M, King's Bodyguard

by Niall Leonard

  The young man sighed. “He was by no means one of ours.”

  “He was German. Your people recruited him. Trained him to infiltrate anarchist groups. Deployed him. He was indeed an agent provocateur, but for the Kaiser’s secret police, not the Russians’.” I waited. Steinhauer had the grace to feign embarrassment; he nodded.

  “Yes,” said Steinhauer, “my people, as you put it, did train him. Long before I joined His Imperial Highness’s service. I like to think that if I had come across Herr Detmold before he was deployed, I would have prevented it. You said yourself, William, that an agent provocateur is an unreliable weapon, one that can blow up in your face. Detmold proves your point. I am sorry I did not tell you sooner.”

  “You did not tell me at all, Gustav. In fact, you confidently informed me he was Latvian.”

  “How could I admit that one of our own agents had set out to kill the Emperor? If it had ever come out, someone would have had to answer for it, and you know the politics of the Court—that someone would almost certainly have been me. I am sorry I lied to you, but I had to cover for myself. And what good would the truth have done, in any case? He was beyond our control. He had renounced his country, betrayed his oath to the Emperor. He might have been Japanese, for all the difference it would have made to our quest.”

  That last remark was so disingenuous as to be laughable. The smallest scrap of genuine information on Akushku would have helped us track him down; we might have connected him to Lady Diamond that much sooner. At the very least it might have stopped me making a fool of myself pestering the Russians and the French. Steinhauer had kept vital information to himself, risking my life and those of my men.

  But he had risked his own life too. Why?

  Though I was inwardly seething with indignation, I kept my tone as affable and casual as I could manage. “Akushku’s mother, after she was widowed, was disowned by her late husband’s family. With no income, and no home, and an infant to feed, she was forced to seek work as a governess, and found a place in Russia,” I said. “Then she lost that job too and was thrown out on the street. She and her son returned to Germany, where young Detmold, who’d just been parted forever from the girl he loved, had to watch his own mother die in poverty.” I flicked the ash from my cigar with more vigour than I’d intended. “So who, in God’s holy name, thought a lad with such a history could be relied upon to serve his country?”

  Steinhauer shrugged. “What can I say? You are completely right. But it was before my time. And the men I serve are—how can I put this—not always as shrewd as one would hope.”

  “But you still follow their orders.”

  “Of course. I am an officer in His Imperial Majesty’s service.”

  “Were you ordered to keep Detmold’s history a secret from me?”

  “William, I swear I would have told you had I thought it would help.”

  “Were you ordered to kill him before he could tell me what he was trying to do?”

  Steinhauer frowned, as if I was not making sense.

  “We know what he was trying to do. He was trying to assassinate the Emperor.”

  “But you shot him before he could tell me why.”

  “I shot him before he could shoot you.”

  “Just before you arrived, Detmold told me the Kaiser despised my King.”

  Steinhauer smiled. “This is hardly a state secret.” His own cigar had nearly gone out; he screwed it into the ashtray between us.

  “And that the Kaiser intended to take something from Edward.”

  Now Steinhauer looked amused as well as baffled. “A mistress, perhaps? Your king can certainly spare one.”

  “Detmold’s last words were, ‘The Kaiser despises your King. He means to take his…’ What do you think he was referring to, Gustav?”

  Steinhauer shrugged. “Alas, we shall never know.”

  “Edward’s crown, perhaps? His kingdom?”

  Steinhauer chuckled, as if he thought I was joking. I watched him, and waited. Finally he seemed to decide to humour me.

  “William, Detmold was mad. A nihilist, a terrorist—a brilliant one, yes, and at one time he had been our agent—but he was insane. And insane people invent absurd conspiracies. You know this.”

  “He did not strike me as mad.”

  “Such lunatics are the most dangerous kind.”

  Steinhauer clicked his fingers to catch the eye of a waiter and mimed with his thumb a bottle topping up our brandy glasses. Then he turned back to me. “And even supposing he had been in his right mind,” he went on, “how would a renegade agent, who for years had been living among anarchists and agitators and criminals—how would such a man have any idea what the Kaiser was planning or not planning? The two of them did not spend evenings together drinking beer and playing billiards. I have no idea what His Imperial Majesty is thinking, and I am at his side constantly.”

  I know you are, I thought.

  Steinhauer leaned forwards and lowered his voice. “William—the very notion, that my Emperor wants to take your King’s throne, is ridiculous. War with the British, with the greatest Empire in the world? Between two nations bound together by history, by family, by friendship, by trade? We have no navy worth speaking of, while Britain rules the seas. The whole idea is so absurd, only an anarchist would credit it. They want to believe that our civilisation will destroy itself, and save them the effort. And I think you are forgetting…” He trailed off, as if he was ashamed to point out my mistake.

  I took the bait. “What have I forgotten?”

  “More than my Emperor, more than your King,” said Steinhauer, “Akushku—Lippe-Detmold—hated you. You are Europe’s most feared policeman, anarchy’s greatest enemy. You had foiled his attempt on the Emperor’s life. He wanted you to die in despair, thinking your mission had been a failure. So he lied to you.”

  Any one of those excuses might have convinced me, Gustav, I thought. But all of them? You protest too much. I sighed inwardly; Steinhauer and I had for a while been as close as brothers. And now I wondered if we would ever again be honest with each other. Or indeed if we ever had.

  “You’re right, I’m sure,” I said with my best rueful grin.

  “His Imperial Majesty wants no war with England, or any nation,” declared Steinhauer.

  “I’m sure he doesn’t. But then, what was it you said, back then? Sometimes the Emperor’s servants think they know better.”

  “Sometimes the Emperor’s servants are fools,” said Steinhauer with a snort. “That does not mean anyone listens to them.”

  So they are talking about it? I thought. I smiled. The waiter arrived with the brandy decanter.

  “Just a large one, for me,” I said. As the waiter topped me up, I had another thought: What if Gustav had arrived a moment later, after Akushku had finished telling me the Kaiser’s true intentions? Would he have shot Akushku, then turned his gun on me, and tearfully told everyone afterwards he’d been too late to save my life?

  Steinhauer raised his glass, smiling.

  “To brothers in arms.”

  “Brothers in arms,” I echoed.

  Yes, I decided, he damned well would have.

  * * *

  —

  “How was the service?”

  “Simple. Surprisingly touching.”

  It was a lovely mild spring day and I was walking with a young woman round the pond at Barnes, watching a heron on the bank motionlessly poised to snap up a fish.

  “It was good of you to arrange a funeral for this girl no one knew,” she said.

  “She deserved a decent sendoff. More than some I could mention.”

  “I should have liked to be there.”

  “Your presence would have defeated the whole object, Theresa. Angela’s dead; may she rest in peace.”

  The heron made its lunge, rose fro
m the water and flapped languidly away, a silver fish twitching in its beak.

  “I am not sure I like the name Theresa,” said my companion.

  “It’s the name on your passport. Theresa Foy, from Guernsey. You’d best get used to it.”

  The girl I had once known as Angela Minetti pouted, but slipped her arm through mine. Her hair, now dyed raven black, was straying rebelliously from under her hat. It was just as well we were so far out of London and strangers here, or salacious gossip might have found its way back to my wife. Had she known, Amelia might well have asked some awkward questions; Foy was her family name from Guernsey, and Theresa Foy was her little sister, dead of consumption at the age of twelve. Angela had needed a new identity; all it had taken was two guineas and Theresa’s birth certificate.

  “I bought my ticket for Berlin today.”

  “Good,” I said. “The hotel I’ve chosen for you is not the Ritz, but you’ll be safe. And I’ve arranged for a small allowance.”

  “I shall be your kept woman after all.”

  “You’ll be your own woman,” I said.

  “But what shall I do there, William?”

  “Do you know what a type-writer is?”

  “A man who uses one of those typing machines.”

  “Or a woman. I think you should train as a type-writer.”

  “So I can become a clerk?”

  “So you can pass for one. While you work for me.”

  “Good.” Theresa smiled. “I want to be useful.”

  “You will. Just don’t go attacking any more policemen. I won’t be able to spring you so easily over there.”

  She laughed.

  Akushku had caught her, just as I’d feared, when she’d been watching the derelict furniture factory. He’d been trying to drag her off the street when by chance a passing constable intervened. Thinking on his feet, Akushku had claimed to be the long-suffering husband of this wayward wife, and it nearly worked. The policeman was about to leave them to it, until Angela—also thinking on her feet—launched herself at the constable and raked her nails down his face. Akushku had fled. It was a mad, impetuous act that saved Angela’s life, and got her arrested—and very nearly committed—until a message from her had finally reached me, a few days after the royal funeral.

  I’d told no one she’d survived, not my colleagues, not Amelia and certainly not Steinhauer. At first this was merely out of habit; no one needed to know, I’d reasoned, and if the world thought Angela Minetti was dead, she’d be safe from any hothead who wanted to avenge Akushku and punish an informer. I’d arranged accommodation for her, and a new identity, and told myself I was being chivalrous—what better way to rescue the girl from the sordid pit she’d fallen into?

  But I soon admitted to myself that my intentions had never been so selfless. Theresa Foy, née Angela Minetti, was a woman of courage, initiative, intelligence and beauty—qualities I would have been a fool to overlook. Between her, Lady Diamond and my own Amelia, I’d underestimated the talents of women. That mistake I was determined never to repeat.

  “I’ll send word soon,” I told her, “and let you know what I need you to do.”

  * * *

  —

  I waited, standing not quite to attention, as the Prime Minister’s private secretary passed him letters to sign. The man was short and slight, and the way he bent around the huge form of Lord Salisbury put me in mind of those Egyptian birds that pick the teeth of Nile crocodiles.

  The Prime Minister already looked irritated by my presence: This briefing is not going to go well, I thought. My memorandum had requested a private audience to discuss “certain matters best not put in writing.” Did Salisbury think I was merely referring to another of the King’s unfortunate liaisons? As his private secretary slipped out of the room, the PM settled back in his chair, already wheezing, and waved at me to get on with it.

  “You remember, Prime Minister, the matter of the anarchist who called himself Akushku, and his attempt to bomb Her Late Majesty’s funeral.” Salisbury nodded, coughing noisily into a massive and not-very-clean handkerchief. “We have since established that Akushku’s real name was Aleksandr Ruprecht Lippe-Detmold, and that he was a former agent of the German secret police.”

  Salisbury seemed to think he’d misheard. “German, you say? But I thought his intention was to assassinate the Kaiser?”

  “It was, sir. It seems he’d gone rogue. Thrown in his lot with the anarchists he was meant to infiltrate.”

  The Prime Minister harrumphed and started to make some remark, possibly about damned treacherous foreigners, before another fit of wheezing coughs overtook him, stifled eventually by that grubby handkerchief. He was so overweight I wondered that he could breathe at all. I waited for the paroxysms to subside before I continued.

  “Before he was brought down by the Kaiser’s bodyguard, Herr Steinhauer, Lippe-Detmold said something to me that in hindsight seems significant.”

  “Hmm?” Salisbury peered into his handkerchief, already losing interest. I came straight to the point.

  “He told me the Kaiser planned to declare war on Britain and take His Majesty’s crown.” That got the old man’s attention; for a moment he forgot to wheeze.

  “War? You did not mention this before. This Detmold character actually said that?”

  “He was about to, sir, when Herr Steinhauer shot him.”

  “Wait a moment. Did he say it, or didn’t he?”

  “He meant to, sir. I have no doubt of it.”

  “Hm. Do you indeed? And this man was a renegade? A nihilist?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, then, why on earth should we credit anything he said? Or even intended to say?”

  I confess I hesitated. At the moment Detmold had spoken, I had not believed him. But everything I had learned since then, and every instinct I had, convinced me that he had not been lying after all. Only ten days earlier Walther, my young friend from the German embassy, had fallen under a train at Clapham Junction. The coroner had pronounced it misadventure rather than suicide—the deceased was happily married, with two infant children and another on the way—but I was sure it had been neither. Instinct told me Walther had been murdered because he had been leaking secrets to me; the Germans were cleaning house.

  But citing my instinct as evidence would probably impress Salisbury no more than it had impressed Robert Anderson. Indeed, the way this meeting was going, Salisbury might well use it as an excuse to ignore everything I was telling him.

  “Experience, sir. And, certain other, indications.”

  “Oh, poppycock. These people are masters of lies and malicious invention. They know a well-placed rumour can do more damage than bombs or bullets, with less effort and far less risk. Have you any concrete evidence for what you’re claiming?”

  “None that I can share at this point, sir.”

  “Well, if you wish me to take this matter to the Cabinet, you’d better find some evidence that you can share.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting you take it to the Cabinet, sir.”

  But Salisbury no longer cared what I was suggesting. “It’s those blasted Boers you should be worrying about. They’re the ones we’re at war with, they’re the ones with sympathisers and spies over here—might I suggest that you focus your efforts on them? Rather than on a friend and ally, whose help we might very well need in the near future, now the French are back in bed with the Russians. The Kaiser may not love our King, and he is certainly headstrong, but I refuse to believe—”

  He ran out of breath, and the rest of his sentence was lost in wheezes delivered to his handkerchief. I did not need to hear the rest of it, but I had resolved not to leave until I had made my case.

  “Nevertheless, Prime Minister, I think it would be wise to take some elementary precautions. We should assign officers to monitor German activities in
Britain, and to identify and keep track of Germany’s agents. I’ve already—”

  “Please, Melville!” spluttered Salisbury. “If this is a request for more funds, or for an open warrant to spy on private correspondence, I will not countenance anything of the sort.”

  There it was. Private correspondence. He would discount all my warnings because King Edward had once taken my side against his, and this was his chance to repay me for the slight to his vanity. I’d hoped for better from this wheezing, corpulent old duffer, but politicians rarely failed to disappoint me. Some sort of subtle threat would be next, I thought.

  “You do very well as it is for money and men,” Salisbury was saying. “And I cannot tell you how to run your department. You are not directly accountable to me, and doubtless that is as it should be. But should Parliament ever learn that Special Branch has wasted time and resources investigating such transparently ridiculous rumours, you should not expect my Government to defend you.”

  Should Parliament ever learn. As a threat it was not even particularly subtle.

  “I understand, Prime Minister. Thank you.”

  Salisbury inspected his handkerchief briefly before stuffing it back into his waistcoat pocket.

  “And in future if you have such concerns I would be obliged if you take them to your new Assistant Commissioner, rather than waste my time. Now send my private secretary back in, would you?”

  I did not bother hailing a cab. Scotland Yard was only a few minutes from Downing Street, and it was a fine May morning, and I needed some time to think. Salisbury himself had conceded there was nothing to stop me setting up a section within Special Branch to detect and monitor German agents. The new Assistant Commissioner, Edward Henry, was at least an experienced policeman—he had made his name in India—and I thought it unlikely he would dismiss my concerns out of hand. But such operations cost money, and my budget was overstretched as it was. Without support from the government—if the Kaiser was indeed planning for war with Great Britain, and mobilising his intelligence services against us—we’d be a peasant rabble facing a cavalry charge with pikes and pitchforks.