by Joseph Hone
“Is someone being funny?”
Kirk looked up, aggrieved.
“You think I’m an Egyptian agent?”
“Not I, Mr. Marlow, I assure you. The charges are being brought by the Crown, on an application made by the Chief of your department to the Director of Public Prosecutions. They’ve accepted that there is a case to answer.”
“You think I’d come all the way back here in the circumstances—if I were working for the Egyptians?”
“I’ve no idea. No doubt that’s a point your counsel will have every opportunity of presenting on your behalf in due course.”
“I’ll call my solicitor then.”
“Certainly. Meanwhile you will be held in custody. Oh, ‘and I must warn you that anything you say will be taken down …’”
He ran on with the legal procedure hurriedly, an old lady scrabbling for something forgotten in her bag, trying to tumble it out as I stood at the door, waiting with a sergeant. When he was finished I was taken downstairs. They made a list of my belongings, including my passport. They didn’t, of course, spot the microfilm behind the foreign exchange allowance, and I didn’t tell them about it. I thought, somehow, that once that emerged in the right quarters I would be done with the whole business and Williams would start the first of his many turns with the gentle Inspector Kirk.
I was given some warm buttered toast on a large tin plate and a cup of sweet tea. Looking up from my cell through the area window I saw a narrow ribbon of gusty blue and grey spring sky over the embankment and I thought: “I’ll be out in that in a minute, get caught in a nasty squall on my way home if I’m not careful.” I’ve since learnt that this is a common delusion suffered by prisoners during the initial part of their confinement.
My solicitor came afterwards, when it had got dark and the lights had mysteriously gone on in the tiled cubicle. That was the point when I knew I wasn’t going to get home that night—when I realized that they did things here for you literally without asking.
I told the solicitor that I wanted to bring a counter charge against the head of my department, and wished to make a statement about that, and he said, when I’d finished, that he would lay the information with the Special Branch and if they took no action it would undoubtedly form a major part of my defence when I came to trial. He seemed hopeful about this new evidence, said it gave us something positive to work on. I thought so too.
After he had gone I thought about Williams; there was little else I felt like thinking about. He hadn’t ditched Usher, Herbert, Marcus and the others—I had, and no doubt he would manipulate the evidence to convince any jury. What would my piece of microfilm be worth then? Just something I’d been given by the Egyptians to frame him with. “A Russian agent, my good fellow?—you’ve got it all wrong …”
*
And so it went at my trial twelve weeks later, some of it held in camera, at the Number One court in the Old Bailey. They’d had their way by then, of course; the Russians had swamped Egypt in the meantime; Williams’s plan had gone off without a hitch—unless one looked at the five thousand Egyptians slaughtered in the Mitla Pass as a hitch, but I’m sure Williams didn’t; they were running away after all.
My counter accusation against Williams looked pretty thin when one got down to it: pure supposition with all my possible witnesses in Siwa oasis, for, of course, the Egyptians had dealt with them very summarily before the Six Day War.
The evidence against me on the other hand, though almost entirely circumstantial, sounded pretty convincing: if not I, then who was it who had betrayed a whole circle within the space of four days? It was Blake all over again. I was the only person present at the place and time in question (that was a typical phrase) who had comprehensive knowledge of the people involved; I was the only one subsequently to remain at liberty …
What was the motive then? And here a principal point of evidence was brought against me which was quite unexpected and which tore to shreds the remnants of my own case: it was that I and my former wife had been Soviet agents in Cairo for more than ten years. This staggered me until I saw the evidence: a recent photograph from a West German magazine of Bridget walking away hurriedly from a store in a Moscow street, a haggard, frightened, unwilling, unhappy shape in a headscarf, but undeniably her.
The story beneath described her as part of a KGB husband-and-wife team active for many years in Cairo who had infiltrated a British Intelligence circle there during the Suez adventure. Subsequently the husband had arranged to divorce the woman and he had left Egypt to take up an important post with the SIS in London.
The whole thing was a carefully executed plant by Moscow, but other than denying it completely there was no way I could prove that it was untrue. Only Williams, who had arranged it, could have done that.
Of course, I remembered Hawthorn’s rumour the day before I left Cairo, the woman that had been kidnapped by the Russians that week-end on Gezira: Williams had thought of everything. My counsel thought it barely worth bringing up, but I insisted. They could check with Hawthorn if needs be.
The Attorney-General, a well meaning, confident fellow who had behaved during the whole trial like a tall man knocking-up at the net, dealt with the matter immediately: “If I may say so, my Lord, Cairo has been a hotbed for this sort of story since the Holy Family were rumoured in Heliopolis. But let us take it in this instance the rumour was true: I would suggest that it was leaked by the KGB for the obvious purpose of clearing the defendant of any connection with Miss Girgis. If they abducted his wife it was hardly likely to be thought that the defendant was working for them. In reality I would suggest that what happened was that things had got too hot for Miss Girgis, she was being withdrawn from the field, while her previous husband was thus left free to pursue his subversive activities in London. We must thank the German press for some smart detective work and, in this case, we may safely allow our credulity rein in a climate notorious for its deceitful airs: very well, then, Miss Girgis was ‘kidnapped’, I accept that; but willingly … knowingly. She was not deceived, nor should we be.”
We argued that if such were the circumstances I was hardly likely to make such strenuous efforts to get back to England; I would have returned to Moscow myself.
“Experience in these matters clearly shows that this is exactly what the KGB do not do,” the Attorney-General put in. “Once a man has a good placing, impeccable bona fides, as the defendant had, they do their utmost to ensure that he remains at the station he has penetrated.” The man paused, looking around the court, making one of his rare but beautifully timed applications to Actors’ Equity; then he continued in an off-hand way: “My Lord, ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, one has only to consider the case of Harold Philby to appreciate the lengths to which the KGB will go to ensure that their men remain at a penetrated station.” There were suitable mutterings all round.
His final address came shortly after and at the end he returned with relish to the same theme: “… It has been the folly of the past to retain such men as the defendant in British Intelligence—even after their disloyalty was strongly suspected, even to the extent of unofficially re-employing them, making them privy once more to the most sensitive policy areas, when they had been officially sacked. Such was the case with Philby; he was trusted in high places to the bitter end; and that it was such, and worse, I think no one here need contend. Let us not dally with that trust ever again. Let us be firm for once, not fools; let us be forearmed, since certainly we have been forewarned.”
He paused once more, just for a moment, nothing dramatic this time: “I ask that the defendant suffer the full penalty which the law allows,” he said in a small voice, suddenly bowing his head and starting to put his papers together before he’d begun to sit down.
I did: twenty-eight years. After Blake they were obviously being more cautious with their sentences.
I remember glancing up at Williams in the public gallery as I went down. He had got up and was moving out with McCoy and some of m
y other colleagues, straightening their coats, blowing their noses, chattering to each other in businesslike whispers. I could almost hear the fatuous, facile talk: “… a meeting has been arranged … we shall need someone … a new Cairo circle? … well, I hardly think at the moment … operate strictly from Beirut from now on. McCoy, make me out a work chart on our Beirut commitments, what we can spare from there … had quite a blow you know, losing all those chaps … dear me, yes …”
They shuffled on out into the bright afternoon, the baking weather which lay all over London that summer. It was just coming on to 5:30 when I got down to the cells, but by then I’d ceased to miss opening time; the piquancy of the hour barely crossed my mind.
I wondered how long Williams would last as we rolled along out of London, in convoy, and up the M1. I caught a glimpse of a fast bowler just starting his run towards the last of the sunlight in a park below the North Circular flyover. Yes, his reputation must have taken a fearful knocking over the whole business and Marcus might not be in Siwa Oasis for ever. On the other hand they were right about the KGB: Williams would stay where he was to the bitter end; and so, in the nature of things, would I.
I was surprised all the same, some time later, when I came to go over the case for my appeal, to hear from my solicitor that my allegations against Williams would now have to be directed to the Deputy Chief of Service of British Intelligence. Williams had left his Holborn office for good.
Of course, he’d been kicked upstairs after the fracas in Cairo; perhaps the KGB had intended that in their plans from the beginning: a kick it may have been, but the fool now had free run of all the secrets in the attic: a pawn for a queen. It was a good move.
“I don’t know how far well get with this appeal,” my solicitor said, a touch of weariness in his voice. He had travelled all that day on the way up to the top security jail in Durham and was understandably tired. “People at that height tend to be pretty sure of their ground—tend to protect themselves thoroughly, you know.”
He looked at me anxiously, seemed to gaze through me, as though searching for something, a spot a long distance away on the horizon. “I know,” I said. “I know.”
About the Author
Joseph Hone, born 1937, is a novelist, journalist and broadcaster. Faber Finds is reissuing his four Peter Marlow spy thrillers – The Private Sector, The Sixth Directorate, The Valley of the Fox and The Flowers of the Forest. As a writer of spy thrillers, Joseph Hone has been compared favourably with the likes of Eric Ambler, Len Deighton and John le Carré. His most recent book, Wicked Little Joe, is a memoir published by Lilliput Press
Copyright
This ebook edition first published in 2014
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
All rights reserved
© Joseph Hone, 1971
Preface © Jeremy Duns, 2014
The right of Joseph Hone to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–31569–7