Every Spy a Traitor, page 33
I count on your help in this respect.
I note what you said about three or four possible dissidents within your Central Committee, but I cannot be more emphatic: there is no room for dissent and I expect all twenty-four members of your Central Committee to endorse any agreement we make with Germany.
Your friend and comrade,
MBM
In the margin beside the final paragraph were a number of initials written in Cliff Milne’s handwriting:
HP?
WGMP?
JRC?
But Cooper was too distracted to give any thought as to what or who those initials stood for. At first, reading the letters his mounting emotions had been a heady mixture – elation at how thrilled Percy Burton would be with what was undoubtedly, to use his description, gold, and also fear at what the letters revealed – a possible pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
But these emotions had evaporated as soon as he came to the second page of the letter written on 1 August. The agent referred to as ‘B’ was unquestionably him, not least because of the Morozov connection and the link with the now dead Douglas Marsh.
He couldn’t possibly alert The Annexe to the existence of agent B, which meant he couldn’t let Burton or anyone else see the second page of the final letter.
As a British agent he was staring at the most revealing and dramatic intelligence imaginable.
Yet it was now clear he’d be unable to share the most important part of it.
He was lost in his thoughts until the sound of a car horn brought him back to his senses.
He turned on the lamp and began to photograph the letters.
He had a plan, of sorts.
* * *
‘I’m confused with all this, Cooper…’
Charles Cooper nodded. He’d expected Burton to be confused.
Percy Burton was sitting at his desk in The Annexe headquarters on Bryanston Square. Spread out in front of him were nine photographs – the first three Molotov letters and just the first page of the final letter, the August one.
‘I fail to understand why Milne took the precaution of concealing this highly sensitive correspondence from Molotov in his safe, but only included the first page of the August letter?’
‘Maybe he lost the rest of it, sir, as I suggest in my report?’
‘But Molotov isn’t anyone, is he, Cooper? He’s the Soviet Foreign Minister and the letters incriminate Milne: it is not the kind of correspondence one leaves lying around on the bus or on the kitchen table! One would have thought that either Milne would keep every scrap of that correspondence under lock and key or else destroy it. But not lose part of the correspondence, that makes no sense!’
‘But those letters there, sir, they’re very important, surely?’
‘I don’t dispute they’re interesting, but I’m not sure they’re as interesting as your report would suggest. You rely too much on speculation. I’ve made the point to you before, Cooper, when studying intelligence one must distinguish between informed analysis and speculation. In your report you state that you believe that Cliff Milne is operating in a clandestine manner on behalf of the Soviet Union. That is a reasonable supposition. Some would say it is stating the obvious – after all, there is a specific reference to his helping undermine a pact with the Soviet Union.
‘However, you go on to say in your report, where is it… let me find it… ah, here we are: Based on a careful reading and analysis of the letters I believe that the Soviet Union may be using its commercial negotiations with Germany as a cover for entering into a full-scale military pact with them.’
He dropped the report onto the desk and waved his hand melodramatically.
‘Where is the evidence for that, Cooper, eh?’
Cooper knew he couldn’t reply that the evidence had been on the last page of the August letter. Instead, he shrugged and said he could see what he meant.
‘Of course, if there was any firm evidence to that effect, it would be of the utmost importance and His Majesty’s Government would act accordingly and urgently, but this is too speculative. If I were to alert the Foreign Office to this they’d dismiss it out of hand. As it is we need to keep an eye on Milne: sooner or later something more substantial may emerge.’
‘We may not have enough time, sir?’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Because I believe that if there is to be a pact between the Soviet Union and Germany that could take place before the end of this month.’
‘As you say in your report. More speculation. How do you know that, Cooper?’
Burton leant back, lifted his eyebrows and stared quizzically at Cooper, who opened his mouth and began to reply before stopping. He could hardly quote from the last page of Molotov’s last letter, of an announcement ‘before the end of August’.
‘An informed guess, sir.’
‘There we are, Cooper – a guess. Speculation. And there’s another thing, Cooper: in your report you talk about possible opposition to such a pact from within the Central Committee of the British Communist Party and you go so far as to actually name three people. I can’t find their names…’
‘Harry Pollitt, the General Secretary of the Party; Willie Gallagher, the Communist Member of Parliament for West Fife, and JR Campbell, the editor of the Daily Worker.’
‘Yes, thank you, Cooper – how do you know these three are likely dissidents, tell me?’
Cooper said, yes, he saw the point, he accepted this was speculation and it was based on his knowledge from inside—
‘I suggest, Cooper, that you get back into that safe as soon as you can and find me something more substantial. I don’t deny what we have here is interesting and certainly more interesting than anything else you’ve dug up, but I’m loathe to pass it on and make a fool of myself.’
‘But what if it turns out to be true, sir?’
‘What if what turns out to be true?’
‘The Soviet Union going into a military pact with Germany?’
‘You really have got that bit between your teeth, haven’t you, Cooper?’
‘I have a very strong feeling, sir: after all, if I have interpreted Molotov’s letters correctly, and you were to share that, it would be quite something, don’t you think?’
He expected another lecture about speculation or even impertinence, but Burton paused and seemed to be having second thoughts.
‘I’ll tell you what I shall do, Cooper: I shall send round a memorandum to alert people to the possibility without creating too much of a flap. And there is another point, we’ve not established the provenance of the letters, have we – or even whether Molotov speaks English?’
He stood up in a manner which made it clear that was the end of that and although Cooper now felt emboldened by Burton’s promise to send a memorandum, he didn’t feel emboldened enough to point out that surely the situation was urgent enough to merit more than a memorandum.
* * *
Percy Burton was a worried man after Cooper left.
He liked to think he was decisive and a good judge of character, but both those qualities were failing him now.
Even though it was only four o’clock he poured himself a whisky and asked his secretary to bring through the file on Charles Cooper and when he’d finished reading it was nearly six o’clock and he asked Pamela Clarke to come and see him.
‘When was it you first spotted Cooper?’
‘Early last year, sir – March, if I remember correctly?’
‘And was there anything about him at the time or subsequently which would make you doubt him?’
‘Doubt him in what way, sir?’
‘I think you know what way!’ He’d raised his voice and immediately apologised and said it had been a long day and maybe he was somewhat under the weather, but what he meant was could she be absolutely certain that he was as innocent as he seemed?
‘We checked him out, sir, didn’t we? There was nothing to arouse any suspicion. After all, I was the one who persuaded him to go to a Communist Party meeting and that was how it all started. He wasn’t a walk in and we didn’t turn him.’
She knew better than to ask what was causing this doubt because that wasn’t done, but she found it hard to resist asking if everything was… all right.
‘I do hope so, Pamela, but I can’t make up my mind about Cooper. I find it hard to decide whether he’s exceptionally good at what we ask him to do, or whether he’s very lucky or whether he’s at times perhaps too well-informed or whether… I don’t know, I can’t always make him out. Maybe he seems a bit too good to be true is what I’m trying to say.’
Pamela smiled and asked if maybe she could have a whisky too and Burton apologised and said it had been quite remiss of him not to have offered and she suggested they sit down on the comfy chairs as he called them.
‘What you’ve just said about Cooper, sir, isn’t that the point?’
‘Eh?’
‘Isn’t that the point you always make about agents, that at some point or the other you’re not sure about them, that you can’t always make them out? You’ve said that about every agent I’ve been involved with and I daresay you had those doubts about me too. We’re not bank managers or shop assistants or foremen in a factory or any other predictable and routine job. There’s always going to be an element of doubt about all of us, sir: we’re not ordinary people. We’re enigmatic. We’re unpredictable. The world we operate in is neither ordinary or predictable, is it? We practise deception every day and rely on our intuition – and our nerves. That’s bound to cast us in a suspicious light from time to time.’
Percy Burton leant back and looked less tense now and said he supposed she may be right.
‘Has Cooper done anything wrong, sir?’
‘Wrong? No, I don’t think so… I certainly hope not. In fact, on the contrary, he may well have unearthed something…’ And then he stopped himself and Pamela nodded in a way that showed she quite understood and he didn’t need to say any more.
‘Perhaps you ought to be getting home, sir?’
‘I have a memorandum to write first.’
Chapter 33
London
August–September 1939
The full impact only truly registered with the Foreign Office towards the end of the week and by lunchtime on the Friday – 25 August – it was clear that the department’s traditional early departure of diplomats and other senior officials to the country for the weekend was in grave doubt.
By early afternoon, no one dared leave their desks.
It was the same at the War Office on the other side of Whitehall and at the headquarters of MI6 in St James’s.
Civil servants senior enough to be in the know, but not senior enough to be considered responsible in any way, commented it was as if a giant tidal wave had struck Whitehall, leaving victims reeling and numb with shock.
At Number 10 Downing Street the atmosphere began as one of bewilderment, soon turning to rage.
Who knew about this?
Someone must have known?
Find the person who knew!
At first, it was impossible to find anyone who’d admit to knowing anything. Officials shook their heads and insisted this was the first they’d heard of it and were as shocked and surprised as the next person.
And then an official on the French desk at the Foreign Office called Milton admitted seeing a memorandum the previous week. He’d been puzzled by the fact that it was sent from ‘Burton, Special Office’ and he recalled asking his boss what ‘Special Office’ was and whether ‘Burton’ was a person or the town on the river Trent, only to be told it didn’t matter because the memo was a load of nonsense anyway.
And that was the beginning of the end for Percy Burton.
* * *
Percy Burton had met with Cooper on the Thursday, 10 August, three days after Cooper had photographed the Molotov letters from Cliff Milne’s safe in King Street. The memorandum was a compromise of sorts, the standard civil service way of covering one’s back.
It was typed on pale blue paper with Burton’s carbon copy on a pale-yellow sheet.
MEMORANDUM
From: Burton, Special Office
To: Germany Desk, Foreign Office
Date: 11 August
Subject: Moscow manoeuvres
Unconfirmed and yet to be corroborated reports from a hitherto reliable SOURCE suggest talks currently underway between the Soviet Union and Germany regarding a commercial agreement, may be a cover for a more substantial agreement between the two countries which may extend to full-scale military pact.
SOURCE indicates this may be announced before end of the month. SOURCE indicates this is being driven by Soviet Foreign Minister MOLOTOV.
MOLOTOV understood to be hostile to proposed pact involving Soviet Union, France and this country, which he has been seeking to undermine since replacing LITVINOV in May.
SOURCE reports MOLOTOV anticipating some dissent in Communist Party of Great Britain to a pact with Germany and is insisting on unanimous support from Party’s Central Committee.
It went in the internal post late on the afternoon of Friday the 11th, which Burton knew full well meant it was highly unlikely anyone would see it before Monday and even then it would not be top of anyone’s in-tray because he’d avoided marking it ‘Most Urgent’ or ‘Top Secret’ and unlike most memoranda, it only had one recipient, the chronically over-worked Germany desk.
Conveniently, that Saturday was the ‘Glorious Twelfth’, the start of the grouse shooting season, which meant fewer people than usual would be around to see the report.
And as it was, no one on the Germany desk at the Foreign Office looked at it until Wednesday the 16th when it ended up on the desk of a rather put-upon chap called Travers who was indolent with resentment after having recently missed out on the third secretary job in Lisbon so he did nothing until the Thursday when he sent copies to the Soviet and French desks and hoped that would cover his back.
Milton on the French desk did read the memorandum on Monday the 21st and thought it was interesting and certainly tallied with his own understanding that the proposed pact between the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union was floundering so he drafted a telegram to Paris to that effect and arranged to see the head of French desk the next day to clear it with him, because his back needed covering too.
It all started that Monday, really, building up to the crescendo on the Friday. First there was the news from Moscow over the weekend that the commercial agreement had been signed and then on the Monday came the news the Soviets had suspended the tripartite talks with France and the United Kingdom. On the Wednesday the German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop arrived in Moscow ‘for talks’ and by the Thursday a Non-Aggression Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union had been announced and among the flurry of telegrams from Moscow was one from the Hon. Milo Smart quoting an article in Pravda which talked about improved political relations between Germany and the Soviet Union.
On the Friday there was a terribly worrying telegram from the MI6 station in Berlin, which was the cause of that tidal wave in Whitehall. A German diplomat called Hans von Herwarth had told the American ambassador in Berlin, Charles Bohlen, that that the Soviet–German pact contained a secret protocol allocating different spheres of influence between the two countries.
They were dividing Europe up between themselves.
* * *
If Percy Burton thought he’d been clever in covering his back with a memorandum, which he could say showed he had made some effort to share his knowledge of the Nazi–Soviet pact, then he was horribly mistaken.
Everyone wanted to find someone to blame for London not knowing about this serious development. MI6 had soon heard about the Burton Memorandum, as it became known, and were furious he’d not shared this intelligence with them. The Foreign Office were furious it had been sent just to one desk and without the sense of urgency it so obviously merited. And Downing Street was furious with everyone, so Burton was called into Downing Street that weekend where it became very apparent very quickly this was an audition for a scapegoat and he’d got the part.
How could he have sat on such vital intelligence?
Did he not appreciate the significance of this?
When he did share it, why did he do so in such a lacklustre manner?
Who was his source?
Percy Burton was no fool: he knew he was most probably about to be sacrificed so as to satisfy the almost animalistic urge to find someone to blame, someone whose fault this could all be. And he was tired, too: The Annexe had been established in 1931 as what he’d always understood was a one- or two-year project at the most and he’d done the job for eight years and that was a pretty decent innings.
He did say he wasn’t sure it would have made any difference had they all known about the pact earlier, but when one of the private secretaries said in a pointedly sharp manner that wasn’t his judgement to make, Burton realised it really was all over. There was no point in resisting.
So, he said he acknowledged he’d underestimated the significance and indeed importance of this intelligence and was prepared to accept responsibility… and if a gentleman’s agreement could be reached then he’d be prepared to tender his resignation.
‘What, here and now?’ said one of the private secretaries sitting in judgement on him. He sounded incredulous.
Percy Burton nodded.
‘And the gentleman’s agreement?’ The private secretary could barely conceal his sheer relief that this unpleasant business could be sorted so quickly and so amicably without having to resort to anything unpleasant.
‘If I were to be allowed to resign without any blemish on my character or record and retain my full pension, of course.’
