Friends and Traitors

by John Lawton

  “I’m afraid I have to resign.”

  “Eh? What?”

  “Resign. I’m really very sorry about this.”

  “You mean quit being my PPS?”

  “No, I mean quit Parliament.”

  “In God’s name, why?”

  “To save you and the party from the scandal.”

  “Iain, you’re talking in riddles. What fucking scandal?”

  “No … it’s not a fucking scandal … it’s a cocksucking scandal.”

  Rod dropped his briefcase onto the floor with a thump. Slumped into his chair, not looking Stuart-Bell in the eye. On a deeply sub-conscious level, somewhere in the Freudian catacombs of the mind, he’d always dreaded this moment. He’d known on that same level that Stuart-Bell was queer, he’d never been certain how queer. And there was no way he’d ever have taken his brother’s advice—”Just ask.”

  Until now.

  “Tell me,” he said, still not looking at Stuart-Bell.

  “It was about ten o’clock last night. It had been a long sitting, and by half past nine it was really rather obvious that there’d be no vote at the end of it, so I sloped off. Down Birdcage Walk and into the park. A route I take quite often, because …”

  He ground to a halt.

  “Because?”

  “Because … one can be pretty certain of meeting the odd off-duty guardsman.”

  “Odd in the same way you’re odd?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who blew who?”

  Even to his own ears Rod thought he sounded like an owl saying this.

  “I blew him.”

  “I see.”

  “It’s what I … like.”

  “So you’ve done this before?”

  “Lots.”

  “Red jacket and busby?”

  “Good grief, no, that would be asking to get caught. No, they’re always in khaki. This boy was a private in the Coldstreams.”

  “And how did you get caught?”

  “Two bobbies with bike lamps. They’d probably been watching him for a while. I was just unlucky.”

  “Did money change hands?”

  “No … would that matter?”

  “It would add soliciting to indecency so … yes. Are you up in front of the beak?”

  “Today at eleven.”

  “Then I think you’d better apply for the Chiltern Hundreds before you go. I’ll tell Gaitskell. He’ll hit the roof.”

  “He turns a blind eye to so many things.”

  “He turns a blind eye to Tom Driberg’s antics, if that’s what you mean. Driberg’s led a charmed life. You haven’t.”

  “He really has blown guardsmen in busbies and red tunics—and he’s got away with it.”

  “Oh Iain, I do wish you hadn’t told me that.”

  §68

  The Prime Minister had more than one PPS, and the one who now stuck his head around the door was Toby or Tony somebody, and was utterly confident as he spoke that Rod was alone, enjoying his perk.

  “Sir Rodyon?”

  Rod wished they wouldn’t call him that. But how do you unteach good manners?

  “Ah … Tony?”

  “Tim, actually, but no matter. The PM asks if you’d care to take tea with him at four.”

  “Today?”

  “Yes. Today.”

  “Where? Sorry, I mean delighted, of course. But where exactly?”

  “At Number 10. In the PM’s apartment. The copper on the door will let you in. Top floor. Just walk up.”

  And with that he was gone.

  Rod had been to 10 Downing Street many times. After the war, newly elected, Labour in power, he had been one of the “new Labour bright boys,” and an occasional visitor. Someone to be shown off. By the end of the forties, holding a sub-cabinet appointment at the Air Ministry, he had become a frequent visitor. In opposition, having known Winston Churchill all his life, having witnessed the spats between Churchill and his father, Alex, he was sometimes the token socialist invited as leavening at international get-togethers. But, he’d never been to the PM’s private apartment, and he’d not been to No. 10 since Macmillan became Prime Minister almost two years ago.

  An invitation to tea at No. 10 was one thing. Tea in the apartment quite another. Most of Downing Street being offices, what few realised was that the second most powerful man in the Western World lived in an apartment not much bigger than a council flat in Debden or Haringey. If Macmillan asked him upstairs, it could only mean one thing. Privacy.

  “Mind how you go, sir,” said the copper who’d let him in. “The bannister’s a bit wonky. If you ask me the whole place is falling apart.”

  Rod climbed past the portraits of the great (Palmerston, Melbourne, Gladstone, Disraeli) and the disgraced (Chamberlain, Eden) to find Macmillan at the top of the stairs, tea pot in hand. He was in mufti, a raggy cardigan and old slippers.

  “Ah, bang on time. I’ve just this minute put the kettle on.”

  “Prime Minister, surely you have someone to do that for you?”

  “Apparently not. Take a seat. I’m sure I have a packet of ginger nuts around here somewhere.”

  Rod sat down, little short of shocked. It was a big enough kitchen, but … what was the word? … tatty, it was tatty. It looked much as it must have done in the twenties. A scrubbed pine table, cracked linoleum, a single shaded light bulb dangling from the low ceiling. Every Ideal Home Exhibition, the annual pride of the Daily Mail, that effervescent display of the latest, shiniest gadgetry of household convenience, had passed this room by. It struck Rod as ironic that most of those gadgets were described as “Labour Saving,” and were conspicuous in their absence.

  “No ginger nuts,” Macmillan was muttering. “We’ll have to make do with Arrowroots.”

  He lifted the whistling kettle off the gas ring and sloshed water into the teapot, which he crowned with a hand-knitted cosy, patriotic in red, white, and blue. Surely Lady Dorothy did not knit?

  Macmillan read his mind.

  “Present from a loyal voter in Stockton many years ago. Getting a bit worn now. Just like this house. If you ask me the whole place is falling apart.”

  He glanced around as though seeking confirmation in the faded paintwork and scuffed skirting board, then he reached out an arm to the dresser and handed Rod a single sheet of paper.

  “Got this last night.”

  Rod read it. “Top Secret.” His heart sank. Oh fuck.

  “I see why we’re meeting up here.”

  “Quite. You got back from Vienna when exactly?”

  “Just last night. The trip ended in Amsterdam, pretty much on time.”

  “And your brother stayed on in Vienna?”

  “Yes. He didn’t say why. I asked and he wouldn’t tell me. I had been puzzled … until now.”

  “It’s a bit of a pickle,” said Macmillan with classic Macmillian understatement. “But young Fred seems to have done the right thing, so far. Contacted the embassy, got through to some chap at MI5.”

  “So far?”

  “Rod, this isn’t just a courtesy call. There’s something I need from you. Reassurance.”

  “You’re asking me to vouch for Freddie?”

  “That would be one way of putting it. You know as well as I do he has … shall we say … a reputation for recklessness. The chap from the Branch who dogs my every footstep tells me that Freddie and that subordinate of his are known as the Tearaway Toffs at Scotland Yard.”

  “I can’t deny any of that. And I’m not sure I can vouch for him, particularly as I don’t know what it is you want me to vouchsafe.”

  Macmillan poured tea, split a packet of Arrowroots onto a saucer.

  “Feel free to dunk. I always do.”

  Rod waited. No idea of where this conversation was headed.

  “It’s like this,” Macmillan continued. “I met Burgess just the once. At your father’s dining table. Can’t deny the wit, but his manners were deplorable, and his personal habits disgusting. You could ra
ise a crop of spuds in the dirt under his fingernails.”

  Rod was wincing inwardly. Burgess pretty well disgusted him too, and with some success he’d managed to avoid him between dinner and defection, but this seemed like a moment to make agreement seem tacit rather than articulate. Mac was surely heading for a point? Some point? Any point?

  “I don’t want Burgess back. There’ll be no de-brief, no attempt to bring him in from the cold. He burned his bridges in ‘51. He can just bugger off back to Moscow. I don’t want Burgess back—at any price.”

  At last.

  “And Freddie? He’s just the unfortunate middleman.”

  “Indeed, he is. But Burgess chose Frederick Troy because he knows him.”

  “They were never the best of friends. Let’s not shoot the messenger.”

  “All the same … I don’t want your brother adopting Burgess as a cause. As I recall, your brother is very like your father. A man with many causes, you will agree.”

  “My father edited newspapers, Prime Minister. The many causes went with the job. My brother is a copper, that’s his job, that’s his cause. And he is fiercely loyal to it.”

  “Good. Good. Then let’s say no more about it. Your brother comes home. Burgess goes back to his igloo in Moscow, and we shall forget he ever asked to return. Now … about young Stuart-Bell and the Cold-stream guardsman. At least it wasn’t a Grenadier. A small mercy there.”

  Rod’s inner voice uttered a painful, “Oh God.”

  His outer voice said, “Ah, you heard?”

  “Will he go quietly?”

  “He has gone, Prime Minister.”

  “Good. Pity, all the same. Always liked him. Fellow Scot, after all. I’m sure you and Hugh had high hopes of him. But … awful timing.”

  “In what way?”

  “The debate on homosexual law reform next week. Free vote. I dunno which way it’ll go, but one of our own up in front of the beak for … for whatever … and please don’t tell me … it muddies the waters, don’t it? We should all be thinking about the issue in the abstract, a matter of principle and law, not individuals. Instead, you’ll be thinking about poor Stuart-Bell and I shall have difficulty not thinking about that bugger Burgess.”

  Macmillan had neatly linked the two issues together, as though they were two pieces of the same jigsaw puzzle. Rod did not see the puzzle. He saw coincidence and nothing more, and it would be a while before he attached any further significance to his conversation with the Prime Minister. But then, the old man could be amazingly elliptical, subtle to the point of obscurity, to the point where half the nation had willingly misunderstood his “never had it so good” speech.

  However, there was nothing elliptical about “I don’t want Burgess back—at any price.”

  §69

  Vienna

  The next morning Troy and Gus sat at the embassy, both unsure whether they were expecting a call or not.

  But Jordan called at nine thirty.

  “Troy, I’m afraid I won’t be coming.”

  “I’m not handling the bugger alone!”

  “Just hear me out. We’re sending someone. You won’t be on your own. It just won’t be me.”

  “Then who?”

  “Dunno yet. I was never the best choice. Not my area of expertise. It will mean a delay, though.”

  “How long?”

  “You’ll have to babysit him at least another day.”

  Troy said nothing.

  “Troy? Troy? Are you still there?”

  “Jordan. I’m not happy about this.”

  “Me neither. I was all packed for couple of days away. Just keep tabs on him, and get what you can out of him.”

  “I am not—no, I will not interrogate him!”

  “Sorry. Bit of a lapse on my part. Far too cheeky. Just a throwaway remark. Ignore me. Troy, just whip the old fraud out to dinner and relax. I’ll call Gus when my replacement’s on his way.”

  “Thank you, I’ll be sending Five the bill. Jordan, there is one more thing. Please tell Foxx what’s happening. All she knows is I had to stay on here. I don’t want her kept in the dark any longer.”

  “You didn’t tell her?”

  “What was to tell? That I’d received an anonymous invitation? Enough to alarm her, and no reassurance I could give.”

  “If you’re sure she can be discreet, I’ll tell her everything. Let our fat friend take the blame.”

  “Don’t worry, she’s already sitting on secrets.”

  “And Rod?”

  “Rod doesn’t need to know.”

  They hung up.

  Gus sat at his desk, listening on an extension, the last to put down the telephone.

  “Did you get all that?”

  “Oh yes, Freddie.”

  “And?”

  “He’s been pulled.”

  “In what way is that different from being replaced?”

  “Just a feeling. Jordan’s a senior field agent. My idea of just the right bloke to de-brief Burgess. The ‘not my area of expertise’ was a bit disingenuous to my ears. Still, could be wrong. You never know.”

  “And now I’m stuck with Burgess for another day and another night.”

  “Love to help out. I’d be intrigued to meet him, but it would be terribly bad form to have official embassy contact with him.”

  “You’re missing very little. He’s the shell of the man I used to know.”

  “In fact … it would be a bit of a sticky wicket if he’d come to us direct. Right now you’re invaluable to both sides.”

  “Yep. That’s me. Piggy in the middle.”

  “Cheer up … you might get a medal for services to Queen and Country.”

  “Or six months in the Scrubs. No Gus, whatever I do now it won’t be appreciated. And I can’t face a third night with him. I’ll go round to the Imperial now and tell him it won’t be happening tonight, but that’s all.”

  §70

  “At least have a drink.”

  “Guy—it isn’t even noon.”

  “It’s noon in Moscow.”

  Irrefutable logic.

  “Just the one.”

  One became two, became three. Troy kept swapping his full glasses for Burgess’s empties and by half past two Burgess’s head lolled back against the cushions, exhaling his Scotch-and-garlic patented halitosis, and Troy snuck off silently. If the staff at the Imperial couldn’t handle a comatose drunk in their lobby in the middle of the afternoon they were in the wrong business. All they had to do was ease off his shoes and, when he awoke, remind him of his room number.

  §71

  The person he most wanted to see now was the person he felt oddest about seeing. He felt, with no apparent logic, that he and Voytek had compromised one another.

  He killed an afternoon walking around in drizzle, hopped from café to café, and in the evening bought a ticket for the Konzerthaus. He sat at the back of the stalls, far enough away never to be spotted, and listened to Voytek play Mozart’s “Jeunehomme” concerto, the Ninth in E flat—one that he’d never much bothered with before.

  The second half was Beethoven’s Second Symphony. One few orchestras would ever tackle. Troy found he could live without it and left at the interval.

  He turned in at the Sacher, ridiculously early. Found himself buzzing from too much strong Viennese coffee. Found he’d no interest in any of the novels in his travelling bag. Lay back. Locked his fingers behind his head and watched the rippling reflections of street lamps in rain play across the ceiling as curling ribbons of light.

  §72

  Troy wondered who to curse for the brevity of the note in his hand. Gus for taking it down so curtly, or Jordan for being so elliptical in the first place.

  All it said was: “5 p.m. Schwechat. Blaine.”

  He’d caught a cab for the ten-mile drive out from the city centre and sat in one of the airport’s makeshift buildings, little better than a British post-war prefab, wishing he’d brought a warmer coat and thicker gloves.
<
br />   He could hardly miss Blaine. One runway, few landings, and when the BEA flight from Heathrow touched down, only seven passengers.

  He could hardly miss Blaine. He was huge. A least six feet four. Everything about him was big—from ears like the doors on a Rover 90, a nose Jimmy Durante might be envious of, and soft hands the size of frying pans that gripped Troy’s like a closing clam.

  “Bill Blaine,” he said, in the same received pronunciation as Troy. “Old firm.”

  “Troy,” said Troy. “Even older firm.”

  “Ha, ha. Jolly good!”

  And the big blue eyes lit up behind their thick spectacles in a way that made Troy think he might well be able to like Bill Blaine if only he could be bothered, but he couldn’t. All he wanted of Blaine was to dump Guy Burgess on him and have done.

  In the cab Blaine attempted a little small talk.

  “I’m surprised we haven’t met before.”

  “Well, my job doesn’t much overlap with yours,” Troy lied.

  “No. I meant personally … rather … socially. Your sister’s a pal of my sister-in-law. They go back years. To schooldays, I think.”

  Troy didn’t ask which sister. One could have quite enough of sisters, and of late he had come to feel about sisters the way Bertie Wooster felt about aunts. He changed the subject.

  “Will you be escorting Burgess back to England?”

  “If all goes according to plan, yes. I have that authority.”

  “Do you also have a passport for him?”

  “No. I mean … Good Lord … no one thought of that.”

  “I think you should know he’s travelling on a ringer.”

  “Eh? A ringer?”

  “A fake. A Russian fake of a British passport. He hardly speaks a word of Russian, after all, so they couldn’t give him one of theirs. I haven’t actually seen it, but he assures me it’s a good one, and certainly the Austrians haven’t spotted it as phony.”

  “In his own name?”

  “Now, that would ring a few alarm bells. No, he calls himself Sir Roderick Spode.”

  “Hmm. I suppose you have to admire his nerve, and his wit. He seems fond of those initials. He ducked out of England in ‘51 calling himself Roger Styles. Of course, it’s possible he won’t need a passport. I just stick him in the diplomatic bag.”