William nods. He hands her an envelope. Her fingers tremble as she opens it and checks the tickets. Two passengers; Southampton to Cairo, Cairo to Singapore and, finally, Singapore to Sydney. She takes out her new passport and runs her finger over the name. Joan Margery Stanley. She opens Max’s new passport and checks that too. George Stanley. Not entirely new but a common enough name for some overlap not to matter, and enough of a difference to allow him a fresh start, albeit on the condition that he never again returns to Britain. Birth certificates, marriage certificate, employers’ references. It is all there. And at the bottom of the envelope, a St. Christopher’s medal with a note stapled to the chain. She will look at the note later.
‘Thank you,’ she whispers. ‘How can I ever repay you?’
‘Never tell anyone,’ he whispers. ‘That’s all I ask. And burn the photograph.’
Joan shakes her head. She reaches into her pocket and hands the photograph to him. ‘I thought you might like to do it,’ she says. ‘That’s the only copy, as far as I know.’
William smiles and slips it into the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘Thank you.’ He turns to Max, still sitting motionless beside him, and touches him on the arm. ‘Time to go, Professor.’
William winds the window up, his job done. The two men shake hands, and then Max gets out of the car and walks around to take his suitcase from the boot. He does not look at Joan as he does so, not even a glance or a nod to give any indication of what he is thinking. Has he changed his mind? Does he want his old life back now after all? Perhaps he will say it once William has gone, hand her over to the authorities at Customs, tell her that he cannot believe she ever thought she’d get away with it. Or . . .
But the next thought does not have time to form itself in Joan’s mind, because just at that moment Max closes the car boot and looks straight at her, his blue eyes glittering in the dim glow of the dawn, and he is smiling, grinning even, and in another second his arms are around her waist and he is lifting her, snatching her up like a leaf caught in the wind, and holding her so tightly that she can hardly breathe (‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers into his neck, ‘I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry’) and her suitcase and coat must be making her heavy but he doesn’t seem to notice because he is laughing, and then suddenly so is she, both of them giddy like children. He puts her down and they begin to walk—it is almost a run—up the wooden steps and onto the boat, turning at the top of the steps to see William flash the car headlamps in farewell and, for a brief moment, Joan lets go of Max’s hand so that she can put her fingers to her lips and blow William a kiss.
And it is not just a kiss. It is also a promise.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The inspiration for this book came from a newspaper article published in 1999 in the Times (snappily captioned ‘The Spy Who Came In From The Co-op’) in which Melita Norwood was identified at the age of eighty-seven as having been the most important and longest-serving Soviet spy of the Cold War era. New evidence to identify her became available when Vasili Mitrokhin defected to Britain from the KGB in 1992, bringing with him a huge number of painstakingly copied files previously unseen by the British intelligence services. Norwood was dubbed the ‘granny spy,’ making a televised statement to the press in her garden in which she was, disappointingly if unsurprisingly, rather economical with the truth, and not hugely remorseful. Norwood’s case was later considered by Parliament and a decision was made by the Home Secretary not to prosecute on the grounds of age. I was in the middle of a history degree at Cambridge University when I read this story, and subsequently took a paper led by Professor Christopher Andrew, the historian contacted by Vasili Mitrokhin when he first left Russia and the coauthor of the various volumes of the Mitrokhin Archive which finally identified Melita Norwood, and it was during that time that Red Joan was born.
Apart from having Che Guevara mugs and not wishing to receive any payment for their activities, the only resemblance between Melita Norwood and Joan Stanley is that they both worked as personal assistants to the directors of important metals research facilities during the Cold War (Norwood working at the British Non-Ferrous Metals Association from 1932 to 1972, and Joan working in a ficticious department albeit located for the purposes of the novel in the real-life Cavendish Laboratories at the University of Cambridge), thus giving them access to the highest-level documents on atomic research in the project known as Tube Alloys, while also retaining a level of protection from suspicion which came largely from the fact of their gender. The differences between the two women (one real, one not) are varied and multiple, and Joan Stanley is not intended to be a representation of Melita Norwood. Whereas Joan has a university degree in science and a high level of technical knowledge, Melita Norwood had neither of these advantages, and whereas Joan displays a wavering attitude towards communism, Melita Norwood remained a committed communist right until the end, visiting Russia after her retirement and continuing to distribute the Morning Star around her neighbourhood in Bexleyheath beyond her eighty-ninth birthday. In many ways her story is quite remarkable, but it is not the story I wanted to tell here.
The character of Sonya is loosely based on Melita Norwood’s controller during this time, one of the very few female controllers operating during the Cold War, Ursula Beurton (also known as Ruth and codenamed Sonya) who trained in China and then operated a radio system in a farmhouse near Oxford with her husband. The case of Kierl was inspired by the trial and prosecution of atomic spy Klaus Fuchs in 1949, who was also controlled by Beurton (whereas Kierl is controlled here by Leo and remains in Canada).
The setting of much of the story is in some ways inevitable, Cambridge being infamous for its cultivation of some of the most famous KGB spies this country has produced and who were all in Cambridge a little before Joan, but their influence is intended to be felt through Leo, Rupert and William. Leo’s thesis is largely based on the research interests of Maurice Dobb and Michal Kalecki, both Cambridge Marxist economists who were interested in the theory of Soviet Planning and its practical wartime implications.
Any other resemblances to persons real or imaginary are entirely unintentional.
A large number of books were extremely useful in researching the background to this book and I would like to mention the following which were of particular help:
The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West, Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin (London, Penguin, 2000)
The Spy Who Came in From the Co-op: Melita Norwood and the ending of the Cold War, Dr. David Burke (Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 2008)
Bluestockings: The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education, Jane Robinson (London, Viking, 2009)
My Sister: Rosalind Franklin, Jenifer Glyn (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012)
Klaus Fuchs: The Man Who Stole the Atom Bomb, Norman Moss (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1987)
The Thirties: An Intimate History, Judith Gardiner (London, Harper Press, 2010)
Soviet Economic Development Since 1917, Maurice Dobb (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1947)
The National Archives at Kew were also an invaluable resource, with all of the interviews and reports being based, in some fashion, on genuine reports, particularly in relation to MI5’s pursuit and interrogation of Klaus Fuchs. There is one deliberate anomaly in the dates where I have referred to the Tube Alloys project as being in existence under this name in 1941, when in fact it was not given this name until 1942.
Please visit my website at www.jennierooney.com for further information.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This novel went through a number of drafts and my unending thanks go to the people who have given their support, advice and encouragement at each stage: my agent, Clare Alexander, for never holding back with suggestions of improvements and nuggets of wisdom; my editors at Chatto & Windus, Juliet Brooke, whose insightful notes on each draft were almost worth publishing in themselves; and
Clara Farmer for her enthusiasm and guidance throughout. Further thanks and appreciation also go to everyone at Random House, especially Lisa Gooding and Will Smith. In addition, I’d like to thank Suzanne Dean for her beautiful cover design.
My very grateful thanks also go to those who have generously given their time and assistance to the research of this book: Dr. Peter Holmes of the University of Sussex for his general comments and for suggesting the idea for Leo’s thesis; Dr Alix McCollam of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands who corrected my rather shaky understanding of nuclear physics with admirable indulgence (and Dr. Richard Samworth for putting us in touch); Dr. David Burke for sharing his knowledge of Melita Norwood’s political activities with me, as well as elaborating on the fascinating story of his involvement with her at the time of her exposure in the national newspapers. In addition, I am grateful for the assistance of Anne Thomson, archivist at Newnham College, Cambridge, for being generous with her time and knowledge, and for the general assistance given to me by staff at the National Archives in Kew. As ever, any lingering factual mistakes and discrepancies are my own.
I would also like to give special thanks to friends and family who experienced the trauma of being early readers of the manuscript, and whose comments, big and small, were hugely appreciated: particularly my mum, dad and brothers, Tammy Holmes, Peter Holmes, Ann Holmes, Gillian Hardcastle, Sarah Beckett, and the members of my fabulous ‘focus group’: Frankie Whitelaw, Emma Clancey, Della Fanning, Helen Harper, Emma Whiteford, Sarah Machen, Lucy Stoy and Kate Wilson, whose willingness to critique with reckless abandon was not just admirable, but also hugely helpful. Thanks also to Joan Winter (she knows why) and to my family and friends who kindly continued to ask how the novel was coming on. But most of all, thank you to Mark, without whom it would all have felt like pretty hard work.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jennie Rooney was born in Liverpool in 1980. She studied history at the University of Cambridge and taught English in France before moving to London to work as an attorney. Her first novel, Inside the Whale, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award.
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