The Widow's Son

by Daniel Kemp

  I noticed the noise of the wind had died away along with the solitary cow that had been mooing somewhere in the distance. All was quiet and it was the silence that hurt. It wasn't Henry's answer I couldn't handle, it was the answers hiding in the same silence hovering around a different place. I knew Razin's knowledge would have come from nowhere else.

  Chapter Eight: Big-Wigs On Sundays

  The warming memory of a shared love will stay forever if undisturbed by hatred or envy. Loving relationships that have finished can burn through the entire body causing misery and pain if they are allowed to, but how can they be stopped and never reignited? It seems that the flimsy kind, those of a few night-time distractions or the kind that temporarily interfere with the clarity of rational thought will stay hidden if not played with or dragged into the present. However, the question remains; what is to be done to remove entanglements that hurt when broken and every now and again we are unable to stop reminiscing about? I was being driven across country away from the farm with its undisclosed secrets towards Fraser Ughert and the conundrum to be faced, when Fianna's memory dominated me as it had done so many times in the eternity since her murder. Once again I was considering how to permanently remove her and the memories from my mind without finding any answers.

  Please don't think I'm being frivolous by asking what must appear to be both an irreverent and an irrelevant question about the dead, as I do realise that dear ones that have passed never leave us. However, in order for me to move away from a feeling of responsibility for Fianna's death and Kerry's, I must bury their memories deeper than the bodies. I have tried distractions with married women thereby side-stepping the issues of love, devotion and family. I have even had the interference of a pseudo marriage thrust upon me by the intelligence service, offering vapid sex with a female equivalent of myself suffering the same neurotic illness. Neuroticism was a symptom of greatness according to the long lamented Jack Price.

  'The bigwigs who play at being spies at the weekends down Guilford way will not like you, Patrick. Your abnormal obsession with our work frightens them. The devout in this job have that effect on the mentally ill-adjusted, and believe me when I say there are plenty of mentally deranged bigwigs down Guildford way.'

  Not a person over impressed by authority was our Jack, and nor am I. It was Molly Ughert who opened the door.

  “Oh, sorry, I was expecting Fraser to open the door, Molly. I had telephoned ahead making sure my visit wouldn't interfere with your Sunday lunch and I was trying to save my blushes after last night,” I tried to defend myself in a clumsy way. It wasn't necessary.

  “You're always welcome here, Patrick, and there's a place set for you at lunch. Last night's attack was nothing new for him and sadly nor I. If he's not working himself into an early grave over you and his beloved secrets, it will be something else no doubt. Come in out of the cold. Go through, he's in his office. He is in there every day now. He seems busier at home than he ever did, despite him telling me he's retired from the service.” She pulled a face that resembled a painted clown wearing a wide grin. She must have been born smiling, must have Molly.

  “I'll invite your men into the kitchen through the back door so as not to disturb you two. I doubt anyone's fed them. Incidentally, you are coming Friday week, aren't you?” she asked as she turned to go.

  “Friday week, Molly? Why, what's on Friday week?”

  “It's Christmas Eve, Patrick,” she announced, then in admonishment said, “Oh dear, I shouldn't have said your name, should I? I'm so sorry, but I'm sure the house is clean. Fraser has it swept every week.”

  “Is it, Christmas Eve I mean? Never mind about the name. It doesn't matter nowadays, Molly. I'm so sorry about my surprise, I didn't know I was invited.”

  “Of course you're invited. It's a standing invitation. Are you coming or not?” she asked, hands on hips resembling my judo instructor just before he knocked me out for calling him a bastard without adding any sir to my accusation.

  “I would hardly say no to your fine cooking, Molly, would I! Count me in,” I replied with little confidence of being able to come.

  “Good! My youngest sister is coming. I'm sure you remember her I hope. She was delighted with your company the year before last. She missed you terribly last year.”

  “Geraldine, yes I remember her. How could I forget?”

  A very elegant, seductive woman aged about the same as myself and of the same height with a captivating character. I wished she was not my type nor was I hers. We had noiseless sex on Christmas Eve and during the following two days. We were discreet, but I was dubious over how long our affair would have lasted before Molly and Fraser became aware of it. Something I would not like nor, I suspect, would she.

  “Right! I'll expect you sometime on Christmas Eve before midnight, that's if the ghosts in London don't need you.”

  Molly closed our conversation with that surprising remark and turned and walked away, leaving me to guess whether ghosts was a term Fraser had used, or something she had thought up. I gave her the best smile I could given the circumstances of not fully trusting her husband and walked solemnly towards his office. Fraser was bent over his desk in the bay window surrounded by filing boxes and old-fashioned ledgers, one of which was opened at the letter M. All the lights were on and the heavy duty curtains drawn even though it was only a little after twelve noon.

  “Your cigarette brand is in the box, Patrick. Prepare yourself for a long initiation, laddie. I take it you have interviewed Henry Mayler at the farm again?”

  “That would be right, Fraser. Henry managed to surprise me with a couple of things.”

  “You, surprised? No, I don't believe that. I knew you would work it out. All Henry did was hasten the outcome and dot a few I's. Have you had time on the drive to work it all the way through?” he asked as he poured a very large Scotch for himself and an equal measure for me.

  He wore that soft derisive smile of his, the one that said, I know more than you know and if you're good I'll let you in on the secret. I smiled, not only because of the whisky but because I was right, there was more to come.

  “Henry told you about his Control going missing and me stepping into the breach, did he?”

  “Not in those words, no. He thought he had vanished, but was not certain. What he did say was that his Control did not speak to him for about a year and nobody answered his plea for help for over two hours when he was in Kabul after the attempted suicide bombing incident. Another thing he said was that Karabakh, the man he was instructed to follow was a Syrian-Armenian who was stirring up the Kurds. You omitted that fact from Mayler's file, Fraser. He also added that you wanted Razin to know that you were now Mayler's Control and I was taking over at Group. Shall we open up with why that was necessary?” At that moment one of the telephones on the desktop rang.

  “You're a busy man,” I remarked.

  “I wish! Did Molly ask how hungry you were? If not that's what she's about to do. Always rings before entering.”

  Seconds after he had replaced the receiver she had her head around his door asking me if I wanted something now or would wait for lunch in an hour or so. I said I'd wait. To which Fraser seemed relieved, asking the same question as his wife had done about Christmas.

  “Thank goodness for that,” he said when I replied that I was coming. “There was a time when being surrounded by so many family members would have sent my heart racing, but nowadays the thought of being with Molly's two sisters, our two daughters, plus our two brothers and entourage slows every cell of my body to a crawl. I shall dust off the chess set in readiness.” He retrieved the Mayler file from the opened folder.

  “Have you had time to find much out about Oswald Raynor, Patrick?”

  “No, other than what you told me of his payment for the London home of the Maylers in 1954.”

  “Yes, so the story would have us believe. But his real claim to eternal fame is that he killed a Russian mystic named Rasputin, of whom you have most probably
heard.” I jumped at the chance of displaying my intellect.

  “Called the Mad Monk by some.” I sat back pleased with my memory of Rasputin's more common name.

  “We in this county had many names for the man,” he expeditiously dismissed my remark.

  “Rasputin's story goes back a long way, Patrick, way before the Maylers were settled in this country and way before Sergei Kruglov was a colonel general. Back as far as when the Tsar and Tsarina of Russia were being advised by him. We in this country were well aware that the advice this, as you called him, mad monk, was giving the Tsar would dramatically change the then First World War raging in Europe. If Russia withdrew from the fight in 1916, and sued for peace with Germany, as Rasputin was advising, all the Kaiser's troops and munitions would be brought to bear on the Western Front and there's no doubt that would have changed the outcome of the war. However, we also used Rasputin, but we played him in another way to the Tsar. Our Royals and the Romanovs were related of course, as were many minor Russian nobles to our own nobility. We suggested that if, as we predicted, there was a rising against the monarchy then Rasputin, with our money lining his pockets and the promise of more to come, would be ideally placed to barter with the leaders of that revolt, the Bolsheviks, and save the Romanovs with the aim of keeping the Tsar as ceremonial head of Russia. As early as 1905 we had penetrated the Bolshevik party but the information from our assets close to Lenin and Bogdanov indicated that Rasputin was having more of an effect on the Tsar than we had given him credit for. Our money had not changed his convictions. The counselling to pull out of the war was gaining favour with Nicholas. Ways were therefore sought to remove this Rasputin and his damaging advice without provoking the royal family.

  “In 1916 there was no military intelligence or security groups like we have now, but there was a group within the War Office designated as an intelligence gathering service and it had its own Director General of sorts; our very first C, Captain John Scale. Oswald Raynor was one of the men available to Scale. Contact was made with sympathetic Russian noblemen and a trap was set for Rasputin. Oswald Raynor killed Rasputin. Move the time on thirty-eight years to 1954 and Raynor, now sixty-four years of age, had known of Arek Mayler since 1945 when he and Colonel General Sergei Kruglov met at the conference at Yalta and again met five months later at the one at Potsdam. Oliver Raynor turned Kruglov's head our way with the usual promises of wealth and prestige along with twinkling badges of rank. The Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire was one example of what Raynor and Scale provided and the other honour, the Legion of Merit, he arranged with the Americans which Butler told me gave Kruglov a great laugh.”

  “Did we know that Arek Mayler was passing secrets to the Russians when he was working at the Hanford and Los Alamos sites?”

  “Yes, we did. However, our hands were tied so to speak as regards that. We could not expose Arek Mayler as a high level Russian asset because that would have exposed Kruglov, and the intelligence that came from him was considered to be of greater value. This went on for years, but most of what Arek leaked was retrievable by Kruglov, which we in turn played out to other countries' intelligence services so that not all that went back to the Americans came directly from us. It was when Raynor knew Kruglov was about to be discovered that Arek Mayler and family were moved into Montagu Square and Meredith Paine used the company budget to hide the purchase of that and the Harley Street address by using Raynor's name, and in so doing notified Kruglov that his asset was safe. Arek was told that his life as a Russian spy was over and his role as a British one was about to begin. That was the price we exacted for his rescue from the imminent arrest for treason. Meredith acted as his direct handler and things ticked along just dandy. He gave us what he had on the various stages of atomic research the Americans had reached, and cheekily we sent him back occasionally to meet with old colleagues and discuss any progress they were making in the same research fields as well as in missile development.

  “When Arek died we left his son, Dietmar stroke Christopher, alone. First to grieve and then to finish his medical exams. Tragically he would not play the game we wanted him to play. Said he wanted out for himself, Elizabeth, and the child she was expecting. We could not allow that as he was aware of what his father had achieved for us and the Russians. Pressure was applied, but he was obstinate, completely unmanageable. Threatened to go to the Russian Embassy and then the America one to expose his dead father as a traitor and in consequence us as his ultimate handlers. Meredith Paine ordered his death. It was signed off in-house and everyone hid their heads in shame apart from Henry of course, as he knew nothing of it. He became the widow's son by default.

  “The feeling doing the rounds at that time was that Elizabeth Mayler knew the score and to some extent that was true, because when the proposition was put to her about taking over in the Harley Street address and running it with us paying for and overseeing her son's upbringing, she agreed. We assisted her progression in every financial way possible, Patrick, but Henry Mayler's connection to the Rosicrucian fellowship was our paramount consideration. Christopher's noncompliance was unfortunate, but Henry's birth date added to his father's growing intractability at the time of that birth, changed our perspective considerably. However, Meredith Paine could only see the possibility of a double asset in the newly born male child, he was not conscious of the vital Rosicrucian connection. Sir Gerald Butler was, and with him came his words of warning.”

  'This is a timeless commitment, Ughert. It passes from me to you seamlessly, understood?'

  “When Henry's mother started to make demands about her son's nurturing, we were not about to be indulgent with her as we had been in the beginning towards her husband. She was unhappy with him going to a male only college at Oxford. She wanted us to place him some where he would be able to mix with more females and perhaps disguise his idiosyncratic preferences. She was aware of his sexuality and wished it to be discouraged. We didn't allow the disagreement to fester as we had done with Christopher. Rather luckily Elisabeth's heart failed shortly after Henry moved to Oxford. After a few weeks of being there Arthur Drefus noted the boy's sexual orientation and that was the other concern he expressed when advising Henry's recruitment. On leaving university the casual approach he was adopting in pursuit of like-minded companions was becoming an acute embarrassment to me personally and needed channelling into something less public.

  “I was made aware of a young Communist Party card holder who was of the same inclination as Henry working in a branch of the Department for Works in Marsham Street, Westminster. It was not a classified job in any sense, so nobody had fully checked his background and he never flaunted his Communist association. As you are now aware there have been very few people who have handled the Maylers. Kruglov at first, then Meredith Paine, Gerald Butler, followed by me. You are the next in line, laddie. The details of how this minor clerk in the Department for Works was recruited and subsequently how Henry Mayler and he met are unimportant. Suffice it to say that he did as I asked, and for several years was very good at deception. His name was Bernard Higgins. It was essential that I managed our prime asset myself, not only because of what Butler had told me, but also what I knew of the Rosicrucian order. I gauged that the hands-on management of Henry Mayler away from the centre, using an unknown controller, could work if I handled it correctly. I'm pleased to say it did work, maybe better than I thought it would, because now I have regrets which I would not have had if I'd not participated so closely. Let me now tell you of Bernard Higgins and more of my mortification.

  “I rented a bedsit in Baker Street near the station, a few steps from the photography college where Mayler was studying, for Bernard. Henry was a creature of habit. He would purchase a coffee in Baker Street prior to arriving at his studies. It was easy to get Bernard and Henry to meet. Henry was hooked from his first sighting, alternating his sleeping accommodation from Montagu Square to the bedsit within days of that meeting. I was required to grease the rath
er austere landlady's palm more than once.”

  “And what on earth is the regret for?”

  “I am getting to that, Patrick. I wanted everything that Henry Mayler reported graded as ancillary information, not upper level, top-drawer, top-floor stuff. In fact I needed Henry well out of the limelight and in that way I could find the precious time needed to handle the information and keeping him close whilst moulding the reports Bernard sent to his Communists friends. The regret is twofold, one for Bernard's death. His body was found by an American army motorised patrol out of Khost, in Afghanistan, in the week following that foiled assassination attempt in Kabul in November this year. He had been beheaded. I'm not ruling out the beheading being done to look as though the mujahideen were responsible. Among other things your friend Liam Catlin is in that part of the world to find out what he can about Bernard's sudden death.”

  “And the second regret?”

  “I'm unable to tell you all of that story yet. Some things need to unfold before I can.”

  “Why did Bernard Higgins wait a year to contact Mayler? Henry was visibly upset by that.”

  “There I think, lies the secret. I ordered Bernard to start a relationship with a CIA officer stationed in London.”

  “Do you want to share the name with me, Fraser?”

  “It's all in what is happening now. You must be patient for a little while and then it will be up to you to tie the pieces together.”

  I frowned, poured two more glasses of whisky, lit a cigarette and passed on making further inquiries down that avenue.