‘Us?’
‘Me and your lady friend. These days it takes a lot to keep an old man amused but she has limitless talents. And that was before we started on the Krug. Hurry on down, Tam. I get the impression she’s missing you.’
The line went dead. Moncrieff frowned. Then the phone began to ring again. Hesketh, he thought. With more drivel from sunny Lisbon.
‘You’re still there?’
‘I am…’ a woman’s voice, ‘… and it’s lovely. Why were we so keen on Seville when we could have been fantasising about this place instead?’
Moncrieff was staring at the receiver. He hadn’t heard this throaty laugh for nearly three years, but he knew exactly who it was. The same intonation. The same hints of self-mockery. Not Souk’s drivel at all but Isabel Menzies. For once in his life, Moncrieff was speechless. When they were in Berlin, Seville had been code for a future together. It had never happened but here she was again, Bella Menzies, still with the word Seville on her lips.
‘You’re in Lisbon?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s a long story. We need to meet. Tell me you’ll come.’
‘When?’
‘As soon as you can.’
‘That could be difficult. More than difficult.’
‘So I gather.’
‘You know about our visitor?’
‘Of course. Churchill’s best-kept secret. Isn’t that the line?’ She laughed again, and Moncrieff had a sudden image of the pair of them, Bella and Souk, together in some hotel room, toasting the Deputy Führer in looted French champagne. The thought made him feel deeply uncomfortable but he’d no idea why.
Bella hadn’t finished.
‘A big fat plum falls into your lap…’ she said, ‘… and no one has a clue what to do with the wretched man. Am I getting warm here?’
‘You might be.’
‘Then come down. Take the flying boat. It can’t be worse than Air Hitler. The Alps were invented to frighten people like me. At least my bit of Russia’s flat. No mountains.’
‘You flew in from Moscow?’
‘Via Berlin. Our German allies can be very accommodating but flying’s still flying and I hate it.’
‘And Moscow?’
‘Moscow is a state of mind. Just now the snow’s gone but nothing seems to get any warmer.’
‘Why might that be?’ Moncrieff enquired.
‘I’ve got a shrewd idea but in our game you need to be certain. Maybe Hess knows. He’s a special kind of German. He doesn’t like us much but he seems to have some regard for the truth. This pact of ours was always a marriage of convenience but at least we’re not killing each other. Not yet.’
A marriage of convenience. Was this why she’d taken her courage in both hands and flown to Lisbon? Was this why she’d phoned? Everyone knew that Hitler would one day turn on the Russians. That was a given. That was what he’d been telling the rest of the world for years. But a date would be useful. Especially if there was some prospect of the English suing for peace.
Bella wanted to know whether Moncrieff had talked to Hess personally.
‘No.’
‘Will you?’
‘I’ve no idea. It’s possible, I suppose.’
‘You could talk to him in German. Make friends with the man. I gather he expected to be home by Monday. Which must be something of a disappointment.’
‘Is that what they’re saying in Berlin?’
‘It is. He flies. He lands. He talks. He tells the King to get rid of Churchill. And then it’s Monday morning and he’s off again. Porridge and kippers in Scotland. Wife and baby waiting in Munich. Sweet.’
Moncrieff smiled. He could hear the old Bella, the Bella who’d cut a swath through the diplomatic parties along the Wilhelmstrasse, the Bella who’d made a name for herself in the higher reaches of the Nazi dung heap. She’d quietly attended to MI5 business from her desk in the British Embassy and no one had realised, least of all Moncrieff, that in the smallest hours she’d been reporting to her masters in Moscow. A woman with a true centre to her life, he thought. No matter how misguided.
‘Do you ever miss it?’ he asked. ‘England?’
‘Not at all. Most Russians I know live on porridge oats, and they do smoky things to fish from the Baltic. Shut your eyes and it could be a cold day in Arbroath. Does that help at all? Only I’d hate you to be sorry for me.’
‘I’m not sorry. I was never sorry. Just confused.’
‘That you hadn’t spotted it? My little passion? Hadn’t drawn the obvious conclusion?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the other thing?’
‘What other thing?’
‘Us?’
‘We were good. Or I always thought so. We laughed a lot. That mattered.’
‘So why did you go? Why did you leave?’
‘They threw me out. You might have remembered.’
‘That’s not what I meant. Why did you leave me? Why no letters? Why no attempt to stay in touch? We weren’t at war, not then. The phones still worked. Air mail was still getting through. Just a word would have been nice. Just the knowledge that it had really happened and I didn’t make the whole fucking thing up. Leading a double life isn’t quite as simple as it might sound. Even women have needs.’
Moncrieff nodded. Everything she said was true. Under different circumstances they’d have made that trip to Seville. And probably stayed.
‘You sound hurt,’ he said at last.
‘I was.’
‘And now?’
‘Now’s different. Don’t ask me for the details because that’s another conversation. Something important in your life, you take care of it. I thought I’d done that. I honestly did.’
‘You mean Communism? The cause?’
‘I mean you. There were certain things I’d never said to anyone. But you were there. You were listening. And yet you still went. I couldn’t work that out. I tried for days, weeks. I got ill. That’s pathetic. That’s a confession. But here’s the truth. After something like that you get tougher. God has a role for heartbreak. It’s not very pretty and I’m not sure it turns you into a nicer person, but it’s a bit of a lifeline and I was grateful for that. So I’m different now, if that’s your question, and, no, there’s nothing I miss about bloody England.’
‘You want to see me again?’
‘I’d love to see you again. I’d love to take you to bed and fuck you witless and I probably will. But the woman you wake up with won’t be the woman you left in the middle of the night. You remember that? After I picked you up from our Gestapo friends? You had to get to the airport for the morning flight. Otherwise they’d lock you up again. I had that planned. I had it all worked out. There was a bed upstairs in that flat of mine, our bed, the bed where we’d say a proper goodbye, and maybe make a plan or two to meet later, neutral territory, any bloody place as long as we were both there, and yet you wouldn’t even step foot inside the building. I offered to drive you out to Tempelhof but even that didn’t work. You said you wanted to walk. You said you needed to be alone. A girl understands language like that. It meant all bets were off. It meant I’d failed completely. Alone is the perfect description. And I’ve been alone ever since. Did it hurt then? Yes. Does it hurt now? No. I’m lying in bed with a phone to my ear. I don’t know whether you want to make the effort to imagine any of this, but I haven’t got very much on and it’s very hot outside and there’s still a bottle of Krug in the fridge and your eager little friend knows where to lay hands on a great deal more. So take the flying boat, Mr Moncrieff, and let’s talk a little more…’ she laughed, ‘… while there’s still time.’
15
The following day, Wednesday 14 May, German radio made another announcement about the ex-Deputy Führer. By now, it was known that Hess was in Scotland, a prisoner of the British. He had grounds, in the words of Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda, for believing that the Duke of Hamilton and a group of his friends were oppose
d to the warmonger Winston Churchill and were determined to get rid of him. Hence his flight across the North Sea. His intention? Perhaps a little less crazed than it might have seemed: to bring the British to their senses.
This bombshell exploded in Whitehall in mid-morning and prompted a tart response from the Ministry of Information. Churchill wanted to make a lengthy statement to the Commons but once again he was dissuaded. Instead, word was quietly passed that the German broadcast was pure mischief, a barefaced lie trying to spare German blushes. They’d lost one of the top figures in the Reich, and they were trying to make the best of it. At MI5 headquarters in St James’s Street, the Director of ‘B’ Section had drawn the appropriate conclusions.
‘Downing Street are going to bluff it out,’ Liddell said. ‘They’re going to put Hess on the shelf, keep him safe, and not say a word. That way they keep everyone guessing. The Germans. The Russians. Even MI6. It’s ruthless, of course, but you wouldn’t expect anything else. Churchill is the key to everything. He was never good at spotting plots, but I suspect it’s dawned on him just how dangerous the situation might have become. It was Churchill’s good luck that Hess ran out of fuel. Otherwise anything might have happened. The PM has to emerge from this thing intact. That, gentlemen, will dictate the passage of events from this day forth.’
Heads nodded around Liddell’s office. The Director asked Moncrieff whether he had any news from Wilhelm Schultz. Moncrieff shook his head.
‘These things take time, sir,’ he said. ‘You’ll be the first to know.’
The meeting over, Ursula beckoned him into her office and asked him to close the door. She’d been quietly keeping her eye on the People’s Convention, the Communist group that had so briefly helped themselves to the comforts of the Savoy’s air raid shelter. There was to be a meeting in an East End pub this very evening and she wondered whether Tam might pop along.
‘Harry Pollitt will be there. And Willie Gallagher and maybe that MP, Denis Pritt. All the usual suspects.’
‘And Pat Doherty?’
‘Him, too. And maybe even our little princess.’
Our little princess was new. Moncrieff wondered whether the appellation was Ursula’s or had come from someone else. Miss Cathy Phelps. Our little princess. Deeply fitting.
‘You think it’s worth a visit?’
‘I think it’s time we cocked a listening ear. She works at the Palace. Places like that are full of gossip. The royals always assume that the staff are deaf and blind, that they lack the intelligence or the interest to take much notice of what’s really going on. They also believe in a degree of loyalty that might be misplaced. Are we getting my drift here? Or should I spell it out?’
‘You want me to talk to her about the Hess thing.’ Moncrieff’s voice was flat. In truth, he had no appetite for another meeting.
‘The Hess thing. Exactly. These last couple of days I’ve had two conversations which suggest some kind of royal welcome might have been prepared for our German friend.’
‘In Scotland, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘At Dungavel House?’
‘There or thereabouts.’
‘Care to give me a name?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t. And that’s rather the point. Our little princess struck me as very acute. Judging by the company she keeps, she’s also no friend of the royals. A conversation would be more than welcome. It might even yield a name.’ She offered Moncrieff the ghost of a smile. ‘It was your idea to leave her in place. Do I hear a yes?’
*
The pub was called the Roaring Donkey and lay in a maze of streets between the Whitechapel Road and the river. No German bombers had appeared over the capital since Saturday night, but the smell of ashes and ruptured drains still hung in the air. It was impossible to round a corner, Moncrieff quickly concluded, without confronting more rubble heaps, more shards of glass swept into tidy piles, more front walls ripped off to reveal – with a terrible intimacy – the domestic lives within. Just yards from the pub, people were still pausing to inspect an upstairs bedroom, complete with pink wallpaper, sagging floorboards and a rather handsome brass-knobbed bedstead exposed to the chill night air. Someone had hand-lettered a rectangle of cardboard and hung it on the end of the bed. Bombed-out twice, it read. Third time lucky?
The pub – imperfectly blacked out – was cavernous, packed with drinkers, both men and women. Sturdy wooden crates, probably filched from the nearby docks, had been pushed together at one end to form a makeshift stage, and a rather tattered red flag had been fixed to the wall behind. With some difficulty Moncrieff found himself a chair at the back of the crowd, all too aware of his height. Should Cathy turn up, he wanted – for the time being – to remain unseen.
She arrived barely minutes later, Doherty with her. Moncrieff watched them as they elbowed their way through the crowd, drawing handshakes and pats on the back. They were well known here, welcomed, admired, but the sight of his father’s red beret, on Cathy this time, angered Moncrieff deeply. Since Ursula had shown him the surveillance photos he’d made a sort of peace with the way she’d betrayed him, blaming himself for ever believing she’d be genuinely interested in a man his age, but the beret was something different. It was tangible. It had meant a great deal to his poor mad father, even in his twilight years. And yet, in cold blood, she’d stolen it. In the land of Karl Marx he was aware that all property might be theft but this was larceny on an altogether more intimate scale. She’d known exactly what she was doing. And now he’d make her pay for it.
The meeting was in some danger of making a start. A man in a worn black suit clambered onto the stage and called the room to order. The collar of his open shirt was frayed and a blow of some sort had half-closed one eye but his voice carried to the far corners of the huge bar and he had an air of command that stilled the hubbub.
He’d arranged the evening, he said, to push the People’s Convention a little closer to where it deserved to be. He, along with a number of other speakers, was here to make the case for the Peoples’ War and the People’s Peace. Too many men and too many women had already died in battle, or under the bombs, to preserve the rights and privileges of the rich. Society, he roared, was totally out of kilter but thanks to Mr Hitler, in one of history’s great ironies, an opportunity was on hand to correct that balance. The day of reckoning, of righting old wrongs, was fast approaching. And no one in the ranks of the so-called mighty could stop it.
The pub erupted in applause. The floor was suddenly wet with spilled beer. Moncrieff was still looking at Cathy. Tiny amid the press of bodies, she was clinging onto Doherty, her eyes ablaze.
Another speaker mounted the stage and added more fuel to the fire. Earlier, making his way to the pub, Moncrieff had wondered quite how this bunch of Communists had adapted themselves to the Non-Aggression Pact that Ribbentrop had so artfully schemed in Moscow. How come you could live with the knowledge that Fascism had just become your very best friend?
This puzzle had preoccupied far bigger brains than his, but watching the evening unfold, Moncrieff realised that none of it really mattered. Ribbentrop’s pact was simply the small print of history, a deceit the Nazis had fathered to keep the Soviets off their backs while they attended to enemies rather closer to home, and very soon would come the moment when Hitler turned his armies around and marched them east.
The evening’s final speaker was Doherty. He bounded onto the stage and left the pub in no doubt where the people’s revolution was heading next.
‘War is a confidence trick,’ he yelled. ‘Germany, Britain, France, they all spill our blood for their gain. Capitalism is a conspiracy against the people. Just take a look down the street. Just ask yourself who does the dying. This will be the war to end all wars. Why? Because at last we’ve seen through all the lies, all the propaganda. And you know what? Up there, up river, they’re shitting in their pants. Because they know their time has come. Remember Robespierre. Remember Danton. On les aura!’
&
nbsp; Another roar of applause. We’ll have them! Minutes later, the meeting over, the crowd pushed towards the bar for more beer. Doherty had been mobbed by the people around him, mainly women. They wanted to touch him, to put their arms round him, to give him a kiss, to tell him what a hero he was, to marvel at his passion, and the way he could exactly voice what they all thought, all believed. Moncrieff’s gaze found Cathy, the little princess, and he knew she’d seen this wild adulation too, probably dozens of times. She was much closer now, carried towards the door by the swirl of the crowd. And as he watched she turned and caught his eye.
‘You,’ she mouthed. ‘What are you doing here?’
Moncrieff fought his way towards her and grabbed her by the hand. Moments later, they were out on the street. She fought free. She wanted to know what on earth he was doing.
‘We need to talk,’ he said.
Another pub, close by, Cathy’s choice. Moncrieff didn’t even know what it was called. The bombing had removed the sign that had once hung over the main door and most of the windows had been boarded up. They slipped inside. Candlelight revealed half a dozen drinkers, bent sorrowfully over near-empty glasses. Cathy led the way to the bar. Moncrieff sensed she wanted to be friends.
‘You can have light ale or light ale,’ she said. ‘They haven’t got many glasses, either.’
Moncrieff bought two bottles and they retired to a table at the back.
‘You’ve been here before?’
‘Yes. It used to be a proper pub. Once.’
‘You were here with Doherty?’
‘Yes. That man was probably born in a pub. The drink doesn’t touch him.’ She reached for her bottle and twisted the stopper. ‘You know his Christian name as well?’
‘Patrick. I’m guessing Pat for short.’
‘Guessing?’ She smiled at him in the half-darkness. ‘You people never guess. Pat’s right. You people know.’
‘You think I’m one of them? The class enemy? Tam Moncrieff? Laird of all he surveys?’
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