Witchfinder

by Andrew Williams

  I sit at my desk with Elsa’s postcard – the familiar image of the ruined church that Berliners call the ‘hollow tooth’ – and I consider the possibilities, one stop after another – subject, counter-subject, inversion, like one of Maurice’s great fugues – until my head is booming. Stop! From the bottom drawer of my desk, a bottle of whisky. This is the edge of reason that Jim Angleton tiptoes all the time. How easy it would be to fall. Like the winter climber who ventures on to a wind-cut cornice at the crest of the mountain, a footstep too far, a single hysterical impulse, and crack! Over the precipice he goes. I have known days and nights of confusion and fear in the field but never been tested quite like this. Has she gone?

  17 February 1966

  The FLUENCY committee is gathered at Peter Wright’s conference table to discuss his visit to France.

  ‘P-P-Proctor’s g-guilty,’ he says.

  ‘Did he say so?’

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘If the evidence put it beyond doubt.’

  I know Sir Dennis Proctor a little because he was a friend of Guy’s. He reached the top of the civil service and is now enjoying his pension and a lucrative company directorship. I bet the last week playing host to Wright in France felt like the longest of his life.

  ‘He admits he’s been l-l-left wing all his life,’ says Wright, ‘but claims he was never a Communist. One night he got pretty drunk and admitted he’d always admired Burgess.’ Wright looks at me from the corner of his eye. ‘I have it here,’ he says, turning the pages of his notepad. ‘N-no secrets from Guy, even when I was working for the prime minister. Guy only had to ask and I would tell him … P-Proctor shared every secret that crossed his desk with his friend, and Burgess passed it on to his Soviet controller.’

  ‘Well done, Peter,’ says Stewart. ‘How much damage? Can we prosecute?’

  ‘Pour encourager the civil service,’ says someone else.

  And my head is a swarm of wild imagining. Where is she? I’ve shared so much of my work with her. Er mwyn duw. Too much drink and too little sleep and too many meetings in smoke-filled rooms like this one, with papers from the thirties that are so fragile they have to be pared apart with a knife; too much suspicion, too little purpose, and no reason to be joyful.

  ‘Proctor’s f-first wife committed suicide,’ I hear Wright say. ‘I wonder why. She spoke to Burgess just before he scuttled off to Moscow, and not long after that she took her life.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Peter,’ I say. ‘Will you excuse me?’

  I don’t have time to be careful. I ring a travel agent I’ve done business with in the past from my desk: he says he can get me a flight to Berlin tomorrow. I ask him to buy an open ticket for me in the name of Morgan. Then I ring the number two at Berlin station and call in a favour: would he please check with the army and local police if Elsa Frankl Vaughan is still in the western half of the city. At six o’clock I lock my office door for what may be the last time and take the lift to the entrance hall, where the duty policeman wishes me a pleasant evening and I wish him the same.

  The temperature is close to freezing and everyone is moving more quickly. I join the procession across the parks, just as I’ve done for the last three years, glad of the winter darkness, the prickle of the cold on my face and in my throat. I know every tree, every park bench, and the office windows that overlook Queen’s Walk, where we used to say a hack at the Economist was keeping a seat warm for me. Too late. Tonight the air is too thick for hymns. My calmer self says I’m wrong to assume the worst; my cynical Service self can only recall that it was like this when Guy fled in ’51.

  I’m so full of these mad thoughts I don’t check whether the splints are missing from the front door. As soon as it’s open I notice a chink of light at the end of the hall. Either someone has forced their way in uninvited, or they need no invitation. I drop my briefcase on the floor and lean my back against the wall. No greeting. No word. I feel … I don’t know … relief, of course. I feel foolish. I feel an overwhelming sense of sadness settle like a mist on the lake of my heart, because nothing is as it should be.

  ‘Welcome home,’ I say.

  Elsa’s sitting at the table in her black wool coat, a suitcase at her feet. She doesn’t rise to kiss me, merely acknowledges my presence with a weak smile that lasts no longer than the beat of a crow’s wing.

  ‘I wasn’t sure you were coming home,’ I say.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You know why: I haven’t heard from you for days.’

  She says nothing, and her face shows nothing – neither warmth nor remorse – and it hurts so much I lose my temper. ‘Where the hell have you been?’

  ‘Didn’t you get my card?’

  ‘Was it too much to pick up the phone? Christ. I didn’t know where you were. Your minister came home days ago, girl! You left Bielefeld early on Saturday, skipped the hotel in Gütersloh – no record of you there, or in Berlin. And no one at the MoD seemed to know—’

  ‘You contacted the ministry?’ she says, rising from the table.

  ‘I was beginning to think you weren’t coming back. I was worried. Where the hell were you?’

  ‘I was doing my job! Honestly, Harry, what’s wrong with you?’

  We glare at each other. I’m furious. I’m sad. I’m in love – when she’s angry most of all, because her dark eyes are sparkling like a mountain lake and there’s an intense frown between her perfectly arched eyebrows, and always a strand of hair on her cheek. And I want an excuse to touch her. ‘So, are you home?’ I say, nodding at the suitcase.

  ‘For now.’

  I take half a step and reach out to her, but she turns and bends to pick up the suitcase.

  ‘Here let me,’ I say.

  ‘No, thank you.’ Grabbing it with both hands she half lifts, half drags it to the kitchen door where she pauses, and without turning to look at me she says, ‘I’m going to have a bath.’

  ‘Can I bring you something? Boil the kettle? A glass of wine?’

  No reply. I listen to her bumping the suitcase up the stairs and every thump makes the house seem less like a home. Burn Daddy’s antique furniture. Tear the kitchen cupboards from the walls. I feel more alone than I’ve felt since the last time we broke up and I went back to Vienna.

  The loose floorboard on the landing squeaks, the pipes groan as she turns the brass taps on full and water cascades into the bath. From all your filthiness, all your idols, I will cleanse you, the minister used to boom at us in chapel. Only it isn’t that easy, because the filth bloody well sticks. The smell lingers. The questions remain. You’re back, Elsa, but the questions haven’t gone away. I hear. I see. I know you’re not telling the truth. And you said, ‘No lies, Harry, not to each other,’ but that’s how it seems to be between us now.

  45

  MRS LINDA GILL-THOMPSON would like an adventure. Mrs Gill-Thompson went out of her way to catch my eye. She smiled, looked away, then back in a heartbeat, and her second smile was the try-if-you-like smile of a woman in her forties who wants to be desired, is tired of being alone, and is only too conscious of time slipping to the grave. I am vain, it’s true. I was flattered, curious, that’s all. Then a day and two nights later I woke with a print of her face on my mind’s eye, and as Elsa slept beside me the seed of an idea took root. Because the crowded room where our eyes first met was the DG’s Secretariat, and Mrs Gill-Thompson’s desk is only feet from his door.

  On the Friday after our significant moment I found a reason to be in the entrance hall at half past five in the evening, and when she emerged from a lift with some of the other girls I caught her eye again, once, twice, thrice, before she followed her friends on to the street. It was no great matter to engineer some business in the Secretariat the following Monday. Since then we have spoken four more times and I have asked her to meet me for a drink.

  ‘Mrs Gill-Thompson, did the DG receive my memo on new faces at the KGB residency here in London?’ I say, for the benefit of her neighbours in the Secretaria
t.

  ‘I don’t think so, Mr Vaughan,’ she says, reaching for the papers in her tray. ‘Let me check.’ As she leafs through them I slide a note in front of her: 18.30 The York Minster. Dean Street. She scribbles an answer: Fine. The usual!

  Mrs G-T presumes intimacy on a short acquaintance because she knows I’m trusting her to keep her mouth shut. Does she care I’m a married man? I don’t think so. She’s flattered, and she enjoys the secrecy, because it’s part of the flight. She’s taller than Elsa, thicker at the waist, not unattractive but not as attractive. Her voice, her values, her clothes are just what one would expect of a county lady, even though the worn tweed suit and shoes she wears to work suggest money is an issue. She has spirit and a sense of humour, and it’s easy to imagine her enjoying sex. But all I want from her is the sort of office intelligence that will help me lay my hands on the OATSHEAF-WORTHINGTON file.

  6 March 1966

  I’m fifty-two today. Elsa takes pity on me and we make love for the first time since she came home from Germany. Make love? We wrestle and bite, and when it’s over, she’s up and into the bathroom straight away.

  ‘Are you free tonight?’ I shout.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What about Ronnie Scott’s?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  Can’t? She means ‘won’t’. ‘Come on, girl, perhaps after your very important engagement …?’

  She steps back into our bedroom in a towel and picks up her hairbrush. From my pillow I watch her at her toilette: hair dryer, a little perfume, panties on under the towel, then to the wardrobe to choose her clothes. Jesus Christ. I want to shout, ‘Enough,’ but I haven’t the stomach for another row.

  ‘Aren’t you going to shower?’ she says.

  ‘No hurry.’

  She sits on the edge of the bed with her back to me and I wonder if she’s waiting for me to leave so she can dress. Just the thought saddens me so, because we’ve never been shy with each other before.

  ‘Love you,’ I say.

  I spend my birthday in a noisy Service car on the road to the laboratories at Porton Down. Waiting at the security gate for final clearance, I experience the same sort of apprehension I always feel in a hospital only worse, because the men in white coats are busy thinking of ingenious and invisible ways to kill not cure you.

  ‘I don’t know why you bothered to come,’ the chief white coat says, as we walk to his office. ‘I told Peter Wright that I haven’t the foggiest idea how one would infect someone with Lupus erythematosus.’

  I ask him about the Russian paper that suggests the drug hydralazine can cause a condition like lupus if taken in large doses. ‘Are you asking me if it is possible to refine it into a one-shot weapon?’ he says. ‘I doubt it very much. Besides, there are so many easier ways to eliminate someone, why would you bother?’

  By the time I’ve returned the car to the Battersea garage and caught a taxi home it’s close to seven o’clock. The splints have gone from the door again, but this time the house is empty. I run upstairs to check our bedroom, and the black stockings and skirt she wore to work this morning are lying in a heap in front of the chimneypiece, and she must have considered her blue silk dress for the reception she’s attending this evening because she cast that on her chair. I keep my clothes in the mahogany tallboy to the left of the window, and two of the drawers are open. She’s been rummaging through my things too. A photograph of the two of us in Vienna in 1948 that I keep as a reminder of a perfect day is missing from the top drawer. My first thought is to be glad she wants a souvenir of that time, but as I turn from the tallboy a shiver of doubt courses through me. Why has she gone through my things? I hurry across the landing to the box room and lift the loose floorboard where I keep my camera: it’s still there, and the cymbal beat in my chest begins to slow. Sitting with my back to the box-room bed I am calm enough to reflect that it’s just a photograph of the two of us and perhaps she was searching my other drawers for more. I suspect her, she suspects me, and if we don’t address our mutual suspicion a few fading photos is all we’re going to be.

  But it’s midnight when she drops into bed beside me and when I say, ‘We must talk,’ she is full of excuses.

  10 March 1966

  Wright chooses the first day of election campaigning to report on the Communists and ‘fellow travellers’ he would like to turf out of Parliament. He tells us the Security Service is bugging more than forty Labour MPs, trade unionists, even a Liberal or two. The operation has been growing in the dark, like mushrooms on a bed of cow shit. FLUENCY meetings are generally tense occasions with the MI5 contingent chary of the three of us from MI6, especially me. Wright and his cronies have usually discussed the business of the day before we meet and offer us only bones, unless we have something to trade for more. But Wright is all smiles today, and so very anxious for my views it puts me on my mettle. The reason for his faux bonhomie is soon apparent. He is going to target the Labour Member for Acton and chairman of ITV: Bernard Floud.

  Evelyn leads from the file, and it’s the same old story of Oxbridge activism in the thirties. Solid establishment type with a conscience and an abhorrence of Fascism led astray. Silk shirts and PJs from an expensive tailor, membership of an exclusive student drinking club, white-tie dinners and dance the night away, before a good dose of political instruction from the Communist Party in the morning. Floud served in intelligence during the war but was privy to no major secrets. Now he’s a man of influence, tipped for ministerial office if Labour wins the election, as many believe it will. Only Bernard Floud and his late brother, Peter, have been named by Pool, Hart and Blunt. All the pieces are there, apparently. Floud was at school with one of the Cambridge spies and he remains on good terms with dozens of ‘persons of interest’.

  ‘What about you, Harry?’ says Wright at last. ‘You were at Oxford at the same time.’

  ‘I knew him a little.’

  ‘Anything that might help us?’ he says mildly.

  ‘The student Labour Club was full of secret Communists in those days. You’ve heard me say it before: youthful idealism doesn’t turn you into a Philby.’

  ‘Floud was a f-friend of yours.’

  ‘Is that a question?’ I say, drawing a cigarette from a packet. ‘I met him, oh, half a dozen times. Struck me as insecure. He would have gone into the Church a hundred years ago.’

  ‘You don’t know when he left the Party?’ Wright is in control of his stutter; a bad sign for me.

  ‘Peter, I told you. I didn’t know he was in it!’

  He nods reflectively.

  ‘Anything else?’ I say, and regret it at once. Because it’s always a mistake to sound defensive even when there’s good reason to be.

  ‘Floud was a member of the Civil Service Communists Group after the war. They used to meet at the flat of an historian called …’ Wright looks down at his notes.

  ‘Eric Hobsbawm,’ says Evelyn. ‘Another of the Cambridge Apostles.’

  ‘We know Floud was still a C-Communist in the forties: he was blacklisted for promotion.’

  ‘Ah. I didn’t know, did you?’ I wave my cigarette at Evelyn and the rest of them.

  ‘How could I, dear?’ she says acidly. ‘I wasn’t a member of the Party.’

  ‘We believe F-Floud recruited a number of the Oxford circle – Jenifer Hart, perhaps Pool, and others, and their controller was our old friend OTTO.’ He touches the corners of his mouth with thumb and forefinger reflectively. ‘We believe Floud spent some time in China. R-r-run a check, would you? Everything you’ve got in your registry – his wife, brother and sister-in-law were Communists, too. And his associates at the television company. Evelyn will give you a list.’

  ‘Right. Terence?’ I look at Lecky.

  ‘Got it,’ he says.

  ‘Floud held a k-key role in the Oxford circle, and if we put some pressure on him … I don’t need to remind you that Hollis and Mitchell were at the university, Hollis spent time in China, and we
know Mitchell was active in left-wing politics in the thirties.’

  We know nothing of the sort, but it isn’t the time to say so. It’s Floud and the list of his associates that concerns me. Lecky collects it from Evelyn after the meeting and lets me see it before he returns to Century House. There are fifteen names I recognise, like Hart and Pool and Rees, and Arthur Wynn, the civil servant who operated as a talent-spotter, and Sir Andy Cohen at the Foreign Office, but one name I expect to see is missing. Because I know, and they know, that Mrs Harry Vaughan was thick with Floud at university, and that they’re still on good terms. Elsa’s name was on a list shown to Hart, and Wright has made no secret of his wish to interview her. I don’t know whether to be relieved or afraid. I do know Evelyn doesn’t make mistakes with lists and files, and she must have omitted Elsa’s name for a reason.

  Back at my desk I take the Johnnie Walker from my bottom drawer and pour a stiff one. I’m almost ready. But is it too late? For the first time in twenty-five years I don’t know what she feels about me. The phone rings and it’s Mrs Gill-Thompson from a phone box on Piccadilly. Her sons have an exeat from their boarding school and she won’t be able to meet me before Monday.

  ‘Monday should be okay.’

  ‘Then come to my flat for dinner, Harry,’ she says.

  ‘That’s nice. Can I let you know?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I know she’s disappointed I haven’t jumped at the chance – she has every right to be. ‘It’s just that …’

  ‘Your wife,’ she says.

  ‘Can I let you know on Monday morning?’