The Secret Houses

by John Gardner

  This attitude seemed to have worked, for when Fishman arrived an hour later he brought with him an invitation for Dick Farthing to sit in on one of the Newton sessions.

  ‘Am I allowed to contribute?’ Dick asked immediately.

  Fishman hesitated. ‘You met him when he was in London, yes?’

  ‘Briefly.’ He did not mention his first encounter with both Dollhiem and Newton at the so-called Camp X near Oshawa, during the war.

  ‘Okay, then, why not?’

  ‘Do I get a look at his file – and, Jim, I mean his real file, not a few pages of filleted paper?’

  ‘Why not? You can read it here.’

  Dick Farthing had been in the business for a long time, and ever since the day Naldo had come to him at Redhill to ask about Dollhiem and Newton at Camp X, Oshawa, the two men had stayed in his mind. The memories had returned, and slowly he had begun to see them in a clearer perspective, like a photographer bringing a subject into focus.

  Dick also knew the first rule for people ferreting after traitors in his world. He had passed it on to many young officers, though God knew if they had understood. ‘If you want to wear a moleskin jacket,’ he would say, ‘you must first find out when the animal was possibly led away from the paths of righteousness.’

  In other words, in examining a suspect traitor’s life, first find a period of time when he was in the right place, or the wrong circumstances; when he was most vulnerable; when he was sitting – or even lying – next to the people who most wanted to gain his soul. Once you had pinpointed that time in a man’s life, you would find all the other signs stuck out like Indian signals – notches in trees, twigs crossed on a pathway, a mark on a fence. But first find the time and place.

  He had already been able to examine the late, unlamented Nathaniel Dollhiem’s life in some detail, and had come to the conclusion that there was only one time in that man’s life when he was truly vulnerable. Could he find the same short period in Newton’s existence?

  When the meeting was over, he stayed behind to talk with Jim Fishman. ‘I’m sorry I can’t allow you to take the stuff back to your hotel room, Dick,’ the head of Counterintelligence apologised. ‘But you of all people know about classified files. I can give you an office, with a telephone and the dossier. I’ll leave the safe open. When you’ve finished, just put the files inside and close it.’ That way Dick could not be privy to the safe’s combination.

  ‘When can you come along and see Newton?’ Fishman asked.

  ‘Give me a couple of days.’

  Dick went straight to work, going through the available minutiae of Tertius Newton’s life. At eleven o’clock that night he put the file into the safe and walked back to his hotel. The security man who had guarded the office wished him goodnight, then – like Dollhiem before him – Dick went through a series of tricks designed to both spot and throw off any personal surveillance.

  When he knew that he was clear, he stopped at a public telephone booth and placed a person-to-person collect call to England. ‘The party will be at one of these three numbers,’ he told the operator. A few minutes later he was speaking to C, using a familiar double-talk which would mean little to anyone who might be listening.

  The following afternoon he did the same thing, and got replies to the questions he had put to C. Then, finally, he made a series of calls – to the city halls in San Jose and Los Angeles, and the Records Office of UCLA. They asked him to call back in an hour, which he did. The answers he received from California now put Tertius Newton in his sights. He told Fishman that he would be free to see Newton anytime on the next day.

  ‘Pick you up at ten in the morning,’ Fishman said.

  ‘Fine. I might just have some surprises for you.’

  *

  C took Dick Farthing’s call from Washington in his elegant private apartment in Queen Anne’s Gate. Immediately after Dick was off the line, C telephoned Caspar, cryptically asking him for a meeting at the Northolt safe house.

  Though Caspar had his hands full coordinating the British side of the now intensive search for Marcel Tiraque and Jo-Jo Grenot, C considered that he was the only person who could deal with the matters discussed by Dick.

  Their meeting took place at midnight, C providing Caspar with a series of photographs and making it clear that he should be absolutely one hundred percent certain that the answers he obtained were genuine.

  Caspar drove straight to the house, standing in its own grounds just up the road from the small military camp at Knook, near the garrison town of Warminster. They were expecting Caspar. Ramillies had been returned there on the previous day and, while he was taking some refreshment, the team of men and women who were still cleaning out Ramillies went to work.

  Ramillies Railton – aka Colonel Gennadi Aleksandrovich Rogov, NKVD – had changed since Caspar had last seen him. He appeared to be fitter and more at peace with himself. The interrogation team had worked hard, making Ramillies come to terms with his situation, so he now acknowledged that while there would never be a time when he was wholly safe from his former masters in the Russian Service, life could be lived with a certain amount of pleasure and comfort. Yet this happy state could be obtained only if he answered all questions put to him with clarity and honesty.

  They had reached a point which they called ‘filling in the gaps,’ which was a relaxed and easy time. So Ramillies was more than startled to find himself being wakened during the early hours of the morning to face questions. This was both unusual and unnerving, for it smacked more of the way they did things in No. 2 Dzerzhinsky Square.

  For a second, on being shaken from sleep, Ramillies thought he was actually there. He had known the place when it was Lubianka Square, and even imagined the cathedral with its single cupola – the Church of Our Lady of Grebniev. They had already been pulling down the cathedral when he had last been in Moscow. Now, as he tried to shake sleep from his head, he thought of the plans he had seen for the new square, designed by Architect Shchussev.

  They told him not to bother about shaving, but to hurry up. ‘Your brother has to talk with you,’ one of them said. Again the dark thoughts of Moscow came into his head and he found himself experiencing genuine fear. Why should Caspar invoke fear in him, like some evil wizard from a child’s fantasy?

  Caspar was drinking coffee, in the comfortable room they used for what they liked to call their ‘informal talks.’

  ‘Ram!’ Caspar rose, going to his brother and shaking his hand. He was full of apologies for waking him at this hour of the morning. ‘I fear it’s orders from on high, old son.’ He smiled warmly, offering Ramillies coffee and a cigarette.

  ‘They say you’re making great progress.’ Caspar sounded enthusiastic. ‘And, by heaven, you look well, Ram!’ It was a good fifteen minutes before he got to the point.

  ‘Look, Rammer, we have a problem. I’m going to be honest with you so that you can speak freely. I’m not trying to be tricky, but one of your old mob has got himself knocked off in the States. I have to do some checking with you.’ And he launched into an apologia in which questions were embedded like raisins in a cake. Slowly he came to the crux of things –

  ‘While you were running your man, Lightning, did you get a sudden crash instruction? I’m talking about July 1944 – six weeks or so after the D-Day landings?’

  Ramillies thought for a few moments, then said yes. ‘I was asked to pass on details of the proposed OSS landing near Orléans – the one called Romarin.’

  ‘Who asked you to do that?’

  ‘Moscow – as always.’

  ‘How would they have known?’

  Ramillies hesitated again. You could not tell if he was trying to avoid the question or really had a problem of memory. At last he said, ‘From inside the OSS. I knew there was at least one penetration agent planted there – one, maybe two.’

  ‘And you sent the message to Klaubert?’

  ‘Through our contact within the Tarot réseau, yes.’ There was no hesitation.
Ramillies had learned that giving a little meant you might hide a great deal.

  ‘So someone in the réseau would know – and Klaubert would also know?’

  ‘There was a time element – but, yes.’

  ‘You said there were, maybe, two penetration agents within the OSS. In fact, didn’t Moscow alert you to two possible agents arriving to assist Lightning at the same time as Romarin?’

  Ramillies gave a little smile. He was still sleepy and his brother had caught him out with one simple slip. ‘There were two, yes. One was long-term. There was another, but I knew nothing concrete about him.’

  ‘The message that was passed to you from Moscow…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Did they tell you the true object of the operation?’

  Ramillies nodded. ‘Yes. It was one of those foolhardy things. Suicide – they were trying to kidnap Klaubert. Presumably to discourage further SS brutality. He wasn’t the first Nazi officer your people, or the Americans, tried to lift. They even had a go at Rommel.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Now, Ram, this is very important – was the object of the Romarin operation passed on to your agent within Tarot?’

  ‘No.’ Sure and quick. ‘Moscow gave strict instructions about that. She could have known from London, of course.’

  Well, Caspar thought, that was a blessing. London had passed orders to Tarot, but not the object of Romarin. By then Klaubert would have been desperate to get out to England. If he had known the true objective of Romarin, he might have tried to let it succeed. With the knowledge that two Soviet agents were coming to help, he must have been really split three ways.

  ‘These agents – they had code names?’

  ‘I can’t quite remember if it went as far as that.’

  ‘Come on, Ram, don’t piss about. We know most of it.’

  Ramillies went around in circles for a while, dodging issues, so Caspar changed the angle of attack. ‘Okay, let’s go back even further.’ He reached into his briefcase and withdrew a number of photographs which he lined up on the table in front of Ramillies. ‘Let’s go back to the time you spent at Bykovo – the spy school.’

  ‘Yes?’ Ramillies looked blankly at the photographs.

  ‘We know that one of the men in those pictures was at Bykovo.’ Caspar was a competent liar. ‘If you recognise him as having been there in your time, just push the photo towards me. The man concerned is dead now, so it is of little consequence.’

  ‘Of so little consequence that you have to get me out of bed to confirm it?’ Ramillies gave a sly smile, then, as though playing a game, he pushed a photograph toward Caspar. ‘You win. He was there. Pavel Denisovich Rosten.’

  Caspar nodded as though he had known all the time. It was the right photograph. ‘Now, Ram, give me the rest – work names of the two agents who were to arrive with the OSS people.’

  Another long silence, then –

  ‘One was called Dumas. The other… I can’t quite…’

  ‘Try, Ram. Try. Yes, it’s important.’

  ‘Dumas and Noble.’ Quick, as though getting it off his chest in a hurry.

  ‘Did you know the identities of these people?’

  ‘No.’ Without hesitation. ‘No, only the work names.’

  ‘Were there signals?’

  Ramillies nodded. ‘I seem to recall that they had to flash the Morse letter S. Where from I’m not sure. You know what it’s like in the field, Cas, nobody tells you quite everything. I passed on the time and place of the drop, and that two of our people would be there to link up with Lightning. I gave their work names and said they would flash the letter S in Morse code. That’s all.’

  ‘Yes.’ Caspar looked happy. ‘Yes, that is all, Ram. Thank you.’

  He stayed, chatting – family talk, for Ramillies had expressed a wish to see some of the family again once they would allow him more freedom of movement. Then Caspar left, driving to London. He wanted to get Ramillies’ answers to the Chief, then get on with what he saw as the most important work – looking for Tiraque and Jo-Jo.

  Much later, when it was all done, he said to his cousin James that – in spite of the criminal horrors Klaubert had committed – he felt some sorrow for the man. ‘Fancy being split three ways,’ he said. ‘Being a noted SS officer, feared by so many; staying loyal to us, though we gave him no assistance; and being in the moral pay of the Russians.’

  James had said the Russians must have thought him a worthwhile source, even though he gave them only chicken-feed. Then he laughed. ‘There’s some irony in it, Cas. They went to a lot of trouble penetrating the OSS. Really it was rather bad luck for them to discover their two penetration agents were both involved in an attempt to kidnap a man they regarded as their source within the SS. ‘

  Caspar had laughed also. ‘Serve the buggers right,’ he said. ‘Klaubert was good to them – even with his chickenfeed. He must have had lines in everywhere: friends in high places – generals of the Wehrmacht; other SS officers; people in the Abwehr; then the Berlin connection. If only we had taken some notice.’

  Yet, as he drove back to London after the interview with Ramillies, Caspar could think only of the two men who went in, cloaked with their own duplicity, by parachute on the Romarin operation. It took exceptional courage to descend from the sky, among enemies, desperately using small flashlights to flash out the constant dot-dot-dot of the letter S while bullets meant for others flew around you. Men who would do that were, in some measure, to be admired.

  C passed the answers back to Dick in Washington, who by this time had obtained answers to other questions from California.

  The true sweating of Tertius Newton could start.

  *

  The house outside Alexandria was very plain, with only the bare necessities as far as furnishings went. There was, of course, a cellar in which the recording machines turned constantly. Every room was wired for sound.

  Newton looked fitter than when Dick had last seen him in England. He sat, with Marty, in a room which sported four comfortable chairs, a small table – bolted to the floor – and colour-washed walls in lime green. Some psychiatrist had suggested the shade was more conducive to relaxation. There were no pictures on the walls.

  ‘Well, look who we have here, Tert.’ Marty slowly got to his feet as Dick entered with one of the security guards. Fishman had driven him down, but preferred to stay outside, sitting and smoking in his car. ‘You remember Mr Richard Farthing from England, surely?’

  Newton frowned slightly, as if trying to place Dick’s face. ‘We only met for a very short time. I don’t know if you remember me, Mr Newton.’ Dick smiled and settled into one of the chairs. ‘I visited you while you were clearing up a few points after the Enquiry on Tarot and Romarin. Remember now?’

  ‘Gee, I guess I saw so many people, I – ’

  ‘I don’t want to take up too much of your time, Tertius, but we met somewhere else. Don’t you remember that either?’

  ‘Where? Where else were we supposed to have met?’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t Little Chicago, was it?’

  ‘Little Chic – What you talking about?’

  ‘The camp where you trained. Not Camp X – that was where we did meet for the first time. But you weren’t really trained there, were you, Tertius? By the time you got to Oshawa, you’d already done a long course of training elsewhere.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Newton looked nonplussed. ‘I don’t follow you, Mr – er – I didn’t get your name.’

  ‘And I didn’t get your name, Pavel. Not until yesterday. You see, we have very good sources now. I know your true name, which you probably want to forget. They taught you to forget your real name at Bykovo, didn’t they? They preferred you to think in terms of your legend – the cover they provided for you. Your legend was Tertius Newton – just as your wife’s legend was Mrs Olive Newton. You were born in San Jose. She was born just up the road in Tinsel Town itself. I could go to those places and look up your birth certificates, couldn’t I? Tert
ius Freeman Newton and Olive Wilson Carey, isn’t that right?’

  Newton sat and looked at him with cold eyes.

  ‘Sure it’s right, Tert.’ Dick allowed himself a smile. ‘Your legend was great. Except they let you down on one thing. UCLA had absolutely no record of you. You, and Mrs Newton, suddenly appeared, like characters from outer space in a science-fiction comic book. One minute you did not exist, the next there you were, the nice young married couple moving into a nice little house, in a nice residential area of San Jose. The all-American boy with his all-American wife. You came from nowhere – certainly not from UCLA – in 1940. There’s no trace of you before then, though there is a trace, if someone bothers to take a careful look. I’ve taken a very careful look. Tertius Freeman Newton died when he was only eighteen months old. Olive Wilson Carey died when she was less than a year old. But you so loved your country that you volunteered for the Service immediately after Pearl Harbor. You put quite an accent on your proficiency in languages, though I guess it was pure luck that you got invited to join the OSS – just as it was a nice piece of luck when you met up with Nat Dollhiem, who had political leanings to the left. Did it take long for you to recruit him, Comrade Rosten?’

  He turned to Marty Forman. ‘What you have there, Marty, is an “illegal” – to use the NKVD term. He and his wife were quietly infiltrated, fully grown, into the United States, sometime in 1940 or early 1941, I guess. This guy’s real name is Pavel Denisovich Rosten. He’s never been near the campus of UCLA, but he is an alumnus of a very special school – the NKVD school at Bykovo.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Marty Forman without any emotion.

  ‘Yes, he is,’ Dick snapped. He had gone through Newton’s file a hundred times and could find no suitable time in the man’s life when he could have been recruited. In the end he realised that Newton did not exist until 1940 or ’41. Ramillies had confirmed, by identifying his photograph, that Newton had trained at the so-called spy school – Bykovo.

  ‘You’ll have to fill in the other details for yourself, Marty.’ Dick Farthing dropped a buff-coloured folder onto the table. It was his personal check on Newton’s background, and an outline of his own theories concerning the recruiting of Nat Dollhiem. ‘There’s a lot of good stuff in there, Marty.’ He gestured to the file. ‘Have a nice year piecing it together.’ At the door he turned and looked back at Newton, who sat upright, his face grey. ‘Which one were you, Tertius? Dumas or Noble? My guess would be Noble.’