The Factory by Brian Freemantle

enough to accept the defection as genuine, wondered Davies: the debriefing seemed to be going on interminably.
    That weekend Oleg produced unlabelled photographs for him to identify and Davies was staggered by the apparent depth of the Soviet knowledge of the British intelligence establishment. There were prints of Samuel Bell and Jeremy Thurlow and five more people in the Factory, as well as pictures of every person attached to the intelligence section of the British embassy in Moscow. There were also about twenty photographs he didn’t recognize at all.
    Davies realized apprehensively that this was the severest challenge with which he’d so far been confronted. Clearly the Russians knew the photographs to be of British intelligence officers. And the likelihood was that although they were presented to him namelessly the Russians also knew all the names and were asking him for the identities as yet another trial of his intention to cooperate absolutely. It was one he had never anticipated.
    Davies went through the pile apparently with great care, in reality using the time desperately to think of what to do. He decided it was obvious that the Russians would already know the embassy personnel here in Moscow and so he picked them out and added names, one by one. Bell and Thurlow were two he had already provided and so he picked out those, too. Which left the five attached to London headquarters, all of whom he knew. But only one of whom, Peter Whitehead, he had so far offered during the debriefing because he knew Whitehead had been seized during an operation in Latvia and that he was disclosing nothing by naming the man. Protracting his supposed examination as long as he dared, Davies agonized over what to do. He couldn’t point a finger at any more. But if he didn’t and the Russians knew they had been his colleagues at the Factory then he exposed himself: ruined an operation that had taken more than a year to set up to get himself deep within the very heart of Soviet intelligence.
    â€˜I don’t think I know anybody else,’ he said.
    There was a long silence from Oleg. ‘Sure?’ the man pressed.
    The suspicion was obvious: maybe the man did know, already! Shaking his head uncertainly, Davies said: ‘You must understand that in England we operate the traditional intelligence system, with everything compartmented. You can work in a building with people but never come into contact with them: never know their names. This man for instance …’ Davies picked up the photograph of George Fowler, who had occupied the office next to him at the Factory and whom he knew well, on occasions even going to dinner at the man’s home. ‘… he looks familiar. But I’m not sure. Certainly I don’t have a name. I only want to provide what I know to be absolutely accurate, as I always have.’
    Oleg put Fowler’s photograph separate from the others who had been positively identified and said: ‘Any more who look familiar?’
    Oleg was going to keep on and on, Davies thought: on and on until he was forced to make a decision between himself and men and women who’d been trusted friends. People upon whom at least twice his life had depended. Could he, whatever the importance of his own mission, risk their lives? Anthony Marshall! The man’s image stared up at him from one of the prints, and Davies remembered how the man had been killed, on an assignment no one at the Factory had ever truly understood. He jabbed his finger down. ‘Him, I think! Yes, I’m practically certain. But he left the department. I never knew where: upon assignment, I suppose.’
    â€˜Again, no name?’
    Davies shook his head, deciding that having denied knowing the man for so long it would be a mistake suddenly to appear to remember. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
    â€˜Yes,’ said Oleg heavily. ‘So am I.’
    â€˜So where are the discrepancies?’