Yesterday there had been gales in the North Atlantic and we had angled up to sixty-three degrees north to avoid them, passing over the mountains of Greenland, fangs of snow and rock, chilling in their beauty. Now there was just sea below, sea and more sea.
Failure. The word echoed round my mind. Mission failure. Personal failure. I hadn’t expected to return the hero of the hour but at least I wanted to demonstrate that I belonged in this clandestine world. Instead I hadn’t even been able to avoid a casual mugging, except that this had not been a casual, opportunistic mugging. I had been targeted.
Chicago had been a rollercoaster. I had left London suspicious that the whole mission was not what it seemed; a feeling confirmed when I met Julia French. The sheer amateurishness of everything we were doing brought back the doubts I had first experienced when Watkins told me we were off to Zandvoort to catch a spy. But when Kardosov almost literally fell into our hands and everything appeared to turn out so well those doubts disappeared. I had a feeling of what an old girlfriend used to describe as mild euphoria. We had found the Griffin Interrogator. We had caught Samovar. A picture flashed into my mind of Julia shepherding Kardosov from the Sears Tower with a gun in her hand: we were real secret agents. This was the life I had imagined when I travelled down from Durham to meet Mr Smith in Carlton Terrace. I had found my vocation.
But now?
Now I wasn’t even sure I would stay as a junior civil servant. I had really ballsed things up.
Somewhere there had been a mistake. But where? I went over everything that had happened. Nobody had followed me from London, or from Toronto. There was no sign that the hotel was being watched. And we hadn’t noticed anything suspicious when we left the Options Exchange. So how had anybody got onto me?
By the time we reached London I had convinced myself that the answer lay with Julia French or Nick Broadbent and the Canadians. I knew nothing about French or Broadbent and nor had anybody else in London, except the DG. Nick Broadbent’s name hadn’t even been mentioned and Watkins at least had expected French to be a man. I realised that I had started thinking of Julia French as simply ‘Julia’ but something about her still jarred. She was too authentic. She knew too much about the Department.
The most likely scenario was that the Canadians had inadvertently done something to queer the pitch, but I had no idea what. And it brought me no nearer to discovering who attacked me. The Americans would have arrested me. The Russians wouldn’t have let us grab Kardosov in the first place. Had Donnell also contacted somebody else, the Chinese perhaps? Possible, but surely extremely unlikely. The only people I didn’t try to connect it with were the two men who attacked me in Zandvoort; I should have done.
I wanted to believe that I had simply been the victim of a mugging, that the thief had no idea what he was taking. But he had gone straight for the briefcase and only French and Broadbent knew I was going to put Griffin in the case.
And London knew of course. ‘Where’s the case?’ Watkins greeted me at Heathrow.
‘I lost it.’
‘You what?’
I told him the whole story as Morgans whipped us through the morning traffic.
Watkins was at his best, showing why he was head of our section. No synthetic sympathy, just analysis, after he’d radioed the news to headquarters.
‘Miss French has already reported. She’s on her way here now with Kardosov, courtesy of the RAF. She’s lucky to have arranged that so quickly.’
‘She’s RAF herself,’ I explained. Watkins clearly didn’t think that was a plausible explanation, as he himself had been unable to arrange for the RAF to fly him back from Nijmegen.
‘So she is genuine,’ he continued. ‘The DG and the DO seem to have great faith in the Canadians, let’s assume that they’re also above suspicion. If none of them were working for the other side you must have been under surveillance. You and Miss French are fully trained, you would have noticed one man following you, therefore it was a team.’
In fact, as Watkins surely knew, I was not fully trained. I was not a secret agent, I was an analyst. And I was pretty sure Julia French was not fully trained either.
‘I could have been followed, but I checked carefully on the way out to the airport.’
‘They wouldn’t need to follow you there, where else would you be going?’
‘That’s true, but how did they know that Griffin was in the briefcase?’
‘Any professional would know. Subconsciously you were undoubtedly guarding that briefcase, gripping it particularly tightly. Watching it more closely. Look at it another way. It wouldn’t be in your suitcase because you wouldn’t let it out of your possession. And it would have been conspicuous in your pocket, like wearing a gun. It had to be in the briefcase.’
‘And who has it now?’
‘That’s the mystery. As you said, the Americans wouldn’t have attacked you. The Russians wouldn’t have lost Kardosov. The Chinese couldn’t get a team there that quickly. Of course it might be political, the Canadians could have taken it themselves.
Anything Watkins doesn’t understand is political. I had one more question. ‘What will happen to me?’
‘I wondered if you’d ask that. You didn’t really have much of a chance, not against a team. But you may have been off-guard, cocksure. Your first proper mission and you were returning a hero, making up for that unfortunate business in Zandvoort. It’s happened before. Griffin’s important to the DG, puts one over on the Americans and puts us in credit with the Navy. Don’t worry about the future, concentrate on what happened. Are you sure nobody was following Kardosov? Nobody suspicious at the airport?’
I wanted to see somebody. A face seen once too often. The same face at the Sears Tower and at O’Hare. But no, it was wishful thinking. There must have been a tail but I’d missed it.
As we reached headquarters Morgans started whistling ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street’. Not very appropriate.
The DG was waiting with Adam Joseff, a teleprinted message in his hand. Joseff’s office looked exactly as it always did: chaotic.
‘Bit of a mess,’ the DG said and he wasn’t talking about the DDG’s office. ‘Let’s hear it all. Start with landing in Toronto.’
It took nearly an hour to recount the story, concluding with Watkins’ theory that we’d been opposed by a team.
‘You haven’t answered two questions,’ the DG said, stamping out his cigarette. ‘Who has Griffin and how did they get on to you?’
‘Not the Americans,’ I started.
‘No, we can be sure of that. They’ve just reported Donnell’s death and asked us to keep watching for Griffin.’
‘That leaves two possibilities. French and/or Broadbent are unreliable, or we were under surveillance.’
‘No go,’ the DG replied. ‘Miss French is perfectly reliable. Broadbent too, although we’ll check his team again. There’s a possibility you forgot: you could be unreliable.’
He paused for a moment before continuing.
‘Let’s assume you’re just incompetent. Still wet behind the ears. Now think. The Soviets sent Samovar. They wouldn’t have risked that if they’d had time to mount a proper operation. So the time available was limited. That excludes the Chinese, freelancers and any third world agencies. They couldn’t have got a team into Chicago faster than the Russians. The Eastern Europeans wouldn’t do anything without Russian approval and they couldn’t have got a team there either.’
‘What about the East Germans?’ Watkins asked. ‘Koenig told us they’ve got a team in New York.’
‘They’re the one exception. We know some of them are not as fond of the Russians as they used to be but there’s absolutely no possibility of them targeting a KGB operation. I suppose if the KGB ordered them to help Kardosov get from Holland to Copenhagen, they might just follow him to Chicago. Or suppose they notice our man Burton’s arrival in Copenhagen and discover his interest in the plans of one Nils Olssen, they might well alert their men in New York to meet Olssen’s plane and see why the British are so interested. If they saw Kardosov being abducted they might have followed you to the airport. Pretty remote but possibility one.
‘Possibility two: the Israelis. One of their teams disappeared at least a month ago.’
I interrupted. ‘At that US Embassy meeting I attended, the Company mentioned the Israelis sending an agent to New York six weeks ago without telling them. The FBI lost him but the Company seemed to think it may have been important, usually the Israelis inform them if they have a team operating in the US.’
‘If the CIA representative mentioned this mysterious visit,’ the DG replied, ‘we can assume it has no importance. Possibility three has to be our friends across the Channel. The other Europeans either wouldn’t risk anything in the US, like the Germans; haven’t any inclination, like the Swedes; or haven’t the capability. But the French at one stage had a team in Quebec. They could have got on to Kardosov in Toronto or on to our plans for bringing Kardosov home through Canada. They’re my bet, unless anybody has any other ideas.’
‘South Africa.’ Joseff had a passionate loathing for all things South African. ‘They have men in the States.’
‘True. But Griffin is for nuclear submarines, which they don’t have. They wouldn’t risk American goodwill for something they don’t need.’
‘They could use it for bargaining.’
‘How? The Americans don’t want Griffin, they want to stop the reds getting it. If the South Africans threaten to give Griffin to the Russians, American favour will be gone for ever.’
Joseff tried again. ‘They could sell it to the French, exchange it for jets or helicopters.’
‘All right Adam, four possibilities: East Germany, Israel, France and South Africa. Let’s deal with them one at a time.
‘Six have nothing effective in East Germany since Koenig was blown. Our man in the Bonn Embassy is new. We’ll tell the Americans that we’ve heard rumours that the East Germans have pulled off something really big in the US Midwest. Then if it turns out to be true we might get some credit even if we lose Griffin.
‘Israel’s a dead end. We can’t penetrate them and they don’t need anything we can offer. We can radio Philips but he won’t find out anything. You can look through the files,’ he said to me, ‘and see if you can explain why an Israeli team would be in the US. Try the war crimes stuff, they could be Nazi-hunting again.
‘South Africa I’ll leave to you, Adam. I’m sure if they’ve got Griffin you’ll soon know about it.
‘That leaves France. There hasn’t been a peep out of Paris about this. I suppose there’s nothing to lose from a direct approach, we’ll send Devereau over. We’ll have to bid high to get a look-in.’
The meeting was over. ‘You’d better see the medic about that knock on your head,’ Watkins suggested on the way out, ‘and then get a few hours’ sleep in the dormitory. The files can wait.’
After I woke I went up to Watkins’ office, hoping he would have something more interesting for me to do than looking through old files. I was under no illusion about why I had been sent to look at the war crimes files, it was the DIS equivalent of naughty schoolboys being put in detention. Watkins had gone home. On his secretary’s desk was a photo of Julia French.
‘Mr Watkins wanted you to confirm that this is the person you met in Chicago,’ she explained. ‘He tried getting her RAF files but they’ve been mislaid. It probably doesn’t matter now. Miss French has arrived. The DG went off to meet her. Looks familiar doesn’t she, in the photo, perhaps she’s been here for training.’
I left her gazing at the photo and went down to Records. ‘Mr Watkins has been looking for you,’ Jenkins informed me, ‘he’s got a photo.’
‘I know, thanks.’
The files were useless and their sheer volume left me bemused. I discovered that using the so-called ‘ratlines’ an estimated 9 000 Nazi war criminals had been smuggled to Latin America alone after the war, with hundreds more escaping to the Middle East, Australia and the United States. Where was I supposed to start looking and for what? The section on war criminals in the United States was meagre, the only recent addition being on Klaus Barbie, whom the CIA had spirited away to Bolivia despite his having been sentenced to death in absentia by a French court. The other files hadn’t been added to or examined for nearly a year, since Roger Black had done a note on the latest Bormann theory. The index had disappeared, which didn’t help, and I was more than glad when Joseff phoned.
‘Pop up here a minute, will you, Thomas.’
Julia French was already there. We spent an hour going over our stories again but nothing new emerged. Joseff was keen to know if I had called anyone from the hotel.
‘You didn’t phone any friends? Nothing anyone could have overheard?’
I assured him that the only phone call had been the one from Watkins. I noticed he didn’t ask Julia the same question. Eventually we were told to go home but remain on call over the weekend.
As we left the room I suggested to Julia that we might go for a drink but she declined.
‘Another time perhaps.’
When we reached the lift she walked off in the direction of the DG’s office.
Julia French remained an enigma. It was odd that her service files had been mislaid. In Chicago Julia had mentioned her school, Wycombe Abbey, and I vaguely recollected that a university friend, Jenny Merchant, had also attended a school in High Wycombe. Perhaps I could learn more about Julia French. Back in my apartment I found Jenny’s phone number but her mother answered. Jenny had a temporary job with a tour company in Rio de Janeiro. Mrs Merchant insisted on giving me Jenny’s phone number in case I ever found myself in that part of the world: an unlikely possibility.
By Sunday evening I was ready to face the office again. It seemed to be clear, if surprising, that nobody was blaming me for losing the Griffin. And if they weren’t then why should I blame myself? But I was resigned to wading through more musty files. Watkins had other ideas.
‘We need to move on,’ he said. ‘No good dwelling on past failures. My Directorate has better things to do than investigate historic war crimes.’
Instead he sent me off to compose an assessment of an assessment. The Foreign Office had produced an eighteen-page overview report on Angola where at least three different guerrilla groups were vying to take over from the departing Portuguese.
‘Our ministers need an assessment of this today,’ he told me. ‘The FO don’t seem to have taken air power into account at all.’
The FO’s effort was a typical ‘on the one hand this but on the other hand that’ report. The guerrilla faction supported by the Americans would probably come out on top as their development programme was the most likely to be effective, but on the other hand the group backed by the South Africans had the support of the largest ethnic group and therefore might win out. A third group supported by the Russians was dismissed as militarily insignificant. I was no military expert but the DIS had quite a few and our conclusion seemed to be that none of the guerrilla groups were up to much militarily. The winner, I wrote, would be whoever could persuade their sponsors to commit their own troops. The Vietnam War was almost over and after that disaster the Americans certainly wouldn’t be rushing to commit ground troops to war in Africa. The question to ask was not which guerrilla group was stronger but who was willing to commit the most of their own troops: South Africa or the Soviet Union?
I left it like that. I had become a proper civil servant I thought ruefully. On the one hand the South Africans might win, on the other hand the Russians. As it turned out the Russians surprised us all the following year by airlifting Cuban troops into Luanda and brushing everyone else away; I hadn’t predicted that.
Watkins had told the typing pool to make my report top priority but when I went to pick it up it wasn’t ready. The supervisor was clearly used to Watkins demanding priority for his section whether it was justified or not.
‘Group Captain Watkins has already gone home,’ I was told. ‘Your report will be delivered to your office when it’s ready.’
I wandered off to find a colleague who was trying to establish how many of the new Russian PSM pistols were coming out of the factory in the Urals. It was said the Russians were restricting their issue to the most senior KGB and Army officers only but I thought I had seen two this morning, in a photo taken in a guerrilla camp in Angola.
When I returned to my own office the Director Operations, Richard Mendale, was sitting behind my desk. He was reading the assessment I had just completed.
He made no attempt to get up. ‘This is rather good,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you should stick to analysis in future rather than playing at being an action man.’
His warm smile did nothing to soften his words.
‘You let yourself get jumped in Zandvoort and then just to prove you can do it again you lose Griffin in Chicago. Not very encouraging is it? What’s your excuse?’
‘I don’t make excuses.’
‘Good answer. As Oscar Wilde once said, it’s better to offer no excuses than a bad one.’
It wasn’t actually Oscar Wilde but I suspected that Mendale would not appreciate being corrected.
‘Adam Joseff tells me you want to join Operations one day. Not a lot to recommend you so far is there?’
I wondered where the conversation was going. I had better things to do than stand in front of my own desk and let Mendale lob insults at me.
‘When the bullets started flying in Zandvoort I thought I handled myself pretty well.’
‘Perhaps you did but you shouldn’t have let yourself be caught.’
‘And we got hold of Samovar in Chicago.’
‘That was pure luck,’ responded Mendale. ‘You and French hadn’t planned to follow Kardosov. If his backup had arrived in time you would have been stuffed. And then again you let yourself get caught at the airport. Anyway, in my Directorate civilians make the tea, we don’t have any civilians in the field. You would be the first.’
‘I’ve always been happy to be first.’
Mendale nodded.
‘I can believe that. Perhaps your day will come. Tell me: how did anyone get on to you at the airport in Chicago? And don’t say Broadbent.’
‘Why not Broadbent?’
‘Because I’ve known him and his cowboys for years.’
‘And have you known Julia French for years? By the way, is French an assumed name?’
‘You don’t need to know that.’
‘Although she’s allowed to have my real name. Why’s that?’
Mendale just looked at me. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘The DG wants to see you.’
‘What’s it about?’ I asked.
‘I gather he wants to tell you himself. He’s tied up at the House. We’ll have to go there.’
As we set off on the short walk Mendale suddenly remarked, ‘You’re a clever bugger, aren’t you? You knew that quote about no excuse being better than a bad one wasn’t Oscar Wilde.’
‘It’s George Washington.’
‘But you didn’t try to correct me, you didn’t point out it was Washington.’
‘Perhaps I thought you didn’t need to know.’
He didn’t reply.
We crossed Parliament Square and went in through St Stephen’s entrance, Mendale leading the way along the uneven corridors with their paintings and tapestries depicting scenes long forgotten elsewhere.
The Director General was in the Guest Room. As we approached a smartly dressed man in Savile Row suit and club tie who had been sitting with the DG stood up and walked past us. He glanced towards Mendale and nodded to acknowledge his presence. Neither man said anything. The DG rose to greet us.
‘Dick, Thomas, good to see you. Some silly fool has put down a motion on badgers. I may have to go and vote at any minute.’
‘What did Brasenose want?’ Mendale asked.
‘You know better than to ask about that,’ the DG responded. ‘We’re here to discuss our plans for Thomas.’
A police launch cruised up and down the Thames outside. The DG relaxed into his red leather chair, obliterating the portcullis design which always reminds me of the old threepenny piece.
‘The Griffin Interrogator’s in Brazil,’ he announced. ‘Some freelancers have it, don’t ask how. They’re going to sell it to the highest bidder and we’ve been invited to the auction. They sent a message to the DO here via our man at the Embassy in Washington. We’re to put the name of our representative in the Telegraph’s deaths column. We’ve arranged to put your name in. “Regret to announce the death of Thomas Dylan in Chicago.” No time to produce another cover so you’ll travel on your own passport.’
A waiter brought the glasses of exorbitantly priced, nasty white wine.
‘Watkins thinks you’re the man for the job; you know the area apparently and you speak the language.’
‘I spent three months in São Paulo as part of my degree. And I’ve been back to Rio recently on holiday.’
‘So you have contacts in Rio,’ put in Mendale.
‘Not really in Rio, although Jenny, an old university friend, happens to have just landed a job with a tour company there. I was in Rio for the sun.’
‘On your own?’
‘Yes.’ I didn’t think it was any of Mendale’s business that I had intended to spend the holiday with a girl I had met in São Paulo. Unfortunately, it had soon become clear that absence makes the heart grow colder. I was not, after all, the man of her dreams.
Mendale nodded but said nothing.
‘Dick here has your tickets,’ continued the DG. ‘And there are some background reports on the political situation down there. Whoever is organising this auction will have booked you in at the Hotel Florianopolis, the address is with your ticket. You won’t be on your own. We have a good man there, name of Vernon. He’s on the case already. Try not to compromise him with the locals. You’re the front man, if the auctioneers make contact they’ll make it with you. But trust Vernon with any operational stuff. And report back on every step you take, that’s very important. Watkins goes on leave on Wednesday but the DO here will make sure that anything you want gets top priority.’
‘Just make sure you don’t get into any fights this time,’ said Mendale. ‘You’re there to take part in an auction. If you find out who else is bidding report back. In particular, if you discover a Russian presence let us know right away and keep close to them.’
Mendale and the DG made the assignment sound marginally more sensible than the decision to send me to Chicago, but only marginally so.
‘Can I ask one question?’
The DG nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘Why us? Why the Defence Intelligence Staff? Isn’t this sort of thing we have a Secret Intelligence Service to handle? Haven’t they got people in Latin America?’
I thought I caught the hint of a smile on the DG’s face but it was Mendale who answered.
‘Six have washed their hands of this whole operation. We’ve given them Samovar and that’s a big tick for them. That’s what Six and Five wanted, although it won’t do them any good. Kardosov’s not going to say anything and we’ll never prove he’s done anything illegal here. In any case we could never admit we grabbed him off a street in Chicago. We’ll have to discreetly hand him back. Perhaps Six could swap him for Koenig.’
The DG cut Mendale off. ‘Kardosov is no longer our concern. Hopefully our colleagues will be able to learn something from him and his network will be disrupted. The relevant point is that Justin Brasenose feels that he cannot commit resources to this so-called auction.’
‘Of course not,’ said Mendale. ‘Getting involved with anything connected to Griffin just risks upsetting the Americans and heaven forbid that happens again. We’re on our own this time.’
As far as Six were concerned we were on our own in Chicago I thought, but I let that pass.
‘The Griffin Interrogator is of prime importance to the Royal Navy,’ put in the DG. ‘The security of our submarine fleet is critical in the event of future hostilities.’ He stood up. ‘I need to get back to the chamber. Division could be at any minute.’
The DG seemed to belong here in the House of Lords much more than in his office; a slightly eccentric peer of the realm at home in front of the carved wooden bar and heavy wooden walls, the tapestry, the hideous brown and white ceiling, the vulgar red curtains.
‘Just one thing for you to remember, my boy,’ he said. ‘It’s for the sake of the Queen.’ Squeezing my hand in farewell he repeated, ‘For the sake of the Queen.’
I hadn’t the slightest idea what he was talking about.