The Secret Houses

by John Gardner

  ‘Does it matter? No… Yes… Yes, I do know. It was one of those trips to Berlin. I think one of the times he went over into the East even. He had sources everywhere.’ Suddenly she stopped, her mouth opening. ‘You’re not going to do anything to Marcel, are you? I mean, he really has done everyone a service.’

  Naldo said he did not know what would happen. ‘Depends on the Americans.’ He inclined his head toward Arnie, who said he did not think any harm would come to Marcel. In his head and heart he considered Tiraque should be flayed, boiled in oil, hung, drawn and quartered. Nothing should be made easy for him – especially death.

  Naldo urged her on. ‘So Marcel came back from one of his jaunts to the Eastern Zone and told you Buelow was working for the Americans?’

  ‘In Washington, yes. He asked which one of us would like to deal with him.’

  ‘And you offered?’

  ‘Of course. He’d been there, in the Rue de Bourgogne, during the atrocities – the Tarot killings. Of course I offered.’

  ‘And Marcel provided the weapon?’

  ‘Yes. He had it in his case…’ Her speech slowed down as though something had occurred to her. ‘When he came back. He explained the whole thing to me in Paris. Showed me how to fire it. Exactly how to get the vaporized cyanide right into his face. How to take the antidote pill just before using it. Oh, Marcel taught us so much. He taught us to drive, sail – ’

  Naldo added. ‘And did you all go on this jaunt to Washington?’

  ‘No, not that time. No, we didn’t. Just Marcel and myself. I remember, we used the same name as we did after Arnie visited the Rue de Rivoli. We were Monsieur and Madame Jourdain. Marcel thought it amusing because Jourdain is a character in Molière’s play Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.’

  ‘What did you do after Arnie dropped in unannounced at the Rue de Rivoli apartment?’

  She gave him a knowing smile, which he found disturbing. ‘We moved to a hotel of course. The Jourdains and the husband’s unmarried sister. It was so easy, though I didn’t think it necessary.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, he had never seen Jo-Jo. Why should he think anything of it? You couldn’t find Klaubert, so why should you be alerted by Jo-Jo? I didn’t think Arnold could have recognised her.’

  ‘Marcel was right though.’ Arnold gave an unrealistic laugh, knowing that he was trying too hard. Attempting to appear relaxed when he was taut as a bowstring.

  ‘Oh, yes. He insisted. We even had the furniture removed and placed in storage. He was wonderful at hiding in the open – where everyone looked for him.’

  ‘So the Jourdains went to Washington?’

  ‘Yes, and it poured with rain. Poor Marcel, he got soaking wet that night. He hired a car and it broke down.’

  ‘Was that while you were – ’

  ‘Taking the first revenge? Yes.’ She looked solemn. ‘It was not as pleasant as I expected. Only later I realised. I’d simply got rid of vermin.’ She frowned. ‘It was horrible for Jo-Jo. She was sick and had nightmares for days after Dollhiem. She had the more difficult one – a gun.’

  ‘Why was Dollhiem necessary?’

  ‘Marcel found out from one of his contacts that Dollhiem was a Russian agent. He felt we might be compromised, and he knew the Pudding – that’s what we called Dollhiem – had managed to get settled back in the United States. He was obviously spying for the Russians. He also knew far too much about us.’

  Naldo lit a cigarette. ‘Caro, this information. He didn’t get it on one of those trips to Berlin, did he?’

  She looked surprised. ‘Yes. Yes, of course he did. Marcel had contacts within the Russian Sector. That’s where he got it from.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And Klaubert?’

  ‘I told you. Marcel knew you were searching for Klaubert – no, that’s not true. He said that if we kept an eye on you – on Caspar, and you, Naldo – you would probably lead us to Klaubert. I don’t know what his reasoning was. He was right, though. We watched you a lot in London – ’

  ‘When you weren’t taking trips to kill people in Washington. What about Newton?’

  ‘Newton?’ She looked amazed. ‘The American who we brought in after that ghastly night – the parachute business? What was it called? Romarin?’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘Well, what about him?’

  ‘You had nothing to do with his death?’

  ‘He’s dead? No. I had no idea.’

  Did Naldo see a small cloud of doubt form at that moment in Caroline’s eyes? He was never quite certain.

  There was something else of more immediate relevance which suddenly tied itself into Naldo’s head. He heard C’s voice – it seemed years ago – saying that his secret operation Symphony might have a bearing on two matters of great importance in the here and now – the question of preserving the secrets of the atom bomb and delving into Soviet forward planning.

  Suddenly he wondered about Newton and the role he could have played as a sacrificial victim. He had been insinuated into a position of trust within the Atomic Energy Commission. As a chief security expert, he could be an agent nonpareil. Why then had he been removed by his own people? By now Naldo was completely convinced that Tiraque had manipulated Caroline and Jo-Jo for the Soviets – that Tiraque was certainly working both sides of the street throughout the entire war, and possibly even before that. Whatever the immediate answer, there could be but one conclusion.

  Naldo put it to Caspar later: ‘If the Soviet Service, the NKVD, were prepared, or even forced, to take out Newton, it meant they already had someone else. Another traitor possibly even better-placed to glean secrets from within.’ It nagged at all minds for years to come, despite the trapping of scientists like Fuchs and Pontecorvo. It hung around all those entrusted as guardians of things secret – even after the sensational revelations of the 1950s, the ’60s and ’70s, when names like Burgess, Maclean, Philby, and Blunt became household words synonymous with betrayal.

  Meanwhile, Caroline chattered on for some time, talking of the places where they had hidden, the names adopted and, most of all, the revenge they had extracted. Klaubert at the end. Buelow and Dollhiem in the middle. Of Newton she knew nothing at all. The whole time – the experience – had been a gigantic game for her. The deaths were incidental. Deaths that were required, like passing Go in a game of Monopoly.

  They played the recordings back to Caspar. Neither of them wanted Dick to hear. After that they spent three days with Jo-Jo, who told a similar story and seemed to take the same view as Caroline.

  Caspar, and the recordings again.

  ‘Yes.’ Caspar was obviously moved and sad. ‘I’ll hit Tiraque with that, and the other stuff, tomorrow.’

  Oddly, both Naldo and Arnie did not think to inquire about ‘the other stuff.’ Only later did Caspar tell them.

  In the New York hotel – to which Caroline had led them, by whispering its name to Dick – they had opened up a heavy briefcase. Inside were passport blanks: British, French, American, plus stamps and photographs. There were also documents of identity, cards, bank drafts, passes.

  Samples had gone straight back to London; others were given to the Agency for examination. In the time Naldo and Arnie had been questioning Caroline, London had discovered the source. The passport blanks were all from a batch identified as having a Soviet origin.

  Caspar moved in on Tiraque the next morning. In a calm and almost judicial manner he told Tiraque all he knew, and a great deal he suspected – but he told that as fact. ‘You worked with Thunder as surely as you worked with me,’ he said toward the end. ‘No wonder you were able to carry out jobs so convincingly. Did you assist in the servicing of Lightning? Did they discover, right after it was over, that Lightning – Klaubert – was working a three-way switch? Did you realise, Tiraque, that Buelow had been married to a Railton, or did they just order the job because poor old Otto was helping us? Why Dollhiem and Newton? Just orders because we were closing in on them and Moscow thought they would b
reak? Or was it something more devious? Did you get rid of Newton to blind us? To make us think you’d lost your one highly placed man who was close to the most heady secrets of all – the A Bomb, and whatever else we concoct from the scientists’ recipes?’

  Tiraque merely smiled. Then he shrugged. ‘You appear to have all the questions and most of the answers. Yes, Dollhiem discovered the truth about Klaubert right at the end – on the day Klaubert left Orléans. Colonel Rogov ordered a complete liquidation. Everyone. He said that a single bad apple could contaminate others. That’s how it was. Surely you understand? It was business.’

  ‘You bastard,’ Caspar concluded, his voice now betraying a little of the anger he felt. ‘To seduce those two girls – I don’t mean sexually seduce – and make the whole thing into a terrible game. And you let them do some of the dirty work. Caroline for Otto, and Jo-Jo for Dollhiem. No wonder your people are such great deception artists, Tiraque. You offer the masses gold and heaven on this earth. Then you give them copper, corruption, control by the State, restriction, and death. You’ll hang for this one, Tiraque. We’ll get you. Even on circumstantial evidence. Or I might even manage to persuade my brother to testify. You worked under him long enough, I’m sure. Did you know we had him – Thunder? Colonel Gennadi Aleksandrovich Rogov? My brother, Ramillies?’

  Again, Tiraque merely gave his enigmatic smile. He would never give them the opportunity to hang, or burn him in the electric chair.

  Somehow, in an ultimate act of deviousness, he had managed to hide a cyanide capsule on his body, or in it – a hollow tooth was the favorite theory.

  The baby-sitters found him in his bed the next morning. He had been dead for several hours.

  Chapter Forty-two

  There were still problems. How to deal with Caroline and Jo-Jo was an urgent matter. One of the Agency psychiatrists – fully briefed on the business – after hearing the recordings and talking to them was convinced that near the end of it all, maybe at Klaubert’s very death, Caroline knew everything.

  Now she merely suppressed the truth. Why else would she have given the address of the New York hotel to her father? he argued. Rest, care, and watchfulness were required. Both women might know, deep down, how they had been used – seduced by an expert Soviet dissembler who had managed to remain hidden from the British Secret Intelligence Service for so long and had doubled through the entire war.

  In the end all the arguments failed. During the following summer, Caroline and Jo-Jo faced a military court, made up from the American and British Judge Advocate General’s departments and peppered with legal people drawn mainly from the wartime secret organisations.

  The prosecution asked for the death penalty for both girls. They were charged with treason, murder, and – in Caroline’s case – giving aid to the enemy.

  Only by the brilliant pleading of an astute ex-MI5 officer retained by Dick Railton Farthing did they get off with terms of imprisonment: twenty years for Jo-Jo; twenty-five for Caroline. They served fifteen and seventeen years, respectively, in a special stockade close to a military base near Bangor, Maine.

  The business did not even make the newspapers, and when they finally returned to Redhill Manor it was to a changed world. Life had altered and both women were utterly broken.

  In the present – winter 1947 – the British contingent returned to England for the Christmas wedding of Naldo and Barbara.

  But before that day, Caspar travelled to Warminster. Ramillies was nervous and jumpy, he thought. Edgy, with his eyes constantly moving as though seeing threats in every passing shadow. The doctors put it down to the stress of his continuing, and demanding, interrogation. Caspar accepted their diagnosis, yet still felt unease.

  ‘Why didn’t you give us Tiraque?’ Caspar’s tone spoke of fatigue rather than anger.

  Ramillies looked at him with blank eyes. Then, after a moment’s pause, he turned away. He had cooperated, he said, to save his own neck. ‘The traitor and the betrayed are not always the same people.’ His voice also sounded tired. ‘We’ve all said it before, Cas. It depends where you’re standing – like witnesses of an accident or even a bank robbery.’ He repeated that they had spoken of it at other times. ‘When I was taken into the Russian Service I was a traitor to you; the country of my birth was betrayed. I’ve cooperated with you, and so become a traitor to the Party and the State. I have betrayed my faith. Understand, Cas, that I’ve only given you what I thought could be safely lost. You asked for no other names, so I did not betray Tiraque, who had worked for me and others in the NKVD since the mid-1930s. Tiraque was a magician – a great manipulator. I had plans for him.’

  He was quiet for a while, then he gave a sigh. ‘You have Tiraque then?’

  Caspar nodded. ‘Yes – and the girls.’ He was not going to give away Tiraque’s last act. ‘The girls are shaken, and I think emotionally and mentally bruised.’

  Ramillies gave a bitter little laugh. ‘I, of all people, understand that.’

  Before he left Warminster, Caspar told his errant brother of Naldo’s forthcoming marriage. ‘Christmas weddings seem to be a tradition in our family.’

  ‘I wish…’ Ramillies opened his mouth, like a fish, as though it was difficult for him to complete the sentence. ‘I wish… that I could be allowed one more visit to Redhill. Just one Christmas. A few days to look at the family again. To see the house, gaze up at the Berkshire Downs.’

  Caspar merely nodded and left.

  *

  The Railtons were an arrogant family. Always, when a male married, they tried to talk the bride’s parents into getting permission for the ceremony to take place in Haversage. Most Railtons had been married from Redhill, driving down into the town and filling the church of SS Peter & Paul. In Haversage they were treated like royalty – after all, they owned almost the whole town.

  On this occasion, however, it was not to be. The Burvilles were also high-minded and arrogant. Barbara, Colonel Burville decreed, would be married at their own church in the little Surrey village of Rowledge, near Farnham.

  So it was, with every Railton present, together with numerous Farthings from the United States. Everyone thought it fitting that Naldo should choose Arnie as his best man, and they looked with inquisitive interest on Arnie’s own future bride, Gloria Van Gent, whose clothes were the envy of many women present. ‘She’s certainly a gilded glory,’ Sara laughed. ‘Our Gloria’ll make some of us ladies pull our stockings up.’

  The new Mr and Mrs Railton arrived at Redhill Manor on Christmas Eve, having spent the first night of their marriage at a small hotel not far away.

  Throughout the holiday, the couple remained quite unembarrassed at spending their honeymoon in the presence of a great phalanx of Railtons and Farthings. It was a cheerful holiday, kept in the traditional Redhill manner, even with the cloud of anxiety which hung over them regarding what would eventually happen to Jo-Jo and Caroline.

  On the morning of Boxing Day, when the trees and bushes around the Manor were heavy and white with frost, Caspar was summoned to the telephone. The call was urgent, and from Warminster.

  He made his apologies and left, after a hurried discussion with Dick, and his cousin James.

  Along the main roads, as he drew near to the SIS house, Caspar came across police roadblocks. Closing the door after the horse had gone, he thought.

  The Duty Officer told him in a simple manner, looking serious, for he knew his job and pension were now on the line. Yes, there had been a relaxing of vigilance over the holiday. It was natural, and Ramillies seemed perfectly at ease. ‘We knew him too well,’ the DO said. ‘Knew he wouldn’t try anything silly. He felt safe here – one of the family, you might say.’

  ‘Not tense?’ Caspar asked sharply.

  ‘He’s had moments of tension,’ the DO acknowledged. The interrogators’ reports were there for all to see. ‘Last night, though, he was the life and soul of the party. In fact, I think we almost forgot what his true situation was.’ In those few words
the DO had told the truth, and knew that in telling it he might have damned his own future. Caspar said it was quite natural. If Ramillies had been allowed to take part in the festivities, then it was easy for the staff to be blinded.

  The details were straightforward. They all thought Ramillies was probably a little drunk. Two of the baby-sitters who guarded him personally – like permanent warders in a death cell – had seen him to his room. ‘He was happy enough.’ One of them looked embarrassed. ‘He wanted to kiss Jim good night.’ He chuckled in spite of the gravity of the situation. ‘Jim got huffy about it in the end, and Rogov apologised.’ At Warminster they had always called him by his Russian name. ‘It ended without anything untoward,’ the guard said, betraying his police background by his choice of words.

  At five o’clock in the morning one of the guards patrolling the perimeter of the grounds noticed a gap in the hedge, and saw the wire had been cut. ‘They had neutralised the alarm. It’s easy enough with a battery and a couple of crocodile clips,’ the Duty Officer said. ‘We have drawn attention to it before now. That section has always been insecure.’

  The guard had alerted the main house. Ramillies was not in his room, but there were signs of a struggle – a table overturned and a lamp, still burning, lying on the floor.

  Down the road, at the small military camp of Knook, the young soldier on guard duty that night had seen a car slow down and take the Warminster road. It had happened at around three-thirty in the morning. No, he couldn’t give them the make of car – ‘It was big. Four doors. I didn’t think to take the number plate. There was all this carry on in the back, though. I thought it was a lark. Blokes pretending to wrestle – skylarking in the back.’

  On the following day a car was found – an old Wolseley that had been missing from outside its owner’s house in Warminster. The police went over it for fingerprints. There were none. They did find a small patch of freshly dried blood on the back seat, and other drops on the door. The area around the car yielded more blood spots, preserved in the frost, together with the tracks of a second car.