The Darkling Spy

by Edward Wilson

Genres: Spy Thrillers; Historical Thrillers; Political Thrillers

Synopsis

London, 1956. A generation of British spies are haunted by the ghosts of friends turned traitors. Henry Bone, a Mandarin spymaster, is convinced that a man code-named 'Butterfly' is the Holy Grail of Cold War Intelligence. In reality, however, Butterfly is an aristocratic pervert whose political tastes are as ugly as his sexual preferences. Worst of all, Butterfly has the ability to identify each traitor - and every serving British spy who helped them.

Release date: April 1, 2011

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 189

Sample

Berlin, Soviet Sector: 17 August 1956. They were going to put Brecht into a hole on the very edge of the cemetery. The grave was wedged in a corner overlooked by two high brick walls at right angles. The awkward position made it difficult for the diplomatic delegations to get near, but Catesby pushed his way through because he had a job to do.


The funeral was bigger than the Volkspolizei had expected. More than a million people had thronged the streets outside the walls of the Dorotheenstadt Cemetery. But Catesby was an accredited diplomat, so he was inside the walls. His official title was Cultural Attaché for Film and Broadcasting. He even had an office at the British Embassy in Bonn. But the CultAt post wasn’t his real job. It was his ‘legend’, his diplomatic cover. Dip cover gave dip immunity. It meant that if you got caught, they couldn’t prosecute you, they could only throw you out. They called it being PNG’d, declared persona non grata. It usually happened in places like Moscow or Warsaw, but one Brit had been PNG’d from Washington. It was ugly when it happened between allies.


Catesby knew he had to write a report and that he ought to take some photos, but he wasn’t in the mood for spying. He felt sweaty wearing a black suit in the still August heat. And he felt sordid being a spy at Bertolt Brecht’s funeral. Catesby admired the dead playwright, but it was an admiration he had to keep to himself. Brecht’s politics weren’t too popular with his bosses back in London – and even less popular in Washington. Catesby looked around at the mourners and realised that the US Embassy hadn’t sent a representative. Not surprising for the funeral of a man who said that setting up a bank was a bigger crime than robbing one.


Catesby felt out of place standing with the diplomatic delegations. He felt like a black-market spiv who had crashed the party to pimp and sell dodgy jewellery. Well, spies were spivs. They weren’t gents, not like the real dips. Catesby would have preferred a career as a diplomat, but he didn’t think the Foreign Office would have him. He knew they wouldn’t.


Catesby had pushed his way to the front so he could clearly see the main mourners. He was only ten feet away from Brecht’s widow, Helene Weigel. He remembered Weigel playing Mother Courage. The character reminded Catesby of his own mother, and her desperate struggle for bourgeois respectability. And yet, if it hadn’t been for his mother, Catesby wouldn’t be carrying a black diplomatic passport and making good wages. He certainly wouldn’t have gone to university. He would have left school at fifteen and become a ‘decky learner’ on a Lowestoft trawler or, at best, a fitter in a shipyard like his Uncle Jack.


Catesby put on a solemn face and folded his hands in front of him. The pall-bearers were carrying the coffin through the crowd. They had finally succeeded in getting the coffin to the grave where they lowered it on to wooden trestles. There wasn’t a vicar or anyone religious, but there was a man in his fifties who seemed to be directing the practical side of things. The pall-bearers were joined by four hefty younger men who passed webbing straps under the coffin. It soon became obvious that a man who had devoted his life to theatre was being buried without any theatre at all.


As the body was lowered into the grave, Catesby tried to identify the family and close friends who lined up to toss handfuls of soil on to the coffin. The mourners were led by Weigel and a daughter from Brecht’s first marriage; who were followed by the children from his second marriage. Catesby also managed to identify two of Brecht’s girlfriends, who seemed on perfectly good terms with Helene Weigel. Catesby envied them all. They could be what they were. They could even flaunt it.


HUMINT, Human Intelligence, was an important part of Catesby’s job: it meant watching people. The day before the funeral Catesby had spent twelve hours going through photograph files. Catesby had a trick to help remember which names belonged to which faces. He created animal familiars based on their looks: Friederun the Ferret, Helmut the Hare, Renate Rabbit, Walter Vole and so on. The faces in the files were a Who’s Who of anyone who was anyone in the East Bloc. Sometimes the faces visited Catesby in his dreams, but not as humans. The previous night Catesby’s world had transformed into a woodland where Pigling Bland and the Flopsy Bunnies were trying to kidnap the Fierce Bad Rabbit. Catesby suddenly woke up and remembered something. That’s what they were trying to do to Kit Fournier. He wondered when they were going to call him back to London. If the usual crowd didn’t get Fournier and break him, they’d give him a bash.


Catesby had kitted himself for the funeral with a pinhole covert surveillance camera. He needed to take pictures for updating the photo files or for adding new faces. The tiny camera lens was located in his lapel buttonhole and he operated the shutter by pressing on his belt buckle. Catesby thought that, since it was a funeral, he would spend a lot of time with his hands solemnly folded in front of him. He thought that touching his belt buckle would look less obvious than scratching or having a hand in his pocket. But after a few snaps, he became aware that a female Swedish diplomat was looking at him in an odd way. Catesby avoided eye contact – God only knows what the woman was thinking. He quickly removed his hands from his midriff. The Swede continued staring and tightened her mouth.

Catesby watched as the last of Brecht’s inner circle approached the grave. The sandy soil of Berlin was so light that it trickled through the fingers of each mourner. The thin soil reminded Catesby of Operation Stopwatch. Together with the CIA they had dug a thousand-yard-long tunnel into East Berlin to tap the telephone lines leading to Soviet Military Headquarters. Catesby had been to the tunnel to help the technical staff decipher the German telephone engineering manual they were using to differentiate various cables. The beige sandy soil had reminded Catesby of the sand cliffs at Covehithe in his native Suffolk. He rubbed the fine sand between his fingertips and said, ‘It’s all going to fall into the sea, you know – just like Covehithe.’


The technicians ignored his comment, but less than a year later Soviet troops burst through the roof and the monitoring staff had to run for their lives. The tunnel had been betrayed.

As the last mourner walked away from Brecht’s grave, the delegations began to disperse and mix with one another. Catesby watched the UK Ambassador shake hands with Helene Weigel, who was elegantly composed and at ease. Walter Ulbricht, the leader of the East German government, was already walking towards his ZIL limousine.


Catesby could see the Ambassador talking to the security officer, a lumpy retired Glaswegian cop. Presumably, the Ambassador wanted to make a quick getaway and was wondering how they were going to get the Humbers through the crowd. The cars and their drivers had been requisitioned from British Military Headquarters to ferry them from Templehof Airport. Catesby reckoned they were stuck for a long time. The East Berlin Vopos who could have cleared a way with their lumpy Volga patrol cars had disappeared.


On the other side of the cemetery wall various groups had begun to sing Brecht-Weill songs. The funeral had turned into celebration. A woman with a deep voice was singing the Alabama song in a broad Berliner accent.


Oh, moon of Alabama


We now must say goodbye


We’ve lost our good old mama


And must have whisky, oh, you know why.


Catesby wouldn’t have minded a drink himself: standing around at these things could be awfully boring. Suddenly, there was a voice next to him.

‘I think I know you from somewhere, London perhaps.’

The speaker was obviously German, but spoke English with an American accent. He was a short balding man who looked about sixty. He was exactly the sort of nondescript person who passes unnoticed in a crowd or even alone – the ideal spy. Catesby recognised the face from one of the files – and from somewhere else too – but the man’s name fluttered around the edge of his consciousness like an elusive butterfly.


Catesby smiled and said, ‘I think we have met, but I’ve a terrible memory for names. I do apologise.’

‘Please don’t apologise. I can’t remember your name either, but I’m sure we have met.’

Catesby turned to face the balding German so he could get a good photo through the buttonhole lens, then he tapped the shutter release under his belt.

The German smiled and said, ‘Cheese.’

Catesby could see the Ambassador gesturing to him over the heads of the crowd. He gestured back, then said to the German, ‘Unfortunately, it looks like we’re about to leave. I wish we had more time to talk …’

‘Maybe we’ll meet again – and have a drink.’


‘I hope we do,’ said Catesby, but the inconspicuous man was already gone.

On the other side of the wall, the husky voiced Berlinerin was now singing another Brecht-Weill song:


Und der Haifisch … and the shark has teeth


And wears them in his face.


And MacHeath has a knife


But it’s a knife that no one sees.


It was nearly midnight when Catesby got back to the embassy in Bonn. The first thing he did was to remove the film from his miniature camera and pop it into the diplomatic bag, ‘priority air’. He tagged the film envelope with a ‘SECRET/Delicate Source’ label and the address code that meant it would be taken by a Signal Corps motorcycle courier from the Foreign Office straight to the SIS lab above the car pool garage in Vauxhall. Catesby asked the night clerk in the embassy mailroom to sign a bag receipt, he left nothing to chance. He then went upstairs to the registry where a clerk named Sidney briefly looked up from Sporting Life. ‘Doing overtime again, sir?’


‘Yes.’

‘I hope they pay you enough, Mr Catesby.’

‘I get by.’

Catesby suspected that he was the only member of the diplomatic staff with whom the clerks and drivers dared banter. Sometimes he felt they were mocking him. They saw through him. They knew he wasn’t a member of the officer class. He had had the same problem in the army.

‘You want those photo ledgers again, sir, don’t you?’

‘How did you know?’

‘Because they seem to be the only things you ever take out.’

‘You’re on to me.’

Sidney winked meaningfully, then walked into the vault to retrieve the ledgers. The FO and SIS still called document files ‘ledgers’ – as if they were books in a Victorian counting house. As he waited for Catesby to sign the classified document receipt, Sidney asked, ‘How’s Ipswich Town going to do this season?’

‘They’re going to win the league.’


‘You think so, sir?’

‘We’ll see, Sidney.’ Catesby picked up the photo-files.

When Catesby got to his office, he put the photo-files on his desk, turned out all the lights and locked the door behind him. He then sat in his chair, closed his eyes and listened to the night. It was a counter-surveillance trick that he often used. Sometimes he would sit in a darkened office for an hour at a time – or more if he fell asleep. On a few occasions he had heard furtive footsteps in a corridor – and once, he was sure that someone had stopped to listen at his door. But it had never got as far as keys in the lock. He wondered what he would do if he ever caught anyone snooping. Would he wrestle the intruder to the ground and shout for help? Or would he reach for the revolver in his desk drawer?


Catesby yawned and turned on the desk light. He sometimes wondered if he were going mad. Paranoia was an occupational illness – especially among the Americans. He listened to the night again. The only sounds were the whistles of trains and the horns of Rhine barges. Catesby sat perfectly still because he didn’t want to frighten away the butterfly that was flittering through his brain. Suddenly, the butterfly settled on a bare branch that was London, 1949. Catesby closed his eyes and strained to put a name to the bald German’s face; then suddenly said aloud: ‘Gerhard Eisler.’

 

The interrogation had taken place in 1949 at a safe house in Oakley Street in Chelsea. Catesby was still new in the service and had been called in as an interpreter translator. In the end, his help hadn’t been needed because Eisler spoke excellent English. The safe house had been damp and freezing. The only heating was a single-bar electric fire in the sitting room where the interrogation was taking place. Catesby was exiled to the kitchen where he made cups of tea without taking off his coat or gloves. He could hear muffled voices coming from the next room, but couldn’t make out the words. From time to time Eisler laughed – he seemed a lot happier than the guys from D Branch and SIS. Finally, the kitchen door opened and Catesby was invited to join the group. Eisler must have guessed Catesby’s role for he looked at him and spoke German for the first time:

‘Herauf, herab und quer und krumm,


Mein Schüler an der Nase herum.’


The D Branch man, an ex-policeman named Skardon, turned to Catesby. ‘What was that?’

‘It’s from Goethe’s Faust. It means he’s been leading his students a merry dance: “Up, down, sideways and bent …”’


‘That’s what we thought.’ Skardon turned to a technician who was packing up an Ampex 200 tape recorder. ‘Tell the goons he’s ready to go.’

Five minutes later, Catesby was alone in the flat with Skardon and Henry Bone, the Head of R5 Counterintelligence. Bone was a former Olympic yachtsman who had a laconic and deceptively languid manner that clearly annoyed Skardon.

After an awkward silence, Bone turned to Catesby. ‘Sorry, we had to keep you in the kitchen. We didn’t want the subject to know you were one of our chaps instead of just an interpreter. What do you think of him?’

‘He speaks with a slight Saxon accent – and seems sardonic and self-confident.’

‘In any case,’ said Bone, ‘we’re going to have to let him go.’

At the time, Catesby had no idea why the interrogation had taken place or what the ‘subject’ had done wrong.

Skardon rubbed his hands together. ‘Bloody cold in here.’

Bone smiled wanly at Skardon. ‘You’re not happy, Jim.’

‘Letting this bird go is a big mistake.’

Bone winked at Catesby. ‘Jim doesn’t like our man in Washington – you see it’s all our man’s idea.’

Skardon suddenly snapped, ‘I think we should end this discussion now.’


 

Catesby had long passed the point where he wanted to sleep. Sometimes staying awake sharpened the senses and made you aware of things you missed before. Oakley Street safe house was now playing through his mind more clearly than ever. There were two factors that set Catesby’s nerves on edge. The first was that ‘our man in Washington’, who had ordered Eisler’s release, had been PNG’d by the Americans two years later. This was the only time since the British Army burned down the White House in 1814 that a British diplomat had been declared persona non grata by the Americans. The same diplomat-spy was still the centre of an ongoing espionage scandal that had set MI5 against SIS and SIS against itself. Catesby would love to read the files, but the relevant ledgers were UK EYES ALPHA with bells on.


The other factor that bothered Catesby was why Eisler had singled him out to make contact. It wasn’t just social. Catesby cast his memory back over Oakley Street. Memory is like a clandestine tape-recording that you keep rewinding to search for more clues. Each replay ought to reveal something you missed before. But Catesby couldn’t find a thing that would have led Eisler to make contact. It must be something else. He finally opened the photo-file and looked at the MI5 report that was stapled on the page next to Eisler’s photo.


Born Leipzig, 1897. Decorated for bravery in World War One. Prominent member of Communist Party in 1920s. Reportedly made trip to China in 1920s where he was known as ‘The Executioner’. Alleged to be covert leader of Communist Party in America during Word War Two. Centre of 1949 diplomatic incident between UK and US when he stowed away on a Polish ship from New York. Removed from ship and arrested in Southampton by British customs, but then allowed to proceed to East Germany by UK authorities. Currently head of East German state radio.


Catesby knew the Americans had been outrageous over Eisler. At least during the war, they had comported themselves like houseguests even if they found the plumbing awkward and the beds too small. But by ’49 they realised they were kings of the world. When the Americans heard that Eisler was on a Polish ship docked in Southampton, they virtually kidnapped him. The CIA Head of Station and a US consul boarded the ship with an extradition warrant to be served by a local magistrate and two police constables. But it turned out to be quite a scene. Two consuls from the Polish Embassy were already on board and protested that Eisler was under the protection of the Polish government. There was a brief shouting match, but the Americans shouted louder and in slightly better English. Eventually, the magistrates took the US side and ordered the cops to arrest Eisler – who surprised everyone by fighting back like a demon. The plump little German managed to take out one constable with a knee to the groin and sent another’s helmet spinning into the Solent. He was finally subdued with a truncheon blow and taken into custody. And then, Catesby remembered, there had been a big row in the House of Commons too.


Catesby locked his office door and walked downstairs to the embassy library. It held nothing confidential, but public documents often reveal more secrets than the most protected EYES ALPHA ledgers. You just needed to know where to look. Catesby had to stand on a chair to reach the Hansard for 1949. He carried the heavy red volume to a reading desk and paged through the Parliamentary proceedings for May until he found the Eisler debate.


Mr Gallacher: Then I will ask another question, Mr Speaker. Is the Home Secretary aware that it is a tragic situation when Ministers who claim to be socialists are responsible for such a shocking and shameless affair as the treatment of this anti-Nazi refugee? Is there any limit to the depths of degradation to which this country can be drawn at the command of America?


Catesby smiled. The dots were joining up. He had met Willie Gallacher at a party in the late forties. Gallacher was one of the two last communist MPs elected to the UK Parliament. It was a pretty drunken party, but Gallacher was more sober than most and had deduced, via an indiscreet host, that Catesby was in SIS. They had talked at length and the communist MP was surprised to find that Catesby was a lefty too. Catesby had, of course, laid it on thick to gain Gallacher’s confidence. It was all part of the game – Catesby had even written a brief report about the encounter. You needed to cover yourself.

One of the library’s fluorescent lights began to blink and flicker. It made Catesby feel anxious, under surveillance. It was as if the light had discovered his secret self and was sending out a Morse code signal. Catesby now understood why Eisler had picked him out. His ‘fellow comrade’ pose with Gallacher had finally paid off.

When Catesby got back to his office, he leaned against the plate-glass window. There was something about the Bonn embassy that made him uneasy. It was a modern post-war building with lots of glass and steel. The idea was to convey, falsely perhaps, the openness of Western democracy. But Catesby found it too light and airy, especially at night. Anyone passing by on the street could see him leaning against his office window and looking thoughtful. But what if they could read those thoughts?


Catesby listened to the night. The nocturnal chorus began with the high singing whistle of a Rhine barge – and a second later the low base whistle of a steam locomotive. The great hulking iron mammoths of the Rhine seemed to have their own language. The thought of inanimate objects talking to each other made Catesby queasy. It reminded him of his own job. Espionage was a nightmare world of the unnatural. It was a Hieronymus Bosch hellscape where house plants have ears and fountain pens take pictures. There was no such thing as an innocent object. Every telephone was a predator waiting to trigger a tape machine. The human was becoming irrelevant. It wouldn’t be long, Catesby knew, before radar dishes spoke directly to missile silos. The human factor was too slow – and maybe too sentimental. Catesby hated the bomb, but he had to keep that secret too – because part of his job was spying on other people who hated the bomb.


There was a new noise, one that was much nearer. Someone was knocking hard on his door and calling his name. When Catesby opened the door he found the NDO, the Night Duty Officer, holding a cable marked URGENT in his hand.

‘I’m glad we could find you, it’s always our fault if we can’t.’

Catesby unfolded the cable printout. The perforated strips from the telex machine were still clinging to its sides. The message was simple, not a word wasted. It was typical of Henry Bone.

Bone didn’t need to say more. It was clear he wanted help with the Fournier op. 




 

Henry Bone was as cadaverous as his name: tall, slim, high-browed and hollow-cheeked. Catesby thought that the black cassock with velvet piping suited him perfectly. Bone wasn’t the sort of priest you’d find striding across a sheep-shitten hill in Galway. Oh, no. Monsignor Bone was every inch a Vatican inner-sanctum priest: ‘His Holiness will see you now, Ambassador.’ Just as the real life and secular Bone was an inner-sanctum spy chief. Catesby, on the other hand, wore his Roman collar with less assurance and wasn’t always sure when to turn the page of music.


The two men were staked out in the organ loft of Brompton Oratory. It was an excellent surveillance post. You could see everyone who entered the church and hear every syllable of the most faintly whispered Hail Mary. Catesby had set up a pair of cameras with wide-angle lens that covered most of the nave. He operated the shutter releases with a foot control so that he could take snaps while still turning pages of eighteenth-century organ music.


‘Let’s try the d’Agincourt again.’

Catesby leafed through the sheets of music until he found Dialogue du 2e Ton and propped it on the stand above the four rows of keyboards.


‘Do you like François d’Agincourt?’ said Bone.

‘No, he’s boring.’

‘You’re not very musical are you, Catesby?’

‘That’s not true. I like Jacques Brel and Charlie Parker.’

‘But not at the same time.’

‘No. They’re for different moods.’

Just as Bone pulled out a stop and began to play, there was the sound of a door opening and the echo of footsteps from the nave.

‘He’s here,’ whispered Catesby, ‘keep playing.’

Bone glanced down at a viewing lens as he held a long unstopped note. Catesby had got technical services to provide periscope pipes with magnification lens. The periscope eye and a wide-angle camera lens were hidden in the ornate wooden frame of a clock mounted on the organ loft railing. ‘Don’t turn around,’ whispered Bone, ‘he’s giving us a good look. But you need to turn the page.’


Catesby folded back the music and watched the 6x magnified image of a man genuflecting in front of the altar. The surveillance target held his trilby in front of his heart in a gesture of piety. Meanwhile, Catesby took pictures by working the remote cable shutter release with his foot. When the man was standing again, he turned and walked to the right. Catesby worked his foot up and down to get a couple of profile snaps before the target disappeared from view.


‘He’s gone into the St Theresa chapel,’ said Bone. ‘That’s where they always meet, bad security.’

‘Shhh, this place echoes.’

When Bone reached the end of the Dialogue, Catesby replaced the music with a Sanctus by François Couperin. Bone fiddled with a number of the organ’s 45 stops and began. Catesby remembered the words of the Latin mass that went with the music: Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua. He’d had enough of that stuff as a child.


Bone tried to play as normally as possible, but both he and Catesby were listening intently to the sound of rapid footsteps on the parquet flooring.

‘He must have made the drop,’ whispered Catesby.

They both looked at the viewing lens and caught a glimpse of Vasili Galanin as he hurried through the nave. Galanin was the most important Sov agent in London. He was the rezident, the KGB Head of Station, and operated under dip cover from the embassy.


‘Our Russian friend,’ said Bone, ‘looks more like a poet than a spy.’

As soon as Catesby heard the street door close, he put a hand on Bone’s shoulder and whispered, ‘Stay here and keep playing; I’m going downstairs to make sure he hasn’t brought his own watchers.’

The nave wasn’t empty. There were three people. Two of them were bent in prayer. They were elderly regular visitors. Catesby and Bone had noted them during the previous days of watching and waiting. They were almost certainly ‘civilians’. The third person was a man in his thirties with a black moustache and heavily Brylcreemed hair. He wasn’t praying. He was walking around glancing at the dome mosaics and the Mazzuoli apostles as if passing time. His presence worried Catesby. He didn’t want the fellow hanging around while he ransacked the Theresa chapel for Galanin’s drop. He needed to get rid of him.


Catesby stopped at a display table and picked up a handful of pamphlets advertising parish events and groups. The Brylcreem man was standing near the Lady Altar, described in the Oratory guide as ‘an extreme example of flamboyant baroque’. Catesby walked up beside the visitor. ‘Magnificent, isn’t it?’

‘What?’

‘The altar piece,’ said Catesby. ‘It was commissioned in the late seventeenth century for the Duomo Nouvo in Brescia, but seems to have ended up here among the buoni cattolici of Kensington.’


The other man appeared to be biting his lip or chewing the end of his moustache.

‘I don’t believe I’ve seen you here before,’ said Catesby, ‘but that could be because I’m new to the parish myself.’

The man put his hands in his pockets and shifted nervously.

Catesby waited patiently for an answer. He wanted to hear the voice again; he thought he had detected a North American diphthong in the ‘what’. Catesby flourished a pamphlet. ‘I wonder if, perhaps, you would be interested in joining the St Philip’s Servers Guild. It’s a very worthy organisation indeed, and gives a layperson a rare opportunity to take part in the liturgy.’


The man cleared his throat as if he were about to speak, but seemed to be looking over Catesby’s shoulder at something or someone else.

‘The Servers Guild,’ said Catesby, ‘is named after our founder, St Philip Neri – an extraordinary priest. After years of prayer, the Holy Spirit finally came to him during the feast of Pentecost in 1546.’ Catesby paused; then lowered his voice. ‘It happened in the catacomb of St Sebastian. The gift of divine love came as a ball of fire that entered his mouth and plunged into his heart with such force that it broke three of his ribs.’


For the first time, the other man looked at Catesby. His face was cold and vacant, but his eyes were burning. The words came slow and deliberate. ‘Would you like to suck my cock?’

Catesby put on a look of priestly disgust. ‘I think it’s best,’ he said, ‘that you leave the church.’ For the first time, he noticed that the organ music had stopped.

‘Father Emile, have you found those hymn books?’ It was Henry Bone. ‘They ought to be collected after every service. Have you looked in the Theresa chapel?’

‘No, Father, I’ll do it now.’ As Catesby walked to the side chapel he sensed the stranger’s eyes boring into his back. – and knew his cover was blown. He began the search in the back row. Unlike the nave, the Theresa chapel was fitted with pews. He moved slowly, genuinely searching for hymn sheets and missals; not wanting to give anything else away, not wishing to shed the last thin veneer of his priestly cover. Finally, there was the echo of footsteps and the sound of a door opening – once again, he sensed a final glance – and then the door slowly closing. Catesby peeped over the back of a pew and saw Bone looking down at him.


‘Did your friend introduce himself?’

‘Not quite,’ said Catesby, ‘but he’s an American. And I’m sure he’s from Grosvenor Square.’

‘Diplomat?’

‘No, he’s one of us – or one of the FBI guys that Hoover uses to spy on the dips.’

Bone looked concerned. ‘They’re on to Fournier.’

‘It looks that way.’

‘We can’t waste time – we need find the drop before Fournier turns up. Look underneath the pews and I’ll keep a look ou