The Diplomat's Wife
Page 32
Dick laughed. ‘Don’t worry, Philip,’ he said. ‘I’m not a “mole” as she says you call it. It’s not me.’
‘Oh, good,’ said Phil, happy to be seen to be persuaded.
‘Seriously, Philip. It’s not me. She and I discussed it a couple of days ago. I convinced her it wasn’t me.’
‘Good,’ said Phil.
Dick frowned. ‘You don’t believe me, do you? She said I should find you as soon as she died. She also said you would be difficult to convince.’
‘No, no, you’ve convinced me,’ said Phil. Unconvincingly.
‘Being Emma, she told me how to convince you.’
‘Did she?’ said Phil. That did sound like Grams. ‘I’m listening.’ But he was still standing motionless in the open field. At some point he would run.
‘Emma says that what convinced her was that the Foreign Office never received her warning about the Russian talks with the Germans in the summer of 1939.’
‘That’s right.’
‘She says that the only possible reason they didn’t is that I didn’t pass on the message.’
‘That’s also right,’ said Phil.
‘It’s not quite right,’ said Dick.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean there is another possibility. That I did pass on the intelligence, but that the person I told it to kept it to himself.’
‘Heaton-Smith?’
Dick nodded. Phil thought about it. It did make sense.
‘So you still maintain that you gave the information to Heaton-Smith?’
‘I do,’ said Dick. ‘I remember it well. We were in a pub in Pimlico. It’s the one and only time I met him. He had a gap in his front teeth.’
Phil thought about it. Maybe.
Dick was thinking too. ‘Why would I have sent a postcard to Emma telling her about Kurt and Kay if I was trying to stop her finding Lothar? Eh?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Phil. ‘Why would Heaton-Smith want me to tell him where Lothar was?’
‘Emma had an answer for that.’
‘Which was?’
‘He had been put up to it by C and Freddie Pelham-Walsh – C is the head of MI6.’
‘I know.’
‘The three of them decided to involve you, and so Heaton-Smith had to. But by recruiting you himself, and keeping Emma out of it, he could follow how her investigation was going. If she found Lothar, and you told Heaton-Smith where he was, he could make sure that the KGB got to him before MI6.’
‘But why mention the mole at all? Surely, the less I knew about moles, the less chance that I might find one.’
‘Either C or Freddie insisted on it. The important thing from the mysterious Mr Swann’s point of view was that Emma didn’t find out what you and he were up to.’
Phil thought it all through. ‘OK. Heaton-Smith may be the mole, I get that. Or it might be you. How do I know which?’
Dick smiled. ‘According to Emma, you have the answer to that.’
Sixty-One
July 1979, Three Castles, Buckinghamshire
* * *
This time, Phil was ten minutes late as he walked into the Three Castles. Swann was waiting for him, at the same table where they had met before, between the jukebox and the dartboard.
Phil bought himself a pint and joined him.
‘Hello, Phil,’ said Swann, smiling. ‘Thanks for getting in touch with me.’
Phil smiled, shook Swann’s hand, and sat down. He came straight to the point.
‘The man you are looking for is Dick Loxton,’ he said.
‘Loxton, eh?’ said Swann.
‘Do you know him?’ Phil asked.
‘We met once, during the war.’
‘Oh, was that at a pub in Pimlico? My grandmother told me about that. He had a message for you about the talks between the Germans and the Russians. Was that right?’
‘He did have some information for me,’ Swann said, carefully. ‘From your grandmother.’
‘Did the British government take any notice of it?’
‘No,’ said Swann. ‘They didn’t believe it. Even though we were nearly at war, there were still some appeasers left in the Foreign Office.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘So tell me, Philip. How do you know that Loxton is our man?’
Phil launched into a detailed exposition of his earlier suspicions. Swann listened carefully. After a couple of minutes, they were interrupted.
‘Hello, Kenneth.’
Two men were standing behind Swann. One, a sixty-year-old civil servant with a suit and tie, fleshy square face and bulging, hard eyes, was doing the talking.
‘Do you mind if we join you?’
‘Of course not. I was just debriefing Phil here.’
‘We heard.’
Swann didn’t move. Slowly he drew on his cigarette, not moving his eyes from the civil servant.
‘Are you wearing a wire, Phil?’ Swann asked eventually.
‘He is,’ said the civil servant.
‘Uncomfortable, aren’t they?’ Swann said to Phil. ‘Just wait till you take it off. The tape they use rips off all your chest hair.’
‘You were talking about Dick Loxton,’ the civil servant said.
‘We were.’
‘And how he met you in a pub in Pimlico in 1939 and passed on information about the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Information that you didn’t pass on to anyone in London.’
‘Oh, I can assure you I did,’ said Swann. Phil had to hand it to him; he was keeping his cool. But he had just confirmed that Dick had indeed followed Emma’s instructions back in 1939. Dick wasn’t the mole, and it looked very likely Kenneth Heaton-Smith was.
‘We’ve checked the old files,’ said the civil servant. ‘There is no record of you mentioning your conversation with Mr Loxton to anyone.’
‘It will be in the files somewhere,’ said Swann. ‘Just a question of looking in the right places.’
The civil servant scanned the bar, which was becoming crowded. ‘We really need to discuss this further, Kenneth, but this isn’t a good place to do it. Why don’t you come with me and Roger?’
Phil, and Swann, glanced up at Roger, who was in his late thirties, broad-shouldered and very fit-looking. Phil wouldn’t want to have an argument with Roger. And neither did Mr Swann.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Goodbye, Phil.’ And they were gone.
* * *
Ten minutes later, his wire expertly and painfully removed in an electrician’s van in the pub car park where the civil servant and his entourage had been listening to it earlier, Phil returned to the pub. Dick was waiting for him with two pints lined up on the bar.
‘Turns out you’re not a Russian spy, after all,’ said Phil, accepting his gratefully.
‘That’s good to know,’ said Dick.
‘Was that bloke “C”?’
‘Couldn’t possibly comment,’ said Dick. He raised his glass. ‘To Emma.’ He paused. ‘And Hugh.’
‘To Grams,’ said Phil. ‘And her brother.’ He took a sip.
Nothing tasted better to him at that moment than a good English pint in a good English pub on a summer afternoon.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I should like to thank Hugh Chawner for his help with Spain, Geoff Skingsley for his help with France and Colin West for his help with the Gaelic.
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Thanks are also due to my agent, Oli Munson, to Susannah Hamilton, my editor, and to Richenda Todd and Liz Hatherell for their copy-editing and proof-reading. And to my wife Barbara for accompanying me on the arduous research trips required to write this book.
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Also by Michael Ridpath
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Amnesia
Launch Code
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Spy Novels
Traitor’s Gate
Shadows of War
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Financial Thrillers
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About the Author
Before becoming a writer, Michael Ridpath used to work as a bond trader in the City of London. After writing several financial thrillers, which were published in over 30 languages, he began a crime series featuring the Icelandic-American detective Magnus Jonson. He has also written a number of stand-alone thrillers, including Amnesia and Launch Code. He splits his time between London and Massachusetts.
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You can find out more about him and his books on his website www.michaelridpath.com, on Twitter or on Facebook.
First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.
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This edition published by Yarmer Head
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Copyright © Michael Ridpath 2021
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The right of Michael Ridpath to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the author.
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This is a work of fiction. All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.