The Secret Families

by John Gardner

  On the train to Knightsbridge, he noticed that his hands were shaking.

  Barbara was out when he got home. There was a note propped up against the hall telephone. ‘Gone to buy enticing clothes. Love B,’ it said, and Naldo smiled, feeling relief, just as he had felt post-coital guilt all the way back to London. Barbara had not used that little code for a long time. When they were first married she left notes for him all over the house. Soon they had, without talking of it, invented their own codes and signals. ‘Enticing clothes’ meant that she had missed him, and wanted him sexually.

  Naldo went into his study and telephoned the shop. He spoke the words that meant the conversation should be scrambled, and the duty officer made the correct response. Naldo counted slowly to ten, then pressed the tiny button built into the rear of the instrument, which was the primary phone on the line in. At each end they had pressed the scrambler buttons at the same moment and he asked for Tubby Fincher. By the time the connection was made, Tubby would know that all was secure.

  ‘Yes, Naldo. What can I do for you?’ Tubby always sounded tense, as though his position in the firm had to be buffered by illusory smoke clouds. He made telephone callers think they were the last people in the world to whom he wished to speak.

  ‘Did you know there was a Sov hit team in town, Tub?’

  ‘No, what makes you think there is?’

  ‘They just gave me the runaround. Showed themselves. Approached me, then buggered off with a cryptic word which told me I was an easy target. What’s going on?’

  There was a long silence. ‘How many?’ Fincher asked.

  ‘A regiment.’ Naldo had begun to doodle on the pad by his desk. ‘Two cars, a van and four pairs of footmen. They looked like a boyevaya gang to me.’

  ‘They all look like boyevayas after you’ve served a month or two in Berlin.’ Fincher was not even trying to be funny.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Naldo asked again. Looking down he saw that he had doodled several female thighs and torsos, clad in bikini briefs.

  ‘Think you’d better come in and have a chat, Nald. Tomorrow do you? About eleven?’

  ‘I’ll be in anyway. I’m stationed here now, remember?’

  ‘Not likely to forget. Tomorrow then. Oh, and keep off the streets, Naldo. A word to the wise.’

  ‘Going to the theatre tonight. With Barbara.’

  ‘Be cautious,’ Fincher said, then sent their voices into oblivion by closing the line.

  Naldo disengaged the scrambler, tore the page covered with doodles from his note pad, and wrote on the clean sheet, ‘Can’t wait. Back soon. Love. N.’ He carried it through to the hall and placed it beside Barbara’s note. Then he again put on his overcoat and went out into the cold December afternoon. He hailed the first cab showing a light and got the driver to take him down to Leicester Square. Half an hour later he was walking into the Lyons Corner House. In the basement there was a row of public coin boxes. He could have used the ones by the railings of Kensington Gardens, five minutes from the house, but nowadays they were even operating sound-stealing on coin boxes. He never used one within a mile of his home or office.

  He asked for the Berlin number, deposited the money demanded by the operator, and waited for three minutes before he heard the distant Nurrrrrp … Nurrrrp. Arnie picked up on the fourth double.

  ‘Ja?’

  ‘Oh, I think I must have a wrong number,’ Naldo said in German.

  ‘Who did you want?’ Arnie also in German.

  ‘Fräulein Sender.’

  ‘I can get a message to her.’

  ‘Oh, thank you. Tell her Walter called. Could she call me tonight?’

  ‘Certainly. Tonight you say?’

  ‘Yes. She has the number.’ Naldo put down the telephone and walked back upstairs. On his way out he bought some violet creams for Barbara. She said they were ‘her favourite fruit’, and always called them ‘violent creams’. The telephone doubletalk would already have set Arnie in motion. Within hours, the shop would be put into a situation demanding them to instruct Herbie to have another look at the Hypermarket/Blunt material.

  Barbara was back, getting dressed, when he got home. He telephoned the theatre and found out what time the show ended, then ordered a cab to take them right to the doors of the Adelphi, and another to get them to the Trattoo in Abingdon Road, where he now booked a table. Pasquale would see to it that a cab picked them up. Pasquale, like any good restaurateur, knew Naldo’s ways: how he liked to sit at the back of the room so that he could see the entrance; how he should never be addressed by name, though Pasquale thought his name to be Mr Douglas, and how he always had to call a cab from a firm known to him and with a driver known to him. He would check it was the right driver before letting Mr and Mrs Douglas leave the building. In truth, Pasquale did all these things, and, in private, thought Mr Douglas was a fussy, stupid Englishman who liked to be seen as a big, powerful man. But, like all good restaurateurs he never confided these reservations to anybody else. In his own country you could always be wrong about this kind of thing, and he did not want to be caught out. Pasquale was strictly a belt and braces man.

  They enjoyed Maggie May, an amusing, dramatic and sad musical about Liverpool dockers, strikes and whores. Liverpool was the ‘in’ city since the Beatles had made the breakthrough.

  On their way out, Naldo felt eyes on him and turned his head. The big Russian with the bad teeth was patiently waiting to get from his seat to the aisle. He smiled at Naldo who mouthed ‘Yeb vas’ at him, though his guts did a slow roll of panic. The Russian raised one finger and gently prodded the air with it, smiling all the time. Naldo was pleased that there was a cab waiting for them, and even more happy when he watched for vehicle surveillance and found none.

  They ate seafood, Fegato alla Veneziana, and, switching to French, Crêpes au citron. Barbara sat next to him facing down the long narrow room with the mirrors and greenery giving it an illusion of greater width, and Naldo stroked her thigh under the table.

  When they got back to the house near Kensington Gore there was no waiting. They stripped each other in the darkness of the bedroom and fell backwards together onto the bed.

  ‘And how’s my little laughing cavalier tonight, then?’ Barbara whispered, giggling and reaching for him. ‘My, he’s got his rapier out. Kiss me, and talk very dirty, Naldo Railton. I feel really filthy.’ And she did. A tiny bit on the side helps the marriage along, she thought, then cried out with pleasure as he entered her.

  The next morning, after Naldo had left, she called the Hans Crescent number just to hear the bell ringing in the distance and knowing it was doing so in the one room in which she had committed her only act of adultery. To her surprise a man answered.

  ‘Philip?’ she said, in a small voice.

  ‘What do you want?’ It certainly was not Philip Hornby speaking, so she asked for him.

  ‘Nobody of that name here,’ he said. ‘You sure you’ve got the right number?’

  She repeated it, and he said, yes, that was the number. But there was no Philip Hornby at this address. ‘I’m doing some redecorating,’ the man said. ‘Redecorating for Mr and Mrs Barnes. Lived here for years.’

  She was mildly disturbed, then decided she had been taken for a ride — literally, she felt. ‘Rotten bugger,’ she said aloud. ‘Bet you borrow the place from the Barnes people.’ At that moment her own telephone rang. When she answered, the caller closed the line without speaking.

  2

  Big Herbie Kruger’s red telephone rang at just after ten. He had been in his office for over an hour, and the red telephone rarely rang. It was the one connected directly to the shop.

  Maitland-Wood himself was on the line. ‘Can you get over here, chop-chop?’ BMW asked. He always used obscure pidgin-English type phrases when speaking to staff who were not actually born in Britain. It was the wrong thing to do with a man like Big Herbie. ‘What’s with the chop-chop?’ Herbie asked, sounding his most puzzled.

  ‘Fa
st — schnell-schnell! to you, Kruger.’ BMW thought at least he knew where he stood with Kruger. He had not served with the XX Section for nothing. XX stood for twenty, or doublecross. Maitland-Wood had spent some of the war with Five and their unit at Ham Common, Camp 020, neatly doubling German agents, or luring them into false flag operations. He found Kruger easier to deal with than some of the young university entrants they were getting into the service these days.

  At his end, Herbie banged the telephone onto its rest — ‘Schnell-schnell! Raus! Raus! Bloody Pinewood German,’ he exploded. Then he went silent and very still, a smile slowly spreading across his face. ‘Clever boy, that Naldo,’ he whispered to himself.

  ‘Uncomfortable, Kruger.’ Willis Maitland-Wood scowled across his desk.

  ‘No, fine. Quite comforting here.’ Herbie gave them his big grin.

  ‘I mean,’ said BMW, taking a long pause between the personal pronoun and the word ‘mean’, ‘that we, here in this department, are uncomfortable.’

  Herbie knew well enough what he meant. Still grinning he looked around him. ‘Better than my office. You got all mod cons here, Mr Maitland-Wood.’

  ‘Just shut up and listen, Herb,’ Fincher, seated nearby, snapped like a mouse trap.

  ‘We’ve had access to a ciphered cable,’ Maitland-Wood continued. ‘Flash from Berlin via Langley. Need-to-know flash. Last night. Early hours in fact. They followed it up with a very long dossier which went through the Grosvenor Square telexes this morning.’

  Herbie, who already had an idea of what was to come, thought that BMW had a tendency to talk in a series of crossword puzzle clues.

  ‘We’ve examined the cable, and the dossier. So has CSS. It was the CSS who instructed us to call you in.’

  ‘Do I have to make educated guess, or you going to tell me things straight?’ Herbie asked. He had stopped smiling and sat very still, as though made of granite. Inside his head he thought, ‘Was mir die Nacht erzählt — what the night tells me.’ It was the title of the fourth movement of Gustav Mahler’s Third Symphony. Somehow it seemed apt for Herbie to think of the titles of the Third’s movements now.

  ‘Just listen, Herb. Mr Maitland-Wood will tell you everything,’

  ‘Cockroach,’ BMW said as if it had a wealth of meaning.

  ‘What the animals in the forest tell me — second movement,’ Big Herbie thought. Aloud, he said, ‘Insect,’ but not loud enough to be heard.

  ‘Our American cousins had a walk-in defector about four weeks ago. Berlin.’

  ‘Didn’t hear about it.’ Herbie’s lips hardly moved.

  ‘You weren’t meant to hear about it.’ Willis Maitland-Wood felt this was not really his job. C should have done it himself. ‘They’ve given him the crypto Cockroach. For the CIA it’s apparently insect time.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Yes, just over four weeks ago to be exact,’ Fincher butted in.

  ‘Four weeks?’ Herbie raised the pitch at the end of ‘weeks’. It seemed the right thing to do. ‘Why they not flown the bugger back to Washington DC and put him through the grinder?’

  ‘That’s none of our business, Kruger.’ BMW on his dignity, even though he would never keep a walk-in hanging around on the operational turf for that long. ‘They must have their reasons.’

  ‘Maybe he’s no good. Maybe he’s bloody double. Maybe bait; dangle, huh?’ Herbie knew well enough that Cockroach was just that. They had him well and truly sorted out in one of the well-equipped safe houses run by the Americans. They were doing their best to turn him, or feed him some carrots, pop him on a stick and dangle him back. ‘Was mir die Morgenglocken erzählen — What the morning bells tell me. Fifth movement.’ Cockroach was a very low-grade radio mechanic, straight out of the KGB centre at Karlshorst. Knew nothing; no ambition; no interest except to go to America and become rich by being a well-paid radio mechanic. Naldo had told him all this yesterday. Arnie was keeping him for stock. He could put words in the man’s mouth and Cockroach would not even know it, Naldo had said. Also, Arnie could do it at arm’s length, without becoming involved on paper. Langley would gobble it up and give it to London, quick as a whore can pass on the clap. That is what Naldo had said, and Herbie believed Naldo in almost all things.

  Cockroach, BMW now told him, was a specialized technical expert. ‘Radio, I understand. German, but a party member and happy as Larry to work for KGB.’

  ‘Who is this Larry?’ Herbie asked and was ignored.

  Ponderously BMW came to the point, with a few prods from Tubby Fincher, who kept shifting his skeletal frame in a chair that seemed to engulf him.

  Cockroach, it seemed, had positive evidence that Daulis had still been working for the Russian service up to two years ago. Also he had positive intelligence that Daulis had twice made connections with one of Herbie’s own network. Daulis was their name, that month, for Blunt. They all thought it was a terribly droll crypto, for in classical mythology Daulis was a nymph.

  ‘This being the case,’ BMW droned on, ‘you are significantly involved. Maybe even compromised. We have the dossier and the dates. It is possible we shall have to ask our brethren from Five to have some strong words with Daulis. It’s just, well, we should be sure of our facts. We thought you might like to check your own files. Just to see if they were possible: the two meetings with your fellow, I mean.’

  ‘Which fellow?’ Herbie had assumed a hard, angry expression. The kind of reaction they would all expect from him, for he agonized greatly about his network, known as the Schnitzer Group. He was constantly complaining to Fincher and BMW of the difficulties of servicing them long-range.

  ‘Your man? Yes. Real name, Willy Blenden.’

  ‘Shit!’ said Herbie. Then, once more, with feeling, ‘Shit!’ And again, for the insurance, ‘Shit!’

  ‘May not be true, Herb,’ Fincher tried to soothe him.

  ‘And then again it could be truth. I need time. Go through my stuff.’ He paused, then put the boot in. ‘Shall need access to Daulis’s files also. Today. Straight off. There was some stuff didn’t quite add up, last time I checked. I need the watchers’ files as well. Watchers on Daulis, I mean.’

  ‘Sure, anything, Herb,’ Fincher said. ‘They’ve been updated since you last poked around in them anyway. It’s going to be another year, at the least, before they’ve finished with our artistic gentleman. But, anything you want.’

  Yes, anything, they both said. Anything you like, keys to the kingdom. Complete freedom in the Registry. ‘Oh, my,’ Herb thought. ‘My God. What I learn from love. Love of job; love of pension. Nald, you and Arn have just scared Mr Maitland-Wood and Mr Fincher shitless. Probably CSS as well. Because we all know everyone’s agreed that Daulis, a.k.a. Sir Anthony Frederick Blunt, has been out of the trade for a long time now. Also he’s been more than co-operative. Named names. Whispered poison. Even though he has shown no hint of remorse. Naldo, you bloody genius.’

  They gave him all necessary forms and clearances there and then. In triplicate if he wanted them, praying that he could check and come back to tell them this bloody Cockroach was out of his tree, and they were off the hook.

  They even telephoned Ambrose Hill, while Herbie stood there, and told him that he was to give full and complete co-operation to Mr Kruger.

  ‘Almost give me a medal, Nald,’ Herbie said later when the two of them sat down in a very secure room and talked, with Herb handing over several rolls of exposed film.

  ‘They’ll give you a jock-strap medal when you tell them they’re off the hook, Herb. When you say he’s been a good boy since way back. But they won’t be thinking of medals when we finally show that he’s been leading them a dance around the houses: naming wrong names and spreading gloom and suspicion.’ Naldo smiled. ‘But not yet, Herb. Keep the options open. Keep digging, would you? Keep beavering away until I surface again.’

  ‘You going invisible, Nald?’

  ‘Yes. And it’s three wise monkey time for you, Herb.’

  ‘For y
ou, Nald, I make it four, OK?’

  But that was a couple of days later, seated among spices and canned goods.

  In the present as Herbie was taking the lift down to registry, so Naldo Railton was making his way from the second floor to the fifth and his meeting with Tubby Fincher. They probably passed in the lifts.

  3

  The suite of offices on the fifth floor, which housed the CSS and his immediate aides, was nested within the building. The rooms had no windows; the walls contained noise-absorbant tiles, and electronic bafflers protected the area from external sound-stealing devices. Technicians swept the offices morning and evening, while one of the duty officer’s standard jobs was to check the waste baskets.

  Naldo had the feeling that they had laid on the full works for him. One of the jumpers, pearls and sensible shoes secretaries showed him into Willis Maitland-Wood’s office, where Willis sat behind his desk, wearing the look of a headmaster about to deal with some errant schoolboy. In a chair to his right, Tubby Fincher squirmed visibly. Standing just inside the door was one of the minders from Warminster. Naldo recognized him immediately. ‘Hello, Mr Railton, sir,’ said the minder, like a gamekeeper tugging at his forelock.

  BMW gestured to a stand chair set carefully before his desk. The minder’s name, Naldo suddenly recalled, was Max. The runes did not read well, so he did not sit, but leaned, one hand braced on the chair back.

  ‘All right, Max. Outside. See we’re not disturbed.’ BMW nodded to the minder. Behind him, Naldo heard the door close. Then —

  ‘Just tell us what happened,’ Maitland-Wood’s attitude was officious and unfriendly.

  ‘Please sit down, Naldo.’ Fincher looked acutely embarrassed.

  ‘No, I won’t bloody just sit down, Tub. I reported something really dangerous to you. In turn, you asked me in to talk about it in a secure place, and I find the heavy mob on guard. I presume your office is secure, Willis?’

  ‘Oh, it’s secure.’ BMW put aside any pretence of the meeting being merely a friendly get-together. ‘So just sit down. There are other things we must talk about, and probably put to you. All right?’