‘Breakfast in Europe and lunch in Asia!’ cried the ambassador’s wife as the motorboat drew up to the landing-stage. ‘I shall never get used to the decadence.’
‘We do our best,’ smiled Joan Templeton, stretching out an arm to help her ashore. She alighted with an unladylike squeal, but swiftly recovered and handed small bouquets of wild flowers to Joan and her daughter, Vanessa. The ambassador made the leap unaided, then turned back and muttered instructions to the crew, half a dozen young men in starched white shirts and matching pantaloons. They swiftly removed the Union Jack from its position by the wheel, folded it away, and seated themselves cross-legged on the cushions on deck – I guessed they would wait here until required for the return journey.
On land, everyone greeted one another with polite pecks on the cheek, and the ambassador asked Vanessa how she was enjoying her final year at Badminton. His wife, meanwhile, had caught sight of me standing to the side and immediately leapt over.
‘I was so sorry to hear about your mother,’ she said, taking my hands in hers and clutching them urgently.
‘It was perhaps for the best,’ I told her. ‘She had suffered long enough.’
She tilted her head and gazed at me for a long moment, her eyes large and liquid with sympathy. I gave a tight smile in return: I knew this was one of many such exchanges I could expect to face in coming weeks. While we spooks were housed in the city’s Consulate-General – the old embassy, a magnificent nineteenth-century palazzo – the regular diplomatic corps were based out in Ankara, an arrangement that suited us rather well. But in summer they descended on Istanbul, their arrival presaged by a flurry of thick crested invitation cards embossed with gold type. My usual existence, in which I saw less than a dozen colleagues regularly, was about to be overturned with two months of cocktail parties and picnics.
Today was the opening of the season, the Templetons’ annual lunch party, which one had to take a ferry to reach as they lived in Beylerbeyi, a pleasant suburb on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus. Like many others out here, the ambassador and his wife had known my parents in Cairo. I had spent much of the previous summer, my first in the city, fielding anxious enquiries over Father’s disappearance at the end of the war and my mother’s continuing ill health. But with Mother’s death a couple of months earlier I had become an orphan, so I was braced for an even higher pitch of concern.
Had she known the truth about my parents, the ambassador’s wife would probably have recoiled in horror. My mother had hailed from an old Swedish family that had settled in Finland in the nineteenth century. Father had been introduced to her at a ball in Helsinki in 1923 when she was just nineteen, and they had married soon after and moved to Egypt, where Father had been Head of Station. I had been born in London a couple of years later – I was to be their only child.
Shortly after my birth, it had become clear that beneath Mother’s poised exterior lurked serious problems. She suffered from continual headaches, and became increasingly demanding, rude and, eventually, hysterical. Her father had been killed in the civil war by the Red Guards, and as a result she harboured a deep hatred of the Soviet Union. She was also virulently anti-Semitic, and would often refer to Jews in public as ‘vermin’.
All this proved to be highly embarrassing for Father, whose career in the Service was flourishing. In 1936, he was posted back to head office in London. As the Nazis in Germany became more powerful, he had advocated closer ties with them, becoming one of the leading lights of the Anglo-German Fellowship. He was also an admirer of fascism – he was briefly Treasurer of the Nordic League – and argued strongly in favour of appeasement. However, he had swiftly abandoned this line once it had become clear that war was inevitable, and following the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact he had publicly cut all ties with fascist groups and become staunchly anti-Nazi as well as anti-Communist. But Mother’s ‘condition’, as everyone had started to call it, was much harder to disguise.
Things had come to a head in early September 1939, when she had announced at a party in Belgravia attended by several government ministers that Hitler was the strongest leader Europe had seen in generations and that he was fully justified in his persecution of the Jews, who, she had added for good measure, were also natural enemies of England. Father had been advised by friends in the War Office that she was a liability, and that if nothing were done the three of us could be interned. As a result, he had had her shipped off to Finland, where she was cared for by private doctors at a remote estate. I came home from school to be told that Mother was ill, and that it might be some time before I saw her again. In the event, it wouldn’t be for another five years.
In late 1941 Britain had declared war on Finland, and Father had had her shifted again, this time to a clinic in Stockholm. I had visited her there briefly early in 1945, but she hadn’t even recognized me: either madness or medication had frozen her mind. She had remained in the clinic after the war, and had finally passed away after a series of strokes in April. Her funeral had been a quiet affair near her family’s home in Helsinki. I had attended and spent a few days there, and then flown straight back to Istanbul.
The ambassador’s wife let go of my hand, and Joan Templeton led us beneath some parasol pines and into the house. We walked through the cool shade of the living room and out to the sunlit garden, where several cane chairs were arranged beside a table laden with salads, cold cuts and a large dish of pigeon with rice.
‘Colin’s just upstairs with some guests,’ Joan said. ‘Colleagues from London. He’ll be down shortly, I’m sure. Can I get you both a drink? Colin made some of his punch.’
‘That sounds just the ticket,’ said the ambassador, and his wife nodded her approval from beneath the brim of her hat. Joan headed towards the table to fix the drinks and everyone seated themselves. Vanessa settled into the chair next to mine and gave me a mischievous grin. She was seventeen now, and had blossomed into a classic English rose. She was lively company, but my thoughts were still entirely consumed by another woman: Anna, the nurse who had treated me in Germany six years earlier, whom I had loved and had planned to marry – and whom my own father had murdered before turning the gun on himself.
Anna had been a Russian, and over the course of our love affair had tried to convert me to Communism. She had come within a hair’s breadth of doing so, but her revelation that she was an NKVD agent and allegation that Father was using me to execute Soviets rather than Nazi war criminals had been more than I could accept. I had coldly rejected her, and immediately delivered a message to Father denouncing her as a spy. Her subsequent death at his hands had overturned my mind: as well as the devastation of the loss, it had seemed to confirm everything she had claimed, and I had been plunged into shock, grief and rage. The rage had soon won out, however, and it had been directed not just at Father, but at all he represented. The thought of Anna’s body laid out on the stretcher in the hospital, her skin already turning grey, tormented me. And so, as I had buried Father in the garden of the farmhouse in Lübeck, I had vowed to take my vengeance, by adopting Anna’s cause as my own.
She had told me that her handler was based in the Displaced Persons’ camp at Burgdorf, so I had taken Father’s jeep and driven there. It had started snowing, huge flakes of the stuff, and by the time I arrived at the camp there was a blanket of it across the landscape. I presented the papers identifying myself as a member of an SAS War Crimes Investigations Unit and said I wished to interview residents of the camp as part of my team’s enquiries. My uniform was a mess, but I had placed Father’s leather jerkin over it, and after I had filled in a couple of forms, they had let me through with the advice to tread very carefully: several former SS officers had recently been discovered in the camp and nerves were particularly taut as a result.
I had walked around the main area for several hours showing the one photograph I had of Anna. Most people had clammed up as soon as I approached, but eventually someone recognized her and told me she had been an occasional visitor of Yuri, a Ukrainian doctor whose room was on the second floor of the old barracks. I made my way there and knocked on the door. After a few seconds, it was opened by a thin man wearing a greatcoat over a pair of pyjamas.
‘Yes?’ he said, peering at me. His face was cracked and leathery, as though he had spent most of his life outdoors, and he had tiny eyes, like sparks in a furnace. A snubbed nose gave him a faintly childlike appearance, but his hair was greying at the temples and I put him in his mid to late forties.
‘I believe we have a mutual acquaintance,’ I said.
He looked me over uncertainly, but then something registered in the eyes and I guessed he had recognized me from my file. He turned to speak to someone in the room, and a few seconds later a small figure scurried past me: a girl, fourteen or fifteen years old, wearing a thin nightgown. She looked up at me for a moment with startled eyes, then wrapped the gown tightly around her waist and disappeared into the corridor.
‘My daughter,’ said Yuri, his voice raspy. ‘I do not like to discuss my work in front of her.’
He opened the door wider and I stepped inside. The room was sparsely furnished: an iron bedstead with a dirty mattress, a couple of wooden chairs, and clothes and books laid out on the floor. But he and his daughter had a room to themselves, which meant he was a very powerful person in the camp. I had seen rooms elsewhere that had been home to two and even three families. Presumably he was using his medical skills to gain favours and influence – and to seek out potential agents.
‘Anna should not have told you about me,’ he said, locking the door. ‘Why have you come here?’
‘Anna is dead.’ At first I wasn’t sure if he had heard me, but then he visibly crumpled, his body hunching over and his breathing coming in gasps. I made to approach him, but he held a hand up until he had recovered. When he looked up at me again, his eyes were wet with tears.
‘It cannot be,’ he whispered. ‘Not my Anna.’
‘Was she also your daughter?’ I asked, suddenly shocked at the thought.
He shook his head slowly. ‘But she could have been.’
He asked me what had happened and I told him, leaving nothing out. He listened very carefully, occasionally interjecting with questions to clarify a detail. When I had finished, he walked over to one of the chairs and perched himself on it.
‘Thank you for telling me this,’ he said. ‘Anna was one of my finest agents, but she is not the first to have been murdered by the British.’ He looked up at me sharply. ‘Can you believe that earlier this year your country and mine were allies? Now one would almost think we are at war.’
‘I know. There were even rumours after the ceasefire that we would join forces with the Germans and take up arms against you.’
His eyes widened a fraction.
‘Why have you come here?’ he said.
I had rehearsed a speech in the jeep, but suddenly I wasn’t so certain of my convictions. I shut my eyes. The image of Anna in the stretcher swam back into my mind, and I forced myself to imagine Father squeezing the trigger, the bullet entering her…
‘I want to work for you,’ I said.
He stood up. ‘And yet you did not when Anna was alive?’ he said, a touch of anger in his voice. Perhaps realizing this, he stepped forward and placed a hand on my shoulder. ‘I am sorry, but revenge is not a good motivation. It burns out too quickly. It does not persist. And I need people with persistence. With ideals.’
‘I have ideals,’ I said. ‘You’re right, I didn’t want to do it when Anna was alive. But I didn’t understand the situation, not fully. I… I’m afraid I didn’t believe what she told me.’ I stared into his face, at the curious snubbed nose and the glinting eyes.
‘But you do now?’
I nodded, willing myself not to cry in front of him. ‘Please,’ I said. ‘Have some faith in me. I am ready to serve…’ But even then, even in that moment, I had been about to say ‘Anna’, not ‘Communism’ or ‘the Soviet Union’.
Yuri paced around the room for a few minutes, his hands steepled together at his lips as he considered my proposal.
‘I want to make sure we are very clear about this before we proceed any further,’ he said, after a while. ‘I need to be certain that you understand the consequences of what you are suggesting. There is no return from this point. Once you have committed to us, we will become your home. Your family.’
I thought of the family I had been born into: Father a murderer, Mother on the brink of insanity. And I thought of Anna, and the family we might have had together had she lived.
‘I am committed,’ I said.
Yuri looked at me for a long while. I held his gaze. ‘You must go to London at once,’ he said finally, and his voice had taken on a quiet hardness. ‘Nobody must ever know you have been in Germany. You will be contacted shortly.’
I was filled with conflicting emotions: elation that he had agreed to take me on, disappointment and puzzlement that it wasn’t to be at once. ‘How will you know where to find me?’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘We will.’ He walked over to the bed and picked a book from a pile leaning against it. I was surprised to see that it was a selection of poems by W. H. Auden. He opened it and read out one of the lines, then looked across at me. ‘That will be your signal.’
It didn’t seem as if there were anything else to say, so I had shaken his hand and left him. My frustration at his request for me to wait was tempered by the knowledge that I had now set out on the path Anna had wanted for me. I returned to London as instructed, and told everyone I had been visiting my mother in Sweden. A few people asked about Father, and I replied that I hadn’t seen him in over a year. The story soon went around that he had disappeared just after the ceasefire – nobody knew where, or what had happened to him, but as time went by most presumed he had been killed. Eventually, I cleared out his things in Chelsea Cloisters and moved in there myself.
I had expected to find another job fairly easily, but it proved harder than I’d anticipated. This was perhaps partly because I felt very uncomfortable being back in England. After three years in foreign fields, the entire country now seemed to me an ugly braggart: delighted with itself for winning the war, but ignorant of the fact that without the Soviets and the Americans it would never have happened. I hated the glorying in victory, especially as I had seen the terrible state Germany had been left in.
I was a fish out of water in other ways, too. After joining the war late because of my age I had, almost as though making up for lost time, taken part in operations under the auspices of several organizations: the SAS, SOE and a few other irregular units. But all of them had either been disbanded or were about to be, and I wasn’t sure I was cut out for the Service: I was a field agent, and most of the Service chaps I knew were desk men.
I nevertheless applied for a job in the Soviet Section, which was expanding almost by the day. Unbeknownst to me, it was headed up by one of Father’s oldest friends, Colin Templeton. I was given the position, and started work at Broadway Buildings in early February, 1946.
The Section’s entire focus was on obtaining up-to-date information about the Soviet Union: its scientific expertise, intelligence structures and, of course, military plans. Many were convinced that Stalin intended to invade Western Europe. As reliable information was extremely scant, real war crimes investigators in Germany, Austria and elsewhere were being thwarted: many of the senior Nazis they apprehended were swiftly judged by London to be crucial counter-espionage assets, and were exfiltrated, given new names, and pumped for everything they had. But the more I heard about the supposed Soviet threat, the more determined I became to counter it from within – and the more anxious I became about the fact that I had not yet been contacted.
Just as I was starting to wonder if Yuri had simply given me the brush-off, it happened. I was walking down Thurloe Street when I felt something graze my shoulder. Whirling around, I caught sight of a slim man in a grey herringbone coat heading in the opposite direction. As he walked away I felt my pockets, but to my surprise found that something had been added to them rather than subtracted. It was a small visiting card for a café a few streets away. And on the back of it, someone had written in pencil: ‘It is later than you think. Saturday. 11.00.’
The line of poetry seemed more ominous now than when Yuri had recited it to me a couple of months earlier. Perhaps as a result, I left the flat at eight o’clock that Saturday morning. The café was within walking distance, but instead I took a succession of buses all over town, repeatedly checking my watch. I had arrived, flustered but certain I had not been tailed, just before eleven, and waited for my contact to arrive. When he did, I realized it was the man in the herringbone coat. He shook me by the hand as though he had known me for a very long time, removed his coat, and ordered a pot of tea.
This was Georgi. He was in his mid-thirties, intelligent, cultured and charming. He had worked in France and Belgium, where he had been responsible for rooting out information about the Nazis’ troop movements. We got on immediately, and over the next few months met regularly in locations around South Kensington. I once asked him if it wasn’t unwise to meet so close to where I lived, and he had told me that it was by far the safest option: it would be easier to explain my presence if I happened to meet anyone, and the police were less vigilant because it was a genteel neighbourhood with few immigrants. As an additional precaution, we opened every meeting by establishing the cover story for it in the event of any interruption: most of the time he was a Finnish aristocrat who had known my mother in Helsinki. But we never had to use any of the cover stories we prepared: nobody paid us the least attention. We would sit in a corner and play chess or backgammon – he was rather good at both – and he would quietly question me about my work at the office. At that stage there was very little to report, and I had the feeling he already knew everything I told him anyway and was simply testing how much I would reveal to him, and how clearly I could relay information.
At our fourth meeting, Georgi announced that he would cut contact with me for six months, barring emergencies, in which case I was to leave him a message at a dead drop in a cemetery in Southgate. I had immediately feared that I had done something wrong, but he assured me that this was a positive sign, and that it meant that Moscow now trusted me enough to leave me to advance my career without having to watch over my every step.
‘Bide your time,’ he said. ‘Go about your work efficiently, and when we meet again you will have more to tell me.’ As I had watched the back of his coat disappear through the door of the café, I had felt strangely abandoned.
But I had followed his instructions. I had continued with my work in Soviet Section, and slowly but surely was given more responsibilities. Colin Templeton now often invited me to his home, where I met his family. The six months crept by, and then it was time to meet with Georgi once more. He asked about my work, and seemed pleased with my answers. Once again, I didn’t feel I was telling him anything he did not know, but was happy I was finally of some use.
My meetings with Georgi continued in this way until late 1949, when Colin Templeton called me into his office and told me he was being posted to Istanbul as Head of Station, and that he would like me to come along as part of his team. I accepted at once, and left a message for Georgi in the cemetery in Southgate telling him the news. There had been no time for another meeting, as I was due to head out to Turkey immediately.
After nearly four years behind a desk in London I had been looking forward to heading into the field again, and Istanbul didn’t disappoint. The city had been crawling with spies during the war, and it seemed little had changed since. The main concern was the Soviets, with the growing American influence a close second. Turkey had been neutral in the war, by and large, and was now cleverly playing the former combatants off against one another. Despite the plans for democratic elections, the possibility that they might turn to the Soviet Union had everyone worried, and strenuous efforts were being made to convince them to come into the new NATO structure. Britain’s position was that this should happen in conjunction with it joining a separate Middle Eastern security alliance, but the Americans had other ideas. Despite Britain’s efforts to persuade them otherwise, the Turks were coming to the realization that the balance of power was shifting in the world, and that the United States might be better able to provide them with long-term support.
I quickly settled into my position in the Station. I loved being away from London, with its pea-soupers and boiled beef, and immediately immersed myself in the hubbub and intrigue of the city’s back alleys. After a year had passed without any contact from the Soviets, I began to panic. Perhaps Georgi had not picked up my message in Southgate, and they were unaware I had moved to Turkey? But surely he would have checked the drop.
My fears had finally been put to rest just three weeks earlier. I had been wandering around the Grand Bazaar when a small boy had placed a piece of paper in my jacket pocket and run away giggling. I had followed the address to a shop that sold antique silverware, where I had discreetly been led through to a back room. To my surprise, I found Yuri seated on a pile of silk cushions. He looked much the same as he had in Burgdorf, only his hair was a little greyer and the greatcoat and pyjamas had been replaced with a smart lounge suit.
He had wasted no time in getting to the point. There had been some commotion in Moscow: several agents in the field had been recalled to headquarters for further training. As a result, all the information I had given to date had been reviewed – and been found wanting.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, reeling. ‘Georgi was very pleased—’
‘He was mistaken. Moscow feels you have not yet handed us anything significant.’
‘But I haven’t had anything significant to provide!’ I said. ‘Georgi told me to bide my time until I was more established.’
Yuri gave a thin smile. ‘Moscow is concerned about the time and resources that have been spent on you for such little reward. Unless you can provide a higher grade of material, it is perhaps best that we discontinue our arrangement.’ And with that he announced the time and location of the next meet, then stood, parted the curtains, and disappeared through them.
That next meet was now less than a week away, and I still had nothing of note to report. The simple truth was that, at twenty-six years old and with just five years in the job, I was still far too junior to be given access to any great secrets – and I couldn’t see that situation changing any time soon.
I took a sip of punch and looked up at the villa, wondering again what it was that Templeton might be discussing with the ‘colleagues from London’. They had arrived a couple of hours earlier, not by motorboat like the other guests, but in a scratched-up jeep they had parked in the driveway at the foot of the garden, on the Asian side. Templeton had immediately escorted them inside the house and up to his office, and they hadn’t been seen since.
There had been three of them. William Osborne was one of the Service’s rising stars: having spent much of the war working in the Middle East, he was now establishing a reputation as an expert in deception operations. Charles Severn, the driver of the jeep, was a new recruit to the Service whom I had known at school, and not much liked. The final member of the party had not been from London at all: the head of Turkish military intelligence, a dapper man with a marvellous moustache who, for reasons I had been unable to unearth, we called ‘Cousin Freddie’. He sometimes came by the office to meet Templeton – but what was so important that he had come to his house?
‘Hello, Dark.’
I looked up to see a young man stretching out his hand. He was dressed in a dazzlingly white short-sleeved shirt and navy-blue Daks, and his fair hair was brushed back with pomade. Despite the addition of several inches in height and a short clipped moustache, he was instantly recognizable as the boy I had last seen nine years earlier.
‘Severn,’ I said, shaking his hand. ‘It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Do you know everyone?’
Severn made his way around introducing himself, and Vanessa blushed as he kissed her hand.
‘Is this your first visit to Istanbul?’ she asked him.
‘Yes,’ he said, settling into a chair.
‘How are you enjoying it?’
He wrinkled his nose. ‘Not much. Rather a scruffy-looking place. I was expecting more, somehow.’
There was an awkward silence, and I wondered whether Templeton had sent him out of the meeting early because he was too junior to hear the rest, or because he hadn’t been able to stand the sound of his voice any longer. Perhaps he was nervous. I asked him if he wanted a drink, and he looked up at me with gratitude. Yes, I decided, it must be nerves. Probably his first mission in the field – I remembered how I had felt on mine.
More guests arrived, most of them diplomats. Drink was consumed, and food eaten. Conversation turned to Korea, and the King’s health, and which mosques were worth visiting. Severn told me a series of anecdotes about old boys I had no recollection of, and I did my best to feign interest. But there was still no sign of Templeton, Osborne or Cousin Freddie. They’d now been closeted away for over two hours. What on earth could they be discussing?
‘Pretty girl,’ said Severn. ‘Is she yours?’ I turned to him, and he nodded at Vanessa, who was talking to a first secretary.
‘No,’ I said coldly. ‘She is not.’
‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to offend.’
I decided to change the subject. ‘How’s London these days – do I take it you’re working for Osborne?’
Severn laughed bitterly. ‘That’s one word for it. The man’s a positive slave-driver, and I’m the one being driven. Or rather, it’s the other way round – would you believe he’s dragged me halfway across the world to be his chauffeur? Wish he’d got some local sod to drive him around the desert instead.’
I suppressed a smile. ‘Why didn’t he?’
He placed a finger to his lips. ‘Hush-hush stuff. Although no doubt Templeton’s given you some of the background?’
I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Sorry, I didn’t realize. Templeton doesn’t tell me that sort of—’
‘Don’t pull that with me. You should have heard him in there – he couldn’t stop talking about you. You’re his boy. Stay close to him, I would. Only reason I’m chumming up to Osborne is because I reckon he might go to the top. And his politics are sound. He says what he means, anyway.’
I made some assenting noises and went to help myself to more punch. I couldn’t work it out: was something significant going on here, or was it just the pressure from Moscow that was making me believe there might be? I found Severn’s attitude mildly surprising. His family were one of the richest in England, and I had presumed the Service was simply a hobby for him. But it appeared that he was, in fact, rather ambitious, and sharp enough at least to try to judge which way the wind was blowing.
I made a note to myself to keep an eye on him, and turned to see Templeton, magisterial in a straw hat, cream linen suit and a pair of battered leather sandals, marching out of the house. Osborne and Cousin Freddie followed directly behind him. The meeting finally appeared to be over.
‘Hello, everyone!’ Templeton said as he approached the gathering. ‘Sorry to be the absent host. Is there any punch left?’
Everyone laughed, and he kissed his wife and daughter. More introductions were made; glasses clinked; the sun beat down. A hookah appeared from somewhere and Templeton offered it to Cousin Freddie, who nodded in appreciation at being given his own amber mouthpiece to use. Some felt that Templeton had gone native, but I suspected that this sort of thing was simply solid tradecraft, an extension of the idea that a good agent always listens twice as much as he speaks. Cousin Freddie certainly seemed to become more talkative as he inhaled from the water-pipe, and Templeton sat cross-legged opposite him, nodding his head every once in a while.
The shape of the party shifted, with separate circles forming. Osborne ambled over to speak to Severn, who noticeably stiffened as he approached. Osborne gave me a nod – we had met briefly during the war. He had put on a lot of weight since then, and the heat seemed to be getting to him: his hair was plastered to his forehead and his cheeks were flushed. I couldn’t see his eyes, as they were hidden behind small dark glasses with gold rims.
‘What’s the story with the missing diplomats?’ Vanessa asked him. ‘Is it true they were spying for the Russians?’
I glanced across at Templeton to see whether he had heard, but he was still deeply engrossed in conversation with Cousin Freddie. Templeton tried to shield his daughter from any discussion of his work, but it had had the opposite effect: Vanessa was fascinated by the espionage world, particularly its more sensationalist aspects. She had been talking incessantly about the diplomats since they had vanished from their jobs at the Foreign Office a few weeks earlier.
She wasn’t the only one. I had never met either man, but both were well known to the community here. Donald Maclean, the son of a Liberal MP, had been head of Chancery in Cairo, while everyone seemed to have a story to tell about Guy Burgess. He had been in the Service before the war, worked for the BBC during it, and afterwards had joined the Foreign Office, eventually being posted to Washington as a second secretary. The rumour was that he and Maclean were Soviet agents who had been on the brink of being exposed by Five. Their disappearance was the talk of the town, and as a result, several diplomats within earshot turned to see how Osborne would reply to Vanessa’s question. Such subjects were not generally broached in public, but if ever you were going to pick up a titbit it would be at the Templetons’ party.
‘It doesn’t look good,’ Osborne admitted sotto voce. ‘The bad news is that Five now want to interrogate Philby about the whole affair.’
‘Really?’ said Vanessa, placing her hand over her mouth. There was an almost audible intake of breath from people seated nearby. Kim Philby had been Head of Station here before Templeton, leaving for Washington in ’49. We were sitting less than a mile from his old house: he had been the first from the office to live out in this neighbourhood, and several others had followed suit, the Templetons included. I knew Philby and Burgess had been friends: the regulars at the Moda Yacht Club still hadn’t forgiven either man for the time they had become royally drunk in the bar on one of Burgess’ visits out here. But that hardly seemed enough to hang him for.
‘They don’t seriously suspect him?’ I asked.
Osborne removed a handkerchief from his jacket and wiped the back of his neck with it. ‘Apparently, yes. They claim he’s the only person who was in contact with Burgess and also knew Maclean was under suspicion. But the whole thing’s absurd. Everyone’s blaming everyone else, and it looks like Five want to blame us.’
‘I heard they were queer,’ said Severn, who was now on his fifth glass of punch by my count. ‘Part of the Homintern.’ He gave a braying laugh, and Osborne glared at him. ‘Well,’ Severn trailed off, ‘they’re snakes in the grass anyway.’
‘We once had a snake in our garden in Cairo,’ said Joan Templeton brightly, and polite titters rippled around the chairs. ‘No, really, we did! What was it, Vanessa – a cobra?’
‘No, Mummy, it was an adder! And the snake-charmer brought it there especially, remember?’
The conversation moved on. People began reminiscing about the embassy ball in ’47, when the Fleet had visited, while Severn continued to knock back the punch and Osborne turned more and more scarlet. The heat was starting to get to me, too, and I excused myself to stretch my legs.
I wandered through the house and back to the landing-stage. The boat crew were busy chatting to one another, and looked up at me with surprise.
‘Does anyone have a cigarette?’ I asked, placing my fingers to my lips.
One of them smiled and produced a packet. Although disappointed I couldn’t get hold of Players in the city, I had gradually become accustomed to the taste of Turkish tobacco. As I gratefully accepted the cigarette, I pondered the conversation about Maclean and Burgess. By the sound of it, they were indeed doubles. I had occasionally wondered whether there might be others, but had been grateful I didn’t know who they were any more than I imagined they knew of me, working on the well-established principle that the fewer people who were in on a secret the more likely it was to be kept. But it seemed the two men had planned their flight together, so perhaps they had been aware of each other’s secret beforehand – and then there was the extraordinary possibility they might have been aided by Philby. I had nobody to confide in but Yuri, or whomever else Moscow sent to run me. Once away from a meet, I was on my own.
I chatted to the boat crew for a while, then wandered back into the house. Joan had decorated it with her customary good taste: elegant silk screens, mementoes from the family’s time in Egypt and a few artfully placed carpets. I smoked my cigarette and eyed the staircase that led up to Templeton’s study. I knew from the office that he often left the last thing he had been working with on his desk. Perhaps he had done the same now. Everyone was sitting outside, enjoying the party – would anyone be likely to notice if I were away for a few more minutes? I thought not. I headed towards the staircase and started walking up it.
As I reached the top, I heard raised voices – they were coming from Templeton’s study. I pushed open the door and saw Templeton towering over Severn, his eyes bulging out of his head and his face flushed. He looked like he was about to hit him. He spun round on his heels at the sound of my entering, and I immediately hid my cigarette behind my back – he disapproved of smoking.
‘Paul,’ Templeton said, his jaw clamped together in quiet fury, ‘I wonder if you would be good enough to put Charles up this evening? I fear we’re a little short of room here.’
‘Of… of course, sir,’ I said, and Templeton bowed his head at me and stalked out of the room.
I stepped forward and helped Severn up – he had slipped to the floor.
‘What the hell did you do?’ I asked in wonder. I’d never seen Templeton lose his temper in this way.
Severn looked up at me with clouded eyes. ‘Search me,’ he said, slurring the words. ‘I only placed my hand on her leg, I swear.’
After a decent interval, I took him by the arm and led him downstairs.
*
By the time we reached my flat in Pera, Severn’s head was lolling against the side of the jeep. As I had helped him downstairs, Templeton had discreetly taken me to one side and given me the keys to the vehicle, telling me to return it to the Consulate-General transport park as soon as I was able. Then he had placed a hand on my shoulder, thanked me, and trudged back to the party. I didn’t get the chance to see Vanessa before leaving to check if she was all right.
I managed to drag Severn up the stairs and hoisted him onto the couch in my tiny living room. I took his shoes off and went back down to the jeep to lock up. As I did, my eye fell on a flap of yellow material peeking out of the underside of the driver’s seat. I jimmied the seat up, slid it out, and squinted at it in the glare of the afternoon sun. What on earth… ?
It was a large-scale fold-out map of Turkey, and someone had drawn small black circles at several points on it: I counted thirty of them.
I quickly considered my options, and came to the conclusion there were two: I could either make a copy of the map and give it to Yuri at our next meeting, or I could replace it under the seat and forget I had ever seen it.
My first instinct was to copy it, of course. Here, finally, was something substantial to give Moscow. But was it, and if so just how substantial? I had no way of knowing. It was a strange sort of morality, perhaps, but it was mine: I was uncomfortable with the idea of handing over a secret I didn’t even know myself. And there would be nothing lost if I replaced it. After all, it was only thanks to Severn getting blotto that I had seen it at all. I might just as easily not have done – and it might not be important at all.
No, it had to be important. Osborne had come out here because of this, and Severn had obviously driven him, Templeton and Cousin Freddie to some or all of the marked locations.
Perhaps, it occurred to me, there was a third option. I could find out what the map meant myself, and then decide whether it was something I felt I could pass to Yuri. I glanced down at it again. The nearest circle was positioned just outside Izmit, a town about sixty miles away – if I took the jeep, I could be there and back in a couple of hours. Severn was passed out, and everyone else was still at the party in Beylerbeyi. I had a jeep at my disposal…
I walked back up to the flat and into the living room. Severn was snoring now, his head tilted back. I went over to the dresser and wrote a quick note explaining that I was returning the jeep and would be back shortly. I placed it by his head, then went into the bedroom and removed a metal case from beneath a floorboard. I took out Father’s Luger, which I had taken from his body in Germany six years earlier, and held it in my hand. It was heavy and cold. I placed it in my waistband, then turned off the lights, locked up the flat and returned to the jeep.
*
Once I had crossed back over the Galata bridge, I took the road out of town, heading through a landscape of grey mosques and olive groves until I was driving along the coast, the wind blowing dust into my hair. The circle on the map was a few miles short of Izmit, and as I reached the spot I saw a wide earth track heading off the road and decided that it must be the location. I slowed to a snail’s pace, checking for signs that the site might be occupied or under surveillance. There didn’t seem to be any, so I slowly drove down the track, eventually coming to a dead-end at the crest of a hillock. I parked the jeep and got out to have a look.
It was late afternoon now, but the sun was still a glaring hole in the sky, and it beat down on my neck as I walked around trying to see what it was that Severn and the others had driven out here to see. I decided I had turned off too early, as there was nothing but scrub and a few beech trees. After several minutes of fruitless searching, I headed back to the jeep and started reversing back down the track to rejoin the road. It was probably just as well, I thought… But as I tried to angle one of the wheels, I saw something that made me hit the brakes: a tree stump.
If I hadn’t been here with the map, it would never have given me pause for thought. But it was the only stump around, and it was setting off alarms in my head. I braked again and went to the back of the jeep, where there was a small bag of equipment: driving gloves, binoculars and a torch. I took the torch and walked up to the stump. Kneeling down, I placed my hands against the side of it, and pushed.
The stump lifted: it was on a hinge. I brushed away soil and leaves to reveal netting. Pulling that away, a dark hole about the width of a man appeared, and I saw a narrow wooden ladder leading down. I took a breath. There was still a chance to turn back, pretend I’d never seen the map, pretend none of it had happened. But Yuri’s words came back to me: ‘Unless you can provide a higher grade of material, it is perhaps best that we discontinue our arrangement.’ I reached out for the top rung of the ladder.
A few seconds later I landed in darkness. I grabbed the Luger from my waistband and turned on the torch. I was in a low tunnel. There was an opening to my left, and I crouched down and crawled through it.
The space was bigger than my bedroom in Pera. Most of it was taken up with wooden crates. I pushed aside a layer of plastic sheeting in one and shone my torch down on it: cold metal glinted up at me, and I caught a whiff of cosmoline.
I spent several minutes poking around the boxes, prying with my fingers and the torch. I found rifles, pistols, binoculars, a radio set and even commando daggers. The latter confirmed all my suspicions: this was a stay-behind base.
Early in the last war, several groups in England had been secretly trained and provided with underground arms caches such as this, the idea being that if the Germans invaded a resistance force would already be in place ready to counter them. The concept of the Auxiliary Units, as they had been called, had expanded as the war had progressed. Instead of waiting until a country fell to the Axis powers and then dropping supplies to hastily assembled partisan groups, as had happened in France, men in several countries were discreetly approached and asked to commit to staying on as part of resistance forces in the event of invasion. In Singapore, these groups had initially been called ‘left-behind parties’ until someone had realized that it might not be the best name to inspire volunteers, and changed it to the rather more inspiring ‘stay-behind parties’.
But why would the Service need stay-behind parties in Turkey? The answer was obvious: the threat of Soviet invasion. If there were to be another war, as many were predicting, Turkey was an obvious flashpoint – the Russians could slip over the mountains along the long border and the army wouldn’t know what had hit it. Britain didn’t fancy that idea, so had set up these bases as a precautionary measure. That meant that there must also be men who knew where the bases were and had been trained in guerrilla warfare – that, presumably, was where Cousin Freddie came in.
I made sure there was no sign that I had been in the cave, then clambered back up the ladder and hoisted myself out of the hole. I carefully replaced the netting, the foliage over it and the stump, then headed back to the jeep and drove off, my heart thumping in my chest.
I arrived back at the flat around dusk. I replaced the map under the driver’s seat and entered the flat. Severn hadn’t moved from where I had left him, and his snores had only increased in volume.
I tore up the note I’d left him, and headed for the comfort of my bed.