MI6 HQ, 54 Broadway Buildings, London SW
The British Counter-Espionage Service, MI5, and the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, answered to different branches of government—MI5 to the Home Office, via which it had access to the Police Force in the rough shape of Special Branch, and MI6 to the Foreign Office. If that were not enough to make them suspicious of one another, add that MI6 had its own counter-intelligence section, and add further that Dick White, who had been head of MI6 (“C”) for the last couple of years, had previously been head of MI5, and had been a deputy head at the time of the “Missing Diplomats” crisis of 1951, and a pattern for mutual mistrust was established.
MI5 had cocked it up at the time, and Dick White knew it. Letting Burgess and Maclean escape had been so stupid, so easily avoided. MI5 had not so much egg on their face as a whole omelette. They might go on apologising to the Americans for ever. White might blame himself as well as blaming those above him—he had, after all, been one of the many who dismissed whisky-sodden, garlic-munching “Guy the Spy” as too improbable for words—but in 1958 he felt no inclination to let MI5 handle the death of William Blaine, despite the fact he was their own agent, not Six’s. But, it would be as well if MI5 never knew that.
White sent for his most trusted advisor, Lt. Colonel Alexander Burne-Jones—whose rank had not changed in twenty years, whilst his powers and responsibilities had grown exponentially … but as Burne-Jones often said, there’s no such thing as a pay grade or a rank once you don the cloak and pick up the dagger.
Burne-Jones hated visiting C in his den—his fourth-floor office, from which he rarely descended to meet “the troops.” It reminded him of a doctor’s waiting room. All that was missing were a stack of outdated magazines depicting a fiction of the English countryside … riding to hounds … county shows … pseudo-debutantes. He always kept the curtains drawn, never lit the fire, never offered you a sherry, and had never found so much as five minutes to take you down the rogues’ gallery, the photographs of his predecessors … all those moustaches … all those intimidatingly misshapen English teeth in fading monochrome.
C was reading. Glanced up as Burne-Jones came in. Waved him into one of the oversized leather armchairs that faced his desk. Burne-Jones found himself looking at a bank of telephones. Perhaps a qualification for getting the top job was knowing which phone to pick up? He had three and would invariably answer the wrong one. C had four. Three black, and the green scrambler, next to the overflowing ashtray and the open packet of Senior Service cigarettes. If C got through this meeting without lighting up Burne-Jones would be amazed.
White stopped reading. Closed the folder and spun it around to let Burne-Jones see the cover. The Vienna embassy’s report on William Blaine.
He simply tapped on it with his finger.
“Alec, you’ve read this, I suppose?”
“Of course. Came in on the teleprinter about an hour ago.”
“Do you think Five have any leads?”
“No. They have nothing. There was only one witness, one survivor, if you like, and that was Chief Superintendent Troy.”
“What was he doing in Vienna?”
“Family holiday, I gather.”
“Is that believable?”
“His brother’s fiftieth, so … probably.”
“Do you know him?”
“No, but the brother in question is Rod Troy.”
“The Shadow Home Secretary?”
“The same.”
“Bugger.”
“There’s worse. His brother-in-law is Lawrence Stafford at the Post—a man known to tell us where to stuff D-notices when he’s a mind to. There’s a rumour that one Home Office underling trying to make him accept a notice questioned his patriotism, only to have Stafford offer to return his George Cross to the Queen. But, on this occasion he appears to be complying.”
“Not averse to looking after his own, then.”
“Quite. This will need careful handling or there’ll be ripples. I hear Five want to put a watch on him, but young Troy has dealt with the Branch countless times so he’s capable of running circles round a couple of dumb coppers in beetle-crushers and bowlers. He was temporarily assigned to the Branch to cover Khrushchev’s visit in ‘56, he has good Russian, after all, and it’s hard to tell who hated who more. But that’s the other thing—he’s run afoul of them far too often. Put politely, they have their suspicions. Put realistically, they’ve had it in for him ever since Khrushchev’s visit.”
White had been asked to take control of MI6 immediately after Khrushchev’s visit—his predecessor, Sir John Sinclair, more or less fired by the Prime Minister himself—and the espionage fiasco that had surrounded it. His career had been diverted, rewritten around that incident, and he was not about to allow it to be used as any kind of yardstick. He had taken charge at the low point of SIS’s history and the only way was up.
“Doesn’t make him a wrong ‘un.”
“No, but on the other hand, it would appear he and Burgess were old friends, and in ‘51, when Five pulled in everyone who’d ever known Burgess, they overlooked Troy. Peter Wright’s Burgess-crony hunt has become an obsession. It would be easier to list the people he hasn’t interviewed. That he missed Troy is little short of amazing. Troy is just the sort of man Wright despises. Although it’s probably fair to say Wright despises anyone who doesn’t buy his suits off-the-peg.”
White seemed almost to flinch at this. Yet another cock-up come to light. Another damn thing he’d got wrong.
“Man’s an idiot,” he sighed, reaching for his cigarettes.
A contrived pause as he struck a Swan Vestas and lit up.
“And,” exhaling a cloud of cheap tobacco fumes, “we’re off the point.”
“Of course. Sorry,” Burne-Jones said. “It might have been chance that the entire Troy family was in Vienna, but it was no mere chance that Burgess approached Troy. He must have planned it. If Five have any sense they’ll put Jim Westcott on to interrogate Troy, keep Wright well out of it, and ignore anything the Branch say. If Troy is a wrong ‘un Westcott stands a better chance than anyone of finding out … and if he’s not they’ll be able to clear him without his family making a fuss.”
“I’m not happy,” he said. “Burgess was one of us for however long it was—?”
“It was just a few months in 1940. Section D, till it was wound up. He went back to the BBC after that.”
“Which is all the excuse I need. Put one of our own on to Troy. Someone Troy won’t run circles round. Someone you can trust absolutely. What’s that son-in-law of yours up to at the moment?”
“I’ve just assigned him a spell abroad.”
“Oh—of course, I was forgetting—Beirut. When does he go out there?”
“In two weeks. He’s on embarkation leave right now.”
“Cancel it. Put off his departure by ten days and assign him to young Troy. I can think of no one less likely to be intimidated by the English Establishment than Joe. The Troys may own newspapers, have a man in the Commons, another in the Lords, DSOs, DFCs and GCs … gongs and ribbons galore. It won’t mean shit to Flight Sergeant Holderness. This calls for an oik, not someone on the old school-tie network. Let’s get it right this time. One Guy Burgess cock-up in my career is quite enough.”
Oik?
Burne-Jones blinked at this. He knew plenty of people who might and often had used that term to describe Joe, along with “spiv,” “wide boy,” and “chancer”—he just hadn’t expected to hear it on White’s lips. Perhaps there was an irony he was missing? After all, White was putting his trust in Joe. But … orders were orders. All the same, he couldn’t help wondering what his daughter would say. She could and would be resentful in the extreme at the loss of Joe Wilderness’s embarkation leave.
But it worked out well. All Judy said was:
“Dadyoucompleteanduttertotalfuckinbastardgobshiteofafatherhow canyoufuckindothistoyourowndaughter!?!”
Burne-Jones did not pause to parse.