Secret Kingdom

by Francis Bennett

  He pulled out a silver cigarette case from his pocket and lit a cigarette with a slim silver lighter. He did not offer one to Eva.

  ‘Now, you will agree that, in our constant battle with the West, capturing an uninvited Englishman inside our borders is not an event that happens every day. You will understand why we cannot let such an opportunity pass unnoticed. Hence your presence this afternoon, and our request that you work carefully on these documents so that we may present to the world authentic evidence of the West’s malevolent intentions towards our country. Does my explanation cause you any difficulty?’

  Again the cautious smile, the shake of the head. No words.

  ‘I need hardly add that we wouldn’t want anyone to know about this. But I don’t need to tell you that, do I? I know from your record that you have often worked confidentially in the past. You come with an enviable reputation, Mrs Balassi, and not only as an athlete. Now, if you have no questions, I should leave you alone to get on with your task.’

  As he went past her, he squeezed her shoulder. If it was a secret sign, she read its message. Her role was noted, transcribed, a matter of record. She was an accomplice in the crime. Betray the secret and there was only one punishment possible. The regime already had its dirty fingers round her throat. Now it was signalling that it was ready to squeeze the life out of her.

  4

  To: Director C

  From: Deputy-Director C

  Status: Strictly confidential

  Subject: Hungary

  Date: 24 July 1956

  We face an increasingly difficult situation in our response to events in Hungary which demands resolution.

  For some weeks now we have been receiving reports from Martineau that the country is moving inexorably towards an uprising which the Soviets will use their superior military strength to suppress with great ferocity. We have given little credibility so far to what Martineau has been telling us, and precious little support, largely because our concerns have been to preserve our position in Suez against what we believed was the more immediate danger posed by President Nasser’s threat to nationalize the Canal.

  The case for attending to Hungary has been further undermined by the Peter Group’s report and our need to respond to its damaging allegations about Martineau and indeed the credibility of Merton House. This has not been helped by the Government’s appointment of the Junior Minister at the Foreign Office to investigate those claims. Over the years, Watson-Jones has made it clear that he is no friend to Merton House, and in his recent conduct as chairman of this committee we see no reason to change our opinion. We have had to dig deep into our resources to battle against his damaging prejudices. That battle is not yet won.

  We took the view, and I am sure at the time this was right, to give little or no credence to Martineau’s views on Hungary because to be seen to support Martineau when he was under suspicion of being a traitor would have been potentially damaging to Merton House. (It was doubly unfortunate that the Treasury was conducting its annual review of the next round of government spending at the same time.)

  That situation may now have changed. Following my visit to Budapest, we now know, if we didn’t already, that Martineau is not a traitor, and we are reasonably sure that Watson-Jones’s investigating committee will have little or nothing to say for itself when it finally completes its task.

  Following my discussions with Martineau and the limited evidence of my own eyes, I believe it is time for us to put Hungary back on the agenda and to review our policy. I am sure Martineau is right when he says there will be a bloodbath in the streets of Budapest if nothing is done. What are our options?

  1 We do nothing, many Hungarian citizens are killed, the Soviets are victorious, Soviet hegemony remains untarnished. The danger here is that we build into the minds of those who live within the Soviet bloc and believe, whether secretly or publicly, in the values of democracy, an example of betrayal at the time of greatest need that will exist long in their memory, and will dog our heels politically for years to come as the West makes efforts to convert the Soviet Union from dictatorship to democracy.

  2 We challenge the Soviets, using the moral position of the United Nations to exert pressure on the Kremlin to allow a degree of democracy into Hungary, and by extension the other satellite states. The likely outcome is that the Soviets will cock a snook at the UN by ignoring what it says, on the basis that it does not have the courage of its convictions nor the power to make its position stick. The UN will lose face, the Soviets will achieve what they want anyway and no one will gain except the enemy.

  3 Threaten the Soviets with military force, probably NATO. The danger here is that the Soviets may call our bluff; a small-scale event, an uprising involving a few thousand Hungarians, will lead to an international crisis with the attendant risk of a wider military entanglement putting at risk the lives of millions.

  There are no easy answers, and our continuing involvement in the Suez affair and the Peter investigation is not helping. However, unless we are prepared to sit back and see a nation slaughtered like rats, we must resolve our position. I suspect that the testing time is not far away.

  (Signed) NC

  5

  I learned much less at school than I should have done [Anna wrote] but I remember our English teacher, Miss Fraser, who taught us to love John Donne’s poems. We used to laugh at the line, ‘More than kisses, letters mingle souls’ (we thought kissing was mingling souls), but now I know that what Donne wrote is true.

  She heard the church clock strike. Midnight already? She counted the chimes. No, eleven. She’d been here for over an hour and still hadn’t finished what she was writing. Suddenly, there was a commotion in the street, below her window. Any distraction was welcome. She looked out. Two men, both drunk, were arguing about something, fists flying but not connecting. They parted, shouting insults at each other.

  She went back to her desk once more.

  We are apart, we are likely to remain separated for weeks, possibly months. I cannot speak to you. I cannot be sure my letters will reach you. Yet I cannot sit here and do nothing because you fill my mind every minute of every day. I have resolved to bring you closer by writing to you each day, letters I will not send but which will wait for your return. Whatever I write is for you, every word will ‘mingle our souls’.

  6

  Martineau waited in the interrogation room. It was hot and airless and he could feel sweat dripping down his spine. No fan. No windows. Artificial light. Strip neon suspended from the ceiling. No sense of day or night, though he knew it was afternoon outside. Destroy the natural rhythms of the body, remove any awareness of the separation of night from day, and you loosen the disciplines of the mind. It was all so blatant and so threatening. No attempt at any concealment because there was no need to hide anything. Rooms like this were part of the mechanism of control. The authorities wanted their existence to be known, the absolute nature of their power to be beyond dispute.

  He wiped his brow with the back of his hand. If he spent long in here, he’d suffocate or go mad or both. Fifteen minutes passed before the door opened and a small, shabby figure was ushered in.

  ‘Hello, I’m Bobby Martineau,’ he said. ‘From the embassy.’

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ Leman said.

  They sat down on either side of a small table, their guard standing, watchful, by the door. Martineau tried to ignore the heat and his melting body.

  Leman was pale, but whether that was prison pallor or his natural complexion he couldn’t be sure. He was smaller than Martineau had imagined, and he was aware at once of a strong sense of self-containment. Leman had reserves, inner strengths, resources he could call on in adversity to which his slight frame was no guide. There was a calm awareness about him, a watchfulness. Nothing escaped the attention of his dark eyes. He was thinking all the time. He would make a formidable opponent.

  Martineau began by asking him about the conditions of his imprisonment. Was he being fed prop
erly? Given the opportunity for regular exercise?

  ‘They aren’t leaving me to rot, if that’s what you’re asking. I suppose I must still have some value to them.’

  The unasked question was, what happens when they’ve drained me of everything they need? Martineau hurried on.

  Had he been threatened? Bullied? Beaten up?

  ‘No, no one’s laid a finger on me. Is that what I am to expect?’

  Had he been interrogated?

  ‘I’ve been asked questions. I wouldn’t say I’ve been interrogated. Not in the sense I think you mean.’

  ‘Have you told them anything?’

  Leman shook his head. ‘I’m developing a technique for avoiding answers.’

  ‘Is there anything for them to learn?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  The man didn’t trust anyone easily, that much was obvious. His manner was wary, he was cautious, no talker, watching you, weighing you up. Not altogether likeable, Martineau judged. But the good thing was, the fight hadn’t gone out of him. The debilitating effect of his incarceration was visible on his face but it hadn’t spread to his soul, at least not yet.

  ‘We’re doing our best to get you out of here.’

  ‘I didn’t believe Randall when he said that and I don’t believe you now. I would prefer you to tell me the truth.’

  The gaze was certain, demanding, impossible to escape the message. The man was a realist. No point in trying to fool him.

  ‘The truth is,’ Martineau said, ‘you’re a gift to the communists, a Westerner at loose in their country at a time when they’re looking for ways to distract international attention from what’s going on here. You’ve provided them with the cover they need and now they’re going to play it for all it’s worth. There’s going to be some fun and games and they won’t be over quickly.’

  Leman thought about replying but said nothing.

  ‘I can’t be optimistic about the future. I’d like to be but it wouldn’t be fair.

  Is there anything I can do for you?’

  ‘A last request, you mean?’

  No smile, but he was encouraged by the gallows humour.

  ‘Anything you’d like me to do?’ Martineau repeated.

  Leman was silent, thinking, his chin in his hands. ‘Yes. I want to give you a letter but they won’t let me hand it over to you.’

  ‘Give it to me verbally.’

  ‘That’s what I hoped you’d say.’ Leman smiled. ‘It’s a short message. For someone called Anna Livesey. She lives in London, 14 Moore Street, SW3. Please say,’ and then he hesitated. ‘Please say, some things are not what they seem.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘That’s all, yes.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  7

  Hart pressed the buzzer and a voice asked: ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Hugh.’

  ‘Come in. First floor.’ The door clicked open and Hart went in. Christine Martineau was waiting for him on the landing. She offered her hand and he shook it.

  ‘How nice to see you.’

  She led the way into the apartment. The first time he had been here he had not noticed it. Now he was struck by its Englishness, pictures of the English countryside on the walls, English furniture, photographs of family groups, even copies of The Tatler and The Field. How unlike Martineau it all seemed. No untidiness, nothing out of place. Spotless and organized. Nothing to suggest his presence in her life.

  ‘Would you like a glass of sherry?’

  She had laid a small table in the window, looking out over the garden. He saw there were only two places.

  ‘It’s a mess, don’t look at it. I try to do my best but I can’t do it all on my own. The trouble is, Hungarians aren’t gardeners,’ she said. ‘There are so many things I can’t get here, and they seem reluctant to send out seeds and weedkiller in the diplomatic bag.’

  Christine Martineau had sent him a note after Archie Randall’s birthday party, thanking Hart for ‘saving’ her when her husband was called away. She made him sound like a doctor. It was followed a few days later by a second note. Would he like to come and have lunch? She hoped he wouldn’t be too busy. He’d agreed, imagining Martineau would be there but it was obvious the moment he arrived that he wasn’t and nor was he expected.

  ‘I should warn you, I’m trying out my Hungarian cooking. I hope you won’t mind being a guinea pig,’ she said, placing a bowl of cold cherry soup in front of him. ‘Now, tell me all about yourself, how you joined the diplomatic.’

  He demurred, claiming there was nothing to say, that he’d fallen into the job by accident. ‘Most people do,’ she commented. This was his first overseas posting, he was learning the ropes, how helpful Bobby was, it must be quite a burden to have a raw recruit on your hands especially at a time when so much was going on.

  ‘That’s it, really. Nothing very interesting, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Don’t you feel sorry for them, these poor people?’ Christine said. ‘Their terrible oppressed lives and all the awful lies they have to pretend are truth when they know they’re not. It must be like living in a permanent nightmare from which you know you can never wake up. When you’re out here, stuck in the middle of a communist society as we are, you see how loathsome it all is, what a tragic waste of lives and energies. People at home don’t have any idea of the unrelenting greyness of it all, how life-sapping the trivial betrayals of daily life can prove to be, how life-denying and hateful Marxism is. Bobby’s always saying how impossible it is to get anyone in London to understand what living under communism is really like. What I hate most is the loss of identity. You always have to do what you’re told because some authority always knows better than you do. Imagine that. You can only be true to yourself inside your mind, and that may not last for long because they’ve got ways of controlling what you think.’

  She gave him veal in a paprika sauce, beautifully cooked, and ‘vegetables from the market. The one delight here is that you can get almost any vegetable or fruit you want, all home-grown, and so cheap too.’

  Why had she asked him? What did she want? Not to talk about Bobby, clearly. She had mentioned Martineau once, and then neutrally, and had never steered the conversation back to him after that, though he had given her the opportunity to do so.

  ‘Shall we take our coffee outside?’

  He got up and saw at once a framed black and white photograph of a striking young woman. She was smiling at the camera, laughing, obviously happy. Was it their daughter, perhaps? Martineau had never mentioned children.

  ‘Don’t you recognize me?’ Christine said. ‘Have I changed so much?’

  They sat in deckchairs in the garden. He hadn’t noticed her before. She was the wife of a senior colleague, taking pity on him because he was new and he’d done her a good turn. Now, in the afternoon sunlight, he saw that she was an elegant woman, well groomed, that was the expression he was looking for, not a hair out of place, her nails polished, a crisp, ironed dress, carefully chosen jewellery – an amethyst ring, a gold bracelet, a twin row of pearls around her neck with an elegant clip. Almost beautiful, in an icy, controlled, conventional way. For all that coolness, she communicated a sense of anxiety to him.

  ‘The house has been divided into three flats. We’re the middle one, but the other two are empty at the moment, so it’s just us,’ she said. ‘I expect we’ll have neighbours before long.’

  ‘Don’t you get lonely?’ he asked.

  She was taken aback by the suddenness of the question.

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘Being out here,’ he said, not knowing why he’d asked the question.

  ‘I’ve got plenty to do in the garden. I see my friends, Rachel Randall and I were at school together, we’ve known each other all our lives. It’s nice having her here. But that isn’t the answer to the question you’re asking, is it?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, it isn’t,’ he said. What he didn’t say was, what am I doing here? Why did
you ask me? What is all this about?

  ‘Why do I put up with it? That’s what you want to know, isn’t it?’ He caught the edge of bitterness in her laugh. ‘What’s in it for me?’

  ‘Isn’t that why you asked me here?’

  ‘I asked you to lunch to say thank you for being so patient the other night. I felt I’d behaved rather badly.’ She lit a cigarette and pushed her hair back with her hand. ‘I suppose the question I should ask you is how much do you know?’

  ‘Assume I know nothing. It’s probably true anyway.’

  ‘I’m sure you can’t be interested.’ She was retreating from him now, but he knew she didn’t mean it.

  ‘I want to understand,’ he said evasively. ‘Does that help?’

  She smiled. ‘It makes it easier.’

  Somewhere in the distance he heard the sound of a siren, a police car or an ambulance racing through the streets. He felt secure in this overgrown garden, alone with this coldly beautiful woman. The world and its troubles were miles away.

  She took her time to answer. She gazed out over the garden. When she spoke, she didn’t look at him.

  ‘Bobby’s a lot of fun, he’s always been popular, you must have seen that. People like him, they don’t want to lose him. Every time he’s been in trouble they’ve pushed the lifeboat out and rescued him. Good old Bobby, they say as they haul him to safety once more. At least, that’s what used to happen. His cronies are getting thin on the ground now, they’re retiring or dying. They aren’t there any more to come to his aid. I don’t think he realizes how isolated he’s become. Poor old Bobby. Time catches up with all of us, doesn’t it?’