A Very British Ending (Catesby Series) (17 page)

London:
January, 1959

Catesby was in serious trouble and his estranged wife was furious. When he went around to Stanhope Gardens to talk about it, Frances dragged him into the small courtyard garden so the children wouldn’t overhear what she had to say.

‘I’m freezing,’ he said, ‘can’t we go back inside?’

‘No, you stand there and listen. You have no idea how difficult it is bringing up teenagers as a single parent with a full-time job.’

‘No problem, I’ll move in and help.’

‘No way are you moving in after what you’ve just done. My son is going through a difficult phase and you’ve made things worse.’

Catesby smiled to smooth things over, but he quickly realised the smile was a mistake.

‘It’s not funny and you shouldn’t have given him the idea that it was. He needs boundaries and guidance. I’m trying to instil some responsibility and sense of discipline – and then you go and undermine it.’

‘How long is the suspension?’

‘A week.’

‘That’s outrageous.’

‘No, it isn’t. We’re lucky he didn’t get excluded – and it is a good school.’

‘I’m glad you sent him to a comprehensive.’

‘But, Will, why did you laugh when he told you the story?’

‘Because it was funny.’

Catesby thought the chemistry teacher had handled the situation badly. Okay, his stepson had been messing around in the lab, but that was no reason for the teacher to have reacted the way he did. The teacher had prodded Catesby’s stepson with a ruler and shouted, ‘There’s an idiot on the end of this ruler!’ And the stepson had replied, ‘Which end?’ When he told his stepdad what had happened, Catesby had laughed out loud. Which, he now realised, was probably not the right response. Catesby then made things worse by praising his stepson for being witty and standing up to authority.

‘Sometimes,’ said Frances, ‘I think the rumours about you might be true.’

‘Which rumours, that I’m a Soviet spy?’

‘No, William, I don’t think the Russians would have you – they would find you too immature.’

‘Why are you smiling?’

‘Because it’s impossible to take you seriously. No, you’re not a Sov mole; you’re an adolescent revolutionary. You shouldn’t be at Broadway Buildings, you should be marching up and down Oxford Street handing out “Ban the Bomb” leaflets.’

‘I think we should ban the bomb, don’t you?’

Frances shrugged.

‘Sorry, do you want me to have a word with your son?’

‘No, he likes you the way you are.’

The last three years had been a difficult time for Catesby personally. He and Frances had continued to drift apart, but they were still friends and sometimes lovers – even though they had both been unfaithful. During an operation aimed at penetrating East German intelligence and getting rid of a double agent, Catesby had an affair with an East German artist. He had almost fallen in love with the woman, but she was killed in the operation – and guilt replaced love.

Another personal tragedy involved the fate of Catesby’s sister, Freddie. She had been sacked from her job as a translator at GCHQ, but Freddie was lucky not to get a long prison sentence. Catesby had long suspected Tomasz, Freddie’s lover, of being an East Bloc Romeo agent. Tomasz was too good to be true – and too handsome and charming for his sister. It was heartbreaking, but Freddie’s mad passion for Tomasz had led her to pass on secret information. When Catesby found evidence of what she had been doing, he destroyed it. In the end it didn’t matter because Freddie was arrested in any case – and then released because a trial would ‘not be in the public interest’. Even though Catesby had risked his career and freedom to protect his sister, she never forgave him for betraying Tomasz.

In the end, Catesby realised that Bone had been manipulating all
the players – like a cat tossing a mouse from paw to paw. Tomasz’s death was convenient and cleared the air for all concerned.

Whether or not Bone had killed Tomasz to protect British interests or to protect his own interests was a question still to be answered. But Bone knew where all the bodies were buried – and Catesby could point to a few fresh graves as well. Bone’s unwavering belief in Kim Philby as a ‘triple agent’ remained a sore point between them. It might have been a genuine belief – or an alibi. Catesby had a view, but kept quiet about it. Bone’s secrets were safe with Catesby – as were Catesby’s with Bone. The terms of the insurance policy were simple: ‘If you grass me, I’ll grass you’.

Meanwhile, despite setbacks in his personal life, Catesby’s career prospered and the promotions came as regular as spring blossom. One of Catesby’s most successful operations had been a sting that busted a nuclear spy ring. The op also trapped Kit Fournier and turned him into a British agent and prisoner. Catesby had always known of Fournier’s dark incestuous secret – and used it to entrap him. The Americans were glad to see the back of Fournier – and accepted the myth that he was missing and probably dead. Fournier’s imprisonment on a remote South Atlantic Island became an SIS legend, but also its most closely held secret.

1 January 1963

It was brutally cold and the roads blocked with snow. Catesby had bought a cottage in a Suffolk village, which was his rural hideaway. It wasn’t too far from where his mother lived in Lowestoft – but not too near either. He needed a bolthole in the countryside he knew and loved – and now he was stuck in that bolthole. Catesby had spent Christmas with his sister and mother and Boxing Day with his estranged wife’s family. Then it happened. It was already cold, but the Arctic finally said, ‘Fuck you, Suffolk’. It was Thursday afternoon, 27 December.

Catesby saw it coming as he was walking back from the Rumburgh Buck. He liked going to a pub full of people who did useful things – like ploughing, looking after livestock, nursing, repairing tractors, cooking school meals and building houses. If you wanted someone to repair your electricity line or unblock your drains, the Rumburgh Buck would be a better place to find them than the common room at All Souls College Oxford – or anywhere in Whitehall. The people in the pub knew that Catesby was a Suffolk person, but they still treated him with suspicion – which is why he left after a single pint of bitter. Billy-No-Mates, he thought, as he set off down the lane with bleak frozen fields on either side. Hunched against the cold east wind, Catesby watched the sky turn a dirty yellow. It was an odd colour for a Suffolk sky. Then it began to snow, not the usual big wet flakes that melted as soon as they hit the ground, but small steely ones – and it didn’t stop.

It was three o’clock in the morning on New Year’s Day and Catesby was alone in his draughty rambling house. He had gone to bed at 10 p.m. on New Year’s Eve and slept through the fireworks at a nearby farm. Midnight on New Year’s was, of course, the ideal time to shoot someone if you didn’t have a silencer for your gun. Catesby ran his fingers over his temples and forehead – there weren’t any holes. Otherwise, it would have been easier to sleep. He put on a dressing gown. It was absolutely freezing. When he
went for a pee, he had to break the ice in the toilet bowl. Catesby went back to bed and crept under heaps of blankets. But he still couldn’t sleep – and it wasn’t just the cold. He got up again and went downstairs. A fire was still smouldering in the inglenook. Catesby picked up an old copy of the
East Anglia Daily Times
. He glanced again at the two leading news items. Harold Macmillan had agreed to buy Polaris missiles from the United States and the Beatles had become the first British band to reach Number One on the American charts. Catesby smiled. It was a trade-off – and, as usual, the Americans had got the better end of the deal. He crunched up the newspaper, piled on kindling and poked the fire back into life.

The early hours of New Year’s Day were always a time for personal reflection. Even though Catesby had moved up the career ladder and was in line for an OBE, his position was precarious. The hoof-beats of the dark knights of comeuppance always echoed in the distance. The OBE was in recognition of the role he had played in helping resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis. Catesby had ping-ponged back and forth between London, Havana and Washington more as a back channel diplomat than as a spy. No one, thought Catesby, would ever know how close the world had come to nuclear war. And he realised that most of the credit for averting the nuclear apocalypse belonged to a KGB general who sacrificed his life and to a submarine officer called Vasili Arkhipov. Unlike war, peace required heroes on both sides.

In the course of his career, Catesby had made a lot of enemies with scores to settle. It probably wasn’t a brilliant idea being alone in a remote rural cottage – especially at night. At first, Catesby had taken precautions. During times of particular paranoia, he set warning devices along the path to his house. The devices varied from tins with stones in them to loud electronic alarms. When the neighbours began to gossip about jealous husbands and London villains that had it in for him, Catesby decided to abandon the warning alarms. Instead he kept his Browning 9mm close at hand, but he wished that he still had his old Webley revolver – they never jammed. The Webley, of course, had blood on it – and Catesby had made sure that it had been melted down.
He didn’t want a forensic team to have a look at it at the eleventh hour.

In a way, the dark knight of death was the one Catesby feared least – and there were times when he would have greeted him with a welcome. But the other dark knights stalking him were the ugly ones, the ones who preferred torture and humiliation to a clean kill. The knights were prison, dismissal, exposure and shame. Catesby had never been a traitor, even though he had covered up for those who were. When shapes changed so often in the mists of bluff and double bluff that Catesby wasn’t always certain what he had done. But he had protected his sister and would never regret that.

Catesby was less of an outsider than he had been in the early years – and the OBE would prove it. Maybe, he thought, a gong went with the house. Catesby had bought the property from a retired colonel who also had an OBE. And now money was no problem either. Catesby, as an SEO, made twice the average male wage – and had little to spend it on. But most important, and satisfying to his vanity, was having influence. He was often co-opted to JIC, Joint Intelligence Committee, and sometimes asked to write reports for the committee, which were thoughtfully discussed. Catesby’s intelligence analyses maintained that the Soviet threat to Britain and Western Europe was greatly exaggerated. His views playing down the Russian threat didn’t make him popular with the barking anti-Commie brigade. But Catesby fastidiously supported his analyses with statistics, facts and constantly updated intelligence. He eventually won over a general and a Tory MP. There were, however, still those who regarded Catesby as a closet Lefty – and probably worse.

He got up and drew the curtains. Catesby reckoned the retired colonel from whom he bought the house might have known more about him than he let on. The colonel, after showing Catesby around the property prior to the sale, winked and touched his nose. He made sure that no one was looking before he unveiled it. The safe was brilliantly hidden. The only gems that Catesby kept in it were documents that he shouldn’t have – and it was time for a New Year’s inventory. It was a serious disciplinary offence
to keep them in his home, but many of the docs were there for Catesby’s own protection – to prove that he hadn’t been acting without authority. Copies of documents like that had a funny way of going missing when there was an enquiry. The important thing about the JIC document was the list of signatures affirming that Catesby’s views had been openly presented.

JOINT INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE REVIEW OF SOVIET MILITARY CAPABILILITIES AND INTENTIONS AGAINST UK AND WESTERN EUROPE

UK EYES BRAVO: STRAP 2 CAN/AUS/US EYES ONLY

LEDGER DISTRIBUTION:

FO – PUSD

CABINET OFFICE

ODA US EMBASSY

CANADIAN HIGH COMMISSION

AUSTRALIAN HIGH COMMISSION

1 DECEMBER 1962

FROM: WILLIAM CATESBY, HEAD OF PRODUCTION SECTION EASTERN EUROPE AND WEST GERMANY, SECRET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE

This estimate reaffirms previous judgements that the USSR does not at present intend to initiate military action against Western Europe and the United Kingdom and is not now preparing for a general war at any particular future date.

During the last ten years there has been a substantial decrease in Soviet troop levels from a high of 5.4 million in 1953 to a middle estimate of 3.8 million today. Khrushchev’s claim of 4.8 million troops is clearly false and in line with previous exaggerations about ICBM capabilities. The infantry and tank divisions deployed in Eastern Europe and the Democratic Republic of Germany are, in most cases, severely under strength. Many of the formations are divisions in name only. The intention seems to be to deceive the West as to actual troop numbers.

There are sixty operational airfields in the Baltic/East German region capable of serving heavy and light bombers. The number of heavy bombers deployed in the region has halved since 1959 and the light bombers are down by a third.

Although there has been a decrease in Soviet conventional forces, there has been an increase in nuclear forces in the region. This development, in the context of fewer tanks and troops, suggests a strategy focused on deterrence and defence. Although there is little or no danger of a deliberate offensive strike from Soviet forces, there is a high danger of accidental war as the result of the USSR misreading Western intentions. The Kremlin is clearly bluffing about Soviet military capabilities. The more astute Soviet and East Bloc intelligence officers are aware that Western intelligence officers know that the Soviet leaders are bluffing. The great fear among Soviet commanders is that the West, having perceived Soviet military weakness, will launch a pre-emptive strike. A Soviet response to a real or falsely perceived imminent attack by the West would completely devastate Britain and Western Europe. It is essential that Western military commanders make absolutely certain that military exercises – or surveillance over-flights of Soviet territory – are not construed as preludes to an attack.