The Secret Families

by John Gardner

  Someone out there put 400,000 volts of electricity through the room. Barbara felt a new alertness in the listeners.

  ‘I knew it! I knew it!’ Carole Coles looked as though she would stand up and do a little jig of triumph. ‘It was all too easy. Nobody keeps a diary of events they want to hide. Not in this game.’

  ‘In old age, they do.’ But even Keene sounded elated. ‘When they’re afraid they’re going to forget things. Elderly spies have died on account of cheating by taking notes.’

  ‘Were these diaries written in old age, though?’ Fat Martin had a wide grin on his face.

  ‘Possibly.’ Gus looked at him as though he had the intelligence of an ant.

  ‘If I could —’ Barbara began.

  ‘Of course, we’re being very rude.’ Gus gave her a little bow, a gesture which said, ‘Continue, put us right.’

  ‘The diary contains some kind of trap. That is, the diary for consumption by the service. What Naldo says is that there was one firm and old penetration right at the heart of things. This person, cryptoed Croesus, might still be active. If not, the job is passed on to the next in line, like a baronet. It’s deep family stuff. Caspar didn’t name them, but Naldo says if analysts ferret around in the fabricated diary, they will stumble on the truth. He also says that he believes Caspar was too emotionally involved to put the matter straight before he died. Naldo says you have to take a good look at three people, one of whom is still active. The others … ? I just don’t know.’

  ‘When you talk of Naldo saying things …?’ Gus began.

  ‘I really mean Naldo wrote things, often at great length. The Ks had sound on us in that ghastly little apartment, but he went over every square inch and found nothing to give them pictures. We knew where the sound-stealing stuff was and played up to it. For Naldo’s safety it really had to look as though I came out of my own free will, in disgust, thinking he had been turned. It has to go on that way. I shall even get a divorce.’

  ‘The two versions of the diaries,’ Gus began again.

  ‘No, I haven’t seen them.’ She smiled, her eyes still damp as they talked. ‘Naldo has not told me where they are, but it seems that, when the crunch comes, they can both be obtained. He’s anxious that the princes of the service should follow through on the logic of the concocted diary only at this stage.’

  Gus stopped her again. ‘There are two things that worry me about all this. I’m told the diary being examined by the Credit committee checks out with every move Caspar made in the 1930s when he was out of the service.’

  ‘They dovetail,’ she replied quickly, anxious to put him right. ‘Naldo says it’s a remarkable job. All the dates and meetings in both diaries took place. The names he gives are for real. It is the spirit of the diaries that differs.’ She explained that the fabrication showed Caspar as an agent doubled back by the Soviets. ‘In the other version he blows all that to pieces; shows how he was not doubled at all, but was doing things for the right reasons. He was collecting intelligence, looking at Stalin’s grand plan for Europe, and the Soviet service’s part in it.’

  ‘Then why,’ Gus asked softly, ‘didn’t he put the whole of this thesis to the powers that be when he returned to the fold?’

  ‘He tried to do just that and got nowhere. In his papers he claimed to have used someone he preferred to call Croesus. After he failed to make any impression he left the job to Croesus entirely. Caspar felt that, during the Second World War, the Soviet target just remained dumped. It was his reason for getting out in the thirties anyway. He couldn’t work from within, and he felt very strongly about the whole business. He was bitter. Disillusioned. So he left it to someone else to plead his cause. Remember, Gus, the spirit of the times was hands off the Soviet target.’

  Keene nodded, speaking almost to himself. ‘And Croesus failed to deliver, even when we belatedly put the Sovs back in our sights.’ Then, louder, he asked, ‘But what about Arnie and Naldo? I know the Ks, they don’t take in defectors unless they’re pretty certain of them. They’re more paranoid than we are. Arnie Farthing and Naldo Railton seem to have just walked in and were accepted with open arms.’

  ‘Part Two of the story,’ Barbara said quietly, as though she was still not quite convinced about what she had been instructed to say. Nald maintains it is all deniable, but you can prise it out of the right people.’ She nodded at Keene. ‘That’s one of the reasons that this part is for you only.’

  Everyone remained very still, waiting for her to speak. ‘Somewhere, among the many covens run by our cousins at Langley there are two operations. Both are deniable, both buried so deep that he is uncertain about the DCI himself knowing of them. The first was called Heartache. This was a ploy to dangle a very senior field officer and play him directly to the Ks. It took five years or so before they bit completely, but when they did, Heartache continued to give the Sovs the same high-quality intelligence he had provided for a long time.’

  ‘Why?’ Keene interrupted.

  Barbara answered the question without even pausing in the narrative. ‘It had a dozen prime objectives; a sort of rolling operation which could be made use of at the right moment, as far as we can judge. Langley, Naldo thinks, has already got a contact very close to Moscow Centre. He said you already know, from defector information, that the centre claims to have all our services well and truly shot to pieces: penetrations in Five, the SIS and CIA. Heartache was a ploy to discover more, to snatch names, or, in the end, to do something even more sinister.’

  ‘Do we know who Langley’s man is in Moscow Centre?’

  She shook her head. ‘Naldo only had Arnie’s word for it. A kind of throwaway, a hint even. We don’t know if he’s well placed or very low-grade.’

  ‘And Heartache?’

  ‘Is Arnold.’ The room went even more still. ‘God knows what back-up he’s got. Precious little, I should imagine. Someone highly placed at Langley, with a very involved, complex, Byzantine mind set the thing up and ran Arnie solo.’

  ‘So what about Naldo?’ Afterwards they would have been hard put to say who voiced that important question.

  ‘It appears that things began to close in. Suddenly the reasons for Heartache changed. Arnold met Naldo a few days after Caspar’s funeral. He told him that Railtons and Farthings were under suspicion. He also told him one other known secret. A secret big enough to make the SIS and the CIA look like gullible idiots if it ever comes out.’

  ‘Idiots?’ muttered Fat Martin.

  ‘Heartache went into a new phase coded Heartbreak. It appears that Heartbreak was intended to get rid of the threat that hangs over both services.’

  ‘What kind of threat, Barbara?’ Keene leaned forward. There was still a little wine in the bottle and he poured the dregs into a glass and swilled it down as though taking a magic potion.

  ‘Naldo wouldn’t tell me, but he did give me one story. He said there are some things, skeletons, that no intelligence service, no country even, would ever make public because of embarrassment. He said that a CIA agent had resigned and gone on a hunt for the truth about the Kennedy assassination. Apparently this man got at the truth, which had something to do with the Vietnamese. The proof was brought back to Washington and they shredded it and burned it. What Naldo said was, a country could live with the idea of a lone nut killing the President, but it would be too hard to live with the idea of a squalid revenge killing.’

  Keene nodded; Carole looked blank; while Fat Martin seemed intent on catching flies in his mouth.

  ‘Naldo said that, in the end, Heartbreak meant Arnie going into the East, running as a blown defector, to put right this embarrassment, whatever it is.’

  ‘Get this straight,’ Keene’s brow creased. ‘The embarrassment has nothing to do with the Kennedy assassination?’

  ‘Absolutely not. He used that as an illustration. There is something still lying around in Russia that could cause red faces on both sides of the Atlantic. I did get the impression that it had something to do with Pres
ident Kennedy, but not with the assassination. It was something so embarrassing that the history of it should never be put right. Heartbreak is now the end product of Arnold Farthing’s long dalliance with Moscow Centre, and, because Naldo was, and is, a party to the truth, he became involved. It appears that Arnie had used him.’

  ‘Used Naldo?’

  Barbara let out a long sigh. ‘Used him, Gus. You don’t mind if I call you Gus?’ She parodied the way the whole team were being so polite to her. ‘Arnie used names. People in the trade. They were his own agents. His network for the Ks, and Naldo was set up good and proper for it because of those three bloody, and I use that word advisedly, operations: Fontana, Dredger and Matador. You must’ve been cleared for that triumvirate of idiocy, Gus, because you’ve already mentioned it.’

  Keene nodded, inclining his head towards his two assistants to show they were all clear on the ops mounted at great cost, of life and finance, to put one barely productive agent adjacent to KGB sources.

  ‘You’ll recall, then, that our dear cousins in Christ at Langley were cut in, and they offered their services to drive the no-go dangles into the net. To tip off the Ks about which offers they should not accept.’

  Another nod.

  ‘It was Arnie who tipped the Ks on all three occasions, giving them a clear equation from which they could only choose one man. A man called Brunner, I gather. I also understand he hasn’t been of much use.’

  Keene looked as though he had very suddenly had a thought. ‘Barbara, how come you’re cleared for all this? Yes, the whole business has been a disaster, and was never a well thought out operation from the start. But how come you’re cleared for it?’

  ‘I’m not. I’m not even part of your bloody service. I’m the messenger girl. Naldo cleared me off his own bat, because someone had to bring the truth out and I’m saying nothing to your damned Credit committee. I want locking away here with an armed guard, six dogs and a padlock on my drawers. I also require a good divorce lawyer who’ll keep his mouth closed, and my home telephone number routed here. Right?’

  ‘Right. And I’m supposed to do what?’ Keene looked bewildered.

  ‘You are to lead Credit to the right conclusion. You are to find the jokers. One, possibly even two, out of these three.’ Barbara produced a slip of paper from the pocket of her robe and handed it over to Gus Keene who took it, and read the names. Like Naldo and Barbara before him he felt the nausea rise into his throat. ‘Jesus Christ, no!’ he whispered, looking at Barbara’s hand which was beckoning to take the paper back from him.

  ‘I’ve got used to the idea,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t make it any easier, but I’ve got used to the obvious one. I can also make an intelligent guess on who to choose from the other two. It’s the prime mover that takes some getting used to, but when you think about it, the whole damned thing becomes obvious.’ She paused, as though for an intake of breath, then added, ‘By the way, Naldo says you can trust Herbie.’

  There was silence for a while, then Keene nodded, raising his eyebrows in a gesture that was meant to be one of both acceptance and sorrow.

  2

  ‘So, let’s take a vote. Can we trust Herbie?’ Keene looked from Fat Martin to Carole Coles.

  ‘There seems to be nobody else,’ from Fat Martin.

  Carole said, if Barbara was moving them towards some deeply buried truth on Naldo’s instructions, then, at least for a while, they should keep her happy, and do as she asked.

  ‘By happy, you mean trust Herbie?’ Keene was just testing.

  ‘Who else we got?’ Fat Martin was looking out of the window. They were in Keene’s office inside the main house. Summer rain fell heavily onto the lawn and hushed itself through the trees.

  ‘“Summertime, and the living is easy”,’ Carole sang. She had quite a nice little voice and could carry a tune. Her old grannie had always said, ‘You should go on the stage with that voice.’

  ‘Bloody easy,’ Keene commented. ‘But as you rightly say, murdering the English language, who else we got?’

  ‘So, do we go on sweating Barbara?’ Carole joined Fat Martin at the window.

  Gus gave the instructions. Yes, they had to keep Barbara under wraps and go on pegging away at her. ‘I must caution everyone regarding my dear old second in command, Mr Elder of the Credit committee. If he gets a whiff of Barbara, we’re in trouble. OK?’

  That was something they took seriously, and Gus began to draft a memo to all. Hands off the person in the hospitality suite. Nobody but the qualified room service, plus his team, were to go near. No sneaky peeps, no questions. On pain of getting chucked out minus pension and any other insurance.

  ‘So,’ when he had completed the order, ‘we go on with Mrs R; we also have to run through the entire Railton clan; and have a word with Herb. Herb first, I think.’

  They caught him unawares as he was leaving the Annexe for the night, and they all drove to a house Gus used quite often, and not on the normal books at the shop. As chief inquisitor he ran this place out of the Warminster funds and had yet to be caught.

  ‘Just a little help, Herb,’ he began.

  ‘A little help for you, Gus? This is often a lot of grief for the one who helps.’

  Gus smiled and nodded. Carole fixed the drinks, and the Fat Boy stood looking down into the street. The house was in Soho and a sea of umbrellas floated below. It had rained for twenty-four hours.

  ‘You have friends in that nice complex in Langley, Virginia?’ Gus asked.

  ‘Some.’ Herbie tilted his palm, accompanied by similar head movements. ‘Depends on which offices you want.’

  They had talked about that on the way up to town. ‘If it’s deniable, the things called Heartache and Heartbreak have to be counter-intelligence. Those people can bury operations until the end of time.’

  To Herbie he now answered with the acronym, ‘CI’.

  ‘Oh, yea. Real pushover.’ Herb laughed.

  ‘Well?’ Carole asked.

  ‘Well, what?’ Herbie snapped back. ‘You want for me to call Jim Angleton on an open line and ask what he’s got running? Sure. Easy. Make my mark and get boot up the arse from everyone.’

  ‘Isn’t there a more discreet way of doing it. Anyone at Grosvenor Square who’d know about a deniable CI op?’

  Herbie appeared to be wrapped in thought. Only Gus, who had eyes and ears for these things, detected a tiny change in manner, indicating that Herb had hit on a line of reasoning.

  ‘Don’t know.’ Herbie was still wrapped in his magic thought cloak. ‘What’s the question?’

  ‘Deniable operations running against the Sovs. One called Heartache which went on for around six or seven years and then changed, last winter, to Heartbreak.’

  ‘You want this unofficial? Big operations?’

  ‘Let’s say operations so quiet that you can’t even hear a pin drop.’

  ‘Shit! Well, might not work, but is one fellow. Old friend from way back when I worked with Nald, Arnie and Cas, just after war.’

  ‘It concerns Arnie and Naldo. In a way it concerns Caspar as well.’

  ‘Then why not ask bloody Credit people?’

  ‘Because they’re rogue elephants, or hadn’t you noticed?’ Fat Martin said quietly.

  ‘Sure, you know Willis tried to sick a P4 lawyer onto Naldo before he bought himself wings?’

  ‘Who?’ Gus Keene tried to sound disinterested.

  ‘Ohh,’ Herbie shrugged, ‘Legal and General. Lofthouse. Know him?’

  Keene knew him, and had tried to have the man taken off the P4 list at least twice. ‘Nobody else, Herbie? You’re sure?’

  ‘Yea, sure, Gus.’

  ‘Now, how about this agency fellow, Herb?’

  ‘So. A guy who worked covert ops and CI, way back. Before Langley. Guy called Marty Foreman. They put him out to grass, OK? Here, London. Grosvenor Square. Might not know because he’s getting on, but still has eye to the ground always.’

  ‘So try Mr Foreman, Herb
.’

  ‘What if it goes wrong? I point him at you?’

  ‘We know nothing. Didn’t even ask.’ Gus smiled sweetly.

  ‘OK, spell out what you didn’t ask.’

  ‘We didn’t ask if there was any truth in a couple of ops, working under the same flag. Heartache and Heartbreak. Concerned Arnie going over the wall. Confirmation that there were such operations, that’s all we want.’

  ‘I try him. If I come back with arse in sling, you know the answer’s yes.’

  ‘We’ll give you a call tomorrow. Payment comes now. How about us all going for a nice Indian.’

  Gus knew a little place at the Kensington High Street end of the Earls Court Road. Nobody could ever remember its name, but they called it ‘the Ring of Fire’ for reasons not hard to figure out, particularly in the dark reaches of the night.

  Herbie ate a double chicken vindaloo with dry vegetable curry, washed down with twelve halves of lager and they left him in St John’s Wood crying curses on all who criticized the works of Gustav Mahler.

  He got back to Gus, in Warminster, at four the following afternoon. ‘First one existed,’ he said, sotto voce. ‘Second one exists now. Noisy as the grave.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘He wanted to know if it was something to do with Naldo. I tell him, yes. I say future of Naldo at risk. Then he gives me the two names back and tells me what I told you. Nothing else. He say he lose his pension if anyone checks back. OK?’

  ‘That’ll do very nicely, Herb. Thanks.’

  ‘Don’t mensh, old sheep.’

  They spent the day with Barbara, breaking down her time in Moscow into segments, and showing her faces from what they called their ‘holiday snapshots’.

  ‘Now,’ Gus said. ‘Now we do the difficult bit for a week, then Barbara for another few days, then another difficult bit.’

  ‘Where do we start?’ This was late and Carole was wrapped around him, as Gus had told his wife he would not be home much for several weeks. His wife did not know that Gus had, of late, become disenchanted. He knew she was seeing a personable young insurance salesman which meant the days were numbered and he had to make decisions. ‘You ever hear an old song, Carole …?’