by Joel N. Ross
“I’ll take him well in hand. Old friends, we are. Ain’t that right, Mr. Wall?”
Tom looked at MacGovern. His neck was long and ropy.
“That’s right,” Tom said.
“If you’ve everything under control?” Ginger asked.
“You can be sure of that.” Mac clamped a hand on Tom’s arm. “Couldn’t be more keen to welcome Mr. Wall home.”
THE QUESTION WAS, How do you make yourself forget? The answer was, You don’t. Forcing forgetfulness was impossible. You couldn’t just blot out your ability to field-strip a rifle, erase your memory of a Glenn Miller tune. So you lived with the constant clangor of your past—and if it grew too loud, if it stood an inch behind your ear, shrieking, you suffered with it. All Tom wanted was amnesiac silence, to be left alone by the world of things, the world of memory, to curl into his bunk and let the sleepless dark consume him.
MacGovern dragged him inside, pulled him past the dormitory, away from the governor’s office. “Soap on the tile floor. Clever clogs, you are. But what of discipline, what of order? You think the old boys want to see MacGovern brought low?”
“I think—”
Mac shoved him into the wall. Tom’s bandaged hand caught a hard edge and he gasped. “They want me raised high,” Mac said. “Untouchable. Un-bloody-touchable. I may be a tin-pot god, but I’m theirs. What else have they got?”
Mac yanked on a door handle and dragged Tom outside, across a walkway and into what they called the gatehouse. They were alone. The air was cold. Mac shoved Tom into an empty room. It was tiled, there were spigots overhead, and one wall was lined with square metal basins. For shearing sheep? For slaughter? There was a moldering fox-fur coat draped over one of the spigots, hanging from a twist of wire.
“Off with it, then,” MacGovern said.
Tom didn’t understand. The room smelled of musk and mildew.
Mac cuffed him. “The clothes, your Sunday bloody best. Off with it.”
Tom clumsily untied his shoes, took off his socks. He unbuttoned his shirt—the greatcoat was long gone, as was MacGovern’s wallet—and eased it over his bandaged hand. He glanced at the fur coat on its wire-twist hanger. “Hang it there?”
“We’ve other uses for that.”
Tom folded the shirt and laid it on his shoes. He stripped off his trousers and briefs and placed them on the pile.
“Cold yet?” MacGovern asked, his voice echoing against the tiles.
“I’ve been cold, Mac.”
MacGovern unfurled one of his arms and cracked a window. December air seeped in. “You tell me, Mr. Wall, if you start feeling a chill.” He turned a tap, the pipes knocked, and a needle spray of water burst out. “Keep your hand dry, now—bandage gets damp, no telling what’ll be festering underneath.”
Tom lifted his right arm away from the water. Festering underneath. He couldn’t think about that.
MacGovern tossed the fur coat onto the wet floor and twisted the wire off the spigot, testing it for weakness. “Order. Discipline. Time you learned their value.” He stepped toward Tom, and there was a sound in the hall.
The door opened. “Mr. MacGovern!” It was Mrs. Harper. An English gentleman stood behind her, with mussed dark hair and an air of genial inoffensiveness. Had to be Davies-Frank.
“Giving Mr. Wall a scrubbing,” MacGovern said, “after his recent escapades.”
“In the gatehouse?” Mrs. Harper said.
“Best hot water, once it gets flowing. Isn’t that right, Mr. Wall?”
A long silence.
“That’s right,” Tom said.
“There you are, then.” MacGovern’s eyes flicked to the gentleman. “If you’ll excuse us, sir? And you, Nurse.”
“Mr. Wall can wash himself,” Mrs. Harper said.
“I’ve the bruises to show he can’t, Mrs. Harper.”
The gentleman said, “Would you prefer to bathe here or elsewhere, Sergeant?”
There was no condescension in his voice. Merely polite interest, as if this were a situation in which one often found oneself, and he was simply doing the done thing.
“What I want,” Tom said, “is to be left alone.”
“I’m afraid I can’t oblige, Sergeant. However—” He looked to Harper and MacGovern. “We will wait outside.”
“I won’t be responsible—” MacGovern began.
“That’s quite enough,” the gentleman said.
“You want something from me?” Tom asked.
“It’s a private matter.”
Tom spread his hands. He was standing there bare-assed—how much more private did matters get?
“Even so,” Davies-Frank said.
“You want something from me,” Tom told him. “I’ll take my chances with Mac.”
“You’ll hear me out,” Davies-Frank said. “You haven’t any choice. Neither have I.”
CHAPTER
SIX
AFTERNOON, DECEMBER 1, 1941
TOM DRIED HIMSELF with the threadbare towel Mrs. Harper had placed on a milking stool outside the door. His suit had been brushed. There was a new tie—so loud, it echoed. He dressed and worked the tie until the knot was passable, then put the length of wire in his pocket. A broken brick, an old wire . . . he was turning into a rag and bone man.
Mrs. Harper knocked and entered. “All done, then? Let’s have a look at your hand.”
Tom turned his head away as she unwrapped the bandage. The cold air on his sensitive flesh sparked a shiver of revulsion. He’d never flinched from a battlefield injury, but he couldn’t bear the sight of his own hand. Couldn’t bear the thought of it—the knots of unclean scars, the puckered dead skin around the pitted wound, edged in ragged white.
“There,” Mrs. Harper said, wrapping it firmly. “The pink of health. You must be gentler with it. And with yourself, as well.”
“This from the woman who refuses me sponge baths.”
She clucked and they stepped into the corridor, and Tom saw they were alone. Despite beating MacGovern’s head against the floor, they’d left him alone with Mrs. Harper.
“Where’s . . . anyone?” he asked.
“I told them not to be ridiculous,” she said crisply.
“You’re a marvel, Mrs. Harper.”
“That I am, Sergeant.”
She led him to Kirrage’s room. Inside, Davies-Frank was reading a report at a small desk, his air of affability perfectly intact. He reminded Tom of a young bachelor in an Oscar Wilde play, the lead’s agreeably dim best friend. But when Davies-Frank greeted Tom, there was nothing vacuous in his face. “Would you close the door, please, Sergeant?”
Tom closed the door and inspected the drab room. “This supposed to put me at ease?”
“Is it working?”
“Never been easier.”
Davies-Frank nodded solemnly. “Excellent news. You’re wondering, of course, Sergeant, why I—”
“Call me Tom. I’m nobody’s sergeant.”
“Then you must call me Rupert.” He pushed the folder he’d been reading across the desk. “This is you.”
“Yeah? You haven’t caught me at my best.”
“Neither have you caught me at mine.” Davies-Frank leaned forward, intent. “I need your help. We need your help.”
Tom almost laughed. “Me? You got the wrong man.”
“Thomas Stuart Wall, born October 1912 to Farley and Eugenia Wall. U.S. Army from ’32, served in Haiti and China, promoted, honorably discharged, and joined the Canadian armed forces in early ’40 and was made a sergeant by virtue of previous rank. Commanded a squad of mixed U.S. volunteers and Canadians in Greece and Cr—”
“Swell. Enough.”
“That’s the man whose help we need.”
“You think that man can help you?”
“That’s the question.”
Davies-Frank patted his jacket, extracted a cigarette case, and offered it to Tom. Tom took a cigarette and leaned forward when Davies-Frank snapped a lighter. He bent the flame toward himself. English cigarettes, filled with nothing. Still, a lungful of smoke and he was calmer, clearer.
“What do I think?” Davies-Frank said. “I think it’s not in your interest to help us, Tom. I think it may do you harm—it may even do us harm. Speaking candidly, the latter concerns me far more than the former. But I think you’re the one person who can help us, and the only way to get your help involves deceiving you, playing to your illness.”
Tom shook his head. “I’m tired; I’m spent. I can’t even help myself.”
“You went to Shepherd Market and the American embassy.”
“Looking for a new tie.”
“Looking for Earl.”
“You know where he is?”
“I know where he isn’t.”
Tom snorted smoke. “Swell.”
“He isn’t anywhere he can be found. He hasn’t been home; he hasn’t been at work. As far as I can tell—and believe me, Mr. Wall, I have gone to some effort—he has simply vanished.”
“This is the deception? Telling me Earl’s gone?”
“No, this is true. He’s been gone over a week.”
How would Davies-Frank know? He was British intelligence, of course—one of the many branches—and Earl was his American counterpart in the COI, the newborn office of the Coordinator of Information. But intelligence sharing between the two countries hardly existed. The United States had never had a central intelligence agency, unlike the Brits and the Germans, who were old hands at the game. Instead, it had dozens of scattered offices—in the State Department and the military, the navy’s ONI and the army’s MID—which scrambled for ascendancy. The offices were underfunded and understaffed, more engaged in bureaucratic infighting than intelligence gathering.
President Roosevelt, over the objections of a dozen lesser agencies, had recently appointed “Wild Bill” Donovan to head the new COI. Donovan was a stand-up guy, but the COI hadn’t celebrated its first birthday yet. Relations with the Brits were more cordial than effective, and even the cordiality was strained. The COI wouldn’t inform the Brits of a missing American agent, and the Brits couldn’t have every COI officer in England shadowed, either. Or could they?
“I don’t see it,” Tom said. “What’s between you and Earl?”
“Nothing—he’s gone. And you won’t find him if we could not.”
“He’s not your man to find.”
“We worked with the Americans,” Davies-Frank said. “They had less luck. I suspect your brother’s engaged in COI business without COI knowledge.”
“Earl likes to run his own show.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time he’s flown solo, from what I was told.”
“He’s gone?” Tom said. “Earl’s gone?”
“He has absolutely evanesced.”
Sounded like the truth, and it tallied with the vacant house and the vacant office. But gone where? Why? And how could Tom find him if the Brits and the COI could not?
“Are you ready for the deception, Tom?” Davies-Frank asked. “If you help us, we’ll find Earl and bring him to justice.”
“But you’re lying?”
“Oh, yes. We’ll find him—you have my word on that. But bring him to justice?” Davies-Frank ground his half-smoked butt in the ashtray. “No. He had nothing to do with Crete.”
“You know shit about Crete.”
“I know you lost your squad. I know Earl wasn’t involved.”
“But you’ll lead me to him?”
“That’s right.”
“So spill,” Tom said. “What do you want done?”
WHAT DID HE want done? Davies-Frank could hardly answer. Other than Poland uninvaded, Hitler unelected, and dinner with Joan and the twins uninterrupted?
He met Tom’s restless eyes. The American was detached, wounded—still, there was something solid at his core. Perhaps only an echo of the man Tom once had been, but Davies-Frank trusted his impressions. He wanted Tom: first to extract information from Sondegger, then to kill the Nazi agent. Davies-Frank was fascinated and repelled by Sondegger—and frightened. A thousand men he’d never know would die if he failed. So he wouldn’t fail, not with Sondegger, not with Tom.
But recruiting from the sickbed required a novel approach—unlike the approach that had been made to him. Davies-Frank’s father had been a dean at Oxford. A man of enormous intelligence marred by an equally enormous ego. Upon his retirement, he’d declared that nothing would again move him from his library. When Highcastle had approached him about the XX Committee, he’d been true to his vow and declined. But he’d offer something better, he said: his son.
So Rupert Davies-Frank was paid a visit. A knock on the door, and Highcastle had stood without. He’d removed his hat and scowled—a stout middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair.
“Rupert Davies-Frank?” Highcastle had asked, though of course he’d already researched him exhaustively.
“Yes. May I help you?”
“The dean sent me.”
“My father?”
Highcastle nodded.
“Pity, that.”
Highcastle’s scowl deepened. He stared at Davies-Frank and said, “You’ll do,” and through some alchemical impulse transcending class and generation and disposition, they had almost immediately bonded into a partnership.
The task of the Twenty Committee had grown exponentially with its continued success. Each additional agent added another factor of complication. If a single agent contradicted one forgotten report on one trivial point, it would undermine the whole system. Every message, every fact and opinion, had to be not only believable but compatible with all other fabrications—past, present, and future. They had to feed the Nazis a jumbled but perfect puzzle, with the assurance that the Abwehr analysts would assemble it themselves and trust in their own work.
The Nazis could never suspect the integrity of their British network. Even if it meant missing an opportunity to mislead them, even if it meant the loss of soldiers and civilians, the loss of matériel and morale. They must never suspect. The XX Committee would not win a battle today at the cost of the network’s integrity tomorrow.
The motivating belief behind the Twenty Committee was this: There would come a day when the entire network, acting with a single mind, would strike a crippling blow against the Nazis—would tip the scales so dramatically, with timing so impeccable, that all the lives and opportunities previously lost would be not only redeemed but honored.
The men and women who risked their lives in the field could not be told the truth. In Germany and France and Poland, they polished the false pearl until it shone. They were trained by the Special Operations Executive—the SOE—not only to infiltrate and sabotage, not merely to build networks and gather information; they were trained to unknowingly disseminate falsehoods, to provide a framework upon which the Twenty Committee’s work could easily be hung.
They lived and died. They valued themselves more cheaply than their ideals. They were not afraid of death, but of failure. And if Thomas Wall could not extract the information from Sondegger, they would die by the score . . . for nothing.
TOM FIDDLED WITH the length of wire in his pocket. His brother had snowed them all. Davies-Frank believed Earl wasn’t involved with Crete, and Earl had walked away from the betrayal untouched.
“I need hardly say this is sensitive information,” Davies-Frank continued.
“Then don’t. I’ve been through that wringer already.”
“Quite. The Americans vetted you, of course,” Davies-Frank said. “Owing to your relationship with Earl. And your . . . uncle, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Tom said. His father, a doctor, had wanted his sons to follow him into med
icine. They’d followed his brother Sam into the military instead—Earl into intelligence, Tom into the army. “My other Uncle Sam.”
“We vetted you as well, because of your brother’s wife.”
Harriet. His brother’s wife. Tom felt the undertow of memory dragging him down, but he shook himself, focused. This was the man who might lead him to Earl.
“Plus, you have the security benefit of . . .” Davies-Frank paused. “Of being considered a not entirely reliable source . . .”
“Of being bughouse,” Tom said.
“Precisely. It lessens the security risk if nobody believes what you say. Another fag?”
Tom took the cigarette. “You’ll spoil me.”
“I well may. Now, then. The Twenty Committee started in 1936, with a man I’ll call Sleet. He was a mechanical engineer. . . .”
Davies-Frank spoke softly, fluidly, and Tom felt the veil of exhaustion sluggishly recede, observed the quickening of interest in his own mind. How long since he’d been briefed, been engaged, been advised?
Sleet, Thrush, Bitters, Reindeer, Cardigan. The entire network of the British-based Abwehr wrapped up in a tidy package: a turned paymaster leading to another cell, a double agent escaping, stealing a canoe, being narrowly prevented from crossing the Channel to return to Nazi territory. Secret writing and wireless transmissions, and dead-letter boxes in Oslo, Paris, Brest, the Iberian Peninsula. The War Office, the W Board, Home Defence Executive, and MI5 and MI6 all participating, though usually unwittingly.
Tom was more aware than most of spies and counterspies—his uncle Sam had been Military Intelligence—but an entire network turned? And Earl, somehow involved? Too incredible.
Davies-Frank caught an expression on Tom’s face. “Yes?”
“I’m waiting for you to say, ‘Brought to you by Blue Coal dealers . . .’”
“Blue Coal?”
“Finest anthracite in America,” Tom said. “‘Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.’”
Davies-Frank half-smiled. “Used to be quite the comedian, didn’t you? I’m glad I didn’t know you then.”
His tone sparked something in Tom, some ember of fraternity. He’d been too long away from men who weren’t afraid he’d shatter. “I’m a regular Jack Benny,” he said. “How’s Earl involved?”
