Gentleman Traitor

by Alan Williams

  Philby began to stroll down the pavement in its direction. The street was now filled with that flat neutral light just before dusk when distances and colour are deceptive. Several cars had already switched on their side-lights. He was calculating that both the crowds and the visibility would make it unlikely for them to risk taking a shot at him.

  He passed within a foot of the BMW and noticed its twin spotlights and an aerial the size of a fishing-rod sprouting from its rear wing. He recognized the driver from Peters’ photographs: a sallow freckled face, and wearing string-backed driving gloves that rested on the wheel. The man beside him had on a blue beret, black leather jacket, and wrap-around glasses with reflecting silver lenses. There was a map spread across his knees, but he was looking out at the street. Philby came close enough to notice the lumps of muscle under the man’s cheekbones, and to see that the map was a large-scale one of the Vevey-Montreux area. Then the man moved his head a fraction, and Philby caught a double-glimpse of himself in the reflecting lenses, before walking on.

  Twenty yards up the street he stopped at a newsagent’s and bought a Daily Telegraph, then sauntered back, unfolding the paper and glancing at the headline ‘Big Security Shake-up in Whitehall’. Neither the Mercedes nor the BMW had moved. He walked straight past the BMW without glancing at it this time, and could still hear its engine running. When he reached the Mercedes he refolded the paper and climbed in beside Peters. ‘It’s the same two you photographed. Let’s go.’

  Peters hesitated. ‘Is it the British policeman you were talking about, sir?’

  Philby nodded but said nothing. Peters had started the engine and now pulled leisurely out into a break in the traffic. He drove at a measured pace, gathering speed only as the road widened out of town, back towards the autoroute. For a moment there was no sign of the BMW. Philby began looking out for it, when Peters, again with uncharacteristic familiarity, said, ‘Better not turn round, sir. No point in alerting them unnecessarily.’

  From then on Philby relaxed, noticing the clean ashtray, the polished dashboard, the stiff blond hairs at the back of Peters’ neck. They passed a roundabout and Peters touched the accelerator. At the turn up to the autoroute Philby instinctively began to fasten his seatbelt; and as they swung round the first bend he now caught a glimpse of the BMW, about two hundred yards behind. He was almost beginning to enjoy himself. Only one thing bothered him. He said: ‘By the way, Peters, they’ve got a bloody strong radio on that car.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry too much about that, sir. It probably means they’re operating with just one car, and keeping in touch with a base in Montreux. I don’t think there’ll be much opposition.’

  Philby grunted, and again said nothing. He was both relieved and slightly irritated by the South African’s remark. Yet he had to concede that Peters’ reasoning seemed sound. The fact that the hard-liners in MI5 — or whatever establishment they now drew their pensions from — were using Sergeant Dempster for the second time, suggested that it was a relatively local and limited operation, which in turn meant that Dempster’s bosses must be getting desperate. Philby smiled to himself. No wonder Sergeant Dempster had had so little trouble getting out of Russia! Why pay two men to do the job of one?

  They’d reached the intersection, and Peters slowed to allow two cars to pass on the inside lane, long enough to fasten his own seatbelt — something, Philby noted, that he had never seen him do before, even while driving well above the speed limit on the crowded autoroute in from Lausanne. At the same time, the South African turned to him and said, ‘Sit well back, sir.’

  The engine gave a low roar and they leapt into the fast lane. Peters switched on the lights and Philby could see the needle on the speedometer creeping round the dial to 130 — 150 — 170… The dusk was deepening and the lake was a pool of mist on their right with the lights of Montreux winking up at them from about three miles ahead.

  The needle was quivering just about 200 as they flashed past the blue and white sign to Montreux Est. The traffic was beginning to pull into the slow right-hand lane, and Philby caught a glimpse of two points of light in the near-side wing mirror; but it was too far to see if they belonged to the BMW. A series of diagonal yellow lines now raced towards them as the fast lane began to narrow, and a sign loomed up showing two tapering vertical white bars with a red stroke across the middle. It was the end of the autoroute.

  Philby knew this stretch of Switzerland fairly well, from studying Pol’s Michelin map on their several gastronomic excursions into the surrounding French countryside. He remembered the double dotted red line that showed the proposed extension of the autoroute west to Martigny, then up to the Simplon Pass and into Italy.

  He was thinking of the map that he’d seen on Dempster’s lap less than half an hour ago, and wondering that if it was detailed and up-to-date enough, it could well mark the exact position of the road’s progress, when a row of luminous orange marker-cones swept out of the half-light, directing them on to the main road round Montreux.

  Peters had reduced speed, but only to 140 kmh. There was a slight bump as the Mercedes’ front wheels struck the beacons, scattering three of them into the side of the road. In the same moment Peters switched the headlamps on full, and Philby could see the metalled surface ending about a hundred yards ahead at a row of red and white oil-drums which blocked most of the road. Beyond stretched the broad white curve of the unfinished chalk road with the edges straggling off into yellow clay.

  Peters flicked the wheel and they missed the nearest oil-drum with a swaying swoosh; then came a loud rumbling vibration and the speedometer needle dropped to nearly 120. This time, Philby twisted his head round and could now see them, against the darkening sky, two bright points of light that swerved violently, then flared on to high-beam, glowing off the ragged row of beacon-cones.

  The BMW righted itself and its twin spotlights now came on, rippling down the edge of the last strip of metalled road. It swerved again when it reached the oil-drums, but the driver was ready this time, and it swept past them, its distance steadily closing with the Mercedes.

  Philby now realized what was going to happen, and in a confused moment wondered whether he should mention Dempster’s map: but before he had time to speak, he was flung back against the stiffly-sprung seat, as the Mercedes surged forward, swaying slightly on the loose gritty surface.

  They passed a column of mud-spattered yellow bulldozers and digging machines; then a huge tip-truck swept into view, parked half across the road. Peters screeched round it, and the Mercedes began to slide into a slow dry skid. Peters’ hands hardly moved, and just as slowly, he corrected the drive, almost without reducing speed.

  The driver of the BMW seemed either less skilful or less lucky. Through the rear windows of the Mercedes Philby could now see little but a white fog of chalk-dust churned up under their wheels; but then he saw the lights of the smaller car slewing sideways until for a second it seemed to be held rigid, its headlamps wobbling frantically across the edge of the claybank. Then the long hard beam of a spotlight straightened again and settled back to follow the broken line of the verge.

  The race went on for another seventy seconds. Ahead the hills had turned black. The white chalk road snaked away under the two pairs of headlamps, rounding a sharp bend as the Mercedes began to gain. Scattering lights glimmered high in the hills; while several hundred feet below them, as the unfinished autoroute began to climb out along tall concrete stilts, they could see the blur of traffic on the distant main road running parallel to them along the lakeside. And all the time the white chalk kept coming on and on, thundering under the wheels and swinging into another bend around a dark shoulder of hill.

  The wake of white dust was now so dense Philby could see nothing behind; and the next thing he knew, he was thrown forward against the painful pressure of his seatbelt, then swung sideways against the corner of Peters’ adjustable seat. One hand brushed Peters’ shoulder, the other collided-painfully with the door. He found himself h
alf on his knees, the whole weight of his body suspended by the safety harness. There was a shriek and a howl of machinery that seemed to explode from under the floor of the car. He could smell burning rubber, and this time he was tossed to the other side, slamming his elbow against the window, and cutting his hand on the upper door-handle; then his head bounced up against the padded roof and the floor came up to meet him as he flopped back again into his seat.

  The whole incident had taken less than five seconds. During the last two, part of Philby’s mind had registered the lights of the pursuing BMW. They had lit up the inside of the Mercedes with a distorting glare, as the smaller car careered past them with a spray of flint and gravel that rattled off the Mercedes’ windows, then vanished like a ghost car fleeing into the cloud of chalk dust.

  Philby had time to see the cloud drift out into a pool of empty twilight, hang for a moment with the car’s four beams of light waving wildly into the sky, then topple forwards and plunge down into darkness.

  Peters had cut the Mercedes’ lights and engine; and in the sudden hush, through the closed windows, came a faint clanking, crumpling sound. For two seconds there was silence again; then a dull boom, and ahead a white-orange glow swelled upwards, outlining the column of naked concrete stanchions and the hard black line that marked the end of the autoroute.

  Philby’s door had jammed, and he had to slide out after Peters, his feet sinking into clay and his shoes scraping against lumps of rock. He saw that the Mercedes had spun round in its own length, leaving two scooped-out trenches of chalk blackened with scorched rubber, and had come to rest lying at a steep angle along the clay bank.

  In the darkness the only light was the flickering glow from beyond the edge of the road. Behind were no lights, no sound. Peters and he walked together the thirty-odd yards to the brink. The road ended at a few rusted iron rods twisting out of a concrete shelf. Together they peered over. About three hundred feet below, the skeleton of a toy car was silhouetted in a ball of flame that was beginning to lick at the gorse up the sides of the ravine.

  Philby said dispassionately, ‘Excellent work, Peters.’ He turned away; but Peters stood watching a moment longer. ‘Come on,’ said Philby. ‘It’ll be spotted from the villas above — although it’ll take them some time to get down there,’ he added, and started back towards the Mercedes, nursing his injured hand. Peters caught him up a moment later and the two of them climbed in through the doors that weren’t jammed against the clay bank.

  Twenty minutes later, they joined the steep track up to Pol’s villa. Peters drove into the garage and let Philby go on ahead, up to the trellised patio which was now lit by coloured lanterns under the Moorish arches. Pol was still in his rocking chair, but dressed now in a butter-scotch silk suit and a heavy matching cravat. He was still drinking champagne, and rose with some difficulty to greet Philby. ‘You’ve hurt your hand, my friend? Nothing more serious, I hope.’

  ‘Nothing. The fish bit, we pulled in the line and fried him. There’ll be a few red faces tomorrow in Whitehall — especially when it comes to explaining what two of their officers were doing driving down part of an unfinished motorway.’

  Pol was giggling, as a thick swarthy man in a white tunic stepped forward and handed Philby a dark whisky. He drank it in the rocking chair next to Pol and gave him a full account of the chase. Pol scarcely interrupted, except to stifle his laughter. When Philby had finished, the Frenchman laid a fat pink claw on Philby’s knee and cooed ecstatically: ‘So our little séjour in Switzerland was not in vain — eh, my friend? Now you should have little to worry you. And we can start making plans.’

  Next evening Pol gave a small buffet dinner. Apart from Peters, who stood immobile by the door, and Pol’s four squat blue-chinned manservants — whom Philby recognized from the hijacking of the Troika-Caravelle — there were less than a dozen guests. They seemed prosperous and polite and inoffensive. Only one caught Philby’s attention, a thin dark man in a cheap brown suit, with crooked cheeks and one white eye like a burnt-out flashbulb. Philby recognized him at once as an Arab, probably of humble origins.

  Pol himself paid almost no attention to the man, preferring to concentrate on the food: terrine de campagne, salmon mousse, artichoke hearts, and strawberries and cream served with Château d’Yquem. But one thing about Pol struck Philby as out of character: not once did he see the Frenchman drinking. The same went for the small brown-suited Arab.

  Quick to suspicion, Philby reasoned that the little man scarcely looked like one of those fat-cat oil-emissaries from Saudi-Arabia or from the Gulf States where abstinence is de rigueur. Only one other Arab country enforced the same taboos, and that was Libya.

  Philby had nothing to go on — not a grain of evidence with which he could even broach Pol, let alone interrogate him. The Frenchman’s business affairs were wide and eccentric, and some paltry dealings with an oil-rich state across the Mediterranean would hardly be out of order. Yet Philby — for better or worse — was still very much Pol’s creature, and throughout the evening, the ugly thought kept crossing his mind that Pol, in his role as the supreme deus ex machina, might already be planning to link the immature fanaticism of Libya to that of a certain African state.

  Pol would do it for money, Philby thought. He would do anything for money. But more dangerous still, he would do it because he enjoyed doing it — for the devious pleasure of the game. And it was because Philby understood these emotions so well himself, that in moments like these he came close to fearing Pol.

  CHAPTER 23

  The object was washed up on the shore twelve kilometres from Gagra. It came in with the early tide, while the fishing boats were still at sea, and lay for some hours undisturbed on the empty beach below the village of Dhugali. It was first discovered by an ancient man, known simply as the ‘Old One’, who boasted of having been five years old when Napoleon invaded Russia. The locals treated him affectionately as a harmless simpleton, but the authorities considered him a public nuisance and often threatened to have him confined to an asylum.

  For the Old One had a reputation for inventing fantastic stories. Once he had come out with a tale of having seen clouds of men falling out of the sky, holding umbrellas, on to the mountains behind Dhugali; and since it was early in the Cold War, he was taken seriously. Special units of Security Forces had been dispatched to the area to search for the invading saboteurs, until the Old One confessed with great mirth that all he had seen was a flock of snow-geese. And on another occasion, during the jittery months following Stalin’s death, he had convulsed the village one evening by saying that he had just met the old tyrant walking quietly on the sands, his withered arm tucked into the jacket of his grey tunic.

  So no one was prepared to take him seriously when he broke into the local café that morning, shouting that there was a dead cow lying on the beach with blond hair and that it smelt like the tomb.

  It was the smell that finally attracted two more people to the spot — an elderly couple, both Party members, whose word could be trusted. The local militia arrived and found the body of a woman who had been in the water for about two weeks. What was left of her face was badly mutilated. The Criminal Police in Gagra were called in and the body was taken to the morgue at Police Headquarters.

  The autopsy revealed that it was the body of a well-nourished woman of between thirty-five and forty-five, and that she had died not from drowning, but from a series of blows to her head and face. The only item of clothing left on her was a pair of partially decayed nylon tights, of Western make; and buried in one of the swollen, pulpy fingers was a gold wedding-ring. The hallmark was again Western, and an expert later identified it as of British origin. The corpse’s teeth also contained some expensive fillings that were not typical of Soviet dentistry.

  The Gagra Criminal Police at once began re-examining the file on a missing British woman who had disappeared eighteen days before from the Intourist Grand Hotel in Gagra on the day that she had checked in. Her name was Mrs Joyce Eil
een Warburton, aged thirty-nine, and she had been employed for the last five months in the English-language section of Radio Moscow.

  The head waiter at the hotel confirmed that she had dined in the restaurant with a man who had spoken English with her, but who had ordered in fluent Russian. She had left the hotel with him shortly before midnight, and none of the hotel staff had seen them return.

  Since the case concerned a Westerner, the file was now passed to the KGB Bureau in Sochi, who immediately informed Moscow. Dzerzhinski Square had a considerable file on Mrs Warburton. She had been cohabiting with an Englishman, Maddox, who had been killed by a hit-and-run truck the same evening that she had disappeared. The truck had still not been traced. Furthermore, Maddox had been in the employ of a certain Charles Pol whom the Soviet authorities suspected of being involved in the hijacking of the Troika-Caravelle to Finland seventeen days before — the day after the woman had disappeared and Maddox had died. But what interested the Committee of State Security most was the fact that Mrs Warburton had for some months been the mistress of H. A. R. Philby, who had himself disappeared on the same day that she had.

  The day after the body was found, a squad of senior KGB officers arrived in Gagra and began a vigorous inquiry. Here they were helped by several events which had seemed unimportant at the time, but which now became crucial. Two days after the woman had disappeared, a skiff had been found on the shore a few miles from the town. It was found to be a hired boat that had been reported missing from the beach below the Grand Hotel. Next day an oar had been washed up, and three days later a schoolboy from the Gagra State Primary had been seen showing off the broken shard of a second oar, which he said he’d found on the beach. Then, a week later, two dilapidated pieces of female undergarments had appeared on the ‘free’ market in Gagra. They were of good material, though badly damaged by sea-water, and both had labels printed in Roman characters which turned out to be the names of a well-known department store in London. The stall-hawkers protested that they had also found the garments on the beach, and were only hoping to sell them for a few kopeks. The police confiscated them, and now brought them out for a careful examination. One, a brassière, was found to contain blood-stains which matched the blood group of the dead woman.