Kyiv (Spoils of War) Read online

  ‘And if they aren’t?’

  ‘We slow down quicker,’ Glivenko was looking at the kitten. ‘That’s the pilot talking, not me.’

  Moments later, without warning, the aircraft lurched to the left and the kitten began to struggle in Bella’s lap, alarmed by the howl of the engines as the pilot fought for altitude. Glivenko, thrown off his feet, was lying in the narrow aisle, face up, and Bella caught a shrug of resignation as the pilot banked sharply, this time to the right. Then they were straight and level again, the danger evidently over, and when Bella checked through the window she could see the broadness of a river disappearing into the haze, and the endless sprawl of a city beyond.

  The aircraft was dropping now, a descent that seemed to steepen and steepen until the pilot abruptly hauled back on the controls and settled the aircraft onto what looked like wet sand. Mercifully, there was no damage to the undercarriage and Bella, still at the window, watched a quartet of figures striding towards the aircraft as it slowed to a halt. The uniforms were all too familiar. NKVD, she thought. For a moment, her blood icing, she knew she’d fallen into a trap baited by Bezkrovny. But then, as the pilot throttled back and the engines died, she felt a gentle pressure on her arm.

  ‘I know these people,’ Glivenko, back on his feet, was smiling. ‘Everything’s different here.’

  5

  FRIDAY 12 SEPTEMBER 1941

  It took Tam Moncrieff a day at his desk in St James’s Street to prepare for his visit to Section Five. He spent the morning and half the afternoon preparing a comprehensive report of his dealings with Rudolf Hess. Reading between the lines, he knew it was impossible to miss the thrust of his conclusions – that MI6 may have been complicit in the Deputy Führer’s flight to Scotland, and in the subsequent disappearance of a set of peace proposals authorised at the highest level of the Reich – but Moncrieff suspected that Broadway had marked his card already. Moncrieff? A troublemaker, they’d murmur. An ex-bootneck, far too chippy for his own good. And, just in case any of this Hess nonsense ever merited serious attention, a bit of a fantasist as well.

  He finished the report in time to snatch a late lunch, leaving the typed copy for Ursula Barton’s attention. By the time he returned to his office, a note had appeared on his desk. Barton, he thought.

  ‘Nice work,’ she’d written. ‘We need to talk about Krivitsky.’

  Krivitsky? The name seemed familiar, but Moncrieff couldn’t remember why. Hundreds of names, possibly more, had come across his desk in the last three years. Moments later, he was back in Barton’s office. Walter Krivitsky? Chasing biscuit crumbs across her plate with a moistened finger, she was happy to explain.

  ‘During the thirties he was working for the NKVD, based in The Hague, running Soviet agents all over Europe. I met him a couple of times. He was an intense little man, hard to like, married to a blonde called Tonia. They had a rather nice townhouse in the Celebesstraat. Krivitsky awarded himself a doctorate and took another name and pretended to sell art books. His real job was to make things tough for us if it ever came to war with the Soviets, and there were some in the office who thought he was rather effective. I’m afraid I was never one of them. The man had survivor written all over him.’

  Moncrieff nodded. Walter Krivitsky, he thought. The man from the heart of Soviet intelligence who’d fled to the West.

  ‘This is the defector who took a boat to America and wrote a book about what Stalin was really up to,’ Moncrieff raised an eyebrow. ‘1938? 1939? Am I right?’

  ‘Thirty-eight,’ Barton nodded. ‘Until then he’d kept his doubts about the Vodzh largely to himself, but then the show trials got under way and it became obvious that his Leader’s wrath would spare no one. Fellow agents in the West, friends of his, solid Communists, were being hauled back to Moscow and stuffed into the mincing machine. There was no logic, no discernible plan, only blood. To no one’s surprise, Krivitsky decided to make his excuses and leave. Next thing we know, he’s living in an apartment in New York and writing articles for the Saturday Evening Post. Hoover was livid, by the way. Krivitsky insisted America was wide open to penetration and it turned out he was right.’

  MI5, she said, asked him to come to London and share what he knew about Soviet agents. Krivitsky agreed.

  ‘He gave us a couple of names in the first interview, Foreign Office people, both of whom we knew about already, so we turned him over to Jane Archer who took him to St Ermin’s for a proper chat. She did a wonderful job, by the way. An absolutely textbook piece of work.’

  Moncrieff nodded. St Ermin’s Hotel, a favoured haunt of MI5 interrogators, was a couple of minutes’ walk away.

  ‘I thought Archer was sacked?’

  ‘You’re right, she was. In my book, she never overstepped the mark, but she had decided views on the management and didn’t bother to hide them. OH was both incompetent and a fool. Someone had to make the point, and Jane paid the price.’

  OH – Oswald Harker – had briefly held the post of MI5 Director. Looking back, Moncrieff remembered muted applause from offices on the upper floors when he, too, was given his marching orders.

  ‘So, what else did Archer get out of Krivitsky?’

  ‘A lot. The key was the investment the Soviets were making trying to recruit agents-in-place. These were people whom they’d identified as future high-flyers. They tended to be young, and clever, and happy to work for the cause. Most of them, in Jane’s lovely phrase, were cursed by idealism. Our Soviet friends think long-term. Most of these prospects were still at university but in fifteen or twenty years’ time they might find themselves with access to all kinds of information. Money, incidentally, rarely came into it. It’s always the power of the idea, Tam. Krivitsky’s word, not Jane’s.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘What else did the man have to say?’

  Barton shot him a look, and then shook her head.

  ‘I suggest you ask for his Registry file when you’re up in St Albans,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t know what he told her?’

  ‘Of course I do. But what I’ve never seen is their version of events. You’re paying them a visit to put fresh meat on the bones of poor old Hess. A peek or two at other files won’t hurt.’

  ‘Files? Plural?’

  ‘Of course. Krivitsky is one of them. Your lovely Bella will obviously be the other. The power of the idea, Tam.’ The smile was icy. ‘Do I sense a yes?’

  *

  Next morning, Moncrieff took an early train to St Albans. Section Five was based in a rambling Edwardian villa on the outskirts of the town. The heavens opened the moment Moncrieff stepped out of the station and he buttoned his trench coat while waiting for a taxi. When one finally arrived, the driver turned out to be an oldish man with thick pebble glasses and a comical Bairnsfather Old Bill moustache. Sensing something military in Moncrieff’s bearing, he was quick to point out that he’d fought – and been gassed – at the second Battle of Ypres.

  ‘Ever happen to you, sir?’

  ‘Happily, not. I was still in nappies at the time.’

  ‘Best out of it, then. The chlorine stuff they were using was vile. Where to?’

  ‘Glenalmond. You know it?’

  ‘Me?’ The cabbie wheezed with laughter. ‘You’re one of them, sir?’

  ‘One of what?’

  ‘Them spies? They’ll tell you that place is full of archaeological wallahs busy on the dig but most blokes in my trade know better. I’m taking people up there all the time, and you know the clue that gives you lot away? Crisp new fivers. Which means you’re either on the Black or in the Funnies. Begging your pardon, sir, but you don’t look like a criminal so I’m guessing you must be a spy. Take it as a compliment, sir. It sounds more fun than driving a bloody taxi.’

  Still chuckling, the driver joined the trickle of mid-morning traffic, and Moncrieff sat back against the scuffed leather as street after street of neat little semi-detached houses slipped by. The drive
r, he knew, was right about the cover story MI6 had concocted for Glenalmond. The finds at a nearby Roman site had attracted international attention and headquartering the Verulamium dig at somewhere like Glenalmond would be entirely plausible.

  The villa lay at the end of a gravel drive. Water was dripping from a huge elm tree as Moncrieff bent to pay the driver. To his slight irritation, he only had a couple of five pound notes and they were both brand new.

  ‘You’ve got change?’ he asked.

  The driver nodded, opening his wallet and counting out four one-pound notes and a handful of coins.

  ‘Sorry they’re so grubby, sir,’ he handed over the notes. ‘Good luck with the dig, eh?’

  Moncrieff stood in the rain, watching the taxi depart, then glanced round at Glenalmond. In his many trips out of London over the last couple of years, he must have seen dozens of properties like this – tall sash windows on the ground floor, a steepish pitch to the tiled roof, hints of Home Counties mock-Tudor in the timberwork – but he didn’t doubt for a moment that it perfectly served Section Five’s purposes. A modest flight of stone steps led up to the front door. Inside, he found a well-spoken young woman behind a desk, deep in an old copy of the Illustrated London News.

  Moncrieff unbuttoned his trench coat, waiting for some kind of acknowledgement. Eventually her head came up. She was very pretty.

  ‘Major Moncrieff?’ She had a dazzling smile. ‘We’ve been expecting you. I’m sorry about the rain but Kim insisted that nothing would put you off. Upstairs, Major Moncrieff, second door on the right. I’d offer you coffee but the stuff we’re getting just now is undrinkable. Can you bear to make do with tea?’

  Moncrieff said yes, but her finger was still anchored in the text of the article she’d been reading, and the moment he turned away her head went down again.

  The door to the office upstairs was already ajar. Moncrieff knocked twice and stepped inside. The room was bigger than he’d expected, six desks, all occupied. There was a powerful smell of pencil shavings, pipe tobacco and wet dog. The latter, a black and white spaniel, was curled in a Pending tray on the floor beside the fireplace. The tray was lined with a sodden copy of that morning’s Times. Moncrieff recognised the headline from the newsstand at St Pancras station. After brave resistance by Norwegian trades unions, the Nazis had declared martial law in Oslo.

  ‘His name’s Sammy. You’ll be glad to know he only bites the enemy.’ A hand briefly descended on Moncrieff’s arm. ‘Welcome to our little nest, Tam. We’re here to make life sweet for you.’

  Moncrieff, already wrong-footed, had last met Kim Philby on a flight home from Lisbon earlier in the year, and it wasn’t until the end of the journey that Philby had mentioned his role in MI6. He was responsible, he’d said, for the welfare of the Iberian out-station, impressive for someone still in his late twenties. Over the intervening months, he’d put on a little weight, but the stammer was still there, lurking at the edges of every sentence, and so was the effortless charm. Philby appeared to have dressed for the pub, and Moncrieff, bending to stroke the dog, was curious about the Army blouse he was wearing, unbuttoned.

  ‘Belonged to my pa,’ Philby smiled. ‘In the rain, when it gets wet, I can still smell him.’

  A tray of tea arrived in the hands of a young man Philby introduced as Tim. The men behind the desks were broadly the same age and most of them were busy annotating mountains of typed sheets. The atmosphere, like the dress code, was relaxed to the point of informality. No one appeared to use surnames and as pencils sped over lines of text there was much comparing of notes. This material, Moncrieff suspected, had probably arrived in diplomatic bags from distant corners of unoccupied Europe, and the frequent laughter that greeted yet another gem felt totally unforced. Deeply collegiate, Moncrieff thought. A bunch of young friends, undoubtedly clever, trying to make sense of other people’s wars.

  *

  Philby insisted on taking Moncrieff to lunch. The dog accompanied them, bounding ahead, nose to the ground, leading the way to a nearby pub called the White Hart. The landlord had a bag of bones readied for the dog and pulled a couple of pints without Philby saying a word.

  ‘There’s a brewery he uses in Letchworth,’ Philby was organising a couple of bar stools. ‘We trust this lovely man with our lives and he never lets us down. Salud.’

  They touched glasses and Moncrieff sensed already that he’d have to make the running if this conversation was to lead anywhere worthwhile. Philby, he’d decided, had a talent for masking an undoubted intelligence. On one level he got close to you, sometimes uncomfortably so, while on another he appeared to step back, keeping his distance, watching, listening, cracking a joke, benign, unruffled, smiling his quiet smile. In a certain light, like now, his eyes were an intense blue.

  ‘Souk?’ Moncrieff asked. ‘Any news?’

  Philby studied his glass for a long moment and then shook his head, a gesture laden – it seemed to Moncrieff – with something less than regret.

  ‘I’m afraid not. The bloody man’s disappeared. No one’s had sight nor sound of him. The temptation is to put it down to the monkeys in the PVDE but that might be asking a little too much of them. Those people can do the business when they really try but Souk had the measure of them. He was also putting serious money in the right pockets.’

  ‘You know that?’

  ‘I do, Tam. It was my job.’

  Moncrieff held his gaze. The PVDE were the Portuguese secret police. Agent Souk, in real life, was an English-born chancer called Gordon Hesketh who had tested their patience to its limits. Hesketh, who excelled in playing rival clients off against each other, had briefly been on MI5’s payroll, much to Philby’s irritation.

  ‘He conned you, Tam. Just like he conned every other bugger. All he ever sold was gammon. Take it from me. The man was peddling lies.’

  ‘You really think so?’

  ‘I know so. Swelp me, I mean it. I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to tell me that the real trick is sieving all that dross and picking out the bits you think might have some value. Only one problem, my friend. It was all porkies.’

  Moncrieff shook his head. In his own mind, he knew that Hesketh had – intentionally or otherwise – flagged the path to Rudolf Hess. Thanks to Souk, Moncrieff had come close to the truth about the Deputy Führer’s dramatic descent on Scotland, an operational coup that had sorely embarrassed the spymasters in Broadway. Hess had arrived on British soil to make a peace to which Churchill would never agree, a proposition that had earlier won quiet support from Philby’s bosses.

  ‘You may be right about Souk,’ Moncrieff murmured. ‘The rest of it? I’m not so sure.’

  ‘You’d like to help us further?’

  ‘That’s why I’m here. We conducted a post-mortem afterwards. We thought you might be interested.’

  ‘Someone died? I didn’t know.’

  A smile played on Philby’s lips. Moncrieff ignored it. He had yesterday’s typed report on the Hess operation in an envelope in his pocket. He put it carefully on the bar. Philby gazed at it. He looked, if anything, even more amused.

  ‘Golly,’ he said.

  ‘Take it.’

  ‘Must I?’

  ‘This is inter-operational. At least, that’s what my masters tell me. Sunlight is the best antiseptic. Did anyone ever tell you that?’

  ‘Often. Which is why we all fall in love with Lisbon. Did you succumb as well, Tam? The temptations of the place? All those wonderful meals? All that wickedness? Visits to the casino at Estoril? Little crooks like Souk pissing your money – our money – away? Is this what I’ll find in there?’ He gazed at the envelope a moment, then slipped it into the pocket of his Army blouse. Moments later, he drained his glass and nodded at a table at the other end of the bar. ‘Enough. We must eat.’ A sudden grin, seemingly artless. ‘Never mix business with pleasure, Tam. My pa taught me that. It was a lesson he learned from the Arabs and I’ve every reason to believe they were right.’
<
br />   *

  Lunch was liver and a curl or two of bacon swimming in cabbage leaves, overboiled potatoes and a thin gravy. Offal, as Philby remarked, was one of the war’s great blessings. Keen to avoid the contested turf that was Agent Souk, and aware from Barton that Philby had been a journalist before the war, Moncrieff asked about his brief posting to the BEF. The British Expeditionary Force had crossed the Channel some months after Hitler invaded Poland, and the government was keen to wave the flag.

  ‘It was a joke, Tam. A calling card. Our German friends had the best army in Europe and everyone knew it. They were also doing alarming things in the air. I’d seen their pilots in Spain and believe me they understood the dark arts. Flying against them was a death sentence. Crouching in some miserable bloody trench was no better. Once the weather cheered up after the winter, Europe was in for die Behandlung.

  ‘The treatment?’

  ‘Indeed. You speak German?’

  ‘I do.’

  This news appeared to come as a surprise. Philby bent a little closer over the table.

  ‘Amiens, Tam. You know it?’

  ‘Picardy,’ Moncrieff nodded. ‘A fine cathedral.’

  ‘We were there in May, a whole bunch of us scribblers. The bid was to conjure good news out of disaster but there was no lie big enough to disguise what was going on. The thing was a rout. On a hill above the city, our lads were digging in. There were a couple of hundred of them, all that stood between the Panzers and the sea. Guderian and the boys in grey were expected any minute. To stop a tank you need the proper kit. They had bugger all, just Lee-Enfields, and you know how many bullets we’d seen fit to give each of these poor sods? Fifty, Tam. Just fifty. And even some of them were—’

  The last word seemed to stick in his throat. His mouth opened and closed, a beached fish, but he couldn’t get it out. Finally, his whole face contorted and the word emerged, semi-intact.