A Covenant of Spies

by Daniel Kemp

  “Hmm, would you say the meet and exchange went easier than you anticipated?”

  “I hadn't anticipated any trouble. What are you getting at?” I asked and immediately read his mind. “Are you thinking the demonstrations were arranged as a diversion so I got the code to that radio traffic without a hitch, because if you are, that's going way beyond anything I've known. Do you know something you're holding back on me?”

  “I'm not, no, but less than six months after your microfilm encryption exchange, there was a NATO exercise where I know from first-hand knowledge that the so-called undecipherable new coded data the Soviets were employing was being broken all along their radio frequencies as they were being used. GCHQ were running numerous forages into their transmissions and relay stations, but holding back from sending them off stream and thereby warning them. The NSA were linked in via Menwith Hill and, as far as I was aware, it was the first time the Echelon part of their Frosting programme was in use via facilities based in the United Kingdom. It was being aimed at every Soviet satellite and then turning the Russian signals into unencrypted scripts that we then read at leisure.

  “Nobody confided in me as to how that was done and where all the information had come from, but I do know we had broken into the Frosting programme sometime in the seventies and although those new Soviet codes were only exclusive to us for the opening few hours of the exercise, we did not share what our chaps decoded at Menwith Hill with anyone. Those signals went straight to the top floor and the Prime Minister. We were watching the Soviet armed forces answering their telecommunications and switching on lines of radio communications and radar beacons through every stage of their alert status. All the systems they had in use were ours to manipulate, had we wanted to. The screens I was privy to showed so many new green and red lights, it looked like some psychedelic lighting to a nightclub. To limit the access to that level of intelligence to just ourselves for no matter how long came from way up high, Patrick. I would say the Poles had trialled that new coding in Warsaw before the Soviets adopted it throughout their military.

  “As I said, we had it on our own to play with for a few hours, but eventually all of it had to be shared. Part of my responsibilities at Group was to report activities to the NATO staff at Strategic Studies within the Ministry of Defence. I was the link man and the one at the other end was an American—said he was a naval commander, name of Forman, Commander David Forman. He never said, but he probably arrived with the Air Force lieutenant colonel you mentioned. Thinking back to that time, there was one thing about Poland that was exclusively American. That was their overhead satellite pictures. Under a treaty obligation, they were supposed to share all photographic intelligence with our Ministry of Defence Intelligence Fusion Centre, but nobody could be certain how much they really passed our way.”

  * * *

  My mind was working in double quick time over what Fraser had said and what was missing to complete the picture he had painted. To obtain a new Soviet Union radio signal coding was a coup of gigantic proportions, the like of which was rare in the extreme, so could it be within the bounds of possibility to assume the climax to the student and trade unionist demonstrations was organised to coincide with my operation into Warsaw? Could the death of a student nearby be so arranged as to cover the exchange of money for secrets that could damage the Eastern Bloc for years that followed? If the answer was yes to either of those propositions, then why entrust a mission of such importance to a relatively inexperienced officer such as me? Someone either had huge faith or was hoping I might balls it up.

  Chapter Ten: The Lodge

  Hannah's car pulled up outside the gated entrance to The Lodge, the name of our mysterious wedding present just outside Hassocks in West Sussex, at precisely 11.03 Thursday morning. We were due to entertain Hannah's only brother, his wife and two children for the weekend, with my two favourite sports of shooting and riding included on the agenda. She varied her routine as much as she was able, making it not every weekend that we stayed in the house, nor were our plans written on any schedule that could be seen by anyone. It was always a spontaneous arrangement whenever the pieces of our two lives fell into the right place.

  Although forewarned of her arrival some ten minutes prior, and in receipt of the registration of her ministerial car, as her driver turned into the lane leading to the property, one of the two armed guards stationed in the gatehouse exited and positioned himself where the car would stop before admittance to the property was possible. At the same time as he left the gatehouse, nearby cameras were concentrated on the entrance and the alert status was moved up to its highest position. As per the rehearsed routine, after the occupants of the vehicle produced their security passes and satisfied the waiting guard's inspection, he radioed for the high ornamental gates to be electronically opened. Inside the motionless, highly polished, black sun-reflecting car Hannah sat alone in the rear, with her principal protection officer in the front. The day was sublime, and according to the meteorology office the weather was set fine to continue for the coming week.

  * * *

  The main part of the red-brick house was built in 1763, as attested to on the keystone in the arched portico above the four wide-bricked steps leading up to the black gloss-painted front door. The first registered owner of the property was a Lord Richard Montfort who was, according to the records, an aide to King George III. As much as Hannah had searched the archives for that name, it was impossible for her to find how Montfort aided the King, or come to that, any Richard Montfort who fitted into the timescale, leaving it all as an ongoing investigation into who he was and what exactly he did. In addition to that intriguing missing part to her research, all subsequent records had been mysteriously destroyed until the 3rd September 1989, when on the death of its last owner the property was transferred to—the state.

  Luckily I'm not a superstitious man like Fraser, but had I been, then I might have found it very worrying that the last registered owner of The Lodge, before the state took possession, had the same surname as the person who had purchased a London residence for Henry Mayler's grandfather and his family in the 1950s. One of Fraser's other superstitions that again I did not share was with numbers. And here we had a conundrum. The London home of the Maylers was also transferred to the state when Henry, the last of his family, died and the date of that transfer was similar to the transfer date of The Lodge—divisible by a number important not only to Fraser, but to the Rosicrucians as well, the number three.

  * * *

  There had been two extensions added to the main building since its inception, both of which were solidly built and in keeping with the original Georgian architecture. Even so, despite those extensions, the house itself was not huge, nor was it small. There were four bedrooms, four bathrooms, a more than adequate kitchen, a large dining room and an intimate sitting room along with an office. All those rooms, on the ground floor, had open fires in inglenook fireplaces. Before we began our 'occupancy', all the draughty sash windows were replaced by security triple-glazed projectile resistant ones, white-framed, conforming with a stretched Listed Building requirement that took the status of my job into account. The place provided not only somewhere secure to unwind, but comfort and in the most part, provided work did not interrupt us, tranquillity and enjoyment.

  The original tall, thick, matching red brick wall surrounding the property was completely intact, as were the old stables. One of the stable blocks housed part of the screening points for the outside surveillance cameras and another a twenty-four-hour manned communications station. All the equipment in the modernised 'stables' was replicated inside the basement of the main house. The centralised basement area was connected by tunnels to all the other outbuildings, nine in total. Of those nine, five were self-contained cottages converted to house three Ministry of Defence security guards in each. This effectively meant that eight guards were patrolling the periphery of the house at all time. One of the remaining buildings continued to be used as stables for the two
mares Hannah and I would ride when time and conditions allowed. Another of the remaining buildings was the garage. It too was connected by an underground passage to the main house. There was one other complex of rooms leading from a separately accessed tunnel. Those rooms were to be used for a specific purpose, hopefully never in Hannah's and my time. They were designed to sustain life in the event of a nuclear war.

  Beyond all these myriad of buildings there were eleven acres of green open grounds on which a neighbour grazed his sheep and when we could, Hannah and I rode and shot at clays for enjoyment. The neighbour in question was a Special Branch officer whose daughter undertook the livery of our two horses. There were additional mounted cameras that overlooked each and every one of those meadows as security had been placed on the top of the list when the house was gifted to us.

  * * *

  The coincidence of Oswald Raynor being the man suspected of firing the fatal bullet into the head of Grigori Rasputin, the Russian mystic and court advisor to the last Tsar of Russia, being the same as the last owner of The Lodge was not lost on me, nor was this cursed number three that played such a huge role in the Masonic and Rosicrucian life of Mayler and the Circle of Eight. But whatever was behind the words, The Home Of Cilicia, was not going to be discovered by running away from any serendipitous connections. We had enjoyed our three years of tenure, taking delightful long weekend breaks in the Sussex countryside, and it wasn't written on any agenda of ours to change that enjoyment.

  * * *

  In the back of the car Hannah had the files on Lieutenant Colonel Jacob Ward and Commander David Foreman along with the ones that Michael Simmons at Group had unearthed on three other Americans that, although not working on Operation Donor from any seventh-floor desk, were included in the signal traffic from the CIA outstation that was permanently manned near Admiralty Arch at the opposite end of Whitehall to the apartments Hannah and I had. There was something else she had brought with her: the address where Geoffrey Prime was living. Unfortunately, however, none of what she had on the seat beside her was she able to give to me in person.

  The bullet that killed her went through the rear side window into her temple and exited through the other side of the car, embedding itself in the trunk of a sycamore tree thirty yards from the where the guard had stood. He was now kneeling on the tarmac road facing the direction of the kill shot. He never had a target.

  * * *

  To be intimate in a long-term relationship with any woman was always going to be a step too far in my line of work. It was never a rule of course not to get as deeply involved as I had, but it was a fact that if you did, you then had a weakness that could be exploited. I was never one to obey rules or take notice of facts thrown at me derived from someone else's 'life mistakes' because it was expected. No, that was not me. But the moment I heard of Hannah's murder, I wish I had taken notice of a puerile silly fact because that's how I felt—defenceless to the charge of being exploited by my own ego in ignoring my responsibly to those around me.

  Chapter Eleven: Death Played a Card

  Even though I had never received any formal education in the art of either telling lies or adopting different individualities, I had, through the persistent rehearsal of both, acquired a master's degree in fabricating the truth and adopting expedient identities. Most of my artistry I'd found to be natural and pure in the way that nothing was ever forced or appeared to be faked. That attribute had been the pivot around which my career had blossomed, but there was, and is, no point in attempting to mislead oneself and in this narrative there is no point in me lying to you. I will be open and honest and say that my first thought, when told of Hannah's death, was for myself. I would be on my own again. Which was something I had usually relished. It was, until our marriage, the way I liked my life to be. In fact, being on my own was my absolute preference to being in any sort of closed-off relationship, but somewhere along the road of an ageing self-discovery, my predisposition was totally transfigured overnight, waking the next morning to find a yellow-coloured ring uncomfortably around a finger on my left hand and my life devoted to a single person.

  Yes, I was sad that Hannah's life had ended at such a young age, and sad for the members of a family that she knew, and for those who knew her, but my life was not ended and if it had been love that placed that ring around my finger, then love should have nailed it there. We are all alone at one time or other in our lives and as much as I told myself that's what I wanted, I needed all my ability to lie to believe it. Normally, over time, a lie becomes cemented to the memory. It becomes your truth, your way of life. I did not have time to falsely justify a lie. Whether it was false or not, there was a truth I had to live and live it I would applying all the experience that had been thrown at me.

  Death had taken yet another fine, beautiful woman who had shared part of my life and left a bloodied stain on it to blend with each of the others and choke me. I knew love, and I knew the taste it left when drowned by blood. What I didn't know was how to turn my back on it. When death finally remembers my name and calls for my life, I would like it said that my blood flowed through the lives of others in a positive way. I did not enter the life of another person to suffocate whatever was inside of them.

  * * *

  After the manner of a life-shattering telephone call screaming death down the invisible line at me came the prosaic reporting of other procedural requirements from the scene of a crime relating to a member of the intelligence kinship: there was no sign of Hannah's killer. No abandoned rifle or spent cartridge case. No picturesque, unusually broken twigs lying where the killer had made an entrance to the woods, or even an escape. No signed confession pinned to a tree. No, none of that because according to the expert assessment, this was a professional kill by someone who knew more than just Hannah's habits; they also knew the exact specification of the glass of Hannah's car.

  All ministerial vehicles, along with those of top civil servants when going about official business, were fitted with laminated glass, which could either absorb a bullet, or if it was fired at from an angle, deflect the bullet. However, Hannah's car reflected her position on the civil-service ladder, having cheaper, thinner laminated glass than mine and the likewise privileged others. In some sort of defence, I could claim that my knowledge of that subject was woefully short, but it shouldn't have been, should it?

  The shot that killed her had been fired at the required, exact right-angle, shattering the glass of her window. The Home Office senior pathology team attended the scene as soon as possible and despite every method they applied, the calculating and measuring of the passage of the embedded sycamore bullet was at best difficult, and at worse impossible, owing to the degrees of deflection my wife's skull would have caused to the bullet's flight. This matter-of-fact information made the position of the assassin harder to trace because of the thickness of her skull.

  Perhaps it was the length of time since anyone close to me had died that stirred a sense of outrage on receipt of the news delivered in such a tactless manner. Or maybe it was because Hannah's murder was the only one where I was not present or attended the scene immediately after the murder without the necessity of a vocally expressed report. But on replacing the telephone, I felt the chill of the realisation of death of someone so close come over me as I sat on Fraser's comfortable office sofa, whisky glass in one hand and a burning cigarette in the other, watching Molly furtively glancing at Fraser with a look of crestfallen acceptance on both their dispirited faces.

  The solemnity of the moment we shared was shattered by yet another phone call. The Chief Constable of Sussex Police, who was the officer in charge, blamed the adjacent woodland to the north of the property, left untouched by the security assessment officer, who had to gauge risk against this rural protected area of beauty, for providing cover for the assassin. Notwithstanding the obstacle this presented to his men, one of them he proudly proclaimed, had found a sealed envelope address to me pinned to a tree from where the sniper had rested the rif
le that fired the .308 soft-point round that had shattered my wife's beautiful head and killed her instantly.

  Inside the envelope was a sheet of scrap paper on which these few words were typed: If life is the greatest gift of all then death is its most grateful recipient. Only when life is ended can we escape from the ramifications of death, Mr West. It's now your turn to suffer.

  * * *

  I excused myself from the Ughert's company and went to the bathroom, where I shed a hundred tears of remorse. But again, if I'm to tell the truth and not a self-effacing fabrication of it, I'm not completely sure they were all for Hannah. It's more than likely, most of those tears were for myself, because it was I who killed her by falling in love.

  * * *

  Jimmy, my driver, was a dependable, level-headed type of man with the sort of stalwart personality that made him ideal for being a principal protection officer and driver, but the look of bemusement on his face when I declined his offer to drive me to The Lodge from Fraser's turned that perception on its head. He resembled a little boy who had lost his toy. Frank, his fellow protection officer and all-round man of steel, although seemingly equally puzzled, was not as reticent. He decided to ask with a sombre but melodic ring to his question, 'Would you not think it best to visit the scene, guv, before returning to London?'

  I prided myself on being a polite man under most circumstances and unquestionably when only civility was called for. Understanding of one's fellows' needs and wants, aspirations and limitations, coupled with their ability to manage the pressures of the outside lives in which they lived, was of equal significance to my dignity and self-esteem, particularly since becoming the shortened version of 'governor' to those I was on the most familiar footing with. Courtesy Before All Other was one of the many epigraphs engraved in stone or wood I'd seen during my educational years and it could and should have been my maxim, my family insignia, but because of various episodes of life, some to do with me and some not, that honourable dictum did not adorn a crest of the West family. Nevertheless, I had curbed most of the intransigence and some of the irascibility that had attached itself to me because of past indiscretions on my part. Unfortunately, the day of my wife's murder was not a day where convention played any part.