by John Lawton
White stopped reading. Closed the folder and spun it around to let Burne-Jones see the cover. The Vienna embassy’s report on William Blaine.
He simply tapped on it with his finger.
“Alec, you’ve read this, I suppose?”
“Of course. Came in on the teleprinter about an hour ago.”
“Do you think Five have any leads?”
“No. They have nothing. There was only one witness, one survivor, if you like, and that was Chief Superintendent Troy.”
“What was he doing in Vienna?”
“Family holiday, I gather.”
“Is that believable?”
“His brother’s fiftieth, so … probably.”
“Do you know him?”
“No, but the brother in question is Rod Troy.”
“The Shadow Home Secretary?”
“The same.”
“Bugger.”
“There’s worse. His brother-in-law is Lawrence Stafford at the Post—a man known to tell us where to stuff D-notices when he’s a mind to. There’s a rumour that one Home Office underling trying to make him accept a notice questioned his patriotism, only to have Stafford offer to return his George Cross to the Queen. But, on this occasion he appears to be complying.”
“Not averse to looking after his own, then.”
“Quite. This will need careful handling or there’ll be ripples. I hear Five want to put a watch on him, but young Troy has dealt with the Branch countless times so he’s capable of running circles round a couple of dumb coppers in beetle-crushers and bowlers. He was temporarily assigned to the Branch to cover Khrushchev’s visit in ‘56, he has good Russian, after all, and it’s hard to tell who hated who more. But that’s the other thing—he’s run afoul of them far too often. Put politely, they have their suspicions. Put realistically, they’ve had it in for him ever since Khrushchev’s visit.”
White had been asked to take control of MI6 immediately after Khrushchev’s visit—his predecessor, Sir John Sinclair, more or less fired by the Prime Minister himself—and the espionage fiasco that had surrounded it. His career had been diverted, rewritten around that incident, and he was not about to allow it to be used as any kind of yardstick. He had taken charge at the low point of SIS’s history and the only way was up.
“Doesn’t make him a wrong ‘un.”
“No, but on the other hand, it would appear he and Burgess were old friends, and in ‘51, when Five pulled in everyone who’d ever known Burgess, they overlooked Troy. Peter Wright’s Burgess-crony hunt has become an obsession. It would be easier to list the people he hasn’t interviewed. That he missed Troy is little short of amazing. Troy is just the sort of man Wright despises. Although it’s probably fair to say Wright despises anyone who doesn’t buy his suits off-the-peg.”
White seemed almost to flinch at this. Yet another cock-up come to light. Another damn thing he’d got wrong.
“Man’s an idiot,” he sighed, reaching for his cigarettes.
A contrived pause as he struck a Swan Vestas and lit up.
“And,” exhaling a cloud of cheap tobacco fumes, “we’re off the point.”
“Of course. Sorry,” Burne-Jones said. “It might have been chance that the entire Troy family was in Vienna, but it was no mere chance that Burgess approached Troy. He must have planned it. If Five have any sense they’ll put Jim Westcott on to interrogate Troy, keep Wright well out of it, and ignore anything the Branch say. If Troy is a wrong ‘un Westcott stands a better chance than anyone of finding out … and if he’s not they’ll be able to clear him without his family making a fuss.”
White did not look happy.
“I’m not happy,” he said. “Burgess was one of us for however long it was—?”
“It was just a few months in 1940. Section D, till it was wound up. He went back to the BBC after that.”
“Which is all the excuse I need. Put one of our own on to Troy. Someone Troy won’t run circles round. Someone you can trust absolutely. What’s that son-in-law of yours up to at the moment?”
“I’ve just assigned him a spell abroad.”
“Oh—of course, I was forgetting—Beirut. When does he go out there?”
“In two weeks. He’s on embarkation leave right now.”
“Cancel it. Put off his departure by ten days and assign him to young Troy. I can think of no one less likely to be intimidated by the English Establishment than Joe. The Troys may own newspapers, have a man in the Commons, another in the Lords, DSOs, DFCs and GCs … gongs and ribbons galore. It won’t mean shit to Flight Sergeant Holderness. This calls for an oik, not someone on the old school-tie network. Let’s get it right this time. One Guy Burgess cock-up in my career is quite enough.”
Oik?
Burne-Jones blinked at this. He knew plenty of people who might and often had used that term to describe Joe, along with “spiv,” “wide boy,” and “chancer”—he just hadn’t expected to hear it on White’s lips. Perhaps there was an irony he was missing? After all, White was putting his trust in Joe. But … orders were orders. All the same, he couldn’t help wondering what his daughter would say. She could and would be resentful in the extreme at the loss of Joe Wilderness’s embarkation leave.
But it worked out well. All Judy said was:
“Dadyoucompleteanduttertotalfuckinbastardgobshiteofafatherhow canyoufuckindothistoyourowndaughter!?!”
Burne-Jones did not pause to parse.
§86
Foxx and the Fat Man met Troy at Heathrow. A leisurely ride home in his own car. Enough to conceal the fizz of anger bubbling below the surface.
Foxx hugged him. Tears in her eyes.
“The messes you get into.”
The Fat Man said, “Wotcher cock,” stuck Troy’s suitcase in the boot, and drove while Troy and Foxx took the back seat.
She rapidly curled into a foetal sleep, her head in his lap, and the soothing sound of the Fat Man’s front-seat narrative, cast softly across his shoulder, was almost like music—how the vegetable garden was winter bare, but for …
“That foreign stuff you’re so fond of. That ‘orrible, smelly, poor excuse for a nunnion.”
And Troy realised he was talking about the garlic.
“An’ a few winter carrots. Mind, the rabbits are robbin’ us blind. Now, I know where I can pick up a Bren gun for twenty nicker, an’ if you was to ‘old the torch—”
“Absolutely not.”
“Suit yerself, old cock.”
“How is the pig doing?”
“I’ll swear she understands everything I say to ‘er. She misses you, though.”
Troy doubted that, and as the Fat Man embarked on what would very likely be another long chapter in his tales of life-with-pig, he tuned out, let meaning sink beneath the music … a fat man’s sonata in B flat for pig and veg.
He dropped them at the end of Goodwin’s Court with a “See yer at the weekend.”
With the door closed, Foxx draped herself around him once more.
“I’ve been so worried.”
“I have to make a phone call,” he said, sounding callous even to his own ears.
“Now? Can’t it wait?”
“‘Fraid not.”
He called Jordan at home.
“Am I the first person you called, Freddie?”
“Of course.”
“Good. I’ll be right over.”
§87
Foxx stayed up long enough to greet Jordan. Put on a brave enough face to bring a twinkle to his wicked blue eyes.
When she’d gone upstairs, Jordan said, “Why you haven’t married that woman is beyond me.”
Troy said, “Let’s not waste any time. If I could answer that question I would, but I can’t and won’t. Perhaps being married already might have something to do with it?”
“I forget.”
“And I can’t. So …”
“So?”
“So, where were you?”
Jordan shrugged off his coat and sank
into the sofa, not bothering to conceal the weariness showing on his face.
“I got pulled. Right at the last minute. I was actually heading for the door when I got the call. I was told someone else was taking over. And that was it. Bill Blaine’s name wasn’t mentioned till later.”
“You didn’t ask why?”
“Freddie, that may be the way the Yard works, but when Five ask you to do something you don’t ask questions. If you do, you will rapidly get a reputation as a troublemaker. Now, we’re both well aware that that has long been your reputation, but I’d hate it to be mine. Sending Bill made sense in its way. The Cambridge lot were his subject. He’d known half of them when he was up at Cambridge himself. I talked to him about his time at Cambridge on odd occasions. He was usually little short of vitriolic. Self-deluding, fair-weather Marxists—or if he was feeling particularly bilious, a bunch of poofs who were in it for the rough trade.”
“Well, that certainly describes Guy.”
“How long did Bill get with him?
“No more than a couple of hours. He was shot as we were walking back to the embassy.”
“Five were very keen that Bill talk to him. Did he comment?”
“No.”
“Did he leave any notes?”
“Probably not. He’d not have talked to Guy with a pencil in his hand, surely? If it had been me, I would have left the note-taking until I got back to my hotel—but Blaine didn’t get the chance.”
“So Five have nothing?”
“Not a sausage.”
“Except … they have you.”
“Jordan, I don’t think I’m following you here.”
“It looks like a set-up.”
“I suppose it does. Guy pretends he wants to come home, Five send out Blaine for the de-brief. The KGB bump him off, and Bob’s your uncle. One British agent less.”
“Quite.”
“But for the fact that I was expecting you—not Bill Blaine. Nobody was expecting Bill Blaine.”
“I honestly don’t know what to make of that. Nevertheless, from Five’s point of view you are the last person to see Blaine alive, and apart from him, the last person to talk to Burgess. That alone makes you interesting to Five. The fact that Burgess seems to have asked for you in the first place makes you little short of fascinating.”
“Why do I suddenly think ‘fascinating’ is a sinister description?”
“Because they want to talk to you. I think that was predictable. What’s not predictable is that they have brought Jim Westcott out of retirement to question you.”
Westcott was MI5’s master of interrogation—the spycatcher. The man they’d set to tackle the atom spies, Klaus Fuchs and Karel Szabo.
“Good God. Are they really barking so loudly up the wrong tree?”
“Yes. They’ll approach you tomorrow. Try to act surprised. In the meantime, don’t expect to see any mention of this in the papers. It’s had a D-notice slapped on it.”
“For Christ’s sake, why?”
“It’s a no-win situation. Vienna has only just stabilised, and I hate to say this, but hanging on to the pretence of its neutrality matters more than the life of one secret agent. If we hit one of theirs we get into a tit-for-tat battle. If we complain at diplomatic level we expose the illusion. The government is far more concerned to keep doors open than go back to what we had up till ‘55. We need a neutral ground where we can do business with the Russians. Somewhere a damn sight less hostile than Berlin. Of course we could snatch Burgess—”
“No, you couldn’t. He’s back in Moscow.”
“But that would be to rack up the tension … and besides, I doubt very much whether anyone really wants him back after this.”
“So, the KGB get away with murder?”
“More or less. The investigation will be left to the Vienna police, who, needless to say, will not solve the death of one innocent English cultural attaché … victim of a mindless killing … and blah de blah.”
“It could have been you.”
“Yep. Someone just walked over my grave.”
“Are you familiar with that English turn of phrase which has always had me slightly baffled. I can think of no equivalence in Russian. ‘Consume one’s own smoke’?”
“Very English, very public school, and very accurate. That’s exactly what we’re being told to do. Let one of our own be murdered and just stick out the stiff upper lip.”
All this required thought and booze.
Troy looked under the sink for the bottle of green-tinted Polish vodka he kept for Kolankiewicz’s visits.
Jordan knocked his shot back in one and held out his glass for another.
“Just the ticket, eh?”
Troy said, “How much do your people know?”
“About what?”
“Let’s start with my wife.”
“Nothing to my knowledge. Jim may well ask you, after all, her absence is a little odd. But you married an American. I’d stick to that line if I were you.”
“And the Czechs?”
Jordan sniffed at his vodka, leaned back, and breathed out at length. This was tricky for both of them. In 1948, four Czech assassins had come for Troy. They were the four principal reasons he had stuck Méret Voytek on a cross-channel ferry. Troy had killed them all and called on Jordan to clean up the mess. Ever since, they had had an implicit understanding never to mention the incident again. Jordan had disposed of the bodies. Troy had no idea how, and until now had never thought he would need to ask.
“No, they don’t know about that either. I’m often amazed at how many secrets one can keep in an organisation dedicated to prising them open. As far as Five is concerned, I took out the Czechs. I even went to the trouble of splashing a bit of blood around in that crummy hotel they’d been staying at in Fulham.”
“And the cleaners?”
“They were my men. Loyalty still counted for something in those days. One is dead now, the other two have retired. There’s nothing to worry about there.”
“I’d love to have nothing to worry about, but I’m not sure I share your confidence.”
“As I said. Try to act surprised.”
Troy paused.
“Jordan—why kill Blaine? It doesn’t make sense. The Russians must have approved of Burgess going to Vienna or he would not have been there. Hence, they knew the possibilities, and may even have engineered the one that came to pass. But why shoot the messenger?”
“Perhaps because they could?”
“They could have taken Blaine out on the streets of London. A discreet hit as he crossed some London park at dusk. A bullet to the head and pop! They didn’t need to lure him or you to Vienna with Burgess as bait.”
“I don’t know, but it does seem as though Burgess asking to come home was just a ploy.”
“I talked to Guy. Far, far longer than Blaine did. It wasn’t a ploy. He wasn’t faking. He wanted to come home and he believed Moscow would let him.”
“And how believable is that? Does Moscow show mercy?”
“Dunno. Perhaps he picked up too many young comrades in too many public lavatories. Perhaps they feared he’d corrupt an entire generation and destroy the Soviet Union more effectively than an atom bomb. Gives a whole new meaning to ‘Fat Man’ and ‘Little Boy,’ doesn’t it? Or it may be Guy just bored them, and they’d sooner he bored us back here.”
Jordan sniggered at the truth of this. Knocked back his second shot.
“As I said, Freddie. Just try to act surprised.”
§88
Troy’s first morning back in his office would be telling. Stan was unpredictable at the best of times. Troy wasn’t sure which way he’d jump—or how much he knew.
He had half listened to Eddie …
“Mr. Wildeve’s in High Wycombe. A poisoning. The Hoxton Boys go on trial at the Bailey on Wednesday. He’ll be back for that. Mostly it’s just a mountain of paperwork.”
“A small mountain?”
“No, an alp. Mont s
oddin’ Blanc. You’ve been gone three weeks.”
… but all of him listened out for Stan.
Just after ten, he appeared in Troy’s office.
Closed the door behind him.
“We’re in a pickle.”
“We are?”
“Branch want to see you.”
“In which case, your immediate use of the plural personal pronoun has me somewhat baffled.”
“Eh?”
“I’m in a pickle, apparently. Not you.”
“When one of my officers is under investigation by …”
“OK. I get it. Who, when, and where?”
“Jim Westcott.”
Troy faked the raising of one eyebrow.
“I’m flattered, the last Branch man to try and turn me over was Charlie Walsh in 1940. Suddenly I’m playing in the First Division.”
“For God’s sake, Freddie, take this seriously. This could be where your chickens come home to roost.”
Troy stared at Stan. Above the chalk-stripe suit, the rumpled collar, and the decidedly non-school tie was the face of an implacable man.
“Chickens?”
“The whole fuckin’ hen house.”
“Meaning?”
“I’ve told you repeatedly—”
“To have nothing to do with the Branch. Yet in 1944, you told me to investigate the murder of a Branch detective sergeant against the express wishes of the Branch itself. Two years ago, you assigned me to a Special Branch squad guarding Khrushchev. Need I say more?”
“I should knock your block off for cheek like that, but if you think about what you just said, it makes perfect sense of ‘we.’ We’re both in this.”
Troy kicked himself. He should have known better than to antagonise Stan.
“Sorry, Stan. When and where do you want me to meet Westcott?”
“He’s on his way down now. Set up a meeting with him and clear off.”
“Clear off.”
“Take leave until this is over.”
“I’ve just had three weeks leave.”
“I’ll not have the Branch questioning one of my serving officers. They want you on leave and so do I.”
“Agreeing to that … putting me on leave is telling them I’m guilty of something.”