by Pirate Irwin
“Let’s get down to business, Cartwright, as I am due in the Commons in the next hour,” he said firmly. Cartwright looked a bit put out but nodded his assent, his watery eyes and unkempt appearance making him look even more of a pig than Sebastian had initially thought. “Now, you came to me with a proposition, one you thought I would reply positively to. That’s correct, isn’t it?” asked Sebastian to which Cartwright nodded in the affirmative. “Well, I need to know more, or at least I would like to know who it is exactly that is pulling your strings, because clearly from your permanently inebriated state you are incapable of running a spy ring. In short, I am not convinced that you are who you say and not in fact simply a shyster on the make, who just hit it lucky by coming across this ID card.” Cartwright flashed an angry and upset look back at Sebastian, but Sebastian knew he had hit the right chord. Cartwright looked unnerved and flashed his eyes all round the room without being able to look Sebastian in the eye. “Aha, I thought so. So perhaps you could now enlighten me with some of that information. After all, we are now on the same side, aren’t we?” and Sebastian preferred him one of his warmer smiles. Cartwright stroked his dull grey stained tie and stared at his shoes, murmuring something inaudible to himself. “Sorry, Cartwright, the cat got your tongue or something!” hissed Sebastian. Cartwright had broken out into a sweat, despite the room being relatively cool; the effects of the alcohol were taking control. He placed his glass unsteadily on the table and mopped his brow, trying to buy himself some time but eventually he gave up. “It wouldn’t be of any benefit to either of us were I to divulge the names of the people I am involved with. Just fulfil your part of the bargain now and I will see if you can meet with Philby . . .” and with that Cartwright put his hand to his mouth in horror as he realized that he had given up the information Sebastian wanted. “Alcohol really isn’t good for one, you know, Cartwright,” Sebastian said patronizingly. “However thankfully it has been for me, as you have just given me the name I needed, though I must admit I am surprised as I thought he had been removed from active duty despite the intelligence services not being able to pin anything on him and he therefore was of no use to his real paymasters any longer,” said Sebastian. Cartwright just sat there like the amorphous blob, he was, refusing to add anything, fearing he would acerbate the enormous blunder he had already committed. Sebastian just sat there as well, tapping his fingers impatiently on the desk regarding Cartwright with a mixture of pity and contempt. “Listen Cartwright, I’ve had to deal with far more difficult adversaries than you through my rather adventurous career so don’t be disappointed that you have failed to yield any results. You’re simply not a match for me. As you should have guessed by now, my answer is no, niet, nein, to your proposition. Now if you’ll excuse me I must prepare myself for my speech at the Commons, though you may want to come along and listen, as it will be of interest to you,” he said icily.
Cartwright glared back at Sebastian. “You’ll pay for this, Stuart. You sit there so lordly and arrogantly and yet you are facing the gallows for treason. No matter what you put up as a defence, you will not escape the hangman and I for one will turn up to watch,” said Cartwright narrowing his piggy eyes.
Sebastian laughed and waved him away. “You don’t get it, do you, Cartwright? You won’t have the chance to because I would wager a bet that you will either precede me or accompany me to the scaffold. If you think you are just going to walk out of here and return to your boring little day job which you try and alleviate by spicing it up with a little bit of espionage on the side for the enemy then you are deluded. No, Cartwright, I will be taking you down with me, and Philby for that matter. I would just go home and wait for the doorbell to ring,” said Sebastian with a self-satisfied look on his face. Cartwright shot him another hateful look, but took the hint and lurched to his feet, gathered up his fedora and stormed out, leaving the door ajar. Sebastian leant back in his chair and turned to look out the window of his ministerial office for the last time, and he couldn’t but help thinking back to the night of the failed coup and how von Helldorf had surveyed the square in front of his headquarters from his window – only this time Nero was not going to be fiddling while all around him burnt.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Sebastian awoke to the sort of headlines that he had been dreading, though his reaction was milder than Macmillan’s, who saw any hope of a rise in his fortunes wiped out by the revelations that a Minister of Defence had resigned over personal matters which pertained to his war record. That would have been bad enough, but for the fact his claims over two more alleged Communist spies had further heightened suspicions of the whole establishment, though once again the intelligence services were moved to repudiate the involvement of Kim Philby, despite their belief that he was indeed an agent.
As for Cartwright, he had already disappeared so there was to be no show trial of him unless he fortuitously fell into their hands but he had probably fled the same way that Burgess and MacLean had taken to Moscow. Sebastian, for his part, thought he had made probably one of his greatest speeches in his relatively short political career. Shame it was his last, he thought bitterly to himself. The phone had been ringing all night and into the early hours, though he had given short shrift to reporters and in the end had resorted to taking it off the hook. Macmillan had summoned him to Downing Street at midday to seek a fuller explanation as to why one of his brighter stars had decided to call such an abrupt end to his career. Sebastian was not looking forward to the hearing as he had been fairly general in his outlining of why he had decided to end his career in such a fashion, but he knew it was only a matter of time before the truth came out and it was to this end that he had worked through the night to work out his defence. He had a fair idea of what it would be but as to what he said to Macmillan, well, that was another matter. He had spoken briefly to both his mother and Smithers, both of whom were in shock, but he had not elaborated much further than to say he felt he could no longer fulfil his ministerial duties owing to problems in his past, all of which would be revealed soon. Both were not satisfied and demanded an audience, which he refused, claiming he had to tell the Prime Minister before he could reveal any more.
Ushered into the Cabinet Room, Sebastian was surprised and relieved to see it was just Macmillan who was there. They shook hands warmly, Sebastian accepted his offer of a large Scotch and then having been directed to sit down, related as much of the story as he felt possible to reveal without endangering his defence when it came to a trial. Macmillan listened attentively, though it was impossible to tell what he was thinking behind the sphinx-like features and the eyes covered by the bushy eyebrows. There followed a period of silence after Sebastian had finished while Macmillan thought about his story and judged what was the best way of handling it. Finally he rose from his seat and walked the length of the room and back again before sitting down again.
“I am afraid, Sebastian, there is no option but for you to be tried for treason and you are aware, I am sure, of all the consequences,” he said in a mournful tone. Sebastian nodded and added he was fully prepared to accept them should he be found guilty. Macmillan sighed: “I am sorry to say that the odds on you being found not guilty aren’t good. You may find it strange, but I have a certain amount of sympathy for you; you were offered the chance of life and you took it and under those circumstances there are not many people who wouldn’t have done. However, on the other hand, you donned enemy uniform, and that is enough to hang anybody. You have been a bloody fool and the damage this will bring on the party does not bear thinking about. The only thing I can ask of you is to resign your seat immediately, so you can at least do the party a small favour, though the damage you have already wreaked on it is too great to ever be resolved,” said Macmillan wearily.
“I thank you for your kind words, Prime Minister, but I am sorry to say I cannot and will not resign my seat, as it would be an admission of guilt and I do not believe myself to be guilty. I apologize for the catastrophic consequences that wil
l flow from this but I stupidly, nay arrogantly, never thought such matters would rear their head. Once you have been through what I have experienced in the war, you start to really think that there is somebody up there looking out for you. Sadly it has not been the case, but I am determined to fight my corner and while I understand you cannot support me, nor can the party, I will still not step down as an MP,” he said.
Macmillan shook his head sadly and lowered his gaze onto the finely polished table where he had experienced so few good moments since he had entered the Cabinet and then onto being Prime Minister. “Very well, Sebastian, I cannot force you to step down, but once you leave this room that is it. I cannot help you and I will advise the rest of the party to do the same, no matter if they sympathize with your plight. Though I think that is unlikely. Furthermore, I will not be able to hide behind mere obfuscation should I be asked a direct question on you and the circumstances of your departure. I will keep this discussion in the main quiet but I will have to answer a direct question should it be put to me in the Commons, lest I be held to account later for misleading Parliament. Of course, you can avoid all that by at least making a statement to fuller effect of why and how you came to resign. Perhaps you could at least do that for me,” he said plaintively.
Sebastian thought about it for a minute. “Yes, of course I will, Prime Minister,” he replied. And with that, Macmillan walked out of the room leaving Sebastian to ruminate over how had things turned out differently he would have been looking towards weekly meetings in this hallowed chamber instead of visiting it just the once to explain how he had come to betray his country and his party.
Macmillan made his way to his private drawing room where he had Home Secretary Rab Butler, Alec Douglas-Home and the Lord Chancellor the Earl of Kilmuir waiting for him. They were all settled in nursing drinks when he entered, and all save Butler rose to their feet as their leader made his way to the drinks tray and fixed himself a Scotch. He levered himself into his chair which was covered in a rug made of the clan tartan, took a sip and sighed. Butler raised his eyebrows and waited impatiently for him to speak.
“We’re in a mess,” said Macmillan wearily, to which Butler nodded, though he thought to himself we wouldn’t be if I were the leader and not this bumbling fool. Macmillan studied his audience, knowing that he would have preferred Butler not to be there as he would take great pleasure at the stew they had got themselves into with Sebastian’s treasonable offences and that it had been him who had overridden several dissenting voices in fast-tracking the charismatic MP into ministerial office. His judgement would be seriously questioned, but there was little Butler could do about it for the moment and he was prepared to ride out the storm, though it would have been infinitely preferable had Sebastian acquiesced and stood down from his seat. A former Nazi in the party and in government, that was even more damaging than Suez, the disaster that had brought him to power. Macmillan relayed Sebastian’s explanation to the troika sitting around him and he could see the barely repressed smile growing on Butler’s face while Home gasped and Kilmuir assessed the legal ramifications in the same cool, lawyerly manner that had seen him earn high praise at the Nuremberg Trial of the major war criminals when he had been Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe. Having finished, Macmillan turned to his legal advisor and asked him what the procedure should be.
“Well, Harold, obviously he has to be tried for treason and it falls on my office to prosecute as is normally the case. However, this is difficult in this instance because it is the government trying one of their own and whatever the outcome we will be held to account,” he opined.
“What’s the problem? He’s guilty as hell and the public will expect us to achieve such a verdict. You are surely not implying that he will be found innocent which then will really land us in the mud,” interjected Butler.
Kilmuir looked Butler squarely in the eye and thought, that’s just the verdict you would want for your own leadership ambitions, Rab riding to the rescue at last for the ailing giant of British politics and saving it from extermination. However he had a point. “Well, in the case of a jury trial, that is always a possibility,” he replied.
Butler shook his head, while Home piped up for the first time. “I don’t suppose we can try him without a jury,” he said in his aristocratic drawl.
Kilmuir shook his head. “It wouldn’t be deemed fair to the defendant and he can insist on it. Also, I doubt we can have it held in camera as it does not involve State secrets. After all, he is bound to have a friendly reporter or two that he can leak his story to which would make the holding of the trial behind closed doors worse than useless. We cannot gag him,” he said. Macmillan reflected on the consequences of what the Lord Chancellor had said and thought with a jury there was every chance Sebastian could swing them round, even with the horrors of the Nazi regime and all the images of the concentration camps that had been revealed in the aftermath of the war. Christ, he had even been in one, which would have an impact on the jury and the public in general.
“I don’t suppose we could make him disappear,” said Butler drily. Kilmuir groaned at Butler’s insouciance and thought it only reinforced why he should never be leader. The more pragmatic Home pointed out a rather more pertinent result of whatever revelations would come out. “You can imagine what the Soviets are going to make of this, Harold. They are going to have a field day over the British Government harbouring what in their eyes is a war criminal and as for the Americans, well, Eisenhower is going to be only delighted that his ministers have been holding talks with a man who used to bear the uniform of a nation they fought against and which cost them thousands of men. I personally agree with the Lord Chancellor we should leave the case alone and let some hotshot barrister take charge of the case. If he loses then it’s his problem and not ours, and Sebastian can then be forced to step down regardless of being found innocent and we can send him off to the backwaters somewhere.”
Macmillan shuddered at the phone call he would have to make to President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower later and explain to him about the scandal set to break. The Soviets could blow the roof off Downing Street for all he cared but he knew they would use it as valuable currency in their propaganda war and try and persuade the Americans that the real enemy was not them, but in fact the English. With the huge Jewish lobby in the States, Ike might well have to give credence to them. However, in his favour, Sebastian had stopped short of selling himself out twice and revealed that far from being clean of Soviet double agents, Britain was still full of them, and whereas Cartwright had disappeared, there were bound to be others sniffing away, trying to get information from other compromised ministers or officials.
“Very well, gentlemen. We shall proceed as follows. We shall not prosecute him ourselves but we will lend a helping hand to the case against him. He is not to receive any aid from us regardless of anyone sympathizing with the background to his story and we are to proffer our sincere apologies to the Soviets on a formal level, even though they were trying to turn him, owing to their limitless intelligence on former servants of the Reich. If only Ike had not been so political a general then we wouldn’t be in this mess, as we would have got to Berlin first,” sighed Macmillan.
“That’s really not important now, Harold. We have to concentrate on the present and put into operation a huge damage limitation exercise. I also need not tell you I am sure that there should be no inadvertent leaks from our side, which could prejudice the case against Sebastian and lead to a mistrial. Whatever our feelings about what he did we mustn’t allow that to cloud our conducting a free and fair trial,” said Kilmuir.
Macmillan nodded sagely and asked his legal chief: “What do you think the chances are of him winning?”
Kilmuir reflected on it for a minute or two before replying. “Well, it depends on a number of factors. Namely how many witnesses can be unearthed, which is perhaps not the nicest term to use, who are still alive from his time in the POW camp, then in his period in the Wehrmacht and so on. It may very
well be he has withheld some of his story as he clearly doesn’t want to show all his hand to someone he now considers the enemy, so I would say there is a 25 per cent chance he could be cleared and that, gentlemen, would be most embarrassing,” he said. Butler smiled inwardly thinking, embarrassing, yes, but once the effects had worn off it would be problematic mainly for old Walrus sitting encased in his tartan and he would only derive the benefits and finally achieve his ambition of becoming leader of the Conservative Party. Of all the people in the room it was only Butler who looked forward to the trial with any great anticipation and pleasure – for he could not lose, whatever the verdict. Why, he mused, I might even throw some helpful titbits of information Sebastian’s way, after all, in a curious way he was taking on the establishment, just as he, Butler, had ever since becoming a Conservative MP and now revenge for all the slights could be at hand.
Being charged with treason was not exactly tremendous for one’s social life, as Sebastian quickly discovered. Calls went unanswered and even people in the local shops were far less respectful than they had been prior to the charges being laid. He was fortunate not to have been taken to the traditional abode for alleged traitors, the Tower of London, but he nevertheless found himself isolated from the rest of London life with his mother also virtually abandoning him. As he had suspected, the shock of the revelations, which had only been cursory, as aside from the identification card there was very little other information to hand with Cartwright fleeing, had a dreadful effect on her. On the rare occasions he saw her she looked every bit of her 60 years of age, the wrinkles round her eyes more evident and cut a stooping figure as if by doing so she could avoid being hit with the shame of what her one and only son had done. However, as he kept trying to tell her, the case was not so cut and dried as that and it would have been nice if at least his mother had stood by him, but she simply looked away and turned the conversation on to another subject. Sebastian was at a bit of a loss as to how to go about defending himself, other than tell the story as it was and hope he persuaded the jury that he had done nothing different to what they would have done in similar circumstances. Being barred from traveling abroad was not a huge help to his case, as he desperately needed to find out if several of the most integral members of his days in Germany were alive and were they willing to help him – of course, if they were in East Germany then he could forget about it. Inmates from Flossenburg, former Resistance members; in his most desperate moments he wished he had taken the name of the major who had protected him the night of the collapse of the plot, but without access to files or to foreign travel he was lost. Despite being advised to hire a top barrister he decided he would conduct his own defence, believing that he had the mental agility and energy to last the case. He reasoned as he was on trial for his life he would prefer to have his fate in his hands and not somebody, who, whatever the verdict, had little to lose, as judging by the mood in the press Sebastian was unlikely to get off, which left the barrister in a no-lose situation and perhaps in such circumstances might not inspire him to a great defence. If he had managed to avoid being hanged by the Germans in a biased court then he was surely capable of mounting his own defence in a proper court of law where despite the prevailing mood against him he started on level terms. That at least provided him with some hope, and his smile over that would grow even broader once he heard the name of the barrister who would be facing him – his former best friend turned foe Adam Steiner. It was one of his few remaining loyal friends, a fellow MP Crispin Darbyshire, who told him when he dropped round one evening. Sebastian let out a great belly laugh, somewhat to Darbyshire’s surprise, and when he asked him why he found it so amusing that he was up against the most admired criminal barrister in the country, Sebastian tapped his nose in conspiratorial fashion and simply said: “Crispin, it is as if my whole life is going full circle and I am being given the chance to redeem myself with each and every person who I may have wronged – in their minds anyway – and Steiner is one who will also relish the chance to avenge himself over me. I can only imagine the delight he must have experienced when he was handed the brief. Let us hope that he brings his conceited, humourless persona fully to the fore because then I am sure, solely based on the two different characters we are, that I will win over the jury. Steiner v Stuart, it is as if the crowning moment of my life was meant to be thus,” purred Sebastian and poured him and his guest another glass of champagne.