The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [54]
A window cleaner had appeared at the far side of the lounge, working on the exterior of the pub. He was in his late twenties and had a pair of iPod headphones plugged into repeatedly pierced ears. Neame saw him and gestured to the landlady, who approached him with the deference of a lady-in-waiting attending to the needs of an ailing monarch.
‘Yes, love. What can I do for you?’
She put a hand on Neame’s shoulder and Gaddis was afforded a glimpse of his life at the nursing home: the humiliation of being treated as a child by carers flushed with good intentions.
‘Your window cleaner,’ Neame asked. ‘Is he local by any chance?’
The landlady looked back across the room as the man swiped a set of French doors with a chamois leather.
‘Who? Danny?’
‘Danny, yes. Has he worked for you before?’
Gaddis could see what Neame was doing. He wanted to check the window cleaner’s credentials. Was he bona fide or MI5 surveillance?
‘Yes, love. Lives just down the road. Been looking after us for years. You need someone to clean your windows?’
Neame smiled gratefully. ‘Well, if you can recommend him, that would be enormously kind.’ It was an utterly convincing performance. ‘Could you fetch his number?’
‘Of course, love.’
And the landlady walked off, leaving Neame assured that their table was not being bugged.
‘As I was saying,’ he continued. There was no acknowledgement of the exchange which had just taken place: not a sideways glance, not even a knowing smile. ‘White was an old friend of Eddie’s from the war. Eddie went to him and told him what he had done. It was a private conversation which took place at the Reform Club. It constituted a full confession.’
‘Full to what extent?’
‘Everything he had ever done. Every name, every agent, every Soviet controller. He gave them Wynn, he gave them Maly, he gave them Cairncross.’
‘I thought Cairncross confessed in ’51?’
‘That’s what the history books would have you believe. He did, but only after Eddie exposed him.’
‘And Blunt? Philby?’
‘Sadly not. Because ATTILA had been ring-fenced by the NKVD at Trinity, in isolation from the Ring of Five, Eddie had no idea that Kim was working for Moscow. He thought Anthony was an art scholar, for God’s sake. We all did. He only knew for certain about Guy, and of course it was too late to alert London to Burgess and Maclean. They were already drinking vodka in Derjinsky Square. No, Eddie’s real area of expertise was Oxford.’
‘So he gave White the names in the ring? He gave them the Floud brothers, Jennifer Hart? That’s why it was rounded up?’
‘Speculation,’ Neame muttered, taking a stern gaze back to the window cleaner. Gaddis heard the squeak of cloth on glass. ‘But he named Leo Long, Victor Rothschild, James Klugmann and Michael Straight as possible trouble-makers. Some names were cleared, others were not. By then, Straight was back in the United States living the life of a responsible citizen. Ten years later, he was to make a similar confession of his own to the American government which led to the exposure of Blunt.’
‘And White went for this? He didn’t just want to string him up?’
‘A number of factors were in play, Sam. White was very fond of Eddie and could understand why he had fallen for Communism. A lot of us did. It was a heady time. In many ways, the decision to aid Mother Russia was a noble one, taken in good faith. Dick was also able to distinguish between the different personalities involved. Donald, for example, had a very deep and profound hatred of America. Later, White would come to recognize that Kim was a sociopath. Anthony, it transpired, was also utterly self-serving. Now you wouldn’t necessarily have said that about Guy or Cairncross. Along with Eddie, they were the ones who were steadfastly ideological, who spied out of conviction rather than from some misguided sense of their own importance. White also knew that Edward Crane was a brilliant intelligence officer. Furthermore, the country couldn’t afford another spy scandal. Had Eddie been exposed following the defection of Burgess and Maclean, there is every possibility