With Anne back from the powder room, Denis passed the port and asked how things were going at ‘the firm’. Ian was still connected to MI6, albeit loosely. He had become something of a journalist, and was the Service’s mouthpiece through ‘Atticus’, a regular column he wrote for the Sunday Times.
Ian fitted a cigarette into the long amber holder he now affected and leaned back in his chair. ‘We live in interesting times,’ he said, flicking his gold lighter. ‘Not to put too fine a point to it, the intelligence services on both sides of the Atlantic are in a flat spin. There is a scare on that we’ve been penetrated by the Soviets, so everybody is ducking for cover. Letting the Russkies steal our bomb wasn’t a very clever thing to do and we’re suffering the consequences.’
Later on, there was dancing, and I grabbed Ian and took him out onto the floor. ‘You said that you had told Anne things that could have you shot,’ I said. ‘Did you tell her about the cables?’
Ian looked obtuse. ‘What cables?’
‘The ones your DNI sent Denis’s DNI. The German secret cables about the Eastern Front. The ones we passed on to the Russians at Menzies’ request.’
Ian took a long, deep breath. ‘I handled an awful lot of cables during the war,’ he said slowly. ‘You can’t expect me to remember them all.’
It was my turn to take a long, deep breath. ‘Ducking for cover.’ Ian’s own words came back to me, and I looked up at him thoughtfully. He caught my look and shook his head.
‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he insisted.
So Denis and I were on our own. Moments before, I’d looked straight into Ian’s soul. But that was moments before, and about a girl called Anne. Now the shutters were down. The professional Intelligence officer was at work again.
That is what is so awful about the spying game: the personal betrayal that it involves.
We drove home the next morning and it was nice to get back to the simplicity of country life. I consciously tried to shake off London and its ambiguities as I climbed out of the car and breathed the fresh, clean Dorset air. There was a scent of roses from the walled garden, and the distant laughter of children.
‘That business about secret cables isn’t going to come back and haunt us, is it?’ I asked out of nowhere, seizing Denis by the hand.
I’m sure he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about, but he smiled and squeezed my hand. ‘Nothing is ever going to haunt us here,’ he said. ‘This is our sanctuary.’
There was a letter for me with Malayan stamps on the hallstand addressed in a vaguely familiar hand. I opened it and sat down on the davenport, smoothing out the thin airmail paper with my hand. It was from Tim Featherstone, written on the terrace of the Swimming Club just before he was due to sail for Australia. As I read it, I could almost smell the tang of chlorine from the pool, hear the boys shuffling softly amongst the tables with their trays of stengahs and Singapore slings.
Tim wrote that he had made a full recovery from his terrible wound, and that after many months of convalescence he had been appointed Dunlops’ manager for North Queensland, a considerable promotion. His mother was going to Australia with him, and his letter was full of optimism and plans for the future. But it did have its painful side as well. He wrote:
I hear that you and Denis are now quite the lord and lady of the Manor. I am glad for you. I think that all of us out here had plans for something like that. To make our fortunes, and then to go ‘home’ to lead the life of gentlemen farmers, with our dogs and our children, and our wives about our necks. That’s why I can never return to England. Without Jan and the twins it would be a travesty, and quite unbearable. So I am going to become an Aussie, and live and die in that sunburnt country.
Denis had put deck chairs out in the walled garden and I wandered out there with Tim’s letter in my hand, keen to share the pleasure and the melancholy that I felt. But the Tiger of Selangor was stretched out fast asleep, a Neville Shute novel unopened on the grass beside him.
I stretched out in my chair and looked up into the deep autumnal sky. Sanctuary. I liked the word, and let it roll around my mind, and then I too was fast asleep.
Chapter Forty-One
Roger Hollis sat in his large, gloomy office on the top floor of Leconfield House and drummed his fingers on the thick manila folder that lay before him. He was not looking forward to the coming meeting, and his irritation showed in the quick way he pulled on his cigarette, the firmness with which he squashed the butt in the heavy glass ashtray.
Hollis hated fuss. All his working life he had been insulated from it, sitting quietly behind his desk while others had gone out and done the dirty work. Set the electronic bugs, trailed the suspects, made the breathless arrests at windswept airports or on the gangways of departing ships. It wasn’t fear that kept him out of the turbulent side of counter-intelligence: it was part of his job to remain in the shadows, unknown and unknowable.
The cool-eyed puppet-master pulling strings.
But the current operation threatened to be different. Vastly different. The suspect was ‘in house’, a colleague and a friend. And the implications of his treachery – if it was treachery – reached to the very core of the secret world in which Hollis lived.
The buzzer sounded on his desk and Hollis sighed. ‘Come!’ he called, quickly shaking out another cigarette. Unconsciously he straightened his shoulders, threw up his chin. Malcolm Bryant had that effect on people. Always crisp, always alert, he made those around him feel just a trifle slack and off-balance.
‘Good of you to spare the time,’ Hollis said, rising in his chair and extending a hand.
Malcolm took the hand without warmth. ‘I’ve been trying to see you for days,’ he complained. ‘In fact, I was beginning to think you didn’t want to see me.’
Hollis laughed uncomfortably. ‘Busy, old chap. This American flap. Anyway, you’re here now. What have you got for me, Malcolm?’
The two men sat down and Malcolm opened his leather briefcase and slipped a bundle of papers onto the desk between them with an almost theatrical gesture. ‘I’ve got a first-class security breach,’ he said. ‘Certainly deliberate. Almost certainly the work of a Russian double agent.’
Hollis picked up the papers and studied them carefully. They were made up of Ultra decrypts, each one stapled to a Venona decrypt. A moment’s examination told him that the Ultra material had been quoted in the Venona messages. To make the fact clear to the meanest intellect, the matching passages had been colour-coded.
The material itself was dynamite. First-rate German operational material, clearly intercepted and decoded by Bletchley Park and equally clearly passed on to the Russians.
Hollis let the last paper flutter down to his desk and looked at Malcolm over the top of his glasses. It was far worse than he had expected, but Hollis was a professional and he kept a smooth, gently smiling poker face. ‘You seem to have a bit of a breakthrough here, Malcolm,’ he said carefully. ‘Any idea who passed the Ultra stuff on?’
Malcolm grinned. A hard, cynical grin with absolutely no humour in it. ‘I don’t, Roger,’ he said. ‘But you do. I’ve been trying to get the man’s name out of you for days.’
Hollis’ smile didn’t slip an inch. ‘You asked me for the MI6 order of battle in Melbourne between 1943 and the end of the war. I couldn’t give you that immediately, Malcolm, because the information is not mine to give away. I had to clear its release with Patrick Reilly. You know the drill. MI6 might have had an asset to protect, or they may have been running an operation.’ Patrick Reilly had been Stewart Menzies’ personal assistant during the war, and in the departmentalised reality of MI6 he was the only man who could release order of battle information. If there had been an asset to protect or a secret operation on foot, Patrick Reilly would have been the only man apart from Menzies himself who would certainly have known about it.
‘I take it Pat has now given his clearance?’ Malcolm asked, and when Roger nodded: ‘When did he give his
clearance?’
‘That’s not your concern,’ Roger said. His gentle smile remained untouched but there was ice in his voice and Malcolm decided on another tack.
‘Look, Roger – I don’t want to fight with you but I really do need your help on this. There has been a breach – you can see that – and the quicker we can start putting a bill together against the culprit the better. Particularly in the present circumstances. Don’t forget, this man may still be with us in British intelligence.’
Hollis sighed. ‘The cables went from the Director of Naval Intelligence to his opposite number in Melbourne. A man called Commander Long, a man above suspicion.’
Malcolm stared levelly into Hollis’s eyes as if trying to see into his mind. ‘There would have been someone else. The man who actually received the cables. His personal assistant, or chief of staff. We always had an MI6 man doing that, didn’t we?’
Hollis opened the folder in front of him and took out a typed sheet of paper. ‘Long’s personal assistant was an old friend of yours. Elesmere-Elliott.’
Malcolm had a momentary feeling that the world had tilted, slipped to one side, and his mouth opened but shut again.
‘I know precisely what you’re thinking,’ Hollis said. The half-smile was gone, replaced by a hard mask. ‘You are thinking that this could well prove that your bill against Elesmere-Elliott in Malaya was true after all. I want you to disregard that thought entirely, Malcolm. Unless your investigation into this matter is completely objective it will be worthless.’
Malcolm had recovered his composure and took a cigarette from the brass box on Hollis’s desk. ‘That’s why you hesitated to tell me Denis was involved, isn’t it?’ he asked shrewdly. ‘You thought I’d go off half-cocked.’ He paused for a moment, and then went on. ‘Another construction might be that you were protecting an old friend.’
Hollis let the remark pass. ‘I am going to give you authority to investigate Commander Elesmere-Elliott, but only in respect of events from the beginning of 1943 to the end of 1945. No investigations of activities before or since. That means a historical inquiry only – no watching, no listening. And the matter to be kept strictly within MI5. No contact with MI6 until I give the go-ahead.’
Malcolm lit his cigarette and took a long draw. ‘I regard that as limiting my ability to carry out a quick and effective investigation into a possible risk to national security. These are dangerous times, Roger, and they demand quick, firm action. I will make a note of this conversation and put it on file.’
Hollis’s smile slipped for the first time. ‘Put whatever you damned well like on the file, Malcolm. But for God’s sake don’t lecture me on my duty. I’ve been doing the job I do for too long to be browbeaten by stepped-up young policemen like you.’
Hollis regretted his outburst as soon as the door closed behind Malcolm. As Malcolm had said, these were dangerous times. Two of the service’s brightest stars – Donald McLean and Guy Burgess – were under investigation as possible Soviet double agents, and everyone who had had anything to do with them was backpedalling furiously. It was not a good time for men of the old school – men of balance and common courtesy. It was a time for hard men like the American, James Angleton, who kept a loaded gun in the top drawer of his desk and boasted that he had used it more than once. Or Peter Lincoln, who had arrested his own Head of Station because he forgot to lock a sensitive safe.
Or Malcolm Bryant.
That autumn, I fell in love with a horse, and Denis with a dream. We had driven up to Newmarket for the Tattersalls’ yearling sales, not with any serious intention of buying but as an outing and a chance to see the next generation of British bloodstock. But a horse we saw changed everything.
We were strolling amongst the open stalls when Denis stopped and rubbed his chin. ‘That’s not a Bois Roussel colt,’ he said, shaking his head emphatically. ‘I’d stake my life he has Hyperion blood.’
The colt in question was a pretty little chestnut with a blaze of white on its forehead and four white stockings. It looked much too small to be a thoroughbred, and when it whinnied and tossed its long, golden mane I laughed. ‘It’s just a pony,’ I said. ‘A beautiful little pony!’
‘That’s precisely what they said about Hyperion,’ Denis said. But the sign above the stall was quite clear: ‘Lot 126: a yearling colt by Bois Roussel out of Blue Wave.’
‘Could they have made a mistake?’ I asked.
They had made a mistake. Even as we stood there discussing the matter men came along and changed the sign. The Bois Roussel colt was next door. Ours was ‘Lot 125: a yearling colt by Hyperion out of Cassigold’.
We talked about the colt during lunch in the Terrace Room, feeling rather self-conscious in our country tweeds amidst the well-dressed racing crowd. ‘Beautiful conformation,’ Denis said thoughtfully. ‘Just like his sire. It would be funny if he was a throwback, wouldn’t it?’
I knew a bit about horses, but Denis knew English bloodstock backwards. ‘How good was Hyperion?’ I asked. ‘As a racehorse, I mean. I know he’s been a champion sire.’
‘Oh, Hyperion was good. Very good. He won the Derby of course – in record time – and went on to take out the St Leger. His sire was Gainsborough, a Triple Crown winner, but his dam was even better. Selene was probably the best racehorse that England has ever produced.’
‘It would be rather nice to have a horse that well bred,’ I said, cutting into a rather fine piece of grilled salmon. ‘We’d give Bobby Weld a run for his money, wouldn’t we?’
Denis laughed. ‘If he were a throwback, we’d give any horse in the world a run for its money.’
I suddenly wanted that little horse, and I knew Denis did too. I put my knife and fork down and took his hands in mine. ‘We could afford him, couldn’t we?’ I asked. ‘We could race him down at Salisbury, and then, when he retired, I could have him as my hack. He has a certain something, don’t you think?’
Denis laughed. ‘With that breeding, we could build a stud farm around him. All he’d have to do is to win a Classic or two, and then the biggest breeders in the country would be beating a pathway to our door. Wouldn’t it be extraordinary if he were a throwback?’
I clutched at the suggestion. ‘You’ve always wanted to start a stud farm. What a chance this would be! And the Fates showed him to us, didn’t they? We’d have walked straight past if they hadn’t mixed up the signs.’
‘He does seem to have Hyperion’s temperament,’ Denis mused. ‘Hyperion was a placid horse except when racing, and then he had a heart of fire. He’d shove bigger horses aside if they crowded him. The harder they bumped, the truer he ran.’
We bought our colt almost for a song. His lack of size, and the prejudice in racing circles against four white stockings, worked for us and when the hammer fell I had the sweetest sense of victory.
We didn’t drive back to Dorset that night but stayed at the Rutland Arms in Newmarket, planning the colt’s future. The first decision we had to make was to choose a name, and I proposed Richelieu. ‘Sun of a Star,’ Denis said firmly. ‘Hyperion is a star as well as a Greek god, so the name is jolly appropriate. Or what about Al Kochbar, which means the same thing?’
‘Richelieu,’ I said equally firmly. ‘Don’t forget, if he wins the Derby we’ll be building a thoroughbred stud farm around him. Richelieu Park sounds an awful lot better than Son of a Star Park.’
We tossed a coin for it over dinner, which seemed the appropriate thing to do. Denis won, but as soon as he did he raised his champagne glass to me with a chivalrous smiled: ‘Richelieu he is, my dear. Just in case he does come a cropper and ends up as your hack.’
During the night, the idea of a stud farm in Dorset bloomed in Denis’s mind. I think it was three in the morning when he joggled me awake. ‘There’s good chalk country not ten miles from the Manor,’ he said. ‘Perfect country for a stud. We’ll build everything from scratch, and have the most modern stables in England.’
‘When are we going to start
this stud?’ I asked.
‘The sooner the better. We’ll buy some good brood mares, and pay for a sire or two until Richelieu finishes his racing.’ There was a moment’s silence, and then Denis nudged me again. ‘The Fates again. Being right on the edge of the Dorset chalk.’
I sighed. ‘Why the preoccupation with chalk?’ I asked a little irritably.
‘Oh, don’t underestimate chalk. The best horses in Malaya were always from New Zealand. We put it down to the fact that New Zealand foals are raised on chalk. Chalk puts something in the grass, and it’s always firm but never hard. Lets a young horse really stretch his legs.’
I rolled over and pulled the eiderdown over my ears. ‘It’s nearly four o’clock,’ I grumbled. ‘Please forget your blessed stud farm for a while, Denis.’
But then I couldn’t sleep. I saw the stud farm in my mind’s eye, its white post-and-rail fences straddling lush green fields while a stallion with a golden mane flashed across the chalky turf, his four white feet flying.
‘Elli,’ Meredith Gardner said. ‘Your spy’s cover-name is Elli. It’s always difficult breaking out individual letters, but we’re quite certain it’s Elli. And he must have been important to the Soviets because they treated him with kid gloves. I say him because a wife is mentioned. His wife sometimes helped make the dead-letter drops.’
‘Do the cables tell us anything more about him?’ Malcolm asked. ‘If I’m to put up a watertight bill – and nothing less will be good enough – I need to know more than that.’
Meredith spread his hands and was about to say something but Ann Last, sitting quietly in the background, cut in ahead of him. ‘I know all about Elli,’ she said. ‘Igor Gouzenko talked about him after his defection. In Gouzenko’s book, Elli was the most important Soviet agent of them all.’
Malcolm pushed his chair back to allow Ann into the circle. ‘Can you remember anything about Elli?’ he asked. ‘Was he in Australia, for instance?’
‘He was the only one of the Soviets’ top agents who was not in England the week Gouzenko defected,’ Ann said. ‘We know that because the warning cable to London from Moscow Centre specifically asked for a message to be sent to him. But we don’t know if he was in Australia. Gouzenko himself didn’t know too much about him. Only what he had gleaned from cables passing through his hands.’
In the Mouth of the Tiger Page 89