The Whitehall Mandarin Read online

  ‘We already have plans to turn your agents over to a new controller. He is excellent, “our man in Portland” – and he speaks English with an American accent. So your false flag ploy with Tyler will still be credible.’

  Cauldwell knew who Vasili was talking about. He had just murdered one of his agents. Vasili’s ‘man in Portland’ was indeed ‘excellent’ and his full name was Konon Trofimovich Molody. Molody’s cover name, Gordon Lonsdale, belonged to a supposed Canadian businessman who specialised in slot machines. Cauldwell wasn’t supposed to know any of this and discovering it hadn’t been easy. Lonsdale’s true identity was a trump card he had intended to play when the time was right. But things were fast deteriorating.

  Vasili drained his demitasse cup with an appreciative Russian slurp. ‘Youseff makes excellent coffee.’ He pressed a button and a muffled buzz sounded faintly from above. ‘Even if you are not having more, I shall.’

  The inside of Cauldwell’s head was spinning. The last thing he wanted now was more caffeine. He felt trapped. He wished that he hadn’t got into Youseff’s van the previous evening. He wished that he had picked up his false passport and headed for a Channel port.

  ‘I know that you are an excellent agent handler…’

  The trapdoor opened and Youseff came down the secret stairs with an ibrik of fresh coffee. Vasili turned to the Syrian, ‘Thank you, my good friend, you are a mind reader.’

  Youseff gave a smile that flashed with gold-capped teeth. He picked up the empty pot and departed like a genie. As soon as the trapdoor hissed shut, Vasili continued, ‘Although you ran your agents with great skill, you misjudged your former lover.’

  ‘I’m not sure that “love” had anything to do with it. It was your idea.’

  ‘Mr Knowles was a very talented violinist, but would have been an even more talented politician. His decision to give up music for a career in politics was a good one. Who knows,’ continued Vasili, ‘he might one day have become Prime Minister.’

  Cauldwell shrugged. He wasn’t sure Vasili’s long-term plan would have worked. If Knowles had risen to power, he wouldn’t have given in to blackmail. He had principles.

  Vasili sipped his coffee and looked closely at Cauldwell over the rim of his demitasse. ‘Did you kill him?’

  ‘Who?’ Cauldwell was losing the thread.

  ‘Knowles. Who did you think I was talking about?’ Vasili smiled and gave Cauldwell an odd look. ‘Have you killed anyone else?’

  ‘No.’ Cauldwell struggled to look unwitting and innocent. He wondered if Vasili could possibly know about the naval officer on the train.

  ‘But you did kill Knowles?’

  ‘Of course. I had to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he found out about me.’

  ‘But you didn’t kill him soon enough?’

  Cauldwell felt cold sweat begin to trickle down the hollow of his spine. ‘What do you mean, “not soon enough”?’

  Vasili put his cup down. ‘You’re busted. Knowles informed on you – and three of the agents you were running.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I don’t have to tell you.’

  ‘What happened to the others?’

  ‘Two of them are dead. And your American colleague has disappeared.’ The Russian stared hard at Cauldwell. ‘There are many questions you haven’t answered.’

  ‘Then ask them.’

  ‘How did Knowles find out you were a spy?’

  ‘Jennifer Handley told him. It all began last year. She fell in love with Knowles and thought that telling him about me would split us up.’

  Vasili gave a mirthless smile. ‘It worked.’

  Cauldwell frowned. He had suspected from the beginning that the Orford Ness spy ring was heading for disaster. The personalities involved were too unstable. Jennifer’s husband, Brian Handley, was head of AWRE, the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, on the remote shingle spit near Aldeburgh in Suffolk. The couple were a Soviet spy team who had been passing on secrets for years. Cauldwell had callously used Jennifer as a honey-trap femme fatale. She would do anything for the Communist cause, but unfortunately she tended to get emotionally involved. Cauldwell had used her to seduce her CIA agent cousin, Kit Fournier, into becoming part of the gang. Fournier fell in love with Jennifer but meanwhile Jennifer fell hopelessly in love with Knowles. The spy ring had become a comic opera of revolving beds.

  ‘By the way,’ said Cauldwell, ‘I warned you that she was emotionally unstable.’

  ‘There are few spies who are not emotionally unstable.’

  ‘But I’m not one of them.’

  ‘You are, Jeffers, a cold fish. But you still haven’t told me how Jennifer Handley got involved with Knowles?’

  ‘She met him when he was playing in a concert at the Aldeburgh Festival – and invited him to an orgy.’

  ‘Were you part of it?’

  ‘Reluctantly. I thought it was a bad idea, but things got out of control.’

  ‘Did you take photographs?’

  Cauldwell paused. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened to the film?’

  ‘I don’t know. Someone stole my camera. As I explained, things got out of hand and were pretty raunchy – a lot of booze and drugs too.’

  ‘How unlike you, Jeffers, not to be in total control.’

  ‘I’m not perfect.’

  ‘We know that, Jeffers, we know that. If you were so wonderful, Knowles wouldn’t have decided that he loved his country more than he loved you.’

  Cauldwell smiled. ‘There’s no accounting for tastes.’

  Vasili shook his head and laughed. ‘When I write reports for my bosses in Moscow they never believe me. They somehow imagine that our foreign spies will be drawn from the proletariat and the intelligentsia. When I tell them that our best spies have names like Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess and come from incredibly upper-class families and are frivolous and love other men, they think that I am crazy. And, frankly, my bosses do not like this sort of thing. Despite being Communists, their ideas are very traditional.’

  ‘Maybe you should enlighten them.’

  ‘I try to enlighten the First Chief Directorate on cosmopolitan Western mores. They remain sceptical, but regard England as an exception – a mad country full of unbuckled Lord Byrons running amok.’

  Cauldwell looked closely at Vasili. ‘And what do your bosses think of me?’

  ‘They think what I tell them about you is true.’

  ‘And what do you tell them?’

  Vasili smiled. ‘I tell them that you are a talented and valuable spy.’

  Cauldwell folded his hands and stared at the table. ‘Do you know what I’m thinking?’

  ‘Only if you tell me.’

  ‘The Americans are not going to believe Brit accusations about me being a Soviet spy. They’re going to think the lefties in SIS are trying to frame me. No one in CIA or FBI would ever dream that I’m a Soviet spy. In fact, they have me down as a right-wing conservative. My ancestors were plantation owners who kept over a thousand slaves. Okay, my personal behaviour is debauched and unconventional. But old money Southern gentry have a reputation for that. My cover is perfect.’

  ‘I don’t think so – and my boss doesn’t think so either. He is certain CIA will break you and that you will reveal everything.’ Vasili paused. ‘But if you think otherwise, why not go back to US Embassy and write a report? Tell them that British are trying to frame you and that you are completely innocent. I dare you.’

  ‘I might very well do that.’ The pupils of Cauldwell’s eyes turned into pinpoints of black steel. ‘But I promise you. If they do arrest me and send me back, they will never break me.’

  ‘I hope that your boast is never put to test. That is why we have made arrangements to make sure it never happens.’

  Cauldwell stared blankly into the darkness of the cellar. ‘What are these arrangements?’

  ‘You are to leave England for Moscow. It must be done underc
over and in such a way that it appears you have committed suicide by drowning.’

  Cauldwell remained silent, lost in his own thoughts. It wasn’t what he wanted. But he knew there was no other way out. He had to obey orders.

  The Suffolk marshes can be among the bleakest places in the world. And even more so when the weather is shit. It was August, but there had been no warm days. A series of Atlantic depressions had brought heavy bands of rain and low temperatures. Cauldwell spent hours looking out of the rain-streaked cottage windows at the sea. It was the waiting time. And he was oddly happy. In some ways he didn’t want to see the ship in the offing. He had begun to see the beauty of the bleakness – and to hear it too. When the wind was howling and the sea pounding the shingle he could hear the music of Britten’s Sea Interludes – played on his dead lover’s violin. But the bleak loneliness and the awful weather were useful too. They were the ideal conditions for an extraction by sea.

  Cauldwell found it difficult to believe that such isolated places existed within a hundred miles of London. He had taken out a long-term lease on the cottage as a safe house for the Handley gang. The nearest neighbours were miles away. There was no electricity, no phone and no access by road. You needed to pump fresh water by hand. The flint cottage, which was four hundred years old, had been built before the sea encroached. At the time it had been far away and the cottage had been surrounded by rich grazing pastures instead of impenetrable marshes. In coastal Suffolk the earth did not ‘abideth for ever’ and the churches that preached that untruth tumbled into the sea.

  When the fires were lit the cottage was a cosy, homely place. Cauldwell liked eating his supper in front of the inglenook. There were plenty of pheasants in the copse where he gathered firewood. The birds were almost tame and easy to pick off with his Makarov 9mm automatic pistol. He didn’t worry about the noise. Gunshots are a normal countryside sound.

  Cauldwell had strung the antenna for the R-350 back and forth across the cottage attic. It was a messy job because the attic was a cobweb wilderness full of mouse and rat droppings as well as barn owl pellets. The barn owls were winning the battle of tooth and claw under the eaves. Cauldwell admired the good sense of long-dead builders. They had put round owl-sized holes in the gable ends of the roof space so the owls could get in and keep down the rodents. The owls were like cats with wings – and one of them had even come into Cauldwell’s bedroom. It was there, perched on the end of his bed, when he woke in the morning. The owl stared at him for a long while with its head cocked to one side before it flew back up the chimney.

  The R-350 was the Soviet Union’s newest clandestine radio transmitter/receiver. It was compact and totally secure – provided you used the message puncher and burst encoder. First, you encoded your message using an OTP, a one-time pad. Then you typed the enciphered letters into the message puncher, which punched a pattern of holes on to strips of ordinary 35mm photographic film. (The use of 35mm film was genius. An agent anywhere in the world could buy that film without arousing suspicion.) You then fed the encoded film strip into the burst encoder which read the holes like a player piano does the perforations on a music roll. You press the transmit button – and the entire message is transmitted in a compressed burst of less than a second. It meant that it was nearly impossible for radio monitoring stations to pick up the transmission. And, even if they did, the OTP encoding would be unbreakable.

  Cauldwell admired Soviet technology. It was tough, practical and easy to use. And there was always a back-up system if something went wrong. And something had gone wrong. He had used the R-350 dozens of times before, but on those occasions it was always sending and receiving messages from the First Chief Directorate. The First’s communication centre was a hub of technology staffed by secret radio professionals. Sending messages to a ship in the North Sea was a different matter. All Soviet merchant ships had KGB-trained radio operators, but their training and the state of their radios varied. The best-equipped ships were IGAs, Intelligence Gathering Auxiliaries, pretending to be fishing trawlers. The IGAs bristled with antennae and radar and were crewed by radio professionals. Of course, no one really believed they were fishing boats. Consequently, the IGAs were kept under close surveillance and it was impossible to use one for a clandestine op like ‘ex-filtrating’ an agent from a beach.

  There was, however, little suspicion attached to the Russian cargo vessels that sailed between Murmansk and East Anglia laden with timber. The timber was imported by a British company, one of whose directors was a former British cabinet minister. The Soviet merchant ships came down the North Sea calling variously at King’s Lynn, Lowestoft, Ipswich and ports further south.

  Vasili had told Cauldwell that one of the ships would pick him up on her return voyage to Russia. A fast inflatable would come ashore on a moonless night. At first, the plan was for Cauldwell to leave a set of clothes on the beach as if he had gone for a midnight swim. He complained that it was a pretty feeble attempt at a fake death. It was a cliché disappearing act that many had tried before.

  Finally, Vasili agreed: ‘Okay, don’t drown yourself. Just get in boat.’

  The first planned rendezvous had to be cancelled because of the appalling weather. Cauldwell had been told not to contact the Soviet Embassy either by telephone or radio because of an increased level of electronic surveillance. The emergency alternative was to ring a public phone kiosk in London from another kiosk at a certain time. It wasn’t an alternative that Cauldwell wanted to use. It meant that he would have to break his marshland cover.

  The nearest public phone was in a town designated as САУТУОЛД on the Soviet military map. Vasili had given Cauldwell the Russian map to ease communication with whichever ship was sent to pick him up. САУТУОЛД, better known as Southwold, was a coastal resort town with a lighthouse that would be a key reference point for Cauldwell’s rescue ship. The map was also intended for use by Spetsnaz commando teams who, if war broke out, would slip ashore to wreak havoc at nearby US airbases. The map’s very existence was an awful reminder that Britain was a Cold War pawn teetering on the brink of destruction.

  Cauldwell set off across the marshes wearing a black oilskin that he had found among other foul-weather gear heaped on a row of hooks in the cottage. He wondered if he looked too much like a tramp for upmarket Southwold. Or, even worse, the holidaymakers might think he was a local fisherman and ask him questions. Cauldwell could put on a standard English accent, but he certainly couldn’t do a Suffolk one. The situation was dire, but vaguely comic too. It appealed to the actor in him.

  The rain was lashing in horizontal sheets as he set out across the Bailey bridge that connected Walberswick to Southwold. The River Blyth was ebbing fast with muddy whirlpools spinning towards the harbour entrance. Two women in raincoats and sensible brogues were pounding across the bridge in the opposite direction. Cauldwell had to flatten himself against the railing to avoid being trampled. One of the women acknowledged his giving way with a terse ‘Thank you’.

  Southwold harbour was called Blackshore. There were jetties with fishing boats and yachts, sheds galore and a pub. The town itself was on a hill surrounded by marshes and sea. It was utterly English. The path to the town from the river rose through water meadows with grazing Frisians. After the cows, the land undulated into a golf course. And then flattened out for tennis courts, cricket and rugby pitches. It had finally stopped raining. There were now breaks in the cloud and streaks of sunlight that made the Suffolk coast look like a Turner painting.

  The nearest public phone was outside the Red Lion pub, which was emptying as the landlord bellowed, ‘Drink up, please. It’s time.’ Cauldwell had to wait because a man was already in the kiosk – and the stack of tuppences on the shelf suggested he was going to be in there a long time. Cauldwell looked at his watch; he was going to miss his phone rendezvous. He tapped on the kiosk window, which was fogged with breath and cigarette smoke. The man frowned as Cauldwell opened the door and put on his best English accent. ‘
I apologise for disturbing you. But I have to make an urgent call to London. My son’s been in a road accident and they need my permission to operate.’

  The man’s face softened. He spoke into the phone, ‘Just a sec, Peg.’ Then to Cauldwell, ‘Sorry to hear that. I’ll get off now.’ Then to Peg, ‘Ring you later, love. Someone needs the phone.’

  Cauldwell dialled the number. It rang ten times. No one answered. Cauldwell pretended to talk to the hospital in case the man outside was eavesdropping. When he had said enough – interlaced with pauses for the consultant surgeon to speak – he hung up the phone and left the kiosk.

  The man looked at him, but was too reserved to ask any questions.

  ‘Good news,’ said Cauldwell. ‘No brain damage, but a broken arm. Thomas won’t be playing any cricket this season.’

  ‘Who does he play for?’

  ‘Vale of Eden, it’s a local junior team.’

  ‘In London?’

  ‘No, in Surrey.’ Cauldwell felt he was skating on thin ice. ‘Better get back to tell my wife.’

  ‘Cheers.’ The man ducked back into the kiosk.

  Cauldwell hurried away. Vasili must have decided the latest phone was insecure. MI5 couldn’t tap every public phone in the country, but they did tap the ones that surveillance had picked out as being used by suspicious characters. Spies had to chop and change.

  It was raining again as Cauldwell headed back to the cottage in the marshes. The trip had accomplished nothing. He still needed to establish contact; otherwise, there would be no escape. Part of Cauldwell wanted to disregard Vasili’s instructions and get out of the country by his own means. He needed, however, hair dye and a moustache to match the image on his false French passport. He had had the forgery done at his own expense some time ago. The KGB did far better forged passports, but Vasili had yet to give him one. When the fires of paranoia were burning, as they often were, Cauldwell suspected that not having been given that passport was a sign of mistrust.