Secret Kingdom

by Francis Bennett

His victim fell to his knees, clutching his head in his hands, blood pouring from a wound. His assailant was immediately surrounded by police and, arms up to ward off blows to his face and head, beaten into submission. The crowd, satiated by its own experience of violence, continued on its way, ignoring him.

  ‘We can’t stand by and let them beat him up like that.’ Hart’s instinct was to go to the man’s aid. He felt Martineau’s hand restrain him.

  ‘Leave him alone.’

  ‘They’ll kill him if we don’t stop them.’

  ‘It’s not our quarrel, Hugh.’ The grip was tighter now, as Hart struggled to free himself. ‘Don’t get involved.’

  ‘We’ve got to do something.’

  ‘Stay where you are.’ Martineau was shouting at him, his face close to Hart’s, eyes blazing, real anger in the strength of his grip. Hart was incapable of freeing himself. ‘Leave him alone. This is nothing to do with us.’

  It was a moment of confrontation, Hart’s instincts against Martineau’s discipline. The figure lay frighteningly still on the pavement, blood seeping from a wound on his temple.

  If he’s dead, Hart thought, remorseful at his failure to act, I’ll have let him die and not lifted a finger in his defence. Bloody Martineau. What the hell was he playing at?

  An arm moved, then the head. The man was recovering consciousness. As his friends rushed forward to give help, the police formed a circle around the wounded man to prevent anyone from getting close. With a wail of sirens, a police van roared into the square, backed into the area and the young man was quickly lifted into the van and driven off.

  ‘We should have done something,’ Hart said angrily as the van drove off. ‘They damn near killed him, the bastards.’

  ‘We’re not here to engage the enemy, Hugh. Our duty lies elsewhere. We can’t afford to forget that, however painful it may be.’ Martineau let go his arms and smiled briefly at him. ‘All right?’

  Hart looked at him, his fury barely under control. This was the first time his animosity towards Martineau had come out into the open.

  ‘No, it’s bloody well not all right,’ he said. Then he turned and walked away.

  6

  ‘Strong stuff,’ Pountney said. The report lay on the table between them. ‘Do you think there’s any truth in it?’

  On a first reading, he had found the charges genuinely shocking. That Merton House might be controlled by men who took their orders from Moscow was a damning indictment of poor vetting and lax discipline. It gave him no pleasure to see his prejudices confirmed. A careful rereading had revealed holes in both the arguments and the conclusions and he viewed the accusations with increasing scepticism. The scenario as presented was too simple, the pieces fitted together too snugly, to carry conviction. How easy it was in the murky world of intelligence-gathering to smear and damage through insinuation. This was a time for rigorous scepticism, not an emotional response.

  ‘They’re only repeating what I’ve been saying for years,’ Watson-Jones said smugly. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me to find half the staff of Merton House on Moscow Centre’s payroll. The place is riddled with traitors. The sooner we abolish it the better.’

  It was a predictable response. Watson-Jones’s contempt for Merton House was widely known. Whether that made him a fair-minded appointment to lead the investigation into the allegations in the Peter Group’s secret report was open to question, Pountney thought, but that was a decision taken by those wiser than him.

  ‘If what they say is true,’ he said, ‘why wait ten years to bring it up?’

  ‘Truth doesn’t age, Gerry. We both know that.’

  ‘Nor does it mature like wine.’

  ‘Better now than never,’ Watson-Jones replied sharply. ‘These are very serious allegations made by people who know the service intimately. We have no choice but to investigate the charges and establish the truth. It would be irresponsible to brush this under the carpet on the basis that it all happened a long time ago, especially when it’s likely that the consequences of what happened then are still very much with us today, and they could be very damaging to our national security.’

  (He saw Watson-Jones at the despatch box, the upholder of truth and decency, the light of justice burning brightly in his hand, the nation safe under his vigilant eye. His sentiments smacked of opportunism. Pountney should have become used to it by now, but the performance still sickened him.)

  ‘I came away with the impression that this is more about settling old scores than unmasking Soviet agents.’ For once he wasn’t going to let Watson-Jones get away with it so easily.

  ‘If settling old scores means redressing the balance by rooting out Moscow’s men, then I’ve nothing against it. I think we may find this Peter Group has done us a great service. If we’ve got a Soviet cadre camped in our midst, then it’s about time we locked the bastards up and told Moscow where to get off.’

  Watson-Jones, he knew, saw his investigation as an opportunity to score political points over his rivals. He wanted his opinions vindicated, but there was more to it than that. Though nothing of his endeavour would ever reach the public eye – the inquiry would take place behind closed doors under conditions of secrecy – its existence and conclusions would be known in the places that mattered. He saw a successful resolution of the investigation (and he had already defined ‘success’ as proving both the report and his prejudices to be right) as a chance to stake his claim for higher office. He’d been presented with a political gift he was not going to give away lightly.

  ‘I shall want Lander in on this, and you, Gerry, and we’ll need a neutral corner, some nonentity from the Home Office might do the job. David’s got some ideas on that. Oh, and you’d better read this.’ He reached for a letter on his desk and handed it to Pountney. ‘A full and detailed denial by the Director-General. Pages of the stuff. Very self-congratulatory. God knows, these people are full of themselves, aren’t they?’

  7

  Like a ship at sea, prison is never still, never silent. Even in the depths of night there is movement and sound, footsteps hurrying, a key turning in a lock, a door slamming, a torch beam flashing momentarily, hushed voices, whispered commands echoing down empty corridors. The silence returns, only to be broken by the night noises of the inmates, the squeak of rusty bedsprings, sighs, cries, moans, sudden shouts and screams. The release of sleep allows them the only freedom they have, to express their suffering and despair as hope retreats in the endless hours of the night.

  *

  How simple it all seemed as he walked home at midnight, how clean and right and appropriate, a neat piece of engineering, all shiny and oiled and waiting for him, ready to go, the components fitting together with a seductive symmetry. He was light-headed with excitement, full of energy and purpose. Without his participation, Sykes had said, there would be nothing, no results, no changes, no history made, and he had believed him. If a voice within warned him to resist Sykes’s magic, he never heard it. The clamour in his mind deafened his sense of caution.

  His dilemma, he’d said, was simple. He had all the evidence he needed to show that what was happening in Hungary was of profound importance, pushing Suez into the background. He couldn’t publish the evidence that supported his position without putting at risk the sources on which he depended for his supply of secret information. What he needed was independent evidence that would corroborate what he already knew. He had no time for the emotional pictures of the front-line reporter nor the ideological rantings of the committed politico. He was after the cold eye of the expert analyst. He wanted Leman because he had the qualities Sykes was looking for – though he never said what they were. He would go out to Hungary, see for himself, bring back Sykes’s evidence, and then together they would write a devastating critique of the Government’s policy, ‘or lack of it’, towards Hungary and all the Soviet satellite states. What a storm they’d stir up.

  ‘You’d be away ten days at the most, more likely a week. What’s a week in your life?
’

  He would travel to Vienna, he’d have accreditation as a journalist, his cover being that he was to write a series of political articles for Commentary.

  ‘What about?’ Leman had asked.

  ‘What it’s like sharing your borders with the communist bloc,’ Sykes had replied without hesitation, ‘knowing that in the event of war your country will be on the front line in what could rapidly become the final confrontation between East and West. Living on the edge. That do you?’

  Once in Vienna, making use of contacts Sykes promised to provide, he would be taken secretly over the border into Hungary. There, again through intermediaries supplied by Sykes’s contacts, he would meet men who were planning an uprising against the Soviets. Leman would be able to assess their strength and, Sykes hoped, that of the Soviet forces lining up against them.

  ‘I know what’s happening. I want you to confirm it.’

  After a few days he would return to Vienna, pack his bag and come straight back to London. Then, with the evidence he’d brought back from the ‘front line’ and Sykes’s help, he would write the piece that Sykes was bursting to publish and the shit would truly hit the fan.

  ‘Throw Suez off the front page,’ he added, ‘and get something done to stop a tragedy in the making.’

  Leman was stunned. Why are you listening to this? a voice inside him asked as he caught the bus home. You are being seduced by a man you should distrust. In any other mood you’d have nothing to do with him. What’s happening to you? How come you’re losing your judgement all of a sudden?

  Leman leaned on the new certainties he felt inside himself and smiled. What can I do to stop myself? It’s too late to back out now. The deed is done. He had thrown off one life and assumed another. No more analysis of what other people did. He was going into action himself. He felt excited, at ease with himself, decisive, ready to jump. He had been set on fire by Sykes’s cause.

  *

  Anna was in bed when he got back to Moore Street but not asleep. He’d already made up his mind to try to get away with saying as little as he could about the long evening he had spent with Sykes. The drink at the office in Lincoln’s Inn Fields had become dinner in an expensive restaurant in the Strand, and then more drinking in Sykes’s Mayfair house. His habit of silence would be his defence.

  ‘What’s happened, Joe? What’s up?’ She could sense his excitement even before he had said a word.

  ‘I saw a man about a dog,’ he said unhelpfully. He lay down beside her on the bed.

  ‘Did Sykes offer you a job?’ She knew everything about him, this woman. Were there no secrets any more?

  ‘He asked me to go to Vienna to write an article for him.’

  ‘Did you agree?’

  ‘I said I’d think it over.’

  ‘Don’t touch it, Joe. Have nothing to do with him. He’s not to be trusted.’

  ‘You don’t even know him.’

  ‘I know people who do.’

  Her connections. They were always right because they were hers. Why couldn’t she let him make up his own mind? Was he never to create a world of his own that did not owe its origins to Anna?

  ‘The money’s good,’ he said thoughtlessly because he was tired.

  ‘You don’t need the money,’ she said angrily.

  ‘Don’t I?’

  ‘Oh, Joe.’ She sat up in bed and turned on the light. She was naked, a blue band around her hair, holding it back from her face. ‘Please. We’ve said all there is to be said on the subject. I thought we’d agreed it’s out of bounds.’

  She was leaning over him, her body tantalizingly within reach. He put his mouth around the tip of her small, beautiful breast. She pushed him away.

  ‘All right. I’m sorry. I won’t mention it again.’

  ‘The subject’s closed?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  How could it be? It was naive of her to suppose that a refusal to acknowledge what he found difficult to accept meant it would go away. After all, this was her house, filled with her possessions. The sheets they slept in, the carpet they stood on, the shades on the lights, the colours on the walls – they were all suffocatingly hers too. Even the clothes he wore were hers because she’d bought them for him. Except for the books, of course. They were his, and the icon he’d picked up in Russia on a visit he’d made one summer vacation while he was at Cambridge. He’d smuggled it back in his suitcase.

  ‘I’ll spend my money how I choose to spend it,’ she’d said after another equally pointless argument. ‘If it pleases me to spend it on you, then that’s what I shall do.’

  He’d said nothing to her then, using silence as he so often did as a defensive weapon.

  ‘Money isn’t everything,’ she’d added, forced by his silence into saying something she regretted the moment she’d opened her mouth.

  ‘Only people who’ve got money can say that.’

  Why was he left with the feeling that she had bought his love? It was unjust and unkind and palpably untrue, he knew that, but he could never rid himself of the possibility that he had been bought.

  ‘You have a loving family and no money,’ she said. ‘I’m an orphan with more money than I know what to do with. Which of us is better off?’

  His guilt kept him from telling his parents about Anna. He knew his mother looked admiringly at his shoes, his suits and his shirts and saw the outward signs of a success beyond what even she had dreamed of for him.

  It’s all a lie, a sham, he wanted to shout. None of it’s mine. He said nothing, his silence compounding the deceit, until it was too late to say anything. Hating the lies, he avoided his parents, putting a distance between them. If they noticed – surely they couldn’t be that blind? – they said nothing. Joe was making his way in life, that’s what they told themselves. He wouldn’t have time for them and they didn’t expect him to. He was flying in a world they couldn’t even imagine.

  ‘Promise the subject is closed? You won’t raise it again?’

  In her anger she hadn’t asked him any more about Vienna, and he felt an immense relief. They’d have to talk about it soon, but tonight Vienna was his, his alone. Something he had found for himself to be thrilled. Nothing to do with Anna. His adventure.

  ‘I promise,’ he lied. He’d got away with it. He put his mouth to her breast once more and this time she let him keep it there.

  8

  ‘It never crossed my mind to tell you,’ Koliakov said. ‘I imagined you knew all about it. The pair of you were always so close.’

  ‘Julia never said a word.’

  ‘I’m surprised.’

  ‘Had she been to Moscow before?’ Koliakov was reluctant to answer but she wasn’t going to let him get away with any evasion. ‘Had she, Koli?’

  ‘Once or twice.’ She could see from the expression on his face that he was lying and hating himself for it. ‘Well, over the years it added up. I didn’t keep count.’

  Over the years!

  ‘Who did she see?’

  ‘She never told me.’

  ‘If she told you she was going to Moscow, you must have asked her why. She must have given you her reasons.’

  Koliakov, her old friend Koli, looked at her sadly. ‘It’s too late for all this,’ he said. ‘There’s no point in it. You didn’t know when Julia was alive, why do you want to know now?’

  ‘I have to know everything, Koli. Every single detail.’ How close she was to telling him what she had found out about Julia.

  Koliakov shook his head. ‘Don’t do this, Eva, I beg you. Julia’s dead. We all wish she wasn’t. Nothing we can do can bring her back. Leave your memories of her as they are. Let her spirit rest in peace.’

  When you possess the knowledge that your closest friend has died in your place, how can you leave the mystery of her death alone? When you know that someone saved your life by substituting your closest friend’s name for your own, how can you not want to go on until you know the truth?

  ‘Julia was as clos
e to me as a sister, closer even,’ she says, keeping her motives secret. ‘There wasn’t a corner of our lives we didn’t share. Then she dies and suddenly I discover she went to Moscow when she told me she was going to Pecs. I could forgive that if you hadn’t told me this wasn’t the first time she’d been to Moscow. It’s a shock to learn that there was a side to her I knew nothing about. You can understand how upset I am, can’t you? Why did Julia deceive me? What was she hiding from me? I don’t know what to believe any more. I have to know why she went, whom she saw there, why she never told me about this part of her life.’

  ‘I imagine she thought it would upset you. Remind you of a time you wanted to forget. I’m sure she did it from the best of motives. She always had your interests at heart.’

  Alexei. That’s why she’d said nothing. She’s gone to see Alexei. That explained what Koli was concealing from her. Anxiety spiralled through her system.

  ‘Was it Alexei, Koli? Did she see Alexei?’

  Surely Julia couldn’t have done that. She couldn’t have gone to Moscow to see him without telling her what she was doing. Meeting Alexei was impossible. Out of the question. But the thought that she might have done so was poisoning her and she felt desperate.

  ‘Why is this suddenly so important?’ Koli reached across the table and took her hand. ‘What’s behind it all? Julia died well over a year ago.’

  I have seen Julia’s file, she wanted to say. I was the one under investigation. It should have been me who was taken away that night. But she couldn’t tell anyone that, not even Koli.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know what I’m doing.’ Without warning she burst into tears of disappointment at the hopelessness of the task and the desperation of feeling that she would never know anything, that the truth would always evade her grasp. ‘I’m sorry, Koli. I didn’t mean to do this.’ She was drying her eyes with her free hand.

  ‘What are a few tears between friends?’ he said quietly, refilling her glass. He still held on to her hand and she did not bother to remove it. ‘Let me help you. Tell me what’s upset you so. It’s not Julia’s death, is it? You’ve got over that. It’s something else.’