The India Spy Read online

  A path along the back of the beach was clearly reserved for business class. Executives in tight white tennis shorts, Adidas shirts, trainers and white socks pulled up to their knees were walking briskly in twos or threes. I recalled my meeting with Frank in Haus Khaz and the walkers we had passed as we strolled round the old tank. It was time to call him. I knew he hadn’t blamed me for what happened, but I was still dreading the call, in case he had been forced out of Delhi by further harassment.

  “Raj, should you be ringing me?” he asked cautiously. There was a long echo on the line.

  “It’s okay. How are you Frank?”

  “Coping.” He didn’t sound it. His voice was subdued. “And you?”

  “Listen, I’m sorry about what happened in Delhi. It was my fault, I’m sure of it.”

  “Whatever. These things happen. Christ, they used to happen all the time.”

  “You’re all okay, though? Susie and the kids?”

  “We’re fine.”

  “That’s good. Very good.”

  An awkward silence, broken only by a sudden hiss. For some reason I expected Frank to have bounced back, as if nothing was wrong. But he sounded tired, defeated.

  “We thought we’d let things blow over in Delhi,” he continued, sounding marginally more upbeat. “Catch up with friends back here for a while.”

  “Good idea. There have been no more problems, then?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” he added, managing the faintest of laughs. “Watch yourself with Jamie, won’t you?”

  I promised him I would, adding that I would call again soon, although I wasn’t sure when. It depressed me hearing him talk like that. In the past I had always come away from Frank’s company feeling stronger, better able to cope with the world. Ravi had once described him as “easy-go-happy”, which just about summed Frank up.

  After breakfast at Brunton’s Boatyard, overlooking the harbour entrance, I walked across to the Cardamom Café. I found Macaulay busily lifting a new computer terminal out of a box. He visibly slowed up when he saw me, one hand reaching for the small of his back.

  “Could you help me with this a moment, Raj?” he asked, his voice strained. “I think my disc’s prolapsing again.”

  I dropped my bag and took hold of the terminal, which was surprisingly light, as Macaulay slumped into a cane chair next to me. I thought of the boy he had hit in the mouth.

  “I hope you’ve got something for me,” he said. “I feel terrible.”

  After putting the computer down, helped by Paul, who adjusted it on the table as best he could with his shrunken hands, I went over to Macaulay.

  “I’ve got some medicine which I brought out from London,” I said, opening my case and removing a bottle of pills. “A sort of Viagra for the whole body.”

  “Uh huh,” he said, taking the bottle from me and examining the seal, as I knew he would. “It’s not a duplicate, is it?”

  “As I say, I brought it out with me from London,” I reassured him, although I didn’t tell him that it consisted of painkillers so mild that a local copy from the medicine market in Old Delhi would have been twice as effective. “Take two morning and night after you have eaten.”

  I glanced up to find Macaulay looking at me more seriously. “You didn’t come all this way just to give me a bottle of pills,” he said, his watery eyes scrutinising me, floating from side to side.

  I closed the case on my lap, trying not to betray any unease. I was finding it hard to shake off the images of the previous night.

  “How do you mean?” I asked, glancing at his lips.

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” he continued. “The Medical Centre in Delhi sending someone all the way down here just to see me. It doesn’t add up.”

  “I’m on a tour,” I said, my mouth drying. “Next week I’m due to see one person in Tashkent who’s been waiting two years for a visit.”

  “What was her name, Priyanka? It’s her, isn’t it?”

  I smiled with relief.

  “Sonsy girl,” he continued. “Did you meet her in Delhi?”

  “A friend introduced us,” I said, wary of dragging Frank and Susie’s names into our conversation.

  “And you’ve been working out a way of coming to see her ever since,” he said, laughing. “Let me know if I can be of any other assistance.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  He paused and then looked at me again.

  “You know who her father is?” he asked, his head suddenly still, except for his eyes, which were blinking. I felt my stomach tightening. I didn’t think I could bear another revelation about the freedom struggle. But before I had time to reply, Macaulay had leant forward and was patting me on my leg.

  “I jest,” he said, smiling in a way that left me unconvinced. His breath smelt of whisky.

  I wanted to move on, conscious that this was my last chance to gather information about Macaulay before I reported back to Sir Ian. His inscrutable manner discouraged personal questions, but I couldn’t just rely on Priyanka’s notes.

  “I had a patient in Delhi last month,” I said, watching another terminal being carried in through the door. Macaulay stood up to oversee its installation opposite where I was sitting.

  “He’d fallen ill in Cochin,” I continued, but he wasn’t listening any more. His demeanour had shifted. “I presume you were involved in sending him up to us?”

  Macaulay ripped open the top of the box with surprising strength, almost menace. We had fallen back into the old ways again but I had to persist, hoping that something might make him drop his guard. The standoff was broken by two Westerners who came up to the door outside and knocked on the glass.

  “Sorry, we’re closed for half an hour,” Macaulay explained, walking over and turning round a sign in the window. “Dotcom land’s expanding.”

  “Were you involved?” I asked again, watching him return to the new terminal.

  “With what?” he asked, plainly annoyed. He plugged in the keyboard lead.

  “With the patient. He was a backpacker called Dutchie, Dutchie Reason.”

  I watched his face closely for a reaction as he sat down at the new terminal and moved the keyboard into a favoured position, inching it slightly to the left and then to the right.

  “What do you want to know?” he eventually asked, looking at the screen, which had flickered into life.

  “We’re reviewing our procedures,” I said, still watching him. “Too many drugs cases, particularly in Goa.” Macaulay tested the modem connection as he spoke, tapping hard on the keyboard.

  “He hung around the café for a few days, said he was expecting a letter. We run a poste restante service here as well. Then I heard he’d been found at Ernakulam Junction, face down on platform two.”

  “Why wasn’t he sent to Madras?” I asked.

  “Ask them,” he said, the first hint of defence creeping into his voice.

  “I have,” I said, lying, taking a gamble. “They knew nothing about him.”

  Macaulay turned round to look at me. “He needed to get home.”

  “He was talking deliriously by the time I saw him. Kept on mentioning something about Kali.”

  Macaulay stood up and leant over the top of the terminal, fiddling with some leads at the back of the screen, his body language suggesting the matter was closed.

  “Mr Nair, I have work to do,” he said, his head out of sight. “I’m grateful for the medicine you have given me, doubly so if it actually works, but I must now ask you to let me get on with my day.”

  “Did the letter ever arrive?” I asked. Macaulay ignored me. I turned to leave and noticed Paul, who had been listening to us talk. He watched me closely as I walked out of the door, his face full of unclear meaning.

  “Oh, Mr Nair,” Macaulay called from behind me. I was already on the other side of the street. I looked back to see him holding out a sheet of paper. “I almost forgot. There was a call for you. From a Jamie Grade. Delhi numbers.” I walked back over to
him and took the piece of paper, checking his eyes for something to tell me that he knew Jamie, but he wasn’t letting on.

  The note asked me to call Jamie as soon as possible, giving his office and residence numbers. My first thought was how Jamie had known that I was in Cochin; my second was what he thought about me being here. He obviously knew I had been visiting Macaulay and for the moment, at least, I had to assume that he had rung Madras to try and contact me there. They would have told him I was here. Still, it didn’t look good, given that Sir Ian had gone out of his way to keep Jamie in the dark.

  I walked round to the parade ground and decided to go inside St Francis Church, but as I turned the corner by the post office I was conscious of someone coming up behind me. I turned to see Paul, trying his best to run. I walked quickly towards him, reducing the distance he had to cover. He was carrying a large padded envelope in one hand, clutching it close to his chest. He stopped a few yards from me, panting hard and wiping sweat from his forehead. He held the package towards me, as best as he could.

  “Please, take this,” he said, in surprisingly rounded English. “Dutchie was my friend.”

  I took it from him, recognising it as the package Macaulay had put under his desk when I had first arrived at the café.

  “Did you know him well?” I asked, gently squeezing the padded envelope. It felt like documents of some sort.

  Paul smiled fondly. “We played Game Boy together, at the café. I always beat him.”

  “What was he doing here?” I asked.

  “Running away, so he said.”

  “Did he know Macaulay well?”

  “Mr Macaulay hated him.”

  “Why did he hang around, then?”

  “Because Mr Macaulay loved his body,” Paul said, laughing. “Perfectly formed, like mine. It drove him crazy. So he let Dutchie stay on his island. He had no money.”

  “Where can I contact you? Do you live at the café?” I thought again about the boy in his lunghi.

  He shook his head. “Mattancherry. I’m at the café from nine to nine. It’s best you find me there.”

  We looked at each other for a moment, each sensing that the other had much more to say.

  “Are you really a doctor?” Paul asked, after a pause.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Mr Macaulay doesn’t think so.”

  “No?” I said, trying to make light of his words. “What does he think I am, then?”

  “Are you British?”

  “Yes. I was born in Edinburgh. My parents were from Kerala.”

  “Mr Macaulay thinks you are Indian.”

  “He’s entitled to his opinion. What do you think? Do you think I am Indian?”

  He ignored my question. “And he thinks all Indians who live in Britain are…”

  “Are what?” I asked.

  “He has many files,” Paul said, his voice trailing off. “Indians who shifted to Britain. He has information on them all. He’s been waiting for you, someone like you, for many years. What happened to Dutchie?”

  “He’s okay,” I said. “He’s back in Britain now.”

  “He saw the files. It was a mistake. Macaulay caught him,” he said, more distracted.

  “What did you mean when you said he’s been waiting for someone like me?” I asked, trying to sift through everything he was telling me. Paul was getting nervous, looking around to see if anyone was coming.

  “You’ve made all his work worthwhile,” he said.

  “How? What was in the files?”

  He looked around again and spotted someone on the other side of the parade ground.

  “Please, be careful,” he said. He twisted awkwardly on his deformed feet, and set off down the road.

  “Wait,” I called after him, but he was picking up speed, his dragging feet kicking up dust as they went.

  I decided to let him go and turned to see who it was that had frightened him off, but the parade ground was empty. I walked over to the shade of the rain tree, where the children had gathered the last time I was here, and sat down, leaning against the bark. The package had been sent from Delhi but there was no sender’s address. I tore it open and pulled out a sheaf of photocopied A4 documents, old typewritten records of some kind. There must have been a hundred pages, the first of which was headed: “India Office – Public and Judicial Department.” Across one corner of the page someone had stamped: “Declassified 1997”. I flicked through the pages, each one containing passages marked with black biro in the margin. The first section that caught my eye read as follows:

  “Strong arguments can be adduced in favour of the retention of IPI as a self-contained unit for some time to come. Admittedly, if it is so retained by the Security Service it will be performing some functions which are outside the Security Service charter – but this would seem to be justifiable until the situation is clarified.”

  “IPI”. I glanced up for a moment, saying the initials quietly, the same letters that had appeared at the end of the intercepted letter to Jamie. I looked down at the paper again to check that I had read them correctly. Trying to remain calm, I flicked back to the first page, where the words “Indian Political Intelligence (IPI)” had been underlined.

  According to Frank, the intercepted message had been about an Indian, someone from Gujarat, who had joined CND.

  I put the documents down for a moment and rested my head against the tree behind me. There was no indication of who had sent them to Dutchie, no covering note, just the Delhi postmark. Breathing in deeply, I glanced at my watch, looked around and set to work, reading through the pages as quickly as I could, skipping from one marked-up section to the next.

  Set up shortly before World War I, IPI had been a highly secret branch of Britain’s intelligence services with a remit to preserve the internal and external security of British India. It had operated out of London, sharing an office with MI5, and had monitored the activities of a large number of Indian revolutionaries, subversives, communists and freedom fighters on the

  subcontinent, as well as those who were domiciled in Britain and Europe. It had expanded under the leadership of someone called Philip Vickery to become an extensive intelligence-gathering operation, the existence of which had never formally been acknowledged and was only known to a select few. Vickery’s field officers had kept under surveillance a large number of Congress activists, communist extremists and, latterly, anyone who had even marginal connections with the rise of Indian nationalism. The activities of British citizens who were thought to be sympathetic to their cause had also been monitored.

  All communications between Vickery and MI5 and MI6, with whom it had reluctantly shared information, had been signed simply IPI. Only once, when IPI was finally closed down after Independence, had Vickery signed a valedictory communication with his own name. The organisation’s cessation was particularly intriguing, given that Frank’s intercepted message must have been in the 1980s, over thirty years after the department had formally been wound up. IPI’s official assets, worth £3,000, had been handed over to India after Independence, but there was a strong sense from one heavily censored passage (whole sentences had been blacked out) that more sensitive data had either been destroyed or withheld. IPI itself had become part of MI5, merging with a department known as OS4. As for Vickery, who had favoured “the retention of IPI as a self-contained unit for some time to come”, he continued to be an important player in the intelligence community, eventually dying in 1987, aged ninety-six.

  There was one page, near the end, that I kept returning to. The type was of poorer quality, as if it was a copy of a copy, and a number of names, mostly field agents, had been removed. But there was still a sub-heading which referred to the minutes of a high-level meeting in 1946, off Parliament Square, where the fate of IPI had been decided by a group of security chiefs. The following four paragraphs were completely blacked out, and someone had written in the margin: “Retained under the provisions of Section 3(4) of the Public Records Act 1958.” Whatev
er IPI’s fate might have been, it was clearly too sensitive for public consumption.

  I turned to the last few pages, which were mostly about Vickery. In amongst them was a grainy, photocopied photograph of him, a tweed-suited man standing in front of some palm trees, holding a white pith helmet in one hand. He was smiling, his head tilted slightly to one side. I had seen his face somewhere before.

  I put the documents down, my eyes tired after reading so much dense, dirty type. The sun had set, but the air was still warm and moist and the back of my shirt was sticking to the bark of the tree. If my father had been a militant in the freedom struggle, IPI would have known about him. But I knew he wasn’t. Macaulay clearly had access to data of some sort, however ill-informed it might have been. Paul’s talk of files on the island seemed to confirm that. But what was Macaulay’s link, if any, to IPI? Had he once worked for the organisation? It might explain the rumours of him being a spy.

  The photo on Macaulay’s desk: it had been of Vickery.

  I looked again at the photocopied image and thought back to our dinner on the island, to the half-moon table behind Macaulay’s chair. The photo had been framed and was much smaller, like a cameo, but the tilted head and smile were the same.

  I tried to slow my thoughts down, follow the most plausible links. IPI had been disbanded. Macaulay was a historian, unpublished but with influential friends in Whitehall. He used them to gain access to some old IPI files, and even kept at his island retreat some of the more sensitive assets, perhaps, that were supposedly handed over to the Indian government in 1947.

  But why keep files specifically on Indians who had emigrated to Britain? And what was the connection, if any, with Jamie? IPI. Jamie had received a confidential communication about an Indian working for CND, signed with the initials IPI. When Frank had made his own inquiries, his mole had told him to back off, said it was too dangerous. Jamie, Macaulay, IPI – what was it that linked them?

  At least one thing had become clear: Dutchie was more than just a traveller, or Jamie would not have gone to such lengths to get him out of the country without a fuss. If he had been sent to Cochin, by whom? Sir Ian? Dutchie hadn’t stumbled on the files by accident. He had been looking for them.