‘It’s only a matter of time,’ Jean said, ‘before the Daily Worker tumbles to it.’
We collected a file of flimsies from RAMC records at Lower Barracks, Winchester, and stopped in Stockbridge for lunch. From there it’s only a short journey.
The fingers of winter pressed deep into the white throat of the land. The trees showed no sign of leaf and the soil was brown and polished shiny by the damp winds. Farms were still and silent and the villages deserted as though spring was not expected to return. The prison is sited on a narrow ridge on the extreme edge of the plain. It’s the only Psychiatric (Maximum Security) Prison that is run entirely by the Army. The buildings are modern and light and in the grounds there is a huge piece of abstract sculpture and two fountains that are switched on when someone important is coming. Along the drive, flowerbeds—now brown and bare—were the size and shape of newly filled-in graves. The Governor’s secretary was waiting for us in the main entrance. It was a Kafka-ish place that looked a little too big for humans and smelled of ether. The Governor’s secretary brandished a large manilla file at us. He was a small, beautiful man who looked as though he had been assembled from a plastic kit, and his fingertips were in ceaseless movement as though he had got sticky stuff on them and was trying to remove it. He extended one of the flickering little hands to me and let me shake it. Then he saluted Jean and went into an on-guard with a copy of the prison rules which I signed. Jean parried with the RAMC documents and a straight thrust with Pike’s passport. The man did a cut-at-flank with a Governor’s memo that we hadn’t seen. Jean lost ground initialling this but did some criss-cross high-cuts with a War Office file from Ross. The man was signing it with a flourish when Jean lunged with a photostat of some Cabinet minutes that had nothing to do with this case at all. She had judged her opponent well, for he surrendered before reading it all through.
‘Very comfortable interrogation room,’ the man said.
It was much too likely to be bugged.
‘We’ll see him in his cell,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you’d send some tea down there.’
‘Very well,’ said the man. ‘They said you’d have your own way of doing things.’ He smiled to indicate that he didn’t approve. I waited a long time for him to say, ‘It’s very irregular,’ but he didn’t say it. We walked down the main hall to the senior warder’s office. Inside a muscular warder with a key-chain down to his knees looked up from his desk as if he hadn’t been poised there waiting for us.
‘Take these people across to three wing—special observation,’ said the man. He handed the warder the flimsy sheet of yellow paper which I had signed.
‘That body’s receipt must be back in my office before this lady and gentleman leave the main gate.’ He turned to us and twittered an explanation. ‘Otherwise you won’t get out.’ He turned back to the warder. ‘All right, Jenkins?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Jenkins. The Governor’s secretary offered us his fidgety little hand.
I said, ‘It’s very irregular.’
‘Yes,’ he said and went away tuttuttering.
Jenkins went across to the filing cabinet. ‘Would you like some tea?’ he asked over his shoulder.
‘Yes please,’ Jean said. He unlocked the filing cabinet and produced a bag of sugar. ‘I’ll bring some sugar down for you. Have to lock it up,’ he explained. ‘The night shift pinches it.’
Three wing is used for the prisoners who need constant attention, and is set apart from the other buildings. The grass was beaten into mud by winter and the grounds were silent and devoid of any sign of gardeners or guards. The Psychiatric Prison was like a very modern primary school from which all the breakables have been removed. The gates were designed in modern patterns to avoid the feeling of being behind bars. But the patterns weren’t large enough to squeeze a man through. There was a constant clang and clatter of keys, everywhere was much too clean. As we passed each door Jenkins sang out the name of it: diningroom, association room, quiet room, classroom, library, physiotherapy, electro-convulsive therapy. Obviously Jenkins was kept specially for visitors. In the highly polished corridor leading to Pike’s cell there were prints by the better adjusted of the Impressionists. Outside his cell in a wooden frame were slotted cards bearing his name, number, a coloured one for his religion so that the chaplain could spot it, and special diet—none—but I noticed that there were no cards in the space that said sentence and classification.
Pike’s cell was small but light and—oddest of all for a prison—the window was low enough to see through, although only for a distance of ten yards. The wind was howling across the yard outside but the cell wasn’t cold. The paintwork was a petrifying yellow and there was a narrow strip of coconut matting of the same colour. On the wall was a copy of the prison rules in microscopic type. There was a hospital bed, a triangular wash-basin and flushing water-closet. On the wall there was a crucifix, a photo of Pike’s house, a photo of his wife and a photo of the Queen; the Queen was in colour. Beside the bed there was a tiny reading lamp with a lampshade of a baroque design with red plastic tassels. Pike had been reading a copy of I, Claudius. He placed a cigarette paper inside as a marker and put the book on the table.
The warder said, ‘Vis’ter f’yer Pike on y’er ft nat erper sission nerve tenshun.’ Pike obviously understood this strange language for he stood rigidly at attention. He was dressed in army fatigue uniform. The warder walked close to Pike and inspected him. There was nothing threatening in the way he did it. He did it like a mother who had cleaned a bowlful of porridge off her child and wants to be sure he is now quite tidy. The warder turned back to me and spoke in a different voice. ‘Two teas for you and the lady. I’ll put sugar on the tray. Do you want tea for the prisoner?’
‘That would be very nice,’ I said.
When the warder had left Pike said, ‘You’ve done all right for yourself, haven’t you?’
‘I’m a busy man, Pike,’ I said. ‘If I had my way I would just deliver you to the Soviet Embassy and forget the whole thing, but providing you don’t make my job more difficult than it already is I’ll try and remain as unprejudiced as possible.’
‘Well first of all you’d better hear…’
‘When and what I want to hear from you, I’ll let you know,’ I said. ‘In any case you’re one of the Army’s problems at present, nothing whatsoever to do with me.’
‘What do you want then?’ He touched his buttons to be sure they were all correctly fastened. Finding that they were, he glared at me defiantly.
‘I’m here to tell you that if your wife decided to leave the country nothing would be done to impede her.’
‘Very kind,’ said Pike huffily. He stroked his uniform in quick nervous movements.
‘Don’t let’s be confused about this. We know that last week she took another—I might add a final—batch of stolen virus to Helsinki. She returned to England yesterday. Although she thought she was doing it for the Americans those eggs were due to be delivered to the Russians. Luckily they didn’t get there.’
‘Russians,’ said Pike scornfully. ‘They’ve told me some stories in here but that’s the best one yet. I am an American agent. I work for a secret American organization called Facts for Freedom.’
‘It’s about time you moved into the past tense,’ I said. ‘And it’s about time that you got it into your thick pill-pushing head that stealing from a highly secret government establishment is a very serious criminal charge no matter if she was going to boil the eggs for three minutes and eat them with thin bread and butter.’
‘Threats is it?’ said Pike. He undid his pocket button as though he was getting a notebook then he fastened it up again. ‘I’ll have the whole lot of you in the Old Bailey. They tell me that psychiatric prisoners are not allowed to petition the Home Secretary or the Minister of Defence but I’m going to take this matter to the House, the House of Lords if necessary.’ The words came smooth and fluent as though he had said them to himself many times—although without believing th
em.
‘You are not taking anything anywhere, Pike. If I let you walk out of here now to…well to anywhere, to the BMA, or to your MP or your mother, you’ll spin your story about joining the Army by accident and then being held by Military Intelligence in a lunatic asylum. Do you expect anyone to believe that? They’ll say you are a nut, Pike, and so will the Army psychiatrist that they send along to examine you. You would feel your arms slipping into a backward overcoat before you knew what was happening to you. Then you would begin to struggle and shout and yell about your innocence and sanity and everyone would be even more convinced that you’re a nut.’
Pike said, ‘No psychiatrist would lend himself to such a thing.’
I said, ‘You’re naïve, Pike. Perhaps that’s been your trouble all along. That Army psychiatrist will uphold the diagnosis of his colleagues. You were a doctor, Pike; you know what doctors always do: they agree with their colleagues. Haven’t you ever covered up for someone’s faulty diagnosis by agreeing? Well, that’s what this psychiatrist would do; especially after reading your dossier.’ I tapped it. ‘It says here that while masquerading as a doctor you prejudiced the lives of fourteen persons.’
‘It’s all a tissue of lies,’ Pike said desperately. ‘You know that. My God, it’s diabolical. A man came here three days ago and insisted that I had once been an artillery officer in Kuwait. Last week they said I was an abortionist. They’re trying to send me insane. You know what’s true.’
‘I only know what’s in your file,’ I said. ‘You played amateur wonder-boy spy games. Men get hurt doing that. Most of them are far more interesting than you. Now let’s get down to business. Where would you like your wife to go?’
‘Nowhere.’
‘Just as you like, but when your wife goes into custody they will probably make your child a ward of the court; he’ll end up in an orphanage. Your wife will get at least seven years.’ I put all the documents back into my case and locked it.
Pike stared at me. I could hardly recognize the man I had met in the King’s Cross consultingroom. The hair that had been sleek and steely was now limp as cotton and streaked with grey. His eyes were sunk deep into his skull and his protests were not accompanied by any muscular activity. He was like a man dubbing a sound track on an action film and unable to make it convincing. He ran a finger round the neck of his uniform blouse and waved his chin about. I offered him a cigarette and while I lit it for him our eyes met. Neither of us could muster the slightest glint of kindness.
‘Yes, well. We have relations in Milan. She could go there.’
I said, ‘Here’s some paper, write her a letter suggesting she goes to Milan. Don’t date it. Make it a very strong suggestion because if she doesn’t go within a couple of days I won’t be able to prevent her arrest.’
‘A different department,’ said Pike sarcastically.
‘A different department,’ I agreed, and I let him have pen and paper and when he had finished writing I let him have a cup of tea with two cubes of sugar.
Chapter 28
Jean was typing out our file on the Midwinter organization. She stopped. ‘What a lovely name, the Loving Trail. Why is it called that?’
‘A man named Oliver Loving drove cattle from the pasture of Texas to the rail-head at Cheyenne.’
‘It’s a lovely name, Loving Trail,’ Jean said. ‘I suppose that’s what they were all on. General Midwinter loving America strongly although not very cleverly.’
‘The understatement of the year.’
‘And Mrs Newbegin. I know you hated her but I’m sure that it was a distorted sort of love that drove her on to soft-soap Midwinter and pressure Harvey into being a big success.’
‘Stealing. Is that your idea of success?’
‘I’m trying to understand them.’
‘Mrs Pike and Mrs Newbegin are exactly the same type. Tough, aggressive, hard-bitten, handling their husbands like a road manager with a new pop-singer. You work with these files all day, you know that women like these almost never think in terms of politics. They are biologically motivated and biology being what it is, the female of the species will survive. Drop them into Peking and in six months either of those women will have a big house, nice clothes and a husband operated by remote control.’
‘What happened to Harvey Newbegin? Did his control blow a fuse?’
‘Harvey loved youth. Like a lot of people who covet other people’s youth he really wanted to be rid of his memories. Harvey wanted to start all over again; by marriage, by defection; he didn’t mind as long as he could have a new clean slate.’
‘I’d say that was his wife’s fault; he felt trapped.’
‘Everyone feels trapped; it’s our way of rationalizing our leaden lot in the face of our golden potential.’
‘That reminds me,’ said Jean. ‘I must renew your subscription to the Reader’s Digest.’
Very funny. I fixed fifteen paper clips into a neat chain but when I pulled it one, the third from the end, distorted and gave way.
‘Why did Harvey Newbegin defect?’ Jean asked. ‘I still don’t understand.’
‘He was an unstable man in a high-pressure world,’ I said. ‘There’s no nice glib explanation. He wasn’t a Communist spy, a revolutionary or a subversive Marxist. They never are. The day of the political philosopher is over. Men no longer betray their country for an ideal; they respond to immediate problems. They do the things they do because they want a new car or they fear they’ll be fired or because they love a teenage girl or hate their wife, or just because they want to get away from it all. There was no sharp motive. There never is. I should have know that, just a ragged mess of opportunism, ambition and good intentions that go wrong. That’s the path to hell. Just build an inch of it every day and it can be a painless journey.’
‘What does your golden potential tell you about Signe; a sex-pot?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘You know…young girls.’
‘No,’ Jean said woodenly. ‘You do.’
‘She’s a young girl who suddenly discovers she’s a beautiful woman. The sort of men who have been telling her not to make so much noise are suddenly waiting on her and listening to every word she says. Power. She gets a little drunk on it, it’s nothing out of character. Madly in love one day, out of love the next. A lovely little game, but Harvey took it seriously. But Harvey was an actor too, he relished it.’
‘I was looking at the medical report of Kaarna’s death,’ Jean said. ‘The Helsinki police said that it was a thin pointed instrument, the wound being delivered by a right-handed assailant from behind him with a downward striking action…’
‘I’m way ahead of you,’ I interrupted. ‘A hat-pin used by a left-handed girl who had her arms around him while both were lying on the bed would give the same sort of wound. A Russian courier died from exactly the same type of wound five months before, so did several others. She was good at counting vertebrae.’
‘Cloth traces in the teeth?’ said Jean in a businesslike way.
‘We all have our funny little ways,’ I said.
‘My God,’ said Jean. ‘You mean she was the official killer for the Midwinter organization, just as Harvey Newbegin said.’
‘Seems like it,’ I said. ‘That’s why old man Midwinter asked me if she was emotionally entangled. He was still thinking of using her on Harvey.’
‘What will happen to her now?’
‘Dawlish is hoping that Signe Laine and Mrs Pike can be employed by us.’
‘Blackmail.’
‘A harsh word, but if we offer them a job they’ll be in a difficult position to refuse.’
So Ross at the War Office had found a way to hold Dr Felix Pike in custody without the publicity of a public trial, but even Ross couldn’t pretend that Mrs Pike had joined the army and gone crazy. We had a tacit agreement with Ross that he would leave Mrs Pike to us. We wanted to keep her under observation with a view to recruiting her.
Ross wouldn’t break his agreement, but he knew other
ways of sabotaging us. Early Friday afternoon we heard that Special Branch had become interested in Mrs Pike. We all knew it was Ross’s sly hand, the artful little sod.
‘The artful little sod,’ I said.
Jean snapped the file closed and produced a large manilla envelope. Inside it there were two airline tickets and a bundle of American currency. ‘Dawlish wants you to put Mrs Pike on an aeroplane.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Special Branch are going along there with a warrant this evening, so you’ll have to use the letter from Pike after all. You should have an hour to turn her round if you hurry.’
‘I hate these bloody jobs.’
‘I know you do.’
‘You are very sympathetic, I must say.’
‘I don’t get paid to be sympathetic,’ Jean said. ‘I don’t see why you must always be so holy about the sort of jobs you do. It’s quite straightforward: get Mrs Pike on the plane before she gets arrested. I should have thought you liked playing good Samaritan.’
I took the tickets and stuffed them in my pocket. ‘Well you can come too,’ I said. ‘Then you’ll see how bloody enjoyable it is.’
Jean shrugged and gave the driver Pike’s address. Friday night in week-end-cottage land. Foundations were sinking and damp rising. Stockbrokers in Daimlers and casual clothes arrived relaxed and would leave on Monday morning tense and exhausted. It was a cold evening. Toasted tea-cakes, kettles singing on the hob, hansom cabs and deer-stalker hats almost visible through the light fog. Besterton village was a clutter of architectural styles from timber frame with brick nogging to the phoney Georgian of the Pike residence.
The converted barn that Ralph Pike had lived in had burn marks on two of the upstairs windows. There were no cars in the drive now, no music or signs of life anywhere. I rang the bell. The Spanish manservant came to the door.
‘Yes?’
‘Let’s see Mrs Pike.’