The Secret Families

by John Gardner

  ‘How are you, Andrew, old sheep?’ Big Herbie said with a huge smile.

  ‘What the —’

  ‘Let’s take it quietly, Mr Railton. Plenty of time to talk at West End Central.’ The Special Branch man also smiled.

  In his mirror, the police driver saw four men latch on to Sammi, and another team enter the Swiss Centre in search of Miss Galina Kirsanov.

  ‘A good lot of weather we’re having, eh, Andrew.’ Herbie smiled.

  When they got to West End Central, the Second Secretary (Trade) was already shouting his head off.

  Half an hour later they were explaining the evidence to Andrew, who made no comment, but simply kept asking for a solicitor. All the wind and hot air had gone out of him, and he looked like a man who, very suddenly, had discovered the food he had eaten contained arsenic. Which, in one sense, it had.

  Savelev was allowed to leave an hour after his arrival. They kept the briefcase, and let Sammi out with him. The two men met in the reception area and went through a charade of not knowing one another. Neither realized that the Foreign Office had already PNG’d them through one of its solicitors who arrived, in person, at the embassy with the instructions.

  In one of the interview rooms, Carole Keene was explaining the situation to Miss Kirsanov. ‘It’s a one and only chance, Galina. We have to let you return to the embassy now, in fact. If you go you’ll be back in Moscow within seventy-two hours, and they’ll never send you abroad again. You know that. I know it. Back to Moscow, or stay here and live a pleasant, uncomplicated life. We’d pay well and give you plenty of work.’ It was about the tenth time she had said it.

  ‘Yeb vas!’ Kirsanov spat into Carole’s face. She left ten minutes after her colleagues.

  ‘What does yeb vas mean, Gus?’ she asked her husband as they prepared for bed, in the early hours of the morning, after Gus had seen Andrew Railton banged up for the night.

  ‘Fuck you!’ he translated.

  ‘Oh good. Now?’ Carole gave him her most falsely coy look.

  3

  They kept Naldo under enough sedation to prevent him from attempting to walk. The standard of the food had gone down rapidly, once they let him know he was still in the Soviet Union. A doctor checked him each day, and topped up the sedative. Apart from that, he saw only those who brought food, and came to make sure he had not soiled the bed. He was not in Moscow, of that he was certain, because it was now the end of January and no sign of snow showed from beyond the bars of his window.

  Once every month, he had the pleasure of a day with the slim, French-looking interrogator, who let slip that it was like the Arctic in Moscow. Naldo played the game, pretending to establish rapport with the interrogator, with whom he was now on Christian name terms. Naldo and Jacob. All very cosy.

  The drugs they used to keep him from getting out of bed seemed to allow rational thought. Certainly they allowed deep depression. To combat the depression, which had grown from the knowledge of having betrayed his country under hypnotic drugs, Naldo decided he should try and get his mind going on rational thought. He started by trying to remember the great Shakespearean plays. First, by plot, act by act. Then scene by scene. Last of all, by text. This final mental exercise was the most difficult. He only got a few bursts of language, skipping great hunks and then landing on a long speech that he knew by heart.

  Gradually logic returned, and with the logic, he accepted the fact that he was not responsible, personally, for treachery. It was important for him to try reconstructing the vivid recall he had undergone during the hypnotic phase. He went through all he could bring back from his subconscious, knowing that, should he ever get home again, the boys at Warminster would want chapter and verse on everything. He knew for sure that he had blown Brunner. He hardly had to be even half mentally agile to realize that. What anguished him was the huge area of on-going operations he might have spilled.

  He worked on other matters also, figuring out why nobody would discuss Penkovsky, or even admit that he, Donald Railton, had murdered the man. You cannot kill a person twice, and Oleg Penkovsky, it was well known, had gone to his death immediately after the trial. So that was that. They would never admit it. He could never be accused. If he spoke publicly, they would say he was a raving loony.

  The word trial began to repeat itself in his head, forcing its way upwards and confronting him with another question: why had they not taken him back to Moscow to stand public trial? The Soviets rarely missed any opportunity to chastise the West with an espionage show trial. Yet they had not made any move towards this. The answer came during a visit from Jacob in late February.

  They had done the usual question-and-answer routine, which had of late born down heavily on Arnold Farthing. Why they should want so much information on a dead man was beyond him, but they did, and Naldo gave them tidbits from his own store of knowledge. He asked about Arnie’s wife, Gloria, and was told that she had decided to stay in the Soviet Union. He wondered about where they had taken her — what part of the Gulag — and what had been done about the children.

  At the end of the February meeting, Jacob was about to leave when he dropped a shattering piece of information into Naldo’s head.

  ‘They’ve arrested your cousin,’ Jacob said, without the trace of a smile.

  Naldo looked surprised, and then elated. ‘They finally got the little shit,’ he said in the kind of voice described as containing ‘grim satisfaction’.

  ‘I would never describe Andrew Railton as little.’ Jacob still did not show any pleasure. ‘A shit, probably. But a big shit, yes?’

  ‘Andrew? They’ve arrested Andrew? What in God’s name have they arrested him for?’ In spite of his dislike of cousin Andrew, Naldo always thought of him as a somewhat priggish pillar of society. The nastiest prefect in the school. ‘Why?’ he repeated.

  ‘Why d’you think? He worked for us. For years he was a penetration. In the end he let his guard slip. They even got his controller, but he’s back in Moscow now. Andrew’s coming up for trial in a few weeks. What is the expression? They’ll throw the book at him?’

  With some satisfaction, Naldo said they would also lock him up and throw away the key.

  ‘We’ll see.’ Jacob gave a minute trace of a smile. ‘We’ll see.’

  Later that night, Naldo knew why they had not thrown him to the party wolves in Moscow. KGB were keeping him in stock, against something unfortunate happening to one of their penetrations. Andrew had certainly been one of the three possibilities he had deduced from Caspar’s papers. But he could never have been the first one. Andrew was a second-generation traitor. There was someone else. Caspar had known it, and indicated it in his papers.

  The thought plunged him into depression again, for he was almost 100 per cent certain who the leading light in that act of treachery had been.

  4

  As the date for Andrew’s trial approached, there were hectic comings and goings at the shop. The Legal Department had worked in close co-operation with Special Branch, and C had seen to it that the whole operation was credited to their brothers at MI5. The case against Andrew William Railton was, as they say, open and shut — ‘More shut than open,’ one legal brain had pronounced. Andrew, everyone knew, was really for the high jump.

  In drawing information in — especially for the damage control operation that was taking place — various SIS residents were being pulled into London for short briefings. One such was Mark Bertram-Prince, official food taster to the CIA, which meant he ran liaison in Washington.

  The British Embassy in Moscow had still picked up no traces of Arnie Farthing since Naldo’s arrest. They knew little. Only one further communiqué — the third — had been issued through Tass, following the original shooting and detention of Naldo on charges of espionage. This last communiqué simply said that Donald Arthur Railton was being detained for lengthy interrogation and his trial would be held when all the facts came to light. The ambassador had pleaded constantly to be allowed to see Naldo, and he w
as backed up by the Foreign Office, but excuse piled onto excuse. All the embassy knew was that Naldo was being held at the psychiatric hospital in Sochi.

  As for Arnie, the American Embassy in Moscow had not had a glimpse of him, which bore out the operational sight-seeing of the British — until the SIS liaison officer, Mark Bertram-Prince was summoned to London. Even then, only a chance remark started people taking action.

  Bertram-Prince was a long-serving SIS officer. His experience was large, and he had that particular talent which involves hearing and seeing things not meant for his ears or eyes.

  On his second day at the shop, Bertram-Prince spent several hours with C, and, towards the end of the session, he asked, almost diffidently, ‘Chief, know anything about an operation called Heartbreak?’

  C said he certainly did know of such an operation, and called in Willis BMW to hear what their man in Washington had to say.

  ‘There’s quite a batch of stuff at Langley,’ Bertram-Prince told them. ‘And it keeps coming. Mind you, I don’t think I’m supposed to know because there’s a cloak of silence around the whole thing.’

  ‘Do you mean …? Are you suggesting …?’ C took a deep breath. ‘Mark, is Heartbreak still running?’

  ‘Very much so. I brought it up because the little I’ve seen of it relates to a Soviet source. It’s all pretty good material. I’ve only peeped at four or five things but, if it’s for real, Heartbreak’s feeding them golden eggs.’

  C and BMW exchanged shocked looks. ‘When did you last have sight of anything, Mark?’ Maitland-Wood put on his concerned voice.

  ‘Last week. A heap of information regarding military economics, with special reference to the Sovs’ air force.’ He saw the look on their faces. ‘I said the wrong thing?’

  ‘No. No. No.’ C’s voice sank to a whisper.

  Later he talked to Willis in private. ‘You realize what this means?’

  ‘It means that Arnold Farthing’s still active.’

  ‘Not only that.’ C banged the desk with the flat of his hand. ‘It means that, in all probability, the bloody Yanks sold Naldo out. I want to see Paul Schillig first thing Monday morning, and no buts or sorrys, or recall to Washington tricks. I want to put the bugger through the blender.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  1

  ‘After all this time, you’d have thought they’d get the airconditioning right.’ Marty Foreman sat in his shirtsleeves. There were wet patches under his armpits and an island of sweat had formed across his back. Outside, the temperature was well below zero. Inside the CIA complex at Langley, swamps and jungles came to mind. People were always going off sick. In winter it was too hot; in summer you shivered with cold.

  The stocky, pugnacious Foreman clenched his fists and beat the air. ‘For Christ’s sake, Paul, what can I say? When Arnie first put up the idea of Heartbreak as the final operation, he said he needed human collateral, to give him credibility after they took him in. We think he’s just about the bravest field agent we’ve ever had. We accepted the idea of Naldo Railton, and it was always understood here that Naldo was expendable. I’m sorry, that’s all I can say.’

  ‘I bet Naldo didn’t know he was expendable.’ Paul Schillig kept his voice pleasant and level.

  ‘Look, what can I tell ya?’ Marty beat the air with his fists again, in an almost emotional act of frustration. ‘When it started, right at the beginning, how were we to know they’d denounce old Caspar as a traitor; or arrest his son with a third-rate centre-trained controller who knows from nothing about tradecraft. Two guys who hadn’t the faintest idea of how to watch their asses. Who knew then?’

  ‘And who knows now, Marty?’ Schillig always tried to keep any anger out of his voice. Many years ago he had learned the art of being nice; showing himself as a reasonable man. Now he was on the verge of revealing that side of him that never appeared in public. ‘You haven’t been hauled up in front of their head of service and told he’ll see to it that every single CIA operative will be vacuumed out of the United Kingdom within two weeks. This damned operation could cost us any special relationship we’ve managed to reclaim with the Brits.’

  ‘What do they know?’ Marty Foreman stood and strutted around the room, arms waving as though swatting invisible flies. ‘They know from nothing, and they’re starting to look fucking stupid. The Prime Minister is forced to admit an internal investigation found Caspar Railton to be a long-term penetration; and that after another Railton gets put in the bag by the Sovs. Now yet another Railton’s going down. They’re going to think Railton’s a crypto for all their officers. Three in a row and that ain’t funny anymore. It makes them look like idiots.’

  ‘Can it make the Farthing family look like idiots, Marty? I hear you’ve had problems with Heartbreak yourselves.’

  ‘Who in hell told you that?’ Foreman snapped, and Paul Schillig drew a sheet of white paper from his inside pocket. He had spent all morning with the DCI and James Jesus Angleton getting the piece of paper. It gave him complete access to all the Heartbreak material, and the operation they called Heartache which had been organized to set it up. Being a disciplined man, Schillig had been through the files: just a quick trip to examine the views. Later he would return and spend hours with them. In the meantime he would get all he could from Marty.

  ‘What d’ya mean by it anyway? Why don’t you get off my back, Schillig, and leave the covert ops to professionals?’

  Schillig went very quiet. ‘What I mean by it, Marty, is that I need to hear everything. The whole business, blow by blow. Detail. Minutiae. Whatever you want to call it. Why Naldo was expendable, and what happened. I have to know it, and I have to be able to give reasoned answers. Your own boss, Angleton, has given the go-ahead for you to talk to me. The DCI has said I am to have all possible co-operation from CA people, and don’t deny you’re Covert Action, Marty, because I’ve known you too long.’

  Foreman slumped into his chair, hanging his head like a stubborn schoolboy. Finally he said, ‘OK, so what d’ya wanna know?’

  Paul Schillig sank into the other chair. ‘Don’t you listen to a thing? I want to know the whole score, Marty. I need to know what was going on, what is going on. I’ve got to know how far Arnie’s now at risk, and how he gets stuff out. How far’s he blown, Marty? They going to throw him into a camp, shoot him, or let him go bananas like Naldo Railton, in one of their hospitals? We have to cut the Brits in, and the word is you’ve got an operation, deep in the heart of Russia, that’s going sour.’

  ‘OK. OK. Give me a minute, Paul. Get my breath and I’ll tell ya.’

  Then Marty started to talk. ‘You know how things go wrong. OK, we realized that there was need to get someone there. Need to put one man right into the centre. We’ve had a casual there for a long time. High class, but nervous. We only got stuff from him once in a blue moon, and he refused to work full time. Lots of excuses: lines of communication were difficult; he required someone to hold his hand; the whole thing had to be 100 per cent waterproof — which, as you know, just can’t be possible in our profession. So Arnie came up with a great dangle. To be honest we had Clifton in mind to start with.’

  ‘Why Clifton?’

  ‘Because he spoke Russian like he was third generation from a peasant. Then we went over it again and decided Clifton didn’t really have the balls for it; tended to be a little flakey. We needed to make them an offer they really could never refuse. Someone with a lot of experience and good contacts. Arnie proposed himself, and we began Heartache, which was the dangle, and by God it was good. It took Arnie five years. Five solid years in Berlin. A word here; a hint there; he even had a blazing tantrum in a restaurant and walked out on Jim Angleton — right in front of the Soviet resident. They swallowed him and played him. We even handed them good intelligence. Real pearls before swine stuff.’ He gave a throaty laugh, ‘Mind you, we invented some of the stuff ourselves. But it was great.’

  Schillig nodded encouragement.

  ‘They took it all,
and finally they came to that point we all have to face when running a defector in place. They offered him a way out; said if it all suddenly went wrong, he’d have a home in Moscow. They gave him what he was after, on a plate, right?’

  ‘So far. How did Naldo come into it?’

  ‘Naldo was running his own dangle. Find the lady. Trying to get someone close to the middle-ranking Ks in East Germany. He needed Arnie’s help. Got Arnie to tip them on who not to touch, so he was pulled in off his own bat. OK?’

  ‘Up to a point.’ Schillig looked concerned. ‘And only up to a point. Naldo asked for help and got it, but he had no knowledge of Arnie’s real set-up.’

  ‘Look.’ Marty made the gesture with his hands. ‘You know how it is, Paul. We were bowling along a straight road, motor running nicely, everyone happy, then, crunch!’

  ‘Crunch?’

  ‘Another car; another operation runs straight in front of us, like a kid on a tricycle. It was something completely apart from what Arnie was doing, but it did have an effect on Caspar Railton, and then Naldo.’

  ‘You like to tell me what it was?’

  ‘Not really. Nobody here says it aloud. It’s one I keep away from you, Paul. Maybe the DCI or Jim’ll tell you, but I doubt it. Just take my word for it. We were suddenly faced with facts we found unpalatable, and part of those facts could put Caspar Railton in the frame as a long-term Soviet agent. Mind you, Caspar had helped to put himself in the frame, but for other purposes. The thing we don’t talk about was in Russia, and had to be taken care of. Arnie saw Naldo — this was after Caspar’s funeral. You know how much that guy loved his uncle?’

  ‘I know Naldo was close to him, yes.’

  ‘Close? You’re joking. To Naldo, old Caspar was father, mother, lover, adviser, friend. He loved the guy more than life — certainly more than his wife and children; more than his service; more than country.’ He paused, eyes flashing. ‘Arnie told him of this thing we don’t talk about. Naldo put two and two together very quickly — Arnie was a shade naughty, mind you. He gave him a couple of pushes. But Naldo wanted revenge. It was Naldo who wanted to go into the Soviet Union and take care of this blight; this guy who, in his mind, had tipped the scales and put the boot in on Caspar a long time ago.’