by John Gardner
‘Oh, Andrew saw to the alarms, and locking up the place with Donald … Naldo. The keys were left with Mama.’
‘You go back into that house, Alex?’
‘When?’
‘Any time after your father’s death.’
‘No. No, I haven’t been back since he died, not to Eccleston Square.’
‘You’re absolutely certain.’
‘Positive.’
‘When were you last there, then, Alex?’
‘Eccleston Square? Easter. Last Easter. ’64.
‘Really? Then how come your fingerprints were all over the place when Mr Maitland-Wood went in the other morning?’
Willis Maitland-Wood had made a statement soon after they had taken Naldo from outside the Eccleston Square house. While he had ordered a surveillance team to keep an eye on the house, he had not authorized any surreptitious entry. The first time any of his technicians had entered Sir Caspar’s former residence they had done so with him, and Tubby Fincher, on the night Naldo had disappeared. Gus had asked him, ‘Why didn’t you deny all that to Naldo at the time? When he accused you, Willis?’
‘Giving him a bit of rope. Seeing where it would lead,’ was all Maitland-Wood had to say, except for his constant repetition of facts. Nobody had gone in on his authority. Apart from Naldo, who did not have his authority, and, apparently did not legally require it. In turn this could only mean that either Naldo was lying, which was unlikely, because of the evidence of the sprung traps he had laid; or someone else had paid the house an unauthorized visit. The fingerprints pointed towards Alex.
Alex Railton looked as though he was in shock. ‘My fingerprints?’ his voice cracked.
‘Yes, Alex. Some smudged; some perfect. But, in the meantime there are a few other questions. Do the cryptos Fontana, Dredger and Matador mean anything to you?’
‘Of course.’
‘There’s no of course about it. Only a limited number of people knew about those little games. But I gather you handled the communications on all three.’
‘Yes. Three among many.’
‘You discuss them with Naldo?’
There was a long silence. Then, ‘I was given to understand that my cousin had need-to-know.’
‘Quite right. He ran all three of those ops, and all three went down the drain. Yes, he had need-to-know. You discuss them with him?’
‘Yes. Under operational rules. But yes.’
‘Good. He come to you, or did you meet somewhere?’
‘We met. We met halfway. Twice. Year before last, and last year. Once when Fontana and Dredger were running. Then again when Matador was in full swing.’
‘Where? Where did you meet?’
‘Where would any Railtons meet if they wanted a halfway house? Stratford-upon-Avon. Same place both times. The Alveston Manor. Lunch.’
‘You lunched alone, I take it?’
‘Yes. He left his goon in the car outside.’
‘What goon, Alex?’
‘That bloody German goon of his. Kruger.’
‘Kruger’s not his goon, Alex. Kruger has his own parish. His own parishioners.’ Now Keene was puzzled. Big Herbie Kruger was in no way connected with Fontana, Dredger, or Matador. Those three interlocking high-risk ops were Naldo’s. Run by him, targeting East Germany and Russia. Though they might well have been better off with Herbie’s specialized knowledge. There had been specific instructions to keep Herbie well clear, according to Maitland-Wood.
‘Kruger’s a drunken oaf,’ Alex said with little conviction, and Keene recalled Stalks’s information about Herbie getting very drunk at Redhill over Christmas.
But, if Alex Railton was telling the truth, Herbie was involved. Naldo flouting instructions? Alex Railton denying the Eccleston Square matter? These were new sets of numbers in a vast elusive equation which Gus Keene was beginning to find more puzzling. He continued with the first interrogation session of Alexander Railton, probing at the Eccleston Square fingerprints, then leaping back to the amount of information passed between Naldo and Alex concerning Fontana, Dredger and Matador.
It became increasingly obvious that, as far as Eccleston Square was concerned, Alex Railton would not crack until the evidence was laid out one piece at a time before him. As to the other matter, he was able to give dates and times, as well as the rough details of what had been discussed.
Maitland-Wood arrived a little after six, and spent an hour with Alex Railton, carefully explaining to him that C himself had given instructions for classified material to be shunted clear of Railton at GCHQ.
‘You’re accusing me of treachery!’ Alex fumed.
‘Not at all.’ For once BMW had himself under control and behaved like the true professional he could be when he took pains. ‘I’m sorry, Alex, but you look like a security risk to us.’
‘Because of my damned cousin, and the follies of my father?’
‘Mainly because of your own follies, I fear.’ Maitland-Wood had always felt respect for Alexander’s work. He might not have removed him from sensitive areas if it had not been for the intimated evidence of Stalks. BMW was a prude, who regarded the slightest sexual deviation as grounds for caution. In a way, Gus Keene had to agree. There was always the threat of blackmail, using Delia Railton as the recipient of sneak previews as they called the kind of photographs with which Alex could be badly burned. In the end they sent him away, only slightly crestfallen, with a date to carry on the interview during the following week.
‘I want all the pretty pix from Eccleston Square,’ Keene told BMW. ‘Even with the evidence I don’t know if he’ll admit to anything. There’s a very strange smell emanating from that quarter, Willis.’
BMW grunted, and Keene continued, ‘You have been frank with me about those three ops of Naldo’s, Willis? I mean nothing went on that I should really know about?’
‘You have everything you need to know.’ Maitland-Wood was brusque, and Keene had the distinct impression he was hiding something. Need-to-know was paramount in the procedures of their trade, for it provided a whole series of cut-outs between planners, the case officers, controls and agents in the field. Need-to-know was the set of locked Chinese boxes that kept everyone in the right place with just enough information to allow the show to be run smoothly.
Keene shrugged. ‘Then I’ll have to talk to Big Herb again,’ he said sadly.
‘Yes,’ Maitland-Wood snapped. ‘Yes, Gus, you do that. Do it fast. I don’t trust the bugger.’
3
Not to put too fine a point on it, Big Herbie was making love to the bubbly Josephine from security when the telephone rang. Josephine, who was no newcomer to sex, found the large German to be one of the best lovers she had ever pulled into the prone position.
Herbie was fun and sexually inventive. In the grace and favour house they had provided for Herbie, in St John’s Wood, she found him tender and very satisfying. When the telephone rang they were both mounting towards a pleasurable climax, making love to the third movement of Mahler’s First Symphony.
This was a relatively new experience for Josephine. She often had fantasies about getting it in a warm bath, or out by some river bank on a sunny day with nothing between her bare buttocks and the soft mossy earth. Not only had she never had the experience to music, but also she had never even heard of Gustav Mahler. At the time, Josephine’s musical education consisted of the lyrics to most of Perry Como’s and Andy Williams’s hits.
It did surprise her that she seemed to have heard the tune before. For Herbie it was excellent. The First was not his favourite symphony, but the third movement, with the Frére Jacques melody turned into a slow funeral march, was good for the rhythm of copulation. He was becoming more and more involved in the music of Mahler, and, while the chubby, bouncy and bubbly Josephine was, naturally, uppermost in his mind, Herbie recalled that the maestro had written of that symphony, ‘All the floodgates within me were thrown open at one sweep.’
Herbie’s and Josephine’s floodgates were ab
out to be thrown open when the phone rang, and Herbie was quite unable to answer it until the act was completed. Josephine was a noisy girl who reached orgasm to the accompaniment of a wild scream. She was still being noisy when Herbie panted, ‘Ja?’ into the instrument.
‘Herb? It’s Mr Keene, Gus.’
‘Ja-huh-huh, Mr-huh-huh, Keene-uh. Gus-huh.’
‘Ahaaaaaaaa!’ Bubbly Josephine went on in the background.
‘You all right, Herbie? What’s that caterwauling?’
‘Huh, one-huh, moment-huh, Mr Keene. I have some avant garde music on the player here. Huh-huh. One moment, please.’
He jammed the sheets into bubbly Josephine’s mouth and she grabbed them gratefully, silencing herself from what had been a singular pleasure. Herbie consigned Mahler’s First to oblivion, then went back to the telephone. Gus Keene was laughing. ‘Kruger, you old ram. I just worked it out.’
‘What you work out, Mr Keene?’
‘What you’re up to.’
‘Up to? I listen to music.’
‘The food of love, Herbie.’
‘Ja. Give to me the excess of it, that pain again.’
Gus Keene could not make up his mind whether Herb was deliberately misquoting Shakespeare, learned from a Railton probably, or having him on. ‘Need to see you, Herbie,’ he said grittily, having decided that Kruger was, in fact, taking him for a ride.
‘Sure, Gus. Tomorrow morning do? First thing, or later, which is going to be best for you?’
‘Neither. I want to see you now. The place we met last time, off St James’s. Within the hour, and that’s an order.’ He closed the line, smiling at the thought of Big Herbie sorting out the problem of the rest of his evening.
Kruger arrived at the safe house within three-quarters of the allotted time. He was also, for him, dressed neatly. True, the suit looked as though it had been run up by a tailor’s apprentice with a bad drugs problem, and the tie lurched to the right of his collar in a disastrous swing. Apart from that, he looked good. The shoes matched for one thing.
Gus had brought in a large pile of sandwiches, or, to be exact, Carole had been sent out for them, having completed her stint in Registry for the day. There was fresh coffee and they fed Herbie as they plied him with questions. Carole had wanted to talk to Keene and Brook about the day’s archaeological dig, which made her even more convinced that something was very wrong with Caspar’s cryptic diary, but Keene said it could wait, filled her in on Alex’s reticence regarding Eccleston Square and his new story about the three blown operations, Fontana, Dredger and Matador.
‘You keep a diary, Herb?’ Fat Martin started in.
‘Diary? No. Is very difficult. Also very insecure, very unsafe. You start keeping diary, you end up in the pokey for Official Secrets.’
‘How do you keep track of work, then?’ Keene asked, passing him the plate of sandwiches for the sixth time, while Carole Coles poured fresh coffee.
‘Usual. Official log. Kept in lock and key always.’
‘Where?’
‘Private safe. Annexe.’
‘Good. I want you to be careful about this, Herb.’ Keene put on his clean-cut, straight-talking look. ‘You good at remembering dates?’
‘Pretty. Give or take a month, yes.’
‘And if we gave you some dates and you couldn’t remember what you did on those days we could trot across to the Annexe and find out?’
‘Sure, Gus. Why not?’
‘Conversely, if you tell us what you were doing on such or such a day, we could check it in the log?’
‘That’s how we all do it, sure.’
‘OK. Try these for size.’ He gave Kruger the two dates, one in 1963, the other the previous summer, when Alex claimed to have met Naldo in Stratford.
Herbie thought for a moment, then looked up with a big grin. ‘Sure, Gus. I remember those days. Easy, because they’re connected, right?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Sure. I went to Stratford-on-Avon with Naldo. Shakespeare’s birthplace. Swan of Avon. Naldo call him Billy the Kid. Funny, huh?’
‘You see anyone else?’
‘Yea. Naldo saw that little cousin of his. That Alex. Naldo tell me Alex is a little shit. I remember. They had meals both times.’
‘But you didn’t?’
‘I made packed lunch and sat in Naldo’s car. Better really. Naldo was worried about Alex. There had been fuck-up —’ He looked sheepishly at Carole. ‘Sorry. Cock-up. Screw-up there had been with communications on ops he was running.’
‘Ops you knew about?’
‘Sure I knew. I was part of operations. Adviser capacity.’
‘What were the ops, Herb?’
Kruger frowned. ‘You have right to know?’
‘Call Mr Maitland-Wood if you like.’
There was a long pause during which Gus Keene waited for Herbie to chicken out.
‘Think I’d better,’ Herbie finally said. ‘They were bad ops. Black. Had a double meaning.’
Keene nodded briskly towards the telephone, and Herbie dialled the shop. From the St James’s end, they knew he was put through to the DCSS at once.
‘I got Mr Keene here.’ Herbie showed no particular awe. ‘He’s wanting to know stuff about the ops Naldo ran last year and year before. The black things. I was adviser, you got me?’
BMW said something, and Herbie replied, ‘Mr Keene and his people want me to talk about them, those three operations. Is OK or not?’ BMW said something else and Herbie held the instrument out to Gus Keene.
‘Apology to make, Gus.’ Maitland-Wood sounded genuinely contrite. ‘Those three operations were, and are very sensitive. I told you we instructed Naldo to keep Kruger out. I lied to you. Kruger was advising. Specialist knowledge and that kind of thing. He doesn’t know much. We kept him at arm’s length, but you can question him about what he does know. After that, I think we’d better talk. I’ll give you the full strength. OK?’
‘Thank you.’ Keene put the phone down, showing a certain amount of irritation. He disliked being led up the garden path by senior officers who were supposed to brief him.
‘Tell us what you know, Herb. He’s OKed it.’
‘Ja. So he told me, Ja. You know the cryptos?’
‘Fontana, Dredger and Matador. Right?’
Herbie nodded. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘They were interlinked, but with a difference. I don’t know who planned them, but the operations were bloody ruthless. We had fewer sources than we would have liked close to the Ks in East Berlin. Well, in East Germany really, and Moscow as well. Object of those three caperings was to get someone close. Get a national from the East recruited to work close to the Ks, then make himself invaluable so they’d take him to Moscow, OK? We had the man. Ideal. Wonderful. Best there was. Problem was how to dangle him without it looking obvious.’
‘That’s always the problem.’
‘Sure, but there’s one proofooling way. Nobody likes it, because agents die from it.’
‘Yes?’ Keene was really saying, ‘Go on.’
‘What you do, Gus, is dangle several. In this case four of them. Three fakes and a real one. When the Ks discard the three fakes they choose the real one. Like magician making you take king of spades, yes.’
‘Yes.’ Keene felt the disgust deep in his stomach. What Herbie was saying was that the firm had deliberately sacrificed three under-par agents in order to get a penetration in, which was tantamount to murdering three of your own men. ‘What you’re saying is that Fontana, Dredger and Matador were three phoney passes. The real pass was a separate thing?’
‘Nearly, but not quite. First two were no-goods. Matador was the key for whole thing. Matador gave them two choices. One good and one bad. Drove Naldo half crazy, those ops. He didn’t like losing agents.’
‘You didn’t mind?’
‘Weren’t my agents, Gus. I was watching the backs of my people already there. I didn’t lose anyone.’ He gave a huge shrug of the shoulders. ‘This game you need
to have strong stomach. I learned that in the camps, and as a kid in the war. Didn’t like it, but was necessary. Naldo surprise me. Was bloody squeamish.’
Yes, Keene thought, I bet he was. Carole Coles had gone a chalky colour. ‘How did they tip off the Ks, Herbie?’
Kruger did not look at any of them, and his usual boisterousness seemed to have ebbed away. ‘I suddenly got severe loss of memory, Gus.’
Keene nodded. He wondered how men like Naldo, or more especially the operational planner, managed to live with this kind of thing. Like some time-lapse photographic sequence, he saw it all; Naldo briefing four German nationals, pledged to the West, trained, brave men, with Naldo in full knowledge that three would never make it. In his mind he pictured Naldo smiling and slapping each of them on the back. Naldo alone with each man, in secret, maybe for days going through the briefing routines that were worthless except for the chosen one. He nodded at Carole, Fat Martin and Herbie. ‘I’m going out for a while. We’ll talk about this again. Some other day, Herb, OK?’
On his way back to Swiss Cottage, Herbie found a pay phone, dialled a Berlin number and put a lot of loose change into the box that swallowed money like a hungry gannet.
‘Fienhardt,’ announced the voice at the distant end.
‘You know who this is?’ Herbie asked in German.
‘Ja.’
‘Checking on that little job. Anything new?’
‘No. It was looked at two days ago. Nothing.’
‘OK. I call you again. Two, maybe three, weeks.’ Herbie closed the line. Fienhardt was one of his occasionals in West Berlin who knew plenty of people in the East. He thought Herbie was into smuggling icons out from Russia and he had a number of special friends who ran messages for him in Moscow. The friend he had last used to check out what Naldo had called Box 12, in his clandestine letter to Herbie, had reported that Box 12 was still empty, as of forty-eight hours ago. Next time, he would use another friend. You could not be too careful when it came to smuggling from the East.
4
Clifton Farthing got back to Washington two days before Christmas, several weeks before Gus Keene started to work on Alexander Railton and Herbie Kruger. He drove out to Langely in order to make his report on the opening stages of the operation they called Heartbreak. His chief of section said he could leave the film in the safe and complete the report in the New Year. ‘Go home. Spend time with your wife, Clif,’ the older man told him. ‘Have a good Christmas.’