A Very British Ending (Catesby Series)

by Edward Wilson

  The woman from Five, to her credit thought Catesby, seemed genuinely concerned. ‘Do you know the name of this captain?’ she said.

  ‘No, but his body was found in Carlingford Loch in November, 1974. It might be an idea to re-investigate the circumstances of his death.’

  The woman made a note on her pad.

  ‘Another set of events that concerned us were the military deployments at Heathrow Airport. I’ve already discussed this at JIC – so this is nothing new. Neither SIS nor the Prime Minister were informed in advance of these terrorist alerts and exercises.’

  ‘What are you implying, Mr Catesby?’ said the Cabinet Secretary.

  Catesby paused and considered ‘I don’t,’ he said in a quiet voice, ‘want to sound alarmist – or provocative.’

  ‘We will indulge you, Mr Catesby,’ said the woman from Five.

  ‘May I remind you what happened in May, 1968? A very powerful newspaper proprietor, with a large number of rich and powerful backers waiting in the shadows, tried to persuade a member of the Royal Family to become head of the UK government following a military coup. I suggest you interview Sir Solly Zuckerman, who was the government’s Chief Scientific Adviser at the time. He was present at the event. Fortunately, the Royal showed the plotters the door.’

  The two others remained stony-faced. Knowing about it wasn’t something they could admit in front of Catesby.

  ‘Since that time,’ continued Catesby, ‘a far more radical clique has been pressing for direct action.’

  ‘What do you mean by direct action?’ said the Cabinet Secretary.

  ‘I mean a coup d’état – and they have had contact with senior military officers.’

  ‘And what, Mr Catesby,’ said the woman from Five, ‘was the reaction of the military to these promptings?’

  ‘The Army, to their credit, seem to have rejected them.’

  ‘So that,’ said the woman, ‘is the end of the conspiracy?’

  ‘No, it isn’t. They still want to force Wilson out of office either by blackmail or simply wearing him down mentally and emotionally with smears and innuendo. The worst part of this scandal is the way journalists and rogue officers have collaborated.’

  The woman from Five narrowed her eyes. ‘You mentioned earlier, “a far more radical clique”. Can you tell us who they are?’

  Beginning with JJ, Catesby named them all.

  ‘And how, Mr Catesby, did you find out about them?’

  It was a killer question, but one that Catesby had been anticipating. ‘The group – and their private armies and emergency committees – are fairly well known.’

  ‘But you are accusing them of contacting the Army and trying to stage a coup. How do you know these details?’

  ‘I would have to check my files and have discussions with my colleagues.’

  ‘Perhaps, Mr Catesby,’ said the woman from Five rising like a matador for the kill, ‘we can help you. You discovered this information via a listening device that was hidden in the billiard room of a gentlemen’s club in Mayfair.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘Don’t you find it odd that the clique you named are all members of that club?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Catesby, ‘it’s just a coincidence.’

  ‘And is it also a coincidence that the listening device was similar to those often used by the Secret Intelligence Service?’

  Catesby was annoyed at the woman’s deliberate lie. Bone, trying the false flag ploy, had constructed the type of device the KGB used. Catesby didn’t know why he said it, but the words just spurted out. ‘And even more similar to ones the Russians use?’

  ‘How do you know the one found in the club is similar to the listening devices the Russians use? Have the police shown it you? I am sure they would have made a record of your visit if they had.’

  Catesby winced, but remained silent. To call it a gaffe was an understatement. The American version, which he often heard used by US soldiers in Germany, seemed more apt: Hey man, you just stepped on your fucking dick.

  The woman from Five looked at Catesby with something that could be described as pity – but it was the pity of a hangwoman fitting the noose.

  The Cabinet Secretary intervened. ‘I must inform you, Mr Catesby, that the principal reason that you have been summoned here today is to discuss some very serious allegations against yourself. We have not yet made a decision whether or not to pass on these allegations – and accompanying evidence – to the Crown Prosecution Service, but it cannot be ruled out – and seems increasingly likely.’ The Cabinet Secretary took off his reading glasses and stared out across Horse Guards. ‘At one time, a frequent formula was, “it is not in the national interest to prosecute” – but that is an option we can no longer use as often as we did in the past, if at all.’

  Catesby looked down at the table and saw his reflection twisted and distorted by the ancient oak grain beneath the polish. It was the end.

  ‘Unauthorised listening and wire-tapping is, Mr Catesby…’ the Cabinet Secretary was still speaking, ‘a very serious offence, but murder is a capital offence. We have received information, two files from separate sources, alleging that you killed a former German Army officer in Bremen in May, 1951.’ The Cabinet Secretary looked over his reading glasses at Catesby. ‘You obviously do not have to respond to this accusation at this time and without legal counsel.’

  The telephone rang.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said the Cabinet Secretary as he picked up the phone. The person on the other end was doing most of the talking. Catesby watched the Cabinet Secretary nodding and saying ‘yes’. Finally, the Cabinet Secretary put his hand over the mouthpiece and looked at Catesby, ‘Would you mind waiting outside?’

  Catesby got up and went into the anteroom. There was only one chair: an ugly Victorian antique upholstered in green velvet – with what looked like a poo stain in the middle of the velvet seat. Perhaps, thought Catesby, the last person grilled in the Cabinet Secretary’s office had been even more frightened. He decided to remain standing. He stared across Horse Guards to the old Admiralty building. The Empire hadn’t been built by being soft and kind – and what was left of it wasn’t going to be kind to him. Catesby had long expected it – and why should he complain? Like Cromwell and More before him, he wasn’t an innocent civilian caught in the crossfire. Catesby looked at his watch; the Cabinet Secretary was having an awfully long telephone conversation.

  Catesby was kept waiting another twenty minutes. Finally, the door opened and Catesby was summoned back in. An officious-looking young man had joined the other two and was staring at Catesby as if he were a tramp that had crashed the Queen’s Garden Party. Catesby almost wanted to shout, ‘Oi, mate, I’ve got an OBE.’ But decided to keep quiet.

  The Cabinet Secretary spoke first. ‘This meeting is suspended. If and when it is reconvened, we will let you know. You are free to go. My assistant will show you to the door.’

  Catesby nodded a goodbye to the woman from Five. She looked at him with an expression that gave nothing away. The young assistant touched Catesby’s elbow and said, ‘I’ll show you out.’

  They walked down the stairs, along the corridors and through various rooms. Everywhere were knots of people speaking in hushed tones, as if a death had just been announced. When people saw Catesby – clearly a Downing Street outsider – they averted their eyes and stopped talking.

  Catesby was relieved when the door of Number 10 closed firmly behind him. He was glad to be outside – in the cool damp air and away from the funereal tones. In contrast to the gloom inside Downing Street, the street outside was party time: packed and pulsating with people. There were television vans all over the place and what seemed a hundred people snapping pictures or talking into microphones. A reporter lurched up to Catesby and put a microphone in his face, ‘Can you tell us the latest, please?’

  Catesby waved the reporter away and turned to the policeman guarding the front door, ‘What’s happene
d?’

  ‘The Prime Minister, sir, has just resigned.’

  Catesby understood why the meeting had been suspended. Compared to a prime minister, he was too small a prize to pluck and gut. They had got what they wanted – at least, for the moment.

  In the years that followed, Catesby developed a grim admiration for the merciless genius of the Secret State. The suspension of the meeting with the Cabinet Secretary had not granted him freedom, but the opposite. The Secret State had given Catesby notice that a sword hung over his head – and the hanging sword would remain there for the rest of his life. The state’s other technique was the honeyed carrot. When Henry Bone retired, Catesby was promoted to Bone’s former post as Dir W Eur & Sov Bloc. Afterwards, they remained friends and confidantes. Catesby was not surprised to learn that Bone had several swords hanging over his own head. But the swords did not entirely shut them up. A lifetime in espionage meant that Catesby and Bone knew how to pass on information without leaving fingerprints.

  The best spies are the ones who know they are sometimes going to get it wrong. The worst spies are the ones who, like Angleton, can never admit they’re wrong. When Catesby lectured SIS trainees at Fort Monckton, he always told them that the trade closest to that of intelligence officer was being a bookie. Even though you keep a close eye on the teams and the horses, you can’t offer your punters a dead cert, you can only offer odds. The job of an intelligence service is to provide assessments and probabilities. Politicians, however, twist an intelligence officer’s guess about a threat into a certainty to justify their own actions. Although Catesby was resigned to inaccuracies of the spy’s crystal ball, he did become increasingly frustrated by not knowing what actually had happened afterwards. Catesby never found out who had burgled his safe, who had sent him threatening letters – and why Harold Wilson resigned. Life wasn’t a tightly knit detective novel where there are no loose ends.

  Catesby would never know how close Britain had come to a military coup d’état. Perhaps not very close at all. Sending in the tanks and bombing the presidential palace was a very old-fashioned way of changing governments – but it did make good television footage. The British way, like so much of British life, wasn’t the stuff of action films. Ruthless viciousness certainly existed in Britain, but it wasn’t the openly displayed malice of a moustachioed generalissimo waving a pistol at elected legislators. The British way was hidden and subtle.

  In retrospect, Catesby agreed with Bone that the most astute of the coup plotters had been the retired colonel. Money always wins. If you owned or controlled most of the press and the news media, the soldiers could stay in their barracks. You didn’t need to control all the press, just the big ones that account for eighty per cent of circulation. The small prints, intended for political fringe groups or the intelligentsia, don’t matter. The long-term plan, as Bone had predicted, was to privatise the civil service and the rest of the public sector. Who pays wins.

  Margaret Thatcher becoming prime minister was the beginning of the end for Catesby. He reluctantly continued in post for three years, but finally resigned in complete frustration. The third person Catesby told, after his wife and the DG, was Henry Bone. Bone was living in nervous and edgy retirement – owing partly to Thatcher outing Anthony Blunt as a Soviet Spy.

  ‘I told you that she was evil.’ Bone spoke from the shadows of a wide-brimmed straw hat. They were drinking gin and tonic in the garden of Bone’s South Kensington home.

  ‘That’s one explanation,’ said Catesby.

  ‘What finally made you jump ship?’

  ‘She sabotaged the Peruvian Peace Plan – but will never admit it.’

  ‘I can assure you, William, that the cables, documents and logs have either been destroyed or will never see the light of day.’

  ‘I was, by the way, a hawk when the Argentines invaded. I fully supported sending the Task Force south, but I thought Galtieri would withdraw after a show of face-saving bravado.’

  ‘So did we all. How were you involved?’

  ‘I was only on the fringes – a bit of backdoor diplomacy, but mostly liaising with other intelligence agencies.’

  ‘How did the plan play out? I’m no longer in the loop, you know.’

  ‘The first version called for Peruvian and US troops to replace the Argentines. But Buenos Aires rejected American troops and London wouldn’t have Peruvians. So back to the drawing board. Version Two had Mexican, West German and Canadian troops as peacekeepers. My job was largely reassuring the Germans.’

  ‘Was it really signed, sealed and delivered?’

  ‘Who knows? As you suggested, the docs are either deep-sixed or in the burn bag.’

  ‘I’ve heard,’ said Bone, ‘that Galtieri sobered up enough to sign the agreement fourteen hours before she sank the Belgrano.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t in the loop.’

  Bone smiled.

  ‘I was,’ said Catesby, ‘in the West German embassy in DC when I first heard there had been an agreement. I’ll never forget it. It was three o’clock in the morning and we were tired and bleary-eyed. I was looking at maps with the West German military attaché and a Canadian when the Night Duty Officer came into the room. He said there had been a telephone call from the White House saying that Argentina had accepted the Peace Plan and that the Peruvians were relaying the news to the British Foreign Secretary. The military attaché sent for a bottle of Sekt and we toasted the peace.’ Catesby sipped his gin and tonic and stared at a climbing rose. ‘And twelve hours later it all descended into irrecoverable chaos.’

  ‘As I said, she’s evil.’

  There was nothing more to say. The rest, thought Catesby, was history. The first torpedo blew off the ship’s bow. The second torpedo exploded in a stern engine room and knocked out the cruiser’s electrical system. There were agonising screams and cries for help from the sailors who were trapped in the dark below decks – and the first to die. Of the 323 who perished, 200 were under the age of twenty.

  Afterwards, Thatcher claimed that news of the Peruvian Peace Plan did not reach Downing Street until three hours after the Belgrano was sunk. Catesby knew this was a lie, a total nonsense. He was sure Thatcher had sunk the cruiser to sabotage the Peace Plan. In addition, the Belgrano had been carefully staying outside the 200-nautical-mile exclusion zone that Britain had declared around the Falklands. It was, thought Catesby, like saying to someone: ‘If you step over that line, I’m going to punch you.’ And then you punch them even though they didn’t step over the line.

  *

  A year later, Catesby was watching a BBC TV phone-in when the teacher, Diana Gould, questioned Thatcher about the Belgrano sinking. The mood quickly turned bitter and emotional. Once again, Thatcher denied having heard about the Peace Plan and insisted the Belgrano was a threat despite being outside the exclusion zone and heading away from the Falklands. Catesby later heard that Denis Thatcher had thrown a wobbly after the interview. He shouted at the programme’s producer that his wife had been stitched up by ‘bloody BBC poofs and Trots’. Catesby was depressed by the story, but not surprised. Britain had become a different place. The genteel veneer was gone. Power had been passed on to a coterie of spivs and saloon bar bores.

  Catesby had always enjoyed quiet pleasures. There was now a lot more time to garden, to read and to do up his house. One repair required stripping away the rendering of an exterior wall. The uncovered wattle and daub had last seen the light of day 450 years before. The newly bared wall was patterned by the fingerprints of those who had pressed the daub into the wattle all those centuries before. He tried to put his own fingertips into the shallow depressions – he wanted to connect somehow with that past generation. But Catesby’s fingers wouldn’t fit. The indelible marks in the daub had been made by the fingers of children. Catesby flashed back to an image of himself as a tattered ten-year-old begging herring from the Lowestoft drifters to feed his family. He placed his palm over the finger marks on the wattle and daub.

  St J
ames’s Park, London: June, 1993

  It was one of the saddest sights that Catesby had ever seen. The ex-Prime Minister was sitting between two winos on a park bench. The dementia must have really kicked in. He was clueless and babbling. Catesby bribed the winos to leave them alone with a fiver each. He sat down next to ex-Prime Minister.

  ‘Would you like to go home?’ he said.

  ‘What, to Huddersfield? No, I’m in the House of Lords today.’

  ‘Would you like to go back to the Lords?’

  ‘Yes, there’s an important debate on the Open University. I’m very proud of that, you know?’

  ‘You have a lot to be proud of, Lord Wilson – you made Britain a more civilised place.’

  ‘Are we going back to the Lords?’

  ‘Yes, let me help you up.’

  Catesby could see that Wilson was in no fit state to go back to the House of Lords.

  ‘I think,’ said Catesby, ‘that we should go home first.’

  ‘Huddersfield?’

  ‘No, Lord North Street. I think Mary is making you lunch.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  It wasn’t far to walk. Lady Wilson was surprised to see her husband, but pleased that Catesby had bought him there. Apparently, he had slipped his minders in the Lords and they were very worried too.

  It wasn’t much of an act kindness. But, Catesby later thought, it’s probably why he got invited to the funeral.

  Saint Mary’s Old Church, Isles of Scilly: 7 June 1995

  The morning after the funeral, Catesby got up early. As he got older, he found it difficult to sleep – particularly in the summer light of a June early morning. He found himself wandering back to the grave site and stood for a few seconds paying his personal respects. The churchyard was a riot of green and birdsong and he could hear the gentle sough of the sea. Catesby reached for a tissue and found something else stuffed in his pocket. It was the funeral programme.