A Very British Ending (Catesby Series)

by Edward Wilson

  Conservative sensitivity to Labor charges of ‘warmongering’ is becoming a worrying political factor in British politics. It has led Foreign Secretary Eden to recently redefine British foreign policy objective towards

  (a) a reduction of the temperature of international debate and

  (b) a resolution of certain areas of conflict with the Soviet Union by building a mosaic of lasting peace.

  SM/HOUND indicated his personal concern lest this policy curtail or preclude more aggressive Secret Service operations, such as air dispatch of agents behind the Iron Curtain. Eden’s fear is that such operations would involve too great a risk of adverse publicity in the British press if uncovered. Such publicity would be capitalized on by Labor who would then accuse the government of risking war with the USSR. Such British timidity could seriously jeopardize our operations behind the Iron Curtain.

  Dulles frowned and closed his eyes. He tried to obliterate the annoying news from London with a sex fantasy about a liaison scheduled for lunchtime. She was a young journalist – journalists were almost too easy. The DPP opened his eyes and focused on business instead of fellatio and spanking – apparently, she liked that. His intelligence network covered many spheres. The problem in the British sphere was the Labour Party – they even weakened the resolve of the Conservatives. There were two solutions to Labour: either destroy it or reform it. The latter was probably the better idea. There was a pro-American faction within the Labour Party that needed to be cultivated – and plans for that were already in progress. Dulles glanced back at the log. The next item was good news from OSO London.

  Our man, SM/REVEAL, from the London Daily Express called on me this morning for a background fill-in for an article he is preparing for publication about Communist infiltration in the UK. I provided him with those materials we have available explaining that he must disguise the source. SM/REVEAL is a master of conjuring innuendo out of partial facts and half-truths. SM/REVEAL has enemies in all the right places, especially left-wing academia and the Labor Party. I suggested that we check his article for ‘accuracy’ when he completes it.

  Dulles drew on his pipe and sat back. The British journalist was a gem – and he was sure there were more like him. Dulles leaned forward to pen a note in the ‘actions’ column. I would like to have a private meeting with SM/REVEAL if he comes to Washington. Please use him also as conduit for DISINFO, but make sure that the planted stories are plausible. Please advise DPP which Labour politicians could be most usefully targeted by SM/REVEAL.

  Dulles walked over to the window. The view from 2430 E Street was bleak and unimpressive. Through the bare winter trees he could see the severe modern lines of the State Department, the ugliest public building in the capital. Deo volonte, his older brother would soon be installed on the hallowed ‘seventh floor’ as the 52nd United States Secretary of State – following in the footsteps of his grandfather, John Watson Foster (32nd US Secretary of State) and his uncle, Robert Lansing (42nd). Allen Dulles found his office accommodation cramped and undignified. The E Street site had formerly been the US Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. Dulles sometimes imagined that he could detect a lingering whiff of formaldehyde. He had been assured that the CIA HQ was temporary, but plans for relocation were still undecided. The DPP went back to his desk.

  The next item in the log was a piece of what Dulles called ‘oriental exotica’, but still something to be taken seriously in the fight against the Communist menace.

  Gayalo Thondup, another brother of the Dalai Lama, has arrived in the U.S. accompanied by his Chinese wife and child. At present, the three are guests in Virginia of the Dalai Lama’s brother Tak-teer, supported by the CIA-controlled Committee For A Free Asia.

  The Dalai Lama of Tibet has responded to the State Department message conveyed to him in July by his elder brother, offering covert US assistance to maintain the autonomy of Tibet. The response expressed deep regret that the Dalai Lama was unable to take immediate advantage of the US offer. The Dalai Lama said that he was forced by circumstances and the needs of his people to return to Lhasa but hoped that the US would not lose confidence in him and would continue to be friendly.

  Dulles emptied the ash from his pipe and folded his arms. The expansion of Red China was an enormous strategic problem. The surprise intervention of Chinese land forces in the Korean War had been a disaster for the Americans. The Chinese vastly outnumbered the US Marines and soldiers, who had reached Korea’s northern border and been poised on the brink of victory, and hurled the Americans back down the Korean peninsula. And there was now a personal factor for Dulles. His only son, Allen Macy Dulles, was serving as a Marine lieutenant in Korea.

  The first problem was China. What America needs, thought Dulles, is a Mongolian ally – a new Genghis Khan. And are not the Mongolians faithful adherents to the Dalai Lama’s form of Buddhism? Things were linking up in the DPP’s mind. Never dismiss an op or an agent as too bizarre, too strange. The world was full of screwballs who worshipped other screwballs. Dulles was pleased that he had never dropped ST/ATARS. He wasn’t expensive to run; he was dripping with Romanov gold. But he did want funding and weapons for guerrilla operations along the Soviet Union’s southern borders from Turkmenistan to Mongolia. ST/ATARS argued a good case in favour of monarchy – and so, remembered Dulles thinking back to his student days at Princeton, did Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan. Dulles picked up his pen and wrote an action note: Can we arrange a clandestine meeting between Gayalo Thondup and ST/ATARS? DPP would also like to know more about ST/ATARS fishing trip along the Rhine. He knew it would be difficult for ST/ATARS seldom stirred from his fake Mongolian palace in Paraguay.

  The DPP went to the next page of the log. It was London again.

  OSO Update: SM/OATSHEAF is now a director of import company Montague Meyer who specialize in timber imports from the Soviet Union. OATSHEAF is obviously using high-level Soviet contacts that he made during his frequent visits to Moscow while President of BOT (Board of Trade). His new position will give him reason, ‘cover?’, to make frequent visits to USSR.

  Allen Dulles picked up his unlit pipe and aimed it eastwards: ‘Get him!’ OATSHEAF was a very sore point in the Pentagon as well as CIA. While President of the BOT, OATSHEAF had negotiated the deal that sent Rolls-Royce jet engines to the Soviet Union in return for cattle feed. The Sovs, of course, broke their contractual agreement on patent and reverse engineered the Rolls-Royce engines to produce jet engines for the MiG-15s that wreaked havoc in the skies above Korea.

  There were many in Washington who wanted SM/OATSHEAF prosecuted for ‘trading with the enemy’. Dulles, however, was not one of them. During the 1930s, he and his brother had worked for Sullivan and Cromwell, a law firm that had been brokering deals between Wall Street and Nazi Germany. In 1935, Allen Dulles visited Germany and returned very disturbed about Hitler’s regime. He recommended that the firm close its Berlin office. His brother objected strongly, but the partners finally voted to close the Berlin office. Unfortunately, Foster later backdated documents to falsely record that the Berlin office had been closed in 1934. It was a sleeping dog that the Dulles brothers did not want to disturb.

  Dulles re-tamped his pipe and lit it. He wanted to calm himself and think clearly and contextually. The Rolls-Royce engines to Russia fiasco was a symptom of a wider-ranging British disease. Socialism and cuts in military expenditure were bigger problems. The island of Great Britain was the USA’s most important offshore base. If the rest of Europe fell to the Red Army, Britain would remain as an unsinkable – not matter how bombed and battered – American aircraft carrier. The USA still did not have missiles with sufficient range to hurl themselves across the polar icecap at Russia. Britain, whether the British people liked it or not, was a bastion of last resort and must not be allowed to wobble or sell out. Dulles began writing. DPP to OSO London: Everything possible must be done to destabilize and neutralize…

  Broadway Buildings, London: January, 1952

  Henry Bone was stari
ng out the window and cradling his long fine fingers around a saucer and cup from an eighteenth-century Sèvres tea service. The hand-painted roses on the cup were blushing. Catesby wondered if the original owners had been guillotined in The Terror. Bone had been silent for several minutes, but finally spoke in quiet even tones – more to himself than Catesby. ‘The VE celebrations were a lie. We lost the war – to the Americans.’

  Catesby wasn’t paying attention. He was preoccupied with another matter. The cat had been lying in ambush waiting for him. The first stage of the seduction had been brushing against his legs and purring with tail up. Catesby replied with ‘tsik, tsik, tsik’ bird noises and held an index finger tauntingly above the cat, who finally stood up on his hind legs with a throaty purr and rubbed a nose and ear against Catesby’s finger.

  ‘Did you say something?’ said Bone.

  ‘Sorry, I was talking to the cat.’

  ‘Hmm, he’s hungry; that’s why he’s playing the harlot.’ Bone sighed and left his window-gazing. He put his cup and saucer on a sideboard and went back to his desk. ‘Please sit down, Catesby, you’re making me nervous.’

  As soon as Catesby lowered himself into the leather armchair, the cat plopped onto his lap.

  ‘Don’t think he likes you,’ said Bone sliding behind his desk, ‘he knows you’re an easy touch.’

  ‘What’s his name?’ said Catesby stroking.

  Bone frowned. ‘Zadok. I know, it’s dreadful. I didn’t name him. In fact, he’s not even my cat.’

  Catesby smiled.

  ‘Zadok belongs to a neighbour – who, as you ought to have guessed, is a musician.’

  ‘And you’re looking after Zadok while your neighbour is – on holiday? But surely, not this time of year. Is your neighbour visiting friends?’

  ‘I don’t think he has any friends in Wormwood Scrubs, but he may have made a few since he began his sentence.’

  ‘What interesting neighbours you have.’

  ‘He isn’t a common criminal. He was, however, indiscreet and was sentenced under a barbaric law.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘In any case, he should be out in less than two months.’ Bone smiled. ‘My neighbour used to summon Zadok by putting “Zadok the Priest” on his gramophone, but I haven’t got the record.’

  ‘So you play a piano version and he comes running?’

  ‘You are clever, Catesby.’ Bone lifted a folder on his desk. ‘And thank you for writing this report.’

  Catesby stirred nervously. He wasn’t sure he should have put it in writing. ‘What are you going to do with it?’

  ‘I’m going to put it in the burn bag.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m not even going to take notes – I’ll rely on your memory for anything I forget.’

  Catesby looked at Zadok. ‘Shhh.’

  ‘If cats could talk, our friends at Five and Scotland Yard would run out of notepads.’

  Catesby began to stroke the cat who purred blissfully.

  ‘You have a rapport with animals, don’t you, Catesby?’

  ‘As you said, they know I’m a soft touch.’

  ‘Have you still got Schwarzer Hermann?’

  ‘Yes, he’s a noisy bugger.’ Black Hermann was a mynah bird that Catesby had inherited from his SIS predecessor in Germany. The predecessor had been sold the bird in 1945 by a very worn middle-aged woman who wanted nothing to do with it. There was a sad history attached to the bird. The woman’s son had been a waiter in a café frequented by an underground youth group called the Edelweisspiraten. The Edelweiss Pirates hid deserters, tried to avoid military conscription and often stalked Hitler Youth groups and beat them up. Black Hermann was the café’s mascot and had mastered a German vocabulary of three words: Deutschland kaputt and Scheisse. In the closing days of the war, the café was raided by the Gestapo looking for Edelweiss Pirates, but only found the woman’s son and Black Hermann – who kept screeching Deutschland kaputt. The Gestapo arrested the teenage waiter for spreading defeatism and summarily executed him. Neither Catesby nor his predecessor had ever worked out why the Gestapo hadn’t executed the mynah bird as well – nor why the bird eventually stopped shouting Deutschland kaputt.

  Bone perched his half-moon reading glasses on the end of his nose and picked up a sheet from Catesby’s report. ‘Your host at the Rhineland castle may not be as mad as you think – and it could be useful that you linked him to an address in Paraguay.’ Bone paused. ‘But maybe not directly in an intelligence sense.’

  ‘In what sense then?’

  ‘I have a friend who is an art dealer – in fact, he used to work with us. You must meet him. It would go with your dip cover as a cultural attaché.’

  Catesby sensed that Bone was scheming. The best way to deal with him when he was like that was not to ask questions – for then Bone simply shut up – and just let him scheme.

  ‘His name is Tommy.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The art dealer. Next time he has a party, I will get you an invitation.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘The important thing,’ continued Bone, ‘about Russia’s aristocratic diaspora is that they are everywhere – and know everyone. There are, I believe, rather a lot of them in Hollywood.’

  Catesby detected a note of snobbery in Bone’s voice, but didn’t comment.

  Bone was now re-reading the rest of the report and looking concerned. He finally looked up. ‘What your wife has told you is very disturbing.’

  ‘Do you think she is being alarmist?’

  Bone shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘It’s not a conspiracy,’ said Catesby, ‘they’re too stupid to run a conspiracy.’

  ‘How little you know about conspiracies, Catesby. They don’t appeal to geniuses.’ Bone smiled. ‘No disrespect intended for your famous ancestor.’

  ‘He’s not my ancestor. I wish people would stop harping on about it – the name’s a coincidence.’

  ‘If you go back far enough most of us share the same forebears – that’s what makes noble ancestry such nonsense.’

  Catesby raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Do I surprise you?’

  ‘I didn’t expect, Henry, to hear you express such egalitarian sentiments.’

  ‘How little you know about me.’

  Catesby looked at his boss. Bone’s face bore the half-smile of inscrutability that alternatively charmed and infuriated.

  ‘Back to the conspiracy,’ said Bone. ‘It may not be fully fledged yet, but there are people in the Security Service who are already starting to weave half-truths into poisonous lies. The Rolls-Royce jet engines were traded to the Soviet Union with the full knowledge and approval of the Air Ministry and MI5. They are now trying to change their tune – and we can see why. The first part of the conspiracy will be a smear campaign. Has your wife managed to see the original documents?’

  ‘I don’t believe so.’

  ‘And it’s unlikely that she will, for they must be very well buried.’ Bone regarded Catesby with hooded eyes. ‘Does your wife know that you are passing on this information?’

  ‘I assume that’s why she told me.’

  ‘So you don’t think you’re betraying her trust?’

  Catesby shrugged.

  Bone looked at the standard civil service clock on his office wall. The clock had a large brown Bakelite surround. The second hand gave a monitory click every time it jerked forward. ‘No clock,’ said Bone, ‘should be pretty – which is why I haven’t replaced that Kafkaesque monster. Time is a relentless, ugly process and we should be reminded of the fact.’

  Catesby was tempted to tease Bone about his philosophising, but held his tongue. He wondered if his boss had been drinking and the tea was a cover ploy. It had been rather late for tea-drinking.

  ‘Have you, Catesby, ever been to the underworld?’

  ‘Metaphorically?’

  ‘No, in reality. Surely, you’ve heard of Q-Whitehall?’

  ‘But I’ve n
ever achieved the status necessary to be privy to its secrets.’

  ‘Your luck, if not your status, has changed.’ Bone nodded at the clock. ‘It’s past closing time. Most of our colleagues are now well on their way back to the ghastly suburbs where they will silently swear about the pram blocking the hallway before walking the dog.’

  Catesby gave a wistful smile. Part of him wished that he was one of them.

  Bone got up and went to a light-oak wall unit – an oddly tasteful example of civil service issue furniture. He slid open a door and took out two canvas holdalls. ‘I keep one,’ he said, ‘for VIP visitors. I hope it’s not too big for you.’

  Catesby took the bag and followed Bone out of the office.

  ‘We’ll take the service stairs.’

  The stairs, lit by low-voltage bare light bulbs, continued below the ground floor. On one level there was the hum of boilers and the gurgle of plumbing, then an unlocked steel door to another level. They were descending into total silence. When they reached the bottom of the staircase they seemed to have come to a cul-de-sac. Bone unzipped his holdall. ‘It can be a bit messy in the tunnels.’

  Catesby took a pair of blue overalls out of his holdall and slipped them on. They were a bit big and he had to roll up the legs and cinch in the waist. There was also a yellow miner’s helmet with a head torch.

  ‘Right,’ said Bone, ‘you might need to help me with the hatch.’ He pointed to a steel ring that was embedded in the concrete floor.