The Diplomat's Wife

by Michael Ridpath

  Emma nodded.

  ‘I know it’s not exactly proof,’ Phil went on. ‘But it’s a good guess.’

  ‘I always wondered why Kurt’s warning about the Molotov– Ribbentrop Pact never got through to the Foreign Office,’ Emma said. ‘There is only really one explanation. It was never delivered. Dick never delivered it.’

  ‘Because the Russians told him not to?’

  Emma nodded.

  ‘We could just ask Swann,’ said Phil.

  ‘We could. But I’d rather we didn’t.’

  Phil had been afraid of this. ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘I don’t actually know.’

  ‘All right, how long have you suspected?’

  ‘Since Spain.’

  ‘Wait a moment,’ said Phil. ‘Did you shoot Lothar so that he couldn’t tell me about the mole?’

  Emma nodded. ‘Sorry, Philip. You took me quite by surprise when you brought that up. I thought Lothar would refuse to tell you, but I couldn’t take the risk. I was always going to shoot him; that just made me pull the trigger sooner.’

  ‘But Dick’s here! He’s here with you now!’

  ‘I know. And it’s wonderful.’ She reached out to take Phil’s hand. ‘I know I have asked a lot of you, Philip. But I have just one more favour. Keep this to yourself. For me. Just so I can enjoy my last few days.’

  ‘But he’s a spy, Grams! Don’t you care? He’s spying for the Russians and they’re our enemies.’

  ‘I don’t care, Phil. I was a spy, once, remember? Dick is a good man. He is doing what he is doing because he believes in it. Because he believes that capitalism ruins the lives of the masses. Because he loves his fellow human beings. I admire that.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ said Phil. ‘Does he know you know?’

  ‘No,’ said Emma. ‘And I strongly suggest that you don’t let on that you know either. It might not be good for you.’

  Because the bastard might kill me, thought Phil. He was angry with his grandmother. Angry that after all this she would put him in such an awkward situation. Again.

  ‘Promise me, Philip. Promise me you won’t tell Kenneth about Dick? Even after I’m gone.’

  Why shouldn’t he? Why the bloody hell shouldn’t he?

  He glared at his grandmother. She held his eyes, pleading, trusting.

  Emma, Freddie, Dick, Kurt, Kay: they had all betrayed their countries at various times, all from a genuine belief that what they were doing was right for humanity. Phil disagreed with them. History had proved that they were wrong; the Soviet Union was evil.

  He might be only eighteen, but he loved his country, as so many eighteen-year-olds had done before him.

  But he also loved his grandmother.

  ‘OK, Grams,’ he said. ‘I won’t tell anyone. I promise.’

  Chapter 60

  July 1979, Buckinghamshire

  The phone call Phil had been expecting came the Friday after he got back from Cornwall. He returned home from his first week on the building site filthy and exhausted. His mother was waiting for him in the hallway, her eyes red.

  ‘Grams is dead, Phil.’

  ‘Oh.’ Phil had anticipated this news, but it still stunned him.

  ‘A man called Dick Loxton has just rung. Who is he? He says he’s been staying with her.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Phil. ‘We met him in Paris. He knew her before the war.’

  ‘And he’s staying with her now?’

  ‘Yes. I saw him last week.’

  ‘And you didn’t tell me?’

  Phil didn’t answer.

  ‘He says she had a brain tumour and that she knew about it. Did she tell you?’

  ‘Not at first,’ said Phil. ‘But eventually. When we were driving through France.’

  ‘And you didn’t tell me that, either?’

  ‘She made me promise not to.’ He looked at his mother, whose face was crumpling in front of him. He felt guilty and he felt angry. Guilty that he had kept his promise to his grandmother, and angry that she had made him do it. ‘Sorry, Mum.’

  ‘Phil!’ The tears were streaming down his mother’s face now. ‘Phil, she was my mother. I had a right to know. I should be down there looking after her, not this dick.’ She spat out the last word in all its penile ambiguity.

  Phil’s father emerged from the sitting room; he must have come home early from work. He put his arms around his wife and glared at his son.

  Phil stumped upstairs, and sat on his bed in his jeans, filthy with dust from the building site. His eyes roamed around his room and settled on his copy of the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide lying on the floor.

  He thought of his grandmother beside her brother’s grave at Chaddington; sitting beside him in the TR6 lecturing him on Plastic Bertrand; showing him that church with the amazing windows in Paris; crammed in the back of the tiny taxi travelling through East Berlin. He imagined her as a young diplomat’s wife confounding all who met her, diplomats and spymasters, throughout Europe.

  He smiled. And then a blackness seeped inside him, spreading from somewhere in his chest throughout his whole body, filling every empty cranny with a darker emptiness.

  He blinked and felt a hot trail wriggle down his cheek.

  There was a knock at his bedroom door.

  He didn’t answer.

  The door opened. His mum appeared, hesitated, and then walked into the room and sat down next to him on the bed. Slowly, she put her arm around his shoulders, and he leaned into her as she hugged him tight.

  He felt her lips in his hair.

  Phil had had enough of keeping promises to his grandmother.

  While his parents were sipping gin and tonics before supper in the sitting room, he made a murmured phone call to a London number, reversing the charges. It took a while for him to be put through to Mr Swann, or Mr Heaton-Smith, or whatever his name was.

  ‘My grandmother just died,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Swann. ‘I know you expected it, but it must be a blow.’

  ‘I have some things I need to tell you. I know who the mole is.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I need to tell you face to face.’ Phil and Emma’s proof wasn’t cast iron; he wanted to have a proper chance to explain it to Swann.

  ‘All right. I’m abroad at the moment. But I can see you at one o’clock, Sunday. Same place.’

  Phil heard a car pull up in the little driveway outside their house. It was Saturday afternoon, and his parents were at the garden centre. Mel was in her room practising her guitar, and he was learning Gaelic vocabulary.

  He found it strangely calming. It both distracted him from his grandmother’s death and reminded him of her at the same time.

  He looked out of his bedroom window to see the familiar shape of the TR6, top down. And Dick at the wheel.

  Christ!

  Dick rang the doorbell.

  Play it cool, Phil thought. Not too cool, though. It would be natural for him to seem upset, agitated even.

  ‘Hello, Dick,’ he said as he opened the door, opting for a downbeat tone.

  ‘Hello.’ Dick flashed one of those kind smiles that had so captivated Emma. ‘I’m so sorry, Philip. I know how fond you were of her. And she was of you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Phil. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I came to deliver the car,’ Dick said. ‘Emma was very keen you should have it. And you and I need to have a little chat.’

  Uh-oh. ‘Come in,’ said Phil.

  ‘Look, it’s a lovely afternoon. Why don’t we take her out for a spin?’

  Phil couldn’t think of an answer why not. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘One moment. I just need to tell my sister where I’m going.’

  ‘I’ll wait in the car.’

  Phil ran up to Mel’s room.

  ‘Who’s that?’ said Mel, looking up from her guitar.

  ‘It’s Dick, Grams’s friend. He’s taking me out for a drive.’

  ‘Have fun.’

  ‘Mel
. I’m dead serious about this. Listen closely.’ Phil looked around her room, grabbed a biro and ripped off a sheet from a pad of paper on her desk. He scribbled down a number.

  ‘If I’m not back in an hour, ring this number and ask for Mr Swann. Tell him Dick Loxton took me for a drive and I haven’t come back yet. Dick Loxton. Have you got that?’

  ‘Are you serious?’ His sister’s expression was somewhere between bemused and scornful.

  ‘Dead serious,’ said Phil.

  ‘I knew something was up,’ she said. ‘Now you’ve got me scared.’

  ‘I am scared,’ said Phil. ‘Bye, Mel.’ And he bent down and kissed her quickly on the cheek.

  ‘Wow,’ she said. He never kissed her on the cheek. ‘Bye, Phil.’

  He left the house to find Dick waiting for him in the passenger seat.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Phil asked.

  ‘Is there anywhere we can go for a decent walk around here? There must be; the countryside is beautiful.’

  ‘I know somewhere,’ said Phil, and drove off towards one of those small valleys that cut into the Chiltern Hills.

  Dick was talking about Emma’s last few days, something about how she had been comfortable until the very end when she had complained of a severe headache and then lost consciousness.

  Phil was listening with half an ear.

  Dick was going to kill him. Take him to some remote spot and kill him.

  Phil had no idea how. He probably had a gun.

  Phil needed a plan.

  The walk was Phil’s best hope. Dick was an inch or two taller than Phil, and quite a bit heavier. Phil wasn’t sure he could overpower him, especially if Dick had a gun.

  But he could outrun him.

  So the plan was, wait till they were close to some woods, but don’t wait too long.

  And then make a run for it, into the trees.

  They were driving along a quiet road and parked in a layby near a footpath, which led up through a field to a wood.

  They got out of the car.

  ‘Emma said you and she had had a conversation when you came down last week,’ Dick said. ‘About me.’

  ‘We did,’ said Phil, avoiding Dick’s gaze.

  ‘She said you had both decided that I was some kind of spy.’

  They had crossed a stile and were climbing a low hill beside a hedge, watched by a clutch of bullocks. Behind them, a tiny village dozed in the Buckinghamshire sunshine. The field was exposed to the view of anyone looking out of the windows of their cottage. Not a great place to shoot someone undetected. Dick would have to wait for his chance.

  Phil stopped. ‘I promised her not to tell anyone, and I haven’t.’

  Dick grinned. ‘I’m sure you haven’t. You are the epitome of a loyal grandson.’

  ‘You can trust me not to tell them now,’ Phil said. And at that moment he was willing to stick by that promise if Dick could think of a way of enforcing it without killing him.

  He was scared, but he was doing his best not to show it.

  Dick laughed. ‘Don’t worry, Philip,’ he said. ‘I’m not a “mole” as she says you call it. It’s not me.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ said Phil, happy to be seen to be persuaded.

  ‘Seriously, Philip. It’s not me. She and I discussed it a couple of days ago. I convinced her it wasn’t me.’

  ‘Good,’ said Phil.

  Dick frowned. ‘You don’t believe me, do you? She said I should find you as soon as she died. She also said you would be difficult to convince.’

  ‘No, no, you’ve convinced me,’ said Phil. Unconvincingly.

  ‘Being Emma, she told me how to convince you.’

  ‘Did she?’ said Phil. That did sound like Grams. ‘I’m listening.’ But he was still standing motionless in the open field. At some point he would run.

  ‘Emma says that what convinced her was that the Foreign Office never received her warning about the Russian talks with the Germans in the summer of 1939.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘She says that the only possible reason they didn’t is that I didn’t pass on the message.’

  ‘That’s also right,’ said Phil.

  ‘It’s not quite right,’ said Dick.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean there is another possibility. That I did pass on the intelligence, but that the person I told it to kept it to himself.’

  ‘Heaton-Smith?’

  Dick nodded. Phil thought about it. It did make sense.

  ‘So you still maintain that you gave the information to Heaton-Smith?’

  ‘I do,’ said Dick. ‘I remember it well. We were in a pub in Pimlico. It’s the one and only time I met him. He had a gap in his front teeth.’

  Phil thought about it. Maybe.

  Dick was thinking too. ‘Why would I have sent a postcard to Emma telling her about Kurt and Kay if I was trying to stop her finding Lothar? Eh?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Phil. ‘Why would Heaton-Smith want me to tell him where Lothar was?’

  ‘Emma had an answer for that.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘He had been put up to it by C and Freddie Pelham-Walsh – C is the head of MI6.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘The three of them decided to involve you, and so Heaton-Smith had to. But by recruiting you himself, and keeping Emma out of it, he could follow how her investigation was going. If she found Lothar, and you told Heaton-Smith where he was, he could make sure that the KGB got to him before MI6.’

  ‘But why mention the mole at all? Surely, the less I knew about moles, the less chance that I might find one.’

  ‘Either C or Freddie insisted on it. The important thing from the mysterious Mr Swann’s point of view was that Emma didn’t find out what you and he were up to.’

  Phil thought it all through. ‘OK. Heaton-Smith may be the mole, I get that. Or it might be you. How do I know which?’

  Dick smiled. ‘According to Emma, you have the answer to that.’

  Chapter 61

  July 1979, Three Castles, Buckinghamshire

  This time, Phil was ten minutes late as he walked into the Three Castles. Swann was waiting for him, at the same table where they had met before, between the jukebox and the dartboard.

  Phil bought himself a pint and joined him.

  ‘Hello, Phil,’ said Swann, smiling. ‘Thanks for getting in touch with me.’

  Phil smiled, shook Swann’s hand, and sat down. He came straight to the point.

  ‘The man you are looking for is Dick Loxton,’ he said.

  ‘Loxton, eh?’ said Swann.

  ‘Do you know him?’ Phil asked.

  ‘We met once, during the war.’

  ‘Oh, was that at a pub in Pimlico? My grandmother told me about that. He had a message for you about the talks between the Germans and the Russians. Was that right?’

  ‘He did have some information for me,’ Swann said, carefully. ‘From your grandmother.’

  ‘Did the British government take any notice of it?’

  ‘No,’ said Swann. ‘They didn’t believe it. Even though we were nearly at war, there were still some appeasers left in the Foreign Office.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘So tell me, Philip. How do you know that Loxton is our man?’

  Phil launched into a detailed exposition of his earlier suspicions. Swann listened carefully. After a couple of minutes, they were interrupted.

  ‘Hello, Kenneth.’

  Two men were standing behind Swann. One, a sixty-year-old civil servant with a suit and tie, fleshy square face and bulging, hard eyes, was doing the talking.

  ‘Do you mind if we join you?’

  ‘Of course not. I was just debriefing Phil here.’

  ‘We heard.’

  Swann didn’t move. Slowly he drew on his cigarette, not moving his eyes from the civil servant.

  ‘Are you wearing a wire, Phil?’ Swann asked eventually.

  ‘He is,’ said the civil servant.

&n
bsp; ‘Uncomfortable, aren’t they?’ Swann said to Phil. ‘Just wait till you take it off. The tape they use rips off all your chest hair.’

  ‘You were talking about Dick Loxton,’ the civil servant said.

  ‘We were.’

  ‘And how he met you in a pub in Pimlico in 1939 and passed on information about the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Information that you didn’t pass on to anyone in London.’

  ‘Oh, I can assure you I did,’ said Swann. Phil had to hand it to him; he was keeping his cool. But he had just confirmed that Dick had indeed followed Emma’s instructions back in 1939. Dick wasn’t the mole, and it looked very likely Kenneth Heaton-Smith was.

  ‘We’ve checked the old files,’ said the civil servant. ‘There is no record of you mentioning your conversation with Mr Loxton to anyone.’

  ‘It will be in the files somewhere,’ said Swann. ‘Just a question of looking in the right places.’

  The civil servant scanned the bar, which was becoming crowded. ‘We really need to discuss this further, Kenneth, but this isn’t a good place to do it. Why don’t you come with me and Roger?’

  Phil, and Swann, glanced up at Roger, who was in his late thirties, broad-shouldered and very fit-looking. Phil wouldn’t want to have an argument with Roger. And neither did Mr Swann.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Goodbye, Phil.’ And they were gone.

  *

  Ten minutes later, his wire expertly and painfully removed in an electrician’s van in the pub car park where the civil servant and his entourage had been listening to it earlier, Phil returned to the pub. Dick was waiting for him with two pints lined up on the bar.

  ‘Turns out you’re not a Russian spy, after all,’ said Phil, accepting his gratefully.

  ‘That’s good to know,’ said Dick.

  ‘Was that bloke “C”?’

  ‘Couldn’t possibly comment,’ said Dick. He raised his glass. ‘To Emma.’ He paused. ‘And Hugh.’

  ‘To Grams,’ said Phil. ‘And her brother.’ He took a sip.

  Nothing tasted better to him at that moment than a good English pint in a good English pub on a summer afternoon.