It’s quieter in Whitcomb Street, quiet enough for Wright to tell me he could see Arthur was rubbing me up the wrong way and he wanted to tell me why. ‘Don’t take it personally. You have to make allowances for him,’ he says. ‘He doesn’t trust the management.’
I say it is a matter of trust and that I’m not the management. ‘I’m either in or I’m out, Peter.’
‘If Dick White says you’re in you are.’
I nod. ‘We say in Welsh, “Wrth gicio a brathu mae cariad yn magu.” While kicking and biting, love grows.’
He laughs. ‘Well, you can expect some scars. We all can.’
‘And there’s nothing else Arthur isn’t telling me?’
Wright stops and turns, lifting the brim of his hat a little to catch my eye, no doubt to prove his sincerity. ‘Not that I know of, Harry.’
I walk as far as the Oxford and Cambridge but turn down an invitation to join him inside for a nightcap. He shakes my hand warmly and assures me he’s looking forward to working with me on the PETERS investigation.
‘PETERS?’ I ask.
‘Arthur didn’t say?’
‘No, he didn’t.’
‘The code name for Mitchell.’ He pulls a face. ‘Sorry.’
The porter has hailed me a cab. ‘No need to be,’ I say, as I climb into the back. ‘An oversight, I’m sure.’
In the court at Dolphin Square Elsa’s flat is dark and the curtains are open. I stand by the fountain with a cigarette in the vain hope she’ll return before I finish it. Someone in a ground-floor apartment is playing a blues favourite of mine on the piano, but badly. In a cigarette haze I try to imagine Elsa sitting at a big desk in the War Office, twisting a strand of hair about her forefinger, her blouse open a button lower than civil-service serious; when she crosses her legs her stockings make a sound like rushes in the wind. Someone bursts through her door – it’s Jack Profumo – and I hear myself say, ‘In the name of God, go, Minister!’ Then the cigarette burns my fingers.
The trace splints have gone from my door and there are tiny scratches on both locks. Someone has broken in and may still be there, someone who’s clever enough to pick a lock but too stupid to replace the splints. Or does the someone want me to notice? I take a deep breath. I’m too old for rough stuff. I unlock and open the door very quietly, and the first thing I see is Elsa’s purple coat lying in a heap in the hall. She has left a trail for me to follow: cardigan on the couch in the sitting room, shoes kicked on to the polished oak floor; her dress is hanging on the back of the bathroom door, and the rest of her things are at the foot of my bed, where she lies curled like a fern beneath the covers.
‘I’ve seen this in a film,’ I say. She groans sleepily, and I reach under the goose feathers for her thigh. ‘Didn’t I give you a key? I was going to shoot you.’
‘Don’t touch me!’ she shouts, because my hand’s cold, and she rises to her elbow to repel me. ‘Impressed I managed to break in? I can still do it!’
She wants to know why I’m late, so I tell her about Tweedledum and Tweedledee, that I left half a bottle of whisky on Dum’s table, that Dee is joining the investigation, and that they’re both quite certain there’s a mole at the top of MI5.
‘Are you certain?’ she says.
‘It looks like it. Martin and Wright think it’s Mitchell. I don’t know. Maybe there’s more than one spy. We’re all untrustworthy motherfuckers, apparently.’
‘Did Martin say that?’
‘His American friends. Arthur doesn’t use bad language.’
‘Will Dick let him keep digging?’
‘Don’t you think he should?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says, sweeping a loose strand of hair behind her ear. ‘How would I?’
I insinuate my hand under the covers again. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘I’m not,’ she says. ‘Why should I?’
‘You shouldn’t but it sounds as if you are.’
‘No! Stop,’ she snaps, and clamps my hand between her thighs. I lean forward to kiss her, but she pushes my face away. ‘Hurry up and come to bed.’
‘Bad day? I blame Profumo. I want to be one of the first to do so.’
While I’m undressing she asks me about Wright. First impressions, generally positive. He’s a technical bod with no experience of this sort of investigation, and he feels he has something to prove. He couldn’t wait to tell me he’d left school without any qualifications and worked for years on a farm, and when he got a place at Oxford, the best he could do was a short course in rural economy.
‘Snob,’ she says.
‘Not me. As Marx says, I am free from all prejudice: I hate everyone equally.’
‘Wasn’t that W. C. Fields?’
‘Was it?’ I’m standing on one leg, pulling at a sock and losing my balance. ‘There.’ I hold it up in triumph.
Elsa asks: ‘Do they know about me?’
‘By “they”, I assume you mean Martin and Wright.’
‘Do they know you tell me everything?’
‘Do I?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘To answer your first question, not unless they have a warrant from the home secretary to bug me. And to answer one you haven’t asked, Wright seems to want to get on with me, which is refreshing. I expect he knows I’m just an ordinary boy from the South Wales Valleys.’
‘Humph. If you say so.’
‘But with a foot in both camps.’ I’ve finished undressing and stand naked before her.
‘A sight for sore eyes,’ she says.
‘Do you think so?’
As she sits up, the covers slide, and she opens her arms to me. ‘More like a Cheshire Cat.’ Then she drops them again. ‘Ah. Almost forgot. There’s a letter for you on the piano – it’s marked “urgent”.’
Elsa has propped it on the music rack in front of a jazz piece by Peterson I’m learning. My name and address are written on the envelope and I know the hand very well. My skin prickles with anger as I gaze at the loops and curls. It’s seven years since he was in touch with me, and ten years more would be ten years too soon.
‘Who is it?’ Elsa shouts from the bedroom.
‘My aunt Brenda,’ I lie. ‘One of my cousins is unwell … dying, she says.’
I walk through to the kitchen and pick up the matches I keep by the stove. The letter catches at once and I drop it flaming into the sink. Then I scoop up the burned flakes and drop them into the bin with the peelings and bones from the roast I cooked for Elsa on Sunday.
‘Were you close to your cousin?’ Elsa says, as I climb into bed beside her. ‘Why don’t you visit him? I’ll come with you.’
‘Not him – her,’ I say. ‘No. We lost touch a long time ago.’
7
June 1963
PROFUMO HAS GONE, the Pope too, and the President of the United States has visited the new wall between East and West to boast Ich bin ein Berliner! In the spirit of this June madness the PETERS investigation has moved to an MI6 safe house in a tatty little mews flat above a garage in Pavilion Road, five minutes from Harrods and Harvey Nichols, and five minutes the other way from the long-hair, suited and booted youth of the King’s Road, where I swear hemlines have risen a couple of inches in just the few weeks we’ve been here.
Clive comes in from his shift in the observation post opposite Leconfield House, flumps into an old armchair, shuts his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘PETERS is still at his desk,’ he mutters, behind his hand. ‘Jean from Administration has taken over the OP, with Bill from Training in the car.’ This is a job for streetwise ex-coppers from Five – but the man who makes surveillance operations like this happen is our target: Graham Mitchell. To make matters worse Martin is at daggers drawn with the director general. Hollis is a sceptic and he’s only agreed to a full investigation of his deputy on Dick White’s say-so. That means we have no choice but to bumble on with a makeshift team of office juniors and secretaries from Six.
A new boy, de Mowbray, is han
dling the day-to-day street work for me. He puts his head round the door and says, ‘I’m picking up PETERS at Waterloo, Harry.’ He’s fresh from South America and as keen as mustard. ‘Team of three – Jean, Maureen and me – all the way to Chobham. His house is about twenty minutes from the village. An acre of grounds, a tennis court …’
‘He plays a lot.’
‘It’s all rather lovely, but damnably difficult keeping an eye on him. If we could set up an observation point nearby …’ But he knows we can’t, that Hollis won’t wear it.
‘I’ve said it before, Stephen …’ I lift my feet off the desk and push back the chair ‘… no risks. Tell the girls.’ Too close on the street, too slow, too casual, and the entire operation will be blown.
For some reason lost to memory the transcription centre at Leconfield House is on the same corridor as the staff canteen. There’s no name on the door, but everyone in the lunch queue knows it’s where the Security Service eavesdrops on enemies of the state. ‘Our Tower of Babel,’ says Wright. He rings the bell and steps back to allow the assistant duty officer to view him through the grille. ‘They don’t like visitors, but in the circumstances, they’ll make an exception for you.’
A plate slides open and I can see small dark eyes. Wright holds up his badge and slides a permission slip through for me. The hutch closes and an automatic lock turns. On the other side of the door we’re met by the new head of A2A. Nothing is said because he knows we’ve come about PETERS. He leads us across a large room, where technical types are recording telephone intercepts on reel-to-reels, and into a corridor with blue doors left and right.
These are the box rooms where the section’s secretaries transcribe the tapes. A member of our little magic circle is sitting in one of them with a closed-circuit television and a recording machine. ‘Hugh’ has spent hours hunched over his large stomach watching the feed from the camera behind the two-way in Graham Mitchell’s office. He has a pen in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and the air is thick with smoke. Someone coughs and it takes me a moment to realise it’s the deputy DG. Bending closer to the screen I can see a noisy black-and-white image of him at his desk. The two-way mirror is only ten feet from him but it’s difficult to gauge his expression because the camera lens is wide open. But I’ve spent enough time in his office to know his face and voice will betray nothing more than the careful reserve of a Winchester College schoolboy.
Wright asks Hugh: ‘Anything?’
‘Nothing,’ Hugh replies. ‘Still chuntering to himself. I can’t make sense of it, but I’ve got a transcriber working on the tape.’ He runs a fat finger down the log. ‘He had a meeting at eleven with the director of D Branch and with someone from the Home Office at three. Mrs Mitchell says she’s roasting a chicken for his dinner. Golf and drinks with guests unknown on Saturday. As I say …’ He shrugs and shows us his palms. ‘Sorry, Peter.’
Wright checks his watch. ‘Almost five thirty. You go, we’ll hold the fort.’
Hugh eases his heavy frame out from behind the table and picks up his jacket to leave. ‘PETERS will be on his way soon,’ he says.
PETERS is already tidying his desk. As I watch him straightening the picture of his wife I wonder at how much is invested in a name. No one knows this man called PETERS. A deputy DG known to colleagues as Graham Mitchell used to do the same thing at about this time. Graham was a stiff colleague but decent enough, and he did some useful work during the war. But that was Graham, this is PETERS. What loyalty do we owe this stranger called PETERS?
He limps to his safe with a file and we watch him close it and turn the dials. Then he walks over to the mirror, and the fisheye distortion of his face is so unnerving I’m convinced he’s guilty. He mutters something like, What? I couldn’t, and If you say so.
Wright smirks. ‘First sign of madness.’
‘Twenty-five years in the Service: who can blame him?’ I say.
‘You know, he picks his teeth in this mirror.’
‘You don’t like him, do you, Peter?’
‘Not much,’ he says. ‘Actually, not at all. I wouldn’t let that cloud my judgement, though.’
I would like to quote Marx (Groucho) but for once I bite my tongue.
Mitchell picks up his briefcase and The Times, pauses at the door to check everything’s in order, and he’s away. I take the radio from my coat pocket and warn de Mowbray.
‘We should wait a few minutes,’ says Wright. So, we sit and smoke and talk, and I ask him if he’s convinced we have the right man. He’s been checking the log, but now he looks at me over his large steel-framed glasses. ‘You don’t think so?’
‘I’d like to see something more concrete.’
‘That’s why we’re here,’ he says. ‘You know we’ve interviewed Philby’s wife?’
‘You?’
‘Arthur. She says Kim suddenly became very anxious last summer, began drinking even more heavily than usual. Arthur thinks that was when he heard we were investigating him again. Tipped off by someone here, Harry, in this building.’
He can’t be sure of that, but I don’t say so. I say, ‘Arthur should have told me. What the hell’s he doing?’
‘Sweating the files, I think.’
‘Want to tell me what he’s looking for?’
There’s a deep frown between his eyes that not even a large pair of glasses can hide, and once again he reminds me of the sternest of the stone heads in the quad at my old college. ‘Believe me, Arthur knows what he’s doing,’ he says. ‘You – we – have to trust him.’
‘Do you use that word often?’ I ask. He has the good grace to smile.
A few minutes later we step out of the lift on the fifth floor and walk swiftly along the corridor and into the director general’s Secretariat. The desks have been cleared for the day, but the DG’s Secretary, Val, is still at her post. She knows why we’re here – she knows everything because she’s Hollis’s mistress and has been for years. He has asked her to rescue the contents of Mitchell’s wastepaper basket and his ink blotter at the end of every working day. The blotter’s treated with some sort of chemical solution so we can develop it and check what he’s writing. It’s the sort of thing a technical bod like Wright relishes. To date we’ve learned nothing more than answers to The Times crossword puzzle and a chess move or two. Val walks towards me with today’s wastepaper and the key to the DDG’s door. She’s holding the basket at arm’s length, as if it’s full of shit. I don’t expect she thought she would ever be called upon to do something at the sharp end of the Service.
I’ve visited Mitchell’s office many times in recent weeks. I’m always struck by how little he’s made of the place in his seven years as deputy DG. It belongs to Whitehall. There’s just a single photograph of his wife. I don’t know Pat Mitchell, but I worked with her brother during the war, when the people here were still a family.
‘Graham’s a very private person,’ I say.
‘Secretive.’ Wright is fiddling with the combination of the safe.
‘What’s the difference? Do you know him well enough to say?’
‘Does anyone?’ he says, glancing over his shoulder at me. ‘Ah. Here we are.’
He has the safe open. ‘D Branch files – Communist Party of Great Britain – and what do we have here? A personal file. Well I never!’ He holds up the buff cover to show me. ‘Your file.’
‘Mine? How the hell did he get his hands on that?’
‘You joined MI5 in 1940?’
‘Is that any of your business?’
He eases his glasses down his nose and looks over them at me. ‘The question isn’t how but why does PETERS have your file?’ He offers a weak smile. ‘But I don’t think it should concern us now.’
It concerns me. I take a step towards him, then stop because the connecting door to the DG’s office is opening.
‘Hello, Peter.’
Wright shuts the safe and turns to greet Sir Roger Hollis. ‘Do you know Harry Vaughan, sir?’
; ‘Of course.’ Hollis shakes my hand. ‘Back here after all these years.’
He doesn’t seem happy about it, although it’s difficult to be sure because his voice always sounds flat. It’s been a while, but I remember a shy man, who used to tell a lot of filthy jokes, which is perhaps what you do if you want to forget you’re the son of a bishop. He was a bottom-pincher too. I don’t suppose he bothers any more, with his mistress in the house. The funny thing is, he looks a little like Sean Connery. Twenty-five years older and without the charm certainly, but the same strong face, the same dark eyes and thick black eyebrows. Hollis’s hair is silvery and receding now, and no one would mistake him for a man of action, but it’s easy to imagine why Service ladies of a certain age consider him handsome.
‘You know Graham Mitchell’s retiring in September?’ he says.
I say that I do.
‘And I’m sure Peter’s told you that I don’t like this one bit.’
‘None of us do, sir.’ I’m quite sincere.
‘All right,’ he says, and turns to Wright. ‘This is the transcript of Graham’s mutterings – or transcripts, because there are two versions, both incomprehensible.’
Wright thanks him and takes the envelope. ‘Harry’s going to look in his desk, sir.’
‘If you must.’
Hollis stands over me as I wedge the lock with a small wrench, feel the pins with the pick, then push the springs back one by one until they set. I glance up and he has the sourest expression. I don’t suppose he’s ever got his hands dirty in this way. I’m tempted to say, ‘Yes, this is what we do, Bishop.’ But the drawers are open already. ‘Voilà!’
We work our way through his deputy’s papers in silence. They’re full of other people’s secrets, which makes our dirty business even dirtier. An officer in D Branch is asking for leave to settle a messy divorce, and one of the ‘ladies’ in Registry has breast cancer: there’s nothing out of the ordinary.
Wright has found some photographs and is busy arranging them beneath the desk lamp. ‘I’ll take copies and we can run checks,’ he says, pulling a mini camera from his jacket.
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