Vasili winked and gestured for Kit to come over. Kit flashed him a middle finger, then looked up to see the Irish Ambassador frowning directly at him. Kit nodded and smiled blandly, then made his way to the drinks table and served himself. He then circulated past the Uruguayan chargé d’affaires, who was speaking in German to the Papal Nuncio, and found himself next to Vasili. The Russian, by way of small talk, began by asking, ‘How are the British getting on with their hydrogen bomb?’
Kit laughed and gestured with his thumb towards a British cabinet minister, then whispered, ‘Why don’t you fucking ask him?’ It was the same minister that Kit had compromised in a honey trap.
Vasili glanced at the minister and said deadpan, ‘I don’t think he would tell me.’
‘But his girlfriend might.’ Kit not only knew that the Russians knew, but he knew that the Russians knew that he knew. In other words, his comment revealed nothing that wasn’t already known. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have said a word. Kit wasn’t sure how the Russians knew about his honey trap and it worried him. There were rumours that a Sov attaché had got involved too. The rumours complicated things and Kit longed to know if they were true. He gave Vasili a playful nudge with his elbow. ‘She’s a good looker, isn’t she?’
Vasili didn’t reply and kept a straight face. He wasn’t going down that dark alley with anyone who wasn’t a very senior colleague. It was the sort of thing you only talked about in the hushed offices of the Lubyanka in Moscow. Kit knew this, but liked teasing the Russian. To lighten the tone, Kit asked, ‘How many of your embassy staff are not KGB?’
Vasili pursed his lips and looked thoughtful, ‘Just over half – but who knows about the other half? Maybe they’re just pretending to be cooks and drivers, but are really undercover KGB spying on us. Who knows? KGB is not, my friend, so much a job title as an existential concept.’
An essential part of Kit’s job was transcribing these conversations. If they weren’t too juicy, he dictated them to a security-cleared shorthand typist. But he had a feeling this was one he’d have to type himself. He knew that Vasili had to do the same – and not put a foot wrong. The tightrope that Vasili walked didn’t have a safety net. There were fifteen members of the original Bolshevik government. By 1940, ten of them had been executed and four others had died. That management culture permeated the entire state apparatus. The NKVD, the predecessor to the KGB, had arrested almost twenty million and executed seven million. And yet, thought Kit, the survivors of all that terror were so infinitely human. How could they love music, poetry, art – and friendship too – with such passion? Was it because the abyss was always there and each minute had to be caressed and savoured like a precious wine? Compared to them, thought Kit, we are so shallow, so insipid. Did Donald Duart Maclean see that too?
‘You and your friends,’ said Vasili, ‘aren’t so close any more.’
‘Thanks to you guys. But we’re not getting divorced, we’re staying together for the kids.’
‘You mean like Little Boy and Fat man – you’re staying togetherfor the bombs.’
‘Don’t be silly, we don’t share that stuff any more. After Comrade Burgess and Comrade Maclean, we wouldn’t trust the Brits with a recipe for chocolate chip cookies.’
‘Vasili looked slightly confused; he’d learned English English.‘What are cookeesh?’
‘They’re what the British call biscuits.’
‘So they are the same thing.’
‘No, not the same. The recipes are different.’
‘Are the American recipes better?’
‘Much more advanced, let’s say.’
‘And why,’ said Vasili, ‘won’t you tell the British how to make these better cookeesh?’
‘Cookeees.’ Kit paused and made eye contact. ‘I’ve already told you – their sous chefs can’t be trusted with kitchen secrets. So the Brits are going to have to find their own recipes.’
Part of Kit’s job was misinformation. He knew that Vasili would assume that he was lying about the US-UK rift – the hidden ‘truth’ being the contrary, that Anglo-US military cooperation was improving. But it had, in fact, become even worse under Eden. It was bluff, double and triple bluff. In the intelligence world, ‘truth’ and ‘factual reality’ seldom coincide. The Cambridge spies were underused by the Russians because, for years, the KGB had believed that the members of the spy ring were perfidious triple-dealing Englishmen who had been planted by the British Secret Service. The officers handling the Cambridge ring had risked being shot by their KGB bosses because the secrets they gleaned from the spies were too good, too perfect, to be ‘true’. If everything adds up and is confirmed by other sources as true, it doesn’t mean ‘truth’ – it means a vast conspiracy to deceive.
‘Good whisky,’ said Vasili, and drained his glass.
‘By the way,’ said Kit, ‘do you still see our friend, Monsieur Poêle?’ Mister Pan, Peter Pan, the statue in Kensington Gardens. It was the place where Kit and Vasili exchanged information via dead drop spikes. There was, from time to time, intelligence that was mutually beneficial to both superpowers – to the detriment of a third. The exact spot was next to a little-used path between the statue and the Serpentine. The dead drop spike is a metal container about the size of a fountain pen. One end has a sharp spike for sticking in the ground, the other a little green loop for retrieving it. The hollowed out spike is used for concealing messages or microfilm. If Kit had something to pass on, he would go for a walk in the gardens and suddenly discover that a shoelace needed tying – and then press the spike into the soft grassy turf with the palm of his hand. The sign that dead drop mail was waiting was a piece of chewing gum stuck on the armrest of a bench near the park entrance.
‘I haven’t seen Monsieur Poêle for some time. Is he well?’
‘He’s feeling a bit under the weather.’ Kit waited to see if Vasili had got the joke: rain, snow, pigeon shit. Finally, it registered and the Russian groaned. ‘He might,’ said Kit, ‘appreciate a visit.’
‘Have you heard,’ said Vasili, ‘the one about my friend Boris?’
‘No.’
‘Boris hasn’t been feeling very well lately – and he’s been making some mistakes, so he’s called back to Dzerzhinsky Square to see the chief. The chief says, “How are you feeling, Boris?” Boris says, “To be honest, I’m not feeling too good today.” “Well, Boris,” says the chief, “would you like to hear the good news?” “Yes,” said Boris, “what’s the good news?” “The good news, Boris, is that you feel better today than you will tomorrow.”’
The next day Kit woke with a hangover and a letter from Jennifer. She encoded the first part, BCIU QAWG NCIK, which Kit decoded to, IVEF OUND BOAT. The rest of the letter was written in the clear.
It’s a lovely boat and, I think, a very seaworthy one. Billy Whiting, the boy who does chores for us, found it lying ashore at Aldeburgh. It’s a traditional East Coast boat called a Blackwater Sloop – I love the name. Billy says it needs some work, but that he and his uncle can manage it. What should I do?
It was lovely to see you – you always make me laugh. Brian’s back. He’s working very long hours and seems troubled about something. I think there’s some sort of crisis on Orford Ness.
I hope you come up to have a look at the boat. Sorry this is so brief.
Take care,
Much love, Jennifer
Kit was pleased that Jennifer remembered how to use the code. He re-read the letter, the words ‘crisis on Orford Ness’ rang a very loud alarm bell. What were they up to? Kit knew he was expected to penetrate the security on Orford Ness, but didn’t know how it was possible. He wasn’t allowed to use anyone acting under ‘official cover’ – this excluded all US military and government employees. Kit thought about Driscoll, but knew that an Irish navvy with an IRA background had as much chance of getting an AWRE security clearance as a KGB officer in full dress uniform.
Kit carried Jennifer’s letter over to the sink, lit a match, burned the letter a
nd washed the ashes down the drain. Then he struck another match to light the gas cooker so he could boil a kettle for tea. I must be turning into a Limey, he thought. Kit took the lid off the tin of leaf tea, but waited for the water to boil so that he could ‘warm the pot’. Making tea was the English equivalent of a Tridentine Mass. But what about Stanley, thought Kit? A site like Orford Ness must be begging for electricians.
Facial appearance is only part of an effective disguise; there’s also walking, gestures and voice. But, thought Kit, the most important part of a disguise is sharing the attitude and thoughts of the person you are impersonating. If you could do that, it changed you far more than a false moustache or a fake limp. In a corner of his bathroom mirror, opposite the Maclean statement, Kit had taped another quote: The essential character of a nation is not determined by the upper classes, but by the common people, and that the common people of all nations are true brothers in the great family of mankind.
Kit stared at the words. He secretly admired the man who had said them, but it wasn’t an easy belief for him to take on. The words were from the unpublished autobiography of Paul Robeson, the black American singer. Kit’s admiration for Robeson had to be ‘secret’, for part of his job was stopping the autobiography from being published. Robeson’s book, banned in the US, was now doing the rounds of publishers in London. Robeson had fallen foul of HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Committee, for saying things like ‘our basic democratic rights are under attack under the smokescreen of anti-communism .’ Consequently, Kit’s bosses, the US State Department, had taken away Robeson’s passport and issued ‘stop notices’ at all ports and border crossings.
It hadn’t been difficult to find a corner of the South Lambeth Goods Depot that was quiet and abandoned – particularly if you parked there at lunchtime. Kit’s favoured place was next to a pair of derelict water tanks next to a siding that was never used; years of stale grass had grown and turned rank between the rails. A sparrow hopped between the sleepers foraging for seeds. Kit opened his briefcase and took out his make-up box. He set up a mirror on the car dashboard and within five minutes had turned himself into an American of mixed race. For a second or two Kit admired himself in the mirror: the dark skin improved his looks. He then locked the car and set off on foot to his agent rendezvous. Kit found himself humming a song he’d picked up from Stanley, ‘Meet Me in Battersea Park.’
See the people riding on the roundabouts and swings,
Children so delighted at the puppets on the strings.
Kit arrived at the usual park bench and sat down. He checked his watch: Stanley was running late. That was unusual, the Londoner always got there first. The bench was on the edge of the park and looked out over the Thames. On the other side of the river a red-coated Chelsea pensioner limped along the embankment. The pensioner finally found a bench and sat down. He leaned on his stick and stared across the water. Kit felt that the pensioner, with a leg full of shrapnel from Ladysmith or Mafeking, was watching his every move. Kit opened a copy of the Manchester Guardian – it was part of his cover – and started reading an article about the implications of Khrushchev’s speech denouncing Stalin. All change, thought Kit, all change.
Kit looked at his watch again: six minutes late. Maybe Stanley wasn’t going to show. And in any case, he might not fancy a job in Suffolk. Kit looked across the river; the pensioner had been joined by another and they were talking. The paranoia began to ease and Kit folded the Guardian: the newspaper was a prop, part of the cover story he had put on to deceive Stanley. Kit knew that Stanley, despite his criminal activities, was both a patriot and a man of the left. He would never have touched a job if it meant working for a foreign power, especially the Americans. Therefore, Kit had devised a cover story that included an English wife, a friendship with Paul Robeson and connections with British socialism. Kit never mentioned a political party by name, but let Stanley make his own assumptions. The targets of his break-ins – bomb budget figures and the Tory PM’s health records – would be valuable assets to any of the government’s socialist opponents. Wouldn’t it be funny, Kit thought, if the left wing of the Labour Party ended up getting blamed for the burglaries? He could imagine Allen Dulles slapping his thigh and howling with laughter.
There was the sound of someone kicking a football on the field behind the bench. Then the voice of a child, ‘Come on, Grandad, please try to get the ball.’
‘Now, listen Albert, I’ve got to have a talk with this gentleman.’
Kit heard tiny footsteps brushing through the grass at the back of the bench, then a child’s voice whispering in his ear. ‘Mister, would you like to play piggy in the middle? You can be piggy.’
Kit turned and faced a boy who looked about four. He wasn’t used to children and felt awkward around them. Before he could think of something to say, Stanley came to the rescue.
‘Albert, you young tearaway, let that poor man be.’ Stanley then knelt down and pointed into the distance. ‘Look, Albert, you see those two elm trees over there. Pretend they’re fullbacks – I want you to dribble back and forth between them practising that two-step move I showed you.’
Kit watched the child trot off towards the trees. It all seemed so strange – child, grandparent, park, play. What, thought Kit, was the name of this strange planet? The sounds of organ music and laughter from the funfair carried across the greensward. The park was dotted with prams: punctuation points of life. How, thought Kit, do you find the code word that lets you in?
Stanley called out to his grandson. ‘Use both feet – that’s it!’ Then turned to Kit and said, ‘They’re on to me.’
‘How do you know?’
‘They tried to put the frighteners on me – bastards.’
‘Who were they?’ Kit was playing dumb.
‘It was them. You always know it’s them – they stick out like bleeding thumbs.’
Kit knew that by ‘them’ Stanley meant the security services. In the underworld you called a gang or a villain by name, but the heavy hands of the State were always ‘them’. It was as if they were evil spirits and saying their name aloud – MI5, Special Branch, SIS – would invoke a curse. ‘What happened?’ said Kit.
‘They were waiting for me when I came out of the Bread and Roses – parked in a big Humber. But I ignored them and continued on my merry way – and the car starts following me at walking pace. When I turn into Elmhurst Street, the Humber turns too, and two blokes jump out and start to walk on either side of me. But I just walk along whistling with my hands in my pockets pretending they’re not there. They didn’t like that – and about three seconds later, they lift me up and throw me against an iron railing. It hurt and I’ve still got the bruises. So I say, “What that’s for?” And one of ’em says, “Shut it, Stanley.” For a while, they just kept staring at me. Then the other one said, and he had a voice just like a vicar, he says, “We’re disappointed in you, Stanley, we never thought you would do something like this. We strongly advise that you stop.” And that was it – the driver turned around and picked them up – and I haven’t seen them since, but I think they’re watching. That’s why I brought Albert – they know I wouldn’t bring the kid if I was on a job.’
‘Have you ever worked for them?’
‘Might have.’ Stanley seemed embarrassed. ‘Nothing much, did the phones at the Egyptian Embassy.’
‘I’m sorry it turned out this way.’ Kit reached into his pocket and took out a roll of pound notes.
‘What’s that for?’
‘It’s a token of appreciation, a bonus, for what you’ve done.’
‘I don’t want it. I liked working for you. It felt good to get at those bastards – they just want to keep us down.’
Kit shoved the roll of notes into Stanley’s coat pocket. ‘Just take it.’
‘What’s the matter? You seem angry.’
‘I’m not angry at you.’ Kit stared at the river. The tide had changed and there were brown whirlpools heading seawards. He wondered
if it was possible to choke to death on self-loathing. Stanley was a villain and safe-cracker, but one that knew all the words of ‘The Red Flag’ and ‘The Internationale’. Kit remembered Stanley telling him how he had fought the Fascists on Cable Street and had his skull cracked in a baton charge by mounted police. The duping of Stanley required more than a trick of spycraft; it required an acid of bleak cynicism that corroded the soul.
Chapter Five
As Kit walked past the Roosevelt Memorial, he noticed that the daffodils were in full bloom. A reminder that in one month the Russian light cruiser, Ordzhonikidze, would dock in Portsmouth Harbour bringing First Secretary Khrushchev and Premier Nikolai Bulganin to Britain for the goodwill visit. As soon as Kit got to his office he sent for the most recent underwater espionage files – not the sort of stuff you can take home to peruse of an evening over a glass of wine. Even in the embassy itself, he had to sign a dated and timed top secret document receipt.
The previous October the Sverdlov, another Soviet light cruiser, had been to Portsmouth for the Spithead naval review. Both British and US Navy intelligence were surprised by the ship’s manoeuvrability and wanted to find out her secret. The underwater espionage was a joint CIA-MI6 operation, codenamed SM/ CLARET, that involved both British and American divers. MI6 had enticed Commander Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb out of his boozy retirement for a fee of sixty guineas, a quaint unit of British currency worth twenty-one shillings. It hadn’t taken Kit long to learn that ordinary people exchanged pounds, but gentlemen traded in guineas. But it was only afterwards that Kit discovered that ‘the gentlemen’ from MI6 hadn’t told their boss, the Prime Minister, what they were doing. It was a totally unauthorised op. It didn’t take Kit long to realise that MI6 had used the CIA as camouflage. If something had gone wrong, they would have blamed the Americans for spying in British waters. The ensuing shit storm would, of course, have destroyed Kit’s career.
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