by John Gardner
The peasants wanted only to live as they had always done—let the women slog in the fields, while the men got drunk, or occasionally assisted with the harvest. The idea that a governing body could move them from their homes and villages, setting them down to do factory work, did not immediately appeal. To them, an Inspector of Rural Areas was equated with the hated zemsky—the government official under the old regime, who usually lined his pockets at the peasants’ expense.
Trofimov, however, must have had charm, and an appeal to the peasants, for he lived, worked, and sent in reports—duplicates of which arrived on the Whitehall desk of the Secret Intelligence Service’s Head, together with long, personal, intelligence notes. The area was small, and he used great care and subtlety in choosing those who would eventually be moved into industry. Trofimov was a long way from Moscow, his particular patch being on the edge of the Ukraine itself. Herbie concluded that the man must have been dedicated and trustworthy to a high degree. Life would be far from easy in his shoes.
It was in the Ukraine, after the magnificent harvest of 1925—when those who worked on the schemes for making the country self-sufficient were of good heart—that he came across the boy. News arrived, in the form of a long report, marked Personal. For Head of Service Eyes Only. Big Herbie went over the relevant passages again and again;
I have been to this village before; but they were always surly and difficult. A week ago, however, the mood changed. Nearly everybody had been drinking heavily in celebration: for the barns are full. The Agricultural Commissars will be around soon to proportion the grain. Then they will have a beano for a year.
If next year’s harvest proves to be as catastrophic as 1921 they will be up in arms. These people never seem to learn from nature. Or God. Or both. Two bad harvests, and the whole country is in grave trouble.
One of the older men approached me during the evening, addressing me very much in line with the old, pre-revolutionary, style. He appeared to be greatly troubled, and sought my advice. There was a boy in the village—brought there as a young child, in 1917 or 1918: he could not say which. The couple who brought the child made no secret that they were hiding him, and that, formerly, they worked for some prince and princess. The boy has no documents, and is the offspring of aristocracy.
I felt sick at the fear this small fact produced. The whole community feels threatened by the presence of a teenage boy. They have probably heard about the scandal at Mozyr: a whole family shot in the public square, for trying to pass off the Tsar’s niece—one of a hundred claimants—as a daughter. I have seen the boy tonight, and that is why I am marking this urgent.
He’s a stout lad with plenty of spunk. Certainly frightened, but with an arrogance that would see him face a firing squad without a tear. He had no hesitation in condemning the regime to me; and that takes guts.
I think, with some elementary training, we could use him on a long-term basis. The Communists, as the Bolsheviks now call themselves, are here to stay. Believe me, this constitutes considerable danger to the Western way of life. Certainly to the Empire. If we could catch boys like this, and get them working for us, I am certain the time will come when they could be of great use. I await your instructions, and, in the meantime, will take the lad with me. I shall get him papers, and coach him in a cover.
Only a little under forty years ago; yet they talked, wrote, and thought, like that. Herbie shook his head over the letter, knowing that the words came from a man more advanced in the techniques, and tactics, of long-term intelligence than most of his day.
He turned the pages, skipping though to the point he had reached during his last session. The, then, Head of Service had agreed to try and make the boy into a ‘deep cover agent’ they actually used those words); and Trofimov had managed to get him to Moscow, provide papers, and coach him in his cover.
I shall get him to a farm—Trofimov wrote to his Chief—and see that he is settled and established there. It has to be far away from the last place; but somewhere I can keep my eye on him—so I can visit about once a month. I did say his French is excellent, did I not? He is also picking up English from me at a remarkable speed. This will be a great asset. You will agree that time must be allowed to pass before we set him into play. About a year on a farm—they are full of the collective farms business at the moment, so there is much to do in order to keep my own cover. Also much work on the Five Year Plan, though it will take more than five years to get industry and agriculture running properly. Can you start making arrangements for me to come out—with our little Stentor—for training? A couple of months in France, I think. Somewhere remote, with a pair of really trustworthy chaps to help. You will have to visit him of course.
Two months’ training. Good God, I am suggesting a couple of weeks for our man, Herbie breathed silently.
He was conscious of Ambrose Hill at his elbow, bending to whisper that Mr. Shepherd was waiting for him.
They walked over to the Annexe: Curry with his lope, head down, and scuffed suede shoes brushing the pavement with a swishing noise. Curry had a tendency to lope, and not put his feet down squarely.
“Job for me, the Old Man says, Herb old fruit.” He spoke rather loudly, considering they were in the street.
“I want it secure, Curry.” A drop of steel in Herbie’s voice.
“Ah.” Curry managed to place a forefinger alongside his nose, and continue walking steadily at the same time. Something, Herbie considered, a lot of world leaders might find difficult.
Worboys leaped to his feet when they entered the outer office. “No messages, Herbie.” It was almost pathetic, Kruger reflected. Young Worboys had been reduced to a mere message-taker. “Inside.” He jerked his head towards the inner office door. To hell with manning the phones, he’d let young Worboys learn a little from Curry. Break a few rules of his own—why not?
It took around half-an-hour for Herbie to give them the guidelines, and he was most careful to disguise his personal reticence regarding young Gold. “I stress that the subject must not know; and it has to be done last week, you understand?” There was no stupid smile. When he wanted, Herbie could be terrifyingly hard. “Not your ordinary, common or garden, positive vetting. Something special, yes?” Curry was to do everything, and Worboys would watch, learn, and give active support. “There’s a possibility—a minor possibility—that you’ll turn up some connection with friends of his late lamented father,” Herbie counselled. “I doubt it, but if that happens just pack up and come home.”
“What you mean is that if he’s even brushed shoulders with anything dodgy, it’s no go,” smiled Curry.
“Right.” Herbie stressed the need for thoroughness, combined with speed. “No mistakes, Curry. If we’re out by a millimetre, it’ll blow up in our faces.”
He then gave the bare essentials—rough date of birth; family address; schools; and the fact that Michael Gold was in his last post-graduate year at St. John’s College, Cambridge.
“Just right, old fruit.” Curry grinned. “Nice trip to Cambridge. Could do with the odd stunt in a punt. Right time of year; coming up April.”
Worboys took the cue, “Ah, the Backs a blaze of colour; sun kissing ancient brick ...”
“Clowns I don’t need.” Herbie still did not smile. “Work and speed. Get to it. Day and night if you don’t mind.”
“Worry not, Herb. I’ll put a girdle round Gold’s earth in”—a wry look—“in a couple of days.”
Thank Christ he could trust Curry. Behind the scuffing gait, at the back of the couldn’t-care-less facade, lurked a ruthless professional, who could not be squeamish if he tried.
Big Herbie watched them leave; put a message through to say that he would be at Registry until about eight, then at the St. John’s Wood number. Slowly he walked back along Whitehall, conscious that the surveillance teams—dogging him under the supervision of Curry Shepherd—were there, unseen, around him. This way of life took the strangest turns. People watching him, for a false move—or hint
that he had gone sour—taking their orders from a man who had just been sent to do a job at Herbie’s own bidding. But the world had gone mad anyway.
Secret inks; disguises; shadowing; photography; lines of communication; what to look for, and how to use what they called a one-time pad. These were only a few of the things they had taught Stentor all that time ago in France. There were pamphlets and books as well. He remembered a book by the Boy Scout man—what was his name? Baden-Powell. A brave man, but his espionage was in a different country—a strange terrain—and of a time past. How naive they were then: those earnest men in the chateau, preparing him for a job they could not really do, because the techniques had already passed them by—or they had missed the Indian signs, and taken the wrong trail. The war to come would be fought very differently. Two wars really—the war with Germany, and, starting even before that, the new secret war, played out in darkness, or on the air waves; even on the wind, in newspapers, among the gossips. War by photograph and manipulation. The war of whispers, distorting mirrors and silent death.
When you really boiled it all down, Stentor knew he had learned the professional side of his life by trial, error and cunning. You could not be taught the weird and black arts, they were soaked up over years of deception.
He chuckled to himself, glancing out of the window of his office. A group of neophytes, just out of training school, were being herded around on the usual conducted tour. Stentor could see their faces. They looked so young. Did he look as innocent when he first joined the army?
On the way back from the training in France, they advised him to go via Moscow, and volunteer for the army—even though he was well under age. He expected they would tell him to disguise his education, but that was the last thing Trofimov wanted. Together they concocted a story that was a kind of truth in reverse. He had been son to the Head Butler of the Prince and Princess Anashkov. Their son was about his own age, and their Highnesses had arranged for Stentor to take lessons with the young princeling. His own mother and father had a butler whose son took lessons with him. The butler, his wife, and the boy, had been killed in one of the first riots. Looking back on it, Stentor felt he must have been quite a bright lad—even though he had been bilingual from the moment he could talk, like most children of his class.
By the time he was ripped from his parents and the old life—at just over seven years of age—Stentor could read well; knew his way around maps of the world; had some notion of the nature of history, and simple mathematics. In the seven years that went by before Trofimov found him, Stentor learned more practical things, but had still not forgotten the original lessons. “When they realise you’re above average, they’ll want you for their new Officer Corps,” Trofimov maintained. “As long as you’re a good Party member. Learn what you can from your local Commissars. It might seem dull, but it’ll be your salvation.”
The trip back by way of Moscow was really only to cover his absence from the farm. In Moscow, Stentor reported to the Recruiting Office, at the Znamensky Barracks at the end of Karetnaya Road—the old ‘Coachmakers’ Row’—where they welcomed him, asked many questions, gave him a raw cognac to drink—laughing when he spluttered on it—wrote, and filed, details of name, age, work, parents, and then told him to come back next year. “In the spring, little one,” the sergeant called after him. “Come in the spring, and we’ll make a soldier out of you.”
So, in the spring, he returned, and they made a soldier out of him: not just a soldier, but an officer. By 1928 the young man was an officer cadet; by the end of ’29 a junior lieutenant-—what nowadays they would call an ensign.
The telephone hauled Stentor from his reverie. Vascovsky, oily and a shade too friendly, was on the line. A social call, he said. Would the General like to have dinner with him and his wife? The General—Stentor assumed Vascovsky’s own unctuousness—would be more than delighted; he presumed it would be informal, and that his wife was also invited? But of course. So the date and time were arranged.
Stentor supposed all four of the Quiet Dogs were going through this small mill; Vascovsky’s mill. From what he knew of General Vascovsky, his mill ground exceeding small.
Curry Shepherd, with young Worboys in his wake, took exactly three days to vet Michael Gold. Even by Big Herbie’s exacting standards it was a fast, and meticulously-detailed job. “Old Chinese adage, cocker.” Curry switched on his brightest grin. “From womb to tomb, we leave no room.”
“So what you come up with, Curry?”
“Michael Gold is what.” Shepherd laid a plain folder on Herbie’s desk. “All there. Even talked to the midwife. Educationally abnormal; brighter than St. Peter’s halo; modern languages a speciality; very fast on the uptake. Politically clean as a new-born babe. Sexually normal, but not as pure as a new arrival. Lots of girls—and he’s been leading one little darling up the garden path ...”
“Cynthia Perkins,” murmured Herbie.
“Why ask if you know it all, cocker?”
“Because I don’t know it all.”
“He’s shrewd with cash; hasn’t smoked dope, or taken magic pills; steers clear of contemporaries who do. Drinks little. Smokes ten a day. Health okay. Plays squash. Too good to be true; but you were right about the Papa.” Curry winked broadly. “Then you would be, Mr. Kruger, you knew him pretty well. I tripped over you a couple of times, checking out the father-son bit.”
Herbie shrugged. The father had been a source; that was all. “I’ll read the file, of course; but you say he’s okay?”
“Michael Gold? Wouldn’t let him go on a nature ramble with my daughter; but I’d use him, if that’s what you’re after.”
“Okay, Curry. Better get your boys on their toes.” He gave an innocent, idiotic smile. “I threw them this afternoon. Had fun in Marks & Spencer. They didn’t have all the exits covered, and couldn’t get cars around fast enough. They presume too much, your boys, Curry. You should watch that.”
“Mostly trainees on today, Herb. Don’t blame ’em too much. You do anything naughty when they lost you? Like make phone calls to friends in the Kremlin, or that beautiful and ornate building in Dzerzhinsky Square?”
“I do it all the time, Curry. You watch me. We’ll be doing it all the time soon.” Herbie switched off the stupid grin. “Just so you can brief the lads, I go to Cambridge tomorrow, okay?”
“If you have to. Changed since I was last there,” Curry said mournfully. “Not what it was, Herb. Not what it was.”
The Backs at Cambridge were, indeed, a riot of colour—a carpet of daffodils—but there were few people on the river, and even Big Herbie was forced to turn up the collar of his greatcoat against the fiercely cold wind. Herbie had vowed to be scrupulous over the recruitment of Gold. Act on your orders, he told himself. Do what must be done, though you disapprove. “Comes straight in from Russia, they say.” Michael Gold laughed. “Nothing to stop it this side of the Urals.”
The young man seemed to have inherited no traces of either father or mother; though Herbie occasionally thought he could glimpse a glitter in the eyes, which brought back memories of the young Alex.
“I’m sorry to thrust myself on you like this.” It had been Herbie’s idea to walk in the biting and blustery wind. Out of habit he had no desire to talk in Gold’s rooms, in New Court. “Thrust myself? That’s right, yes? The idiom?”
“Thrust? Yes. It’s good to see you, Uncle Herbie.” The ‘Uncle’ had always been Alex’s idea.
Herbie grinned his stupid oaf-like gape, telling Michael to forget about the uncle. “Just plain Herbie’ll do.”
They went from John’s to Trinity, then took the Hostel Bridge, walked up as far as King’s, then turned back. “I had nothing much on, today.” Michael’s hands dug deeper into his pockets. “And you must know I’m always glad to see you. Though I was puzzled by the telegram. Mother’s not ill or anything, is she?”
“You think your mother wouldn’t let you know if she was ill?”
Michael laughed. Herbie was r
ight; Nataly Gold would have telephoned, and sent a telegram, had she been unwell. “And got six neighbours to let you know also, Michael,” Herbie added.
“You said it was urgent.” Michael Gold did not even phrase it as a question.
Herbie stopped walking, turning towards the young man. “Have you ever been to Russia?” The question was put lightly; though, behind it, anyone with perception would detect a hint of suspicion.
Herbie watched Michael Gold’s hands—there was no hint of movement. Then he switched to the eyes. A twinkle, spreading downwards: the slow smile crossing his face. “My motherland?” The smile turned to a one-syllable laugh. “No, Herbie. Neither of them would go back. They had a good reason, I gathered. As for me? Haven’t had the time. One day, possibly. I really should see it all, I suppose.”
Herbie’s gaze switched. Over Michael’s shoulder, a pair of young lovers were entwined, trying to keep in step; moving very slowly towards them. They appeared to be engrossed in one another. Herbie really would have to tell Curry not to pair off his people in the same way twice on one surveillance. Those lovers had been out and about in London the day before. Ahead, towards St. John’s and the Bridge of Sighs, an elderly man loitered, as if waiting for Godot. Eberhard Lukas Kruger equals Godot, the massive SIS man considered.