Elsa is dressing for dinner. I telephone her. ‘Draw your curtains if you’re going to walk around in your underwear – I’m not the only Peeping Tom in Dolphin Square.’ She threatens to have me arrested and I remind her I do this for a living and on Her Majesty’s behalf.
‘Pick me up in half an hour,’ she says. I change into a clean shirt, pour myself a drink and have time to settle at the piano to run through some favourites. I’m struggling to remember ‘Lullaby of Birdland’ when the telephone rings. The porter in Reception is with a ‘gentleman’ called Watkins, who would like a word.
‘’Arry! Surprise. How are you, mate? Been a while …’
‘It’d better be important, Watkins,’ I say. ‘Wait for me at the King William – it’s on Grosvenor Road.’
Watkins is one of the last people in the world I would welcome on my doorstep. I met him at Dylan Thomas’s table in the York Minster many moons ago. He’s something on the news desk at the Daily Mirror. A former Communist, ‘former’ by his own report. He’s waiting in a discreet corner of the pub, which is empty in any case, and he has bought me a pint of bitter. ‘Or would you prefer a Scotch, ’Arry?’
‘Who gave you my address, Huw?’
‘I promise it will go no further than here,’ he says, tapping his head with his forefinger. ‘Wouldn’t have come, only the story’s breaking, see, and I thought for old times’ sake …’
I gaze at the sags and bags of a face ravaged by years of dissolution and feel a great urge to punch it very hard, then walk away. First, I must be sure there’s nothing that will hurt me or embarrass the Service.
‘The Telegraph got the story but we’re all going to carry it,’ he says. ‘The Soviet defector – Dolnytsin. I know you know about these things.’
‘Who?’
‘Anatoli Dolnytsin.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘The Telegraph will say ex-KGB – American property – and he’s warned them we’re as leaky as an old boat, that Philby was responsible for a network of spies. Come on, ’Arry. Dolnytsin? There was a Dolnytsin at their embassy here?’
‘Was there?’ I get to my feet. ‘I didn’t know.’
He leans forward to whisper: ‘The paper’s goin’ to pay.’
I push back the pint he bought. ‘Not me. I look forward to reading your story.’
‘Hang on, ’Arry, you owe me.’ He’s struggling to release his gut from the table. ‘Remember when Goronwy Rees wrote those pieces on Burgess for the People?’
‘Goodbye, Huw.’
‘I knew you were close to Burgess, too, but did I say anything?’ He steps between me and the door, close enough for me to feel his malodorous breath on my cheek. His beer-shot eyes chase about my face. ‘I told them, “’Arry couldn’t have known Burgess was a spy …”’
That’s enough. I grab the lapels of his jacket and drag him to tiptoes. ‘Threaten me, Watkins, and I’ll finish you. Understand? I’ll finish you.’
I hear him protesting his innocence as I walk to the door.
‘I wish you’d punched him,’ says Elsa, a little later. ‘He may have punched you back.’ She’s impatient with me because we’re late for drinks at Nick Elliott’s home in Belgravia. ‘This was your idea,’ she reminds me, as our cab turns into Eaton Square.
I squeeze her hand, ‘Thanks,’ and she gives me a resigned smile. ‘Watkins offered me money. They’re like that, aren’t they?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘His newspaper preaches hell fire for Philby because he gave away secrets, and yet here he is, offering me money to betray some more. Damn fool threatened me too.’
She frowns. ‘What did he say?’
I smile and kiss her cheek because a cab isn’t the place to talk of such things, and we’re in Wilton Street with the driver to pay.
My conversation with Watkins rolls around the back of my mind throughout the evening. Nick and Elizabeth Elliott have invited old friends from Six and their wives. Some have left the Service, some are ready to, and because they’re decent and loyal friends, they’ve invited Eleanor Philby too. Elliott introduces me to her and we try to make polite conversation that dances round her husband’s presence in Moscow. She’s about my age, a west-coast American, slim, elegant, engaging, and very drunk. She can’t be still for a moment, fluttering like a small bird or an enchantress casting a spell that will help us all forget she’s married to Kim. We can’t talk about that scandal, so we talk about the other, the one involving Jack Profumo. The room wishes to hear from Elsa. I try to draw Elliott to one side but he’s listening too.
Someone asks if the government can survive and if Butler will replace Macmillan. ‘Hailsham for prime minister,’ says someone else, ‘because he’ll strike the right moral tone.’
‘You knew Kim, didn’t you?’ Eleanor Philby has me by the buttonhole. She’s drunk so much she has the staggers. Lifting her finely manicured fingers from my jacket, I steer her to a chair.
‘You know, Kim’s the most interesting man I’ve ever met,’ she says, when she’s seated with her glass. ‘And so soft-hearted. When his pet fox died he was quite inconsolable.’ I shake out a cigarette and say nothing: her kind husband abandoned his last wife to the bottle and she died alone in penury. I listen to Eleanor rattle on, until she says, ‘Kim won’t stay there, you know.’
Then I feel sorry for her. ‘I’m afraid he won’t have a choice, Eleanor,’ I say. ‘They won’t let him go.’ But I can see she isn’t listening.
Elsa smiles graciously, like the good civil servant she has become, and whispers through her smile, ‘Get me out of here,’ and I’m ready with one of the best of my many excuses to oblige. We breathe more easily on the Elliotts’ steps. She asks me what I’m going to do to thank her for her efforts, and flowers won’t be enough. ‘I love you,’ I say, ‘but I must leave you too. I have to speak to C.’
‘Is this about Watkins? What did he say, Harry?’
She’s worried, and I’d like to confide in her, but there isn’t time before the papers hit the streets.
Number 54 Broadway is as empty and dark as the London Transport headquarters at 55, and the international property company at 29, because office spies like to keep office hours. I don’t know the senior duty officer, and I’m obliged to bully him into surrendering the emergency number. Dick is dining with the foreign secretary and is grumpy with me on the phone.
‘The newspapers are running a story about a defector working for the Americans – and us, sir. Anatoli Dolnytsin, they say.’ I pause to make him feel uncomfortable. ‘They’re making some wild claims.’
‘All right, Harry.’
‘The British can’t be trusted – that sort of thing. A network of spies …’
‘All right,’ he snaps at me again. ‘Wait there, will you.’
The line goes dead.
I wait in his outer office. I smoke and, in a reflective haze, consider quite calmly just how angry I want to be. I’ll make it personal. ‘All about trust,’ I might say (isn’t it always?) and ‘You left me out of the circle, sir.’
Who came up with this masterstroke? Martin? Angleton? Can’t kill the story, so feed the sharks the name Dolnytsin. Change a couple of letters and you have the CIA’s favourite defector and the man who really set the PETERS ball rolling, with his talk of a Ring of Five: Anatoli Golitsyn.
Dick greets me with a warm handshake and a smile, neat and trim in his well-cut dinner suit. We are to enjoy another fireside chat at his home in Queen Anne’s Gate. ‘You think you’re owed an explanation?’ he says, gesturing to an armchair.
‘Yes.’ I want him to tell me everything and apologise, and because he’s Dick White I expect he will.
‘The story must have come from the Americans.’ He lifts the crystal decanter from his drinks tray. ‘Scotch? You like ice, don’t you?’ He places a glass on a table at the arm of my chair. ‘Golitsyn is helping us with a general security review.’
‘Helping Arthur Martin?’
/> ‘Yes.’
‘Wright knows?’
‘Because it’s a Security Service operation,’ he says, taking the seat opposite, ‘you didn’t need to know, and Golitsyn insisted on the smallest possible circle. He says it’s common knowledge in Moscow Centre that the KGB has a source at the very top of Five, and that makes him very jumpy.’
‘Common knowledge?’
‘That’s what he says, and he’s convinced the Americans. They think we’ve completely underestimated Soviet penetration of the Service.’
‘Jim Angleton?’
‘And others. And this leak to the newspapers, it’s come from Angleton – or one of his people – a crude attempt to put pressure on us to order a full security review.’
Dick gets to his feet to signal he has nothing more to say. ‘We’ll speak to our friends in Fleet Street, issue a denial.’
‘And Mitchell?’
He looks uncomfortable. ‘Golitsyn says he has the right profile.’
‘The right profile?’
Dick’s colour rises. ‘Your scepticism is noted.’
I finish my drink and rise. What happened to cautious Dick, the safe pair of hands, the politician’s favourite? Worst case, Golitsyn is still Moscow’s creature; best case – still bad – he belongs to the CIA and dances to ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’.
Dick’s gazing at me. ‘Look, Harry, he understands how Moscow Centre operates. He’s a great resource … This time we’re going to get it right. We need to eliminate the possibility of a systematic infiltration.’
‘I don’t doubt it, sir, but perhaps someone else,’ I take a step towards the door, ‘someone with a taste for this sort of thing …’
‘No. You have the field craft. Arthur’s a good chap, but … excitable. I need a clear and steady eye, a cool head – I need you.’
‘Then why did I have to get my intelligence from a Daily Mirror hack?’
‘That was a mistake,’ he says. ‘Sit down, would you, please? Another?’ He picks up my glass. ‘There’s something else you should know.’ He turns with the decanter in his hand and stares at me as if caught in two minds whether to say more. For once slim, fit Peter Pan looks something like his age. ‘What I’m going to tell you … Well, you know the spiel, but we’re talking about our crown jewels or, to be precise, Uncle Sam’s. We call it VENONA, and it changed everything after the war – everything.’
There’s a twinkle in his eye now because he knows I relish a good secret – we all do. But there are bad secrets too, and Dick can’t see but my skin is pricking with apprehension as I imagine for a moment what this one will lead to.
‘We keep it to a small circle here and in Washington,’ he says, placing the whisky on the table beside me. ‘For eight years – the war years and after – we managed to intercept intelligence signals between Moscow and its embassies in Washington and London. We can’t decode them all, but enough to know they had – may still have – an army of agents in America. Two hundred so far. And at the heart of government. Two hundred! How many they have here in Blighty isn’t as clear. We have code names – a score or more. We know the Russians were running an inner circle with access to grade-one intelligence – a Ring of Five. Burgess, Maclean and Philby belonged to that circle; two of the Five are still in place. We’ve barely begun to work on agents in the outer circle.’
Dick shuffles to the edge of his chair to look me in the eye. ‘Golitsyn says the KGB has moles in senior positions in MI5 and MI6, and there’s enough in VENONA to suggest he’s right. Honestly, it puts the fear of God into me.’
He pauses. ‘I’ll arrange for you to view VENONA. Wright would be a good guide.
‘Wright?’
‘Yes, Peter has been indoctrinated,’ says Dick, tetchily. ‘Please. No temper tantrum.’
I laugh, and he’s pleased to hear me.
A clock strikes the witching hour, and we rise. As we walk towards the door he puts his right hand on my shoulder. ‘Glad we had this talk.’
‘And Graham Mitchell?’
Dick touches his brow. ‘Arthur’s convinced he’s ELLI. He’s the mole. I haven’t seen the evidence yet.’
‘Is there any?’
‘We’ll make that call soon.’ His hand falls from my shoulder to the door handle. ‘We should have listened to Arthur sooner … I should have. Which of the ancients was it who said, “A nation can survive its fools but not its traitors, because the traitor appeals to the foulness that lies deep in the hearts of all men”?’
10
12 August 1963
I WATCH THE rain rolling down the safe-house windows and imagine my girls on their holiday in Devon. Do they have a bedroom with a view across the sea to Wales? I promised to take them there. Daddy is spending the summer on his backside in front of a television monitor. Mitchell coughs, and I glance at the screen. He’s scribbling quietly at his desk and has been for an hour.
My sometime girlfriend Nina writes that Vienna is enjoying temperatures in the nineties, that she has left the city for her family home on a Riesling slope in the Tyrol. ‘Bring your new girlfriend,’ she says, but my new old girlfriend is tired of waiting for me, tired of summer rain, tired of spoon-feeding the new minister at the War Office, and has taken refuge at her godmother’s house in France. There’s a respectable chance he’ll have gone by the time she gets back, because the government is rocking. There’s too much news, too many bad headlines, here and in America. The Times correspondent in Washington says our closest ally is beginning to wonder if we’re an ally at all. He writes:
To an American public already mystified by the Profumo scandal, the Philby case, and a long list of other security troubles, the Dolnytsin affair is another shock. Political and security scandals are turning Britain into the Latin America of Europe and causing great pain in the American intelligence community.
Someone in that ‘community’ has taken the trouble to tell The Times so, perhaps the same someone who gave the Dolnytsin story to the papers in the first place.
So, I yawn and hum a tune and imagine the mop-head boys and the girls in cotton dresses tearing up and down the King’s Road on their scooters; and the man who hawks newspapers at Sloane Square tube, who told me he left a leg in the desert; and Arthur Martin getting tight in the Duke of Wellington, around the corner. We see a good deal more of each other now and I can tell from his face he’s drinking too much. But he’s making an effort to be agreeable. Perhaps he hopes to win me round before he goes into battle with Hollis. He seems quite certain the director general will do his damnedest to kick the PETERS investigation into the long grass. I think Arthur needs a holiday, that we should all go on holiday.
Mitchell gets to his feet and walks round his desk to the mirror. The transcription girls say he spends part of each day muttering to his reflection. I’ve noticed him fidgeting, scratching, bouncing his knee under the table. Why is he so anxious? He hasn’t long to go before he retires. His secretary has begun to organise his leaving do in the Pig and Eye Club at the top of MI5.
‘Picking his teeth again?’ Peter Wright settles into a chair beside me. ‘He needs a dentist.’
‘Yes.’
He reaches across the table for the ashtray. ‘Anything?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Arthur thinks we’ve enough to interrogate him and we should d-d-do it now. Do you agree?’
I say, ‘I do,’ and that it’s the only way to put this to bed. I’ve read the VENONA signals and I don’t doubt there’s a Fourth Man and a Fifth, but it’s going to take more than dust marks at the bottom of a drawer to convince me it’s Graham Mitchell. We’ve crawled all over him for months, bugged, burgled, rifled his belongings, and his wife Pat’s stuff too. We’ve listened to their cooing, chased them from golf course to golf course and even down the Solent in a yacht. In short, we’ve done all we can with the resources available.
‘It was PETERS who recommended we stop work on the VENONA,’ Wright said, when he was acting as my guide to the signa
ls. ‘Suspicious, don’t you think?’
‘Deeply,’ I said, ‘but what about Dick?’
‘Dick?’
‘Well, Dick was director general at the time and it says here in the file’ – I had it open in front of me – ‘that he agreed to suspend the decoding operation because it was getting nowhere. Too much effort for too little in the way of solid leads. It was his decision, not Graham’s.’
Wright pursed his lips, hummed, pushed his glasses up his nose then said, ‘Dick was persuaded.’
He says the Americans have a powerful computer working on the old VENONA signals now and it has thrown up new information that proves Philby was a traitor during and after the war.
‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘When he comes back from Moscow we can have a public hanging.’
Mitchell has a visitor. His brother-in-law, James Robertson from D Branch, has popped his head round the door and begs a few minutes. ‘It’s about that bloody man Wright,’ we hear him say. ‘Can’t you clip his wings, Graham? He’s a law unto himself.’
I turn to Wright with a sympathetic face. ‘Doesn’t like you, Peter.’
‘I don’t like him,’ he says coolly.
Mitchell waves Robertson to a chair. ‘What is it?’
‘He’s supposed to be working for me but I hardly see him,’ he says, ‘and when I do he’s evasive. Is he doing something for the DG?’
Mitchell picks up a pen and puts it back again.
‘The thing is, Graham,’ his father-in-law continues, ‘this fellow Wright thinks he knows everything about counter-espionage. Honestly, I don’t know what’s happening to this place.’ He leans forward to clutch the edge of Mitchell’s desk. ‘We’re becoming second rate. The calibre of people since the war … He’s a bloody technician. Time you put him in his place!’
Mitchell is on his feet encouraging Robertson to rise. Can they talk about this later? His manner, the slight tremor in his voice … I lean closer to the monitor. But his head is bent – I can’t see his face. When he raises it he is bonhomie again. ‘Pat is very well, thank you,’ and ‘Can you make lunch on the fifteenth?’ They leave his office together, closing the door on their conversation.
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