The Trinity Six. Charles Cumming

want you to put CHESAPEAKE to one side for a few weeks.’ CHESAPEAKE was an operation against a Russian diplomat in Washington whom SIS were sizing up for recruitment. Tanya was running the London end in conjunction with a junior colleague. ‘I’ve found something else to exercise your talents.’

      She nodded. ‘Of course.’

      Brennan stood up and paced in the direction of a bookshelf. He was aware that staff members who came into his office were often on their best behaviour. It was one of the drawbacks of his position: an excess of polite rigidity. Still, he stopped short of offering her a drink. A little hierarchical posturing never hurt anybody.

      ‘Long ago,’ he began, ‘I learned that spying isn’t about strengths in human nature – ideological conviction, duty, loyalty to one’s country. Spying is about weaknesses – the lust for money, for status, for sex. This is the guilty secret of our secret trade.’

      Tanya felt that she was expected to agree with this thesis, so she said: ‘Right’ and stared at Brennan’s tie. He had a reputation in the Office for pompous longueurs.

      ‘I’d like you to find out everything you can about a man named Samuel Gaddis. He’s a doctor of Russian History at UCL, Department of Slavonic and East European Studies. Get close to him, befriend him, earn his trust. Gaddis has been digging around in a Cold War secret that the Office is rather keen to suppress.’

      ‘What sort of secret?’

      There were other questions she wanted to ask. How close? Befriend in what way? Is Doctor Gaddis married? But she knew the nature of such operations. She would not be asked, nor would she be expected to do anything that would compromise her relationship with her fiancé.

      ‘Long ago, the Service took into its employment a gentleman by the name of Edward Crane, who subsequently operated in various different guises.’ Brennan, now standing beside the bookshelf, drew a finger along the spine of a volume by Sir Winston Churchill. He did not attempt to keep an edge of the sensational from what he was about to say. ‘Crane was a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge in the 1930s.’ He looked into Tanya’s eyes and waited for the penny to drop. ‘He was known to Messrs Blunt and Philby, Messrs Burgess and Maclean. He was an associate of John Cairncross. Do you follow?’

      Tanya felt a lurch of shock which quickly warped into a feeling of profound satisfaction. How many people knew what she had just been told? The identity of the sixth man was the most carefully guarded secret of the Cold War.

      ‘Crane’s operational codename was ATTILA. He’s managed to remain anonymous, largely because we’ve managed to keep people off his scent and largely because there was no record of ATTILA’s activities in Mitrokhin.’ Tanya had a sense, even as Brennan was talking to her, that he was holding back a vital piece of information. ‘The finger was pointed at Victor Rothschild, the finger was pointed at Tom Driberg. Christ, at one point they even suspected Roger bloody Hollis. But nobody has ever identified Crane. Until now.’ Brennan pivoted away towards a broad, sunless window in the north corner of the office. ‘Doctor Gaddis is on the trail of a gentleman by the name of Thomas Neame, a ninety-one-year-old currently resident at a nursing home near Winchester. Neame, for reasons that I am not yet in a position to divulge, knows more or less all there is to know about Crane’s work for the Russians. I’ve put some basic information in this file.’ He passed a slim manila envelope to Acocella, which she secured in her lap. ‘It goes without saying that this is a sealed operation. You will report solely and directly to me. I have given you the name of an officer at GCHQ Cheltenham who will assist you with any communications information you may require.’ Both of them took a beat to absorb the euphemism. ‘I don’t have the manpower to spare on surveillance, so you’ll be operating alone unless there are exceptional circumstances. Any questions?’

      Tanya was experienced enough to send that one back over the net. It was better to say: ‘I think perhaps I should read the file first, sir,’ so that Brennan could be assured of her professionalism.

      ‘Good.’ He seemed pleased. ‘Have a look at it, come up with a plan of attack.’

      She stood up, the file under her arm. ‘There was just one thing, sir.’

      Brennan was planning to open the door for her, but stopped mid-carpet. ‘Yes?’

      ‘What did you mean when you referred to status, to sex, to the lust for money? Are you implying that these are particular weaknesses in the Gaddis character?’

      Brennan reached for the door handle. ‘Well, who knows?’ he said. ‘That will be for you to find out.’

      Chapter 12

      Some things are so obvious that they can embarrass you with their simplicity.

      Gaddis had been working at home over the weekend – preparing a lecture for the new term at UCL, fixing a leaking pipe in his leaking bathroom – when he needed to boot up an old laptop in his office in order to find an email sent to him by a colleague several years earlier. As he was scrolling through the cluttered inbox, he saw a cluster of emails sent to him by Charlotte from a hotmail address that Paul had known nothing about: bergotte965@hotmail. com. Charlotte had set up the account during a difficult period in her marriage in order to communicate privately with three of her closest friends, Gaddis among them. It was a eureka moment, a solution that had been staring him in the face. More than a week had passed since Gaddis had spent the fruitless day in Hampstead searching through Charlotte’s office. It had never occurred to him that she might have used the hotmail to communicate with Thomas Neame.

      He needed a password, of course, but that was easy. Gaddis simply had to type Charlotte’s mother’s maiden name into a security check, give her date of birth, and the details were forwarded instantly to her Outlook inbox. Gaddis could access this via webmail and within five minutes was staring at the messages.

      It was like a sequence of lights illuminating a darkened highway. Before his eyes was a list of every main player in the St Mary’s cover-up. There were emails from Benedict Meisner, messages with the subject heading ‘Lucy Forman’, as well as frequent exchanges with Calvin Somers. Gaddis had surely stumbled upon the key which would unlock the door of Charlotte’s research. It was all here, everything he would need to find Neame.

      He began with the Meisner correspondence, but quickly realized that it was a legal and factual dead end. Now working as a homeopathic doctor in Berlin, Meisner denied ever having met Calvin Somers or playing any role in faking the death of Edward Crane.

      As I have repeatedly pointed out to you, any suggestion that I was involved in gross professional misconduct of the sort you describe is as absurd as it is defamatory. Should you continue to pursue this matter, I would have no hesitation in instructing my lawyers to instigate proceedings against you, and against any newspaper or publication which chooses to publish these bizarre allegations.

      Gaddis turned to the message with the subject heading ‘Lucy Forman’. The email was from Forman’s sister. It transpired that Forman had died in a car accident in December 2001. In a second email, the sister confirmed that Forman had indeed been working in London in February 1992, the winter of Crane’s supposed death.

      As Gaddis was finishing Charlotte’s correspondence with Somers – most of which related to arrangements for various meetings in West Hyde and Chorleywood – he noticed a new message in the Hotmail inbox, addressed to bergotte965@hot mail.com from ‘Tom Gandalf’ with the subject heading ‘Wednesday’. It could have been spam, but he clicked it.

      [email protected] has sent you a secure email using Hushmail. To read it please visit the following web page …

      A weblink was listed below. For a moment, Gaddis was concerned that it would download a virus into his computer. But the coincidence of the Christian name ‘Tom’, added to the clandestine nature of the message, convinced him that the email had originated with Neame. He clicked the link and was taken to the website for an email encryption service.

      Your message has been protected using a question and answer which was created by the sender. You must correctly answer this question, word for word, to retrieve