Warsaw concerto, p.48
Warsaw Concerto, page 48
part #13 of Timeline 10_27_62 Series
‘Our long-range rocket program was wrecked in the war. All the key factories were destroyed, and most of our best scientists and engineers killed. In another full-scale war we could destroy the British Isles but the Americans would obliterate us without raising a single bead of perspiration.’
Thus, in some quarters, Krasnaya Zarya – at least in western Europe – remained a necessary evil. If the foreseeable future was one in which the USSR had no option but to pursue its destiny through the agency of proxies, then it had to work with what was to hand. The only course of action which was unthinkable was to allow the West to enjoy, unperturbed, the spoils of their mendacity. The USSR had been attacked in October 1962 without warning, tens of millions of Soviet citizens had been murdered and no Soviet leadership could allow that to go unpunished.
Raisa had met her husband at Moscow State University where she had been studying Marxist-Leninist philosophy. At the time she had been going out with a fellow student.
That had not worked out.
Afterwards, she had suspended her university studies so that she could marry and start a family with Mikhail Sergeyevich, whom then as now, through everything, had been unfailingly devoted to her, and she to him. She had lost their first child, falling ill during her pregnancy – the doctors had said it was her life or that of her unborn child – and that trauma had, if anything, simply further solidified their marriage. They might have had more children after Irina; it had not been possible or sensible, so they had counted their blessings. Her only real worry was that Mikhail, as he was prone to, would miss her and his daughter so much it would surely, sooner or later effect his work with the Troika.
The telephone rang in the claustrophobic front room – she hesitated to call it any kind of ‘lounge’ or ‘parlour’ – and she heard Irina pick up the handset.
“Papa!” Raisa’s daughter shrieked excitedly.
Husband and wife invariably spent every telephone call discussing Irina’s health, her schoolwork, the friends she had made, accounts of walks she had taken with Raisa, or the times she had accompanied Raisa to the nearby Party shops to buy groceries. In the last few months children’s clothes had begun to become available for the first time since the war, although the choice remained small and the styles uniformly grim especially for a young girl. Raisa still mended and darned, honed her childhood seamstress skills, experimented with cutting up her own oldest dresses…
Irina was babbling happily.
Raisa frequently heard complaints from her friends that their husbands had little time, and on occasion, no patience whatsoever for their offspring. However, whether it was because Irina, as an only child, was so special to them, or simply because Raisa had been lucky enough to meet and marry a remarkable, genuinely good man, Mikhail had never been distant towards his daughter.
Raisa did not interrupt.
She let her daughter’s voice fuel her husband’s soul anew.
It was several minutes before Irina ran out of breath. Or rather, she remembered to breathe. Reluctantly, she handed over the receiver, remaining close so that she could retrieve it as soon as possible.
“My darling,” Raisa’s husband said quickly, as if he feared either Irina would snatch back the phone or the line might suddenly go down, “next week my work will bring me to the Crimea. I hope to spend a day or two with you…”
Raisa was momentarily speechless.
“Really?” She checked, wondering if she had misheard Mikhail.
“Yes, Comrade Alexander Nikolayevich has indicated to me that if our schedule allows that he would like to meet you and Irina…”
Raisa had no idea if she ought to be honoured or…terrified.
“That would be…good,” she murmured, knowing how lame that would sound if the KGB was bugging the line.
“Are you well, my love?”
“Yes. Irina and I are keeping warm and the rations are of much better quality than last winter. Things are looking up!” She prayed that did not sound too false.
Her husband laughed.
They always tried to make their exchanges seem spontaneous. Just in case he, or she, was under surveillance. In this respect discussing Irina, the apartment and remembering to say positive things about the ration situation and the competence of the local Party, one was on fairly safe ground.
Raisa was still a little unnerved by the thought of being introduced to the Chairman…
“I hope they are not working you too hard, darling?” She asked.
“There are never enough hours in the day,” he retorted cheerfully.
Raisa had got used to the idea that she had married a workaholic a long time ago. Mikhail always rose early, liked to start work at seven or eight in the morning and often did not come home until the early hours of the next morning. This, he compensated for by giving wholly of himself at those rare times, infrequent days off, official holidays, basically whenever he could be with Irina and her, totally to them. At those times they were the centre of his universe. Neither his wife, nor his daughter could ever have any doubt that everything he did, he did for them.
And, of course, for the Soviet people.
“I hope you’re not too thin?”
“I eat well,” the husband assured his wife.
Today, the line was clicking distantly, hissing only a little.
Raisa wondered if that meant he was nearer to Odessa than usual, not in faraway Sverdlovsk or some godforsaken Siberian or Mongolian military base?
“I finally managed to go to see Warsaw Concerto a couple of days ago,” she said brightly.
“Oh.” Raisa’s husband hesitated and she read volumes into it. “It is what it is, my love. We must all be strong. We must be again the bearers of the flame of Revolution.”
“Yes,” Raisa agreed. Unforgivably, she forgot herself, just for a moment: “Otherwise, my darling, everything that we have gone through will have been for nothing…”
Her voice trailed away.
Oh, God!
Did I actually say that?
To her astonishment her husband laughed indulgently, proudly, fearlessly.
“As always, you speak for us both in this, my love.”
Chapter 43
Thursday 19th January 1967
Amesbury, Wiltshire, England
“What the Devil is all this about?” Air Marshal Sir Daniel French demanded irascibly when he, his visitor and his wife were finally alone behind the closed door of his official residence’s lounge.
The man who was responsible for the future of British aviation – well, strictly speaking all military aerospace research and development and the now rapidly-expanding United Kingdom end of a plethora of new, potentially huge Anglo-US cutting edge aircraft and missile programs – had arrived back at home that evening to be greeted by the news that a ministerial cortège was about to descend upon the residence. Not, mind you, to ruin his evening but apparently to interview his wife!
His staff had warned him of this unwelcome development shortly before he was about to leave his office at RAF Boscombe Down, this after a particularly tiresome day entertaining a gang of visiting Congressmen and Senators, none of whom, clearly had anything better to do with their time than to enjoy, or not - goodness they were a miserable, carping lot – their ‘jolly’ in England away from the alleged pressures of Capitol Hill. Most of today’s American visitors seemed to be pressing the cases of this or that big US aero-conglomerate, and a couple of Air Force types apart, seemed somewhat venal in their motivations, and remarkably ill-informed about the complexity, breadth and ambition of US-UK cooperation…
The man to whom the worried husband addressed his heated interrogative smiled amiably and stuck out his hand, which Dan French shook cursorily.
Dan French had had only passing contacts with the forty-nine-year old – he was fifty in three or four day’s – Secretary of State for National Security, the man who oversaw the work of all the United Kingdom’s intelligence organs, including MI5, MI6, the Government Communications Headquarters at Cheltenham, and high-level security dealings with the nation’s allies, and presumably…its enemies also.
Airey Middleton Sheffield Neave, DSO, OBE, MC, PC was, by common consent of his friends and foes alike, that rare thing, a living national treasure. Parliamentarian, barrister and man of arms he had been Edward Heath’s ‘fixer’ in the early days after the cataclysm, Margaret Thatcher’s loyal lieutenant in the critical Ministry of Supply during the immediate post-October War United Kingdom Interim Emergency Administration’s existence, and the obvious man, the only man in fact, to take the home and foreign security services under his wing, in the wake of the intelligence disasters which had: very nearly allowed the Soviets to seize Malta, actually enabled the Argentine to gobble up the country’s South Atlantic colonies and protectorates without so much as a whisper until the deed was well and truly done, and meant that the Soviet invasion of Iran-Iraq had come like a bolt out of the blue to Margaret Thatcher’s Unity Administration in April 1964.
Among his many responsibilities Airey Neave remained the sitting Member of Parliament for Abingdon; and everybody took it for granted that no member of the Government was closer to either the Prime Minister, or the Foreign Secretary, than the man who had been the first British officer to make a ‘home run’ from Oflag IV-C, – Colditz Castle – and read the indictments to several of the leading Nazis tried at the Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunals.
When Airey Neave’s name was mentioned, it invariably prompted a flicker of knowing, rueful amusement in Rachel’s eyes. Dan French had never pressed his wife on any of the particulars of her dealings down the years, wisely deciding that the less he knew the better for all concerned.
Right now, he was asking himself if he ought to have been…curiouser.
Neave had been recruited by MI9 at the end of the Second War and he was one of those archetypal ‘intelligence types’ who never really stopped being a case officer, spy or whatever they liked to call themselves. To say that his wife was a constant source of amazement, not to mention, surprises to Dan French, would have been an understatement of not inconsiderable proportions. For example, on their wedding day, planned as a quiet, family affair in a small local church outside Salisbury, no fanfare, no publicity, etcetera, both Airey Neave and the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary had turned up, with their wives and their security details. Moreover, the nervous bridegroom had been somewhat taken aback to discover that his wife to be was on ‘Tom and Rachel’ terms with Lord Thomas Carlyle Harding-Grayson, whom it seemed had – like Airey Neave - also been something so important in the Second War, and subsequently, Cold War secret world that to this day, he never breathed a word about anything he had been involved in during those times.
Now, Dan French had a vague sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach; a feeling not unlike that he had some days back in the winter of 1943-44 when he, and all the other chaps in the briefing hall destined to fly their Lancasters to Germany in the coming hours, waited, if not with baited breath, then very keen interest, for the sheet hiding the big ‘ops map’ of Western Europe, to be removed to reveal the target for that night...
A chap did not have to be a rocket scientist – and he had got to know quite a number of them lately, so he knew they tended to be a pretty damned brainy crew - to work out that he was about to learn more news, almost certainly of the disturbing kind, about his wife’s mysterious past.
Whether he liked it or not.
What the Devil is all this about?
“Ah, that,” Airey Neave sighed, “is a bit complicated, I’m, afraid.”
“I think,” Lady Rachel French observed, wondering if she ought to step between the two men to prevent an unpleasant scene developing, “you boys ought to have a stiff drink.”
Judging that her husband – a dear, well-intentioned man of impeccable integrity; not a thing she would ever say, notwithstanding he was a charming, impeccably mannered man with many outstanding personal qualities, about the nation’s Security Tsar – was not about to punch their guest on the nose, not quite yet, anyway, she moved to the drinks’ cabinet.
The men briefly relaxed their half-pugilistic attitudes, one to the other, in deference to Rachel, who did not stint on the measures of Scotch whisky she poured into two crystal tumblers.
“I told Airey that we were not going to have this conversation until you got home, my darling,” she informed her husband, planting a pecking welcome kiss on his cheek as she pressed his drink into his hands. “I think we should sit down. Airey should not stand up so much. Not with his heart.”
This latter aside baffled Dan French.
“I had a heart attack three years before the October War,” the hero of Colditz confessed, shrugging philosophically.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” the other man murmured. He realised he had not only got under the collar but, unforgivably, he had been rude to a guest in his house. That would never do. “Yes, let’s all sit down. Please, forgive my intemperance, Airey.”
“Don’t mention it, old chap. We’re all friends, in this thing together. What?”
They had the residence to themselves, more or less. The Secretary of State for National Security had left his entourage outside in the cold, the French’s RAF-supplied maid, had clocked off earlier that afternoon and Dan French’s two batmen-bodyguards were presently eyeing Airey Neave’s travelling ‘heavies’, no doubt with barely veiled suspicion. It happened that Thursday was the cook’s day off; normally, when Dan French entertained visitors, Boscombe Down sent over a gang of stewards to oil the wheels.
Coals glowed ruddily in the nearby hearth as the protagonists settled into arm chairs.
“The thing is,” Airey Neave prefaced, “I have received a rather odd request from our American friends,” he explained, before he thought better of dissembling. “Specifically, earlier today I had a long conversation with the Director of Central Intelligence, Richard Helms.”
Dan French saw his wife’s eyebrows rise a fraction.
“My, my, you speak to the strangest people, Airey,” she remarked, as if she was simply making polite small talk.
“Actually, not so much as you’d imagine,” Airey Neave chuckled.
“Helms?” Dan French asked tersely. As Governor-General of Malta and Commander-in-Chief of All Allied Forces in the Mediterranean for the best part of eighteen months he had enjoyed the highest ‘Command Level’ security clearance. It had been a blessed relief to have that clearance downgraded, relatively speaking, to “All Technical-Military Areas’, on his assumption of command at Boscombe. He had never been entirely comfortable knowing every ‘dirty little secret’ in the land, or leastways, every ‘dirty little secret’ that Aire Neave had allowed to be known abroad. Inevitably, the Minister for National Security and his then Director of the National Security Services, Sir Dick White, had kept things from the C-in-C in the Mediterranean. For example, the real purpose of Rachel’s mission to Malta in 1965.
Of course, she had confessed all to him anyway, and the rest was, as they say, history…
“Yes, a charming fellow,” Airey Neave remarked ruefully. “But slippery, obviously. A fellow has to be quite slippery to survive at his level in Washington these days.”
Dan French was a bit old-fashioned about these things.
Insofar as it was possible, he firmly believed people who held high command in the military, or in government generally, had a duty to discharge their responsibilities with as much diligence and, well, honour, as was humanly feasible in the warped circumstances of this brave new world in which they found themselves.
Rachel short-circuited the discussion.
“What does Richard want?” She asked bluntly.
“He wants you to go to the United States,” Airey Neave retorted as bluntly.
“Why?”
“Rachel is retired from all that, dammit!” Dan French protested angrily, very nearly spilling his drink.
Airey Neave was suddenly giving him a schoolmasterly look as if to remind him that they both knew better than that. Rachel had not just been a spy, or an intelligence officer: she had been a freelance assassin.
And that reality was not going away any time soon…
“In Beirut,” Rachel said quietly, “who one was working for was a,” she hesitated, “grey thing. Other places, too.” She focused on Airey Neave. “Dan has never asked me and I have never told him anything other than he, as a very clever man, has already worked out for himself. And,” she shrugged, “when Dick sent me back to Malta that last time, I took it as read that the service would have had to make certain ‘declarations’ to the Governor, just in case you needed to disown me later.”
Airey Neave nodded.
See no evil, hear no evil, think as little evil as possible was an eminently sound foundation in any marriage.
“I heard that Dick was very ill?” Rachel inquired.
It was the turn of the Secretary of State for National Security to raise an eyebrow. That the legendary Director of the Security Services was hors-de-combat at presence was not a national secret; that he was terminally ill, cancer, was and from Rachel’s tone she was still dialled into her old world sufficiently well to have heard that rumour.
But then Rachel had always been closer to Dick White than he had; his old friend would have balked at the suggestion; but Airey Neave was not the only man in his circle who suspected that the one thing which had kept the spymaster safe in Rachel’s company down the years, was that, to all intents, he had come to fill the role of a second father to her, a substitute for the man murdered by the Soviets back in 1939.
The relations between a good case officer and a gifted agent were often complicated…
“Officially, he’s still on sick leave,” Airey Neave confirmed. “He won’t be coming back. That’s for your ears only, by the way,” he added, for Dan French’s benefit. “In his absence I’ve taken the opportunity to re-organise the service. Despite the Prime Minister’s reservations; home and abroad really do work better separated. Martin Furnival Jones is holding the fort at MI5. I’ve brought in Sir Frank Roberts from the FCO to hold the fort at MI6, he’s a diplomat rather than a spy, but a sound old Russia hand.”
