The House of Special Purpose

by Paul Christopher

  ‘The only way to prove it would be by public tribunal,’ Menzies responded. ‘A trial. Your name would almost certainly come up. You might even be called as a witness.’

  ‘Testifying to what?’

  ‘Testifying to her confession to you that she was in fact in the pay of the NKVD.’

  ‘As she was during her relationship with Gorky and also with the esteemed Mr Wells. She confessed the same thing to them. It is something she does to get sympathy, nothing more.’

  ‘It has also been recently suggested that you yourself may well have been recruited by the NKVD.’

  Lockhart stared wide-eyed at the man across from him. ‘You say this sipping my single malt, in my rooms?’

  ‘I’m merely saying what is being bruited about by people within my office.’ Menzies paused again. ‘You are aware of Wells’s accidental meeting with her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He was entering Russia to interview Stalin. She was in the process of leaving, even though he’d told her a number of times that if she went back she would be killed.’

  ‘Claptrap,’ said Lockhart.

  ‘I’m afraid not. I checked. Wells was quite right. Miss Budberg, or Countess, if you believe what she says, has applied for and been given free passage into the Soviet Union on a number of occasions over the past fifteen years. She travels in and out of Russia as though it had been fitted with a revolving door.’

  ‘Are you really saying that I’m a spy for the NKVD?’ Lockhart laughed, his head tilting back. After a few moments the laughter ended and he leaned forward across the small space separating them. ‘In case you’ve forgotten, Menzies, after being thrown out of the bloody country I was tried in absentia and convicted of concocting a conspiracy to assassinate Lenin himself. They had a name for it. They called it the Lockhart Plot. I was supposed to have been in league with that lunatic you once employed, Sydney Reilly. What did the press call him? Ace of Spies? After the trial I was sentenced to death.’

  Menzies let out a long sigh and swallowed the rest of his drink. ‘The facts are these, Lockhart. You were a British consular agent in Russia in 1917 when you met Moura Budberg, of whom you knew nothing other than the fact that she was mistress to Maxim Gorky and that she had confessed to him that she was an agent for the NKVD. Nevertheless you initiated an affair with her. An affair which has continued into the present. There is some small circumstantial evidence that you were in fact recruited as an agent of the NKVD and most telling of all, Lockhart, you were aware that there was cine film in existence showing the assassination of the entire Romanov family, yet you never said anything about its existence until you discovered our interest in it. You must admit keeping such a secret does rather raise one’s suspicions.’

  ‘I simply didn’t want to cause embarrassment,’ Lockhart said gruffly.

  ‘Embarrassment to whom?’

  ‘The crown for one. Your office for another.’

  ‘My office?’

  ‘Reilly told me that SIS had been charged with developing a rescue mission for the tsar and his family but they were too late.’

  ‘Sadly Mr Reilly, being among the dead, cannot corroborate your story.’

  ‘Presumably the PRO could confirm his orders.’

  ‘You know as well as I do that any such orders would be under one-hundred-year seal, even if the Foreign Office ‘Pickers’ haven’t gone through them pruning history back to a safe level.’

  ‘You’re speaking of a distant past,’ said Lockhart wearily. ‘A time when things were very different than they are now.’

  ‘Adultery, treason, deceit, subterfuge?’ Menzies shook his head. ‘Very little has changed, Lockhart, if anything.’

  ‘You’re an intelligence officer, Menzies. You deal with those things all the time. In point of fact they are the bread and butter of your business.’

  ‘I expect better from those I work with.’

  ‘Why? We’re all of us human.’ He laughed. ‘There’s no honour among spies any more than there is honour among thieves; if you believe otherwise you are a fool.’ Lockhart shook his head again. ‘And what does it all mean in the great scheme of things?’

  ‘In the great scheme of things, probably nothing,’ said Menzies. ‘In the real world it means that two people are now being used as bait and will possibly die because of your libidinous excesses with Miss Budberg, your little Russian tart, not to mention any pillow talk of official secrets she was privy to.’

  ‘You are perilously close, Colonel.’

  ‘To what?’ Menzies snapped. ‘Offending you? Offending Miss Budberg’s so-called honour? A Mata Hari willing to fornicate for her supper?’

  ‘What,’ said Lockhart angrily, ‘are you trying to say?’

  ‘I’m not saying, Lockhart, I’m telling. You are on notice as of now that Miss Budberg is under twenty-four-hour surveillance by both our people and by Special Branch. Any contact you have with her, either in person or by telephone, will be duly noted.’

  ‘You have a listening watch on her telephone?’ said Lockhart, astounded.

  Menzies climbed to his feet. ‘And on yours,’ he said and left the room.

  * * *

  Arnie Lindbergh landed the Stinson at sunset on a field just outside the little village of Jaumave and refuelled. There were two other planes on the field, both of them crop dusters, and no sign of police. Lindbergh bought some roughly made sandwiches and beer and then they were on their way again. By midnight they crossed high above the town of Aldamas.

  ‘How far to the border now?’ Jane asked.

  ‘Thirty miles. ’Nother twenty minutes.’ Arnie yawned.

  ‘Think you can stay awake that long?’ asked Morris Black. ‘You’ve had four bottles of beer by my count.’

  ‘I could fly Gertie blind as well as blind drunk,’ said the flier. ‘You just make no never mind about that, my Limey friend.’

  ‘Anybody likely to stop us?’ asked Jane.

  ‘There’s a Federale post at Ciudad Camargo – that’s about four, five miles from the river.’

  ‘The river?’ said Black.

  ‘The Rio Grande, my friend. The border.’

  ‘Will they know about us?’

  ‘By this time?’ said Arnie. ‘Sure. Not that there’s much they can do about it. They’re supposed to work with the Border Patrol in Rio Grande City to keep the wets out but mostly they just take some mordida to look the other way.’

  ‘Wets?’ asked Black.

  ‘Wetbacks. Beaners. Call ’em what you want. Mex farmworkers. Come up here during picking season. More of them over to California.’

  ‘No aircraft?’

  ‘Few trucks and a big jail when the Border Patrol kicks ’em back after the picking. Steals what money they can find, then sends them home. More mordida.’

  ‘Strange system,’ murmured Black.

  Arnie grinned, his face lit by the glow from the instruments. ‘I believe you folks in England called it droit de seigneur or something. You got the peasants working for peanuts and you got first crack at the best-looking women.’

  ‘Touché.’ Black smiled.

  ‘What happens after we land?’ said Jane. ‘Are we going to have any trouble with the Border Guard?’

  ‘Won’t even know we’re there,’ Arnie answered. ‘We go in dead stick.’

  ‘Sounds ominous,’ said Black.

  ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve had Gertie climbing ever since we hit Los Aldamas.’ As if to demonstrate, the pilot pushed in the wheel slightly, levelling them off. ‘We’re at just under ten thousand feet. ’Bout three minutes from now you’ll see a few lights down there on the left. That’s Comales. From there on I cut the engine and we glide over the border like a big old bat. The airport in Rio Grande City is a good five miles north of town. Closed this time of night. Nobody’s going to know we’re there except for Postie.’

  ‘Postie?’

  ‘As in deaf as one.’ Arnie grinned. ‘Ever since he got back from France. He was
artillery. Blew both his eardrums standing beside those howitzers all day. Now he runs the taxi service from the airfield into town or anywhere else you want to go. He’ll take you to Brownsville.’

  ‘Then what do we do?’

  ‘There’s a train in the morning. Take you to Dallas. From there you can go anywhere.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Sleep in Gertie for the rest of the night, then head out sometime before dawn.’

  ‘Back to Mexico?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘What about the car we stole?’ asked Jane. ‘It’s still parked in your beanfield. They’ll have found it by now. The police will know you flew us across the border.’ Arnie reached into the side pocket of his door again and withdrew the old .44 calibre revolver. He handed it to Morris Black.

  ‘What am I supposed to do with this?’

  ‘Aim it,’ said Arnie. He took hold of the barrel of the gun and brought it up to his temple. ‘See?’ He smiled. ‘You held a gun to my head and that ain’t no lie.’ He took the gun back from Black, used his knees to keep the wheel steady then shook out the cylinder, emptying the bullets into his hand. He pushed open his window an inch and tipped the shells out into the dark, roaring wind. They tinkled against the side of the plane, pulled along by the backdraft, and then they were gone. ‘Emptied out the gun when you left me. Damned humiliating.’

  ‘Will they believe you?’

  ‘I’ll do a little palm greasing and then suggest that maybe they should see how much they get for the car. They’ll forget all about me.’

  Jane peered out the window next to her. Far below she could see a pale wash of light and what appeared to be a fair-sized lake. ‘Is that Comales?’

  ‘Yep,’ said Arnie. ‘Time to keep our voices down.’ He twisted the starter to the off position and pushed in the throttles. The engine coughed once or twice, backfired noisily and then fell silent. It was an eerie sensation, gliding through the darkness in silence, and Jane felt an uncomfortable lightness in the pit of her stomach. It was like riding a down elevator with no bottom. A few minutes later she saw the broad silver ribbon of the Rio Grande and then the lights of the town on the U.S. side.

  Starr County Airport was just where Arnie said it would be and so was Postie, asleep at the wheel of a two-decades-old open-sided Ford station wagon that looked as though it might have started life as a military ambulance. Postie was a small redheaded man with a perfectly round face, pop eyes and freckles. According to Arnie he could read lips perfectly as long as you were looking straight at him.

  ‘He just looks dumb as a post,’ said Arnie, ‘which is the other reason for him being called that.’

  ‘What’s his real name?’ Jane asked.

  ‘Ignatius Loyola Kiddler,’ Arnie answered. ‘His daddy used to be a priest according to him.’

  Morris Black paid Arnie and they said their goodbyes, Jane giving Arnie a hug and a kiss on the cheek for all his help. Then they climbed into the back of the station wagon and Postie drove across the bumpy road that led out to the narrow highway.

  ‘You’ve been quiet,’ said Jane as they reached the paved road. In front of them Postie was driving at a steady twenty-five miles per hour, both hands gripping the wheel, looking forward as though his neck was locked in place. It was late but the night was still warm and Jane felt relaxed for the first time since she’d watched Cesar die.

  ‘I’ve been thinking.’ Black lit a cigarette and stared out at the dark, flat landscape.

  ‘A penny for them, then.’

  ‘We were set up.’

  ‘You said that before.’

  ‘We were set up long before we went to Mexico. We were set up right from the beginning. We were sent to Mexico to fail, perhaps even to die. We’ve been lied to from the start. By our own people.’

  ‘You really believe that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay, say you’re right. What are we going to do about it?’

  ‘We’re bloody well going to find out why.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Saturday, November 29, 1941

  Washington, D.C.

  After being dropped off at the terminal in Brownsville, Jane Todd and Morris Black took a brand-new Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma Coach bus to Dallas and from there through a series of exhausting connections, they finally arrived in Chicago with just enough time for Black to place a trunk call to Fleming in Washington before they boarded the Twentieth Century Limited. For the first time since their headlong flight from Mexico the two finally began to relax and they spent most of the twenty hours on the train sleeping in their upper and lower berths. Arriving in New York, they barely paused for a meal before climbing onto yet another train and heading south to the nation’s capital.

  In Washington Black called Ian Fleming and agreed to meet with him at the Hay-Adams English Tap Room and Grill later in the day. They spent the morning buying new clothes and arrived at the hotel half an hour before the appointed time. They booked a day room, dropped off their purchases then went to the restaurant. They found a booth in the rear of the grill, ordered something to drink and settled back to wait for Fleming.

  ‘What if it’s him?’ Jane asked, sucking the froth off the top of her glass of Schlitz. ‘Fleming, I mean. What if he’s the leak?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Black answered, shaking his head. He would have given anything for a room-temperature pint of Fuller’s but he contented himself with a small sherry instead.

  Jane lit a cigarette. ‘Why not? Because he’s one of your own?’

  ‘No. Because he has nothing to gain. The cloak-and-dagger part of it is his sort of thing. Rather runs in the family, actually. His brother Peter has something to do with Intelligence himself. Far East, I think. He might be telling a few tales out of school to Godfrey at Naval Intelligence but he’s not a Red, I assure you. Drives a Bentley Touring Car and has all his books bound in black leather with gold-stamped titles on the spine and his family crest on the front. Not the sort of behaviour that would appeal to Uncle Joe and Comrade Beria down in the dungeons of the Lubyanka.’

  ‘Then who?’ Not that she expected any real answer; it was a question they’d asked each other a hundred times in the past few days.

  ‘At first I thought the only people it could be is the Russians. On the face of it they’re the only ones who stand to gain.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now I’m not so sure.’

  A dark-haired figure appeared out of the gloom, dressed in an expensive-looking suit and smoking a cigarette.

  ‘So tell me about Mexico,’ said Ian Fleming, sitting down in a seat facing them. A waiter appeared almost instantly and took his order for a martini and Fleming went to great pains to request that it be shaken and not stirred. Jane smiled to herself. Black was right – the darkly handsome man across from her was far too much of a pompous ass to be one of Joseph Stalin’s secret henchmen. She took another sip of her far more plebeian Schlitz and puffed on her cigarette.

  ‘We were set up,’ said Black.

  ‘So you suggested when you called from Chicago.’

  ‘The only people who knew we were there were you, Donovan and Stephenson,’ said Jane bluntly.

  ‘So you think I’m a suspect?’

  ‘Black doesn’t but I’m not convinced.’

  ‘Good for you. Never rule someone out just because you know each other.’ The waiter arrived with Fleming’s martini on a tray. He set it down in front of the Intelligence officer and waited while Fleming took a judicious sip. He nodded and the waiter withdrew. ‘On the other hand,’ he continued, ‘you shouldn’t just jump to conclusions. You’re forgetting the clerk who managed to get your travelling money, the administrative assistant who cobbled together your airline tickets, any number of other people within COI or British Security Coordination. There’s also the very real possibility that your Mr Hoover may well have had the town house in Georgetown wired for sound.’ Fleming paused. ‘Which is precisely the reas
on I suggested that we meet here.’

  ‘Doesn’t say much for your ability to keep a secret,’ Jane snorted. ‘In fact, it sounds more like you’re all spying on each other more than you are the enemy.’

  ‘I’m afraid you may well be right.’ Fleming nodded. He finished his martini, speared the onion with his swizzle stick and looked around for the waiter. Spotting him behind the bar, he gestured for a refill and turned back to Jane. ‘It does say something for the British Old Boys network, however. Most of our best people went to school together or know someone who went to school or worked with the candidate in question. You Americans haven’t had a decent intelligence organisation since the days of Benedict Arnold and your Revolution.’

  ‘On the other hand, we did catch him.’

  ‘Touché.’ Fleming smiled. ‘But you still haven’t told me very much about your escapades down south.’

  ‘As I said, someone set us up.’

  ‘The newspapers said there were two murdered policemen and a young man dead as well. He was referred to as the driver of your getaway car.’

  ‘He was just a boy,’ said Jane. ‘An innocent bystander. In the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  ‘The policemen?’

  ‘Already dead and for some time by the look of them.’ She made a sour face. ‘Long enough for the flies to have found them.’

  ‘We were shot at from a reasonably long range,’ said Black. ‘Almost certainly someone using a high-powered rifle. The policemen were killed by a revolver or automatic pistol, not to mention the fact that they were protected by a high wall. The whole story is absurd. A cover-up.’

  ‘I’m almost sure it was connected with Mercador,’ said Jane. ‘The man they have in prison for Trotsky’s assassination. They didn’t want us talking to him so they tried to get us out of the picture.’

  ‘Then why didn’t they just kill this Mercador fellow?’ said Fleming.

  ‘He’s far too prominent and the communists have a lot of friends in Mexico,’ said Jane. ‘Including their el presidente or whatever they call him.’

  Fleming’s second martini arrived. He lit another cigarette and waited until the waiter had gone before he spoke again. ‘You’re probably right.’ He nodded. ‘I asked your FBI friend Foxworth to do some checking for me. According to him a woman travelling as Evangelina Herrera flew into Miami from Havana a week ago, then flew onward to Boston. This was only a few days before our dear Professor Maddox did a flit and we went on our grave-digging expedition. The passport eventually came up as stolen but by then it was too late. From the description we think it was an NKVD agent named Guadalupe Gomez. She was probably the one who shot at you. According to her file she does her best work with long guns.’