Secret Kingdom

by Francis Bennett

  Martineau pours the coffee. If Carswell’s disillusion is anything to go by, then London’s in a mess. No point in probing deeper now. This isn’t a time for questions like that. Remember, he tells himself, someone in London called you a traitor. You’re not off the hook yet.

  ‘What’s going on here, Bobby? Is the place going to blow up?’

  ‘Bound to, yes.’

  ‘The Hungarians will take to the streets, even though they know they can’t win?’

  ‘They’re prepared to die for what they believe in. These are brave people, Nigel, driven to the end of what they can tolerate.’

  ‘It’ll be carnage.’ Carswell appears shocked by the prospect.

  ‘It’ll be harshly suppressed by the Soviets and there’ll be a lot of blood on the streets. No question.’

  ‘Is that inevitable?’

  ‘Unless we stop all this dreaming about traitors in our own ranks, face up to what’s happening here and decide to do something about it, yes, it is.’

  Carswell was silent for a moment. ‘Our lot have got their nose up Nasser’s arse and the Yanks are busy getting ready to elect Ike for a second term. That’s the problem, Bobby. Finding someone who cares. No one’s bloody interested in Hungary right now.’

  ‘I care. My Borises care.’ His anger is barely under control. ‘Isn’t that enough for you?’

  Carswell pondered while he poked around in the bowl of his pipe. ‘It’s not as straightforward as you might suppose, Bobby. You should know that by now.’

  Martineau’s heart sank. He could sense what was coming.

  ‘We have a lot of reports from a lot of different people. We have to weigh them up, balance them out and take the line we think is right.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Nigel. You can’t weigh up the truth. It’s either true or it’s nothing, worthless. I’m telling you there is going to be an uprising here. Tomorrow, next week, the week after, I don’t know when, but soon, soon. The Soviets will bring in their tanks, and the only possible outcome of their intervention will be a slaughter. That is what will happen. That is the truth.’ He paused. Only you don’t believe me, do you?’

  ‘I said, it’s not as simple as that.’

  ‘I’ve got the best sources possible, honest, brave, good men and women whom I trust, I know what they’re telling me is true. And you won’t listen. What am I to do?’

  ‘Give it time. Things may change.’

  ‘What if they don’t change before it’s too late? What then?’

  Carswell hesitated before replying. ‘You’re not kosher at Merton House right now, Bobby. This resurrected Peter business, the charges I’ve been investigating, have damaged you. You’ve not got a strong platform on which to build your case.’

  ‘Am I lying to you? Am I inventing a revolution? You’re here, now, can’t you feel the tension in the air? What do I matter? It’s the people in the street we should be worrying about.’

  For the first time Carswell looked uncomfortable.

  ‘When I’m back, I will do my best to put things straight, you have my word on that. But I can’t promise success. Nothing will happen quickly. You must understand that. Of all the charges we have to face, that of traitor is the hardest to eliminate. It’s like hacking at granite with your bare hands.’

  Innocent people are going to die, he wants to shout. We have the power to save them but only if we act now, before it’s too late. How can we live with their deaths on our conscience?

  He has to close his eyes tightly to stop himself getting up to throttle Carswell. Then his anger passes and he’s back once more with his familiar despair.

  The questioning continues through the afternoon, a twisting journey back again and again over familiar ground, Eva, Hart, Peter, his Moscow affair with Marie-France Pelissier. Each time the path is a little different. Carswell’s method is full of Jesuitical devices to trap him if he is lying. But Martineau has nothing to lie about and he recognizes the technique. At one point he feels sorry for Carswell. It doesn’t last.

  *

  Four o’clock. Martineau is exhausted. He struggles to keep his concentration because the interview isn’t over yet. The heat remains oppressive. He notices the damp patches on Carswell’s shirt and how red his face is. He’s forgotten how bad he is in the heat. If he’s stuck it out for several hours it shows how serious the situation is.

  ‘That’s it then? Nothing more to add, is there?’

  How many times have they been over everything? Three? Four? Surely Carswell can’t want to do it again.

  ‘You’ve given me all I need.’ He yawns and looks up at Martineau. ‘That’s it.’

  ‘What’s the verdict? Will I live?’

  ‘You’ve got a good few years in you yet.’

  ‘Did you expect otherwise?’

  Carswell relaxes. The tension in his body eases and he leans forward, head in hands, his full weight on the table. Martineau knows what that means. It isn’t over yet, even though Carswell wants him to believe it is. He still has one more trick up his sleeve. The Carswell Twist.

  ‘On the way out here, I didn’t know what to think, Bobby. Heart versus head. You know the form. My heart knew the accusations against you couldn’t be true, my head told me anything is possible.’

  He wants me to think he’s jumping over the table and sitting on my side. Get my defences down. It’s not over yet, is it, you crafty bugger? I know what you’re up to.

  ‘What happens now?’

  ‘That’s up to the Director-General. What I hope is we’ll be able to put an end to all this nonsense once and for all and get back to doing the work we’re paid to do. But he’s new to the Service, so I can’t be sure he’ll see it my way.’

  ‘So we wait, do we?’

  ‘We wait, yes.’

  Is that it? Nothing up his sleeve after all? Come on, Nigel. Surprise me.

  Carswell puts his glasses away in his pocket. He is about to get up from his chair. ‘Oh, there is one last point, Bobby.’

  Bastard.

  ‘The girl’s got to go. I don’t have to tell you that, do I?’

  ‘The girl has nothing to do with any of this.’ That was no defence, he knew, but he couldn’t give her up without a fight.

  ‘She’s the hook you’re hanging on. I can’t return empty-handed.’

  ‘Her head or mine, is that the deal?’

  ‘Your head’s not on offer, Bobby. After what you’ve told me, it never was. Do I have your word you’ll get rid of her?’

  When it comes to it, he doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t consider his options because he hasn’t any. He gives his reply like the response to an order, a reflex action born out of years of doing his duty.

  ‘Yes.’

  Oh, God, what was he going to do?

  11

  1

  He couldn’t understand what the guard was saying because he was speaking in Hungarian. He tried talking in Russian but the man either couldn’t or wouldn’t respond. The sign language told him he was being asked to stand up but he remained lying on the bed, feigning incomprehension. The guard shouted this time, gesturing with his hands for him to get to his feet. He did nothing. Exasperated, the guard grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him upright. The cell door was unlocked and he was escorted down a brightly lit corridor. It was the first time he had been moved from his cell in three days.

  In that short time the depression that had accompanied his loss of freedom following his arrest had slowly given way, if not to hope, at least to the realization that, in prison, the real battle is in the mind. Physically, there was no contest. He could not break down the bars nor shatter the locks that held him captive. He was their prisoner and would remain so for as long as they chose. Come to terms with the reality you can’t defeat, he told himself. Accept the loss of your freedom, learn the new rules of your life, acclimatize yourself to the system and accept you are a physical part of it, otherwise you will go mad.

  When they question you, give nothing away.


  Until they destroy your mind, the freedom of the imagination remains yours. They cannot shackle what you think. But he saw the dangers of that. Let your imagination roam too wide and you will come up against the barriers you can’t break, the solid walls and barbed wire that keep you captive. That way could lead to madness. Focus your mind. Make it work for you. Fight them with your imagination. That was the battleground – your mind against theirs, a psychological contest where the odds, if not even, were a damn sight narrower.

  The more you say the more they think you know.

  He still retained control of what he said, until they ceased to listen to him or destroyed his ability to speak coherently, and within the limits of the prison, he could control how far he went along with what they wanted of him.

  He would play games of mental resistance with his jailers. He would be difficult, changeable, unpredictable, obliging, obstinate, understanding, obtuse. There would be no pattern to his behaviour. What he accepted today, he would reject tomorrow and accept again the day after. They would not be able to take him for granted. That way he would keep himself alive in the face of the deadening oppression of the prison regime. He would test them to discover the limits to what they could tolerate. He saw himself engaged in a process of discovery. How far would they let him go in his challenge to their authority? He could show them there was still another battle to be fought and won and that he would be a tricky, difficult adversary. If nothing else, he would get them to respect him.

  The more they think you know, the more they will want from you.

  He was led into an interrogation room.

  *

  ‘When were you born, who are your parents, where do you live, what do you do? And why are you in our country without a visa?’

  ‘I’m a British citizen. I demand to see the British ambassador.’

  Would he be hit or dragged back to his cell and beaten up? Nothing happened. His request was translated, ignored, and the interrogation continued.

  Who was he working with?

  No answer.

  Who was he working for?

  No one. He was alone (this reluctantly).

  How had he made contact with traitors to the peoples’ democratic state?

  He had met no one.

  He was arrested with a girl. Who was she? (Some fumbling among papers here. They didn’t know her name.)

  The girl was nothing to do with him. They’d stopped to give her a lift.

  There was laughter at that.

  ‘You cannot expect us to believe that.’

  ‘You have to believe it because it is true. I don’t know who the girl is. I’ve never seen her before. She is nothing to do with me.’

  ‘She is in prison.’

  This was the first moment of confrontation, his first test. They wanted him to incriminate the girl. If he protested too loudly they would have the information they wanted. Did they need it, though? If they’d got her in prison, they could do with her what they liked. The thought made him anxious. What would they do with her? She was young, a child. Surely they’d let her go. If they had her in the first place, that is. Perhaps they were lying.

  ‘I have told you what I know. I have nothing more to say.’

  Who had given him the papers he was found with? Who were they for?

  ‘Tell him I had no papers when I was arrested. I don’t know what he’s talking about.’

  The interpreter repeated in Hungarian what he had said. The officer listened carefully, wrote in his notebook and asked another question.

  ‘He says you were arrested with papers that show you are part of a Western conspiracy to destabilize our country. He does not have these papers with him here but he has seen them. He has seen the signatures of British politicians, Eden and Macmillan on the papers. Others too. There is no doubt about their authenticity. The evidence is overwhelming.’

  ‘I am a British citizen,’ he replied. ‘I demand to see the British ambassador.’

  He made the same request at intervals to test what happened. The officer ignored the question, behaving as if Leman hadn’t spoken at all. After an hour he was returned to his cell. In that time he had told them nothing. He was pleased about that.

  2

  Hart caught the backwash of rumour and gossip that raced round the embassy following Carswell’s brief visit. Who was he? FO? SIS? Or some government agent from an anonymous Whitehall department? Was he a secret Treasury man, spying on their expenditure? Hart knew, of course, but publicly maintained the deceit that Carswell was a Foreign Office official, losing out to the more popular view that whatever cover Carswell had assumed (something to do with Resources Management, someone said), he was in Budapest on a special mission arising out of the growing political crisis.

  What mission? Here Hart was no clearer than anyone else. When they met briefly on the morning of his departure, Carswell was giving nothing away. The intimacy they had achieved weeks before over lunch at his club was nowhere to be seen. Hart came away disappointed.

  The story rapidly took root that Carswell had been discussing emergency plans to evacuate the staff in the event of a revolution. Wives and families were to be airlifted out at the first sign of trouble, followed by non-essential staff. As many as possible of those remaining were to be housed in the embassy. Only in the event of full-scale war would the embassy be closed. The timing of his visit, coinciding with the news about Leman’s arrest, was seen to be inspired. London, for once, was way ahead of the action.

  Hart was sceptical that London should think of anything before it happened. He sided with those few who believed that renewed government concern about possible Soviet infiltration lay behind Carswell’s visit. There were enough hints from London to suggest that. What the Government feared was a new defection to Moscow.

  ‘If another British agent ends up in Moscow, the US will be out of the special relationship like a scalded cat,’ Carswell had been overheard to say, or so Hart was assured. The verdict was that he had come to question Martineau about the loyalties of some of his colleagues in the Service.

  Martineau himself gave nothing away. His behaviour remained as it had always been. Hart kept as close an eye on him as he could but learned nothing.

  3

  The telephone rang. She awoke with a start and looked at her watch. It was a little after two in the afternoon. She must have dozed off.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mrs Balassi?’ The voice at the other end was not one she recognized. ‘We have some translation work we’d like you to do for us.’

  Work always came through the union, that way she could be sure it was official. It was a way of keeping out of trouble. ‘Who is this?’

  She recognized the name of the ministry. The speaker refused to identify himself. ‘We would like you to do the work here, in our office. We will send a car for you. Fifteen minutes? It will be waiting for you in the street.’

  She changed her clothes, put a comb through her hair and looked out from behind the print curtains. The black official car was already there. She scribbled a hurried note for Dora and went downstairs.

  ‘Mrs Balassi?’ An unsmiling man held the door open for her. The journey was short, past the Parliament buildings to the Ministry of Education in Academy Street. She was ushered into the main entrance where she was issued with a pass. She was shown to the lift, a series of boxes that moved continuously up and down – no protective cage, simply a space which you occupied by jumping in and left by jumping out.

  ‘Go to the fourth floor. You will be met there.’

  She was taken along a corridor, through a secretarial office (neither of the two women urgently typing looked up as she came in) and into a meeting room filled with a large table and chairs. A tall elderly man rose to his feet as she entered.

  ‘Thank you for coming so promptly. I hope we haven’t inconvenienced you. Please, sit down. May I offer you some coffee?’

  They were alone in the room. No papers. No officials. She would ha
ve expected others to be present, a fussing secretary, forms to be signed. This was unorthodox to say the least. Better be careful.

  ‘You must be wondering what this is all about.’ He smiled in an attempt to reassure her. To do that he would have to give her his name and she knew he wouldn’t tell her who he was. ‘We need your help. We have some papers we want translated into English.’

  ‘May I see them?’

  ‘In a moment. First there are things I must tell you.’ He was in his seventies, silver hair brushed back off his forehead, tall, expensively dressed in a dark suit. Not a minister. She would have recognized him if he had been. He didn’t look like a civil servant, too smooth (too old?). He was a government fixer, a man who had bargained his own relationship with the regime; there were others like him she knew who did their dirty work when called upon to do so. She wondered what freedoms he had negotiated in return for being on call.

  He opened an envelope and extracted some pages which he looked through. He had very long fingers, carefully manicured nails. When he bent towards her she smelled the faint aroma of something sweet, reminding her of vanilla.

  ‘I believe in candour, Mrs Balassi. It is better to take you into our confidence at the outset. I wouldn’t want you to think we would insult your intelligence by not giving you a context within which to work. These papers I am about to give you are private letters, memoranda, official documents. All British. However, as they are not genuine, they are written in Hungarian by our own people. Our first task is to get them translated into English, convincing English. Then we will set about making successful forgeries of incriminating documents that we will tell the world fell into our hands when we arrested the British spy, Leman. I hope nothing I have said shocks you.’

  She didn’t know what to say. She shook her head and smiled. There was nothing incriminating about a smile, and it couldn’t be picked up by a tape recorder.

  Leman was now in custody awaiting trial, he said. ‘If we believed in God, we might say he was a gift from heaven. He was on his way to Budapest to meet some counter-revolutionary elements in the Writers’ Union. He made contact with a band of students, one of whom works for us.’ For a moment his narrative hesitated as if he was weighing up what to say. ‘At the appropriate moment, she delivered him into our hands.’