Restless (40 page)

This fact helped him explain the background to what had gone on in Las Cruces. He felt that the timing was the vital clue and all to do with what was happening in Russia in late 1941 when, coincidentally, another Russian spy – Richard Sorge – had told Stalin and the Politburo that Japan had no plans to attack Russia through Manchuria, that Japanese interests were concentrated and directed towards the west and the Pacific. The immediate consequence of this for the Russians was that it freed large numbers of divisions to fight against the German army, still marching towards Moscow. But the German invasion of Russia was faltering: the tenacity of Russian resistance, the over-extended lines of supply, fatigue and the encroaching winter meant that it was stopped and held finally just a few miles from Moscow.

Thoms had reached for a book and opened it at a marked page at this juncture.

'I'm quoting from Harry Hopkins here,' he said. Harry Hopkins – all I could think of was Mason Harding.

Thoms read, '"As the new Russian armies from the Manchurian front began to mass and gather around Moscow, waiting to launch the inevitable counter-attack there began to grow in the Russian high command – and notably within the NKVD and the other secret services – the realisation that the tide had finally turned: the prospect of Russia defeating the Germans was finally realisable. Certain elements within the Soviet government began to think ahead, about political settlements in the post-war world."'

'What's this got to do with agent Sage stuck in a car in the deserts of New Mexico?' I asked.

'That's what's so fascinating,' he said. 'You see, some people, particularly in the intelligence services, began to think that, for the Russians, it might actually be for the best, in the long term, if the USA did
not
enter the war in Europe. If Russia was going to win, then the last thing they wanted was a strong US presence in Europe. Russia could do it on her own, given time. Not everyone agreed, of course.'

'I still don't follow.'

He explained: towards the end of 1941, NKVD interest began to focus on the strenuous efforts that the British were making to persuade the USA to ally themselves with Britain and Russia against the Nazis. These efforts seemed to be working: to the Russians it appeared as if Roosevelt was looking for any excuse to join the war in the Allied cause. The discovery of the Brazilian map was a key factor in this propaganda war – it seemed to have genuinely tilted the balance. A great coup by BSC, so it was judged. US public opinion could understand much better a threat that lay at their own borders, rather than one that was a distant 3,000 miles away.

So, Thoms argued, it was probably at this juncture that whoever was running Mr A issued him with instructions to try to do something to undermine this increasingly successful BSC propaganda, and expose it as such. To his mind the events at Las Cruces looked very typical of this sort of destabilising exercise. If indeed agent Sage had been found dead with a forged German map of Mexico, he said, then the whole BSC South American case would have been exposed as the sham it was and the isolationist, non-interventionist cause in America would have been hugely strengthened.

'So Sage was meant to be the smoking gun,' I said. 'BSC exposed – perfidious Albion, yet again.'

'Yes, but Mr A's hands were totally clean. It was a brilliant, very, very clever operation. Mr A issued no instructions to Sage beyond the initial courier delivery – everything Sage did on the way to New Mexico and in Las Cruces was impromptu, completely unplanned and the result of decisions made on the spot. It was as if agent Sage could be relied upon to engineer his own destruction. Remorselessly, unthinkingly.'

Engineer
her
own destruction, I thought – but she was too smart for them all.

'Anyway, it didn't matter in the end,' Thoms said, with a wry smile. 'The Japanese came to the rescue with the attack on Pearl Harbor – and so did Hitler with his subsequent unilateral declaration of war on the USA a few days later: everyone tends to forgets about that… Everything changed, for ever. All this made sure that, even if Sage had been compromised, it would have made no difference at all. The US was finally in the war. Mission accomplished.'

Thoms had made a few other points. He felt that the assassination of Nekich seemed very significant. Information from the FBI debriefing of Nekich appeared to have reached Morris Devereux in November 1941, hinting about serious Soviet penetration of the British security and intelligence services ('We know now just how extensive it was,' Thoms added, 'Burgess, Maclean, Philby and whoever else in the gang is still lurking out there'). Devereux would never have suspected Mr A as a 'ghost' had not agent Sage's experiences in Las Cruces caused grave doubts to be raised and the finger of culpability to be pointed. Devereux was clearly very close to unmasking Mr A before he was killed. His death – his 'suicide' – bore all the signs of an NKVD assassination squad, which again supported the case for Mr A being a Russian agent, rather than German.

'I think Mr X is probably Alastair Denniston, director of the Government Code and Cypher School,' Thoms said as he walked me to my car. 'He would have sufficient power to be able run his own "irregulars". And, think about this, Ruth, if, as seems highly likely, Mr A was an NKVD "ghost" in GCHQ then he probably did more for the Russian cause during the war than all the Cambridge spies put together. Amazing.'

'In what way?'

'Well, this is the real dividend of the stuff you gave me. It would be shocking if it was made public. Huge scandal.'

I said nothing more. He asked me if I wanted to go out for a meal some time and I said I would call – life was a bit frantic at the moment. I thanked him very much and drove out to Middle Ashton, picking up Jochen on the way.

My mother seemed to have reached the final page. She read out loud: '"However, this is not to denigrate the story of agent Sage. The material you gave me provides a fascinating account into both the huge extent and the minutiae of BSC operations in the USA. This is all compelling stuff to someone like me, needless to say – the lid has been kept very firmly pressed down on what the BSC was up to over the years. Until now, no one on the outside has really had
any
idea of the extent of British intelligence operations in the USA before Pearl Harbor. You can imagine how this information might be received by our friends on the other side of the Atlantic. Forging a 'special relationship' clearly wasn't enough – we needed British Security Coordination to go the extra mile."'

She tossed the pages down on to the grass; she seemed upset and stood up, ran her hands through her hair and went into the house. I didn't go to her – I thought she probably needed some time to let all this analysis filter through to her, to see if it fitted, made sense.

I reached over and picked up the typed pages, tapping them into shape on my knee, deliberately thinking about other things, such as the intriguing news the morning's post had brought – an invitation to the marriage of Hugues Corbillard and Bérangère Wu in Neuilly, Paris, and another letter from Hamid, sent from a town called Makassar on the island of Celebes, Indonesia, announcing that his salary had risen to $65,000 and that he hoped to take a month's leave before the end of the year, during which he intended to come to Oxford to see me and Jochen. Hamid wrote to me regularly once a week: he had forgiven me my crassness in the Captain Bligh without my having to ask for it or before I could apologise. I was a very bad correspondent – I think I'd replied briefly to him, twice – but I sensed Hamid's dogged wooing would continue, none the less, for a long time to come.

My mother came back out of the house, a packet of cigarettes in her hand. She seemed more composed as she sat down, offered me one (which I refused, I was trying to give up, as a result of Jochen's persistent nagging).

I looked at her and watched her light her cigarette.

'Make any sense, Sal?' I asked, tentatively.

She shrugged. 'How did he express it? "The minutiae of BSC operations in the USA…" I suppose he's right. Suppose de Baca had killed me – it wouldn't have made any difference. Pearl Harbor was right around the corner – not that anybody ever guessed it would happen.' She managed a chuckle, but I could tell she didn't find it funny. 'Morris used to say that we were like miners chipping away at the coal-face miles underground – but we hadn't a clue how the mining industry was run on the surface. Chip-chip-chip – here's a piece of coal.'

I thought for a while and then said, ' Roosevelt never made that speech, did he? When he was going to use your Mexican map as evidence. That would have been amazing – might have changed everything.'

'You're very kind, darling,' my mother said. I could tell she was not going to be bucked up today whatever I tried: there was a kind of resigned weariness about her – too many unhappy memories swirling around. ' Roosevelt was due to make the speech on 10 December,' she said. 'But then Pearl Harbor happened – and he didn't need a Mexican map anymore.'

'So Thoms is saying that Romer was a Russian agent. Like Philby, Burgess, Maclean – I suppose that's why Romer killed himself. Too old to run like they did.'

'It makes more sense,' she said. 'I could never understand why Morris thought he was an Abwehr ghost.' She smiled an empty smile. 'Still,' she added with heavy irony, 'it's good to know how insignificant and petty it all was in the "big picture", I must say.'

'It wasn't insignificant and petty to you,' I said, putting my hand on her arm. 'These things all depend on your point of view. You were the one in the desert with de Baca – no one else.'

She looked suddenly weary, saying nothing and stubbed out her cigarette, half smoked.

'You all right, Sal?' I said.

'I'm not sleeping well,' she said. 'Nobody's been in touch with you? Nothing suspicious?'

'I'll get in the car and drive home if you bring that up again. Don't be ridiculous. It's over.'

She paid no attention. 'You see, that was the mistake, my mistake. It's bothering me: you should have gone to meet him under a false name.'

'That wouldn't have worked. He'd have checked up on me. I had to tell him honestly who I was. We've had this conversation a hundred times. Please.'

We sat in silence for a while.

'Where's Jochen?' I said.

'Inside – drawing.'

'We should head off.' I stood up. 'I'll get his bits and pieces.' I folded away Rodrigo's letter and as I did so I thought about something.

'What I still don't understand,' I said, 'is why Romer would have become a Russian agent in the first place.'

'Why did any of them?' she said. 'Look at them: they were all middle-class, well educated, privileged, establishment figures.'

'But look at the life Romer was leading – everything about him, the way he lived. Money, position, power, influence, lovely houses. "Baron Mansfield of Hampton Cleeve" – he even had a title. The boy locked in the English establishment sweetshop, wouldn't you say?'

My mother had risen to her feet also and was now wandering about the back lawn, picking up Jochen's scattered toys. She stood up, a plastic sword in her hand.

'Romer used to say to me that there are only three reasons why someone will betray their country: money, blackmail and revenge.'

She handed me the sword and picked up a water pistol and a bow and two arrows.

'It wasn't money,' I said. 'It wasn't blackmail. So what revenge was he after?'

We walked back to the cottage together.

'In the end it comes down to a very English thing, I believe,' she said, seriously, thoughtfully. 'Remember, I didn't come here until I was twenty-eight. Sometimes, if you don't know a place, you can see things the locals miss. Remember, also, Romer was the first Englishman I really got to know… Got to know well,' she added, and I sensed the pain of her past still living, stirring beneath the recollection. She looked at me, with her clear-eyed look, as if daring me to refute what she was about to say next. 'And knowing Lucas Romer, as I did, and talking to him, being with him, watching him, it struck me that sometimes it's just as easy – and maybe sometimes more natural – to hate this country as to love it.' She smiled, knowingly, ruefully. 'When I saw him that night: Lucas Romer, Lord Mansfield with his Bentley, his butler, his Knightsbridge house, his club, his connections, his reputation…' She looked at me. 'I thought to myself: that was his revenge. He'd got it all: everything that seems most desirable – money, reputation, esteem, style, class – the title. He was a "Lord", for God's sake. He was laughing all the time. All the time, laughing at them all. Every minute of the day, as his chauffeur drove him to his club, as he went to the House of Lords, as he sat in his Knightsbridge drawing-room – he was laughing.'

She made a resigned face. 'That's why I knew – absolutely, without question – that he'd kill himself that night. Better to die acclaimed, fondly remembered, admired, respected. If there was a heaven he'd still be laughing, looking down at his memorial service with all those politicians and dignitaries celebrating him. Dear old Lucas, fine fellow, salt of the earth, a true-blue English gentleman. You say I won – Romer won, too.'

'Until Rodrigo publishes his book. It's going to blow everything wide open.'

'We must have a talk about that one day soon,' she said, severely. 'I'm not all that happy about it, to tell you the truth.'

We found Jochen; he gave her his drawing – of a hotel, he said, nicer than the Ritz – and we packed everything away in the car.

'Oh, yes,' I said, 'one thing that's been on my mind, I keep thinking about. It seems silly, but – what was he like, my uncle Kolia?'

She straightened up. 'Uncle Kolia,' she repeated, as if testing the phrase, savouring its unfamiliarity. Then I saw her eyes narrow, keeping the tears back. 'He was rather wonderful,' she said with false briskness, 'you would have liked him.'