It is now over two weeks since I failed to make the drop, and I haven’t heard from Zach. Every day I expect a phone call or a letter, but so far, nothing. Perhaps he believed me when I said I was going to tell my employers. I should have; they would have put him on the Watch List2 and filed his description under suspected Soviet or Stasi agents. Perhaps they would then have had to investigate the truth about Pa – if indeed they didn’t already know? I didn’t think of that at the time; I was too ashamed at having been lured in so easily. And now, I fear, it’s too late.
I’ve been dreaming about Pa. Does the fact I was trapped mean that everything Zach said was untrue? If so, how did he know all those things?
Wednesday, 11th July
There appears to be an increased urgency to the Cuba Group meetings. I have to admit I find them exciting, as though I have a front-row seat at the circus. Head of C [Caribbean]3 is convinced that something major is brewing over there. He’s a funny little man: dark, intense, with the barely contained energy of a bedspring that’s been pushing against its cloth for too long. He’s been in the trade since Oxford and relies strongly on what he calls his ‘hunches’. You give him a piece of research and he’ll say, ‘Something smells wrong about it. My hunch is that what’s actually going on is …’ More often than not he’s right.
In this case, his hunch is that Cuba is going to become the theatre for a major Cold War tugging match, and to date it looks as if Redland is winning. On 2nd July, Raúl Castro4 paid a high-profile visit to Moscow.5 According to Pravda, he returned to Havana with the promise of Russian technical equipment and advisers, as well as greatly beneficial trade agreements. ‘That means weapons, mark my words,’ said Warhol. ‘We should keep a very close watching brief on what’s happening over there. The sooner 007 gets there the better.’
Saturday, 14th July
A letter from R this morning. I recognised his writing, of course, and opened it with a pounding heart. ‘My Dearest Jane, will you ever find it in your heart to forgive me?’ it began. I’m not sure what I expected – confusion, recrimination, a demand to bring me to account, perhaps? But what followed was one of the most heartfelt declarations of longing that I have ever read. He wrote of the wonderful times we had shared; he treasured the memories and regretted everything he had done to contribute to the demise of our relationship:
It could have been so different – I confess, I had hopes that it would lead to a happier denouement. You are an extraordinary woman. I have never met anyone with your independence and integrity and I doubt I ever will. I just wish I could have matched up to you. I was a fool to try to unwrap the layers of your character in one clumsy wrench. I shouldn’t have been in such a hurry and then, perhaps, I would have had the time to savour each one? I know it’s too late, but please forgive me and remember me with affection. Take care. I hope one day our paths will meet again.
I shed tears when I read that. I miss him more than I can admit, even to myself. It was I who had been unworthy. Integrity? If only he knew. I’d repaid his trust with evasion, initially, and towards the end with suspicion. But even now, when I replay my conversations with Zach over and over in my head, I still cannot expunge the thought – such a treacherous thought – that R was one of the few who knew about my childhood in Africa. I’d told him about Evie and Winnie, and the lower branches of the acacia tree where I would sit, swinging my legs, writing my diary and waiting for Pa never to return. But it doesn’t take the emptiness away.
Monday, 16th July
007 is en route to Cuba. He sent a long signal to M from Jamaica yesterday. It was reassuringly positive; a week in the sun, getting fit and planning his trip, appear to have done him good. He’s decided that his best method of entry is by small boat, landing just west of Santiago de Cuba, making the final approach underwater. The original plan was to go in via the American base at Guantanamo Bay,6 but this had to be abandoned after Castro declared the surrounding area a militarised zone and evacuated the local inhabitants. The base is now under virtual siege – it’s a peculiar situation, to have battling countries living side by side, with the aggressor paying rent to his prey. Guantanamo, in any case, is thought to be riddled with Castro’s spies.
He was most adamant that we do not disclose details of his trip to anyone. According to his sources, the Cuban military are screening the airports, pulling aside suspect visitors for what, from all reports, amounts to intense interrogation. Key landing beaches are ringed by heavy artillery, on the watch for another Bay of Pigs-type invasion. Castro apparently does not believe, however, that the Americans would try anything near his home town and power base of Santiago de Cuba. Consequently, there’s less security in the east, leaving the coast clear – literally – for a discreet landing by 007.
Once in Cuba, 007 will take the cover of Arlen von Kaseberg, an employee of Universal Exports,7 based in Zurich. Q Branch has ensured that the legend is intact; his passport has regular stamps from Cuba over the past decade and the Swiss have been briefed to give him collateral support. He plans to make his way overland to Havana, as inconspicuously as possible, and when there, to try to establish the identity of this Caballo. He’ll be operating entirely without back-up. We have a skeleton diplomatic presence in Havana only. Until last year we had a small station there, acting under the aegis of an oil company. However, when Castro nationalised the refineries, our men were sent home, leaving us completely blind. We’ve had a certain amount of help from the French and Italians as well as the Swiss, but 007 has insisted that no one be alerted to his presence.
I do not have a good feeling about this mission. 007 sounds confident enough, and it’s well within his capabilities, but there’s something I can’t put my finger on that makes me uneasy. Perhaps, for once, I know too much?
Friday, 20th July
Well, one of them has made it back safely, thank God. 006 came in from Novaya Zemlya just a few days later than we’d anticipated. He’d been travelling non-stop for five days and was completely exhausted; he’d lost weight and his usually ruddy face was gaunt and grey, but he insisted on submitting his report to M and Head of S before he went to sleep. He almost stumbled out of the Office and I called Mary up to make sure he got home safely. Transcribing his report later, it sounded as if he was truly lucky to have made it.
He went in from the west disguised as a Siberian fisherman. 006 probably speaks just enough idiomatic Russian to pass as a taciturn local, especially after a week or so away from a bath and a razor. Novaya Zemlya sounds like a God-forsaken place, cold and barren,8 which of course makes it an ideal location for the most important Russian nuclear testing-ground.
We’d heard reports last year of an enormous explosion up there, at the end of October, which the Ministry was keen to confirm. They also wanted any information about the new generation of Soviet inter-continental ballistic missiles [ICBMs]. Both of the great powers have been spreading rhetoric and disinformation about their relative strengths and weaknesses on this front.9 While spy-plane photographs10 reveal a certain amount about surface appearance, they don’t tell us about actual effectiveness and range. In any case, the Powers incident11 has put paid to much activity in that sphere. So 006 was sent to the boffins for a crash course on nuclear weaponry, before being catapulted into icy hell.
His mission was remarkably successful. By a stroke of luck, he ran into a cold and bored Russian technician, keen for company and an opportunity to complain about his boss. Presumably he didn’t believe that an uneducated fisherman could be much of a security threat. When he mentioned that they were desperately short of manual labour, 006 leapt at the opening. Two days later, he was working in the store-room attached to the central laboratory. In between carrying heavy boxes and crates from Zone A, where much of the testing up to this point has taken place, to the new scientific and administrative centre in Zone B, 006 overheard several significant conversations. Eventually, though, he was caught poking around the offices and had to make a rapid escape, through northern Rus
sia to Norway. No wonder he’s exhausted.
Extracted from 006’s report, dated the day of his return, copied for the joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) and currently filed in the National Archives (CAB 179):
I was able to ascertain that on October 30, 1961, a 50 megaton bomb, known as Tsar Bomba, was detonated at what is known as Site C (73.7N 54.0E). The bomb measured 26 feet by 6.6 feet and weighed 27 tons. A special parachute was designed enabling it to be dropped from a TU-95 bomber at a height of 33,000 feet over Novaya Zemlya. The fireball reached from the ground almost to the height of the release plane and light from the explosion was visible 600 miles away. The mushroom cloud was estimated to have risen as high as 40 miles into the atmosphere. The test was declared a success and work has started on the construction of a template, this one designed with a yield of up to 200 megatons.
After four weeks of working at the plant, 006 managed to infiltrate the laboratory late one night. There he found papers relating to the recent test firing of the R-7 intercontinental ballistic missiles:
The R-712 has demonstrated significant degrees of variance in aim and range. The scientists are concerned – they cannot rely on the missiles landing within 100 miles of their target at a range of 5000 miles (Russia to the East coast of the United States). They are more confident about the R-1213 and R-1414 Medium and Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles, which are consistently outperforming the ICBMs in accuracy over shorter distances. The technicians had begun a programme of stripping and recalibrating all the missiles in batches of 50 at a time, when an urgent directive from Moscow ordered them to transport a large number of R-12s and R-14s, along with nuclear warheads and trained technicians, down to Severomorsk15 and Leningrad […]
I was trying to find papers to confirm whether the consignments had left when I was caught looking through top secret files. I was forced to take aggressive action, resulting in the certain death of two security guards, with another injured. I escaped under the security fence and, with a team of guards and dogs in pursuit, made my way to my vessel. I landed four days later at Murmansk. Unable to get a signal through to HQ, I decided to make the short journey to Severomorsk, in an attempt at confirming the missile movements. Security at the port was tight – the eastern side had been sealed and was patrolled by heavily armed Russian special forces wearing green epaulettes. I spoke to various local inhabitants, who said that there was an unusual number of cargo ships currently at dock. A long convoy of heavy transporter vehicles had arrived several days previously, but to date, the ships had not left port. Judging that I had little chance of infiltrating the loading area, I made my way instead across the border to northern Norway, arriving in Oslo one week later, on July 18.
Sunday, 29th July
It is as I’d feared. The nightmare is not over. I was taking our normal route across the park on Saturday when Rafi sniffed the air, bounded ahead towards the Serpentine and started barking at something the other side of the bushes. There were hundreds of people about, strolling, sun-bathing on the lawns, playing tennis and badminton, and I couldn’t see what it was that had excited him. I called him, but he just looked at me and continued to bark. It was more of a summons than an aggressive call. I walked briskly over towards him and crouching at the foot of the statue of Peter Pan, looking a little sheepish as he fondled Rafi’s ears, was Zach. ‘Hush, Rafi,’ he said, looking at me. ‘Now you’ve given me away and I’m going to get into trouble.’ Then he stood up and smiled. I’d forgotten how handsome he is and was annoyed to feel myself blushing.
‘I don’t want to talk to you. Come on Rafi,’ I said, turning away.
‘Jane, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to put pressure on you. My aim was to help you. I know how much you want to track down your father. I thought I’d found out something that would make you happy. I’m just afraid we both got caught up in something that turned out to be rather more than we’d anticipated.’
‘You mean you didn’t … No, I’m not talking to you. This is ridiculous. I’ll have to report seeing you, of course.’
As I turned to go, he reached out and grabbed my shoulder.
‘Listen. You’ve got to believe me. I’m as much a pawn in this as you are. They just told me what to say and do.’
‘Who are “they”, and what have “they” got on you then? Why are you doing this?’
He turned his hands palms up and spread his fingers. ‘We all have our private reasons.’
‘Yes, but you know mine and I don’t know yours. Who are you? Was anything you told me about yourself true?’
‘Come on, let’s go and have a cup of tea.’ He’d started to lead me back across the park, when I recovered my senses. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t want anything to do with you.’
‘Please, Jane. I have a lot riding on this too. I need your help. I really need your help.’
I started to walk away.
‘I’ll call you this evening. Please listen to what I have to say.’
I didn’t intend to answer the telephone. I should have called Bill instead and told him everything and asked for his help in dealing with it. But I didn’t. Stubbornness and pride as well as shame, I suppose – the need to preserve the image of the irreproachable Miss Moneypenny. I should have gone out, far from the phone, but I was suddenly a little scared – scared that I would be followed, that my every move was being watched and recorded.
At 6 p.m. it rang. I left it and went into the bathroom. When I came out again it had stopped. A few minutes later, it started up again, ringing insistently, incessantly. It would stop and start again. I took it off the hook and switched on the wireless. But the ringing continued in my head and after about fifteen minutes I could bear it no longer and put the receiver back on. It immediately started to ring. I picked it up, intending to tell Zach to leave me alone, but it was Helena.
‘Jane, thank God you’re in.’
‘Have you been trying all evening?’ I asked.
‘Of course not. Listen. I’ve just had a call from the hospital. They’ve been trying to get hold of you. Aunt Frieda’s been taken in with pneumonia. I’m getting on the next train. Will you come to meet me, please? We can go to the hospital together … I’ll phone you as soon as I’ve found out when my train gets in.’
I was so shaken by the news that I picked up the phone automatically when it rang again. ‘When you were six, you were bitten by a snake in Samburu. You were far from a doctor. Your father made an incision in your foot with his hunting-knife and sucked out the poison. Then he bandaged it in his handkerchief and stayed talking to you all night until the fever had passed.’
This was family legend, an event I remembered with a clarity that is only conferred by a thousand retellings. But, as far as I could remember, I had never spoken of it to anyone outside the family except, possibly, R.
‘Who is this?’ The voice had a heavy accent, harsh. It was not Zach.
‘A friend. I am sorry to disturb you when your aunt is ill.’
My knees gave away and I sat down suddenly. ‘How did you know that?’
‘Never mind. Can you get the information we asked for?’
I told him that I wasn’t prepared to do it, that I’d informed my colleagues of Zach’s approaches. ‘We will trace you and then you’ll have to face the consequences. You can’t make me do anything,’ I said, almost convincing myself.
‘We have reason to disbelieve what you say. You have not placed any complaint on record with your organisation. If they discovered now that you have kept this quiet, you would be in significant trouble.’
I slammed the phone down. What he said was true: every rule in the book clearly states that any suspected approach by foreign agents should be reported immediately. I should have said something the minute I suspected that Z was not all he professed to be.
The phone rang again. I nearly left it, then remembering Helena, I picked it up. I nearly crumpled when I heard her voice, so calm and familiar. We spent the rest of the evening sitting next to our aun
t’s bed listening to her laboured breathing as she slept. Every now and then one of us would remember one of the nuggets of advice she had occasionally served up to us, as if it was some particularly tempting canapé. ‘Now don’t go marrying the first young man who asks,’ she would say. ‘Marriage is terribly overrated. I had many proposals in my time, as you know. I may have some more before I finally fall off my perch, but the idea of spending the rest of my life with a man, sharing a bed with him … oh no.’ She would shake her head. ‘Men are at their best in the kitchen. What you want is a good career. And for that you need a degree.’
Dear Aunt Frieda, the original blue-stocking. When we first came to London, she treated us as the children she never had. I pray she gets through this. I would miss her desperately, those sporadic Sunday suppers of chicken soup and rice. The doctor says she has a good chance. She was awake when we went this morning and seemed to be breathing more easily.
I told Helena everything last night. It had got to the stage where I couldn’t go on alone. It was surprisingly easy in the end. She’d long suspected, of course, what it was I did, though she had no idea of the details. I begged her to tell no one, not even Lionel.
‘Of course I won’t,’ she gave me a hug. ‘Don’t worry.’
We were sitting on my bed. It all poured out – R, Zach, the phone call. Helena sat quietly facing me at the other end of the bed, hugging her knees to her chest in the position I knew so well. When at last I came to the end, the first thing she asked was, ‘How does he know that you haven’t reported it? Who could have told him?’
Moneypenny Diaries: Guardian Angel Page 13