Secret Kingdom

by Francis Bennett

  The man who greeted her was tall, pale and gaunt (‘almost skeletal from some angles’), with deep-set eyes, only a few years older than she was and dressed in a thick, shapeless jersey, an ancient pair of corduroy trousers and battered suede boots. When he spoke it was slowly and with care, as if he was concealing the last traces of a childhood stammer. What finally destroyed the image she had conjured up was his right arm which hung useless at his side (Sykes shook their hands with his left). Joe wouldn’t have missed that – how could he? – but he hadn’t thought to mention Sykes’s disability.

  ‘No need to ask why you’ve come,’ Sykes said. ‘Where’s Joe?’ He lit a cigarette without offering one either to Anna or Esther. ‘That’s what we’d all like to know, isn’t it? Where’s our man buzzed off to?’

  ‘You’ve not heard anything?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Not a peep, no, and he’s missed his deadline, damn it. I’m left with pages to fill, which doesn’t make me happy.’

  ‘What was he writing for you?’ Anna wanted Sykes’s version.

  ‘Didn’t he tell you?’ Sykes sounded surprised.

  ‘You know what Joe was like.’ She had to remember to talk about Joe in the present, otherwise she’d start believing he had gone for ever. ‘He keeps things to himself.’

  ‘I’m interested in what’s happening in the countries closest to the Soviet borders, Austria and Germany particularly, what it’s like to live with the threat of a Soviet invasion every time there’s any political tension between East and West. I got the impression Joe was excited by the project. He saw writing for us as a real opportunity to spread his wings a bit, maybe as a prelude to a change in career. That’s why his disappearance is so puzzling. He had so much to gain from making a success of this commission.’

  ‘You don’t think he might have crossed the border into Hungary, do you?’ she asked, voicing her worst fears. ‘Unintentionally, of course.’

  ‘Good God, no. What makes you think that?’

  ‘Budapest’s not far from Vienna.’

  ‘He’s a bloody fool if he has,’ Sykes said sharply. He didn’t know Joe that well, he went on, but by his reckoning the man was an academic, not an adventurer. Creeping into the communist bloc by the back door wasn’t something he could see Joe doing, unless MI6 had got their claws into him, which was pretty unlikely given the political colouring of Commentary. ‘I see no point in thinking he’s crossed any borders. It won’t get us anywhere.’

  There was something in his manner she couldn’t trust. His explanations were too neat, too easy; they slipped off the tongue with the practised skill of the rehearsed performance. Sykes had prepared for their visit, and she was going to take away from it only what he wanted her to have. On the evidence so far, that was precious little.

  ‘Then how do you explain the fact that he’s disappeared into thin air?’

  ‘Maybe he’s had an accident and lost his memory, or he’s been kidnapped. Or he’s got fed up and done a bunk. Perhaps there’s something in his life he wanted to escape from. Who knows? We all have demons, don’t we, and sometimes they can strike without mercy.’ Sykes jabbed out his cigarette and pushed away the ashtray. ‘I leave it to those who know him better than me to decide which is the more likely explanation.’

  Was there a threat in his voice, a challenge to her influence on Joe? Was he trying to blame her for Joe’s disappearance?

  ‘I went to Vienna with Joe because he asked me to.’ She knew she sounded defensive but she couldn’t help it. ‘That hardly fits with your theory of his escape.’

  ‘Forgive me, I’m not laying blame,’ he said. How effortlessly he slid out of difficult corners! ‘We’re all in the dark on this. I’m as anxious as any of us to find some answers. We each have our reasons for wanting Joe back. Don’t we?’

  ‘Have you made enquiries?’ Esther asked.

  They were the first words Esther had spoken since they had arrived, and they appeared momentarily to unsettle Sykes, as if he hadn’t been expecting her to talk at all.

  ‘My brother-in-law works at the Foreign Office.’ His answer surprised Anna. It was the first piece of information about himself he had given away unasked. ‘I’ve spoken to him on a number of occasions. Believe me,’ he added, ‘my concern about Joe is genuine.’

  ‘Foreign Office no good,’ Esther said. ‘They don’t know anything.’

  Sykes smiled. ‘They’re doing their best, Mrs Leman, but they aren’t the police. I know they take Joe’s disappearance seriously. They’re as concerned as the rest of us.’

  ‘What do we do now?’ Anna asked.

  ‘I’m not sure there’s anything we can do, except wait.’ Sykes thought for a moment. ‘I have a hunch Joe will turn up when we least expect him. One day soon the door bell will ring and there he’ll be. He’ll have some involved Joe-like explanation for his absence, something none of us would ever dream of. He’ll hand over his copy, have a drink and off he’ll go.’ He touched Esther’s arm. ‘I think your son’s all right. I really do.’

  ‘My son’s in trouble right now,’ Esther said, ‘and I don’t think he’s coming back. That’s why I’m afraid.’

  4

  ‘Item six,’ Watson-Jones said. ‘Hungary.’

  Pountney was out of sorts. He’d had a restless night, he’d slept through the alarm and had rushed out of the house without breakfast, since when the day had never been fully under his control. Unusually, Margaret had not had ready all the files he needed for the SSC meeting and he was feeling guilty because he’d been sharp with her. Now, by the time he’d got his hands on the milk, his tea had gone cold and he had missed his usual Digestive – someone had greedily taken more than his share; the plate had emptied faster than ever today. Already the meeting was well over its allotted span of two hours and there were five more items to go. At this rate he might have to forgo lunch.

  Why the hell couldn’t Watson-Jones get through the agenda quicker? He was, by common consent, a poor chairman, overbearing, inflexible, intolerant of anyone who did not share his views and known on occasion to be vindictive to those who opposed him. He had a faultless memory for slights and a dubious reputation for getting even with those whom he believed had slighted him. No wonder the committee was taking all morning to grind acrimoniously through its business.

  ‘What do you have for us this morning, David?’

  The Soviet Security Committee, to which, following his appointment as Watson-Jones’s Private Secretary, Pountney was the newest recruit, was one of a number of specialist Whitehall committees informally known as the ‘Red Task Force’ set up to monitor different aspects of the Soviet threat. Each group reported to a central coordinating committee which produced weekly summaries, the ‘Red Reports’, that were circulated first to the Joint Intelligence Committee and then on to the Cabinet. Made up of representatives from the Foreign Office, the SIS, with observers from the Ministry of Defence, the SSC’s task was to give the Government early warning of any political or military activity that might lead to the extension or reduction of the Soviet sphere of interest.

  ‘Thank you, chairman,’ David Lander said. ‘Little that’s new, I fear.’

  It was the period of summer manoeuvres, so there were more Soviet troops visible than usual around the country; Rakosi continued to govern with his bunch of ruthless henchmen and the Kremlin’s full connivance in his policy of ‘midnight arrests, instant trials and summary executions’; the secret police reigned supreme; indeed Hungary had all the usual ingredients for a lethal cocktail of Soviet-style repression. Still little or no sign of popular unrest in the streets. ‘That’s all I have to report, chairman. A familiar, if gloomy, landscape. I’ll take questions now, if anyone has any.’

  There wouldn’t be any questions, it was too near lunchtime. Hungary was a dead issue at this time of the morning or indeed any time of the morning, a Soviet satellite where, according to Lander, nothing was happening which need detain the committee.

  ‘Nothing threa
tens? No storm clouds?’

  Watson-Jones was asking questions not out of any interest he might have in the answers but for the sake of the record (he had fine-tuned his instinct for covering his arse). ‘Under questioning from the Chairman,’ the minutes would read, ‘DL confirmed there were no developments in Hungary worthy of the committee’s attention.’ The chairman’s mind was already on item seven.

  ‘If no one has any points to raise under item six, I think we can move on.’ Watson-Jones looked up briefly for assent.

  ‘Chairman?’ Carl Brotherton flagged his wish to speak by holding up his pencil.

  ‘Carl. What does Merton House have to say for itself?’

  ‘I don’t think we can dismiss the situation in Hungary quite as easily as that. Our reports from Budapest would appear to contradict David Lander’s more optimistic analysis.’

  ‘Please.’ Lander held up both hands in mock surrender of his position. ‘My comments were not intended to be controversial. Tell us how your people see it.’ He didn’t bother to disguise the contempt in his voice.

  ‘Our observation leads us to believe that the country is going down a path that sooner or later may lead to a local uprising against the Soviet occupation. If that happens, it’s likely the Soviet retaliation will be pretty strong.’

  ‘Does that surprise you?’ Watson-Jones asked aggressively. ‘Whether we like it or not, the Soviets regard Hungary as theirs. If the Hungarians are foolish enough to get it into their heads to try to chuck them out, they’ve got to accept what’s coming to them.’

  The silence that met Watson-Jones’s enquiring gaze as he surveyed the room was not an endorsement of his views. To all but the very thick-skinned it was a clear signal of disapproval. If Watson-Jones noticed it at all, and that was unlikely, he ignored it. What surprised Pountney was the unexpected distance between Lander’s analysis and Brotherton’s summary. How could the two be so far apart?

  ‘If there were to be an uprising,’ Brotherton persisted, though without the firmness that Pountney would have expected – don’t use the conditional with Watson-Jones, he doesn’t understand it – ‘there may be calls for Western aid, perhaps even intervention. That raises a number of difficult questions. Shouldn’t this committee prepare a position on this so that we are ready to help when the time comes?’

  ‘Damn fool idea. Of course we shouldn’t,’ Watson-Jones said dismissively. ‘Not our business to go into Hungary and tell the Soviets what to do. Our position couldn’t be clearer.’

  ‘We don’t mind telling Nasser,’ said some brave soul at the back.

  ‘Not the same thing at all.’ Watson-Jones rounded on the speaker, his eyes sizing up the culprit for future humiliation. ‘Nasser’s a nobody who’s got to be taught a lesson. The Soviets are far too powerful to mess with, so we leave them alone. I don’t think there can be any disagreement on that.’

  ‘And let innocent people die in the cause of their own freedom?’

  ‘I’m not taking responsibility for the Hungarians,’ Watson-Jones said, raising his voice and banging the end of his pencil on the table, ‘and nor is Her Majesty’s Government. If the Hungarians want to pick a fight with the Soviets, that’s their business. It’s a damn fool idea that will end in tears and it’s got nothing to do with us.’ He looked round the table. ‘Are we agreed on that?’

  It was no different to what Pountney had feared. When it came down to it, nobody at this meeting was prepared to stand up to Watson-Jones. Not even Brotherton who, on the face of it, had a case to answer. (Why didn’t he pursue his position? Why did he give in to Watson-Jones’s bullying tactics so quickly?)

  ‘Item seven. Soviet activity in the Middle East. Here’s something we can get our teeth into.’

  5

  Bloody in-tray. It filled up every time you blinked. Where the hell was Martineau? Why couldn’t he deal with all this paperwork?

  Hart picked out another telegram. Some damn fool Englishman had gone missing and London was asking the embassy to keep an eye out for him. Surely they knew better than that. If there was a missing Englishman in Budapest, the communist authorities would be shouting his name from the rooftops. What a useless bunch they were in King Charles Street.

  Joe Leman.

  He knew that name from somewhere. Deep in his mind he heard an echo from another life. Could it be his Leman? He hadn’t thought about him for years. Now his name appeared on a piece of paper and memories came flooding back of those early days of his Russian course at Cambridge. It couldn’t be the same man, could it?

  Leman was a research student and he was teaching the course, he told them quite openly, because he needed the money. Hart hadn’t liked him at first. He was still at an age when he expected those who taught him to be older than he was and he took against Leman because he was in his early twenties, while Hart was eighteen.

  He changed his mind because Leman was a good teacher, very patient. A few weeks into the course, Hart had made a determined effort to get to know him. If there were mysteries in Leman’s life, and Hart and his friends agreed there were, they wanted to crack them. With others on the course, Hart invited him out for a drink a couple of times; he had him back to his room for supper; he even got Leman to accompany them to Duck Soup at the Arts Cinema, but they were never asked back to his digs in Silver Street and they never got to penetrate the silence he used so artfully as a defence against their curiosity.

  Was there a woman in his life? He never mentioned one and when they saw him he was always by himself. He was an expert in the art of evasion, and by December their initiative had fallen by the wayside. Hart had fallen in love by then with an au pair girl from Aarhus, and his mind was occupied with other mysteries.

  When they reappeared in January, Leman had gone. They’d had no warning that he wouldn’t be returning after Christmas; there’d been no goodbyes. Nor was there any hint of where he’d gone. All they learned was that he had left Cambridge. In his place was the blonde Russian wife of an anthropology don at Selwyn who was nowhere as good at teaching but whose magnificent cleavage made up for other deficiencies. Their curiosity about Leman vanished quickly. Hart had not thought about him from that day to this.

  Now Leman had vanished again. How appropriate that he should reappear in his life as an absence.

  6

  He woke suddenly because his back was hurting. It was still dark outside. He had no idea what time it was and there was no way of telling. They’d removed his watch soon after his arrest. For an hour he lay awake listening to a man weeping. Then he slept again, restlessly, unable to find a comfortable position where his back or legs didn’t hurt, and disturbed by his dreams.

  *

  The rain had stopped, but the deserted streets of this strange city were wet and the air was cold. He shivered and walked faster.

  Why had he quarrelled with Anna? She was the excuse, not the cause, of his outburst. He was anxious, on edge, which wasn’t surprising. That bloody telephone call as they ran up the stairs. Its insistent ring had unnerved him. Who else would hang on so long at midnight except someone who expected him to be there? Why ring tonight? That wasn’t what he’d agreed with Sykes and the arrangements had been meticulous.

  ‘Two or three days,’ he had told Sykes. ‘I’ll need that time to settle in. We can’t start any earlier.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Sykes had said. ‘I’ll make sure our Viennese friends understand.’ Joe had thought no more about it. Until a few minutes ago.

  Perhaps something had gone wrong. Perhaps, after all the careful planning, they were telephoning to call it off. God, he hoped not. He’d built himself up for this. Not to go ahead would be more than failure, it would be defeat. That couldn’t be contemplated. But the doubt was there now, lodged squarely in his mind. The plans he had rehearsed to himself only a few hours ago that had seemed neat and orderly and as tight as a steel drum were now beginning to unravel. It was not a sensation he appreciated.

  The unanswered call had made him a
ngry because he was uncertain and he’d let his anger and uncertainty centre on Anna. He should never have allowed that to happen. He was racked by guilt. Why did he have to treat her like a bastard when she was so good to him – warm, patient, understanding, forgiving, loving Anna? She deserved someone better. God knows she did. But the thought of her with another man made him hold his sides in pain.

  He turned to make his way back to the apartment. The street was deserted, the citizens of Vienna tucked up safely. Bed. That’s where he should be now. He thought of Anna, sweet-smelling, soft, languidly sleepy after her bath. He would wake her from her dreams with a kiss, apologize – how easily the words ‘I’m sorry’ tripped off his tongue – she would forgive him, touching his face with her long fingers (she always forgave him), she would tell him to get undressed and come to bed. That was how it always ended, with forgiveness, warm kisses and the explosion of passion that he could release in her.

  ‘You’re my lover,’ she had said to him early in their affair. ‘My one true lover, for whom I was made, mind and body. No other man could do to me what you do. Never forget that, Joe Leman. No other man.’

  Whatever else he may have done to her, he had never forgotten that. Not once in all the days they’d been together. She was his, too, he was made for her, only he never dared to tell her so. Surely she knew that? Surely she knew that he loved her?

  He hurried on, dreaming of the woman with whom he shared so much of his life. So much, but not yet everything.

  He was yards away from the steps that led up to the front door of the apartment building when two men got out of a car parked on the other side of the street. He had his hand on the rail when they caught up with him. One of them held him fast by the arm.

  ‘Herr Leman?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Where were you? Why didn’t you answer the telephone? We’ve been trying to get in touch all day.’

  So he was right, but the knowledge gave him no pleasure.