The Secret Families Page 17

  Ascona is a magnet for artists the world over. Its quaint, narrow streets, beautiful views of the lake, and the surrounding mountains, make it a tranquil place for men and women who wish to live in peace and just get on with creative work.

  Naldo had always been there in the spring or late summer. He was used to getting his first sight of the town from the lake, awash with sunlight, for the good light there is one of the factors that influence painters: the surface of the water like glass, and the colour of the houses making Ascona appear to be a small piece of paradise.

  Today, mist and clouds shrouded the mountains, the lake was choppy from the chill breeze, and the town’s colour seemed to be reduced to uniform blacks, greys and greens. From across the lake, in the direction of the Italian frontier, came a long roll of distant thunder, and Naldo shivered in his lightweight coat as he came down the gangway and under the wood and metal, white-painted arch with the name ASCONA picked out in black.

  He was tired, even after the long sleep at the Hotel Palma au Lac. Now, as he began the twenty-minute walk along the lakeside to the villa, he recalled a dream from the previous night. He dreamed that he had met Arnie, not at the villa but in some strange city. Arnie had claimed he had the power to resurrect the dead, and, to prove it, he had the living figures of Stalin, Lenin and Himmler walk in the street. Traffic went by, and pedestrians did not look twice at these figures from the past. It ended in a room crowded with the living dead. It was like a scene from some bad horror movie. Arnold had called up Caspar who laughed in Naldo’s face and said, ‘I fooled everybody, didn’t I?’ In the dream Naldo had asked, ‘How?’ and Caspar replied, ‘It was I who made the poison to kill the dog.’

  As he walked under the soggy palm trees, the dream came back strongly, and with a vivid clarity which was unusual.

  The front of the pink Villa Carlo faced the road, a low wrought iron fence barring the inquisitive, and a pair of gates closed to the pavement. Naldo opened the gates and walked the few paces to the short flight of steps which led to the front door.

  He had a key and the lock turned easily. Seconds later he was in the wide panelled hallway.

  ‘Arnie!’ he called. ‘Arn? I made it.’ He knew the house was occupied. He could feel the warmth of the heating and smell food.

  The door to the main living room opened, and Naldo frowned with surprise. It was not Arnold who came into the hall, but his wife, Gloria, still a very attractive woman who had kept her figure and, with assistance, her long blonde hair.

  ‘Gloria?’ Naldo sounded part questioning and part surprised.

  She smiled. ‘Hello, Nald. Arnie said you’d be along.’

  He knew the secret should not normally have been shared with Gloria. Even Barbara was unaware of the Villa Carlo. ‘Where is he?’ Naldo asked, frowning. ‘Where’s Arnie?’

  Her voice dropped, almost conspiratorially. ‘I thought you knew, Nald.’

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘Arnie,’ she said taking another step into the hall. ‘Arnie’s in Moscow. I thought they’d have told you.’

  PART TWO

  The Families Scattered

  (1964—1969)

  NINE

  1

  In London, they started on Barbara in real earnest on the third evening. That was the day when two sightings of Naldo Railton were reported from what Maitland-Wood described as ‘impeccable sources’. The fact that both sightings came from proven snitches, one of them known to the French as a spoiled casserole, their term for bad informer, had no bearing on the matter. By the third day, Maitland-Wood was frantic and would have believed anybody.

  ‘If Kim walked through the door and said Khrushchev was a double, Willis’d believe him,’ Fincher was heard to remark.

  The information was, first, that Naldo had been seen at Heathrow on the night he went missing, and there was evidence he had boarded a flight to Paris. Second, from the spoiled casserole, that he checked in and boarded an Aeroflot flight direct to Moscow.

  BMW put Fincher onto checking passenger lists and those travelling on the Aeroflot flight included a name once used, many years before, by James Railton, Naldo’s father. ‘That clinches it,’ Maitland-Wood announced. Curry Shepherd, a young officer who had recently been brought in from Berlin to work as dogsbody to the fifth floor, muttered, ‘Round up the usual suspects.’

  Maitland-Wood did not give such an instruction. By this time he realized that everything had to be played by the book. For one thing, Paul Schillig had popped around from Grosvenor Square to remind him that nobody in Washington would go public on Arnold Farthing’s possible defection. So Willis went in to speak to C, who, from the outset, had been unhappy about all the loose talk concerning Caspar. He could not believe that someone as loyal and honourable as Caspar Railton could ever have betrayed his trust. This he made plain to Maitland-Wood, whom he ordered to get the whole thing wrapped up once and for all. Maitland-Wood did not, at that time, tell C what he and his technicians had discovered in Caspar’s Eccleston Square house. He was saving that as his big finish.

  When BMW emerged from the meeting, some two hours later, he came with instructions to do two things. First, he was to set up a committee whose duty it would be to determine the late Sir Caspar Railton’s guilt or innocence. If guilt was proven, the committee would be regarded as a damage control unit. Second, and of more immediate concern, he was to find the missing Donald Arthur Railton, and decide upon what action should be taken to either physically bring him back to London, or report on other possible options. C made it clear that the reports should come to him alone. He also wanted the whole business completed within a month, which Willis Maitland-Wood tactfully explained was unrealistic. ‘We’ll need at least a year,’ he said. ‘Maybe two.’

  Willis Maitland-Wood was like a dog with two tails. Committees were meat and drink to him. He spoke briefly to Fincher and then set out to erect the whole paraphernalia of a secret committee of enquiry.

  It was cryptoed with much heart-searching. BMW wanted to call it Buoyancy, but Fincher objected that this would immediately alert their brothers in Five who already had a committee with a similar crypto, seeking out a possible penetration in their service. In the end they settled for Credit. So the Credit committee came into being on the fifth floor of the shop, just after lunch on that Friday afternoon.

  Maitland-Wood took the chair, Fincher acted as vice-chairman, and they immediately co-opted five other senior officers. They were Desmond Elms, from the Soviet desk; Indigo Belper, from Legal, and as flamboyant as his name; Arden Elder, the 2 I/C from Warminster, and therefore a skilled interrogator; Beryl Williamson, a canny, and very pretty, Scottish lady wrangler from GCHQ; and David Barnard, a smooth, precise master in Covert Operations. Barnard was a man blessed, or cursed, with a deceptively charming manner.

  By 2.30 that afternoon, the seven-person team had taken over one of the large secure briefing rooms on the fourth floor. Maitland-Wood set out the parameters within which they should work. They immediately listed their priorities, and voted on who could be safely used to assist in the enquiry. The officers, chosen by Maitland-Wood, all ardently subscribed to the theory, based on the information gleaned from the defector known cryptically as AE-Ladel, that the Soviets had placed penetration agents at the highest levels of both the American and British establishments, in particular the SIS, MI5 and the CIA. This religion, for it was more than mere acceptance of a theory, they shared with the committee Five had set up for the same purpose. Also, the entire committee, with the possible exception of Tubby Fincher, subscribed to the concept that the Railton family, in Britain, was far gone in corruption and could no longer be trusted. In particular, they wanted to sift evidence and bring forward conclusive proof that, at least since the late 1930s, Sir Caspar Railton had been a penetration agent working for the Soviets. They banned all personnel who had been actively close to any of the Railtons or Farthings, which narrowed their field considerably. In spite of some contact and cross-fertilization, C
urry Shepherd, who had proved himself to be a skilled young field agent, was appointed as their postman. ‘I suppose I’ll carry the bad news from credit to the insolvent,’ he remarked.

  For the initial enquiries, which BMW called ‘a peep behind the Railton scenes’, their first choice was Gus Keene.

  Keene was grand vizier and inquisitor in chief, based at Warminster. A telephone call was made requesting his presence, together with his two most capable associates, in London at the speed of sound. Faster if possible.

  Keene arrived at just after 4.30 and spent an hour being briefed by the Credit committee who made it clear they required results as of last Thursday week.

  Gus Keene, like most good interrogators, was a former policeman who had also read Law, though not practised it. He was a dark, gypsy-like man, tall and slim, in his early fifties. Meeting him for the first time you might have said country doctor, or the man who wrote a provincial newspaper’s daily naturalist column. He had a cosy manner, smoked a pipe, used to great effect during interrogation sessions, and on the surface appeared indifferent when the talk got around to politics or crime. To their detriment, some people found him a generally diffident man. Keene used indifference as an animal will use its colouring as camouflage.

  The pair chosen by him to assist in the work were two of his most promising juniors, and after the Credit committee had briefed him, Keene met them in a pub within walking distance of the shop.

  Carole Coles was in her late twenties, with a first in Law from Oxford; Martin Brook was thirty, with a second in Economics from Cambridge, which shows what you can achieve with an economics degree.

  ‘Simple business.’ Gus jammed his pipe into the corner of his mouth and nodded thanks to Martin who had just bought him a pint. ‘All we have to do is sweat the entire Railton clan. From this we are to form an opinion regarding Naldo Railton’s disappearance. Ever meet Naldo, Carole? Smashing fellow. Always said he’d go far. Apparently he has. The so-called evidence is Moscow, but I don’t somehow believe it.’

  ‘Who’s first?’ Martin Brook asked. He was inclined to fat, with a round, pleasant, and good-humoured face, the main feature of which seemed to be his spectacles with their thick, heavy, black frames, making him look like an eternal student. When he was an undergraduate he had played Trophimov in an ADC production of The Cherry Orchard. Friends said he was Stanislavskian and just went on living the part. Any fool could see that he was smitten with the lovely Carole for he watched her with spaniel eyes, and hung on her every word. Carole treated him as a joke: apart from his work, which everyone admitted was high-grade octane.

  ‘First?’ Gus asked in reply, taking a puff on his pipe so his face all but disappeared in a cloud of smoke. ‘Oh, we are. You see old Naldo Railton’s fairly urgent, but we have to report on other matters, and that means you two spending a few days in Registry, under Ambrose Hill’s eagle eye. You’ll be going through every piece of paper any Railton’s used within the service. I think the lads back there,’ he inclined his head in the general direction of the shop, ‘would even get you to go through a mountain of Railton toilet paper if they thought it would help.’

  In detail he explained their role in examining the evidence on the late Sir Caspar. ‘Tonight, though, I think we’ll all go and have a talk to Naldo’s missus. Barbara Railton, née Burville. Military family. Married to Naldo for, what? Nineteen years or so? Two kids. Probably knows the trade backwards. We’ll have to do the first one on her turf, not ours, and I gather that idiot Deputy CSS has already been there muddying the water.’ Maitland-Wood had, in fact, visited the house near Kensington Gardens on the night that Naldo disappeared. Barbara had been unhelpful and a touch acid.

  Now Keene said, ‘I’ll do most of the talking. You two watch and chip in if you think we’re going for gold, OK?’ He did have the decency to telephone Barbara first. She put them off until 9.30, but once the trio were in the Kensington house, they stayed until two in the morning.

  Keene could not but admire Barbara’s stand. ‘Look,’ she had said, more weary than angry, ‘look, I would like nothing better than to know what’s happened to Naldo. He came home three nights ago, tired, and obviously concerned. I thought Arnie Farthing had been stirring it, because Naldo kept talking about him. We had dinner together, he took an overnight bag and left. Said he’d be away for a couple of weeks.’ She went on to say that, in the wee small hours, Maitland-Wood, Tubby Fincher and half of Special Branch, complete with search warrant, had arrived. ‘They turned the house over and told me Naldo was missing. That’s all. “Your husband’s disappeared, Mrs Railton, and we don’t like the look of things.” No explanation. No hint about what they didn’t like the look of. I’ve telephoned that bloody man Maitland-Wood twice a day ever since. No joy. Nothing. So, perhaps you can tell me what’s happening. I just want to see my husband.’

  Good performance, Keene thought, rating it 9.5, on a scale of 10. He knew spies’ wives. They were into everything and took nothing at face value. He had no doubt that Naldo had simply told her he would be doing a disappearing act, and she was to play the little woman left in the dark. ‘Let’s talk about Arnold Farthing then,’ Keene said.

  ‘Why? I want to talk about Naldo.’

  ‘Then we might get some clues by talking about Arnold. How close were they? Naldo and Arnold?’

  ‘He was best man at our wedding. Naldo was best man at his. Knew each other backwards, though they hadn’t been together for some time. I haven’t seen Arnie for years.’

  ‘They close enough to come running to each other’s calls?’

  ‘That would depend on professional circumstances. They both put service, agency in Arnie’s case, and country before anything else. Naldo is, presumably, like yourself Mr Keene, of an age to feel he was born to empire. Now he only has his country. I don’t have to explain about Arnie, he’s very much a “my country right or wrong” merchant. I suppose most Americans still are. Like us British, it’ll take time, and a heavy dose of hard leftist politics, for them to grow out of it. The Americans think the hard left’s a couple of congressmen talking liberalism. They’ve no idea. They’re as bad as the British who talk about the police being fascist. If you’ve never had to deal with the real thing, you don’t recognize it until it’s too late.’

  It was like playing a hard game of tennis with a pro, the three interrogators agreed afterwards. ‘Bloody convincing,’ Carole Coles said.

  ‘Truth or consequences?’ Keene asked.

  ‘She’s a frightened lady,’ Martin Brook announced with confidence.

  ‘Thus spake the fat boy of the Remove.’ Keene puffed at his pipe. ‘Frightened about what? Frightened for her husband? What we might get on her husband? Or what we could discover once we unleash ourselves on the great Railton and Farthing clans? Or what our dogged, bloody-minded march through the grand old man’s paper past, Sir Caspar’s motivation, will bring to light?’

  ‘Probably a bit of all four. Thus spake the trim, elegant, poised and needle-sharp most wicked girl in the school,’ Carole Coles smiled.

  ‘Well you got the last bit right,’ Keene spoke through teeth clenched around his pipe stem. ‘I’ll get her to drop by the shop tomorrow. Give her some of my famous tea and sympathy on our home ground.’ Keene took the pipe out of his mouth. ‘You two can go work in the salt mines and commit the secret histories of all the Railtons to your prodigious memories. I never thought I’d see the day when the whole of that family ceased to be flavour of the year.’

  ‘Accidents will happen, even in the best-regulated families, as my dear old mother used to say, constantly and to our undying irritation,’ observed the neat and dark-haired Miss Coles, winking at Keene. They had been very careful. Not even the fat boy, alias Martin Brook, guessed that Gus and Carole had been engaged in a passionate affair over the past two years. ‘How far do you think Maitland-Wood’s stamped his clumsy boots all over the evidence?’

  ‘Quite a bit I should say. But they’ve got something out of it
. There was an arrangement, set for the morning after Naldo disappeared. They had permission to turn over the late Sir Caspar’s drum, though the place is more like an entire tympany section. The family’s had that little mansion since the Ark. When old Giles Railton lived there he had the young Winston Churchill as a neighbour. It’s in Eccleston Square. The other night, after BMW and his gang left Mrs Naldo Railton, they gathered seven or eight technicians, the kind who know about locks and hidey-holes, and took the Eccleston Square place apart. Very happy with the result, is Mr Maitland-Wood.’

  He went on to explain they had removed a large number of papers, and a pile of thick diaries. ‘Including those for the years 1935 to 1938,’ BMW had told him darkly. When met by a blank stare, he had explained to Keene that those were the three years during which Caspar Railton had been out. ‘Private and fancy-free. Spent a lot of time dashing about Europe,’ again darkly.

  ‘Well, I’m for my bed.’ Gus Keene finished his pint and rose. ‘I’ll ring the shop in the morning and fix up your trip down memory lane. You staying with your folks, Martin?’

  When Brook was in London he always talked about ‘staying with my people’. Keene liked to quietly needle him about it. ‘Well, we’ve been put up at the Regent Palace, so we can’t give you a lift out to Clapham, can we?’ He grinned, pronouncing it ‘Clay-fam’. ‘We should all get an early night. Going to be a busy day tomorrow.’ He could not have known how busy.

  On the following day the car hired by Michel Provin was discovered.