Spycatcher (33 page)

For days Pavilion Road was deserted, as the entire focus of the case shifted to the isolated spot on the common indicated by Mitchell's map. But Mitchell never went close to the spot, nor did anyone else.

When I first began searching Mitchell's office, Hollis was highly nervous.

"There are some highly sensitive documents inside, Peter, and I want your word that they will remain undisclosed."

Hollis was worried in particular about personnel reports, and other embarrassing, rather than secret, papers which have by necessity to pass across the Deputy Director-General's desk. He need not have worried. There was nothing remotely interesting that I saw in Mitchell's office, which only confirmed me in my view that being DDG under a man as autocratic as Hollis must have been one of the very worst jobs in the world.

Every night for some months Hollis and I met after hours. At first he expressed distaste at having to pry into a close colleague's affairs, but I never felt the sentiment was genuine. When I told him about the frequency with which Mitchell picked his teeth on the closed-circuit television, he laughed like a drain.

"Poor bugger should go to a decent dentist," he laughed

I, for my part, felt determined, even ruthless. I had waited for years for the chance to grapple with the penetration problem, and I felt few scruples.

It was in those evenings that I first came to know Hollis as a man. Although I had worked for him for close on eight years, we had rarely talked outside the strict confines of official business. We had moments of tension, but by and large our relationship was correct. Only once did we have a major confrontation, when I was in A2 with Hugh Winterborn in the late 1950s. An Argentine delegation came over to negotiate a meat contract with the British Government. Hollis passed down a request from the Board of Trade for any intelligence, and instructed us to arrange for microphone coverage of the Argentines.

Winterborn and I were outraged. It was a clear breach of the Findlater-Stewart memorandum, which defined MI5's purposes as strictly those connected with national security. The rest of the A2 staff felt exactly as we did, and Hollis' instruction was refused. For a few hours we all anticipated mass dismissals, but then Hollis withdrew his instruction, and it was never discussed again. The only strike in MI5's history ended in total victory for the strikers.

Occasionally, during the searches of Mitchell's office, Hollis talked about his early years. He told me about his travels in China during the 1930s, where he worked for British American Tobacco.

"Dreadful business out there. Any damn fool could see what the Japanese were doing in Manchuria. It was perfectly obvious we'd lose China if we didn't act," he used to say.

As with many older MI5 officers, the roots of his dislike of the Americans lay prewar. He said the Americans could have helped out in the Far East, but refused to because they were gripped with isolationism. The French in the Far East were, he said, effete, and would rather have seen the whole place go down than help us. That left only the Russians.

"They watched and waited," he told me, "and they got it in the end after the war, when Mao came."

He rarely mentioned his family life, although many people in the office knew he was having a longstanding affair. Just occasionally he talked about his son Adrian, who was a gifted chess player, which evidently was a source of great pride for him. (Adrian used to go to Russia to play chess. )

On one occasion we were talking about the case when I ventured an opinion that, whatever the result, it demonstrated a weakness in our protective security. Hollis became huffy.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

I told him that procedures for vetting MI5 recruits were clearly less strict than those the Service laid down throughout other Whitehall departments.

"Look at me," I told him, "I still haven't had a vet since I joined in 1955."

The next day the forms were sent down for me, and the issue was never discussed again, although shortly after this the vetting procedure changed, and candidates had in future to provide more referees, one of which could be nominated by the Service.

The most memorable thing about those evenings with Hollis was his extraordinary supply of the filthiest jokes I had ever heard. It was almost as if they were a defensive mechanism, an excuse for talking, or else a way of easing the burden when he stepped down from the Olympian heights of power to mix with the troops. I asked him once where he had amassed such a fund of stories.

"China," he told me. "Everyone drank and told jokes. It was the only way to pass the time."

Early on I decided to search a small desk in the corner of Mitchell's office, and I asked Hollis for the key.

"It was Guy Liddell's desk," he said. "He left it when I took over from him. It's been there for years..."

I asked him for his consent to pick the locks of two of the drawers which were locked. He agreed and I brought the lockpicking tools the next day, and we inspected the insides of the two drawers. They were both empty, but one caught my attention. In the dust were four small marks, as if an object had been very recently dragged out of the drawer. I called Hollis over, and showed him the marks. He seemed as nonplussed as I, especially when I inspected the lock mechanism and found scratch marks, as if the drawer had recently been opened.

Hollis went back to his office through the interconnecting door which ran between Mitchell's office and his own. I finished the search alone.

"Only Hollis and I knew I was going to open that drawer," I thought to myself, "and something has definitely been moved. Could even be a tape recorder. Why not Mitchell? Because he didn't know. Only Hollis knew Guy Liddell's desk. Hollis took over the Deputy's office from him. No key? A man like Liddell doesn't leave the desk, and take the key. Only Hollis knew. Only Hollis..."

I looked up. Through the door Hollis was staring at me. He said nothing. He just stared, and then bent over his file again.

Throughout the summer months of 1963, as Mitchell's retirement neared, the investigation continued at full pitch. But the whole thing was hopelessly compromised. It had all been too hasty, and too ill-planned. Battling the deadline, and lacking the support of Hollis, it was inevitable that the security of the operation began to crumble at the seams. Mitchell realized that something was wrong. For a start, he noticed that the circulation of papers through his in-tray became erratic, as Hollis sought to restrict his access. Then he began to take evasive action against the Watchers, doubling back on himself, and practicing standard countersurveillance. There was little doubt that he knew he was being followed. Through the television monitor, Mitchell exhibited all the signs of a man under terrible stress, as if he were sunk in a massive depression. He was a tall, thin man at the best of times, but he looked positively cadaverous toward the end, with dark, sunken eyes. When people were in the room with him he made an effort to appear normal, but as soon as he was alone, he looked tortured.

"Why are they doing this to me?" he moaned one day, gazing at Hollis' office door.

In the final month the whole affair became almost a farce. There was no chance of finding anything under those circumstances, so Arthur and I pressed Hollis to sanction an interrogation to resolve the case one way or the other. Hollis refused to commit himself, but a few days later he arrived unannounced at the small house in Pavilion Road.

"I have been to see the PM," he said stiffly to the half dozen of us who were in the room, "and I am afraid an interrogation is quite out of the question."

Out of the comer of my eye I could see Arthur brewing for another outburst.

"Another defection at this stage would be calamitous," he said. He thanked us all briskly for our efforts and disappeared down to his waiting car. It was typical Hollis mismanagement of personnel. Here were experienced officers, working at a pitch of desperation, and he could barely spare us two minutes. The dirty work was done. Best leave it to the dirty workers!

It was, as well, a naive approach. The MI6 Watchers, led by a hot-headed and overimpressionable young officer named Stephen de Mowbray, were appalled by Hollis' decision, and immediately took it to be a crude attempt at in-house suppression, the very thing MI5 accused MI6 of with the Philby affair. Moreover, no closedown could remove the fact that the Mitchell case had been done. A full report on the investigation had been written by Ronnie Symonds, a senior D1 officer assigned to handle the paperwork in the case. Symonds' report outlined the history of allegations of penetration of MI5 and concluded that there was a strong likelihood that a spy existed at a high level inside the Service. It raised the obvious question of whether the Americans should be alerted.

Symonds' report was sent to Hollis and Dick White, and after private consultations between the two chiefs, we were summoned for another Sunday afternoon council-of-war, this time at Hollis' house in Campden Hill Square. The contrast between Dick White and Roger Hollis was never clearer than in their homes. Hollis' was a tatty, bookless townhouse, and he appeared at the door wearing his dark pinstripe weekday suit. He showed us into the dingy breakfast room, and launched straight into business. He wanted to hear our views. He gathered there was some concern about the Americans. Consultation never came naturally to Hollis, and there was more than a trace of irritation in his voice now that it had been forced on him.

Arthur acerbically said that we had to find a way of telling them now, in case it became necessary to tell them later, when the effect, if the case against Mitchell was ever proved, would be much more traumatic.

Hollis was utterly opposed. He said it would destroy the alliance, especially after Philby.

"For all we know," I reminded Hollis, "the Americans might have sources or information which might help resolve the case. But we'll never get it unless we ask."

For the next hour Hollis debated the issue with the two of us, tempers fraying on all sides. The others in the room - Ronnie Symonds, Arthur's desk officer for the Mitchell case, Hugh Winterborn, and F.J. - tried desperately to keep the temperature down. Symonds said he wanted to keep his options open. Perhaps Mitchell should be interrogated, but then again, it was always possible to regard the issue as closed. As for America, he said he did not know the scene out there well enough to have a view. Winterborn was solid and sensible, supporting Arthur's view that the bigger disaster would be to say nothing now, only to find the case proved later. F.J. finally burst out in exasperation.

"We're not a bloody public school, you know. There's no obligation for us all to 'own up' to the Americans. We run our Service as we think fit, and I wish some of you would remember that!"

But even F.J. acknowledged that there was a problem which had to be resolved. He said that on balance he felt it would be quite prudent to keep the Americans informed, the question was how to do it. Hollis could see he was outnumbered, and suddenly announced that he would visit Washington himself.

"Wouldn't it be better done at working level?" asked F.J., but Hollis' jaw was set firm, and although Arthur tried to move him, it was clearly a waste of time.

"I have heard the arguments. My decision is made," he snapped, glowering at Arthur across the table.

Hollis left for the United States almost immediately, where he briefed John McCone, the new Director of the CIA following the removal of Allan Dulles after the Bay of Pigs, and Hoover. Shortly afterward Arthur followed on to brief the Bureau and the Agency at working level. He got a rough reception. The Americans simply failed to understand how a case could be left in such an inconclusive state. Here, allegedly, was one of the most dangerous spies of the twentieth century, recently retired from one of the prime counterespionage posts in the West, and yet he had not even been interrogated. The whole affair smacked, to them, of the kind of incompetence demonstrated by MI5 in 1951, and in a sense they were absolutely right.

Hollis returned, determined to resolve the case. He ordered a new review to be written by Ronnie Symonds, and Symonds was specifically instructed not to communicate or cooperate with either Arthur or me in the research and drafting of the new report.

When the Mitchell case was handed over to Symonds, I returned to the Directorate of Science, where I was informed that Willis had made a change in procedures. He felt the Directorate need no longer involve itself in GCHQ's affairs, and wanted me to relinquish all contacts with the organization. I was incensed, I knew that unless MI5 hunted and chivvied for facilities and cooperation from GCHQ, things would soon slip back to the desperate state that existed before 1955. Few officers inside MI5 had any real idea of what could be done for them by GCHQ, and, equally, few GCHQ people bothered to think what they could do for each other, a job which I felt was vital for the Directorate to continue. But Willis could not be shifted. He wanted me to leave Counterclan, and join the bureaucrats. It was the final straw. I went to see Hollis, and told him that I could no longer continue to work in the Directorate. I told him I wanted to join D Branch if possible, or else return to A Branch. The Mitchell case gave me a taste of research, and I knew that the position as head of D3 was still vacant. To my surprise, Hollis offered me a transfer to D3 immediately. There was just a small caveat. He wanted me to return to the Directorate to finish one final special project for Willis, before taking up my new post in January 1964.

Willis' special project turned out to be one of the most important, and controversial, pieces of work I ever did for MI5. He wanted me to conduct a comprehensive review, to my knowledge the only one that was ever done inside British Intelligence, of every scrap of intelligence provided by yet another defector to appear in the West in the early 1960s - Oleg Penkovsky.

Penkovsky was, at the time, the jewel in MI6's crown. He was a senior GRU officer who spied in place for MI6 and the CIA during 1961 and 1962, providing massive quantities of intelligence about Soviet military capabilities and intentions. It was hailed on both sides of the Atlantic as the most successful penetration of Soviet Intelligence since World War II. Penkovsky alerted the West to the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba, and his information about the Soviet nuclear arsenal shaped the American approach to the subsequent Cuban missile crisis. He also provided the evidence for the identification of the Russian missiles in Cuba. But in late 1962 Penkovsky and a British businessman, Greville Wynne, who was his cutout to MI6, were both arrested by the KGB, and put on trial. Wynne was given a long prison term (although he was eventually exchanged for Gordon Lonsdale and the Krogers) and Penkovsky, apparently, was shot.