Every Spy a Traitor, page 25
A photograph of a man possibly in his mid- to late thirties appeared on the screen, a thin face, tilting upwards in an almost arrogant manner, his fair hair carefully brushed back.
‘Cliff Milne: we know little about him other than he has an office on the top floor of King Street which is always locked, even when he’s in it. He’s meant to be close to Springhall and we’ve seen reports that even Politburo members have been seen deferring to him. We think – though we have nothing in the way of evidence – that he has particularly strong links to Moscow: quite possibly to Soviet Intelligence.’
‘Your job,’ said Pamela, ‘will be to get as close to him as possible.’
‘Once you get into King Street, of course.’
‘And any thoughts as to how I’m to do this?’
‘That, my dear chap, is up to you to work out!’
* * *
It took Charles Cooper two months to get a job at the headquarters of the Communist Party.
He’d resumed going to meetings at the start of September and in the middle of the month moved into the house in Willesden where the owner, a retired army officer in his seventies called Meldrake, duly played the part of an invalid gentleman.
As Frank Reynolds, Cooper attended no more than three Communist Party events a week, including educational ones at a weekend. Whenever the opportunity arose, he volunteered to sell copies of the Daily Worker on street corners or outside stations and at least twice a week he’d be up before dawn to help leaflet workers outside a factory.
And it was early one morning in the first week of October that he finally got to talk to a man he’d had his eyes on for a couple of weeks. He was with three others at an aircraft factory in Acton handing out leaflets promising peace and better wages and so far none of those going in for the early shift had shown the slightest bit of interest. The man turned up half an hour after the rest of them. Cooper knew he was called Wright and he’d seen him at meetings and knew he was an organiser for the Communist Party and although he wasn’t sure what it was he organised he also knew he worked full-time at King Street and so was clearly of some importance.
He stood next to Wright and got talking and hoped he came across as committed and intelligent and absolutely dedicated to the Party. He could tell that Wright was interested, so after they’d finished leafletting, he asked him if he fancied some breakfast, which is how they ended up in a steamy cafe on the corner of Du Cane Road and Common Lane.
Cooper was pleased with how well he handled it. He spoke of how he despised Left Oppositionists – the Party’s code for Trotskyists – and how they were the enemy of the working class and of how the only hope for the future was the Communist Party and he was determined to devote himself as much as possible to the cause now that he had some time on his hands.
Wright asked how come he had so much time on his hands and Cooper explained he’d been a travelling salesman but had come to resent his employers, especially after he read Tressell’s The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, and although his circumstances weren’t identical he felt he identified in some ways with the characters in the book and certainly with its central theme of poverty and exploitation being an inevitable consequence of capitalism.
Wright nodded approvingly, and Cooper continued. Through a friend of a friend of the family he heard of a retired gentleman living not too far from where they were sitting who needed a male companion to live in and take care of him at night, which meant his days were his own and so if he could do anything to help the Party, well it would be an honour and at this point Cooper worried he may have rather over-egged the pudding, but Wright said he was sure he could arrange something and to meet him here at the same time the next week.
Wright was waiting for him when Cooper arrived at the cafe as arranged. He watched as Wright spooned half a dozen sugars into his mug of milky tea and noisily sipped from it before rolling a cigarette and beckoning Cooper to come closer.
He could smell the milk and the cheap tobacco and traces of the previous night’s dinner on Wright’s breath.
‘We can take you on at King Street, but you won’t get paid: it will be routine work, clerical more than anything else, and sometimes taking stuff around London and acting as a messenger.’
He paused and slurped his tea and looked at Cooper in a quizzical manner and Cooper said thank you, yes… he was fine with all that.
‘I’ll need your address.’ Wright had produced a small notebook and pushed it and a much-chewed pencil towards Cooper. ‘Write down your address and your full name and your date and place of birth and where else you’ve lived and worked.’
* * *
The previous week Percy Burton called him in to The Annexe on the Thursday for a briefing and Cooper could tell it was important because the older man had locked the door of his office and led him over to the two small armchairs and indicated they should be pulled as closely together as possible because he needed to talk in absolute confidence.
Percy Burton went over his mission once more: to spend the first few weeks working in King Street and being as helpful and hard-working as possible and not doing anything that may arouse suspicion. He was to gather as much information as possible on the people working there and what they do… and, well, you know the score and Cooper said yes, we’ve been through it many times.
‘And in particular I’m to try and find out what I can about this Cliff Milne and see if I can get to work in his office.’
And there was a long silence after this, the only sound coming from a carriage clock behind Burton’s desk and Cooper wondered what he was going to say because so far he’d only been repeating what had been covered countless times over recent weeks.
‘There is something else.’ Burton’s voice was so quiet now Cooper had to lean even closer.
‘We have a traitor.’
Just those four words and then silence.
‘Where?’
And Burton told him everything he knew about Archie, telling him that despite the hunt for this traitor being a top priority not just for The Annexe but also for MI6 and MI5 and the Special Branch they’d drawn a complete blank and whoever Archie was, he was very clever and so well concealed that it may well take a stroke of luck or a slip-up by someone for his identity to be revealed.
‘And there’s nothing on him other than this?’
‘As I say, Cooper, we know very little about him, other than he’s English, is very highly placed and works as a Soviet spy, providing them with what is described as “excellent intelligence” and his codename is Archie and he was in Paris in May this year.’
Percy Burton held open his hands as if to emphasise the paucity of the information he was providing. Charles Cooper could feel his body tense. Could it be that this ‘highly placed’ agent was actually him? Of course, he wasn’t in Paris in May and he’d never heard that codename before, but this could be Percy Burton’s subtle way of raising the subject of his loyalty.
‘And this—’
‘Hang on, Cooper, I’ve not finished: in May 1937 – a year before Archie was in Paris – an Englishman was spotted in the Kremlin where he had a short encounter with someone working for us. We believe this Englishman had a connection with Oxford University in or around 1930. I’m afraid the description of him is so bland as to be useless. But we have reason to think this person spotted in the Kremlin in May 1937 is the same person who was in Paris a year later.’
He dropped his head and exhaled deeply. ‘We therefore have a traitor in our midst. Finding him is an absolute priority. We know that he was spotted in London in August this year by the same person who saw him in the Kremlin. Suffice it to say that this Archie is very dangerous indeed. It’s a long shot, I admit, but it may well be that as you hopefully infiltrate your way into the deeper recesses of the Communist Party, you may pick up some hint or clue about Archie.’
Cooper was relieved that Burton was clearly not linking him with being Archie. But as he was talking, he recalled the dacha outside Moscow in September 1937, the atmosphere as relaxed and calm as it could be in the circumstances and Nikolai telling him they had another agent in London.
…someone in a similar position to you, though he has been with us longer. We cannot tell you much about him, other than that he is already very highly placed, and we believe he is on course to go to the top of his organisation. In time your role will be to support him.
This person sounded very much like Archie.
‘And there’s no other clue as to who he is?’
‘I’m afraid not, Cooper.’
‘And this codename, could that mean anything?’
‘I think not. Of course, we do look most carefully at these codenames but these days the Soviets choose random ones for their agents. There was a time when they tried to be clever, but it rather backfired a few years ago. They were running an agent in Lisbon, a well-connected British businessman called Walker, links with the embassy and pretty much anyone who mattered in Portugal. All we knew about him was his codename: Agent Peshekhod. One of our Russian speakers pointed out that Peshekhod translates literally as a ‘pedestrian’ and it didn’t take terribly long to get from ‘pedestrian’ to ‘walker’ and consequently poor old Mr Walker is currently a guest of His Majesty. The Soviets no longer use cryptic codenames.’
* * *
What Cooper wasn’t to know was that the day before Percy Burton had told him about Archie another meeting had taken place, although it was one of those meetings which officially – and even to an extent, unofficially – did not happen, so much so that the two participants met in a deserted lane off a small road between Marlow and Henley as dusk fell over the Berkshire countryside.
Phillips was already waiting when Burton arrived and suggested they walk for a while and Burton followed him along the slippery edge of a field towards a small wooded area, where they stood and lit their cigarettes and looked out over the fields, listened to the rustle of the wind and bird noises in the far distance.
‘This meeting isn’t happening, Burton.’
‘As you said, Phillips: understood as always.’
‘This hunt for Archie… he’s going to be the death of me. I’m beginning to doubt we’ll ever find the bastard. We know he’s out there but…’ His voice tailed away in the wind and he was staring dead ahead.
‘It’s certainly looking like it’s going to be a long haul and of course until we know what intelligence he’s actually passing on we—’
‘No, it’s more than that Burton. Very confidentially, I’m beginning to wonder whether he could be in 54 Broadway.’
‘Really – you mean working for MI6?’
Phillips was standing a full yard ahead of Burton but he nodded and said why not and then he turned round and told him how the previous week he’d set a trap.
‘I have a large team of two dozen working on the hunt for Archie: half of them senior officers from the European desks, the other half the younger officers, the ones the chief thinks so highly of. I’ve wondered if one of this team could be Archie, so two days ago – on Monday – I told them we had an informer linked to the Soviet embassy who was going to be passing on intelligence to us regarding Archie that evening in the foyer of the Phoenix Theatre on Charing Cross Road. I’ve used this place before: there’s a secret mirror behind the main ticket desk that gives a good view of the foyer.
‘All part of the trap, of course, but I had the place very carefully watched and I was behind the mirror and I’m as certain as I can be that someone did indeed turn up – we had a couple waiting on the corner of Charing Crossing Road and Flitcroft Street and they spotted a man acting suspiciously but before they could do anything about it he hurried away. I think it could well have been Archie and he smelled a rat and scarpered.’
‘Which means…’
‘Which means Archie could well be inside 54 Broadway.’
‘You could continue with this deception: feed false leads to smaller groups until you find Archie through a process of elimination?’
‘I could, but I fear I’ve shot my bolt on this one. He’s smarter than us. I trust you, Burton, so not a word of this, eh? Even the chief doesn’t know about this. Sinclair would never believe that one of his chaps could be a traitor. But there’s a reason I’ve called you here.’
He took a while to light another cigarette in the wind and looked over the fields before beginning to slowly walk back to the cars now that darkness was taking hold.
‘I know little about The Annexe, Burton, and I’m one of the few who know you even exist. But I’m pretty sure you’ve got your best sorts on this. If I was a betting man, I’d say you were the odds-on favourites to find Archie. I just ask you to keep me in the loop.’
Chapter 22
London
October 1938
Once Archie had calmed down – which wasn’t for a few days – he was able to reflect in a more measured manner on the events of that Monday.
He realised it could have been a good deal worse. For a start, his wife hadn’t been in town. Recently, she’d been in the habit of accompanying him when he drove back on Sunday night: she’d spend Monday and much of Tuesday there, catching up with friends and shopping, before returning to the country on Tuesday afternoon.
But that week she’d remained in the country because new curtains were arriving or something tedious like that and as a consequence wasn’t there to observe the mood he was in when he arrived home.
He was furious when he flung open the front door and waited for a minute or two in the dark hallway to check there were no other sounds before locking the front door and bolting it twice. He closed the second door leading through to the rest of the house and kicked the door into the lounge, slamming it against the sideboard, grabbed a bottle of whisky from the drinks cabinet and drank straight from the bottle and this only seemed to make him more angry, because in his fury he flung the bottle against the fireplace, the contents spraying everywhere and shards of glass spreading over the ridiculously expensive rug, which his wife assured him was worth it because it had been hand-sewn over a period of God-knows-how-many months in a part of Persia he’d never heard of.
He slumped into an armchair and remained there until the clock on the mantelpiece chimed eleven o’clock and as if on cue but quite unexpectedly, he felt tears well in his eyes and thank heavens he was on his own because this had happened before at times of extreme tension – there’d been enough of those – and he knew better than to suppress them, so he allowed the tears to flow down his face and although he wiped them away at first with the back of his hand, he soon gave up because the more he cried the less angry he felt.
* * *
He’d been caught completely off-guard by Phillips at the meeting that morning, although it had started promisingly enough with Phillips announcing in his usual tedious tone that the search for the traitor had made no progress and things were really most disappointing.
And then he announced there was a very important development, pausing and looking around the room as if to make sure he looked at every person in it.
‘The Service has an informer, a person linked to the Soviet Embassy, who is somewhat elusive and can be hard to make contact with but they have been in touch to tell us they have information that will lead to us identifying Archie… He is prepared to pass on this information in return for a large sum of money. I will be meeting our informer in the foyer of the Phoenix Theatre on Charing Cross Road this evening in the half hour prior to the performance of The White Guard, which ironically is based on a novel by Bulgakov and is set in Kiev during the civil war. Obviously, the theatre will be busy then so one hopes the chances of them being spotted are less than they could be, and I imagine the subject matter of the play will mean there’s a more cosmopolitan audience.’
Phillips paused once more, and Archie glanced up to observe that one or two of the senior officers looked surprised and he did have to admit that this all sounded a bit odd, not least the fact that Phillips was sharing it with so many people, but of course he just concentrated on remaining as impassive as possible, not displaying any sign of his utter shock.
‘Hopefully, by this time tomorrow we’ll know just who Archie is!’
It made little sense that Phillips had said there’d been no progress and then went on to announce what appeared to be a significant development. He knew this could be a trap, but he knew he simply couldn’t take the risk.
Nor could he take the risk of telling Osip: as far as Osip was concerned, the British knew nothing of Archie.
He left Broadway just before five thirty that afternoon, walking towards Victoria and then taking a taxi to Kentish Town, getting it to drop him five minutes’ walk from the small lock-up he rented in a quiet alley behind a parade of shops.
It looked like a garage from the outside but was too small for a car and the owner had been more than happy to take two years’ rent in advance, cash no questions asked. Archie waited after he’d turned in to the alley and when he was sure no one else was around he retrieved the key from its hiding place between the gutter and the roof. At the rear of the small room were three suitcases and he opened one and selected a set of clothes – a pair of shabby trousers, a pullover, a pair of scruffy shoes, but with good quality soles in case he needed to run, a large raincoat and a cloth cap. In the unlikely event of someone affording him a second glance he looked every bit the labourer on his way home from a tiring day.
And those few looking so closely at him would see a man with dark hair, perhaps a bit too long at the collar and with a moustache and a goatee beard, which along with a heavy pair of cheap-looking spectacles ensured he was quite unrecognisable. The wig, moustache and the beard had been very expensive, but worth every penny.
