Moneypenny Diaries: Secret Servant

by Samantha Kate

  ‘Roddy Parks told me that Pa escaped,’ I said.

  ‘Damn fool thing that was to do, too,’ said Pitman. ‘I told him so at the time, but he was desperate to get out and to let you know, somehow, that he was still alive. He wouldn’t listen to us. He could be a stubborn old boy.’

  I smiled, and nodded. My father’s reputation for perseverance was legendary.

  ‘We’d almost made it once before, he and I. Jumped out of an upstairs window during the changing of the guard and made a dash through the wire at the edge of the grounds and into town. We got as far as the Dutch border before we were caught. I’m afraid I gave the game away – I’d spent so much time underground tunnelling that my face was unnaturally white and my German wasn’t up to much either. Hugh could pass for a native. Anyway, at the beginning of ’45, we were all busy building that glider in the attic. It gave us something to do, while we were waiting for the Yanks. He was helping, but he had another plan of his own.

  ‘He had devised a daring escape route. While we were rehearsing in the theatre, he got out through the kitchen and hid in the suspension of the bread delivery van. I was the only one he had told about it – there were informers, we suspected, even within our ranks. He said he was heading for the Protectorate [Czechoslovakia]. His escape remained undetected. For the next Appell, I organised one of the ghosts to take his place. He continued to do so until the day the Yanks came. Every day, I waited for Hugh to be brought back and, when he wasn’t, my hopes grew for his safe journey home. I was convinced that when I got out, he would be there to greet me.’

  His voice was breaking with emotion. He looked towards the mountain for a minute and, when he turned to me again, the resolve was back in his face. ‘Hugh spoke about you all the time, my dear. I want you to know that. I am so sorry. When I came back here after the war, I meant to contact you, but it was a struggle getting the farm started. Then Connie left and, by the time I’d sorted things out, your mother had died and you and your sister were gone. I suppose I was waiting – waiting for the possibility of your father’s return. I’d always hoped and prayed he’d be back. Hugh was a strong, clever man. I couldn’t believe he wouldn’t be able to get out. I’ve waited for his return every day,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it was you I was waiting for?’

  His eyes grew misty as he fell into silence. I wished I could comfort him. I took one of his work-hardened hands in mine and we sat there, gazing out over the peerless view, our thoughts joined in a brave and frightened man running for his life in a strange and hostile country. I had, I realised, come to the end of the line. The likelihood of being able to follow his tracks any further was minimal. I needed to face up to the reality that Pa was lost.

  Wednesday, 25th December, Christmas Day

  Home again. Since receiving M’s cable, typically terse – PROMONEYPENNY IMPERATIVE YOU RETURN SOONEST SIGNED MAILEDFIST – I have been involved in a constant flurry of logistics. At first, we were told the flight back to London was full. After an appeal via what is now the Consulate, they found one seat. Helena urged me to take it – saying she would be happy to spend another night in Nairobi. I had a brief fantasy of packing her on to the plane and walking out into the bush with a goat’s bladder of water and a small hunting-rifle and disappearing for ever – the thought of returning to London and the reality of life without R was too horrible to contemplate – but an emergency summons by M is not to be ignored. I persuaded Helena to bring her bags to the airport just in case, and in the event, after using my eyelashes and best Swahili on the newly promoted BOAC duty manager, another spare seat miraculously emerged.

  Helena fell asleep straight away, with her head on my shoulder, but it was never going to be a possibility for me. Too much was churning around in my head: what Miles Pitman had told me, what M was going to tell me, what I wish I had told R. I wish I had been straight with him from the beginning – told him about the Office and worked it out together. Of course I can’t think about it rationally now, with mists of what might have been obscuring what was. Perhaps if we had talked about it to each other and examined what our work meant to us, instead of each grasping on to it as an emergency lifebelt, then maybe we would have found a path to a future together? It is too late now and regret is a selfish, destructive emotion, but I can’t banish the ‘what ifs’ from my mind.

  Kenya was wonderfully cathartic. As the sun shone, I felt strength and resolve seep into my bones. Lying on the dry grass, looking up to the cloudless sky and listening to the symphony of birdsong, I felt, for a time, perfectly content. I was back in a world at once familiar, yet full of the excitement of the unknown, and I felt free. I resolved to look to the future with optimism and without fear, to carpe the diem and make the most of it – laugh when I can and love if I can and, if a man like R never enters my life again, to thank the stars for my friends and colleagues and for my wonderful sister.

  Spending that time with Helena was a privilege and a pleasure more than I can say. She is dear and funny and sensitive, listening without complaint as I gabbled on and on about R and my now-useless regrets. Lionel will be the most blessed of husbands. I still wish I had told her about meeting Pitman, but, despite that, I feel closer to her than I have in years – certainly since she moved to Cambridge and met Lionel. That reaffirming of our sisterhood, particularly in the face of another bereavement, was a gift for me more valuable than any jewels. I hope she feels the same.

  A car was waiting for me at Heathrow. We said an affectionate goodbye, before I was driven the short distance to Quarterdeck.2 Hammond showed me to the library, just as he had a year ago, when M dropped the thunderbolt that James had disappeared in Japan. Bill was waiting, standing by the window looking out to the forest. As the door opened, he turned and then rushed across to give me a warm embrace.

  ‘Can’t tell you how much I’ve missed you, Penny. We all have. The Old Man especially. We had a job to find you,’ he chuckled. ‘Had half the new Kenyan government and all their game trackers working on it. Still, it seems to have worked. You’re here now and you look well.’

  I thanked him and wished I could return the compliment. While I was delighted to see him, his face was pale and his eyes tired. It dawned on me that I hadn’t thought of the Office at all while I was away and that I had no idea what had happened. It is a peculiar parallel universe we inhabit, where the dramas of the world are enacted behind a screen of security. On the blind side of this screen, where the vast majority live, nuclear destruction could have been threatened and averted, lives lost and saved, coups thwarted, secrets traded, without a hint of it seeping into the wider consciousness – or indeed mine, half the world away in Kenya. It was a strange thought.

  I asked Bill what the meeting was about, but he just raised his eyebrows and told me to wait for M. When he emerged through the door, dressed as usual in a suit and spotted bow tie, and went to stand, ramrod straight, with his back to the fire, I could only just suppress a smile. In the space of a day and a night, I had travelled from the Kenyan bush to this bastion of English masculinity in the grounds of Windsor Castle. All without a bath.

  M dispensed with the formalities, instead brandishing an envelope. It was addressed to Helena in Cambridge and had a Russian postmark. ‘From Mrs Marmalade,’ M announced, before I could wonder how he had come by it. He passed it across to me. The envelope had been opened already. I reached inside and pulled out a card. There was a picture on the front of St Basil’s Cathedral. I turned it over to read the back. ‘Moscow cold and snowy. I hope your sister is well. Wish you were here. Love E.’ I handed it back to M.

  ‘She needs help,’ I said. ‘That was the signal. He doesn’t want to leave and she can’t persuade him to go.’

  ‘We understood that much,’ he replied, drily. ‘So, are you prepared to go?’

  My surprise must have shown. M was looking at me intently, as if trying to gauge my inner thoughts, while Bill assiduously switched his gaze to the window when I turned to him. ‘Me?’ I asked.

&nb
sp; ‘It’s you she’s asking for,’ said M. ‘She trusts you. The question is, are you willing?’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ I said, almost without thinking.

  Bill cleared his throat and I turned to see him glaring at M.

  ‘Sir, with respect, I maintain that this is not a good idea. Miss Moneypenny is known to the KGB. For God’s sake, they tried to recruit her last year and she shot one of their officers,’ he burst out, in a rare exhibition of emotion. ‘She’s probably on their hit list. Is it worth the risk for the minor chance that Philby might be persuaded to come back to London, where he knows damn well he will be reviled and vilified? On top of all this, she has suffered a huge shock recently …’

  ‘What relevance is that?’ I asked, suddenly riled by Bill’s insistence on treating me like a fragile flower. ‘Sir, if you think I should go, I will have no hesitation in doing so.’

  M walked across to the window. ‘We gave Mrs Philby our assurance that we would help. We cannot go back on that. As to whether Miss Moneypenny herself goes – that is up to her. I agree that it will cause additional risk, but we should be able to offset most of that with a decent legend. The Centre won’t be expecting her, which is in her favour, and we can easily disguise her absence from the office, as long as this is kept a top-secret operation, strictly NTK [Need To Know]. I’m not prepared to permit a single leak. On the benefit side, she has already established a relationship with Mrs Philby. How likely is it that anyone else could even gain access to Philby’s wife, let alone gain her trust?’ He looked at Bill. ‘We need to get him back, if we possibly can. A woman is never going to be put under as much scrutiny. We should be able to get her into Moscow with little trouble. Is that not right?’

  Bill nodded.

  ‘Very well, Miss Moneypenny, as I have said before, if we can manufacture the appropriate cover for you, are you prepared to go?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  On the way back in the car, Bill tried to remonstrate with me, but all I could think of was that I would be getting away again – away from the lingering memory of R and the demons of guilt that visit me in the night. ‘I’m going, Bill,’ I told him, as the car turned into Ennismore Gardens. ‘I’m going for Eleanor. Now it’s up to you to ensure that I’ll be safe out there.’

  It’s late now and I haven’t slept for two nights and I can’t imagine how I will sleep now. My brain is turning at such speed that I fear it will hit a corner and career out of control. It’s Christmas night and I’ve got no tree and no presents. I realise that, for the first time in weeks, I’m alone.

  Monday, 30th December

  At last, a glimmer of good news in the morass of bad. James is almost back on his feet. The business with Scaramanga and the mobsters was sorted out between us and the Cousins with the minimum of diplomatic manoeuvring – and scant observance of the strict truth, I understand. Felix Leiter kept his leg and left Jamaica a week ago, after a solemn face-saving ceremony at James’s bedside attended by the Commissioner of Police and a Supreme Court Judge, in which they were awarded the Jamaican Police Medal for ‘gallant and meritorious services to the Independent State of Jamaica’. Another piece of lettuce to add to the Commander’s pocket-wear.

  This morning, M called me into his office and dictated an ‘Eyes Only’ herogram to James at the hospital. After acknowledging receipt of his report, he continued:

  YOU HAVE DONE WELL AND EXECUTED AYE DIFFICULT AND HAZARDOUS OPERATION TO MY ENTIRE REPEAT ENTIRE SATISFACTION STOP TRUST YOUR HEALTH UNIMPAIRED STOP WHEN WILL YOU BE REPORTING FOR FURTHER DUTY QUERY

  As I took down his words, I couldn’t suppress a smile. The olive-branch had been offered, with no conditions attached. James was back in the game. M continued:

  IN VIEW OF THE OUTSTANDING NATURE OF THE SERVICES REFERRED TO ABOVE AND THEIR ASSISTANCE TO THE ALLIED CAUSE COMMA WHICH IS PERHAPS MORE SIGNIFICANT THAN YOU IMAGINE COMMA THE PRIME MINISTER PROPOSES TO RECOMMEND TO HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH THE IMMEDIATE GRANT OF A KNIGHTHOOD STOP THIS TO TAKE THE FORM OF THE ADDITION OF A KATIE TO YOUR CHARLIE MICHAEL GEORGE

  I looked up. ‘Sir, he’s not going to take it,’ I said. M looked at me. ‘You think not? Write that he must cable his acceptance immediately and add something along the lines of “This award naturally has my support and entire approval and I send you my personal congratulations.” Then we’ll have to wait and see. If you care to have a wager on it, I’ll put five shillings on him accepting. Chief of Staff, incidentally, agrees with you, but he’s yet to put his money on the table. No doubt CS would be on for a punt too.’

  It was a rare sign of humanity from M – evidence that, beneath the gruff exterior, he was truly delighted by James’s return to the fold. I was happy to accept his bet, for the pleasure of seeing his face light up with a hint of mischief. This afternoon, we received a reply, which I deciphered on the Triple X before taking it in to M. I passed it to him without saying anything and watched as he read it to himself. The expression on his face didn’t change until he got to the end and emitted a short, bark-like laugh. ‘Scottish peasant, eh? One with Krug tastes.3 Well, you and Bill obviously know 007 better than I do. Haven’t got any cash on me at the moment. All right if I give it to you tomorrow?’

  Of course I nodded my assent, even though I know, when dealing with an Office wager, tomorrow rarely comes.

  1964

  January

  I had no idea that my aunt had been to Moscow. She never made any allusion to it, and I never asked. I don’t know where my mother thought her sister had disappeared to at the beginning of 1964, in the months running up to her wedding, but presumably Aunt Jane had made up some story. I am sure my mother would have been terrified if she had known that her only living close family member had crossed the Iron Curtain.

  From a post-Cold War vantage point, it is not easy to grasp the fear in which the Soviet Union was held in the 1960s. Just over a year before my aunt’s visit to Moscow, the world had come to within a whisper of nuclear war, with Russian and American missiles pointed and primed against each other across the battlefield of Cuba. The Soviet Union and its satellites kept their activities strictly under guard, releasing to the West only the propaganda images they meant us to see. For most people over here, Moscow meant long lines of tanks and limitless armies of soldiers goose-stepping their way across Red Square. It meant Yuri Gagarin beating Alan Shepard into space, and Soviet women athletes powering to the top of the Olympic medals podium. It meant Stalin and his purges, the labour camps and the vast acreage of frozen steppes.

  In my aunt’s time, employees of the intelligence services were prevented from visiting Communist countries, unless specifically ordered to do so. Yet the greater part of their work involved a minute dissection and analysis of the comings and goings in the Soviet sphere. The Eastern Bloc comprised the enemy, and was at all times assumed to be plotting to overthrow or undermine the democratic structures of the West. Like all her colleagues, Miss Moneypenny had read countless intelligence briefings relating to all aspects of Soviet life; she had listened to the stories of agents who had returned from undercover missions into Eastern Europe, and had attended the memorial services of her colleagues who had been caught there without permission. But nothing had prepared her for the possibility that she would one day have to cross that physical and ideological frontier herself.

  Monday, 6th January

  I was summoned this morning to see Head of Q in his basement burrow. I knocked on his door, which some prankster had covered with warning notices: ‘DEPARTMENT OF DIRTY TRICKS!’ ‘BEWARE, UNEXPLODED BOMBS!’ ‘SHOCK HORROR – HIGH VOLTAGE FENCING!’ ‘QUIET, BOFFIN AT PLAY!’ Very Q Branch humour.

  ‘Enter, good doctor,’ called a voice. Puzzled, I stuck my head round the door. ‘No, it’s Miss Moneypenny. If it’s a bad time, I can come back.’

  Head of Q chuckled. ‘Miss Moneypenny you were, but now you are Dr d’Arcy, scholar of Byzantine art, spinster, aged thirty-five. Interests: religious art, Marxism, Persian cats and youn
ger men. How does that sound?’

  ‘I hate cats,’ I said. ‘If it has to be an animal, how about chinchillas or Shetland ponies or something less snooty than Persian cats?’

  Head of Q chuckled. He’s always been one of my favourite people here – his air of distracted intelligence masks great kindness and a childlike sense of humour. He goes through agonies whenever an agent is injured – or worse. I think, more than almost anyone, he was devastated when 007 disappeared and, when he did his Lazarus trick, Dr Desmond [McCarthy] was foremost in promoting a spirit of forgiveness.

  He gestured for me to sit down, then reached into his filing-cabinet and extracted a file. ‘This hasn’t been easy, you know. We’ve been working under extreme time pressure and I’m not used to being kept in the dark about a mission. However, if M and Bill say this is how it has to be, then who am I to pry?’ He looked at me, expectantly, but apart from a smile, I kept my counsel.

  ‘Well, we’d better get on then. There’s a lot to get through. M wants you off inside two weeks, which is cutting it a bit fine. We’ve got to get this legend established, equip you and find a route into Redland. None of that’s easy. The Planners are handling your entry, but the rest is up to me.

  ‘The main challenge has been to find you a cover that fits and is plausible enough to get you into the sphere and keep you there. For Moscow, we can’t just issue you with a new passport, give you a Universal Exports1 business-card and send you on your way. The Reds are too damn suspicious for that and I’m sure they’ve known about UE for years. Over-staffed too – they check out everyone and everything. No, we agreed it would be best if you assumed the character of a real person, a known sympathiser. Not many of those on our files – certainly few your age and general appearance, more’s the pity.’ He gave another of his high-pitched giggles. ‘However, I’ve managed to fish out a beauty for you. Dr Rose d’Arcy, graduate of the University of London and the Courtauld Institute. Wrote some rather inflammatory articles linking art to Marxism for the Spectator and the Left Review, got herself noticed by our chums over there, possibly even recruited – though I doubt it somehow: too bombastic – and, after a warning word in her ear by our people, took flight in the middle of the night to settle in East Berlin. That was seven years ago, and would have all been very well, but for the fact that, in a fit of misguided idealism, she threw away her British passport. Now her mother’s ill and she wants to get back over the border to see her. East Germans won’t let her. They fear, probably with good reason, that she’ll do a bunk and broadcast to the world how dreadful it is to live in a poor and dismal Communist state, where nothing works and everyone is being watched by someone else.