The Secret Families

by John Gardner

  ‘Get me a drink, Arn. I bloody need it.’

  ‘Alas,’ Arnold did not really look pained. ‘The beloved Den Mother who cares for all our safe and green houses, makes it a rule. Like ships of the US Navy, we do not carry alcohol except for special, authorized occasions. Barb well?’

  ‘Going out to the movies.’ Naldo still felt angry, but knew nothing would be gained by falling out with his old friend. He rubbed his face, driving circulation back into his body, stamping his feet. ‘Going out with Vi Short.’

  ‘Ah, the delectable Lady Short.’

  ‘You’ve met Vi?’

  ‘Once, at some function. Grosvenor Square. An unhappy, unfulfilled lady, I thought.’

  ‘Vi? She’s had enough filling for any red-blooded girl.’ He stopped to see that Arnie’s face was set in a smirk.

  ‘Arn, you didn’t?’

  ‘I’m saying nothing that incriminates me.’

  ‘You sly old devil. The gorgeous Gloria was left in Berlin, I presume?’

  ‘You presume right. From there on in I plead the Fifth.’

  ‘No booze, huh?’

  ‘Not a drop in the house. Only two books as well — apart from a load of porno stuff that our dear girls, or boys, use on clients, I suppose. The Bible and Shakespeare. It’s a Gideon Bible, which must tell you something about how the accounts are run around here.’

  Naldo nodded unhappily. The curtains were drawn to shut out the night. He went over and lifted one corner, peering down into the street below where the wind was blowing little drifts of fine snow along road and pavements. Below him not even a shadow stirred in the streets. The 1 per cent still bothered him. Naldo only bet on certainties.

  Arnie Farthing started muttering to himself, just loud enough for Naldo to hear — ‘Oh really, Arnold. How nice, Arnold. And which one are you reading, Arnold? As you ask, Nald, I am reading the complete works of William H Shakespeare — the Cambridge Text with notes by John Dover Wilson, no less. First published in 1921. How strange, Arnold, we have an edition just like that at home. We don’t have a Bible though. For us Railtons, William of Stratford is our Bible.’

  ‘Stow it, Arn. You’re getting boring.’

  Arnold gave a short laugh, one note pitched high. ‘I can see why you bloody Railtons are so attached to this guy. I found a piece here, in Richard II, which could have been written of Railtons, only it’s about kings.’

  ‘No!’

  But Arnold continued. ‘Substitute Railtons for kings and you’re away —

  ‘For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground.

  And tell sad stories of the death of Railtons —

  How some have been deposed, some slain in war.

  Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed …’

  ‘Stow it, Arn.’

  ‘Strikes home though, doesn’t it?’

  Naldo saw there was no beating him — ‘OK! Enough!’ He held up his hands in surrender.

  ‘Strikes home, yes?’

  ‘Arn,’ there was serious warning in Naldo’s tone. ‘You’ve hauled me over to this blighted city; fed me full of filched information which boils down to the supposed fact that Oleg Penkovsky, wonder-spy, has not been executed, but lives in luxury on the Black Sea, which indicates he wasn’t the man we thought. Right?’

  ‘Right, except there’s no supposed about it.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  Arnold opened his mouth, but Naldo held up a hand. ‘Wait! Let me finish, just to make sure I’ve got it right. You also tell me that the firm for which I work is about to nobble my late Uncle Caspar, and name him as a Russian penetration agent. Right?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think they’ll name him out loud, unless some idiot begins to ask questions in your House of Commons. That is the way these things are usually leaked, isn’t it?’

  ‘As a rule, yes. But you continue by suggesting that those of us with kinship to Caspar might also be put through the mill.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘And, by association, members of your own family?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t follow any of the logic. I can’t see why Penkovsky being a disinformation agent makes Caspar, or Dick, or you —’

  ‘Or Naldo Railton?’

  ‘OK, or me. I don’t see the connection. Why should we be sought out as possible suspects?’

  ‘Because we’re here.’ Arnold looked up blankly at Naldo’s frown. ‘Because we’ve had the opportunity, and because we’re interconnected. Also, because that’s what the files say at Langley.’

  ‘So you said.’ Angry again, his face flushed, body tensing like a man about to make a physical attack.

  Arnie pushed at air with his hands, in a fending-off motion. ‘Sit down, Nald. Sit and hear me out.’ He stopped, waiting for Naldo to back off. ‘You got incensed before, when I first brought it up. Rightly so. I’m not cool about this. But hear me out.’

  A long silence stretched between the two secret men. Then Naldo gave a shrug and sat down, close to the small electric fire that warmed anyone who could get within six inches of it. Arnold saw the movement and said his outfit did not bother about keeping places like this warm. ‘It encourages the clients to get cosy more quickly.’ He gave what in any other man would have been called a shy smile.

  ‘Right, I’m waiting. You said you’d committed the thing to memory.’

  Arnold tried another smile, ‘Conned it by rote, as Shakespeare would say.’

  ‘Go on.’ It was the kind of tone nobody argued with.

  Arnold reached out, touched Naldo’s sleeve like a conspirator. ‘It was in the final batch of stuff Alex sent over. Just before they lifted him. The produce included two military pamphlets which, it appeared, we already had. Also a correction to an earlier pamphlet he had provided. That was useful. Then there was a coded signal. The whole lot came on two microdots. The bit I learned by heart was the decrypt of the signal.’

  He breathed in, closed his eyes, as though settling to bring the words to the front of his memory. ‘“I fear we have not long.” That’s how it began. Then — “Unless I am wrong the state organs have caught up with us. This is why I am sending these out now and not waiting in the hope of meeting up with my friend. I suspect we have been blown and this is an urgent warning. There is penetration of the British secret department, though I suspect he is retired. I have met him in London. By chance I had sight of a highly sensitive document in our files. The state organs had given us information so that wires would not be crossed. When I saw this document I became terrified. They have insinuated an agent at top level into the SIS. Before, I thought the only danger was from your counter-intelligence security. I was wrong. Since the late 1930s there has been an agent of influence working within the secret department. This man is now retired, but I believe I have met him. I do not know his real name, but he belongs to an aristocratic family which has links with the world of secrets going back for centuries. This man’s cryptonym is Dionysus. His dossier was Sovbloc Red, and suggests that he still provides high octane material via a relative who is known as Croesus. This man might be a son. Further details are that Dionysus was seriously wounded in the First Great War. Croesus is a Sovbloc Green. Also a member of the same family is what we call a shifr odtel. There are also links with an American family who have people in the trade. Former members of the British family have worked for us in the past. He has blown us all.” It was signed, “Alex”.’

  ‘The Railton track record,’ Naldo muttered.

  ‘Not altogether. I believe that side of things was added as a sweetener, to see if we would bite.’

  ‘You said there was mention by name.’

  ‘The analysts locked on very fast. Caspar is put up as obvious, and yourself, of course. The shifr odtel is off the hook — your beloved Alexander.’ In Russian secret terminology a shifr odtel is a codebreaker. ‘The analysts do a very good job. We all get a mention — Caspar, you, myself, Alexander, your dad, Dick. Everyone. That’s the good news — ther
e were a series of memos running between Langley and London. London dismiss the possibilities. In a word they say preposterous.’

  ‘So, what’s the bad news?’

  ‘There is a flash Cosmic file attached. It emanates from London just four days before the Blunt product team came over to brief Langley. The briefing from which I was barred.’

  ‘And it says?’

  ‘New evidence demands a reappraisal of the loyalty of certain members of the Railton family. It gives a reference back to the last Penkovsky signal, and the memos that followed pooh-poohing the whole thing. The signal says that, while Caspar is dead, his file has been reopened. It also says that there will be a fresh look at the working lives, and operational defects, of all who come under the blanket of Penkovsky’s accusation.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘That’s what we’re in, old friend. I should imagine Jim Angleton has argued using the most recent information, that Alex lives and breathes. But, if he did argue that way, it made no difference to the Brits. They still kept me out of the Blunt product briefing. Hence my reason for needing to see that file.’

  ‘Yep.’ Naldo gave a long sigh, and Arnold left him with his thoughts for a few moments before asking —

  ‘You were at the Alex briefings, Nald. Did Cas actually meet the bastard face to face? I mean was there a full-blown introduction?’

  Something stirred, just under the surface of Naldo’s consciousness. An itch. An itch he could not scratch. He thought back to the meetings in London and Paris and, as he did so, even the smells returned — smoke, fish, alcohol, the particular cologne Caspar always used. He stood up, with the pleasant, mannish smell almost there in his nostrils, and at that moment a whole scene flashed into his mind, and out again. Mentally he grabbed at it, pulling it back to the present. Caspar standing by a door, a glass in his hand. Willis Maitland-Wood, one hand on Penkovsky’s shoulder, and the Russian’s hand reaching forward to grasp Caspar’s. As the picture came, so the words followed. ‘Sir Caspar, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Have heard a lot about you, and here you are, in the flesh.’

  That was over three years ago. Now he had the look in Penkovsky’s eyes; how they glittered and how the Russian gave a little nod to Caspar, then turned and smiled broadly at BMW who gave a tight smile.

  ‘Fucking Judas,’ he said. ‘Yes. Yes, Arn, I think Alex fingered Cas. I was there. I can see it all now. Even the reason Bloody-Maitland-Wood required Caspar’s presence.’ Briefly he described the scene.

  ‘Careful, Nald. Don’t jump at shadows.’ Arnie shook his head. ‘Penkovsky wouldn’t have shown himself to risk something like that. Certainly not in front of BMW.’

  ‘I’ll kill him!’ Naldo felt that he had been physically penetrated. He thought he knew what a victim of rape must feel. Revenge flowed through his head, as though his blood was made of some new potent liquid. ‘I’ll go to bloody Sochi and kill him with my bare hands.’

  ‘Naldo.’ Arnie had come over to stand beside him. ‘I think that would be a good idea, I’d kill the bugger as well. But we must know what Blunt has said to reactivate something that was dismissed as a fairy tale at the time. After that, well, we might just find some way. Can you get the Blunt material? Hypermarket?’

  ‘Depends what word is out about me. Depends if they’ve already put me in the leper colony or are just doing a light watch, with the brains working on old files. If they haven’t got at Herbie, then there’s a chance.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Herb has access. Don’t ask me why, because I can’t tell even you. But he has access. I’ll try him.’ He locked eyes with Arnie. ‘You do realise this is ongoing, don’t you? I mean, they’re still working on Blunt.’

  ‘Sure, I know that. But, whatever he’s said, he’s said already. If we can take a look now, Nald, I think we just might be able to do something positive. Can you go invisible?’

  Naldo turned towards him. ‘That’s one thing that both Cas and my father taught me. Always keep a hole you can drop into. That’s what they both said. Preferably a hole about which nobody else knows. Yes, Arn, and we’ve got a bloody good hole to drop into, haven’t we?’

  ‘Naturally. Let’s make use of it. That’s what Cas would’ve wanted.’

  They sat down and began to talk. Setting up telephone code words; meeting places; flash-signals, all the things they would have to do in order to mount their own kind of operation. It had to be secure. Even more so than usual, for what they planned had to be kept from their own most trusted people. They both knew that they were quite alone in this. Alone and outside the law. It was possible the pair of them might even have to cheat their own agencies. The two men were still there at eleven o’clock, but by then they had the makings of a plan. It was far from foolproof, but they reckoned — providing the requisite parts of Hypermarket were forthcoming, and showed what they suspected — it stood around a 60 per cent chance of working.

  Naldo’s mind ran in angry circles. He was aware that chivalry, honour, love of country and family were considered unfashionable, but he had more than loved his uncle. To Naldo, Caspar had been a giant within the world of secrets; totally reliable; undoubtedly trustworthy. For anyone in the Secret Intelligence Service to even suggest Caspar Railton had betrayed his country was anathema to him. In Naldo Railton they had perhaps chosen the one person who would go to the ends of the earth, die even, to save family honour and particularly the reputation of his uncle.

  At 11.30, Naldo, keeping to his original cover, left to make his meeting with the source he had used as an excuse to come to Berlin at all. She was a young girl from behind the Wall who had cast-iron reasons for coming over once a month. She worked for an East German textile company who were putting out feelers for work in the West — all above board, with documentation and special permission from the DDR Department of Trade. So far everything the girl had given to him was good and checkable. There was no reason to think she was entrapment material or a double. Quite the opposite.

  Naldo knew her only as Helga, and she brought small pieces of gossip, and, sometimes, a few troop movements. She provided nothing shopworn. From the first she had made it very obvious that she fancied Naldo — whom she knew as Mr Gray — and certainly wanted to bed him. She had tried, but he had always kept her at arm’s length, sticking to the first rule of running agents or sources.

  It had stopped snowing and the temperature was rising, sending a light mist from the pavements. As he pushed through the slush, he decided that tonight would be different. He either had to get drunk or have a sexual encounter. It was not difficult for Naldo to decide which would be better for his soul. Have Helga tonight, he thought. Then tomorrow recruit old Herbie.

  3

  After it was over, she lay in his arms, and wondered why? Aloud she asked —

  ‘Why? Why tonight? And why me?’

  ‘Because we were there.’ He gave a kind of laugh, that sounded hollow. ‘Because we met and talked and wanted each other, I suppose. You did want me, surely?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I wanted you,’ Barbara said. ‘This is the first time I’ve been unfaithful in all the years of my marriage, and here I am, mother of two as they say in the popular press, in bed rutting like a bitch on heat.’

  ‘It’s sometimes necessary.’ Philip Hornby leaned over and kissed her.

  ‘I think it was that scene where Finney and the girl virtually did it over the meal. God, that was sexy.’ As planned, they had seen Tom Jones, and Barbara had felt her body go hot then moist during the famous scene where Tom and the girl manage to convey a bedful of sensual lascivious nuances into the act of eating a meal. If she had not known it before, it was then that Barbara really knew she would give herself to this stranger.

  On the wall facing the bed in Philip Hornby’s flat, there was a large copy of some painting by, she thought, Brueghel. She knew little about the artist, and could not have told him Brueghel’s dates, let alone the painting’s name. But it was all snow and people: a village in winter and in t
rouble, for mounted soldiers rode, with menace and plumed lances, down the main street. It looked as though they would crush anything that got in their way.

  ‘So, where do we stand?’ she asked now.

  ‘We’re lying,’ he chuckled, kissing her ear.

  ‘I mean, do I see you again?’

  ‘I should damned well hope so. Cigarette?’

  ‘Just one. Then I must go.’

  ‘Why not stay the night?’

  ‘I can’t do that. I have children home from school. Christmas is nearly on us.’ She blew a long stream of smoke through pursed lips.

  ‘And you’re going away for Christmas?’

  ‘Family tradition — my husband’s family. They have a place in the country and all family members who’re in England gather there. We even spent our honeymoon there, over Christmas. It wasn’t in the least bit embarrassing either. I thought it would be, but Christmas at Redhill is really something quite special.’

  ‘Redhill?’

  She told him about the manor, and the Railton family: how they were descended from Pierre de Royalton, one of Duke William’s knights who had distinguished himself at Hastings in 1066; how Henry VIII had given the family lands around Haversage at the time of the Reformation. She mentioned that her husband’s great-uncle had been a Foreign Office mandarin who had died, taking many secrets to his grave, and how Naldo’s great-grandfather was General Sir William Railton, VC, who had taken part in the blundered charge at Balaclava.

  ‘Real roots,’ Hornby said. ‘Not like my lot. My father was a cockney from Hackney, and my mother worked in a drawing office. Mind you, the old boy pulled himself up by his bootstraps. Sort of laid down a trail that I could follow. Self-made. Looks like you’ve got the real thing.’

  ‘What’s the real thing?’ She laughed, turning her head towards him, a puzzled expression in her eyes. ‘You care about things like that? God, there’s nothing upper crust about either of our families — my husband’s or mine. We’re all army and civil service. Sure there’s a bit of history, but nothing special.’