Confirm or Deny

  Confirm Or Deny

  Graham Ison

  © Graham Ison 1989

  Graham Ison has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1989 by Macmillan London Ltd.

  This edition published in 2017 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter One

  Sir Edward Griffin walked through to Piccadilly before hailing a cab; it was good security to be circumspect when making visits about delicate matters, but it was the cause of deep personal regret that he was having to avoid telling anyone in the service what he was doing – even his deputy. The Home Secretary, however, had made it clear that he had no choice; he had been firm on that.

  Perhaps even now he would be proved wrong, but he had to acknowledge that it was a vain hope.

  It was made the more bitter that it had come at the very time he should have been retiring; at a time when he should have been giving little parties at the office for selected friends and colleagues. And being dined out by his own senior people, or indeed those at the place where he was going now, and having distinguished guests, the Prime Minister even, make complimentary speeches about him and his career and how much he would be missed. He wouldn’t be, of course; no one ever was; he was enough of a realist to know that six months later he would have been forgotten – six weeks even!

  Then there were all the things that he and his wife had promised themselves over the years. Some compensation for the long hours, the at-times-impossible tasks, the responsibility. His pension would not have been generous, not by industry’s standards, but he had invested wisely and there would be enough to live on quite comfortably; enough to do the things he and Mary wanted to do.

  There was the garden – he had great plans for the garden – and he could have spent a little money on the books he had always wanted to own; and have the time in which to read them. And then perhaps they would have gone to the occasional concert, and less frequently the opera – his love, or the ballet – Mary’s. They were neither of them very keen on the other’s musical interests, but had been married long enough, thirty years, to give in gracefully, and make allowances.

  And then this. Just about the most serious dilemma that could arise. The Home Secretary had asked him to stay on. There was only one small crumb of comfort in that: at least he wasn’t under suspicion.

  But there was one caveat he had disliked, and that was why he was in this cab now, going where he was going. He had been tempted to refuse, to demand his retirement, but it would have made no difference; someone else would have been given the job, and then there was no telling what might have happened. At least this way he could retain some control.

  “Westminster Abbey, guv’nor.” Griffin was aware that the cab had stopped and the driver was peering back at him through the open panel. “You did say the Abbey – not the Cathedral?”

  “Yes. Yes, I did. Sorry, I was day-dreaming.” Griffin alighted and handed over the fare and a tip, not too generous but enough – he never gave anyone cause to remember him if he could avoid it.

  He waited until the cab had turned and disappeared into Parliament Square before crossing the road and walking briskly down Tothill Street. Again, he was avoiding being noticed, as with his dress: anonymous fawn raincoat – his flasher mac was how some of his more irreverent staff described it – and he wore no hat.

  He rounded the corner of Dacre Street and strode along its narrow pavement to the main entrance of New Scotland Yard; “Back Hall” the policemen called it for a reason he could never understand.

  As he pushed his way through the revolving doors, a young man in a dark gray suit moved rapidly across from where he had been waiting in front of the Roll of Honor. “Good morning, sir. Please come this way.” He paused. “You have your pass, sir?”

  “Yes,” murmured Griffin, opening his wallet to show the security guard. The guard didn’t give it a second glance. It was like all the others, the familiar pattern: a photograph and the Commissioner’s signature.

  Griffin knew exactly where he was going in the building and was entitled to free access, but the young police officer escorting him was an added safeguard against anyone asking awkward questions.

  They walked across the predominantly gray foyer and into the gray lift. Griffin pondered on its grayness: all gray in a place where the business was essentially black and white.

  The lift stopped and started all the way to the eighteenth floor; anonymous people getting in and out, messengers with file-laden barrows, tea-ladies with urns on trolleys, and once a policeman in uniform looking strangely out of place in this world-famous police headquarters.

  They emerged into a gray corridor, Griffin’s guide nodding to a colleague in a glass-fronted office.

  The secretary’s office was like any other: a girl, a typewriter, tea-things, paper, clutter.

  The young policeman said hallo to the secretary and tapped lightly on the open inner door of the Deputy Assistant Commissioner’s office. “The Director-General of MI5, sir,” he said.

  Donald Logan skirted his desk, hand extended. “Good morning, Edward.”

  “Good morning, Donald. Thank you for seeing me at such short notice.”

  Logan waved a deprecating hand. “Come and sit down. Coffee?”

  “Thank you – black, no sugar.”

  Logan smiled. “I know. Carol, two black coffees – no sugar in Sir Edward’s.” He closed the door and sat down opposite Griffin in the group of chairs behind it.

  Neither man was inclined to start the conversation. Both knew that the secretary would be returning with the coffee soon. Logan guessed that Griffin’s peremptory visit must be important: Griffin knew it was.

  “England seem to be doing well.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Cricket, Edward, the test.”

  “Oh, yes. I’m sorry, I don’t follow cricket.”

  Logan laughed. “I’d’ve thought it was a must for an establishment figure like yourself.”

  Griffin smiled a taut smile. “Like Drake playing bowls, you mean?” It was a simile that was peculiarly apt to him that morning.

  “Something like that.” He moved slightly so that his secretary could put the tray of coffee on the table between them.

  Griffin watched the door close again, and then glanced round the big double-aspect office.

  “It’s swept quite regularly – by your chaps,” said Logan, a half-smile playing round his lips. They both knew he wasn’t talking about the cleanliness of the rich pile carpet.

  Griffin smiled too. “Sorry,” he said, “but this problem’s beginning to get to me…”

  Logan sat, relaxed, waiting. He had known Sir Edward Griffin for some time and they got on well. It was not always an easy relationship, the one between MI5 and Special Branch, or the Security Service and SO12 as each was now known in that infuriatingly bureaucratic world of ever-changing terminology. Overall, their objectives were the same, the security of the state, but the nuances varied. MI5 were acquisitive; to them, intelligence, however ob
tained, was paramount. To Special Branch, enforcement of the law brooked no compromise; nothing could be permitted to interfere with their duty as police officers. It occasionally soured the relationship on both sides, particularly at the lower levels.

  With a light sigh, Griffin said; “We’ve got a leak, Donald.”

  “Oh!” Logan pursed his lips. “You’re certain?”

  “There’s an outside chance that I’m wrong, I suppose, and I hope to God I am, but…” He left the sentence trailing.

  Logan put his coffee cup down on the low table between them. “I thought you chaps always consumed your own smoke?”

  Griffin’s glance wasn’t malevolent, but it betrayed the bitterness he felt. “I’ve no option. The Home Secretary has instructed me to enlist your help.” He stared bleakly at Logan’s coffee cup for a second or two and then looked up again. “Fully supported by the Prime Minister, I may say, who seems to think that Special Branch can do no wrong.”

  On another occasion, Logan would have made jocular capital out of that but not now. “I see.” The policeman waited patiently, sympathizing silently with the man opposite. It was no easy task to face up to the existence of a traitor in one’s organization, and there seemed no other construction which could be put upon what Griffin had just said. It was worse when you had to tell an outsider and ask for his assistance.

  “We’ve had two operations go wrong recently. Well, in the last year. One you know about – the Nikitin case.”

  Logan remembered it well. Last summer an “illegal” called Ivor Nikitin had been found to be the controller of a young naval telegraphist at the Ministry of Defence. The combined operation between MI5 and Special Branch had been undertaken, as usual, in the utmost secrecy, but at the moment the trap was sprung it was discovered that Nikitin had disappeared. MI5’s so-called sister service, MI6, had subsequently reported his return to a hero’s welcome in Moscow. They had been left with the naval telegraphist, a pathetic twenty year old whose only rewards had been one hundred and twenty pounds, an expensive camera – and twenty-one years’ imprisonment.

  “But last month,” continued Griffin, “a similar thing happened. This time an East German.”

  Logan raised an eyebrow. “When?”

  “Two weeks ago.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “No, you wouldn’t have known about it. It was aborted before you were involved – unfortunately.”

  “What makes you think it was a leak, Edward? It could have been bad luck. After all it does happen, particularly in our business.”

  Griffin shook his head slowly. “The pattern was almost identical with the Nikitin case.” He paused reflectively. “And it was the same team from my service who worked on it.”

  “Well it would have been anyway, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s true,” he conceded, “but coincidences like that alarm me, Donald. It only needs one of those damned investigative journalists to get the merest whiff and they’ll be shouting KGB penetration from the roof-tops. Look what they did to poor Roger Hollis.”

  Logan nodded. All the world knew the constantly recurring allegations about the former Director-General, knew also that his death had prevented him from defending himself, but hadn’t stopped the rumor-mongers. “Still, Edward, they’re not suggesting you work for the Russians, are they?” It was said with a smile, a smile that Griffin did not return.

  “No, Donald, they’re not,” he said solemnly. “Not yet, anyway. But if I’m not seen to take some action – some positive action – they’ll accuse me of complicity soon enough.”

  Logan half turned in his chair and stretched out his long legs, his gaze flickering across to the group photograph on the opposite wall – a photograph of stem-faced and moustached Special Branch officers in the First World War army uniforms they had worn when attached to military intelligence. One of them had relentlessly pursued Percy Topliss, the monocled mutineer, to his death; Special Branch officers were very good at tracking people down.

  “Roger Hollis wasn’t a spy,” said Logan comfortingly.

  “I know that and you know that,” said Griffin. “It’s a classic case of Soviet disinformation. Our source has proved that to us beyond all reasonable doubt, but we can’t broadcast it without prejudicing that source.”

  “Exactly. Might this not be the same?”

  A ray of hope appeared on Griffin’s face, to be extinguished almost at once. “A set-up, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d like to think so. If you can prove it I shall be eternally grateful to you.”

  “Well,” said Logan, “Supposing they wanted to cast suspicion on one of your officers. What better way to do it than to put down a few clues that’ll lead you on, and then pull the plug at precisely the right moment, leaving your service with egg on its face.”

  “I must admit I’ve thought about it – hoped if you like. All we got was some poor little sod of a leading telegraphist in the navy who had no money and a weakness for scantily clad young ladies. And he didn’t get much of either.”

  “They wouldn’t have worried about him,” said Logan, “as you well know. They’ll sacrifice anybody to achieve their aims. They don’t play cricket, you know.”

  “Neither do I,” said Griffin, and Logan glimpsed a little of the steel that had caused the Prime Minister to appoint him to his present post.

  “You have a plan?” asked Logan, determined to steer the DG away from his self-pitying reminiscing.

  “Of sorts, yes.” Griffin paused, reflecting, realizing that he was getting too edgy about the whole thing, to the point where he was now wondering whether he should even confide in the head of Special Branch. He plunged. “We’ve got a double agent – here in London—”

  “Are you sure?”

  For a moment, Griffin looked puzzled. “She’s seen at regular intervals; of course she’s here.”

  “I didn’t mean that. The question was, are you sure that she’s on your side? Always a risk with double agents, surely?”

  Griffin laughed cynically. “I see what you mean. Yes, as sure as we can be.”

  “Go on.”

  “My idea was to make her the subject of an operation. Use the same team as we used for Nikitin and Gesschner, and place the team itself under observation.” He spoke the last words softly. The whole thing was distasteful to him; he still couldn’t come to terms with the proposition that one of his own officers could be working for the KGB. Logan raised a quizzical eyebrow and Griffin went on. “The moment our double agent is alerted, she would tell us.”

  “And you’d be no further forward than you are now,” said Logan, half to himself. “Who’s her handler?”

  “John Carfax.”

  “He’s fairly senior, isn’t he? She must be pretty valuable.”

  “Vulnerable more than valuable. But she’s useful.”

  “But that would blow her cover for all time, surely? You’d either have to let her go – back to Moscow, I mean – or put her into cold storage. The first option might make her useful to SIS, but in neither case would she be any more good to you.”

  “You don’t make omelettes without breaking eggs,” said Griffin. He looked tired.

  Logan pursed his lips. “If we’re to take this on, Edward, I shall leave it very much to the officer charged with the enquiry to make his own plans.” He didn’t like the sound of Griffin’s proposal at all. In his view, the Director-General was allowing his judgment to be clouded; there would be no profit in sacrificing a double agent. It seemed that Griffin was too close to his problem to be objective about it.

  “Who will you give me – Frank Hussey?”

  The DAC shook his head slowly. “I propose giving you John Gaffney,” he said. “You remember him?”

  “Wasn’t he the chap who was involved with that girl in Moscow – the ambassador’s secretary?” Griffin frowned.

  “Yes,” said Logan flatly. “But he was promoted detective chief superintendent after
that. He was the officer who investigated the murder of that girl whose body was found in France.”

  “Oh yes, I remember that – or more particularly a rather painful interview with the Prime Minister,” said Griffin. “One of several lately,” he added.

  *

  At the other end of the short corridor leading from the DAC’s office, three young men and one young woman were perched nervously on chairs specially placed outside a door, through which, they were shortly to be admitted for interview. They looked around. At the thermoplastic flooring, at the vinyl-covered utility boarding that formed the walls, and at the office doors. From time to time, self-confident men entered these offices. Most were attired in dark suits, some clutching files, some nonchalant with hands in pockets; others were scruffily dressed in jeans and sweaters. Some would knock deferentially, straining for the summons to enter; some would just barge in, and occasionally the nervous quartet heard gratuitous and ingenuous insults, or snatches of laughter. Somewhere, a telephone seemed always to be ringing.

  They had all entered the building boldly enough, producing their warrant cards as proof of belonging, but by the time they had reached the eighteenth floor, some of the bounce seemed to have left them. They sat now, wondering. The three men, immaculate in best suits, occasionally fingered their collars or adjusted their ties. The woman, a girl of twenty-four, had dressed carefully and soberly in a navy blue suit, under which she wore a cream blouse, buttoned to the throat. Her black hair had been dragged back off her face into a bun at the nape of her neck. She had been warned that to be sexually provocative at the interview was suicidal. She could have been devastating in her appearance but had taken the hint, and intended to rely on her degree and her awareness of current affairs for success. On her lap, beneath her handbag and white gloves, lay a copy of The Times which she had read from start to finish on her journey to St James’s that morning.

  The men, occasionally shooting sideways glances at the girl’s legs, engaged in apprehensive banter and exchanged whispered policemen’s stories about arrests and senior officers, but once in a while, raised topical world events just to test how much the competition knew. All four wanted desperately to become Special Branch officers, to cast off their blue serge forever, but the competition was fierce. They had heard that from an initial one hundred and thirty applications, fewer than twenty were likely to be successful. The phrase “many are called but few are chosen” kept running through the girl’s mind, and probably those of her companions too.