Friends and Traitors

by John Lawton

  The next train was for Edgware. When it pulled in, his follower slipped through the sliding doors into the nearest car without a backwards glance. Troy followed one car behind. At every stop he stepped onto the platform. Tottenham Court Road, Goodge Street, and Warren Street he deemed unlikely, far easier, even quicker, to walk; the probabilities opened up at Euston, with the possibility of a change to the main line—Mornington Crescent, Camden Town, Chalk Farm … Bel-size Park.

  At Hampstead, the man got out, stuffed the newspaper into his pocket, and joined the burgeoning, slow-moving queue for the creaking, ancient lifts that hauled you up from the deepest station in London to street level. There were three. Troy had only ever known two to be working at any one time. Surfacing at Hampstead could be an ordeal. Troy took the emergency staircase. Unless his heart gave out, there was a chance that he could get to the surface first.

  By the time his man appeared, Troy was standing on the far side of Heath Street in the darkened doorway of a closed shop, his blood roaring in his ears—he felt he must be breathing as loudly as a charging rhino. He watched the man head south, towards Church Row. He could almost believe the man was about to call on his brother, but he walked on, walked on and turned right into Perrin’s Walk, and suddenly all this began to make sense to Troy.

  There was only one thing to do.

  He stood outside the house in Perrin’s Walk and rang the bell.

  He heard footsteps on the stairs. A voice yelling, “Get that, will you.”

  Then the door opened, a familiar face appeared, a familiar jaw dropped, a familiar eye popped, and Eddie said, “Oh, bloody Norah.”

  “I’ll take that as an invitation, shall I, Eddie?”

  Eddie was speechless.

  A voice above them, “Ed?”

  Eddie closed the door behind Troy without another word. Troy went upstairs to the first-floor sitting room. His follower had shrugged off his macintosh and stood in shirtsleeves with his back to him, pouring vodka on the rocks for two. He turned.

  “Eddie, get us a third glass, would you?”

  Then he stuck out his hand.

  “Joe Holderness. I’ve heard a lot about you, Chief Superintendent Troy.”

  Troy shook the hand.

  “And I you, Flight Sergeant Holderness. Or do I call you Mr. Wilderness?”

  “Nah. The women call me that. You can call me Joe.”

  §101

  Troy could not work out whether Eddie was angry or embarrassed. He seemed to have only one shade of red to cover both emotions. He sat in silence while Wilderness told Troy a little of their time in Berlin together in the years just after the war. Nothing really surprised Troy. Eddie, after all, had given him a fragmentary narrative over the last two years in which Wilderness had figured almost as a comic book hero. However, Troy had not quite realised the extent of Eddie’s criminal pursuits. Nor had he realised that it had all ground to a halt only hours before he and Eddie had met in 1948. The next time they met had been in 1956. Eddie had been a constable in the City of Birmingham Constabulary. Troy had recruited him to the Yard, promoted him to sergeant—or as Eddie put it, “rescued me from copper’s drudgery.” However … Troy did not give a damn that Eddie had been on the wrong side of the law ten years ago. Where he was now was where he was now.

  “Eddie,” Wilderness said. “Nip and see if Judy needs anything.”

  “Such as?”

  “Anything, Ed. Anything at all.”

  Eddie seemed begrudgingly slow to recognise what Wilderness was saying, but took his by-now-watery, untouched vodka to the kitchen.

  “No point in involving him, is there?”

  “No,” said Troy. “I need him in the dark for the moment. Besides, he won’t handle divided loyalties at all well. You’re investigating me, Joe. Tell me Eddie is not part of that.”

  “He’s not. He found out less than two minutes ago.”

  “You just told him you’ve been following me? I spotted you two days ago.”

  “Well done. Five out of ten.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I’ve been following you for three weeks.”

  This shocked Troy. For a moment he had nothing to say.

  “Good God, I have fucked up. Three weeks? The Branch have been following me almost that long. I spotted them at once. Give me ten out of ten for that.”

  “They’re idiots. We both know that. I followed them, they followed you. They hadn’t a clue either of us had spotted them. They were called off on Tuesday.”

  “Called off? Why?”

  “Westcott submitted his report.”

  Wilderness paused. He was going to make Troy tease this one out.

  “And?”

  “And perhaps this is when your chickens come home to roost.”

  The same cliché Stan had used. Apt and inadequate at the same time.

  “You may be right,” Troy said. “Westcott gave me a checklist of everything Five had against me. A catalogue of my sins.”

  “People die around you, Mr. Troy. In particular, Special Branch officers seem to die or vanish … and MI6 agents resign for no apparent reason. That’s a shedful of chickens.”

  “So, he hasn’t cleared me?”

  “No. He hasn’t. And that note you left in the hollow tree on Hampstead Heath didn’t help.”

  “It was a joke. Burgess vanished just as though he’d come face-to-face with a Boojum.”

  “Was Bill Blaine the Boojum? If so, it was a very good joke, but the plods, having never read a word of Lewis Carroll, wouldn’t have a clue it was a joke, and whilst Jim probably does know what a Boojum is, he could not afford to write it off as a gag. I’d imagine it was pored over for clues for hours. You succeeded in wasting their time, you slowed down Jim making his report by a day or two, I should think.

  “Nonetheless—Boojums or not—his report went into Five on Tuesday morning. By Tuesday evening a copy was on Dick White’s desk at Six … and mine too.

  “Jim Westcott works on the principle that most of the time the man he’s interrogating, however gently he goes about it, is already compromised and feels compromised. And all Westcott has to do is puff on his Player’s Navy Cut, listen carefully, and expose the contradictions in what he’s being told. That’s how a good spycatcher works, and Jim is the best. That’s how he nabbed Klaus Fuchs. He’s adamant that you show no sense of feeling compromised. Not a hint of guilt. No self-contradiction. Whatever the circumstances, in a London club … strolling by the river like two old pals … your story and your tone never varied. You were not intimidated by the formal approach, you didn’t unbutton when he went casual on you. He even joked that he wished he’d been able to take your pulse. That way he’d know for certain you were alive. You may be the only man ever to fox Westcott. Put simply, his report says he cannot prove you are a traitor, nor can he prove you are not. It’s not damning, but it’s the kind of ambiguity that cast Philby into no-man’s-land. They can’t prosecute, but they could use it to end your career.”

  “I don’t think of it as a career. It’s a job.”

  “But it matters to you, all the same. I’ve Eddie’s word for that. It matters.”

  “It does.”

  “So …”

  “So?”

  “So, I’m going to clear you.”

  Again, Troy was shocked.

  “How, Joe? What do you know that the Branch don’t?”

  “They’re idiots … ‘scuse me, I may be repeating myself here … lazy, clock-watching, unimaginative idiots. They followed you. They did exactly what Five told them. No more, no less. Nobody thought to tell them to work shifts, so they didn’t, and there was no twenty-four watch on you. Now, every investigation requires a bit more … a bit more imagination than the orders allow for. They tailed you, they know who you met, where you took lunch, what newspaper gets shoved through your letter box each morning. I did all that too. But I also searched every house you own or even have a stake in. I’ve been through every cupboard in Go
odwin’s Court, every closet in your brother’s house in Church Row … he should get a new safe, the one he has is Victorian and far too easy to crack … and every attic, lumber room, and cellar out at Mimram. I’ve searched your ex-mistress’s clinic in Harley Street, and I’ve turned over that lunatic accountant she’s married to. I’ve upended every wastepaper basket, read every saved letter. I’ve cross-examined your bank manager. I’ve even had one or two of your narks hauled in and threatened with fictitious charges. They’re very loyal to you, by the bye. You obviously pay well. I won’t say there’s nothing I don’t know about you … I can even tell you Miss Foxx’s bra size … 34C in case you’re wondering about lingerie for Christmas … but I know enough.”

  “Enough to justify the illegal search of an MP’s house?”

  “Contain your rage, Troy. Enough … enough to clear you. Every spy leaves some trace. It’s a given. I’ve never known anyone manage to conceal everything. You have left nothing. But, there’s a deciding factor. You are not the spy I found, but there’s the spy I did find.”

  “My wife.”

  “Yep. Tosca.”

  “Eddie knew her in Berlin in ‘48. I may assume you did too?”

  “Yep. I knew Major Toskevich. She chatted me up in a bar in the American sector when I was nineteen. I’d’ve put Tosca at thirty-five or so. At first I thought I was being pulled and what nineteen-year-old wouldn’t succumb to the fantasy of the older woman? Particularly one looking like Tosca. Instead she was teaching me how to survive among the rogues. I was a rogue, but Berlin was full of bigger rogues. I made my fair share of mistakes in Berlin. I’d’ve made a lot more if I’d never met Tosca. I’ve every reason to be grateful to her. I might even say I owe her my life. If MI6 had to set anyone on your tail, then you can count yourself lucky it was me. I’d no more betray Tosca than I would Eddie.

  “What I didn’t know was that she’d defected. Eddie can keep some secrets.”

  Lucky seemed almost an understatement to Troy. He hoped deep down in his heart that Joe Wilderness meant what he said. Or they were both damned.

  “Defected?” he said. “Hardly the word. She ran for her life. In what way is Tosca the deciding factor?”

  “I’m getting to that. But, a question. Did Jim Westcott ask you about her?”

  “Once. Just once. It came up over lunch. He was in his relaxed mode. As tactical as his pro mode, but less obvious. Threw it out over the bangers and mash as a casual query. The kind of thing that didn’t require privacy or security clearance. Just brown ale and ketchup. Asked how I’d come to marry an American, which is one of her many legitimate nationalities, and the one she presented when we married in Vienna.”

  “And?”

  “I gave him the short version of the truth. It was a wartime romance. No lie there. Jim has old-fashioned manners and didn’t ask why we were separated, merely asked where she was now. By the time we got to plum duff and custard he was telling me who he favoured in the 3:30 at Sandown Park. He never asked about her again.”

  “She’s in America. I found her airmail letters.”

  “She is. And now you know as much as I do.”

  “Jim can’t know who she is. She isn’t mentioned in his report. If he had even an inkling … he’d have risked it.

  “If … big if … you were a Soviet agent … Moscow would have told you to have absolutely nothing to do with Tosca. It’s as simple as that.”

  Troy mused on this. The winning card tossed down almost as an afterthought. Too casual for words.

  Wilderness got up and refilled their glasses with vodka.

  “I acquired a taste for vodka in Berlin. Actually, I acquired it in the company of your wife. But, there’s every other tipple if you’d prefer something else.”

  «Нет, товарищ, я за водку.» No, comrade, vodka is good.

  Wilderness grinned.

  “Cheers, comrade.”

  Troy said, at last, “Two things baffle me. Why did Six feel they had to duplicate a Five investigation?”

  “Dick White was at Five when Burgess defected. He knew they’d cocked it up and didn’t want this to go the same way. Plus, however briefly, Burgess was one of ours. He worked for Six. Sometime during the war, I gather.”

  “It was the summer of 1940. He told me at the time.”

  “God, was he really that indiscreet?”

  “Oh, he was far worse than that.”

  “Two things, you said?”

  “Why have MI5 overlooked Tosca?”

  Wilderness knocked back half his vodka. Stared momentarily into the glass. Then looked Troy in the eye.

  “I don’t know. It’s unbelievably stupid. But it’s saved your bacon. Tosca was always a liability to you. It’s little short of ironic that she’s turned out to be your Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card.”

  Wilderness’s wife appeared at the kitchen door.

  “Joe. You didn’t tell me we had another guest.”

  Troy stood, realised he was still wearing his overcoat and looking at odds with Wilderness in shirtsleeves and a woman in a pinafore. He looked like what he was. A man about to leave.

  “You must be Freddie,” Judy said. “Odd we’ve never met. I often chat to your sister-in-law in the baker’s or the greengrocer’s. Now … I’ve got Swift Eddie knocking up toad-in-the-hole. Can I persuade you to join us?”

  She turned her gaze to her husband. Troy gently shook his head.

  “Freddie already has a Friday night date, Judy. Single man, after all.”

  “Ah, well. Perhaps some other time. So pleased to meet you at last.”

  When she’d gone, and they could hear the banging of pans in the kitchen, Troy said, “I don’t think we should get to know one another too well, do you?”

  Wilderness shrugged, “I’d’ve gone for it. But … you could be right. I can’t read Eddie at the moment. So …”

  The sentence led nowhere.

  “I was thinking more of Tosca,” Troy said. “I doubt whether I’ve seen the last of her. And who knows how often I’ll have to play that Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card. You may find yourself investigating me again. Be far easier for both of us the less we know one another.”

  “Yeah. May be. It’s a pity, all the same.”

  §102

  It was eight-ish by the time Troy got home to Goodwin’s Court. Foxx had her nose in a book, her blue-jeaned legs tucked beneath her backside, the pink tips of her socks just visible.

  Troy tilted the book so as to see its title:

  Venetia: A Regency Romance by Georgette Heyer

  A woman on the cover—heart-shaped face, improbably slender, in a pink dress that matched Foxx’s socks. Things could be worse. She might ask him to get a television set.

  “Troy, you’re sneering. Stop it!”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are. I can hear you. Your inner sneer is nagging at you even as you tell me lies.”

  “Force of habit. My education ruined me.”

  “Liar. You mean mine ruined me, don’t you?”

  Troy shrugged off his coat, flopped down next to her.

  “Is it interesting?”

  Foxx said nothing, gathered herself with a squirm.

  “OK. Then give me the gist of the plot.”

  Foxx flipped open the dust cover, as though refreshing her memory from the publisher’s blurb.

  “Well, Venetia’s an orphan …”

  “Score one.”

  “Shut up! Venetia’s an orphan … well, she thinks she’s an orphan … lives on an estate in Yorkshire … and she falls for Lord Jasper, the wicked baron who lives next door …”

  Troy aimed for a blank expression—blank even if the muscles in his cheeks turned to agony suppressing a grin.

  Foxx suddenly slammed the book shut.

  “Oh God. What am I saying? It’s utter fucking tosh, isn’t it?”

  She stood up sharply, threw the book at his groin, and stomped kitchenward.

  “I’ll coo
k. Cooking and fucking. The only things I’m good for. You utter fucking bastard!”

  Troy let the book fall to the floor. Lay back against the sofa. His inner sneer gave way to something fatter and fluffier and several degrees warmer. A voice that said, “It’s over.”

  §103

  At dinner he opened a bottle of the “good stuff,” as he and Rod always called the thousands of bottles they had inherited from their father. A Pouilly-Fumé that might well have been a little past its best. All the same, Foxx glugged it as though it were Tizer, and her mood audibly relaxed.

  “Bastard,” she said, and blew him a kiss across the cod-and-mash pie.

  “Guilty as charged.”

  “If I say tell me about your day, will it be as dull as mine? … starting a book I’ll never finish … or did you achieve something?”

  “Yes. I think I did. It’s over.”

  “Over?”

  “The Branch are off my back. No one is any the wiser about Tosca, and the Burgess affair is safely contained. As the Prime Minister might well put it … a little local difficulty. I can report back to the Yard on Monday and play the honest copper.”

  “Well,” she said. “We all kid ourselves about something.”

  “Ouch.”

  “No … no, Troy. I wasn’t saying you’re bent … different, not bent … I meant, well … usually things are only over when you’ve cracked them wide open. It’s over when you say it’s over.”

  “This is different. This is very different. Burgess is not my problem. Blaine is not my problem. As I told Rod, if Blaine had been gunned down in the streets of London it would be another matter entirely. But he wasn’t.”

  “You can walk away from this?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wish I could believe you.”

  “Just watch me. I’m going to kick off my shoes in about ten minutes and with them the metaphorical dust of Vienna. I shall put up socked feet, stick Schubert on the gramophone. Blow the cobwebs off a Balzac novel I’ve been halfway through since August. In an hour or so I may even help myself to the old man’s Armagnac. Listen to the late news on the Home Service. Then I may undress you, tumble you into bed and ravish you so fiercely you might think I had been rechristened Sir Jasper. Tomorrow I shall sleep in, spread the morning papers across the eiderdown, read snippets of the new nonsense aloud to you … a demarcation dispute in Scunthorpe between the Guild of Putters-On and the Amalgamated Union of Knockers-Off, an advert for washing machines at a guinea down and five bob a week for infinity, a life peerage for Fred Fatarse, the supermarket magnate, the life and loves of the newest, tuneless teen pop idol, Randy Racket … while I watch you dress, then have all the pleasure watching you undress again at my immediate behest and Sir Jasper you once more. In short, I shall spend a blissfully spook-free weekend with Franz Schubert, Honoré de Balzac, the Manchester Guardian, and the girl of my dreams.”