by John Gardner
It is quite right that we should do this, but not at the cost of action against the Soviet target. C and his cohorts see the Communist Party of Great Britain as the only threat and are happy to leave them to Five. Our own people are gradually being withdrawn from their areas of influence. I think the policy is appalling. The Foreign Office are said to be certain of some non-aggression pact with that peasant madman Stalin. I am not so sure. True, Stalin will sign a pact with either ourselves or the Nazis. It will, though, be signed for one reason only: so that Russia has a little more time to prepare herself for what, inevitably, must come: a clash between the USSR and the Nazi forces of darkness.
I have no doubt that, before this decade is out, we shall see Europe in flames again and I could weep when I think of the slaughter. The situation in Spain daily grows worse, and it may be that the first shots of a new war will start there with the cut-and-dried issue of Fascism versus Communism, or something similar. In the meantime it is folly to use all our resources on Hitler and his gang. They will be the first cause, but the last must be Communism, and Stalin’s brand appears to be the worst possible, most barbarous, way. If I am not allowed to fight Stalinism from within the service, the best I can do is go out and fight it for myself. In the end I shall, if lucky, return with the hard information concerning Stalin’s aims and intelligence plans.
It is only a month since I met the man who calls himself Redruth. He is so damned obvious in his approach, and it did not take many minutes to realize that he was testing the water. Three weeks ago I let him believe that I was interested, by making one or two vaguely disparaging remarks about the service and the weakness of our country’s liberal democracy. He has bitten, and told me he will be in Paris for the rest of this month.
When I went into the shop this morning, I was very much in two minds about the whole business. It is impossible to talk with C and some of those around him. If I shared my plans with any of them I would be turned down flat. The Soviet target is to be left to Five. In the middle of the Tuesday meeting a sudden chance came my way and I was able to cause an almighty eruption which led to a straight battle of bitter words between C and myself, in front of everyone. This will be my only chance, and it appeared to be God-sent. I blustered out, wrote a letter of resignation and cleared my desk.
Now the plans of the past year can be put on my own operational footing. I am free of the service, yet I serve it still and, what is best, I shall serve my country more loyally than ever.
C tried to make amends, but it was a half-hearted affair. He sent that ignorant little ass Maitland-Wood, hardly out of nappies, to plead his case. I sent him packing and then told old Phoeb I had resigned. She is bewildered, but will see the point in due course. I have told her I must get away to rest for a while. Tomorrow I shall seek out Redruth in Paris. At least we have his real name on file, and I have made certain that Five know exactly who he is, though I am loath to name him even in this true representation of my actions. Maybe, as time passes, the moment will come.
Wednesday 6 August 1935.
I am having second thoughts. This account is being written after my return from the Paris trip, though I shall try to set things out on the days they occurred. Today I flew from Croydon, hating every minute of it. I just cannot understand how Dick and James enjoy the business. The Imperial Airways De Havilland aeroplane was well appointed but noisy. I booked into this really terrible hotel near the Opéra. It seemed best to stay away from my old haunts, though I took a walk around and was accosted seven times in broad daylight. Some of the women are attractive, though I wonder how they would take to my false limbs. I laughed aloud when I thought of a mild joke. I could hear one of the tarts in some bedroom saying to me, ‘Just unscrew it and throw it over here, chéri, and I’ll take care of it.’
At about six o’clock I telephoned the number Comrade Redruth had given me. He sounded overjoyed, and there was absolutely no element of secrecy or tradecraft. He gave me the name of a café and we met there shortly after seven. Almost immediately I realized that I have few qualities required of a field agent. I do not lie easily. The fellow went on and on about Stalin and the wonderful things the bastard is doing for Soviet Russia. He maintains that Communism requires a strong hand at the helm. ‘Comrade Marshal Stalin is our strong right arm, not just a hand,’ he said. It sickened me, knowing what I do about the camps, and the terrible slaughter which seems to go on daily at this man’s whim. The fool will denude his army of leaders and his rule appears to be designed to cut away any decent Communist with true ideals. Stalin is after a puppet state, like Hitler. Of course I had a lot of the old line thrown at me. ‘The only way we can curb the menace of the Nazi Party is by joining forces and turning all Europe against this Fascist horror,’ Redruth said. All I could do was agree.
Then, with no further preamble, he came straight out with it. ‘Are you prepared to help us in the struggle?’
I had to say, ‘Of course, but how can I help?’ It stuck in my craw, for I knew this man was, in reality, asking me to join in the Stalinist struggle. He said I would be a great assistance, being already a powerful member of the British Secret Intelligence Service. His face was a picture when I told him I had resigned. He said we must talk in more privacy, and gave me an address. I was to follow him, leaving it for ten minutes after he made his own exit.
At the house, which was one known to our Embassy people last year, a second man was waiting. I recognized him instantly as Pierre Dubois, of the French Embassy in London. ‘Well, Caspar,’ he greeted me. ‘Never did I expect to meet you under these circumstances.’ I managed to joke about it, though it was soon obvious that I was undergoing a test. Both men agreed that I could still be of assistance to them. Dubois even suggested that I swallow my pride and return to the service. As this is my intention in any case, I told them I would have to consider it. They then asked many questions, mainly foolish little things that could be easily checked. I used common sense and told the truth. They asked mainly about the organization of the SIS. Names and so forth. Also names of our officers in embassies, working as passport and visa secretaries. There was little point in holding back. They almost certainly had the information already. In the end, they said I would know more by Friday. I wait with some anticipation, for, if I am accepted, there is a strong possibility that, sooner or later, I shall get my hands on the intelligence I seek. (a) Stalin’s blueprint for Europe. He certainly has one. For all the reign of terror and denunciations, the man is mad with power, and the very fact that the Comintern exists at all is a sign that he is working towards a Europe, possibly a world, dominated by Communism. I wonder if it would be his brand, or the real thing. Both are bad. His is the worse of two evils. (b) Discover unknown agents at work in Britain. I have no doubt there are many.
Naldo read quickly, and with immense interest. The diversity between the two documents was fascinating, the first giving a picture of Caspar as a completely dedicated agent for the Communist cause; the second showing the truth of what he was doing. If anyone took the first, fictional, diary seriously then there was indeed tragedy ahead for both Caspar’s memory and the Railton and Farthing futures.
During that very first week in 1935 Caspar Railton was recruited as an agent of the NKVD as it then was. In the record of truth, he continued to set out his real aims, while in the fictional Diary One, Caspar made clear every move. He carefully dovetailed both accounts. Should anyone ever wish to check his movements they would never find a deviation. His forays into Europe were always taken as short breaks. Sometimes Phoebe accompanied him, and there was no doubt that, mixed up with a whole lot of chickenfeed, Caspar had been forced to provide certain facts. He was careful to record each item he passed on: usually names of agents the firm already considered to be compromised; the many doubtful people who had insinuated themselves into the networks of the SIS across Europe. Often he tested the Bolsheviks by providing names of those who were thought to be working both sides of the street; or those considered to be borderli
ne cases. The firm would know, sooner or later, who was real and who false.
It was also clear that the Russians had, long ago, divined that British embassy passport and visa control officers were, in reality, SIS people. Caspar saw no reason to muddy the water on this point, and confirmed several names. He also gave them the true information that the Russian target had been down-graded. He made no mention of Five’s renewed efforts to penetrate the CPGB and the Comintern.
In the fiction he was utterly dedicated, not to Communism in the mould of Lenin or Marx, but in the hideous bloodletting of Stalin’s society, with its purges, show trials and ensuing barbarism. In the diary of fact he showed just how difficult it was for him to retain the fiction.
In many ways the fictional diary should have spelled out the truth, for he was very careful not to take geographic risks. His business with the controller allotted to him was carried out either in England, France or Switzerland. He made no move to cross into Russian territory, though on several occasions they tried to tempt him. By the end of 1935 he was fully operational, with the cryptonym Dionysus. The crypto which stuck across the years. In fact it became even more clear, as time went by, why both Penkovsky and, later, on Kremlin instructions, Blunt had fingered Caspar. By the early spring of 1938 Caspar had the relevant information he had set out to gather. Soon after his return to the service he went cold on his controller, who was quickly arrested and expelled from the country. Within three years of war, the NKVD must have suspected, if not actually known, that they had harboured a double.
Why, then, Naldo asked himself, did they not simply liquidate Caspar? Many traitors to the Stalinist, and later other would-be Soviet dictators’ causes, were simply executed. The NKVD had a special squad whose duty was to carry out these ‘executions’, going to the ends of the earth. This was the elite unit originally known as Smersh — Smert Shpionam, or Death to Spies, made into popular fiction by Ian Fleming, some of whose James Bond books Naldo had read with amusement, particularly for their high content of ‘in’ jokes. The unit was far from amusing though, operating under that particular name between 1943 and 1946. Its name had altered over the years, but it still existed as a special core of men and women whose job it was to carry out what came to be known by the KGB as wet affairs, operations associated with the spilling of blood. One of their first assignments had been in the field, murdering huge numbers of Russian people who had been overrun by the German Army. It was enough for these poor people to have been forced to live, cheek by jowl, with their brutal enemy for Smersh to execute them as traitors.
It was soon quite clear why Caspar had not paid an early price for his treachery to Russia. The men who had recruited him managed to keep his true identity a deep secret, so deep that, when they finally discovered the truth, they were too busy hiding it for the sake of their own skins to be bothered with denouncing Caspar. In the thirty months or so that Caspar worked under cover in Europe, he came into contact with many names that were to become both famous and infamous in the annals of the SIS, during and after the Second World War.
In particular he was constantly in contact with a Russian legend: Spatukin, the man who at long range controlled the bulk of the KGB’s planted penetration agents. During the late 1930s, when they first made contact, Spatukin, if that was his real name, was only in his late twenties, a boy wonder of counter-intelligence work. Caspar wrote of him:
He is of medium height and looks more American than Russian. The rumour is that he is the son of an illicit relationship between a White Russian princess and an American businessman. Whatever the truth, he has sharp features which do not appear Slavic in any way. His hair is dark, yet the complexion is clear and pink, very healthy-looking with black eyes. He speaks English, French and German as fluently as his native Russian, but I feel uncomfortable in his presence. He can, like all good agents, sit very still, not moving a muscle for long periods. He can also hold his tongue, a trick we have all learned, for it makes others imagine they must fill the silence with their words. The dark eyes can become disconcerting. I personally feel that when he is looking at me he does not trust me. He boasts that no photograph of him exists so all I can do is try to describe the features. As I have noted, his nose and chin are sharp, pointed, the chin with a small scar where he once put his teeth through the fleshy part below his lower lip. Dark eyes, as I have said; very still. They flick towards someone who speaks and remind me more of a snake’s tongue than eyes. I notice a tendency for him to turn his eyes onto a person without moving his head. His hands are also worth noticing. Long, with square palms, elegant fingers, the nails trimmed very close. Rarely does he use his hands to make gestures, and there is a minute scar, about an eighth of an inch across, on the back of his right hand, just below the middle finger. In normal conversation his voice is soft, pleasant, even musical with almost a lilt to it, even when speaking in his own tongue or German, not the two most musical of spoken languages. Some of this might stem from the fact that he is an intelligent music lover, particularly partial to the music of his own land, with a great interest in new composers emerging from the revolution. Spatukin is most dangerous, a young man, younger than I, and already blessed with power. He still has a long way to go, and blessed with an ambition which he will never allow to carry him into excesses that might leave him unprotected among the old guard, or those who influence Stalin.
In March 1938, Caspar wrote in the factual diary — Diary Two:
Monday 7 March 1938.
So there we have it at last, the full aims of Soviet Russia. At this moment they are, as I always thought, playing for time. I know they bargain with the Foreign Office on one hand, and with von Ribbentrop in Berlin on the other. As I have maintained over the years, whoever becomes their ally will be used so that they have the chance to prepare for what must come. At the meeting with Redruth, Spatukin, and the Soviet General Bulanov, Deputy Chairman of NKVD, last week, everything was made clear. Bulanov cannot last long. Uncharacteristically, he talks far too much. He claims to have Stalin’s ear, and there is little doubt that the man is a go-between, carrying the Marshal’s instructions to the NKVD chairman, Yezhov, whose days are also numbered. If I am to believe all Bulanov says, Stalin’s Communist ideal is a complete undermining of the Western liberal democracies by active stealth. When the war with Germany comes, which it is bound to, sooner rather than later, the fact remains that many Soviet activists are already in place. I have picked up several pointers. There is at least one in the SIS. There are several in the diplomatic service, and within the Foreign Office. Redruth and Bulanov boast about people with cryptonyms like Elli and Homer, Basil and Timon. They know details of my old service, and of Five, down to minutiae such as that Five’s telegraphic London address is Snuffbox. They are aware of so many things I have never given to them, that there can be no doubt of treachery on a Tudor scale.
The Russian service is playing to win, and while we neglected to watch, and keep ourselves posted of the movements of activists, they were already doing their work, recruiting and burrowing. From what I have learned, I believe the establishment of Great Britain and its empire is riddled with a thousand cancers, men and women whose allegiance is neither to Britain nor the Soviet Union, but to the evil that is Joseph Stalin. When he finally goes, they will side with whatever brand of this powerfully emotive political ideal appeals to them.
It is true to say that Britain is lost, and probably the rest of Europe. Maybe not in our lifetime, but certainly, I would say, by the end of this millennium. The strength of the Soviet Union lies in its capability of taking punishment. A thousand strong men can die, but there are another thousand waiting to rise up in their places. It is the same with the penetration agents with which they have infected political parties, government, civil service, trade unions, the intelligence and security services, the military and police forces. We might well catch a few, but there are dozens more to take their place, and, within a decade or so, others will have been converted. I have no doubt that the
same is true in the United States of America. Some, I am certain, are very young. Others older, but certainly not wiser.
All the information I have gleaned will be set before C for instant action. I trust he will go directly to the Prime Minister who will pass it on to the President of the United States. Nobody has time on their side any more.
Would that it had been that simple. It became all too obvious, once Caspar had returned to the fold and rejoined the SIS, that C, and those at the top, were much more concerned about the events taking place in Germany than any stories, however devastating, that Caspar brought back to them as hard intelligence. In his notes, Caspar Railton wrote, in the summer of 1939 from his place back in the Secret Intelligence Service:
I have given up trying to push my cause. There is little point. If C and the politicos will not listen then I must try and help wherever I can. Today I have asked C if I might go out, like an Apostle of Christ, into the highways and byways of Europe and compel them to come in. He appeared to understand what I was asking; to recruit far-sighted people in France, Belgium, Holland, and other European countries, so that we might have some kind of active intelligence-cum-sabotage arm available in the heart of Europe on which we can fall back, should Hitler and his legions strike suddenly. I have left all my notes, together with names, cryptonyms, intelligence digests, information gathered, and hints for Croesus to press my case further with C and, if necessary, the Prime Minister, Lord help the poor old bugger.
As he read on, so the sun rose, and Naldo looked out of the window to see the Jungfrau swathed in mist and early snow. He was tired, like some traveller who had gone for miles. He thought of Arnold, and the meeting he must attend that day in Thun, and the lines of Robert Frost, so often quoted by Arnold that they were almost hackneyed —