‘Was there anyone else, anyone he tried to hide?’
‘Hide? His like don’t hide, what’s the need? They’re not the ones who pay the price, now are they?’ She gave a carrot a particularly violent blow, sending the end flying off on to the flagstones. Freya returned it to the pile of peelings. ‘I hear as that Mrs Pearson thinks marriage vows are for other people. He wasn’t the only man she’s been seen with, nor even the only boffin. Can’t think what she sees in them, myself. And that Emma Hardcastle, never had any sense, moped around for weeks when he’d tired of her. Empty-headed as they come, she is. Thought all she needed was a nice rich husband with a nice big house, never mind he’s dull as ditchwater, and now she wonders why she’s miserable. It won’t end well, I tell you.’
Hooves clattered in the courtyard, and Ben’s voice called out a greeting.
‘Oh, that’ll be Francis with Pompey,’ said Freya. ‘I’d better attend in case Last Hurrah decides to make a scene. Can’t have him taking chunks out of Lady Priscilla’s finest.’
The door closed behind her.
‘Can’t have you putting in the hours at the typewriter, either,’ Mrs Partridge said to no one in particular. ‘If it’s not detective novels, it’s playing detective.’
‘What was that?’ said Pam, coming through with an armful of laundry for ironing.
‘Just me talking to myself,’ said Mrs Partridge. ‘Now, mind you pay proper attention to those shirts of his lordship’s. He may prefer things the American way, but he’s got standards to maintain now, whether he likes it or not.’
Scene 7
Back at the Hall, Hugo returned to Bruno’s file, where he’d started. Follow the grudges, Saul had said. Bruno had plenty of those. A vigorous participant in scientific debate, his personnel assessment said. Intolerant of sloppy thinking and half-baked ideas, often jeopardises relationships with colleagues by vehement dismissal of their proposals. Well, he’d seen what that looked like in the interviews at the Atomic.
Scientific mind widely respected, yes. It seemed a great deal could be forgiven for someone who came up with solutions to so many problems. Rothesay didn’t like to dwell on them, though. Impatient to move on to the next stage once theoretical problems solved to his satisfaction, another colleague had said. Short-tempered with those who can’t keep up.
All of a piece. Noticeable how much more vivid it seemed now he’d been turning Rothesay’s life inside out for a week. He could see the academic Dr Rothesay much more clearly. The file was full of suppressed resentments, gripes, and the reluctant acknowledgement of a first-class mind. Some vicious academic disputes, but nothing to shoot a man in the back of the head for. Numerous affairs, not unusual. No trace of homosexuality, gambling habits, academic plagiarism, anything the Soviets could have used to gain a hold on him.
Hugo turned to the last page, the material most recently added. He hadn’t done the background check on Rothesay, since everyone transferred to Foxley from one of the other establishments had already been cleared.
The only serious black mark on Rothesay’s file was his involvement in that accident up at Ulfsgill. The accident Árpád had heard about, far away in Siberia.
It is considered that, while a first-rate theoretician, Dr Rothesay is perhaps not suited for direct contact with radioactive material . . . His natural impatience is an impediment to working in such an environment from day to day . . . Recommend transfer to a theoretical facility along with his immediate colleagues.
He went in search of Harriet Godwin, found her at her filing cabinet with a stack of files in hand.
‘You again?’ she said. ‘People will talk. And I’m meant to be in with Árpád. He’s reading some peculiar avant-garde quarterly of Woolhope’s, makes about as much sense as the Rosetta Stone.’
‘He can wait. That accident at Ulfsgill,’ he said, without preamble. ‘There must be an official report.’
‘Indeed there is. Heavily classified, I might add.’
‘I need to see it.’
‘No way, José. That’s shoot-yourself-after-reading stuff.’
He leaned against the table, wincing slightly. ‘I’d have thought it was a little late for that.’
‘Nothing like locking the stable door after the horse has bolted, now is there?’
‘Have you read it?’
‘Yes. In London, in a secure reading room. I think Woolhope has seen it, too.’
‘So give me the gist. I’m supposed to be finding the mole who leaked it.’
‘Special Branch are doing that.’
‘Yes, they are. Haring off after someone who has nothing to do with it.’
She put the papers down on top of the cabinet. ‘What do you need do know?’
‘What the report said. What Rothesay did, to be simultaneously blamed, exonerated, and transferred somewhere else to do exactly the same job.’
‘The report,’ said Harriet, ‘is a masterpiece.’
‘Of what?’
‘Whitehall politics. Oh, the first half lays out the details of the accident very clearly, what happened, who was involved, what the consequences are for our reactor programmes.’
‘Can you tell me?’
She sighed, thought for a moment. ‘There was some sloppy work. A lot of cutting corners. Experimental improvisation, one might say. The reactors at Ulfsgill are producing contaminated plutonium, no, that doesn’t mean it’ll make us all glow in the dark, only that it might fizzle rather than go off with a bang.’
Hugo said, ‘You mean there’s too much plutonium-240.’
She grinned. ‘You did your homework, I see. Most of the Service doesn’t know an isotope from an isobar. In any case, Rothesay came up with a possible solution, rather ingenious, and they were conducting a small-scale test of his ideas. Reading between the lines, it was rather sub rosa, or as sub rosa as you can get in an atomic research lab. Jerry-built or borrowed equipment, and no real official sanction. They were trying to gauge the purity of plutonium ingots with the scientific equivalent of an abacus and some bits of string. Two ingots came into contact when they weren’t meant to, irradiating a lab and an operator, who subsequently died.’
‘I need the name of the dead man, and his next of kin.’
‘You can get that for yourself. His name was Adam Sørensen, and his security file is in the archives here. Officially, he died of a pre-existing condition, the radiation merely amplified it.’
‘So what did the other half of the report say?’
‘It laid out, in great detail, how the organisational structure at Ulfsgill was getting in the way of progress, how the theoreticians shouldn’t be stuck out in Westmorland where they could get themselves into mischief, and how the people working on fuel problems and reactor design needed to be pulled together into one high-powered department, somewhere closer to London and the universities.’
‘Rothesay?’
‘Should have gone through official channels on this project, distinctly slapdash where safety procedures were concerned, has the engineering expertise of a cabbage – that’s not what it actually says – but is far too valuable a theoretician to be affected by this. Deserves a senior research post in this new organisation, where his talents can be put to good use.’
‘And his idea?’
‘Hedged around with so many should ’s and may’s and deserves further careful scrutiny’s that no one will touch it ever again. Sørensen, I should add, gets the chief blame, for carelessness.’
Hugo drummed his fingers on Harriet’s desk.
‘I’ll have a cigarette, since you’re keeping me waiting,’ said Harriet. ‘You?’
He nodded absently. Harriet rattled around in the desk for her lighter.
‘So the official story,’ he said eventually, ‘is that someone died, and it’s no one’s fault.’
‘Accidents happen,’ she said, ‘particularly when you play with radiation.’
‘And who wrote this masterpiece of bureaucratic doublespeak, or can I guess?�
��
‘You can guess.’
‘Laurence Oldcastle.’
‘Spot on.’
Hugo had read Oldcastle’s file nearly as many times as Rothesay’s. ‘Who went from running this wing-and-a-prayer department at Ulfsgill to Head of Division at Foxley. On the basis of his own report.’
‘I believe,’ said Harriet, ‘that once the relevant committee had established that Oldcastle’s course of action ought to be followed, it was unanimous in recommending that he be appointed to head this new division.’
‘And he brought the team with him.’
‘You have to admire the man. There’s a certain kind of genius to it.’
Hugo held up a hand. ‘So in this report, Oldcastle just about acknowledges that Rothesay’s impatience caused the accident, but then does his level best to absolve him of any actual blame.’
‘And succeeds. I’d say Rothesay was Oldcastle’s man if ever there was one.’
‘I wouldn’t have said they were that friendly.’
‘They needn’t have been. Oldcastle may be as political as they come, but he knows his own scientific limitations. Trust me, I spent enough time with him.’ She took a drag of the cigarette. ‘They go right back to Los Alamos together. It was a partnership, of sorts. Rothesay was Oldcastle’s ticket to chairmanships and honours.’
‘While Oldcastle was Rothesay’s protector, the one who smoothed over all his little peccadilloes and got him out of trouble. Ensured he could keep producing results.’
‘Full-time job, if you ask me.’
‘So who, aside from the immediate team, knew what had happened at Ulfsgill?’
‘Special Branch looked into that. There were rumours among the researchers and in the academic community, but someone took care to circulate the “existing condition” story. It was well handled, no scandal to ruffle anyone’s feathers.’
‘Oldcastle again?’
‘Not entirely, but I imagine his superiors in London consulted him extensively.’
‘So it was all tied up terribly neatly, until Árpád turns up, fresh from whatever research gulag Joe Stalin sent him to, and innocently discloses that the Russians know all about Rothesay’s blind alley. At which point the report is classified to kingdom come, lest the stable cat follow the horse out of the door, and the powers that be launch a sleeper hunt. May I have a word with Árpád?’
‘Since he’s staying in your country pile, you hardly need to ask.’
‘Fewer curious ears here.’
‘The servants get uppity and listen in, do they? Can’t have that sort of thing. Come on, then, he’s in Interview Room 3. You can tell me what you need to ask, and I’ll think of a way to present it so he doesn’t catch on.’
Scene 8
Árpád was still poring over the first page of the quarterly when Harriet returned, this time with Hugo. ‘Ah, it is you,’ he said. ‘I wondered whether perhaps I was only allowed to speak to you in the Castle, some arcane rule of your Service.’
‘No, Hawksworth is far too grand to spend much time with the likes of us,’ said Harriet.
‘Thank you,’ said Hugo testily.
‘My pleasure.’
‘This magazine of Mr Woolhope’s,’ said Árpád, ‘it is perhaps a code?’
‘It’s certainly a mystery,’ said Hugo, ‘but the mystery is whether Woolhope actually reads this stuff or just wants to make the rest of us think he does.’
‘Makes Roger Bailey very suspicious,’ said Harriet. ‘He thinks anyone who’s into this kind of literature must be a pinko.’
‘Pinko? Ah, yes, a Communist. I tell you, anyone who wrote like this in Hungary, they would be in great trouble with the Party.’
‘They’ll be in great trouble with their bank managers,’ said Harriet, ever practical. ‘I can’t imagine this sort of thing pays for itself.’
‘Woolhope will be crushed,’ said Hugo.
‘He’ll find another way to wind us all up. Now, Árpád, Hugo would like to ask you some questions about the personnel at Camp 39.’
Árpád put the magazine aside and sat up straight. ‘I am all ears, is that how you say?’
‘It is indeed,’ said Hugo, pulling out a notebook and sitting down. ‘Now, who was your immediate superior?’
He spent the better part of half an hour interrogating Árpád about things he had absolutely no interest in – although perhaps someone in the Service might find it valuable, further down the line. At last Árpád gave him the opening he needed, courtesy of Harriet’s flash briefing on the way over.
‘You said Domentzov had found favour, even though he was supposedly another political prisoner,’ Hugo said. ‘How did you know?’
‘Well, there were little indications at first,’ said Árpád. ‘We noticed he was getting letters from home, this is a privilege. Of course they were read, but they were the words of his family, this made him happy. Naturally, the MGB would not allow this unless he were doing something for them.’
‘Keeping an eye on the rest of you.’
‘Domentzov is not a bad man, you understand,’ said Árpád. ‘He is a patriot, in that Russian way where one can be a patriot even for a country which destroys one’s life. But also, he went out of his way to look after the rest of us, and when he spoke up for a man in trouble, the trouble stopped.’
Hugo nodded.
‘But then Moisevich had an idea, something he wanted to try. You see, we were not an important institute, because we were all recruited from the gulag. They gave us the dirty work, the things with no glamour and not much importance. Problems with reactors, for instance, particularly the isotopic composition of our plutonium, which is very dirty. You see . . .’
‘Hugo is a layman,’ said Harriet, well aware that Hugo wasn’t interested in the physics.
‘Of course. It was a matter of purifying the fuel, shall we say. Not my line of work, but I was in the meetings where it was discussed. Every week, as I said. Now, one week Moisevich has had his idea. He lays it out. Domentzov is interested, very interested. He knows Moisevich is a clever man, a meticulous man, also a cautious one. He would not propose this unless he were sure.’
‘Go on.’
‘So, we were all excited. We talk it through with Moisevich, we make some changes. The next week, at the same meeting, we present these to Domentzov again. But now Domentzov pours cold water on it, which is an essential thing when you’re dealing with reactors.’
Harriet grinned. Hugo looked nonplussed.
‘Reactors need cold water, and lots of it,’ said Harriet. ‘To keep the temperature down. That’s why all our hands-on stuff happens up where it’s wet and miserable.’
‘Also for the Soviets,’ said Árpád.
‘What did Domentzov say?’ Hugo asked. ‘As clearly as you remember it.’
Árpád remembered it very well, because those meetings were always warm. They were held in Domentzov’s office, which had recently had a better radiator installed – another sign of favour – and which was also too small for the purpose. With ten or eleven men packed around the desk, it was soon toasty.
‘He said that a very good British scientist at Foxley had come to grief over this, a man had died,’ Árpád said, ‘and that the theory was not sound. It was an interesting idea, but we should concentrate on concrete plans which would produce reliable results in accordance with the targets.’
Árpád held a finger up. ‘This was what he said to us. At the end of the meeting, though, he called Moisevich back. This, you understand, this was the important bit – how we knew Domentzov had friends. And this was good for us, too, because to know someone who has friends is a little bit safer.’
‘Do you remember the date?’
‘Yes, it was February of last year. The twenty-first or so, I’d say.’
Two weeks before Stalin died, then. A truly grim time behind the Iron Curtain.
‘Do you know what Domentzov said to Moisevich?’
‘Not then. Moisevich, of course, w
as Jewish. This was a bad time to be a Jew in the Soviet Union, there was talk of a purge. Perhaps a huge one. We had TASS and Pravda; we knew something was coming. A few weeks later, with Stalin gone, things were different, and that was when Moisevich told me. Domentzov said the idea was very good. He had looked through it carefully. But when the British did it, they were in a hurry, and there was an accident. The man who had the idea was blamed, this is how also it would be in the Soviet Union. Domentzov said that it would not be good for Moisevich, in the current climate, if he were to propose something risky. He would be seen as a wrecker, quite possibly shot. And so would the men who worked for him, because, you see, to make such a thing happen, Moisevich would need a group of his own, to work for him only.’
‘So Domentzov’s handlers were trusting him with quite detailed intelligence,’ Hugo said.
Árpád shrugged. ‘Who was he to tell, in the middle of Siberia?’
‘Was Domentzov still in the camp when you were released?’
‘He was the first to be let go. He told us that we had been rehabilitated, that the new leadership felt there were better uses for our talents. We would be given jobs elsewhere. He was transferred to an institute not far from Moscow. He said he would try to get jobs for us also.’
Just like Oldcastle, Hugo thought, taking his team with him, pulling strings for their benefit. Just as a Roman senator gave positions to his clients, in fact. Some things never changed, no matter how you dressed them up.
He followed Domentzov’s story to its end, asked a few questions about the more obvious MGB minder at the camp, and then excused himself again.
‘Of course,’ said Árpád. ‘I will return to this strange code of Mr Woolhope’s.’
Hugo and Harriet walked back to her room in silence.
‘Is that what the official record says?’ Hugo asked.
‘More or less.’
‘On which basis, London launched a hunt for a traitor who’d been both at Ulfsgill and at Foxley. In other words, one of Oldcastle’s team.’
‘Exactly.’
‘They thought, just as Árpád thinks, that Domentzov was simply protecting Moisevich.’
A Matter of Loyalty Page 15