by Daniel Kemp
Ryan became one of only three officers allowed into the vault at J Division, but unlike Prime he was not allowed to take documents home. There was yet another vacancy left open by Prime's 'untimely' resignation—that of leading a team of twelve transcribers in another part of J Division, the Higher Intelligence Specialist part. Ryan volunteered and was promoted to it. As I looked closely at the areas of his responsibility, it became clear that he was accountable only to himself. Who better to expose a spy than another spy, and then take his place?
I showed Fraser what I'd found in the records from Cheltenham after Molly had returned from her night out and was safely in the adjoining apartment sound asleep. If she smelled her husband's pipe tobacco or heard the clinking of glass as the lip of the Jura bottle kissed the whisky glasses, then I think she might have demanded their return home to Chearsley in Buckinghamshire immediately, but as she didn't I thought the two of us could play at solving mysteries until the puzzle was tired of us.
It was almost three in the morning when we decided that enough was enough. We had ideas of what could have happened, but we were short of people who could confirm those ideas, However, there was one perhaps who could tell us if 'Ryan' was the traitor Dickie suspected, and if we could jog his mind a little further, perhaps confirm my idea that Ryan was the CIA operative in Czechoslovakia before I arrived there.
* * *
Being married as long as Molly and Fraser, almost forty years I think, was something I could never have imagined for myself until I had the great fortune to meet Hannah. I had known her for such a short while in measurable time, but an eternity in unquantifiable painful memories. I suppose there must be several advantages of a long marriage and one certainly must be the telepathy between the couple who have survived the years. I experienced Molly's clairvoyance in knowing that Fraser was not going home to Buckinghamshire straight away as she finished breakfast and then bade her husband farewell with a kiss to his cheek and one to mine.
“Look after him,” she said to me, adding, “he's a complete idiot when it comes to looking after himself. Don't let him smoke too much and don't let him drink as if he's trying to save all the distilleries in Scotland.” Then to Fraser she said, “Just be careful please, and come home in one piece.”
With that, she disappeared through the door, down the steps to the apartment's gated entrance and the waiting car. The comfort inside would be scant recompense for her husband's company, but a journey I guessed she would have made a hundred times before—on her own. There is a difference in how one can be alone whilst in the company of others, or alone in one's own company. I thought no more of it, leaving the harmony of self-sufficiency to another day to explore when loneliness for companionship overtook this lazy body of mine. For now, we had Geoffrey Prime to see and then, if time permitted, off to Beaulieu and a reluctant Russian who'd said nothing of a relative named Anatoly Vladimirovich Malikova, whose father had a prolonged period of contact with a traitorous man to this country.
* * *
Prime's record was not easy for me to read. He was sentenced to a total of thirty-eight years imprisonment in November 1982 when he pleaded guilty to seven counts of espionage, and three counts of sex offences against children. Thirty-five of those years were passed down for his spying activities and only three for the sex offences. I calculated his release date to be some time in 2020, not 2001, as in reality it had been.
He served only half his sentence. Eighteen months for indecently assaulting three girls aged eleven to fourteen, and seventeen-and-half years for giving away some of our secrets to the Soviet Union. I know I'm a cynic. I've recognised that illness in me for a good many years, but the disproportionate level of justice for the children and their parents carried the stench of a social, privileged order that made me want to weep for justice. Social stratum considered the affairs of state far more important than the wellbeing of the working-class.
I had read that when Geoffrey Prime was posted to Kenya, in the late fifties, early sixties, he was so disgusted by the poverty he saw in the countryside, along with what he perceived was the exploitation of Kenya by the British colonial authorities, that he turned towards Communism as an answer to man's inhumanity to man. Had there been many as sensitive onlookers to Prime's lenient punishment for the sexual abasement of children he confessed to, then maybe the ranks of Communists would have been swollen by people who thought likewise when justice was dispensed so unevenly that day in November. Despite my cynicism and obvious abhorrence, I had to move on and interview this man.
On leaving prison, Prime moved into his deceased mother's house situated within nine miles of The Doughnut, the appellation of the Government's Communications Headquarters in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. He registered with the police and was put on the sex offenders register; other than that, he was free to move around the same as anyone else. I didn't plan to stay long in his dead mother's house.
* * *
He was a tall, unshaven, gaunt man, with a grey receding hairline, ashen-faced with blue-framed spectacles through which two brown eyes stared at me, wishing I would disappear from his present into his past, but I wasn't going anywhere other than through the front door his left hand held only ajar.
I thrust an open wallet with a plastic card denoting I was Chief Superintendent Pritchard from the War Office Constabulary, at his face. It was a plainclothes police officer from the War Office who arrested Prime, and I doubted any amount of time would erase the memory of that warrant card.
“We're coming in and you're not going to stop us, Geoffrey. Stand aside or you will be hurt.” The file said he was sixty-eight, but on first impression he was nearer eighty-six or older.
“Have you a warrant?” he asked in a soft voice.
“No, I haven't. Nor am I known as being patient. But I do possess a very loud voice. Open the door or I'll use it to tell the neighbours exactly what you are, Prime, in case they don't know.”
As the door opened, I was hit by the smell. Cats have never been my choice of companion. Not only for the way they tend to take everything for granted, but because I've encountered the same smell of litter trays that are hardly ever changed. I know that it's not the cats' fault, but that doesn't alter my view. Next to strike me was the shabbiness of the place matched by his own lack of self-respect. The shirt he wore was threadbare in places as were his trousers, making his whole musty stale smell irritate my nose. I sneezed loudly and noticed his bare feet. Dirty feet and smelly litter trays; where else would I rather be? He disgusted me.
His mother had passed away in this house whilst her son was detained in prison. She had few friends at the time and, as a consequence, her body was not found for six days after her fall, which according to the autopsy led to a painful, agonisingly long death. Geoffrey had no other close family. Of the not-so-close, not one attended her funeral to stand at the graveside with her convicted son. When I read that detail, it crossed my mind what had kept her nieces and nephews, her brother and sister away. Was it his treason or his perversion? I was already in a bad mood when those thoughts crossed my mind again and they did nothing to help.
Inside the three up, three down, grey pebble-dashed, terraced house, there was ancient faded wallpaper hanging from corners in the hallway, and in one place hanging more than halfway down. The room Prime showed us into was dark and dank with a worn, indistinct patterned carpet on which stood two armchairs and a faded sofa where lay four cats in various modes of repose. There was a low coffee table between the two soft chairs either side of an imitation log fire with a small, square piece of wooden furniture on top of which was a television. It was from beside that item of furniture that the smell originated: two fouled cat litter trays. In the other part of the long, undivided sparse room were four hard-backed, timber chairs and a dining table. I sat on one of the chairs at the table and indicated to Prime to sit opposite me. Frank opened the two windows onto the rear neglected garden and took a deep breath.
Prime offered tea. At the tim
e of offering he smiled, adding a comment of how important he must be to justify a Chief Superintendent paying him an unannounced visit. When I failed to answer either his question or pass a comment on how important he was or not, he asked if he had done anything wrong. He was a squalid man in equally squalid surroundings and I had no intentions of hiding my hostility towards him.
The force of language I used and the volume of my voice in replying to his pointless question caused Frank to rapidly close the windows, adding, “Careful of the neighbours, boss. Remember what we said.”
“Yeah, you're right, sergeant. We had better keep it down for Mr Prime's benefit. At least for now, Geoffrey, hadn't we? It's up to you if I remember that when we leave. I've only a few things to ask of you, Prime, and if you deliver straight, honest answers, I can move you out of here, give you a new identity, and offer you a new start in Canada or Australia.”
His facial muscles went rigid as his hand rose to remove his glasses. My eyes followed the hand that was holding them; they were twitching involuntarily between his forefinger and thumb. He carefully placed the glasses on the table. He rubbed both eyes and replaced the blue-rimmed spectacles on his face, leaving his gaze to look through me as though there was something new for him to see. His eyes then narrowed into a question. “How do you mean?” he asked, in a hesitant voice.
“What do you mean by what do I mean? I mean what I said. The office told me you were intelligent. You had better be, Prime, for your sake. Listen carefully to what I'm saying and open your effing ears. New start, new place. First question, and do something with that effing window, sergeant. I'm suffocating in here. Ever thought of cleaning the cats' shit up, have yer?”
“I do most of the time, but I haven't been well lately. Oh, was that your first question?” His face had relaxed into a stupefying look. The vacancy of his expression made me think that he could have taken sedatives for the illness he spoke of.
“No, it effing ain't, you piece of shit. My questions are a lot more serious than about effing cats and if I don't get the right answer to the right ones, I'll see to it that the only thing you can afford to eat will be cat shit. No, of course you won't be eating cat shit. How silly am I? You won't be able to pay for cat shit. There is another consideration of course, before you stop thinking about the aforementioned shit and that is, will you have any teeth left after I have your name and the word paedophile painted on every blank wall anywhere near here. I'll even add your address for good measure, Prime. I might be able, sergeant, to get it in the local rag. Can you see the headline, Geoffrey? A convicted nonce living at blah, blah, blah. How does that appeal?
“Perhaps your neighbours don't know what a paedophile is, but they soon will once I get started. But, no, don't look so worried. What I want is not that difficult to deliver. If all you say ticks the boxes, then I'll go back to the Ministry of Defence and recommend to the Minister you get that new life I said you would. What I recommend gets done, no problems with that. Okay, here we go? Are you ready for this life-changing opportunity?”
His head was nodding like one of those toys on the back shelf of cars.
“What incentives were you offered to name Randall Cavershall II as an American CIA spy, Geoffrey?”
There then followed the confirmation I was after. Without any further inducement he pointed the finger at Cavershall and gave some further insights behind Dickie's reasoning why he was shown so much leniency inside the prisons where he was kept segregated from those who might cause him harm on behalf of those helpless children and their parents. I was following Frank along the narrow hall towards the front door when I stopped suddenly, causing the following Prime to close on me. I turned and 'inadvertently' trod hard on one of his bare feet. Of course, I apologised.
* * *
As Frank and I praised each other for our thespian skills playing the hard cops in a Cheltenham movie, Jimmy put the car in gear, and away to a waiting Fraser in Whitehall we drove. Neither of my PPOs bothered to ask if the relocation I'd promised Prime to his favoured Canada was going to happen. They both knew me too well for that.
* * *
“Are you saying that once Dickie was certain there was another mole at GCHQ, he offered Prime a protected prison sentence if he got the mole's name? And you are further assuming it was this CIA/Soviet double agent who supplied the teaser from Czechoslovakia in 1979. Is that about right, Patrick?”
“Yes, that's where I'm going with it. The CIA planted Cavershall in GCHQ without knowing he was already under Russian influence. The CIA's idea behind having a spy inside Cheltenham was to gain additional information their Frosting programme was short on. They wanted a way into our most secret communications. One would have been the internal scrambled link between the Prime Minister's office and the War Department. Another was the link between the office of chairman JIC to the Strategic Command Centre in the Admiralty. Both those two, and four other vital UK defence issues, were handled separately through a division of GCHQ manned solely by the Director General's hand-picked staff. Cavershall would be automatically co-opted into the staffing role once he was made head of J Division.
“As the Russians never had an ear inside the government's communications headquarters, they wanted everything Cavershall could get. In respect of the '79 information document, I'm working with the theory it was simply a taster in order to get the Russian 'spy' accepted by top floor at Century House. It's intriguing as there's no record of Cavershall leaving the UK. What there is, if you look closely, is an abnormal signal routed through a CIA relay outstation in Lucknow, India, on to their central command West Berlin Station and finally, so the AIS machinery in Greenwich tells us, to a hand receiving set with the coordinates registering to an address where Cavershall lived not far from Prime, in Cheltenham. That first originating signal that reached Lucknow was apparently a shortwave micro signal with a distance of no more two hundred kilometres.
“I'm presuming this signal originated from Vyacheslav Trubnikov's desk in Delhi following a command from the KGB at Moscow Centre. Who knows? That order could have come from a department where Putin worked. Obviously, Dickie did not have our facilities at Greenwich to work with. We must bless old Hardballs for that, Fraser, which I'm doubly sure you do. I reckon Cavershall told Dickie all about Trubnikov and the Delhi link when confronted with Prime's accusation.”
“Excuse me if I'm missing something, Patrick, but where did the '81 report come from if there was no logistical officer working the ground and focusing on that amount of detail that is in that report? Are you saying the Russians gave up their crown jewels in a message sent to a hand receiver near GCHQ, and all the millions of pounds worth of monitoring equipment missed it? Do you honestly believe there was that amount of incompetency at GCHQ at the time?”
“No, Fraser, I would never accuse GCHQ of being incompetent. To my way of thinking, Dickie turned Cavershall when he found out he was a CIA plant but with Soviet loyalty. How he did that is open to all kinds of conjecture, but remember this: in the late seventies, early eighties, the world was hanging on to sanity by a strand of hair. We were fast approaching a nuclear war between the great powers of Russia and America. Dickie was almost three times young Cavershall's age, so I think he played the patriotic card. 'You're playing the protagonists against each other and it will only end up one way—world desolation, son. Work for us and we will be able to keep the USA and the USSR apart. Give us the power to do that, because we are the only sane ones left in the world.'
“Cavershall was given all the tuition that fifty years in the intelligence trade had taught Dickie. He guided Cavershall's every step it took in convincing Vyacheslav Trubnikov that London bought everything Trubnikov wanted to sell … with one enormous condition,”
Fraser's impatience interrupted me. “You're getting almost as good as me at telling stories. Come on, laddie, let's get that condition on the table.”
I smiled at the old form of address he had for me. Although I had been the instigator in asking
that it was dropped since my elevation to the top chair, I missed his familiarity in that regard. Who knows for sure, but perhaps it was to do with marrying Hannah and not wishing her to think Fraser was disrespecting my position. Another possibility, and in all probability the truth, was my ego's need of massaging, having arrived at the throne of power that Fraser held before retiring. I ignored the use of 'laddie', and hoped for more, but I would not admit that to any examining psychiatrist in case they thought I put my ego before my wife's death.
“The condition was that Cavershall forced Vyacheslav Trubnikov to defect to our side, Fraser. Otherwise, none of this has any meaning.”
Fraser stood from the sofa that Hannah normally occupied when we were together talking generally about this or that, and at once I was reminded of the normality of a life we had both spoken often of, away from secrets and lies, deceit and consequences, living as an ordinary couple in Sussex, enjoying a country way of life. I realised that form of normality could never be now I was on my own, but not at that moment. Now I had Fraser staring down at me, daring me to expose my explanation on how anything like that was possible. Someone of Trubnikov's importance to be turned and nobody else in the know other than a young CIA double-spy and the practised hand of Dickie Blythe-Smith on the verge of retirement, pension, untold fishing stories and the knighthood the old bugger deserved. I was ready to turn my back on the spoken normality and return to the nefarious life I chose.
“He did it because of the love affair Dickie told Randall Cavershall Trubnikov was having with a Polish colonel that was known by Dalek and Jana Kava. Ask me how I know that, Fraser.” I hadn't meant to change the tone of my voice, but it had changed. I was demanding he ask that question like some dog barking to be let out. However, it was never my intention to give him a chance to reply.
