Witchfinder

by Andrew Williams

  There are two types of fear. There’s the fear that paralyses and there’s the fear that mobilises. The first dulls the senses; the second sharpens perception. While the first may drive a man mad, it is possible to live a lifetime with the second. That was how it was in the war, and I imagine it was the same in Stalin’s Russia in the thirties, when a careless word might mean a death sentence for a family.

  Elsa still asks me, ‘When, Harry? You promised.’

  And I say, ‘Soon,’ when I mean ‘It’s too late.’

  For now, the first concern of the FLUENCY working party remains the hunt for a master spy upon whom it will be possible to hang the mistakes of my generation. They sometimes call him the Fourth Man, sometimes the Fifth, sometimes ELLI. We meet in the last week of May to consider a draft of our report for the heads of Service. Hollis should be at the meeting – his office is just along the corridor – but he’s too busy planning his retirement to realise the last six months have been a paper chase for evidence of his guilt. And Wright and Angleton won’t be denied. I expect they wrote the findings of the FLUENCY report before our first meeting. In short, ‘we’ – the FLUENCY committee – believe the chief custodian of our country’s secrets, Sir Roger Hollis, should be investigated as a double agent.

  Martin, ‘our consultant’, is back inside the building, and Angleton’s man, Bright, is invited to hear our conclusions too. No one cares that the director of the CIA will now be told before the man at the big desk along the corridor. The DG will learn tomorrow when his mistress, Val, brings him his first coffee and a Rich Tea biscuit, and our Most Secret report. He’ll choke on that biscuit.

  31

  7 June 1965

  ELSA SAYS, ‘JACK Ellis is in town. What have you done to upset him?’

  We’re standing beneath the white-stone portico on the north side of the Ministry of Defence with the rain bouncing on the steps below us. Across the road, Whitehall Court, an apartment building in the French renaissance style that was home in its heyday to the first incarnation of the Secret Intelligence Service. I have come from a FLUENCY meeting to whisk my best friend and lover off to the York Minster to get filthy drunk on wine and memories.

  ‘You used to be so close,’ she says.

  Jack was my CIA contact in Vienna, and I was best man when he married Michelle, but the last time I saw him was in a Georgetown park at dusk, and he made me feel about as welcome as a wet shoe. Angleton’s people were over him like a rash, and in the months after Philby, acknowledging a friend in the British Secret Service wasn’t much safer than owning to a chum in the KGB. And now he’s in London. Elsa saw him at an American Embassy lunch, a big man trying to appear small. ‘He isn’t going to see you, I’m afraid. Full of excuses … Sorry, Harry. No honour among thieves.’ She steps forward with her arm out and hand open and the rain splashes on her palm. ‘Wait here,’ she says. ‘I’ll go inside and phone for a taxi.’

  ‘Hang on.’ I catch her arm. ‘What was he doing at the embassy?’

  ‘He’s over with Gordon Gray, the former national security adviser to the president. Fact-finding, Jack says. I imagine it has more to do with you people than with us at Defence.’

  ‘Gray’s more than a former, he’s a very current adviser on foreign intelligence matters. Did Jack tell you where he’s staying?’

  Elsa takes a step away and stares at me. ‘Harry. No.’

  I would like to tell her she’s wrong and kiss her frown away. ‘There’s a reason why he’s avoiding me.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. Perhaps he’s heard how you treat your wife.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You know you’re taking us for granted, don’t you?’

  I watch her run down the steps to hail a passing cab, and as it pulls away I remember Jack observing in his folksy Texan way that Elsa is pretty enough to make a fella plough through a stump. He’s right. I wish I could explain that I have to see Jack precisely because I won’t take us for granted. Maybe I’m chasing my tail, but I think he’s avoiding me because he’s in trouble, or I’m in trouble, or the whole bloody Service is in trouble.

  I call our liaison officer at Special Branch from a telephone box near Charing Cross station and ask him to run a check: Gray and his entourage are at the Connaught in Mayfair. At half past seven, a cab drops me in front of the Jesuit church we used for dead-drop messages during the war, and I splash across Mount Street into the shelter of the hotel porch. The Connaught is a late-Victorian red-brick affair, smart but not flashy. The dark-panelled décor of the lobby reminds me of pictures I’ve seen of first class on the Titanic. A receptionist has a map of London open on the front desk and is trying to show an elderly American lady where she will find the statue of Eros at Piccadilly Circus.

  ‘Would Madam like a taxi?’

  As he lifts a telephone my gaze is drawn to the theatre mirror behind him just as Angleton’s man, Bright, walks through the frame. He’s close enough to slap me on the back. Er mwyn duw. I don’t need Sherlock Holmes to tell me he’s here to see Gray.

  The CIA party is in the hotel restaurant, seated at one of the tables furthest from the door. Jack has his back to me, facing a broad man in his mid-fifties with a deep furrow between his lip and his nose and the sort of straight mouth a small child draws on its first picture. I can tell from his manner that he’s the focus of the conversation, and that this must be Gray. His other table companions – one of them will be Bright – are hidden by a fat pillar and a fern. The head waiter asks me if I’m going to dine and I decline, but I ask him for the name of the bar beyond the glass doors on the far side of the restaurant. ‘The Coburg, sir,’ he says.

  And what a handsome art-deco watering-hole it turns out to be. I order a Scotch and settle opposite a mirror that offers an oblique reflection of Gray. I could be in the bar all evening and leave none the wiser, and I’m in two minds as to whether to wait for an opportunity to catch Jack alone or scribble a note and come back later. Dear Jack, if the mountain won’t come to Mohammed …

  Then Gray eases his chair from the table and with a start I recognise the broad brown-checked jacket that Martin has made his summer uniform. A few seconds later he reaches for his coffee cup and his head bobs into view. Bloody Arthur Martin is briefing Gray on how things stand in the Service. That means FLUENCY and Hollis, and there’s no question now: I must see Jack tonight.

  I watch the receptionist dial Jack’s room and make a mental note of the number. No, I wouldn’t like to leave a message, thank you. But a few minutes later, when the front desk is busy with another elderly American, I slip into one of the lifts – it’s much easier than it should be. Jack’s sloppy too. There’s nothing to suggest he has taken precautions with his door. A wire coat hanger will do the trick, and I find one just along the corridor: Room 520 has left a pink blouse on the door for Laundry to collect.

  Jack’s room is plush enough, I’m sure. Like most of London’s expensive hotels, it is furnished with fake antiques and sporting prints to encourage the visitor to imagine he’s a guest at an English country house. There’s a small bottle of whisky and three dirty glasses on the table. By the bed, a picture of his wife, Michelle, and their daughter, Eleanor. I assume anything secret is in the safe but I search his things to be sure. Then I turn off the light and settle in an armchair with his whisky.

  There isn’t much left by the time I hear him approaching along the corridor. His voice is husky and I know of old that he’s with a woman he wants, and that he’s drunk even more than I have. It takes him a while to find his keys, and when he does he says, ‘After you, darlin’,’ which sounds so sleazy it makes me smile. His companion is wearing a grey suit and glasses; penny for a pound she’s a secretary at the embassy.

  ‘Hello,’ I say, and she squeals.

  Jack spins round too quickly and cracks his elbow on the wall. ‘What the hell! Git yer ass—’

  ‘Don’t shout. You’re frightening the lady.’

  Who is clever enough to realise it’s ti
me to leave. She doesn’t seem the slightest bit sorry about it.

  ‘How dare you?’ he says, when she’s gone.

  ‘How dare you, Jack?’

  He takes out a handkerchief and mops his brow, then steps unsteadily towards the wardrobe. ‘Son of a bitch! You’ve been through my things.’

  ‘Must have been the maid.’

  ‘And she drank my Scotch, too?’ He helps himself to the little that’s left, then lowers his heavy frame into the other armchair. ‘Don’t get the wrong idea … Merle’s a good girl,’ he says. ‘She works at the embassy.’

  ‘Merle? Is that her name? How’s Michelle?’

  ‘Harry, I swear you’re lower than a snake’s belly.’

  ‘And you’ve always known it.’

  The room’s warm and close but not like a Texas summer, yet Jack is sweating like a pig. I watch him turn his glass on the arm of the chair, scratch his cheek, his nose, his knee, and contrive to look anywhere but at me. He’s afraid. And I feel a surge of sadness because in the next few minutes we will lose for ever the laughter and the sympathy we used to share.

  ‘What’s Gordon Gray doing here, Jack?’

  ‘Is that it?’ He puts down his glass and leans over his broad knees to rise. ‘’Cause you know I got nothin’ to say.’

  ‘This thing with Gray … Is it something to do with Angleton, with us, the British?’

  He gets to his feet and sways towards me.

  ‘What are you doing, Jack? Planning to have me ejected? Come on! Why don’t you sit down? I saw you with Arthur Martin this evening. Was Wright there too?’ I see the answer in his face. ‘No Wright. OK. But tell me, why is a security adviser to the president involved in all this?’

  Jack is saying ‘nothin’’. Well, fine! Then the answer is the obvious one. ‘This has gone to the president. Gordon Gray is here because the president has asked him to be.’

  ‘Jeezus.’ He steps back, a hand to his lips. ‘Git outta here!’

  ‘Shall I ring for another bottle of Scotch?’

  ‘Go on, git!’

  ‘You ring. Best no one knows I’m here chewing the fat with you, especially Bright because he’ll tell Angleton.’

  Jack opens his mouth but my meaning penetrates the whisky fog in his brain before he can tell me to ‘git’ again. He closes his eyes and holds his head. ‘You’re jumpin’ on me with all four feet, ain’tcha?’

  ‘Jack, we’re friends, right?’

  ‘You bastard!’

  ‘You can trust me.’

  He snorts with disgust, as well he might in the circumstances. No need to spell it out. He picks up the bottle, realises he emptied it and drops back in the armchair with a long face. What happened to the brawling scratchy cowboy I used to know? Age has wearied him; it condemns us all.

  ‘I want to make it easy for you,’ I say. ‘I’m going to talk and you’re going to look me in the eye, and if I go astray, touch your ear, your face, stroke your moustache, something like that, all right?’

  Angleton or someone else, Deputy Director Helms perhaps, has taken the Agency’s concerns about the penetration of British intelligence to the White House. True. Gordon Gray is working for the president. True. Angleton is hoping to scalp Roger Hollis. All true. Jack’s fingers are squirming in his lap but that’s where they stay.

  ‘And it’s all part of a grand plan for the CIA to run things around here,’ I say.

  ‘Jeezus. Can you blame us?’ he blurts. ‘The mess you folks have made of things.’

  ‘That’s funny because it was you who told me Angleton was as crazy as a bullbat, Jack. I guess he’s finished investigating you.’

  ‘That guy is never finished.’

  ‘See? You do understand.’

  Jack leans close and peers at me. ‘Are you hollerin’ about MI6 or is this about you?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Which is why I don’t trust you.’

  ‘Well, you should because we’re friends – or we were.’

  He offers a tight smile but it’s gone in a flash. ‘You know Jim Angleton’s a Chicano, right? Injun blood. I’m tellin’ you for old times’ sake, Harry: Roger Hollis’s scalp ain’t the only one he’s fixin’ to take.’

  Elsa is sitting in bed with her work spread across the counterpane. ‘All right, tell me,’ she says, and it’s an order not a request. I obey. I shouldn’t, it’s another weak moment, but I’ve lost an old friend and I risk losing more besides. I push her papers aside and drop on to the bed in my suit and tie, kick off my shoes, and talk of Jack and Angleton and Gray and Hollis and me, and when I’ve finished she says, ‘You should have resigned months ago.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I say, which I don’t mean, and ‘Kiss me,’ which I do. She ignores me because her mind is busy with the rest of my life.

  ‘The Observer. You know the foreign editor.’

  ‘After they took on Philby?’

  ‘The Times.’

  ‘He worked for that, too.’

  ‘Then it has to be the Economist.’

  ‘Twenty-five years in the Service. I owe it something – and the country.’ She sighs. ‘Das kannst du deiner Oma erzählen,’ she says – tell it to your grandmother – and she bends over me, and beneath the curtain of her hair we kiss.

  Jack says Maurice is no poker player and perhaps that’s so, but he’s a fine actor nonetheless, one of the Firm’s best. I believe I could arrive at the Athenaeum with news of a nuclear strike and he would frown or raise an eyebrow, perhaps offer me a last cigarette, and that’s about all. At one of our meetings he told me he didn’t think much of lie-detector tests because he took the CIA’s and passed with flying colours. But we meet the evening after my conversation with Jack and for once he is quite open about his feelings. ‘Dick has lost his grip,’ he says. ‘He’s ready to accept the FLUENCY report without question and is urging Roger to widen the scope of the inquiry. What’s more, he’ll get his way. You realise what that means for Roger?’

  Of course I do: for the first time in history the head of a secret security service will authorise his officers to investigate him for treason.

  ‘Incredible, isn’t it?’ Maurice draws deeply on his cigarette. ‘Incredible.’

  He pauses while the smoking-room steward serves us another drink. This has become our corner on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and any other day I have something to report. The steward has four fingers of whisky poured before our backsides touch the leather chairs. Maurice leans over his knees. ‘Angleton has discussed the FLUENCY report with “our friend”, who is now sure Hollis is a traitor.’

  ‘“Our friend”?’

  ‘That’s what Jim calls Golitsyn. Funny. I read somewhere that the tsar called his mad monk Rasputin “our friend”, and look what happened to him. Our friend Golitsyn is convinced his old friends in the KGB want to bump him off too, and I tell you, Harry, I’m sorely tempted to help them.’

  I laugh, and we pick up our drinks. As I sip mine I wonder if this is the time to speak to Maurice about Gray and the CIA investigation. But instead I ask him if anyone in our government knows the head of its Security Service is accused of betraying his country. He gazes at me over the edge of his glass and says nothing, which is to say everything, because a man who has beaten the CIA lie-detector test would have no difficulty convincing me with a lie. So he wants me to know we’re hiding FLUENCY from the prime minister. His eyes are almost shut, one hand open on the arm of his chair, the other pinching his cigarette in a circle – the Derbyshire Buddha. I wonder if he’s giving me time to imagine doing something rash. A word in a Labour MP’s ear, perhaps. But I don’t have faith in his silences. I should tell him the White House knows all our troubles, that a joint CIA-FBI inquiry has the British Secret Service in its sights, and that Jim Angleton is going to crunch us up and spit us out. I should tell him, but I don’t, because he’s to blame too. He’s let things go too far already. He’s decent and sincere but he’s a Service politician, and he’ll do all he can to keep it in-house. />
  ‘You’ll stay for dinner?’

  ‘Sorry, Maurice, I can’t.’

  ‘Until Tuesday, then,’ he says, and shakes my hand warmly, no doubt confident that he can trust me not to break our little contract.

  The warmth, the smell and the roar of the big city evening are a release after the perpetual autumn of the club. As I walk along Horse Guards Road my gaze is drawn to the lights burning in the state drawing room at the back of Downing Street. Wilson may be working on his plans for a peace conference to end the war in Vietnam. Proof, I’m sure, that our prime minister is a Soviet stooge. We live in mad times. The question is, Harry Vaughan, what do you intend to do about it?

  There’s a bench beside the keeper’s cottage in St James’s Park where the secretaries at the Foreign Office feed the pelicans in their lunch hour. Jack Ellis asked, ‘Is it for you or the Service?’ and I said, ‘Both,’ which was more candid than wise. I’m looking out for myself, yes, but I belong to the Service. I’ve lied, cheated and killed someone for the Service. I finish my cigarette and flick the butt into the water. A young man in a boat-club blazer ambles past me but only as far as the low rail around the lake. I wait for him to turn and give me the eye, which he does very brazenly. What would you think of that, Guy Burgess? I’m old enough to be his father, and more. When I shake my head, he smiles and wanders off without a word.