The Whitehall Mandarin Page 5

  Cauldwell looked out to sea as he descended to the river. There were ferries from Harwich to Holland and Scandinavia. It wouldn’t be difficult to dye his hair to become Dubois. And he could simply tell a curious customs official that he shaved off his moustache. Part of him wanted a new life. But he had not yet decided to follow a new direction; it was too soon.

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  It was a spooky night with gusts of wind flinging rain against the windowpanes. At times it sounded as if someone in the garden was throwing handfuls of pebbles to gain his attention. On one occasion Cauldwell actually opened the casement window and called a furtive ‘Who’s there?’ into the darkness. It was, he thought, like being a character in a Victorian ghost story.

  Cauldwell knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He sat up late into the night wearing the clunky earphones of the R-350 and poised with a pencil and pad to copy. He was desperate for a message. A single candle cast yellow light and grey shadows against the crumbling plaster and oak beams. Cauldwell wondered how many people had been born and died in the bedroom shadows around him. He wondered what those disembodied spirits thought of him. Did they regard him as friend or enemy? Cauldwell wasn’t sure what he was. And that was his biggest secret of all.

  Finally, there was a faint sound. At first, Cauldwell imagined it was a dead child’s finger tapping on the window, but then he realised the tapping was inside his earphones. It was a message in Morse. Cauldwell picked up a pencil and began to copy the letters. He had been expecting the random letters of an encoded message, but quickly realised that the Morse message spelled actual words and not code. The lack of security sent a chill down Cauldwell’s spine as he copied the message: NO ONE TIME PAD AVAILABLE EXTRACTION 0115300856 AT 49107308 ACKNOWLEDGE.

  It was all Cauldwell needed to know: the time and the place. He quickly checked the grid coordinates on the Soviet map to make sure he had copied correctly. He then replied that the message was received and understood – and turned off the transmitter. There would be no more sending or receiving before the extraction. It was too dangerous.

  Cauldwell wasn’t unduly worried. Sometimes encryption and security had to be sacrificed. Under the circumstances, it wasn’t odd that the message had been sent in the clear and in English. It was perfectly logical that the replacement ship wouldn’t have had the appropriate set of one-time pads. And any radio operator on a Soviet merchant ship sailing in British waters would need to have good English.

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  The rain had softened to a penetrating drizzle. It wasn’t easy to find a way across the marshes to the shingle beach even in daylight. But in the utter midnight blackness it was almost impossible if you had never done it before. Cauldwell looked at the map with a hooded red torch. As the gull flies, the sea was only 400 yards away, but on foot it was nearly a mile of tortuous paths and rickety footbridges. The silhouette of a ruined windmill towered above the reeds like a dark sentinel. Cauldwell followed the footpath towards the mill, but knew from the map he had to turn off that path when he got to a creek. He pushed his way through a tangle of prickly vines. The footing was slippery and glutinous. He hadn’t gone far before he slipped from the path into a dank, water-filled ditch and nearly lost a boot. His trousers were torn and he was soaked through. As he regained his balance, there was the cry from an owl that sounded like a cat’s miaow. The owl was mocking him. He didn’t belong there.

  Cauldwell realised he had reached the creek when he heard something plop into the water. It sounded like a clumsy kid doing a belly flop. It was too big to be a rat and too graceless to be an otter. It must have been a coypu. Cauldwell froze and listened to the night. The only sounds were the sough of the sea on the other side of the shingle bank and the piping of oystercatchers. He wondered why the birds were so loud so late at night. But then he remembered they were like that every night. The warning calls were natural. The marsh was a jungle of predators hunting for eggs and chicks.

  The footpath rose on to the creek bank. The creek itself was nothing more than a wide ditch that a good long-jumper could have leapt across. But during the early Middle Ages the ditch had been the Dunwich River, where seagoing ships had docked. Cauldwell walked along a narrow slippery bank where carters and sailors and customs officers had once jostled. The medieval river had seen a brisk trade in Suffolk grain and wool exchanged for fine wine, Flemish cloth and Russian fur. The pious rich merchants of Dunwich built sixteen grand churches to thank God for their prosperity. But God did nothing to stop the coastal erosion or to stop His churches from tumbling one by one into the sea. The very last stone of the very last church fell into the sea as the guns fell silent on the Western Front. By then, Dunwich’s only exports to Flanders were young men who came back with mangled limbs and blank eyes. Cauldwell felt there was a curse hanging in the damp air.

  When Cauldwell got near the shingle bank that kept the sea from the marshes, he felt a sense of exhilaration and release. The reed beds had given way to mudflats and the oystercatchers were piping even louder. There was a lot of noise from a sluice that was emptying water from the rain-sodden marshes. Cauldwell paused and listened to the night noises. There was something sinister in the air. He wondered if he should turn back. At the moment he needed Moscow, but wasn’t sure that Moscow needed him. Would he ever get to Moscow? Disposing of his body at sea would be an easy option. The sense of exhilaration had gone.

  The only barrier between Cauldwell and the shingle bank was a patch of viscous mud. He decided to risk it. He put a boot forward and sank in, but as he pulled back he lost his footing and found himself flat on his back – covered from toe to head in thick Suffolk mud. When he got up again he found his hand clutching a bunch of samphire. The samphire was the only thing about him that wasn’t covered in mud. He bit off a piece. It was lovely, salty and clean – his last taste of Suffolk.

  Cauldwell looked around. He now saw there was a firm path to the sea that he had missed. He followed the path and was soon on top of the shingle bank looking out to sea. Cauldwell sat on the bank and laughed. It was kind of funny. When the Russians saw him, they would think they had rescued the Creature from the Black Lagoon. It was also funny because one of Cauldwell’s jobs as US Cultural Attaché had been trying to sell the film of the same name to British distributors. A large part of his job had been promoting American ‘cultural products’ – and The Creature from the Black Lagoon was a classic. It had been one of the first 3D films and you needed cardboard 3D glasses with one blue lens and one red lens to get the full effect. Meanwhile, the Soviet Cultural Attaché had been flogging Prokofiev and the Bolshoi.

  Cauldwell checked his torch to see if it was still working after being soaked. It was. He needed it to signal to the fast inflatable that would be coming in to get him. He looked out to sea again – nothing. He checked his watch. He was twenty minutes early. Still plenty of time. Cauldwell now stared south to try and spot the running lights of a merchant ship. There was a flicker of white on the horizon, but he also needed to see the red portside light that indicated it was a ship heading north. He kept his eyes fixed on the light. It finally disappeared; it was a ship heading south.

  ‘Fuck. Where are they?’

  Cauldwell suddenly felt very cold. He was sodden from the waist down. He tried running in place to warm himself up, all the time staring at the southern sea horizon. A white light finally appeared – and then a red one. This had to be the ship.

  He scrambled down the bank on to the beach. There was only a slight swell. It was as if a month of rain had made the sea too heavy and wet to leap into breakers. Cauldwell took off his rucksack and stretched his arms. The backpack was heavy with the R-350 and his other spy gear. He tapped the deep pockets of his oilskin jacket to make sure he still had his torch and his Makarov 9mm. He took the pistol out of his pocket to check the safety was engaged. He didn’t want an accidental discharge to put a hole in a Russian or the inflatable when he hopped on board. You had to remember that ‘up’ was the safe position and �
�down’ the fire position – just the opposite of the Walther PPK. Cauldwell looked at the heavy pistol in his hand. He decided it might be a better idea to completely immobilise the Makarov by removing the magazine and the round in the chamber. He didn’t want an accident at this point.

  Just as Cauldwell was about to put his finger on the pistol’s magazine catch, the night exploded into brightness. Not the brightness of a gun discharging, but the brightness of two artificial suns rising from opposite ends of the beach. Cauldwell was centre stage as he had never been before. He was Hamlet with a skull in his hand – his own skull. The blinding beams came from mounted 60-inch searchlights of 800 million candlepower each. Cauldwell waved his gun with one arm and covered his eyes with his other. For a few seconds the only sound on the beach was that of the portable generators powering the giant torches.

  ‘Drop your gun, Jeffers.’

  Cauldwell recognised the voice and turned squinting towards the dark shadows from where it had come. As he did so, there was a metallic click.

  ‘Drop it fucking now or I’m going to shoot you in the balls.’

  ‘Is that you, Catesby?’

  ‘It is me. Drop the pistol now. I hate having to shoot people in the balls – the screaming is awful.’

  Cauldwell smiled and tossed his pistol. It dropped into the shingle with a hissing thud.

  ‘Good boy.’

  Cauldwell stared into the distance, but was too blinded by the lights to make out the other person. ‘I can’t see you, Catesby.’

  ‘That’s good. I’ve aged a lot.’

  ‘It must be the booze.’

  ‘Or maybe my job.’

  Catesby had always suspected that the American had something to hide ever since they had served together in post-war Germany. At the time, Catesby’s suspicions had been dismissed and laughed at – and now, finally, he was vindicated. But Catesby felt no sense of triumph. Cauldwell was a mess.

  ‘Bloody hell, Jeffers, what have you been doing to yourself?’

  Cauldwell answered with a bleak smile, too exhausted for further banter. He could hear the sound of heavy footsteps running across the shingle and voices speaking in accents from both sides of the Atlantic.

  ‘Don’t worry, Jeffers. No one’s going to kill you – at least, we’re not. But we’ve got to go through legal niceties for your turnover and extradition.’

  Two groups of men, six in each, approached like pincers from opposite sides of the beach. The lights behind the men turned them into flat black silhouettes. They looked like disembodied shadow puppets deprived of any human quality. The two largest, and they were huge, were in American military police uniforms. They clanked with handcuffs, batons and Colt .45 automatics as they jogged towards their prey. The first American to reach Cauldwell grabbed his arm and pulled it behind him for handcuffing.

  ‘Not yet, bud,’ shouted Catesby.

  ‘My name ain’t Bud; it’s Hank.’

  ‘Sorry, Hank. You’ve got to wait a few seconds.’

  Everything that happened next was perfectly legal, but totally secret. A UK judge had already approved Washington’s request for extradition. Two warranted plainclothes Scotland Yard officers informed Cauldwell of his rights and that he was under arrest. A consul from the US Embassy signed a document accepting custody of Cauldwell under the provisions of the US–UK extradition treaty. Hank was then allowed to handcuff Cauldwell and march him off.

  Catesby continued to lurk in the shadows because he wasn’t supposed to be there. He was SIS, Secret Intelligence Service. And, as he was constantly reminded by his colleagues in Five, SIS are forbidden to carry out operations within the UK. The argument about who should be handling Cauldwell had rumbled on since the photo session above St James’s Park. But SIS had finally won because the Americans wanted Catesby there for ‘psychological’ reasons. They didn’t want violence; they wanted Cauldwell alive. An American ‘psych’ suggested that Cauldwell was less likely to ‘react with violence’ if he was confronted by a voice that he knew and respected. And Catesby’s voice was the closest they could find.

  When he first met Cauldwell, Catesby’s diplomatic cover as Cultural Attaché for Film and Broadcasting had been the flimsiest in Bonn and Berlin. Everyone knew that Catesby was a spy. But despite the rough working-class edge Catesby put on, he was a convincing CultAt. He spoke fluent German and was an expert on East German drama. Cauldwell first realised that Catesby was a serious character when he heard him having a conversation with Bertolt Brecht about Schlegel’s translation of Hamlet – and reciting sein oder nicht sein to Brecht’s amusement. Cauldwell decided that Catesby might be useful to know – and wondered if he were a potential traitor.

  Meanwhile, Catesby decided to open a file on Cauldwell. The American’s persona as a social and cultural snob with conservative political views seemed as fake as Mussolini’s medals. At first, Catesby thought that Cauldwell’s right-wing flag waving was a ruse to cover up his sexual ambiguity. But then he realised that was too simple. In any case, Catesby’s reports to London ringed Cauldwell as a potential double. Meanwhile, Cauldwell was reporting the same about Catesby. But not to Washington.

  Catesby watched as the Americans led Cauldwell up the beach towards Walberswick. Everything was in darkness again. The giant searchlights had been extinguished and the generators had fallen silent. The only sounds were the fading of squashy footsteps on shingle – and then only the sough of the waves and the piping of the oystercatchers from the marsh. Catesby tensed as he heard something behind him. He instinctively knew it was human and reached for his revolver. He waited and crouched. There was the sound of a footstep on shingle.

  ‘How did it go?’

  Catesby recognised the voice and let the gun fall back into a Mackintosh pocket that was well stained with gun oil. ‘You shouldn’t creep up on me, Henry, especially when I’m tooled up.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be so nervous. You knew I was here.’

  Catesby nodded to a ship that was passing close off shore. ‘And so do the Russians.’

  ‘Did you think I was one of them?’

  Catesby smiled. He had, actually, suspected that for some time.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Bone. ‘They’ll not be coming ashore now.’

  As if on cue, one of the giant searchlights reignited and cast a beam against the black hull of the ship. A few seconds later, the ship changed course and veered out to sea.

  Catesby turned and looked at the dark shadow of his boss. Henry Bone was everything that he was not: tall, refined, aristocratic and a virtuoso of duplicity. Catesby knew how to be duplicitous too, but his duplicities were simple harmonies compared to Bone’s highly structured compositions. Hearing Henry Bone tell lies was like listening to eighteenth-century organ music played by a priest with long fine fingers in the Cathedral of Notre Dame.

  Catesby smiled and put on his London voice. ‘The Hank geezer promised me I could have a slappy face bash.’

  ‘Speak normal English.’

  ‘I could ask you to do the same, but let’s not argue. The Yanks said that I can interrogate Cauldwell provided there’s an American present.’

  ‘I already knew that. It was part of the deal we brokered.’

  Catesby frowned and kept quiet. He wasn’t going to rise to the bait of Henry’s all-knowing one-upmanship.

  ‘In any case,’ said Bone, ‘you still haven’t told me what happened.’

  ‘Why weren’t you here with me?’

  ‘It’s never a good idea to show my face.’

  ‘I agree. To be honest, nothing much happened. It went like clockwork. The American psych was right about my friendly voice being a calming influence. As soon as I told Cauldwell that I was going to shoot him in the balls he dropped his gun.’

  ‘Did he look upset?’

  ‘Not much. In a way, almost relieved to see us.’

  ‘That’s interesting.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of what it says about Cauldwell’s re
lationship with the Russians.’

  ‘Not good, eh?’

  Bone shrugged. ‘I honestly don’t know.’

  ‘Cauldwell isn’t like the others. It’s almost as if he was working separately, to a different agenda.’

  ‘See what you can find out when you interrogate him. Do you want a lift back to London?’

  ‘No, I’m staying at my mum’s in Lowestoft.’

  ‘You love this bleak place, don’t you?’

  Catesby looked out to sea. ‘Can you hear it?’

  ‘Hear what?’

  ‘You’re not from here. That’s why you can’t hear them. They’re only whispering tonight.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The ghosts, a very old couple. They’re trapped down there where the sea meets the shingle and you can hear their voices. They’re talking gently tonight, but when the autumn gales come they’ll be shouting at each other.’

  ‘What are they saying?’

  ‘I’m not going to tell you, Henry. You’re not from around here. What they are saying is family secrets.’

  ‘I’d better leave you.’

  Catesby listened until Bone’s footsteps had disappeared. Then waited a minute longer listening to nothingness. He felt he had been waiting since that apocalyptic day when the North Sea had finally risen to cut off the last of the land bridge that connected the British peninsula to the rest of Europe. It was too late. That last hunter gatherer, bearing aloft his barbed antler spear and running hard, would never escape the rising tide. Britain was an island.

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  One of the Americans – Hank-not-Bud – gave Catesby a lift to Lowestoft. Hank wasn’t a military policeman. The uniform was a fake. He was a high-ranking intelligence officer. Hank looked surprised when he arrived at Catesby’s childhood home. It was a humble terrace house.

  ‘Is this it?’ said Hank.

  ‘Yes, we’re here, chez les Catesbys.’

  ‘Is this where you were raised?’

  ‘Partly. We used to live down by the docks. But we’ve come up in the world. This house has an indoor toilet and hot water taps. You look surprised.’