneth alone in a pub around the corner, because it could have made Kenneth nervous if I had turned up too; and watching the parade was the best way for me to avoid attention while I waited nearby.

A squadron of Air Pioneers marched past with little wings stitched to the lapels of their uniform. They were the boys who had shown the most aptitude in their dexterity tests and now dreamed of piloting Soviet-made Yaks in dogfights with the Americans above London. They wore proud expressions as they passed their yelling parents and jealous schoolfriends. After the boys came the older girls in the boiler suits of engineers, followed by honoured assembly-line workers. And then a crowd-pleasing moment as a cavalry regiment trotted through, the kids behind the barriers scrambling forward to get a closer look at the stamping horses.