by John Gardner
‘So Arnie said, “Come along with me, Nald, we’ll do it together.”’
Marty shook his head. ‘No, it didn’t even happen like that. The whole business just went out of control. They set up this committee in London to stick Caspar’s dead body up against a wall and shoot him. Almost at the same moment, and by pure coincidence, the Sovs started a compromise operation on Naldo’s wife. They do that, as you well know. We do the same thing from time to time. Compromise someone and then keep it in a safe to trot out in case you ever need it. OK?’
‘And they needed it?’
‘Well, Arnie needed it, but he had no idea they’d jump when they heard Naldo’s name. We set up a contact for Arnie — so he could get stuff out of Soviet Russia. That was done slowly, carefully. It’s still going on in fact, but it was time for Arnie to say, get me out. They got him out, and he took Naldo with him. As far as Arnie was concerned it was for collateral. To show them how good his contacts were. Naldo went along for one reason, and of his own accord. To avenge his Uncle Caspar …’
‘And you can’t tell me how he —?’ Schillig began.
‘No. It’s the one thing you’ll have to get from others. But believe me, Paul, Naldo went to kill a man, and he did just that. All you need know, Paul. OK? If the Brits want the whole story they’ll have to ask Naldo, because we’re not giving it to them. Naldo went freely, knowing there was danger, but knowing what he needed to do. That’s all they have to be told.’
Schillig pondered, looking at the plain carpet as though trying to find a pattern. ‘As I hear it, you had Farthing trouble, though.’
‘More collateral.’ Marty gave one of his shrugs again. ‘Arnie had to show them he could still get stuff in. Let them see it happen. So, almost on a whim, Clifton became the chosen one. The one they would see. Vietnam was on the boil and, when we came to it, Clifton was used. The really heavy stuff still goes out from Arnie through other people. Has done from the start. At the moment he’s telling the Sovs that very soon he’ll have someone for them right slap bang in the American Embassy. That’s being arranged. But Clifton was a godsend. Arnie told them he needed to meet this contact in Vietnam, and he needed to see him alone, to collect intelligence. Once a month they went through this charade. Arnie told them they mustn’t peep, which means they had eyes on him all the time. Every meeting was observed.’
‘So what went wrong?’ Schillig’s voice turned cold.
‘Clifton went wrong.’ Marty looked away from him. ‘Clifton Farthing was an alcoholic, and nobody spotted it, because he never drank in the field. He was the kind that went on benders: you know, three or four days at a time, then nothing for weeks — the lost weekend syndrome. It became worse when Phoenix got to him. We’ve made mistakes with Phoenix, Paul, but the signs are that, even with the mistakes, the hundreds of clean Vietnamese we’ve wasted, it’s been worth it. But Clifton really felt guilt. As far as he was concerned, he was the big man; he was running as our main courier to Arnie. That was great while it lasted, but we knew it couldn’t go on for ever, so we went on beefing up lines of communication within Russia itself. And we’ve put in some very good stuff. Really excellent — dead-drops, letter-boxes, embassy resident’s total involvement, and a full-time contact taking up his appointment next month.’
‘It all went well, until?’
‘Until Clifton began to shout his mouth off. He got drunk in Saigon; he drank here in Washington; and when he drank he talked. No names, but he boasted of this great operation he was running. Classified stuff; stuff the Sovs would give their right arms for. He did not name names, but Clifton became very dangerous. It would only be a matter of time before he blew Arnie.’ He paused, unravelled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow.
‘Then why didn’t you pull him out, Marty? Why didn’t you see to it?’
When Foreman spoke he sounded like a man who had just completed a long and arduous field exercise. ‘It was family.’
‘Whose family? The Agency; or the Farthings?’
‘A bit of both. We couldn’t let him go on, and it wasn’t wise to have him around, even in a stockade somewhere.’
‘So someone wasted him?’
Marty locked eyes with Schillig. His eyes were, for the first time since Schillig had known him, full of compassion. ‘Yeah. Someone did. Arnie did.’
‘Oh, Christ.’
‘I’ve told you: Arnie was getting the heavy stuff to us through the Moscow set-up. Took more time, certainly, but it was worthwhile. Christ, Paul, the kinda stuff we get from field agents nowadays helps to back up satellite material. In twenty, thirty, years’ time we’ll have almost by-passed field agents. The technology’s taking over, but there will always be things that can only be checked by people on the ground. The Sovs complained to Arnie that he was giving them only a 20 per cent yield. The rest was chickenfeed. We knew it; then they knew it. It was the Sovs who told Arnie they were concerned about his Stateside contact. We gave him the instructions. We also told him the truth. Clifton’s going to blow you, we said. Waste him, we said, or he’ll waste you.’
‘And that’s what he did.’
‘Sure as God made little apples he did. Arnie’s nobody’s fool. He knew the Sovs kept an eye on him during the meetings in Vietnam. He told them that he wasn’t happy. He needed to gain respect and confidence. So he wastes Clifton, and then, as we read it, dropped Naldo in the shit, so that he could come out clean. Clifton was good collateral, as was Naldo. Only Naldo went in of his own choice. You must make them see that.’
‘OK, but I’m going to need a name. Whatever you say, I need to know who Naldo was after. Just like I need to know why the Brits haven’t spotted Arnie lately. Sure, our Moscow embassy can lie, but the Brits … well, they’ve been looking for him. How? Why?’
‘Arnie’s in Leningrad is why. He works hard, and the intelligence gets through. I wouldn’t say he’s 100 per cent in the clear, but it does seem that they really do trust him.’
‘And for that he had to give them Clifton Farthing and Naldo Railton.’
Marty made a large shrugging motion. ‘The Brits got Naldo’s fucking cousin, Andrew, didn’t they?’
‘Yes,’ Paul Schillig said, after a long pause. ‘Yes, I suppose they did.’ Then another pause before he said, ‘What a shitty, dirty, underhanded immoral business we’re in, Marty.’
Foreman shrugged again, ‘Beats working for a living. And don’t forget, it was Naldo Railton’s choice to go in with Arnie.’
Schillig returned to London with instructions to tell the British all they needed to know. The DCI even gave him complete authority to pass on all details of Heartbreak, and its current standing, to C.
In spite of Marty’s silence, Schillig took Oleg Penkovsky’s name with him, though even he found it hard to believe, as did the head of the SIS, who was righteously furious at the liberties taken with one of his best officers. ‘Your people’re behaving like terrorists,’ was all C said to the CIA resident. ‘When’s it all going to stop?’
Paul Schillig could give him no answer. A month later, the British resident in Moscow reported a sighting of Arnie Farthing. ‘Where?’ C asked, and was not surprised to hear he had been seen driving himself into the old building in Dzerzhinsky Square.
2
Andrew’s lawyers, distancing themselves from the moral issues of acting for a traitor, pressed for a very early trial. They made sure their client was kept in Pentonville Prison, once known, years ago, as the ‘Tench’. They knew that the Warminster interrogators would have preferred to have him on their own premises. That way they would get more from him, and, it followed, would have more evidence to deal out during those parts of the trial that would be ‘in camera’.
Once they had done their job, the legal advisers, who knew they could not win the day, would simply take their money and run. After that, Warminster could have him. In the meantime, Gus Keene and his team, bowing to the difficulties, spent many hours at Pentonville.
Their
line of questioning was three-pronged. They were anxious to know how long Andrew had, as they put it, ‘Been at it’. They also tried to establish if Andrew had, at any point, been involved with the so-called treachery of his father, Caspar. Even Gus, who rooted for Caspar, was beginning to have his doubts now that Andrew had been caught red-handed.
The Warminster team had another interesting line of questioning. How, they had to ask, did the Soviets imagine they could get good intelligence from a man who was really only on the fringes of the service. As a P4 legal adviser, Andrew was on call for his professional services, particularly interrogatory techniques, or to provide cover. P4 people rarely got anything deeply juicy with which to tempt interested hostile intelligence services.
In the few weeks’ grace at their disposal, Gus and his people got few answers. They drew a complete blank on the length of time Andrew had been operating for the KGB. As an intellectual side-issue they did not get any reason for the treachery. It was not possible to tell whether Andrew had been seduced by political leanings, or by the lust for gold.
They were equally unsuccessful over the question of Caspar. ‘My father,’ Andrew maintained, ‘had his work. I had mine. I have no idea if he was or was not a long-term agent for KGB. If he was, then KGB operational policy saw that we remained apart. We were never inter-cognisant.’
Regarding the final query, Andrew was relatively helpful. ‘My controllers always said that a person in my position was more likely to get good intelligence than someone completely inside.’
‘How so?’ It was Gus who asked.
‘Their reasoning is that professional men like myself, with strong links into the service would have a lot of friends within the service. Those friends were more likely to drop exceptional information my way. Particularly if I dropped the correct questions.’ This last seemed to be added as a touch of vanity.
Gus nodded. He knew as well as the next man that Andrew was probably being honest. People within the service often carried very heavy secret loads, and they needed an ear into which they could pour their problems. The P4 doctors and lawyers had just such ears, as did former members of the service.
Oh, yes, Gus Keene thought. Oh, yes, that all figured. They had not yet fitted all the pieces of the Anthony Blunt jigsaw, but he had possessed a very willing ear to ‘old friends’. ‘The Russians,’ wicked Sir Anthony had said, ‘knew I was no good to them after I left MI5, so they let me go.’ Really?’ people like Gus had said. ‘They let you go, Anthony? Even though you were still having quiet lunches with your own old colleagues. A wonder you didn’t just telephone the stuff to Moscow Centre.’ Until just after the lads came in to say there would be immunity if he owned up, Blunt had been at work. You bet your sweet arse on it.
‘I wonder,’ Gus mused one night. ‘I wonder why they always met at the Swiss Centre. Presumably, they imagined they were immune — on neutral ground.’
Gus and his team still had a long way to go when the nights became shorter, and the acrid smell of fireworks drifted across leaf-strewn gardens and parks. It was on 5th November 1970 that Andrew William Railton was brought to the Old Bailey for trial, charged with — as they say — offences under the Official Secrets Act.
After the first two days of generalization, the court was cleared for most of the time as members of the SIS and MI5 gave evidence. It was a kind of ritual. Andrew William Railton went down for life. In summing up, the judge, referred to ‘the country you have betrayed, and the honour of your noble service, and family, you have besmirched’.
At Redhill, Sara had laughed loudly. ‘There’s not much honour left.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Neither in country, service or family. Especially family. Doesn’t that damned judge read the papers any more?’
Dick merely nodded, and went slowly to the room they all referred to as ‘The General’s Study’. Sara found him there an hour later, sobbing like a child.
Through his tears, Richard managed to quote from Hamlet.
‘That he is mad, ’tis true; ’tis true ’tis pity;
And pity ’tis ’tis true: a foolish figure;
But farewell it, for I will use no art.’
Sara thought of the words again and again over the next weeks, during the run-up to Christmas. She felt she had no heart to face her fellow Railtons this year, but the annual festivities took place as usual.
Barbara, now back in the Kensington house, smiled also at the judge’s unhappy choice of words. Then she also wept: for dear dead Caspar; for James and Margaret Mary, who, she thought, must be heartbroken to see to what depths of depravity the once proud family had fallen; for Arnie Farthing, her dear friend; and, most particularly for her husband, Naldo, far away in a hospital she imagined to be vile.
Aloud, she followed the Railton tradition and said to nobody but the spikes with which the walls of her house gave up secrets to the listeners, ‘Poor Naldo, close mew’d up.’ And then she wept again until the doorbell rang.
It was Herbie, come to offer some kind of comfort. ‘We go on little outing, Barb!’ he said loudly, twirling his finger and touching his ear, bringing her attention to the mikes.
They went out to Veeraswamy’s, that most plush Indian restaurant, where Herbie ate a chicken vindaloo so that sweat poured down his face, and Barbara was contented with a chicken korma.
‘This is good news, ja?’ Herbie put down his spoon and fork.
‘What?’ Barbara looked wild-eyed.
‘Andrew going in the pokey, is good news.’
‘Good, and sad.’
‘No Barb, is good. Soon, Russians will want him back. You see, they make exchange for Naldo.’
She had never thought of the possibility, and her first reaction was, ‘Oh, Christ, the family all over the papers again.’ Aloud she voiced the opinion that it would never happen. ‘Both sides would look bloody foolish, Herb. The Railton family is only a tiny, scattered part in all this, but look at the embarrassment they’ve caused already. Didn’t you see the headline in the Mirror — “A Family of Traitors”?’
‘Ach, bloody newspaper talking. Who gives shit about newspapers, Barb? All print lies. Only good for two things, newspapers.’
‘What?’ She saw his face wrinkle into a gigantic pattern of fun.
‘Only good for fishes and chips, and for wipe arse.’
‘Herbie!’
‘Sorry Barb. But it will happen. You put a cross on my words. It will happen.’
She could not allow herself to believe him, and the next two years seemed, to Barbara, to stretch into infinity, and during that time Gus and his people dried out Andrew as far as he would dry.
After the Lord Mayor’s show of Andrew’s trial, came the dustcart of the second trial: that of Alice Edith Ross, née Pritchard, one-time secretary at the shop, secret lover of sly old James, whose adoration for his wife went without question. Alice Ross was the cut-out between Andrew Railton and his Soviet control, and it was her voice which had filtered onto the Andrew Railton tapes. She had been known as Snowball, though there was not much of a snowball about her appearance. Gus Keene said, ‘The only good thing is that it proves they must have been running Andrew since the Ark.’ KGB operations only used cut-outs when things were really bedded down. The longer you ran an agent of Andrew’s calibre, the more likely there would be a slip. A go-between, a cut-out, helped reduce the number of face-to-face meetings Andrew required with his control.
Alice Ross, née Pritchard, was a flashy lady, who owned to being sixty years of age, but had almost certainly reached sixty-five. During the hearing she presented a rather pathetic figure: too much make-up badly applied (one newspaper described the slash of crimson which was her mouth as looking obscene); her thinning hair dyed blonde; her fingernails scarlet, the colour clashing with the lipstick. Two dabs of bright rouge spotted her cheeks, giving her a bizarre look.
There was a difference of opinion as to whether Alice was really a little crazy, or had cannily put on the eccentricities for the court’s benefit. S
he pleaded guilty; agreed that, in the latter part of the 1930s, she had worked for ‘a department of the Foreign Office dealing with intelligence matters’, which was surely MI6 or the SIS, but nobody would officially own up to the existence of such an organization. Alice said she had become disillusioned with the work and resigned in 1939, only to be shunted sideways into military intelligence, with the equivalent rank of captain and a small staff at the War Office.
Both C and Gus Keene held their breath when she talked about becoming ‘disenchanted’ for they were anxious that the dalliance with old James Railton should not become public property. ‘The name Railton’s now a sort of living microcosm of the service,’ C said. ‘God help us if another betrayal — if only of his wife — comes to light.’ As he said it, so a ghostly grey thought trudged through C’s mind. It stayed to haunt him for a moment, then was gone. This grim and terrifying idea was to return to him again and again until, thank God, it was exorcised by events.
But Alice had either forgotten, or wanted to avoid any hint of moral turpitude on her part. So the fleeting meetings and breathless, stolen weekends remained hidden. Instead she told her story blatantly, describing how she had met Russian military personnel during her time with the ATS; how they had politically seduced her, and how she had, in 1944, agreed to work for the Soviet service. The charges against her were tied into Andrew’s case, so nothing else came out in public. The judge seemed to take the business lightly, and once she was found to be guilty he passed a sentence of five years.