by Philip Kerr
“It was three or four years ago when he and Markus Wolf went to Moscow. The two Englishmen were already under suspicion. Moscow thought they’d been allowed to escape to Russia and that, in return for allowing Burgess and Maclean back in to England at some time in the future, the British planned to use them to supply all sorts of disinformation to the Soviets. Stalin even considered having them both liquidated just to be on the safe side, or sent to some far-flung corner of Siberia where they could do no harm. Gratitude was never Uncle Joe’s strong suit. Anyway, kinder, wiser counsels in the GKO prevailed and they remain alive and almost at large. But consequently neither of them has ever been given much more than a nominal role in the KGB or GRU. Markus, however—he showed the GKO that Burgess and Maclean were still an important and valuable intelligence resource, and that the British continued to be just as afraid of them as perhaps the Russians were. He showed them how that fear could be turned into paranoia and exploited to our advantage.
“The tape recording was made at the main studio of Moscow Radio. It was quite a production. Sound effects, everything. Maclean made one or two tapes, I think, but it was Guy Burgess who revealed that he had a real talent for the microphone. Of course, having been a radio producer with the BBC may have made it easy for him, especially with the help of a bottle of good whiskey. And it was Burgess who had the idea of the tapes being designed for submission to the BBC. According to him, there were lots of lefties at the BBC who thought the same way as he did—especially in Berlin. One or two of them are even on the Stasi payroll.”
“You’re saying that there are BBC employees in Berlin who are the agents of the Abteilung?” This was the man with the irregular teeth speaking now; while he spoke he nervously adjusted the cuff links on his shirt. Meanwhile Anne gave a loud sigh and reached for her handbag, from which she took out a packet of cigarettes and then lit one impatiently.
“That’s right,” I said. “Guy Burgess told Wolf that if ever they’d had the same opportunity as he’d had—to spy, that is—they’d have done exactly the same as he did.”
“So why did they choose Roger Hollis to target and not someone else? Someone in MI6 perhaps.”
“As a matter of fact, in the beginning the KGB weren’t convinced that Roger Hollis was the right man to go after. But Wolf convinced them that it was the apparent ordinariness of Hollis that made him so effective in counterintelligence; that and the fact that as number two in MI5 he was also Wolf’s principal opponent, so to speak. Wolf liked things like this. It appealed to his sense of spying as a game of chess, I think. The whole thing was a bit of a game, really. To have some fun embarrassing the British secret service. Also, Guy Burgess really had met Hollis in Paris in nineteen thirty-seven, although purely by chance. Anyway, that was to be the key to the whole operation. Of course, Hollis never was approached by anyone from the GRU. He was quite beneath the radar, having no foreign languages nor any interest in socialism, and not even having been to university. Later on, when Guy Burgess saw that Hollis had joined MI5 and risen quickly through the ranks, he came to regard Hollis with a new respect and to believe that his complete lack of ego made him probably the most effective man in the whole of British counterintelligence. That was also the opinion of Major General Markus Wolf. According to General Wolf, it was Hollis being so unremarkable that made him so remarkable. You see, Wolf believes that spies are like works of art that have been painted by master forgers. It’s usually the smallest things that give them away, but only to another expert. A careless brushstroke here, an initial letter on a signature improperly formed, a dealer’s number incorrectly sequenced on the back of a picture frame. You had to treat Hollis in the same way and imagine some art expert looking at the man’s life as if he were investigating a priceless work of art. Which meant finding some tiny bogus detail that most ordinary people would overlook—something so small that someone else might very well miss it—and inserting it into the man’s whole historical narrative, retrospectively. Like using cobalt blue instead of Prussian blue, he said. And it was clever to have Burgess snobbishly dismiss the man he’d met in Paris as a no-account little tobacco salesman.”
“But why involve Somerset Maugham in this whole scheme?” asked the monk.
His tone was completely neutral and gave me no clue as to whether I was on the right track or not. Like one who was trying to focus on what was true and what was not, I took a long pull on my cigarette, narrowed my eyes, and stared into some amorphous, intellectual space above Anne’s brunette head where deep thoughts and ideas were floating around in her cigarette smoke.
“Again that was Wolf’s idea. He decided to use Maugham because Maugham was rich and, in spite of his age, perceived to be extremely well connected, albeit historically, to the British secret services. Many of the men who worked with him in Russia were still involved with the service. He was the soft underbelly into MI6 and, of course, easily compromised because of his homosexuality. Wolf spent a long time looking for that photograph of Maugham and Burgess, which Guy Burgess had told him about. Yes, I forgot to mention: Wolf spent several weeks talking to Burgess at the Hotel Metropol in Moscow, noting hundreds of details like that. And as soon as he found the photograph, the plan went into action. By then I was living down here and working at the Grand Hôtel, where a number of French ministers are fond of taking their holidays and mistresses. Anne’s wrong about the minister, however. Operation Othello was always accorded a much greater operational importance than entrapping one French minister of defense. Almost the minute Wolf had the photograph in his possession we knew we were finally in business. The photograph was perceived to be the best way for me to secure the old man’s trust and confidence. And the whole scheme would have worked, too, but for the girl’s crisis of conscience. I told Wolf we should have used a native German, someone with family still in East Germany whom we could have pressured if she’d even thought of defecting. That’s how the Stasi works, see? You don’t ever have a choice. You work for them or something bad happens to someone you care for. They lose their job, or worse, they get sent to a camp. Or in my case, they threaten not just to keep you in a camp, but to put you on hard labor. At the camp I was in at Johanngeorgenstadt, they put me onto a detail mining pitchblende rock, for their uranium enrichment program. I’d have been dead within a few weeks of that if I hadn’t agreed to join the Stasi. But Wolf was convinced that Anne’s background as a writer made her perfect for his plan. Frankly, I think he was sleeping with her.”
“Nonsense,” said Anne. “You bloody liar. That’s just not true.”
“Isn’t it? You seem to have slept with almost everyone else—me, Harold Hennig, an American millionaire at the hotel, your gardener, and for all I know that French minister. If I’d suspected the bar had been set so low, I would have avoided your bed and kept things between us entirely professional.”
I turned back to address the monk. “But as it is, I fell for her even though I always suspected she was ideologically unsound. Perhaps because she was ideologically unsound. I don’t know. And not that it really matters now. We’re all for the high jump, I expect. Even you, Anne. I can’t imagine what kind of deal you think you’ve cut with them, but you’re quite deluded if you think you’re just going to walk away scot-free from this room. That there aren’t going to be any consequences for you back in London.”
“Never mind that now,” said the monk. “Tell us about Harold Hennig.”
I was enjoying myself now and plowed on. I was sure that if my story had sounded completely implausible to anyone except Anne, by now they’d have silenced me the way they’d already silenced Harold Hennig.
“Harold Hennig I’ve known since before the war, when I was working as a policeman at the Police Praesidium on Alexanderplatz and he was working for the Gestapo in Berlin. He was attached to the Queer Squad. He had a very profitable sideline in blackmail even then. The master blackmailer, we used to call him on the police force. I mean, what better
cover for a blackmailer than being a policeman? It was Hennig who was behind the scheme to blackmail General von Fritsch into resigning from the Wehrmacht in nineteen thirty-eight. That was on Hitler’s orders. And no one understood blackmail better than Adolf Hitler. I was the one who brought Hennig into the Stasi in the first place. That was one of my major functions in the beginning; to track down men from the RSHA and cajole or pressure them into working for the Stasi. Anne is quite right, again: Half of the Stasi has some sort of background in the old Reich Main Security Office. Most of us cut our teeth in the RSHA. That’s what younger ideologues like her can never understand. That the dictatorship of the proletariat requires the working class to be even more ruthless in the administration of that dictatorship than the Fascists. No one is forbidden to join the organs of the state merely by virtue of their former political allegiance. Men were Nazis. Men are reeducated in socialism. I was. Anne was wrong that I told her that I thought this was funny. My English always lets me down when I try to make a joke. Just ask my employers at the hotel.”
Anne was still shaking her head. If she’d had a gun she’d probably have shot me.
“You’d thought it all out, hadn’t you?” said the monk. “This scheme to sell us the idea that Hollis was a mole.”
“No,” I said loudly. “Wolf hated that word. Moles make molehills, he said. There is no subtlety in that. What Englishman doesn’t notice molehills on his beautiful lawn? Wolf preferred to think of this as his cryptic egg scheme, which is something that kuckucks do. I’m sorry, cuckoos. A cuckoo is a brood parasite. It lays an egg that’s just like all the rest in the host bird’s nest, to persuade it to bring up the cuckoo chick as its own. Wolf’s idea was that you could equally be persuaded that you had been bringing up a cuckoo chick all along.” I shrugged. “Well, now you know the truth. Hollis was your egg, not ours.”
“If what you say is true,” said the monk, “then perhaps you know of other cryptic eggs in our service.”
I lit my second cigarette with the butt of the first, which I stubbed out in a glass ashtray the monk had shoved in my direction. On purpose I didn’t put it out very well and, to his irritation, the cigarette butt continued to smoke for several more minutes.
“The HVA is a new service,” I said evasively. “It takes time to lay an egg like Hollis. So far, only the GRU and the KGB have had the opportunity to do this. I daresay Wolf is recruiting people in your service as we speak. But they won’t hatch for a while.”
“How about Russian eggs,” said the monk. “Perhaps you heard a mention of someone’s name when you were last at Karlshorst.”
I thought quickly, recalling the names of the two men I’d overheard Sinclair and Reilly mention while I’d been eavesdropping on their conversation on top of Maugham’s roof, and wondering if the old man had told them about that. Perhaps not if he really had suffered a minor stroke. This was the moment I’d been hoping might come along—when the British, already paranoid about Soviet agents in their service, would ask me for names. But I had to play things carefully now. If I was too reluctant to give them any names, they might decide I knew nothing; but if I was too eager, they’d assume I was making it up.
“Perhaps,” I said carefully.
“Maybe you’d care to share a name with us now.”
“In return for what?”
“We could make a deal.”
“What kind of a deal?”
“The kind of immunity deal that gives you back your liberty, perhaps.”
“How do I know I can trust you to keep your word about something like that?”
“You don’t. But we’re holding all the cards here. Quite frankly, Gunther, I think your only chance is to come clean with us and hope for the best.” He paused. “The way I see it, you’ve got nothing to lose. You’re burned. Finished. Useless to the Stasi now. We might easily let you go on the basis that you probably won’t last five minutes when they find out you’ve told us everything. Of course, you might survive. Stranger things have happened.”
“Yes, that might work, I suppose.” I nodded thoughtfully. “There is a name I can give you. Two names, actually. For a while they were the two most important Soviet agents in MI6. The question is, which of us is prepared to share them with you now? To some extent I’ll only be confirming what you know since one of them is already in the public domain. But the other should prove I’m telling the truth, all right. Although once I’ve given you these names, I’ll have effectively told you what this operation was really about. That this whole operation was set up by the HVA not only to blacken the name of Roger Hollis but more importantly, to salvage the reputation of someone else. Someone even more important, perhaps. Someone who might yet still make a comeback as the KGB’s top man in MI6. Someone who was always a better spy than Roger Hollis.”
“I’ve already explained what this is about,” insisted Anne. “What are you talking about, Gunther? This is complete fantasy.”
“Herr Gunther, we both know you don’t really have a choice here,” insisted the monk. “I’m sure you know the difficulty you are in. The difficulty we are both in. There is no legal process available to you, or for that matter to us. Then again, we can hardly let you go, can we? Unless and until we’re convinced that you’ve told us everything, I’m afraid I can’t answer for the consequences. Some of my more muscular colleagues favor taking you out to sea and dropping you over the side with a weight around your ankles. Ever since the defections of Messrs. Burgess and Maclean, morale has been low in our service. I’m afraid that killing you and Herr Hennig would help to restore a sense that the balance has been redressed. I sincerely hope it doesn’t come to that. For your own sake I urge you to cooperate fully.”
“All right,” I said. “But I have to say there’s something I don’t understand.”
“What’s that?” asked the monk.
“Why hasn’t she told you this? I don’t understand you, Anne. Why are you trying to protect him? It’s all over for me and you and Hennig. The best we can hope for is to try and cut some deal before they throw us all in jail.”
“This is fantasy,” Anne told the monk again. “Look, I’ve told you everything there is to know. The whole bloody operation. I’m not holding anything back. But for me, the deputy director of MI5 would probably be suspended pending an investigation. Wouldn’t he? It’s only because of me that you know anything at all. But for me, you’d be in the dark about all this.”
No one spoke. Anne looked furtive now, even a little desperate. The trouble was that everyone believed her lie, which meant she could hardly contradict mine without compromising her own.
“Why on earth would I hold something back now?” she said. “It makes absolutely no sense. He’s making this up to try and make me look bad in your eyes and to save his own skin. That much is obvious.”
“Anne French is telling you she doesn’t know this man’s name,” I said. “But I have to tell you now that she and I have had more than one lengthy conversation about him. While we were in bed. So I’m afraid she’s lying when she tells you she doesn’t know what I’m talking about.”
“What? That’s a load of crap,” said Anne.
“Is it?” I asked smugly. “Look, the last time I saw her I had absolutely no sense that she was experiencing any crisis of conscience about her actions. None at all. She was cool and very collected. If I’d had even half an idea that she was going to betray Hennig and me I’d have put a bullet in her head without a moment’s hesitation.” I frowned and wagged a finger in her direction. “When last I met with Anne French all of her questions were about Sir John Sinclair and MI6, not MI5. Was it possible that proving that Roger Hollis was a Russian spy would help to put our man in the clear again? That kind of thing.”
“Tell me you’re not going to believe any of this Fascist bastard’s nonsense,” said Anne.
“I don’t know,” confessed the monk. “Really I don’
t. It’s a most intriguing picture you paint, Herr Gunther. It is as if you really do have the names of two men who have spied for the Soviet Union in MI6. Do you? I wonder.”
“Look,” said Anne, “it’s perfectly obvious he’s just going to give you the name of Sir John Sinclair or Patrick Reilly. Or that other queer who was at the hotel. The art curator. Blunt. He’s bluffing you, like this was a game of bridge. There is no Soviet agent in MI6, I tell you. At least none that we know of.”
“Look, we all know that there’s an easy way to prove who’s telling the truth here,” I said. “We should both agree to write down two names at the same time. Then you can decide for yourself what her real intentions are here, gentlemen. To help, or to hinder. If these names are not under some suspicion in the British secret service, then I’ll be the one facing a midnight boat trip, not her. I’ve already put up my hands to everything of which I’ve been accused. So, I’ve nothing at all to lose, have I? Can this beautiful lady honestly say the same?”
The monk handed me a pencil and a sheet of paper. “Very well,” he said. “I’m going to do what she’s been urging me to do for several minutes. To call your bluff. Write it down, Gunther. Write down the names. But woe betide you if you’re wrong, my German friend.”
“With pleasure.”
I tore the sheet of paper in half, wrote the name JOHN CAIRNCROSS, and handed it to the monk.
“This first man has already confessed to being a Soviet spy,” I said. “However, his name is not yet known outside of MI6. So I couldn’t possibly have known about him unless someone in the HVA had told me. Agreed?”
