cell?’
‘What do you think?’
Neame weighed up his answer, and took his time about it. Almost half a minute passed before he responded.
‘I think a fairly hefty dose of the latter. To my mind, Eddie had no real ambition to join the Foreign Office, no heart set on a career in government. Bear in mind that he was only eighteen and just out of school. He wasn’t like Kim, who made a great song and dance about everything. Heavens, as I recall, Kim signed up for CUSS thirty seconds after landing in Cambridge.’
‘CUSS?’
‘The Cambridge University Socialist Society. He was so over-the-top the Soviets wondered if he might have been a plant.’
‘And Burgess?’
The mention of his name had a strange, almost melancholy effect on Neame, who looked into his lap and brought his hands together, gently knitting the fingers. In the distance, a young girl laughed.
‘Guy is certainly central to all this,’ he said quietly. ‘He had a huge impact on everybody, not just Eddie. In fact, Eddie writes at length about him in the memoirs. I myself have certainly thought back many times to the conversations I enjoyed with Guy.’
The memoirs. How could Gaddis get hold of them? It seemed a cruel twist of fate that Neame should be sitting on a document which would not only validate ATTILA but radically enhance the quality and historical importance of his own book. There was something of the narcissist in Neame; he was eager to play up his own role in the affair but also keen to taunt Gaddis with his proximity to Crane’s autobiography. Increasingly, it appeared that there would be a drip-feed of information, possibly over many weeks, and nothing Gaddis could do to control it.
‘So you were involved in the political scene yourself?’ he asked. ‘You were studying French as well? You were socializing with Eddie?’
Neame halted the flow of questions with a pained sigh and Gaddis realized that he had moved too fast. He had to learn to allow the story to emerge at its own pace. Neame would continue to manipulate him, certainly, but if Gaddis was patient, he would eventually be rewarded with a complete picture of Crane’s time at Cambridge.
‘Eddie and Guy were the two I was closest to, certainly at Trinity,’ he said. ‘I eventually lost touch with Burgess during the war, although of course one kept up with his exploits. The interesting thing was that he and Eddie were in many ways polar opposites. Where Eddie was self-contained, disciplined, very much a realist, Guy was perpetually drunk, always wearing filthy clothes, living on high ideals. But a marvellous talker. Such control of the language, you know?’
‘I’ve heard,’ Gaddis said. Something regretful in the tone of Neame’s recollections caused him to wonder if he and Burgess had been lovers. The old man’s next remark did nothing to lessen this suspicion.
‘Guy was also, of course, a famous philanderer. What Kim was to the girls, Guy was to the boys. And not just pretty little Cambridge undergraduates. He liked rough trade: truck drivers, working men. Couldn’t get enough of that sort of thing.’
‘Do you think he was involved with Eddie?’
Gaddis might as well have asked if Neame himself was gay.
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘Was Eddie homosexual? He had no children. He never married. I wondered if he was ever romantically involved with Blunt or Burgess?’ He longed to add: ‘Or you, Tom?’ but lacked the courage.
‘How on earth am I supposed to know?’ Neame seemed more embarrassed than angry, as if Gaddis had crossed some threshold of decency.
‘There’s a theory in one of the Blunt biographies that Blunt’s sexuality may have had an influence on his preparedness to betray his country. Homosexuality was illegal in Britain in the 1930s. Therefore any homosexual was, by definition, regarded as a criminal outsider by the state.’
Neame straightened the fabric of his trousers and stared into his lap. ‘That seems a bit far-fetched to me.’ He tried to divert Gaddis with an anecdote. ‘Eddie and I arrived in Guy’s third year. Both of us immediately fell under his spell. It was Guy, for example, who organized the waiters’ strike. Do you know about that?’
‘No.’ Gaddis was lying, but he wanted to hear Neame’s version of events.
‘Quite straightforward, really. At that time, many of the staff who worked behind the scenes at Trinity weren’t paid a salary during the holidays. Guy believed, with some justification, that this was outrageous and, with Eddie’s assistance, persuaded them to down tools.’
‘How did they do that?’
Neame looked annoyed to have been interrupted.
‘Because Guy and Eddie were both, in their different ways, absolutely marvellous with people. Guy could tell you that the sun wasn’t going to come up tomorrow morning and you’d believe him. Eddie was the same. There were any number of reluctant souls among the waiters and kitchen staff but he convinced them not only that it would be in their best interests to strike, but that they would also be in no danger of losing their jobs. He had no guarantee of this, of course, but that was the calibre of the man. If Eddie told you something, you believed him. The whole saga was a rare example of him sticking his head above the parapet. Very few people really knew how central Eddie had been to orchestrating the whole thing.’
‘So who knew the full truth? Burgess? Blunt?’
‘Blunt certainly. He and Guy were inseparable and, as far as I know, on the lookout for recruits all the time. No doubt they tipped off their NKVD controller that Eddie was cut from the right cloth.’
‘That’s all it took? Surely membership of the Party was a pre-requisite for the Russians?’
‘If you say so.’
Gaddis pushed again.
‘Does Eddie write about his recruitment in the document? Does he shed any light on that?’
It was better to refer to the memoirs simply as a document; Gaddis didn’t want to give Neame the impression that he was sitting on material of incalculable value to his investigation.
‘Well, you see, that’s where it gets interesting. The Soviets did a very clever thing, which was probably the reason Eddie was able to survive undetected for as long as he did.’ Another party of tourists, this time Japanese, shuffled past the pew. ‘A gentleman by the name of Arnold Deutsch was tipped off about Eddie by Guy. Have you heard of Deutsch?’
Gaddis had certainly heard of him. Deutsch — known by the codename ‘OTTO’ — had been responsible for the recruitment of the Ring of Five.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Well, Deutsch recruited Eddie, but without telling Burgess or Blunt.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Moscow was worried that the network was already too big. They had Kim, they had Anthony, Guy, Donald and John. All it would take was for one of them to crack and the Brits would be able to dismantle the entire cell. So Eddie was set up on his own. In due course, Cairncross became what they call “conscious” that Crane was an asset, but none of the others, not even Guy, had a clue what was going on. Eddie was given the codename ATTILA. Deutsch told Burgess that he had no interest in working for the Party and that was that. Everybody moved on.’
Gaddis reached out and ran his hand along the wrought-iron radiator beside his chair. He was trying to work out the implications of what Neame had revealed, trying to walk the cat back.
‘That makes sense,’ he muttered, but Neame interrupted him.
‘As things turned out, the Soviets had actually done MI5 a favour.’
‘How’s that?’
The old man appeared to amuse himself with a private thought. It was clear that he enjoyed toying with Gaddis’s appetite for information. ‘Well, that’s another part of the story,’ he replied softly. ‘I’d be jumping ahead if I told you.’
‘Jump away.’
Neame smiled. ‘Oxford first.’
‘Oxford?’
‘Didn’t you know, Doctor?’ Neame turned in his seat, first to the left, then to the right, reassuring himself that they were not being observed. Gaddis could feel another secret coming. ‘The Russians sent Eddie to Oxford.’
