by Ted Allbeury
“He just gave me the instructions on how to come over the Zone border and told me about my family.” The young man smiled diffidently. “He said that you were a man to be trusted.”
Shapiro stood up. “Where are your belongings?”
“I only had the papers and a little money. I expected to be caught quite quickly.”
“You say your mother was Polish, do you speak Polish?”
“It’s not bad.” He smiled. “Poles tell me it’s very old-fashioned. Out of date slang. But the orphans were mainly Poles.”
Shapiro stood looking at his son. “I’ll take you back with me to my house, and I’ll get proper documentation for you.”
“Did this message from Zagorsky make any sense to you?”
“Yes it did. Apart from anything else it means you’re under my protection now but you’re not under arrest.”
Shapiro had spoken to the Field Security captain and the arrest sheet had been torn up and Shapiro had signed for the take-over of the prisoner. Shapiro had asked for the receipt to be endorsed to establish that the prisoner had not been charged with any offence.
As they got into the car the young man said quietly, “Can I ask you what this is all about?”
Shapiro started the car as he said, “I’ll tell you later.”
Part Four
37
Sir Peter came in from the garden when he heard Shapiro’s car pull into the drive. It didn’t really fit the organisation’s protocol to be seeing Shapiro without the request coming through Morton and it was even less palatable that Shapiro had made clear that he didn’t want Hugh Morton to know about his visit. But Joe Shapiro was MI6’s longest-serving officer and Sir Peter was sure that whatever it was all about Shapiro would have good reasons for his request. He glanced in the hall mirror as he walked to the front door. Untidy but clean was his verdict.
The handshakes and greetings were warm and genuine and when they were seated he looked at Shapiro.
“You look tired, Joe. It’s time you took some leave.”
“That’s what I came to see you about. One of the things anyway.”
“You don’t need to see me about that, for heaven’s sake. Take what leave you want. When did you last have leave? Must be two years at least. Or is it more?”
“About six years, Sir Peter.” He looked towards the window on the garden and then back at his boss.
“I’m due to retire next June. I wondered if there was any chance of retiring early without my pension being reduced?”
“Of course. No problem at all. Is there some other problem, Joe? You don’t look your usual energetic self.”
“Not a problem. But there’s something I want to tell you. But I need your assurance that it will stay between you and me.”
“Is this a personal thing or work?”
“Both.”
“I don’t like open-ended promises, Joe. What’s the general area of what we are talking about?”
“Would you rather I didn’t raise the matter with you?”
“Not at all, Joe. I just don’t want to be giving promises that I’ll do or not do something without knowing what I’m committing myself to.” He paused. “I’ve known you too long not to realise that you wouldn’t be here unless you thought it was necessary.”
“It’s a matter of putting a certain part of the record straight.”
“Part of your record … ?”
“Mine and one other person’s record.”
“To that person’s disadvantage?”
“No. Just to my disadvantage.”
“Joe, I don’t want to play twenty questions. What are we talking about?”
“I did something way way back that I’ve come to regret. I put the organisation above human relationships. I wish today that I had acted differently.”
“Does anybody else know about this?”
“Only the other person concerned.”
“Is he gunning for you now?”
“No. He knew what I was doing at the time and he agreed to it. There’s no come-back of any kind. Except my conscience.”
Sir Peter looked at Shapiro’s solid, four-square face and saw the anguish in the eyes.
“OK, Joe. It’s just between you and me.”
“It’s about Phoenix. Summers.” He paused. “He’s my son.”
For several minutes Sir Peter was silent and then he said quietly, “Tell me all about it, Joe. I don’t understand yet but I understand well enough how tormented you must be. Just take your time. There’s no hurry.”
“When I was a kid in Moscow my protector was a man named Zagorsky. He was tried for treason and I thought he was dead. About nineteen forty-three or forty-four we met accidentally, in London. He was an officer at the Soviet Military Mission under an assumed name. We talked for a couple of hours that night. He didn’t know that the Bolsheviks had murdered my wife and abducted my son. He was genuinely upset about it.”
“Did you report any of this?”
“Major Johnson knew about my wife and son. No I didn’t mention our talk. He was going to leave the Mission. It wasn’t significant.”
“Carry on.”
“In nineteen forty-seven when I was at 21 AG I got a message that a line-crosser was asking to see me. When I talked with him he said Zagorsky had sent him to me to pay off a debt. He had told the young man, who was brought up in a Soviet orphanage, just enough about his background to tell me. The young man had no idea of the significance of what he was telling me. But I did. He was my son.”
“That must have been quite a shock, Joe.”
“It was. I’d always had him in my mind as a baby. It sounds terrible but I found I didn’t have the right feeling for him. He was a real nice fellow—but that was all.”
“What happened?”
“I never told him that he was my son. I got false papers for him and he joined the British Army. Because of his intelligence and his languages he was transferred into the Intelligence Corps. Then, as you know, he was transferred to us, to SIS, because he was a fluent Russian speaker. When Hodgkins was looking for a volunteer to be infiltrated into Poland he volunteered. I’d not seen him more than half a dozen times in all that time but it fell to me to provide his legend and documentation. I did it all very, very carefully. The only thing I did that was out of line was to tell him that I knew that his mother had been murdered by Bolsheviks. I showed him the old cuttings from the Berlin newspaper.” He paused. “I shouldn’t have done that. Not as a father. It was unforgivable. It was baiting a trap. And it wasn’t even necessary. He’d got all the guts you needed. I put the Polish documents in his mother’s family name—Kretski. His British passport and his papers were in my real name of Summers.” Shapiro took a deep breath. “That’s it, Peter. That’s about it. I might as well have cut his throat.”
“There’s nothing more than that?”
“Maybe just one last thing for the record.”
“Tell me.”
“When I went to Washington to try and persuade them to exchange Abel for Phoenix there was a problem. The CIA had discussed a possible exchange with Abel and he said he would refuse to be part of an exchange. I asked if I could talk to Abel. I’m not sure why but I thought I could persuade him.” Shapiro took a deep breath. “When we met at the prison it was unbelievable. Colonel Abel was my old friend Zagorsky. That’s how he came to agree to the exchange.”
“How is your son now?”
“Physically he’s not too bad. They say he’ll improve. But mentally he’s in a bad way. The quacks say there’s nothing clinically or surgically that they can do.”
“Don’t they hold out any hope?”
“You know doctors, Peter. Yes. Plenty of hope. Could come all right in a few years. Even over-night. But the prognosis is pessimistic.”
“And you feel you are obliged to take him over?”
“I’ve no doubt about that. He’s my son. It may not feel like it. But he is. That’s the least I can do for him.”
“What can y
ou do?”
“Just be around. Wake when he has his nightmares. Hold his hand when he starts screaming. Pray for his soul. And mine.” Sir Peter noticed the quaver in Shapiro’s voice and decided that practicalities were the best cure.
“Let’s deal with the practicalities first, Joe. You can leave the service in two months’ time. I say two months so that we can put you up to full colonel in Part Two orders and your pension will go up accordingly. Early retirement will not affect your pension. It amounts to taking years of accrued leave. I’ll see to that.
“So far as your son is concerned, he can be back-dated as a major from when he was caught. His disabilities came on active service so there will be an increased pension for him. His medical bills will be paid by the department and I’ll arrange a bounty payment so that there will be enough to buy a house.
“I hope that will relieve you of the day-to-day worries we all have. But I’m worried about you.”
“In what way?”
“You’ve got a guilt complex, my friend. And like all those things they’re never founded on fact but on fantasy. The more rational the man is normally, the wider and deeper the complex.”
“So?”
“Let’s look at the chicken’s entrails, Joe. Your son was forcibly taken away and there was nothing you could have done to get him back.”
“I could have offered to go back to Moscow if he was released.”
“And who would have cared for him after you’d died in a Gulag camp? Nobody. And then when you saw him again after over twenty years you couldn’t relate to a healthy young man when all those years in your mind he was a baby. Irrational maybe but I suspect it’s par for the course. And you had no family or anyone else around you to support you and take some of the load. So you did what you could for him.”
“And then sent him to his death.”
“Did you know that Hodgkins was looking for a volunteer?”
“No.”
“Did you suggest to your boy that he should volunteer?”
“No.”
“And when it was all cut and dried and put on your plate to provide his cover did you do it to the best of your ability?”
“Of course I did.”
“And is it fair to say that if you had not been his father and an old friend of Abel Zagorsky he would still be in the labour camp or in his grave?”
“It’s possible.”
“Joe. Don’t be so stupid. You know it is so. When you were that small boy, a cabin-boy on a broken-down merchant ship, you were about to be sucked up by a whirlwind that was sweeping over Europe. Was that the fault of a teenage boy, for God’s sake?”
“I appreciate what you’ve said. I know that it’s meant to be helpful but it still leaves me as a very poor specimen of a man.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Joe. With a mind like yours, how can you twist the facts so remorselessly? If you were my father I should be very proud of you. And I mean that. Wipe this blackness out of your mind. You’ve got much to do for that young man. Don’t give up your strength to this ridiculous farrago of guilt. If you still feel you have a debt to pay then for God’s sake pay it the only way you can. Your usual way, with guts and self-confidence.”
It was Gavrilov from Special Service-I who de-briefed the man whom the world knew as Colonel Abel. They got on well together. Much the same age as one another, worldly-wise so far as Soviets can be, they met almost every day for nearly two years. There was no hidden recorder. It was lying there, turning slowly, quite openly on the table, the latest Uher, bought in West Berlin.
Reel after reel went to the evaluation unit who sent copies of significant sections to other departments and sections of the KGB.
Zagorsky had been given a pleasant apartment over-looking the river. Two rooms and the usual facilities, and a middle-aged lady who cleaned up the place every day. It wasn’t an onerous duty but she did sometimes complain about the tangle of wires that sprawled onto the floor from his hi-fi and short-wave receiver.
His wants were not extravagant and most of them were easily and willingly provided. In the first summer Zagorsky and Gavrilov took a simple meal every day in a small restaurant within sight of the KGB HQ. They played middle-grade chess and exchanged reminiscences of other cities they had both known in the Soviet Union and abroad. They both confessed to a liking for Paris as a permanent home but neither of them had ever been there.
It was after one of those protracted meals that Gavrilov said, with a smile, “We were amused when we saw the newspaper cuttings about your trial and it mentioned the coded messages that were supposed to be letters from your loving wife and daughter.”
Zagorsky shrugged. “Who wrote those damn things?”
“There was a team. When it was decided to use that format for coded messages we got in a lady novelist and we created this little family for you, like a radio serial.”
Zagorsky smiled. “It was well done. It influenced people. It even made me feel homesick when they read them out in court.”
“We heard that when the pilot’s family were pressing for an exchange that you weren’t very happy about it. Why was that?”
Zagorsky looked for a few moments at the people walking in the sunshine and then he looked at Gavrilov.
“Off the record or on the record?”
“Off. Nobody’s ever raised the point. I was just curious, that’s all.”
“First of all I was disappointed that Moscow hadn’t offered an exchange for me. The embassy didn’t contact me. Nobody. I was just left to rot. I hadn’t talked to the Americans. The press made that clear. So I took it as a sign.”
“A sign of what?”
“That Moscow didn’t particularly want me to come back so long as I wasn’t talking to the CIA. Then out of the blue is the stuff in the newspapers about an exchange with young Powers.” Zagorsky shrugged. “You get rather paranoid when you’ve been in prison for years. Years with no contact with my own people and my own country. Virtually the only friendly contacts I had were from the people who put me in jail.
“So when there is a suggestion about an exchange I am well aware that the initiative did not come from Moscow but from the pilot’s parents and I asked myself what sort of reception I would get when I returned to Moscow.” Zagorsky smiled at Gavrilov. “As you know, with a few exceptions it was not a very enthusiastic welcome.” He sighed. “After all those years of risks and difficulties I have heard people suggest that my mission in the USA was a failure.” Zagorsky shook his head. “It no longer angers me. It no longer disappoints me. All I ask … is to be left in peace.”
“That’s no problem, Zag. When the de-briefing is over you’ll have your apartment and the dacha and all the privileges you’re entitled to.”
“We’ll see, comrade. We’ll see.”
“You don’t trust them, do you?”
Zagorsky just smiled as he waved to the waiter for more coffee.
The de-briefing was virtually completed by mid-April and Gavrilov was no longer a daily visitor. Perhaps one short visit a week to tidy up the loose ends in his de-briefing, but no more. Zagorsky still went to the same restaurant for lunch but it wasn’t the same on his own. From time to time he saw KGB officers whom he knew from the old days. They waved and smiled but they never stopped to talk or join him at his table. And being long experienced in the ways of the KGB he knew that it would always be like that. He had spent years in the West, virtually unsupervised, independent and surviving. And that made him suspect. To the KGB he was contaminated. It wasn’t personal. It applied to anybody who had lived independently in the West. Who knew what they might have been up to? And in any case they were men who now knew about the West. Knew the Soviet lies and knew what freedom was like. The experience didn’t necessarily make them pro-Western. There were many things about life in the West that they found abhorrent. But whatever their feelings they knew too much about the lies and fake promises to the people that kept the Bolshevik machine in power. They were not officially os
tracised. Nobody was ordered to avoid them. But people knew the system and they didn’t need to be told. There was a KGB word for it. Sanitisation.
Zagorsky knew the system too and he didn’t resent his treatment. He understood the motives, but it didn’t stop him from being lonely. Gradually his outside forays were reduced to a brief daily walk for exercise and then back to his rooms. It was not unlike his life in New York. But he missed the people and he missed the talk. Being a patriot he spent no time wondering if his life was just reward for his services to his country. He left no will or last testament and it was the cleaning lady who found his body one morning. He was still sitting crouched in the leather armchair and there was jazz coming from the short-wave receiver which was tuned to “The Voice of America.”
The meeting between Volnov and Gavrilov about the man who had used the name of Gordon Lonsdale took place in a dacha about ten miles east of Moscow. It was held at the dacha, not for any security reason but merely because Volnov didn’t want to spoil his weekend in the country. He was in his sixties and he didn’t like his routine being disturbed. Especially for a man he positively disliked. Gavrilov too disliked Lonsdale but he was stuck with the responsibility of deciding what should be done with him. He sensed that his compromise proposal was not going to be acceptable to the older man. But he could see no alternative that would be tolerable to those who wanted Lonsdale to be given public honours.
Volnov folded his arms and leaned back against the cushions on the couch.
“Why all the fuss about the man? He was never in danger. The worst that could happen to him was a prison sentence. We exchanged him for the Englishman Lynne or Wynne, whatever his name was. He’s back here without a hair of his head disturbed. So why the circus?”
“He did a good job for us.”
“Rubbish. The fool was caught. His network in London was handed to him on a plate from Moscow. He was just a glorified messenger-boy.”
“It would help him with his family problems.”
“That woman’s right—his wife. I saw all that translation of the English newspapers. ‘I was spy’s mistress says Natasha something or other.’ ” His face was flushed as he looked at Gavrilov. “All those foreign whores he slept with. She should be allowed to divorce him if that’s what she wants.”