Moneypenny Diaries: Guardian Angel

by Samantha Kate

  Bill said that James is hell-bent on tracking down Blofeld and Bunt. ‘He says he got a positive ID on them in the split second before Tracy was shot. It’s highly probable. We traced Bunt to a hotel in Munich. She put a telephone call through to Room 310 of the Hotel Metropole on Lake Como on the 30th. The occupant of 310, who fits 007’s description of Blofeld and drove a red Maserati, checked out soon afterwards, presumably headed for Munich. Unfortunately, they dumped the car outside Kitzbühel and we lost all trace of them. But James isn’t going to let them go – if it costs him his life, he’s going to track Blofeld down. He really loved her, you know. Tracy. Wish I’d met the girl who melted that heart of ice.’

  I took Mary for a drink to Bully’s, where I related the bulk of the conversation. I didn’t dwell on Tracy. Whatever she says, Mary’s half in love with 007 – though probably not much more so than with 006 and 009; in this business it’s impossible not to get entwined with the people you work with so closely, not to mention with the business itself. Inevitably, we drifted into The Conversation. ‘I’m not sure I can take it,’ she said. ‘Every time one of them disappears or gets in trouble, a little part of me goes with them. Either my heart gets broken every few weeks, or I get hardened to it. I’m not sure which is worse. Lil13 said it would happen; she said three years in the 00 section and then you have to get out, otherwise you never will. Well, I’ve practically just begun and I’m already feeling it. But I can’t leave – it’s my dream job and what else could I do now? It was all right for Lil, she found Gerald. How on earth do you do it?’

  But do I? How much of me has died along with the men and women we have lost over the past nine years I have worked here? Is that why I can’t give myself unreservedly to a man, in case he, too, disappears one day? With R, for the first time, I feel the possibility – but as yet it is a faint one, and one that, I fear, I may be afraid to explore too deeply.

  Sunday, 14th January

  A wonderful weekend with Helena,14 as always. Yesterday, we took some sandwiches and a flask and set off along the river towards Ely on our yearly pilgrimage for Pa.15 He would have been fifty-nine today. It’s nearly twenty-two years since he disappeared, two-thirds of my life. H and I indulged in our yearly fantasy of ‘What if …’ What if he hadn’t died; where would we be? What would we be like? How would our life have been different? As usual, we never mentioned the biggest ‘What if’ of them all – What if he isn’t dead?

  This year, I am determined to find out what really happened to him. I know that being unable to believe a parent’s death is a common pathology – but when you never see their body, when they vanish into thin air and are simply ‘presumed dead’, surely one has some cause to wonder? I know I cannot permit myself even a slither of hope, but I would dearly love to discover how and where he died.

  I just can’t get over the gaps in his service record. Nowhere is there any mention of active service, when we know he went to Madrid, at least, and to Lisbon – I have the postcards to prove it. And his last letter to me, I can’t forget my promise16 – just as I am still writing these diaries, as he wished. Sometimes, I wish I had never started – it would certainly make my life easier now. Every time I get out a journal, I feel the guilt of betrayal, but still I cannot stop, almost as if to do so would break that final bond with Pa.

  Helena is in terrific spirits; she is my one sure connection to the world out there. Her wedding plans are still ‘long term’, which causes us considerable merriment. Lionel17 even finds it moderately amusing – he says that at his age he doesn’t want to risk accusations of ‘rushing into it’. I imagine that after six years of engagement, another few can’t make a difference, and as H pointed out, she’s not yet thirty, so there’s still time for children – although whether Lionel will manage to give any child of his as much love and attention as he bestows on his beloved old bones remains to be seen.18

  I didn’t mention R. I want to tell H about him, but that would make it real, somehow. If I keep him a secret, perhaps I won’t be forced into confronting the choice I know is looming?

  I miss him. It’s been nearly three weeks since we last saw each other – since then, he’s been away and I’ve been buried under work. I wake early sometimes, wishing he was beside me.

  Saturday, 20th January

  A crisis averted. The Sunday Times has been inundating the FO with enquiries about the Swiss affair. Apparently, 007 was spotted in Zurich soon after Blofeld’s empire exploded into the skies. Then one of the dead up there was identified as a known member of the Union Corse. The paper was on the point of printing an article linking the British intelligence services to the Corsican mafia, when M personally telephoned the editor and read him the riot act. The Permanent Secretary followed this with a dressing down in his office at the Ministry. If the piece had been printed – even unproven – it would have started a mountain of dirt-digging, questions in Parliament, all that sort of thing. Since it was an ‘unofficial operation’, M never told the PM about 007’s involvement. If they’d been able to pin it on us, an organisation that doesn’t officially exist, it would have become embarrassing.

  M called a Cuba summit and asked me to take minutes since Bill was still busy mopping up the Swiss situation. Head of CA [Central America], A [America] and C [Caribbean] sections, with Ross over from Jamaica, Hughes-Onslow – our man in Havana until Castro kicked him out19 – and Scott from Grosvenor Square [the American Embassy] sitting in. On the Agenda: (i) Lessons from the Bay of Pigs;20 (ii) Local politics – do we have anything to fear?; and (iii) American action – what next?

  I enjoyed the meeting. I find the idea of Cuba strangely alluring, probably something to do with the music, cocktails, the idea of dancing in the Havana night. I cannot help but feel some sympathy with the revolutionaries; possibly a recherche of my Kenyan student days? I would love to go there, but while I’m still working here – or until the Americans ‘liberate’ Cuba from Communism – that won’t be possible.21

  There was consensus that Kennedy would not walk away from Cuba – a case of saving face as much as defending his mighty land from the forces of Communism as represented by one small island. Why do citizens of the most powerful country on earth feel the need to flex their muscles so provocatively? The Soviet threat is undoubtedly terrifying, especially with their assumed nuclear superiority, but the Americans seem actually to enjoy getting wrapped up in McCarthyite paranoia. The politicians certainly find it expedient.

  The main lesson from the failed invasion – not surprisingly – was the need for more humint [human intelligence] on the ground. If the Americans had had better intelligence from impartial agents in Cuba, would they have made the mistake of believing the dissidents’ reassurances of a majority underground opposition, ready to rise up at the hint of American military support? Most probably not. Cousin Scott sat silently through all of this. Our Cousins22 have nothing to be proud of. The official line is still that the Bay of Pigs was an independent dissident-led attack, and although we know the truth – the world knows the truth – they have to stick to this blatant fiction.

  He was similarly quiet when the discussion came round to any possible future American action. When asked, he just kept repeating, ‘I am not authorised to comment on this.’ He said it so many times that M became really irritated and banged his hands on the table, saying, ‘Well, if you will not tell me, I will ask your superiors.’ To which Scott simply shrugged apologetically and mimed his hands being bound.

  Ross came by to say farewell on his way back to Jamaica. ‘I have a message from our Commander friend; he asked me to give you a kiss and to say he wished you were there to tuck him up at night.’

  ‘How is he? Really?’ I asked.

  ‘Not good, I’m afraid. Went to stay with him last week and he drank a bottle of Scotch before bed, then I heard terrible shouts in the night. I got up, expecting to see some intruder, but all I found was him pacing up and down, apparently berating himself. “Sorry, old boy,” he told me. “Didn�
��t mean to wake you.” He looks like hell. I don’t think he’s even been out snorkelling.’

  I asked him to convey my special best wishes and to say that all of our thoughts are with him. We need him back here. I think even the OM is missing him.

  Wednesday, 24th January

  Dinner with R last night. At last. I’ve been looking forward to seeing him – but not without some trepidation. Somehow, whenever I glimpse that old Rubicon, I feel impelled to run in the opposite direction; maybe this time, with R, it will be different?

  He had made a tremendous effort, booked Quaglino’s and spruced himself up in a smart navy suit with a pale lilac shirt. He arrived with red tulips – in January! When I saw him, I felt a stab of pleasure and thought, This is going to be all right, I know it is. I was wearing my Sybil Connolly dress with the fine pleated linen skirt and new Frank Cardone blue and pink mod shoes. Had we bumped into anyone from the Office, I’m not sure they would have recognised me. It was raining hard when we got to the restaurant and when R came round to open my car door, water dripping from the spokes of his umbrella and over his spectacles, I had a scent of Barcelona and the exhilaration of our meeting.23

  We were gay, with champagne and plenty to talk about. I told him about Helena and Lionel and the wedding that never is, and about Inherit the Wind,24 which we saw at the Cambridge Arts Theatre. We started talking about the lengths to which one would go in the name of a job, the extent to which our work defines us. He was wonderfully eloquent on what it meant to him to build something and to be able to see the results in bricks and cement. ‘If I couldn’t work, I don’t know what I would do,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure I would be me.’ Perhaps I was a little quiet, because he stopped and took my hand. ‘I know you like to keep your job and your private life separate,’ he said. ‘I respect that. But I also know it’s important to you and I want to share the important things in your life, though I’ve no idea whether you want to share them with me …’ He trailed off, as if that possibility had only just occurred to him.

  But I couldn’t give him the reassurance he was seeking, instead muttering something about having been an orphan and how that made me wary of giving too much of myself to people, in case they are taken away from me. Which of course is only half the truth. I saw him looking intensely at me, as if trying to decipher what I was really saying. Sometimes, I wish I could sweep all the secrecy away.

  Friday, 26th January

  Blofeld’s trail appears to have gone cold. 007 is due back in the Office any day, and we wanted to have something positive to give him. There have been suspected sightings around the world, some of which appear to have been genuine. It looks as if he and Bunt headed first to Prague – a couple answering their description were photographed leaving the Russian Embassy on 5th January. Unfortunately, by the time the report reached our head of station over there, they had vanished again. He immediately alerted the main exit points, put men in the airport and railway stations, but they saw nothing. A week later, Blofeld visited a document-forger in Istanbul, where we are sure he bought new papers. The forger is one of the best in the world, used in the past by the top echelons of SMERSH25 and SPECTRE26. Darko Kerim27 sniffed him out years ago, but M decided that it would prove more profitable in the long run to leave him in situ and keep a more or less permanent watch on his premises (a shoe-repair shop deep in the Medina).

  One of Kerim’s sons – most of them stayed at Station T to work for the new head after their father was killed – recognised Blofeld immediately, despite the dark glasses and hat. He called the Office for instructions, and was told to concentrate on finding Blofeld’s new identity, rather than on tailing him. Our chaps own the front-desk men in every hotel, and once his new name was known, it was thought we would be able to track him down soon enough. So Kerim junior let him leave, then went into the forger’s rooms. Unfortunately, it was the wrong decision. Blofeld had made certain that no one would be able to follow his tracks. The forger’s throat had been cut. When our man arrived, blood was still draining from his severed arteries; he had faked his final document.

  Wednesday, 31st January

  A perplexing change in R. Over the past three days he has acted entirely out of character. On Monday, I received a message from the central switchboard, saying that a gentleman had telephoned asking for me. When, according to protocol, they informed him that there was no one of that name listed, he had persisted for several minutes, asking them to check. Ten minutes after ringing off, he had telephoned again, most insistent that I worked there, even describing me to them. He had refused to give his name, but they had managed to trace his number – would I like it?

  He was at home when I telephoned that evening. I couldn’t let on that I knew he had tried to contact me, but he seemed to be expecting me to call. He said he needed to see me, urgently. We arranged to meet on Friday night, but this evening, when I left work, he was standing in the street outside the Office. He must have followed me from home this morning – I should have picked him up, basic anti-surveillance drill, but I suppose my thoughts must have drowned out such instincts. Either that, or he is highly adept at tailing people. He made no effort to deny it, when I asked if he had followed me.

  ‘I just wanted to see where you worked,’ he said. ‘I tried to telephone you on Monday, but they said that no one of your name worked for the Foreign Office. So I wanted to see for myself. I assumed you worked in Whitehall.’ I told him that I normally did, but that I’d been seconded temporarily to one of our contractors and that my name had probably been taken off the telephone list while I’m here … I tried to make this prepared answer sound natural.

  I took his arm and dragged him into a taxi. But not before I caught a glimpse of Troop28 staring at us from the front door, and the last thing I need is for one of my colleagues – or indeed one of Them – to see me with R. We went to a wine bar off Oxford Street. Our conversation was not a comfortable one. He asked why I hadn’t been straight with him. He wanted to know what I did and for whom I worked. He sounded confused, cross, even a little resigned. It is a conversation I have had a hundred times before – in my head. I was able to bluff my way through it; everything I said can be backed up by the FO Personnel Department if he asks any more questions. But it feels ugly to have to lie to him.

  February

  The Secret Intelligence Service – the Firm, or the Office, as it is known to those who work there – is Britain’s external security agency, responsible for obtaining secret information and conducting operations in support of the country’s foreign policy objectives. It has representatives or agents in nearly every country in the world, particularly those deemed to pose a threat to the security of the United Kingdom. These days, its headquarters is a showy building on the south bank of the Thames dubbed, not always affectionately, ‘Legoland’. It is a London landmark, hard to miss, and its current chief, John Scarlett, is no stranger to public attention.

  It was not always so. The SIS was originally part of the Secret Service Bureau, which in 1909 divided into two branches: MI5 and MI6 (Military Intelligence – sections 5 and 6). Under the command of Commander Mansfield Smith-Cumming – or ‘C’ as he and all subsequent chiefs were known, except for M, who chose to use his own initial – in 1922 MI6 severed ties with MI5, the domestic security service, to become a separate entity with the title of Secret Intelligence Service. There was little consultation and not inconsiderable rivalry with MI5. Each guarded its secrets from the other, almost as jealously as from the outside world. In most cases – apart from in the highest echelons – one had little idea of who worked for the other, or, indeed, on what they were working. Cumming died in his office in 1923, and the following year the SIS moved into an anonymous office building at 54 Broadway, opposite St James’s Park tube station, which remained its headquarters until 1966. It was to here that Jane Moneypenny reported for work each day.

  Until the Intelligence Services Act of 1994, the SIS did not officially exist. It was funded by the Treasury
out of the ‘Secret Vote’, and all employees were bound by the strict terms of the Official Secrets Act. The officers were recruited straight out of university – primarily Oxbridge – and from other branches of the armed or intelligence services, being chosen for their intelligence and discretion. The new recruits were sent first on a six-month introductory course, based at Fort Monkton, the SIS’s secret training facility in Gosport, Hampshire, where they were instructed in the theory and practice of tradecraft: how to recruit and run agents, deal with notional defections, and conduct and resist interrogation, as well as the technical side of surveillance and photographic techniques. After this was completed, they would work in London for a further year and a half before being deployed to a foreign station, where they fell nominally under the aegis of the local British embassy or High Commission.

  Administrative staff comprised mainly well-bred and independent girls with a genetic aptitude for keeping secrets. Jane Moneypenny was not unusual in having a colonial background. It was held at the time that this conferred on the girls a certain toughness and adaptability that served them well in their duties, particularly foreign postings. Most had some sort of social or familial connection with the intelligence services; they were subtly sounded out by recruiting agents before receiving letters inviting them to an interview with the Foreign Office. Jane Moneypenny was picked out by Miss Oster, the eponymous head of an elite secretarial college in South Kensington, who also served as a respected scout for the SIS. Jane had signed up for a secretarial course soon after arriving in London in the spring of 1953 – and qualified top of her class in half the usual time.