The Dark Chronicles (52 page)

‘I know. There were even rumours after the ceasefire that we would join forces with the Germans and take up arms against you.’

His eyes widened a fraction.

‘Why have you come here?’ he said.

I had rehearsed a speech in the jeep, but suddenly I wasn’t so certain of my convictions. I shut my eyes. The image of Anna in the stretcher swam back into my mind, and I forced myself to imagine Father squeezing the trigger, the bullet entering her…

‘I want to work for you,’ I said.

He stood up. ‘And yet you did not when Anna was alive?’ he said, a touch of anger in his voice. Perhaps realizing this, he stepped forward and placed a hand on my shoulder. ‘I am sorry, but revenge is not a good motivation. It burns out too quickly. It does not persist. And I need people with persistence. With
ideals
.’

‘I have ideals,’ I said. ‘You’re right, I didn’t want to do it when Anna was alive. But I didn’t understand the situation, not fully. I… I’m afraid I didn’t believe what she told me.’ I stared into his face, at the curious snubbed nose and the glinting eyes.

‘But you do now?’

I nodded, willing myself not to cry in front of him. ‘Please,’ I said. ‘Have some faith in me. I am ready to serve…’ But even then, even in that moment, I had been about to say ‘Anna’, not ‘Communism’ or ‘the Soviet Union’.

Yuri paced around the room for a few minutes, his hands steepled together at his lips as he considered my proposal.

‘I want to make sure we are very clear about this before we proceed any further,’ he said, after a while. ‘I need to be certain that you understand the consequences of what you are suggesting. There is no return from this point. Once you have committed to us, we will become your home. Your family.’

I thought of the family I had been born into: Father a murderer, Mother on the brink of insanity. And I thought of Anna, and the family we might have had together had she lived.

‘I am committed,’ I said.

Yuri looked at me for a long while. I held his gaze. ‘You must go to London at once,’ he said finally, and his voice had taken on a quiet hardness. ‘Nobody must ever know you have been in Germany. You will be contacted shortly.’

I was filled with conflicting emotions: elation that he had agreed to take me on, disappointment and puzzlement that it wasn’t to be at once. ‘How will you know where to find me?’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘We will.’ He walked over to the bed and
picked a book from a pile leaning against it. I was surprised to see that it was a selection of poems by W. H. Auden. He opened it and read out one of the lines, then looked across at me. ‘That will be your signal.’

It didn’t seem as if there were anything else to say, so I had shaken his hand and left him. My frustration at his request for me to wait was tempered by the knowledge that I had now set out on the path Anna had wanted for me. I returned to London as instructed, and told everyone I had been visiting my mother in Sweden. A few people asked about Father, and I replied that I hadn’t seen him in over a year. The story soon went around that he had disappeared just after the ceasefire – nobody knew where, or what had happened to him, but as time went by most presumed he had been killed. Eventually, I cleared out his things in Chelsea Cloisters and moved in there myself.

I had expected to find another job fairly easily, but it proved harder than I’d anticipated. This was perhaps partly because I felt very uncomfortable being back in England. After three years in foreign fields, the entire country now seemed to me an ugly braggart: delighted with itself for winning the war, but ignorant of the fact that without the Soviets and the Americans it would never have happened. I hated the glorying in victory, especially as I had seen the terrible state Germany had been left in.

I was a fish out of water in other ways, too. After joining the war late because of my age I had, almost as though making up for lost time, taken part in operations under the auspices of several organizations: the SAS, SOE and a few other irregular units. But all of them had either been disbanded or were about to be, and I wasn’t sure I was cut out for the Service: I was a field agent, and most of the Service chaps I knew were desk men.

I nevertheless applied for a job in the Soviet Section, which was expanding almost by the day. Unbeknownst to me, it was headed up by one of Father’s oldest friends, Colin Templeton. I was given the position, and started work at Broadway Buildings in early February, 1946.

The Section’s entire focus was on obtaining up-to-date information about the Soviet Union: its scientific expertise, intelligence structures and, of course, military plans. Many were convinced that Stalin intended to invade Western Europe. As reliable information was extremely scant, real war crimes investigators in Germany, Austria and elsewhere were being thwarted: many of the senior Nazis they apprehended were swiftly judged by London to be crucial counter-espionage assets, and were exfiltrated, given new names, and pumped for everything they had. But the more I heard about the supposed Soviet threat, the more determined I became to counter it from within – and the more anxious I became about the fact that I had not yet been contacted.

Just as I was starting to wonder if Yuri had simply given me the brush-off, it happened. I was walking down Thurloe Street when I felt something graze my shoulder. Whirling around, I caught sight of a slim man in a grey herringbone coat heading in the opposite direction. As he walked away I felt my pockets, but to my surprise found that something had been added to them rather than subtracted. It was a small visiting card for a café a few streets away. And on the back of it, someone had written in pencil: ‘
It is later than you think. Saturday. 11.00
.’

The line of poetry seemed more ominous now than when Yuri had recited it to me a couple of months earlier. Perhaps as a result, I left the flat at eight o’clock that Saturday morning. The café was within walking distance, but instead I took a succession of buses all over town, repeatedly checking my watch. I had arrived, flustered but certain I had not been tailed, just before eleven, and waited for my contact to arrive. When he did, I realized it was the man in the herringbone coat. He shook me by the hand as though he had known me for a very long time, removed his coat, and ordered a pot of tea.

This was Georgi. He was in his mid-thirties, intelligent, cultured and charming. He had worked in France and Belgium, where he had been responsible for rooting out information about the Nazis’ troop movements. We got on immediately, and over the next few
months met regularly in locations around South Kensington. I once asked him if it wasn’t unwise to meet so close to where I lived, and he had told me that it was by far the safest option: it would be easier to explain my presence if I happened to meet anyone, and the police were less vigilant because it was a genteel neighbourhood with few immigrants. As an additional precaution, we opened every meeting by establishing the cover story for it in the event of any interruption: most of the time he was a Finnish aristocrat who had known my mother in Helsinki. But we never had to use any of the cover stories we prepared: nobody paid us the least attention. We would sit in a corner and play chess or backgammon – he was rather good at both – and he would quietly question me about my work at the office. At that stage there was very little to report, and I had the feeling he already knew everything I told him anyway and was simply testing how much I would reveal to him, and how clearly I could relay information.

At our fourth meeting, Georgi announced that he would cut contact with me for six months, barring emergencies, in which case I was to leave him a message at a dead drop in a cemetery in Southgate. I had immediately feared that I had done something wrong, but he assured me that this was a positive sign, and that it meant that Moscow now trusted me enough to leave me to advance my career without having to watch over my every step.

‘Bide your time,’ he said. ‘Go about your work efficiently, and when we meet again you will have more to tell me.’ As I had watched the back of his coat disappear through the door of the café, I had felt strangely abandoned.

But I had followed his instructions. I had continued with my work in Soviet Section, and slowly but surely was given more responsibilities. Colin Templeton now often invited me to his home, where I met his family. The six months crept by, and then it was time to meet with Georgi once more. He asked about my work, and seemed pleased with my answers. Once again, I didn’t feel I was telling him anything he did not know, but was happy I was finally of some use.

My meetings with Georgi continued in this way until late 1949, when Colin Templeton called me into his office and told me he was being posted to Istanbul as Head of Station, and that he would like me to come along as part of his team. I accepted at once, and left a message for Georgi in the cemetery in Southgate telling him the news. There had been no time for another meeting, as I was due to head out to Turkey immediately.

After nearly four years behind a desk in London I had been looking forward to heading into the field again, and Istanbul didn’t disappoint. The city had been crawling with spies during the war, and it seemed little had changed since. The main concern was the Soviets, with the growing American influence a close second. Turkey had been neutral in the war, by and large, and was now cleverly playing the former combatants off against one another. Despite the plans for democratic elections, the possibility that they might turn to the Soviet Union had everyone worried, and strenuous efforts were being made to convince them to come into the new NATO structure. Britain’s position was that this should happen in conjunction with it joining a separate Middle Eastern security alliance, but the Americans had other ideas. Despite Britain’s efforts to persuade them otherwise, the Turks were coming to the realization that the balance of power was shifting in the world, and that the United States might be better able to provide them with long-term support.

I quickly settled into my position in the Station. I loved being away from London, with its pea-soupers and boiled beef, and immediately immersed myself in the hubbub and intrigue of the city’s back alleys. After a year had passed without any contact from the Soviets, I began to panic. Perhaps Georgi had not picked up my message in Southgate, and they were unaware I had moved to Turkey? But surely he would have checked the drop.

My fears had finally been put to rest just three weeks earlier. I had been wandering around the Grand Bazaar when a small boy had placed a piece of paper in my jacket pocket and run away giggling. I had followed the address to a shop that sold antique
silverware, where I had discreetly been led through to a back room. To my surprise, I found Yuri seated on a pile of silk cushions. He looked much the same as he had in Burgdorf, only his hair was a little greyer and the greatcoat and pyjamas had been replaced with a smart lounge suit.

He had wasted no time in getting to the point. There had been some commotion in Moscow: several agents in the field had been recalled to headquarters for further training. As a result, all the information I had given to date had been reviewed – and been found wanting.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, reeling. ‘Georgi was very pleased—’

‘He was mistaken. Moscow feels you have not yet handed us anything significant.’

‘But I haven’t had anything significant to provide!’ I said. ‘Georgi told me to bide my time until I was more established.’

Yuri gave a thin smile. ‘Moscow is concerned about the time and resources that have been spent on you for such little reward. Unless you can provide a higher grade of material, it is perhaps best that we discontinue our arrangement.’ And with that he announced the time and location of the next meet, then stood, parted the curtains, and disappeared through them.

That next meet was now less than a week away, and I still had nothing of note to report. The simple truth was that, at twenty-six years old and with just five years in the job, I was still far too junior to be given access to any great secrets – and I couldn’t see that situation changing any time soon.

I took a sip of punch and looked up at the villa, wondering again what it was that Templeton might be discussing with the ‘colleagues from London’. They had arrived a couple of hours earlier, not by motorboat like the other guests, but in a scratched-up jeep they had parked in the driveway at the foot of the garden, on the Asian side. Templeton had immediately escorted them inside the house and up to his office, and they hadn’t been seen since.

There had been three of them. William Osborne was one of the
Service’s rising stars: having spent much of the war working in the Middle East, he was now establishing a reputation as an expert in deception operations. Charles Severn, the driver of the jeep, was a new recruit to the Service whom I had known at school, and not much liked. The final member of the party had not been from London at all: the head of Turkish military intelligence, a dapper man with a marvellous moustache who, for reasons I had been unable to unearth, we called ‘Cousin Freddie’. He sometimes came by the office to meet Templeton – but what was so important that he had come to his house?

‘Hello, Dark.’

I looked up to see a young man stretching out his hand. He was dressed in a dazzlingly white short-sleeved shirt and navy-blue Daks, and his fair hair was brushed back with pomade. Despite the addition of several inches in height and a short clipped moustache, he was instantly recognizable as the boy I had last seen nine years earlier.

‘Severn,’ I said, shaking his hand. ‘It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Do you know everyone?’

Severn made his way around introducing himself, and Vanessa blushed as he kissed her hand.

‘Is this your first visit to Istanbul?’ she asked him.

‘Yes,’ he said, settling into a chair.

‘How are you enjoying it?’

He wrinkled his nose. ‘Not much. Rather a scruffy-looking place. I was expecting more, somehow.’

There was an awkward silence, and I wondered whether Templeton had sent him out of the meeting early because he was too junior to hear the rest, or because he hadn’t been able to stand the sound of his voice any longer. Perhaps he was nervous. I asked him if he wanted a drink, and he looked up at me with gratitude. Yes, I decided, it must be nerves. Probably his first mission in the field – I remembered how I had felt on mine.