The Secret Families

by John Gardner

  Arnie gave him what used to be called an ‘old-fashioned look’. One eyebrow raised, and an expression of disapproval. ‘In fact, it’s your neck as well; and a lot of other necks. Best take care.’

  Naldo experienced the same unpleasant sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, a well-known occupational sixth sense. Arnold had something really unpalatable lying festering in his mind.

  ‘Whatever you say.’ Naldo spoke quietly. So they got a table, then and there at the Kempinski, and lunched with care also. Some soup, smoked salmon and salad. No pudding. No alcohol. Afterwards, Arnold went to one of the telephone booths in the lobby.

  He returned, frowning. ‘Not the kind of day to go for a stroll in the Zoo, and I can’t use one of our normal safe houses,’ he said. ‘You mind a green house? It’s OK, and we have full access to the mirrors and tapes, which means we can switch them off.’

  Naldo nodded. ‘As long as nobody starts any rumours about us.’

  Arnie gave a short, uneasy laugh. Green houses were places the trade used for entrapments, honey-traps. As such, the houses were always fitted with the best in hidden cameras and bugs.

  3

  The doorman summoned a taxi which dropped them off near the Charlottenburg S-Bahn. The house — a second-floor three-roomed flat — was five minutes’ walk. They made it fifteen, sweeping the street twice. Arnold was on edge and made certain they had no watchers on them.

  It was a pleasant flat, well furnished, and without gimmicks likely to put clients off. The rooms smelled fresh and clean, as though someone knew it was to be used. Arnold showed Naldo the two-way mirrors and the observation room, also the main controls hidden away in a broom cupboard. Naldo, for his part, took another look around, just to be on the safe side. Then together they checked that everything was deactivated before sitting facing each other in the small living room, which had no mirrors anyway. They were reserved for the bedroom, which was decorated, as Arnie remarked, in poule de luxe.

  ‘OK, so you say Alex was a plant, and you can prove it?’ Naldo was like an accused man waiting a verdict. He wanted to get the bad news over and done with.

  ‘I can prove he’s still alive and well and living it up in a dacha near Sochi.’

  Naldo nodded. He knew that Sochi was a Black Sea resort favoured by the Soviet privileged because of its mild climate. Nobody spoke of the prison camps and the special psychiatric hospital nearby.

  ‘What kind of proof, Arnie?’

  ‘Photographs. Statements. Transcripts, with cross-refs to tapes. The tapes certainly exist, and there’s mention of film. But the statements and pix are enough. He’s there. No doubt about it.’ Arnold gave a pleased grin. ‘It seems Alex was first spotted last year, by one of our floaters. Unconfirmed, but worrying. A lot of agency people were always worried about Alex.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So they put in some plumbing — one-time tourists, a couple of journalists, all working through Tchaikovsky Street. They came up with the goods.’ By Tchaikovsky Street he meant the US Embassy in Moscow.

  ‘Put it in perspective for me, Arn, because I don’t quite see where it’s all leading and what it has to do with our families.’

  ‘OK, I said Alex had tried it on long before you Brits netted him. Well, I do mean tried it on. You couldn’t stop him. Anywhere our people went in Russia — embassy parties, diplomatic functions, even little soirées for visiting firemen — Penkovsky would be around, lurking behind pillars or doorways, shoving envelopes into people’s hands, talking about coming over. He was such an obvious dangle that Langley eventually warned everybody off; and your people knew about it. The memos went through both SIS and Five. They’d already made up their own minds, because the Comrade Colonel had also embarrassed them.’

  ‘But we finally picked him up.’

  ‘I guess that was a field error. The guy your people used was only a floater. Not a pro. I guess someone didn’t warn him. He saw it as a chance and took the bait.’

  ‘And Alex’s bait was a sackful of jewels, Arn. Explain. Why?’

  ‘How does anyone explain, except to say that most of the jewels were paste repros? His profile still doesn’t fit. It never did. Alex did it under discipline. When he was finally taken as a live one, nobody could see the wood for the trees. Just on track record, to say that he was an agent of conscience isn’t enough. No offence to Caspar, because he probably didn’t know the record. Neither did a lot of the others.’

  ‘But the intelligence …’

  ‘Break it down, Nald. Go root in the files and see what he gave us.’

  ‘But he gave us a great deal.’

  ‘Wrong. You examine all the stuff, piece by piece. Everything. Some of it sounded terrific at the time, but in the terrible clarity of now, the majority was already known, or intelligently guessed at. Oh, sure he gave us little bits of tittle-tattle, scraps picked up from his father-in-law’s table, and the sum total of that was the strength of the military power, compared with the weakness of Beria’s secret police. Remember Lavrenti Beria, Stalin’s thug? You recall what Alex told us about his death after Stalin died? How the military lured him to the Moscow General HQ, shot him and burned his body. And that gets important if you want to follow this whole thing through. Remember Alex was GRU, which means military not NKVD, as the Ks were then. He was, to use their language, a ‘neighbour’. But, from the files I’ve seen, it would appear that they were all in on this. The Ks and the GRU. It became necessary for some kind of alliance between them.’

  ‘He gave the missile details. Technical and tactical.’ Naldo sounded lame, half-hearted, and he knew it.

  ‘Uh-huh. So he did. But only just. Remember, all that was military stuff.’ There was something Machiavellian in the way Arnold spoke. ‘Never once did Alex give us a clue as to intention. All he did was give us missile capability. He showed how the military handled the missile sites; how they went about the work; he also showed that the missile gap between the Soviet Union and the United States was much smaller than our analysts had originally computed.’

  ‘Yes. But the missile information was central to the power play at the time of the Cuban Crisis. Surely —’

  ‘Nald,’ Arnold interrupted quickly, ‘that was the whole point. Well, almost the whole point. You have to ask yourself about the timing. When did Alex give us this wonderful knowledge? The answer is that he gave it just when we really wanted it. Kennedy needed it desperately; the agency needed it three years before; the Pentagon was asking for it almost from the moment we knew the Sovs had an atomic capability. Alex gave it just in time for the supposed Cuban Crisis, and — this is damned important — he got himself pulled by the KGB at just the right moment. Just as the Cuban business was heading into its final phase, they removed him; and, for safety, his courier as well.’

  ‘I don’t get it. Why, Arn? Why should the Sovs mount an operation which turned out to be an information op, not a disinformation op?’

  ‘The end product.’ Arnold held up a hand. ‘The end product, plus a neat piece of disinformation, which is revealed only now that we know Alex still lives.’

  Naldo looked at him, saying nothing. Waiting, his face a blank, reflecting his mind.

  ‘Go check it yourself. Every scrap of Alex’s product, with the exception of the important, though limited, missile intelligence, was worthless. Your people, and mine, fell on the stuff and were blinded by its brilliance, mainly because we required the core, the heart of the product.’ Arnold leaned back, spreading his hands wide. ‘It was the Emperor’s clothes time. There is nothing there of any value, except for the missiles.’

  Somewhere in the street below there was a crunch, as though a couple of cars had been in an accident. Angry voices floated up to the window.

  ‘And the object? The bottom line of a Russian op like this?’ Naldo’s brow was creased.

  ‘Cuba.’

  ‘Kennedy stopped more missiles going to Cuba, with the dirt we gave him from Alex. That’s plain enough. It saved
the world from nuclear disaster.’

  ‘Sure it did.’ Arnold allowed a short pause. ‘Kennedy also gave guarantees to the Russians. Never again would America allow its bases, or agencies, to assist in an attempt to dislocate the new Cuban regime. No invasion of Cuba from US soil. Not ever. Quoth the Raven, never more. They got what they wanted.’

  Naldo raised his eyebrows. ‘But, if I follow you, Alex was trying to sick intelligence onto us, and your people, long before Khrushchev came into power.’

  ‘True. Who knows why? Testing the water perhaps. Getting a man in. A penetration operation that went wrong. Probably the object changed with the circumstances, the prevailing political and military policy. Like I said before, we alter the object of operations like designers change fashion. We dance to the tempo of the time. If the beat changes, so do we. But in the end Penkovsky’s op went right. We know that, because, instead of lying cold, in an unmarked grave, Oleg Penkovsky is living it up on the Black Sea. Isn’t that the clearest proof we have? That, and the fact of him being GRU. Military?’

  Naldo thought for a few moments. ‘That’s it? That’s the lot? The GRU push him at us for years, then finally get us to bite just when they want, in order to stage a confrontation in which they appear to be the losers? Why should Khrushchev allow an operation like that to be run? He called the shots. He wanted the missiles on Cuba.’

  ‘Who said he did call the shots on this one?’

  ‘He was the capo di tutti capi, as they say in certain circles.’

  ‘He also liked the brinkmanship. He wanted a big bang. The military did not. Because they knew they couldn’t get away with it. Looking at it now, the whole thing was a GRU and KGB double-play to draw Khrushchev’s teeth; to defuse an untenable situation; and to provide big bread-winner Khrushchev with a nice bonus. They gave him Cuba: safe, clean, once and for all. In the long run that would keep the comrade chairman happy.’

  Outside the shouting had died away. Arnold glanced up as though the new silence had become a sinister sound. Across the rooftops snowclouds had started to gather, and darkness was closing in.

  Then Farthing spoke again. ‘Who, in Russia, bore the brunt of the blame after it was over? Certainly not the GRU. KGB were the patsies, weren’t they? Khrushchev did an awful lot of hiring and firing. And Oleg Penkovsky reaped a golden handshake instead of a bullet. How would it be if the Ks had agreed to be the fall guys? Agreed so they could protect very important assets?’ He stopped talking and lit a cigarette. Naldo did not recall ever seeing Arnie smoke before. Now he drew on the Marlboro in long, quick drags, as though someone might stop him before he finished it.

  They sat together in silence for a long time — ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, each thinking of the ultimate conclusion. Naldo rose and walked to the window. Looking out at the first snowflakes, corkscrewing in the streetlights, he asked, ‘If all this is solid, where do we come in? Why should it hurt our families, Arnie?’

  Arnold bit his lower lip. ‘It’s there, in the Elephant files. I memorized the important bits, and I’ll give you the full text. But first, look at the small print. The detail. The handling. You were there, Nald. You were there in London — twice — and in Paris. Think back. What did you really feel about the handling? At the time what did you think about the tradecraft? Didn’t you say it stank?’

  ‘It was God-awful. Insecure. Dangerous …’

  ‘And Penkovsky himself?’

  Naldo nodded. ‘Worrying. Bad discipline. Leaky as a sieve. They had to keep plugging him, hence the hired whores in Paris.’

  ‘And the one grand in sterling your boys gave him. Know how he spent that?’ Once more he answered the question himself. ‘He blew the lot on expensive presents for his wife and brother officers in Moscow. Don’t you think they’d be a little surprised at the amount of money he had to throw around if they weren’t in on it? They must’ve laughed like gurgling drains.’

  ‘You put money into the pot as well.’ Naldo tried to sound accusing.

  ‘Oh, yes. A lousy three hundred bucks a month, and I’m not going to defend our handling and tradecraft either. I wonder who had the bright idea of taking him out of London for over eighteen hours, so that President Kennedy could shake his hand? That happened. Clever, huh? He could have been spotted, missed by the delegation. Anything.’

  ‘At least we didn’t let him meet the Queen, and that’s what he wanted. The man was a prima donna. His contact took him to Badminton, the horse trials, just to look at Her Majesty at a distance. Had the hell of a job restraining him. He wanted to go over and introduce himself.’

  ‘The whole thing was fiction, Nald.’

  ‘The whole thing? I don’t know how anyone got away with the tradecraft and handling. There was that lunatic business of making him a colonel in the British and US Armies. Taking his picture in both uniforms. They had a field day with those at the trial, remember?’

  ‘Right, and a good laugh as well, no doubt. You do know that Alex was the name he preferred to be called by friends out in the real world? Who the hell ever uses nicknames for cryptos like your people did?’

  Naldo Railton’s face was that of a deeply worried man. He shied away from where the whole story was taking them.

  ‘And didn’t you say he got edgy in London when he knew Five were involved, and keeping an eye on him?’

  ‘He panicked and blustered. We had to reassure him again and again that nobody in Five knew who he was; or what the operation entailed.’

  ‘Right. Because, like other defectors before him, Alex gave the impression that Five was shot, deeply penetrated.’

  Naldo gave a curt nod. At least two defectors had fingered Burgess, Maclean and Philby, who was part of the Secret Intelligence Service. Together they had stuck to what they knew — that there was a ring of five highly-placed penetration agents within the SIS and MI5. The two Foreign Office men and Philby made three. Blunt’s confession earlier in the year brought the total to four. So there was probably still one on the loose. Everything pointed to MI5 still being penetrated.

  ‘Blunt was long out of Five when he confessed, right?’ Naldo gave a very short nod.

  ‘So we can count him out?’

  Another no-comment nod.

  ‘Oleg/Alex was still fingering Five as being leaky.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Arnie sighed. ‘Remember, Naldo, that someone once said the price of freedom is constant paranoia. Let me give you a “what if” situation. Alex was a plant. We know that now, so what if he wanted to misdirect everybody in your service? What if his other job, apart from the missiles, was to take the heat off any suspicion that your firm, the Secret Intelligence Service, was penetrated, and continue to point a finger at Five?

  ‘By showing fear of Five, Alex was performing a song without words. He was saying, watch out for Five, they’re still bugged; they’re penetrated to hell. You boys are OK. Since Kim, nobody’s got into your pants. Yet the truth, Naldo, is that your SIS is the penetrated service, and Five is as clean as a whistle.’

  ‘So where do you take it from there?’ Naldo still sounded unconvinced.

  ‘Nobody’s going to admit out loud that Alex was a double, are they? To admit that is to explode one of the great successes of all time. So the history books have got to say, look at this, Oleg Penkovsky was the wonderful agent of conscience. Without him, the world would be a desert. But, in secret, a small faction knows that the truth is the opposite. I have heard voices on the wind, Nald. In your untight little island they’re still saying there’s someone operating in Five. Those of us who know that Alex is alive, and well and living in Sochi, have our doubts. Isn’t it more possible that the Sovs had, and might still have, an agent in place, high in the pecking order of your own service?’ He spread his hands again, in the gesture he had used on and off all day. Frank and open Arnold. ‘It’s no secret that Five are still hooked on the original bait.’

  Naldo turned, stared at the ceiling and whispered, ‘From where we sit it seems like a
witch-hunt.’

  ‘Uh-huh, now we’re getting to the nub of why I brought you here. I’ve said it all, except the stuff memorized from the Elephant files. What if Five’s as clean as a whistle? What if they’re jumping at shadows, investigating ghosts? They’re so lost in the maze, Nald, that it wouldn’t surprise me if they eventually fingered some poor senior bugger, just to satisfy themselves that they’d done the job. But, what if Alex did two things? What if he told us about the missiles in plain language, so they could get guarantees from Jack Kennedy; and, more subtly, by inference, he underlined what everyone believed: that your Five was a major target? What worries me, Nald, is that any minute they’re going to open a new inquest. This time within your SIS, using evidence from what I’ve seen in the Elephant files. Your service wouldn’t be alone. There’s one going on inside Langley at this moment. Already heads have rolled.’

  ‘I’m to believe this?’

  Arnold’s face and voice took on a pleading note. ‘You’d better believe it, Nald. Like you’d better believe we’ve got to get ourselves some protection. We have to take a look at the Blunt confession. We have to, because I think Blunt’s put in some heavy disinformation as icing on the cake. I’m pretty certain you’ve had some access to Five’s tapes. Now we need further access. We need to know what’s really been said. All of it.’

  ‘I’ve got news for you. I’m excluded from Hypermarket as well, though nobody’s made a big thing out of it. Just need-to-know and all that.’ Naldo smiled at the irony. ‘You think Blunt’s fingered people? Like Penkovsky, he’s drawn fire from the SIS and put Five up as the real target?’

  ‘I think he’s probably done more than that. I think he’s named names, just in case something has gone wrong. I think he’s pointed the finger. Poured new poison into people’s ears; and remember, Nald, this is just the start. They’ve only been at Blunt since the spring. He can go on talking for the next six years or more. The guy can make it up as he goes along, can’t he? That’s what these people do to muddy the pools. This is a terrifyingly clever piece of work, Nald. It’s Chinese boxes, matryoshkas, nesting dolls; infinities of distorting mirrors. When I discovered that friend Alex was alive, I came across some even more alarming matters.’ He took a short breath, as though steeling himself. ‘Nald, I know who the prime suspects are in your firm, and mine. Apart from small fry that is.’