Heirs And Descendants Collection

8. Where Life Begins

Peter Trimble teamed up with the Directorate of Military Intelligence, Section Six, from the sanity of the outside world in 1978. He was almost 29, and immediately became a sub on the "Garden File", directly under the supervision of the then "C" Dicky Blythe-Smith. That file had been opened in 1961 by one of his predecessors, Maurice Cavendish, when irrefutable information was mysteriously intercepted at GCHQ.

A cryptanalysis of previously used pages, of an intended "one time pad" encrypted message, pointed at a certain Harold Adriano Russell Philby as being, beyond doubt, the "third man" in the Burgess Maclean scandal. Stanley, the name used, by the Soviets in these messages, had been nicknamed "Kim" after the young Indian of Rudyard Kipling"s novel, having had been born in the Punjab and spent time in the Indian Civil Service. This was a major breakthrough for the SIS, as one time pad messaging, that is encrypting words and letters into numbers to which an additive key from a "one time pad" was added, was unbreakable.

as one time padone time padThe code had been corrupted by the reuse of entire pages of previously used material, allowing for its decryption. At the time, it was taken to have been an oversight at the Soviet manufactures of their secret communication equipment, or simply a lucky break as can happen in life. No one considered it to have been deliberate, other than Cavendish. Philby had been supplying information to the Russians since before the Second World War but had been cleared of spying charges; even being vindicated by Prime Minister Macmillan in the House of Commons in 1955. He was an acute embarrassment to all in the upper echelons of English society, especially the Intelligence community. Cavendish, either in collusion with the Government or on his own, decided not to use that undeniable evidence and arrest and prosecute Philby; instead he allowed him to escape to the Soviet Union, where he was beyond the reach of journalists and the full exposure of his treason.

By this action the cryptanalysis was not apparent to the Russians, and project Venona; the name given to this decryption continued into the eighties. More oversights and lucky breaks came the way of SIS. Had Cavendish been clairvoyant, or just plain lucky?

Venona;Set against Stanley"s banishment away from the Secret Services, were the unanswered questions over the full and exact damage he had done. The only avenue into that investigation left open to Maurice was the time honoured one of leg work; that of going back and over everything Stanley had done, or everywhere he had been stationed.

Two separate and seemingly unconnected items were thrown up by "subs" working out of "the office." The first was when the department was situated at 54 The Broadway SW1 in 1963. A bank account, under the name of Stanley Russell, was held at a branch of the Martin"s Bank of 63 Long Acre WC2. It was opened on the 14th July 1936 with a deposit of £2.5 million plus change, then another of exactly £2 million in November of the same year, and finally one of £3 million, again with change, in May the following year. There had been no withdrawals. The writing on the application form filled in by Stanley was identical, conclusively, to that of Philby"s.

Lord Edwin Davenport, as British ambassador, had a great deal more to do at the outbreak of war than just the forwarding on of a fellow hereditary peers" letters. He delegated Philby to that task, who was attached to the Embassy in Vienna throughout the early war years, supplying valuable information to the Allies. Edwin had noted down all the details of the three letters. However, it being such a small inconsequential event, it went unnoticed and unrecorded on Stanley"s file until Peter Trimble, ferreting around as all good "subs" are meant to do, unearthed it early in his career, in the Westminster Bridge Road building that then hosted the SIS. This was the second item. Taken apart, as well might they have been done, owing to the fifteen-year gap in their discovery, there was no connection; but put together as Dicky Blythe-Smith did, it added up to one thing, and one thing only. Lord Maudlin Paterson was sending money to a person in Leningrad, and Stanley had intervened in the delivery.

The next thing that Dicky had to decide upon was how to approach the problem of an errant, supposed ex-custodian of a private bank, in which the SIS had a distinct interest. After due deliberation he abandoned protocol, adopting a radical approach rather than the more conservative prudence that the situation may have demanded. He sent the young, inexperienced, Trimble to parley with the aged Lord at Harrogate Hall.

“I"m sorry to trouble you, my Lord, but I have come to speak to you about some letters you wrote to a Señora Cortez in Leningrad starting in 1936 and then going on for many years,” Peter stoically declared.

“Yes, young man…and what interest are they of yours?”

“Well, Sir, we believe that Kim Philby that abomination of a man took some money from those letters for himself.”

“What money? Was there money in them? What makes you think it was mine?” indignantly he asked. Come on, speak up, man!” he contemptuously demanded of young Peter.

“Well, nothing really, other than we"ve found a bank account of his with £7.5 million in. We just wondered if it could be yours, Sir?”

“Are you accusing me of being a spy, or a fraudster, or both? Make sure that Blythe-Smith is in his office on Monday when I shall walk the ledgers over the bridge to him. Tell him that he should not have sent a boy to do what he could not face himself, and also; to have his apology ready and for good measure, his resignation. I will be speaking to the PM this evening about this.”

The Director of MI6, as the Secret Intelligence Service is popularly referred to, has only once resigned. If it was a more regular occurrence it would cause an unnecessary furore amongst the servile citizens it is supposed to serve, and this edict was applied to Dicky, who sent a letter of abject apology to Lord Maudlin and attached his report to the Garden File. There it stayed until Peter Trimble assumed the role of "C" in 2007, and the haunting memory of that ancient meeting was remembered.

GardenWhere the complexity of my father was introspective and self-absorbed, Maudlin"s was the opposite; he was an extrovert, gregarious, and in his young days, an utterly carefree man. In some ways, Judith reminded me of his methodical way of thinking and his painstaking attention to detail. He had selected Vienna as his chosen route for his correspondence, with care and deliberation. His inbred suspicion of all things foreign narrowed his options it must be said. However, it was still an inspired choice. The fact that Stanley had intervened was beyond his comprehension or his control. It had been through his foresight that GCHQ had been endowed with the unique facilities that enabled that institution to decipher the code that had lead the SIS to his door! It was in 1946 when he had contacted Meredith Paine, the then "C," and proposed the expansive program of improvements to GCHQ capabilities, prompted by his own experiences of gathering information; but he had no fears of any investigation. The secrets were, as he advised me, buried deep.

The air route for mail was complicated in the late thirties. Through Germany was the direct route; however, the tensions between that country, Britain and the USSR made that choice unreliable. The route via Scandinavia was unusable, due to the unrest, prior to the "Winter War" between Finland and its unhappy neighbour the USSR. A route through North Africa and the Middle East was feasible, but long in time and therefore capricious. Notwithstanding all these obstructions, the overriding consideration to Maudlin was his inability to write in the Cyrillic alphabet and his well-founded mistrust of some Soviet postal worker being able to read English. So, he settled on Austria as his safest bet; and until that interview, had never known where his money had gone.

He had no replies from Andrea to muse over for ten long years and had often worried about her welfare, until in September 1946 he received a rerouted letter from her, informing him of her poverty and asking for help.

He was a learned and erudite man my great-grandfather, gaining his knowledge from wide and expansive fields; not relying solely on his academic lessons for his insight on life. He had been aggrieved that he was the last son and in line for the Standard of Saint George, as he had sought a more adventurous life for himself than that.

At the onslaught of the "War to end all Wars" he had enlisted, against his father"s will, in the Royal Horse Artillery and immediately was given the rank of Captain. He saw action on the Western Front, the Sinai Peninsula and in Persia and ended the war as a Colonel. He was commended on four occasions, and wore his awarded Distinguished Service Order and Bar, along with his other campaign medals, with great pride. By 1922 he had retired from the Army, much to the relief of his father and Alfred, the third-youngest brother of the quartet of Paterson sons but not, to their horror, from hostile activities. He volunteered for the Irish War! There, in Ireland, the seed was planted that grew and led to his acquaintance with MA; or, more correctly, Andrea Isadora Mafalda Cortez, who unbeknown to him then, was one year old.

Maudlin"s responsibility lay in the gathering of information of the Irish Republican Armies" intentions and tactics, and in this role he recruited an assembly of men known as the "Cairo" gang. For three years Maudlin"s handling of those seven Protestants, as they went about their trade, was impeccable and faultless…until one day when he made a mistake. He vowed there and then, standing on the street where their bodies lay, never to divulge confidential, intimate secrets to anyone, even if they are, supposedly, on your side!

“Never trust your friends with confidential information Harry, they will ultimately let you down. Keep it to yourself. Never allow yourself to think that a friend is as reliable as you are in keeping a secret, because they won"t be. Just remember that you can only ever rely on yourself, and no one else.” Another snippet of knowledge my great-grandfather gave me, and I was trying to live up to him in keeping the faith.