The investigation was conducted as far as it could possibly go, and then Stevens was summoned for an interrogation, which I conducted with Jim Patrick, a one-eyed Gurkha officer who worked as an interrogator for D3.
Stevens had obviously been half expecting the call ever since he had first heard Goleniewski talk about a middling-grade agent with Polish connections. He was alternately truculent and defensive. He stared me nervously in the eye, as if to convince me he was telling the truth. He agreed that he was a good fit for the allegation, and accepted that someone of his background was an odd recruitment for an organization like MI5.
"I always wondered when everyone would wake up to the Polish side of me," he said. "I suppose I'll fail the vet now, won't I?"
"I don't know," I replied, "but if it's any consolation, it won't be me that'll decide. It'll be F.J."
He obviously felt that whichever way the interrogation went, he could not possibly win. Unlike Hanley, he could not really hope to walk through the fire unscathed.
We had been going three days when he walked coolly into the room one morning and sat down at the table opposite me.
"It's time for me to tell you something," he said. "I've decided to confess..."
I flashed a glance over to Jim, who immediately began taking notes. It was only an additional precaution, since all the sessions were taped.
"Yes," he went on, "I've been wanting to tell someone about it for years. You're right... I'm the spy you're looking for."
He seemed to crumple up in front of us, his shoulders heaving, as if he were weeping. But it only lasted a moment or two, before he held his head up, and looked straight at me.
"Do you really mean this, Greg?" I asked.
"You have a witness, don't you?"
"You realize you'll have to give a statement to the Branch?"
He nodded. I leaned over to Jim and told him to inform the Director-General's security man, Tom Roberts, and arrange for Special Branch to come immediately. Stevens and I sat opposite each other, the files and questions in front of me suddenly redundant.
"It's all true, Peter," he said again, in a clear voice.
I told him that he had best not say anything until Tom Roberts arrived. Jim Patrick came back in. For a few seconds more we sat in silence, and then I noticed Stevens' shoulders going again. For a moment I thought he was weeping, perhaps even about to have a breakdown. It often happens.
"Damn," I thought to myself, "I should have had the office doctor stand by."
Then suddenly he began to roar with laughter.
"You really believed me, didn't you?" he cried.
For a second I felt the hot flush of embarrassment.
"I'm not sure I understand...?"
"You wanted a spy, didn't you," he said, reddening suddenly, now that the joke was over. "I thought I'd give you one. I was going to get chopped anyway. I know that!"
"I don't think we should discuss the matter here," I replied. "Tom Roberts will be here in a minute, you can explain it all to F.J."
For all I knew, it was a real confession, which he was trying to retract, although I felt I knew Stevens well enough to believe that he was only horsing about. But it was a stupid thing to do. Any chance he had of surviving the investigation had almost certainly gone.
F.J. was appalled when he heard what had happened. He was a lawyer, and had a venerable respect for the niceties of MI5's processes.
"What do you think?" he asked me when I got back to his office. "Was the confession bogus, or do you think he retracted it?"
"You know my views," I replied. "I am sure he is in the clear because I think the middling-grade agent was a phony allegation from the start. I just think he had a brainstorm..."
F.J. grunted. Tales of false defectors were never very welcome to a man of his solidity.
'You don't suppose he made the whole thing up - Goleniewski's story, I mean?" he asked.
I told him we had checked the tapes before the interrogation.
"I even got Stevens to verify the translation. Oh, Goleniewski said it all right."
"Don't see how we can keep him," he muttered, chewing his pipe. "Man's obviously unstable. Polish thing grotesque as well. Sort of thing that gets into newspapers."
He waved me out.
Within an hour Gregory Stevens' career was terminated. He spent ten minutes with F.J., and Tom Roberts escorted him to the pavement outside Leconfield House. He didn't even have a chance to clear his desk.
A few days later Arthur came to see me. He and I had seen little of each other since his departure to MI6. He had aged and seemed less driven than he was before, though the past still held him. He wanted to know about Stevens. They were friends in D Branch in the old days, and Arthur, much the older man, had an almost paternal regard for him.
"Did you have to do it?" he asked.
I told him about the middling-grade agent, and the retracted confession, and the confusion and doubt which plagued us all.
"What else could we do?" I asked. "How can we tell Whitehall to do their vetting, and then turn a blind eye ourselves?"
Arthur knew we had been right, but the cost was becoming progressively higher.
"It's poisoning us all," he said quietly.
Gregory Stevens' departure caused great bitterness in the office. He was a popular officer, and inevitably I was blamed. No one, apart from a handful of senior officers, knew the context which had led up to his investigation - the long history of suspected high-level penetration of MI5, the Blunt confessions, the terrible secret of the FLUENCY conclusions which implicated Sir Roger Hollis, and the hunt for the middling-grade agent.
Word began to spread through the office that D3 was conducting vetting purges in the office, and that officers like Gregory Stevens were being victimized. There was talk of the Gestapo. Younger officers began to avoid me in the canteen. Casual conversation with many of my colleagues became a rarity. Those of us involved in the penetration issue were set apart, feared and distrusted in equal measure.
It was the same in MI6. After years of neglect, a new head of Counterintelligence, Christopher Phillpotts, was appointed in the mid-1960s, around the time FLUENCY got off the ground. Phillpotts looked to all intents and purposes like a figure from the ANCIEN REGIME of British Intelligence. He was a charismatic war hero with a penchant for pink gins and cravats and bow ties. But he was a strict disciplinarian, who believed that in the wake of Philby's defection, the Augean stables needed cleaning. A thorough review of security procedures and personnel was the precondition for a return to self-respect for a Service which, despite Dick White's best efforts, had still to recover from the wounds of Philby, Suez, and Commander Crabbe. Those who could not satisfactorily account for their backgrounds would have to go. National security demanded that, at long last, the benefit of the doubt be given to the state.