Maybe not, but too civil service to be a decent field agent. And yet, after the isolation and the ignominy of the last couple of years, this is a task he seems to relish. I sense he has recovered some of his old Winchester College confidence. There will be no further contact between us, so I wish him luck and watch him in the rear-view mirror as he walks to the club with a pronounced spring in his step.
34
13 July 1965
AN INSTRUCTOR AT the Fort taught me that once you’ve pulled the pin on a standard British grenade you have four seconds’ grace.
To be sure I’m clear of the blast, I spend Tuesday with Lecky in the basement at Century House. I catch him leaping at the furniture, like a dog agitating for a bone.
‘Hollis was on good terms with a hack in China called Smedley,’ he says, ‘female of the species and an American.’
‘Where’s this come from all of a sudden?’
‘Bright at CIA London station.’
‘Ah.’
‘Seems Smedley found time in her busy newspaper schedule to do a bit of moonlighting for the Communist International.’
‘So Roger was friendly with a Communist in the thirties?’ I say, throwing my hands into the air. ‘Well, that’s it. Will you ring Special Branch, Terence, or shall I?’
‘All right. We all know where you stand on this, Vaughan.’
‘I stand before you with an open mind.’
‘Peter doesn’t think so.’
‘Don’t fall for that “Counter-intelligence feeds off scraps” bullshit, Lecky. You know Wright and Hollis have history, don’t you?’
He protests he’s capable of making his own assessment, and he’s reserving his judgement too. I’m not sure. He has inhaled deeply, and now sees things the same way as Peter Wright, which is back to front. Merely countenance the possibility for long enough and nothing becomes something. As the great Tom Paine observed, ‘Time makes more converts than reason.’ Peter is teaching Terence to know and not to know, to search for the good facts and ignore the inconvenient ones. In the wilderness of mirrors you see only what you want to see. Funny, because it is the way the Party goes about things, too, the way Guy and Kim went about their business.
Late in the afternoon, Moulders rings me from his office many floors above. ‘All sorts of trouble on the other side of the river.’
‘Oh?’
‘Meet me at eight tonight. Usual place.’
‘Not tonight.’
The line crackles. ‘Does this have anything to do with you?’ he says at last.
‘No idea what you’re talking about, Maurice.’
‘Never mind. Tomorrow. Eleven. My office.’
But the following day – the Wednesday – I return to Leconfield House and ring Maurice’s secretary with an excuse. She says something tart I don’t catch, because my room is full of the noise of the street. The windows are open in the hope of some small breeze on a sweltering high-summer day in central London, where the sky is filthy white and my throat feels sharp and dry with exhaust fumes. For a moment I allow my imagination to carry me to a glade by a stream, where an attractive little Jewess, who happens to be my wife, is lying on a rug, the sun through the trees dappling the skin of her legs.
I’m watching her roll on to her side and reach for the Chablis when I am catapulted back to my desk by a car horn in the street below, my shirt clinging to my back, the Smedley file open in front of me. Agnes Smedley. War reporter. Champion of independence for India in the twenties, of the Chinese Communist Party in the thirties. Judged by the same to be ‘too independent of thought’ but a loyal supporter nonetheless, and an agent for the Communist International. There’s a picture on file of her in combat fatigues and a Mao hat. Died 1950. Ashes buried at a cemetery for heroes of the revolution in Peking. Lecky has run a trace through the Passport Office for the dates of Hollis’s arrivals and departures from London, and there’s the address of a bank in Peking that he was using for his post. There’s a note from Wright, too. He’s spoken to an old soldier who remembers Hollis out there. Hollis was ‘thick’ with another Communist called Arthur Ewert, a talent-spotter for Moscow. Wright has scribbled a note on a cover sheet, ‘Every man is defined by his friends.’
I wait an hour, then saunter down the corridor to the D3 Secretariat where members of the team are sweating over their files. Wright’s sitting at his desk with a cigarette between his fingers, Evelyn hovering at its edge.
‘Things t-t-took an awkward turn,’ he says. ‘I expect you h-heard about it?’
‘Of course he did, darling,’ says Evelyn, gazing at me from the corner of her eye.
‘I did hear that Roy Rogers’s horse, Trigger, has “passed away”,’ I say, ‘and that the Russians are sending a couple of thousand military advisers to help the Communists in Vietnam.’
Evelyn snorts; most unattractive.
‘I was r-referring to a more local difficulty,’ says Wright. ‘The Americans have conducted a secret review of our intelligence and found it wanting in every way. Jim Angleton was b-bursting to tell me. Cornered me, at one of his all-night drinking sessions. He – they w-want rid of Roger and their own people inside MI5. They were planning to meet the prime minister to tell him so.’
I whistle. ‘Landing their ships on our beaches?’
Wright’s gaze drifts from me to his desktop and then to Evelyn. ‘Jim briefed me in confidence’ – he leans forward to extinguish his cigarette – ‘b-b-but I was duty-bound to warn Roger. I flew home last night. He’s shocked, of course.’
‘Dick will be, too, I’m sure.’
Evelyn has a hand to her birthmark. They both knew and chose to say nothing until the cat was out of the bag, and now they’re putting on a fine show of sympathy and quiet indignation, just as you might with a friend who confides to you that his wife is sleeping with someone else and he has no idea the someone is you. Wright left just enough space to back away. I could expose him as the second-rate conspirator he is, but not without risking the identity of my source, and I don’t believe it would make a bit of difference to the FLUENCY investigation if I did.
‘Roger’s b-been humiliated,’ says Wright. ‘He’s refusing point blank to see the American ambassador. He’s asked the Foreign Office to tell members of the CIA’s London office they’re persona non grata, kick them out. That’s r-really not in our interests, of course, and I’m sure Dick will tell him so.’ He sighs, as one with unnatural cares. ‘Jim wants to help us. He’s just gone about it the wrong way.’
I say, ‘I see,’ when I mean, ‘You shit.’
The phone on Wright’s desk rings and he answers. ‘Yes, sir,’ and raises his eyebrows to warn us it’s Hollis on the line. ‘I’ll c-come right up, sir.’
But Wright hasn’t done with me for the day. Vicky, one of the D Branch secretaries, has found me a small fan, but the breeze is barely enough to lift the papers on the desk in front of me. In desperation I’ve used the silk tie Elsa’s mum bought me for Christmas to hold the window wide open. At half past four Wright barges into my office. There’s no pretence when we’re alone, no courtesy. He must be a cold-blooded creature because he’s still wearing his tie and jacket, the sort of dark blue blazer I associate with clubhouse bores.
‘I w-wanted a word in private,’ he says, closing my door with his arse.
‘Keeping secrets from Evelyn?’
He smiles his sideways smile. ‘Of course not.’
‘Does she know you broke into the DG’s office?’
‘It’s about Jim,’ he says. ‘He thinks you m-may be working for the other side.’
A frisson of anxiety courses through me, and to disguise it I grunt and push my chair away. ‘And what do you think?’
‘Jim thinks you’re obstructing the investigation. And there’s your friendship with Burgess, of course.’
‘Oh, really?’ I laugh loudly. ‘Pot calling the kettle. All those liquid lunches Angleton enjoyed with Philby at Harvey’s restaurant – he was one of Kim’s
best sources. You know that.’
‘And Operation SUBALTERN.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘And now this b-business with the DG.’
‘What business?’
‘Jim thinks you warned R-Roger that the CIA was moving against him.’
‘You told Roger. You were duty-bound to, you said.’
‘Well, that isn’t quite true.’
‘Oh?’
Cool as you like he pushes the papers on my filing cabinet to one side so he can lean against it with his arm on the top. ‘I was g-going to speak to Roger, naturally, only someone b-beat me to it. Was it you, by the way?’
‘Well, if I did know, I’d have been duty-bound to say, wouldn’t I?’
‘Did you?’
‘No, Peter.’ I feel my shirt peel from the chair as I lean forward to look him in the eye. ‘Who told Roger what and when doesn’t matter. Accusing me of being a spy … well, that’s crazy. Mad. A wild allegation.’
Wright licks his bottom lip as if he’s tasting his reply. ‘You have gone out of your way to be difficult, Vaughan.’
‘Not true.’
‘You told Jim you didn’t consider me fit to run the investigation – a technician—’
‘Science officer. He asked me and I told him you wouldn’t be my first choice.’
‘Well …’ he stands up straight and reaches behind his back for the door handle ‘… we’ll see, won’t we?’
‘Here,’ I say, getting to my feet. ‘Here’s something for you.’ I scoop up the Smedley file and offer it to him. ‘A friend of Hollis in China – an agent for the Communist International. Worth looking into.’
He’s smiling, but not in a pleasant way.
‘Yes. Lecky told me about Smedley. “Bullshit”, you called it, didn’t you?’
‘Bullshit to think you know a man just by the company he keeps. Accuse Dick, accuse Angleton, then you can accuse me.’
‘You can’t accuse me,’ he says, opening the door. ‘I’ve always be v-very careful about the company I keep. Thank you for this.’ He flaps the Smedley file at me. ‘I’ll let Terence know I have it from you.’ Then he closes the door oh-so-quietly behind him, and I close my eyes. ‘Cachiad …’ I say it very quickly three times, four times, six and seven times, then kick the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet.
Rush hour in Piccadilly, people hurrying to the tube at Green Park, everyone impatient to be home, except me. I stop and gaze in art-shop windows, step into Hatchards to inspect the ‘must buy’ books, then Fortnum’s for some fancy chocolates. I carry my little package through ‘Honey and Preserves’ to the exit on Jermyn Street, and on Pall Mall I collect my post from the Reform, pausing at the bottom of York Steps to tie a shoelace. In Horse Guards a crowd is listening to ‘Beating the Retreat’, and even with my heart pounding trumpets and cymbals, I smile at the recollection of another Marx quip, that military justice is to justice what military music is to music. Time to calm down, Harry. No one is following you home today. Only remember, it’s Vienna Rules now.
Mrs Howard’s help is polishing the brass door fittings at number 21, and scaffolding is going up opposite at number 11, just across the street from home. Should I splint the front door? Those fine upstanding chaps in A Branch may come calling, or someone from the CIA. Elsa will want to know why.
The house is empty, the post still on the mat. An image of Jesus stares up at me. ‘Hymn practice 19.30,’ Maurice writes. Turning his card over again, I note it’s a fresco of Judas’s betrayal of Christ by the late medieval painter Giotto. I expect he picked it up on his holiday last summer. Well, Maurice, I suppose we still need each other. But the first thing to do is fling open the drawing-room windows for some air. Then I change my shirt and carry a cup of tea and an ashtray to the couch. In our dark little hall the grandfather clock strikes half past six.
I find Maurice playing with the organ stops out. (‘Bach is best,’ Dylan Thomas used to say.) The air is charged with the rich scent of sandalwood, and as the bass pipes rumble, dust motes dance in the rainbow light pouring through the stained glass on to the chairs and terracotta tiles of the nave: a modest neo-Gothic church of grey Kentish ragstone on the outside, colourful and idolatrous within. In the threads of Maurice’s Prelude (in C major, I think) I can almost imagine there is such a thing as a divine order. The trouble with the chapel Sundays of childhood was that we relied too much on the spoken word of the minister for inspiration, and he was a competent actor but we knew his lines too well. There was no moment on the road from Maerdy, only a growing conviction, like the swell of a mighty organ, that we walk through the shadow of the valley alone. Marx (Karl) was a companion for a mile or so, until I realised he was a terrible bore, and that he had kept bad company.
The last chord of the Prelude blossoms and dies in the corners of the church, and for a few precious seconds of silence my nerves tingle with feeling, just as they do after sex, or when someone walks over my grave. Maurice coughs and turns a page of his music book and the spell is broken. I begin to clap and he turns, right hand to his large spectacles. ‘You’re early.’
‘I’m glad, because I came in time for your performance.’
‘Practising for next Sunday.’ Swinging his legs round and over the pedals, he shuffles along the bench and perches at its edge. ‘Sanctuary from the sinful world.’
‘Music or this place?’
‘Inseparable,’ I hear him say, his head between his knees. ‘Excuse me, will you?’ He was playing the pedals of the organ in his stockinged feet and with all the confidence and agility of a Highland dancer tiptoeing round a sword, but leaning over his stomach to lace his shoes is proving to be much more of a challenge. Rising at last, flushed with the effort, he asks, ‘You’re not a believer, Harry, are you?’
‘I’m not religious.’
‘What do you believe in?’
I puff out my cheeks. ‘Things,’ I say, ‘things. But if I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Perhaps it is already. Now, why am I here, Maurice?’
‘You do believe in something?’
‘Must we do this now? I thought this was urgent.’
‘You look uncomfortable,’ he says, gesturing to the seat nearest the bench. The organ is on a dais above the floor of the nave so when I do what he wants I find myself looking up at him, like a servant on his knees before his master. ‘That’s better,’ he says. ‘Now, tell me, why did you keep the CIA investigation of the Service from me?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Angleton thinks you told Roger because you knew he would kick up a fuss – that you were throwing up a smokescreen.’
‘I heard that from Wright, yes.’
Maurice leans closer, forearms across his broad knees. ‘Well?’
‘And if I did know, wasn’t it my duty to notify Roger?’
‘To tell me first – or the chief,’ he remembers to say.
‘Angleton thinks I’m a traitor. Did he tell you that too?’
Maurice stares at me. Solomon, on his bench, and no one who utters unrighteous things will escape his notice. I meet his gaze, motionless, unblinking, until he says at last, ‘Well, are you a spy, Harry?’
‘All right, Maurice. I’m ELLI.’ I glare at him. ‘I confess.’
His left hand moves to the keyboard and the organ booms, like a ship’s foghorn. ‘Good try. You’re not important enough, and you know it, but, if we’re to believe your FLUENCY colleagues, ELLI may be one of many spies in the Service.’ The corner of his mouth twitches with just the suggestion of a smile. ‘Let me ask you again …’
‘Oh, come on.’ I roll my eyes to where Heaven should be. ‘All right … We’re in your church, I’ll tell you something. Obeying orders … it isn’t an unconditional pact. No matter how many promises you make, how many oaths you take, not if you’re a proper human being. The war taught us that, didn’t it? Remember the camps?’
‘I remember. And I remember you were at one – the liber
ation of Belsen, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
He reflects upon this a moment. ‘We choose sides to protect our values, then set about compromising them. Sometimes we have no choice. That’s why I come here’ – he opens his arms to the church – ‘to remember who I am. But don’t keep things from me, Harry. Hollis retires in December and he’ll be replaced by his deputy, Furnival Jones, and I understand FJ thinks very highly of Wright and Martin.’
‘That’s true.’
‘He’ll push forward with the investigation. Don’t give him any cause to doubt you. And, Harry,’ he clasps fat hands together as if in prayer, ‘lie to me and I’ll cut you loose.’
I protest – ‘Maurice!’ – even though it’s a piece of nonsense. When the time comes he’ll cut me adrift in any case. He’ll have to. It’s only a question of when.
35
29 July 1965
SERVICE PEOPLE ARE familiar with many shades of secret. They recognise the difference between official secrets and a secret to save the reputation of an official. The best efforts of the management to bury the rift with the CIA are not enough to prevent it seeping through the building. Someone called Peter may have spoken to someone, and that someone is busy telling colleagues at Five that the Americans are trying to shove the director general out of the door. Hollis will limp on to retirement, but his reputation will never recover.
Our working party meets to assess the situation on the last Thursday in July. For the first time in a while Arthur Martin joins us, although his manner is so changed it would be easy to take him for an imposter. I swear this business has hurt him more than Blunt. The anger, the arrogance, the fire has gone out. Well, it’s Wright’s show now, and he is calm and reasonable as if the hunt for a mole is a simple technical matter, like the wiring of a listening device. The perfect white-coat voice and manner. As I listen to him remind us of the need for total secrecy an image comes to mind of a snake-oil salesman selling his dodgy potions from the back of a wagon. ‘It’s imperative knowledge of our work is restricted to the smallest circle,’ he says, and Stewart taps the arm of his wheelchair in agreement. The investigation falls into three sections now and Evelyn has prepared a summary of our progress.
Witchfinder Page 24