Chapter Twelve

Friday afternoon
August 31, 1945
Ottawa

The Laurier Club, the private club for Liberals, occupied the corner of an elm-lined avenue, blocks from the University of Ottawa. It was on the old French side of town, where Catholic priests, dressed in billowing black cassocks, meandered along the shady streets in summer, and in winter walked gingerly upon the icy pavement between the university’s austere limestone buildings.

A government limo delivered Grierson and me to the iron gates of the club. We were eager to avoid the burning afternoon sun so we quickly climbed the stairs to enter the grand foyer. The grey-haired maître d’ directed us to the lounge where Preston Ellery was waiting, sipping a whisky and soda.

Ottawa was abuzz with the rumour that Ellery was the top contender for the Secretary-General’s position at the UN. Before Grierson even sat down, he congratulated Ellery on his accomplishment, as if it was a foregone conclusion. Then he introduced me to Ellery who didn’t bother to stand when he shook my hand.

Grierson and Ellery ignored Oleg, who stood at attention, ready to lead us to our table and serve lunch.

“I know who you are, Miss Linton. My friendship with John goes back to university days in England. We keep no secrets,” confessed Ellery.

“How nice for you both, keeping no secrets. I wish I had friends like you.”

“When John told me you’d be joining us for lunch I was pleasantly surprised. I’ve decided to speak openly in front of you. I require you to relay the nature of this conversation to your rezident, to Colonel Zabotin. Can you do that?”

I nodded my head in agreement. Ellery’s voice was strained when he spoke.

“Some of this information comes from Zabotin so you might be familiar with it, Miss Linton,” he added, not looking directly at me, but turning to Grierson.

“Zabotin tells me the key Soviet asset in Washington, a high-placed British diplomat who goes by the codename Homer, is worried that the Americans are close to breaking the wartime code used by Russian intelligence.”

I was surprised that Zabotin had confided in Ellery, who I’d understood worked expressly for the Canadians. But things were never that simple during the war.

“If that is true,” Ellery continued, “my connection to Moscow would be exposed. The Americans, and the Brits, will read the wartime cables between Zabotin and Homer. My advice to Homer is often quoted, according to Zabotin.”

“Does it matter?” Grierson piped in. “Whatever you did, you did to beat back the Nazis and win the war.”

“It matters, John. I must be careful. Lately, the Soviets have hinted they’re hungry to bite off more of Eastern Europe,” Ellery replied. “Atlee is a dyed in the wool Labour man and he loathes Stalin. If Harry Truman has his way, we’ll be at war with the Russians before the year is over. In any case, the Soviets will nix my appointment as Secretary-General, believing I’d compromise their seat on the UN Security Council. I know too much.”

Grierson trusted Ellery’s judgment. “What’s important is that Nazi scientists aren’t running the show at Los Alamos,” Grierson said, trying to calm Ellery. “Truman must acknowledge that Stalin won the war. Even Churchill knew the Allies couldn’t have done it without the Russians. The fighting turned at Stalingrad. You could influence the Americans. Help them to see that keeping the peace with the Soviets is paramount.”

Grierson’s naïveté even surprised me.

Both men ordered sirloin steak, medium rare, green beans and mashed potatoes, while I asked for the chicken breast. Ellery selected an excellent Burgundy stored in the club’s cellar long before the outbreak of war.

Over lunch, Ellery became increasingly perturbed. “Damn it, John. I can’t let this nonsense with Soviet intelligence cost me my run for Secretary-General. I’m the modern choice. Canada, that is. We will become the world’s peacemakers,” he said.

“The Soviets, the Brits and the Americans will support you at the UN. You’ve done nothing dishonourable.” Grierson was confident, but Ellery believed differently.

Oleg poured more wine for Ellery and Grierson as they spoke of the dangers Homer posed. I covered my glass with my hand. Homer had stood as First Secretary at the British Embassy in Washington for much of the war. In the summer of 1945, he was acting as Secretary of the Combined Policy Committee on atomic energy matters, a joint committee of Americans, Brits and Canadians in Washington. If, as Zabotin warned, it was discovered that he was run by the Soviets, Homer might crack.

Ellery explained to Grierson that although Homer didn’t relay technical information to Moscow about atomic secrets, he did report on the progress of the scientists at Los Alamos, and his intelligence was encrypted, and sent directly to Zabotin, who in turn, transmitted it to the Centre. Ellery didn’t know if the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa used the same Soviet encryption method as the one the Americans were about to break. If so, Homer’s messages to Zabotin could be translated by the de-coders in Washington. “We’ll be exposed,” he whispered to Grierson, “on matters of atomic espionage.”

Grierson took a long drink of his wine.

“You could help us, Miss Linton,” Ellery said, finally turning to me and offering me more wine. “I’d be grateful if you could find out how Zabotin transmits his cables to the Centre. Does he use the wartime encryption code or the Soviet diplomatic pouch? Could you find out?”

I said I would try.

“Security at the Ottawa embassy is impenetrable, and even if the code is broken, we were working to defeat the Germans, not endangering the Allies,” said Grierson, but again Ellery disagreed.

“No John, everything is up for grabs now that the Americans have exploded two atomic bombs. Understand that Soviet hotheads, excuse me Miss Linton, believe they must replicate the device to maintain the balance of power. What will happen to me, to us, if Washington cracks the Soviet code? Apparently the Nazis knew it for years. A pro-Nazi Norwegian decoded it for the Germans. That’s how Washington got their hands on it, through this Nazi who needed to get out of Norway after the Germans surrendered. The Americans welcomed him.” Once Ellery starting talking, it was hard for him to stop.

“Eventually the FBI or this new organization, the Central Intelligence Agency, will figure out that it was Homer who passed the information to Zabotin who in turn passed it on to Moscow. I helped Homer to gather that information and I assured Zabotin that he was safe to send it from Ottawa to Moscow. It was my duty. Churchill was holding back financial and military support to the Russians. Otherwise the Allies would have lost the war.”

Ellery put his head in his hands. “My appointment as Secretary-General will look like a Communist plot. I’ve spent the entire war easing relations between the West and the Soviet Union. So did you, John. Now we’ll be ruined.”

“Did Homer send the actual formula for the bomb, or the drawings themselves?” Grierson asked.

“God no, not the drawings or the actual formula. As I said, nothing highly technical. I don’t believe Homer or Zabotin or any other Soviet operator outside Los Alamos is privy to that.”

Grierson threw back the remainder of his wine. “Freda, what about your friend, Harry Vine? Wasn’t he in Los Alamos?”

Ellery was curious about Vine. “Who is he? One of Zabotin’s boys?”

I couldn’t believe our best-kept secrets were being discussed in front of Ellery.

“They go way back. Vine, Zabotin and Freda hail from the same village, a God forsaken place near the Soviet-Polish border. Could you elaborate, Freda?” Grierson asked me.

“John is correct. The three of us come from Nesvicz, a village inside the Pale, but it’s not important.”

“You’re an odd triangle, aren’t you?” John liked to talk. “Zabotin and Vine can’t stand the sight of each other from what I’ve gathered.”

“We’re from a different world than you are,” I commented, trying to put an end to this line of conversation.

Ellery asked me if I knew what transpired on Vine’s trip to Los Alamos, but I said I didn’t know.

“Could you find out, could you ask your friend Vine? Our continued anonymity depends on me knowing the facts.”

“I’ll ask,” I assured him.

After that, the two men placed their linen napkins on their seats as they stood up to leave the Club. I followed suit. On the way out, Ellery invited Grierson to his lodge on Pink Lake for the Labour Day weekend. “Our sainted cook is spending the summer with Patsy at the lake house and you’ll enjoy the roast beef and her storied maple syrup pie.”

“How’s Patsy?” Grierson asked kindly.

“I suspect she’ll spend a great deal of the weekend in her bedroom,” Ellery replied. Ellery shook my hand and disappeared into his waiting limousine.

Grierson’s car and driver were resting across the street under the shade of a tree, and he offered me a lift back to the office, but I declined. “Spend the weekend with your friend,” I said curtly. “I have work to do.”

I walked back to the Party office where I painstakingly jotted down whatever I could remember from the luncheon conversation. Then I translated my notes into Soviet code and destroyed the originals. The Chairwoman of the Canada-Russian Friendship Association pretended that she wasn’t interested in what I was scribbling and as I was stuffing the encryption in the prescribed drop, she looked down at her desk loaded with photos of a smiling Tim Buck and Stalin shaking hands. I told her to remain at the office until a courier from the embassy picked up the drop, and like the good comrade she was, she nodded her head in acquiescence.