by John Gardner
But, for now, the couple basked in pleasant loafing. They would walk, lie in what was called the sun lounge, and each evening totter down the hill and along the road, lined with huge dusty trees. The landscape looked very Victorian to Naldo, but he could not tell why.
They naturally struck up a good relationship with the people who ran the taverna, and the two waiters, Spiros and Dimitri. They would eat well, drink quite a lot of ouzo, and, inevitably, learn to dance, as Alan Bates and Anthony Quinn had danced in Zorba.
On Christmas Day, they went through the routine of giving each other little gifts — a cloth shoulder-bag with Greek designs on it for Barbara, and a set of worry beads for Naldo. They bought small gifts for the boys at the taverna as well, so, though the place was officially closed for the day, they were allowed to eat there — lobsters, freshly caught, salads and sweet cakes.
On 27th December the cable arrived, with much clucking and head-shaking. Naldo had, rightly, presumed it would be read, and the contents passed on to the hotel management, who were not bothered about them eating out.
It was bad news for the English. The staff passed it around, and it reached the taverna before they arrived for their evening meal, when they were greeted with the reverence shown only to those on the brink of a death watch.
The cable had read:
DEEPLY REGRET WORST FEARS CONFIRMED REGARDING UNCLE STOP NOT EXPECTED TO LIVE FOR MORE THAN A FEW DAYS STOP SUGGEST YOU GET HOME WITH ALL HASTE
There was much telephoning, and they departed on the following morning, taking an Olympic flight to Athens, where they were booked onto a British European Airways flight to Gatwick. Strangely, the nice Railton couple, waved off from the hotel by the staff, arrived in Athens, but, once there, they cancelled the flight to Gatwick.
On the next morning they reappeared as Mr and Mrs Roberts, on an Air France flight to Paris, Orly. From there, a last-minute decision put them onto Aer Lingus to Dublin, where they spent a merry evening at the Shelbourne, hopping into London, Heathrow, on the last flight of the day.
Nobody even bothered to ask for passports; what was more, nobody even noticed. Five had a watch out, but they used the small staff available to check on the ex-Athens flights: The soft route always works.’ Naldo smiled as they directed the taxi to New Cavendish Street.
But as they disembarked, he thought he saw a familiar silhouette, framed in the back of another passing cab. It was caught in their taxi’s headlights for a fraction of a second, no more, but Naldo took one stride away, into the darkness of the building. It remained in his mind, and, during the following couple of days, he moved with extra caution.
Barbara dialled Herbie five minutes after they checked the flat, taking the telephone apart, examining walls, lamps, the undersides of tables and chairs. ‘Doing the rounds,’ as Naldo called it. It was far from being 100 per cent foolproof, but better than nothing.
Herbie arrived at one in the morning, and Naldo immediately asked if he had been followed.
‘I play it safe all ways, Nald.’ Herbie was not happy, he seemed to have lost the use of the facial muscles which allowed him to smile. ‘Three taxis and a bus. Nobody here.’
Naldo asked them to turn out the lights, and he pulled back the curtain a fraction. The street seemed deserted, though he saw that a car, a blue Rover 3.4 had parked directly opposite. It had not been there when they arrived, and it appeared to be unoccupied.
‘He’s coming?’ Naldo asked when the lights went on again.
‘About half an hour. You want details before he gets in?’
‘If you would, Herb.’
‘OK. Subject One. No Post Mortem. Heart attack. Saw his doctor the night before so no need, the duck says —’
‘Quack, Herb,’ from Barbara.
‘No need, the quack says, OK.’
‘OK’.
‘Subject Two. They have some fancy name, but basically they’re stuff called Digoxin. Fifty milligrammes is fatal dose. Subject Three. Yes, a silver pillbox among the effects. Seen it myself. Still at the shop. Empty. OK?’
Naldo did not speak.
‘Subject Four. Yes, you completely right, Nald. Didn’t show that morning. Got in around 2.45 — 14.45 as the twenty-four hours has it. All there, I got everything in writing. I even ask the duck — the quack — to sign statement, official.’ He pulled out a sheaf of notes from the small briefcase which looked even smaller when carried by Herbie.
Barbara asked if that was it.
‘The whole thing. Tied up almost with pink string and sealing wax.’ Naldo pursed his lips. ‘All we’ve got to do now is prove it.’
The entryfone buzzed, and Barbara called out, ‘Yes?’ into the little telephone speaker by the door.
‘Hunter,’ said the disembodied voice.
‘Come home, then, sir.’ She pressed the button to open the ground floor electronic lock.
Naldo was beside the window. As the front doorbell rang, he saw the Rover drive away, and noted that a small white van had parked up the street.
‘Well, Naldo, this had better be good because I’ve kept quiet, and not told a living soul,’ C said from the threshold. He looked tired and much older. Naldo put it down to the time of day. ‘If you want a laugh, I know the few people watching for you haven’t got a scent.’ He was shrugging out of his topcoat. ‘Damned cold out there. There’s been a heavy frost, and maybe snow before long.’
‘Nobody on your back, sir?’
‘Only my own man. You know him. The best. Max.’
Naldo poured a large brandy and set it before the CSS. ‘You’re probably going to need that, sir.’
‘Let us say, I’d better need it, Naldo. It’s the last —’ The telephone began to ring with that strident urgency that only comes late at night or in the early hours.
‘Who the hell?’ Naldo said calmly. He picked up the instrument and said nothing. ‘For you, chief. Max,’ handing it to C. How did the old devil get the number, he thought to himself.
‘Can’t be … Right … Yes, if he comes round for a third look … I’ll flash three times … OK.’ C put down the telephone. ‘Max says he thinks someone’s doing a round-the-houses. Taxi. It’s passed twice since he’s been watching.’
Naldo felt his heart give a jump. He wondered if it was the same cab he had seen before. ‘You ready, sir?’
‘Depends what you’ve got.’
Naldo gave a sigh: long, a great expelling of his breath, as though his lungs needed emptying before he started. ‘It’s not easy for me, sir. I have a prima facie case against my father for being a Soviet long-term penetration; an explanation for Sir Caspar’s letter reaching Mr Morris when it did; evidence that the letter’s a forgery; possible means of handling; and the probable involvement of yet another member of my family. The entire business appears to be a family business. Betrayal’s our second name. I’m sorry.’
‘How solid’s your evidence, Naldo?’ The chief spoke as though trying to soothe a sick child. Barbara and Herbie saw how ill and lonely Naldo looked, from the bleakness deep in his eyes, to the slight shaking of his fingers.
‘Only up to a point, sir. I think we’ll need watchers to catch them, and my father’s an old man. I don’t know how discovery’s going to affect him. I —’
‘Just lay out the facts. Tell us how it lies, Naldo.’
Naldo Railton placed the sheaf of papers from Herbie on the table, and a further document next to it. Then, softly, with occasional breaks in his voice, he began to talk.
Thousand-and-One-Nights time, Big Herbie Kruger thought.
4
In the King Street house, James Railton sat alone, gazing into the fire. For some strange reason he had begun to feel older in the last few weeks, as though another winter had brought his body and mind into that chill last season of his life. Even Margaret Mary had noticed the change, and seemed to be constantly asking him if he was all right.
He told her ‘Yes,’ but they both knew he was lying, as he had lied for so long now
. Even in retirement he lied, and schemed, doubled to and fro, hid in the mental shadows.
God, it had been so long, he thought, catching the pictures of faces in the fire. So long since he had thought of honour, family, God and country. He supposed it was the country and his own values — or the old family values — that had started the slide.
It was the First World War, the Great War as they had called it, that had been the turning point. James really had believed that God, honour, country and family had meant something then. When it was over, he knew a new order would replace the old; that Great Britain would be a land fit for heroes. Yet the heroes remained unsung, for the most part. Some begged in the streets — Ex-Serviceman; Wife and Children to Support; selling matches or bootlaces from cardboard trays, or playing an instrument, lonely in the gutter; marching from north to south for fair wages, while others prospered, if they had the right contacts, the correct look, the proper school. Nothing altered. Nothing was ventured and nothing gained. Each year they paid lip-service to the glorious dead, while the unemployment figures rose and love of country became tarnished.
James remembered now how he had woken one morning to see clearly that he was ashamed of his background, sick to death with his family and their strength of rank and privilege.
It must have shown, for suddenly — in the Travellers Club of all places — the approach was made. Already Hitler was on the rise, the scent of war hung in the air. If Hitler and his Nazi Party were to be defeated there was only one way: one way to be certain, this time, that at the end Britain would blossom into a new Jerusalem. After all, Communism was only a form of political Christianity, and in that way lay hope.
He recalled the tall, languid man, talking quietly, and for hours on end. The Government’s way of appeasement was of no value. Fascism could only be put down through a political ideology fully opposed to the evil that Germany had embraced.
Slowly he had seen the full light. What Britain needed was the ruthless discipline of Stalin’s Marxism; the weeding of politicians and military leaders; the clean sweep of class; the organization of the people, and the equality it would bring. In the end, he had totally embraced the only way.
Certainly there was danger, but James had always thrived on that: the code-word telephone calls, the drops, and the meetings. Within a year the old arcane rituals were replaced by new ones. In the giant chess game he had changed sides and it was as easy as crossing the road.
James Railton did not think of himself as a traitor. It was his country that had betrayed him. The old country had become a nonentity. The empire was in twilight time and the saviours had approached him just as his disillusioned view of country, family, God and honour was at its lowest ebb. And he was not alone. Even younger members of his own family had followed him when he cast the fly. Moscow Centre used guile, handled them in a way his own old service could never have handled them. They cosseted the three of them and kept them safe. Not even the arch-mole Blunt, who had led so many others, knew of their existence.
Because of them, and others of like mind, it would come: the dream; just as it had come to Russia. He had no regrets, just hatred for the past. At his age, the future mattered little, except that he had done his best to point the way. One day his secret efforts, his personal contribution to the Soviet future would be recognized. For now it was as though his country was a private luxury motor car about to be crushed between two lorries. James was sure it was not an original thought. He had read it somewhere. At least he had done something positive with his life, not like so many of the dissatisfied poor and rich kids of today who sought shelter in the drop-out sub-culture of drugs and pop groups.
He let the fire warm him, and delved back into his memories, wondering how long men and women would have to fight in secret for true freedom and equality.
TWENTY-SIX
1
‘Weep if it’ll help, Naldo.’ C was ever a man’s man, but, once Naldo had finished, his sense of comprehension and compassion showed clear. Herbie had taken out a handkerchief and blown his nose loudly, muttering something about ‘Foolish. Blubbings. Foolish. Unmanly, the blubbings.’ Barbara, who knew it all anyway, did nothing to stop the tears trickling silently down her cheeks.
Later, one of them thought C had wiped the corner of an eye. ‘It’s not every day that a man is forced to betray an elderly father whom he’s always loved,’ C said. ‘Nor outline a possible corruption which has eaten the heart of his family.’ He paused, going over to the window, motioning them to turn off the lights, then drawing back the curtains. It was day. A milk-float went up the street and the sound of heels on the pavement below merged with the early morning traffic.
‘I suppose you loved your uncle more than most,’ C said, not even looking at Naldo as he walked back to the table. ‘As for the evidence. Well, it makes sense. As you said at the beginning, we need them red-handed, and that means a surveillance team. There’s the question of forgery in Caspar’s papers. You know who, but when’s the question.’ It was always the problem with counter-intelligence. There was no case unless you caught the target guilty, in the act, or got a clean confession.
As though he had not heard his chief’s last words, Naldo said, ‘It needs one that can be trusted.’ His voice was gritty, his throat dry. He spoke of the surveillance team.
‘Quite.’ C understood, and went towards the window. Then, as though caught by a sudden memory, he turned back into the room. Barbara had gone off into the kitchen to make tea and raise the level of the central heating. There was frost on the windows. Naldo remembered childhood and his father pointing out the incredible kaleidoscopic and beautiful patterns formed within the droplets of frost.
‘We can deal with telephones and spikes. No problem.’ C seemed to be speaking to himself. ‘I can have the telephones wired in a matter of an hour. The spikes can probably be put in later today. They changed King Street much in the last few years?’
He called it King Street, but, in reality, James Railton’s house stood in King Street, St James’s, at the bottom of the wide street off Piccadilly called St James’s Street, because of the palace with its colourful guard which stood at the far end. King Street branched off to the left. Offices, some exclusive shops, a few very good houses — some now dissected into flats — towards the point where the street filtered into St James’s Square.
‘Hardly at all,’ Naldo answered.
‘We get a team in?’
‘I should think Special Branch can arrange it, sir. Directly opposite the house they’ve refurbished the building. What was once four houses is now a damned ugly office block. The SB should be able to put on some pressure.’
‘You want to be in on it, Naldo?’
‘It’d be best.’ He answered slowly, laboriously even, as though the long relating of facts through the early hours had left him without words.
C nodded. ‘I’ll be back to you. Must get a move on. This line’s clear, I presume?’ pointing at the telephone.
‘Should be, sir.’
‘I’ll send a man around.’ C was shrugging himself into his coat. ‘Suggest Barbara lets him in and then both of you stay out of sight. I must go …’
‘No tea, sir?’ Barbara came through with a tray.
‘Like to, but this is probably more important than any of you think. I might return and brief you here. Otherwise I’ll call.’ He stopped, strangely hesitant for a man used to making very fast decisions. Then — ‘It’s possible Gus’ll be over sometime. I might want you to go over everything with him, Naldo. Sorry to put you through the ordeal, but it’s necessary.’ He moved his body, from the trunk, his feet staying in the same position: it was how they were taught to change an aiming point with a pistol. C looked at Kruger. ‘Herb, you got anything vital on today?’
‘It’ll keep, actually.’ Herbie sounded very precise.
‘Right. Would you stay and babysit these two?’
‘Best nanny in the business, chief.’ Pause, as though counting beats like an
actor. ‘Like to be at the kill, please.’
C nodded agreement. Then — ‘Now, I’d be obliged if someone would flash these lights three times, I don’t want to incur Max’s wrath. It can be awful.’
‘Yes, I’ve seen it,’ Naldo said, flashing the lights, on-off, on-off, on-off.
They filled the day somehow. Herbie lumbered out to get cigarettes, and returned to tell them there was heavy surveillance on the block. ‘The chief’s got bodies from every way which —’
‘Which way, Herb,’ Naldo and Barbara spoke in unison.
‘They have this place completely covered. I think Max really did see something last night, maybe.’
Naldo was smoking more than ever. Lighting cigarette from cigarette. They tried to behave normally, but all knew the horror that would come, if not that night, the next, or the following week. At one point Naldo said, ‘They might have talked recently. At Redhill. We need something to flush them.’
‘Ja, I think, maybe, the chief knows that, Nald.’ Herbie spoke as one who had a whole plan of battle laid out in front of him; the pieces set in place. The big German was always surprising them. He did so now, seeing the look on Naldo’s face. ‘I tell you, Nald. I tell you what the Chinaman Sun Tzu said. He said, “Your surviving spy must be of keen intellect, though in outward appearance, a fool.” This brings great comfort to me.’
Later, in the middle of the afternoon, Naldo suddenly quoted Shakespeare for no apparent reason: