Nobody knows for certain what happened. But one story, relayed to Andrew on the following evening by the nurse who waited outside the door, has gained credibility over the years.
According to this nurse, Marie asked to be left alone with her father. The nurse, concerned, for the old man had become agitated during that morning, waited outside the door, and so heard the short monologue.
Marie stood over him, looking into the eyes which had so often in the past regarded her with cold affection, and the feeble slavering mouth that had lulled her into putting her emotions in jeopardy.
Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft.
Then she spoke softly:
‘Goodbye, Papa. You almost damned me. I hope you burn, and when you do, think of me.’ Then she spat straight into his face. That part was certain, the nurse said, because she washed off the spittle after Marie left.
Giles Arthur Railton, OBE, died on the following afternoon, 20 November 1918, at five minutes past six.
His son, Andrew, together with the others, visited Eccleston Square that evening, and it was then, says the myth – the truth according to the Railtons and Farthings – that he made the final discovery which was the penultimate piece of treachery in that part of the family’s history.
*
Andrew and Charlotte were at Giles’ bedside when he died. Caspar and Phoebe arrived a little later. Nobody seemed to know what to do once the first arrangements had been taken care of, and the telephone calls made to the rest of the family.
Robertson offered the drinks’ tray, and, at about seven o’clock, Andrew suggested the others should go back to their respective homes. ‘There’s nothing you can do. I’ll wait for the funeral people. They said about half-past seven.’
Caspar and Phoebe were happy to be freed, but Charlotte, who could see Andrew had not taken his father’s death in his stride, said she would stay and wait.
When the younger couple had gone, Andrew, with uncharacteristic sentiment, asked if she minded him going upstairs again. ‘Just want to be with the Old Man.’
Charlotte nodded. ‘Better like this, Andrew. He hasn’t really been alive since the seizure, you know.’
Andrew nodded, absently, went upstairs, and opened the bedroom door quietly, as if not to waken the shrouded figure. At the bedside, Andrew lifted the sheet to take another look at the face. His father seemed to have become younger again now that death had taken over, removing the pain and fear.
Covering the face, Andrew looked around the room, just as if it was for the first and last time. He had heard, in his head, his father quoting Shakespeare, as he came up the stairs. The Railtons were weaned on it.
And our little life is rounded with a sleep.
Then, he could never say why, Andrew sensed something not quite right. Slowly he turned, and looked, turned again, looked again.
Everything was normal. The bed, the dressing table clear but for his father’s watch. The leather-bound copy of Shakespeare’s Works on the bedside table.
He looked again. He had visited his Father almost each day since the seizure and not noticed before. It was the book that had been there all the time, and Andrew simply took it to be his Father’s Shakespeare, because it was always there. But this was not – this was a large, leather-bound Bible. Never had he known his Father to keep a Bible by the bed: or anywhere, come to that.
He picked it up, turning it over. It was relatively new – a year possibly – and with a wide, thick leather marker. Perhaps old Giles Arthur really had had a premonition after all, and he had set his house in order.
Inside on the flyleaf, Giles had written carefully, Seek and Ye Shall Find. Giles Railton 1917 in copperplate handwriting, neat and small.
Seek and Ye Shall Find.
Andrew, who had spent his life, since adolescence, communicating with his father in simple cipher, felt the tingle of a voice from the grave.
Where be your gibes now?
He opened the Bible, and saw the marker, with its gilt embossed pattern of arrows slanting towards one corner. The corner was slightly frayed, and he put down the Book and looked closer. The marker was made of leather which had been folded, fitted together with minute clasps. If you inserted your thumbnails, and those of your forefingers, between the join, the leather came away. Two long, thin pages of paper were stuck firmly to the leather, and filled with Giles’ tiny writing.
It took only a glance for him to see what it was, the simplest of ciphers; the old book cipher he had so often used with his father. This time it came complete with the Book.
Pencil poised, Andrew began. He had the whole thing unbuttoned in fifteen minutes. Charles, he imagined, had taken almost an hour over it. Andrew wondered how his cousin had felt at the news. Unholy news. Even diabolical. Andrew understood well enough. He had always been able to understand his father.
At the time he said nothing to Charlotte, but, when the undertakers left, he took the Book home and made a copy of the message, putting in his own punctuation, for there was no doubt of his father’s intentions. He would read it to the family – the adults – at Christmas. It was only fair that the whole family should be admitted to the final whims and machinations of Giles Railton’s life.
Yet he had the grace, and sense, to show it first to Mary Anne, for the knowledge this last message gave them had a particular bearing on her own father. The accusations, and Charles’ final silence, had undoubtedly come from obedience to Giles and this message. Like so many others, Charles had been lured and deceived by a master traitor.
‘It took me a few seconds to work out some things,’ he told Mary Anne, in the privacy of The General’s study, at Christmas. ‘MARY is obviously Marie, and THE BROTHER OF JOHN can only be your own poor father. I was foxed with MARK and DAVID, until I remembered that the general code name for LENIN was – and probably still is – DAVIS. If you take DAVID as DAVIS we have LENIN, which makes MARK into MARX. The rest is easy.’ He passed her the paper, knowing the cipher began 1 Ep John 1.1,2,3,4,5,6. Which meant The First Epistle of John, Chapter One verse one – the first six words ‘That which was from the beginning…’
The whole, long decode read –
THAT WHICH WAS FROM THE BEGINNING MY BELIEF I HAVE BETRAYED THRICE WITH HEART HEAD AND BODY. ALL THINGS SHALL PASS AWAY. THE EMPEROR AND KING WILL CEASE AND THE HOST WILL RISE UP AND THE PEOPLE WILL SHARE EQUALLY ONE WITH ANOTHER. THIS I HAVE LONG COME TO BELIEVE THROUGH THE TEACHINGS OF MARK AND DAVID. I HAVE SERVED MY COUNTRY BUT BETRAYED IT FIRST WITH MY HEART FOR I NEEDED TO PROTECT THE TWO WHO APART FROM MY WIFE I LOVED ABOVE ALL OTHERS AND HAD ALREADY BETRAYED. I SPEAK OF JAMES AND MARY. BECAUSE OF ME THEY HAVE FALLEN AS SHEEP AMONG RAVENING WOLVES AND I HAVE HAD TO BETRAY TO SAVE THEM. I HAVE SOLD SECRETS TO THE ENEMY FOR THEIR SALVATION AND USED THE BROTHER OF JOHN TO COVER MYSELF AND KEEP SAFE. HE WAS MORE FOOL THAN KNAVE AND SHOULD BE FORGIVEN EVEN THOUGH HE WAS LAID OPEN TO BETRAYAL BY HIS FOLLY FOR HE HAS A CHILD AT THE ENEMY’S MERCY. FOR LONG HAVE I BELIEVED REVOLT MUST COME THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. THERE SHALL BE A NEW KINGDOM AND IT SHALL BE HASTENED BY VICTORY AGAINST US AND A GREAT RISING WILL COME FROM THE EAST. GOD SAVE THE NEW KINGDOM OF THE PEOPLE AND MAY ALL MY SINS BE FORGIVEN. IF THE BROTHER OF JOHN READS THIS BEFORE ANY OTHER THEN I BEG HIM TO REMAIN SILENT FOR THE SAKE OF JAMES AND MARY AND HIS OWN CHILD. HE SHOULD REMAIN SILENT EVEN UNTO THE GRAVE. THERE IS BLOOD ON MY OWN HANDS THROUGH A WOMAN’S NECK AND A WHITE HANDKERCHIEF.
It said everything. And the family sat in stunned, shocked silence as Andrew read it to them after dinner on Christmas Night.
It told the whole story of Giles’ political change in the evening of his life, and how he had embraced – for his own reasons – an ideological faith which came close to what was now known as Communism.
It told of the way in which he manipulated Charles’ misfortunes and folly to his own advantage; and how he had managed to deal with the enemy by trading intelligence, perhaps only small things, through ‘The Fisherman’, using Charles as his perfect
foil – and so keep James and Marie safe.
It told clearly who killed Hanna Haas.
Giles Railton believed a new social order to be inevitable: and that sooner rather than later. His belief had become so strong that Giles had even turned it into action – betrayal to advance a German victory, and so bring the revolution quickly to fruition. Nobody could tell when his political vision had first struck. All of them knew that Giles had turned the vision to action.
The decode is now, according to the mythology, kept in a locked steel box at Redhill Manor, together with the Bible and the marker which contains the cipher.
*
This should be the end of the story of those fledgling years spent by the Railton family in what we now know of as MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. But there is no end to the whole story, and certainly, if we deal with Giles’ horrific betrayal – ‘the first of the really great modern traitors,’ they say in those endless seminars at Warminster – the rest should be told. Yet, it cannot be fully related, for decades were to pass before the whole truth, and last twist of Giles’ actions, was made fully known.
By rights we must now our quietus make, not with a bare bodkin, but with a date – an arbitrary date. Some time, let us say, in the October of 1935. First, though, much was to happen in the seventeen years between. The world was changed. Empire tilted, though few felt the start of its slide. The Railtons, and, come to that, the Farthings of America, flourished.
That Christmas of 1918, which should have been so full of joy with its returned warriors, and the influx of children to Redhill, was probably the most gloomy since the war had started.
Not only was the family saddened by the deaths of Charles and Giles; but also the facts which came with Andrew’s reading of the Giles Decode – as it became known – were totally bewildering. The acts of treachery, the drawing in of weak, silly Charles, and the duplicity, were hard enough to bear; but it was even more difficult to accept that this pillar of Establishment, the great secret man, had been so swayed by a political ideology alien to all of them.
The men endlessly discussed possibilities. In particular, Caspar, James and Dick Farthing tried to make sense of it.
‘The conundrum,’ ventured James, ‘is why he protected Marie, myself and Charles’ child by selling out to the Germans, when he was so attached to social change through disorder.’
‘Easy.’ Caspar appeared well up in the state of play, and the fighting still going on in Russia and its neighbouring countries. ‘We were all his disciples, weren’t we? Every one of us. His devious disciples. He ran us like a puppet master, and manipulated the entire family.’
‘Sara apart,’ added Dick. ‘I am never sure if I was manipulated, but probably it was so. He sold out, though, Caspar. Sold to Prussians to let the Revolutionaries in.’
‘I suppose,’ Caspar had really almost completed Giles’ jigsaw, ‘that “The Fisherman” was a go-between. Passing the messages – and a threat, if the old man got out of hand.’
In the end, they all realized that, whatever the reason or rhyme, it simply had to be accepted. Within himself, James thought it was just possible that the Old Man, in the twilight of his years, suddenly felt guilty – a sense that there were too many men and women like him: people of wealth, rank and great privilege. The labyrinthine passages of power were stocked full of men with his background who had risen by education, influence, money and the fact that their charmed lives had been set while still in their cradles. The world of diplomacy, and, almost to the same extent, politics, the military and naval services, were led by what amounted to feudal power. ‘I believe he suddenly saw that way of things had to end, and he made an intellectual grab at the first straw that came to hand,’ he told Margaret Mary.
Her response was typical of her own view at that time. ‘Oh, to blazes with bloody Giles,’ she grumbled. ‘Why did he have to pick on poor old Charles? I liked Charles, idiot that he was. Oh, poor Charles.’
‘Poor Charles, my foot.’ James’ eyes, for a second, took on the same ruthless look which had once rested often in Giles’ own eyes.
‘Come to Mama,’ chirped Margaret Mary very brightly, for the transitional period of adjusting to him being there was over. Now, no hesitation or embarrassment stood between them as they went about their own particular nightly – and often daily – rituals.
Caspar spoke, confidentially, about it to C, who remained as wise as ever, putting nothing on paper. C was the only person outside the family who had first-hand knowledge of the business. ‘Road to Damascus.’ C never smiled when Giles’ name was mentioned. ‘Straight road to Damascus stuff. Think about it, Caspar, and you can pinpoint the very moment, and, in the future, mistrust those who have undergone a sudden conversion. Personally, I’d have had the watchers out on St Paul for a long time if I’d been in charge of the Christian secret service when he came blundering into Damascus yelling that he’d gone blind, and Christ was the Messiah. I’d have set the dogs on him, whipped him down to Warminster and had him squeezed, sharpish.’ He dropped into silence, pondering, before he sadly admitted, ‘Just as I should have done with Giles Railton, when he began to sell off his own private informers and little covens of spies he had hidden away over the years.’
‘And it was my grandfather who backed the sly Ramillies,’ Caspar added darkly.
To which C grunted, ‘And the last we know of your little brother, Caspar my boy, is that he was picked up in Petrograd and carted away. Probably shot that day. So many of our people in Russia have gone, or are going.’ He thought again for almost a minute. ‘You know, I had one devil of a row with Giles Railton. He was dead against any British military or naval intervention in Russia against the Bolsheviks. DNI went through the same business with him. Now we know why.’
There was a final act in the whole Railton drama of those times. But this was not to be revealed completely for several decades. Yet Giles did point the way. James and Caspar both maintained they had an inkling as soon as they heard Giles’ testimony. The secret historians say Giles Railton was but the first of many to exchange class and privilege for the hidden hair shirt of treachery. Yet he managed that without giving up anything – except those he loved. The first hint of that last knife twist which Giles had built into his treason came around 1935.
Epilogue
1935
In the wake of strikes and a world recession there were many young undergraduates, living in the rarified atmosphere of the great Oxbridge universities who became affected – some would say infected – by what they saw as the class struggle of socialism. They had come, late, to Giles Railton’s own cause, and one such was another Railton – Donald, eldest son to James who in 1935 was in his final year at Cambridge.
‘Talks a lot of half-digested, emotional tommyrot,’ James said angrily to Caspar. Both had grown high in rank, and wise in the ways of the secret world. ‘Workers of the World, Unite. March under the banner of Freedom!’ He gave a sarcastic snort. ‘Let them go. Go to the cradle of the Revolution and see if they like the purge of freedom.’
‘A phase,’ Caspar chuckled. ‘He’d have got on well with your uncle, Grandfather Giles. Member of the Young Socialists, is he?’
‘Don’t think it’s quite gone that far.’
It had not gone that far, but neither James nor Caspar was to know that young Donald was not a member of the Labour Party because of strict instructions. ‘You can serve the Party better,’ a friend told him, ‘if you do not publicly display your politics. Keep clear of Labour meetings; don’t get mixed up with demonstrations; and for God’s sake don’t join the Movement.’
It was in October 1935 that this same friend invited Donald to his rooms, in Trinity, ‘to meet a Comrade who will instruct and help us. He has British origins, but has lived in the USSR for some time.’ The friend’s name does not matter. It is now as familiar as any well-known brand of lavatory cleaner.
Donald went to the rooms, in Trinity, on a damp, bitter, late October night when the wind cut into the univ
ersity city, straight, as some often said, off the Steppes.
The comrade from Russia spoke for almost two hours, to an audience of six. He offered help and instruction in ‘fighting with stealth for the cause of the Party,’ and invited questions. He was tall, in his forties, but with prematurely grey hair.
Donald went with one of the other young men to see him off on the late train to London. There was something terribly familiar about the comrade from Russia, but Donald could not put his finger on it – something in his voice, mannerisms, walk, features.
On the train itself, their visitor sat back and closed his eyes. He was tired. Tomorrow he would speak with others in London, then it was time to return to Moscow. Progress reports to write; names to be passed on; a meeting with the Cheka hierarchy – they were in the midst of merging the NKVD, OGPU and UGB.
He smiled to himself. So that was James’ son. Like his father. Very like his father. So much so that he would have to show extreme caution. Ramillies Railton – now known under a dozen aliases – wondered to himself about the circular progress of history. Who would have thought he’d have met his kinsman, unrecognized, in these circumstances? Grandfather would not have been surprised, naturally.
Many, many years later – and that is a different tale – when the truth of that night, its aftermath, and dramatis personae became certain knowledge, Caspar stood, looking out onto a damp and drizzling Whitehall. ‘Bloody Giles,’ he said, softly. Then, the inevitable Shakespearean tag, ‘And is old Double dead?’
John Gardner, The Secret Generations
(Series: # )
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