‘Is the Cabinet likely to endorse this advice?’ I asked, avoiding a direct answer to the question.
‘Reading between the lines,’ Colin said, ‘I think we may assume that secret diplomatic contacts with the Soviets are on the cards, if they haven’t already happened.’
I had asked for this meeting with Colin because of my conviction that Peter’s campaign against Stevens, the explosion in the Moscow laboratory and the reports of the anti-nuclear faction in the Politburo were all scenes in a grand Soviet deception, a more complex drama than any we had come across before, and one that was working its powerful magic on us. How disastrous if the Cabinet were to revise their policy as a result of Soviet manipulation. We were doing the enemy’s work for him.
My first thought had been to go straight to Rupert Corless, but my experience of his lack of sympathy over Krasov deterred me. Better to get Colin on my side before approaching Rupert. I expected Colin to be sceptical initially and reject my theories but he was a fair man, and I knew that if I could get him to listen long enough I had a chance of winning him over. Then we could both tackle Rupert. Together, we might win the day.
Thirty minutes later there was still no sign of Maitland. I put my head round the door again. Miss Pertwee was on the telephone. She cupped her hand over the mouthpiece.
‘It’s Mr Maitland now,’ she whispered. ‘He sends many apologies. He’s so sorry to keep you waiting.’
I was to stay. He was returning, ten minutes at the outside. I sat down again and tried unsuccessfully to finish the crossword Colin had started on his journey into Vauxhall. I heard the tapping of the typewriter and occasionally the dull ring of the telephone. The ever-vigilant Miss Pertwee had left the connecting door open so she could keep an eye on me without moving from her desk. Whatever else might happen, I was not to be allowed to escape before Colin’s return.
The core of my case was that Peter had been turned. This was supposition on my part but I was increasingly sure that amid so much good information was a secret seam of deception coming directly from sources within Moscow intelligence. SOVINT had probably been misled for months as the web of the Soviet deception was spun ever more tightly around us.
‘Let them think we’re trying to cover up a massive failure in our nuclear programme,’ I could hear the Soviet planners saying. ‘Deceive them into believing we are desperate to negotiate a nuclear standstill. Wait as the divisions in the Western alliance erupt and their bitter arguments slow down their own progress. Then watch their faces as we explode the weapon they thought we could never make and move rapidly on to the superbomb.’
Was I right? Were the events we had so far been unable to explain only understandable as part of a daring Soviet deception? Being right didn’t mean I would carry the day. Rupert had to be persuaded to accept the notion that Peter was no longer his friend but his enemy. Was I deluding myself to imagine that that was possible? Rupert owed Peter the late flowering of his career. Nothing is harder to shift than a vested interest. My confidence, which had not been dampened by my soaking in the sudden shower, began to evaporate.
‘Rupert’s in a flap. I couldn’t get away,’ Colin said twenty minutes later, pipe clamped firmly between his teeth. ‘Sorry.’ He seemed unwilling to talk in front of Miss Pertwee. ‘No calls, Miss Pertwee, please. Mr Lybrand and I have to put our thinking caps on.’
He ushered me into his room, closed the door, sat down at his desk and said: ‘We have a crisis, Monty.’ He opened the file he was clutching. He had clearly forgotten why I was there.
Did the name Watson-Jones ring any bells? He didn’t know much about the man either, but whether we liked it or not, a degree of intimacy was about to be thrust upon us.
The Minister had received a letter from Watson-Jones in which he claimed he had learned from his American contacts that a Soviet intelligence source had given the British information in January that one of our leading scientists was betraying nuclear secrets to the Russians. ‘Watson-Jones’s wife’s American,’ Maitland explained. ‘Her father’s in manufacturing, he’s made millions.’ The British authorities had ignored this warning and failed to investigate the suspect. For months vital secrets had been flowing out of the country. Watson-Jones was not surprisingly – ‘his words’ – shocked at these allegations, and he wanted the Minister’s assurance that none of it was true.
‘There’s a sting in the tail,’ Colin said. ‘He has a dossier he’s offering to share with the Minister. That means this letter’s an opening salvo and there’s more dirt to come.’
‘How the hell does he know about Stevens?’ I asked.
‘No point in speculating,’ Colin said. ‘He knows, that’s all that matters. The Minister is jumping up and down like a scalded cat because, so he told Rupert this morning, the Foreign Office has had secret talks in Moscow and there are encouraging signs that the Soviets may be prepared to discuss some kind of nuclear arrangement. The stakes are high, Monty, and the Minister doesn’t want Watson-Jones rocking the boat. If he’s going out soon, he wants to go out in glory.’
This was a reference to Gaydon’s expected departure from office. He was neither a popular nor an effective Minister. A former railwayman who was owed a small political debt which it would not take long to repay, he was widely expected to go at the next ministerial reshuffle. That couldn’t come soon enough for most of us who had to work for him.
‘Do you think the Soviets are serious?’ I wanted to see if I could push Colin into declaring where he stood. Over the past months in particular, he had used his role as Rupert’s deputy to avoid taking sides. Was this wariness, self-preservation or had he run out of opinions?
‘In my experience, Monty, people believe what they want to believe. Sceptics seldom have a following. They’re usually lone voices, drowned out in the din.’
‘That’s an evasion,’ I said. ‘If you believe all this talk of an opposition to Stalin is nonsense then you should say so as loudly as you can.’
‘The emperor’s new clothes?’ Maitland smiled ruefully. ‘The truth is, Monty, I’ve been in this game too long. I’ve lost my perspective. I don’t know what’s true and what’s not any more.’
‘If in doubt, don’t,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that the rule?’
‘What if I’m wrong?’
‘What if you’re not?’
He sucked on his pipe, his face expressionless. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. ‘You’ve not believed in what we’re doing for some time, have you?’ he said.
‘I think we’re being manipulated, Colin. It’s as simple as that.’ I gave him my theory. He listened attentively.
‘If we’re victims of a Soviet deception, then Watson-Jones is right. That puts us in a spot, doesn’t it? How can we subvert our own investigation?’
It wasn’t a question I could answer. I wanted to know how strong Maitland’s position was.
‘Have you had doubts about Peter for long?’ I asked.
‘Months, yes.’
‘Why keep them to yourself?’
‘No evidence. Simple as that. Supposition in plenty. The hard evidence is all against us.’
‘That’s the Soviets being clever,’ I said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘How can I be sure?’ I asked, irritably. But at least I was prepared to be honest about my concerns. I didn’t bury them because I was afraid of upsetting the apple-cart. That silenced Colin for a while.
‘Look at the political dilemma,’ he said eventually. ‘No bomb, and we can remake the country economically. The blueprints have been ready since 1943. Rebuild our industries. Stake our claim as an economic power. Jettison the ties with the Empire – it’s history now. Earn our place at the top table not just through our military power, our nuclear bomb, but through our economic performance. What’s the other side of the coin? Divert massive energies and resources we don’t possess into building this dangerous weapon. Starve the country of what it needs but take our place in the game with the other nuclear p
layers. What do we do, Monty? What do we do?’
I could tell he hadn’t finished by the way he was puffing at his pipe.
‘Look down the tunnel into the future. Go left and we emerge into sunlight. Go right and we’re stuck in the gloom. Maybe we’re being offered an olive branch. Maybe we have to grasp it. It would be irresponsible not to do so. We have to reach for it, even if it turns out to be nothing at all. Politically, we don’t have a choice.’
‘Watson-Jones wants blood,’ I said, ‘and we’re to do his bidding.’
‘We have to protect our Minister’s interests.’
‘Even though Watson-Jones might be right.’
‘Watson-Jones is raising serious questions about Gaydon’s competence,’ Colin said. ‘Those questions have to be stifled at birth. Rupert’s certain he wouldn’t have bothered to write to the Minister in the first place unless he had Stevens’s name up his sleeve.’
‘But why? What can he possibly hope to gain by denouncing Stevens as a traitor?’
‘His motive remains a mystery,’ Colin said. ‘Unless it’s the traditional self-importance of the ambitious MP.’
A year or two before Rupert had told me, in an unexpected burst of confidence, that as a young man Colin Maitland had wanted to be an MP. Repeated failure to be selected had bred in this moderate man a hearty distaste for the members of the club he had failed to join.
‘Suppose he names Stevens. What happens then?’
‘There’s a procedure to follow. We’d suspend Stevens and there’d be an investigation.’
‘The police?’
‘Not if we could help it. We’d want our people to conduct the enquiry, but you never know. Scotland Yard could be brought in.’
‘What’s the effect of suspension on Stevens?’ I asked.
‘Devastating,’ Colin said. ‘He’d be removed from anything to do with our nuclear programme. The enquiry would take weeks, possibly longer. Things wouldn’t come to a halt, but they’d slow down dramatically.’
‘What would be the effect on our programme?’
‘Conservatively, I’d say it would put back our bomb by at least a year. Under the scenario we’ve been discussing, there’d be smiling faces in the Kremlin if that happened.’
‘That’s what’s baffling me,’ I said. ‘Watson-Jones is rabidly anti-Soviet. You’ve only got to read that awful tract he finances to see that, and the rumour is he doesn’t think the newsletter goes far enough. Yet here he is, apparently playing into Soviet hands. I don’t understand it.’
‘Unless.’ Colin took his pipe out of his mouth and examined the bowl with the perplexed look of the dedicated pipe-smoker. How was it that such a good pipe had suddenly gone out?
‘Unless what?’
‘Unless he doesn’t understand what he’s doing.’
‘He can’t be that stupid, Colin.’
‘There’s always a danger we’re attributing motives where none exist. I said the same to Rupert and he took your view. But suppose this information suddenly fell into his hands and the letter is a knee-jerk reaction? What then?’
‘I’d take him behind the bike sheds and let him know what’s what,’ I said.
‘If scaring him into silence has been tried, and I’m not saying it has, the tactic doesn’t appear to have worked.’
‘Then we’ve got to try harder,’ I said. ‘If he won’t listen willingly, he’ll have to be made to listen. Someone’s got to speak to him or one of his people.’
‘Your friend works for him, doesn’t he?’
‘I can’t ask any more favours, Colin. Why can’t you talk to Charlie Faulkner?’
‘Charlie’s dying, Monty. He’s out of it. No influence any more.’
‘How can I ask Danny Stevens to ask his employer not to denounce his father as a spy? It’s impossible, Colin, and you know it is.’
Maitland accepted that, nodding silently at me and pulling at his pipe. ‘So where does that leave us?’
‘Where we came in half an hour ago.’
‘No further forward.’ He looked gloomy. ‘I’ll go back to Rupert. He won’t like it. Someone will have to take Watson-Jones to one side and tell him to shut up. I’d be surprised if he did. But it’s all we can do.’
We never got to speak to Watson-Jones. I got a telephone call from one of our watchers in Cambridge shortly before lunch to say that Stevens had disappeared. One moment, he assured me, he’d been there, the next he’d vanished into thin air. By seven that evening we’d had reports that someone answering Stevens’s description had been spotted on a cross-Channel ferry and by midnight we’d caught up with him in Brussels. I thought we would pull him in at once but Rupert was against the idea.
‘We can pull him in any time we want,’ he said. ‘Let’s see where he’s going and who he’s going to meet. You never know, we might learn something.’
12
DANNY
Charlie didn’t appear next morning. He’d had a bad night and the doctor wasn’t prepared to let him out, or us in to see him.
‘Complete rest,’ Beryl told us. ‘No telephone calls.’
There were two messages on my desk when I got back to my room. Monty had telephoned and someone called Lord Iredale wanted to speak to Charlie, but as Charlie wasn’t in he said he’d speak to me. I tried to contact Monty but he was out. I left a message and telephoned Lord Iredale. I was curious to know what he wanted.
‘Sorry to hear Charlie Faulkner’s laid up. I was wondering if you’d care for a spot of lunch? One o’clock at my club in St James’s.’
Iredale was an imposingly tall man, elegantly dressed in a blue pinstripe suit and a tie I know I was meant to recognize but didn’t. He must have been in his forties, though it was hard to tell how old he was. He swept me past the bar and into the dining room.
‘I’m off the booze at the moment. Doctor’s orders. Let’s go in and eat. Nursery food, all fairly tasteless, but what isn’t these days?’
I drank Bloody Marys while Iredale sipped tomato juice, and we ate a strange mixture of sausages and batter covered in a thin, lukewarm gravy. Iredale hardly touched his.
‘You’d have thought they couldn’t go wrong with a sausage.’
He pushed his plate away and lit a cigarette. ‘I gather you were in Italy in forty-four.’ He had done his homework on me. ‘Come across my nephews, William and Frank Iredale?’
I had met them once in Naples, a couple of boneheaded officers whose incompetence was legendary. Their reputation was made in bars and brothels, not on the battlefield. I had done my best to avoid them.
‘Useless pair. God knows how they got their commissions. I thought we’d better get that over with before we talk.’
I was meant to warm to his frankness but it put me even more on my guard. There was something in Iredale’s patrician manner I didn’t take to. I asked if he’d been in Italy too.
‘No. I mucked about in the desert for a bit, then Yugoslavia.’
‘With Tito?’
‘Mihailovitch.’ He gave me the impression his wartime exploits were not what he had asked me there to talk about.
‘Tell me,’ he said, looking around the room to see how many of his fellow diners he knew. ‘This business with Watson-Jones. What would it take to call the hounds off?’
‘What business with Watson-Jones?’ I had no idea what he meant.
‘What would you want to put a stop to it?’ There was a chill in his voice. His attention was now focused wholly on me.
‘Shouldn’t you ask Watson-Jones that?’
‘I’m not sure you heard me, Stevens. I am asking what you want to pull Watson-Jones out of this thing and close it down. Money? New job? Women? What’s your price, man? I can’t put it plainer than that.’
‘What if Watson-Jones wants to go on as he is?’
I thought he would be reluctant to answer but he wasn’t. I found his directness intimidating.
‘The man’s rowing in someone else’s pond. The water’s rough and
he’s not used to the conditions. That’s dangerous. The people I represent don’t want to take their eye off other more important matters in order to rescue him from drowning. We want our friend safely back in the boathouse, tucked up out of harm’s way and we think you’re the man to do it. That’s simple enough, isn’t it?’
I recognized the fixer’s language. Nothing was ever what it seemed, and I didn’t need an interpreter to work out what Iredale was telling me. Watson-Jones was up to something and neither Charlie nor I knew anything about it. In the pursuit of whatever it was he was after, he had upset the people Iredale worked for. They had to be powerful, otherwise why bring in Iredale to offer me bribes? This put Watson-Jones’s unnamed action, his ‘rowing in someone else’s pond’, in a more serious light. What could he have done? Why had Iredale fixed on me as the man to get his friends off the hook? Who were the ‘people he represented’?
‘I’ve got some questions,’ I said.
‘I don’t promise to answer anything.’
‘Why attack Watson-Jones in print?’ I was sure Iredale was behind the Naismith article. ‘What did you hope to gain?’
‘The bloody fool wouldn’t listen to warnings.’ Iredale’s laugh was contemptuous. ‘God knows, we dropped enough hints but he still wouldn’t clear off our patch.’
‘So Naismith’s piece is a shot across the bows?’
‘We’re way past that stage.’ He drew heavily on his cigarette. ‘Our guns are trained on the waterline. If we shoot, Watson-Jones sinks. Do I make myself clear?’
There was no mistaking the threat in his voice. I still had no idea what was going on, but I wasn’t about to reveal my confusion to Iredale.
‘If Watson-Jones were with us now, he’d be very surprised to hear he’s upset anyone. He’s completely unaware of any warnings.’
‘Don’t be naive, man,’ Iredale said. ‘He knows damn well what he’s doing and what he hopes to gain from it and so do you. For all I know this may have been your idea in the first place.’
Making Enemies Page 31