A Very British Ending (Catesby Series) (8 page)

‘Who betrayed him? It might have been his Mongol translator, who subsequently disappeared with two thousand kilos of gold – or a Bolshevik agent hidden in the ranks.’

‘Was it,’ ventured Catesby, ‘a good idea to invade Siberia?’

‘The peasants of Siberia were ready to rise up against Bolshevism. My kinsman proclaimed Siberia a sovereign Russian land under Emperor Mikhail Alexandrovich.’

Catesby thought it pointless to add that Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich had been executed well before von Ungern-Sternberg’s invasion of Siberia.

His host shrugged. ‘Perhaps his actions were ill timed. The Siberian uprising never took place. He was betrayed and handed over to the Red Army on 22 August 1921. He was executed by the Cheka on the fifteenth of September. He was ambushed while riding at the head of a column of his most loyal followers and it happened too suddenly to fight back. They were starving; for weeks their only food had been grass and the flesh of lame horses. They say he was gaunt and naked at the end.’ The host picked up the yellow Buddhist cord bearing the amulets and talismans. ‘This was all he was wearing when they captured him.’

Catesby stared at his host for a long second. When the explanation didn’t come, he said, ‘Is it not odd?’

‘What?’

Catesby nodded at the talismans. ‘That the Cheka returned those to you. I didn’t realise that they were in the habit of returning personal belongings to the next of kin.’

His host gave a sly smile. ‘I have my connections. The Soviet Union is one of the world’s most corrupt regimes – and that is why it is about to fall.’

‘And what will replace it?’

‘Monarchy, of course. Not the feeble sort you have in England, but absolute monarchy. It is the world’s most natural and civilised form of government. All our great monuments have been built under kings and queens – the pyramids, the cathedrals, the Potala Palace in Tibet. And all our great works of art too – S hakespeare didn’t write his plays in a socialist republic.’

Catesby wasn’t going to alienate his host with counter-arguments. He regarded him as an agent, however mad, to be humoured and milked.

‘My kinsman was right. It must begin with the restoration of the great Khan’s empire – a movement spreading from Mongolia and Tibet. Let me get a map and I will show you the plan.’

The man returned with an ancient atlas where Leningrad was still Petrograd and where the North Sea was the German Ocean. He described a pincer movement of new Mongol hordes heading west while Baltic, Ukrainian and Polish monarchists pressed eastwards. Pointing to Warsaw, he said, ‘The
szlachta
are fearsome horsemen, almost the equal of the Cossacks.’

Never, thought Catesby, write off an agent as mad and useless. ‘How well do you know the Polish aristocracy?’

‘Very well, but many of them are mad and unreliable.’

That seemed to describe his sister’s boyfriend, thought Catesby. It was worth a try. ‘Does the name Tomasz Król ring a bell?’

The host gave a hearty laugh.

‘You do know him.’

‘Tomasz Król is a pretender. His claim to be a member of the
szlachta
is exaggerated. He cannot be trusted.’

‘Can you tell me more?’

‘I don’t think so – not yet.’

Catesby racked his brain for another German equivalent, but
Der Elefant im Zimmer
was the only one he could recollect. He looked directly at his host. The blue eyes were growing madder. ‘What,’ said Catesby, ‘did you do in the war?’

‘I fought.’

‘For whom?’

‘For European civilisation and against barbarism.’

Catesby struggled to hide his disgust and revulsion. His host belonged to a cult that glorified violence. You couldn’t defeat them with words, but only with violence. London’s finest hour was when the heroes of Cable Street drove Mosley and the Black-shirts out of the East End with fists and bricks. But at the moment, Catesby’s job was spying. The fighting might come later.

‘How did you find out about the attempt to murder me?’

His host picked up the last piece of
khorkhog
and slowly macerated the meat as if the food of the Mongolian nomads was helping him think. He finally wiped his mouth and spoke. ‘I heard rumours that you were considered troublesome in some quarters. One has to occasionally make tactical alliances. Among those who wanted you removed were staunch and fierce anti-Communists – who had, in their own way, been fierce warriors in their lost cause.’

Catesby detected echoes of the Gehlen Org.

‘I now regret that I did not intervene to prevent the attempt on your life?’

‘Why?’

His host smiled. ‘You are a Catesby – a descendant of England’s most noble family.’

Catesby felt his stomach churn. He ought to have changed his name by deed poll.

‘Your ancestor tried to overthrow a regime that began England’s degeneration into a nation of shopkeepers and sly merchants. Your country’s break with Rome threw away a thousand years of civilisation. Catesby, Fawkes, Percy, Wintour, Keyes and the others were noble knights fighting to restore England to its proper place in the Holy Roman Catholic Empire. Had they succeeded, England and Spain together would have conquered the new worlds for monarchy and not profit.’

Catesby wished there were something stronger than fermented mare’s milk. His host’s interpretation of history wasn’t easy to take in with a clear head. But he didn’t want to express scepticism and lose him.

His host smiled. ‘A lot of your fellow Englishmen, Protestant shopkeepers too busy counting every last penny in their tills, would not understand what I’m talking about, but you do.’

Catesby smiled back. ‘Have you any brandy?’

‘I believe I have a Frapin Grand Cru cognac. Please wait a moment while I fetch it.’

Catesby didn’t like being left alone in the room with von Ungern-Sternberg. There was something hypnotic as well as demented about his eyes. Catesby knew he would never fall under the spell of such monsters, but he understood why many did. It flattered the ego to be part of an elite secret order. Indeed, it was even part of the allure that attracted many to the Secret Intelligence Service. Catesby’s own boss in SIS, Henry Bone, had once given him a priceless piece of advice: ‘You must never forget, William, that most of our colleagues are mad.’

His host came back clanking two enormous tulip-shaped glasses and a dusty bottle. As he poured, the night was shattered by the steam-horn of a Rhine barge. Catesby refrained from quoting Heine. The poet’s humane liberal politics would have been out of place.

‘There are a few things,’ said his host in a tone that was low and conspiratorial, ‘that I must tell you.’

Catesby waited and watched as his host sipped his brandy. His eyes remained alert, fixed and unblinking above the huge glass.

‘Your country is heavily infiltrated by Soviet agents at the very highest level.’ The piercing whistle of a train both mocked and underlined his words.

‘I have,’ said Catesby offering encouragement, ‘always suspected that.’

‘Would you like to copy their names down?’

Catesby shook his head. ‘I’ve got a good memory.’

The host started with a list of Labour politicians, the usual suspects routinely bandied about by right-wing disinfo, but he also added a Conservative and a Liberal. The host then spat out the name of a novelist, whom he described as ‘a Communist pretending to be a Catholic.’ He then launched into an attack on a Scottish poet who had indeed been a member of the Communist Party – but then was thrown out of the Communist Party for being a Scottish nationalist and thrown out of the Scottish Nationalist Party for being a Communist. If anyone, thought Catesby, would
fight tooth and nail against a Soviet takeover of Britain, it would be that awkward squad poet, Hugh MacDiarmid. Every significant trade union leader was, of course, name-checked. The most disturbing list contained Catesby’s own SIS colleagues – one of which he also suspected. Catesby was especially concerned that his host knew the names of some very secret people. The fires of paranoia were easy to light. The list of Communist subversives ended with a Church of England bishop.

‘How,’ said Catesby, ‘did you find out this information?’

‘As I said before, the Soviet hierarchy is corrupt even unto itself. The Soviet Union is a rotten tree ready to be pushed over. The Caucasus, the Ukraine, the Baltic and the Islamic south are ready to revolt and the Red Army will not be able to stop them.’

‘But an autocratic Tsar would?’

‘Of course – and, by the way, Stalin will be dead in less than eighteen months.’

Catesby took the last bit with a great pinch of salt. He was ready to leave and stood up. For the first time he addressed his host in English, ‘Thank you for a most enjoyable and informative evening.’

‘And thank you for coming.’

Catesby continued the formalities and small talk in English. His host was far from fluent, but Catesby detected what he was looking for – a slight American accent.

Catesby declined the help of his host in finding his way out. He was careful not to step on to a ‘staircase that wasn’t there’ and was relieved when he found himself in the cold night air. He felt that he had spent two hours swimming in a cesspit. As he opened the car door, she loomed out of the shadows. Catesby wondered where ‘the niece’ had been while they were dining. Had she been waiting there the whole time? She suddenly extended her right arm in a clenched fist salute and shouted something in Chinese – a language Catesby didn’t know. She remained rigid like a soldier on parade and then shouted again in English: ‘The East is Red! Long live Chairman Mao!’

Catesby gave an ideologically non-committal wave and got
in his car. The drive back to Bonn was going to be long and thoughtful.

Catesby looked at Gerald who had just entered the office carrying a folder bearing the parallel red stripes that denoted top secret. ‘Have you signed the card for Miss Greenwood?’ asked Catesby.

‘Yes.’

‘And I wouldn’t mind a bob or two as your contribution to the flowers and bath stuff.’

‘Not D marks?’

‘No, I got the stuff from the NAAFI.’

Gerald searched his pocket and put a half crown on Catesby’s desk.

‘Thanks.’

‘Cheers.

‘What else have you got for me, Gerald?’

‘Can I ask a question first?’

Catesby yawned.

‘Why did you wait until after your visit to give the baron a butcher’s?’

‘I don’t want to frighten him off. If he knew that someone like you was poking around in the undergrowth he might have cancelled the invite.’

‘You thought the
Schloss
was a dodgy one, didn’t you?’

Catesby nodded. ‘Not the castle, but him being in it.’

Gerald opened the file. ‘This wasn’t easy. The owners of the castle no longer live in Germany – and the person representing them refused to provide a forwarding address. In fact, they refused to talk to me at all until I went back with a frightening
Polizei
type from the BfV.’

Catesby doodled BfV on his notepad and drew an arrow from it pointing east. The BfV –
Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz
– was the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the West German equivalent of MI5. ‘I wish,’ said Catesby, ‘you hadn’t done that without asking me.’

Gerald gave a sly smile. ‘I think I know why.’

‘I bet you do. Why?’

‘The BfV have been heavily infiltrated by the HVA.’ Gerald was referring to the
Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung
, the foreign intelligence branch of the East German Security Service.

‘And you thought you were being really clever?’

‘Yes, and that’s why I used Fritz the Violin.’

‘Fucking hell.’ Catesby winced. Fritz the Violin, a BfV officer who played and made his own violins, was under high suspicion of being a double agent, but they didn’t arrest him because they hoped leaving him free would lead to others.

‘And it paid off.’ Gerald handed Catesby a piece of paper with a typed name and an address in Paraguay.

‘If they’re not careful, they’re going to blow Fritz’s cover.’ Catesby closed his eyes and tried to piece together the chess moves involved. The East German intelligence service was not being helpful and idealistic by exposing a Nazi on the run. They wanted to smear the West Germans for protecting war criminals – and the smears were not completely untrue. The HVA also wanted to cause friction and suspicion between the Western intelligence services.

‘Have you got it now?’ said Gerald.

‘This is dangerous. We can’t be suspected of cooperating with any East Bloc intelligence service, even if we have mutual interests – like stopping the earth being destroyed by a giant meteor.’

‘Why?’

‘Because the Americans will use it against us and start shouting about Reds under the bed.’

‘Or in the bed.’

‘That too. Okay, let’s go back to the beginning.’ Catesby waved the piece of paper with the Paraguay address. ‘How did you get this?’

Gerald smiled. ‘No dead letter box, no brush pass or clandestine RV – it arrived in the post.’

‘Where from?’

‘It had a Bremen postmark.’

Another piece of paranoia bait, thought Catesby. But probably just a coincidence. ‘Destroy the envelope, but file the letter.’

‘Sure, boss.’

‘Tell me about the castle.’

‘The agent responsible for letting the
Schloss
finally started spilling the beans after some ungentle persuasion from Violin Fritzie. The person who rented it was a woman…’

‘Did she look Asian?’

‘No,’ Gerald looked at his notes, ‘she was about fifty and very glamorous – tall, blue-eyed. She spoke fluent German, but with a slight accent – probably American or Canadian. She said they – the people she represented – wanted to rent the castle as a film set.’

‘For a remake of
Frankenstein
or
Dracula
?’

‘She didn’t say, but the let was for two months.’

‘How did she pay? In American dollars?’

Gerald smiled and shook his head.

‘You’re really full of yourself, aren’t you?’