The Suicide Exhibition

by Justin Richards

  “So what do we do now?” Guy asked. “We can hardly follow them.”

  Sarah nodded. “I didn’t expect us to get in this deep—security checks and all this. Whatever it is. But we’re stuck here now.”

  “We should leave,” Guy decided. “This is too big for us to get involved.”

  “We didn’t have a lot of choice, once we were in that line for the entrance. If we’d just turned and left those guards would have wondered why and probably come after us. Anyway we’ve got this far.” Sarah shook her head. “Getting into this place was the hard part. I saw something that day, Guy. I saw an aircraft or something.”

  “And you want to know what it was, that’s understandable. But—”

  She cut him off. “Of course I do. But if there’s any chance, any chance at all, I want to fly it. We’re here now,” she went on. “Let’s just wait and see if we discover anything else. If not, then I guess we just go back to our usual routine never knowing. But at least we tried. All right?”

  Guy sighed. “All right. But we can’t just stand around here until someone spots us and asks what the hell we’re doing.”

  As he spoke, the door of the hut opened again and a woman in a WRENS uniform emerged. She glanced at Guy and Sarah as she passed, but made no comment.

  “Let’s try round the back,” Guy suggested.

  He led Sarah round the side of the hut. They were hidden from the path here, and Guy risked a quick look through the window. It was dusty and he could barely make out the inside. Several people stood in the middle of the small hut—Brinkman, Miss Manners, and another man. More than that it was difficult to tell. He ducked out of sight again quickly.

  “Well?”

  “They’re talking to someone,” Guy whispered.

  They both strained to hear. Through the window came the faint buzz of conversation, but it was impossible to make out anything coherent. They persevered for a few minutes before Sarah sighed and shook her head.

  “This is a waste of time,” she said. “We might hear more through the door.”

  “That won’t look at all suspicious,” Guy muttered. But he followed her back to the front of the hut.

  As soon as Sarah had turned the corner of the hut, she was back again. “Someone coming!” she hissed.

  They both pressed against the side of the hut, out of sight.

  “Man in a crumpled suit,” Sarah whispered. “He doesn’t look happy.”

  As she spoke, they heard the door of the hut slammed open.

  “What the hell are you playing at, Brinkman?”

  The words reached them clearly through the open door. A moment later, it slammed shut again. Sarah and Guy stepped out from behind the hut. They could still hear the voices from inside, and Guy saw that the door wasn’t quite closed—the newcomer had slammed it so hard it had sprung open again.

  They crept closer, listening, but also trying to look as if they had just stepped out of the hut for some air. As if they had every right to be there.

  “You can’t just commandeer my staff like this.”

  “Actually I can, Mr. Fredericks.” Guy recognized Brinkman’s voice. The colonel’s calm manner obviously did not have a soothing effect on Fredericks.

  “Dr. Wiles is one of my senior analysts. I won’t have him diverted onto your … your … Onto whatever it is you people do,” Fredericks finished lamely.

  “I’m afraid it’s not your choice. Dr. Wiles and whoever he chooses to serve on his team—”

  “His team?”

  “I do hope you’re not going to make this any more difficult than it needs to be.”

  Fredericks sounded almost incandescent with rage. “I shall fight this at every level, believe you me.”

  “Michael…” another voice said, evidently trying to calm the man. “I didn’t ask for this. But for what it’s worth—”

  “You keep out of this, Wiles. It’s nothing to do with you.”

  “Um, well—actually…” the hapless Wiles started.

  But Fredericks wasn’t listening. “I’ll take this right to the top. We’ll see what Mr. Churchill has to say!”

  Guy glanced at Sarah, and saw that she was already watching for his reaction. She raised her eyebrows.

  “I can tell you exactly what Mr. Churchill will say,” Brinkman countered. His tone was conversational. “Miss Manners, do you have the letter?”

  “Of course.” Her voice was so quiet they had to strain to hear her.

  “What is this?” Fredericks demanded.

  “If you read it,” Miss Manners said, “you’ll see that it is a letter of authorization. It gives Colonel Brinkman carte blanche to recruit or requisition whoever and whatever we need.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “You are welcome to take it up with the authors of the letter,” Brinkman said. “You’ll see that it is signed by General Ismay on behalf of the Prime Minister.”

  There was silence for several moments. Guy found he was holding his breath as he waited for Fredericks’ response. But there was none.

  Instead, he heard Miss Manners say: “We’ll let you know if we need anything else.”

  The door was yanked open before Pentecross or Sarah could move. A man in a crumpled dark suit, his face so red with anger that he could only be Fredericks, strode out of the hut. He pulled the door shut behind him, glaring first at Guy, then at Sarah, before he marched off.

  “He must think we’re with Brinkman,” Sarah whispered as they took cover behind the hut once more.

  A few moments later, they heard the hut door open again. Guy risked a quick look round the corner, and saw Brinkman and Miss Manners heading off in the same direction as they had originally come.

  “They said his name was Dr. Wiles,” Sarah said.

  “That hardly helps,” Guy said.

  “It does if we want to talk to him.”

  “If we—” He broke off as Sarah pushed past. “Now, hold on—you can’t just…”

  But she could and she did. Sarah opened the hut door and stepped inside. Guy took a deep breath, and followed.

  * * *

  Wiles sat at his desk staring into space. He needed to think carefully who he might need to help with the transmission decryption. The trouble was, without knowing more of the nature of the problem, it was difficult to decide who was best able to help.

  Wiles didn’t want to antagonize Fredericks any more than he had to. It was a question of getting the right balance between who was best for the job, and who could be spared from their other assignments. An added complication was that secrecy was so strict Wiles didn’t actually know what most of the people at Bletchley did or where their expertise lay. He was rather restricted to those he had worked with before.

  “Better the devils you know,” he murmured.

  He was about to return his attention to the latest documents Brinkman had brought when two more people came into the hut. A man and a woman, neither of them familiar to Wiles. The man wore a suit that had seen better days, the woman was smartly dressed in skirt and blouse.

  “Can I help you?”

  “We’re with Brinkman, Dr. Wiles,” the woman said. He caught the American accent.

  “Are you here to help, or to add further entreaties for me to do the impossible?”

  “We were supposed to be here for the briefing,” the woman told him.

  “Briefing?”

  “The meeting,” the man said quickly. “Just now. We got delayed.”

  “Hardly a briefing,” Wiles said. “Anyway, Colonel Brinkman’s been and gone. You missed him.”

  “Maybe you could just tell us what he said?” the woman asked.

  Wiles frowned. “Why not ask the colonel?”

  “Like I said, we missed him.” The man smiled apologetically. “So, if you could just fill us in.”

  “I’m not sure what you want to know, but you’d better show me your passes and I’ll tell you what I can.”

  The man and woman exchanged looks,
before offering their passes. Wiles glanced at them and forced a smile. “Fine, fine. Not that I can tell you much. Colonel Brinkman gave me the latest UDT intercepts from the Y Stations along with tracking data. I gather it’s a priority.”

  The man nodded. “Absolutely. Top priority.”

  The woman had crossed to Wiles’s desk and was leafing through the papers piled up there. He glared at her. “Do you mind? That material is confidential.”

  She smiled back, as if he’d remarked on the weather. “What is this?”

  He strode across to join her, the man close behind. The woman had found a map, criss-crossed with pencil lines connecting small crosses.

  “It’s my attempt to map out where these UDTs were when the signals were intercepted. I’ve extrapolated the possible flight paths as you can see. I didn’t show it to Colonel Brinkman because it’s a work in progress, no more.”

  The man—Pentecross, wasn’t it?—was peering over Wiles’s shoulder. “Assuming these ‘x’s mark the interception points, you’ve extended some of these line beyond the last sighting.”

  “It seems logical,” Wiles said. Obviously they were not going to leave this alone. “But as you see, the tracks don’t make a lot of sense. We still have no idea where these aircraft originated or where they were going.”

  “What if you’re wrong?” Pentecross said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your extrapolations. What if some of these are actually the same flight, but it changes course? That’s possible, isn’t it?”

  “That sharply? Nothing can maneuver like that, surely. And anyway, some of these lines are from different times, different days.”

  “We know the craft are incredibly fast,” the woman said. “Perhaps they can maneuver more quickly than a conventional plane too.” She jabbed her finger down at various points where Wiles had drawn lines that crossed. “They may be different flights at different times, but all following the same path. Which would make these intersections navigation points, markers of some sort perhaps.”

  Wiles frowned. “I suppose it’s possible…” he sat down, pulling the map across the desk toward him and sending other papers scattering.

  “We’ll let you get on,” Pentecross said.

  “Thank you, Dr. Wiles,” the woman added. ‘It was good to meet you.’

  “The pleasure’s all mine,” Wiles said, but he was talking to the closing door. They were in a hurry to get out. A man from the FO and a woman from Air Transport. Brinkman was pulling strings in all directions it seemed.

  Assuming things were what they seemed.

  Wiles watched through the window as the man and woman disappeared back down the path toward the main driveway. Somewhere in among the books and papers there was a telephone. It took him a few moments to unearth it. He raised the receiver and listened. It was dead.

  The door opened to let Eleanor James back in. Wiles waved her over with relief.

  “How do I get an outside line on this thing?”

  She took it from him, dialed, and handed it back.

  “Thank you. Oh,” he added, “and you just got promoted. From whatever you are now to something else.”

  Wiles ignored her reaction and dialed a number. He might not have much of a memory for faces, but numbers were his business. The phone was answered on the third ring.

  “I wonder,” Wiles said, “if I could leave a message for Colonel Brinkman?”

  CHAPTER 13

  Brinkman got the message when he returned from Bletchley—a pencil scrawl on a scrap of paper left on his desk. He called Wiles back, and was still on the phone when Sergeant Green came into the office.

  “He didn’t get the woman’s name,” Brinkman told Green. “But the man is Pentecross, from the FO.”

  “Persistent bugger, isn’t he, sir,” Green said. “The woman could be that ATA girl, Diamond. I saw her in Piccadilly the other day. Thought it was a coincidence.”

  “Remind me,” Brinkman said.

  “She had a run-in with a UDT, couple of months ago. Miss Manners and I spoke to her about it. Warned her off.”

  “Or not, perhaps.”

  “If it’s her.”

  “It seems likely,” Brinkman decided. “I don’t believe in coincidence.”

  “You want me to do anything about it?”

  “Yes. But I’m not sure what. Need to think about this one,” Brinkman said. He tapped the tips of his fingers together as he considered. “Is there anything else?”

  “Yes, sir. Mr. Alban is here. Miss Manners won’t let him past the front office, but he’s insisting he needs to see you.”

  Brinkman sighed. “That’s all I need.”

  * * *

  David Alban sat down without being invited. He stretched his legs out and yawned. Brinkman pretended to be involved in paperwork, refusing to spare the man more than a glance. He knew what MI5 in general thought of Station Z, and Alban in particular was more than skeptical. He was downright hostile.

  “You’re ruffling feathers again, Colonel,” Alban said at last.

  Brinkman closed the cover of the file he’d been examining and fixed Alban with a stare. “Oh?”

  “Friend Fredericks at Station X has been on to us.”

  “I’d hardly call him a friend. And as you say ‘us’ I assume that’s someone higher up the chain than you.”

  Alban grinned like an annoying schoolboy. “Assume away, old man.” The grin faded, and Alban leaned forward. “But he’s not happy. Making waves. He’s a man of considerable influence, and rightly so, given what his people have achieved.”

  “He’s an administrator,” Brinkman countered. “He’s not even that important at Station X.”

  “Then he has important friends.”

  “Don’t we all,” Brinkman snapped.

  Alban ignored the comment. “Fredericks says that you’ve commandeered one of his top men. ‘Poached’ was the word he used, actually. Like an egg. First SOE and now Station X, you’re overreaching yourself, Colonel. And if you keep pinching—‘poaching’—other people’s prize personnel, it’s only a matter of time before the gamekeeper comes after you.”

  “And you see yourself as the gamekeeper, do you?” Brinkman asked.

  Alban grinned again. “Oh I’m just an errand boy, I’ve no illusions about that. But even an errand boy can wonder what gives you the right to behave in such a cavalier manner.”

  “My authority comes from the Prime Minister himself,” Brinkman said quietly. “And I will not have it questioned by a self-confessed errand boy.”

  Alban seemed unimpressed. “Well good for you. Enjoy it while you can, I say. Because, you know what Winston’s like. He has six impossible ideas before breakfast each and every day.”

  “Mr. Churchill knows how important our work here is,” Brinkman said. For some reason Alban’s use of the Prime Minister’s Christian name irritated him more than anything else the young man had said.

  “Implying that I don’t?”

  “I know you don’t.” Brinkman opened the file again, staring down at it. “You have no idea what we do here.”

  Alban’s shadow fell across the desk as he stood up and leaned over, hands pressed down either side of the file. “I don’t want to know. But I’ll tell you what I do know.”

  Brinkman looked up, and was surprised at Alban’s grim expression. The man suddenly looked much older, and Brinkman wondered if perhaps he had underestimated his ability and position as well as his age.

  “I know that your Station Z is a passing fad of the Prime Minister’s. I know that you’ve upset SOE, which he really does care about, and you’ve upset Station X which Churchill knows is vital to the war effort. And I know that your own security here is a joke.”

  Brinkman said nothing.

  Alban straightened up. A nerve twitched for a second under his left eye. “You were followed to Bletchley, you know.”

  “Yes, I do know.” Brinkman watched for a reaction, but there was none. “And it wasn
’t our security that the two individuals in question breached to get into the site.”

  “They were following you.”

  Brinkman stood up, angry. “Which you could only know if you were following me as well.”

  The grin was back. “Just doing my job, Colonel.”

  “Then kindly get out of here and let me do mine.”

  “With pleasure. As it happens, I have an appointment at Euston station. There are a couple of people coming in on a train from Bletchley that I have to arrest for breaching the Official Secrets Act.”

  “Errand boy promoted to policeman?” Brinkman said. It was a cheap jibe and he regretted it as soon as he’d said it. But he was not about to apologize.

  Alban’s expression didn’t change. But there was a tremble of suppressed anger in his reply. “I don’t know what exactly your department does, Colonel,” he said. “But you’re not very good at it, and it’s costing us funds and resources that could be better used elsewhere.”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Alban. If you could see yourself out, I have important things to do.” Brinkman turned back to his file.

  Alban watched him for a moment before he left. As he turned to go, he said: “You’re an expensive luxury, Colonel. And this war isn’t about luxury—it’s about austerity and thrift. First chance I get, I’m closing you down for good.”

  CHAPTER 14

  The ship docked at just after three in the afternoon, and Leo Davenport was there to meet it. If the captain noticed that “Carlton Smith” had lost his beard since leaving Lisbon, he didn’t mention it. He also pocketed the folded banknotes that Davenport gave him without comment.

  Having got his cargo this far, Davenport was determined not to lose it now. He watched as a crane lifted the large wooden crate and lowered it gently onto the back of a flat-bed truck that Davenport had arranged. As soon as it was secured, he gave the crane driver and the dockers a cheery wave and clambered up into the truck’s cab to sit beside the driver.

  Every time he came back to London, it seemed to Davenport that there was less of the city standing. They drove past burned-out cranes and warehouses, through streets lined with rubble swept to the pavement edges. Several times he had to stop while the driver worked out a new route because the way was blocked. Roads were closed, or the way impassable because of fire engines and military vehicles. Everywhere smelled of dust and ash.