Witchfinder

by Andrew Williams

  By the fourth we have moved on to politics. Removing Fidel Castro from Cuba is a priority and holding the line against the Commies in Vietnam and everywhere. More money and energy must be spent, not least by ‘our British allies’. We are too complacent, he says, too slow to realise the Soviets have agents of influence everywhere, in Britain’s political parties, in the civil service and universities – everywhere. I ask him why he believes that is the case, and he says he has his sources.

  By the fifth martini my head is spinning. Angleton is still talking and seems to be making sense. Moulders is beaten and slumps into silence. We eat with wine, and then our host insists on bourbon. I join him because that is my mission. He holds his glass in his right hand, a cigarette burning between his fingers, and gazes over the top of his spectacles at me. ‘Are you sorry Burgess is dead?’

  Even in a bourbon fog that’s an easy one. ‘I’m sorry he was a traitor,’ I say, ‘but I hear his life in Moscow was some sort of punishment.’ He takes a moment to gauge my sincerity, then leans forward, grinds out his cigarette in an ashtray, and, with a stone-cold-sober passion that makes my flesh creep, he tells me he isn’t the sort to commit murder, but he would happily make a very bloody exception for Kim Philby. I am still imagining Angleton rudely covered with gore when a smiling waiter delivers the check on a silver plate for him to sign.

  ‘That’s that, then,’ says Maurice, as we watch Angleton’s car pull away from the sidewalk a few minutes later. ‘Welcome to Washington.’

  16

  14 October 1963

  I BREAK BREAD with Angleton alone. We sit at his table against the back wall with a view of everyone in the restaurant. He pays again but this time he makes me do the talking. What do I think of Sir Roger Hollis? (Too safe, a time-server, I say.) Can I work with Arthur Martin? (I’m diplomatic.) Peter Wright, do I trust his judgement? (Diplomatic again.) He presses me; I praise. Then I tempt him to offer an opinion of his own by raising a small doubt: I wonder whether a scientific officer has the necessary experience to take on the role of spycatcher. Angleton sips his bourbon and says nothing. I back away.

  The following day I’m granted a short audience at Langley with the deputy director in charge of Clandestine Operations. He isn’t interested in the details of the PETERS investigation or in my assurance that C will leave no stone unturned in the hunt for the mole. ‘That’s bull,’ he shouts at me. ‘You’re losing your friends in this town. Put that in your report to Sir Dick.’

  ‘Richard Helms gave me a roasting,’ I tell Maurice later.

  ‘That was probably Jim Angleton’s doing,’ he replies.

  It’s a Tuesday afternoon, and we’re sitting in his small office at the British Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue. ‘I can tell you, most people here think Philby was too hot for us to handle so we just let him escape,’ he says, ‘and now they look at us and ask, “What’s the point?”’

  ‘Angleton too?’

  ‘He’s relieved no one will know just how much he let slip to Kim during their boozy lunches.’

  I say I have a friend at the Agency who thinks Philby’s defection has changed Angleton, that he’s going a little crazy. Maurice raises an eyebrow. ‘A friend with something to hide?’

  ‘We all have something to hide, Moulders.’

  ‘Yes,’ he offers me a wry smile, ‘we do. Is Jim paranoid? I expect so. He’s head of Counter-intelligence: he’s paid to be the most suspicious man in the CIA.’

  I nod slowly. ‘But is he running the show?’

  Maurice leans back with his podgy fingers laced across his stomach. ‘You’re referring to Golitsyn? Odious man. But he was at Moscow Centre for years. If he says the KGB has agents at the top of the CIA and in our own dear Service we have to take it seriously.’

  ‘I don’t suppose it’s occurred to anyone that it suits Golitsyn very well to say so because it’s his meal ticket, and very much in his interests to string it out for as long as he possibly can!’

  ‘Really, Harry!’ Maurice shakes his head in wonder. ‘I expect it’s occurred to everyone.’ He takes off his spectacles and pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘What do you expect Jim to do? Sweep it under the carpet again? I hope we’ve learned from Philby that that isn’t the way to go about things.’ He looks at me sternly. ‘I worry about you. I thought you were here to convince the Americans we can be trusted to put our house in order.’

  ‘Of course I am,’ I say, ‘and we are.’

  *

  ‘Gutless and godless,’ says Maurice, as we wait to brief the director of the FBI. ‘He says we’re dregs of a once great Empire. He hates us.’

  ‘Hates?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s too strong a word.’

  We approach J. Edgar Hoover through four interconnecting rooms as one might a great potentate, and just like one he wastes no time on civilities. ‘We’re fighting an evil and relentless enemy,’ he says, ‘and you British keep messing up.’

  I’ve heard stories over the years, of course, but I’m still amazed that he presumes to denounce our politicians – especially the Labour Party – in the most intemperate language. The pouches of loose skin on his face are quivering with passion and his eyes are as dark as pebbles of lignite. I don’t protest because that would be unfair on Maurice, and I can’t forget – no one will let me – that we’re beggars in this town. So, rattle on, J. Edgar Hoover, street bruiser, I don’t expect you’ve had this much fun since you took on Dillinger, Ma Baker and Al Capone all those years ago. His charge sheet ends with our greatest crime and the name Kim Philby.

  ‘Let me warn you, I’m going to ask the president to review our security relationship with you British.’

  He pauses and I manage a few words at last: would he permit me to brief him on PETERS?

  ‘Heard all about that,’ he snaps. ‘Don’t believe it. Graham Mitchell is as timid as a mail-order bride. Useless, but not a Commie.’

  I don’t quite believe what I’m hearing. ‘You seem very sure, sir?’

  ‘Your Arthur Martin showed us the evidence.’ He spits the word. ‘Pitiful. We’ve run checks on our joint operations with you and we’ve come up with nothing. You’re barking up the wrong tree.’

  And with that the lesson endeth. Hoover picks up his pen and we are marched back through his marble halls to the street.

  ‘Hoover can’t stand the British,’ says Angleton. ‘What’s the point of them?’

  Dinner’s over and we’ve retired to Maurice’s lounge upstairs for brandy and cigars. I’m sitting on a couch beside the picture window. The curtains are closed but I can hear rain tapping at the glass. The room is dim and smoky, perhaps to please Angleton. Maurice has no eye for furniture or pictures, but there are many good books, piles of British and American newspapers, ashtrays full of stubs, a record player and an old upright joanna. A modern house in a tidy Washington suburb that Moulders has turned into a home for everyone’s favourite bachelor uncle, and tonight for a male-only soirée. Angleton’s chief analyst, Raymond Rocca, is of the company, Harvey from Clandestine Operations, and Bennett from Canadian Counter-intelligence is here too. Strong drink has been taken, Rocca and Harvey are talking politics with Bennett, and tempers are fraying, but Angleton and I sit apart on our couch by the window.

  ‘What’s the point of the British?’ I say. ‘We’re here to make you feel smug about being American, to remind you of the decline and fall of great empires.’

  ‘I’m not the one you need to convince,’ he says, between puffs of a cigar. ‘It’s Mr Hoover – and just about everyone else in Washington.’

  ‘Well, at least one of us can be trusted,’ I say, with satisfaction. ‘Graham Mitchell. He’s quite sure Mitchell isn’t working for the Russians.’

  The right side of Angleton’s face twitches once. ‘I know. But, Harry …’ He leans so close that all I can concentrate on are his glasses and the smoke from his fat Cuban cigar, curling between us like an offering to the God of Moses who first sent spies into the l
and of Canaan. ‘Mitchell isn’t the only officer at the top of MI5 who fits the profile of a Soviet mole.’

  ‘You have another name?’

  To this, he doesn’t reply. I want to press him and he knows it because he makes a point of turning to the others. Their conversation is now at boiling point. The Canadian, Bennett, has lost patience, trying to explain to Americans why a democratic socialist isn’t a ‘Commie’, and he has charged Angleton’s chief analyst, Rocca, with being dumb enough for twins. Maurice is on his feet, trying to keep the peace.

  Angleton whispers sibilantly in my ear: ‘You know Maurice is a homo, don’t you? Damn fool tried to seduce the son of one of our agents.’

  I lie. ‘I had no idea, Jim.’

  ‘It was a tricky business to tidy up.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ I say. ‘Good of you, Jim.’

  I expect he’s tucked his report of the incident into a file ‘for future use’.

  ‘You bastard!’ Bennett struggles to his feet, a cushion to his nose. Rocca has taken a swing at him and Harvey is urging him to take another. Maurice is waving his arms around ineffectually, and if something isn’t done Bennett’s going to take a beating. I can’t let that happen: Bennett is a Canadian from Wales.

  ‘Come on, guys, cool it!’ Angleton is on his feet beside me. ‘What the hell’s this about anyway?’

  What’s it all about? It’s about drink and politics and testosterone. It’s about the world according to Langley: for us or against us? No ifs and buts now, we’re at war! The Soviet octopus sits astride the globe: its tentacles reach across oceans and continents. That’s Communism: it’s been the plan for more than a generation. Senator Joe McCarthy was right about that, see. And the enemy has slipped inside the gate in the guise of a socialist or a social democrat. Senator Joe was a prophet. And still Europe sleeps.

  Angleton stares Rocca down; Maurice puts an arm round Bennett. ‘Harvey! Stop hogging the bottle!’ And I sit at the piano to soothe their troubled minds. No one to talk with, all by myself, I sing, No one to walk with but I’m happy on the shelf. ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’, I’m savin’ my love for you. Then I play my own version of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ and Miller’s ‘In the Mood’, and for a time the great Western alliance appears as one again. But when the music stops Bennett makes his excuses and leaves, and we all breathe a sigh when Rocca follows suit a few minutes later.

  Come the dawn’s early light, Maurice and Harvey are snoozing, and my head’s spinning, but Angleton is still wide awake with things to say, and once again I marvel at his capacity. A disc is ticking on the gramophone, like the in-out pulse of a respirator, the last rhythm of life when the singing and the dancing are done. Angleton has me at an advantage. I should lift the needle and go, but here I am with my glass and my cigarette.

  Smoke seems to swirl around him like a luminous fog, and in my bourbon haze I fancy he is Myrddin – Merlin – and he has cast a spell on us all. He leans forward to pour us another, and because I’m caught in his spell I don’t seem able to refuse.

  He was talking Kennedy and Cuba but now he steers the conversation back across the Atlantic. ‘Rocca’s right,’ he says. ‘The KGB has insinuated hundreds of spies into political parties, trade unions, universities, the arts – anywhere and everywhere they serve the cause of Communism. Let there be no doubt, if the West does not root out this evil and consign it to the ash heap of history, then it must fall.’

  I nod and draw on my cigarette in the hope its sharp taste will bring me to my senses. Angleton needs no more encouragement. He’s flushed with bourbon and conviction and it has loosed his tongue. What do I know about the new ‘left wing’ leader of ‘your Labour Party’?

  ‘Harold Wilson? Bit of a reputation for shiftiness. Other than that … Why?’

  Angleton swills the ice in his drink, then takes a nip. ‘You’re right, Harry. Sly. He’s sly. Want to know why?’

  ‘Why, Jim?’

  He places his glass carefully on the low table in front of us and leans forward to touch my knee. ‘Because Harold Wilson is an enemy agent.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ I stare at him to be certain he’s serious and he stares back, challenging me to protest, to laugh.

  ‘Guess you think I’m drunk,’ he says.

  ‘Or I am.’

  ‘No, you heard. Harold Wilson is an agent of the Soviets. It was the KGB who made it possible for him to become the leader of your Labour Party.’

  ‘Right.’ My voice cracks. I say it again more firmly: ‘Right. You’d better explain, Jim.’

  He tries to. ‘We’ve been watching Wilson for a while,’ he says, ‘not just because he’s a left-winger. We know he has close links with Moscow. And now a trusted source has confirmed it: Wilson is working as an agent of influence.’

  ‘I see. The source … Anatoli Golitsyn?’

  Angleton doesn’t answer. He turns instead to the death of Wilson’s predecessor a few months ago. Hugh Gaitskell was a moderate, a champion of a strong British nuclear defence, ready to work with MI5 to root out Labour Members of Parliament who took their orders from Moscow. He clicks his bony fingers – gone! Suddenly, at only fifty-six. ‘Convenient, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Not for Mr Gaitskell.’

  ‘You’ve heard of Department Thirteen? It handles the KGB’s wet affairs. Our source says it was planning a hit on the leader of a major political party so it could put its own man in place. General Rodin’s in charge of Thirteen, and Rodin cut his teeth at the Soviet Embassy in London.’

  ‘And you think Gaitskell …?’

  ‘Let me finish, Harry. Gaitskell’s doctor contacted MI5. He was suspicious … Gaitskell died from a blood disease called lupus, which attacks the organs of the body. It’s incredibly rare in the West, and the doctor was worried because he couldn’t understand where Gaitskell could have picked it up.’

  ‘This is from Five?’

  ‘From Arthur Martin.’

  ‘Right.’ I can’t look him in the eye, not while I’m trying to make sense of what sounds like a fairy tale. ‘Arthur believes Hugh Gaitskell was infected by the Russians?’ I reach for what’s left of my drink but think twice about more alcohol and take another cigarette. ‘And, just to be clear, Gaitskell was murdered so Harold Wilson could become the new leader of the Labour Party?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Because Wilson is a … Hard to believe, Jim!’

  ‘Not if you know what I know about the way they operate,’ he says, flicking a speck of ash from the knee of his perfectly creased trousers. ‘We ran a check on all Russian scientific papers to find out what they’re saying about lupus. There’s one paper, written a few years ago. That’s all. No one in the Soviet Union has anything to say about lupus.’

  I don’t understand the triumph in his voice.

  ‘Standard practice,’ he says. ‘They won’t let their scientists write papers on lupus because they don’t want us to know they’ve found a way to infect people. It’s the perfect weapon because it’s deniable. I expect they’ve been working on it for years and were just waiting for a high-value target to use it. Well, with this and the intelligence from our source …’

  ‘From Golitsyn?’

  ‘From our source,’ he says firmly.

  ‘Can I meet your source?

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can I meet Golitsyn?’

  He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes with his knuckles. ‘That may be possible,’ he says, so casually I know it won’t it be. ‘I’ll ask him.’

  I want to say, ‘Come on, Jim, he doesn’t fart without your say-so,’ but what’s the point if he’s made up his mind to keep dear Anatoli away from me? So, I settle for a smile. He knows what I’m thinking, of course, and perhaps he’s already regretting that drink and poetry have tempted him to share so much with me because he says, ‘Sir Dick White has approved the investigation. OATSHEAF, that’s what we’re calling it. Just a small group here and at MI5. I don’t need to remind you …’
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  He slips his specs back on and stares at me. I try to meet his gaze. What can I say? My head is thick with the stale smoke and heat of the room. I know I should say something because he’s spun me such a tale … the leader of the Labour Party, who may well be our next prime minister, for Christ’s sake. I can see a faint reflection of the room in his glasses and a dark outline that must be me, and a line of T. S. Eliot’s that I spoke with little thought at our first meeting slips back into my mind because his spell is drawing me into a wilderness of mirrors.

  I say, ‘Jim, if the Russians published dozens, scores, of papers on lupus wouldn’t that be proof they murdered the leader of the Labour Party, too?’

  A little colour rises to his cheeks but he doesn’t flinch. He stares at me for a few more seconds, then gathers his cigarettes and lighter from the table. ‘Good to have had this opportunity to get to know you, Harry.’

  Maurice is stirring. He’s groaning and rubbing his eyes, like an old ham in a Whitehall farce. Was he sleeping or merely pretending to? ‘Christ, it’s almost six,’ he says, ‘I left you for so long.’

  ‘Jim has been entertaining me.’

  ‘Jim’ has slipped on his jacket and is making for the stairs. I follow him to the door and thank him for his hospitality and his confidence, but his mood has changed completely: he’s as cool and aloof as he was at our first meeting.

  ‘You’re flying home tomorrow?’

  ‘I’ll postpone if there’s any possibility of that meeting with Golitsyn.’

  ‘I was meaning to ask,’ he says, as he reaches for the front door, ‘you were in Vienna when SUBALTERN was blown, right?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. Why do you …?’

  ‘Anatoli was there too. KGB British section.’

  ‘Then we can swap old stories.’

  Angleton’s smile has all the warmth of a stab in the back. ‘He remembers SUBALTERN well,’ he says. ‘I wonder if he remembers you, Harry.’

  ‘Yes, I wonder.’

  Maurice is tottering about the lounge, collecting the empties and the ashtrays. He’s drawn the curtains and opened a window for a breath of fresh air. Myrddin has gone and his fog is clearing. Friend Harvey is in the bathroom and may be for some time. I collapse in a chair, close my eyes, and an image of our old Maerdy chapel springs into my thoughts, its polished-wood pews and gallery, the minister’s hell-fire pulpit, and the Ten Commandments painted on boards at either side of the organ. The gold lettering is hard to read in the grey light of a Sunday evening a long time ago, but I remember number nine: Thou shalt not bear false witness. I was small enough to swing my legs under the bench then, and too small to understand what the God of Moses meant by false witness.