The Secret Families Read online

  THE SECRET FAMILIES

  John Gardner

  © John Gardner 2014

  John Gardner has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published 1989 by Bantam Press.

  This edition published by Endeavour Press Ltd in 2014.

  All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  For Charles & Nancy

  Acknowledgements

  The author gratefully acknowledges permission to reprint the following material:

  Lines from ‘Missing’ from Collected Poems by John Pudney. Reprinted by permission of David Higham Associates Ltd.

  Lines from ‘The Waste Land’ from Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T.S. Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd.

  Lines from ‘Heavy Date’ from Collected Poems by W.H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd.

  Lines from ‘Parting’ from Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. Reprinted by permission of William Collins, Sons & Co. Ltd.

  There are secrets in all families.

  George Farquhar: The Beaux’ Stratagem

  Table of Contents

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  ONE

  1

  2

  3

  TWO

  1

  2

  THREE

  1

  2

  3

  FOUR

  1

  2

  3

  4

  FIVE

  1

  2

  3

  SIX

  1

  2

  3

  SEVEN

  1

  2

  EIGHT

  1

  2

  3

  4

  PART TWO

  NINE

  1

  2

  3

  TEN

  1

  2

  3

  ELEVEN

  1

  2

  3

  TWELVE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  THIRTEEN

  1

  2

  3

  4

  FOURTEEN

  1

  2

  FIFTEEN

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  SIXTEEN

  1

  2

  3

  SEVENTEEN

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  PART THREE

  EIGHTEEN

  1

  2

  3

  NINETEEN

  1

  2

  3

  4

  TWENTY

  1

  2

  3

  4

  TWENTY-ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  TWENTY-TWO

  1

  2

  TWENTY-THREE

  1

  2

  3

  TWENTY-FOUR

  1

  2

  3

  TWENTY-FIVE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  TWENTY-SIX

  1

  2

  3

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This is the final volume of a trilogy which began with The Secret Generations and continued with The Secret Houses.

  Each of the books can be read out of context. They are stand-alone works. The links which make up the trilogy are the series of characters which grow through the entire work — members of two families, the British Railtons and the American Farthings, together with several characters I have already used in the Kruger trilogy.

  Each novel is set in a particular period of recent history, and fact is surrounded by fiction so that there is a continuation of a sense of saga throughout the series. I should also add that these are not kiss-kiss bang-bang thrillers, but, I trust, true novels, dealing in turn with Enthusiasm which moves, in the second book, to Identity and, lastly, to Disenchantment.

  I have always believed that novels of espionage require three essentials. First, the protagonists must live on the page, with a past, present and future; second, there has to be a puzzle which is successfully unravelled by the end of each book; lastly, they must lead the readers into believing they are getting a quick peep behind the scenes of a world mostly forbidden to them. I have tried to keep to these rules throughout these three works.

  Thanks go to the large number of friends and colleagues who have given me their help and advice. Most will remain nameless for they know who they are. The others have well-known names which grace the spines of countless textbooks and works concerning the history of the great intelligence agencies of the secret world.

  Finally, in the merging of fact and fiction I have taken liberties with certain aspects of secret history. Any theories advanced in this and the other two books are products of the ‘what if?’ area of my imagination, and not necessarily the truth behind the known stories.

  This is particularly important in the current book. The central core is a true operation and, as far as I can discover, I have taken only one major liberty which concerns the first debriefing, in London, of the man who, in real life, was known as Alex. This was not quite how it was done. However, the rest of the tradecraft and handling of this defector-in-place appears to have been followed almost exactly as described. My final theory has been voiced by others, though Nigel West in his book The Friends claims that the Secret Intelligence Service have information that Alex was, in fact, executed. There is other evidence giving a different picture, and the odd handling and tradecraft surrounding Alex, together with the final use put to the information, known to the CIA as Iron Bark, and the SIS as Arnika and Rupee, does make one wonder about the truth.

  J. G.

  PROLOGUE

  London: April 1961

  On that particular night all on-going operations appeared to have come to a sudden, unexplained halt, and the entire strength of the Watcher Service of Five — meaning the surveillance teams from the British Security Service, MI5 — were gathered together in one place: at the Marble Arch end of Oxford Street, just across from the north-east corner of Hyde Park.

  There are three well-defined groups within the Watchers — drivers, eyeballs and footmen. Some of them were heard to complain that they were not in the job to work for the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. What, they asked, had the SIS ever done for them? But the griping probably stemmed from the fact that, even for England, it was a chilly night. The whole of April had been bad, and now, during this last week, the men in the waiting cars had the engines running and the heaters turned on. Later, the SIS people would have to reassure the subject of all this activity that Five just did the job, and had no idea what it was really about.

  On the pavements, and in doorways, the footmen still wore winter coats with collars turned up.

  The target area was a dream to cover. Even now, at midnight, the traffic flowed freely, and there were plenty of people on the pavements. In spite of the Street Offences Act, the lanes and roads which web their way behind Oxford Street and the Edgware Road contained hotels galore which catered for customers by the hour — casual pick-ups, professionals, and dedicated amateurs still blatantly used th
e area. The footmen merged easily into the local colour.

  Cars were parked at both ends of Bryanston Street; another in Seymour Street, and two more in the Edgware Road. A pair of mobile units did a slow round-robin, taking in Oxford Street, Edgware Road and passing the parked eyeballs at the ends of Bryanston Street. One of the mobiles did not belong to the Watcher Service. Its call-sign was Oscar Bravo One, and it was manned by members of the Secret Intelligence Service.

  Less than a mile away, in Mayfair, in an apartment near the corner of South Audley and Mount Streets, a dozen men and women waited in a large room which looked as though it was prepared for a surprise party.

  Two long tables had been set up, decorated with champagne, caviare and smoked salmon. The entry-phone downstairs would buzz every few minutes, followed by a quick exchange with a short, tubby and rather brusque girl who appeared to be the doorkeeper. A few minutes later another guest would arrive.

  The similarity to a surprise party ended with the food- and drink-scaped tables. There was no light-hearted relaxed chatter, no laughs or loud conversation. It was as though something momentous was about to happen and the gathered spectators remained uncertain, anxious about the unknown. American accents were mixed with British and all were very low key. Tension could be felt, like static, in the whole building.

  At five minutes to midnight the entry-phone buzzed again. There was the familiar exchange, and a minute later, Sir Caspar Railton, now looking weighed down by all his years, was ushered into the room, his nephew, Donald, escorting him, one hand on the old man’s arm.

  Maitland-Wood bustled forward, making a fuss, full of so-glad-you-could-come, and it’s-an-honour-to-see-you-here.

  ‘It’d better be damned good, Willis. When I retired I left for ever, this time. I’m no prima donna. Don’t want to keep making come-backs, you know. Anyway, old Phoeb dislikes me goin’ out of an evening any more. Says it plays hell with me chest.’

  ‘You won’t be disappointed, Sir Caspar. This is the one we’ve all been waiting for.’ There was something unpleasantly oily about Maitland-Wood.

  Caspar grunted. ‘Make all the dreams come true, so young Naldo tells me. Going to make all your fortunes, I hear.’ The old man glanced up at his nephew, Donald, who since childhood had been known as Naldo. As a baby he had difficulty pronouncing his name.

  The telephone rang, and the room became full of statues. A young man with longish fair hair picked up the instrument and quietly said, ‘White’s Restaurant’.

  A slightly accented voice at the distant end asked if they were usually very busy on Friday nights, and the young man told him they had only one table left — ‘It’s a table for five at ten o’clock’, he said. The distant voice said thank you but that was too late.

  As soon as the line was closed, the young man opened an adjacent door, revealing a battery of typewriters and teleprinters, all manned by young women. ‘It’s “go” in five minutes. Now!’ he commanded crisply.

  In the second room, a young woman manning a radio spoke into a microphone. ‘Oscar Bravo One. This is Cissy.’ There was a crackle in her headphones. Then —

  ‘Oscar Bravo One. We read you, Cissy.’

  ‘Your client’s ready for you now.’

  ‘Roger. Wilco. Oscar Bravo One.’

  The girl raised her head and gave the thumbs-up.

  ‘On the way’, the young man told the assembled company. There was no reaction, except for the turning of a few heads, and a slight increase in the tension.

  Over in the Marble Arch area, the dark Rover car that was Oscar Bravo One turned into Cumberland Place, pulling up at the staff entrance to the Mount Royal Hotel, Bryanston Street. As the car stopped, so three men hustled at speed, very close together, from the door. Within seconds, the Rover was negotiating the sweep around Marble Arch, picking up speed as it entered Park Lane. There was another car almost on its bumper, and a motorcyclist cut in between two buses to take station in front of the Rover. Five minutes later the small convoy pulled up outside the house near the junction of South Audley and Mount Streets.

  The men and women in the big room upstairs stood, silent, watching the door. Five men in topcoats ushered in a sixth — bare-headed, medium height, his dark hair combed straight back, his features undeniably Slavic and creased with good humour.

  Willis Maitland-Wood stepped forward. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, he’s here. I want you to meet a very brave gentleman. This is Alex.’

  There was genuinely warm applause, and a sense of relief passed, like a long sigh, through the room.

  ‘It’s good to meet you all at last.’ Alex spoke very good English. ‘But we must get to work. There is much to be done.’ He smiled, embracing the room with sparkling eyes as Maitland-Wood handed him a glass of champagne.

  PART ONE

  The Families Encircled

  (1964)

  ONE

  1

  Old spies do not fade away: they die. Caspar Railton would have freely admitted that he had been living on borrowed time for the past forty years.

  At the age of twenty-one, Caspar had been terribly crippled by a shell during the bitter fighting around Le Cateau in the opening months of the First World War. At the time the doctors considered that, with care, he might last ten, maybe fifteen, years. Caspar’s body inevitably suffered from circulatory problems, and few would have thought he would ever reach the age of seventy-one. But he did, dying the way he would have wanted: at the Travellers Club directly after lunching with three other old spies.

  ‘Our family seems to make a habit of dying or being married just before Christmas, eh, Naldo?’ Caspar’s cousin, James Railton, leaned heavily on his son’s arm, his face set in an expression that fell between grief and philosophical acceptance, shoulders braced against the biting wind which swept the graveyard. He was Caspar’s age, give or take a month. ‘You’ll think it’s hardly worth my going home from this boneyard.’ He spoke to the earth that now covered the plain coffin with a simple brass plate — Caspar Arthur Railton, KCB, DSC, 1893—1964. The old jest was obviously addressed to his dead cousin. They had been as close as brothers down the years.

  Naldo Railton was unusually emotional. He had been close to his Uncle Caspar. At times Caspar seemed more of a father to him than James, and during the service in the old parish church of SS Peter & Paul, Haversage, Berkshire, he had wept within himself — particularly when his cousin Andrew had, read, not from Holy Writ, but, as Caspar had required, from Shakespeare’s Tempest: Prospero’s great speech, ending with the words:

  And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

  The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,

  The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

  Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve

  And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

  Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

  As dreams are made on, and our little life

  Is rounded with a sleep.

  It was typical for any Railton to choose Shakespeare rather than the Bible, and even more typical of Caspar to instruct this passage to be read at his funeral. It did not please the vicar but he had little say in the matter. The parish of Haversage was in the Railtons’ gift — for they had owned much of the place, together with surrounding land, for generations.

  Naldo glanced over his shoulder at the black huddle of departing mourners, whom he would see shortly at the main Railton property — Redhill Manor, perched under the shadow of the Downs, looking across the chessboard of fields and red rooftops of what had once been the small market town of Haversage, on the Berkshire-Oxfordshire border.

  These mourners were nearly all family, a mixture of British Railtons and American Farthings, relatives by marriage and a shared trade. Naturally enough, there were also a few of Caspar’s close colleagues from the Secret Intelligence Service in which he had worked so hard, and for so many years. Above them all, Naldo spotted Herbie Kruger — for who could miss him? Big Herbie as
everyone called him, head and shoulders above the rest in that unresolved posse of black-clad men and women being helped into the dark, shining limousines. Herbie seemed to be looking directly at him, as though trying to convey a message. In his head, Naldo heard a voice.

  ‘Now it begins.’

  He was sure it was a Shakespearean line, and the voice that of some actor he had seen play one of the tragedies, yet it seemed to come from the earth that now covered his dead uncle.

  ‘Now it begins.’

  To his surprise, Naldo realized it was his father speaking, still looking intently at the ground. At that moment it became suddenly clear to Naldo what his father meant.

  At Redhill Manor, the mourners gathered, trying to make the wake for Caspar into a happier kind of family reunion. The Manor, which had been the Railtons’ family seat for centuries, had changed little. As the beautiful building grew older, so its weathering gave it more charm and character: after all it had belonged to Railtons since Henry VIII had granted the land to the family in the sixteenth century. Only those who lived there, and made their mark on the house and estate, showed age and weariness.

  Sara, who had been brought to Redhill by Naldo’s grandfather as a very young second wife, still lived there with her husband Richard. It was Sara and Richard who had forged the bond between the Railtons and Farthings, for Richard Farthing had married Sara after her first husband’s death. As the years went by, so they adopted the name Railton-Farthing, not out of any pretension, but for purposes of making stronger ties between the two families.

  Inevitably, things had changed. Richard — Dick to all the relatives — had become a sick and failing man in his eighties, while the once young and vibrant Sara was crippled with arthritis: though she was still capable of showing flashes of her old self. They were tended by their niece, Josephine, who had been through so much hardship during, and after the Second World War. Jo-Jo, as everyone called her, looked much older then her forty-eight years, and at times needed the help of two permanent nurses who, together with a ‘daily’ cleaning lady and a rotund and cheery housekeeper, always referred to as ‘Stalks’, had long replaced the butler, housemaids, cook, and small regiment of servants.