Peter Vansittart - Secret Protocols

He hesitated, then rallied. ‘You yourself had role in a well-publicized, American-backed Paris event and could be a target. A man, not always white, glancing at you on an omnibus may be less of a stranger than you imagine.’

My fears of prolonged indolence, lack of adventure, non-being, might be misplaced. Hitherto I had seen only innocuous crowds, good manners, tolerant smiles. Also, no Toute Vie , only party politics, what Mother had called ding-dong.

The First Secretary was dry, severe, insisting full attention. How often had he repeated his warnings to cadets? What had been their fates?

‘The British Joint Intelligence Committee has listed some fifty KGB agents here, liaising with dissident units in factories, labour clubs, unions, five church charities, the universities, Fleet Street, even prostitutes. In certain regions of Europe the Cold War is also a shooting war.’

London, renowned through centuries for subtlety, finesse, stylish opportunism, was, new colleagues insisted, hesitating between the rival empires of Washington and Moscow. To soothe the latter, Whitehall, black hats and bolted faces, was refusing permission for a memorial to the Poles massacred at Katyn. Virtual embargo was levied on reporting the extermination of Baltic professional and intellectual classes. Thermonuclear parity was nearly achieved between the USA and USSR and old Chatterbox spoke of God wearying of mankind.

The Baltic States were Soviet provinces, their histories rewritten, their exiles, scarcely heard, cherishing their lost independence like Australian Aboriginals the songs of dreamtime. Despite Khrushchev’s sensational onslaught on his tutor, Stalin, safely dead, as a paranoiac, criminal incompetent, the Embassy, with punctilious courtesy, was denied access to most Fleet Street and BBC sanctums and Westminster lobbies. No country had dared remind the Kremlin of wartime promise to respect Baltic freedoms. Several thousand Estonians were granted British asylum; some, known to be in Soviet pay, left undisturbed. Of nineteen Estonian quislings, eleven had been summoned to Moscow, unlikely to return, the remainder holding Party positions in Tallinn, formerly Reval.

At first, I had merely to scrutinize visas, dossiers, suspect photographs, investigate the disappearance of a portfolio or identity card, the forgery of a signature, a non-existent address, occasionally meeting mild, solemn British Council officials. My German associations at first assured if not suspicion then considerable reserve and perhaps would obstruct promotion. However, determined to reach higher and, with staff too few and underpaid, I was soon promoted to the Research Department, a small basement room, musty, neglected. Yet its files could astonish me like fiction, which some surely must be: a 1942 Nazi plot to invade Ulster and collaborate with the IRA; Lithuanian crowbars battering Jews to death, 1943, a Bishop Brzgyes forbidding all succour; Khrushchev jovially assuring Budapest writers that had he shot some of them he need not have had to defeat the 1956 Counter-Revolution.

From a back room in Portobello Place, a monthly news sheet, Eesti Hääl, ‘Voice of Estonia’, was published. To this I contributed a poem, very old, very bad, then, rather better, a short memoir of my pre-war days. Their impact was insignificant, but publication was ascent.

For the February Independence Rally, a few scores of ageing people assembled in a church hall, decorated with national flags, faded posters, proclamations signed by defunct notables, a few blown-up photographs, amongst them Päts, so often scorned at the Manor.

The First Secretary addressed us. We should be resolute, we should be ready. But for what? He implied, for very little. Following a brief choir performance, several readings, obscure or merely dull, the Ambassador pronounced the finale, in tones in keeping with his long, narrow features.

‘At home, our people preserve courage, hope, continuity. There will be false dawns, false prophets, Great Power amorality, cynicism. Our own resistance can falter. Josef Stalin once declared that the chief saboteurs are those who never commit sabotage, and, God preserve us, he was right.’ He finished, inclining towards a solitary press representative, by commemorating British sailors’ brave help for Estonians fighting Red Army, White Guards, in 1918, winning Independence and free Baltic waters.

My cubbyhole, cramped by drab brown walls, patched where pictures had once hung, was nevertheless mine alone, like the Turret where, Emperor Earth, I had watched the Pole Star, Nail of the Sky. At liberty to explore, I could ignore the Swabian warning against selling the dog and barking myself. The full text of the Pact demonstrated Goethe’s observation of Hatred in love with Hatred. Its Secret Protocol divided Poland into two slave settlements, recognized Soviet annexation of the Baltic States, outlined future treatment of Finland and Romania. Signing, Ribbentrop, I read, cock-crowed that he had the world in his pocket. His smirk at Hitler’s praise that he was greater than Bismarck smeared German history. He promised the Party that he had reduced Britain to trembling submission.

Ribbentrop ended on the rope, but Europe was simmering with nuclear threats. Balance of Power, Balance of Terror. The First Secretary issued constant warnings of SMERSH, Moscow’s Special Branch.

The Paris Conference had sprouted many replicas, Cold War manoeuvres financed by Moscow and Washington: concerts, exhibitions, books, journals, university posts, peace rallies. The Ambassador quoted Marx, that history is made behind backs. In the Germanies, communist and capitalist, ex-Nazis had unobtrusively climbed to high position, helped by Stille Hilfe, Silent Aid, conspirators bankrolled by the unrepentant and satyric. Lately, the West German security chief resigned, fled east, returned, pleading that he had been abducted under the influence of drugs.

The British, strangely late, were hunting a Fourth and perhaps a Fifth Man, leagued with the Cambridge Old Boy spies. The Wiesenthal Centre informed us of the East German secret police, Stasi, employing former Gestapo experts in pornography and drugs. A Stasi agent, Mr Allen, we knew, but could not prove, sat on CND National Council. Three KGB agents worked in the Royal Institution of International Affairs. The Odessa Association, said to receive Vatican funds, still flew Nazi scientists to Syria, North Africa, Ireland and across the Atlantic. The First Secretary learnt that Downing Street had considered reviving the Home Guard, against parachutists.

In our own street a bomb had been defused. Yesterday, a Baltic exile had been front-paged, lying on a Blackfriars railway track like a smashed crab.

In Europe’s black underside, Hungarian ministers had suddenly gibbered that they were British spies, a Bulgarian general was hanged for unbelievable deals with Israel. A famous American atomic scientist was dismissed on suspicion of pro-Soviet sympathies. McCarthy inquisitors spread black wings over Hollywood, several of my favourite stars displaying timidity – or need to engineer rivals’ eclipse.

Samizdats from Estonia divulged underground resistance throughout the Soviet Bloc, organized by Dr Vilem Bernard, Czech Social Democrat.

Elementary research disclosed to me that, with the Pact shattered, many Estonians had welcomed the Wehrmacht as liberators, and even a Soviet-managed bank co-operated with the Nazis in melting down gold from victims’ teeth. Balts had volunteered for the SS Einsatzkommando , Special Employment Unit, execution squads corralling Jews, Nationalists, commissars, for the bullet in the neck, electrodes clamped to the testicles, exhaustion in oil-shale compounds. There was also what Wilfrid called Urfeindschaft , the motiveless or mischievous. ‘I wanted to see,’ a Latvian youth explained, ‘how they fell… whether they squawked.’