Philip Kerr - The Other Side of Silence

“To me, the stuff about Hector McNeil is very damaging,” said Sinclair.

“Especially as he was a government minister at the time.”

“Certainly to the Labour Party if not to McNeil himself. He died last year.”

“Really?”

“Yes. He was only forty-eight.”

“Christ. Scots, of course. Working-class Glasgow. They never seem to live long, do they?”

“The information about Britain having a list of which Russian cities we might bomb in a preemptive strike is also damaging,” said Reilly. “The British people don’t like to think of themselves as aggressors. That could never have been broadcast. Not in a million years.”

“I would like to know who this man was that Deutsch and Guy met in Paris,” said Sinclair. “The one he says Deutsch was looking to recruit for the comrades.”

“The ones who’d just come back from China?” said Blunt. “Yes. That was rather interesting.”

“It sort of rings a bell with me somewhere,” said Sinclair. “But why?”

“He’d been working for a tobacco company, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find out,” said Reilly. “But what interests me more is where the tape comes from. We need to find out from the BBC if they ever received it. And if they did receive it, who gave it to them and what happened to it. One can hardly imagine they wouldn’t have been aware of its importance.”

“On the other hand, if this chap Hebel was given the tape by someone in the KGB,” said Blunt, “the question is what the Soviets can hope to achieve by letting us have it now, five years after Burgess and Maclean went to Russia. Disinformation or disclosure? It’s rather a dilemma.”

“Quite.”

“Walter has an interesting theory about the tape,” said Maugham. “Don’t you, Walter?”

“Yes, sir.” And I quickly told them about Hebel and his history as a practiced blackmailer in Germany. “This just may be a case of blackmail, pure and simple. If so, I can’t imagine anyone better equipped than Hebel to handle it for the Russians.”

“Yes, but what could they want?” asked Reilly.

“Money,” I said. “What else? The Soviet Union is desperately short of foreign currency. And they know how sensitive Anglo-American relations are right now. How anxious you would be to prevent the Americans from having ears on the tape. There’s no telling what’s on the other tapes being offered as part of the deal.”

“They could be even more embarrassing,” said Reilly. “Yes, I do see what you mean.”

“Under the circumstances,” I said, “two hundred thousand dollars looks cheap compared with the diplomatic cost of this tape and others like it appearing in the pages of the New York Times or on some foreign news network.”

“If Walter’s right, then clearly someone in Russian intelligence has a sense of humor,” said Maugham. “The idea of the British government paying off the KGB to stop it from leaking secrets about its number one defector is nothing short of hilarious. At least, it would be if it wasn’t me who was being asked to pay up.”

“Quite,” said Sinclair.

“And Hebel is the man who was in possession of the incriminating photograph that Anthony bought from Willie’s nephew, Robin,” said Reilly. “Is that right? For a thousand pounds.”

“Yes,” said Maugham. “I’m sorry about that, Anthony. You must let me give you the thousand pounds you paid him for it.”

“Please don’t concern yourself too much, Willie,” said Blunt. “As you know, this is not so much an occupational hazard as a constitutional one. The picture and the negative were both purloined from my flat several months ago. In my work as director of the Courtauld Institute I have to entertain a great many students. Sadly, I think one of them must have stolen it and sold it to this awful man. I do have half an idea of who it might have been. An Austrian boy. Which makes it even more disappointing. He’s one of my most promising students.”

“You know this fellow reminds me of the chap in the Sherlock Holmes story,” said Sinclair. “‘The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton.’”

Reilly smiled calmly. “Yes, of course. The king of blackmailers. Rather a good tale that one, I always thought.”

“Milverton was based on a real blackmailer, by the way,” added Blunt. “A man called Howell who was blackmailing the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Howell was found with his throat cut and half a sovereign in his mouth. Which seems fitting, somehow.”

“I wish someone would cut this man Hebel’s throat,” said Maugham. “I suggested to Walter that he should kill him, but alas he declined. Why don’t you have your two friends from Portsmouth pick him up and go to work on him with a red-hot travel iron. It seems to me that you could get all the answers you need from him that way.”

“I don’t think the French would like that very much,” said Reilly. “We’re getting on rather well with them right now, what with all this Suez business. Which makes a very pleasant change. For once we’re on the same page. They wouldn’t like it at all if we acted in such a high-handed fashion as you describe, Willie.”

“Besides,” added Sinclair, “we risk Hebel’s masters responding to that by simply sending one of the tapes to the Americans. Which would be a disaster. That’s the risk you take when you call the blackmailer’s bluff. That the whole thing goes pear-shaped.”

“If this is just an attempt to raise a bit of extra money, then it’s rather clever,” said Reilly. “Willie pays the blackmailer-and pays quickly-to avoid personal embarrassment. We pay him-though rather more slowly, as is typical of government departments-to avoid placing Willie in the invidious position of wondering how to recover his money. And Walter is right, I think. These tapes have been keenly priced. Two hundred thousand is just enough to make it worth their while but not too much to stop Willie from buying them.”

We listened to the tape recording again, and this time, when it was finished, we left the whitewashed drawing room and stepped onto the terrace and had champagne and a cold lobster supper under the stars. Later on, Sir John Sinclair excused himself and went to make a telephone call to “the friends” in London, he said, to set in motion the laborious process of raising Maugham’s money from the cash-strapped British government. Robin Maugham continued to stay away from the Villa Mauresque, which suited his uncle, and, bored I think, Alan Searle drove off somewhere in his car, leaving Reilly, Blunt, Maugham, and me still talking over cigarettes and brandy. Then, with arms folded across his chest like an Egyptian mummy, and glasses perched on the end of his long, beaky nose, Blunt excused himself and set about surveying the old queen’s pictures. From time to time we could hear him utter some adjective to punctuate his breathless appreciation of Maugham’s collection, which, later on, he declared to be “as good as any he had ever seen in private hands,” pleasing the writer to no end. He himself was again in a good mood; the prospect of risking a large sum of money with no guarantee of reimbursement had been troubling him a great deal.

“Well, that’s a relief, I must say. About the money. I was thinking I might have to postpone the purchase of a nice little painting I’ve found by Stanislas Lepine. It is rather expensive. Icing on the cake, as it were. Or perhaps even the cherry. At my time of life, it’s a little hard to tell. By the way, the money will be available from Hottingers, my bankers in Nice, tomorrow morning at eleven.”

“You were quite right to call us, Willie,” said Reilly. “Thank you. Thank you so much. There’s absolutely no question we have to stop these tapes from falling into the wrong hands. And if Mr. Wolf is agreeable, we’ll ask him to handle the exchange, I think. We wouldn’t like to spook this fellow Hebel by introducing anyone new to the proceedings at this late stage. Having said that, perhaps our chaps from Fort Monckton could ride shotgun with you for some of the time and help keep an eye on the money.”