The Unfortunate Englishman Read online

  It could hardly be a meeting of minds or character . . . the sophisticated Boston millionaire, brought up to unimaginable privilege, versus the Russian peasant. Even age and height were against them. Khrushchev was sixty-seven and clocked in at just over five foot, Kennedy forty-three and six foot tall. Experience mattered more than either statistic. Two years ago Khrushchev had run circles around Nixon, in public and on camera. If the little man decided to get rude or funny or just vulgar no one could keep up. He’d dismissed Nixon as little better than an idiot with, “He shows the Russian people a dream kitchen from some impossible future and expects them all to convert to capitalism. Only Nixon could come up with nonsense like that.”

  “Snap out of it, Joe, you’re daydreaming!”

  Indeed he was.

  “Now . . . the quid pro quo. What’s the dope on George Blake?”

  “The dope, Jack?”

  “The damage. You guys must have been doing damage assessment at the speed of light.”

  “It may be that Blake has cost us everything. We are getting sod all out of Russia. We are Russia-blind, to coin a phrase.”

  “Because you no longer have any agents that Blake hasn’t blown to the Russians?”

  “Well . . . Blake didn’t know everything. We still have the odd one.”

  Wilderness wasn’t about to qualify “odd” and was pleased Dashoffy didn’t ask.

  Instead he said, “That’s fuck all quid pro my quo. You owe me Joe, you owe me.”

  §58

  London: May 17

  “Joe? Would you mind popping down to the tech room?”

  “Pop”—such a toff word. The concealment of whatever inconvenience might be caused in a nonsense syllable implying that it was all low key, harmless even, when the opposite might well be the case.

  “Tom Radley’s in town. Bit of film I’d like you to see.”

  Yes, it would be a “bit,” wouldn’t it? A word in the Burne-Jones vocabulary that might span an ocean.

  Ten minutes later Wilderness went down to the basement, to the room with no windows, where stills and moving footage could be projected.

  He’d met Tom Radley, Berlin station, half a dozen times—but Berlin was not his “beat” any more. This would not be a German matter. Burne-Jones would not have sent for him about anything German. He was on his own turf with Germany, but affected a form of bafflement when it came to Russia and regarded Wilderness as his repository of knowledge.

  Burne-Jones said, “We’ve been looking at photographs Tom’s brought in. Not the best either of us has ever seen, bit blurry to say the least, and neither of us is quite as good at Russian as you.”

  Wilderness shook hands with Radley and took his seat. If Radley’s Russian was less than good, what was he doing running the Berlin station?

  They watched the thirty slides through once, and then again, slowly, one by one.

  “We know what they are, just a few gaps here and there . . . and I wondered if you concurred.”

  “Concurred with what?”

  “They’re Soviet Ministry of Defence documents dealing with spy-plane flights over the last five years.”

  “Yep. Reports from pilots, ground control, radar operators. Sightings, trajectories . . . cock-ups.”

  “Cock-ups?”

  “I meant . . . these are the flights that they didn’t manage to shoot down. The flights Eisenhower wasn’t boasting about and Khrushchev wasn’t mentioning until he actually had shot one down.”

  “Ah . . . then we do agree.”

  “Useful all the same.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, they tell us nothing about Russia per se, but did we know the Americans had flown quite so any missions? These papers seem to be recording at least twenty.”

  “Ah,” Burne-Jones hesitated. “We did know. In fact the missions between 1959 and early 1960 were flown by us.”

  “What?” Radley spoke for the first time since greeting.

  Burne-Jones flicked the lights back on.

  “I’m sorry, Tom, but I think there’s nothing here of any use. We know all this . . . because it was us.”

  Radley looked deeply unhappy, and all he said was “bugger.”

  “Ike didn’t want to risk U-2 flights over Russia while Nixon was visiting. All the same he didn’t want them suspended, so the PM agreed to RAF pilots flying them out of one of our bases in Turkey. Gave Ike the deniability he needed. The minute we knew Powers had been shot down we pulled our chaps out of Turkey and sent them off on extended leave. Free holiday on the Costa del wotsit for some of them, and there were a couple of gongs handed out in New Year Honours, with the vaguest citations. It was all on a need-to-know basis . . . and you didn’t need to know.”

  “So our man has wasted his time?”

  “’Fraid so.”

  “I may be a bit in the dark here,” Wilderness said. “But who exactly is our man?”

  “Geoffrey Masefield,” Burne-Jones replied.

  Wilderness said nothing to this, kept his thoughts to himself, just nodded and asked for the lights to be turned off and slides 28 and 29 to go up again.

  “They’re the blurriest of them all,” Burne-Jones said.

  Slide 30 had been nothing more than a black smudge.

  Wilderness stood up, walked to the screen and tried to make sense of the Russian typeface, odd at the best of times to Western eyes, odder seen madly out of focus.

  He had been wondering what part tact might play in what he had to say. It would be a typical Burne-Jones ploy to have got him in just to avoid having to say something himself. A way of sweetening whatever dose he might hand out to Radley.

  “I could be wrong, but these two appear to deal with the flight of April ninth last year.”

  He looked at Burne-Jones and Radley, waiting, knowing he most certainly could not be wrong and that saying he might be was all the tact he was prepared to display.

  “Quite possibly,” said Burne-Jones.

  “The flight Khrushchev has mentioned precisely once and the Americans not at all. In all the rounds of recriminations and fudges amounting to somewhat less than an apology . . . this has been utterly eclipsed by the U-2 that was shot down on May Day last year just north of Chelyabinsk.”

  “Your point, Joe?”

  “In a moment. The RAF flew flights into early 1960 you said. The Americans climbed back into the cockpit when exactly?”

  “End of January.”

  “So, an American flew the April mission. The last one that succeeded. That’s why neither side will talk about it. Khrushchev does not want to admit his people failed to shoot it down; Ike didn’t want the Russians to know what he’d got. Now, let me ask this: as we flew missions for the Americans was the data gleaned shared with us?”

  “I can’t answer that, you know damn well I can’t.”

  “I’ll take that as a maybe. And let me further ask . . . have the results of the April ninth mission been shared with us?”

  Burne-Jones hesitated a fraction too long before saying, “Can’t answer that either.”

  “I’ll take that as a no.”

  Radley said, “Joe, I’m beginning to feel like the outsider here. I brought my own bat and ball to the game and I don’t get to play. What are you saying?”

  Wilderness pointed to slide 28.

  “If this were a clear shot I’d be certain, but as it is . . . call it an educated guess . . . the Russians have recorded the flight path . . . and the flight path would tell us what the Americans aren’t . . . that is where they think the Russian missile sites are, and the fact that the Russians have not raised all hell about this, the way they have about May Day and Chelyabinsk, tells me the Americans found them. Shooting down Gary Powers let Khrushchev go on the attack knowing full well the USA would not be boasting about the flight that took
place three weeks before. It suits everybody. America keeps its film secret and Khrushchev avoids looking like an idiot in the eyes of his own politburo. The USA now knows where the Soviet ICBM launch sites are, Khrushchev knows they know but is able to trumpet shooting down a U-2 as his success and their failure.”

  “I’m sorry to appear dense, Joe,” Radley said, “but where are their ICBM sites?”

  “I don’t know, Tom. Our allies aren’t telling us and I can’t read any of the words after ‘Пермь’, Perm. You’re going to have to ask our Geoffrey to photograph the pages again. Think of it as spying on a friend.”

  “Bugger,” said Radley, as he was wont.

  §59

  Wilderness contrived to be in the lobby as Radley was leaving.

  “Are you in London for long, Tom?”

  “Just overnight, staying with my mother in Highgate.”

  “Oh,” said Wilderness. “I’m going your way. Can I give you a lift?”

  If Radley had said Croydon or Ealing, Wilderness would still have offered the lift.

  As they rounded Russell Square he cut through the small talk and said, “When did you decide to switch Masefield from observing to ­being a courier?”

  “I didn’t. In fact he quite surprised me. He suddenly turned up in Berlin with a roll of microfilm in March, after his third visit. Said he’d had to pay for it, asked for money.”

  “You paid him?”

  “Burne-Jones approved two hundred. Bit of a cock-up. He clearly didn’t know how to use a Minox and every single frame was practically black. But he seems to have got the hang of it now.”

  “You gave him a Minox?” Wilderness hoped he had kept any note of incredulity out of his voice.

  “No, no. I didn’t. That was another surprise. He seems to have gone out and bought his own. Useful. Initiative even—after all, he nips in and out of Moscow a couple of times a month now.”

  “How much bloody indium does Russia have? Has he bought the lot?”

  “Oh, he’s onto unobtainium now . . . he reckons Russia is sitting on tons of the stuff . . . an almost infinite supply.”

  Radley, clearly, had no idea when his leg was being pulled—but Wilderness admired Masefield’s cheek all the same in perpetrating such a schoolboy spoof.

  “And you’ve gone on paying him?”

  “Well . . . I’ll go on paying him . . . Burne-Jones has approved that . . . I’ll go on paying him . . . and he’ll go on paying his source as long as he delivers. Two hundred a pop. Hardly a fortune.”

  §60

  In the morning, Wilderness was waiting for Burne-Jones, sitting in his office nursing a cup of strong black coffee.

  “I’d’ve called you at home, but . . .”

  “I know. Wives. I appreciate you not calling. There are times we must appear like a conspiracy to the two of them.”

  Wilderness was damn sure they did.

  “This is about Masefield, I take it?”

  “It’s as much about Radley as him. Why did you let Tom turn Masefield from passive to active? You wanted someone just looking around, you said.”

  “All looking around got us was pretty photographs of the onion domes of St. Basil’s, the changing of the guard at Lenin’s tomb and so forth.”

  “Well. We both knew he wouldn’t get within a hundred miles of Chelyabinsk.”

  “Can’t deny that. All the same I felt I had to let him try . . . and then he turns up with this.”

  “He was approached?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Radley mentioned a source, and his source is?”

  “Hang on, these long names always tire me out . . . Grigory Grigor­yevich Matsekpolyev. Professor of physics at the Leningrad thingumajig. Their top man, or so he says, in . . . trans . . . trans . . . ”

  “Transuranics. It means all the radioactive elements heavier than uranium . . . neptunium, plutonium, americium and so on. What’s odd is that I’ve never heard the name before. Doesn’t ring any bells. That big a fish and he’s new to me? Seems odd. What do the files say about him?”

  “Nothing. We have no file on him. There are articles by him in half a dozen languages in the science journals but beyond that we know nothing about him. If he’d been to the odd boffin conference anywhere beyond the Warsaw Pact we’d have a file. But he hasn’t. I rang a pal at the Cavendish and, needless to say, he knew him. Met him in Leningrad a couple of times . . . but asking boffins to report on anyone is pissing into the wind . . . violates their scientific integrity. Or something.”

  “Or something? And so we have . . . nothing? And yet this bloke told our Geoffrey he’s their top man. Is he just boasting?”

  “Joe, George Blake cost us pretty well our whole operation east of Berlin. It’s hardly surprising we have nothing on this bloke. It now appears we’ve been getting nothing but rubbish from Russia for years. Our people have been rounded up or turned and we’ve been fed porridge.”

  “Then it’s possible Masefield is being set up right now. They’re giving us stuff we already know. It looks like porridge to me.”

  “To be precise, Joe, in fact to be precise in your own words, it’s not that we know—as you have pointed out there are things on those pages we don’t know, but as the Russians think we surely do it’s information they have nothing to lose by imparting—it’s only that they think we know.”

  “You just lost me.”

  “I don’t think Masefield is being set up and nor does Tom. I think it more likely to be a matter of his source not knowing what to give him, and Masefield not knowing what to ask for. That can be fixed. For now, I prefer your first idea, that there is gold dust on those two muddy frames you suggested he re-took.”

  “I suggest. You order.”

  “Meaning?”

  “It’s putting our man at risk.”

  “No risk no gain.”

  “And what do we have to gain?”

  “As you said, if we can read the flight path of the April ninth U-2, we know what the Americans were looking for.”

  “It would be easier to ask them.”

  “No . . . can’t do that. Special relationship isn’t that special.”

  It crossed Wilderness’s mind to ask what the special relationship amounted to if they could no longer exchange information, but he said nothing.

  “Let me,” Burne-Jones went on, “ask you. Where do you think that plane went after Perm?”

  “Plesetsk, up on the Arctic Circle near Archangel.”

  “And if I ask you ‘Why Plesetsk?’ you may answer without teaching your father-in-law to suck eggs.”

  “Whatever ICBMs the Russians have will be of limited range—a disadvantage they will surely overcome with improvements in rocketry—but in the meantime their only option is to move the missile closer to its target and, short of opening a base in Toronto, their best bet is to get into the Arctic Circle and send missiles over the pole. In that respect Plesetsk is well placed. Only six hundred odd miles from Moscow, not too close to the Finnish border. Further east and their communications would be stretched . . . and we know they’ve been laying rail track in that direction. I may be wrong, but it will be somewhere like Plesetsk and on pretty much the same latitude.”

  “Suddenly I can taste raw egg. But . . . no matter.”

  “Then you might as well accept my guess and let Masefield off the hook.”

  “We must let him try again. We really must.”

  “Blake?”

  “Blake?”

  “Is this about national pride, perhaps only Service pride? You said it. George Blake has rolled up our Russian operation like an old rug in some Turkish market. You, that is we, want sources inside Russia, we want ‘our man in Moscow’ . . . we want to be able to tell ourselves, as we are made to look like a bunch of twats at Blake’s trial, that we still have so
mething . . . anything. So we put in place the first man we can, who has fuck all going for him.”

  “A harsh appraisal, Joe. Harsh. Masefield has one rare quality going for him . . . innocence. Not a career agent. Below the radar.”

  “You mean no track record, no experience.”

  “Joe, all caveats duly noted. But I say again, we must let him try. We really must.

  “The U-2 photographs are not the only thing he’s brought us. Matsekpolyev took him round a metals refinery in Estonia, he got a look at their indium processing, for what it’s worth—only a cover story after all—but he’s confirmed that they’re enriching uranium. And that’s a gem. That’s close to priceless. OK, it wasn’t Chelyabinsk, but we also have the photographs he took. Managed to shoot two rolls inside Sillamäe. They’re both confusing and inventive. Some very interesting shots, we’re still analysing.

  “Ostensibly the Russians are refining indium and a few other metals. But now we know what they’re really up to. More than enough enriched uranium every year to keep their weapons programme going. We’d never have got anyone else in there. His innocence worked for him. And if we’d sent a career agent, a man like you—or worse, a man like me—well . . . would either of us have been able to tell a uranium enrichment plant from a Tizer bottling plant?”

  “That’s the part that makes sense. This doesn’t—where did Grigory Grigoryevich Matsekpolyev, professor of physics in Leningrad, get hold of papers on the U-2 flights, presumably housed at the Ministry of Defence in Moscow?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “Alec, it’s a trap.”

  “I cannot agree.”

  “Tom’s story doesn’t ring true. Wouldn’t you expect a professor of physics to be an idealist? Yet I gather we are paying for these photographs. It’s a trap.”

  “I say again, I can’t agree with you on that.”

  “Suit yourself. If they catch him what’s another dull, little Englishman more or less?”

  “You don’t like Masefield much, do you?”

  “I have no feelings about our Geoffrey. It’s Radley I don’t like.”