The Secret Families

by John Gardner

  Finally he cautioned her. ‘If this man telephones you again, or tries to see you, I suggest you get in touch with someone here. Preferably me, but I’m elusive. Tubby Fincher’d be your best bet. But it’s essential that you don’t stay alone with him again.’

  ‘Oh, my God. Is it …? I haven’t done something that would really harm Nald, have I?’

  ‘Let’s hope not,’ he murmured, then aloud, ‘No. No, that’s not it at all.’ Liar, he thought inside his head. It was unusual, but there were times when the Ks were plain bloody stupid. They had run three men called Philip Hornby in England. Not concurrently, of course, but they had allowed the Hornby legend, as they called a deep, long-term cover, to be run by three completely different people, all of them doing the same job.

  Whatever man was called Philip Hornby was answerable to the Ks. They used him as what they termed a raven. Ravens were the reverse of swallows. Ravens were seduction agents. Trained to it. They were usually put in to compromise mousy little women, often with heavy obligations to a parent, and always in sensitive jobs. Ravens would move in and flatter, adopt the same musical, literary, or political standpoint as the target. Immediately there would be a bond. They would become friends, then lovers. Gus had known ravens who had been run with the same little secretary or filing clerk over five or six years. In the end there would always be a burn. The girl would steal ‘insignificant’ documents or facts from the office — ‘To help us. So that my business will expand, and I’ll have enough money to make certain your mother/father/uncle/aunt/crippled brother can be looked after. So that we’re free to marry.’

  It was all standard practice in what the wits called sexpionage, and it was tried and tested. Usually 100 per cent successful. Why Barbara Railton, he wondered. Compromise? To use as a lever against Naldo?

  He knew of the Railtons’ passion for Shakespeare. It was a legend in the trade. Now, Gus Keene thought of Hamlet and his mother, Gertrude. ‘Look upon this picture; and on this.’ Or would it be ‘Listen to this song, Naldo’ —

  O mistress mine! where are you roaming?

  O! stay and hear; your true love’s coming,

  That can sing both high and low.

  Trip no further, pretty sweeting;

  Journeys end in lovers meeting,

  Every wise man’s son doth know.

  They left it there for the day. Keene asked a few more innocuous questions to calm her, then rang for the nanny. They took her home in the same car, and Gus Keene sought out the two young members of his team. He would share his news with them before talking to Maitland-Wood. In fact he felt it was his duty to share it with anyone other than Maitland-Wood. Yet he was concerned about Barbara Railton. If they were using some explicit pictures of Barbara, probably without identifying the man, to lever Naldo; or even tapes of the act, with Barbara’s voice filtered up so that it could be heard clearly, then the woman was not safe. She really needed a twenty-four-hour minder. Preferably a pair of them. With a dog.

  When Barbara reached home, she was seen to the door by the nanny, then left. Hardly had she taken off her coat when the telephone rang. In some ways it was the kind of thing Gus Keene was dreading most.

  3

  Between them, Arnold, Naldo and Caspar, together with many others, had trained Big Herbie Kruger well, though it was often argued that Herbie was born to the trade and needed no training in the secret black arts. As he himself would say, ‘Nobody tell me nothing to begin with. In the beginning was me, Herb. They turn over a stone and there I am, all ready, full of suspicion, wise of the streets, and brimming over with the tradecrafting like overfilled beer stein.’

  When they had said he should operate between Bonn and London, they advised him, ‘Only come to the shop when you’re told to, Herb. Otherwise, just stay in the Annexe. Safer that way. Right?’

  ‘Right,’ said Herb, looking puzzled. ‘What is Annexe?’

  It was a good question. The Annexe is not easy to find, being halfway up a narrow, unmarked cul-de-sac which runs off Whitehall, heading in the direction of the Victoria Embankment. Annexe is, in truth, too grand a word for the place. The street door is unmarked.

  Immediately inside the front entrance, to the right, lies a small office, complete with desk, four chairs and three telephones. An automatic switchboard sits on the desk, and the room is used by a junior, during the times they let Big Herb work with a junior.

  Behind the ante-room is the main office. This has space for only one desk, one chair and a filing cabinet. The room beyond is a small bedroom, with a bed permanently made up, a tiny bedside table and a wall clock. There are also things like an electric kettle and a tray with teapot, cups etc. A sink is hidden by a curtain in the bedroom. When there was a junior, he was allowed into the bedroom to make tea or coffee.

  When Big Herbie Kruger first set eyes on this dingy suite of offices he stood in the main area remarking that there was no room to — his words — ‘sling a dog’. Once alone in the place he checked the three telephones. They all ran through the switchboard and, he reasoned, would undoubtedly be insecure. Most of the firm’s telephones were linked to recording devices.

  On his second day, Herbie went and talked to a girl he knew in security. ‘On the quiet, if you see my meaning, Josephine,’ he growled, doing his lovable cuddly bear act. ‘I need fumigating, regular. The place is beyond repair. Anyone in the know could have it spiked, ten minutes maximum.’ He meant, of course, that Josephine should see to it that the Annexe was regularly swept for eavesdropping devices, spike microphones in the walls and other irregular hardware of that ilk.

  Josephine, a big-chested, bubbling girl who liked Herbie enough to give him what he called ‘a little slapping and tickling on the side’, was eager to oblige. On all counts. It turned out that, while the telephones were certainly linked to the authorized machines at the shop, the remainder of the place was clean as a police whistle.

  On his next trip into London from Bonn, Herbie telephoned a man whom he knew from drinking in his local pub in St John’s Wood, and asked him out for a lunchtime beer. In fact, this meant several beers. The man had absolutely no connection with either the firm or their brethren of Five. Herbie had checked thoroughly. He knew the man only as Eric. Though again, using the many deceptive arts he had learned, Herbie was in possession of Eric’s full name and his family history. Eric worked for what was then known as the GPO, and the GPO were the people you saw if you wanted a telephone installed, something that could still take a long time in central London in the 1960s. Certain facts of life never change.

  ‘I pay the bills and everything, regular as inside the clock, Eric,’ Herb said. ‘But I need the bloody thing last month. All my office phones are monitored so we can’t make calls outside in work time.’

  Eric now learned that his large friend had a lady, and the lady had a husband. It was necessary for Herb to have a private telephone, installed with great discretion, and operating on an ex-directory number. Herb had gilded the story. His lady friend worked for the same company as himself.

  ‘Say no more, squire,’ Eric told him. ‘Leave it to me. Do the job myself.’ And true to his word, Eric turned up one morning, before, to use his somewhat crude words, ‘sparrow-fart’. He had a new telephone installed, with an ex-directory number, billed to Herb’s home address in St John’s Wood. All kosher, except that the firm had no idea. A telephone that does not exist, except as one that shows as ex-directory in St John’s Wood, cannot be bugged. This was the telephone Big Herbie had used to ring Naldo at the Villa Carlo, and it was this number that he gave for emergency use to Naldo.

  Later in the day of that early morning call from Herbie, the same telephone rang, connecting Herbie with Naldo Railton who lay on the bed of his pleasant hotel room at the Grand Hotel Victoria-Jungfrau, Interlaken, Switzerland.

  From the moment Naldo saw the photograph of his wife, with the message requesting his presence in Thun the day after tomorrow, he knew that both Gloria and himself were under surveilla
nce. He was also concerned because the photograph endangered his wife’s life. He was under threat, supposedly from Arnie, or friends of Arnie’s, because they had that picture. The everyday, normal man in the street would find it hard to believe that people could take a picture of his wife, clad only in silk underwear of dubious taste. In Naldo’s world it was not unheard of, and it bore a message. Do as you’re told or something much worse than a rather sexy picture will this way come.

  After Herb’s telephone call, which brought with it a line of communication, Naldo Railton felt a little happier. Not a lot, but he knew what had to be done. He woke Gloria, told her the bare minimum and instructed her to get her things together in short order.

  In turn, he repacked his canvas bag, now containing not only Caspar’s papers, but also the entire contribution of the necessary sections of Hypermarket, courtesy Eberhardt Lukas Kruger, which he had developed and printed the previous day.

  Together, Naldo and Gloria locked up the villa, set the alarms and left town on the first bus available to take them to Locarno. From there they took a train to Lugano. Before lunch-time they had registered as M. & Mme Provin. It was only necessary for Naldo to show his French passport at the desk of the Splendide Royale, Lugano’s de luxe caravanserai. By now he knew the name would be on some list which would ring bells in quiet Swiss police stations, but he did not intend to stay in any hotel for long. Naldo himself was at the Splendide Royale for the best part of fifteen minutes, leaving by one of the trade entrances and heading for the station to catch the first train to Bellinzona which, by luck and no planning, carried him on to Andermatt where he had half an hour’s wait before catching a direct fast train to Interlaken.

  He had spotted two of the surveillance team on the way to Lugano. After that, nothing. He had no worries about Gloria, who was very wise to the ways of Naldo’s and her husband’s professions. She would keep to the room at the hotel, feigning that her ‘husband’ was in the bathroom when room service brought meals. It meant the surveillance team could be bewitched for twenty-four hours.

  Naldo had chosen Interlaken because it would take him less than an hour by train to get to Thun. The trains to Thun were frequent. He had no option but to keep the appointment, but he would not take either Caspar’s papers or the Hypermarket documents with him. They would have to be mailed to somewhere safe. In the meantime he would go through them in detail, in order to be prepared for anything that might follow. But first he had to make sure that Barbara and the two children were taken to safety and there was only one way to do that.

  On the fifth ring Herbie’s private, and unknown, telephone was picked up. Herbie grunted at the distant end. ‘Herb?’

  ‘Thank God. Nald, I waited for a call. I fell into real tiger trap. Stupid. You OK?’

  ‘Yes. At the moment.’ He then went through the action he was forced to take the following day: the meeting in Thun.

  ‘You want me come out? You want help? I come, wherever you are, Nald. I come so fast feet do not touch the ground.’

  ‘It’s better you help from where you are.’ He gave Herbie rapid instructions which included the code word he would use to Barbara meaning he was well, and that she must do as she was told without question.

  Herbie would have to shift gears and do some very fancy footwork. Naldo wanted Barbara and the children protected. To be hidden in plain sight, where nobody would even think of looking for them. Nobody must be alerted.

  ‘I do it all, Nald. I get on it now. Then I call back … where?’

  Naldo gave him the hotel and room number. ‘Any problems, ask for Mr Provin,’ he said.

  ‘Leave to me. I fix. I’m good fixer, Nald, you know that.’

  ‘You’d better be, you fat idiot.’

  ‘Inside every fat idiot is thin idiot trying to get out.’ Herbie closed the line before Naldo could say more.

  Praying all would run smoothly, he went back to Caspar’s diary which he had spread out on the bed. He found it very hard to concentrate, one ear cocked for the telephone and Herbie’s answering OK which would mean Barbara, Arthur and Emma were safely stowed away.

  He waited five hours.

  ELEVEN

  1

  It had been just after the war, sitting one night in some safe house outside Frankfurt, that the now dead Caspar Railton had given Herbie Kruger, then a lad in his teens, advice that the large German was never to forget.

  ‘If you get on in this business,’ Caspar said, ‘there’s a golden rule. Gather around you people you can trust, but who aren’t in the trade itself. You need good drivers, electricians, plumbers, people with skills. Make sure they’re honest, and be certain they’re not booby-trapped.’

  ‘What is booby-trapped?’ Herbie remembered asking. He smiled now as he thought of it. Caspar had gone on to explain that, in the trade, you soon got a nose for the right kind of outsiders. ‘You have to pull them at home and in the field. They’re especially useful at home, where the shop doesn’t know about them. Appeal to their instincts of loyalty. Tell them you might want to use them for a special job one day. Make them believe that what you ask them to do is for their country, whatever their country is, and that only they can do it.’

  This had been advice which Big Herbie had followed down the years, as a monk will follow a pattern of religious meditation.

  By now, Herbie had a whole private and personal team upon whom he could rely. Each one was hand picked. They would ask no questions, and expect no wages. Eric, the telephone engineer, was one of them though Herbie did not have to work on his personal love of country. Eric was a bit of a rogue, acquainted with people who would do him over if he stepped out of line, so he kept his mouth shut on every subject under the sun.

  Using the telephone that Eric had installed for him, Herbie now made contact with another private recruit. This man loved driving, was good at it and remained silent on matters conveyed to him by Herbie. He could also be trusted to carry out instructions to the letter. He was called Tim Matyear — of Huguenot stock, as his name indicated. A tall, muscular man in his early forties, Matyear, because of certain family matters in past history, would rather die than fail his country. An admirable trait when one considered that both the work ethic and true chauvinism were now both condemned as unfashionable.

  ‘You just caught me, Noddy,’ Tim said when he answered the call. He knew Kruger only as Noddy. ‘I was going up west with the wife. Going to see what the bright lights are like, you know how women get at Christmas, thought I’d give her a treat. Regent Street looks a picture with all those angels.’

  ‘Sorry, Tim, your country is calling. I have work for you.’

  There was a long silence at the distant end. Then —

  ‘I can take the wife tomorrow, don’t worry about it.’

  With great care, Herbie explained exactly what Tim had to do, from the telephone call he was to make, to arrangements for picking up his passengers.

  It was Tim at the other end of the line when Barbara answered the ringing phone, as she returned to the house near Kensington Gardens after her session with Gus Keene.

  ‘Mrs Railton?’ Tim asked.

  ‘Yes.’ She was flurried and out of breath.

  ‘My name’s Pegler, I’ve just got back to my office. I gather you need a car in the morning. For your children, it says here. Ten o’clock to take them to, I can’t read my wife’s writing, is it Haversage or Maversage, not sure which, or where it is. Have I got it right?’

  The trigger words clicked into place in Barbara’s mind. ‘Pegler’; ‘can’t read my wife’s writing’; ‘Maversage’.

  These, plus the ‘ten o’clock’ added up to ‘Be ready in an hour, with your whole family. A car will pick you up.’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered, suddenly going very calm. It was as though Naldo was speaking to her. ‘Yes, ten tomorrow morning. Just my children. It’s Haversage. Redhill Manor. They’ll point the way when you get there. We’re going for Christmas, only it looks as though I shall have to
follow on. I’ve still got business in London.’

  ‘Right, madam.’ Tim was a natural for the job. ‘If they’re there, with their luggage, I’ll be with you on the dot of ten in the morning.’

  ‘Thank you very much. I’m most obliged. I’ll see they’re ready.’ She hoped to heaven that Arthur and Emma were at home, and not rocking around swinging London tonight. With relief, Barbara heard them coming down the stairs. She recradled the telephone and turned to face them, finding that she was automatically asking Naldo’s usual questions — ‘No odd messages? Nobody been in? Telephones? Gas Board? Electricity meter reader?’

  ‘No calls. No visitors. What’s up, Ma?’ For a second, in the hall light, Arthur looked like Naldo when she had first met him.

  ‘It’s family business,’ she said calmly. Emma was on the landing behind Arthur. ‘Pack some warm clothes. Essentials only …’

  ‘Aren’t we going to Redhill? I thought —’ Arthur began.

  ‘No questions, please, chickens.’ She had not called them chickens since they were very small and they reacted to it, knowing instinctively that something was wrong.

  ‘Where’re we going?’ Emma asked. There was a hint of accusation in her voice.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘I do not know! But it’s on your father’s instructions. You’d better be clear that there’s some danger. I’ve no idea what, but just get ready, and prepare for possible unpleasantness.’

  ‘Dad’s not like that bastard Philby, is he, Ma?’

  ‘Watch your language, Emma. Certainly not. How could you think of such a thing?’

  The listeners, who had been on twenty-four-hour watch since Naldo had disappeared, noted the telephone call, passing the information to the supervising officer, who, in turn, sent it up to the fifth floor.