by Daniel Kemp
“Were you there to see the show, Barrington, or were you part of the cast?”
“Neither actually, Dicky.” He was annoyed, but in no position to forcefully show it. “I was there on company business gathering what I could on Mosley and Hitler devotees. You know of course that's where Campbell, and then I, ran Jack Price.”
Dicky merely sipped from his teacup staring directly at Trenchard, neither nodding nor shaking his head to Barrington's rhetorical question.
“Is that where Jack's dislike of you first took root? Did you proposition him? Invite him to a soiree with the three of you, one in which he knew what would take place?”
“Is that relevant? I doubt Jack Price is fond of anyone in this life whatever their sexuality may be.”
“Possibly, but it would be nice to know why he served you up so neatly bundled and wrapped. Never mind,” Dicky said as Barrington was slow to respond. “put that one on the back burner simmering away until later. Was Stiles a Nazi sympathiser when you first met, and if so did he hide it?”
“That's an awkward one to answer. He was never that open in those early days. Definitely anti-socialist, and a staunch critic of anything commie Russian, but not an out-and-out fascist in that sense. The thing that stood out through all his flamboyance was his loyalty to the Crown.”
“How long did it take you to discover that he was homosexual?”
Barrington laughed. Not loudly in triumph, but more as a way of saving face, as the stealthy degradation that Dicky had wanted to achieve was beginning to bite.
“I knew from the first moment we spoke. Just as I knew from the first time we met that you were not. It's a gender thing that some try unsuccessfully to hide while others find no shame in admitting what they are.”
“Your own reasons for not declaring your sexual leanings are not at issue here, nor are the leanings of any others that will be mentioned during this debrief unless specifically asked about. We will stick to the path we are on. Please bear that in mind. Did Stiles introduce you to the Duke of Windsor?”
“Formally, yes, but I had met him once before. I was assigned to a special detail that reported on a visit the Duke and Mrs Simpson made to Paris, just before he abdicated and married her.”
“When did you formally met the ex-king?” Dicky persisted.
“Not until 1940, when he was living in Lisbon, Portugal.”
“The Santo residence?”
“Yes! Stiles and Ricardo Santo were close friends.”
“Was that when you became aware of Gregory Stiles's relationship with Nazi Germany along with his financial dealings with that country?”
“Yes, it was!”
“How?”
“One afternoon Gregory introduced the Duke of Windsor to a German agent named Walter Schallenberg. I was aware of that name through my work with Campbell and with Internal Security. He had been in London in 1933 at the German Embassy. Schallenberg pleaded with the Duke to return to Spain where the Germans, with the cooperation of Franco's secret police, would mount a covert operation taking him and his wife to Germany. He refused, going to Nassau in the Bahamas instead. Stiles was going to finance that evacuation to Spain; instead I saw him sign a cheque for seven figures in favour of the Duke.”
“You had ties to the Spanish Ambassador during that time, Barrington?”
“How very astute of you, Dicky! Again not directly, but through a family member, yes!”
“Did you meet again?”
“The Duke of Windsor? No!”
“Stiles?”
“Not until I think it was in the late sixties, maybe 1969.”
“Where did Stiles go when the Duke was ferried away from Portugal?”
“He went with the Royal party. That's when we lost touch, but I did hear through the grapevine that Gregory had paired the Duke up with an old friend of his; a Swedish millionaire who was visiting Nassau. I would think that it was then that that the idea to set up the quasi Royal Court in Sweden was hatched.”
“But you don't know that for sure, Barrington?”
“No, I do not. Look, I suspect that I'm being more cooperative than you imagined. I hope you're taking note of that,” Barrington proclaimed defiantly.
Dicky was fighting the fatigue that he felt which had been aggravated by the consumption of the best part of a bottle of brandy. If Sheila had known how much he had drunk the previous day and night then she would have enrolled him in the local Alcoholics Anonymous programme. He removed his brown leather gloves and rubbed his eyes. Although he was struggling it was a battle he knew he could overcome; however, the update he'd received from Catherine at section four, whilst still at home, was a completely different matter. That took him to places he would rather not go.
“Duly noted and filed away, Barrington. Tell me about Rudolf Hess; how heavily involved were you in the cover-up that followed his arrival in Scotland?” he asked.
“What the hell! How do you put me into that boiling pot? Way beyond my expertise, the unravelling of why he came to Britain. No one invited me to Scotland that weekend.”
“Not even dear old Uncle Tobias, old chap?”
“My, you have been busy.”
“Yes, I have, haven't I?”
“My answer remains the same.”
“It's a hunch on my part based on the fact that you were so eager to show me how much you knew of the Duke of Kent's plane crash. You can be rather pompous and puffed-up at times when mentioning those you've rubbed shoulders with, Barrington. Often it's best to say nothing, but now it would more expedient to make a clean breast of what you do know. Share the knowledge, lighten the load. You will not only feel better for the experience, but also be better rewarded. Want something stronger than tea?” Dicky asked for his own sake, more than for Barrington's wellbeing.
Back in New York
“Amongst many that your father interviewed in Naples, Italy, at the end of the war, Shaun, was a German colonel who, when a captain, was one of the aides-de-camp of the Nazi Party's illustrious deputy Führer; one Rudolf Hess, of Spandau prison, Berlin fame. The colonel wanted a favour from the allies and more importantly, your father was willing to trade. What he had to offer was gold dust by the tonnage. Luckily for him, and us, your father was a bright, forward-thinking man. In exchange for an exact copy of the names of British sympathisers to the Nazi cause that Hess had carried on that plane trip to Scotland in May 1941, he wanted to stay on the farm in Italy where he had been captured, marry the woman there and live out his remaining days drinking wine under the olive trees. Your father did not think that to be too high a price to pay, but did wonder who to divulge those names to. He copied the names from the document the colonel supplied, then took that copy to the chief of military intelligence in Rome; Wing Commander Douglas Finley. Before he left his field unit he carefully hid away the original document. A cautious man, your father. Unfortunately, he wasn't vigilant enough.
He did not know that Finley and the man that Hess had flown to see in Scotland had served in the RAF together and were close friends. Finley dismissed your father's report, saying that none of the names could possibly be connected with Nazism. He told your father to send the German colonel to the appropriate POW camp to await further investigations on whether or not he should stand trial at Nuremberg. On return to Naples Captain West resumed his duties, but, and this is where I come in, he was recalled to Rome three weeks later by my head of station. If you recall I told you that one of the reasons for my marriage breakup was due to my many visits abroad and this was one of them.” He passed me another cigarette then continued.
Colonel Von Striegt, a prisoner of war detained under military orders signed by Captain H. West at Camp12, Pozzuoli, near Naples, had been found shot dead. He had suspected he might be, and had left word with another prisoner to that effect. I met your father one month after meeting Aberman in Vienna, Shaun, and it all started to fall into place.
“What was he like in those days, Jack?”
“He was
a man of honour and integrity. Just like yourself.”
London
In Lavington Street that's what Dicky was after; honour and integrity along with lashings of honesty.
“We are going to do another ten or fifteen minutes, Barrington, then I will leave you in the capable hands of Ughert's lot. They will address some of the finer points in more detail than I. A lover of exactitude, is Mr Ughert. His men can be a tiny bit messy at times but they get there in the end. I'm to see the Secretary of Defence in company with the Home Secretary. We will obviously be discussing you and what treatment you deserve. Personally, I'd prefer it all to be kept as quiet as possible, save a few blushes that way. However, the next few minutes of your disclosure will determine whether or not that's my recommendation. Are we clear on that?”
“Perfectly, Dicky,” Barrington declared.
“Let's get that little courtesy out the way to start with. From now on you will refer to me as Sir Richard. I am no longer your one time colleague, I am the person in charge of your interrogation and arbitrator on all matters to do with the Trenchard fraternity. Further statements, both verbal and written, will be made with due deference to my position.” Dicky sat back in his chair waiting for Trenchard's response. He didn't have to wait long.
“Yes, Sir Richard.”
“Hess, how involved were you?”
A heavy, laden sigh was followed by the withdrawal of a cigarette and a request for an ashtray.
“Stub it out on the floor. Everything gets swept and burnt after you leave, Barrington. You have never been here.” Trenchard muttered a quiet okay before carrying on with his story.
“Hamilton, that's the man Hess wanted to see in Scotland, phoned me the afternoon he was called to the hospital where Hess had been admitted. He'd suffered some minor injuries when he parachuted from his plane over Hamilton's estate. Hamilton said he would fly down to London and meet with Churchill, taking the list with him. I asked whose names were on it. Some were obviously well known in Whitehall, but there were others that would not have been suspected, let alone known.”
“What did you do?”
“I told Hamilton to tell the Prime Minister of Hess's arrival, but to cover up those unsuspected names. 'Give him the Duke of Windsor, the Duke of Kent and Lord Louis Mountbatten, but those others don't warrant being slandered just on the word of a Nazi, Douglas. They will never survive the scandal,' is roughly what I said.
“Was Douglas Hamilton a fellow supporter of the Nazi ideal?”
“If he was then I knew nothing of it. I believe he was mistaken to be one by Hess because they shared an interest in aviation. Douglas had attended the Summer Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936 and had dinner whilst there with the German Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, but he was part of a travelling parliamentary group and not there under his own steam.”
“Wasn't he later invited to inspect the Luftwaffe by Hermann Göring at about the same time that the Duke of Windsor was in Berlin?”
“You seem well versed on things. I know nothing of that, Sir Richard. We weren't that close.”
“Really! Then that phone call of his the day the deputy Führer arrives on his estate must have come as whopping great surprise to you?”
“We went to the same school and had some of the same friends, but that's all there was. He probably knew I was with the intelligence services and figured I could help.”
“We might have to come back to that at some point, but for now I'll accept your word. What were the names that you persuaded him not to divulge?”
“Arthur Stangate; who sat on the Privy Council and had been First Lord at the Admiralty. Leonard Turner, 1st Baron of Eastfield. His family were major ship owners, Earl Bingham of Tangier, one time supreme Allied forces commander, and finally one time Admiral of the Fleet, Sir Ernest Hatfield.
“Just the four?”
“Along with the two dukes that you're aware of and Lord Louis, then yes, just four.”
“Did the list that Hess carried contain the names of serving Nazis that would actively support a union between Britain and Germany if certain conditions could be met?”
“I see where you're going, Sir Richard, but no. The Jewish question was not a prerequisite to peace. As the once king of the British Isles had voiced no problem with Hitler's proposed Jewish solution and indeed Hess was one of the primary orchestrators of that policy I can't imagine anyone objecting. Hess, however, must have known of fellow-thinking Nazis.”
“Into whose hands did that unabridged list end up, Trenchard?”
“Douglas was asked to hand it over to Kenneth de Courcy, which he did.”
“And who did the asking?”
“The then Chief of Combined Operations; Lord Louis Mountbatten!”
“But of course you and Douglas Hamilton were not that close. Were you?”
“We kept in touch over the affair.”
“Hmm, interesting!” Dicky leant across and stopped the recording.
“What, in your opinion, was the benefit for those esteemed men giving up the sovereignty of this country to Germany, Barrington?”
“Two, mainly! One would rest with the Windsors being of German descent, as are our present Royal Family, and the second was what Hitler offered. The guarantee of holding on to the British Empire by reinforcing its military presence with Axis troops when he had won the war. As you know, Sir Richard, we couldn't hold on to any of it with American hands picking our pockets and drafting our foreign policy for us.”
As Barrington Trenchard finished his reply, the recording was turned on again.
“Why did you send West to see Price? What was the reason behind that decision of yours?”
“In truth, one reason was vanity. I saw his name on a statement and wanted West to find out what he was up to and before you ask, no, I never linked Jack to anything. When I read West's report on Saturday that's when I worried. It had a smell about it with Jack muddying the waters that until then had never been stirred. What I didn't know was that there was a second report, the one that dropped me right in it. I don't know that much about Jack's war years, but I do know his quartermaster comes out of Italy. Want to know his name; Sir Richard?” Barrington stressed the 'sir.' The intended insult did register, but brought only a tiny rebuke.
“Stop playing games, Trenchard. Now's not the time for pass the parcel.”
“Salvatore Guigamo. He was a colonel in the Italian 8th Alpini Regiment, but somehow or other wangled a softer posting when the main part of that Alpine Division joined Hitler's invasion of Russia. Jack uses him for his muscle.”
“Happen to know in which country this man is now, do we?”
“I don't know for sure, no, but I helped Jack with the immigration papers in 1945. The idea put forward was that Guigamo would become active for us in America. When he and some family members left Italy he was heading for New York.”
“Did he provide any intelligence that you're aware of?”
“I wasn't privy to any of that. It was shortly after that I was kicked upstairs to Special Branch.”
“Funny that. Never saw Special Branch as a promotion, old fruit!” Game, set and match to me, thought Dicky.
“Who was debriefing Price when you knew him?”
“Ah! There's the thing that has mystified me forever. Never could find out who Jack worked for. Questioned his loyalty once.”
“That must have made him fond of you, Barrington, particularly if, as seems highly likely, he already had your number filed away for future use.”
“I can't answer for Jack, in truth I never really knew him well.”
“Did Jack ever met Stiles?” Sir Richard continued with his crisp questioning.
“I very much doubt it. From a completely different class, was our Jack. He was the type who wore his lower-working class as a badge across the heart. How goes that saying; you can take the boy out of the gutters but you can't take the gutters out of the boy.” Dicky merely frowned in a disapproving way before continuin
g.
“During your stint in Ireland did you ever work closely with Sir Archibald Finn?”
“Why, is he suspected too?”
“Just answer the question, please.”
“Not closely no, but I was aware of him.”
“Was Jack Price over there at the same time?”
“Can't answer that one. If he was then I wasn't privy to that knowledge.”
“One final question for you, Barrington. Have you ever heard the name of Aberman before?”
Up until now Trenchard's replies had been sharp, concise and quickly delivered. To this question he both paused and prevaricated.
“Aberman, er, I don't think so, Sir Richard. If it's a place somewhere, then I'm unaware of it. Sounds like some Swiss mountain pass. On the other hand, if it's someone's name then it rings no bells with me. Sorry!” he replied with effort.
Dicky rose from his chair, angrily looking down upon his prey.
“That's disappointing, old chap, as I don't believe you. You would be wise to reconsider that answer before I meet the gentlemen I spoke of earlier with whom I will be discussing your future. Ughert has his box of tricks, but it would serve you well if you volunteered the information than wait for him.” He turned towards the door and was just about to call for its opening when Barrington spoke.
By the time he finished both men were drained physically and emotionally, Barrington by the weight of confession, and added to Sir Richard's weary body was the nervous tension of a hunter stalking an animal, knowing that one mistake would send it running.
