The Secret Houses Read online

  Now, in his concern, Caspar sought out his cousin James, who knew almost as much about the network called Tarot as Caspar did. Possibly more, in the light of certain events which had taken place a week earlier.

  James and Caspar were not only cousins, but also close friends, for their careers had run along similar tracks. Their birthdays were within a couple of months of each other; together they had entered the Army, passing out on the same course at Sandhurst – Caspar going to his regiment, and so to France, where he had been so shockingly wounded in 1914; James moving with dangerous stealth into the field of Intelligence, finally becoming an agent in Berlin where he was arrested, escaping execution by devious plots about which the family rarely spoke.

  The cousins arranged to travel to Redhill together by car – their respective wives would go earlier, by train. Caspar needed to talk, and the journey by road would allow that.

  So far his war had been exhausting, and – now that everybody thought the end was in sight – Caspar felt the fatigue. People who knew him well said he had aged incredibly in the past years, looking more like a man of sixty than one in his early fifties.

  When he was enticed back into the Secret Intelligence Service – known to most as MI6 by this time – Caspar was appalled by the disorganisation. His first posting, in 1938, had been to Section D, dealing with what was euphemistically called ‘irregular warfare.’

  Caspar stood two days of sitting around discussing farcical ideas, then went quietly to ‘C’ – the Chief of SIS – bluntly asking for a special brief to, as he put it, ‘Follow a version of Christ’s instructions to go out into the highways and hedgerows and compel them to come in.’ By which he meant that he wanted to collect some really useful covert talent against a possible sea of trouble. All he saw around him was, as someone else put it, ‘An establishment of very limited intelligence, with professionals who were by and large pretty stupid – some of them very stupid.’

  His wish was granted, and, an old hand at the business he had learned from the eccentric Mansfield Cumming, he began snooping around Europe and the quieter corners of the major universities, revealing nothing to his Service colleagues.

  Caspar’s recruiting campaign was so successful that following Dunkirk and the collapse of France, Tarot became operational very quickly. The first signals from this network were in fact received long before any of the trained Special Operations Executive officers could be sent into occupied Europe. SOE was formed, late in 1940, to support resistance movements in the Nazi-occupied countries and, as Winston Churchill proclaimed, to ‘Set Europe ablaze.’

  Soon, Section D was swallowed by SOE, and Caspar found this an excellent vantage point. He could also salve his conscience regarding the recruitment of his nieces by reporting to the girls’ parents that they were safe.

  He continued to do this until Tarot went dead. But the death of Tarot posed him a plethora of problems.

  The major difficulty was even better known to James, who was similarly concerned when lured back to clandestine pastures in 1939, a week after the outbreak of war. James had been part of that idealistic band who saw, in spite of its eccentricities, the necessity for a good, sound, professional Intelligence Service. He had left the work after being ordered to spy on the Labour movement on behalf of the Conservatives. While being a Tory at heart, James was shocked at the idea of such an undemocratic order. ‘The Security and Intelligence Services,’ he snapped at his superior, ‘are here to serve country and democracy, not political whims!’

  When he returned to work, there was still little to be happy about, particularly after the Service lost the bulk of its agents abroad, following the kidnapping of Stevens and Payne Best – Chief and Deputy Chief of the SIS Continental office – in a crafty operation on the Dutch-German border at Venlo: a plot skilfully handled by the Germans and known to all by the understated title of the Venlo Incident. Later, after the invasion of Holland, one of the remaining agents, in a moment of exceptional dereliction, mislaid a suitcase containing every contact address. The entire SIS operation in Western Europe was blown, and James played a large part in attempting to rebuild a realistic and ordered Intelligence apparatus, until the United States came into the war and the Office of Strategic Services was set up as the American counterpart to SOE. James Railton was given the uneasy job of liaison between the American OSS and M16.

  The cousins left London at around four in the afternoon, James picking up Caspar from Wimpole Street where he had his offices – discreetly removed from the main Baker Street complex that was SOE headquarters.

  Caspar said little until the red MG was on the Oxford road. Sitting in brooding silence next to James, his mind strayed to times past when the prospect of a weekend at Redhill was exciting. There was nothing remotely happy about having to break the news that for the first time since 1940 he did not know whether Jo-Jo and Caroline were safe.

  ‘Ever worked out how many of the family are in the lunatic trade?’ he finally asked James.

  ‘Counting Jo-Jo and Caroline?’

  Caspar winced as his cousin went straight to the heart of the matter. ‘And “Big Joe” Farthing, who’s missing, presumed killed, after last week’s cock-up.’ James spoke of an OSS operation called Romarin which had been closely linked with Tarot.

  ‘Touché,’ Caspar murmured. ‘I didn’t know Joe was with the “Outfit.”’

  ‘Well, he was – and Bradley junior; and Arnold junior. Count them in, and add Naldo for luck. If you count ourselves, together with Richard’s work in the States – and he’s still active here of course – there were nine of us. What of the girls, Cas? Chances?’

  ‘They’ve had a good long run. Their chances’re very low.’

  James nodded. It was a bright summer’s day with the countryside at its best, everything at odds with their thoughts, for neither man shirked the feeling that he had contributed to the deaths of agents who were related by blood or marriage. Both men had the girls uppermost in their minds. Caspar and James had loved them as their own, which in a way they were, for the Railtons tended to close ranks quickly in moments of crisis. Once at Redhill Manor, Caspar would not be able to avoid saying something about his nephew, Joe.

  They watched the road and the passing landscape: the trees in their dusty full foliage; the farmland golden with corn and wheat, almost ready for the harvest; and they knew that all was not safely gathered in, yet the winter storm for them might be almost here.

  ‘I’m worried about Tarot,’ James said. ‘Concerned since last week. Since Romarin. They knew, Cas. They knew just where the boys were going in.’

  Caspar did not reply until they had covered a good mile. ‘Me too. I’m worried stiff.’ He said it in such a strange quiet way that James took his eyes off the road to glance at his cousin’s face. ‘You in pain, Cas?’ He knew that Caspar’s old wounds – the stumps of missing arm and leg – still caused him pain, even after so long a time, and that he was starting to feel the onset of circulatory problems which had been expected for years.

  ‘A little gyp.’ Caspar was curt. ‘Get it sometimes. Funny. Stress brings it on.’ Then suddenly he slewed the conversation back to Tarot. ‘I’ve been concerned for a while, old son. You seen the file? Tarot I mean?’

  ‘Bits of it.’

  ‘After Romarin I did some adding up. At the start, the sabotage, and all that wasn’t bad, but it takes an alarming dive when you look at the figures for “Action Demanded” – when we gave them specific targets. They’ve only given us two percent accuracy since 1941. It’s been more a case of setting Europe afizzle than ablaze.’

  James whistled.

  ‘Other things,’ Caspar continued. ‘Over the past four years we’ve sent them fifteen officers. Only three made it to the network, and all but one of those got bagged within two months.’ He paused as they overtook three American ambulances en route to one of the nearby airfields into which the medical Dakotas brought wounded from the brutal fighting which continued in France. There was the i
rony, he thought. They were going armed to Redhill which, even in bleak moments, echoed with laughter and happiness – a place of safety. And arms were being used just across the channel, where young men faced the horrors of battle. For a second he wondered if there was still any life, or laughter, in the house at St Benoît-sur-Loire – Fenice’s house from which Tarot had operated for so long. Where be your gibes now? Your flashes of merriment…? He could hear Jo-Jo and Caroline as very young girls doing a party piece at a long-gone Redhill Christmas.

  Caspar pulled himself back from the pictures in his head, turning to James. ‘I’ve been on to “Nine” as well.’ He meant MI9, the department which dealt with escape and evasion by aircrew shot down over Europe. Tarot’s managed to get almost five hundred aircrew out – or at least on to the next stage and then out. But they’re black-marked by “Nine,” and as usual I’m the last to be told. Tarot’s had over a thousand through their hands. Which means half of their product went missing and didn’t make it home.’ He gave a quick, deep sigh. ‘They weren’t so hot on the intelligence stakes either. Not at all dependable to say the least. We didn’t ask much from them, but we got a good deal less than they should have given. And to think Tarot was the apple of my eye. I was blind to its excess of faults. In other words I should never have sanctioned Romarin for you, James. There’s something very rotten about Tarot.’

  You always see it too late, he thought. Even when it is under your nose. Because he had been instrumental in setting up the network – trained Jules Fenice; pushed Jo-Jo and Caroline toward it; watched the réseau become active and grow very quickly. Taking such a pride in it, Caspar had failed to see that something was very wrong.

  James also had thoughts. He should have examined the logistics of Romarin, and asked far more questions – for Romarin was a daring OSS operation aimed at kidnapping the Orléans area Gestapo Chief – Standartenführer Hans-Dieter Klaubert, together with his mistress, Hannalore Bauer. The unit had been dropped directly on the DZ after receiving the code signal, flashed from a field. The aircrew said they saw flickers of machine-gun fire from the ground, and, two days after, word had come from Tarot itself. The operation had gone very wrong. The OSS team were all presumed dead.

  The time for Romarin had been chosen in order to spread confusion among the SS in Orléans and encourage them not to continue with the vicious acts of their leader. During his years at Orléans, Klaubert had been responsible for the torture and executions of more than five thousand French men, women, and children; a further seven thousand had been deported – on his personal order – to the death and slave camps. Little wonder that he was known as the Devil of Orléans. With an officer as efficient as Klaubert, it seemed strange to James that Tarot had been able to continue operating in the area at all, for it had been the man’s avowed intention to crush the Resistance in his personal satrapy. Nothing matched up, James considered. Then he said it aloud.

  ‘I know.’ Caspar’s usual bonhomie was quite gone. ‘By Christ, I know, James! Something smells, and heaven knows if we’ll get to the bottom of it.’ He sounded a sad and beaten man.

  ‘Oh, we’ll get there, Cas. Don’t worry. Once France is free of the Nazis, we’ll backtrack through hell if we have to. Tarot stinks, old chum. All we have to do is follow our noses.’

  Neither of them could know, as they passed through the market square of Haversage to begin the long climb up Red Hill, toward the Manor, what horrors would be disturbed once the stones of Tarot were turned over and the true stench reached their nostrils.

  Chapter Three

  Twenty, thirty, even forty years later, public disclosures were being made about the networks of agents in occupied Europe during World War II. It was two decades before the first history of Special Operations Executive was released, and about the same amount of time elapsed before the United States opened its filleted OSS files to the historians. Yet even now arguments continue; and secrets remain hidden. One of these concerns the Tarot network.

  In occupied Europe there had been betrayals, great courage, treachery, vengeance, and splendid guile, from both the Mouvement – as the Resistance was first called in France – and the German Military Intelligence, the Abwehr.

  The truth about Tarot did not immediately come to light – even to the guardians of secrets – once France was liberated, as James had prophesied. Much that had gone on in other networks needed no investigation – or very little – yet an inquiry into Tarot was obviously necessary, and quickly scheduled for the spring of 1946.

  Before that, an event which was to have much bearing on the truth took place among the strewn ruins of the now segmented and quartered German capital of Berlin. By pure coincidence the event concerned one Railton and one Farthing.

  The Railton was James’ son, Donald. As a small boy he could not pronounce his name. Instead he called himself Naldo, and so became Naldo, or Nald, to everyone, inside the family or out. He even thought of himself as Naldo.

  Naldo Railton had come to the SIS via his father. At Cambridge there had been a short, if furtive, dalliance with the Communist Party. Later, putting the half-baked, emotional ideals to one side, the young man embraced the cause of pacifism, swearing that, should war be declared, he would rather be imprisoned than go forth to kill. When the shooting war overtook the phony war in May 1940, Naldo Railton quickly changed his mind. As he said to his Great Aunt Sara, ‘If you happened to be in Harrod’s with your wife and children and an armed gang began shooting, you’d do everything in your power to defend them. You’d even shoot back.’ Naldo did that very thing from the cockpit of a Spitfire toward the end of the Battle of Britain, becoming one of those hastily trained young men who went to war with a minimum number of flying hours to their credit. A midair collision nearly cost him his life and certainly finished him for any further operational flying. By then he had seven confirmed kills and a DFC.

  Somewhere along the line James pulled strings and Naldo was quietly seconded to SIS, where he acquitted himself well in training and then went into the field – mainly controlling agents through Lisbon and Gibraltar for the Iberian subsection headed by one H.A.R. – ‘Kim’ – Philby.

  Early in 1946 Naldo found himself in Berlin, one of the sadly depleted number of SIS officers running Berlin Station. The times were badly out of joint. Berlin, neatly divided into four zones, policed by American, British, French, and Russian forces, had already become an island in the huge section of blasted Germany claimed by Russia. The winter had been almost unbearable – the black market flourished and was unstoppable, the city remained in ruins, peopled by a pitifully proud, yet defeated civilian army. Women were to be had for a few cigarettes; murder could be done for an hour of warmth. Many who had survived the bombings and the last weeks of the battle of Berlin died from cold or hunger. Most significant, by this time the enemy had ceased to be the Germans.

  Eyes turned Eastward, and Russia had become the bogeyman. Many politicians and large numbers of senior military officers thought that a war between the former allies was inevitable. Some thought it to be expedient. There was a feeling that it might happen at any minute, while America still held close to the atomic secrets that had brought about the final capitulation of Japan. After a lull of wartime alliance, Communism again became the dark red cloud on the horizon.

  In the meantime, the hollow-eyed, dazed German population was starting to reorganise itself, and the abiding picture Naldo carried from that time was of old men, boys, and women forming human chains to sift through the rubble, certain that Berlin would rise from its own ashes to become a prosperous city once more.

  One evening, in his relatively comfortable billet within the British Zone, Naldo’s telephone rang. The caller was Arnold Farthing, one of Richard’s nephews who had been with the OSS almost from the beginning. Naldo knew him well, not only as a relative, but also as a shrewd and ruthless Intelligence officer. Arnold sounded distinctly rattled.

  ‘Nald – ’ He spoke briskly but in almost a whisper, as though
certain that he was being overheard. ‘Nald, I need to see you. It’s urgent. Can you meet me?’ The night was bitter and Naldo had no desire to go through the business of getting transport and carting himself over to the American Sector. ‘Can you come here, Arnie?’ he found himself whispering, as though imitating his cousin.

  ‘Fifteen minutes. You alone?’

  ‘And palely loitering.’ Naldo smiled.

  Fifteen minutes to the second and Arnold Farthing was at his door.

  *

  Naldo lived on the third floor of a broken-down building which had miraculously escaped the bombs and shells near Hitler’s proud Olympic Stadium. It had once been a small hotel, and one wall was propped up with heavy wooden braces. Using the stairs always seemed perilous, for they leaned drunkenly to one side at the rise from second to third floors. The whole place was inhabited by British officers and diplomatic staff who knew one another only from passing on those stairs. Each kept his own peace in this place. It was not wise to ask questions or show too much interest in one’s neighbour.

  Before the tap on the door, Naldo became slightly alarmed. From his window he had clearly seen the American’s car draw up in front of the house. He thought there was a passenger.

  ‘Jesus, it’s cold. You got a drink?’ Arnold wore a heavy overcoat, muffler, trilby hat, and thick gloves. If his mission had been dangerous, Naldo reflected, there would have been no gloves. You could not use a peashooter with the gauntleted, fur-lined specimens which warmed Arnold’s hands.

  ‘Sure, come on in. Get warm.’ He motioned towards the potbellied, wood-burning stove. ‘Don’t touch it, you’ll get third-degree burns.’ Naldo opened a cupboard, brought out a bottle of Johnnie Walker and two glasses, poured a liberal shot into each, and handed one to Arnold, who had taken off the gloves and hat and was now unbuttoning his coat. He wrapped a large hand around the glass, raised it, then smiled and muttered. ‘Hail and farewell.’