by John Gardner
‘I instructed Tubby here to get some of our own watchers in. Naturally we want to keep this within the family, so to speak. The family as a whole, not merely your family. You must see that I was anxious when they told me you were in the house.’
Naldo allowed his smirk to die. Fight fire with fire. He answered in a reassuring tone. ‘You were only concerned for two reasons, Mr Maitland-Wood. First, because you do not have the correct facts. That’s my fault. I should have told you the house is, to all intents and purposes, now mine. Caspar left it to me: in his will.’
The mask slipped. ‘What?’
‘You had no idea? I’m sorry, but, yes, for some time I’ve known it’s mine. Caspar knew Phoebe didn’t want to live there without him, and, for his own reasons, he was against the property leaving the family. He wouldn’t pass it on to either of his sons. That his daughter, Hester, might want it, never crossed his mind. That’s not surprising. Since she couldn’t even be bothered to come over from the States for her father’s funeral.’
Hester, at the age of forty-four was living in Virginia with Luke Marlowe, son of one of the Farthing aunts, and a distant cousin to Arnold. The pair spent most of their time just outside Williamsburg where they sometimes ‘donned the dress’ and worked as potters in the showplace of historic Williamsburg. Hester had made it plain that she wanted nothing to do with the family trade. They would protest against anything, and the FBI had their photographs on file, taken at marches for black emancipation and the banning of nuclear weapons. During the war, Hester had served with the WRNS, but had turned into such a bubbling chatterbox that nobody dared to repeat a secret in front of her. Now, all that liveliness had gone, her heart and intelligence poured into good works and political causes about which she felt strongly. ‘Hester’s like a Catholic convert,’ old Dick would say at Redhill, laughing. ‘Her conscience doth make cowboys of us all.’
‘So the keys you used … ?’ Maitland-Wood’s quiet voice had turned throaty.
Naldo nodded. ‘Were mine, yes.’
After a long silence, Maitland-Wood asked what the other reason was. He looked troubled, as some high-powered executive will look when the signs of a wrong decision show on the balance sheet.
‘Because you’ve already had the house turned over. As it was recent, I can only presume you sent a team in very fast, as soon as you received the keys. In and out like the ferrets your people are.’
‘Someone has been in the house?’ Maitland-Wood sounded genuinely shocked.
‘You know they have, Willis. Come on. How were they to know I’d salted the place? I did it some time ago, and they’ve left trademarks all over the house. They find anything interesting?’
‘It’s preposterous.’ Still maintaining dignity.
‘If so, then you’ll have to get the SB to turn it over. You’re going to need a search warrant now. I imagine Caspar’s lawyers’ll hold you off in my name. I was trying to do the right thing. I wanted to check, to see if you’d jumped the gun.’
‘I see.’ He looked down at the marble inlay on his desk. ‘So we have to get your permission now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you find anything interesting in the house, Naldo?’
‘Not a thing —’ He was about to continue when the telephone gave a discreet buzz. Tubby Fincher reached for it, said ‘yes’ a couple of times, then, ‘I’ll ask him.’ He covered the mouthpiece with one hand, speaking low to Maitland-Wood. ‘Paul Schillig,’ he mouthed. ‘Wants a meeting urgently.’
Maitland-Wood took the phone from Fincher. ‘Yes, Paul?’ They could all hear the electronic murmur from the earpiece. ‘Well, if it’s that urgent, you’d better come straight over. No. No, I can’t oblige you. We’re in the middle of a small problem here.’ The voice at the distant end cracked again. ‘Really?’ Maitland-Wood sounded intrigued and surprised at the same time. ‘Right. Fifteen minutes.’ He put the telephone down. ‘Schillig,’ he said looking around the room. ‘He has some disturbing news of an old friend of yours, Railton. Arnold Farthing seems to have gone invisible, as they say.’
Naldo tried to look suitably alarmed. Paul Schillig was the agency’s station chief in Grosvenor Square, with cover as political affairs officer. The agency, like the British SIS, had once given local embassy-based chiefs of station and their staffs cover as visa and passport control officers. Now most diplomats, and other members of intelligence organisations, knew that an American embassy political affairs officer was more often than not the local CIA resident. If hostile embassies wanted to find out who was agency material they looked at the political affairs officers, and the list of FSR officers, Foreign Service officers (reserve), and they could take their pick. CIA people never had full Foreign Service cover.
Paul Schillig was very tall. He had unfashionably short light hair, a charming deceptive smile and a manner calculated to put even the most suspicious at ease. One wag in the SIS had referred to him as ‘Paul Schillig, he who makes Steve McQueen look deformed.’ It was an accurate observation.
Naldo, together with lawyer Lofthouse, was banished to the anteroom when Schillig arrived. He came casting smiles and goodwill around him like some foreign prince. His height, just under seven feet, made everyone feel like a child in his presence.
In the anteroom, Naldo picked up the latest copy of Intelligence and National Security and half read an article on the part played by the old Hungarian branch of the KGB, the AVH, in the 1956 uprising. He read the words but took in little of the meaning.
After twenty minutes or so, the door opened and Tubby Fincher beckoned Naldo into the office. Maitland-Wood was still at his desk, looking distracted, while Paul Schillig, stretched out in one of the easy chairs, had allowed the perpetual mask of one who lived without friction to slip. A sense of worry filled the air.
‘Sit down, Naldo.’ There was neither suspicion, anger, pleasure nor pain in the way he spoke. BMW, when pressed, could be a first-rate counter-intelligence officer. The pompous bombast was simply another facet of character, used, Naldo often thought, as carefully as an actor might use false hair.
‘You’ve worked with Arnie Farthing in the past, Naldo?’ Schillig’s accent was neither mid-Atlantic nor English. It leaned towards the kind of English you heard spoken among dons and fellows in university cities, with an occasional lapse of ‘Kan’t’ instead of ‘Carn’t’.
Naldo nodded. ‘It must be on record,’ was all he said. He did not ask why the question had been put.
Silence again, then Maitland-Wood turned to Schillig. ‘I think you should put Naldo in the picture. It seems we have to be nice to him if we’re going to get to the heart of another matter. Though he has to answer an avalanche of queries.’ A trace of bitterness sounded below the words, as though the subtext of his sentence was, ‘You’re not off the hook yet, Railton.’
Paul Schillig moved in his chair, turning his face towards Naldo. Fixing him with clear blue eyes deceptively lacking in guile, ‘Arnie’s adrift,’ he said, as though that told the whole story. ‘AWOL. Gone native.’
Naldo waited for the many sequels. Finally Schillig gave an encapsulated picture. ‘He was recalled to Washington. I gather Jim Angleton’s boys weren’t satisfied with some recent report. They wanted to watch his face as he talked to them.’
Again, Naldo waited.
‘He was in Berlin, as I suppose you know.’ This time, Schillig waited and got no response. ‘Well, he packed a bag. Nothing spectacular, two suits, shirts, spare shoes. And he took a briefcase. The briefcase contained, to say the least, confidential documents. An embassy driver went with him to the airport, and left him at the departures entrance. It appears he went in, but he did not check in at the PanAm desk, which means he didn’t take the flight. They were there to meet him at Dulles. Naturally, Arnie Farthing didn’t turn up.’
Thank heaven for that, Naldo thought. With luck he would be at their prescribed meeting place. If he played his cards in the right sequence, he would be with Arnie for dinner tomor
row night. As he thought about it, Naldo hardly heard Paul Schillig’s next words. Even half-heard they shook him from any complacency, and made his stomach churn. He asked Schillig to repeat what he had just said.
‘Someone using one of Arnie’s identities flew out on an Air France flight to Paris. Another of his identities went out of Paris within an hour of arrival. He took a Dutch Airlines flight to Amsterdam, and a third cover went on. We’ve had a description from four people. It was Arnie. He took an Aeroflot direct flight to Leningrad. It was unscheduled.’ He lapsed, pronouncing it ‘ skeduled’. ‘The flight should have gone direct from LHR.’ Schillig was careful to use the acronym for London Heathrow. ‘Just after the flight was airborne the captain asked permission to divert to Amsterdam, on instructions from his superiors. The bastards do it all the time, so everything adds up to Arnie doing a leap.’
‘What about Gloria and the kids?’ Instinctively, Naldo’s mind shot to the possible repercussions in Washington. By asking about Farthing’s wife and children he held off any thoughts of how he would be compromised if Arnie had, indeed, leapt across the curtain.
‘Worrying,’ Schillig gave a sigh. ‘Gloria sent the boys to her sister, Esther, a couple of days ago. We haven’t dredged up the whole route yet, but we’re pretty certain she sent them to Dulles via France. Then she took a flight to Italy. It puts her in the frame.’
‘Jesus,’ Naldo muttered, knowing he had to tread as delicately as a man walking on thawing ice. He could not believe that Arnold had been turned; could not face the labyrinth of deception which might follow.
‘I don’t think he’s going to help us now,’ Schillig said.
‘Did he have much … ?’ Naldo started to ask.
Schillig frowned, then said, ‘As Chief of Berlin Station he had the lot. Names; cryptos; CI Ops; CE Ops; what we knew; what we didn’t know; who’d been doubled; names of targets. Damage assessment’ll go on for months. We’re going to have to break camp in Berlin …’
‘If it’s true.’ Naldo was surprised at his own positive manner.
‘Meaning you know something we don’t?’ Maitland-Wood asked.
‘No, but meaning that I wouldn’t blow Berlin until there’ve been talks with Jim Angleton.’
‘Why do you say that?’ For the first time, Paul Schillig looked really suspicious. He also fired the question fast, from the lip.
‘Because Arnold was — is — a pro. He’s under Angleton’s discipline. Just as I suspect you are, Paul.’
Schillig unwound his long body. ‘I was authorized to pass on the information. Langley said you people have need-to-know.’
Naldo thought, I bet they did. ‘And are you going to break camp?’ he asked, looking up at the tall American.
‘If orders come through, then the Berlin boys’ll do all that.’
‘Hang on.’ Naldo also rose. ‘Mother’s fed you this story. You got any collateral? Any real evidence apart from a lengthy coded signal?’
‘That’s real enough.’
‘No, it’s a signal. Don’t tell me signals never lie, Paul, because we all know they do. You received a signal in high-class cipher, your eyes only, I presume.’
‘Naturally.’ The American sounded gritty.
‘It gave you some bare facts, which you cannot check, right?’
‘It gave me facts. I believe signals like that when they come out of Langley. It was high-priority stuff.’
‘And we all know Langley, Paul. They can be as devious as the Ks at times.’
‘Watch your mouth.’ Schillig took one step towards aggressiveness.
‘No, I’m just giving you an alternative, Paul. The signal gave you information — for you, and you alone, OK?’
No response.
‘Information for Station Chief, London, right?’
Schillig gave a little nod.
‘And it also said, pass all this on to the Brits, while you’re at it? Just like that? Eyes Only, but let the Brits have it as well? And we all know what you think of our service. You think we dribble like a tap that needs a new washer. Seriously, Paul, don’t you think that a signal as rich and as full of anxiety as this one would instruct you to cover your mouth with sticking plaster?’
‘I only know what I know. The signal authorized me to pass it to C.’
‘So you passed it to his deputy, the ADC and one controller who, if I read Mr Maitland-Wood correctly, is not really to be trusted. Why did you guys want me to hear this anyway?’
‘We thought, Naldo,’ BMW at his most pompous, ‘we thought you might be able to throw some light on Arnold. You’re very close.’
‘We were very close. Worked together; played together at one time. We’re related by marriage. That’s all. I’d like it put on record that I for one do not believe Arnie Farthing’s sold out, gone over or slipped through the curtain. I believe this entire thing from Langley is part of an elaborate operation. What’s more, I want nothing to do with it.’ He sounded very convincing. In his head and heart he was as sick as a cat.
Schillig left shortly after Naldo’s final outburst, and it was Tubby who escorted him to the door. When Fincher returned he was carrying a flagged buff folder. Maitland-Wood took it from him and began to browse through the file within. Finally he looked up at Naldo. ‘I suppose I should really keep you here all night,’ he said. ‘But I’m inclined to think you won’t do anything stupid.’
‘Thank you for your confidence.’ Naldo lit a cigarette and blew smoke towards BMW.
‘I see here that you have four current identities running excluding your real one.’
Naldo thought for a moment, holding one hand up and counting on his fingers. ‘You’ve got a good filing system. Yes, four and my own. Correct.’
‘Those identities are withdrawn as from now. You’ll tell Tubby here exactly where the idents can be located. He will then come with you and bring each one back here. I presume your own papers are at your home?’
‘Correct, plus one of the identities.’
‘Max will go with you both. If you had any thoughts of, perhaps, following, or even trying to find, your friend Arnold, that will discourage you. Tubby and Max’ll leave you at home once the idents have been collected. We’ll send a car for you at 7.30, and do the Eccleston Square house. That all right by you, Naldo?’
‘Perfectly.’ Naldo smiled broadly. ‘I’m not going to run anywhere, Willis. There’s too much to be done here.’ In the back of his mind he thought of the fifth identity which nobody knew about, kept against a sea of trouble such as this.
‘Shall we go, Tub?’ he asked, wanting to move. What he had in mind would keep him very busy if he was going to put a lot of miles between himself and London before the car arrived at 7.30 in the morning.
EIGHT
1
‘I’d rather be waiting till after dusk, if that’d be all the same to you m’dear.’ The man was big and seemingly ageless, with a great barrel chest, broad shoulders, thick muscular arms and massive hands. His face was weathered by wind and sea spray, hair grey and cut short, almost to the scalp. He wore jeans tucked into high boots and a roll-necked woollen jersey that had once been navy blue. His name was Barzillai Beckeleg and he lived in a small, remote cottage, hard by the sea between the Lizard Point and St Keverne on the south Cornish coast. Nowadays he made a living from his lobster pots, and a daily boat hire, or pleasure trips, in the summer, with one or two devious bits of sailing thrown in. He owned two boats: one a small smack which he used for the lobsters and fishing; the other a converted German E-boat which he had bought for a song in 1946, refitted, painted eggshell blue and registered as Overlord. It was this latter boat he used for the hiring, day trips, and the nefarious business on the side.
Naldo had known him during the war. Beckeleg had often worked with the Special Operations Executive and SIS people, taking agents from the Helford River and ferrying them to the coast of Brittany. Dear dead Caspar had been full of stories about the man, though he never repeated his true name
.
‘If us was to leave now,’ Beckeleg said, ‘We’d be caught in the open sea in daylight, and them customs and coastguard bastards’re worse than the bloody Jerries these days.’ He gave Naldo a heavy wink. ‘You’m gonna be all right yere. Safe enough in my little cottage, Mr Provin. I be goin’ to Truro anyhow, this morning. Be back late afternoon though, and you’m not be havin’ to worry ’bout me. I bent gonna tell no one you’m ’ere. Rest up, that’s my advice, m’dear. We’m gonna leave tonight. After the moon’s gone.’
Naldo really wanted to be away and in France by late that same day. He had approached Beckeleg’s cottage on foot, in the cold darkness, after a night of hide and seek during the long drive from London to this place, lying almost at the point where England was tipped suddenly into the Atlantic at Land’s End. He had watched the small white building, just above the rocks, and only approached when he saw the lights come on, and a wisp of smoke eddy and reach for the sky from its chimney. Even then, he had moved with stealth towards the door. Now it was almost seven in the morning. They would have been looking for him, he reckoned, since around midnight, maybe even before then. ‘It means you’ll be making the trip back in daylight,’ he said, still trying to seduce the wily old man.
‘Ah, let me worry ‘bout that, Mr Provin. Might even stay over in France a couple of days. There be a nice young widow woman I sometimes visit in Concarneau, which is where I be a takin’ you.’ He gave another broad wink.
Naldo laughed. ‘Still the same Barzillai,’ he said, remembering the tale of how this fisherman had stayed four days in St Malo, right under the eyes of the German garrison, waiting for an agent. It was said that Barlow, as they all called him in those days, had passed the time with a very pretty Breton girl, young enough to have been his daughter. The agent had reported that the girl wept and clung to Beckeleg on their departure.