The Secret Families

by John Gardner

  3

  ‘Anyone come looking for me?’

  Barbara thought he sounded tense, strung out, unlike the Naldo she knew in London. In London there was not the stress of Berlin, or other foreign postings.

  ‘A couple of telephone calls. One from somewhere on the continent, I think. Rang off.’

  He thought that she had an edge of worry, a subtext in the way she replied. ‘And the other?’ Naldo asked.

  ‘Cockney accent. Sounded like the real thing. Said he’d phone back, later.’

  ‘Nobody at the door? No telephone repair men? Meter readers? Nobody left alone?’ These were standard questions he asked Barbara regularly. She was also suspicious of any callers, official or not. Like all SIS officers, Naldo was a target, abroad or at home. He knew his own service would periodically tap into his line, and it was more likely under the present circumstances. That was easy enough from the exchange, or junction boxes. What he always feared were the new, soulless, ‘infinity’ bugs which, when inserted into a telephone physically would make the instrument into a live microphone. Every word spoken near the system could be heard by unseen listeners.

  ‘I might have to go out tonight,’ he told her. ‘Let you know in a minute. Have to use the magic phone.’ He laughed, and knew it sounded false.

  ‘Tea?’ She felt Philip Hornby moving within her, but knew she really wanted Naldo to take her now, lead her upstairs, strip her and take her hard, even hurt her for being such a silly bitch and letting it happen.

  ‘Yes, tea. Super. I won’t be long.’

  God, she had almost confessed to him. She went through to the kitchen, filled the kettle and switched it on. As she waited, Barbara unconsciously smoothed her hair with the palm of her right hand.

  From the study telephone, Naldo dialled his cousin Andrew’s office. Yes, Mr Railton was in, but with a client.

  ‘Then you’ll have to disturb him, I’m afraid. This is his cousin, Donald. Tell him it’s urgent family business.’

  He was kept waiting, hanging on for a good five minutes. Then —

  ‘Naldo? What’s all this? I’m in conference.’

  ‘I have to ask you something, Andrew. It’s very official, and we need to know now.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Does Aunt Phoebe still have the keys to Eccleston Square?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’ Andrew would make a good team with Willis Maitland-Wood. Willis playing soft to his curt, hard and brutal.

  ‘My immediate superiors want to go through your father’s papers. Official. They can get a search warrant if you insist.’

  ‘They can do what they like, as long as they leave the silver alone. You be with them?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Hold you responsible, then, if anything that comes to me grows legs. As for Pa’s papers, they can have the bloody lot, and those damned-fool toy soldiers. You’ll have to get the keys off Mother. But the bloody house is yours now, anyway. Well, it will be, once we’ve gone to probate, and that’s only weeks away. So it’s up to you, Donald. Do what you bloody like.’

  He dialled Redhill Manor and spoke to Sara, who sounded depressed, as though Phoebe’s grief had got to her. ‘Just tell her there are confidential documents that Caspar’s office wants. I’ve informed Andrew.’ A courier would be at Redhill in the next couple of hours to pick up the keys. ‘Sara, love, could you make sure the keys are all there, and fastened in a thick envelope, addressed to Willis. Yes, that Willis. Willis Maitland-Wood.’

  On the scrambler he told Maitland-Wood that the keys would be ready if he sent someone to Redhill for them, and yes, he was quite prepared to be there himself. It was arranged for eight o’clock the following morning.

  So tonight, old son, he thought, we have to take a look-see. Find out if they have a team already on the place. Or if they’ve been taking a sneak preview.

  He put on his heavy coat, stuffed the Eccleston Square keys in one pocket and a powerful torch in the other, rammed a hat on his head and kissed Barbara.

  ‘Naldo, a hat. You never wear a hat, except …’

  ‘I won’t be late.’ He saw the anxiety come welling into her eyes.

  ‘Please be careful, Naldo. Please. I thought, now that we were home …’

  ‘It’s something and nothing. Don’t worry your pretty head.’ Another squeeze. From upstairs he heard the Beatles drifting down, twisting and shouting.

  His hand was on the doorknob when the telephone rang. Naldo picked it up and heard the overseas static, together with the faint whirr of power being pulled from the line as Maitland-Wood’s listeners strained to capture any illicit conversation.

  ‘I have a call from Rome. A personal call,’ said an impersonal operator. ‘It’s for a Mr Diamond. Mr Sam Diamond.’

  Naldo felt his heart leap into his mouth. He knew the sensation well, and could even recall the time when he thought the phrase melodramatic. ‘I think you must have a wrong number. No Mr Diamond here.’

  ‘That is Kensington 4284?’

  ‘It is, but there’s no Mr Diamond.’

  ‘Hold on a moment, please.’ There were faint stirrings on the line. Then, ‘Sorry you’ve been troubled. Italian gentleman. Seems to have given me the wrong number.’

  Naldo grunted and slowly put down the receiver. Bees buzzed in his head. When they checked, he was sure they would find the call genuine enough, a digit or two out, with a Mr Sam Diamond at the other end. Arnie had made the rules about any of his telephone calls. An Italian gentleman wanting a Mr Diamond meant that Arnold Farthing had been recalled to Washington. If it was a Mr Sam Diamond, it meant that he was going invisible. Within the next hour Arnold Farthing would cease to exist. He would be a man who had dropped into a hole. The warning would mean that Naldo should follow him as quickly as possible.

  He kissed Barbara, and then gave her a hug, holding her to him as though he did not want to leave.

  At the door, he said, ‘Don’t talk to any strange men.’

  Outside, as he turned towards Kensington Gardens, Naldo glanced back. A small black van was trying to get into a parking space almost opposite his house. Why were they always so bloody obvious in their own country, he wondered?

  SEVEN

  1

  The Christmas lights straddled Regent Street. Angels raised long golden trumpets between Austin Reed and Aquascutum. Kaleidoscopic multicoloured snowflakes shifted almost wearily in the cold December breeze that would bring rain before the night was over.

  The traffic was clogged both ways, and Naldo had the taxi set him down at the corner of Denman Street and Shaftesbury Avenue. He walked through the short narrow thoroughfare, passing the Piccadilly Theatre, and crossing to the Regent Palace Hotel.

  It was many years since he had taken this route. He remembered it last in 1944, replete with whores and soldiers on leave. The whores had beats all around this web of streets in Soho then. They used to call them the ‘Piccadilly Commandos’. Now, with the Street Offences Act, they were all but gone, leaving their traces only in the doorway of a clip joint. Unsummoned music crossed his mind. String of Pearls, American Patrol and Pennsylvania 65000. He thought of Arnie, and hoped he had made it to their agreed hole. As he approached the Regent Palace he saw, in a flash across the screen of his mind, the pink villa, the lake and ferries churning white under the mountains.

  He walked through the crowded lobby of the hotel like someone who had every right to be there, stopping at the double bank of lifts where he loitered, looking for any familiar face before he took the side entrance that led into Glasshouse Street, around the side of the hotel. He crossed the street, heading towards the line of arches around the Piccadilly underground station, dodging taxis and private cars. A cab driver yelled an obscenity as he had to brake. ‘You too!’ Naldo snarled under his breath.

  Now he wondered how much surveillance they had on him because of his dead uncle, so he began to go through a whole series of dry-cleaning moves which took the best part of an hour, by foot, underground
and taxi. He ended up, deep in the heart of Belgravia, by a row of telephone kiosks half a mile from Eccleston Square, 100 per cent certain that no watchers were on to him. They would be there, though, near the Eccleston Square house. He would be exposed to them, and they could not be avoided.

  Inside the first kiosk, he took out loose change and dialled Herbie Kruger’s number in St John’s Wood. Herbie grunted his answer after four rings.

  ‘Herb?’

  ‘Yeah.’ At his home, on his private line, Herbie liked to let people think he had never learned to speak on the telephone. He shouted always, as though contact could only be made in that manner. Naldo had seen and heard him in offices, and on operations. His telephone manner at all other times was perfect.

  ‘We meet for a drink tomorrow, Herb?’ Naldo did not introduce himself, or say why he was calling from a public booth.

  ‘Sure. When? Lunchtime or evening?’

  ‘Make it lunch, OK?’

  ‘Sure. Where you want to go?’

  ‘Blue Posts, Berwick Street. How does that sound?’

  ‘No problem. I got a wonderful story to tell you. You know, a joke.’ He pronounced it ‘yoke’ .

  ‘Look forward to it. Say, quarter to one?’

  ‘Anything you want. See you then. I’m not at work for two days minimum.’ It was Herbie who closed the line.

  On returning from his posting in Berlin, one of the first things Naldo had done was to take a long country walk with Big Herbie. They had gone to Redhill for a weekend, and during the outing, on open downland, below the skyline and where nobody could possibly have a directional mike on them, the former controller with his former agent had worked out a series of drops, meeting places and telephone codes. It was a simple intuitive action. Naldo had described it to Herbie as ‘a little secret money in the bank. We’ll keep it between ourselves for a rainy day.’ Even then, he realized, the first signs of disillusionment were showing themselves. He had begun to mistrust his masters.

  He recalled the conversation now as he walked away from the three crimson kiosks, and into his head came some lines from a sentimental Sinatra ballad, something about left-over dreams, and the rainy day they all told him about.

  ‘Funny, that rainy day is here,’ the recognizable voice sang in his ear.

  Neither Herbie nor Naldo would be at the Blue Posts public house in Berwick Street at 12.45 the next day. But by midnight tonight, Herbie would be waiting for him, together with the required material. Herbie’s ‘anything you want’, and ‘yoke’, had signalled that he had managed to get the necessary material from the Blunt interrogation transcripts.

  Naldo trawled the Eccleston Square area for another half hour, trying to spot watchers, and knowing, in his heart, that by now they would certainly have the house covered. He had to go in, check the snares, then get out fast. Doing it would undoubtedly alert the hounds. He could take every precaution, but BMW would know, in minutes, once he was inside the place.

  Here’s that rainy day they all told me about. Arnie gone to ground. Uncle Caspar’s body lies a mouldering in his grave, but his life goes marching on under a microscope. The long and winding road, that leads to Oleg’s door. The Railtons and the Farthings sapped with a blunt instrument. Suspicion sat, like Long John Silver’s parrot, on every shoulder —

  Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind: The thief doth fear each bush an officer.

  There were no odd signs in Eccleston Square. A few parked cars. Nobody in them as far as he could see. Two houses had their ground floor curtains drawn back, and you could glimpse the signs of imminent Christmas bright within; trees and flashing fairy lights, cards on red ribbon. Other houses had their curtains drawn tight against the night and all its evils. The famous Railton place, which had seen many secrets walking to and fro, talking of Lord knows what mischief, stood in darkness, the front door bright and clear in the light from the nearby street-lamp.

  In his pocket, Naldo’s hand closed over the keys and torch. He sucked in breath, took a step into the light from the darkness of the wall where he had been sheltering. He hesitated for two seconds, no more, then walked quickly, with purpose, towards the building he had known since childhood as Uncle Caspar’s house. Behind him he was certain he heard a scrape — a movement, as though another night animal of the city had taken a pace forward. Even the chill damp air was impregnated with heresy.

  He turned the Banham key twice, hearing the deadlock click back, followed by the feel of tension on the spring. His hands touched only the doorknob and he used his foot to kick the door closed behind him. Torch on. Sixty seconds to get across the eight paces, using the stepping stones of memory to avoid the scattered lengths of cotton, to the small cupboard which housed the master control for the sensors. He did not even use the torch, for he knew the layout backwards. The little red light was beginning to blink off the seconds as he found the hole and inserted the second key he had sorted out by feel in his hand. The light blinked off. He was in, and the alarms were deactivated.

  Naldo switched on the torch, running it around the hallway, focusing on the door. Really he did not need to go further, the transparent spray of powder on the inside of the front door had turned white and was smudged; while the tiny pieces of cotton he had arranged in a prescribed order were scattered, or had disappeared, proof positive that someone had been here since he had set the snares.

  Slowly, he made his way through the house, and everything bore the indicators of penetration: from the crushed breadcrumbs on the stairs, to the missing slivers of matchstick and moved pieces of cotton. Inside, all the rooms were in order, nothing seemed to have been touched, but all the snares had sprung. A very professional job but for the alarms he had set, the miniature gins and mantraps. Spoor had been left screaming in the house, probably by several people, for, in particular, the breadcrumbs had been crumbled deep into the fibres of the carpet, the tiny pieces of paper and slivers of matchstick were gone or had fallen from place, while the powder, sprayed at vantage points, was smudged and scattered heavily.

  In the Hide, the safe had been tampered with. They had taken care to reset the numbers as he had left them — 4-2-9 — but the careful trap he had laid within was gone.

  Naldo came sadly down the stairs, keeping close to the banister. Just as he had felt violated when they told him of the investigation into Caspar’s working life, Naldo now sensed some filth rubbing off on his own skin. They had already tried to rape this house in Eccleston Square, and he was disgusted, feeling, as his American cousins would say, sick to his stomach.

  Quietly he opened the front door, meaning to go back and deal with the alarms.

  They stepped in front of him, one from each side, blocking his exit.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Railton, sir,’ said Max. ‘It’s the Deputy CSS. Mr Maitland-Wood wants you back at the shop.’

  Max’s partner came in close and frisked Naldo expertly, and very fast. They took the keys and the torch, one of them going in to switch the alarm system. Max said again that he was sorry. ‘You’re like those fucking SS Kat-Zed commandants, Max,’ Naldo barked. ‘I’m only doing my duty. Only obeying orders.’

  Max shrugged, looked away and shrugged again as they led Naldo off to the waiting car.

  2

  Much as Naldo had expected, the vultures were gathered in Maitland-Wood’s office. Tubby Fincher was there, and a sleek, trendy young man he recognized from the department they jokingly called Legal and General. The lawyer had the nerve to give Naldo a winning smile, which was more than anyone else was inclined to do. The young man was called Lofthouse, Naldo remembered.

  Maitland-Wood wore his hanging judge look, and Tubby merely appeared to be embarrassed, like a young relative suddenly involved in an unnecessary and violent squabble between an uncle and aunt.

  ‘Well, well, well. So the ingrate wanderer returns.’ BMW threw his hand, dramatically towards the same chair that Naldo had occupied earlier in the day. ‘I trust, young Railton, that you have an explanation tha
t will hold water.’

  Naldo was not going to play those kind of games. ‘And I trust you have a similar explanation, Mr Maitland-Wood, sir.

  ‘Don’t be flippant. I want to know why you were in that house, how you obtained a second set of keys, and what you tampered with?’

  Max whispered something to Fincher, then disappeared. ‘He carried nothing from the house,’ Fincher said for BMW’s benefit.

  ‘Where did you get the keys? Why did you enter that house?’ Maitland-Wood repeated.

  Naldo smiled at him, knowing the smile was a smirk and would infuriate BMW even more. ‘You know any reason why I should answer that?’ He continued to smirk.

  ‘By God, I’ll see you out of the service, Railton. Just as we will get to the bottom of this, and probably hang out your Uncle Caspar’s ghost where the press and scum can destroy and exorcise it once and for all.’

  The smirk left Naldo’s lips. ‘If you’d care to come into some public place and say that to me in front of disinterested witnesses, I’ll sue you blind, Maitland-Wood. I don’t care a tinker’s fuck —’

  ‘Watch your language,’ BMW snapped, starting to go crimson.

  Naldo gave a short, derisory snort. ‘Then watch your words, sir, or I’ll have you for breakfast.’

  A vein stood out, throbbing on Maitland-Wood’s temple, and his cheeks blushed scarlet. At last he took two deep breaths. When he spoke it was with an unfamiliar soft and calm voice, which made him sound even more sinister.

  ‘Donald Railton,’ he almost whispered. ‘You kindly got Lady Phoebe to let me have the keys for the Eccleston Square house, your late Uncle Caspar’s property. I understood that you had also approached your cousins, Alexander and Andrew, who were willing to extend permission for us to perform a search on the Eccleston Square property. It was arranged that we would do that, accompanied by yourself, in a family watchdog capacity, at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. I was concerned about you. Truly concerned. Naldo, I understand how even the thought of Caspar’s life being investigated must alarm and hurt you.’ He could not know, only guess, how much more alarmed Naldo had become since BMW had adopted the soft, sympathetic, approach.