The brief window of humanity left and his voice regained its usual authority: ‘Miss Moneypenny, please circulate a memo to the effect that 006 has assumed charge of the 00 section, with immediate effect.’ I suppose I should be grateful that I escaped without further admonishment.
Sunday, 20th January
I am going out of my mind with worry about R. When I dropped by the hospital on Friday, he was sitting up and joking that the nurses’ bedside manners left quite a lot to be desired. Though whether he desired them or not, I never found out. Early on Saturday morning, I got a call from the matron asking me to come in urgently. He’d started fibrillating in the night. His heart stopped briefly, but they managed to revive him. He’s still unconscious and there’s a small chance his brain was damaged. I cannot allow that possibility.
The doctors said they had no idea why it happened. He’d been making excellent progress; this was totally unexpected. I stayed at the hospital all weekend, holding his hand and listening for each breath, worried that the next might not follow the last. I prayed, for the first time in years, and begged forgiveness. R would not be hovering on the knife-edge of death if it wasn’t for me. He would not have come through my door a month ago and Boris would not have shot him. It’s all my fault and I don’t know how I can make it better. He must recover.
Monday, 21st January
R has regained consciousness, thank God. I went to see him after work and he was sitting, propped up against the pillows. He was a little groggy and could barely talk. He smiled when he saw me and squeezed my hand. I sat with him until they asked me to go, and as I bent down to kiss him goodbye, he whispered into my ear, ‘I dreamt of Boris. Please be careful.’ I stood up and in his eyes I thought I saw a shadow of fear. I hope it is just the after-effects of the drugs.
Thursday, 24th January
I arrived early this morning to find the red light on outside M’s door. When he buzzed me in, I found Bill [Tanner, M’s Chief of Staff] and Dingle [Chief of Middle East (CME)] hidden in a cloud of pipe smoke and the Old Man in a state of high dudgeon. ‘Any new signals from Beirut, Miss Moneypenny?’ When I replied in the affirmative, he sent me out to decode them ‘all sails open’, which I took to mean ‘soonest’.
I found a growing pile, all from our Beirut station head. I got out the Triple X and set immediately to work deciphering them. It was only when I had finished and read over the plain text that I began to grasp what was happening. Agent 279 failed to turn up to a dinner party at the house of one of the Foreign Office chaps last night. He appears to have disappeared into thin air.
It was immediately clear why everyone was in such a state: 279 is the numerical designation of Kim Philby, former Head of Sov. Section here and chief liaison officer in Washington until ’51, when he was forced to resign under a cloud of suspicion surrounding his friendship with Guy Burgess. I know X2 spent years trying to confirm his guilt, but nothing stuck – except Philby’s implacable denial that he had ever worked for the Russians. He’s an old friend of Dingle’s and has been stringing for us in Beirut for the last three years or so – though on a short leash and under, I suspect, some degree of surveillance. I have deciphered a number of his reports and M has always insisted on seeing a copy of each of them; I don’t think he has ever quite trusted Philby’s innocence. Could he be the Third Man we’ve all been so afraid of?
Dingle went to see him out there before Christmas and again a couple of weeks ago. On his return, he spent the whole day in with M, delivering his report in person. When he came out, there was a perceptible frown in place of his usual mask of patrician sang-froid and his shoulders were slumped beneath the immaculately tailored suit. Since then, the Old Man’s been in a black mood. He’s had Philby’s file on his desk constantly and there have been a series of huddles with Dingle and various other section heads. I hadn’t before seen the connection, but now Philby’s disappeared it’s flashing loud and clear. From the signals that keep arriving, describing his wife’s surprise and consternation, the lack of any clue as to where he might have gone and the steps being taken to gag the press out there and over here from reporting it, I would guess that the questions being asked are: did he go of his own accord or was he snatched, and is he heading to where we fear he might be?
It was nine o’clock when M buzzed through from his office, ordering me to go home. He sounded weary, but would brook no objections. I hope he doesn’t overdo it. This situation, if it plays out how one fears it might and we fail to contain it, could prove to be his downfall. He tried to resign over Prenderghast, but this is potentially far more explosive. M can be a miserable old so-and-so sometimes, but we need him. He carries the nation’s safety in his arms. I know I sleep more easily because of him.
Friday, 25th January
M stayed at the office last night. I ran into Bill getting coffee at Franco’s this morning. He looked spruce as usual, but the tired crumple at the corners of his eyes gave him away. He sat down at the tiny table at the back to drink it, beckoning me to join him. When I asked what time he had made it home, he looked at his watch and said, ‘About an hour ago. Time enough for a quick shower and change of shirt and back here for breakfast with the Old Man.’ I asked how he was. ‘He’s a tough old gull, used to weathering the night on deck in a storm, but this is hitting him hard, especially coming on top of James. It’s what he always feared. He came on board here just as Philby was off to Beirut – never worked with him before, of course. We didn’t start using Philby at once, but there were certain friends of his here who maintained he’d been dealt an unfair hand and lobbied for us to put him back on the books. Then, when Dingle went out there in ’60, he activated Philby. Against his instincts, M gave the green light. Suspect he saw it as a way to smoke him out, once and for all.
‘Now, of course, he’s kicking himself – and Dingle, for that matter. It’s not so much what Philby has given away in the last couple of years, as the appalling cost of what he may have told them over the last thirty – and what he still has to tell.’
Bill ran his hands through his hair and rubbed his eyes and I thought again how much older he looks than his years. For a slight man with narrow shoulders, he carries above his weight of responsibility. The Firm is everything to him – he has no wife, no children and no space in his life for anything except work.
‘Of course, there’s a chance he might have just gone walkabout like his old man3 used to, or fallen into a wadi in a drunken stupor, but my best guess is that he’s going to wash up in Moscow with Burgess and Maclean before too long. A pretty triumvirate.’ He gave a bitter laugh. 'The last bloody thing we need – the press would have a field-day. First Bobby Prenderghast and now Kim Philby. No wonder the Old Man’s in a state.’
The Office had a feeling of static electricity about it today, as if anything you might touch would pack a mighty shock. There was perhaps more movement than usual, more Registry girls scurrying along the corridors and up and down stairs, carrying signals and files from one section to another, and even they seemed to sense the undercurrent of unease that has percolated the building. Most people stayed late this evening – in M’s parlance, there can be no rats on this ship. We just have to batten down the hatches and hope the news doesn’t leak out. I couldn’t help but think about the events of last year – what Bill called the ‘sieve’ effect. Too much leaked out and some of it after Prenderghast had been caught. I know Dorothy and Bill think there’s another mole in here somewhere – but who and where?
By ten, when he sent me home again, M was still closeted in his office with Bill, Bookie,4 Dingle and Dorothy. I hope he takes some time off over the weekend. Even the captain needs to sleep.
I had planned to stop by the hospital to see R on my way home, but by the time I left, visiting hours were long since over. They let me speak to him, however, and I was relieved to hear him sounding cheerful again. He’s still croaking a little, but definitely in full possession of his faculties, chafing at the concerns of the doctors that keep
him there. He claimed to have got the crossword down to under ten minutes and said he felt like going to Quaglino’s for dinner.
I laughed. I’m torn, in many ways. Before R made his dramatic re-entry into my life, I had thought our relationship was over. When he revealed that he was one of us, my first thought was of relief, my second, of betrayal. While he’s been in hospital, especially these last few days, I’ve put all consideration of our relationship to the back of my mind; all I want is for him to recover. Until I know he has, I can’t concentrate on the other.
Saturday, 9th February
I went to see R at the hospital to find that he had been moved to an end room. There was a man sitting outside his door with a perceptible bulge under his jacket, who demanded I show identification and searched me before allowing me in to see him. When I asked R what it was all about, he tried to shrug it off. ‘Probably nothing. GCHQ thought they picked up my name in a signal from Moscow. The powers that be decided to give me a bit of protection, just in case.’
I wasn’t fooled by his show of unconcern. I tried to ask more, but he insisted that he knew nothing. When I left, however, he looked serious for a moment and urged me to take care. ‘I’ll look left and right before crossing the road, I promise,’ I assured him.
Monday, 11th February
The nightmare has not ended. I went to see Bill as soon as I got in and asked him whether he knew why R had bodyguards on his door. He ushered me into his office and sat me down. ‘I was contacted by my opposite number at the end of last week,’ he said. ‘Seems they have an idea that your friend’s relapse wasn’t entirely natural.’
‘He was attacked in some way?’
‘We don’t know, but we certainly can’t rule it out, particularly in light of some traffic that was recently intercepted, in which his name was clearly spelled out. The KGB are going to be after him. That contretemps with Boris at the end of last year will not be forgotten quickly.’
‘Is he in serious danger?’ I asked.
‘To be honest, we don’t know. He’s been given round-the-clock guards just in case and extra security in place on the entrances and exits. He should be all right in hospital. We don’t yet know what will happen when he’s well enough to leave.’
Neither of us raised the obvious next question; am I at risk, too? I was the one who shot Boris, after all.
Friday, 22nd February
Boris stalks my nights. He’s there when I wake in the dark, small hours, a moving image of past horrors unspooling in front of my open eyes. I can see his pale, hairless hands strapping mine to the bed-head, smell the scent of fresh sweat and musky aftershave, feel the sting of his slaps on my cheeks. Each night, again the click of the light-switch, running for the door, his hand grabbing my ankle, pulling me down, R bursting in, two shots, the heat of a just-fired gun in my hand. Blood on the carpet. I wish I could expunge the memory from my subconscious. It’s been nine weeks now since it all happened and Boris is safely locked up behind bars. It’s time to stick pins in a Russian doll and move on.
I miss James. He would have laughed and told me to put my chin up and stop skittering at ghosts. Without him, the Office seems drained of colour. Yes, he spent most of last year in an uncharacteristically depressed state, but I never doubted that he was going to snap out of it, saunter through the door one day with the twinkle back in his eyes, perch on my desk and suggest an early afternoon at the Ritz. It’s not that I would have said yes – or that he would have thought for a minute that I would – but I wish he was around to ask me.
I think we all miss him, his levity and ability to draw the best from any given situation. M gets increasingly terse, the lines on Bill’s face are burrowing deeper into his premature frown and Dingle just cracks more jokes in what appears to be a desperate charade to hide the blame he has undoubtedly laid upon himself. Philby has not yet resurfaced. His wife reported to Beirut station receiving letters and telegrams postmarked from around the region, but that signifies little. Anyone could have posted them for him. Standard evasion practice.
This evening, M surprised me. He called me in to see him, then said, ‘Miss Moneypenny, I know this has not been an easy time. I don’t want you to think I don’t notice or appreciate the extra hours you’ve been putting in. I wanted to tell you that I hereby grant your request for a week’s leave, effective immediately. It will not be counted against your holiday allowance.’
‘But, sir, I haven’t requested …’ I protested.
‘No buts. You deserve it. There is only one condition: you are not to get into trouble. Anywhere within a thousand-mile radius of Japan is strictly off limits.’
‘Of course, sir. Thank you, sir.’
Bill was waiting when I got out of the office. He looked grave. ‘It’s a little more complicated,’ he said. ‘Hamilton has insisted on checking himself out of hospital. The doctors say he’s well enough to go, but his people are not sure that he’s in the clear, from a security point of view. However, he’s refusing to have a bodyguard. He says he wants to go away for a while and that the only person he’s prepared to go with is you. I had his section chief on the phone for twenty minutes this morning asking me to persuade the Old Man to let you go. He wasn’t keen on the idea. To be honest, nor was I. They were very persuasive, but it was only after your man Hamilton telephoned and insisted on talking to M himself that you were given the green light. Apparently he satisfied the Old Man that he would take very good care of you.
In the face of that determination, who was I to refuse? So tomorrow evening, R, Rafiki5 and I are catching the sleeper train to Scotland. Our final destination is a secret. My stomach is knotted with nerves which, I suspect, have more to do with spending time with R than with any real or imagined danger we may be in.
Sunday, 3rd March
The strangeness of being alone together evaporated once we’d got on to the train and R had satisfied himself that we weren’t being followed. We were a little jittery for the first few days, jumping at any creak or bang, but we soon let go of our fears.
He had rented a beautiful little crofter’s cottage on a bay on the north-east coast of North Uist, a remote island in the Outer Hebrides. Uneven whitewashed walls, thatched roof and the combination of a low ceiling and a huge, peat-burning fire made it as cosy as a caterpillar’s cocoon. From our cottage, we could see for miles around and Rafi would have alerted us to a stranger’s presence. Through the whole week, we hardly saw a soul.
The island is a heavenly, heavenly place. I feel like a different person – cleansed inside and out by the bitter winds that whipped sand into our faces and threatened to blow us off the sides of hills by day and lulled me into an untroubled sleep at night. I love the unfettered power of the elements at their most extreme. There was a tiny islet at the mouth of the bay – which at low tide could be reached on foot across the sands – but apart from that, nothing but the ocean between us and America. A liberating thought. It is only when I go somewhere like Uist, where life seems to be battened down, concentrated on surviving the winter, that I realise how divorced we are from nature in the big cities. It’s not immediately obvious, but I had a strong sense of Africa there. R laughed when I told him this, as we were fighting our way against the wind along a wide beach of the purest white sand. ‘Funnily enough, I had a hunch you’d think that. It’s obviously these pesky mosquitoes everywhere – and as for the sunstroke …’
For the first few days, we avoided the big issues. He made no demands on me and I offered nothing in return. We just laughed and talked and revelled in the beauty of our surroundings. It was on the third evening, after a delicious dinner of fresh mussels, scavenged from the beach, that he gave me a glass of wine and beckoned me to the fire.
‘Jane, I’m truly sorry,’ he began. ‘Please forgive me, and please believe that I never wanted to deceive you. As time went on, I was too afraid to tell you that I knew what it was you did. My work has destroyed every relationship I’ve had and I couldn’t bear for it to consume thi
s one too.’
‘Did you know from the start?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘No. I promise. I was on holiday. At first, I was just relieved by your reluctance to discuss your work, as it gave me an excuse to bury mine. Then, as my feelings for you grew, I found myself wanting to know more. Every time I tried to ask, you evaded the question, until one day it dawned on me that perhaps you too had something to hide? I tried to telephone you at the Foreign Office and when they said they’d never heard of you, the penny dropped.’
‘Why didn’t you just ask me?’
He gave a sad smile. ‘Force of habit, I suppose. Eventually, I had a drink with a chap I know from your outfit and he confirmed it. By then, however, things had begun to implode and it was too late to start afresh. I wish I’d tried.’
‘Instead, you ran away.’
He poured me some more wine. ‘Yes, I suppose so. Then I came back and …’
‘…took my bullet.’ I laughed and felt myself leaning forward to embrace him, and suddenly everything was all right.
We stayed in front of the fire through the night, talking, unpicking and restitching our relationship. So maybe he isn’t the architect I thought I’d fallen in love with, but does that mean he’s a spy I couldn’t love? Once I’d got over that hurdle and stopped thinking purely in terms of truth and lies, I felt myself soaring again. After all, I hadn’t been entirely straight with him either.
Over the next days, our conversation continued unabated and unfettered. We slept separately, but it felt as if we were coming ever closer together. It was an extraordinary relief, for me, to be able to talk freely outside the Office, without having to filter out careless remarks. The only subject we shirked was the future. Time enough for that. All R said was that he wasn’t prepared to live in fear of Boris or any other faceless bogeyman.
Moneypenny Diaries: Secret Servant Page 2