A Very British Ending (Catesby Series)

by Edward Wilson

  Angleton preferred having lunch at Harvey’s Restaurant on Connecticut Avenue rather than the cafeteria at the Langley HQ. Despite a love of French poetry, he preferred American food and drink. He hoped his lunch companion, the CIA’s star Soviet Bloc defector, wasn’t having trouble with a menu that featured canvasback duck, terrapin soup, Louisiana possum with yams and scalloped oysters.

  The defector looked up and asked in heavily accented English, ‘Is the duck cooked in canvas?’

  ‘No, that’s the name of the species of duck. Large numbers of them overwinter on the Chesapeake Bay.’

  ‘And the possum?’

  ‘It’s correct name is opossum. It’s a small marsupial that is native to the American South. T.S. Eliot sometimes uses “Old Possum” as a nickname, as in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.’

  ‘You are, I believe, a friend of famous poet.’

  ‘I have known Tom for years.’

  The waiter had left an ice bucket and a full bottle of Jack Daniels on the table. Angleton topped up their glasses.

  ‘I think I have oysters and roast pig.’

  ‘A good choice.’

  ‘And I’m developing a taste for Mr Daniel’s bourbon.’

  Angleton lit a cigarette from the stub of his previous one. He gazed at his lunch companion through a haze of smoke. Angleton thought the defector looked like an Impressionist painting. He was a mysterious man who drip-fed his secrets. The slowly unfurling secrets became part of an allusive pattern of thin brush strokes and subtle changes of light that less trained eyes failed to perceive. But Angleton, temporarily morphing into FURIOSO, could see it all and how it fitted into a larger and complete whole.

  ‘Is it not strange,’ said Angleton, ‘that Hugh Gaitskell never made it to Moscow?’

  The star defector shrugged. ‘Not at all. That would have been too obvious. The operations are called mokrie dela.’ He smiled. ‘It’s what you call “wet affairs” – splendid name. As you know, they are controlled by Line F of Thirteenth Department. There is Line F officer assigned to each Soviet embassy.’

  ‘Including the one in London?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘By the way,’ said Angleton, ‘our London colleagues have code-named you EMPUSA. I am sure you know its Greek origins and I believe it shows a lack of respect.’

  ‘What have you code-named me?’

  ‘TANGO. It’s a vital dance full of energy and duende.’

  ‘Thank you. I much prefer it.’

  Angleton stared at the newly christened TANGO. ‘Which assassination methods do the Thirteenth Department prefer?’

  ‘Poison.’

  ‘What sort of poison?’

  ‘All sorts. Prescribed drugs like barbiturates and warfarin are useful because it looks like victim has died of accidental overdose. But number one favourite is radioactive thallium because you can deliver poison with small spray gun that looks like asthma inhaler.’

  Angleton peered at his companion through the smoke haze. As soon as he began to perceive an emerging pattern, it disappeared back into the haze. He didn’t want to rush the drip-feed, lest it dry up, but he felt the high-ranking intelligence officer turned defector was holding back.

  ‘Most of the methods you have described,’ said Angleton, ‘have been used against Soviet Bloc émigrés and dissidents whom the Kremlin wanted silenced.’

  ‘That is true: anti-Soviet activists have been usual targets.’

  ‘But how would the Thirteenth Department arrange the assassination of a Westerner?’

  ‘Plane crashes are useful – there are so many possible causes. And guns – especially in America where anyone can buy good sniper rifle.’

  ‘But you said the Thirteenth prefers poison.’

  TANGO/EMPUSA gave a sly smile. ‘There is nothing more secret in the Soviet Union than Spets Byuro #1. They say it was shut down in 1954 after Lavrenty Beria’s execution – before that it was solely under control of Beria and his closest comrades. But Spets Byuro #1 was never shut down. The Byuro is experimental laboratory that specialise in development and testing of poisons in form of powders, liquids, pills and injections. The experiments are carried out on prisoners awaiting execution. No one is allowed to visit – except for staff and tiny select cadre – and no one even knows where it is.’

  ‘Have you been there?’

  TANGO continued to smile slyly. ‘I can speak frankly to you. You realise that information I possess is priceless.’

  Angleton nodded agreement. Some of his colleagues thought TANGO was expensive, but Angleton knew he was worth every penny the US taxpayers paid him. On the other hand, thought the American, it was only fair that the British should also pay for the priceless intelligence that was forthcoming. The Brits were always pleading poverty, but much of TANGO’s insider information was utterly vital to the UK. Britain was riddled with Communist subversives and TANGO knew who they were.

  ‘Any news,’ said Angleton, ‘about our friend in the Lebanon?’

  ‘How ironic that British government continue to pay salary of KGB spy – even though First Chief Directorate has virtually unlimited funds.’ TANGO laughed. ‘If I were British taxpayer I would be very annoyed.’

  Angleton was annoyed too, but for different reasons. Kim Philby had been his good friend and his mentor during his London days. When Philby was assigned to Washington in 1949, the friendship resumed and became deeper. When suspicion fell on Philby, one of the first things Angleton had to do was destroy nearly two years of appointment diaries that recorded more than a hundred lunches and meetings with Philby. Many of the lunches were very boozy ones and Angleton feared he had given away too much. The so-called FURIOSO had been duped by Philby. It was his biggest humiliation and one that he would never forgive.

  Beirut: 23 January 1963

  It was a filthy night. The sea was pounding the esplanades and ripping up cobblestones. The rain was relentless and the streets had turned into rivers bearing flotsam rubbish. The man scurrying from rue Kantari towards the harbour was in too much of a hurry to take counter-surveillance measures. The game was up and there wasn’t any time. In any case, the surveillance teams that should have been on duty had deserted their observation points for the warm and dry. Their excuse was that no one in their right mind – particularly someone who so loved his creature comforts – would be out on such a night. There was only one watcher still on duty. He reproved himself as a ‘silly muggins’ as he reached for the comfort of his hipflask. He was about to pack it in when someone in a hurry brushed past and nearly knocked him over. The surveillance operative instantly knew it was him, not by his face which was covered, but by the pink and blue of his Westminster School scarf.

  The watcher followed his target towards the harbour. He wished that he had backup. Despite the awful wind and rain, a lone cargo ship was loading. The watcher took a pair of miniature binoculars from his coat pocket to have a closer look at the vessel. The hammer and sickle flag snapped and fluttered from the ship’s stern. Her name was the Dolmatova. The watcher hurried into the nearest café to telephone his boss at the British embassy, but owing to the storm the phone lines were down. He quickly went back into a maelstrom of gale and horizontal rain. It took a long time to find a taxi – and a longer time for the taxi to make its way to the embassy. By the time the watcher had filed his report, the Dolmatova had cast off and was pitching and plunging across the Mediterranean towards the Black Sea and her eventual destination of Odessa.

  On reflection, the watcher wasn’t sure that his report would have made any difference – even if the phone line had been working and there had been plenty of backup. The people at the embassy – at least, those in the know – didn’t seem particularly bothered. In fact, they seemed relieved. Had the target been allowed to do a quiet ‘fade’? In any case, thought the watcher, it’s not something for a muggins on my pay grade to be concerned about.

  Broadway Buildings, London: 25 January 1963

  ‘There is some
thing in that report, William, that you obviously find amusing. And, by the way, you sound very East Anglian when you laugh.’ Bone paused. ‘Would you like to share the joke?’

  ‘We need to put out an urgent warning to all surveillance teams.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Anyone wearing an old school scarf, especially if it’s Eton or Westminster, is about to do a shuffle fade to Moscow.’

  ‘Hmm, may I have the report back?’

  Catesby handed it over.

  ‘Have you still got your Christmas card from Kim, the one where he drew an arrow to the third wise man and wrote “this is me”?’

  ‘Funny you mention that.’ Bone picked up something from his desk. ‘Here it is.’

  ‘I think you keep it as an heirloom.’

  ‘I would, if he hadn’t written my name in it along with a personal message.’

  ‘May I see the message?’

  ‘No. But could you empty that wastepaper bin into the burn bag, please?’

  Catesby picked up the green metal bin and emptied its contents into a canvas sack with parallel red stripes and a chain and lock that sealed it.

  Bone put the now empty bin on his desk, struck a match and set the Christmas card alight. The burning fragments fell into the bin.

  ‘Why didn’t you just put it in the burn bag?’

  ‘Because, Catesby, some things are so sensitive that you don’t want to let them out of your sight – even for the short trip between here and the incinerator.’

  ‘Were you surprised by Kim’s fade?’

  ‘Nothing surprises me.’

  ‘It’s going to put us under a lot of scrutiny.’

  Bone nodded.

  ‘We can’t go on hiding the fact that Philby’s disappeared. The hacks and spies of Beirut will soon notice a gap at their local bar. How are we going to explain it? What’s the cover story?’

  ‘It’s best to let the rumours come naturally, un-orchestrated by us. The latest rumours are true to character: Kim’s off on a drinking spree; he’s bedding a new mistress; he’s on a secret assignment covering the war in the Congo.’

  ‘How long before people sniff the truth?’

  ‘Not long. Three weeks at most.’

  ‘What do we do in the meantime?’

  Bone stared at Catesby; then smiled bleakly. ‘We prepare ourselves to be shocked, to be absolutely appalled and utterly stunned. Learn, Catesby, to look utterly stunned and baffled – and don’t forget complete sadness and dismay.’

  ‘How do you feel about it, Henry?’

  ‘I’m not going to answer that question.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘But,’ said Bone, ‘they are going to use it against us.’

  ‘Who are they and who are us?’

  ‘I think, Catesby, you can work that one out yourself. On a purely bureaucratic level, we’ve got to protect the service from undeserved humiliation and recrimination.’

  ‘Why did Nick go to Beirut?’

  ‘Because he’s Kim’s closest friend and was the best one for the job.’

  ‘What was the job?’

  Bone stared at Catesby as if weighing him up. Bone finally made a steeple of his long fine fingers and looked over his half-moon reading spectacles. ‘His job was to offer Kim a deal: immunity from prosecution in exchange for a full confession. We wanted to keep it all in-house.’

  ‘But Philby did a runner.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t have anything to confess – and didn’t think we would believe him.’

  ‘You’re being provocative, Henry.’

  ‘I’ll be even more provocative – perhaps Kim was sent to Moscow as a fake defector, a planted double brimming with disinformation to destabilise Moscow Central by spreading distrust and paranoia.’

  ‘Perhaps, Henry, we should replace our training manual with Through the Looking Glass: “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”’

  ‘You don’t know the truth, William, and perhaps none of us ever will. In any case, too many things are happening at the same time. Ivanov has just been recalled to Moscow.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It concerns the rumour that he’s been sharing a woman with Jack Profumo. I expect Moscow Central want to hold Ivanov’s feet to the fire to find out what’s really happened.’

  ‘And what did happen?’

  Bone smiled. ‘As I said before, I don’t know. In any case, I expect that poor Ivanov is going to get roasted for either having slept with the girl without authorisation – or for having slept with her, but having failed to recruit her as a honey-trap for Profumo.’

  ‘It’s a rough old trade.’

  ‘In any case, we’re standing astride two volcanoes about to erupt – Kim Philby and Jack Profumo. The newspapers will love it: sex, spies and scandal. And meanwhile, Hugh Gaitskell couldn’t have chosen a more awkward time to die. I’ve already heard some odd rumours and might want you to investigate.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘The problem is that certain people will see links between these events.’ Bone took off his glasses and gestured to the horizon. ‘Communist conspiracy will be their rallying call. The diabolical brilliance of that hysteria is that the accusers do not have to prove there is a conspiracy, but the accused do have to prove there isn’t one. It’s impossible to prove a negative. How do you prove that Satan doesn’t exist?’

  ‘But FURIOSO and EMPUSA do exist.’

  Henry Bone didn’t reply. He simply stared into the distance.

  The top storey of Broadway Buildings was Catesby’s favourite place in an ugly building that anyone with any aesthetic sense hated. It was an early twentieth-century office block that completely lacked grace or character. They were scheduled to relocate to a modern glass tower in Lambeth in a year or two, which, unbelievably, was even uglier. It was obvious to Catesby that SIS was not a rising star in the Whitehall firmament.

  Catesby liked the top storey of Broadway Buildings because the only other spies were carrier pigeons. It was the SIS pigeon loft. No one else ever went there except for Ralph, the caretaker who looked after the birds. Catesby didn’t know whether or not the pigeons had been used operationally since the end of the war. If they had, it was a secret to which he wasn’t privy. But the winged heroes had served bravely in the war and one of them had been decorated with the PDSA Dickin Medal. The framed citation was attached to one of the cages: To Kenley Lass for successfully delivering secret communications from an agent in enemy-occupied France while serving with the NPS in June, 1944.

  Sadly, Kenley Lass was no longer there. Catesby hoped it was old age and not a cat or a sparrowhawk. In any case, he found the cooing of the pigeons more comforting than the clipped tones of his human colleagues. It made the loft a good place to think and reflect.

  FURIOSO was the SIS code name for the most powerful person in the CIA. His official title was Associate Deputy Director of Operations for Counter-intelligence, usually acronymed to ADDOCI. The problem with FURIOSO was his self-belief in his intellectual superiority. Catesby knew that the American was bright and refined. FURIOSO spoke several languages and had written poetry in French while still a teenager. Catesby had once asked to see some of the poetry, FURIOSO responded with disdain: ‘I don’t think you would understand it.’ The American had also been a friend of Ezra Pound. Catesby wondered if their friendship had survived Pound’s trial for treason as the result of his propaganda broadcasts for Mussolini.

  Catesby regarded FURIOSO as a dangerous chemical. The American became an even more deadly poison when mixed with others who shared his obsessions. FURIOSO’s alliance with Ferret was a marriage made in hell – and the arrival of EMPUSA on the scene created a ménage à trois blessed by the leaping imps of Pandemonium. EMPUSA wasn’t a fake defector; he was a self-promoting charlatan looking for patrons and audiences – and he found the ultimate patron in FURIOSO.

  Catesby wasn’t certain who had chosen the defector’s SIS code name, but it w
as perfect. In Greek mythology, Empusa was a spectre sent to guard roads, but who preferred eating travellers. In modern Greece, Empusa is a shape-shifting troll who pesters Greek shepherds in the form of a dog. But the Eastern European EMPUSA was a more modern version. He wanted to be a Western celebrity who hobnobbed with presidents and royalty.

  Catesby cooed back at the nearest pigeon, ‘Wouldn’t you like to eat some yum-yum cake at the Queen’s garden party?’ The one thing that ‘walk-ins’ from the East Bloc always wanted in exchange for secret intelligence was to meet the Queen. ‘Your Majesty, may I introduce you to Sergei. He was a cipher clerk at the Soviet embassy in Prague and would like to tell you what General Zhukov had for breakfast.’ Their exaggerated sense of self-importance was tedious. In fact, it wasn’t easy to defect and most would-be defectors who turned up at embassies were turned away. The answer they usually got was: ‘Listen, you can help us more if you stay in place as a double agent and pass on new information.’ But oh no, they didn’t want to do that. Staying in place was dangerous. They wanted Western glitter and they wanted it now. Catesby turned to the pigeon, ‘No Sasha, you’re not going to Buck House. We don’t want you to shit on the tablecloth – fly back to Warsaw. And the fact that you are the last of the Romanovs doesn’t matter. Who isn’t?’

  EMPUSA, however, had managed to push his way past the gatekeepers and was now listened to at the highest levels. An SIS colleague, who had met him briefly, described EMPUSA as ‘unpleasant and egotistical’ – characteristics that would prove far less of a disadvantage in Washington than London. Maybe, thought Catesby, we should pay less attention to manners. Catesby put his finger through the cage and the bird gave it a slight nibble, almost a kiss. He wondered what would happen to the pigeons when they moved to Lambeth – and whether Gerald was still looking after Hermann.