A Very British Ending (Catesby Series)

by Edward Wilson

  The room descended into an embarrassed hush and everyone looked at the general, who unusually, was in uniform. The retired colonel stared at him with utter contempt.

  ‘Why?’ said JJ with his characteristic simplicity.

  ‘Because I don’t take orders from the likes of you.’

  The general put his hat back on, turned on his heel and marched towards the door.

  ‘What a fucking performance,’ shouted the colonel after him. ‘If you wanted to save the honour of the British Army you should have thought of that fifty years ago.’

  ‘Calm down,’ said the banker.

  ‘Fuck you too.’ The colonel grabbed the banker by the lapels. ‘When’s the last time you were spattered with body tissue and blood from a soldier exploding in front of you?’ The colonel paused and looked down into his palms. ‘I am sorry. I shouldn’t get emotional – very ashamed in fact.’ He extended his hand to the banker. ‘Apologies, Mungo.’

  The banker took his hand and said, ‘I understand.’ But he neither understood nor respected the colonel’s outburst. The world of ‘battlefield glory’ and the trauma that went with it were not good for the markets.

  Although the colonel seemed calmer, he still seemed ready to pounce. ‘JJ and I were here when the cops and the bomb squad were searching the building. They were, of course, bored and fed up because they knew the call was obviously from a time-wasting bomb hoaxer with a grudge against posh clubs.’

  ‘Not only the bogus Irish accent,’ said JJ, ‘but there were no code words.’

  ‘The Sinn Féin terrorists,’ said the colonel, ‘don’t want anyone else to claim responsibility for their atrocities so they use code words and pseudonyms which frequently change. It helps them, but it also helps the police cut out hoaxers. As the caller to the club was so obviously a hoaxer, the police let us back into the building towards the end of the search.’ The colonel smiled. ‘They didn’t find a bomb, but they found something even more interesting.’

  ‘It was what we call in the trade,’ said JJ, ‘a passive cavity resonator. A very simple and effective listening device.’

  ‘They found it,’ said the colonel pointing, ‘in the base of that sideboard.’

  ‘An excellent place to hide it,’ said JJ. ‘The resonator picked up the sound waves from our voices as they vibrated against the thin veneers of the sideboard.’

  ‘Do you suppose,’ said the banker, ‘our conversations were recorded?’

  ‘Almost certainly, but not here. A resonator of that type is activated by a radio signal sent on a set frequency. I would assume, therefore, that the person on the receiving end knows the times that we meet here. The device had a monopole antenna about eighteen inches in length, which was hidden along the base of the sideboard, and transmitted our voices to a radio receiver – which could have been anywhere in central London. I could tell you more, but unfortunately the police confiscated the device.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the peer, ‘for sharing your considerable technical expertise.’

  ‘We’ve seen listening devices like that before,’ said JJ. ‘The Sovs used a similar one to bug the US embassy in Moscow.’

  ‘Can we assume then,’ said the banker, ‘that the Russians were bugging us?’

  JJ shook his head. ‘Absolutely not. But whoever planted that device might want us to think so. It’s called “a false flag ploy”. We use them ourselves.’

  ‘So,’ said the peer refreshing his G&T, ‘it could have been our military friend who just stomped off in a huff.’

  There was another embarrassed silence that was broken by someone knocking on the door.

  ‘Come in,’ shouted the colonel.

  A servant entered with a letter on a silver tray.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the colonel taking the letter. The servant left. The colonel looked taken aback.

  ‘Who’s it for?’ said the peer.

  ‘It’s addressed to the billiard room. Should I assume that identity and open it?’

  The others grunted approval.

  As the colonel read the letter his face first turned pale and then crimson.

  ‘What is it?’ said the banker.

  ‘Here.’ The colonel passed it over to the others.

  COMRADELY GREETINGS TO MY FELLOW BILLIARD ROOM PLOTTERS. NOW IT IS TIME FOR ME TO COME CLEAN. I AM NOT THE PERSON YOU THINK I AM. I AM A SPY IN YOUR MIDST. IF YOU TAKE THE TROUBLE TO EXAMINE THE BOTTOM DRAWER OF THE MAHOGONY VENEERED SIDEBOARD, YOU WILL FIND A LISTENING DEVICE. I PERSONALLY PLANTED THAT DEVICE IN 1966 AND, WITH THE HELP OF A COMRADE, HAVE BEEN RECORDING OUR CONVERSATIONS EVER SINCE. I NOW HAVE A MOST INTERESTING COLLECTION OF TAPES. THINK OF ALL THE THINGS YOU SAID DURING ALMOST TEN YEARS OF PLOTTING. YOU ARE ALL TRAITORS AND THE TAPES ARE PROOF OF YOUR TREASON.

  NOW LOOK CLOSELY AT THE OTHER FACES IN THE ROOM. WHICH ONE OF YOU IS ME?

  The banker gave a nervous smile and broke the uneasy silence, ‘Well, it can’t be our gallant friend the general, because he’s not here.’

  ‘It must be him,’ said the peer, ‘he’s doing what JJ calls a “false flag”. He’s betrayed us. Didn’t realise the Communists had infiltrated the Army – that’s why he’s called off the coup.’

  ‘He may be shirking his duty,’ said the colonel, ‘but he is certainly not a Communist. In any case, I don’t think the person who wrote that letter and planted the bug is one of us. I think it’s someone from outside trying to stir up trouble – probably someone in SIS.’

  The banker gave the colonel a sly smile. ‘You would say that, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Don’t make accusations that you can’t prove,’ said the colonel.

  ‘Don’t bully me,’ said the banker.

  ‘What I can’t understand,’ said the peer, ‘is how the bomb scare and this letter happened the same day. It can’t be a coincidence.’

  ‘He’s trying to create confusion,’ said the banker, ‘what JJ calls “disinfo”. And, JJ, why have you gone so quiet?’

  ‘Because it’s him,’ laughed the peer.

  ‘It isn’t me,’ said JJ, ‘but I know who it is.’

  ‘Tell us then,’ said the peer.

  JJ told them, but they weren’t all convinced.

  Century House, Lambeth, London: 21 November 1975

  It was late afternoon and Catesby was pleased there were still no tanks on the streets of London. But he knew that he was about to receive a royal bollocking from Henry Bone. Although Bone had no way of proving that the phone call warning of a bomb had come from him, Bone would assume it had.

  Catesby wound his way down the Kafkaesque corridor. The ubiquitous white of Century House made him nauseous after a sleepless night. He arrived at the featureless door that, aside from a white plastic plate lettered DIR W. EUR & SOV. BLOC, was identical to a thousand others. A joker could cause chaos at Century House by removing those plates, which were, in fact, easily detachable. Catesby knocked.

  ‘Come in.’

  The first thing that Catesby noticed was the cassette recorder on Bone’s desk. It looked identical to the one that had been turned into a bomb. Surely, the police hadn’t returned it.

  ‘You look confused, Catesby.’

  ‘I haven’t been sleeping well. I didn’t know you had a spare bomb.’

  ‘No,’ said Bone nodding at the recorder, ‘it’s the same one.’

  ‘You changed your mind?’

  Bone nodded.

  ‘Was it a matter of conscience?’

  Bone pursed his lips and squinted. ‘It was largely a decision based on new information – which isn’t to say that I didn’t have moral reservations.’

  ‘I thought moral reservations were irrelevant to our trade.’

  ‘They are, but it doesn’t mean they don’t exist.’

  ‘We shouldn’t lower ourselves to their level – and, besides, blowing the bastards up might have caused an authoritarian backlash.’

  ‘That too was a factor.’

  ‘What was your new information?�
�

  ‘I can’t tell you – and I shouldn’t have been told either. The information was delivered via our most effective listening device – alcohol-fuelled indiscretion.’ Bone was referring to his late-night visitor.

  ‘Was it good news?’

  ‘Not particularly, maybe not at all. It merely signals a change in tactics.’

  ‘Can you elaborate?’

  Bone stared at a blank wall. ‘I hate this place.’

  ‘You said, Henry, a change of tactics.’

  ‘Oh, that. We’re moving into an even more modern age. You don’t need an Army to stage a coup.’

  ‘What do you need?’

  ‘Do you know, William, what was the most chilling thing we heard from the bugged billiard room?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It came from the colonel. In many ways, he was the shrewdest and brightest of the group.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Who pays wins. So simple, so obvious and so devastatingly true.’

  ‘Where does that leave us?’

  ‘In the past with the dinosaurs. In a few decades, spies paid from public funds are going to be an extinct species. It’s not just nationalised industries such as car factories and steel that are doomed, but the whole state-funded machinery of government too.’

  Catesby got up to leave.

  ‘And by the way, William, although I respect your reasons for doing it, your bomb-scare phone call to the club wasn’t a good idea. The plotters would never have turned over the bug to the authorities – it would have cast suspicion on themselves. But the police now have our listening device – and I fear it will come back to haunt us.’

  Downing Street: March, 1976

  The past few weeks had been quiet, but the calm had been deceptive. Catesby now knew he was facing the end. He knew they weren’t going to offer him immunity in exchange for a confession. Such gentlemanly conventions belonged to a different era. Nor would they let him keep his pension. He would lose his much-loved house in Suffolk in exchange for a cell in Wormwood Scrubs.

  Catesby looked at the Cabinet Secretary, for all intents and purposes the most powerful person in Britain. The only other person in the room was a woman who sat poised to take notes with a lethal-looking fountain pen. Catesby remembered her from the war and SOE. She was a few years older than him. He knew that she hadn’t traded being a spook for shorthand typing, but was now a senior officer in the Security Service. She was a rarity in MI5 – cool, competent and shrewd – the sort of interrogator that Catesby liked to avoid. She knew that he knew where the bodies were buried – or had been deep-sixed. She also knew that Catesby was a professional spy and spies were professional liars.

  Catesby avoided her eyes and looked at the Cabinet Secretary. If he was dealing with him alone he could have handled the situation. Catesby knew that he could have lightened the mood with a smile that was both warm and supercilious. The Cabinet Secretary’s opening question – What do you know and when did you know it? – was ludicrous. In a normal situation, the Cabinet Secretary would have found it difficult to ask with a straight face. But this wasn’t a normal situation. Catesby was being asked to make a full and frank confession.

  The Cabinet Secretary repeated his question and it rankled even more. ‘What do you know and when did you know it?’

  Catesby realised it was pointless to pretend that he didn’t know what the Cabinet Secretary was talking about, but he wasn’t going to go down without a fight. He was sure that Henry Bone was receiving a similar grilling. Catesby looked at the woman from Five. She hadn’t been one of the anti-Wilson plotters. In fact, most of the service had behaved professionally, but Five’s reputation had been damaged. The woman’s eyes had turned flinty and cold. She was out for blood – particularly the blood of SIS officers who didn’t play by the rules themselves and then castigated the Security Service for doing likewise.

  ‘I do know,’ said Catesby, ‘that there is a plot against the Prime Minister.’ He returned the cold stare of the senior MI5 officer. He was going to give it both barrels even if he went down in flames. ‘And the plot involved past and serving officers of the Security Service.’

  ‘Can you name them?’ said the Cabinet Secretary.

  Catesby did – and then smiled at the woman. ‘And I am sure that none of these names come to you as a surprise.’

  ‘And what activities,’ said the Cabinet Secretary, ‘were these MI5 officers involved in?’

  ‘They were engaged in unauthorised burglaries, phone tapping…’

  The Cabinet Secretary interrupted, ‘Have you evidence of that?’

  Catesby smiled. ‘If you pass me a chisel and a screwdriver I’m sure that I could produce some – and not very far from where we are sitting.’

  ‘That’s an outrageous insinuation,’ said the woman from Five.

  ‘I suggest, ma’am, that you tell that to the Prime Minister.’

  The woman stared hard at Catesby. ‘Is he the source of that story?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask him?’

  ‘Because I am asking you, Mr Catesby.’

  ‘I think it is fair,’ said the Cabinet Secretary, ‘that you answer the question.’

  ‘Yes, the Prime Minister believes that 10 Downing Street is bugged – and also his home in Lord North Street.’

  ‘Did he tell you that directly?’ said the woman.

  ‘No.’

  ‘This is getting tedious. Can you tell us how you know?’

  ‘The Prime Minister expressed his fears to the DG last summer.’

  ‘Can you be certain that your DG didn’t seed those suspicions in the Prime Minister’s mind?’

  ‘I am sorry, ma’am, but in this case, you really will have to ask Sir Maurice.’

  ‘That,’ said the Cabinet Secretary, ‘is a fair reply.’

  Catesby realised that he was no longer a young man. A thirty-year-old Catesby would have weaved and dodged with skill and cutting arrogance. Part of him no longer wanted to play the game. But there was still a fire inside him. You didn’t claw your way out of the shit poverty of the Lowestoft docks, where babies died because their parents couldn’t afford a doctor or prescriptions, if that fire didn’t exist. Catesby may have had an OBE and was only two levels from the top rank of Britain’s intelligence agency, but he remembered himself as a tattered ten-year-old begging herring from the drifters to feed his family. And the driftermen, because they had known the same poverty, were generous with their catch as they tossed them to the ragamuffins waiting by the dockside – even when the owners were looking. The kids scrabbled on the wet cobblestones for the fish, but there was no competition – only a hurry to bring the fish to their homes. Catesby saw the better Britain he had loved and fought for slipping away, but he wasn’t going to let her go without a fight. The words unfurled in his mind like a banner of rage:

  Bring me my chariots of fire!

  I will not cease from mental fight;

  Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand.

  ‘There is a conspiracy to wreck the democratic process in this country and replace it with rule by a small ideological cabal – who also serve the interests of a foreign power.’ Catesby could see that the Cabinet Secretary was confused. ‘I am not, Sir John, talking about the Soviet Union; I’m talking about the USA. And there has been collaboration – and conspiracy – with the Central Intelligence Agency.’

  ‘Could you be more specific?’ said the Cabinet Secretary.

  ‘James Jesus Angleton for one – as well as several CIA officers who have been stationed in London over the past thirty years.’

  The other two stared at Catesby in stony silence.

  ‘Those who shout loudest about Moscow gold,’ continued Catesby, ‘have been stuffing their own pockets with Washington dollars.’ He looked at the woman from Five. ‘As you well know, the Security Service has spent years sniffing around for covert East Bloc funding of trade union leaders and Labour politicians – and hardly found a rouble. But that hasn’
t stopped elements of the Security Service from giving unattributable press briefings smearing Labour politicians and trade unionists with what they couldn’t find. The smears have involved lies, forgeries and illegally obtained information.’ Catesby could see that the woman was poised to pounce. ‘And while I admit that these elements are a rogue minority, you have failed to control them. They even accused your former director general of being a Soviet spy – wrecking his health and driving him into early retirement.’

  The woman from Five put down her pen so hard it shook the table. ‘Sir John, Mr Catesby has turned what should be a serious interview into a rant against the Security Service.’

  ‘Mr Catesby,’ said the Cabinet Secretary, ‘your language is immoderate and provocative. Can you please stick to facts?’

  ‘Fine, let’s start with CIA-funded front organisations such as the Congress for Cultural Freedom which have been active in the UK since the early 1950s.’ Catesby then spent twenty minutes coolly giving a list of magazines, groups, journalists and politicians in receipt either directly or indirectly of money or support from the CIA. He also revealed how officers both from MI5 and SIS had been complicit. He was pleased that the Cabinet Secretary seemed concerned and surprised. The woman from Five seemed bored and fed up.

  ‘Is there anything that you would like to add, Mr Catesby?’

  ‘Quite a bit actually.’ Catesby began by condemning the abuse of positive vetting, which was used to ‘intimidate and break loyal and honourable civil servants and politicians’.

  The woman from Five retaliated by accusing Catesby of ‘comparing the Security Service to the Spanish Inquisition’.

  Catesby listed the suicides that had followed in the wake of extended positive vetting sessions.

  The Cabinet Secretary intervened to lower the temperature and calm tempers.

  The next part of the interview shifted to matters involving the military. Catesby began by mentioning the anonymous letters he had received from the Intelligence Corps captain spilling the beans on Operation Clockwork Orange and its attempts to smear the Prime Minister and other politicians.