Maralinga

by Judy Nunn

  But Lavinia did not need rescuing.

  ‘I’ll tell you about my husband’s disappearance,’ she screamed at the top of her voice. ‘I’ll tell you about the bastard I married!’

  The past month had been altogether too much for Lavinia. She’d had enough. She would tell her story and MI6 could go to hell.

  The banner headlines shocked the world. Splashed across a photograph of Harold Dartleigh was the single word TRAITOR, and in bold black letters beneath the picture: DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF MI6 A RUSSIAN SPY.

  The story that followed was brief. As yet, little specific data had been made available to the press.

  The British secret service community is in a state of shock this morning with allegations that Harold Lord Dartleigh, 6th Baron Dartleigh of Somerston and deputy director of MI6, has been identified as a Russian spy. The allegations, made by his wife, Lady Lavinia Dartleigh, came to light when Lord Dartleigh’s recent disappearance was investigated by the press.

  Buckingham Palace, MI6 and New Scotland Yard have all declined to comment on the matter. However, the Palace has informed us that an announcement will be made later today.

  Lady Dartleigh stated that she has been interviewed and relentlessly harassed by MI6 personnel for the past four weeks. She knew nothing of Lord Dartleigh’s activities, she says, and the threat of her title being revoked owing to the treasonous acts committed by her husband has proved the final straw.

  ‘Hell hath no fury …’ Harold murmured. He put down the newspaper and gazed out his apartment window at the Moskva River. Naturally Lavinia felt betrayed. Poor dear, he thought. His peerage would most certainly be revoked, and she would so hate being plain Mrs Dartleigh. She’d probably abandon his name altogether and revert to her own highly respectable maiden name in an attempt to avoid any association with the traitorous creature who had been her husband. Harold wondered if his children would do the same. Yes, he thought, Nigel undoubtedly would. But Catherine, surprisingly enough, might not. Catherine was a rebel who didn’t care tuppence for public opinion. That was what had so annoyed him about his daughter, he recalled – her steadfast refusal to conform. So dangerous for a man in his position to have adverse attention directed towards members of his family. But who knows, he now wondered. Perhaps Catherine and her arty friends in Paris were communists. Many of the artistic community were. Perhaps his daughter might even understand.

  Harold did not consider himself a traitor at all. He considered himself a soldier in a war against injustice. Far more than a soldier, in fact: he was a leader paving the way for a new world order. There were those born to lead and those born to be led and, like any great movement, communism needed leaders. Harold Dartleigh considered himself the perfect man for the job. He always had.

  Harold had embraced communism at Cambridge University, along with Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean and others of his alma mater who’d been stimulated by the exchange of ideas and philosophies. The passionate intellectual bonding between young men was heady stuff, particularly to Harold, an only child who’d led an indulged but empty existence. Communism had also served as a form of private rebellion against a father whose apathy and weakness of character he’d despised. Harold had needed a purpose and commitment in his life, and communism had provided both. He’d joined the Party, readily accepting the ideals of those who believed wealth and position should be earned and that people should share equally in the benefits of national prosperity. Given his privileged background, his zeal had surprised some of his fellow Party members.

  Harold had never applied the principles of communism directly to himself, however. There’d been no need to. He’d far better served the cause by continuing to live a life of luxury. The power and privilege of his position was not only advantageous to the Party, but, in the eyes of his employer, the Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti, it provided the perfect camouflage. The KGB was unrelenting in its insistence that its operatives maintain appearances. Even Harold’s marriage to Lavinia had been arranged for the purpose of camouflage. He’d become genuinely fond of her, he had to admit, although at the time he would far rather have married Aline, a Lebanese girl he’d fallen desperately in love with while serving at the British embassy in Beirut. But Aline hadn’t at all fitted the required image.

  Harold had been a first-class spy. He’d delivered high-level documentation and intelligence on all manner of subjects that the British and American governments had believed were top secret, but he was particularly proud of his recruitment of Gideon Melbray to the cause of world communism.

  When the two had met in Washington, Harold hadn’t been able to believe his luck. Gideon Melbray was perfect material. He spoke four languages, including Russian, as indeed did Harold, and there was the added bonus of his beauty. Their brief mutual infatuation had made the conversion easy.

  When Harold had finally been offered the deputy directorship of MI6, he’d been elated by the power such a position afforded him. He’d been elated too by the recruitment of his comrade-in-arms, Gideon Melbray. His only regret had been the necessity to temper the ardour of the relationship they’d shared in their Washington days. Sexual dalliances were one of the very few luxuries Harold denied himself. A man in his position could not afford to be caught out.

  For twenty long years, Harold Dartleigh had served the Party, a passionate and committed communist devoted to the cause in which he truly believed. For twenty long years, he’d also led the life of the seriously wealthy, with country estates, servants at his beck and call and every whim indulged. Harold had always had the best of both worlds.

  Not any more, he thought as he gazed out at the majesty of the Moskva River. The view from his rented two-bedroom flat on Kutuzovsky Prospekt was quite spectacular and he knew he should be grateful for the fact. There were many who lived in community blocks with no outlook at all. But the apartment was poky and cold, and already he ached for the beauty of Sussex and the warmth and comfort of his country house. He would miss his baronial estate and his lifestyle and his family. He’d always known they were the price he would possibly have to pay, but he hadn’t expected the change to be quite so radical. He’d expected more of a hero’s welcome. Indeed, he’d anticipated that, if and when the time came, his arrival in Moscow would be heralded as a triumph for the Comintern; he was, after all, a genuine British aristocrat who had defected to his beloved Mother Russia. Surely the Kremlin propaganda unit would wish to make an example of such devotion. Surely he would be offered a highly respected consultancy position within the KGB.

  He now realised, however, that, like Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, both of whom had defected in 1951, he was to be largely ignored and forgotten. Already he’d been assigned to the Government Translation Unit where he worked long hours in the bowels of a nondescript office building. The life he was destined to lead would be a sad one, surrounded by former fellow spies, expatriates who met in bars along the Bersenevskaya Embankment and talked of ‘home’, wherever that may have been, whilst assuring each other that their treason was excusable because they were seeking to make a better world.

  Harold considered such men pathetic. He should not be subjected to the same treatment. He deserved more; he was better than the others. The KGB had never had a spy of his stature in British society. Well, no, that wasn’t altogether true, he had to admit. It was rumoured there were a number in high circles, one with royal connections no less, and there were many who had successfully infiltrated the system at high levels. Kim Philby, for example – he was sure that Philby was working for the cause. He couldn’t be absolutely certain, of course – operatives never got to know who was who – but it was comforting to think there were others of his ilk still in place, still carrying on the good fight.

  Despite treatment that he considered unfair, Harold’s belief in the cause remained unshaken. He could neither dismiss nor regret an indoctrination that spanned over twenty years. To do so would be to deny his reason for living. Besides, he was fully aware of why the KGB had hidden
him away. The KGB knew what the world would soon know.

  He looked down at the newspaper on the table before him, at the headline that screamed ‘Traitor!’ This was only the beginning, he thought. Now that Lavinia had let the cat out of the bag, MI6 would be forced to admit the truth, and every gruesome detail would be spewed forth by media all over the world. He’d be labelled ‘murderer’ as well as ‘traitor’, a title which, strangely enough, he found far harder to bear.

  Harold knew that Gideon’s murder was why the Kremlin had not given him a hero’s welcome. The KGB understood the necessity for Gideon’s termination, but once the world found out – and the world was bound to find out – the Russian government must not appear to sanction such an act. The moment Harold had pulled that trigger he had destined himself to a life of obscurity.

  Personally he felt no guilt at all about Gideon’s death. Gideon Melbray had been a casualty of war. It had been his duty to kill Gideon rather than risk exposure. He would have killed himself too had it been necessary. He’d had the Walther at the ready for that very purpose.

  In his twenty-year service as a spy, Harold regretted nothing. Not the betrayal of his country, not the desertion of his wife and family, not the necessary killing of Gideon Melbray. But there was one act that rested a little upon his conscience, simply because it had resulted from slack behaviour on his part. He’d tried to blame Gideon, who was so often cavalier in his attitude to their work, but he knew that he was equally to blame.

  Harold felt guilty about young Dan Gardiner.

  He recalled the trip they’d made to Ceduna, how he’d promised the lad he’d make enquiries into Pete Mitchell’s death. ‘Don’t you worry,’ he’d said, ‘we’ll get to the bottom of this. Nothing goes on around Maralinga that I don’t know about or can’t find out.’

  And he had found out. A quick bribe to the fettler had provided the truth. But he’d found out for himself rather than the lad. If by any chance the army had killed Pete Mitchell as young Dan had feared, then Harold had wanted to know why. And that was where the problem had occurred. Once he’d satisfied his own curiosity, he’d forgotten all about his promise to the boy. ‘You pop into my office in a few days and I’ll let you know what I’ve come up with,’ he’d said. But he’d forgotten that he’d said it. And that had cost young Dan his life.

  Harold could not forget the look in the lad’s eyes as they’d met his. Try as he might, he’d found that look strangely difficult to dismiss from the recesses of his mind.

  Gideon had admitted later that he hadn’t latched the door. It must have swung open automatically when young Dan knocked, they’d both agreed, because he would most certainly have knocked. They obviously hadn’t heard him, either of them. They’d been caught off guard. It had been midway through the second meal shift, Ned had gone to lunch, the whole building had been virtually deserted, and they hadn’t given a second thought to unexpected visitors. None of which was a valid excuse for his own appalling complacency, Harold thought. It wasn’t the first time he’d been slack either; he’d allowed Gideon to file reports from his office on a number of occasions. Maralinga had lulled them both into a false sense of security. Stuck out there in the middle of that Godforsaken desert they’d thought they were inviolate. Harold had cursed Gideon for not locking the door, but he’d cursed himself too. They’d both killed the boy.

  Gideon had been talking on the telephone, he remembered, and he’d been lounging in the corner of the office listening to the conversation, nodding his approval of each point Gideon made. They’d been looking at each other and neither of them had seen the door swing open. By the time they had, it had been too late. The boy had been standing there in a state of stupefaction.

  The scene young Dan had encountered must certainly have amazed him, Harold thought. Gideon had been sitting behind Harold’s desk, talking on the scrambler phone that was the exclusive reserve of the deputy director of MI6. And he’d been talking in Russian.

  The boy hadn’t noticed him lounging in the corner. The boy had had eyes for no-one but Gideon. Harold had to give young Dan top marks for guts: he hadn’t turned tail and fled; which had been just as well for them really. Instead, he’d confronted Gideon.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he’d demanded, by which time Gideon had been on his feet and already circling the desk.

  Harold had given the order to kill. He’d had no alternative. ‘Ubeite yego,’ he’d said.

  In that instant the boy’s eyes had met his. And that was the look Harold could not forget.

  In one swift action Gideon had smashed the heel of his right hand upwards with brutal force, spearing Daniel’s nose cartilage into the brain. Death had been instantaneous.

  They’d hidden the body in the large office cupboard where it had stayed until the workers had left for the day. Gideon had returned in a supply truck that evening – nobody had noticed anything unusual about Gideon Melbray transporting equipment and supplies – and, when it was dark, Harold and Gideon had driven out to the bomb site in separate vehicles and left the corpse there in the Land Rover. The detonation of Breakaway had done the rest.

  For close on a year now, Harold hadn’t given much thought to young Dan. It was true that on the odd occasion when he had, the look in the boy’s eyes, strangely etched in his memory as it was, brought with it a twinge of guilt at the unnecessary waste of a young life. But it had happened and there was no point in dwelling on the fact. Since his defection, however, young Dan had been constantly on his mind, which was hardly surprising. The boy’s death had proved his undoing.

  Following the knee-jerk reaction to his discovery, Harold’s entire concentration had been upon self-preservation. In fleeing Australia he’d had no time to reflect on the finer points of exactly how it was he and Gideon had been detected. Even when he’d arrived in Istanbul to be met by his case controller, he had not felt safe. The process of secreting him across the border into Russia had still been fraught with danger. Throughout his entire flight for freedom, Harold’s one and only thought had been that of survival.

  But following his arrival in Moscow, he’d had all the time in the world for reflection, as he would have for the rest of his life. It was plainly clear that Daniel Gardiner had not discovered the truth and written of it to his fiancée, as she had so boldly stated at the Maralinga debriefing. How could he possibly have done so? Daniel Gardiner had not known the truth until only seconds before his death.

  The look in the boy’s eyes would now haunt Harold with more than guilt over the waste of a young life, for the look in the boy’s eyes told him that Elizabeth Hoffmann had been bluffing. She’d had no proof at all, he thought. Not that it would have made any difference if she had – the woman had been about to expose him as a spy, and he could have taken no course of action other than the one he’d chosen. But how in God’s name had she known, he asked himself yet again. How in God’s name had Elizabeth Hoffmann known he was a spy? Harold would go to his grave wondering.

  ‘He actually thought I knew,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Isn’t that amazing? I still can’t believe it. He actually thought I knew he was a spy.’

  ‘The perfect bluff,’ Nick replied. ‘Poor old Dartleigh showed his hand unnecessarily. Excellent poker play, Elizabeth, well done.’

  ‘It would have been the perfect bluff if I’d known what I was doing,’ she agreed. ‘More like luck, I’d say.’

  ‘More like sheer arse, I’d say.’

  They were walking along the beach at Glenelg in their bathing costumes. The mid-November sun was unseasonably warm and, as it was a weekend, a number of sun worshippers were sprawled out on the sand working on their pre-summer tans.

  Since the announcement of Harold Dartleigh’s defection, the world press had gone mad. The full story had been released, and news of Gideon Melbray’s murder had quickly been followed by the revelation that he too had been a spy. Nick and Elizabeth had discussed the ramifications of the whole intrigue and had agreed that everything poin
ted to the fact that Harold Dartleigh had killed Daniel, possibly with the assistance of Gideon Melbray. In any event, the two had been in collusion. Both had given witness to Daniel’s state of depression, and it had been principally their word that had confirmed the verdict of suicide.

  ‘Supposition again,’ Nick had said as they’d sat on her balcony surrounded by newspapers. ‘There’s no way we can prove any of this, you know.’

  ‘Why would they kill Danny, I wonder? Do you think he found out?’

  ‘Oh, I’d say he did, yes, most certainly. But it’s something you’ll never know, Elizabeth. Are you content to leave it at that?’

  ‘Yes, I am. As you say, we’ve no proof, and it’s best for the family that Danny’s death remains the accident it was reported to be. All I ever wanted was the truth. I’m happy with that.’

  Now, as they walked together beside the water’s edge, Elizabeth felt a sense of completion.

  ‘It wasn’t bluff or luck, Nick,’ she said. ‘Nor was it, to quote your colourful turn of phrase, “sheer arse”. It was Danny. Danny wrote the letter that set the whole thing in motion. It was Danny who exposed Harold Dartleigh and Gideon Melbray as spies.’

  ‘You’re right,’ he agreed. He was glad for her. She needed to know that Daniel hadn’t died in vain. ‘Let’s sit down, shall we?’

  They sat on the sand and looked out at the ocean, both lapsing into silence. Elizabeth’s mind was blissfully blank, but Nick was wondering where to from here.

  ‘So what are your plans?’ he asked as casually as he could. ‘Will you be going back to London?’

  She sensed the underlying tension in his query and glanced at him, but he was staring resolutely out to sea, giving away nothing. She wondered if he would ever actually tell her he loved her, but it didn’t really matter.