The Secret Families

by John Gardner

  Arnold Farthing gave a curt nod, and looked up, suspiciously, at Naldo, then away again. ‘But he went along with it, didn’t he?’

  ‘Of course he did. Why shouldn’t he? Everyone was starry-eyed, including myself come to that. It was Caspar who actually originated the phrase that Alex was “the great agent of conscience”. Christ, Arnie, it was impressive. I couldn’t follow all the technical stuff, but it was obviously very good indeed: really up-market, the missile intelligence, I mean. The boffins went crazy about it. You must’ve seen most of the product.’

  Arnold Farthing made no comment about seeing the product. ‘And you babysat Sir Caspar on all the debriefings?’ he asked.

  ‘There were only three sets. Two in London. One in Paris. About five nights each. All the other stuff — the pix of documents and all that — were brush-dropped or dead-dropped in Moscow and run through the Embassy.’

  Arnold nodded, indicating he knew all that. ‘You did all of them with Cas, though?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Paris, and the girls? What the Ks would call swallows?’ K was the diminutive they all used for KGB.

  ‘Yes, we took girls over to keep Alex happy. There was an unfortunate incident in London when he tried to use some tart. We couldn’t take the risk again, so we supplied him.’

  ‘They were girls you could trust? Trained and everything?’

  ‘I gathered we’d used them before. Baiting honey-traps. Safe as houses.’ He smiled.

  ‘Caspar condone it?’

  ‘He didn’t know. I knew because we all had to keep Alex sweet.’

  ‘Why did they ask you to mind Caspar? Why not Alexander, his son? He’s in the trade after all.’

  ‘Cryptoanalysis, ciphers, comint. They’re Alexander’s speciality acts. Different end of the business, isn’t it? Alex Railton’s not a field man — the little shit. Anyway, they worked out that I was closer to the old boy.’

  ‘Don’t like Alexander much, do you?’

  ‘Nor my cousin Andrew. Alexander’s a stinking shit, for Christ’s sake. Arn, you know what that runt did to Caspar.’

  ‘Tried to drop his father in the mire when they investigated the network business right after the war. You think I’d forget that?’ This was Caspar’s first humiliation that Naldo had already mentioned earlier.

  Arnie continued, ‘Of course I bloody remember, and it worries me, Nald. You needn’t keep bringing it up. It bothers the hell out of me.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Later,’ sharp, as though pushing Naldo, hurrying him through his memories, his version, in order to get to the heart of the matter, which was the reason he had arranged this meeting in the first place. ‘You heard all the face-to-face debriefings, though. You heard them with Caspar. What did you make of the wonder spy? What did you really make of Penkovsky?’

  ‘Bit full of himself, you know what defectors’re like, Arn, unpredictable, nervous as a rule.’

  ‘Was Alex nervous?’

  Naldo thought for a good thirty seconds. ‘No, come to think of it he never showed nerves — except about Five, about the security service. He wanted nothing to do with Five. Paranoid about it. Apart from that he was very relaxed. Liked the trappings as well. He was dead pro during interrogations. Gave chapter and verse on everything; and he was like a kid on Christmas morning when they gave him the gee-whizz stuff — the camera, film, pen, all the bloody James Bond stuff. He liked that a lot. Otherwise, he always seemed to know what he was talking about. Never stuck for an answer. Convincing. I was convinced — still am.’

  ‘You were there when he asked for the money?’ Arnold’s battered, craggy face was set in a frozen mould.

  Naldo hesitated. ‘Yes. Yes, I was. Right at the end of the first, or maybe the second session during the first London trip. One grand for expenses. Bit embarrassing at the time. Reasonable enough, though.’

  ‘Wasn’t really in line with the “great agent of conscience”, was it?’ Arnie did not even pause for a reply. ‘Did anyone — like Willis BMW, for instance — talk to you about the recruitment? Alex’s recruitment?’

  ‘Only the bare essentials. The stuff on record. The stuff we all know.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ If Naldo had not known the American as well as he did, he would have thought Arnold was sneering. ‘So tell me. Tell me what they told you,’ Arnie prodded.

  ‘You know it, Arn.’

  ‘Never mind what I know. Pretend you’re briefing me. Tell it just as you heard it. No frills, just the straight feed.’

  Naldo shrugged. ‘OK, he made contact with this bloke we had coat-trailing in Moscow. Gave our fellow a bloody great envelope full of shit-hot, gee-whiz intelligence. That was the first of many contributions Alex handed over. It wasn’t surprising they snapped him up.’

  ‘And when it went sour? What’d they tell you about that?’

  Naldo made a little sigh of exasperation, as though this was all a waste of time. Arnold nodded him on and Naldo shrugged again. ‘Alex got nervous. There was a plan activated to get him out — him and his family. Then our bloke had a dinner date with him, in Moscow, but Alex signalled it was no go. Fallback at the airport at 6 the next day. Should’ve been noon, but Alex pulled rank and got his contact out.’

  ‘And that was when exactly, Nald?’

  ‘July ’62, I think. Yes, I’m sure.’

  ‘Alex was giving off warnings like a goddamned alarm system, right?’

  ‘Yes, but —’

  ‘But it went on, didn’t it? He was still passing information, and the courier was popping back behind the curtain — right?’

  ‘That was how they told it afterwards, yes.’

  ‘And nobody thought it odd? Nobody said, “What a bloody silly way to run a railway.” Even though the Ks were on his back, Alex went on pushing the stuff over, and the courier returned with an escape plan — returned behind the curtain, to Budapest?’

  Naldo saw the inconsistency and folly of that kind of behaviour. He frowned.

  ‘So,’ said Arnie, ‘it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when Alex got himself pulled. In Moscow. 22 October 1962?’

  ‘No, it shouldn’t have. But where’s this leading? Arn, you know it all, so why —?’

  ‘And they pulled the courier in Budapest. 2 November 1962. Surprise, surprise.’

  ‘I said if —’

  ‘And you believed all of it? Big trial. Western press have field day. Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Briton and Ruskie held on spy charges. “We do not know these men,” says Foreign Office. Tcht!’ Arnold made a noise of contempt. ‘So, your guy goes off to the slammer. Colonel Penkovsky — Alex — gets a bullet through the back of his head, in the Lubyanka cellars. You believe that? Taken in like all the others, Naldo?’

  ‘Was I taken in?’ Naldo felt icy cold.

  ‘Like a stray dog. Taken in, fed, watered, kept warm.’

  ‘How, Arnie?’ He sounded calm, but his old friend had him needled, jumpy under the skin, like a junky going cold turkey. ‘How and why? Didn’t Alex provide the Cuban missile intelligence? And didn’t he pass enough technical stuff to let Kennedy go right to the brink with the Russians? Or did we all just imagine that?’

  The American shook his head. Slow, tiny movements. ‘No. No, that was real enough. Alex — Colonel Penkovsky — provided unbelievably good intelligence. Russian missile and rocket capability, order of battle, just the kind of thing we all needed. And, yes, that information allowed everything to be taken to the brink, then drawn back.’

  He paused, but there was no comment from Naldo.

  Arnie continued. ‘It was serious business. The fall of ’62. A couple of years ago, Nald, but it seems a lifetime. In October 1962 Oleg Penkovsky got himself lifted, and Jack Kennedy faced Nikita Khrushchev across the baize boards, playing a game called brinkmanship. The Cuban Crisis. The missiles of October, right, Nald? Twelve days that shook the world, OK?’

  ‘That’s how I remember it.’

  ‘Sure, that’s how you�
��re meant to remember it — and most of the world with you. Sure, the Sovs had missiles and technicians on Cuba, a stone’s throw from the US of A. Jack Kennedy says, that’s too close, get your missiles off the island or we’ll turn your country into glass. Belligerent old Khrushchev had a convoy chock full o’missiles heading straight for Havana. Confrontation. The whole world goes to the brink. Khrushchev threatens a pre-emptive strike. Lights burn through the night in the White House, and Kennedy calls his bluff. Comrade Nikita backs down. Why? Because President John Fitzgerald Kennedy has all the facts, ma’am. Yes, sirreebub. JFK has the Russian order of battle, the missile and rocket capability, the works, right there on his desk. So he knows they haven’t got the hardware for the real business.’

  Arnold paused for effect before he went on —

  ‘And how does Jolly Jack Kennedy know? He knows from Alex a.k.a. Oleg Vladimirovitch Penkovsky who has shown that greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for the free world. He knows from Penkovsky, the enchanted agent who is disillusioned with the Communist ideology in general, and Khrushchev’s Russia in particular —’

  ‘It’s not —’ Naldo began, but Arnie held up a hand as though to say, ‘Let me finish.’

  ‘We get all this vital information from Oleg, or Alex as he likes to be called. We get it from a man who is so disillusioned that he trots off to the nearest Englishman he can find who’s doing auditions for the defectors’ opera in Moscow that week. He finds him and thrusts a velvet sack of true gems into his hands, saying that he’s fed up with his lot. Bored with the dacha; the swimming pool; being married to the daughter of an honoured general; holding high rank and a few honours himself; special privileges; doing the weekly shop at the Beryozka stores: Christ, he could probably get Beatles and Stones tapes for the kids.’ Arnold stopped again while a bellboy held up a board, progressing through the lobby, trying to find Herr Felton. ‘But not Dylan. I’d say not Dylan, or Baez,’ he said quietly. Then —

  ‘He’s so disillusioned, Nald, that he gives us everything our hearts desire. Then he goes back to work in Moscow, and even volunteers to do other officers’ night duty for them. Volunteers, so that he can have more time to snap the documents we’re all crazy to get our hands on. Didn’t anybody learn anything about method from Philby? “Kim’s so conscientious,” they used to say. “He stays on late at the office every night.” They didn’t say why, until later, when they woke up and realized he was taking pix of classified material. And Penkovsky’s supposed to be using the same, tried and true, Soviet tradecraft in his Moscow office. You believe that?’

  Underneath, Naldo was becoming more and more angry. ‘OK. Yes. Yes, I went along with what Penkovsky did.’

  ‘Naldo, my dear old buddy, and relation twice removed, of course you went along with it; your service went along with it; unhappily, even Caspar went along with it. The boys from my company went along with it — in spite of what they already knew. I repeat that, they all went along with it in-spite-of-what-they-knew.’ He clipped off the words, like scissors cutting a tape. ‘C knew it as well as our own Director. Naldo, Willis BMW must have known as well, and so must the boys from Langley who sat listening to Penkovsky. They must’ve looked at the product and said, “Jeez, the secrets of a lifetime. This guy really has got balls.” Even though they knew damned well that he was throwing a lot of what the Ks call barium mixed up with what they wanted to believe.’

  ‘In spite of what they knew, Arnie? What did they know?’

  Arnold leaned closer to Naldo Railton. ‘Our people should really have known better. Did anyone ever tell you, or Caspar, or anyone else, the true facts about Alex?’

  ‘What facts?’

  ‘They’re all there, plus a great deal more, in those dossiers Jim Angleton pointed me at in Washington. They’re ciphered Elephant by the way, in case you run into them on your side of the water. It appears that, for years, Penkovsky was hurling himself at us. He’d been soliciting the agency and your firm for a long time before he grabbed the coattails of that luckless courier in Moscow. Nald, he was whoring. Offering himself to you Brits, and our guys, a good five years before Nikita Khrushchev came to power.

  ‘Everyone had him tagged. He was a fucking dangle, Nald. Again and again memos went out saying don’t touch this guy. My own boss, Jim Angleton himself, warned everyone, time and again, even after he became Alex the magic agent. When the chips were down, Naldo, everyone conveniently forgot.

  ‘Eventually, because you Brits picked him up, they took a look at the jewels he was peddling and said, “Shit, this is a crock of gold.” What they should have been saying was, “Gold? This is a crock of shit.” Naldo, you’re going to hate this, but most of what Penkovsky gave us was manure of the finest quality.’

  ‘You can prove this?’ Naldo felt the familiar invisible cold hand lying on his stomach. ‘Prove it from the files in those sterile vaults at Langley?’ he asked again, but now it sounded flat.

  ‘If I’m ever allowed into those vaults again, I can prove it. Those files Jim Angleton pulled for me give you chapter, verse, page number, the full works, together with a little logic. And the files give more than proof. They add a new dimension. The afterburn of the Penkovsky business is something that could be a real threat to your family, and to mine. It could just about put your Railtons and my Farthings out of circulation, and turn us all into lepers.’

  2

  Arnold called for more coffee, and when the new pot was set in front of him, he poured for them both, leaned back and took a sip.

  ‘OK, let’s see what you think, when I tell you about the way it really was according to the Elephant files. The way nobody bothered to tell you — or, worse still, tell Caspar. Could be everyone was honestly mesmerized with all those doubloons and pieces of silver Alex handed out. Maybe it all looked so good they genuinely wanted to forget the truth: really allowed their memories to become selective. It’s possible. But that was then. Now, unhappily, is now, and it’s almost time to pay the piper.’

  Arnold gave Naldo a sad smile of true affection, then started again. ‘Back at the end of the war, when I was spending a lot of time in Cockroach Alley, those stinking old huts along the Reflecting Pool and the Mall: the agency’s first resting place. Back then, we thought our families were in a mess, and we sorted it out, with Caspar’s help. This time it’s much much worse. How many family — both sides, yours and mine — are still in this business?’

  ‘We make two.’ Naldo’s laugh was flawed. ‘Three if you count Alex of GCHQ. You want to add in those who’re retired, or dead?’

  ‘Well, the retired, and the recently dead, yes.’

  ‘Caspar. Dear old Dick. My Aunt Marie, and Denise. My own father.’ His father’s voice, standing by Caspar’s grave, came loudly into his head, ‘Now it begins.’

  ‘Don’t forget another Farthing with heavy Railton ties. Clifton.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  Clifton was the son of Denise Grenot and her Farthing husband, Edward. During the First World War Denise had worked behind the German lines, in Belgium. A Farthing had saved her life, and she was very much a Railton. Her mother, Marie, Naldo’s aunt, had married, and deserted, a Frenchman during that same war. For a long time, Marie had been seriously suspected of duplicity.

  ‘Clifton’s on the Soviet and Eastern European desk at Langley. Speaks Russian like a Muscovite. Walks like a Russian as well, you know, from the upper part of his body, not from his legs.’ Arnold sounded a shade smug. ‘He did the training at “the Farm”, but that was years ago. It wouldn’t surprise me if he turned up in this city one of these bright days, en route for all stations to Moscow — for us, of course. Very gung-ho, Clifton.’ ‘The Farm’ was the name they all used for a secret CIA training facility at Camp Peary near Williamsburg, Virginia. ‘He’s spent time in the field. Clifton’s very experienced. Europe at the end of the war, then Eastern Bloc and South-East Asia,’ he added, almost as an afterthought.

  ‘We’re old in t
he trade,’ Arnold continued quietly. ‘Not only the times, but the people are a changing, Nald. How many in our families can be marked down as traitors?’

  Naldo winced within himself. He knew now where Arnold was leading him, and it was a place he did not wish to visit — the territory of treachery near at hand. ‘You want to count the two girls?’ he asked, and Arnie nodded.

  ‘Two really big ones that we don’t talk of any more, and four who were just plain foolish.’

  ‘Puts you ahead, though. Makes you vulnerable, and don’t forget, Nald, there was one investigation. One more suspect.’

  ‘You mean Cas? How many more times? He was cleared, for God’s sake.’

  ‘He was investigated. You can’t hide it, Naldo. Once a suspect, always considered a risk.’

  ‘Caspar was cleared. He worked as C’s deputy for ten years after that.’

  ‘When did that make any difference? Sometimes it’s best to keep suspects close, where you can control them.’

  Naldo did not look at the American. At last he said, ‘Well, maybe. But what’s this got to do with the Elephant files, and you being cut out of the Hypermarket material?’

  ‘That what they call the Blunt product? Well — well. Naldo, it’s got everything to do with it. That’s why we should both watch our backs. You hungry, Nald? I can’t tell you everything here.’

  ‘I’m hungry, but not for food. I want to hear about Alex. All of it.’

  ‘Maybe we should get some lunch,’ Arnold said. ‘It’s a strain on the throat, sitting and muttering like penitents in the confessional. So, possibly we should have lunch, and then go somewhere quiet. I was going to give you the whole wretched story here, but, perhaps we should be kinda careful.’

  ‘It’s your game, and your neck.’ Naldo did not like the way things were shaping up. There was a tension, an anxiety, an uncertainty about Arnold. He had known Arnie for a long time, and the man was as cautious as a deer going to a waterhole. Now he was suggesting further caution, which did not predict any peace of mind.