The Hit List

by Chris Ryan

  'At the time of the invasion of France I was attached to an SS Panzer division in the Ardennes - the Totenkopf. Real soldiering, Neil, against a determined and honourable enemy -- I remember an engagement against the Algerian Dismounted Light Cavalry which . . . Anyway, having been wounded in the arm and

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  >riefly hospitalised - my left arm, you'll be glad to lear, rather than my fly-casting arm -- I was recalled to erlin late in 1940 and sent on an intelligence course. Speaking good French as I did, I had had some success |with the interrogation of prisoners -- a complicit smile, found, tended to accomplish more than a Schmeisser ?utt to the base of the skull -- and the fact had been noticed.

  'In the summer of the next year I was reassigned to ay Group E, stationed in the Balkans. My task, I told, was to secure intelligence concerning the ctivities of partisans.

  'The counter-partisan system I found in place was aconian. Reprisals for attacks on German troops and property were immediate, with a hundred Yugoslav les rounded up and machine-gunned for every ierman killed.

  'Up to a point this policy was working. The main lorns in our side were a Serbian royalist named Dreza lihailovic, whose followers were called Chetniks, and half-Slovene, half-Croatian communist called Josip iroz. Mihailovic, who realised that public opinion rould turn against him if his Chetniks' exploits caused le execution of thousands of civilians, decided to find down his resistance activities and wait for the lies to invade. Effectively, he was brought to heel by ic reprisals policy, and by 1943 many of his Chetniks rere openly collaborating with their German hosts.

  'Broz, who used the alias Tito, was a different proposition altogether. Rightly or wrongly he

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  considered that the reprisals policy would simply make loyal Yugoslavs hate the Germans even more. He resisted, and resisted hard. His orders came from Stalin, and his followers -- quarter of a million strong by the end -- came from all sections of Yugoslav society. He was a much tougher nut than Mihailovic, and ultimately we never cracked him.

  'But we tried. We tried very hard indeed. I was attached to a unit simply known as Ic, based at a place named Kostajnica, and my brief ultimately contracted to one essential task: I had to insert Yugoslavian informers into Tito's partisan army. We had to know what his intentions were because, to be frank, he was getting the better of us. By 1942 it was clear that the reprisals policy, while discouraging Mihailovic, had failed. We were imprisoning the partisans, we were shooting them, there were corpses hanging at every roadside ... It was a nightmare, frankly, and a very unpleasant atmosphere in which to work. Ah, this looks like our tea. And crumpets! Eve, you're a miracle-worker. Shall I be mother?'

  'Now, where was I?' he asked two minutes later. 'Yes, in Kostajnica, where I had an inspired idea. An idea which became Operation Senfsamen, or Mustard Seed. A few miles down the road was the Ustashe-run concentration camp of Jasenovac. It was a disgrace, frankly - a complete butcher's shop -- and we and the Italians complained about it constantly. Having said that, there was an element of real-politik. The Ustashe were animals, but they were our animals, and we

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  couldn't afford to be too choosy about whom we used. 'I took to visiting Jasenovac, ostensibly for obser | vation purposes. The place was run by a series of ^maniacal sadists and psychopaths - the most extreme j being a Catholic priest named Filipovic. Now I ... ' "befriended" is not the right word, but I made a point I of getting to know Filipovic and his successor, whose rname was Sakic. They were both terrifyingly un i balanced and clearly took a deep pleasure in the pain land suffering that they caused, but for my plan to work |l had to have them on my side.

  'I got them there, basically, by pretending to be like Ithem. I visited that hell-on-earth with a regularity that limplied I couldn't keep away. And after a time no one ftook any notice of me.

  'Now the camp was on a river -- the Sava river - and lopposite was a place called Gradina. Gradina was Iwhere the executions were carried out. Not the mdom killings that were a feature of everyday life at Jasenovac but the planned, systematic shootings and roat-cuttings which were carried out in groups. 'What I used to do was to monitor the execution parties when they were led off the ferry that had Drought them over the river to Gradina. If I thought lat any of the condemned men might pass muster as a sldier and a partisan - and not many did, most had the lull-eyed look of men who have given up all hope - I lad him unchained and brought over to me. Was he prepared to spit on the face of Tito, I asked him? Was ic, in return for his life, prepared to throw in his lot

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  with the conquering armies of the Fatherland?

  'Well, sometimes he was and sometimes he wasn't, and to this day I am amazed by the courage shown by those who refused. They knew why they had been brought across the river and as often as not they could hear the shots from the execution field. But still they said no, and I informed them that I considered them to be brave men and returned them to the guards.

  'Others, for a combination of reasons, said yes. They were Chetniks, they hated Tito, they hated communists, they thought that Germany would win the war - I heard every possible reason. But mostly they were frightened for their lives and would have said anything- to be allowed to leave that grim procession.

  'I took them back to Kostajnica, trained them in espionage procedures and fieldcraft, and turned them loose. Some of my mustard-seeds fell on stony ground, and I never heard from them again. Some were identified as spies by the partisans and killed. But others had their cover-stories accepted and were integrated into Tito's organisation - they took root, you might say -- and slowly the network grew to the point where an entire Ic department was devoted to the collating and assessment of "Mustard-Seed" data. It was, if I say so myself, an operation of some elegance.

  'Unfortunately, despite some spectacular intelligence coups, it did not win us the battle for Yugoslavia, let alone the war, but by 1945 the ground was already being cleared for a much more important

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  struggle - the struggle of the free world against communism.

  'By the end of the war I was no longer the idealistic young SS lieutenant who had marched into France with the Totenkopf division. I was twenty-four years old, but I felt twice that age. For more than three years I had quite literally walked in the Valley of Death, and I had played a key role in one of the most savage and brutal guerrilla campaigns ever waged. When Army Group E was finally forced to retreat from Yugoslavia

  -- the alternative being to surrender to the communists

  -- a colleague and I were sent to contact the British Army, which was on the outskirts of Trieste. We both ' spoke reasonable Serbo-Croat, so it was thought that I we had a good chance of getting through.

  'I got through. It was a nightmare journey, and I was [ almost starving by the time I reached the British lines. My colleague didn't make it, and ended up in |Klagenfurt in southern Austria, which by then had I been appropriated by Tito.

  'At Trieste, after being badly beaten by the patrol to |which I had given myself up, I had the great good fortune to be interrogated by a British Field Security officer who immediately saw the value of the names id the knowledge that I carried in my head, and sent ic on to the Intelligence Corps HQ at Bad Sulzuflen, autside Iserlohn. There, I met the man who was to be instrument of my renaissance. His name was "aptain Robert Maxwell, ME. 'Maxwell, who was born in Czechoslovakia and

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  spoke perfect German as well as Russian and half a dozen other languages, debriefed me over the course of several days in November 1945. In May, six months earlier, the CROWCASS list had been published. This was the Central Registry of War Crimes and Security Suspects - and I, along with several of my colleagues from Ic, wa$ on it. My crime, or my so-called crime, was murder of partisans -- an accusation relatin
g to my having ordered the execution of Yugoslavian citizens. This was not in fact strictly accurate. My responsibility as an intelligence officer had been to identify and arrest partisans, and it fell to others to process those found guilty. That said, of course, history is always written by the victors, and the victors in this case were Tito's communists.

  'Maxwell and I spent several days together, and without naming names I told him about Operation Mustard-Seed. I had a dozen agents within Tito's organisation, I told him, and a couple in his inner circle. These agents, I continued, could be persuaded into providing information on the regime almost indefinitely by the threat of exposure as former Nazi informers.

  'Like all sensible men at that time, Maxwell was looking forwards rather than backwards. In comttion with the rest of his colleagues in the intelligence services, he was convinced that Europe should be bracing itself against communist invasion, and that Yugoslavia was Stalin's probable launch-pad into Europe. The offer of raw intelligence from a source as

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  sensitive as the "Mustard-Seed" network was too good to pass up.

  'And of course he was also looking forwards at his own future. He was already planning the publishing empire that would make him a vast fortune, but he needed a helping hand, both financially and in terms of contacts. A major catch such as I represented at the time would strongly predispose MI6 to come to his aid. As indeed they did. And I ... let's just say that I was in a position to point him towards some sources of funds too.

  'Robert and I understood each other perfectly. By the end of that week there was an unspoken agreement {between us that we would, let us say, keep an eye on each other's careers.'

  'And you did,' said Slater.

  'And we did,' agreed Ridley. 'Although it would be home years before we saw each other again. I was | officially arrested as a CROWCASS suspect, then sent I to a military hospital at Magdeburg, where I was I admitted as an isolation patient before "dying" of I tuberculosis. I was certified dead, carried out feet first I beneath a sheet, and driven to Berlin, from where I was flown to Croydon Airport.

  'The rest, if you like, is history. I spent nine months |being debriefed at a service safe-house in |Hertfordshire, where a "legend" was prepared for me [and I assumed my new identity as John Ridley. I have I the advantage of a near-perfect photographic memory, land was able to reproduce intact every detail of the

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  "Mustard-Seed" files I kept at Kostajnica. The information was relayed to the MI6 station in Vienna, and used to mount a major intelligence operation against Tito. It was superbly effective. MI6 was warned in advance about Tito's break from Stalin, and was able to take advantage of this knowledge to help lever Austria into declaring its support for the West.'

  Ridley smiled. 'And that's about it, really. The rest of my career is a matter of service record. The bare bones of it are that I served in Hong Kong, Oslo, Sofia and Moscow, came home to the Russia desk, and set up the Cadre. Rather than marry -- a security risk I could not afford -- I have dedicated my life to the service. In short, I have been a loyal and tireless servant of my adopted country.'

  He spread his hands and reached for Slater's wristwatch. 'And that's about it. I've been talking to you for forty-five minutes. Do I have a stay of execution?'

  Slowly, a little uncomfortably, Slater nodded.

  'As I said, Neil, you are an intelligent man, and intelligent men ask searching questions. I would expect no less of you.'

  Standing, Slater returned the photograph of the cricket team to its place beside the fire.

  'I know that there are questions that I haven't answered,' said Ridley. 'Might I suggest that I do so while we enjoy the last of this sunshine?'

  The rain, Slater saw, had stopped.

  The landscape shone.

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  'Wellingtons, if you need them, by the front door,' said Ridley.

  'Maxwell and I met from time to time over the years,' he continued, as they crossed the field to the river, leaving dark tracks behind them in the wet grass. 'Lunch at the Travellers' Club, the odd Foreign Office dinner, that sort of thing. There were small favours I was able to do for him and for his newspapers, and vice-versa. We were both, in different ways, aliens at the heart of the British establishment, and the fact amused us.

  'By the end of the eighties, however, we had more ; or less lost contact. I had officially retired, while he had I been swallowed up with the day-to-day concerns of [ the Mirror Group. I was aware, however - as most of I us in the intelligence community were - that things f were not well in his world, and by 1991 it was obvious I that his empire was unravelling in front of his eyes. In I October of that year he played one last desperate card. I He contacted an associate of his whom he knew the

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  'service did business with -- an arms-dealer and general |fixer named Antoine FanonKhayat.

  'A Serbian pressure group, he said, had contacted piim with a view to publicising Ustashe atrocities committed during World War Two. They had photographs showing murders of civilians and )rthodox priests and scenes from Jasenovac, Stara iradiska, Jadovna and other sites. He had viewed the aterial and noted that half a dozen of the photographs

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  showed the man whom he had helped to become a British citizen, namely myself.

  'In the first instance, I think, his motives in buying up the pictures were purely those of hiding his own part in my rebirth. If it was discovered that he had facilitated the integration of an ex-Nazi into the British civil service his rivals would have slaughtered him. But buy them up he did - every print, every negative. It probably cost the Mirror Group a hundred thousand pounds, for which I'm sure Serbia was duly grateful.

  'I honestly believe that it was only when he was really on the skids that he decided to try and blackmail MI6 into bailing him out, and by then his judgement was all over the place. He basically paid FanonKhayat to broker the deal. In return for the pictures incriminating me and tarring MI6 with the Nazi brush, he wanted to be paid tens of millions of dollars in cash, bonds and bullion. Really crazy stuff.

  'Fanon-Khayat, at that time very much MI6's man, presented Maxwell's case to Manderson, who handled him at the time, and then immediately disassociated himself from it. He claimed he merely wanted to warn the service of the existence of the pictures, and handed over the photocopies, which Manderson destroyed.

  'So what still existed, Manderson asked? What did Fanon-Khayat still have?

  'One set of prints, said Fanon-Khayat. The negatives had long since disappeared. The prints travelled with Maxwell, from safe to safe.

  'Well, Manderson thanked Fanon-Khayat, paid him

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  for his trouble, and called me and a couple of other people in. It was clear that Maxwell was a very loose cannon indeed. We could raid his safe and take the pictures, but that would probably just force his hand. We had to go all the way.'

  'The SBS guys,' whispered Slater, amazed. 'You mounted a hit using the SBS guys. My predecessor what was his name, Bernie -- was one of the pair who took out Robert Maxwell. That's unbelievable.'

  'Believable or not, we did it. We eliminated Maxwell, removed the material from the safe, and covered our tracks. A classic Cadre operation.'

  'And let me guess,' said Slater. Tanon-Khayat made a copy. A few years later he's in trouble and decides to throw in his hand with the RDB. Doesn't hand the pictures over, just tells them he's got them, suggests they can use them to negotiate with MI6 .. .'

  'Exactly,' said Ridley. 'And the rest you know. I'm sorry we used y6ur loyalty to the SAS to persuade you into action, but at that stage you were still. . .' He smiled. 'Let's just say that at that stage we didn't know you as well as we know you now.'

  Slater shook his head, trying to absorb all that he had been told. They had reached a stile between two of the rain-sodden fields, and
he came to a halt. 'There's something I still don't understand.'

  'Go on,' said Ridley.

  'Four years ago, or was it five,, you sent Ellis out to investigate Fanon-Khayat and she reported that he was clean, that things weren't going so well for him but he

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  was still our man. So why did Fanon-Khayat have Ellis killed? And how was Ellis -- a highly switched-on agent, by all accounts - lured into a car-park and whacked by a bunch of hired Parisian thugs? What happened?'

  There was silence. Ridley glanced at Eve.

  Slater looked from one to the other of them -- from the visibly frail figure of Ridley to Eve, who was staring regretfully and without focus over the brimming river -- and a cold certainty gripped his heart. 'You set her up, didn't you? She thought she was coming to that car-park to meet a friend - to make a report or to be pulled out -- and instead. . . No wonder they got the jump on her. And no wonder her killers were all taken out afterwards.'

  Slater's head swam, and he reached for the wet timbers of the stile. 'I'm right, aren't I?' he said. 'You had Ellis killed.'

  Eve said nothing.

  Ridley frowned. 'Fanon-Khayat told Ellis about my former life -- trying to impress her, I suppose - and she just couldn't deal with it. She met Manderson in Paris and told him she wanted to leave, that it had all become too much for her. She could no longer handle life in the Cadre, she said, and she intended to go public with the reasons why. In many ways, for all her professionalism, she was a very naive woman.'

  Slater stared at him, incredulous. 'Just where do you people draw the line, for fuck's sake? Ellis was a Cadre member. She was one of your own.'

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  'Oh, please!' said Eve irritably, forcing her hands into the cartridge-pockets of her Barbour coat. 'Let's get real. We had no choice in the matter. We were at war. We are at war, and anyone who threatens our survival is the enemy.'

  'Manderson will be retiring shortly,' Ridley continued, 'and Eve will be taking over the Cadre.' He placed a hand lightly on her shoulder. 'I suspect she would be very glad to have you at her side.'