In the Mouth of the Tiger

by Lynette Silver

  ‘What did he know?’ Malcolm asked.

  Ann frowned thoughtfully. ‘That Elli was quite high in British Intelligence – probably second in charge to an Allied intelligence chief. That he had something Russian in his background. And that his material was so important to the Russian war effort that his material was taken straight to Stalin himself.’

  Malcolm whistled softly. ‘All of that matches with what we know about our target. Elesmere-Elliott was chief of staff to the Australian DNI. His wife is Russian, for heaven’s sake. And the Ultra material is precisely the stuff Stalin would want to see immediately.’

  Meredith Gardner stretched and got up from his chair. ‘This is the side of Venona I absolutely hate,’ he said. ‘I like to think of the work we are doing as an intellectual challenge, but of course it’s a lot more than that. People are going to get caught because of what we find out, and some of them will doubtlessly be shot, or hanged, or whatever it is you do to traitors in peacetime. I know catching traitors is part of my job, but I don’t have to like it.’

  After Meredith had left, Ann dialled the combination of her safe and extracted a slim folder which she laid on Malcolm’s desk. ‘This contains the statements Gouzenko made in 1946 about penetration of MI5 and MI6,’ she said. ‘His allegations were pooh-poohed at the time, I think mainly because nobody wanted the pain and bother of unearthing British traitors. But I hung onto the stuff because I hated the thought Gouzenko might be right.’

  They sorted the bundle of statements between them and settled down to read, Ann prim and upright at her desk, Malcolm lounging back at his with a cigarette in his fingers. Almost immediately, something leapt off the page for Malcolm and he held up a peremptory hand. ‘Listen to this: ‘‘GRU-Naval had a double agent in Singapore just before the war. This man was our contact with Comintern agents throughout Malaya, and very highly regarded. I’m not sure, but I think that man was Elli’’.’

  Ann came over and stared at the passage over his shoulder. ‘I think we have enough for a bill already, Malcolm,’ she said almost reverentially. ‘That matches up with what you say Elesmere-Elliott was doing in Malaya after the war. The stuff you unearthed but which the powers that be saw fit to bury.’ She paused, thinking. ‘And there is another thing. In 1946 there was a serious breakdown in security in Singapore that has never been explained. A Russian naval lieutenant called Skripkin tried to defect to SIFE, but someone in MI5 or MI6 betrayed him. Elesmere-Elliott was in Singapore at the time, wasn’t he?’

  Malcolm banged his open palm hard on the surface of his desk. ‘Of course he was.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I think that clinches it, Ann. All we’ve got to do now is to get our bill together as quickly as we can. Surely, they’ll have to act on what we’ve got now!’

  It was hours later, while Malcolm was dining in his favourite Indian restaurant in Carnaby Street that the final clincher came to mind. ‘Elli’ indeed! Elli was the first four letters of the man’s name. ‘Always did like cocking a snoot,’ Malcolm breathed. ‘But we’ve got you this time, Denis. The original documents don’t lie and, as an added insurance, I’ve secretly photographed the lot. There can be no battleship big enough to help you now, old lad.’

  Life had never, ever been so sweet. I woke up one morning to see the first heavy frost of winter, and pulled on my dressing gown to stare through our window at a crystal wonderland. Mr Frampton had left a sprinkler on in the walled garden, and icicles hung like a million jewelled daggers from the apple trees. The lawns were white with frost, the sky a pale eggshell blue, and in the distance a couple of riders were cantering towards Bluebell Woods.

  One of the Drax girls with her beau, I thought, out riding before breakfast as Denis and I had ridden in KL. The bright carousel of life: a pattern ever changing, always the same.

  ‘Can it get any better than this?’ I asked Denis, and he chuckled.

  ‘I see no reason why not. Next spring we’ll have Richelieu in training for the Classics, the stud will be full steam ahead, and we’ll have a yacht to race off Poole Harbour. The only fly in the ointment will be that we can’t be in half a dozen places at the same time.’

  ‘I know where you’re likely to be,’ I said severely. ‘Up at Monk’s Farm. You’d be up there twenty-four hours a day even now if you didn’t have to come home for meals.’

  We’d found a perfect site for our stud. Monk’s Farm was just outside Handley, with a pretty little Elizabethan farmhouse and sixty acres of flat, rich land perfect for agistment. There were stands of chestnut trees for shade, plenty of water, and even a natural amphitheatre ideal for an exercise track. The lawyers on both sides were at it hammer and tongs, arguing about title and so on, but I knew that everything would turn out right in the end. The Fates were on our side, after all.

  Denis got out of bed and joined me at the window. ‘Happy?’ he asked, and I threw my arms around him.

  ‘Sublimely,’ I said. ‘What on earth have we done to deserve all this?’

  Roger Hollis sat in his gloomy office and stared out at an equally gloomy view of London rooftops. He was not a happy man, and the reason for his unhappiness lay in front of him on his blotter.

  The Elesmere-Elliott bill.

  Malcolm Bryant and Ann Last had done well, he acknowledged to himself. Very well indeed. They had produced a near-watertight case, complete with certified copies of all the supporting evidence and with only one reasonable conclusion: that Denis Elesmere-Elliott had been a Soviet double agent for nearly twenty years.

  Hollis heaved a huge sigh. It was always depressing to be confronted with evidence of man’s fallibility, and particularly so when the man concerned was a colleague, and a trusted and admired colleague to boot. Elesmere-Elliott was one of a kind, a disappearing breed that had never been more than half tamed. Not one of the new machine men of the service, but a buccaneer who served the cause not for professional reward and advancement but simply because he wanted to.

  Or at least, that had been his reputation. Hollis had been in China before the war, and had known of Elesmere-Elliott through story and legend. A magnificent sportsman, a crack shot, a pilot who had written off a Tiger Moth over the jungles of Pahang and survived. And a legendary agent, reputed to have had both the Kuomintang and the Malayan Communist Party eating out of his hand.

  It would be immeasurably sad if it turned out that it had all been a sham. Worse still if money had been the root cause for treachery.

  Hollis sighed again. The next steps in the protocol were as inevitable as the tides. A fiat from the DG, Sir Percy Sillitoe, and then the traditional MI5 ‘interview’, when a board of peers would cross-examine Elesmere-Elliott on the allegations in the bill. If the bill stood up, and Hollis had little doubt it would, the material would be turned over to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

  Hollis shuddered. A trial in these paranoid times would be brutish and short, and it would quite likely end in a hanging.

  Hollis sighed for the third time. This time it was not a sad sigh reflecting on the frailty of human nature, but a sigh of exasperation at his own uncertainty. Because there was something wrong with the bill. Something profoundly wrong. It was something Malcolm could never have uncovered, and that would remain hidden throughout the most hard-fought trial.

  Each of the Ultra cables received in Melbourne had been receipted by Elesmere-Elliott. That made perfect sense, because Signals in London would want confirmation that they had been received. But Elesmere-Elliott had gone further than a simple receipt. He had included his British Bureau number – BB7 – on every one of the acknowledging cables.

  And that made no sense at all, because every communication with a BB number received at Broadway during the war had been automatically referred to the MI6 Director-General, Sir Stewart Menzies. If Elesmere-Elliott was betraying Ultra material to the Russians, why would he have brought C into the loop?

  Perhaps he hadn’t brought C into the loop. Perhaps C had always been involved. Either because the whole business
was part of a still-secret MI6 operation, or because C himself was implicated in a real betrayal.

  Hollis knew that many MI6 operations were kept secret from MI5, sometimes for years, sometimes forever. That was why the protocol required MI6 to be consulted early in every MI5 investigation involving MI6 personnel. MI6 had been consulted in Elesmere-Elliott’s case and no ‘hands off’ signal had been forthcoming. The implication was that the investigation had not crossed any official MI6 operation and could go ahead.

  But then, the people at MI6 who would have handled the matter wouldn’t have known the significance of the BB numbers. They wouldn’t have known because the British Bureau concept had always been highly secret, and it had also been dismantled years before. It was only old hands like Hollis who would know.

  But he did know, and that was the trouble. So he squared the student’s slope of his shoulders and picked up his telephone. ‘Make an appointment with Sir Stewart Menzies, Miss Guernsey,’ he said. ‘For today if possible. Please tell his secretary it’s a Hunt Club matter. And don’t put it in my diary.’

  Then Hollis opened the file again and flipped through the attachments until he came to document he wanted. It was an executive order to ‘all divisions and posts’ from Menzies himself, directing that under no circumstances was Ultra material to be given to the Soviets. ‘This order,’ Menzies had written in his preamble, ‘comes from the Prime Minister himself, and I have given my personal word that it will be scrupulously obeyed.’ Nothing could be much clearer than that, Hollis thought – presumably one of the promises Churchill had extracted from the MI6 Director-General as payment for giving him complete control of Ultra distribution. Hollis lit his pipe and took his mind back to the early 1940s, when Ultra had burst on the scene. Churchill had naturally expected to see all Ultra material but Menzies had resisted. Ostensibly because he feared that Desmond Morton, the PM’s Intelligence adviser, was a blabbermouth and might leak something important. The real reason of course was that knowledge is power, and Ultra would have handed the politicians more power than Menzies thought the politicians should have.

  Hollis’s train of thought was interrupted by the jangle of his telephone. ‘Sir Stewart sends his regrets, Mr Hollis, but cannot possibly see you immediately. But he suggests that if you are free after four o’clock you might like to meet him at his club.’

  ‘Please pass my regards to Sir Stewart and tell him I will meet him at White’s at four o’clock.’ Menzies liked to discuss anything ticklish at his club. It meant that C knew what Hollis wanted to discuss, and that it was ticklish. Hollis sighed again.

  It was raining when Hollis punched the bell at White’s, and George Groom, the head footman, let him in and took his coat. ‘Sir Stewart is in the billiard room,’ he said deferentially. ‘He asked me to make sure you were not disturbed.’

  Menzies rose from a seat by the fire in the huge, empty room and strode forward to shake Hollis by the hand, his highly polished shoes clicking on the marble floor. ‘No need for us to beat about the bush, Roger,’ he said as he advanced. ‘You’re here to talk about the Elesmere-Elliott business.’

  Hollis nodded, and the two men sat down facing each other in front of the open fire. ‘I have no papers with me, Sir Stewart,’ Hollis began. ‘Stupid business, but we are now required to sign for any papers we take out of Leconfield House. Part of the new security squeeze the bureaucrats are insisting on.’

  Menzies nodded absently. ‘Lot of nonsense. If you want to steal something, you slip it into your pocket. Lot of nonsense.’ He rubbed his hands together for warmth before the fire, then turned to Hollis. ‘Now, Elesmere-Elliott. To be blunt, Roger, the man was acting under my direct orders. Russia was being beaten and if they had collapsed the war would have been over. I wanted them to have the benefit of the Ultra material, so I gave it to them. It did the trick.’

  ‘Against the PM’s strictest orders,’ Hollis said quietly.

  ‘Against Churchill’s strictest orders. And in breach of my agreement with the man. But needs must when the Devil drives, Roger. And the Devil was well and truly in the driver’s seat at the end of 42.’

  Groom brought in two old fashioned glasses on a silver salver, each a quarter full of single malt whisky. ‘Will you be staying to dinner, Sir Stewart?’ he asked.

  Menzies shook his head. ‘Not tonight, Groom. Tonight’s a hanging night, and hangings take away my appetite.’

  Alone again, he tapped Hollis on the knee. ‘You’re an old hand,’ he said. ‘You know the score. How will Denis fare if we don’t interfere?’

  ‘It’s a watertight bill, C. If you don’t throw him a lifeline, he’ll go down.’

  ‘What about his wife?’

  ‘Implicated. Silly girl helped service the dead-letter drops. According to the Russians she knew precisely what was going on. They even gave her a cover-name. Grand Duchess.’

  Menzies sipped his whisky, frowning. ‘Are there any links to me?’

  ‘There’s only one thing that ties you into the business. Elesmere-Elliott included his British Bureau number in the cables acknowledging receipt of the Ultra material concerning Russia. Anyone in the know will realise he did that to keep you in the loop.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Nothing else. Unless of course Elesmere-Elliott himself says he was acting under orders.’

  ‘He won’t,’ Menzies said simply. Then: ‘Can you lose those receipts?’

  Hollis grimaced. ‘I suppose so. I could say that they reveal operational methods and are not relevant to the case. Yes, I can lose the receipts.’

  The two men sipped their whisky in silence. Around them, the shadows of a late autumn afternoon were already thick in the ornate room with its chandeliers and shrouded billiard tables. The fire had died down to a mass of embers, blood red in the gloom.

  ‘I have to take this course,’ Menzies said. ‘No alternative, I’m afraid. Too much hangs on my staying in my job for a few more years. Too many irons in the fire, too many balls in the air.’

  ‘I understand,’ Hollis said.

  Everything that needed to be said had been said. But even spymasters are human. The two men needed some time to pass, to take away the sting of what had just been decided. To give the moment a little grace.

  ‘You’ll be wondering if I am a secret Communist,’ Menzies said.

  Hollis shook his head but Menzies went on all the same. ‘You know that my generation was decimated in the first war? I was President of Pop at Eton, and of my eight committee members, four were killed in the first year of the war. Four bright young men who should have been here now, running this country. Four of my closest friends.’

  Hollis moved uncomfortably in his chair. He was an ‘old hand’, which meant he would die for C. But he did not want to sit here, listening to this. Did not want to be the older man’s conscience.

  Menzies read the awkwardness and smiled. ‘I’m not about to ask for absolution,’ he said. ‘But I am going to tell you how the Great War changed me. I decided that if it was ever in my power, I would make sure that no Englishman ever again died unnecessarily.’ He held his glass up against the light from the fire. ‘This is Haig whisky, Roger. Haig & Haig made a lot of money for a man called General Haig. It was that money that eventually put him into a position where he could order a million Englishmen to rise out of their trenches and run forward to their deaths. And he did precisely that. Hundreds of thousands of Englishmen died on that man’s orders. But Haig also saved my life. He took me out of the trenches after eighteen months of hell and made me a brevet major on his Intelligence staff. A more honourable man than I would have stayed with his soldiers and died with them.’

  Hollis lifted his own glass in a kind of salute. ‘You did more than your share,’ he said. ‘Some of us didn’t get the chance to do anything.’

  But Menzies was not to be diverted. ‘I made a pledge when I first joined Intelligence,’ he said. ‘I promised myself to play the game by my own rules, and play it for stakes that I thought were worth
fighting for. And I have done that for over thirty years now. Some of the things I’ve done, Roger, would make your hair stand on end. Some of the things I’m still doing would make your hair stand on end. But the ends have always been the same. To save the lives of Englishmen.’

  Hollis didn’t want to hear any more, and he put his glass down with a muted bang. ‘So Elesmere-Elliott is to dangle in the breeze?’

  Menzies didn’t answer for a moment. Then he shook his head. ‘You still don’t understand, Roger, do you?’ he said softly. ‘It’s all a game, don’t you see? And the game’s not over until the pieces are put away.’

  After Hollis had gone, Menzies paced the billiard room for a good half hour, then took a cab back through the rain to Broadway. The duty officer saluted him in the lobby. ‘Late night, sir?’ he asked politely, but Menzies just stared at him without answering, his blue eyes opaque, inscrutable.

  ‘Cold fish,’ the man said as Menzies took his private lift to his office on the fourth floor. He didn’t stay long: there was a concealed passage from his office to his residence at 21 Queen Anne’s Gate, and he traversed it almost immediately. Pamela and his daughter were away in the country, and Menzies supped alone, the latest cables from the Duty Officer arrayed for his perusal beside his plate.

  After dinner he smoked a cigar, perhaps two, sitting hunched and thoughtful in his favourite armchair, an unread copy of the Times on his lap and the gas fire glowing at his feet. And then, after the housekeeper had wished him a cheerful goodnight and departed, he roused himself and put on his coat and hat. Stepping out into the chill of Queen Anne’s Gate, he walked rapidly for perhaps half a mile before slipping into the doorway of a small maisonette flat. Inside, he closed the door and drew down the blind over the frosted window before snapping on the lights. The place was spotless as a new pin but strangely desolate. Clearly nobody lived here. It was a pied à terre, a bolt-hole, owned by a company his family controlled but available only to him. He went straight to the telephone on the cramped hall table and dialled a number.