A Covenant of Spies

by Daniel Kemp

  Chapter Twenty-Six: NOMITE

  Later on Wednesday morning, I decided that with the promise of extraditing Kudashov's granddaughter from Russia shortly to be fulfilled, and plans for the destruction of Zaragoza in Major Swan's capable hands, I would spend my time trying to find the reason for Dickie's use of the message—No One Is More Important Than Each—the pseudonym used by Jack Price that was so mysteriously sent to Jacqueline Price. Trubnikov would have to wait his turn.

  I first met Jack at a property he owned in Soho, in the heart of London, and it was shortly after our meeting that he introduced the acronym of NOMITE to me. Fraser said he had never heard it before. There was a faint possibility Jack might have mentioned the word or phrase to those he knew in Soho but, by now I reasoned, the ones I remembered would all be dead. I knew for a fact that on his death the apartment in Soho was sold and the revenue was divided equally between three friends of his who worked in that area. At the time of gifting his flat, it was thoroughly searched by all four of us looking for clues as to his wife and children's addresses in Canada, but nothing other than a few questionable bottles of supermarket whisky was found.

  His wife had left him, as had his two children and, for reasons I'd never got my head around, he had taken a liking to me, so much so that the house he had in Woolwich in southeast London was bequeathed to yours truly with instructions to sell it and put most of the money in the bank, for as he profoundly explained: No one gives you an umbrella on a rainy day, son. You keep the money that's left to buy yourself loads of umbrellas. Then when it's raining, go stick one up a Guildford's arse.

  He used the name of the Surrey town of Guildford in a derogatory manner when referring to the top brass of the secret intelligence service. They all seemed to be living in and around Guildford when he was part of the same intelligence service.

  A portion of the sale proceeds, a sum of five thousand pounds, he left to the church where he was to be buried and to pay for his funeral costs and the two plots he acquired for himself and Job, his indispensable right-hand man, whom I've said I had the pleasure of knowing. Before I sold the terraced house in Woolwich I painstakingly went through everywhere, looking for further clues to his life than the few he'd given me or I had discovered as we'd gone along trying to unravel a mystery that started in Vienna, Austria, in 1945, one in which my own father had a role.

  Jack Price was a complex man in his professional service life, but the reverse was true for what private life he allowed himself to have. He had nothing of interest in my search in his belongings in either of his homes. But there was his notorious triangular-framed chair he'd moved to the more countrified air of southeast of London rather than leave it in the 'nightish' realms of Soho. I kept it for a few years, but that too had eventually gone to a curiosity shop, which was fitting, owing to my curiosity when I first saw it.

  Jack died in 1973 and to my knowledge from that year onwards the word NOMITE had never been aired, but Dickie had remembered it, even though it was probably only once mentioned in his company. He was there watching over my shoulder when I signed all the official documents required of me by the secret intelligence service, but how on earth could he know that I would still be in the service twenty-five years on from when he sent the photographs and the critical message to Jaqueline Price? The answer to that was that he could not know. So why put in so much effort?

  I was writing notes of papers putting places together where Dickie, Jack and I might have been at the same time, or if visited separately having a common denominator. One leapt from the small pile. Dickie had been one of the few who, like me, had attended Jack Price's funeral and interment held at St Michael's Anglican Church, East Wickham, not very far from Woolwich. We had light-heartedly discussed Jack's arrangements when lunching at the Travellers and I sarcastically suggested he took the title of Lord Woolwich when his inevitable investiture would be due. There was no doubt in my mind Dickie would have remembered the church all right. He remembered everything, did that sly old fox. That's where he sent the message about the hidden traitor in GCHQ. It had to be!

  * * *

  It was well past lunch when I could finally prise myself away from the responsibilities of chairman of the JIC and set off for the church. Frank and Jimmy went looking for the churchwarden as I visited Jack and Job's graves. For some silly sentimental reason I had brought two bunches of flowers, knowing full well that there were no vases to put them in. Having no other choice I laid them on the ground, wrappers and all.

  “I say! Would you mind awfully taking the flowers out of the paper and the plastic, and putting all the rubbish in the green wheelie bin over there against the wall, please? Leaving it where you have means the paper and plastic will get blown everywhere if it's windy and up here, and on this hill we do catch the wind a lot.”

  He was a tall thin man, with a deep commanding voice, wearing a black cassock down beyond his knees with the sleeves rolled to the elbow with a loose clerical collar. His head was shaded from the hot sun by a white Panama hat. He had been behind a huge oak tree in the corner of the small cemetery and seen me before I had a chance to see him. His reproach made me feel uneasy as he walked towards me carrying a small bin stuffed with waste paper.

  “I'm sorry if I sounded a little brusque just then, but paper in general is the bane of my life. If it's not inside the church being delivered by the postman, it's outside. Confetti is lovely, of course, but when it gets everywhere it becomes an intolerable pest. Whatever you do, don't start me on plastic! If only it wasn't used, then it would not be left lying around.”

  The lenses in his black-rimmed glasses were thick and concave, making his grey eyes seem larger than in truth they were, but nothing could disguise his young age. Even though it felt disrespectful, I asked —“How old are you, vicar?” removing the flowers from the wrapping as I did.

  “I'm twenty-nine. And now you're looking somewhat perplexed and disappointed. Here, let me take the flowers and spread them out for you. That way I can make sure what's in your other hand gets disposed of properly. No disrespect intended in that remark. Which grave are they for?” he asked, his manner now subdued.

  “They are for the two of these. I had the privilege of knowing both men.” Waving my arms, I indicated the two headstones in front of where we stood. “I owe you an apology,” I added, “but I was hoping the vicar here was older than you. You're right, yes, I was disappointed. Sorry I was so obvious, but I always assumed vicars to be old. Anyway, my wife, Mrs West, died last week and I was hoping you might have a plot where she can be buried. She would be close to both my friends and I'm sure she would have welcomed that.”

  “I'm sorry for your loss, Mr West, but as for a burial, then I'm pretty positive the church cemetery is full, but the right people to speak to are at the council offices who deal with those matters. I can give you their telephone number if you wish. I will have it somewhere in the vestry.” His eyes begged for company and I was not about to disappoint him.

  We were walking towards the main church building when he turned to face me. “Sorry, but your name is West, is that right?”

  “It is, yes. Why, does it ring a bell?”

  “It does somewhat, Mr West. I took over the parish last year from a minister who had devoted thirty-eight years to serving the name of God and the parishioners of East Wickham and beyond. A very honourable and humble man was Reverend Martin Jenkins.” He crossed himself, then looked at me. “Martin left an envelope addressed to a Patrick West. Could that be you?”

  I told him it was, showing him my Home Office pass with my name and photograph on it.

  “In that case you must be here for the envelope he left in my charge. It was open, so I looked inside. It had a sort of Christian message if I remember rightly. No one is more important than each. I'm pretty positive that was it. Probably meaning: there's nobody more important than the person beside you. Is that about it, do you think, Mr West?”

  “It's not far removed from that, vicar, yes.�
�

  We passed Frank as we entered the church and he asked, “Is everything alright, sir?”

  I said it was, which stimulated the vicar to ask if I was a man of importance.

  “We are all important in our own way, are we not?” I answered.

  “Indeed we are, but I can't think of too many people who would have a message sent to him via our sacred church dated twenty-five years ago. At least, that is the date on the envelope. Was it a Christian message or could it have referred to some sort of Marxist theory?”

  “I not aware it had either connection. It was designed for a small group of people who shared the same purpose.”

  “Well, we're here now, Mr West, and at a guess, I don't think you will want the council's phone number for your wife's laying to rest.”

  We had arrived in the vestry.

  “I think it's the letter you're after and nothing else. Not my concern of course, it's just that I think I'm in the middle of some sort of espionage hurly-burly and it's caught my imagination.”

  I smiled and tried to look uninterested in his supposition, but that charade was ruined when he handed me the opened envelope with Jack's motto typed on one sheet of paper inside above one solitary name.

  “Who sends a note with an anagram and a name written on it that's picked up twenty-five later other than a spy?” he asked, tilting his head to one side with a smug grin on his face.

  By now I'd had enough of his arrogance. “If I were a spy, vicar, then I would hardly admit it, would I? If true, that could amount to treason, as would you divulging anything that's happened here today. I advise you to forget about the envelope and its contents. That advice is not only applicable to legal obligations you are bound by, it is also for your own safety. This subterfuge was to hide a particular secret that needs to stay hidden. You will receive notification of those restrictions from the Home Office as soon as I leave. Please, do follow the advice. You really do not want to be on the wrong end of the Official Secrets Act, I can assure you of that.”

  * * *

  I looked at that meaningless four-letter name a thousand times on the drive from the peace and restfulness I'd found on a beautiful hot sunny day in the shade of a church on the outskirts of London, wondering what surprises were waiting to be discovered. In the meantime, I phoned ahead and ordered all we could find on GCHQ during the seventies when Geoffrey Prime was in J section through until 1982, when Dickie's message was mailed to the Reverend Martin Jenkins.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Vyacheslav Trubnikov

  It was one week to the day of Hannah's death and the funeral arrangements were finalised. She was to be buried in the Hesse family mausoleum at their stately home in Brockenhurst, in the New Forest, Hampshire. Hannah's older brother and Samuel Rothschild, one of her godparents, had organised all the necessary arrangements. I wanted the operation at Zaragoza and Cilicia Kudashov's staged abduction over and dealt with before my mind could manage to say goodbye to my dead wife.

  I instructed the pathologist not to release her body until the Tuesday following on from, hopefully, the successful outcome of both those operations.

  I had not contacted Hannah's brother, who lived at the Manor, since his rude denunciation of me. I rectified that on Thursday afternoon after spending part of the morning in consultation with Sir John Scarlett at his ultra-modern offices at The Box, Vauxhall. Her brother's complaints had, for the time being at least, diminished, leaving his demeanour far more conciliatory than a week ago on the evening of his sister's murder when we last spoke. He accepted the necessity for the length of time before her entombment, adding his praise for the swift operation in identifying and disposing of her killer. He seemed to know that I was present at Victoria Station when that occurred. I neither cared, nor knew, if he was guessing or had been told. But by the time we finished speaking, I was satisfied that any disagreement between us had been settled and Hannah's funeral would pass without any unnecessary animosity.

  I found Sir John in one of his flag-flying patriotic moods, celebrating an anniversary of an unsuccessful attack on the SIS headquarters building by the IRA. It wasn't the anniversary of the attack as such he was celebrating, but the apprehension of the three men who carried it out. He was smiling as he recalled their capture, but his smile faded when I repeated the reason for my visit.

  “I've looked into this Vyacheslav Trubnikov and it seems that your department missed a trick in 1979, John. How well did you get on with Sir Brian Macintosh's stepfather, who was head of this department at that time?”

  “Francis Henry Grant? Yes, I told you that I remember him. He was a standoffish sort of chap. He came up through Eton and Oxford and was a bit harsh on those having anything less of an education. He and I got on well enough and if I recall correctly, he was great friends with Fraser Ughert. Probably Ughert would give a clearer picture than I, but are you suggesting incompetence on his part or something worse?”

  I didn't answer, but went a different route. “Reading between the lines of a communiqué from the Indian Embassy in Delhi, dated January 1979, addressed personally to Francis Henry Grant and automatically copied at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, it would seem that Russell Macintosh was aware of the relationship that was building between his wife, Elizabeth, and Francis Grant. Mrs Macintosh was often in London, staying at the family home in Chester Square, where Grant was, as noted in Trubnikov's file, seen on numerous occasions. Unfortunately for your ex-head of station, living opposite the Macintosh's London home was the Member of Parliament for Kidderminster, a friend of the Home Secretary and one of the men who had appointed Grant to his intelligence position. Maybe Elizabeth Macintosh mentioned it to her lover and he was of the opinion that the upper class don't tell tales on each other, or maybe she never knew who her neighbours were, but I doubt that very much. Which leaves only my first conclusion: Grant could not have cared less, relying on the upper class not telling tales on their upper class fellows.

  “If the Director General of Soviet counter-intelligence was not clever enough to realise he was cheating with the wife of a chap who had neighbours overlooking her front door who knew the Home Secretary—a man her husband had gone to school with, and being the same person who had appointed him—then that would be why your department missed the trick with Trubnikov. Because Macintosh was in love with the Russian journalist, and his love was used by the First Chief Directorate of the KGB in Moscow Central … possibly by no other than Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

  “The proof of Grant's incompetence is right there in the files, John, except they are not listed under Eton College or Oxford University, or past unethical behaviour of heads of station. They are in letters sent from two disgusted members of Sir Russell Macintosh's staff at the Indian Embassy in Delhi addressed to the Foreign Office and forwarded on to MI6. You told me you've been wanting Trubnikov for years, well your department had him, but never looked past the colour of the school tie.

  “Take a look at the Indian sub-file at the Foreign Office of the February of that year. It's not digital, John, it's typed and a little long-winded. I believe Dickie Blythe-Smith knew of Trubnikov and what was happening with our cultural attaché, and used methods outside of house to deal with it. I'd love your thoughts on the matter when you have time.

  “Right, let's move on and discuss this Iranian thing that the PM wants done with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Have we anyone close to the Director General of the IAEA through diplomatic links or someone we could use in his role as a lawyer? I need to have something on the table by Monday next week at the latest as I'll be seeing him at Hannah's funeral the following day. Of course, that's if I can avoid seeing him beforehand. Thank you, incidentally, for accepting the invitation on behalf of the SIS. Is it Julia you're fetching with you?”

  “It is, yes, and I don't wish to appear insensitive, but we won't be staying after the church service, Patrick. The weather is forecast to remain as is, with the addition of a stiff breeze for the whole of next week. My yac
ht is moored very close at Bucklers Hard on the Beaulieu River. I thought of taking the boat around the Isle of Wight for a couple of days if nothing turns up to interfere with that idea.”

  We shared one of those all-knowing, all-recognising smiles that convey a degree of deviousness known to occur in higher management circles but never passed down to the ranks below. It was he who next spoke.

  “I have a placement in mind for the IAEA thing, which I'll get on to straight away. As for the 1979 thing, with a previous Director General, are you intending to open an inquiry into the matter, or will you allow me to use the information regarding Trubnikov, in GB's best interests?”

  “Too ancient to have any relevance in today's world to be worth an inquiry, John. However, there may well be some mileage you can back me up with, apropos of the trade figures. Other than that, it's all in your good hands to deal with as you please.”

  * * *

  I had briefly spoken with Fraser over the self-same Indian Office sub-file and the one Dickie had covered his back with, which was safely locked away in the vaults at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office no doubt. Dickie was several things and one of his most important characteristics was being ultra careful. I said nothing of my visit to St Michael's Church to Fraser. Again it was not through lack of trust, it was because I needed to glue everything together in my own mind in order to get where I wanted to be. In any case, I told myself, if Dickie wanted his old fishing partner, Fraser Ughert, to know what he sent to the church, then he would have told him.