The Secret Families

by John Gardner

  ‘Plenty, from old people like you.’

  ‘Droll. This one goes, “There’s no one with endurance like the guy who sells insurance.”’

  ‘Can’t say I know it.’ Again she asked where they were going to start.

  ‘We’ll toddle off to Haversage in the morning. Fat Martin can go on asking questions of Mrs Naldo Railton. We shall put the bite on the old folks who live on the hill.’

  ‘You don’t really think …?’

  ‘I don’t know what to think any more. Not since Barbara showed us the three names. Fun with Dick and Sara at Redhill can’t hurt, though.’

  In truth Gus was terrified of what he might find under the stones as they made their progress through the minds of the Railton family.

  Almost at the same time, across the Atlantic, two FBI officers were knocking on doors in the Williamsburg area, and asking questions about a couple calling themselves Hester and Luke Marlowe; Hester being Caspar’s only daughter, Luke being the son of one of the many Farthing aunts.

  Gus and his team would spend all summer long talking to Railtons and their wives. The agency and the FBI would be doing the same to Farthings still alive in the United States.

  The final results, from both sides, were discussed at Warminster at just about the time that Naldo walked in the Park of Culture and Rest, which was also known as Dzerzhinsky Park. More, within hours of that quiet conversation in Moscow, during which Naldo learned that Spatukin was a double, and they would soon be putting paid to Comrade Penkovsky, the Credit committee, in their wisdom, decided to prepare a lengthy document, for heads of Five, the SIS and the Prime Minister’s office, not to mention their illustrious cousins at Langley. This document, it was agreed, would categorically state that the late Sir Caspar Arthur Railton had been a pawn of the Soviet service since the late 1930s.

  Also, on that very night, the flamboyant legal eagle Indigo Belper actually telephoned the spy-watcher at a national daily newspaper, and whispered, ‘Willie, have I got a story for you.’

  3

  At Langley, Marty Foreman, being a loyal and trusted member of the agency, went straight to see his old and reverend chief only two days after the pass made at him by Big Herbie in London. Marty had always given the false impression that the London posting was a backwater to retirement, so he had not even suggested to Kruger that he was returning for a parish council meeting in Washington.

  ‘The Brits’re on to us,’ Foreman said. Long ago he had been a street fighter, and would probably have ended up in jail had not, first, the Office of Special Services taken him to its bosom during the Second World War, and, second, when things settled down, the CIA given him his head.

  ‘You say anything?’ his chief asked.

  ‘Kruger knew the names, Heartache and Heartbreak. He said it had to do with Naldo Railton. Matter of life or death. I confirmed the ops were known to me, but indicated I had no details. I don’t think it’ll go far up the line. My guess is that Gus Keene’s running his own little investigation, and there’s a rumour that Mrs Donald Railton’s back from the delights of Moscow, breathing fire and about to perform a long-range prickectomy on Naldo. I guess that’s how it’s seeped through.’

  ‘So why won’t it go further, Marty?’

  ‘Because wily old Gus Keene, he of the smooth tongue and thumb screws, has Barbara Railton locked away and ain’t telling nobody — know what I’m saying?’

  ‘Well, they’re witch-hunting the Railtons, living and dead; like some of our boys, and the FBI’re doing the same thing to Arnie’s kith and kin over here. I guess when entire families have been involved in the trade over a few generations they tend to throw up the odd rotten apple.’

  ‘In the case of our British cousins, there’s bound to be deep concern. If a Railton’s doubled again, they’ll have no need to eat their stewed prunes each morning. Family jinx; family weakness. We know how Arnie’s doing?’

  ‘He’s playing it real close. Poker-minded, but I guess he’ll do what’s needed.’

  ‘Always covered his back and front, both, did Arnie. So, no intelligence from him?’

  ‘We know he’s trusted. We also know he’s going off to Vietnam. I’m hoping we can fix up a meet. His kinsman Clifton is on his way back there now.’

  Marty nodded, looking anxious. ‘Any of that lot expendable?’ he asked, looking at the ceiling.

  His chief stared hard at his hands, the words coming out in a whisper — ‘Yes. Arnie’ll take his chances forever and a day, naturally, though we’d try and get him, and Fido, back if they blow.’ Fido was their name for Spatukin.

  ‘So, then there is one?’

  ‘Just so. Arnie’s got Naldo incensed about old comrade Alex. He’ll fix the details, but I’d say Naldo will do the blowing away. You can’t kill a guy twice, but, if it goes wrong, then Naldo’ll have to be sacrificed. I guess Naldo’s been expendable from the start.’

  ‘Shit,’ Marty said under his breath.

  ‘Name of the game.’

  SEVENTEEN

  1

  Gus Keene had promised Barbara that he would not pass on to the Credit committee anything she told him. He was as good as his word. But he had said nothing about talking to C. So it was to C, Chief of the Secret Service, that he went with the utmost discretion.

  As it turned out, C had just given his deputy, Maitland-Wood, some very strong and binding instructions regarding the long document which had been prepared by the Credit committee, and so was in no mood to be inveigled, bluffed, or generally have wool pulled over his eyes.

  ‘This document,’ he had said to BMW, after reading the 200-page conclusions of the committee, ‘should, to my mind, be burned. However, because it’s official, and was called for by myself, I cannot disregard it. We’ll keep it in Registry, under lock and key. My Eyes Only.’ This last almost shouted, for C was worried by the whole business. He would soon face an angry Prime Minister, for he was duty bound to report the committee’s findings, and nobody wanted another scandal. Also he was more than displeased with the committee’s conclusions, for reasons which had come directly from his cousins at Langley, and, out of loyalty, had to be kept to himself alone.

  In his office he greeted Keene with a curt nod towards a chair, and the words, ‘I trust, Gus, that you are not bringing me another crisis.’

  ‘Depends, sir, on what you consider critical.’ Keene sat, and there was a long silence, at the end of which C told him to get on with it. Gus did just that, telling all, except for the three names he had glimpsed on the slip of paper shown to him by Barbara. Even then he covered his tracks. ‘I’m only part of the way down the road with her.’ He looked up at the ceiling. ‘I gather, though, there are three likely contenders, one of whom could be long-term and possibly still active. If not, he might well have passed on the mantle to others.’

  There was no window in C’s office, and he had turned off the tapes during the long pause following Keene’s entrance. Now he rose and walked over to the picture which occupied the place of honour directly behind his desk. It was a large and very fine print of Hieronymous Bosch’s ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’. C gazed at the reproduction for a good five minutes, as though trying to find the answer to the meaning of life within this strangely modern bizarre painting which he could hardly believe had been executed in the fifteenth century. Then he began to speak in a low voice.

  ‘I know about Naldo,’ he said. ‘Naldo and Arnie both if it comes to that, but you didn’t hear it from me. OK?’

  Gus nodded.

  ‘Even here, at the top of the world, I am also subject to certain disciplines,’ C continued. ‘I cannot even talk to the PM about that side of things, and I thank heaven the press haven’t got wind of it. Also, I have viewed old Caspar’s diary with grave suspicion from the moment it came into the office. I knew Caspar very well. Damn it, I know the whole family very well. Some of them I’d find difficult to trust with my laundry, let alone classified information, but Caspar was another matter. The b
loody diary just doesn’t ring true. Caspar knew our world inside out: he knew names, ops, history and tradecraft. Cas was a walking encyclopaedia. He’d never have committed anything to paper without reason. Certainly he wouldn’t have told the world he was a long-term penetration, if that was the way of things. Your tale of two diaries makes a lot more sense. Incidentally, did Barbara tell you where the other diary can be found?’

  ‘Alas, no.’

  ‘Then you’d best keep on at her; and go through the other members of the family like the proverbial dose of salts.’

  ‘We’ve already had various cracks at them.’ Gus looked concerned. ‘It’s like trying to grab water in a sieve.’

  ‘Your best people then. Let them have a go.’

  ‘My two best people’ve been with me from the beginning.’

  ‘What do they make of it?’

  ‘Like you, and myself. They don’t believe the diary’s for real. I fear Maitland-Wood and his colleagues’ve been so mesmerized by what they see that their thinking’s impaired. At the first sight of that diary they thought they had the holy grail. All the answers to a lifetime’s problems sewn up and tied with a pink ribbon.’

  C nodded. ‘If the answer to a difficult problem suddenly appears, one is inclined to accept it as gospel. Saves work; solves many hours of thinking. The police do it all the time, then wonder why they get their fingers burned in court. People become obsessed by obvious evidence. They tend not to question the passages that don’t make real sense. You just work away on Barbara. Go through the others, again and again if you have to. Call on me if you need support. In the meantime we keep everything, especially the results of the damned Credit idiocy, to ourselves.’

  ‘Silent as a dumb Carthusian, chief.’ Gus left the shop feeling happier than he had done for some time. He had not reckoned on Indigo Belper and his tongue which had wagged to the Fleet Street spy-watcher.

  2

  Things took a while to even start bearing fruit. The spy-watcher who, for the record, wrote under the byline David Watson, had tried to make a few more enquiries but there were hardly any takers. He obtained only one new piece of information during this first pass. A Foreign Service contact agreed that the SIS was running a tight investigation called the Credit committee, and they had found the late Sir Caspar Railton guilty of being a Russian penetration. It was outrageous, of course, for anyone in the Foreign Service to even whisper this to a man like Watson, but there was a lot of drink taken, and the FO man had telephoned the next morning, pleading with the news hawk to forget what had been said. ‘No way,’ Watson had told him. ‘No way, but your name’ll never surface.’ He then went to his editor and told him the entire story. The editor said ‘Write it,’ which he did. But, by the end of the day, there was a D-Notice slapped on the whole thing, and the Foreign Office contact had handed in his resignation. They reported this last fact, but the D-Notice meant they could not publish the gravy.

  The editor told Watson to keep probing. ‘Use every source you can think of. Let’s get a tame MP to ask a question in the House, then the fur’ll fly. This sounds a good, long-running piece. You may even get a book out of it, Claud.’ Watson’s real name was Claud David Watson, hence the use of David as his byline. He considered Claud Watson, or C.D. Watson inappropriate.

  Eventually the fur did fly. But not until very much later. In the meantime, Gus and his people began a systematic heavy interrogation of every Railton they could lay their hands on. Just the usual ploys,’ Gus told Carole and Martin. ‘You go over it once. Then you do it a second time. After that, again and again: like the young lady from Spain, if you know that disgusting limerick.’

  So Gus gave Carole and Martin instructions concerning Barbara. They were to sweat her. ‘Start gently. Go right back to her very first Railton contact — which would be her first meeting with Naldo, I should imagine. Then home in on Caspar. Begin long sessions. Go through her memory. Every meeting she ever had with Caspar. Every word she said. Everything he said. You know how to do it, so do it well. They always think they can’t remember, but you know it’s always there, locked away on the mind’s tape recorder. Just tease it up to the surface. Start with family occasions and then ripple outwards. About a month’s heavy going should do it.’

  ‘You don’t want much.’ Carole raised her eyebrows.

  ‘The lot, my dear. I have heavy duty to do as well.’ And, so saying, Gus took himself off to Haversage where he lodged at the Bear Hotel overlooking the market square, hired a car and then made his telephone call to Dick Railton-Farthing at Redhill Manor.

  Gus spent a week in Haversage, delving into old memories with Dick and Sara. He was open and honest with them. ‘It’s really about Caspar,’ Gus began. ‘You know what’s been going on?’

  ‘Some damned fool investigation. Trying to prove old Cas did a double on them. Madness,’ Dick retorted.

  ‘They have pronounced him guilty as charged,’ Gus said softly. ‘That’s not for public consumption. But, locked away in the vaults, there are two hundred pages that say he was guilty as hell.’

  Dick took a deep breath, and coughed, the wheezing, racking cough of old age. ‘Gus, I don’t know you all that well, but you can take my life on it: Caspar’s no penetration. Why old Cas was …’

  He coughed again as Sara hobbled into the room, leaning heavily on two sticks. Gus had seen the photographs of her as a young woman, and knew she had been stunning in her day. Now, age and sickness were upon her and, for a second, as she stood in the doorway, Gus pondered on what seemed to be the unfairness of life.

  ‘Old Cas was what?’ When she spoke, Sara’s voice was not that of an old woman, for it still held the mirror of her youth.

  Both men must have looked guilty, so she repeated the words, her voice even stronger. ‘Old Cas was what?’

  Gus nodded at Dick.

  ‘This is service stuff, my dear. Service. Classified …’

  ‘Classified, my foot!’ She looked at Keene, and, for a moment, the smile was that of the beautiful young thing she had once been. ‘Mr Keene, I’ve forgotten more secrets than you’ll ever know. Now, what about old Cas?’

  ‘Actually, one of my reasons for coming down here was because neither of you are true, born Railtons, and I need help.’

  She laughed again. ‘My dear Mr Keene, when one marries into the Railton family the past is forgotten. I once heard Caspar himself say the Railtons are worse than the Church of Rome. When you convert to that Church it is said you become more Catholic than Catholics born. The same is true of the Railtons.’ Her smiling eyes flicked towards Dick. ‘Wouldn’t you say that’s true, my darling?’

  Dick coughed again, grinning and nodding vigorously.

  ‘So what is it about Caspar?’ she asked.

  ‘There’s been an investigation,’ Keene started.

  ‘Oh, phoo! Of course there’s been an investigation, and brainless idiots like Willis Maitland-Wood and Indigo Belper have found him guilty of treason. We all know that. His wretched sons, the appalling Andrew and Alexander, can speak of little else.’

  ‘Then I trust they don’t speak of it outside the family.’ Keene sounded stern.

  ‘What d’you think they are? Cretins, that’s for sure. Adult vocal hooligans. Unpleasant specimens. Yes, I grant you all that, but family business stays within the family.’ Again the smile. ‘You’d be surprised at what secrets are held in this house, Mr Keene. Real secrets, not the rubbish about Caspar — or poor old Naldo, for that matter. We never speak of these things outside. We’re old-fashioned, I suppose, but we’re silent as the grave. Just like Caspar who lies there and cannot fight back.’

  ‘I’d like to help you fight back.’ Keene let the sentence lie between them until she spoke again.

  ‘Your reputation is that of a tough interrogator, with few scruples.’

  ‘Maybe. But I really do want to help you. About Naldo as well as Caspar’s memory.’

  ‘If I ask why, you’ll doubtless say you’ll help by p
utting us all to the question.’ This time she did not smile.

  ‘It’s the only way I know.’

  ‘Ask then. We’ll soon know whose side you’re on.’

  So Gus started his lengthy probe into the past, jogging old memories, hearing stories of Caspar’s youth, collecting snippets along the way. He stayed in Haversage for nearly two weeks, then broke off to deal with other business, returning to the case of Caspar Railton again and again, visiting Naldo’s parents, James and Margaret, and spending many hours talking. It was an odd investigation, for it continued over many months — which grew into years — and he heard things he would never have guessed about the Railton family. The older folk talked of plots and burns and treachery; of misuse and disinformation over the years. By the end of it all, Gus Keene supposed he was the only man outside the family who had seen some extraordinary documents, kept safe in a vault at Redhill, which told a tale of unmitigated treason.

  At the same time, Carole and Martin plugged away at Barbara until she was completely dried out, to use the jargon. Then they shifted to the unwilling Alexander and Andrew.

  It was early in 1966 that they came to one particular conclusion which led them to think that, as Carole put it, ‘the smart money should be on Alexander’. They had turned up more on him than was healthy, and most of it seemed decidedly dubious.

  3

  ‘The randy devil likes little girls.’ Carole Coles said it without humour. There was nothing remotely funny about a man of Alexander Railton’s age and status having a yen for little girls.

  ‘How little?’ Gus could guess the answer was not going to be pleasant, but age certainly came into it. Bad enough to have a suspect like Alexander working at GCHQ, even though his sting had been severely drawn in that very little classified material ever crossed his desk. Worse if he turned out to be what Gus always spoke of as ‘a devious’.