‘He used to have a hide there for watching a buzzard’s nest. He wanted to make notes of everything the pair caught and brought back. It was the day after my tenth birthday and he said that now he had a treat of our own for me. A gipsy picnic. I’ll never forget it. Grilled young rabbit and sorrel salad and fat wild strawberries and cream. From the edge of the wood you could see for miles around. The hide was made of hazel wands and turf. There wouldn’t be much of it left, but he could repair it in a day and it was quite comfortable and rainproof.’
‘You didn’t go up yourself with Rachel?’
‘No. Lots of reasons. I didn’t want to intrude. So I just asked her to give Alwyn my love and picked her up later. I can take you there now if you like.’
But I did not wish to intrude either. The unexpected situation was very tricky. It was impossible to guess what Alwyn was up to or who might be with him, and there was the added difficulty that the KGB might after all be keeping an eye on their new agent.
‘I suppose he can reach us if he needs us?’
‘Easily. Does he know you are here?’
‘No. He told me to stay right out of it. I meant to, but now I can’t.’
She asked why I couldn’t, saying that he was right and that I ought to consider the risk of assisting a trusted government servant believed to have taken a bribe from the KGB and defected to Moscow. God knows I had considered it, but the thing had happened and the risk was irrelevant.
‘Because Alwyn has taken me back into my world.’
‘The land? You really want to make your life on it?’
I was amazed that she had remembered a single remark of mine in Temple Gardens and had spotted what I vaguely meant by my world. On the face of it love of the land hardly explained a half-British exile up to the eyes in essentially urban intrigue.
‘Don’t you, Tessa?’
‘It’s opting out. It’s an escape.’
‘What’s wrong with an escape? Nothing is worth serving except what one loves. And who can love forms of government?’
‘Democrats pretend they do.’
‘Well, let ’em!’
I told her something of my conversations with Alwyn, though they had not been conversations so much as silences.
‘We don’t love England for what it makes or votes or thinks,’ I explained, ‘but for what it is—for the sake of the eyes one was born with, if you like.’
‘Just the peace and the green?’
‘Oh, much more than that! I can’t analyse it. The fields have their own honour and everywhere else it’s only a funny word. Values—I found that yours were mine.’
‘Eudora’s and Alwyn’s?’
‘And yours—the other Tessa.’
‘You can’t cut me in half like a piece of cheese. Are you coming down to the house with me?’
I had to refuse though I wanted hours more of her. It would be too difficult to explain to any women working in the house the reappearance of a Willie who could no longer pretend to be a Portuguese.
‘Where will you be if Alwyn needs you?’ she asked.
‘Is there a pub where no one is likely to recognise me, but not too far away?’
‘Amy’s sister at South Pool can give you a room. You can trust her not to talk, and John can visit you there.’
South Pool was at the end of a creek running east from the Kingsbridge Estuary. A boat could come alongside the road at half tide, but anyone who had run up against the ebb had not time for more than one drink at the pub before he’d find his dinghy hard aground on the mud. So it was not much of a place for the holiday-maker unless he liked messing about in boats with the accent on the mess. The cottage where I stayed suited me well and was typical of South Devon—fuchsia hedge, valerian growing out of the garden wall, a room to let and a notice of Cream Teas.
On the third day, which was August 29th, I came back from exploring the creeks in which Marghiloman had been so interested, and was told by Amy’s sister in a confidential whisper that if I took the footpath up the valley I would find Mrs. Hilliard who wanted to talk to me. I followed the stream but saw no sign of her until a piercing whistle came from behind a hedge. She was too downright for patient hide-and-seek. The whistle could have been heard quarter of a mile off.
When I joined her I recognised her veiled, firm expression as that which I had seen on the day I delivered Alwyn’s Moscow address.
‘We’re in trouble, Willie,’ she said.
Alwyn had turned up at John’s cottage the previous night and sent for her and Tessa. He said that his plans had gone wrong and he was about to be taken off by boat. He had brought it on himself and there was no way of getting out of it. As he did not know when he would see them again he had come down to say goodbye.
Eudora was now in the picture, aware of Rachel’s visit to him and of my conversation with Tessa, but she could not get all the complicated details out of him for he would not stop more than ten minutes, insisting that he had to be back before dawn in case of early visitors. She told him that I had come down to give him some vital message and that she was sure I would help. He replied that I was a bloody young fool and was to obey him and keep out. On no account was anyone to visit his hide.
It all sounded to me like Alwyn at the end of his tether with no fight left in him. I was having none of that. I told her that if she could show me from a distance exactly where he was holed up I would act the part of a busy agricultural labourer, passing directly below the birthday wood so that he could see me. I would not disobey and call on him, but would let him know unmistakably that I was there if it was safe to talk and I was needed.
We went separately to her car which was higher up the valley, and drove off at once by a roundabout route. So far away from Alwyn’s retreat, such precautions were probably unnecessary but we were taking no chances. As soon as the wood was in sight on the ragged Devon skyline, so tumbled compared to the clean sweep of my own downland, Eudora pointed out the landmarks and where I could strike a footpath. She then drove down into a deep lane where the car was safe from observation.
I could see why buzzards and Alwyn had chosen the place to nest in undisturbed. The long strip of pasture below the wood was shamefully neglected. My guess was that it belonged to some farmer who could not get labour and was himself too old to bother with an outlying patch of poor land. There were thistles, clumps of bramble and a few sheep competing with rabbits for the grass. I could think of no way of making my presence convincing. There was nothing that a farmhand could usefully do.
However, the Lord managed it for me as for Abraham—providing not a ram caught in a thicket but a ewe stuck fast in a bramble bush. Alwyn must have spotted her and would be cursing himself because he could not take the risk of being asked by a grateful farmer—who might turn up at any time—where he had come from and where he was going.
It took a full ten minutes to cut her free with a pocket knife and without gloves. In the course of the operation he was bound to see and recognise me. I came out bleeding, and the ewe, as always, thought it was all my fault and didn’t stop to say thank you. But still there was no Alwyn and I continued to circle the hill.
A tongue of the copse straggled down thinly to the lower ground, and there I came on him. He was standing against a tree and beckoned me to him.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked in an army voice. ‘I told you to confess who you are and get on with your life.’
‘It wasn’t very good advice. Thanks to you, I am now in the pay of the KGB.’
He asked me what the hell I meant and I told him they wanted me to find out from Eudora what the evidence was which sunk him.
‘As if they didn’t know!’
‘Well, it’s worth five hundred pounds to them.’
‘Then I should tell them and take it and give your Mr. Marghiloman a case of champagne.’
‘They don’t know who Marghiloman is.’
‘Willie, you are being led up the garden path again. Of course they do! Now go
!’
‘Are you expecting anyone?’
‘That’s not your business.’
‘It is and I won’t go. It’s not fair to leave Eudora and Tessa without a proper explanation. All they know is that you were trying to clear yourself through Rachel and it’s gone wrong.’
‘Come on up!’
I don’t know what the hide looked like when it was first built; since only buzzards had to be deceived, it was probably little more than a screen. The improved model was a low turf-and-hazel beehive in the hollow torn out by a fallen elm, using the great slab of earth and roots as a back wall. A casual passer-by would never have noticed it, for the outline was broken by a branch of the elm trailing dead ivy. The earth floor was dry and the roof rainproof. He had been living on oatmeal biscuits, tins of beef and water from a seepage—hardly big enough to call a spring—which was depressing fare for a civil servant who had notably enjoyed his food and wine.
I managed to make him laugh with an account of my KGB interrogations, and that broke the spell. Discomfort and the intensity with which he plotted and re-plotted his schemes in his own lonely head had kept him for some time without laughter.
He said that when Rachel came up to see him he had expanded his S.O.S. message, pretending that MI5 now suspected that he was in Devon. If he were caught and brought to trial, he told her, she would inevitably be days in the witness box, and defending counsel was bound to leave a large question mark over her activities even though she was completely innocent. He would prefer to escape abroad and leave things as they were rather than engage in a hopeless fight. So was there anything that Rachel could do to help him and herself? He never let her suspect that he knew she was guilty.
Rachel agreed to try. Of course she did. She could hand him over to her Russian masters before MI5 could get at him. And she must have foreseen as clearly as Judas what was likely to happen to him. She spoke of a friend with a van who might be persuaded to pick him up so long as she only said that he was in political trouble without giving away his identity. Two days later she returned with the friend.
‘Not the kind of man I expected,’ Alwyn said. ‘Not a tough. Not a fiery communist from the Clyde. I’d have taken him for a university lecturer. Possibly he is. Just the sort of chap to have far-out, left-wing opinions with a tendency to anarchism, and reasonably likely, given a good sob story, to help anyone in trouble for direct action. In the old days I would have put him down as a harmless nuisance and never suspected that the KGB had got him by the short hairs. Their penetration is deadly clever.’
So it was arranged that on the afternoon of August 30th Rachel and friend were to drive slowly along a by-road easily reached by Alwyn across country. Yes, he knew that his game was far too dangerous to be played in this way by ear, but there was no other procedure open to him. He foresaw that the KGB would have difficulty in disposing of him immediately. There must be some delay, some sort of cat-and-mouse act which would give him a chance of unexpectedly bringing in the police and putting his finger on evidence which would stand up in court.
On the 28th the lecturer fellow turned up alone, approaching the copse as I had done, but from the other side, and waiting to be signalled on. He told Alwyn very reasonably that he didn’t like a long journey with a wanted man inside his van and that it would be best to ran him straight down to some safe spot on the Kingsbridge Estuary where he could be taken off by boat. That had been arranged. A friend with a motor cruiser was willing to pick him up on the evening of the 29th, a day earlier than had been agreed. Quarter of an hour later he would be out of Salcombe Harbour and could be landed wherever he wished in England or France. Alwyn had to admit that it was a much more satisfactory solution and to show enthusiastic gratitude.
He asked why his rescue could not be at night. Because somebody in the scattered cottages or from the deck of a moored yacht might notice suspicious movement and possibly warn the Customs. At the end of the day, however, there was nothing remarkable in a cruiser sending the dinghy ashore to pick up a guest or a crewman, and a credible answer to any question could be invented.
Alwyn was invited to choose the spot and mark it on the map. Somewhere remote but as near as possible to the harbour entrance. He had suggested the foreshore below the woods near the junction of the South Pool and Goodshelter creeks. The van could get fairly close and there was a rough path down to the water. The beach was hard shale and a cruiser of normal shallow draft could come within five hundred yards at half tide.
‘So there it is. At 8.30 tonight,’ he said. ‘Rachel and her friend genuinely believe that I trust them to help me to escape. If I back out now, I gain nothing.’
‘You’re not going to run for it? You’re giving up?’
‘No, Willie, not quite. There’s a slim chance for me to get clear without arousing suspicion—if it works.’
I did not see why the boat was worse for him than the van and said that if the KGB wanted to get rid of him they could close up and bury him where he was.
‘They could indeed. But KGB 13 like to avoid burial. It’s never very safe. The deep sea is.’
‘What’s KGB 13?’
‘The assassination squad.’
‘But in God’s name why?’
‘I told you long ago. While at liberty I am a continual embarrassment. But as soon as I am dead they can safely say that I defected. Invaluable propaganda! All over Europe and America our security is discredited.’
‘Then you have to live!’
‘No, I don’t have to. I have only to make it impossible for them to claim that I am alive and in Russia.’
‘Get the police and catch the lot on the foreshore!’
‘And tell the police what? That I am Alwyn Rory and being rescued by KGB agents?’
‘We ought to be able to identify the cruiser.’
‘She won’t have arrived yet. If I were doing this, I should come in casually as if looking for an anchorage, turn to starboard just past the harbour, pick up my passenger, decide that none of the creeks had enough water at low tide and run straight out again.’
‘Does John Penpole know all these creeks?’
‘I have ordered you to keep out!’
‘But you can’t stop me. And if I’m not to make matters worse …’
‘Then just watch if you must! Your evidence might be of use some time or other. Don’t be seen and for God’s sake don’t attempt any violence! You could only lose.’
I asked him if he expected Rachel to be there. He replied that she was not that kind of agent.
‘Propaganda, fishing for information, possibly recruiting—that would be her line. I should guess that the escape of Mornix was the only time they ever used her for rough stuff. That house of hers with all the fancy dress tenants underneath was a gift.’
He was in no mood to answer more questions, so I wished him luck and slid away. It was already after five when I reached Eudora and the car. Her only comment when she heard my story was that she’d welcome a chance to boil Rachel for the hounds but guessed they’d throw up. There was no time to lose. She drove straight back through Molesworthy to the house and on to the Penpole cottage, with me on the floor of the car.
While I was wondering how much John should be told, Eudora went straight to the point.
‘John, Mr. Alwyn is being taken off by boat tonight at 8.30 and he doesn’t want to go. You and Willie here will watch what happens. That should be easy from the woods on the point. Don’t mix it with them, but get him back here if you see half a chance!’
‘Very good, Master. The captain will have to keep an eye on his chart.’
‘Of course he will, John. He’s probably a bloody admiral in Willie’s trawler fleet.’
‘Is there any objection to my taking Mr. Alwyn’s ten-bore?’
I think she was about to say that he could take a punt and loaded punt gun if he liked, but I reminded them that Alwyn had strictly forbidden all violence. I had a feeling that his very exact choice of the rendezvous was
not calculated to help his gallant rescuers and that we should not interfere. If the police were alerted by shots and he was caught, there was not a scrap of believable evidence in his favour.
‘Where shall we put him if we get him, Master?’ John asked.
‘In the car. I’ll be parked off the lane down from Cousin’s Cross. And then in the kennel room until he tells us whether he wants to go back to the old place or not.’
To avoid too much coming and going of Eudora and curiosity among the villagers of Molesworthy, John and I walked over the ridge by the path through the bracken and were picked up by Tessa’s car. She let us out a couple of miles to the east of the point and by half past seven we were lying down among tall tussocky grass well back from the water and close to the path by which Alwyn and his supposed lecturer were almost certain to come.
He had chosen the spot well—trees and brown water and a gentle current as if we were at the junction of two rivers far from the sea. A solitary fishing boat was chugging up the creek against the ebb. Three or four small craft were moored to the opposite shore; further out towards the main channel, was a converted ship’s lifeboat anchored bow and stern, appearing derelict though she had a canvas cover, shabby and streaked with gull droppings, to keep out the rain. In the South Pool creek was nothing. Half of Salcombe was in sight over a mile away—another world occupied with the business of its waterfront.
The evening was overcast with only a ribbon of clear sky, hardly wider than the setting sun, between cloud and the western hills. We heard feet stumbling down the stony path to our left, but nobody came as far as the beach. Soon afterwards a white motor cruiser appeared end on, feeling her way up from the main harbour against the tide. There was nothing about her to attract attention. The distant hum of the diesels promised plenty of power when it was needed. She might have come round from Plymouth on one side or Dartmouth on the other, and I have little doubt that her papers were in perfect order and her owner as British as I was—or rather more so. But no mere victim of blackmail could have been trusted not to mess up essential details; secret and enthusiastic sympathy with the Communist State must have been responsible for the exactitude with which he had obeyed orders.
Red Anger Page 12
