High Jinx (6 page)

‘Understood, Rufus.'

Number 138 Whitechapel High Street was in the East End of London, a block of six-storey flats in a working-class neighbourhood. The street outside was a heavily used arterial road running into London. The trucks, buses, and other traffic caused, during that hour in the afternoon, what seemed like a continuous dull roar. There were twelve doorbells. Superintendent Roberts pushed the bell designated as ‘Porter.'

A very large woman in her sixties appeared, wearing an apron, her grey hair untended but held back by a bandanna. On seeing the officer with the two policemen and the American she took the cigarette out of her mouth, made an exaggerated bow, and said, ‘An' wot may I do for you, gen'lemen?'

A few minutes later she had opened the appropriate door. Superintendent Roberts turned to Trust and said, ‘Under the circumstances, sir, you had better handle the questioning.'

It transpired that ‘John Shroud' had lived in the apartment for about a year, had paid his rent (twenty-one pounds per month) promptly. He was often gone, sometimes for as long as two or three weeks, sometimes overnight. A quiet gentleman. He used to have a lady friend who came in every now and then and once stayed an entire week, but she hadn't been seen for several months. As for last Tuesday, the porter had been surprised to see him leave, a few minutes after six in the afternoon, because that very morning he had complained to her that his refrigerator was not holding the cold and he would be needing ice the following day in particular. (‘Suppose he was 'avin' some people in,' she commented.) He had come down the stairs, she said, carrying a suitcase, apparently in a hurry, had barely returned her greeting, waved at her, sort of, and she did so hope he wasn't a criminal, but the room contracts had been very carefully made out by a lawyer, and the widow Longstrike had every right to repossess the flat in the event criminal charges were lodged.

Superintendent Roberts thanked her, pointed pleasantly at the door, through which she soon passed, and, under supervision of the police, Anthony Trust began his search.

He had established that Shroud had been in residence for over three weeks; therefore he must have arrived at about the time the cadre had left Camp Cromwell. The question, then, was whether he had left the apartment under pressure of imminent danger, or whether he had simply gone off to meet his next commitment, conceivably to undertake a new mission. As for Shroud's background, Trust awaited the fruits of the extensive research being done under close supervision in Washington by the FBI, and in London by the CIA.

The flat certainly didn't look abandoned. There were two jackets in the closet, a few shirts in the drawer, magazines on the coffee table. And the refrigerator, as the porter had indicated, had been freshly stocked, including with perishables—milk, eggs, mincemeat. What was he doing with such goods if he knew that he would not be back soon? Or at all? It would depend, Trust reasoned, on how much of a hurry he was in. If John Shroud suddenly reappeared the next day, or for that matter later today, then what Rufus was worried about was of a completely different order. If he reappeared he would instantly be arrested. On the other hand, if he reappeared it would lay to rest the urgent question: might somebody have tipped him off between 11:30
A.M
. and 6
P.M
. yesterday?

Anthony concluded his inspection. By the time he reached the safe house on James Street which Rufus had designated as the provisional headquarters of the ‘Sergeant Esperanto' investigation, the mystery was cleared up.

Or rather, it had deepened.

Lufthansa, in answer to their inquiry, reported that yes, one man had appeared at the very last moment, asking for space on the eight o'clock flight to Berlin. He had paid for his ticket in cash. He carried a single suitcase, which he said he wished to take with him, as he had ‘a tight connection in Berlin.' He gave his name as John Hightower, carried an American passport, and had filled out the customary immigration form before arriving in Berlin. A teletype to Berlin retrieved his passport number as set down on his landing form.

A check in Washington quickly revealed that no such passport had been issued, in Washington or in an American embassy or consulate.

John Shroud, aged thirty-eight, was an American mercenary, a radio specialist who had several times been called on to give training of a kind particularly useful to special missions. He was a member of a pool of technicians loosely affiliated with several government agencies that had been charged with a growing number of special missions ever since the end of World War II or, more exactly, ever since the crystallisation of the cold war. There were several agencies in London, Paris, Brussels, and Rome through which one could recruit specialists, usually at a high rate of pay, for almost any job. Shroud had been used for three operations by the CIA and by MI6, having got a security clearance in 1952. He had been a member of the Signal Corps with the Seventh Army that had fought in Sicily and in Italy. He had a Bronze Star, was discharged at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, had applied in 1946 to a Veterans Administration Hospital for a haemorrhoid operation. And there the trail ended—until his name was given by an agency in London for a sensitive radio assignment involving a search for a submarine that had disappeared off the coast of Scotland with a nuclear inventory. The search had been conducted under unofficial auspices.

‘Well, that's it,' Trust said, leaning back in his chair. ‘We'll let Superintendent Roberts continue the surveillance of the apartment in Whitechapel for another few days, but there isn't any point in expecting John Shroud to reappear. He's gone.'

The news was telephoned to Rufus, who advised that he was flying in on an Air Force transport and would meet them at the safe house on James Street at ten in the morning. ‘You are to discuss the matter of Sergeant Esperanto with no one, Anthony.'

‘I understand, Rufus.'

That morning Rufus arrived at the safe house in London looking old, but not for that reason less than omnicompetent. He was greeted with relief, rather as if the chief surgeon had arrived at the operating room and all the attendants instantly knew that that which had been impenetrable would now, little by little, be penetrated. Rufus shook hands (Rufus shook hands with as much thought to what he was doing as other men gave to doing up their flies). He took the coffee proffered him, stirred it with his spoon held upside down, and the badinage trailed quickly to a halt. Blackford and Trust waited.

‘You may have reasoned to what it is that we need to do, gentlemen. But I shall go through the paces in any event.

‘We are faced with the most extraordinary penetration of our intelligence system imaginable. Five discrete landing sites—all of them known to the enemy. The time of the landings—known to the enemy. That is a level of coordinated penetration very difficult even to imagine. There is something extra-human to it. More details on that in due course. It operates, moreover, with uncanny speed and precision. And doesn't mind exhibiting this extraordinary technical precision. As witness the matter of Shroud. We reason to his probable connections and a half day later he suddenly leaves—on a plane for Eastern Europe. Gone.'

Rufus put down his coffee cup and was silent. He was given to doing this. Not often; but such silences were not interrupted by those who knew Rufus. He began to speak again:

‘At 11:06 GMT, Adam Waterman discloses the list of telephone numbers to Anthony Trust and Blackford Oakes, numbers decoded from the key number in Esperanto's phone book. One of those numbers is a private number attached to the Soviet Embassy.

‘At 11:07, Oakes dials the suspect number and reaches the office of Colonel Bolgin, head of KGB London.

‘At 12:05, a message written by Trust reporting on these events is handed to a coding clerk in the American Embassy, whose name is Gerald Astrachan.' All this from memory: Rufus did not use notes.

‘At 12:21, CIA-Washington receives the message which was decoded at—I switch now to Eastern Standard Time—at 0745, and was brought into the office of the Director at 0805.

‘The Director brings me in and we discuss the matter and alternative ways of dealing with John Shroud—Esperanto. We reach the conclusion that, most important of all, no action taken in London should alert Shroud to our suspicions. We reason, I believe correctly, that Shroud was one part of a comprehensive network, but that at least now we have a link.

‘And you know, of course, what then happened. Within five hours of our discussion in Washington, Shroud had left his apartment. Within seven hours he was on an airplane to Berlin. He is now, presumably, in East Germany.'

Rufus rose. He walked at first to the coffee pitcher. Then stopped and absentmindedly returned, his empty cup still in hand.

‘It means that only a very limited number of people could, hypothetically, have alerted the KGB to our having got on to Shroud. They are:

‘1) Blackford Oakes, covert agent, three years with the Agency, during which he was executor of two highly secret, highly sensitive missions.' Rufus sounded as though he were quietly addressing a tribunal. ‘2) Anthony Trust, chief of station, London-CIA. Six years with the Agency, exemplary performance, and recruiter of Blackford Oakes. 3) Adam Waterman, cryptographer, four years of duty, total security clearance. 4) Coding clerk Gerald Astrachan, fourteen years' service including with MI6 on the Intrepid project during the war, total security clearance. 5) The decoding clerk in Washington, eleven years' service, including two years on Air Force One.

‘Have I left anyone out, Blackford?'

‘Well, yes, Rufus, actually: yourself, and the Director.'

Rufus didn't smile. ‘You are quite right. We are hypothetical suspects. Have I left anyone or anything else out?'

There was silence in the room.

Rufus went on. ‘Yes. The teletype. All the information we have discussed flowed through the coding room of the embassy.'

‘Are you suggesting they have broken our code? As obvious as that?'

Rufus answered, ‘Our codes cannot be broken. Because the codes, at the level we speak of, are changed every day, and no human being knows what tomorrow's code will be because that code is selected from a billion billion possibilities, at random, at midnight.'

‘What are we supposed to conclude then, if the assumption is that the persons named didn't tip off the KGB?'

‘That
without
breaking the code, they are getting our messages.'

‘How is that possible?'

Blackford regretted asking the question, the answer to which was the towering enigma that had, after all, brought them all together in the first place. Too late.

‘We'll have to try to find out. By working at both ends: In the Code Room, at the embassy. And,' he sighed, ‘at the other end. By penetrating the Soviet Embassy.'

8

Sir Alistair Fleetwood stared at the full-length mirror in the bedroom of his rooms at Trinity College and straightened his black tie. He paused and allowed himself to wonder
exactly
how Narcissus felt when he looked at his reflection in the pool of water, and adored.

Fleetwood laughed.

‘
Sir
Alistair!' He allowed the syllable to pass voluptuously through his lips. Until exactly 12:44 that afternoon he had been simply
Mr.
Alistair Fleetwood: or, to be sure, Professor Alistair Fleetwood when at Cambridge or in the company of academics.

It had been quite a season for him—all of it taking place within six weeks, actually. The call had come that morning six weeks ago—on All Saints' Day, as the musty set at Trinity so quaintly continued to designate the first of November. The electrifying message: The Swedish Academy of Science had selected him for a Nobel Prize. This was to commend his discovery of the electronic formula whose startling success within the astronomical telescope had permitted the examination of the planets and of bodies located light-years away from the earth with the kind of particularity that radio beams never had made possible. When the patent was filed his colleagues at the laboratory were insistent, though he had vaguely resisted, and it was given the name ‘the Fleetwood Zirca.'

In fact Alistair Fleetwood had not been surprised that he had been awarded the Nobel. It had been widely predicted that he would get it. The development of the Zirca was simply his latest success—who could even say with assurance that it would be viewed as the culminating success? Fleetwood was only thirty-eight years old!—in a career that had dazzled first his family, then the staff and boys at Greyburn, then the staff and fellows of Cavendish Laboratories at Cambridge, then his professional colleagues at Bletchley Park, where he had spent four years with the cryptographers introducing novel uses of electrical energy, critically valuable in coding and decoding with near-instantaneous speed. When John Maynard Keynes had visited Cambridge and spent there a few leisurely days before his sudden and unexpected death in April of 1946, he remarked to a friend that Fleetwood was as brilliant a man as he had ever known. Word got about that the great Lord Keynes had said that about Alistair Fleetwood, and it became something on the order of an honorific penned after his name. His talented young student, Bertie Heath, at one point suggested that ‘Mr. Fleetwood,' as he called him at that point, engrave his calling cards ‘Alistair Fleetwood, C.G.J.M.K.'—Called a Genius by John Maynard Keynes.

Fleetwood, standing in front of the same mirror, would practice an appropriately embarrassed frown for those many occasions when, introduced as a visiting lecturer or speaker, he would hear recounted his academic and scientific achievements. He had become quite good at it, allowing even a trace of surprise to flicker over his face, as though he was hearing for the first time the striking record of his accomplishments and, really, was quite surprised, in a detached kind of way. If only they knew what he was really thinking about this wholly wretched society and all its frumpery and pomp and hypocrisy. But no one would ever know. Well, practically no one.