Web of Discord

by Norman Russell

  Very dimly, as though far off, Arnold Box began to glimpse an unpleasant possibility. At the same moment, he knew that Kershaw had done more than merely glimpse it.

  ‘Sir,’ he said to Kershaw, ‘these names that you’ve mentioned – Brandenburg, and what was the other one? Hesse-Darmstadt. Do I begin to detect a German flavour to the proceedings?’

  ‘You do, Box, you do indeed. And as usual I must leave you in the dark until you yourself see the whole light. But there’s something that I will tell you. The people at the German Embassy are not involved in whatever’s going on.’

  ‘There’s something else I discovered about the Lermontov,’ said Adams. ‘It’s armed. Two of its winch-houses on the forward deck are actually disguised gun emplacements. It was soon after I discovered that, Kershaw, that the ship’s officers began to suspect me. It was then that I abandoned ship, as it were, and began my perilous return to Britain by land and sea. Do you want to hear about it?’

  ‘No, not yet. That can keep till later. But your discovery of guns on board is very important. I imagine that it was the Lermontov that sank the German cargo-ship Berlin Star. The ship was seen to be flying the Russian ensign, but neither the victims nor the witnesses could identify the aggressor with any certainty. Yes, surely, it was the Lermontov. And that means….’

  Colonel Kershaw gazed into space for what seemed like minutes. Then, with an effort, he brought himself back to the business in hand.

  ‘When this meeting’s over, Adams,’ he said, ‘I intend to spirit you away from harm to a place where we can talk at leisure. Meanwhile, there are other things waiting for me to do. The time for action against this growing threat to peace and stability is fast approaching, but there are two events that must take place before I begin to move. One is a meeting later this week, at Whitehall, which has been convened by Sir Charles Napier. It will be attended by various people from the German, Russian and French embassies. I shall be there, too.’

  ‘And the second event?’ asked Adams. Box noticed with amusement the edge of vexation in the captain’s tone. Evidently, he’d resented being upstaged at this meeting by the annoyingly omniscient Kershaw, and to a lesser extent by Box himself.

  ‘The second event, Adams, is a country-house weekend, where, among others, I hope to meet an old ally of mine, Count von und zu Thalberg. You know all about him, don’t you, Mr Box? The count is a high-ranking officer in Prussian Military Intelligence. He is also a very decided Anglophile, and it’s essential that I talk to him before I make a move.’

  Colonel Kershaw got up from the table, and went to look out of one of the cottage-style windows of the little lodge. Box, watching the mild, sandy-haired man with the slight stoop, thought to himself, When this man ‘makes a move’, he will have the whole force of the Crown and its armed services behind him. It was an awesome thought.

  ‘Well,’ said Kershaw, ‘the spring has decidedly taken hold, and the gardens here at the Crystal Palace are burgeoning into their many-coloured splendour. But if certain forces have their way, this year of 1893 will be one of unsettling strife among the nations, and when that happens, the common enemy will strike. There will be much work for us to do if we are to preserve the Queen’s Peace.’

  Kershaw turned from the window, and treated them all to his rather apologetic smile.

  ‘Adams,’ he said, ‘will you go into the next room, where Boniface will arrange for you to be spirited away? I will be with you again without fail this evening.’

  When Captain Adams had left the room, Colonel Kershaw turned to Box.

  ‘What did you think of Mr Boniface, Box?’ he asked.

  ‘He seems a very agreeable man, sir.’

  ‘He is. He’s a naval architect by training, and for a number of years he was attached to the Admiralty as an intelligence interpreter. Then he came to work for me. He travels a lot, you know, and finds ways of surviving in hostile terrain. As you say, a very agreeable man. Perhaps you’ll see more of Mr Boniface before this business is over.’

  Kershaw looked around the little parlour of the lodge, as though to reassure himself that he was actually standing in it.

  ‘This isn’t one of my regular haunts, you know, Box. It’s a bit out of the way for me, but it’s very useful at the moment, and you’ll find me here, or in the vicinity, for the near future. Somehow, I think that you and I are going to work even more closely on this Russian business than we have so far. Call whenever you wish.’

  ‘Did you say Russian business or Prussian business, sir?’ asked Box, impishly.

  Colonel Kershaw subjected him to an impressively blank and forbidding stare.

  ‘Why, what on earth do you mean? I said “Russian”, of course. You must listen more closely in future.’

  Box smiled to himself, bowed, and turned to leave the room, followed by Knollys. However, Kershaw’s voice checked them on the threshold.

  ‘Sergeant Knollys,’ he said, ‘I’d be obliged if you’d stay behind. There’s something very personal about this business which I need to discuss with you alone.’

  As Box walked away from the East Lodge through the spectacular display of fountains, he wondered what the very personal business between Kershaw and Knollys could possibly be. Whatever it was, he was evidently not to be a party to it. It was no good sulking about it. The colonel had his little ways.

  Sergeant Knollys stayed for half an hour. As soon as he had left the East Lodge, Colonel Kershaw went into the next room, where Mr Boniface was sitting at a plain trestle table, his unlit pipe clenched between his teeth. There was a strong smell of cardboard, fish glue and wood shavings in the air.

  ‘Has Adams gone?’ asked Kershaw.

  ‘Yes, sir. Mrs Prout called for him, and has removed him from the premises in a four-wheeler. She had one of those hulking great porters with her.’

  ‘Mrs Prout runs an excellent hotel, with excellent staff, Mr Boniface. Excellent from our point of view, you understand.’

  Mr Boniface smiled, and pointed with his pipe to a model, meticulously constructed of wood and cardboard, standing on the table. It represented a long, cigar-shaped vessel, painted silver, and with a number of structures suspended from it by wires. It was quite unlike anything that Kershaw had ever seen.

  ‘There it is, sir,’ said Boniface. ‘That’s the nearest I can get to what it must look like. I’ve based it on the twelve reports sent back to you, and the five documents furnished by Sir Charles Napier. The Russians, I gather, are convinced that we know nothing about it?’

  ‘That’s so. And for the time being I want them to continue in that belief. Germany, of course, knows all about it, and if it becomes necessary, I’ll get Napier to show this model of yours to von Hagen at Prussia House. Just take me through the salient points, will you? I’m not a technical man, you know, apart from knowing all about heavy artillery.’

  ‘Well, sir, this is the Russian aerial boat Phoebus-Apollo, currently under construction in the Lithuanian forest, and, to judge from its present state of building, due at any time for practical tests. Its length is two hundred and sixty-two feet, and its displacement three hundred and sixty thousand cubic feet.’

  ‘And this thing is designed to rise into the air? Do you think that’s feasible?’

  ‘It may be, sir. In theory, it should be able to rise. I compute the total weight of the aerial boat to be eight tons, with an air displacement of twelve tons. That gives what you might call a surplus lift of four tons. Oh, yes, it’s feasible.’

  ‘How is it powered?’

  ‘They’ve developed a very fine single cylinder steam engine of twenty-five horse power, fuelled by pebbled coal. The engine will drive a propeller – you can see it there, emerging from the rear suspended carriage, which is twenty-four feet in length. There’s room in there for an engineer, who is also the helmsman. From there, he can control the rudder. It’s a boat, you see, but a boat of the air.’

  ‘And the rest of the crew?’

  ‘The captain, and
one other, accommodated in that long forward carriage, which is fifty-two feet long. I estimate that it will do ten knots in still air, without too much turbulence. Ten knots – what’s that? – eleven miles an hour. Its range could be between thirty and fifty miles. Always assuming, sir, that the thing gets off the ground in the first place.’

  Colonel Kershaw sat back in his chair and sighed. He regarded the model with what looked like gloomy dislike.

  ‘And this Phoebus-Apollo, Mr Boniface – is it designed to take wealthy Russians on thrilling trips across the Lithuanian countryside? Excursions, you know?’

  ‘It is not, sir. If you look closely at the forward carriage, you’ll see a number of racks, pointing downwards—’

  ‘I know, I know. I was only teasing you. I have a report from one of Napier’s people at Moscow, which tells me that one of the smaller munitions factories there has been converted to the production of a special kind of shell or bombard, each three hundred pounds in weight. These bombards are filled with high explosive – picric acid, apparently. They will have been designed for those racks of yours, Boniface, and the purpose of the whole venture will be to drop the bombards on to unprotected towns, and sea-going vessels. Sir Charles Napier has been told something similar by von Hagen, who doesn’t realize that I’ve been on to this devilish contraption for nearly a year. Armed attack from the air!’

  ‘It may not come to that, sir. More humane counsels may prevail.’

  ‘Oh, no they won’t, Mr Boniface. Whenever mankind creates a new marvel, he will soon find ways of using it to destroy his fellow man. This Phoebus-Apollo may have nothing to do with the present unrest, but it must not go unobserved. Vigilance is all.’

  Vanessa Drake lodged in a tall, gaunt building near Dean’s Yard, in Westminster. It had once been the convent of an Anglican sisterhood, and the nuns’ cells had been very sympathetically adapted to create a number of sets of rooms for single women. She had brought her work home on the Wednesday night, so that she could work quietly at her table in the morning, and report to Watts & Co. in the early afternoon. She had been stitching a fine and delicate gold braid to the edges of a bourse, and her fingers ached. She set the bourse down on the table.

  Jack Knollys had taken her to the Alhambra again, and then to supper at a brilliantly lit restaurant in Regent Street, and next week, if the weather was decent, they were going to Hampstead Heath….

  It would be nice to have a little villa out at Finchley, near to her friend Louise. She could easily make all her own curtains, and there were some marvellous new fabrics at Peter Robinson’s, just come in. Was Finchley too far out for a man who worked at Scotland Yard? Still, they’d never be able to afford a place like that. Louise was paid a salary by London University, and her parents were very comfortably off. She wondered what Jack’s parents did for a living. He’d never mentioned them yet….

  Maurice was a nice name for a boy, and Louise for a girl, after Princess Louise. Or May, perhaps, like Princess May of Teck.

  Someone was coming up the stairs. Vanessa frantically straightened the mess on the table, smoothed her dress, and sat down to wait for the knock. The door opened, and Colonel Kershaw came into the room. She was quite unable to suppress her cry of delight as she sprang up to greet him.

  ‘So, there you are, missy!’ Kershaw treated her to an amused smile, and sat down uninvited in a chair opposite hers. He was wearing the dark-blue undress uniform of a Royal Artillery officer, and was carrying his glazed peak cap in his hand.

  ‘Well, Miss Drake, how are you?’

  ‘I’m very well, thank you, sir.’

  ‘Good, I’m glad to hear it. And you mustn’t stand up to greet me in your own home. Young ladies don’t need to do that. Now, if I tell you that something rather interesting is going forward, would you want to be associated with it?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir!’

  Why conceal her delight? She was delighted. How smart he looked! She wondered where he could be going, in uniform, like that. The last time she’d seen him dressed as an officer, it had been in the full dress uniform of a colonel at poor Arthur’s funeral.

  ‘Very well. Now listen carefully. I think that very soon – within the next day or so – you will be approached by a German lady, Baroness Felssen, who will say that she admired your handiwork in some church or other. She may come here, or she may approach you at Watts & Company. I’m not quite sure what she’ll say next, but I rather think that she’ll invite you to stay at her house in Northumberland for a while, in order to carry out some commission. Now, I must say at once that there is more to this task than merely acting as one of my “nobodies”, because in this case it is the other side who have taken the initiative.’

  ‘I don’t quite understand, sir—’

  ‘I mean that they know who you are. It’s not as though I were to send you somewhere, incognito. They know that you’re one of my people, and for some reason they want to see you. Now, I don’t want to tell you too much about Baroness Felssen, but I’ll warn you that some people consider her to be the most dangerous woman in Europe, at this moment. You’re at perfect liberty to say, no, thank you, if she asks you to go with her. But if you do agree, I want you to go up there to Northumberland, do whatever she says, look, and listen.’

  He smiled at her, and rather disconcertingly waited for her to make some kind of reply.

  ‘Look and listen? You mean—’

  ‘I mean you’re to do nothing on your own initiative. No detective work. Just look, make a mental note of all you see, and listen. Try to remember what people say. There will be guests there. Watch them, listen to them. Engage them in conversation, if you like. But no snooping, no eavesdropping, no loitering about in odd corners trying to catch conversations. I’m very insistent on that point. Is all that understood, Miss Drake?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘As soon as she makes contact with you, and if you agree to whatever she suggests, come and see me, and tell me what she said to you, so that I can take certain steps. Our friend in Coleman Street will be able to tell you where you can find me. When the time comes for the baroness to dispense with your services, say thank you, and come home.’

  ‘And report directly to you, sir?’

  ‘Yes, report directly to me, and tell me what you saw, and what you heard. There may be danger, and for that reason I will take certain measures to see that you come to no harm. In return, you must do as I tell you. No snooping, no taking foolish risks. For reasons that I must keep secret, this venture is one being undertaken by you and me alone. Other agencies will not be informed. I’ll leave you now, missy. I’ve got a parade to inspect at Horse Guards. Goodbye. I knew you wouldn’t let me down.’

  On the morning of Friday, 24 March, Vanessa Drake looked up from her work as Mr Edwards, one of the managers at Watts & Company, came into the firm’s sewing-room. He was accompanied by a very handsome middle-aged lady dressed in the height of fashion, a woman who spoke courteously enough, but with an air of restrained command.

  ‘Miss Drake,’ said the manager, ‘I have the honour of introducing you to Baroness Felssen, who wishes to speak to you. Baroness Felssen has seen specimens of your work, and tells me she is profoundly impressed by it.’

  Vanessa had felt compelled to rise in the presence of a titled lady, but the baroness hastily put out a restraining hand. Her rather forbidding face was suddenly transformed by a bewitching smile.

  ‘Please don’t get up, my dear,’ she said, in perfect English, though with a slight foreign accent. ‘I like to see you there, subduing all that damask, and all those brilliants, to your will!’ She turned to the manager, and said, in a more distant tone, ‘That is all, I think, Mr Edwards. You may leave Miss Drake and me alone.’

  The manager bowed, and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him. Baroness Felssen sat down at the table, and subjected the girl to a silent but obvious appraisal, at the same time carefully removing her lilac gloves, and depositing them on the table. I hope yo
u like what you see, Baroness, thought Vanessa. Meanwhile, a cat may look at a queen. This stately aristocrat is the kind of woman who’ll be all smiles as long as you do what she wants. It would, though, be dangerous to cross her. What gorgeous clothes she had! That olive-green suit looks as though it was cut in Paris. And that necklace – surely those diamonds are real? They made her glass brilliants look tawdry!

  What a pity that Colonel Kershaw had told her nothing at all about this woman, apart from the thrilling suggestion that she was dangerous. Her brief was simply to look, and listen. Perhaps she’d be able to do more than that, if the opportunity arose.

  ‘Well, Miss Drake,’ said the baroness, with a touch of amusement in her tone, ‘we’ve sized each other up, and no doubt you’ve drawn a few conclusions about me. No, I won’t ask you what they are, in case they’re not very complimentary. And I’ll not tell you my estimate of you, for similar reasons. Instead, I’ll get down to business.’

  ‘Business, madam?’

  ‘Yes. I must tell you that I live at a place called Stonewick, on the Northumberland coast, some miles south of Her Majesty’s Town of Berwick upon Tweed. My house is called Stonewick Hall, a fine, modern stone mansion built on the cliff top, with splendid views of the North Sea. I love that part of England – windswept, exhilarating, so different from this choking capital of yours!’

  ‘You speak of London as though it’s not your capital, too, madam.’

  Vanessa’s visitor laughed. It was a pleasant, good-humoured sound.

  ‘That’s a very nice way, my dear, of asking me to tell you my antecedents! Well, I’ll interrupt my story for a while to tell you. My name is Baroness Felssen, and I am a Prussian noblewoman. My late husband was Keeper of the Armouries to the Emperor Friedrich, and I have a romantic, rambling estate in the eastern provinces of the German Empire. I have always loved England, and some years ago, after my husband’s death, I purchased Stonewick Hall. I spend much of the autumn and winter there, and it was in late February of this year that I visited Durham Cathedral for the first time—’