She asked him for the name of the agent again.
‘Philby. His first name’s Kim. Apparently he’s head of their Iberian Station. He struck me as a decent operator. Urbane. Nice sense of timing. Kept his nerve. Good at crosswords, too.’
Ursula had written the name down. Now she underlined it twice and then glanced at her watch.
‘You did well.’ She nodded at the door. ‘Stay near a phone.’
Close of play for most of the staff at St James’s Street was six in the evening, though working hours could extend deep into the night when operations ran into trouble. It was ten to seven when Ursula Barton appeared at Moncrieff’s door.
‘It seems your postscript has touched a nerve or two. This has gone to the very top. The good Brigadier, no less.’ Brigadier Oswald Harker had been the acting Director-General of MI5 since last year, though a full-time replacement was rumoured to be imminent.
Moncrieff nodded, said nothing. At length, Ursula settled uneasily in the spare chair.
‘My apologies for this afternoon. I’m afraid I was a little testy. To tell you the truth, I’ve been getting tired of us having to deal with all these peace merchants, all these middlemen, all these Germans wanting to tie us hand and foot. Dahlerus. Your friend Schultz. I thought Haushofer and Souk were simply more of the same. It appears I’m wrong.’
‘Who says?’
She shook her head. Moncrieff pressed her harder. Souk, after all, was his baby. As she’d already pointed out.
‘We think Souk has value,’ she said briskly. ‘Certainly enough to warrant a series of precautionary actions on our part. We are, after all, charged with keeping enemies of the state at arm’s length.’
On the basis of what he’d learned in Lisbon, she asked Moncrieff to prepare a list of targets for the MI5 watch list. Some would warrant full-time surveillance. All would have their post and phone calls monitored.
‘These are names of interest to Haushofer?’
‘Of course. What Souk appears to have identified, whether he knows it or not, is a fault line at the very top of what the Director-General likes to call the Establishment. If anyone has a willingness to sit down and talk peace to the Germans we need to be aware of them. I know it sounds blunt but that’s the way it is. We can only have one leader. And he’ll have no truck with anyone from Berlin unless they’re offering the status quo ante. And that, we assume, is unlikely.’
Moncrieff offered a nod of agreement. The status quo ante would reinvent the pre-war countries of Western and Middle Europe, all of them sovereign and independent, unmolested by Hitler’s armies.
‘You want names, then?’ he said.
‘Absolutely. Anyone whom Haushofer mentioned. And anyone, in your judgement, who might also qualify.’
‘I’m not sure I understand.’
‘I’m talking about fellow-travellers. Take the Duke of Hamilton. As you know, we took liberties with the letter to Haushofer and any real interest on the good Duke’s part in peace negotiations may be a gross slander. On the other hand he had some kind things to say about the Third Reich a couple of years ago and so did a number of others in his circle. Take that into account, Tam. We’re not short of bodies among The Watchers. If any of this troubles that conscience of yours, call it spring cleaning. We need to be ready for what I understand is going to be a difficult year. Forewarned is forearmed, especially when we’re dealing with the enemy within.’
The enemy within.
She got to her feet, the conversation evidently over. Then, beside the door, she turned back.
‘One thing I forgot,’ she said. ‘We took a call this morning. I should have mentioned it.’
‘About Souk?’
‘About your place up in the wilds. You’ve had a break-in. The facts aren’t clear and that in itself may be troubling. Esther McFaddon? You have her number? I know she’d appreciate a call.’
*
Esther McFaddon was Tam’s temporary stand-in for Cathy Phelps. She was an older woman from the village, a family friend of long standing who’d agreed to keep an eye on the Glebe House in Tam’s absence. With Ursula gone, Moncrieff found her number and reached for the phone. It took an age for Esther to answer. When she finally lifted the receiver, she recognised Tam’s voice at once.
‘Thank goodness,’ she said. ‘I’ve been so worried.’
She said she’d been checking on the house every couple of days. This morning, she’d arrived to find a small pane of glass smashed in the back door that led to the scullery. It had been snowing overnight and there were tyre marks on the drive. The back door had been opened and there was melted snow on the flagstones inside.
‘Did you have a look round?’
‘I did.’
‘And?’
‘Everything looked normal. That struck me as odd.’
‘Did you contact the police? In Laurencekirk?’
‘Aye. They came out. Two of them. But we can’t know what’s gone missing until you take a look yourself.’
She’d had the glass replaced, she said, but being in the house like that wasn’t really to her taste any more. The thought of the presence of strangers upset her. They might have been there for hours.
Moncrieff was checking his watch. The Edinburgh sleeper left King’s Cross fifteen minutes before midnight. He could be up at the Glebe House by mid-morning and back in London by the day after that.
‘I’ll take the train tonight,’ he told her. ‘Expect a knock on your door.’
10
The summons to the phone found Dieter Merz and Beata at breakfast at the Hotel Franconia.
‘It’s a call for you, Frau Messner. Your father, I think.’
Beata nodded. She was looking at Dieter.
‘Will you talk to him? Please?’
Dieter was about to protest but she put her fingers to her lips and offered a rare smile so he got to his feet and followed the waiter out of the dining room. The phone awaited him at the reception desk.
‘Beata? Liebling?’
‘It’s Dieter.’
‘Really?’ The waiter was right. Beata’s father. ‘You made it down there? You’re staying at the hotel?’
‘I am.’
‘And is all well?’
‘Very well.’
‘You’ve talked to her?’
‘I have.’
‘And what do you think?’
‘I think you have a lovely daughter. I think she’s strong and I think the break has done her good. She’s taking the train back after lunch.’
‘Tell her I’ll meet her at the station.’
‘Of course. I’m sure she’ll phone you later with a time.’
There was a longish silence on the line. For a moment, Dieter thought Friedrich might have hung up but then he was back again.
‘About Georg,’ he said. ‘I had a call this morning.’
‘From the doctors?’
‘From Georg himself. It was a message. For you.’
Dieter was staring at the phone. Georg? Well enough to make a call?
‘How was he?’
‘That’s the point. He sounded normal. He said he felt much better. And he said to say thank you.’
‘For what?’
‘For yesterday. You dropped in? You saw him?’
‘Only briefly. Very briefly.’
Dieter described the fly-by, the moment he swooped low over the terrace and glimpsed the whiteness of the faces below. He could hear Friedrich laughing at the other end of the line.
‘Well, it worked,’ he said. ‘I was talking to the old Georg.’
Dieter took the news back to the breakfast table. Beata pushed the remains of her boiled egg to one side.
‘I’m glad,’ she said. ‘For his sake.’
‘And yours?’
She held his gaze for a moment and then reached across the table. Her hand was warm in his.
‘I want to take you back to the church,’ she said. ‘In daylight.’
She checked
out of the hotel and Dieter drove her to the Basilika Vierzehnheiligen. The church, with its twin towers, dominated the surrounding countryside. Standing in the thin sunshine beside the car, Beata slipped her hand under Dieter’s arm.
‘Come,’ she said, ‘I need to show you something.’
They crossed the gravel towards the big oak door. Two Nazi banners hung on poles outside, rippling in the cold wind from the east. The door was slightly ajar and Dieter half expected the chanting of male voices again but the huge building appeared to be empty except for an old lady on her knees in the aisle.
Dieter looked around. This kind of heavy ornamentation depressed him at first sight. Huge pillars soaring towards the richness of the decorated ceiling. Patterned marble floors. A vast set of organ pipes. Ornate frescos on the walls. Plump angels cavorting above an eiderdown of fluffy clouds. A building like this, thought Dieter, might have been designed by a confectioner. Half close your eyes and the basilica was almost edible.
‘I think I preferred it in the dark,’ Dieter murmured.
‘That’s because you’re a good Lutheran boy,’ she was smiling. ‘May God forgive you.’
She tugged him towards one of the side aisles. Portraits of local worthies hung in the gloom. Finally, she brought him to a halt in front of a sculpture in white marble. The gowned figure gazed sightlessly over rows and rows of wooden pews. The expression on the smoothness of the face was deeply mournful and something strange seemed to have happened to his hands.
‘Saint Pantaleon,’ Beata was crossing herself. ‘He was a famous healer. You see his hands?’
‘Yes.’
‘They’re nailed to his head. That was me yesterday. Me the day before. Me in Wannsee. Me in that horrible hospital. Saint Pantaleon cures headaches. Also depression.’
‘And it works?’
‘It does.’ Beata dropped to her knees and began to murmur a prayer. From the back of the basilica came a hollow clunk as the old lady left the building and hauled the door closed behind her.
Finally, Beata got to her feet. She stood beside Dieter and reached for his hand again.
‘You were asking forgiveness?’
‘I was giving him thanks.’
‘For stopping the headaches?’
‘For last night.’
*
Moncrieff took a taxi to the Glebe House from Laurencekirk station. He’d slept badly on the train, half awake for most of the night trying to fathom just who might have broken into the Glebe House. The remoteness of the place had always been something he’d taken for granted. The village was tiny, a mere speck on the edge of the wilderness that was the Cairngorms, and the house itself, a brisk half-hour walk from the kirk and the tiny village shop, was yet another step into the yawning emptiness of the mountains. No one came here by accident.
The taxi dropped him at Esther McFaddon’s house. She had her coat readied beside the door. An overnight thaw had melted most of the snow and when they finally made it to the Glebe House, Tam could find no traces of tyre tracks in the drive.
‘Did the police look for fingerprints?’
‘Yes. Most of them were mine and the rest were probably yours. They need to talk to you. They want to check.’
She had the key to the front door. Tam stepped into the chill of the entrance hall. Already, in some unfathomable way, it felt sullied, interfered with, a home that was no longer entirely his own. Someone had been here, a stranger, maybe strangers. They’d probably come in the dead of night, aware that they had time and privacy on their side. He tried to imagine the beam of a torch in the darkness, shadows moving from room to room, the creak of an unoiled hinge on a door, the scrape of a drawer being carefully opened.
Esther went to the kitchen. It must have been a long journey, she said. She’d make him tea and rustle up something to eat. Tam thanked her, grateful to be left alone. No hurry, he said. This may take a while.
It didn’t. The last time he’d been here was at Christmas with Cathy Phelps. She’d served out her time afterwards and, as he’d expected, left the place spotless. In room after room, everything was exactly where he remembered it should be. Only in the snug, where Tam had always attended to his paperwork, did he find signs of disturbance.
His father’s escritoire had been his pride and joy, a treasured piece of Louis XVI furniture that had passed down the generations before him. Tam had moved it carefully into the snug where it now occupied a space between the corner of the room and the window. The hinged top lifted to reveal a series of compartments beneath and Tam had taken some care to index letters, bills, diaries and sundry other items he might need in the future.
Now, studying the contents of the desk, he knew someone had been through it. The smallest of the battered cloth-covered notebooks he’d filled with jottings should have been here, not there. And the big address book on which he’d always relied had been replaced upside down. Someone had paid the Glebe House a visit because of this desk, and these contents. But why?
Checks upstairs revealed nothing beyond Cathy’s immaculate stewardship before her final departure. Everything neat and tidy. Everything in its place. Back in the kitchen, Tam settled at the long oak table. Esther had conjured a bowl of porridge with water and spoonfuls of honey. Tea, as well, without milk.
‘Well, laddie?’ Esther wanted to know what he’d found.
‘Nothing, really. Bit of a mystery.’
‘Nothing at all?’ She sounded disappointed.
Moncrief shrugged. Just now he was keen to minimise the importance of what had happened. The last thing he needed was for Esther to decide that the Glebe House could look after itself.
‘You’ll still keep an eye on the place?’ Tam gestured around. ‘It was probably a stranger looking for shelter. Snow? That evil wind off the mountains? There’s no damage I can see. Certainly nothing missing. I’ll talk to the police, of course, but I think we can chalk it down to a rough night and an absence of good manners. Always ask first. Even if the answer’s going to be no.’
‘But there was no one here, Tam, and that’s not right. You can’t just break in, help yourself.’
‘I know. But I think we’ll just have to forget it.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I am. But thank you for doing what you did. Dad would have been grateful, too, I know he would.’
She nodded, unconvinced. Then, struck by another thought, she gestured towards the hall.
‘You didn’t see it? Upstairs in that bedroom your father used at the end? Before he went down to London?’
‘See what, Esther?’
‘His wee red beret. The one with the silk tassel on the back. The one he always kept on the back of the door.’ She was frowning now. ‘It took me a while to realise but it’s nae there any more.’
*
Back in London next morning, Tam got in touch with Buckingham Palace. By now he was on first-name terms with two of the voices on the switchboard.
‘Miss Andrews? The usual message, if you’d be so kind, for the usual recipient.’
‘A pleasure, Mr Moncrieff. I’ll make sure Miss Phelps telephones at lunchtime.’
Moncrieff was at his desk when Cathy returned the call. Her morning, she said at once, had been bloody awful. Travel arrangements falling apart. No one knowing their arse from their elbow.
‘Tonight?’ he enquired. ‘As we planned?’
Moncrieff could hear the hesitation in her voice. So far they’d seen far less of each other than he’d anticipated. When plans fell through for her to stay the night – Cathy having to cover for someone on compassionate leave, or a last-minute alteration in one of the senior royals’ schedule – he’d at first blamed the ongoing muddle that was the war. More recently, though, he’d begun to wonder whether she wasn’t beginning to regret the move south. At the Glebe House, Cathy had been her own mistress. At the Palace, she was merely one face among hundreds.
On the phone a couple of days earlier he’d invited her to a show called Hay Fever
. Thanks to Ursula, Moncrieff knew he could lay hands on a couple of tickets. On the phone he and Cathy had agreed seven o’clock in the upstairs bar at the Lyceum Theatre and now she confirmed she’d do her best to be there.
‘Best? What does that mean?’
‘It means I might be a bit late. Hold the curtain, Big Man. This place is madness.’
Moncrieff was at the theatre ten minutes early. He bought a Mackeson for Cathy and a light ale for himself and found an empty table at the far end of the bar. Cathy joined him moments later. She’d had her hair cut since he’d last seen her and it made her look boyish.
She kissed him, and then sat down.
‘You’ve been in the sun,’ she said at once.
‘You’re right.’
‘Where?’
‘Lisbon.’
‘Lucky you.’
‘Right again.’
‘So why Lisbon?’
Moncrieff shook his head. He was always careful about sharing operational details with anyone in his private life.
‘No clues?’ Cathy was feigning outrage.
‘I’m afraid not. Tell me about your lords and masters. As mad as ever?’
‘Actually, they’re rather sweet, some of them. The Queen still makes a fuss of me, thank God, and that bloody portrait’s finally finished. The artist delivered it yesterday morning. I’m not sure the Queen’s very impressed but Bertie loves it. He even thanked me for filling in. That was his term, not mine. He’s a darling, that man, and he’s crazy about her. I told my dad he should take a leaf out of the King’s book. Treat Mum the way he treats the Queen. I was wasting my time, though. Dad never listens. Never has and never will.’
‘You’ve been seeing them recently? Your mum and dad?’
‘Of course.’ She shot him a look and then changed the subject. ‘Exciting, was it?’ she enquired. ‘Lisbon?’
‘Sunny. And lots to eat.’
‘That’s twice lucky,’ she said. ‘Bertie thinks we all ought to be setting an example. If I have another slice of Woolton pie I’ll be like that girl on the posters. All teeth and good intentions. One of the people I work with came up with the perfect answer. He says he’s given the pie up for Lent and they believe him. He even got an extra egg last week. Lucky bastard.’
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