Agent Lavender: The Flight of Harold Wilson Read online

  Short looked up in shock.

  “Investigations? Plural?”

  “Yes.”

  “Into what?”

  “The Parliamentary Labour Party, Mr Short.”

  There was a brief cacophony before Sir Michael regained the attention of everyone in the room by slamming his fist into the table in a manner that probably hurt. Peter Wright stepped forward.

  “With respect, you and your colleagues are all under suspicion. It’s a natural consequence of the events of the last 24 hours, the same protocol would apply to an infiltrator into a government department or business, it’s just that in this case, the organisation in question is Her Majesty’s Government itself. Now, if you wouldn’t mind—”

  “This is a coup!” bellowed Tony Benn, advancing on Wright.

  “On the contrary, Mr Benn, it is the prevention of one. The prevention of a takeover of this sceptred isle by communists, republicans and Stalinist thugs like Comrade Wilson and, no doubt, your good self. When did the KGB get to you, Viscount? Or was it the NKVD back then?”

  Barbara Castle was unsure as to whether Benn had meant to punch the man’s face or kick him in the groin, because in his rage he had managed to do both with one, confused movement of his limbs. Now, in a voice quite unlike any that his colleagues had heard him use before, he shouted:

  “Read what I said about the Soviets in ’56 before you call me a Stalinist, you fucking—”

  “Mr Benn,” Sir Michael cut in just in time, calmly helping Peter back onto his feet, “there is no reason at present to believe any allegation against you or any of your colleagues.”

  Benn simply stared at him, breathing heavily.

  “Nevertheless,” Sir Michael went on, “the circumstances mean you are under suspicion and thereby subject to an investigation which will involve questioning of you, your family and your respective staffs. Until these investigations are completed, it would be extraordinarily constitutionally inappropriate for you to remain in government.”

  Those near Michael Foot turned to him, but the Parliamentary titan had nothing to say. Roy Mason suddenly found something very interesting to look at on his shoes. Tony Benn simply looked like he was going to cry. The Labour Cabinet looked helplessly at one another. Then, right on time, they began the process common to all groups throughout history who have found themselves in such situations. They all knew they themselves weren’t in Moscow’s pocket. But they had always wondered about Wedgie, and hadn’t Denis been in the Communist Party at university? Barbara seemed fond of visiting Russia. And, while they of course would never say so, there’d always been something a bit off about Michael…

  As their meaningful looks of support turned to sideways glances of necessary suspicion, Sir Michael spoke again, quieter this time.

  “You are all required to return to your homes. Officers have already been posted outside, in order to ensure the smooth running of this investigation.”

  Tony Benn sniffed.

  “So we’re under house arrest.”

  Peter Wright steadied himself on a chair.

  “Everyone else is. You’re nicked for assault.”

  Sir Michael nodded to the door and two uniformed police officers entered. Benn shot them a look of utmost respect and approached them, adjusting his tie.

  “Officers, I have no intentions but to come quietly.”

  “See you soon, Tony,” said Castle quietly.

  “No, you probably won’t,” said Benn, a tad melodramatic as usual, and then he and the officers were gone. Sir Michael motioned to Sir John and the civil servant nodded before exiting again.

  “The press will be informed once the Transitional Authority is in place,” Sir Michael began.

  “What’s the ‘Transitional Authority’?” asked Roy Mason with an air of distaste.

  “Sir John has just gone to get her.”

  Michael Foot put his head in his hands. Healey banged the table in despair.

  “Ted, do something!” he cried.

  Short merely shrugged. “There’s nothing to do. In the event of the fall of the government, the Leader of the Opposition can be invited to form a government prior to an election.”

  “That hasn’t happened since… Henry Campbell-bloody-Bannerman!”

  “Baldwin, actually,” muttered Foot, too quietly for anyone to hear.

  Denis continued to thunder. “And the government hasn’t fallen!”

  “Hasn’t it, Denis?” replied Short, “hasn’t it? The whole country will know in a matter of hours.”

  Sir Michael allowed that to hang in the air for a respectable amount of time before continuing the proceedings.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I must now ask you to vacate the Cabinet Room.”

  The former cabinet duly did so. Michael Foot took one last look at the clock on the wall. It was almost dawn. Just after the door closed, it reopened and Sir John Hunt entered, with a guest, who spoke.

  Sir Michael shook her hand. She smiled and spoke at once.

  “Thank you. Sir Michael, I look forward to being brought up to speed.”

  “Yes, Prime Minister.”

  “...and if this Agrimoney thing takes off, the French and the Germans will strangle the life out of British dairy and those boys will have died in Normandy for nothing.”

  Harold decided not to correct Croker’s apparently hazy recollection of the Second World War. Instead, he checked his watch in the light of the tractor’s headlamp. It was nearly six. Giving his most earnest nod, he paused for thought. To hell with it, he thought. Why not be honest? He placed a hand on Croker’s shoulder.

  “You’re absolutely right about Agrimoney. It’s entirely outside British interests and I can honestly say I’ll do everything in my power to see that we are out of Europe before the end of the decade. I can’t say too much, but in a way I’ve been doing so for a long time.”

  Croker beamed, this time genuinely.

  “Mr Wilson, that makes me very happy to hear. Here,” he said, handing him the keys to the tractor, “she’s all yours. Just make sure one of your folks brings her back in one piece.”

  Wilson grabbed the keys (probably a little too keenly) and clambered onto the tractor. With a prayer and a wince, he got the idling beast into gear and gave a final cheery wave to Benjamin Croker before setting off into the nearby field. As he saw the sun edge above the horizon, he pressed a little harder on the accelerator.

  Chapter four

  Saturday 1st November 1975 – 6:45am

  It wasn’t the way that she had expected to get there, but Margaret Thatcher still savoured the moment her back made contact with the cracked leather of the Prime Minister’s chair. She cast an appreciative eye around the Cabinet Room, a combination of excitement and the wintery dawnlight preventing her from noticing the fraying edges of the Axminster or the mousetrap underneath the Scottish Secretary’s chair.

  “...will be a formality. I would advise that the circumstances would demand that you address the nation as soon as possible.”

  Sir John Hunt paused as he realised that the Leader of the Opposition seemed more interested in the armrests than constitutional quagmire. Glancing at Sir Michael, he cleared his throat, prompting Thatcher to look up.

  “I am sorry Sir Michael, I was not aware that Civil Servants needed someone to be listening to them when they spoke.”

  “Mrs Thatcher, the country currently teeters on the very precipice of destruction. I strongly suggest that you pay attention.”

  With a sense of chastisement that she hadn’t felt since that incident with the Goniometer in Final Year, Thatcher snapped out of her reverie.

  “If you would just let me continue,” Sir Michael continued, “the main priorities for you are to authorise the investigation into the outgoing members of the Cabinet...”

  A hurriedly prepared document, the letters smudged with the speed at which it had been typed, was plonked in front of her.

  “...to order the immediate capture and detention of your
predecessor...”

  Another plonk.

  “...and the submission of names for your own administration.”

  A final plonk, accompanied by a pen.

  “I shall inform the Palace that you will be arriving in an hour. Her Majesty is aware of the circumstances, but it is vital that you are confirmed in office before any discussions are made with regards to the economic or military situation.”

  “The economic situation?”

  Doing his best to avoid breaching protocol, Sir John summarised the precarious position of the economy, pointing out that the disgrace of the entire Labour Party would probably be enough to send the stock markets reeling. Pausing mid-way through writing “Airey: Defence?” Thatcher looked at the Cabinet Secretary and sighed.

  “I realise, Sir Michael, that this isn’t the most auspicious of ways for me to assume the Premiership. However, I suppose in many respects you have offered me the largest landslide since the Reform Act. Assuming that the entire PLP is suspended, would this make Mr Thorpe my successor as Leader of the Opposition? Then again, if the Ulster Unionists were...”

  “Mrs Thatcher, this is not really the most opportune time for debating Parliamentary arithmetic.”

  “If you would just let me continue...”

  “I am afraid not, The Queen will see you in fifteen minutes.”

  “If you would just let...”

  The look on Sir Michael’s face achieved something that Denis, Ted and Willie had never done. Margaret Thatcher fell silent.

  “I suggest that you meet with the representatives downstairs from the armed forces before meeting Her Majesty. In the current circumstances, it is vital that we make every assurance that Polaris has not been compromised.”

  Margaret Thatcher had not fallen silent for long. With the same haughty expression that her father had given when challenged for the leadership of the South Kesteven Small Business Association, the Leader of the Opposition bristled furiously.

  “Sir Michael. Despite everything that has happened so far this morning, I am not prepared to act in such an ultra vires manner before I have been formally accepted as Premier by my sovereign.”

  “If you would just let me continue...”

  “If you would just let me continue.”

  Sir John Hunt almost wept as the Director-General and the Leader of the Opposition bickered amongst themselves. For the hundredth time that morning, he looked at his watch, which was currently telling him that the country had been without a Prime Minister for almost seven hours. Willing himself into action, he firmly pressed his hand on Sir Michael’s back, prompting him and the Prime Minister-designate – an ugly term, he thought – to vacate the room. Closing the door, he heard their voices continuing to bicker all the way down the corridor. He kept an ear pressed against the door for another three minutes.

  More than a hundred miles away, Harold Wilson’s buttocks were the victim of even poorer suspension than the Ministerial Rover. Clattering along only slightly faster that the speed at which ice melts, he focused on the horizon. The inky blackness of the night was now considerably lighter than it had been, with the first rose-tinted fingers of dawn informing him that, just over the headland, a rather irate Soviet submariner was probably finishing his black-market cigar and wondering how observant the local fishermen were.

  He grunted as the tractor hit a stone-hard tree stump, almost somersaulting onto the ground below. He eased off the accelerator slightly; after two decades of service, Wilson was not prepared to end his life by being prised off the wheels of an agricultural vehicle. Not for the first time that night, he wondered why on earth he had chosen to depart when ordered, rather than just slipping away on his next visit to Leningrad. Deep down, he knew that the net had had to have been tightening around him, but it was still a damn foolish thing to be juddering across a Norfolk potato field at silly o’clock in the morning, hoping that an Eastern Bloc submarine was still going to be waiting for him.

  The sound of rushing water alerted him to the fact that the most humiliating stage of his journey was coming to an end, and he came juddering to a halt in front of the meandering stream below him. Ahead was a hedgerow, a tiny country lane and, just beyond that, the North Sea. Leaping off the tractor and making a mental note to ensure that Croker was compensated for the greatest inadvertent act of treason since an over-generous inn-keeper gave a bag of oats to Benedict Arnold, Wilson ran for the cliff edge.

  Anthony Wedgwood Benn grunted to himself as a tray was slid underneath the doorway. All things considered, the Second Viscount Stansgate had enjoyed better starts to the day. Being dragged from Downing Street into a waiting police car under the watchful eyes of three Permanent Secretaries had a tendency to put you in a bad mood. That was tempered by the sparkle in the eye of the Constable who had once had to help his wife give birth in the dark because the workers at the power station had been on strike.

  All things considered, Benn thought as he pawed listlessly at the fried breakfast in front of him, it wasn’t the most heroic position for the victim of a coup to endure.

  Scraping the bacon and black pudding to one side, Benn thought back to the dozens of times that he had seriously thought of asking Denis or Roy if they shared his suspicions about Harold. There had been that time around Hugh’s funeral, hadn’t there? When he had suddenly remembered that his ‘aunt’ had taken ill in Berlin? Not to mention when he had suddenly gone missing on that Shadow Cabinet trip to the Lake District. Even those had paled into insignificance when measured against the problems that had occurred when that Treasury file had gone missing just before Decimalisation.

  “No,” he said to himself as he gulped down a melamine mug of almost-tea, “none of us would have even bothered mentioning it.”

  It was a humiliation, really. He’d had to put up with at least six years of being called a Soviet plant in the Labour Party. He, the pilot who had told every man he could in the RAF that there wasn’t a cigarette paper between Stalin and Hitler. He, the MP who had objected to Barbara visiting Khrushchev’s dacha in ’59. He, the Secretary of State who had made it his life’s work to end the European dependence on Romanian oil.

  Benn threw his arms back in a frustrated tangle. Fifty years of devoted service, three by-elections, and it was he who had ended up being accused of treachery.

  Something needed to be done.

  Harold Wilson ran. He ran like he hadn’t done since the time he had heard that Philby had fled Beirut and had needed to make sure that he reached that dinner with the Archbishop.

  The submarine had obviously not been there. It had been idiotic to have entertained any possibility that it would have been in the light of the entire Ipswich fishing fleet being moored offshore. He reminded himself that it probably wasn’t gone for good; Agent Fuchsia had explicitly stated that in the very unlikely event of him failing to make the rendezvous at the agreed time, he would have another crack at it after sunset, although little had been said with regards to how best to avoid the possibility of him being spotted hurrying down a cliff edge in the middle of East Anglia.

  As it was, he was hurrying up it again. A few hundred meters away, an early dog-walker was looking quizzically in his direction, wondering why a portly man in creased trousers clutching an overnight bag was pottering around first thing in the morning. Harold grasped at his side, suffering a stitch for the first time in at least two decades. Hauling himself over the fence, he made one final dash towards the house on the headland, praying that Brimley still lived there.

  It seemed that the Almighty still have a soft-spot for him, as was confirmed when Jacob Brimley, Fellow in Modern History at Jesus College, Oxford, opened the door. For around five seconds, the two men observed one another. The tension was thick. Brimley looked him up and down, then peered past him, his gaze running along the cliff’s edge. For at least a fraction of an instant Harold half-considered grabbing Jacob’s head and slamming it against the timbers of the doorframe before a hand was extended in welcome.

/>   “I take it that they finally figured you out then, Hal?”

  Wilson staggered back at this, rather shocked at the candid nature with which his entire identity had been stripped bare in a sentence.

  “You knew?”

  Jacob Brimley smiled, gesturing towards the hallway and motioning for Harold to go inside.

  “Obviously. Any man so apparently determined to see Archibald Sinclair speak had to be hiding something. My only surprise was that you chose to enter the Labour Party when you did.”

  Harold Wilson’s face creased up in relief as he crossed the threshold, a waft from the newly fire permeating almost as deep as his bones.

  “Can I offer you anything in return, Jake?”

  “Not at all, old chap. What are College friends for?”

  Probably not harbouring a known traitor to the Crown, Wilson thought darkly, especially since he’d never quite paid Brimley back for that time he’d shown him the questions for the colonial economics paper.

  Brimley paid little attention to this, shepherding Harold into the kitchen and turning the stove on.

  “Expect that you will probably want a cuppa, won’t you?”

  Without waiting for a response, Brimley turned on his heel and began rooting around for the tea bags. He motioned for the member for Huyton to sit down.

  Wilson almost collapsed into the chair by the kitchen table. In the gathering light, he finally got a glance at his state of dress. He had exchanged the lounge suit for a tweed jacket at Downing Street, but it hadn’t fared especially well in Harold’s battle against the Norfolk countryside. Two buttons had been shed during the encounter with Tulip and Lily and, coated by a mixture of mud and straw, he was also doing an acceptable impression of a Medieval peasant’s hut. Then there had been the two hours of not-exactly-sleep he had endured in the barn.

  He snorted, trying to rouse himself.

  “What was that, Hal?”

  Brimley was looking at him.

  “Oh, nothing, just tired.”