The Albion Committee had agreed upon Professor Krilov as its chairman and spokesman, and it was he who alerted Major Pavlov that the committee was ready to report its considerations to the General Secretary. That was on Saturday morning. Within hours, each of the four on the committee had been told to report to the Comrade General Secretary’s weekend dacha at Usovo.
The other three came in their own cars. Major Pavlov drove Philby,
who was therefore able to dispense with Gregoriev, the KGB pool chauffeur who had been driving him about for the past three weeks.
West of Moscow, across the Uspenskoye Bridge and lying close to the banks of the Moskva River, is a complex of artificial villages around which are grouped the weekend retreats of the high and mighty in Soviet society. Even here the gradings are inflexible. At Peredelkino are the cottages of artists, academics, and military men; at Zhukovka are the dachas of the Central Committee and others just below the Politburo; but the last-named, the men at the supreme pinnacle, have their homes grouped around Usovo, the most exclusive area of all. The original Russian dacha was a country cottage, but these are veritable mansions of luxury, set in hundreds of acres of pine and birch forest, the territories patrolled around the clock by cohorts of Ninth Directorate bodyguards to ensure the utter privacy and security of the vlasti.
Philby knew that every member of the Politburo, on elevation to that office, secured the right to four residences. There is the family apartment on Kutuzovsky Prospekt that, unless the hierarch falls into disgrace, will remain in the family forever. Then there is the official villa in the Lenin Hills, always maintained with staff and comforts, inevitably bugged, and hardly ever used, save for the entertaining of foreign dignitaries. Third comes the dacha in the forests west of Moscow, which the newly promoted bigshot may design and build to his own tastes. Last, there is the summer retreat, often in the Crimea, on the Black Sea. The General Secretary, however, had long ago had his summer home built at Kislovodsk, a mineral-water spa in the Caucasus specializing in the treatment of abdominal ailments.
Philby had never seen the General Secretary’s dacha at Usovo. As the Chaika arrived that freezing evening, he observed it was long and low, of cut stone, with shingled roof, and, like the furniture at Kutuzovsky Prospekt, owed much to Scandinavian simplicity. Inside, the temperature was very high and the General Secretary received them all in a spacious sitting room where a roaring log fire added to the heat. After the minimal formalities the General Secretary gestured to Professor Krilov to reveal to him the Albion Committee’s thinking.
“You will understand, Comrade General Secretary, that what we have sought is a means of swinging a portion of the British electorate of not less than ten percent across the nation to two cardinal viewpoints: one is a massive loss of their popular confidence in the existing Conservative government, the second a conviction that in the election of a Labour government lies their best chance for contentment and security.
“In order to simplify that search, we asked ourselves if there were not perhaps one single issue that could dominate, or be brought to dominate, the entire election. After profound consideration we have all come to the view that no economic aspect—not job losses, factory closures, increasing automation in industry, even public-service cuts—would constitute this single issue we have been seeking.
“We believe there is but one: the greatest and most emotional noneconomic political issue in Britain and all Western Europe at the present time. This is the question of nuclear disarmament. This has become huge in the West, involving millions of ordinary people. It is basically a matter of mass fear, and it is this which we feel should become the main thrust, the issue we should covertly exploit.”
“And your specific proposals?” asked the General Secretary silkily.
“You will know, Comrade General Secretary, of our efforts so far in this field. Not millions but billions of rubles have been spent encouraging the various antinuclear lobbies, in proposing to the West European people that unilateral nuclear disarmament really is synonymous with their best chance for peace. Our covert efforts and their results have been huge, but nothing compared to what we believe should now be sought and achieved.
“The British Labour Party is the only one of four contesting the next election that is committed to unilateral nuclear disarmament. Our view is that all the stops should now be pulled out, using funds, disinformation, propaganda, to persuade that minimum wavering ten percent of the British electorate to switch their vote, convinced at last that the Labour vote is the peace vote.”
The silence as they waited for the General Secretary’s reaction was almost tangible. He spoke at last. “Those efforts that we have made and of which you spoke—have they worked?”
Professor Krilov looked as if he had been hit by an air-to-air missile. Philby caught the Soviet leader’s mood and shook his head. The General Secretary noted the gesture and went on speaking.
“For eight years we have put a huge effort into destabilizing the confidence of the Western European electorates in their governments on this issue. Today, true, all the unilateralist movements are so left wing that by one means or another they have come under the control of our friends and work to our ends. The campaign has brought a rich harvest in agents of sympathy and influence. But—”
The General Secretary suddenly smacked both palms onto the arms of his wheelchair. The violent gesture in a man normally so ice-cold shook his four listeners badly.
“Nothing has changed,” shouted the General Secretary. His voice then resumed its even tenor. “Five years ago, and four years ago, all our experts on the Central Committee and in the universities and the KGB analytical study groups told us in the Politburo that the unilateralist movements were so powerful that they could stop the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles. We believed that. We were misled. At Geneva we dug in our toes, persuaded by our own propaganda that if we held on long enough the governments of Western Europe would give in to the huge peace demonstrations we were covertly supporting and refuse to deploy Pershing and Cruise. But they did deploy, and we had to walk out.”
Philby nodded, looking suitably modest. Back in 1983 he had stuck his neck out with a paper suggesting that the peacenik movement in the West, despite noisy popular demonstrations, would not swing any major election or change any government’s mind. He had been proved right. Things, he suspected, were moving his way.
“It rankles, Comrades, it still rankles,” said the General Secretary. “Now you are proposing more of the same. Comrade Colonel Philby, what are the results of the latest British public-opinion polls on this issue?”
“Not good, I’m afraid,” said Philby. “The last suggests that twenty percent of the British now support unilateral nuclear disarmament. But even that is confusing. Among the working class, Labour’s traditional voters, the figure is lower. It is a dismal fact, Comrade General Secretary, that the British working class is one of the most conservative groups in the world. Polls also show they are among the most patriotic, in a traditionalist way. During the Falklands affair, die-hard trade unionists threw the rule book away and worked around the clock to get the warships ready for sea. I’m afraid if one is going to face harsh reality, one must admit that the British workingman has steadily refused to see that his best interests lie with us, or at least in a weakening of Britain’s defenses. And there is no reason to think he will change his mind now.”
“Harsh reality—that is what I asked this committee to face,” said the General Secretary. He paused again for several more minutes. Then: “Go away, Comrades. Go back to your deliberations. And bring me a plan—an active measure—that will exploit as never before that mass fear of which you spoke; a plan that will persuade even levelheaded men and women to vote to get rid of nuclear weapons from their soil, and thus to vote Labour.”
When they had gone the old Russian rose and with the aid of a cane walked slowly to the window. He gazed out at the crackling birch forest beneath the snow. When he had swept to power with his predecessor still unburied, he had been personally committed to the achievement of five tasks in the time left to him. He wanted to be remembered as the man who had increased food production and its efficient distribution; who had doubled consumer goods in number and quality by a huge overhaul of a chronically inefficient industry; who had tightened Party discipline at all levels; who had extirpated the scourge of corruption that gnawed at the country’s vitals; and who had secured the final supremacy in men and arms over his country’s serried ranks of enemies. Now he knew he had failed in them all. He was an old man, and sick, and time was running out. He had always prided himself on being a pragmatic man, a realistic man, within the framework of strict Marxist orthodoxy. But even pragmatic men have their dreams, and old men have their vanities. His dream was simple: he wanted one gigantic triumph, one great monument that was his and his alone. Just how much he wanted it, that bitter winter night, he alone knew.
On Sunday, Preston took a stroll past the house in Clanricarde Gardens, a street running due north from the Bayswater Road. Burkinshaw had been right; it was one of those once-prosperous Victorian five-story houses that had gone badly to seed, the sort now let out in bedsitters. Its small front area was weed-infested; five steps ran up to a peeling front door above the street. From the front patch, a set of steps led down to a tiny basement area, with the top of a door just in view—the basement flat. Preston puzzled again as to why a senior civil servant and knight of the realm should wish to visit such a dingy place.
Somewhere in view, he knew, would be the watcher, probably in a parked vehicle with a long-lens camera at the ready. He made no attempt to spot the man, but knew he himself would have been seen. (On Monday he showed up in the log as “an undistinguished character who walked by at 11:21 and showed some interest in the house.” Thanks for nothing, Preston thought.)
On Monday morning he visited the local town hall and had a look at the list of householders for that street. The owner of the house in question was a Mr. Michael Z. Mifsud. Preston was grateful for the “Z”; there could not be many of that name around.) Called up on the radio, the watcher at Clanricarde Gardens slipped across the street and checked the bell-push buttons. M. Mifsud lived on the ground floor. Owner-occupier, thought Preston, letting out the rest of the house as furnished accommodation; tenants of unfurnished property would pay their own local assessments.
In the late morning he ran Michael Z. Mifsud through the immigration computer down at Croydon. He was from Malta and had been in the country thirty years. Nothing known, bu
t a question mark fifteen years back. Not followed up, and no explanation. Scotland Yard’s Criminal Records Office computer explained the question mark: the man had nearly been deported. Instead, he had served two years for living off immoral earnings.
After lunch Preston went to see Armstrong in Finance at Charles Street. “Can I be an Inland Revenue inspector tomorrow?” he asked.
Armstrong sighed. “I’ll try to fix it. Call back before closing time.”
Then Preston went along to Five’s legal adviser. “Would you ask Special Branch to fix me a search warrant for this address? Also I want a sergeant on call in case I want to make an arrest.” MI5 has no powers of arrest. Only a police officer can take a suspect into custody, save in emergencies, when a citizen’s arrest is possible. When MI5 wants to pick someone up, Special Branch usually obliges.