Bill Granger
The British Cross
For Alec, who was there, and sailed the Baltic Sea with me.
Epigraph
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
He is an Englishman!
For he himself has said it.
And it’s greatly to his credit,
That he is an Englishman!
Author’s Note
A very brave man named Raoul Wallenberg undertook, in the middle of the Second World War, to save Jews condemned to execution in the Nazi death camps. He was a Swedish national and an official neutral in the war; scion of a wealthy and powerful banking family that still has great influence in Sweden, Wallenberg used his many connections to aid his mission of mercy.
Wallenberg worked in Budapest. By dint of bribing, string-pulling, and by issuing Swedish passports to Hungarian Jews, it is estimated he saved more than one hundred thousand lives. In several instances, he actually stopped death trains in the marshaling yards and bullied train officials into releasing their human cargoes.
Wallenberg had been persuaded to his task by the United States in secret, subtle negotiations.
In the last days of the war, the Soviet Army entered Budapest first; they arrested Wallenberg and he disappeared behind Soviet lines.
Some believed the arrest was a mistake. Others held it was part of the professional paranoia practiced in the MGB, the Soviet Intelligence service that is now called the Committee for State Security (KGB). The Soviets may have considered Wallenberg to be an American spy.
After many protests from the Wallenberg family, Sweden, and the United States — though the official protests were muted, indeed — the Soviet Union issued a report that Raoul Wallenberg had died in a Soviet prison in 1947. Unfortunately, his body was destroyed and no proof of the death remained except the word of Soviet officials.
Since that Soviet report, dozens of prisoners who have been released from the Gulag Archipelago have reported seeing him still alive. It is not unusual, despite the brutalities of the Soviet prison system, for prisoners in the Gulag to serve twenty, thirty, or forty years’ imprisonment.
The Bulgarian Secret Police act as surrogates of the KGB in certain acts of espionage and sabotage in the West. In 1982 the Bulgarians were accused of carrying out a plot to assassinate Pope John Paul II on behalf of the KGB. They denied it.
For fifty years, Finland has existed in delicate political balance between the Soviet Union and the West. The Soviet Union is believed in intelligence circles to have considerable influence over internal affairs in neighboring Finland.
For forty years, British Intelligence has been riddled with Soviet spies and traitors. In 1982, it was revealed that the Soviets had turned an intelligence worker at the joint Anglo-American listening post and computer center at Cheltenham.
These statements are true and are reflected in this book.
1
Foul, leaden clouds threatened, but it had not snowed for four days and the streets were finally clear. The bricks of the old streets seemed to glisten in the light of a weak sun, polished by the shattering cold. Cold was piled on cold; wind piled on wind, keening unexpectedly around corners, barreling into pedestrians who fought for their footing along the treacherous, ice-streaked walks. The streetcars ground noisily against metal rails as their steel bodies arched around the corner into Mannerheimintie, making sounds colder and more hurtful than the touch of warm flesh on frozen metal. Every sound in the numbing cold of the city seemed a sort of strangled scream; every sound scraped at the senses because the smothering muteness of the snow had been cleared away from the streets and piled in dirty heaps along the curbs. Pale, sullen days came and withered and they were scarcely noticed because this was the dark heart of the dark Finnish winter and the sun seemed like a dead planet in another solar system, far and distant. The nights were long and starless: gray clouds at sunset, scudding in from the choppy, shallow Gulf of Finland beyond the frozen port of the city smothered the sky and did not permit light from stars or moon.
Devereaux awoke in darkness.
He blinked once and again, but darkness remained. He held up the face of his wristwatch and perceived the hour. He awoke at the same time each morning; except morning was always night.
The room was too warm but nothing could be done about that. Devereaux lay naked on the sheets, half-covered by the comforter. A sudden burst of wind broke against the window of his room; it howled like a damned soul, seeking warmth and entry.
Seven in the morning, Devereaux thought. But to say morning in the darkness has to be an act of faith. Maybe this is the morning that the light will not return. He smiled then, mocking the darkness and his own depression. The Scandinavians called this horrible pit of long, black winter “the murky time.”
Devereaux reached for the lamp at the side of the bed and flicked it on. The room was bathed in yellow incandescent light that made the sense of perpetual night much more real. He pushed himself up in bed and stared at nothing; he waited for the first red streak of morning beyond his window.
For seven weeks in Helsinki, he had moved ever more slowly each day, as though caught in a dream.
He had come to serve his time here like a prisoner. He shut down all his senses. He deprived his mind of expectation; he did not note the passing of the days or mark them on a calendar or keep track of the weeks. The miniature appearances of daylight could not be celebrated or enjoyed for fear of making the long and bitter nights unendurable; he began to understand this was part of the character of the Finns, part of the stoicism, part of the muted suffering. The streets of Helsinki were never crowded.
Seven weeks.
Devereaux stared at the night outside the hotel and still there was no morning light.
No message from Hanley, no answer to questions that had to be asked. In the fourth week — it was the fourth week, Devereaux thought, but perhaps it was not — he had requested more money. And two days later, in the mailbox behind the front desk in the lobby of the Presidentti Hotel, a small envelope waited for him. Again, no words, no messages, no admonitions, no instructions. Money and a copy of a receipt noting the money had been passed to him. At least it was contact; Devereaux had felt lightened by the anonymous touch for the rest of that day; he had nearly felt something like happiness in the way a grateful prisoner might acknowledge the end of time in isolation.
There.
He turned his eyes back to the window and was very still. He felt a curious sense of anticipation that was both pleasant and unpleasant.
Slowly, moment by moment, the blackness became purple and etched the buildings in that color beyond the hotel-room window. And then he saw the redness splitting the horizon; a chill, winter sunrise. He smiled, threw off the comforter and put his feet on the brown carpet; at least this morning was to be different. Perhaps it was the end of the isolation and waiting; in a little while, he would go to the underground mall and make the contact and perhaps that would provoke the resolution.
But he would not hope too much. Hope wounds.
He turned on the tap in the bathroom and the water drummed flatly from the shower against the molded fiberglass tub. When the water was very hot and the room was filled with steam, he stepped into the tub and let the coldness he felt in himself wash away.