‘I’m not sure I agree with that equation.’ He reached over the table to take her hand. ‘If I don’t tell you secrets it’s because, by and large, I don’t have any. My life’s not that interesting! As for the other … do you honestly feel unloved by me?’
He felt the disappointment in Jane’s expression. The words he had spoken were hedged about with negatives – to ask a woman if she felt ‘unloved’ was a poor substitute for the honest declaration of ‘I love you’. She perhaps knew him too well to expect effusiveness. He caught her eye, and after a moment she smiled at him. But there was something unconvinced in the smile, and the feeling of a stand-off between them persisted through the afternoon. They went to see a film in Leicester Square just after six, though neither of them was much engaged by it. Such was his distraction he had already forgotten it by the time they were back on the street. They caught a 19 to Battersea and spoke for a while outside her front door. But there was no invitation to stay, and he walked back to Victoria alone.
‘Eaves.’ He looked up from his desk to find the assistant manager eyeing him coldly. ‘Mr Bowman would like to see you. Immediately.’
This time he found the manager alone in his office. Silently he was gestured to take the chair opposite. There followed a meditative pause as Bowman laid his hands on the desk like a pianist stunned into immobility. He was staring at a letter whose contents apparently bemused him.
‘I’m rather at a loss, Eaves,’ he began. ‘May I enquire – have you been unhappy at the bank?’
‘Unhappy? No, sir.’
‘So there is nothing that might have persuaded you, for example, to apply for another job?’
‘No, sir.’
‘I ask because I received this morning a letter – from Philip Traherne, who I gather has been in touch with you since our meeting a few weeks ago. A curious letter. It seems he runs a government office concerned with “the defence of the realm”. In this capacity he has submitted an urgent request – for your services. Would you kindly explain?’
Eaves made an apologetic frown. ‘I’m not sure I can, sir. Mr Traherne invited me to lunch and talked a little about his work. On a later occasion I met some of his colleagues. That’s as much as I can tell you.’
‘But what does he want you for?’
‘I – I don’t know. He didn’t mention a job when we last spoke.’
Bowman shook his head, querulous now. ‘It’s most irregular. He asks, or rather he insists, that the bank release you without a period of notice. His “department” wants you to start at the beginning of next week.’ He stared hard at Eaves. ‘I’m bound to say it’s a damned liberty he’s taking. What on earth does he imagine you know about the defence of the realm?’
Aware that he had nothing to say which might appease his manager, Eaves kept quiet. A few moments later he was out of the door. When he had last met Traherne at his office in St James’s he knew that a move was afoot, but he’d had no inkling of its peremptory nature. Traherne had introduced him to his colleagues – Castle, a pouchy-faced, twinkling fellow with a limp, and a woman named Tessa Hammond, whose sharp gaze and brittle manner instantly put him on alert.
‘One more thing,’ Traherne had said when they were on their way out of the building. ‘You’ll need a new name. Once you’re on the inside, there’s a danger that someone might decide to investigate you. We’ll kit you out with a new ID, papers and so on. I’m afraid it’s RIP Edward Eaves.’
They batted a few ideas back and forth.
‘I rather like the name Hoste,’ Traherne continued. ‘You see, to us it means the person who welcomes a guest – takes them in, as it were. But the ablative case hoste, in Latin, means “the enemy”. Rather a neat ambiguity, don’t you think?’
‘Well, as long as it remains ambiguous …’
‘Oh, I don’t suppose there are many classical scholars in the ranks of the British Fascists. Now, what was your grandfather’s first name?’
‘John.’
‘John Hoste. Hmm. Possibly.’
They were at the door when his new employer squinted at him. ‘Jack is better, I think. Friendlier. Jack Hoste.’ He offered his hand. ‘Welcome to the Section.’
They met in a restaurant on Judd Street, round the corner from the bank. Jane looked tired, he thought, but didn’t dare enquire as to why. She wasn’t wearing make-up, unusually, which lent her face a scoured, penitential aspect, as though she had just emerged from a religious retreat. Or was perhaps about to enter one. On sitting down her eyes flickered slightly at the bottle of wine: he had ordered it as a precautionary measure.
‘Not planning to do much work this afternoon?’ she said, accepting the glass he poured for her.
‘As a matter of fact I’m not doing any work this afternoon. Today’s my last day.’
Her hand froze almost as the glass was at her lips. She blinked at him. ‘What?’
He quickly explained. The man he had met from the government, Traherne, had arranged it: his employment there was to start immediately. ‘It rather took everyone by surprise. I heard that Bowman wrote a stiff letter to them, complaining. Apparently it was “quite beyond him” as to why my services should be required. I must admit, he has a point.’
Jane listened to him in a seeming daze. Eaves had a sense of himself just then as a stranger in her company. His fault, he knew. He had been always too reluctant to confide in her; this new development would not make it any easier.
‘So you’ll be working for the government?’
‘Yes. At an office in St James’s.’
‘Doing what, exactly?’
He shifted in his seat. ‘It’s to do with security. I can’t really tell you any more than that. They had me sign various confidentiality agreements.’
Jane gave a mirthless laugh. ‘I see. That must please you a good deal. You’re going to a job that will excuse you from telling me anything.’
He flinched at her sarcasm. ‘I hoped you might be proud of me. This job’s better than anything the bank might have offered. More money. And I’ll be moving to London, too.’
‘Have you told your parents?’
‘Not yet. I’m not sure they’ll understand.’
‘I’m not sure I do either,’ she said. ‘Tell me, once you move to London, how will things change?’
He looked at her, wondering if there was a catch. ‘For us, you mean? I don’t suppose they’ll change at all.’
She nodded, as if his reply had confirmed something. She let her gaze drop, and for a long time she kept perfectly silent and still. ‘I had the strangest notion when I heard your voice on the telephone yesterday,’ she said in a distant voice. ‘At first I imagined you were inviting me to lunch because – ha – you had something to ask me.’
He paused, feeling a panic begin to rise. ‘You mean –’
‘Yes. I know. Wasn’t that silly of me? We might go on for another ten years and the thought still wouldn’t occur to you.’
‘Jane, you know how terribly fond I am of you –’
‘Fond!’ she said in a desolate voice. ‘Fond is what you feel about a pet, or a maiden aunt. It’s not a word one uses about a – but what’s the point in complaining now?’
Her face had been averted as she spoke; abruptly she turned to look at him. Her eyes glistened, but she refused to give way. It pierced him to meet her gaze.
‘I should have known, really,’ she went on, and took a mouthful of wine as if to help her to the end. ‘I remember as a girl staring at myself in the mirror and thinking “No one will ever ask to marry me”. And no one has.’
Some minutes later he watched her walk away from the table. At the door of the restaurant she looked back at him, as if there was something she had forgotten to say. But whatever the impulse might have been, she decided against it. Before he could raise his hand in farewell she was through the door, and gone.
March 1944
15
The pub on the corner, where he’d been drinking only the oth
er night, was now a blackened shell. It always struck him how bomb damage was so much more depressing in daylight. At night, with the raids still on, burning buildings had a drama about them. When you got close to the blaze and felt its heat on your skin, there was no denying a certain ghoulish vitality in the spectacle. As an ARP warden he sometimes had to cross fragile ground that might at any moment give way to molten-red vaults below. It reminded him of the trenches during a ‘show’ – terrifying, with wild periods of exhilaration. Only in the morning, when the rubble was cleared and the fires put out, did the reality of it sink in. Everything looked filthy, and grim, and dead.
After nearly three years of calm, in January the Luftwaffe had come back to London. No one had really believed they were gone for good, even when the skies had cleared. But the longer the planes stayed away the more hopeful became the illusion of safety. For a while these new raids were spasmodic, nothing to compare with the heavy Blitz of 1941. They dwindled, and then in February they began all over again. Bombs rained down from Whitechapel to Whitehall (Number 10 had its windows blown in) and incendiaries came down in ghastly chandeliers of spitting flame. The London Library in St James’s Square was hit, and Hoste had gone to help with the clear-up; searching beneath a blanket of ashen debris he found a mausoleum of books lying tattered and coverless. Human casualties were fewer, but the mortuary vans were still busy. He sensed people were less resilient than they had been during the ’41 raids. Back then a mood of defiance, of ‘London Can Take It’, had prevailed. Now they seemed wearier, debilitated by the war and its persistent pilfering of food and clothes and beer. The danger had burrowed down, briefly invisible, but instead of disappearing had renewed itself, and once more the shelters began to fill up.
In the meantime he and his colleagues at the Section had kept close watch over their agents. By 1942 almost all the traffic of German intelligence services was being read: the decrypters at Bletchley had enabled MI5 to identify the enemy and neutralise them. Hoste had heard it confidently said that ‘we know more about the Abwehr than the Abwehr probably do’. The corridors were buzzing with talk of the Second Front. An Allied assault on mainland Europe was imminent, but where would it be directed – and when? A network of double agents had been feeding the Nazis false and misleading information for years. Now the deception was to be put to the ultimate test. Germany had to be tricked into believing that an invasion, when it came, would target the Pas de Calais, a smokescreen for the Allies’ actual plan of landing on the coast of Normandy. To this end an entire assault plan had to be faked, including dummy landing craft and a blizzard of electric noise to mimic huge armies being prepared where none in fact existed.
The Section had been co-opted into this vast campaign of deceit. The fear was that a rogue freelancer of Nazi sympathies might stumble upon the build-up of troops and somehow channel this intelligence directly back to Germany. Such a leak might hole the entire D-Day operation. Hoste would henceforth report both to Tessa Hammond and a new liaison officer, Richard Lang, who belonged to an outfit called the London Controlling Section. His years in the field would help them identify which German agents should be isolated. Lang, a bristling, athletic character with a pencil moustache, had so far only managed a quick meet-and-greet, such was the pressure they were all under.
Hoste had been too busy to pay him much notice. Aside from his ARP duties he had to keep a lid on the stirrings of dissent within his nest of Nazi cuckoos. Some were demanding active sabotage against the RAF; others were proposing assassination plots and attacks on Parliament. He knew that most of them were cranks. But in this feverish climate of uncertainty loose cannons became dangerous: there was a chance they might hit upon the Allies’ plans by fluke and create a panic.
A few nights after the raid Hoste was drinking at a pub just off Hatton Garden with two of his ‘regulars’, Gleave and Scoult. They were among the more sophisticated of his circle, up from Hastings with news of military preparations on the coast. Scoult, puffing on his briar pipe, had apparently been observing the troops’ manoeuvres.
‘It’s odd, though. From what I can see they’re not regular army – they’re raw-looking lads without much training.’
Hoste said, ‘I suppose they’re being kept in reserve. I hear there’s a lot of movement along the Kent coast.’
Gleave, looking pastier than usual in the pub light, gave a nod. ‘I’ve been over there a few times. It looks to us like the fleet is going to use Dover as their base. It makes sense – that’s the shortest crossing to Calais. Would Berlin be interested in photographs?’
‘Of course,’ said Hoste. ‘Your reconnaissance has been of great value to us. Which reminds me –’ He reached into his breast pocket and produced an envelope for each of them. ‘For services rendered.’
They murmured their thanks, and Gleave, tapping his envelope on the table, said, ‘Looks like it’s my shout. Same again, gents?’
Scoult watched him go off to the bar. ‘Damned good fellow, that. And loyal as the day is long.’
‘I’ve always thought so,’ said Hoste, wondering at his definition of loyalty.
After a pause, Scoult dropped his voice confidentially. ‘I shouldn’t be saying this, but not all of your operatives are so trustworthy.’
‘Oh?’
‘Our friend Marita has been, um, expressing her concerns. To put it mildly. She complains that you’re lacking in ambition.’
Hoste gave a half-smile. ‘I’ve heard that from Marita before. You can’t please them all, Mr Scoult.’
‘True enough. But it’s gone beyond that. The other night I overheard her claiming the organisation has seized up, and that none of the recent intelligence she’s given you has had any effect at all.’
‘That’s a serious claim – and an erroneous one.’
Scoult dipped his head in agreement, and hesitated again. ‘Mr Hoste, may I tell you something – in confidence? She reckons that Berlin no longer listens to you. Says you’ve shot your bolt, and that someone else should step in.’
‘I can imagine the “someone” she has in mind …’
‘Correct,’ said Scoult, with a worldly-wise lift of his brow. ‘I think she’d like nothing better than to take charge – and God knows where that would lead us. The woman sees conspiracy everywhere.’
‘What’s her latest?’
Scoult puffed out his cheeks. ‘Oh, the usual. The Jews are behind everything. Now I’m no friend to them, as you know, but for Marita it’s a bloody crusade. To listen to her you’d think every looter and pickpocket in town is a Jew. The Bethnal Green disaster last year? That was their fault, too – “They lost their nerve and caused a stampede,” she told me. Madness.’
‘Not someone you’d like to make an enemy of.’
‘Indeed not. But what I wanted to say was – you can count on us.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ said Hoste, acknowledging with a glance the return of Gleave with their drinks. ‘And thanks for the warning.’
The trees in St James’s Park were beginning to show their leaves again. They looked to him less lonely when they gained a bit of green. Once past the sandbags and the road-blocks you could almost forget there was a war on. Hoste came over the bridge and found a bench from where he could watch the ducks on the lake. A cold, troubled sunlight dappled the surface.
Tessa arrived some minutes later. She was wearing a black-and-camel-checked outfit with a chic felt hat he hadn’t seen before. She had also become more particular about her make-up. He presumed she had acquired it on the black market, such was its present scarcity. A tiny stone glinted on her finger: her chap, Alan, had recently popped the question.
‘You look like a fashion plate,’ he observed, looking her up and down. ‘Is this what happens to a woman when she gets engaged?’
‘That makes me feel I was rather dowdy before,’ she replied. She took out her cigarettes and offered him one. ‘What are we doing here anyway? You could have just come to the office.’
He pulled a
face. ‘For one thing I’m not in the mood to deal with the new chap. For another – isn’t it nicer to be outside on a morning like this?’
Tessa cast a look of indifference around her, as though a park in spring sunlight had no greater charm than anywhere else. As they smoked, he told her about his meeting with Gleave and Scoult, and the odd feeling he had taken away.
‘Why odd?’
‘I suppose it’s because, having been so long in their company, I find myself almost warming to them – Scoult, in particular. He’s actually quite a personable fellow.’
She arched her eyebrows. ‘Hmm. “Personable” isn’t the word I’d use for their sort.’
‘I know. All the same … you can’t spend that much time with someone and not come to recognise a basic humanity in there. They aren’t evil, most of them – just deluded.’
‘And dangerous. As I don’t need to remind you.’
‘No, you don’t. Which brings me to the matter at hand. It seems there is a mood of mutiny among our operatives – I got this from Scoult – and it stems from Marita Pardoe. She’s always thought me too circumspect. Now she’s casting doubt on my effectiveness as a spymaster.’
‘What’s sparked this off?’
He gave a speculative curl to his lip. ‘I dare say it has to do with the way the war’s going. She’s probably realised that Germany can’t win – but she’s damned if she’ll give up without a fight.’
‘Marita on the warpath is really the last thing we need. Did Scoult know what she’s planning?’
‘Only this. She has a replacement for me in mind.’
‘Herself?’ Tessa looked puzzled. ‘That would suggest she’s found a new outlet for getting intelligence to Berlin. Could she have done?’
He shrugged. ‘Unlikely. But I’d never underestimate Marita’s capability. If anyone can …’
Our Friends in Berlin Page 18
