The Secret Families

by John Gardner

  ‘Just put me out of my misery on the Kennedy count first.’

  Arnold made a small facial movement of capitulation. ‘OK. All I can tell you is that one very experienced field officer went private from the agency because of it. He went off to bring back the proof; the whole proof; and nothing but the proof. And when he did, they just shredded it and dropped it into a burn bag. They’ve probably shredded him, and dropped him into a burn bag as well. It’s easier for everybody to stick with the one determined, crazy assassin theory. Nobody wants to sully the President’s memory. That would happen if you proved his death to be a simple revenge killing, carried out by a corrupt and ruthless family called Ngo, who imagined — rightly or wrongly — that JFK signed the warrants that brought about the coup in South Vietnam. A vengeance killing is squalid. A lone nut marksman you can live with.’ He leaned towards Naldo. ‘Now, let me tell you what I came to give.’

  Naldo smiled and cocked his head on one side.

  ‘Blunt …?’ Arnie began.

  ‘The bad Sir Anthony? What of him?’

  ‘I should not even know Blunt exists, Naldo. They’ve cut me out of the action. No access to the confession. No briefing.’ He paused, gall and wormwood in his mouth. Every word he spoke was pained with bitterness. ‘They cut me out because of family ties — Railton ties and Farthing ties.’

  ‘Why?’ Naldo could hear the strong note of alarm in his voice.

  ‘That’s what I asked, and now I think I know. Blunt is not important to the equation. But, sure as hell, my being barred from knowledge is a whirlpool of worry, and very important, because it raises questions. I’m going to tell you the story.’

  ‘Go on.’ Anthony Blunt’s confession that he had spied for the Soviets when he was an MI5 officer was a secret kept very close indeed, on both sides of the Atlantic.

  There was a moment’s silence while both men tried to look into one another’s minds. Then Arnie continued. ‘OK. I’ll tell you what I’ve got. After that you might feel it wise to pool our resources. A couple of weeks ago, I was called to Washington …’ He told the bare facts of what had happened, using sparse language, wasting no words.

  Naldo listened, his heart sinking. He knew that, as the agency’s Head of Berlin Station, Arnold Farthing worked directly to counter-intelligence — this being a euphemism for many things: mainly to monitor and capitalize on the activities of any foreign intelligence agency, and everyone knew that meant allied, as well as potential enemy agencies. They were also responsible for penetration agents, either way — into foreign agencies, out of agencies and, naturally, the penetration of their own service. CIA counter-intelligence would be high on the list of people to be briefed about Blunt.

  Arnie now related the story of his early morning call, and the summons to Angleton’s office. ‘He told me outright that it had to do with my family connections. In particular, connections with a British family. He didn’t name your people. But I did, and he reacted. It would seem that our families are tied too close for some people’s peace of mind.’

  ‘Yea, even unto the third and fourth generation?’ Naldo said it like a man making some automatic liturgical response.

  ‘It isn’t funny, Naldo.’ Arnie was quite sharp, making little biting movements with his mouth as he spoke. ‘No quips. No setting the table on a roar, as you bloody Railtons would say, quoting your beloved Shakespeare.’

  ‘OK. Sorry. Go on.’ Naldo sounding more sober.

  Jim Angleton’s a tight bastard, but he has great loyalties. He did us all one hell of a favour.’ Arnold went on to speak of the two files, though he did not reveal their contents. ‘Before I left the building I saw Angleton again. He said there was a chance that I would be posted home and put behind a desk. He’ll hold it at bay for as long as possible, but it was a plain warning. He also repeated that I should make use of what I’d read in his files. So I went down and took a peek at another pair of files, off my own bat. It turned out to be more than interesting. I pulled the files for Corby and AE-Ladel. You recognize those names, Nald?’

  Naldo nodded. Corby was the crypto for a KGB cipher clerk in the Soviet Embassy, Ottawa, Canada, who had defected back in 1945. AE-Ladel was a more recent and equally alarming defector — a KGB major. Together, these men had provided, not only a terrifying picture of Soviet penetration of the Western intelligence agencies, but also a whole new thesis on KGB operations against the West. The pair were harbingers of fear, suspicion and an indication that the West was losing the Cold War. Above all, they had led to the fingering of Burgess, Maclean and Philby, though these three had slipped the net. On both sides of the Atlantic, they had pointed to other agents. Some were quietly moved to places where they could cause no trouble; some had been arrested; at least three had disappeared. The Soviets had no compunction when it came to blown agents.

  ‘Good. I’m glad your memory holds Corby and Ladel.’ Arnold did not smile, nor did he sound happy. ‘Because the files Jim Angleton let me take a peek at, contained the very latest material on Alex. Remember Alex, Nald?’

  Naldo gave him a quick affirmative nod. Then Arnie let out a deep breath, as though he was exhaling smoke, and said there was a very important question he had to ask.

  ‘Ask.’ Naldo was now concerned.

  ‘Did you have anything to do with Alex, and the Iron Bark material? It’s important.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I did. Not the recruitment, but, yes, I was involved.’

  ‘And your late Uncle Caspar? Wasn’t he pulled out of retirement for some of that?’

  ‘I carried the messages to him. Carted him along to the sessions.’

  ‘Would you tell me exactly what happened? What you were told? What you heard? It’s important for all of us.’

  2

  They all lied, Naldo thought again, wondering if he should talk, and, if he talked, should he tell the truth?

  His brain worked quickly, sifting what Arnie had laid out so far. Because of his connection with the Railtons, Farthing had been aced out of the enclosed circle of knowledge concerning Blunt’s confession — the admission of an old spy that he had, for some time in the past, betrayed his country to the Soviets. Why should they bar that particular knowledge to Arnie? Naldo realised that he was also excluded from the Blunt material, or Hypermarket as they called it. He had not thought much about it before, as his exclusion was in the need-to-know category, so he had always assumed there was no need for him to be on the Hypermarket list. Then he thought of another strange thing concerning Hypermarket. It was Five’s show, but the Secret Intelligence Service had been cut in and taken control. He recalled something else that was odd. The tapes and transcripts had been taken over from Five by the SIS. It was said they had them locked in a secure vault. You required the signatures of the Holy Trinity and St Michael the Archangel to get near them.

  ‘I just need to know what happened. What you saw and felt,’ Arnie prodded.

  ‘Why?’ Naldo was still uneasy, unconvinced.

  ‘Why?’ Arnold parroted him, remembering his own steely response to Jim Angleton. ‘Why? Because if you don’t, I have to work blind, and there’s going to be all hell let loose.’ Then, as an aside, ‘There’s going to be hell anyway, but we might avoid some of the personal horrors.’ He paused again, then said, ‘If I told you there is 24 carat, Grade A proof that Alex is alive and well, and living in style, would that help?’

  ‘But they executed him …’

  ‘That was the sentence of the court.’ Arnold paused for a deep breath. ‘In fact, they sprang him. Set him up for life. Good old Alex sits in the sun, with the best Stolichnaya, as many women as he wants, and every luxury the Kremlin can afford to give him. His wife, the general’s daughter, lives with shame in her widow’s weeds. It has to be like that, to keep the fiction alive. Alex is dead, but he has risen. Alex surrexit. Alleluia!’

  ‘Come on, Arn. Didn’t I hear they were about to publish his diaries. His testament that he risked smuggling into the West?’

 
‘Balls. He risked nothing. There was never any question of risk for that man. Yes, they’re working on the so-called diaries. I can even give you the names of the guys who’re doing the job. It’s being concocted, Naldo. Concocted from all those tapes and notes, taken while you, Uncle Sir Caspar, and two dozen others sat open-mouthed, hardly daring to believe the luck of what had fallen into your laps. Tell me what happened — what you were told; what you did — and I will unfold the truth and open your eyes.’

  Naldo frowned, not liking what he heard. Alex was the cryptonym for Colonel Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky of the GRU, a man who had provided the British and American intelligence services with information beyond price. The brilliant agent of conscience, heralded now in the West as one of the bravest defectors of all time; a man who had stayed in Russia, collecting information for the NATO powers, risking everything, passing his intelligence to the SIS and CIA at brief, dangerous meetings in the West, or through couriers and cutouts within Russia and Eastern Bloc countries.

  What Penkovsky gave was pure gold. He had been a source without parallel in the history of the secret trade. A magic spy of the kind all intelligence officers dream of. Through him, they said, President Kennedy had been able to outflank the Russian Khrushchev, and brilliantly avert a nuclear war. It was only in the previous spring that Penkovsky had been tried, in Moscow, with his British courier. Penkovsky had been shot; the courier went directly to jail — via Lubyanka to Vladimir Prison. If Penkovsky was still alive, as Arnie claimed, something was very wrong.

  ‘From the beginning, Nald. Please.’ Arnold was almost pleading.

  Naldo nodded. ‘OK.’ And he began to talk quietly. For him it had begun three and a half years ago, April 1961 in Berlin, with a ringing telephone in the middle of the night — ‘Isn’t that always the way?’ he said.

  THREE

  1

  Naldo told it just as he remembered it from three and a half years ago. The telephone was ringing beside his bed in the safe house off the Knesebeckstrasser. He had only been asleep for an hour, and it was four in the morning. Big Herbie was in the spare room, in from the Russian zone for a forty-eight hour debrief which had not gone well.

  ‘It was the office. Our Berlin Station,’ Naldo now told Arnie. ‘“Ginger’s looking for you.” That’s what they said. Funny how you remember the bloody crypts and passwords. Ginger was London that week. “Looking for you” meant proceed London fastest. If the cable began with “Ginger” it was flash.’ This last is the highest-priority coding of any cable.

  ‘So you went?’ It was more a statement of fact than a question.

  Naldo smiled and nodded. Do not tell him more than necessary. In reality he had not gone quickly. His subconscious dredged it back now. Herbie had a problem. That was why they had been up talking until three in the morning. Herbie was like a cat all night, pacing up and down, unnaturally nervous. Later on he came around to it. ‘Nald, switch off the bloody tapes. I need talk with you — man on man.’ He could see Herb, who had now settled, his bulk filling the chair, a glass in one hand and the remains of their meal still on the table behind him.

  ‘I had to finish up what I was doing,’ Naldo told Arnie. ‘Servicing an agent.’ He did not mention Herbie, nor Herbie’s problem. The big German was desperately in love with one of the girls he had recruited — Ursula something or other. They had talked it through, because Herbie wanted her out and there was no way Naldo could do it. The poor man was besotted and unhappy. Naldo remembered saying to him, ‘Herb, you know the rules, you know how to behave. You don’t get emotionally involved with one of your agents. OK, it might be good cover to live with her, but if you get your head down there below your heart it goes sour. Believe me.’ He almost said, ‘Believe me, I know.’ It was Railton history that one of the family had allowed it to happen, during the First World War, and had suffered for it.

  He settled for, ‘Enjoy, but unzip the hearts and flowers.’

  Predictably, Herbie had asked, ‘What’s with hearts and flowers?’ Then he had become angry — ‘You think I do it on purpose, Naldo? You think I want it happening? No man is in love for purpose. Hits you like bloody sleigh hammer …’

  ‘Sledgehammer, Herb.’ After all this time, Naldo still automatically corrected Herbie Kruger’s version of the English language, which always got jumbled when he was upset or tense.

  ‘Hits you like bloody sledgehammer, love. I want marry this girl. She’s first girl to make me happy in mind and bed both. Verstehen? I want her out for my pension. At least ask for me. Ask them.’

  There and then, in the spring, nobody had a clue about how the political situation would develop that summer. There was no hint that East—West relations would deteriorate quickly, with hordes of people coming over from the East, and the Berlin Wall going up overnight. Then the confrontation, the temperature rising, the threats and the concern that someone would get trigger-happy.

  Later in the year was a time of anxiety and panic, with agents running in all directions and networks being left to the wolves. But in April, Naldo knew it was no good even mentioning Herbie’s request to London. Maitland-Wood, pompous ass that he was, would have laughed in his face.

  But, to keep his agent happy, Naldo lied to him, telling him that he would give it a whirl back in London.

  So Naldo did not get into Heathrow until nine that night. It was raining and very cold: London had not yet fully acquired the delicious patina of the season. Spring was a little late that year, and at the office it was winter in the shape of Maitland-Wood.

  ‘Where in God’s name’ve you been, Railton? They were on to you at four this morning. It’s logged at 3.45. Then Berlin came back and said contact was made at four o’clock. Time, Railton, is — as the lawyers say — of the essence.’

  He was red in tooth and claw, but Naldo always found it easier to ignore the outbursts. ‘There was an agent. I was servicing him. Time was of the essence there as well. My agent had to get back into the East. Limited trip out.’ God, Naldo thought, how dated that kind of language sounded now, even at the distance of three and a half years. Their trade was like fashion, it changed constantly.

  ‘Sod the agent!’ Then a pause, and, ‘Who?’ as if he did not know.

  ‘Peter. He won’t get over again for a month. He has very good assets. A lot at stake.’

  Now, sitting in the Kempinski, he realised he had even dragged Peter up from the past. Why had he used a street-name to Maitland-Wood? Heaven knew, for C’s deputy was familiar enough with Big Herbie.

  ‘Well,’ Maitland-Wood gave him the grave and serious look, ‘this is the hottest thing to come our way in a lifetime.’ He went through the essentials — not just bare, but stark naked. They were about to open up a defector-in-place. Crypto, Alex. In the real world a GRU Colonel, highly-connected, experienced, decorated during the Great Patriotic War, and now not only with an extensive knowledge of missile technology, but also with access to it. Alex had already provided documents and film. ‘Everyone’s crazy about him. Salivating,’ Maitland-Wood said.

  Grosvenor Square, which really meant Langley, was being cut in, and the wonderful Alex was already in London with some visiting firemen: a trade delegation. On the following evening they were throwing a party for Alex, and doing the first debriefing.

  ‘All taken care of,’ Maitland-Wood puffed like a frog. ‘We’ve borrowed nearly all Five’s watchers, and the SB’re going to help. We’re springing Alex from the hotel where his entire delegation is staying. Open him up, then pop him back. Every night while he’s in London. Cheeky, eh?’

  Naldo personally thought it was not simply appalling tradecraft, but also damned dangerous. You did not tell Maitland-Wood things like that, so he sat, listening in silence to the means — how, once the other Sovs were snoring, Alex was going to be smuggled out to their largest safe house where everything had been laid on. When he finally broke silence, Naldo asked what he was required to do — ‘Especially if everything has already been laid on, sir.�
�� The sarcasm was lost on BMW, as most people called him: Bloody Maitland-Wood.

  ‘Touchy matter.’ C’s deputy thrust his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets, rising and falling on the balls of his feet. To Naldo he looked like the caricature of some pompous local small-town councillor.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Your uncle, actually. Sir Caspar.’ Caspar had been given a knighthood on retirement a couple of years before, in 1959. He was already over age then. But for his years at Sandhurst, and the few months he had been on active service in France, in 1914, Caspar Railton had given his entire life to the Secret Intelligence Service — he personally did not count the couple of years out in the thirties when he had resigned out of pique.

  ‘But my uncle’s out now, sir. Private. What do you want with him?’

  ‘W-e-ll.’ Maitland-Wood gritted his teeth and drew out the word on one sustained note, neither rising nor falling. ‘Well, he’s a very shrewd old hand.’ He was taking his time, and not looking Naldo in the eyes. ‘Shrewd. Knows what’s what. Has a nose. As Alex is such a big fish we thought it might be an idea if he came and ran his eyes over the chap. Get his measurements so to speak. Look and listen, actually.’

  ‘But you said this man’s bona fides were well established.’

  ‘Oh, they are … They are. But, well, he really is the biggest fish we’ve ever netted. We thought old Caspar would like to see and hear for the pleasure of it.’

  Now, in the Kempinski, Naldo told Arnold Farthing what he really thought. ‘They were showing off. In their own nasty little way they were humiliating Caspar. That’s how I read it at the time, anyhow. Rubbing his nose in a super magic source, the like of which Caspar had failed to haul in during his time. After all, he was deputy to C for the last ten years of his working life. I think he only stayed on in the service because of that appointment. Particularly as they’d already humiliated him once with that damned network investigation.’ He spoke of an SOE wartime cell in France which Caspar had run, long-range, from London. Something had gone horribly wrong and, when the fighting was done, there had been a board of enquiry which tried to hang the blame on Caspar.