CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Whereas the French and Russians had come to regard any form of intelligence as a commercial commodity that must be bought, Britain had once again reverted to her traditional amateur status, never officially spending too much on what was looked upon as something foreign to British instincts, but contradictorily and quixotically allowing full play to any amateur who lusted after information for information’s sake.
Richard Deacon,
A History of the British Secret Service
The item that Charles had found in Yuri Messenko’s box was a torn and much-folded scrap of yellow paper, tucked into the pocket of a ragged shirt. On it was printed an address in Church Lane and a man’s name: Vladimir Rasnokov. Charles pondered the matter as he breakfasted with Kate, then put on his hat, picked up his umbrella, and went out into Grosvenor Square. He walked the few blocks up to Oxford and, when the drizzle turned into rain, hailed a cab.
The Intelligence Branch of the War Office was housed in a residence in Queen Anne’s Gate, the shuttered building hidden behind a high wall and an unkempt garden-a fitting metaphor, Charles thought as he approached the building, for espionage work.
For nearly the whole of the previous century, polite society had regarded spying as indecently devious and completely out of character with the British gentleman’s code of sportsmanship and fair play, something to be ignored, even actively thwarted where necessary. But the situation began to change in the 1850s, when the debacles of the Crimean War spotlighted the inadequacies of Britain ’s intelligence in the Middle East and it became clear that most of the military blunders of that ruinous war had resulted from an almost complete lack of information about the enemy. Disastrous as the Crimea had been, however, it was essentially a sideshow, for what really threatened John Bull was the predatory shadow of the Russian bear falling inexorably across Central Asia, Afghanistan, and the northwest region of India. To counter this threat to the Empire’s “Jewel in the Crown,” the War Office began to increase its effort to develop a more effective espionage program, including mapping explorations in remote Central Asia, contacts with foreign agents across the Continent, and networks of native spies, some of whom Rudyard Kipling had recently immortalized in Kim as players in the “Great Game.”
But Whitehall still did not give military intelligence the support it deserved, and the Intellligence Branch continued to labor under the long-standing constraints of insufficient funding and staffing. One section, made up of only two officers and a clerk, had the task of covering the entire Russian empire and almost the whole of Asia, including China, India, and Japan. Despite the scale of its responsibilities, however, it was probably the most efficient and effective of all the sections, for Britain ’s history of confrontations with Russia in Central Asia had resulted in an increasing pool of knowledge about the Romanov regime and its military and political espionage activites.
It was this section that Charles intended to visit, for he had known one of its officers, Captain Steven Wells, during his military service in India during the eighties. Wells was a veteran of the Second Afghan War and had gone on to play the Great Game in the northern border region of India until he was summoned to England in ’99 to join Intelligence. But Wells’s interests were no longer exclusively focused on the far reaches of the Empire. Since joining Intelligence, he had begun to pay special attention to the activities of certain Russians in the East End, and Charles knew it.
“ Sheridan!” Wells exclaimed, unfolding his long legs and standing behind his desk, on which were stacked a number of files with red caution notices on the covers. “Hullo, old chap. What brings you here?” His monocle dropped out of his eye and swung across his uniformed chest on its black ribbon. The third son of an earl, he had the unmistakable look of an aristocrat.
“Thought I should come and see what you’ve been digging up these days,” Charles said with a grin. He looked around at the piles of papers on the shelves and floor, and the large maps laid flat on a table and rolled and stored in bins. The draperies were drawn and the room was lit, glaringly, with electric light. “Quite a change for you, Wells. Gone the days of mountain peaks and open plains, eh?”
“Afraid so, blast it,” Wells said, grimacing. He raised his voice and bellowed, “Dinsmore! Tea, chop-chop!”
“Still the same voice,” Charles remarked. “I’ve always thought that roar could move mountains. And it did, a time or two.”
“All I move these days are mountains of paper,” Wells said in a disgruntled tone. “Chaps here complain when I roar, as well. Don’t know what the Service is coming to.” He lowered himself into his chair as an orderly brought in a tray, placed it on the desk, and poured two cups of tea. When the young man had left the room, Wells eyed Charles. “What brings you here?” he asked again, stirring in sugar. “I doubt it’s idle curiosity.”
Charles put his hand into his pocket and pulled out his pipe. “I wonder,” he said quietly, “whether Intelligence has any special interest in the incident in Hyde Park involving Yuri Messenko.”
Without answering, Wells sipped his tea, then put his cup down and took out a pack of cigarettes. He cupped his hands around the flame of his match as if there were a high wind, then leaned back. His face had become less open, his voice more guarded. “We were interested initially. But the Yard expressed a wish to pursue the case, and we turned to more pressing matters. We do not have staff to waste on wild-goose chases.” He smiled dryly, a smile that did not reach his eyes. “There are far too many wild geese. We concluded that the Yard should do the chasing.”
Charles set down his cup and rested his elbows on the arms of his chair, tenting his fingers. He was aware that there was an almost total lack of communication between the Yard and War Office Intelligence, for which Intelligence was mostly responsible. During the past decade, Intelligence agents had heavily infiltrated the Russian East End, in some cases paying Russian Anarchists to serve as British agents. Intelligence was naturally not anxious to share information about its activities with anyone, not even the police. As a result, the Yard could scarcely tell the difference between an ordinary Russian émigré, an Anarchist, a Czarist agent provocateur, and an British agent. And then, of course, there were the double agents, those in the pay of more than one government, France and Russia, for instance, or Russia and Britain. The situation could hardly be more confusing.
Charles put his pipe back in his pocket, unlit. “And how about Vladimir Rasnokov?” he asked. “Is he one of yours?”
Wells blew out a stream of smoke. “Now, Charles,” he said in a tone of mild rebuke. “You know the rules as well as I do. I can’t discuss personnel matters, even with you, old boy.”
Charles coughed apologetically. “Perhaps you wouldn’t mind putting in a call to Fritz Ponsonby, then. He offered to make introductions, but I didn’t like to trouble him.” He gestured at the telephone on Wells’s desk. “He may be reached directly. His number is-”
“Damn,” Wells said under his breath. “It’s like that, is it?”
“Yes,” Charles said regretfully, “it is like that, I’m afraid. I did not choose the assignment, as you might guess, but having been handed it, I am doing what I can. Special Branch has not made my job easier, I fear. An inspector named Ashcraft has complicated things quite unnecessarily. Bombs, it would seem, have been found everywhere, and three men are being held on explosives charges.”