They found a milk bar close to South Kensington Tube, and took a seat inside near the back. It was mostly empty, and from the way the man behind the counter ignored them after fetching coffee, he was an SIS asset, and never mind that domestic operations were the province of Five. Every service needs local safe houses.
When no other customers remained, Rupert picked up his cup and Gavriela’s – ‘This way, old girl’ – and led the way out back, up creaking stairs (good for warning of night-time intruders) to a musty-smelling room overlooking an unkempt yard.
She sat on an overstuffed couch, while he took one of the mismatched armchairs.
‘What’s happening, Rupert?’
‘The world’s falling apart, didn’t you know? Ten years ago, we knew who the enemy was. Now there’s civil unrest right here.’
‘You mean Teddy Boys ripping up cinema seats.’ Showings of Rock Around the Clock had erupted in trouble all over the country, causing Gavriela to forbid Carl from going to see the film. ‘I should have thought the real threat to Empire was the state of the pound.’
‘The PM received a confidential briefing from Macmillan,’ said Rupert, ‘concluding that there are two root causes to inflation: the commitment to full employment, and our massive defence spending. While Europe’s in a golden age.’
‘I took Carl to Paris last year.’
‘So you did.’ That was Rupert letting her know that leaving the service did not mean dropping out of sight. ‘And you’ll have seen it, Continental cities booming while we have bomb craters still, and prefab houses for the squalid classes.’
‘Oh, Rupert.’
‘French success stemming partly, I should say, from creating technical institutions along the lines of Imperial.’
‘How remarkably enlightened for a classicist.’
‘I didn’t say I approve of the necessity.’ Rupert crossed his elegant legs. ‘Nor the extinction of Empire, but it’s a fact, even if to the PM we’re still a great power.’
If Eden continued to commit the country’s budget to defence against world communism, then SIS must benefit. For Rupert to argue against it spoke of serious misgivings.
‘And Nasser has kicked us out of Egypt’ – Gavriela wanted to show she kept in touch – ‘which Mr Eden thinks is about to become a Soviet dominion.’
‘Not if he reads his JIC reports.’ Rupert meant the Joint Intelligence Committee.
For three months, the British army had been massing in Cyprus, getting ready – alongside French regiments – to invade Egypt and retake the Suez Canal Zone.
‘When the Wehrmacht invaded Poland and Belgium,’ said Gavriela, ‘it was pretty clear where the morality lay. If we invade another country, what does that make us?’
Rupert shook his head. ‘It’s a moot point, because Eisenhower won’t allow us to invade. That’s classified, by the way.’
‘Won’t allow us?’ said Gavriela.
‘The American Sixth Fleet is massing in the Mediterranean. If our ships set sail from Cyprus, the Yanks will move to stop it.’ None of this was in the newspapers. ‘On the other hand, in a few weeks’ time,’ Rupert went on, ‘French envoys will call in to Chequers, to see the Chancellor and request that Anglo-French combined forces make a move. We have this from the Deuxième Bureau.’
Gavriela nodded. The information might have come via semi-official channels or from eavesdropping on French intelligence: both were par for the course.
‘But this is in fact an Anglo-French-Israeli initiative,’ continued Rupert. ‘And you and I will have our ears nailed to the wall if we give a hint of knowing that.’ He related the details, and they were explosive: Israel to invade Egypt under secret agreement with Britain and France, after which the combined Anglo-French forces would ‘liberate’ the place while the Israelis withdrew.
‘Do the Cousins know this?’ asked Gavriela, meaning the CIA.
‘Maybe I should ring the Kremlin and ask.’
It was a year since Burgess and Maclean had surfaced at a Soviet press conference. Since then Kim Philby, SIS’s liaison to Washington and tipped to be a future head of service, had denied being the third man; but dirt tended to stick. Internal investigators, Rupert added, were right now tearing the Recruitment Office apart.
‘I’m glad I’m out of it,’ said Gavriela. ‘All that makes the news is defection and failure. The Crabbe thing was a disaster.’
In April, Premier Kruschev and Prime Minister Bulganin had sailed into Portsmouth Harbour aboard the Ordzhonikidze, a Soviet cruiser which had been too tempting a target: the famous wartime diver, Commander Crabbe, had been despatched to fix bugging devices to the hull. When his torn-up body eventually washed ashore, the UK government owned up to the operation.
The official story involved his being caught up in propellers. Not likely.
‘Berlin and the Stopwatch débâcle,’ said Rupert, ‘are more to the point.’
‘In what way? What point exactly?’
Portrait of a spy grandmaster sitting in a dusty room moving pieces across the board, but she was no longer in the game.
‘I mean, dear Gavi, your popping over to Berlin. Let me ask Alfredo to fetch up more coffee, and perhaps a plate of biscuits, before we discuss the details.’
‘No,’ said Gavriela. ‘No coffee, no biscuits, and definitely no Berlin.’
Rupert’s voice went as mild as she had ever heard it.
‘And no curiosity,’ he asked, ‘about the niece you have yet to meet?’
And that was it: game, set and match to the master.
She might have known.
Intercepts from Berlin, earlier in the year, had begun to reveal uranium shipment details – East Germany being currently the largest Soviet provider, while Prime Minister Bulganin’s public announcements had hinted at nuclear tests under way in Siberia. It was all part of Red paranoia regarding Western intent, said Rupert, and Eden’s intransigence over Suez was likely to trigger World War III.
‘We desperately need more info,’ he told Gavriela, ‘but with Stopwatch/Gold all over the papers, our chaps are having to lie low.’
And this, he went on, was where it fitted Gavriela’s personal interest. Normally, a schoolgirl civilian wanting to defect meant nothing to UK interests; but the dissatisfied daughter of a senior KGB officer with responsibility for the security of East Germany’s uranium mines, that was something else.
‘Her name is Ursula,’ he said. ‘Ursula Shtemenko, and at this stage we don’t know if she’s aware her birth certificate reads Ursula Wolf.’
Up until April, Operation Stopwatch, an SIS brainchild but funded by the CIA who called it Operation Gold, had delivered priceless intelligence. But four days after the Crabbe operation – and before his body appeared – somehow the Soviets had found the secret tunnel between Schönefelder Chaussee and Rudow, filled with telephonic equipment for eavesdropping on KGB signals; and the world’s press went crazy: a propaganda coup for Moscow.
Gavriela wondered if Philby had had anything to do with the tunnel, but knew better than to ask.
‘I’ve photographs of the girl.’ Rupert drew an envelope from inside his jacket, and passed it over. ‘Taken since she made her first enquiry.’
Exactly where that was, Gavriela would find out when she agreed to the operation; but they both knew she was unlikely to back out, having learnt this much. None of the pictures were posed. Clandestine surveillance, then.
‘Identical to my brother Erik, near enough,’ she said. ‘And Ilse?’
There was no need to explain who she meant: Rupert would have briefed himself beforehand on her family, on her brother Erik and on Ilse, the wife whom Erik adored.
‘Passed away six months ago, I’m afraid. Another trigger for Ursula’s current crisis.’
Gavriela leant back against the couch, resting her head on the antimacassar.
‘One more factor for us to take advantage of, is that, Rupert?’
But of course, he had a counter-argument ready, probably cooked up days ago.
‘You think she’s better off with Dmitri Shtemenko as her stepfather?’
Gavriela let out a sigh, and asked him to brief her on the details.