by Jeremy Duns
I noted the hesitation and tried not to hate him too much for it. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Was that also part of the endgame?’
Sasha raised his hands in a very Russian gesture. ‘Perhaps. It is possible. I was never in contact with her. It was always Henry.’
It was always Henry. ‘So Pritchard was running you?’ I asked. He nodded. That explained a lot – why he’d had the transmitter, for a start. He had run Anna, he had run Sasha and, although I hadn’t known it, he had run me. That night he’d left Vanessa’s table at Ronnie Scott’s – he hadn’t gone home. He’d gone to meet Sasha and then home, where he had sent a message to Anna in Lagos. She had immediately upped sticks for Udi, telling her back-up man to find Slavin and kill him – and me if I tried to get anywhere near? Yes, that was how it must have been, or something like it.
I shivered inwardly and turned back to Sasha. ‘If Henry was Radnya,’ I said, ‘what was my code-name?’
He pretended not to hear the tense I’d used. ‘You really want to know?’ he said. ‘It’s an ugly one. “Nezavisimyj”.’
‘“Independent” – why that?’
‘Because we had to keep you separate from the rest of the cell, for…’ – he looked around for a suitable phrase – ‘personal reasons.’
‘You mean because if I had discovered that Anna was alive, Henry had pimped her to me and Father had shot himself over the whole affair, I might not have been so cooperative.’
He smiled tolerantly. ‘If you prefer. But from the start you were seen as an independent operator. A free agent. Someone who had to be nurtured, but who was his own man.’
‘And now?’
He leaned over and grabbed a handful of peanuts out of a tinted glass bowl I hadn’t noticed on the table between us, and dropped a few into his mouth.
‘Now we need you more than ever,’ he said, and crunched a few of them down noisily.
‘Not interested,’ I said.
‘Paul, listen. I understand you are no longer a Communist. In truth, I sometimes wonder if I am either.’ He caught my look. ‘It is the truth. But times and circumstances change. Look at what you distrust about us. About me, if you wish. Do you really believe I am a worse master than the men now running your country?’
‘The coup failed,’ I said. ‘They’re not running it any more than they were last month.’
He tilted his head a little. ‘No? With your old Chief gone, I think you will see some changes. These men have a lot of ambition, Paul. That is why Henry thought of the coup: he felt it would be less dangerous in the long term to let them into the open, with the illusion of victory, than to continue their games behind the scenes. The plan was for him to control them from the inside – and in doing so slowly immobilize them.’
‘Hell of a risky plan.’
He shrugged: he could wear as much tweed as he wanted, but his shrugs were more Russian than vodka. ‘I think it was well calculated. Britain would have been in a state of shock – look at what happened with the Americans – and a traumatized enemy would have suited us well. But, as you say, the coup failed. And Henry is dead. The faction is in a more powerful position than ever, however: far from being under suspicion for the attempt on the Prime Minister’s life, they have used it to call for more financial support, which I think they will receive. They have a hold of the reins, and we need a way to control them.’
‘Did I mention that they offered me Deputy Chief?’ I said. ‘Same as Pritchard would have got – isn’t that funny?’
Sasha swallowed his peanuts. Very slowly, he let out a wide, car salesman’s beam. Then there was the faintest quiver in his lower lip.
‘You accepted, naturally.’
‘I told you,’ I said. ‘I’m retiring.’
His face froze for a moment, but almost at once he decided I was joking. ‘You can’t retire! You are finally coming to fruition!’
I didn’t like it – being talked about as though I were a wine.
‘I’m going to teach English at a prep school in Berkshire,’ I said. ‘Read Bulldog Drummond to the boys before lights out and learn to smoke a pipe.’
He gazed at me with puzzlement. ‘I’ve lived here nearly twenty years and I still don’t understand your sense of humour,’ he said. And then he reached inside his coat and took out a slim leather wallet, from which he removed a group of postage stamps. He placed them on the table, taking care to hold the corners down with the tips of his fingers. ‘But just in case you have misunderstood the situation…’ he said, inviting me to lean across for a closer look. As I did, I realized that they weren’t stamps, but negatives. He held one up to the bulb for me, but I could already see what it was.
I had been wrong. He could still scare me.
*
Outside, I lit a cigarette and thought about the arrangement we had made. Arrangement is perhaps the wrong word: I hadn’t had any say in the matter. The photographs of Anna and me covered every conceivable angle. I wondered who had taken them – Father? Pritchard? Well, it hardly mattered now.
I wandered down the street, looking for a cab but not seeing any. It was getting late, and I was on the wrong side of the river. A free agent, I thought bitterly, as I buttoned my coat.
Far from it.
Author’s Note
The background to this novel is real. The Nigerian civil war took the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and was a superpower conflict by proxy. It was waged for over two and a half years, until Biafra finally fell in January 1970. The British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, was vilified as a result of his government’s support for the Federal side, and did visit Nigeria in March 1969. I am grateful to the National Archives of the United Kingdom for providing me with copies of several Cabinet Office records related to his visit, including the programme (reference CAB 164/409 105669), an excerpt of which is quoted on page 156.
There is no record of an assassination attempt against Harold Wilson in Nigeria, but there were extensive and bizarre conspiracies against him, and by members of the British establishment and intelligence community. I am indebted to the work of Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay, whose Smear! Wilson and the Secret State is an impeccably sourced primer on that subject. Cecil King did meet with Louis Mountbatten and others in May 1968 to discuss a coup against the Wilson government.
Stephen Dorril is also the author of an excellent history of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, which led me to many other works, and I am particularly grateful to him for his advice on Nigeria at an early stage. The atmosphere and details of life within SIS during the late Sixties were drawn from many sources, but chief among them was Tom Bower’s biography of Dick White, The Perfect English Spy. Regarding Soviet intelligence, my starting point was My Silent War, the autobiography of Kim Philby, which was first published in 1968. It gave me few easy answers regarding the motivations of double agents, and even fewer details of tradecraft – although he does describe taking almost an entire day to meet his handler at one point! It is a frustrating but compelling book – I returned to it often. Robert Cecil’s biography of Donald Maclean was similarly stimulating, as were several other books on the known double agents of this era. Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin’s works on the history of the KGB were also crucial stepping-stones for my research into Soviet espionage.
The SAS and others did search for Nazi war criminals in Germany in 1945; they did not engage in the nefarious work I have ascribed to my fictional trio, but I used their real working methods as a basis. Anthony Kemp’s The Secret Hunters was my main source on that subject, but I was also lucky enough to interview veterans of 5 SAS who were involved in war crimes investigations – for which, sincere thanks. Some of the details regarding the Thompson-Bolas were inspired by the lives of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and his mother but, again, I hasten to add that none of that family was ever engaged in the activities described in this novel. Thanks to Michael Veal for his advice on the intricacies of Nigeria’s music scene during this time. I have relocated the Afrospot
to a different suburb of Lagos, but kept its name – it is not meant to be an accurate representation of the real club at that time.
I read many accounts of the war in Nigeria, by soldiers, spies, doctors, priests, journalists and others, but I was probably most inspired by The Nigerian Civil War by John de St Jorre, which I remembered seeing on my parents’ bookshelves as a child. I am honoured and grateful that John agreed to read various drafts of this book, and for his encouragement and advice on it.
Many details in the book may seem incorrect at first sight, but prove not to be on closer examination. For example, Lagos is usually one hour ahead of London, but between 1968 and 1971 Britain experimented with something called British Standard Time, whereby the country remained one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time all year round. But any factual errors in the book are mine alone.
I would also like to thank William Boyd, John Boyle, Ajay Chowdhury, Jeannette Cook, Vincent Eaton, Lucy Elliott, Kathrin Hagmaier, John Hellon, Kim Hutchings, Alice Jolly, Renata Mikolajczyk, Iwan and Margareta Morelius, K. V. Ramesh, Andrea Rees, Marika Sandell, Loretta Stanley, Tim Stevens and Martin Westlake for their advice on various drafts; Dr Evelyn Depoortere for her guidance on Lassa fever; David Powell for information on snipers; Alex Haw for his twenty years of friendship and keen questioning; my parents and parents-in-law for their advice, stories and contemporary material; my agent, Antony Topping, for his wonderfully astute reading of the manuscript and able guidance through this process; my editor, Mike Jones, copyeditor Arianne Burnette and everyone at Simon and Schuster for their encouragement and advice; and finally, my wife, Johanna, for her honest opinions, steadfast support and belief in this project, and my children for going to bed on time, occasionally.
Select Bibliography
Chinua Achebe, No Longer At Ease (Heinemann, 1960)
Chinua Achebe, et al., The Insider: Stories of War and Peace from Nigeria (Nwankwo-Ifejeka, 1971)
A. B. Aderibigbe (ed.), Lagos: The Development of an African City (Longman Nigeria, 1975)
Kunle Akinsemoyin and Alan Vaughan-Richards, Building Lagos (Pengrail, 1977)
N. U. Akpan, The Struggle for Secession, 1966–1970 (Routledge, 2004)
Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (Basic Books, 1999)
Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB and the World (Allen Lane, 2005)
I. A. Atigbi, Nigeria Tourist Guide (Nigerian Tourist Association, 1969)
John Barron, KGB: The Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents (Bantam, 1974)
Saburi O. Biobaku (ed.), The Living Culture of Nigeria (Thomas Nelson, Nigeria, 1976)
Tom Bower, The Perfect English Spy (Mandarin, 1996)
Andrew Boyle, The Climate of Treason: Five Who Spied for Russia (Hutchinson, 1979)
Jean Buhler, Tuez-les Tous! Guerre de Sécession au Biafra (Flammarion, 1968)
Robert Cecil, A Divided Life: A Biography of Donald Maclean (Coronet, 1990)
John Collins, Musicmakers of West Africa (Three Continents Press, 1985)
John de St Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War (Hodder and Stoughton, 1972)
Pierre de Villemarest, GRU: Le plus secret des services soviétiques, 1918–1988 (Stock, 1988)
Len Deighton (ed.), London Dossier (Penguin, 1967)
Stephen Dorril, MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service (Touchstone, 2000)
Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay, Smear! Wilson and the Secret State (Grafton, 1992)
Peter Enahoro, How to Be a Nigerian (Spectrum, 1998)
Sam Eppele, The Promise of Nigeria (Pan, 1960)
William Fagg (ed.), The Living Arts of Nigeria (Studio Vista, 1976)
M. R. D. Foot, SOE: The Special Operations Executive, 1940–1946 (BBC, 1984)
Frederick Forsyth, The Biafra Story (Leo Cooper, 2001)
Henry Louis Gates, et al., The Anniversary Issue: Selections from Transition, 1961–1976 (Duke University Press, 1999)
Mike Hoare, Mercenary (Corgi, 1982)
Ian V. Hogg and John Weeks, Military Small Arms of the Twentieth Century (DBI Books, 1985)
Madeleine G. Kalb, The Congo Cables: The Cold War in Africa – from Eisenhower to Kennedy (Macmillan, 1982)
Anthony Kemp, The Secret Hunters (Michael O’Mara Books, 1986)
A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria: A Documentary Sourcebook (Oxford University Press, 1971)
Phillip Knightley, Philby: KGB Masterspy (Pan, 1988)
Phillip Knightley, The Second Oldest Profession (Penguin, 1988)
John Le Carré, To Russia, with Greetings (An Open Letter to the Moscow Literary Gazette) (Encounter, May 1966)
Colin Legum (ed.), Africa Handbook (Penguin Reference Books, 1969)
Akin L. Mabogunje, Urbanization in Nigeria (University of London Press, 1968)
Alexander Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War (Fourth Dimension, 2002)
Jim Malia, Biafra: The Memory of the Music (Melrose Books, 2007)
Peter Mason, Official Assassin (Phillips Publications, 1998)
Martin Meredith, The State of Africa (The Free Press, 2005)
Bernard Odogwu, No Place to Hide: Crises and Conflicts Inside Nigeria (Fourth Dimension, 2002)
Bruce Paige, David Leitch and Phillip Knightley, Philby: The Spy Who Betrayed a Generation (Sphere, 1977)
Kim Philby, My Silent War (Grafton, 1989)
A. I. Romanov, Nights Are Longest There: Smersh from the Inside (Hutchinson, 1972)
Ken Saro-Wiwa, On a Darkling Plain (Saros International Publishers, 1989)
Ken Saro-Wiwa, Sozaboy (Longman, 2006)
Julian Semyonov, TASS Is Authorized to Announce (John Calder, 1987)
Kate Simon, London: Places and Pleasures (MacGibbon and Kee, 1969)
Wole Soyinka, Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years (Methuen, 1994)
Gordon Stevens, The Originals: The Secret History of the Birth of the SAS in Their Own Words (Ebury Press, 2005)
Viktor Suvorov, Aquarium: The Career and Defection of a Soviet Military Spy (Hamish Hamilton, 1985)
Raph Uwechue, Looking Back on the Nigerian Civil War (in Africa 71, Jeune Afrique, 1971)
Michael E. Veal, Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon (Temple University Press, 2000)
Philip Warner, The SAS: The Official History (Sphere, 1983)
Auberon Waugh and Suzanna Cronjé, Biafra: Britain’s Shame (Michael Joseph, 1969)
Olivier Weber, French Doctors (Sélection du Reader’s Digest, 1996)
Nigel West, A Matter of Trust: M.I.5. 1945–72 (Coronet, 1983)
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SONG OF TREASON
For my parents
Preventive Direct Action in Free Countries
Purpose: Only in cases of critical necessity, to resort to direct action to prevent vital installations, other material, or personnel from being (1) sabotaged or liquidated or (2) captured intact by Kremlin agents or agencies.
Policy Planning Staff Memorandum,
Washington, 4 May 1948
I
Thursday, 1 May 1969, St Paul’s Cathedral, London
‘Sir Colin Templeton was the most courageous, patriotic and decent public servant I have had the privilege of knowing. During his long career, culminating in seven years as head of the organization many of us gathered here today are honoured to serve, he faced this country’s enemies unflinchingly.’
I paused, and as my words echoed around the magnificent building, I glanced up from the lectern and was overcome for a moment by the memory of the last time I’d seen the man I’d come to think of simply as ‘Chief’. The way he had nodded at me when he had seen that my glass needed refilling: no smile, no word
s, just a tiny nod of the head. I relived, in a flash, the shuffling walk he had taken across the room, the sharp clinking as he had lifted the bottle from the cabinet, the shuffle back to pour me out a measure. Then the widening of his eyes as I had raised the gun and squeezed the trigger…
He hadn’t flinched in the face of this enemy – I hadn’t given him the time.
I gazed out at the line of stern faces in the front pew, bathed in the white glow from the windows high above. John Farraday was seated in the centre, dapper and bored. He was acting Chief now, but had already announced that in a couple of weeks he would return to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, whence he had come. He was flanked by William Osborne, owlish in spectacles and tweeds. Once Farraday had gone he would take over, at which point I would be appointed Deputy Chief.
I’d got away with it: I was in the clear. A couple of months ago, this might have filled me with a sense of achievement, even triumph. But in the last few weeks I had been stripped of everything I’d ever held dear, left a trail of blood in my wake, and was now being blackmailed into continuing to serve a cause I no longer believed in. The triumph tasted of ashes, and all that was left was the realization that I had made a monumental error, and that it could never be reversed.
I glanced along the rest of the front row, which was filled out with Section heads and politicians, including the Foreign and Home Secretaries. Behind them, the congregation stretched into the distance, two solid blocks of Service officers, former army colleagues and family members, parted by the checked marble aisle. Several Redcaps hovered discreetly by the entrance, turning tourists away.
It was an unorthodox memorial service. The reading from Ecclesiastes, ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’ were all standard fare, but the eulogy was being given by the murderer of the deceased, while the men who had plotted the fall of the government a short while ago were brazenly sitting next to Cabinet ministers. And around us all spun Wren’s conception, as it had for centuries, cloaking us in false majesty.