1980s. He put that theory to Neame now, because it felt as though his pride was at stake.
‘Here’s what I think, Tom. I reckon AGINCOURT was Harold Wilson and there’s nothing new on him in Eddie’s memoirs. I reckon Wilson danced with the Russians at Oxford but never took his clothes off. In other words, you brought him up just to make your own story look more convincing and didn’t think I’d bother checking it out. On that basis, less than half of what you’ve told me is probably true. Was Crane the sixth man? Was Crane a double agent? Was Thomas Neame his best friend or does Thomas Neame just like playing games with nosey historians to make his lunchtimes more exciting?’
Neame was staring at him, his face absolutely motionless. Gaddis suddenly saw the man as he would have looked at thirty, at forty, eyes blazing with indignation. It may have been the first time in a generation that anybody had summoned the nerve to question Neame’s integrity.
‘You don’t trust me,’ he said. It was more of a statement than a question.
‘I don’t trust you,’ Gaddis replied plainly.
There was a prolonged silence. It was strange, but Gaddis felt a sense of relief. He had cleared the air, he had spoken his mind. If Neame now stood up from the table, shook his hand and walked off into the sunset, he would not be unduly disappointed. It was impossible to write a book of this kind based on the testimony of an unreliable witness; far better to bring things to an end rather than risk his reputation on a story with so many loose ends.
‘ Mea culpa,’ Neame announced suddenly. His expression had changed to one of benevolent contrition and he was holding two shaking hands above the table as an indication of his seriousness. Gaddis could see deep lines scarred into the palms. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I went too far, old chap. I shouldn’t have been so heavy on AGINCOURT. I confess that I became intrigued by the references in Eddie’s memoirs. He did indeed tap Wilson up at Oxford, but states categorically that he was never a Soviet agent. I just wanted the whole thing double-checked by an expert. Wilson has since been investigated until the cows come home and nobody has ever been able to lay a finger on him.’ Gaddis said nothing. He was enjoying the sight of Neame coming clean. ‘I also wanted to test your limits. I wanted to see how much you would swallow. If I had managed to convince you that Wilson was a Soviet asset without your obtaining any corroborating evidence, who knows what others might have been able to persuade you of, further along the road? I need a man I can rely on, Sam. I need a man who isn’t going to get excited at the first mention of the NKVD. What I have told you is just the beginning. In a sense, you have passed a test. I congratulate you.’
Gaddis was dumbfounded. He summoned a look which he hoped would be suitably contemptuous and closed up the space between them.
‘Look, this isn’t a game, Tom. I’m not doing this for laughs. I don’t want to waste my time fucking about with sat-navs and window cleaners and encrypted emails just to polish your ego. I’m here because I’m convinced that Edward Crane was the sixth Cambridge spy and that you’re the key to finding him. But I won’t stay here a minute longer if I think I’m being manipulated. I won’t risk my reputation on an old man who thinks it’s funny to have academics chasing their tails. So you either convince me that these so-called memoirs exist, prove to me that Edward Crane was the sixth man, or call up Peter and ask him to drive you home. Because our business is done.’
‘Oh, I very much doubt that,’ Neame replied, with a sting of malice, and Gaddis heard the voice of a man who had lived his life outwitting others, who had always been one step ahead of the pack. He stared into the old man’s fixed blue eyes and suddenly, like a bone-deep shudder, felt that Thomas Neame and Edward Crane were the same man. Was this possible? He reeled at the thought of it, heat flooding his neck. The idea had caught him completely off guard and he tried to compose himself by remaining steadfast in the face of Neame’s reply.
‘Try me,’ he said.
Neame grabbed a shallow breath and the pain which had repeatedly jagged across his shoulders in the cathedral suddenly did so again. He winced as he brought a hand up on to his shoulder, clutching the thick tweed of his jacket and rubbing the bone. Gaddis instinctively stood up out of his seat and leaned forward, placing a hand on Neame’s arm. Who was he touching? Neame or Edward Crane?
‘Are you all right?’
Neame was looking down at the table, weighing up his options. Gaddis felt that he could read his thoughts. Should I continue with this man, or find another outlet for my story? But suddenly he spoke.
‘Dick White ordered a full internal vetting of Eddie that was specifically designed to clear him of any suspicious links to Communism.’
Neame had clearly convinced himself that the only way to persuade Gaddis of his legitimacy was to keep talking.
‘It helped that Eddie had never joined the Party,’ he said. ‘His year at Oxford was also carefully recalibrated. Furthermore, there was nothing in the files about his friendship with Burgess at Trinity.’
Gaddis felt that he had no choice but to play along.
‘But it was still a miracle that he managed to survive undetected for so long — on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The Yanks must have smelled a rat. And surely any number of Soviet defectors down the years would have known about ATTILA. Golitsin, for starters.’
Neame enjoyed that one.
‘Of course they did. But it didn’t matter. Golitsin told the Americans about Crane and the Yanks came to us — flustered, to say the least. We put them in the picture about ATTILA’s double-life and Eddie’s name was then erased from the Golitsin transcripts. Exactly the same procedure when Gordievsky came over. “Oh, you know about Crane? Keep it hush-hush.” It was straightforward.’
‘Came to us.’ ‘Came to us.’ Why would Neame put himself at the centre of that process?
‘But Golitsin came over in ’61,’ Gaddis replied. ‘Eddie kept going for another twenty-five years. Didn’t the Soviets smell a rat when, one by one, their agents in the West started being exposed? Lonsdale? Vassell? Blake? Didn’t they think it was a little fortuitous that ATTILA was still out there, alive and well and working for Mother Russia?’
Neame remained impassive.
‘My dear boy, I think you’d be better off directing these sorts of questions at a member of the KGB. I have no idea what they were thinking. I should imagine the Soviets had thousands of agents all over the world. Just because one or two of them were exposed in Europe doesn’t mean they were going to doubt a source who had been working for them since before the war.’
‘Then why has Crane’s story never come out? If the Russians still think ATTILA was one of theirs, they’d love to have rubbed London’s nose in it by now.’
‘Ah.’ Neame seemed pleased that Gaddis had joined the dots. ‘My own particular theory is that Moscow discovered ATTILA was a double agent shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union.’
‘As late as ’91? What makes you say that?’
‘Think about it, Sam. Think about the date.’
It took a few seconds for Gaddis to make the connection.
‘St Mary’s. MI6 faked Eddie’s death in early 1992.’
‘Precisely. Because they were worried that the KGB was going to come after him.’
‘Eddie told you that?’
‘Of course Eddie told me that. When your best friend informs you that MI6 are planning to fake his death, you tend to ask why. Eddie said that ATTILA had been blown in Moscow and that anybody associated with him was being systematically bumped off.’
Gaddis acknowledged the logic of this, but found a flaw in what Neame was saying.
‘OK, but by the same token, why haven’t the British told their end of the story? As you said, ATTILA was one of the great intelligence coups of the Cold War. Why didn’t London take the opportunity to humiliate Moscow?’
‘Because of the war years. Edward Crane had been a Soviet agent. You don’t go making that sort of thing public, especially after the Blunt fiasco. Besides, this was a new era in Anglo-Russian relations. Why rock the boat? SIS likes to keep its secrets. It’s in the spying game, not the PR business. What Eddie always wanted to know was who blew his cover. How did the Russians eventually find out?’
Gaddis thought for a moment that Neame expected him to know the answer, but saw that he was going to continue speaking.
‘This was as far as I came with your friend, Miss Berg,’ he said. He caught Gaddis’s eye and appeared to be
