The Crossing

by Ted Allbeury

  23

  Harris was in a hurry but he went into the information room and signed that he had checked the weekly information files laid out on the table. As he headed for the door he stopped, hesitating, and then, sighing, he walked back to the table and sat down. No responsible officer signed that he had read his obligatory files when he hadn’t done so. Out of the dozen or so files there were only three obligatory files for him. One marked “USSR,” one marked “CIA/ FBI” and a third, a thin file marked “Australasia.”

  There were two file number references in the Soviet file that he noted and then he reached for the CIA/FBI file. He had virtually no current contacts with the United States security services but he read through the two-line references to other files as he slowly turned the pages. It was on the third page of photographs that he stopped. Despite the grainy blow-ups he recognised both faces immediately. It just said: “Morris Cohen and Laura Teresa Cohen. Associate of the Rosenbergs, David Greenglass, Harry Gold and others. Disappeared from their address in New York immediately prior to arrest of Julius Rosenberg. Present whereabouts unknown. Possible locations, Australia, New Zealand, West or East Germany, United Kingdom. See Washington file 70410/04/3466. Restricted.”

  He was looking at photographs of Peter John Kroger and Helen Joyce Kroger, antiquarian bookseller and his quiet suburban wife. The owners of the Rover car that had been parked at the “looker’s” cottage. Associates of the mysterious Mr. Gordon and the middle-aged woman from Weymouth and Portland who owned the cream-coloured Mini.

  For ten minutes Harris sat there, collecting his thoughts. He knew by instinct that they were no longer just thrashing around. They were in business at last and it meant a radical change in the operation. This latest piece in the jig-saw would warrant a full surveillance organisation. It could mean thirty or more trained people. And that could mean the operation being taken over by Shapiro himself or someone else equally senior. He reached for the internal telephone and dialled Shapiro’s number. Shapiro had already left the office but he had left a number where he could be contacted. He dialled the number and Shapiro answered.

  “Shapiro. Who is it?”

  “It’s Harris, sir. I’ve just come across something that alters my operation.”

  “Oh, what is it?”

  “A connection, sir. A CIA/ FBI connection.”

  “Why can’t you deal with it?”

  “I think it’s more your level.”

  “Can it wait until the morning? I’ll be in early. About eight.”

  “I’d rather deal with it tonight if I can.”

  He heard the impatience in Shapiro’s voice as he said, “Are you at the office?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “I can come to you if that’s more convenient.”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  Shapiro was in evening dress: dinner jacket, black tie and four miniature medals. He took Harris’s arm and walked to the far side of the reception area. When he came to a halt he said, “Right, what is it?” He sounded as if he resented being disturbed. He frowned as if whatever he was going to be told was unwelcome.

  Harris told him of the CIA/ FBI photographs.

  Shapiro said sharply, “Are you quite sure? Those photographs are never good quality.”

  “Yes, I’m quite sure.”

  “We’d better go up to my office.”

  As they went up in the lift Harris said, “I’m sorry I’ve had to disturb your evening.”

  Shapiro didn’t respond but in his office he took off his dinner jacket. “Show me your photographs and the file photographs.”

  It was ten minutes before Harris came back with the material and Shapiro looked at both sets of photographs for several minutes before he looked up at Harris.

  “Yes. You’re right.” He paused and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. “We’ll need a twenty-four-hour team for the Cohens’ place in Ruislip and the bookshop. Another team for the Gordon chap and the spinster at Weymouth. We’ll have to think about Grushko too. Has Grushko got diplomatic status?”

  “No. It wasn’t requested for him either.”

  “We’ll pull him in when we pick up the others.”

  “What about the MP—Maguire-Barton?”

  “Go on checking on him and keep me informed—but leave him for me to deal with.”

  “Do you want me to stay in charge of the operation?”

  Shapiro looked surprised. “Do you know of any reason why you shouldn’t?”

  “I thought that as it was getting bigger you might …”

  “How many bodies do you want?”

  “On my calculations I could get by with thirty. I might need more if it takes long.”

  “We might have to call in some outside help if it’s a long term job. Special Branch and Five.” He stopped and looked at Harris’s face. “You’d better leave this to me. Go home and get some sleep. You look as if you need it.”

  Shapiro was on the phone even before Harris got to the door and he called out, “Be here at eight, Mr. Harris. There’ll be people to brief.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Harris applied for, and got, an incident room and two clerks to record and collate the information coming in from the surveillance team and other sources. Like most surveillance operations whole days could go by with nothing suspicious reported, but when there were contacts every detail had to be noted. Locations, time, photography where possible, identification, description of the meeting, weather conditions, light conditions and all the rest of the information to rebut defending counsels’ insistence in court that the meeting never took place or that the light conditions were too bad for accurate observation.

  Harris reported daily to Shapiro who seemed anxious to hurry things along. But there was always one major problem with this kind of surveillance and investigation: they were founded on little more than suspicion, and courts were not interested in suspicion, neither was the Director of Public Prosecutions.

  What they wanted was evidence, and, so far as English law was concerned, it had to be evidence not merely of intent to spy but proof of actual espionage. If Soviet diplomats were concerned then suspicion could be enough. They could be declared “personae non gratae” and sent packing. But “illegals,” who had to come before the courts, were given all the benefits that any other defendant could expect.

  24

  Once Shapiro had arranged for full surveillance teams Harris deployed them quickly and right at the start they had a lucky break. Farrance, one of the new men, had followed Mr. Gordon to a block of luxury flats, the White House, in Regent’s Park. And from there to his workplace in Peckham.

  Both places had been subjected to covert searches but the searchers found nothing suspicious apart from large sums of money in cash in a false ceiling in the toilet at the flat. The money was sterling and dollars to the value of just over three thousand pounds. But the search revealed that Mr. Gordon was, in fact, a Mr. Gordon Arnold Lonsdale. Discreet enquiries among some of the customers of the business only confirmed that the business was both successful and efficient. The company had a substantial share of the London gambling machine market, and Mr. Lonsdale’s partners seemed to be no more than normal businessmen.

  A request was sent to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Canada for any information on a Gordon Arnold Lonsdale. Suspected of espionage. Two weeks later a report came back that at least established that Lonsdale was travelling on a fake passport. With espionage suspected, the RCMP implemented a routine check on driving licence applications. A Gordon Arnold Lonsdale had applied for one in 1954 giving his address at No. 1527 Burnaby Street, Vancouver. From there he was traced to the address of a boarding house in Toronto. And it was at that point they discovered that he had a Canadian passport.

  Corporal Jack Carroll of the RCMP had landed from a British Viscount plane at a snow-covered landing-strip in northern Ontario to check the details of Gordon Arnold Lon
sdale in his birthplace—Cobalt, Ontario. It took only three days to reveal that the real Gordon Lonsdale had been taken back to Finland by his mother when he was only three years old. The rest was surmise, but for experienced intelligence officers it wasn’t difficult to imagine what had happened. The boy’s genuine documents would have been taken by the KGB and used to provide cover for the man calling himself Lonsdale. It was a normal KGB practice. But above all they now had legitimate grounds for picking up Lonsdale and charging him, any time they wanted. But they wanted to challenge him with a lot more than using a false passport.

  The check on Ethel Gee showed that she had started work at the Underwater Weapons Establishment at Portland in 1950, and she had signed the Official Secrets Act document that all civil servants have to sign if they are engaged on any secret work. She was forty-six and she lived in Hambro Road, Portland, Devon.

  Her boy-friend was fifty-five. He was Henry Frederick Houghton and he lived not far from Gee in Meadow View Road, Broadway, a suburb of Weymouth. He was employed at the same establishment as Gee and was responsible for the distribution and filing of all papers and documents, including Admiralty Fleet Orders and Admiralty charts. His salary was £741 a year.

  The first meeting of all three of them that the surveillance team had covered was on July 9, 1960.

  Lukas had followed Houghton to the Cumberland Hotel. Ethel Gee had walked into the foyer through the Oxford Street entrance a few minutes later. She and Houghton had talked for a few moments and then left the hotel taking the Underground to Waterloo Station. Lukas asked for assistance on his pocket radio and Ivan Beech and Lukas followed the couple out of the station. As they approached the Old Vic they were joined by Lonsdale. They obviously all knew one another well. Lonsdale gave Houghton an envelope. A few moments later Houghton left Lonsdale and Gee talking together. When he returned he was carrying a blue paper bag. He took a parcel out of the bag and gave it to Lonsdale.

  About five minutes later they split up. Lukas followed Lonsdale, and Beech followed the couple.

  Lonsdale had walked to where he had parked his car, frequently looking over his shoulder to see if he was being followed. Twice he had walked past his car before doubling back and driving to his flat.

  Houghton and Gee had gone to the Albert Hall for a performance by the Bolshoi Ballet.

  The surveillance was stepped up when the evaluation showed that the first Saturday in the month seemed to be a permanent rendezvous for the three of them.

  Farrance had been trailing Lonsdale on August 26 when he followed him to Great Portland Street where Lonsdale parked his car and went into the Midland Bank. A few minutes later he came back to his car and took out a brown attaché case and several small packages which he took back into the bank and left with the clerk for safe custody.

  Harris had applied for, and got, a search warrant for the attaché case, and the contents had been listed and photographed before the case was returned to the bank.

  In the case was a Ronson table-lighter, a Praktica camera, two film cassettes and a bunch of seven keys.

  It wasn’t until October 24 that Lonsdale reclaimed the case from the bank. He walked to an address in Wardour Street and when he left he was carrying a different brown leather briefcase. Lukas had followed him when he went by Underground from Piccadilly and got off at Ruislip Manor station. From the station he walked to 45, Cranley Drive and at last there was further confirmation implicating the bookseller.

  On Saturday November 5 Houghton was under surveillance in Puddletown in Dorset. When Houghton entered a hotel Farrance saw a large cardboard box and a leather briefcase on the back seat of Houghton’s Renault car. Beech and Farrance followed him as he drove to London where he parked his car near a pub called the Maypole. Ten minutes later Lonsdale joined him there carrying a briefcase. A few minutes later Houghton and Lonsdale were driving slowly in Houghton’s car. They stopped in the shadows of a group of trees and then drove back to the Maypole. When they left, Lonsdale was carrying a black document case which was not the case he had arrived with. They drove off in Houghton’s car and were lost in the traffic at Marble Arch.

  Saturday, December 10 linked both sides of Lonsdale’s network. In the early afternoon Lonsdale had met Houghton and Gee at their old rendezvous in Waterloo Road and in the early evening Lonsdale had parked his car about twenty-five yards from the Krogers’ home in Cranley Drive. It had stayed there until just before noon the following day.

  It was decided at a meeting between Morton and MI5 liaison that the arrest of the five suspects and the subsequent handling of the case should revert to MI5 and Special Branch who had been kept informed of the last six months’ surveillance.

  Shapiro’s meeting with Harris had not been smooth.

  “You’ll be required to give evidence and so will your team but the rest is out of our hands now.”

  “But why? They’re there for the taking.”

  “And Special Branch will take them.”

  “But we’ve done the hard grafting all the way.”

  “Which was what you were told to do.”

  “How do I explain all this to my chaps who’ve sweated their guts out for months?”

  “You don’t explain. You send them back to the pool with your congratulations and praise them for a job well done.”

  “Can I ask you a very frank question, sir?”

  “Yes—but I might not answer it.”

  “Was there ever a reason why we—SIS—were told to take on this operation?”

  “Yes—a very good reason.”

  “You know the reason?”

  “Yes. I was one of the three people who made the decision.”

  “But I can’t be told what the reason was?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  For a moment Harris locked eyes with his senior and then he turned and headed for the door. As he opened the door Shapiro called out.

  “Harris.”

  “Sir.”

  Shapiro nodded. “Well done. Keep at it.”

  Harris was plainly neither amused nor mollified by the official pat on the back.

  The spy network’s regular, first Saturday in the month, meeting on January 7 was the last. Houghton had deviated from his usual routine and had parked his car at Salisbury Station and he and Ethel Gee had caught the 12.32 train to Waterloo. The train arrived at 3.20 p.m. At 4.30 Lonsdale arrived outside the Old Vic Theatre, parked his car and stood on the corner of the street. Houghton and Gee crossed from Lower Marsh to where Lonsdale was standing. They walked past him without acknowledging him and he turned and followed them, catching up with them a few moments later.

  Gee was carrying a shopping basket and Lonsdale took a parcel from it. It was then that a Special Branch officer walked past them, turning to face them as he said, “You are under arrest.” The parcel was found to contain four Admiralty Test reports and a cassette of undeveloped film. When it had been processed it was of 230 pages of an Admiralty book entitled “Particulars of War Vessels.”

  At 6.30 p.m. that evening SB officers knocked on the door of 45 Cranley Drive and the Krogers were arrested.

  25

  When the brief radio message came through that Lonsdale and the others had been arrested and that there was hard evidence of espionage, Shapiro checked with the teams still covering Grushko and Maguire-Barton. Grushko was at his flat and was alone.

  When Shapiro rang the bell it was a couple of minutes before Grushko opened the door. Shapiro held up his ID card and Grushko shrugged and looked back at him.

  “What is it you want?”

  “I’d like to come in and talk to you.” And there was real surprise on Grushko’s face when Shapiro responded in Russian. For a moment he hesitated and then he opened the door wider and Shapiro walked in. He had seen photographs of the room way back and it looked much the same.

  Grushko said, “I’ll have to leave in ten minutes. What is it you want?”

  Shapiro smiled and sat down on the couch as h
e pointed at an armchair. “Let’s make ourselves comfortable, comrade.”

  Grushko sat reluctantly. “I haven’t got much time.”

  “It’s going to take quite a time, Comrade Grushko, so you might as well relax.”

  “What is this all about?”

  “Well now. We’ve got a problem. You’ve been rather a naughty boy and we’re not sure yet what we’re going to do about you. You haven’t any diplomatic immunity so we could put you on trial, or we could ship you back to Moscow. Or we could just talk—and co-operate—and leave it at that.” Shapiro smiled. “We don’t have a lot of evidence to put before a court. But enough. Enough to show that you’ve been involved in espionage. You’ve not been all that successful I’ll admit, but it’s enough to get you two or three years in prison.” He paused. “And when we eventually send you back to Moscow they wouldn’t be very happy with your performance here. If we just send you back without taking you to court they’ll be even more unhappy with your operation in London. We’d just have to let them know that you’d been so amateurish, so inept, that we just smiled at your efforts and sent you back.” He looked at Grushko. “You do understand what I mean, don’t you?”

  “What the hell is it you want from me? I don’t understand all this …” he waved his arm dismissively “… all this rubbish.”

  “Oh, but you do, Grigor. You know that I’m being very generous with you. Giving you a chance to just go about your journalistic work on Monday morning as if nothing had happened. No trouble from Moscow and no trouble from us.” He paused. “That is, if you behave yourself in future.”

  “What is it you want to know?”

  “Let’s start with Maguire-Barton. Tell me about him and his relationship with you.”

  Grushko shrugged. “He just wanted a few free trips abroad.”

  “So why did he use a faked passport?”