that he was a double agent for MI6. Which was he?’
‘Both.’
Gaddis put his elbows on the table, his head in his hands and stared across at Neame, on the edge of losing his temper. He was going to have to think of another way of paying Min’s school fees, another way of paying the tax. He would have to write a book about oligarchs, pitch a bloody documentary about Abramovich to the BBC. Neame’s testimony was about as reliable as Peter Wright’s.
‘What do you mean “both”, Tom?’
It was the first time that Gaddis had raised his voice against him. Neame placed his walking stick against the wall and finished his pint with a gingerly sip. The bowl of soup had at last been carried away by the landlady.
‘After the war, Eddie suffered a crisis of conscience.’ Neame was speaking slowly, crisply, but without a hint of ill-feeling; it was as if he understood Gaddis’s frustration and wanted him to feel reassured. ‘He bitterly regretted his association with the Soviets. With the exception of some of the ULTRA intelligence, he felt that he should not have passed Allied information to Moscow. He could see the direction that Stalin had taken and didn’t like it. So, as soon as Guy and Donald had disappeared in ’51, he turned himself in.’
Gaddis felt a faint pulse of hope, life coming back to a dead circuit.
‘Eddie had a close friend in MI5, a man by the name of Dick White. I’m sure you’ve heard of him. Director B, counter-espionage. Went on to become Director-General of the Security Service, then Chief of the SIS. He was the golden boy of the post-war generation in British intelligence and therefore precisely the right man for Eddie to approach with his plan.’
A window cleaner had appeared at the far side of the lounge, working on the exterior of the pub. He was in his late twenties and had a pair of iPod headphones plugged into repeatedly pierced ears. Neame saw him and gestured to the landlady, who approached him with the deference of a lady-in-waiting attending to the needs of an ailing monarch.
‘Yes, love. What can I do for you?’
She put a hand on Neame’s shoulder and Gaddis was afforded a glimpse of his life at the nursing home: the humiliation of being treated as a child by carers flushed with good intentions.
‘Your window cleaner,’ Neame asked. ‘Is he local by any chance?’
The landlady looked back across the room as the man swiped a set of French doors with a chamois leather.
‘Who? Danny?’
‘Danny, yes. Has he worked for you before?’
Gaddis could see what Neame was doing. He wanted to check the window cleaner’s credentials. Was he bona fide or MI5 surveillance?
‘Yes, love. Lives just down the road. Been looking after us for years. You need someone to clean your windows?’
Neame smiled gratefully. ‘Well, if you can recommend him, that would be enormously kind.’ It was an utterly convincing performance. ‘Could you fetch his number?’
‘Of course, love.’
And the landlady walked off, leaving Neame assured that their table was not being bugged.
‘As I was saying,’ he continued. There was no acknowledgement of the exchange which had just taken place: not a sideways glance, not even a knowing smile. ‘White was an old friend of Eddie’s from the war. Eddie went to him and told him what he had done. It was a private conversation which took place at the Reform Club. It constituted a full confession.’
‘Full to what extent?’
‘Everything he had ever done. Every name, every agent, every Soviet controller. He gave them Wynn, he gave them Maly, he gave them Cairncross.’
‘I thought Cairncross confessed in ’51?’
‘That’s what the history books would have you believe. He did, but only after Eddie exposed him.’
‘And Blunt? Philby?’
‘Sadly not. Because ATTILA had been ring-fenced by the NKVD at Trinity, in isolation from the Ring of Five, Eddie had no idea that Kim was working for Moscow. He thought Anthony was an art scholar, for God’s sake. We all did. He only knew for certain about Guy, and of course it was too late to alert London to Burgess and Maclean. They were already drinking vodka in Derjinsky Square. No, Eddie’s real area of expertise was Oxford.’
‘So he gave White the names in the ring? He gave them the Floud brothers, Jennifer Hart? That’s why it was rounded up?’
‘Speculation,’ Neame muttered, taking a stern gaze back to the window cleaner. Gaddis heard the squeak of cloth on glass. ‘But he named Leo Long, Victor Rothschild, James Klugmann and Michael Straight as possible trouble-makers. Some names were cleared, others were not. By then, Straight was back in the United States living the life of a responsible citizen. Ten years later, he was to make a similar confession of his own to the American government which led to the exposure of Blunt.’
‘And White went for this? He didn’t just want to string him up?’
‘A number of factors were in play, Sam. White was very fond of Eddie and could understand why he had fallen for Communism. A lot of us did. It was a heady time. In many ways, the decision to aid Mother Russia was a noble one, taken in good faith. Dick was also able to distinguish between the different personalities involved. Donald, for example, had a very deep and profound hatred of America. Later, White would come to recognize that Kim was a sociopath. Anthony, it transpired, was also utterly self-serving. Now you wouldn’t necessarily have said that about Guy or Cairncross. Along with Eddie, they were the ones who were steadfastly ideological, who spied out of conviction rather than from some misguided sense of their own importance. White also knew that Edward Crane was a brilliant intelligence officer. Furthermore, the country couldn’t afford another spy scandal. Had Eddie been exposed following the defection of Burgess and Maclean, there is every possibility that the government would have fallen. So it was in everyone’s best interests to keep ATTILA under wraps and, yes, this was a golden opportunity to strike back at Moscow. Never underestimate the extent to which SIS and the Russians loathe one another. It’s a blood feud.’
‘You’re missing something out.’
‘What’s that?’
Gaddis took his jacket off and secured it over the back of his chair.
‘Why didn’t Crane tell White about AGINCOURT?’
‘Who’s to say that he didn’t?’
Neame’s reply was lazy; there was a hole in the logic.
‘Because if he did, then AGINCOURT’s identity would have been revealed and we would now know all about him. But you’ve told me that Crane talent-spotted somebody who went on to become a senior figure in the Labour Party in the 1960s and 70s. Who was he? Harold Wilson?’
‘That would be a sensation,’ Neame replied, as if the idea had never occurred to him.
Gaddis laughed at his sheer nerve. ‘A Soviet defector called Anatoly Golitsin named Wilson as a KGB agent in 1963. Did you know that?’
Neame nodded. It was the first time that Gaddis had seen him looking unsure of himself.
‘Wilson’s first name was James,’ Gaddis continued. ‘He was born in Yorkshire. According to Spycatcher, MI5 were convinced he was a spy.’
‘Then go ahead and run the story.’ Neame’s hands were in the air, eyes exaggeratedly wide at the prospect.
‘Oh, come on. You know what I need from you, Tom. Does Eddie name Wilson or doesn’t he?’
‘I have told you, I have no idea. Everything I’ve related to you is based on a single conversation which took place over ten years ago and on a document which Eddie asked me to destroy. My specific area of expertise is ATTILA. All I know for certain is that Edward Crane was used by MI5 and MI6 in a variety of different ways between 1951 and the late 1980s, spreading disinformation to Moscow, that sort of thing. He found out what the Soviets wanted to know, gave London an idea of the enemy’s knowledge gaps. Everything flowed from there.’
‘Everything flowed from there,’ Gaddis repeated wither-ingly. He was tired of evasions, tired of false leads. He was certain that AGINCOURT was a red herring and that Neame was just stringing him along for his own personal amusement. The story was too old; the conspiracy theory about Wilson had been flogged to death in the
