Although it was 1935 and the world was reeling under the Great Depression, Vladimir Mikhailovich secured a position for Alexander at the firm of Inkerman’s, which was an insurance actuary in the City of London. It was not a very senior position, but Alexander’s talent for calculating statistical probabilities in his head, and almost as accurately as a fully experienced actuary but in much less time, quickly earned Alexander the reputation of a man who was going far and fast.
Although promoted swiftly through the ranks of his contemporaries, such was the easy-going nature and infectious good humour of the young Alexander that few resented his rapid rise. This was true even of those who accepted that it was through pure skill rather than any form of nepotism, which would have been a just cause of complaint. As he approached his twenty-second birthday, Alexander was already being tipped, by those in the know, to secure a junior partnership in the next five years, which would make him the youngest member of the firm ever to have been awarded such an accolade. Then again, those tipsters who wagered on his promotion were equally confident that it would be short-lived, for the year was now 1938 and the rumblings of war were again already rising to a crescendo in Europe.
Alex, together with his mother, had taken a house in Onslow Gardens the year before; it had seemed to him that the rent was extortionate, but, in comparison to what others were paying in the same area, it was peppercorn rent. Seemingly, Vladimir Mikhailovich was friendly with the owners, who no longer needed their pied-à-terre in London and were happy to rent it to a friend of their friend – the wheels within wheels were still turning in favour of Alexander and his mother.
That was until that fateful Friday evening in May 1939, when Alexander was walking home, with his mind on other matters, and when he let his guard slip for just a moment. It was a crucial moment that would assuredly change his life and mark the graduation from the days of innocence to those when awareness, in its darkest disguise, would arouse Alex to the realities of man’s ability to be both cruel and merciless. It was a far cry from the days of cosseted comfort that he had enjoyed for much of his life previously.
III
Whether it was the cacophony of military music that woke Alex or whether the noise started after he returned to consciousness, he was unsure. Opening his eyes warily, Alex discovered that the place in which he found himself was not a place that he knew nor even somewhere that he wished that he knew. When decorated last, the choice of colour had been an unattractive distemper colour, but that was many years ago, and time had not enhanced the shade of the walls; age had given them a most unpleasant hue. In all likelihood, the cracked quarry-tiled floor had been laid many decades previously.
The other furnishings of the room were a half-broken wooden chair and a metal-framed bed on which was the thinnest, lumpiest mattress Alex had ever seen; both the bed and the chair were affixed firmly to the floor. There was also a bucket, the purpose for which he shuddered to imagine. The heavy steel banding bolted to the door as reinforcement seemed to be superfluous, as it was plain – even to Alex’s mind, which was innocent of such matters – that it would be quite able to withstand much force. Most worryingly, Alex discovered that his clothes had been removed, leaving him with his dignity protected merely by his singlet and underpants.
He tried a tentative, ‘Hello?’ and was rewarded by the volume of the music intensifying, which only served to amplify the dull ache in his head. Alex struggled to get to his feet, slumped on the unforgiving bed and covered his ears to try to block out the blaring music.
The bolts on the door rattled, and the door opened; the smart gentleman Alex had last seen in Onslow Gardens stood at the door smiling. ‘Zdravstvuyte [Hello] Aleksander Nikolayevich,’ he greeted.
Alex had the sense to look sufficiently confused
So, the man continued in accented English, ‘Okay, my friend; for the moment, we will play the game according to your rules. Come with me.’
The man snapped his fingers, and another man entered the room and grabbed Alex roughly, dragging him to his feet and forcing him – although it did not take much effort – to follow the smart man as he left the room and walked along the corridor. After climbing some stairs to a part of the building that was much more comfortable than the place Alex had left, a door was opened, and Alex was encouraged, by a firm shove in the centre of his back, to enter a very stylish sitting room. The smart gentleman sat Alex in a comfortable chair and stood behind him with his hand placed firmly on Alex’s shoulder.
It must have been only five minutes or so, but, to Alex, it seemed much longer before the door opened, and a white-haired, older gentleman entered the room; he was wearing what Alex thought to be a somewhat-dated frockcoat, a shirt with a heavily starched wing collar, and a formal bow tie. Alex was embarrassed to be still in his singlet and underpants.
‘Vy dolzhny byt [You must be] Aleksander Nikolayevich,’ said the man in clear and unaccented Russian.
Alex continued to wear his expression of puzzled bewilderment, although he knew full well what had been said. When he didn’t respond, the man standing behind Alex squeezed his shoulder painfully.
‘Look, I say, I don’t know who you think I am or why you have brought me to this place, but I would jolly well like you to explain yourself, and then return me to my house from where this ruffian shanghaied me,’ demanded Alex.
The older man continued, ‘Vashe imya Aleksander Nikolayevich Karlov i vy syn grafa Nikolaya Aleksandrovicha Karlova i prekrasnoy grafini Tat’yany Ivanovny Karlovoy. Vot vse, chto my znayem. [Your name is Aleksander Nikolayevich Karlov, and you are the son of Count Nikolai Aleksandrovich Karlov and the beautiful Countess Tatiana Ivanovna Karlova. This much we know.]’
Again, Alex knew precisely what was being said, but rather than respond to the statement, he turned to the man at his shoulder and said, ‘Look, I know you speak this gobbledygook, and I also know that you speak English, so would you mind telling me what this man said and explaining to me what I am doing here?’
‘My name is Sergei Ivanovich Zarubin,’ said the white-haired man, in heavily accented English, ‘and I oversee security at the embassy of the Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Republik, or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, in London. It is part of my job to find those who support the corrupt and decadent imperial autocracy that ruled the motherland before the glorious uprising of 1917, and bring them to account.’
‘I truly don’t care what your name is or what you do for a living; I just want to know why you have brought me here and what you hope to achieve by kidnapping me?’
The man sighed, arose from his desk and continued speaking to Alex in English, in a very weary tone. ‘You are good… very good.’ He then instructed the man behind Alex, whose name was ostensibly Pavel Mikhailovich, to take him back to his cell.
Understanding everything, Alex almost made the mistake of rising when he heard this instruction spoken in Russian, but just resisted the temptation.
*
These meetings, which seemed to follow a similar theme, happened on many occasions, and Alex became disoriented with respect to time, but on each occasion that he was interrogated it became easier to deny his Russian heritage, and act like a totally confused and equally perplexed Englishman, who had found himself held against his will, and for no understandable reason.
One morning, Alex was awoken earlier than had become customary, and another man, whom Alex had not seen previously, dragged him from his bed and frogmarched him to the office of Sergei Ivanovich. Alex was dumped unceremoniously in the chair that he had occupied during the many earlier meetings, but, on this occasion, his hands were restrained behind the seat so that he could not move.
After a while, Sergei Ivanovich entered the room and said, in Russian, that he had some good news and some bad news to communicate. For the first time, he addressed Alex mockingly as “graf” or “count”. He then proceeded to tell Alex that he could now
prove that Alex’s father, Count Nikolai Aleksandrovich Karlov, had been executed by firing squad on 21st December 1917, on the orders of the Supreme Soviet, having been captured in November 1917 while leading a group of brigands who were loyal to the discredited imperialist tsar. The bad news was that his father was dead; the good news was that he was now a hereditary count of the old Russian order, not that it would help him much when he followed his father’s fate and was shot!
Throughout this encounter, the man had watched for any reaction from Alex, and Alex believed that he had not given any sign of understanding at all, so when the man turned on his heel and marched out of the room, Alex felt genuinely that he had again deceived his interrogator. The man behind him undid Alex’s bonds, grabbed him roughly by the shoulders and marched him back to his cell, where his guard threw Alex onto his bed, and the door was slammed shut.
*
Sergei Ivanovich continued his questioning, seemingly for countless days, and Alex started to develop a routine whereby he could almost predict when the door was next going to open, and his minder would take him to yet another meeting with his inquisitor. Each time he was asked the same questions repeatedly, endlessly and without respite, and each time he would sit there with a blank expression on his face, appearing not to understand.
Then came the day when the door opened, and another man whom he had never seen before entered the room and placed Alex’s neatly laundered and pressed clothes, which had been removed from his body when he arrived at this place, carefully on the wooden chair. Another man brought a bowl of water and some foul-smelling soap, together with a nearly worn-out shaving brush and a safety razor. The men backed out of the room and closed the door without saying a word.
The sight of his clothes, and the opportunity to wash and shave raised mixed emotions in Alex’s mind. Was he to be freed or was he to be killed? He washed carefully and shaved the stubble from his chin, before drying himself on the cover of the mattress as no towel had been provided. He got dressed, making sure that everything was perfect, for if today he was to meet his maker, he wanted to be elegant. Alex noted that there was clean underwear among the clothes he had been given; even more surprisingly, they were his own. Alex realised that these people had been to his house, had probably searched it, and had thoughtfully brought him clean, pressed underclothes. Even his shoes gleamed to such an extent that a guardsman would have been proud of the shine on the toe caps.
Eventually, the realisation that his home had been searched brought Alex’s slow-witted brain round to the thought that if they had been to the house in Chelsea, what had they done with (or to) his mother? Had she been there? Had she been seized and taken into custody by these evil Bolsheviks? Had she been interrogated or, worse still, tortured? Was she even still alive? His mind was in turmoil.
When he had finished dressing, the door opened to reveal the man who had brought his clothes, who said one word, ‘Come,’ in a manner that made it obvious to Alex that it was less of a request and more of an instruction.
Alex cast his eye around the room that had become his prison, in the manner of a hotel guest checking to see whether they had left anything behind, and followed the man out of the door. Alex realised that only one man was escorting him; usually, there had been two. Thoughts rushed through Alex’s mind that he should seize any opportunity to overpower the guard and make his escape.
The man took Alex along the familiar route that he had walked many times in the preceding days, during which time Alex was watching for any opportunity to implement his bid for freedom. He was somewhat taken off guard when, instead of entering the sitting room where they usually took him, his guide continued further along the corridor and up some more stairs until he came to a set of double doors, upon which the escort knocked deferentially.
‘Come in,’ came the response.
Alex was mildly surprised at the use of the English language; was this a trap? On entering the room, he saw Sergei Ivanovich standing to the right of the desk, this time dressed in a more contemporary, dark-blue suit and a guards regiment tie. But seated behind the desk was a man dressed in a morning suit, and sporting a neatly trimmed moustache and beard.
‘That will be all, Davies,’ stated the bearded man
Alex’s guide closed the door as he left.
IV
The man behind the writing desk rose, extended his right hand and introduced himself with the words, ‘Good afternoon, Mr Carlton, or should I say Aleksander Nikolayevich? My name is Major Bertram Bullimore, and I work for a small and somewhat anonymous department within the Secret Intelligence Service. I am truly sorry for what you have been put through over the past ten days.’
Only ten days? thought Alex.
‘But we had to be sure of your true allegiance, because we think that we may have an opportunity for you to serve Britain in an interesting and important manner.’
Alex was astounded as well as intrigued, not to say a little annoyed at what he had suffered at the hands of these people – these servants of his adopted country. What on earth could be of such importance and “interest” that they would treat him in the manner that they had done in the past days?
Bullimore continued, ‘Let me also introduce my colleague, whom you may guess is not Sergei Ivanovich Zarubin. Comrade Zarubin is a far less pleasant character than Captain Treves here, and I am sure that, had you met the real Sergei Ivanovich, your encounter would have been much less enjoyable. Indeed, as a Russian aristocrat, the likes of Comrade Zarubin will always retain an interest in your family and others like you, as I am sure your mother must have told you, and you must always be vigilant of those who seek you harm. Captain Treves is a bit of a specialist in respect to our Russian friends, and, as you are aware, he speaks their language faultlessly, having spent several years working for the Special Intelligence Service in both St Petersburg and Moscow. He has distant links, on his mother’s side, to the Russian court, but he chooses to use his particular knowledge to protect Britain from harm.
‘Still, I am sure that you have had enough of introductions. Let me explain our purpose for having you brought here. I am certain that you cannot have failed to notice that the prospect of war is hanging over Europe yet again. I know this because I also know that you tried to enlist in our armed forces so that you could help Britain when the time came. That time may be closer than you imagine, and I am prepared to wager a substantial sum of money that this country will be at war with Germany within the next twelve months, despite what our political masters seem to think. Our little department has been formed to gather intelligence that may be of use, particularly about Russia and Scandinavia, and we are recruiting people who have specialist knowledge in key areas to assist in this task.’
‘Specialist knowledge? What specialist knowledge do you think that I might possess that would assist Britain or your department, and why on earth do you imagine that, after the way you have treated me, I or any intelligent man would want or even consider working for you?’ asked Alex.
‘The precise manner in which you could be useful should not concern you at this point, and, as I said previously, we needed to test your true allegiance. I have to say that you either hold no loyalty to our Bolshevik friends or else you are an excellent actor! Generally, the task that we have in mind for you would involve your specialist knowledge of languages, and your abilities to assess situations as they are evolving and be able to give a clear and concise analysis of the facts. I can tell you that these tasks would not be undertaken in England.
‘Naturally, should you decide not to join us, this conversation will not have taken place, and we shall part as friends and take you home. Your “D” grading for military service would be revised to what you truly achieved, which – I am sure you will be pleased to hear – was “A”. No doubt, our colleagues from the more traditional services will clamour to use your talents in less-fulfilling roles, but we hope that you will join us, for our
task is to make the coming conflict as short as possible and to gain victory over the Hun.’
Alex was slightly perplexed over the use of such an outdated description as “Hun” and would have expected the use of the more contemporary “Nazi”, but he was intrigued by the offer on the table, so he inclined his head slightly, inviting Major Bullimore to continue.
The major was happy to oblige. ‘Of course, you would need to be prepared for the tasks that we have planned, so we would need to send you to one of our specialist training establishments where you would learn the technicalities and practicalities of the tasks that lie ahead. I am not saying that you will not face danger, but, on the other hand, neither am I saying that the role will be hazardous; however, we do rather like our people to be prepared for any eventuality. So, if you are agreeable, you’ll be sent to one of these training schools to begin your basic training, and afterwards, should you meet our exacting criteria, you will get more specialist training in other tasks. Your preparation may take as little as six weeks or it may take as long as six months; it very much depends on circumstances beyond our control and on your ability to absorb the knowledge that could, in the future, save your life.
‘Naturally, I do not expect you to make a decision instantly. However, time is of importance, and so I shall ask Captain Treves to take you home. I hope that you will reflect on our discussions over the weekend, and respond to me on Monday with your acceptance. I do ask that you do not discuss this with any person outside this room, which includes your family and friends, for this is important work that will go largely unrecognised, but that could have a significant part to play in the shortening of the war, perhaps even before it has started.’
With this, Alex was dismissed and escorted on his homeward journey by Captain Treves, as promised.
Winston's Spy Page 3
