The Secret Families Page 15

  ‘All right, Barzillai.’ Naldo had no option but to wait, and do as the man stipulated.

  ‘There be rashers and eggs in me little galley there,’ Beckeleg nodded towards the small kitchen which, like the rest of the cottage, was as neat and tidy as you would expect from a man used to living in the tight quarters of small seagoing ships. ‘You’m keep your head down, Mr Provin. And don’t ’e worry, now. I ’ave too many good memories of you and your uncle ever to let ’ee down.’

  Already, Beckeleg had given Naldo tea — strong and sweet, thick enough to stand a spoon in. They talked about what must be done later, and presently the seaman left with a suggestion that Naldo should lie doggo and not open the door to a soul. ‘I’ll give you the old V-sign — ta-ta-ta-TAT — when I get back.’ He thumped the table with a clenched fist to bang out the morse V. In the war it had been used in many different ways to keep morale high at home and in the Nazi-occupied countries of Europe. Many had realized, for the first time, that it was the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. A famous tympanist had made a recording of the V with a drum beat which became a stirring rallying sign to all when it was broadcast each evening. The sound ran through Naldo’s head now, bringing back memories of bad times which, in the light of his present circumstances, seemed good by comparison. At least in those days there was a common enemy. Now you could not tell who was friend or foe.

  He cooked six rashers of bacon and two eggs, frying a piece of bread in the fat and eating it from a plate on his knees, his chair pulled up in front of Beckeleg’s fire, for the day was cold with more bitter weather forecast. While eating, Naldo thought of all that had happened during the night, from the moment he left the shop to this point of arrival in Cornwall.

  2

  Naldo could not understand Maitland-Wood’s naivety over the question of his four identities — five including his real one. Identities were what the American agency referred to as backstops, not simply the flash-identities used on one-time operations that would not stand up under close scrutiny.

  Naldo’s idents were the full thing. All of them would hold water under any police or security service microscope. They included everything from passport, credit cards, DHSS card and number, diaries with details of next-of-kin, insurance policy numbers, and the like. Tied to these were travellers’ cheques and currency for use in most European countries, plus pocket litter; franked envelopes holding letters addressed to him at checkable addresses, ticket stubs, bills, Diners Card receipts — Diners had just opened an office in the UK; credit cards were to be the thing of the future.

  A line from one of John Pudney’s wartime poems ran silently through his mind.

  Less said the better,

  The unpaid bill, the dead letter.

  From the shop, Maitland-Wood had sent them off together — Tubby Fincher and Max, the nursemaid, who never moved far from Naldo’s side as he took them from place to place, retrieving heavy manilla envelopes, each containing a different identity. One was in a locker at Waterloo Station; another lodged in a safe deposit box at an hotel in Mayfair, where they knew him as Mr Harvey Dunglass; a third was in a similar box at the Ariel Hotel, near Heathrow Airport where the staff spoke to him by name, ‘Haven’t seen you for some time, Mr Zlapka,’ the concierge said. Casimir Zlapka was a naturalized Briton of Polish extraction.

  The last identity, Menelaus Nochos, a Greek passport, was kept in Naldo’s own study at the Kensington house. Barbara looked surprised and alarmed when he arrived home with Max and Tubby in tow, but Tubby, being something of a diplomat, put her at ease. ‘Naldo’s got to hand over some stuff for fussy old MW.’ After that she offered them a drink, which they refused, Max standing outside the study door while Naldo took down a hollowed-out book, kept high on top of his shelves, containing the Greek identity. He then unlocked his desk and produced his personal passport. ‘You won’t be taking my Diners, or bank cards, will you, Tub?’ he asked with a smile.

  ‘Don’t think that’ll be necessary, Nald. It’s just that the Deputy CSS is concerned lest you do a midnight flit on him.’ Tubby took the passport. ‘You won’t get very far without this, will you?’

  ‘Wouldn’t think of going, anyway.’ Naldo strolled into the hall, and saw the pair out of the front door. When it was shut and they were gone, he leant his back against the door, closed his eyes and let out a long sigh.

  ‘You all right, darling?’ Barbara came into the hall.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Trouble at the mill?’

  He nodded towards the telephone. ‘No strangers today, Barb? Nothing odd?’ Their usual routine.

  She shook her head and repeated the question, ‘Trouble at the mill?’

  ‘Can’t talk about it, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Best you don’t know anything.’ He moved away from the door and held her close. ‘Might have to disappear for a while.’ He stopped her mouth with his hand. ‘No, you must know nothing about that either. When they come and ask, say I just told you I would be away for a week or two.’

  ‘Nald, you haven’t done anything stupid?’ Alarm showed like an unpleasant insect, squirming deep in her eyes.

  ‘I’ve done nothing wrong, and you must know that here and now. But they will come, and they’ll put you to the question, like the bloody Inquisition. I’m saying no more. It’s safer that way. Where’re the kids?’

  ‘Out.’ She looked troubled. ‘Emma’s spending the night with nasty little Emmeline whatsername.’

  ‘Emmeline Major, my bestest friend in all the world. My cell mate,’ Naldo muttered, imitating their daughter’s irritating sing-song speech when she was talking of friends. The girl’s language, brought home from school, was as arcane as that of Naldo’s world.

  ‘Art’s gone to hear some amazing and fabulous group. He said he couldn’t afford to turn down the chance of seeing them live.’

  ‘Singing amazing and fabulous songs which go, “Needles and pins-uh; Needles and pins-uh,” I suppose. They all sound the bloody same, four repeated chords and inane lyrics.’ Naldo walked back to his study.

  ‘You’re a musical snob, Nald. They probably said the same about Schubert’s songs,’ Barbara shouted after him.

  ‘He had an excuse. They called it syphilis.’ He closed the door and sat down behind his desk.

  Did BMW really believe that someone like him, Naldo Railton, deep into the secret arts since childhood, would not have a spare identity up his sleeve? The answer was probably, yes. It was BMW’s breed who had smiled upon Kim Philby for staying on and working late, when all CI officers worth their salt should have asked the obvious question — ‘Why the hell’s Kim doing that? Best put some sound in and a pair of footmen on his tail. ‘The Yanks would have fluttered him with the polygraph. The problem now was had BMW put some leeches onto him? And if so, how would he get away with it?

  He tapped a spot on the brass corner of the desk and heard the satisfying click as the secret drawer became unlatched. He remembered his father explaining how it worked when his parents handed the house over to him. ‘Used it a lot myself in the last show,’ James had said. ‘Wasn’t here long enough for it to be a good hidey-hole in the first war.’ During the First World War, James Railton had gone into Germany itself as an agent. They had caught him quickly and he suffered greatly at the hands of his captors who knew what his connections were in the British intelligence hierarchy.

  ‘Why do we all do it?’ Naldo asked himself now, looking down into the drawer as he pulled it from concealment, then was shocked to realize he was repeating one of his father’s comments on the trade: ‘God knows why we do it. The politicians treat us like dirt; the military have trouble in believing us; the general public think of us as superannuated adventurers, while the novelists make a killing from presenting us as candyfloss killers.’

  Naldo took out a heavy envelope and the automatic pistol that lay in the drawer, placing them in a row, together with three spare clips of ammunition, on the desk top. The envelope contained his persona
l secret lifebelt. His spare identity: French documents showing him as Michel Provin. Indeed, Naldo had built up the identity against a possible problem such as this, or an op that had gone wrong. He began to assemble it soon after the war ended in 1945. By 1953 the identity had grown, and had continued to put on flesh regularly from then on. Part of it was luck, around 2 per cent. The rest, as Shakespeare said, is silence. In 1945, while engaged in trying to trace a missing collaborator, Naldo had come across the name Provin in both the Paris telephone directory and the obituary column of Le Monde. That was the luck. Silently through the years he availed himself of specialist knowledge to get a driver’s licence, passport and other necessary documents.

  He used the identity of Michel Provin at least once a year, an essential action, for he needed genuine visas and immigration stamps in the passports. Michel Provin was now on record in official files in several countries. With these documents, Naldo could move like a ghost through Europe. There was nothing, except his physical description, that could give him away, and there were methods of altering the description at least enough to put even the most dedicated skip-tracers off the scent.

  Naldo cleaned out his pockets, placing some items into the concealed drawer, and others to one side for burning. He did not, for one moment, believe Arnie Farthing had slipped behind the curtain. All the information brought in by Paul Schillig was Arnie’s way of conducting a paper chase. No, Naldo thought, Arnie’s already there, sitting back, prepared to spend Christmas in the villa that was the dark hole in which they would hide and discuss the strategy of how they were to clear Caspar’s reputation, and Dick’s if necessary. How were they to make their own situations safe within the intelligence communities? How best to prove the Blunt evidence, whatever it was, as sham? How to reveal the truth about Oleg Penkovsky? Last, but of prime importance, how to cut through all this and put their fingers on the real person who, by their dissembling, both Blunt and Penkovsky had covered in a smokescreen? There was certainly still some very well-placed penetration agent high in the pecking order, either in the Secret Intelligence Service in London, or the Central Intelligence Agency, Washington. Possibly both.

  As he thought of this last thing, Naldo picked up the small automatic pistol, checked that it was loaded, with a round in the chamber and the safety catch on. Together with the three spare magazines, he slipped it into his pocket. Then he burned the small pile of paper put to one side from his pockets which he now salted with Michel Provin’s litter and documents. Last of all, he took a very large, thick empty envelope from his supply in the desk, crossed to the corner of the study and opened the small safe which was bolted to the wall, partly camouflaged by the imitation spines of books. From the safe he removed Caspar’s metal box which he unlocked, transferring the thick wedge of papers which lay inside, sealing them neatly into the big envelope. Then he left the box in plain view on one of his shelves, the key still in the lock.

  After closing the safe, Naldo took a final look around the room. The envelope containing Caspar’s papers was in his hand as he left to go upstairs. In the bedroom he dug around in one of the cupboards, eventually pulling out a grey canvas overnight bag. He laid the bulky envelope at the bottom of the bag, then packed a corduroy suit, brown shoes, two shirts and some warm roll-necks, spare underwear, socks and handkerchiefs.

  From another drawer he took out two airline toilet sets, with their arrays of shaving cream, razors, comb and eau de cologne. Downstairs again he opened another drawer in his desk. Inside lay a squirrelled collection of hotel stickers and airline tags. When he had been in the novitiate of his trade, they had told him never to discard any piece of ID that might one day become useful. Since then, Naldo had kept everything from theatre ticket stubs to airline tags. He chose an Air France tag, tying it to the bag’s handle. Lastly he collected a couple of French paperbacks from his bookshelves, and stuffed them into the bag. Then he zipped the whole thing and clicked its small padlock in place.

  As he was finishing off, Barbara came in to ask about food. ‘I’ve made a goulash,’ she said.

  Naldo laughed. ‘You mean stew.’ Barbara called all stews goulashes. It was fashionable, but as Naldo loathed paprika she could never cook the real thing.

  ‘You, Naldo Railton, are a gastronomic cripple. Brute!’ She saw the zippered bag and the light went out of her eyes. ‘So soon?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Stay for my goulash?’

  ‘I guess I’ll have time. Do me a favour.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Switch the lights off in the living room. I want to see if I have company.’

  At the door she paused. ‘This going to be very dangerous, Nald?’

  ‘Irritating rather than dangerous. We’ll talk over the stew. Just put out the lights.’

  ‘“And then put out the lights,”’ she quoted Othello at him, as though trying to keep up her spirits. She was back in less than a minute. ‘All dark. I’ll serve in the kitchen, OK?’

  Naldo nodded and went to the front room, closing the door behind him, then standing for a moment for his eyes to adjust. He reasoned that Maitland-Wood, if he had been left to run this by himself, could not have a large reserve of manpower for surveillance. Probably a pair of sentinels front and back. BMW would not have the bodies for more than two pairs, and he would never call in the watchers of Five on something so delicate. There might just be a van, after all, he had spotted one earlier. His co-operation with the fifth floor might easily have caused the wheels to be removed.

  At the window he moved the curtain a fraction, positioning himself to get the best view. The van he had seen trying to park had disappeared, but he caught a glimpse of a cigarette glowing in a doorway directly opposite. As though the hidden man had seen the movement of Naldo’s curtain, he stepped forward onto the pavement for a moment. It was a wide street, but the sentinel certainly wanted to be seen. It would discourage Naldo from leaving the house, and keep him guessing about any wheels that might be around. Naldo knew how to get out of that one, but there was always a risk. An intelligent guess was still two at the front and another pair watching the back.

  On his way to the kitchen, he rummaged in the hall cupboard and found an old reversible coat and a battered soft checked fishing hat. He had worn neither in a long time and thought the hat originally belonged to his father.

  Over the meal, he told Barbara nothing new, but repeated that she should not show any signs of distress. ‘Just stick to the facts as I’m telling them to you now. I’ll be away for a few days. Maybe a week or two.’

  ‘And you’re not leaving an address?’

  ‘No. If I telephone and you say, “How nice of you to call,” I’ll know you have company. Otherwise I’ll probably keep it brief. They’ll be listening. Do not ask where I’m calling from, whatever they tell you.’

  ‘And what might they tell me?’

  ‘It’s possible they’ll say I’ve defected.’

  Her mouth dropped open.

  ‘That will be either a lie, or what they want to believe. You can say that I seemed worried tonight, and that I mentioned Arnie a lot.’

  ‘Why Arnie?’

  ‘Sorry.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve been preoccupied, and I talked about Arnie. About old times with Arnie. You can fill in the rest — when you first met Arn and all that stuff.’

  She raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Two Across. The art of spying. Nine letters. E-something-P-something-something-N-something-G-something. ‘

  ‘You’ve got it.’

  He went into the hall and dialled the shop, asking for the fifth floor. BMW was still there. ‘Willis,’ he said, ‘as we’ve got an early start I’d like to come in now. If you’ve an hour to kill I’ve some things that maybe you should hear about our American friend.’

  ‘Which American friend?’

  ‘The one who seems to have won a gold medal for the high jump. You got a car to spare? One that can pick me up?’

  There was only a brief pause. ‘You ca
n have the spare bed in the DO’s room. I’ll send my own car. Bates is duty driver. You know Bates?’

  ‘Safe as a rock. I’ll be ready for him.’

  Naldo put on the coat and jammed the hat on his head. ‘How does that look?’ he asked Barbara.

  ‘Elegant. Old-fashioned, maybe even foreign, but piss-elegant.’

  Through the front room curtains Naldo saw the watcher across the street emerge and give some signal, scratching the back of his head. Then he walked down towards the Cromwell Road.

  Fifteen minutes later the black Rover pulled up and tooted twice. Naldo kissed his wife, held her to him for a moment, then picked up the bag and left, hurrying to the car and settling in on the passenger side, slinging the bag into the back. He was relieved to see that Bates, a short, sleek man who always reminded Naldo of a whippet, was alone. ‘Evening, Mr Railton. The boss says I’ve to go around the houses a couple of times.’

  ‘Good,’ Naldo said, taking out a pack of cigarettes. The topcoat was unbuttoned and after he had lit the cigarette he put the packet back into his pocket and wrapped his fingers around the pistol.

  They circled the block twice, in moderate traffic. There was no sign of watchers, not even a car with a spotter in it. Spotters usually watched for tails and Bates would have driven the block looking for an all-clear signal, such as hat on, or hat off, from a spotter had there been one. Naldo thought that Bates was too relaxed to have had any surveillance advice laid on him before leaving the shop. As it was he talked, an endless stream of knowledge. Naldo thought that Bates spent his spare time reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica. ‘You know, Mr Railton,’ he said, in his undisguised camp manner, ‘I read one of those Harold Robbins books on my holidays. It’s taken a solid month of Jane Austen to get over it. There’s some real rubbish published these days.’