by John Gardner
Herbie had an idea that, in his adopted country, his attitude would be called ‘opening the batting’. He had given the Director General—who had kept him waiting, under Tubby’s surly eye, for fifteen minutes—no chance to even greet him.
The DG raised his eyebrows, motioning Herbie to sit down. When he spoke it was with the calm quiet voice of authority: the velvet larynx covering a will of steel.
“Herbie, it’s nice to see you. Good to have you back. But there’s no need for you to come in with guns blazing. If anyone should blaze, it’s me.”
Herbie took a chair, lowering his bulk into it with some care. “I am under your authority, Director. I spend the best part of a year being questioned at Warminster; there is a Board of Enquiry; nobody tells me the result; Tubby Fincher comes down, out of the blue, on Friday to say you give me a new job—though he behaves like I am untouchable. Then I get a letter from one of my former agents, telling me something I should already know. You expect me to be calm and meek? I’ll do my job—whatever it is—but I am uncomfortable. You don’t have to be blessed with the huge IQ to realise that good old Herbie Kruger is still under suspicion: that some people think I’m a mouse ...”
“A mouse?”
“Whatever they call them in the spy books. A mouse. A long-term penetration agent.”
“Mole, Herbie. Yes, of course you’ve been under suspicion. What d’you expect? You spent a time in the Soviet nick, with one of their best men breathing down your neck.”
“I...”
“Yes, you solved a problem. You can have credit for that. You put one matter to rights. But you then proceeded to have long-term agents blown, arrested, killed.”
Herbie gave a passable imitation of a nodding Buddha. “Okay. I know. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? You’re sorry, Herbie? What good’s that to me? One of my most experienced field officers, invaluable to me here in London, now that we have to rely on fewer and fewer people in the field. That’s what you were. Invaluable. Now what’re you good for?”
“Stamping passports? Vetting visas?”
The DG sat looking at the big man, his eyes glossed with genuine anger.
“Sweeping floors?” Herbie tried again.
“You say the Board of Enquiry result has not been passed on to you? Right.” He shuffled among some papers. “I’m not going to read the whole thing. Take too long. The result is that you are to receive a severe reprimand; that you are to be used only at my discretion; that you will never again be allowed to operate outside the confines of the United Kingdom; and that you will only be given limited access to priority classified documents and information.”
“Then I cannot vet visas.”
“Strictly speaking, no, Herbie. No, you haven’t even the power to do that. Without my especial say-so. However,” the DG leaned back in his chair, “I’m willing to interpret the Board’s findings in a liberal fashion: only because you are good at your job, and we’re short of manpower. Also I believe you went your own way—over the Berlin Wall—out of the best possible motives.”
Big Herbie bowed his head, clearly thanking the Director, who gave a curt smile of acceptance.
“Okay, I’m vulnerable, that’s obvious. Vulnerable to the Soviets, and to many here in this building.”
The Director thought for a few moments, fingers drumming on the glass covering of his desk top, as the traffic rumble rose from the street below, a faint hum in the high office. “For what I had in mind, it is perhaps a good thing.”
The Director gave a half smile, “And I see no harm in your being in touch with Martha Adler.”
“And the work?”
“Ah. Would you relish an impossible task, Herbie? It’s like the old fairytale. Candidates for the princess’s hand in marriage’re required to perform outlandish feats. That is what’s required of you. Pull it off, and you get the princess. At least you regain trust. Will you slay a dragon or two in exchange for trust?”
“Tell me.”
The Director laced his fingers, saying that Herbie should know, first, that the Prime Minister had been consulted. There was agreement to waive some of the Board of Enquiry’s findings—“You are to be allowed access to certain highly classified documents and information; and make no mistake, the Prime Minister can’t even take a squint at them. But it is necessary to the work in hand.”
“And the work in hand?”
The Director asked what Big Herbie knew of Stentor. The workname of their most important source within the Soviet Bloc, Herbie replied. The name was chosen, presumably, because of its mythical connotations: Stentor being the herald before the city of Troy, known for the great power of his voice.
“You’ve handled, and had knowledge of, information directly emanating from Stentor?” The question was put hard, like part of an interrogation.
“You know I have.”
“Did you ever handle information you only suspected came through Stentor? Intelligence, or possible hints, which you considered could have only come from one logical source?”
“You mean without official confirmation that it was Stentor?”
The Director inclined his head.
Herbie’s brow creased; eyes flicking about the room, going back in memory through the vast amount of information that had passed over his desk, or been given to him in verbal confidence. He maintained there was nothing he could put his finger on.
“As it happens, you have been given such information—without being told the source.”
Herbie sat quiet for a moment. Then his eyes slowly widened. “Oh Christ,” he whispered. “Hallet and Birdseed?”
“You worked it out?”
Herbie acidly said it had not taken much working out. “First Crawford; then the others. They came back to it again and again. I gave Vascovsky Hallet and Birdseed for good measure. A bit of extra grain. Millet. They were just tips—came to nothing.” His voice began an upward, angry, rise. “I fed them chickenfeed. Hallet and Birdseed were chickenfeed.”
The Director chuckled, “I liked some of your chickenfeed, Herbie—even though the Hallet and Birdseed stuff was sensitive.”
“Birdseed, yes. Chickenfeed. Good name. Glad you approved.”
The Director nodded. He had liked the trivia, the details Herbie had thrown away about safe houses that were no longer in use; the two small watching operations—in Lisbon and Dublin—that were of no value. “It was Hallet and Birdseed I did not like.”
Hallet was a NATO General. Eighteen months before, while stationed in Germany, with BAOR, the Firm had got wind of a discredit operation being run by the Soviets. Steps were taken; Herbie had been involved on the periphery, and the discredit came to nothing. Hallet was quickly moved back to England and retired on full pay.
Birdseed was also a tip. A Soviet disinformation ploy regarding the possible siting of American nuclear weapons on British bases. The ploy seemed to have been called off, because the whole thing went dead.
“I taunted him a little with Hallet and Birdseed. They were nothing,” Big Herbie paused. “But they were something, yes?”
The Director shook his head. They were something and nothing, he claimed. The difficulty was that they came directly from Stentor. The larger problem was they could be traced back to Stentor.
“And Stentor is vulnerable?”
The Director did not answer. Instead, he asked when Big Herbie had first been made aware of Stentor?
“Two...No...Three years ago. You had him operating three years ago.”
Wrong. Herbie could tell by the DG’s face. “Three years ago, Herbie.” The Director looked straight into his face. “Three years ago, the magic circle was widened. The circle with knowledge of Stentor’s existence. True, there are others who know the workname: but that means nothing. Only six people in the entire Service know that Stentor is our one major Soviet source. Only three of those six are briefed on all the facts. Herbie, you are one of the six. Now you have to be the fourth to join the inner ring of knowledge. W
ould it surprise you to know that Stentor has been in the field—and in place—longer than yourself? Much longer.”
Big Herbie cocked an eyebrow: waiting.
“Like you, Stentor began in the trade when he was aged only fourteen years. Which means he’s a good deal older than you. He first came in as a fourteen-year-old boy. That was in 1925...”
“’Twenty-five?” Herbie again raised his voice.
The Director nodded, asking if he knew of the work done just after the First World War by Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart.
“He operated under diplomatic cover in Russia, during, and after, the 1917 revolution, yes?”
“Lockhart went out in 1918—you’ll have to go through the file—as British Consul-General in Moscow, and head of a special mission. He worked mainly to us—or, I should say, to the Head of Service. In fact, he ruined a rising diplomatic career because of his work for us. Stayed in Moscow until the collapse of Germany. You should read him, some time. A real expert on Russia, and the politics of the period. Became a writer of distinction.
“One of the many things Lockhart did was lay down a stock of agents. In those days we had a very good network inside Russia. In 1925 one of Lockhart’s original people recruited a boy, briefed him—even brought him out for training in France at one time—and set him up as a long-term source.
“The boy was from an old family—aristocrats close to the Tsar, and the court. As the revolution took hold, and things got worse, his family tried to get out. They were caught and shot. The boy was hidden by a servant—it’s all good penny novel adventure stuff; but it happened to a lot of people. He was hidden; survived the Revolution, and the Civil War. By the time Lockhart’s man got to him, the lad was living in fear of being denounced; the very people who saved him had become frightened that his true identity, and background, would be revealed. Lockhart’s man took care of it. He was an exceptional recruiting officer, with a long view—like Lockhart himself. Gave the boy a new identity, coached him in cover, until the lad almost came to believe it himself.
“Lockhart’s stay-behind man had the cryptonym Trofimov and one of the things he did was play the boy straight to the Head of Service. Nobody else—not even people close to Trofimov—knew about the young recruit. In those days we weren’t so sophisticated: certainly not about sleepers, and long-term penetration people. Trofimov, I suspect, knew the foresight of the Russian hierarchy. You must remember they were starting to sow their seeds over here. That’s how advanced their thinking was. Only a few years later they had recruiting officers crawling everywhere—pulling the Cambridge set into their net. They looked to the future. So did Trofimov.
“His young recruit was briefed to take the Party line; get into the military; then squirm his way into their Intelligence Service if he could. His status as an agent; his work; and his potential, has, from that time, been played only to the Head of Service—or Director General when the new title came in. It’s been like the Apostolic succession: passed on from Chief to Chief. Stentor would take instruction from no one else; and give nothing, except to the man at the top—a very good thing as well. He would’ve been rumbled years ago if it hadn’t been for that golden rule. Then, three years ago, it became necessary to widen the circle of knowledge.”
Big Herbie looked bemused. “If he was fourteen in ’twenty-five...” he began.
“Yes,” the Director made a short, nervous, chopping motion with his right arm. “Stentor’s over seventy years old now. Three score years and ten—and for around fifty-six of ’em he’s worked, alone and silent, for us. He slogged away on farms, because they wouldn’t let him near the army; then they took him, and he wormed his way into the Cheka. He survived the show trials, and Stalin’s purges. He was even part of the Military Intelligence arm. Served under cover with the German Army. After the Second World War he still survived, and rose in power. There was a time when he seemed to be in direct line for the top job. You’ll have to read the whole file, Herbie. For the last seven years, Stentor’s been head of a department in the First Chief Directorate—a position of great responsibility; therefore of exceptional value to us. I suppose it could be said that, if Kim Philby was their mole, Stentor is our moth: laying his eggs and eating away at their fabric. The only difference is that Stentor hasn’t been caught.”
“Not yet.” Herbie’s voice unusually hoarse, as his agile mind leaped over possible ravines. “But I’ve put him at risk.”
“Yes.” A terse statement of fact, unflavoured by anger or concern. “Yes, Herbie, you’ve put Stentor at risk. But I accept—like Crawford—there was no way you could have known that the Hallet and Birdseed information came directly from Stentor. Neither could you possibly know that, in giving Hallet and Birdseed to Vascovsky, you were handing them a direct link back to Stentor. We’ve been lucky; very lucky. When Trofimov recruited Stentor, his strategy was that of a long-term operation; but even he could not have guessed how long we would get away with it—or to what heights that fourteen-year-old boy would rise in the Soviet hierarchy.
“The point is that Stentor’s now an elderly man: full of years; but with all his faculties, and a mountain of experience. Otherwise they’d have put him out to grass years ago. Already we’ve faced the fact that they might retire him at any time. The powerful Russians—politicians, diplomats and military—cling to their authority: sometimes even on their deathbeds. But now they’ll either catch our man pretty soon, or put him in a dacha, among pleasant surroundings, for his last years—and then catch him. He’s almost through: and there’s the rub. Successive men in my place have, over the years, promised Stentor that, when the time comes, he’ll be brought out. We’ve given him our word that the autumn of his life will be spent here—in the country he’s served so long, yet never seen. Your actions have forced the situation. It’s now a matter of great urgency. Stentor is not only drawing to the close of a distinguished career in the Soviet Service, and our own Service, but also he stands at the point of exposure. For the first time he is in danger of being well and truly blown.”
Kruger opened his mouth to speak, but the Director raised a hand. “This is the real crunch. We have evidence that a ferret has now been put in to finger Stentor. So your job—the impossible—will be to get him out, as soon as it can be arranged. And this you will have to do without leaving London. You see, I told you, it is an awesome task.”
Herbie Kruger looked as though he was thinking of something else, his eyes glazed in a faraway look. He blinked, coming back to the present. “A ferret, you said? They’re putting a ferret in to drive him into the open?”
“Yes.”
“How do we know?”
“From Stentor himself.”
“Do we know this ferret?”
The Director General nodded.
With a slight trace of apprehension, Big Herbie Kruger asked, “Who?”
“General Jacob Vascovsky.”
The two men locked eyes. You could hear the silence, as though it was tangible, lying there on the desk with the transcripts of Herbie’s interrogation, and the thick flagged folder that was a record of Stentor’s life and deeds.
7
HERBIE KRUGER SAT LOOKING from the train window, as they pulled out of Lewisham. The rain plied its way down the grimed glass, and Herbie decided that Lewisham was not really the centre of the universe: particularly on a soaking wet afternoon.
“Stentor has five methods of communication with us,” the Director General had told him. “They’re nearly all old-fashioned—the tried and true Boy Scout dodges everybody knows.”
When Stentor had taken up his last appointment, some seven years ago, he had acquired his ‘niece’ in Leningrad. The ‘niece’ had direct covert contact with the British Embassy’s ‘outside’ man in Moscow. A simple telephone code would lay on a drop and pick-up. “Just like you read in the books.” The Director was obviously unhappy about such simple tactics. He supposed that, if things got really bad, Stentor could make a run for it; but the Embassy would
certainly send him packing. The other four methods of relaying information to London, ranged from similar drop and pick-up techniques, to a more sophisticated fast-sending radio link which the Russian used sparingly. “He’ll keep that one until last,” the Director prophesied.
“If Vascovsky’s been put on to the scent, their surveillance lads’ll be smelling around Stentor, and his three brothers in the Standing Committee, like wasps around the jam. We know the situation, so he’ll probably remain silent—unless full-scale drama breaks out—until we make contact.” The Director wanted his, Big Herbie’s, comments within three days. How long had they got? A month, if lucky. Six weeks if luckier still. Realistically? A month—give or take a few days.
“And nobody on the spot?” Herbie asked.
All Stentor’s contacts were cut-outs, Big Herbie was told: which meant there was no interrelation, and not one of them knew Stentor’s true identity. That had always been essential: like it was essential they did not have a known ‘face’ making a pass at Stentor. Boiling it down, Herbie considered, it left only one chance. Send in-a mystery, as they said in the Firm’s jargon—a man or woman who could in no way be connected with the Service. Send him in. Give him cover. Show him a way to meet Stentor face to face. Provide a workable plan and bring them both out. After a suitable time lapse, they could then embarrass the Soviet Service by spilling the beans to the Press.
The Director General would be all in favour of spreading it over the front pages. Too often, of late, the Press had dug up old scandals; and raised hell over fictional new ones. Even wild guesses were being taken as gospel truth.
Tales of treachery—however stupid—were meat and drink to Press and public alike. The two Firms had come in for a lot of stick: particularly MI5, with the so-called Blunt scandal—about which the real truth just could not be told—together with various insinuations concerning officers, and politicians, now dead. A coup like this was politically desirable.