The Whitehall Mandarin
Page 6
‘I expected something grand. You sound so upper-crust.’
‘That’s because you’ve got American ears. Most Brits can spot my accent as fake.’
‘Why then do you talk that way?’
‘Are you really interested?’
‘Yeah, Limey-Land is a strange place.’
Catesby looked at the American. ‘Are you going to put this in my file?’
Hank laughed. ‘What file?’
‘Good, take notes if you like. I speak like this because I want to fit in. I began to lose my Lowestoft accent at Cambridge. A lot more went when I became an Army officer – and as I rose from grade to grade in SIS, more and more of my origins were chipped away. I’m a little ashamed of it. When I meet my school pals at the pub, I try to speak pure Lowes’toff as if I’ve never been away. But that voice is more fake than my Cambridge voice – and my mates know it too. When you lose your roots you can’t grow them again. Got it? Latest update for the Catesby file.’
‘See you in a couple of days,’ said Hank. ‘By the way, it looks like we’ll be doing the Cauldwell interrogation together.’
‘I hope so – and thanks for the lift.’ Catesby stared nervously at the neighbours’ windows. He didn’t want any gossip about why he had been dropped off by a big American Ford so late at night.
‘See you, buddy.’
Catesby smiled, ‘My name ain’t Buddy.’
Hank saluted as he pulled away.
Catesby fished the house key out of the letter flap by reeling in an attached string. Every house in the terrace either used letter flap or plant pot. Why not, he thought, just leave the doors unlocked?
Catesby slowly closed the door behind him and took off his shoes. He tiptoed up the stairs avoiding the ones that creaked. He didn’t want to wake up his mother, but she slept so lightly she was probably awake in any case. When he crept into his bedroom he found a pair of freshly laundered and pressed pyjamas lying on the burgundy candlewick bedspread. Catesby felt a lump in his throat. Beside his pyjamas was his Ipswich Town scarf. It had gone missing and his mother had found it. The scarf had been a present for his tenth birthday. Even spies had childhoods.
As he stripped and put on the pyjamas his eyes were drawn to a darkened bedroom window on the terrace opposite. There were no back gardens, just small paved backyards with coal bunkers and washing lines. The back passage between the houses was paved with clinker from the coal fires. Catesby stared at the window opposite. He wondered if the girl who had slept in that back bedroom ever came home. Had she split up with her husband?
Catesby and the girl had been in sixth form together, but not in the same classes. She had studied sciences because she wanted to do medicine. They were the only kids from that neighbourhood who made it to the grammar. They weren’t close, but sometimes the girl forgot to draw the curtain when she undressed. Was it on purpose?
Although they never spoke, they had always made furtive eye contact whenever they passed in the school corridors. Never a smile, never a word – just a deep, knowing look. In the end she didn’t go to medical school, she got pregnant and married a painter and decorator. As she swelled with pregnancy, she never forgot to draw the curtains again. Just before Catesby went off to war, he passed her in Lowestoft High Street. He was so proud of his officer’s pips and his parachutist badge.
She was pushing a pram and spoke first, ‘Hello, William.’
‘How are you?’
She smiled bleakly.
Catesby felt awkward. He didn’t know how to say it. ‘I was sorry to hear about what happened. Please give my condolences to your aunt. It must be so awful for her.’
The Luftwaffe used Lowestoft as a dumping ground for unused bombs. As England’s most easterly point, it was the last bit of land before the bleak North Sea. A single stray bomb had landed at the back of her Aunt Millie’s house. Millie was unharmed, but her six-month-old twins were killed. A month later her husband, a trawlerman turned Royal Naval Patrol Service sailor, was lost at sea. It wasn’t an unusual Lowestoft story – almost too common to mention. And probably not the best way to start a conversation with someone you longed for.
She brushed a lock of hair from her eyes and stared out over a pile of rubble where a recent German bomb had opened up an unaccustomed view of the sea. ‘Aunt Millie’s fine. She’s resilient.’ She looked at Catesby with a mirthless smile. ‘Resilient, that’s a posh word for one of us, isn’t it, William? But I bet you learned a lot of posh words at Cambridge.’ Her eyes glistened with unshed tears.
Catesby gently touched her hand, which was gripping the push bar of the pram.
‘You know something, William? I fancied you like mad.’
Before Catesby could say anything, she was on her way up the High Street with her back to him.
»»»»
Catesby found it difficult to sleep because his bedroom was so cold. In fact, the whole house was always cold no matter how much coal they burned. Being cold was part of living in Lowestoft. Warmth was a luxury like a tot of grog.
The other thing that kept him awake was the Cauldwell business. There were too many missing pieces. It all began with the arrest of British atomic scientist Alan Nunn May in Canada in 1946 for passing secrets – and enriched uranium – on to the Soviets. But after Nunn May’s arrest, atomic secrets were still flowing to Moscow. And then four years later Klaus Fuchs was busted, but not the stream of secrets to Russia. One of the things Catesby kept preaching to his American colleagues was that the Russians are chess players. They know how to make pawn sacrifices to protect more valuable pieces. Were the Soviet defectors and doubles who betrayed spies like Fuchs genuine? Or were they tools of a grandmaster in Moscow who was playing a game of sacrifice to protect his rooks and queen? A lot of pieces had been exchanged in the past year.
Busting the Handley gang and capturing Cauldwell was a big success, but it didn’t seem complete. Catesby was certain that Handley, Britain’s leading atomic scientist, had sacrificed Nunn May and Fuchs to protect himself. Unfortunately, no one had been able to interrogate Handley. He hung himself in the garden shed with a noose made from his wife’s silk underwear. Yes, thought Catesby as he turned, sleepless; things had certainly started to get silly. Or tragic, depending on your point of view. Catesby tossed and turned in a cold sweat. He still wasn’t sure who had betrayed Cauldwell. Two anonymous typed letters had been posted denouncing him as a spy and giving details, including grid coordinates, of his planned ex-filtration from ‘a beach’. One had been sent directly to Dick White, Head of SIS. The other anonymous note had been sent to NID, the Naval Intelligence Division of the Admiralty. The NID note raised even more questions than the one sent to SIS. It had been addressed to Room 39. And insiders, and only insiders, know the unit as ‘Room 39’.
The anonymous note to NID had arrived only twenty-four hours before Cauldwell’s failed escape and confirmed Room 39’s long-held suspicions that there was ‘something fishy’ about the Soviet merchant ships that plied the timber trade with East Anglia. There was no mention of Cauldwell by name, but ships and ports were named – and radio frequencies to monitor were suggested. It was easy for NID, with its impressive array of electronic surveillance devices, to pick up the un-coded Morse transmission from the vessel sent for Cauldwell and to inform the Security Services of the exact time and place of the extraction rendezvous.
»»»»
When Catesby came into the kitchen the next morning the kettle was steaming and the toast was under the gas grill. His mother looked up. She was old and tired – and didn’t seem particularly pleased to have her son home for a few days. ‘Wil je een ei?’ Did he want an egg? When it was just the two of them, she always spoke Nederlands.
The egg question was difficult. There was no right answer. A ‘nee’ meant a frown of ingratitude; a ‘ja’ meant a sigh for the extra bother. Catesby decided to go for an ei soft-boiled.
His mother began to boil the water. ‘There’s a letter for you.’
&n
bsp; A large brown envelope was propped against the Robertson’s marmalade. The address was typed. Something about the letter gave him a chill.
Catesby’s mother poured boiling water into the teapot and also into a saucepan for the egg. ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’
‘I know what it is.’ Catesby was lying; he didn’t know. ‘I’ll deal with it later.’ He changed the subject. ‘How’s Father Sinclair?’ Mooder Catesby was a devout Catholic, but she didn’t have any problem with her son being an atheist. Catesby found that mildly amusing. It was as if the fate of his immortal soul didn’t matter to her any more than whether or not he had an egg.
‘He has gout.’
‘Who?’ Catesby was staring at the letter. It had a North London postmark.
‘Father Sinclair; you just asked about him.’
‘Sorry, I was elsewhere.’
‘Hmm.’
They finished breakfast in the usual silence. Catesby had long since ceased to wonder what had made his mother the joyless widow. Was it the dark secrets of her waterfront youth in an Antwerp bar? Was it the influenza death of his twin siblings? The death of his father in an accident at sea? The twins had died before Catesby was born and he had no recollection of his father. His family had more secrets than SIS. His mother’s past as a barmaid on the Antwerp docks was never mentioned. Nor was the series of European uncles and aunts who appeared and disappeared without explanation.
As soon as Catesby opened the envelope in the privacy of his bedroom, he was relieved that he hadn’t done so in front of his mother. There was no letter, just a photograph – or part of a photograph. At first glance, it looked like a fancy-dress party about to turn into an orgy. A number of men and women – mostly men – were partially clothed in the dress of ancient Greece. It was a photo parody, a tableau vivant, of a painting by Poussin, The Triumph of Pan. Catesby recognised the Poussin connection – as would most officers in SIS who knew Sir Anthony Blunt, the spy turned art historian. The photo was a delicious joke, but a dangerous joke. He immediately recognised three of the semi-clad ‘Greeks’: one was Henry Knowles, who was a leering Priapus; another was Jennifer Handley; and the third, and the only one still among the living, was Jeffers Cauldwell. Mysteriously, about a quarter of the photograph had been roughly ripped away. Catesby knew that the missing part would turn out to be the most interesting. The sender’s message was both provocation and tease: ‘Who else was there and why won’t I let you know?’
Catesby was taking the red single-decker Eastern Counties bus to the airbase at Lakenheath because he still didn’t have a car. And it was a long ride too. The scheduled stops were Beccles, Bungay, Harleston, Diss, Thetford and Mildenhall, but the bus would stop in-between for anyone who waved it down. The woman who got on between Thetford and Mildenhall had appeared out of nowhere. There were no houses, no villages: only acres and acres of damp un-harvested wheat bounded by thick dark woods. The woman, who looked to be in her seventies, shook the rain from her umbrella as she spoke to the driver. ‘Never seen such weather,’ she said, ‘it just go on and on, don’t it?’
‘Not hooly good, that’s for sure,’ said the driver.
The bus followed the Norfolk–Suffolk border, weaving back and forth across the River Waveney, which separated the two counties. It was a land Catesby loved. He wondered if the woman, the driver and the other passengers on the bus had any idea how lucky they were still to be alive. It was all top secret, but the UK government had demanded a full revelation from the Americans. The previous year, a USAF B-47 had been practising ‘touch and go’ landings at Lakenheath, but instead of bounding into a ‘go’ the plane cartwheeled into a bunker full of nuclear bombs. The plane’s crew had been killed, but they had nearly taken a big part of East Anglia with them to Valhalla. The US general in charge admitted that it was ‘a miracle that one didn’t go off’. The incident had caused an enormous row in Whitehall, with some ministers demanding an immediate withdrawal of all US nuclear weapons from the UK.
As the bus approached the airbase, Catesby scoured the sky. He wondered if the US jet jocks were still practising ‘touch and go’ landings or if they had learnt their lesson. The bus dropped Catesby outside the main gate of the airbase. He waved a ‘thank you’ to the driver as the bus pulled away in a cloud of diesel fumes.
There was a long line of chain-link fence topped with concertina barbed wire as far as the eye could see. Although the sign said RAF Lakenheath and a Union Flag waved beside the Stars and Stripes, Catesby knew there would be no British uniforms or personnel inside the gates. He would be all alone. The guard booth was in the middle of the entrance road. A long sign across the roof announced: 3909th Air Police Squadron. Catesby reached for his ID and stepped through the gate.
There were two Americans on duty. One of them straightened his peaked cap and left the entrance booth. He looked like a character from a western who wondered what someone like Catesby was doing in Dodge City. High-ranking British intelligence officers didn’t often turn up on an Eastern Counties bus. The American sauntered towards Catesby and then stopped about five paces away. He was wearing an armband that said Air Police and white gloves. He stared flinty-eyed for a few seconds with his right hand resting on his .45 holster. Everything about him was shiny and crisp.
Finally he spoke: ‘Good morning, sir. Would you come this way, please?’
It took two telephone calls to confirm Catesby’s identity. Five minutes later another crisp member of the Air Police arrived to escort Catesby to Hank’s office.
‘Sorry you were kept waiting,’ said Hank. ‘They were expecting someone in an Aston Martin or a Bentley.’
‘I prefer to keep a low profile,’ said Catesby.
The American laughed and slapped his thigh. ‘But a bus!’
‘It was too far to cycle. In any case, when do we start with Cauldwell?’
‘It’s our turn in ten minutes.’
‘Whose turn is it now?’
‘The medics. They want to make certain he hasn’t got cyanide capsules hidden in his molars or up his anus – and that he’s healthy enough for the flight back to the States.’
‘That’s bullshit about the flight. They want to see how much you can do to him without killing him.’
Hank frowned. ‘We don’t use those methods because they don’t work.’
‘Maybe you don’t do them long enough and hard enough.’
The American shook his head. ‘We use psychology.’
‘Let’s go psycho then.’
»»»»
The interrogation took place in an underground bunker that was a back-up operations centre. It was full of maps, communications equipment and telephones. There were also narrow steel beds, water and food supplies. The bunker was thought to be completely secure against a strike by any known Soviet nuclear weapon.
Cauldwell was seated at a table beneath a neon strip light. He was dressed in khaki fatigues that were army rather than air force issue. He was wearing white sneakers without laces. His hands were cuffed in front of him. There were Military Police wearing helmets and boots with white laces standing on either side of him. They looked a lot fiercer than the Air Police on the gate. Hank nodded at the MPs and they left the bunker.
Catesby looked around at the thick concrete walls – and then at Cauldwell. ‘You can’t say they don’t look after you. If your Russian pals attack, you’ll be one of the safest people in Britain.’
Hank was fiddling with a reel-to-reel tape recorder.
Cauldwell gave a crooked smile. ‘Who betrayed me?’
Catesby ignored him and looked at Hank. ‘Is that thing recording yet?’
‘It is now. This interrogation of Jeffers Cauldwell took place on…’
While Hank recited the preliminaries Catesby smiled at Cauldwell. As soon as Hank finished, Catesby said, ‘Can you repeat the question, Jeffers? It wasn’t recorded.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Do you mean fuck me, fuck Hank or fuck both of us?’
Catesby looked at Hank. ‘If he’s not going to cooperate, there’s no point in this interrogation.’
Hank shrugged.
Catesby turned to Cauldwell, ‘Okay, Jeffers, can we just have a conversation? I’m here because the British government wants the right to interrogate you before you go back to the States. Actually, we expect to find out fuck-all. I haven’t got the time to do the things that might persuade you to say more. In fact, this interrogation has sod-all to do with you and everything to do with UK–US relations. We were nice enough to arrest you and hand you over. So our chat is really a face-saving gesture, a sop to my government – and as an experienced diplomat you know all about such gestures.’
Hank turned off the tape recorder. ‘Listen, Mr Catesby, I suggest we erase that bit and begin again. If a transcript of this gets back to London your ass is gonna be in a sling.’
‘No, leave it. It’s a waste of my time being here and I want them to know it.’
‘It’s up to you, buddy.’
‘Good.’ Catesby looked back at Cauldwell. ‘You know that Knowles is dead.’
Cauldwell’s face remained impassive.
‘They found his body on Shingle Street. I thought you should know. It was a difficult one for us and MI5. We got into a scrape with the Suffolk constabulary. Why do you think?’
Cauldwell shook his head. Hank spoke into the tape-recorder microphone: ‘Subject shook his head indicating negation.’
Catesby continued, ‘Don’t play the faux naïf, Jeffers. The Ipswich plods wanted to interview you, and quite rightly too, as a murder suspect. But we shut them up with a national security D Notice. And they hated it. It’s a card we play too often.’
Cauldwell closed his eyes. When he spoke his tone was mild. ‘I feel sorry for his parents. It must have been an overwhelming sadness for them.’