Cayle himself seemed typecast for this equivocal role. He was a large, loose-limbed man of indeterminate middle-age, with broad sloping shoulders, a substantial stomach that was mostly muscle, and a beak-shaped nose which had been broken twice so that it now resembled the end of a can-opener. As always — and often to the dismay of his superiors — he was dressed comfortably, like a man who permanently travels light.
They had left the Fields, and Hennison headed him down some steps into a smoky vault full of sawdust and corpulent men with loud laughs. A waiter in a white apron led them past rows of wine casks to a reserved table in an alcove. Hennison suggested smoked salmon sandwiches, and after deliberating over the wine list, chose a Puligny Montrachet, without consulting Cayle.
There was a pause. Hennison folded his hands on the table and smiled. His eyes were the colour of weak tea. But deceptively weak, Cayle decided. The man had a brisk, solicitous manner which Cayle instinctively distrusted.
‘You said just now you might be able to help me, Mr Hennison.’
‘Help you? You mean the book?’ His smile brightened. ‘Yes, of course! But allow me first to ask you a question, Barry. The story in your paper seemed to imply that you believe Philby had accomplices.’
Cayle grinned. ‘You don’t want to believe everything you read in the papers, Mr Hennison. But what’s the question?’
‘Do you think there’s still something wrong about the Philby case?’
‘Wrong? It bloody stinks.’
‘From a newspaperman’s point of view?’ said Hennison. ‘Or a novelist’s?’
‘From just about any point of view. The whole story doesn’t hang together. I’ve read up all the Press reports and books on the case, and they add up to asking more questions than they answer.’ He broke off, while the waiter poured some wine for Hennison to taste.
‘Are you suggesting, then, that there was an official cover-up in the case?’ Hennison said at last, no longer smiling.
‘I’m not suggesting it. I’m stating it as a bloody fact. Not only was there a cover-up, but it’s still going on!’ He had Hennison’s full attention now. ‘Three young Englishmen in their early twenties — Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, and Harold Adrian Russell Philby. All recruited by the Russkies at the same time, back in the Thirties, from the same university and the same upper middle-class background. But the coincidence doesn’t stop there. When each of those three lads gets finally rumbled, they all somehow just manage to slip through the net, and next thing we know, they’re being given the red carpet in Moscow. In Kim Philby’s case, he got the full treatment, including a top gong — the Order of the Red Banner — plus his head on a bloody postage stamp. There’s fame for you!’
‘Of course, one must admit,’ said Hennison, ‘that a full-dress trial for any one of them would have proved highly embarrassing — particularly in front of our American friends.’
‘Sure,’ said Cayle. ‘And even more so if it had got out that the three of ’em hadn’t been acting alone.’
‘The old canard of the Fourth Man?’ Hennison smiled blandly and shook his head. ‘I feel that story’s been around too long. If there’d been anything in it, somebody would surely have exposed it by now?’
‘Plenty of us have tried,’ said Cayle. ‘As you know, my paper was the one that first broke the story back in the late Sixties. I was never directly involved in it, but I got talking to the reporters working on it. It wasn’t the facts that interested me so much — it was the fantastic efforts made by the British authorities to try and kill the story. You know — those bowler-hatted bods who describe themselves in Who’s Who as being attached to the Ministry of Defence. Their first line of attack was to treat the whole project as a bad joke, putting it around that Philby had been just a drunken bum of no importance whatever.
‘Well, when that didn’t pay off, they changed tack and said that Philby had been far too important. They tried to warn the editor off on security grounds. They even started a smear campaign, saying that the reporters working on the story were Communist subversives, and that the whole project was just a carefully staged Moscow propaganda stunt. At the same time they let it get around, by whispering in the right ears, in the right clubs, that the big-wigs on the paper’s managerial staff could kiss goodbye to their CBEs if the story ever got into print.
‘But when that didn’t work, they started playing rough. First they slapped on the old “D” notice, which used to be the Government’s nice way of telling a newspaper to shut up, without actually looking as though they were guilty of censorship. The editor took the unprecedented step of disregarding the Notice. But in the end, of course, the usual soggy old British compromise was reached. Whitehall and the FO were allowed to read all the galleys before they went to Press, and cut out anything they didn’t like. And when the story finally did appear, it certainly made the British Security Services look pretty bloody silly. But as for containing anything really damaging, all that came out were the unanswered questions. And they’re still unanswered.’
Hennison inclined his head and smiled at the middle of the table. ‘I don’t want to sound discouraging, Barry. But what you’ve told me is hardly proof of the kind of conspiracy you’ve suggested. I’m referring, of course, to the existence
