by Mark Leggatt
“It was Warrender,” said Montrose. “He had the place rigged.”
“Indeed. I suspect what happened is that, given the imminent arrival of the CIA, Warrender was killed because he would have been captured. I would have very much liked to talk to him.”
Montrose heard the menace in Pilgrim’s voice.
Kirsty pulled the mic closer. “Mr. Pilgrim, he didn’t betray your brother. It was Warrender who was betrayed. We spoke to him. We were in his flat. I really believed him. And the flat, it was totally weird.”
Pilgrim didn’t respond for a moment. “Tell me what you saw.”
“There were newspapers everywhere. Stacks of them all around the apartment. And they were all copies of The London Times. The walls were covered in tiny handwritten numbers, in groups of five. There were thousands of them. That’s it, apart from a fancy old radio and an oil heater set up as a bloody big bomb. No, wait, there was a photo on his desk. It was a woman. The photo was old and faded. She was tall. I don’t know who she is.”
“I think I do,” said Pilgrim. “Tell me about the radio.”
Montrose looked up at the sound of police sirens. He felt a tremor in his spine as a group of armed policemen ran past the window.
“I’ve got the picture on my phone.” Kirsty held it between them and expanded the photo. “It’s a Roberts radio. It’s got an old red and black LED screen.”
“Look closely if you can,” said Pilgrim. “Does it have the letters SW on the dial?”
Montrose kept his head low over the coffee. Shortwave? What’s he getting at?
“Yeah,” said Kirsty. “I can see the selector. It’s set to SW. Shortwave, right? What’s he doing with that? BBC World Service?”
“No,” said Pilgrim. “That’s not the station he was looking for.”
Holy crap. I know what this is.
“Tell me,” said Pilgrim. “Are all the newspapers folded to a certain page?”
Kirsty checked the photo. “Yeah. The crossword page. Why would he do that?”
“I know,” said Montrose. “Numbers Station. Jesus, that’s Cold War shit.”
“Correct,” said Pilgrim. “In the days before the internet and email, this was the way the intelligence services broadcast secure messages around the globe. And, on occasion, still do.”
“But surely anyone could listen in to them?” said Kirsty.
“Of course they could,” replied Pilgrim. “But unless you have the ability to decode the message it would mean nothing. The permutation of the numbers is almost infinite. You say his walls were covered by numbers?”
“Everywhere,” said Montrose.
“The numbers are transmitted from a military base,” said Pilgrim. “They use a powerful transmitter that can be heard anywhere on earth. The message will be broadcast as a series of numbers, but to decode that message into words you need the solution. The normal method was called a one-time pad, where one page of paper, with the answers to the code, would be used to decrypt the message. But the next time a message was transmitted there would be a different code so you’d need a different page of the one-time pad, which is covered in a list of seemingly random letters. That way, even if you discovered the one-time pad, you would only ever able to decrypt one message, if you knew which message it was and how to use the one-time pad code.”
“That sounds like a lot of pages,” said Kirsty.
Montrose nodded. “Yeah, or a lot of newspapers.”
“It’s a near-perfect system,” said Pilgrim. “Better than any modern encryption device. Its only weakness is that the numbers must be coded using the same one-time pad as the agent who is receiving the message. Cold War spy agencies could get hundreds of pages on a microdot, no bigger than the point of a needle, and then send them to the agent. In the case of Warrender that was not required. He used the London Times crossword and so did the person sending him a message.”
“I don’t get it,” said Kirsty. “So only the person actually broadcasting the message knows what they are sending?”
“No,” said Pilgrim. “Only the author. The message would be sent by a military technician. He would only be given numbers to send. He would know nothing of the one-time pad that was used to encode the message, or how to decrypt it.”
“Yeah, that would work,” said Montrose. “But who the hell was sending Warrender messages? He escaped from the British because they thought he was a Soviet spy, then he escaped from the Soviets because they thought he was a double agent. They both wanted Warrender to talk. Someone’s been helping him all these years. I take it that it’s not the CIA.”
“I think I know,” said Kirsty. “The lady in the photo.”
“Exactly,” said Pilgrim. “But why? Love or blackmail?”
“Love,” said Montrose and Kirsty at the same time.
“And he never betrayed her,” said Kirsty. “Okay, what about this for an idea? She was the one who betrayed him. She was the one that Warrender told after he met your brother. And she was the one who told the Soviets where to find your brother. And his escape route.”
Montrose nodded. “She got what she needed. Then she saw Warrender was in danger and she helped him escape from the British, then got him away from the Soviets when she realized they were going to kill him. All those years he knew what she was and what she had done. He never betrayed her. That’s more than just blackmail.”
“It was her,” said Kirsty. “She was the double agent. Warrender said he called London after he met your brother at the border. She was the one who betrayed him.”
“And then she killed him,” said Pilgrim.
“What?” said Montrose.
“Assume I know more about this issue than I can tell you, but your hypothesis is eminently plausible. She killed him to stop him from being captured. She let Warrender talk to you, but when she saw that the CIA were at the front door and that Warrender would be captured, she killed him. But she could have killed him at any time. What she did was a last resort. Did Warrender start the fire?”
“No,” said Kirsty, “we did.”
“Warrender had rigged up the old oil heater as insurance,” said Montrose. “I primed it before we escaped. That place will burn clean. And the numbers and all the copies of the newspapers, there will be nothing left.”
“Then she’ll be safe,” said Pilgrim. “I’m not surprised. The numbers that were broadcast would have been recorded. Both the numbers and the newspapers would have been tracked back to legacy transmissions. It would have sealed her fate.”
“Which is why he was ready to destroy them,” said Montrose. “To keep her safe.”
“I’m afraid to say that theory may be rather naive,” said Pilgrim.
Hate is clouding your judgment, dude. “No,” said Montrose, “he was ready to destroy them because…”
“Mutual destruction,” said Pilgrim. “They probably both held secrets that would destroy the other. If one died, then they would somehow ensure that the truth came out and implicate the other.”
Kirsty glanced at Montrose. “Then why didn’t she kill him before and burn the place down herself? Mr. Pilgrim, I’m right, no? The person who is helping is the lady in the photo. Same age, same place. It all fits.”
“I hate to be obtuse,” said Pilgrim, “But for your own safety, I couldn’t possibly comment.”
You asshole. Montrose placed a hand on Kirsty’s arm. “Whatever. There’s only one thing that makes sense. The strongest bond of all. Love. She knew that he had the password and she protected him all these years. Sounds like everybody wanted to know Roger Warrender. Your brother told Warrender the last password before they split up at the Russian border and Warrender gave him his gun. That’s why they found a Browning in the ice. He’s not a traitor. He didn’t betray your brother. Warrender was the ‘Brit’ in the clue written on his arm. Your brother trusted him. And Warr
ender told no one. Not even the British. Not even after they tortured him. He knew the secret was so great he would take it to his grave. And so did she.”
Kirsty shook her head. “You know, I don’t even think he told her.”
Montrose stared at her. “But…”
“Think about it,” she said. “She saved his life. She kept him safe all these years. She was a double agent, and if Warrender had told her the password she would have told the Soviets. But she didn’t.”
“These theories are getting us nowhere,” said Pilgrim. “I take it he did not reveal the password?”
“No,” said Montrose. “I think he would have told us, but we didn’t have time.”
Kirsty leaned into the mic. “He said only one other man knew it.”
The line crackled and a Californian drawl came through. “Hey, guys, it’s Zac. I gotta tell you, this freakin’ satellite gets weirder every time I look at it. But give me about four hours and my machines will crack the password.”
“We may not have that long,” said Pilgrim. “Kirsty, who was the other man that Warrender gave the password to?”
“Colonel Furstenberg. But Warrender said that he had died before his time. What the bloody hell does that mean?”
“Furstenberg. I’m on it,” said Zac.
“I don’t get it,” said Kirsty. “How could he tell someone that he didn’t talk to?”
“I got him on Wiki,” said Zac. “Colonel Furstenberg. He died in 1946. Natural causes.”
“Where?”
“Says here, Astley Ainslie Hospital, Edinburgh, Scotland.”
“That makes no sense,” said Kirsty. “If it’s the same guy, how could Warrender have told him?”
“Well, that’s the official version,” said Zac. “According to what looks like a range of internet fruitcakes and amateur war historians, he died somewhere else, but it was never proven. I’ve got a photo of him here. Mean-looking dude, about seven foot tall. His name pops up on a ton of conspiracy theories because, if you believe Fruitcake Central, there are no records of him in Edinburgh and there’s no grave.”
“Colonel Furstenberg?” said Montrose. “The guy was a soldier, right? He’s got to have a record somewhere.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Zac, “but according to the theories his death was hushed up. Big time. By the British.”
“If he died in 1946 then he served in the war,” said Montrose. “So why would they try to keep it quiet?”
“This is where the fruitcakes all agree,” said Zac. “Because Colonel Furstenberg was a Nazi. A high-ranking SS Colonel, suspected of genocide in Russia. This is one seriously bad dude. And all the amateur sleuths and conspiracy geeks think they know where he’s buried. And they’re all saying the same thing.”
“Where?” said Montrose.
“The London Cage.”
“The what?”
“I’m reading it now,” replied Zac. “There’s lots of websites with black pages and spooky fonts dedicated to the topic. The London Cage was a secret MI9 torture camp run by the British during World War II. You’ve heard of MI5? Well, MI9 were the guys whose job it was to hunt down and capture senior Nazis. And it looks like the Brits were into some industrial-grade torture too. It was all top secret. All during the war no one ever knew, not even the Red Cross. And that’s like totally against the Geneva Convention.”
“The London Cage? Where is it? Does it actually exist?”
“Well, according to the net, it’s about a five minute walk from Notting Hill Tube station.”
“We’re not far,” said Kirsty. “You got an address?”
“Oh, yeah, I got it all here. It was a private mansion taken over by the government during the war, but it was closed down and sold off when the rumors emerged about the torture. MI9 were disbanded and the Brits pretended all the torture shit never happened.”
“Time to knock on someone’s door,” said Kirsty.
“Wait,” replied Zac. “There’s an issue.”
“Yeah,” said Kirsty, “like breaking into someone’s house and asking them if they know any dead Nazis.”
“No,” said Zac. “I’m reading the history. It says Number 8 Kensington Palace Gardens, aka the London Cage, was demolished by developers in 1982.”
Montrose slumped down in the chair. “Then it’s gone. The password, we can’t...”
“That’s bullshit,” said Kirsty.
Pilgrim spoke slowly. “Kirsty has a point. Warrender was held by the Soviets in late 1982, after the developers are supposed to have destroyed it. Therefore, it may still exist.”
“I’m looking now,” said Zac. “There’s a whole book on the subject written by the dude that ran the place, a guy called Colonel Scotland. It was heavily censored before it made publication. Holy shit.”
“What is it?” said Kirsty.
“According to the conspiracy fruitcakes, The London Cage was based in 2 houses, one was destroyed but there was another big fancy house they used.”
“Where is it?”
“Next door. Number 7, Kensington Palace Gardens.”
“I know that address,” said Pilgrim.
“Then that’s our next destination,” said Kirsty.
They heard Pilgrim sigh. “That might prove rather difficult.”
Montrose could hear the resignation in his voice. “Why?”
“Because that’s the address of the Russian Embassy.”
*
Kane pulled open the door of the Range Rover as soon as it stopped.
Campbell ran around the far side and got in beside him. “We are checking the van for fingerprints, sir.”
“Why the fuck are you doing that? We know who he is, asshole.”
“The girl, sir, we…”
Kane held up his iPhone. “We have a composite photo taken from the hi-res CCTV. So we know what she looks like. Get this to all the cops and operatives. Right now.”
“Yes, sir. We also have the containment sector around Lancaster Gate sealed with men at every exit. Train stations, cabs and the underground are all manned. If they try to run, we’ll find them.”
“You really are as thick as shit. They were already running when we found the van. Check the sectors they could go to, not the one they were in. They will be long gone from here. Spread out. I want every policeman in London looking for them. Every camera.”
“MI5 are being cooperative, sir and we’re monitoring them just in case.” Campbell looked down at his phone. “Sir, what if they’re not running?”
“What are you talking about?”
“They know about containment sectors. We can tell from the route they took out of Soho. What if they’re holed up in Lancaster Gate?”
“Then they’re more stupid than they look.” He sat still for a moment. “Get a team of policeman on it. Check the streets.” A phone buzzed in his pocket and he jolted upright. “Stop the car. Now.” The Range Rover pulled into the curb and he reached for the door handle.
“Sir, we need to get to MI5 right now.”
“Shut up. Stay there.” Kane stepped from the car and pulled the Nokia phone from his pocket. A line of coordinates popped up on the tiny screen. His fingers moved carefully on the keypad as he forwarded the message to a different number. “I don’t care what the fuck you got, Montrose,” he murmured, “you can’t stop me now.”
*
Madame Raymonde watched the river traffic along the Thames: the pleasure boats heading to the leafy suburbs and the slow moving barges going east towards the docks. The cars on the bridge crept across at walking pace. She checked her watch, but she knew too much time had passed. She turned and glanced at Purley’s empty desk.
A knock echoed around the room and Lockhart stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
“I know,” said Madame Raymonde. “I know in m
y heart. Where?”
“An alley. Not far from where she grew up.” He rubbed his face. “They used a knife.”
Madame Raymonde pressed her face against the glass. “Dear God, is there no end to this barbarity?”
He shuffled forward. “We have a car waiting for you, ma’am. It will take you to an airfield and then to France. Miss Purley made the arrangements.”
“No. We are not finished yet. She told me that I could trust you. I need to make a phone call. The Legacy Transmission Officer in RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus.”
“Use the blue phone, ma’am,” he said. “I’ll dial it for you.”
She crossed the room as he dialed the number and sat down in the chair. “Wait outside,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She waited until he was gone and then picked up the handset. “Legacy Transmission Officer? You have an email with a list of numbers for broadcast from Elizabeth Purley. The activation codeword is regicide. Do you understand? Yes? Then do it.”
Chapter 17
“Ready?” Kirsty placed a hand on his leg and nodded towards a young couple entering the coffee shop. She pulled off her blond wig and kicked it under the seat, pulling the pins from her auburn hair.
She’s a redhead. Yeah and this isn’t the time.
Her hair fell around her shoulders as she tucked the phone into her bag and pointed to the coat rack.
Montrose watched the couple hang their jackets up and walk over to the counter.
“Follow me.” Kirsty kept an eye on the couple as she picked out a coat and bundled it into her bag. “Use your jacket as cover.”
Montrose pulled a coat down and stuffed it into his jacket.
“Stay ten steps behind me,” said Kirsty.
