And with the Press came the rumours. In the packed terrace-café of the Cecil Hotel no theory was too extravagant. The attack was the prelude to a mass uprising by Frelimo, the Mozambique ‘freedom fighters’; the massacre had been organized by the Chinese; the Chinese had crossed the Zambesi; there were African hordes mobilizing in Zambia, Tanzania, Malawi; while other OAU states were preparing to send volunteers.
The more sober citizens counselled against such alarmist talk; but as the rain fell, and gin and beer flowed, tempers in the hotel began to find expression in noisy opinions about the native population — opinions not usually voiced outside the privacy of one’s home. However, beneath the anger of this simple stoic community there was also fear. For the massacre had been executed with a thoroughness that was inconsistent with the sporadic, hit-and-run terrorist groups who occasionally struck across the border, and could usually be repelled by a resident’s rifle. In this case there was not only the efficiency of the attack, but the extraordinary delay in catching the killers.
Despite the strict secrecy of the operation, it was known that Colonel Alistair Monks, chief of the local Security forces, had taken charge of the hunt. At around mid-morning he was joined by Brigadier Erasmus de Witwe of BOSS, the South African Bureau of State Security, who was deposited by helicopter on the lawn behind Police Headquarters; and shortly afterwards a black sedan brought de Witwe’s Portuguese counterpart, Senhor Filipo-Munga, a fussy little man with a well-tailored paunch and green-tinted glasses who paused to be photographed before hurrying into the conference which had been going on since dawn.
By lunchtime there was still no official announcement, although General Monks’ adjutant, who was well known to the regulars in the Cecil Bar, called in several times for coffee and sandwiches, and dropped odd items of information. These were not encouraging. For some hours it had not been possible to identify all the victims, since the killers had not only stripped the bodies of all personal papers, but had torn the last two sheets out of the hotel registration book. However, from the adjutant’s latest call it was learnt that the killers had escaped in at least five stolen cars, three with Salisbury number-plates, one from Bulawayo, and one from Durban in the Republic.
The implications of this news were more ominous than at first appeared.
How could five carloads of armed African terrorists vanish during the night? Not only had normal police checks on all main roads been doubled, and the paths through the surrounding hills been scoured by dogs, scouts and helicopters since dawn, but the Portuguese authorities had mounted their own manhunt on their side of the border. It was some hours before anyone gave voice to the awful possibility which was later to emerge as the truth.
At four o’clock that afternoon Colonel Monks and his two companions held a Press conference in the hotel lounge, inviting for good measure a number of leading citizens and local residents, besides the newsmen. Monks’ statement was terse and full of false confidence; but after conceding that no trace had yet been found of either the killers, the murder weapons, or the five stolen cars, he announced that the victims of Hillcrest had all — with the exception of the Ross-Needhams — been shot with .30 calibre MI6s, the US Army light machine pistol. (He refrained from remarking that until now African terrorists had almost invariably used the Chinese or Russian equivalent, the AK47.) The Ross-Needhams, on the other hand, had been shot with .38s, the standard calibre of side-arm carried by the armies and police forces of White Africa.
On being questioned, Colonel Monks made another disturbing admission. Jack Ross-Needham had been a member of the local Umtali pistol-club, and had been a crack shot. Furthermore — one of his friends in the lounge pointed out — he had owned a revolver and a high-velocity rifle; and the revolver he always kept handy under the till in the bar. Yet he and his wife had both been shot in the bar — and in the stomach, not the back — without making any apparent effort to reach either the gun or the alarm system, which was wired up to a howler siren and Umtali Police Headquarters. The only precaution that the killers seemed to have taken was to cut the hotel’s telephone line.
Colonel Monks drew no conclusions himself, and his South African and Portuguese colleagues were silent. It was left to a senior British journalist to point out that police checks on main roads throughout the country were applied only perfunctorily to Europeans. He also reminded the audience that White Rhodesians, still subjected to petrol rationing under Sanctions, made a regular practice of driving over the border into Mozambique and filling up their cars at the nearest pump — which in this case was at Vila de Manica, seven miles inside the border on the road to Beira. Furthermore, cars of Rhodesian registration driven by Europeans were usually ignored by Portuguese patrols.
What was the Englishman suggesting? asked Colonel Monks impatiently.
The journalist replied: ‘The only solution that fits all the facts as we know them, Colonel, is that the killers could not have been African. They must have been Europeans.’
CHAPTER 1
It began with an item in the diary column of one of London’s plumper Sunday newspapers:
I hear that my intrepid Antipodean colleague, Barry Cayle, is thinking of writing a novel about “Kim” Philby — still believed by many to be the greatest spy of all time. Cayle is convinced that the whole story has been far from told. I suggested that as so much has already been written about Philby, is there anything new to say? Cayle thinks there is: “Something the Press can’t touch because of the Official Secrets Act and the libel laws.” Knowing Cayle’s reputation as one of Fleet Street’s ablest fact-finders, Whitehall will no doubt be among those most eagerly awaiting his first excursion into fiction.
The day before the paper came out, Cayle left for the Middle East on a trip round the new Arab-Israeli peace lines. On his return three weeks later he found a letter waiting for him at the office from a Mr Peter Hennison, literary agent. It was dated two days after the diary piece had appeared, and stated that Mr Hennison was familiar with Barry Cayle’s work and concluded, ‘I should be most interested to discuss the whole Philby story with you. Perhaps you could ring me and we could meet for lunch?’
Cayle forgot; but when he phoned two days later and gave his name to a secretary, he was put through at once. Hennison suggested they meet next day at 12.45 at his office in Holborn. He had a pleasant cultured voice, and though not in the least patronizing, there was just a hint to suggest that he did not expect Cayle to refuse. Cayle knew and cared almost nothing about the literary world, and had never heard of Peter Hennison Ltd; but the address was close to the paper’s offices, and since he had nothing else to do for lunch next day, he accepted.
At ten past one he parked his mud-coloured Mini Moke on a yellow line outside a Georgian house overlooking Lincolns Inn Fields. Hennison received him in a handsome room with walls crowded to the ceiling with books — the majority of them in foreign languages. Hennison was sitting in his shirt-sleeves on a cluttered desk, swinging a leg and talking on the telephone. He waved Cayle into an armchair and went on talking, in rapid fluent German.
Cayle sat down and tapped out one of his Dutch cheroots, while Hennison, still talking, leaned back across the desk and flicked a lighter at him. He hung up at last. ‘Sorry about that. Long distance. Barry Cayle, isn’t it? How do you do?’ He sprang off the desk and came round with his hand extended. ‘Glad you could make it!’
He was a slight, rather untidy man with loose grey hair and a faintly donnish manner. Cayle put him in his middle fifties, and guessed that he might have had an interesting war record. He gave Cayle a quick smile. ‘I won’t beat about the bush. Unlike some professions, we literary agents tout for work. I saw you’re writing a novel about Philby, and, as I said, I’d like to discuss it with you. No commitments, just a chat. I’m rather interested in Philby myself. I might even be able to help you.’ He was interrupted by the telephone. ‘Damn. Just a moment.’ He lifted the receiver, listened, then told the caller to ring back. ‘It’s no good —
we’ll never be able to talk here. Let’s pop round to the pub.’
He pulled on a tweed jacket and led the way out. In the outer office he stopped to tell his secretary — a graceless girl with uneven make-up — to take the names of all callers and say he’d be back at three o’clock. He grinned as they reached the stairs. ‘Same old story! — too much work and not enough staff. I need an assistant who speaks at least two languages, besides English. You see, I specialize in foreign rights. Mostly non-fiction. You’d be an exception.’
The compliment made Cayle slightly uncomfortable. ‘I should explain, Mr Hennison,’ he said, as they reached the front door, ‘that I haven’t written a word yet. I haven’t even got a plot worked out.’
‘Not to worry, my dear fellow, it’s the idea that counts. And I’ve a suspicion that it’s a damned good idea!’
He opened the door and strode out into the February cold. Cayle was wearing his Sherpa Tensing anorak — a memento from his coverage of the last International Everest Expedition — but Hennison had only his jacket, without even a waistcoat or sweater. They crossed into Lincolns Inn Fields; and although Cayle was a fast walker, and had longer legs than Hennison, he found it difficult to keep up with him.
Hennison talked all the way. He was an easy, skilful talker who made even personal questions seem like casual conversation; and by the time they had crossed the Fields, Cayle had outlined most of his career since coming to London nearly fifteen years ago: how he’d worked first as second-string to the crime reporter on a notorious Sunday tabloid, then done freelance pieces on anything from bird sanctuaries to an Australian bachelor’s view of London girls; and later travelled to Beirut where he’d become an occasional contributor, then full-time correspondent for the paper on which he now worked, rising over the years to be cast as their front-line trouble-shooter and general Outdoors Man: anything from wars and revolutions to climbing Everest and trying his hand in the Transatlantic Solo Yacht Race, in which he’d distinguished himself by being last out of Plymouth and last into Rhode Island. He was now planning to bicycle across the Andes, which had led one wag on the staff to remark that the paper was becoming ‘an adventure playground for foreign correspondents’.
Cayle himself seemed typecast for this equivocal role. He was a large, loose-limbed man of indeterminate middle-age, with broad sloping shoulders, a substantial stomach that was mostly muscle, and a beak-shaped nose which had been broken twice so that it now resembled the end of a can-opener. As always — and often to the dismay of his superiors — he was dressed comfortably, like a man who permanently travels light.
They had left the Fields, and Hennison headed him down some steps into a smoky vault full of sawdust and corpulent men with loud laughs. A waiter in a white apron led them past rows of wine casks to a reserved table in an alcove. Hennison suggested smoked salmon sandwiches, and after deliberating over the wine list, chose a Puligny Montrachet, without consulting Cayle.
There was a pause. Hennison folded his hands on the table and smiled. His eyes were the colour of weak tea. But deceptively weak, Cayle decided. The man had a brisk, solicitous manner which Cayle instinctively distrusted.
‘You said just now you might be able to help me, Mr Hennison.’
‘Help you? You mean the book?’ His smile brightened. ‘Yes, of course! But allow me first to ask you a question, Barry. The story in your paper seemed to imply that you believe Philby had accomplices.’
Cayle grinned. ‘You don’t want to believe everything you read in the papers, Mr Hennison. But what’s the question?’
‘Do you think there’s still something wrong about the Philby case?’
‘Wrong? It bloody stinks.’
‘From a newspaperman’s point of view?’ said Hennison. ‘Or a novelist’s?’
‘From just about any point of view. The whole story doesn’t hang together. I’ve read up all the Press reports and books on the case, and they add up to asking more questions than they answer.’ He broke off, while the waiter poured some wine for Hennison to taste.
‘Are you suggesting, then, that there was an official cover-up in the case?’ Hennison said at last, no longer smiling.
‘I’m not suggesting it. I’m stating it as a bloody fact. Not only was there a cover-up, but it’s still going on!’ He had Hennison’s full attention now. ‘Three young Englishmen in their early twenties — Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, and Harold Adrian Russell Philby. All recruited by the Russkies at the same time, back in the Thirties, from the same university and the same upper middle-class background. But the coincidence doesn’t stop there. When each of those three lads gets finally rumbled, they all somehow just manage to slip through the net, and next thing we know, they’re being given the red carpet in Moscow. In Kim Philby’s case, he got the full treatment, including a top gong — the Order of the Red Banner — plus his head on a bloody postage stamp. There’s fame for you!’
‘Of course, one must admit,’ said Hennison, ‘that a full-dress trial for any one of them would have proved highly embarrassing — particularly in front of our American friends.’
‘Sure,’ said Cayle. ‘And even more so if it had got out that the three of ’em hadn’t been acting alone.’
‘The old canard of the Fourth Man?’ Hennison smiled blandly and shook his head. ‘I feel that story’s been around too long. If there’d been anything in it, somebody would surely have exposed it by now?’
‘Plenty of us have tried,’ said Cayle. ‘As you know, my paper was the one that first broke the story back in the late Sixties. I was never directly involved in it, but I got talking to the reporters working on it. It wasn’t the facts that interested me so much — it was the fantastic efforts made by the British authorities to try and kill the story. You know — those bowler-hatted bods who describe themselves in Who’s Who as being attached to the Ministry of Defence. Their first line of attack was to treat the whole project as a bad joke, putting it around that Philby had been just a drunken bum of no importance whatever.
‘Well, when that didn’t pay off, they changed tack and said that Philby had been far too important. They tried to warn the editor off on security grounds. They even started a smear campaign, saying that the reporters working on the story were Communist subversives, and that the whole project was just a carefully staged Moscow propaganda stunt. At the same time they let it get around, by whispering in the right ears, in the right clubs, that the big-wigs on the paper’s managerial staff could kiss goodbye to their CBEs if the story ever got into print.
‘But when that didn’t work, they started playing rough. First they slapped on the old “D” notice, which used to be the Government’s nice way of telling a newspaper to shut up, without actually looking as though they were guilty of censorship. The editor took the unprecedented step of disregarding the Notice. But in the end, of course, the usual soggy old British compromise was reached. Whitehall and the FO were allowed to read all the galleys before they went to Press, and cut out anything they didn’t like. And when the story finally did appear, it certainly made the British Security Services look pretty bloody silly. But as for containing anything really damaging, all that came out were the unanswered questions. And they’re still unanswered.’
Hennison inclined his head and smiled at the middle of the table. ‘I don’t want to sound discouraging, Barry. But what you’ve told me is hardly proof of the kind of conspiracy you’ve suggested. I’m referring, of course, to the existence of more traitors in the British Establishment.’
‘So who the hell recruited Comrades Burgess, Maclean and Philby in the first place?’ said Cayle. ‘Who was able to pick them out all those years ago back at Cambridge — recognize just the right characteristics, the right weaknesses, the right neuroses and sense of social guilt that combined to turn three young English gentlemen into life-long traitors? Whoever that person was — or is — must have had one hell of an insight into the British social structure!’
For a moment Hennison’s eyes lifted and
met Cayle’s; and they held in that moment an expression of distinct unease. When he spoke, his words were muted and slightly rushed: ‘Yes, but you must remember that Communism was very much in vogue in the Thirties, particularly among students. A lot of them joined the Party, and some of them may even have been introduced to Soviet agents in England who may in turn have tried to recruit them for espionage purposes. How many of them took the final jump we shall probably never know. But my own opinion is that Burgess, Maclean and Philby were exceptional cases.’
Cayle gave him a tired grin: ‘Oh, they were exceptional all right, Mr Hennison! Those three boys were long-term penetration agents. When they signed on, it was for the duration. They gave themselves up, body and soul, to Stalin’s Utopia, and stuck to her right through the Terror and the mock trials, the Nazi-Soviet pact and the attack on Finland, when most card-carrying members and fellow-travellers were turning their backs on the CP and searching their hearts like a bunch of guilty schoolgirls.
‘Only not Comrades Burgess, Maclean and Philby. They stayed the course. They stayed as full-time employees of the OGPU and the NKVD, organs of mass murder which didn’t think twice about knocking off doubtful foreign agents, even outside Russia. Yet the weird thing is, the Russkies apparently regarded these three British oddballs as reliable — which is pretty strange, when you consider that all three were experienced piss-artists, and two of them roaring queens! In fact, none of them seems to have had even the first qualification for a job like espionage, where discretion counts pretty high. And you know what they say about a spy in the field? That he’s like a test-pilot or a professional boxer — after seven years he’s burnt out. Yet Burgess and Maclean kept at it for twenty years, and Kim Philby for more than thirty! That must have taken one hell of a lot of control.’ He paused. ‘Who was that controller, Mr Hennison?’
Gentleman Traitor Page 2