‘They did what?’
Sir Charles nodded. ‘They fired on the lifeboats. It’s nothing less than murder. The list goes on. The Falaba was forced to stop by a German submarine. It surrendered, the ship was stationary, the crew and passengers were getting into lifeboats, when the submarine torpedoed the Falaba. Over a hundred people were drowned.’
Anthony felt stunned. To attack the ships, yes. That was war, but to fire on the defenceless crew and passengers was against every rule of war, the sea and humanity.
Sir Charles saw his expression. ‘Grim, isn’t it? Germany’s fighting a blockade and she’s using fear as a weapon.’ He tapped his notes. ‘Cavanaugh’s warning indicates that the attack on the Lusitania was planned. Do you know that doesn’t surprise me? The German Embassy in Washington issued a notice to the New York press that any vessel – any vessel at all – was liable to destruction. We’re fighting a ruthless enemy who doesn’t recognize rules.’
He pushed his chair away from the desk and walked to the window. ‘I remember you were shocked at the idea of going into Germany to gather information. I had to persuade you to break the rules, as you saw it. You didn’t –’ he turned and looked at Anthony ‘– think it was a pukka thing to do. How do you feel now?’
Anthony shrugged helplessly. ‘How on earth can I recall how it felt before the war? It seems a lifetime away. I still don’t like it.’ He avoided Sir Charles’s eyes. ‘I’d far rather follow my original notion and join the Medical Corps. I don’t know how much use I was in Germany but I know I’d be worth my salt in an army hospital. Besides that, it’d be a relief to be known by my own name and not be on my guard all the time. I made mistakes, Talbot, plenty of them. I covered them up, but you can only get away with it for so long.’
Sir Charles hitched himself onto the window sill and leaned against the frame. He looked at Anthony appraisingly. ‘How old are you, Brooke?’
Anthony was puzzled. ‘How old? I’m thirty-two. Why?’
Sir Charles nodded. ‘You seem older. You’ve been through it, haven’t you? There’s more grey in your hair than I remember and you look tired. But we need you, Brooke. You don’t just speak the language. You can pass for a native without question.’
‘So what?’ countered Anthony. ‘Yes, I’m a good mimic. You know that.’ He looked at Sir Charles, willing him to understand. ‘But this is more than a game. It’s horribly real. I want . . .’ With a stab of shame he heard his voice crack and he forced himself to continue. ‘God knows what I want, Talbot, but there are men dying in France, men I can help. Surely that’s more important than picking up crumbs of information.’ Mortified, he heard his voice nearly break once more. ‘It’s not worth it.’
Sir Charles walked to the sideboard, took out a bottle and two glasses and poured a small measure of whisky into both. ‘Here, drink that,’ he said and waited until Anthony, wincing slightly, drank the neat spirit.
Sir Charles splashed some soda water into his whisky and sat down at the desk, looking at Anthony thoughtfully. ‘Now the immediate danger’s over you’re suffering from reaction, and no wonder,’ he said quietly. ‘You asked if it was worth it.’
He caught Anthony’s expression of dissent and held his hand up. ‘It’s just beginning to dawn on everyone, politicians and people alike, exactly what we’re up against. Lord Kitchener never believed the war would be over by Christmas and made no bones about saying so. We’re in for a long haul and there are no short cuts to victory.’ His voice grew urgent. ‘But as that sinks in, as the casualties grow and the restrictions begin to bite, there’ll be cries for peace at any price. A quick fight with soldiers to cheer off onto the troopships is what the public loves. For a time it’s more fun than football and cricket and people enjoy reading about distant acts of bravery in places with funny foreign names. But this?’
He walked to the desk and stood with his hands braced on the table. ‘This is different. You’ll hear a lot of talk in the coming months to the effect that the government are senseless warmongers, that all we need to do is to sit down and talk nicely to the Germans with a little sweet reason and everything will be fine.’
Anthony met Sir Charles’s serious eyes. ‘Wouldn’t it? Look, when I think of the Lusitania, I want revenge too, but can’t we find some common ground? There are plenty of decent Germans.’
‘I know there are, Brooke!’ said Sir Charles sharply. ‘Unfortunately those aren’t the ones we have to deal with. Do you remember sending us papers from a contact called Geiss?’
Anthony nodded. He hadn’t been able to read the papers but he remembered Geiss, a political insider from Berlin, well enough.
‘Geiss wasn’t our only source for the information but what was said was so vital that any confirmation was like gold dust. I don’t have to look it up, because I’ll never forget it. It was notes of what the German Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg proposes in the event of a German victory. We’re calling it the September Programme, because the notes we’ve got are dated the ninth of September, at the height of the battle of the Marne. We managed to stop them but only just. Since the Marne we’ve been holding on with our fingernails. Bethmann-Hollweg wants control of the whole of Europe. The French, the Poles, the Italians, the Swedes will all be under German domination.’
Anthony couldn’t quite believe him. ‘That’s fairly comprehensive,’ he said with an ironic twist in his voice. ‘What about the neutral countries? Holland and Denmark and so on? Are they going to be part of Greater Germany?’
‘Brooke, there won’t be any neutrals if the Germans have their way. The September Programme talks about economic control for the neutrals. All of Europe will be nothing more than a puppet state.’
Sir Charles was completely serious. Anthony felt his disbelief shifting but damnit, surely all this fight-to-the-death stuff was crazy? Surely this talk of European domination couldn’t be anything more than sabre-rattling. He asked the obvious question. ‘Where does that leave us? Britain, I mean?’
‘Your imagination can supply the obvious answer, but Bethmann-Hollweg dots the I’s and crosses the T’s. He talks about forcing France to her knees – that’s his actual phrase – so that she will accept any peace Germany sees fit to offer, which means they can impose their will on England. That, too, is a direct quote. I tell you, there won’t be a Britain if we don’t win this war.’
Anthony shifted in irritation. ‘That’s impossible.’
‘You can’t see it, can you?’ said Sir Charles. ‘Very few of us can imagine what it would be like to live in an occupied country.’ He leaned forward, his voice urgent once more. ‘Can’t you see the arrogance, the unconscious, self-assured, dangerous arrogance of that? The Germans can occupy Belgium. Why not? It’s only Belgium. France? It’s foreign. You expect odd things to happen in foreign countries, but occupy us? Never. This is England. That sort of thing doesn’t happen here. It’s been a hundred years since this country was truly affected by war and all the fighting was overseas. It’s been a thousand years since we faced a real invasion and Britain, so the thinking goes, wasn’t really Britain then. The Norman Conquest is tucked away in history books and is just a date for schoolboys to learn. Well, if we don’t win the war, there’ll be another date for schoolboys to learn.’
Anthony had to admit that Sir Charles was right. He couldn’t imagine a successful invasion. ‘What about the Empire?’
‘Which Empire?’ asked Sir Charles with a lift of his eyebrows. ‘The British Empire or the empire the Germans propose to carve out of Africa? Mittleafrikanisches Kolonialreich, they call it. If we lose the war, that’s the end of Pax Britannica. We can lose, Brooke. Believe me, we can lose. The Germans are well-armed, well-disciplined, tenacious and courageous and are horribly inventive about the weapons they’re prepared to use. For years they’ve said that a modern war would call upon every device science could provide. That was horribly proved last month. They used chlorine gas. It’s a disgusting weapon. And, just to make things worse in my opinio
n, the thirst for revenge is so great it’ll only be a matter of time before we use it too.’
‘Do you really think so?’
‘I can’t see us not doing. I’d stop it if I could, but I can’t. Gas is a loathsome thing, but they started it. We can’t let them have the advantage. We’ve managed to hold them and we’ve managed to shake them but we haven’t managed to beat them. Considering they’ve had conscription for years and all we’ve got is our regulars, we haven’t done badly. For years we’ve managed with a small army, a contemptible little army, as the Kaiser put it. Well, that army’s swelled considerably over the last few months and we need to train it, equip it and supply it. Supplying it is probably one of the hardest things of all.’ He pulled out his chair and sat down at the desk once more. He looked, thought Anthony, very tired.
‘I’ve never thought about that side of it,’ said Anthony. He was oddly unsure of himself. Sir Charles was right; it was impossible to imagine life in Britain under the victorious Germans. Arrogance? Yes, he supposed it was.
Sir Charles put a hand to his chin. ‘Supplies are the devil. We’ve had to ration shellfire down to two rounds a gun in some cases – two rounds! – and there’s nothing left in the depots. We’re supplying ammunition straight from the ships to the field and even that supply has, on occasion, dried up altogether.’ He picked up his whisky, swirled it round in his glass and finished it with a gesture of finality. ‘Revise your ideas, Brooke. We’re fighting because we have to fight and it’s a grim struggle for survival.’
Anthony raised his hands in protest. ‘All right. So we have to fight. But Talbot, wouldn’t I be more use in France than in Germany?’
Sir Charles shook his head decisively. ‘We need information. Information that only people like you and that poor devil, Cavanaugh, can provide. Without it we’re fighting blind.’ He walked to the desk and picked up the notes he had made. ‘“Spy in England. Gentleman. He must be a gentleman. Seems to know everything. Knew about me. Frankie’s letter. Read Frankie’s letter.” And then there’s this phrase you couldn’t catch. Star’s anger?’
‘I don’t know what star’s anger means,’ said Anthony. ‘I thought it was the name of the ship, but it obviously isn’t.’
‘Star’s anger doesn’t mean anything to me. What about Frankie’s letter? Who’s Frankie?’
Anthony shrugged. ‘There again, I don’t know. I’ve never heard him mention anyone called Frankie, man or woman. I thought at first Frankie was a girl, a girl he cared about, but now I’m not so sure. He said “Read Frankie’s letter”, and added, “I loved her”. I asked him if he had the letter, but he said – he died seconds later – “It’s not that sort of letter.” I’ve had plenty of time to think about it, and I think that the Frankie who wrote the letter and this girl are two separate people. What he meant by “not that sort of letter”, I don’t know.’
Sir Charles clicked his tongue. ‘Frankie’s letter . . .’ He drummed his fingers on the desk. ‘Let’s put that to one side for the moment and concentrate on what we do know. “Spy in England.” Well, we know there are spies. We even know who some of them are.’
‘Do we?’ asked Anthony, startled.
‘Absolutely we do,’ said Sir Charles with a smile. ‘If we want snippets of misleading information to be breakfast reading in Berlin, they’re invaluable. We have to flavour it with a salting of truth, just to keep the pot bubbling, so to speak, but I watch over the welfare of these innocents like an old mother hen. They aren’t all German, of course. Traitors are rare, thank God, but they do exist, and the Germans pay well. They go up to a thousand pounds or so for something really juicy.’
‘Good grief,’ said Anthony with a lift of his eyebrows. ‘That’s a sight more than I seem to be worth,’ he added.
‘Don’t underestimate yourself.’ Sir Charles leaned forward and tapped the paper. ‘This sounds like someone we don’t know. “Spy in England. Knew about me. He must be a gentleman.”’ Sir Charles sat back, frowning. ‘It sounds like unfinished business.’ He cocked an inquisitive eyebrow at Anthony. ‘What do you know about Cavanaugh?’
‘I know he was an Irish-American and a journalist. As a neutral and especially an American neutral, he was welcomed by the Germans. He was about fifty, but as tough as old boots. He’d been a ranch-hand and a prizefighter and a raft of other things in between. He had a pose of being anti-British.’
‘That wasn’t entirely assumed,’ said Sir Charles thoughtfully. ‘Cavanaugh wasn’t his real name, by the way. He found it necessary to change it. I took a risk with him, but it was justified. As you know, if it hadn’t been for the war, the bill granting Irish Independence would have gone through Parliament. Cavanaugh, in common with many others, was certain that independence would lead to trouble as the Nationalists and the Loyalists battled it out. As a journalist he wanted to see for himself what was going on. He joined a New York Irish group called The Hibernian Relief Fund and what he found shocked him.’
Anthony looked a question.
‘The Hibernian Relief Fund was supposed to help poor Irishmen and their families, both in New York and Ireland. What it actually did was raise money for arms. Not only was a civil war anticipated but it was being eagerly provided for.’ Sir Charles put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. ‘Now, before the war, the money raised came from the New York Irish. Guess who else has taken an interest.’
Anthony looked at him sharply. ‘Germany?’
Sir Charles nodded. ‘Germany. As I said, the Germans aren’t stupid. If there’s a rebellion in Ireland, we, the British, would have to do something about it. That means troops and supplies tied up in Ireland which would otherwise be used on the Western Front. Cavanaugh was all for a Free Ireland but he didn’t want a civil war and he certainly didn’t want the Germans involved. He published his story and all hell broke loose. From then on he was a marked man.’
‘You mean his life was threatened?’
Sir Charles nodded. ‘Several times. Cavanaugh changed his name, came to London and made it his business to get in touch with me. He’d learned enough in New York to realize there was an active Irish-German link in London and was stubborn enough to want to get to the bottom of it. He joined a London group called Sons of Hibernia, which, like its American counterpart, was supposed to be a Friendly Society, aiding poor Irishmen and women. It wasn’t, of course. Having learned from bitter experience, he was rather more cautious this time round and he uncovered some very valuable information. However, it was only part of the story. By his own request, he went to Germany to try and get the other end. There are Irishmen in Germany, honoured guests of the German government, and he wanted to find out exactly what they were doing.’ His mouth twisted. ‘It seems as if they got to him first.’
Once again he looked at the notes he had made. ‘“Spy in England. Gentleman. He must be a gentleman. Seems to know everything. Knew about me. Frankie’s letter. Read Frankie’s letter.”’
‘That sounds as if Frankie betrayed him.’ Anthony clicked his tongue. ‘And yet, it’s odd, isn’t it? Frankie and the Gentleman sound like two different people.’
Sir Charles nodded. ‘Yes. So we’ve got a gentleman spy and his assistant, Frankie, who’s in touch with the Germans or the Irish in Germany, which is much the same thing. So who the devil are they? A gentleman in England . . . It’s not much to go on, is it?’ he added in disgust. ‘England’s full of gentlemen, particularly if you use the term loosely.’
Anthony reached for another cigarette and lit it, smoking thoughtfully. ‘D’you know, that’s exactly what he didn’t do,’ he said after a pause. Sir Charles looked at him enquiringly. ‘Use the term loosely, I mean,’ he explained. ‘Perhaps it’s because he was American, but I’d noticed that about him before. To Cavanaugh, to call him that, an English gentleman was a fairly technical term. He never used it politely or ironically but meant the sort of bloke who mixes in fashionable society and gets invited to house parties or who is asked to come
for a few days’ fishing or play a bit of country-house cricket.’
Sir Charles sat very still for a few moments. ‘A real gentleman, you mean?’ He swallowed. ‘My God, I hope not. The information a gentleman spy could pick up is frightening.’
‘What are you so worried about?’ asked Anthony, his forehead creasing in a frown. ‘Unless the gentleman’s a military type or got special information of some kind, I can’t see they’ll know anything out of the ordinary. I don’t want to be flippant, but I can’t see the Germans would be much wiser for knowing anyone’s batting average or how the trout are rising on the Cam.’
Sir Charles shook his head impatiently. ‘Of course they wouldn’t. But don’t you see, Brooke, someone who does know that sort of thing, someone who’s really in the heart of English society, could pick up all sorts of gossip. You wouldn’t believe what gets chattered about. They could have found out about Cavanaugh quite by chance.’
‘By chance? Come on. Cavanaugh’s not likely to have told anyone and anyone who did know wouldn’t go blabbing it about.’
Sir Charles bit his lip. ‘I wish I could be so sure. Anyone who was on the lookout for information could pick up a dickens of a lot, simply by listening to the conversations round him. You know how people talk.’
Anthony remained sceptical. ‘There’s bound to be a lot of chit-chat, I grant you, but something really serious, like Cavanaugh’s mission, would be kept under wraps.’
‘Would it?’ Sir Charles steepled his fingers and leaned forward. ‘Tell me, Brooke, would you say what I told you about the shortage of munitions was serious? Something the Germans would like to know?’
‘Of course I would,’ said Anthony with a short laugh. ‘They probably have an idea that things are tight but if they knew exactly how tight, they’d keep on fighting, even if it seemed hopeless.’
Frankie's Letter Page 5
