The Red Ribbon

by H. B. Lyle

  “There wasn’t time.” Kell pulled up a chair for himself at the table.

  “Of course,” H2O said, though his eyes lingered for a moment on Constance. He was younger than her, she thought, but not by much. Thirtyish at the outside, and he wore his light summer suit perfectly. He shimmered with long-limbed elegance as he flicked a cigarette into his mouth. “Is there anything to drink?” he said, swinging a chair between Kell and Cumming. He had an air of informality about him, something of the New World.

  “Let’s get down to business,” Kell said. “We don’t have much time.”

  “Quite right,” H2O said. “We shall have a snifter once we’ve settled on the plan.”

  “Plan?” Constance sat on the settee.

  Kell looked over at her, glanced at Cumming, and sighed. “H2O is our naval intelligence’s man in Berlin,” he said.

  “Part-time,” H2O chimed in. “Newspaperman is the day job, for Uncle Sam’s rags. Help out the mother country when I can.” He slung one arm over the back of his chair and pushed tight smoke rings into the air above him. They bent and stretched and broke like signals in the sky.

  Cumming glared at Kell angrily. “I must insist on code names, Kelly.”

  “There’s not much point calling me Kelly, is there? My wife does know my name.”

  “We should get to business,” H2O said. “Give us all the gory details, if you would Cumm—if you would, C.”

  “Hold on,” Constance said. “Shouldn’t we call Wiggins?”

  “Your man?” H2O said, surprised.

  Constance noticed Kell nod, then turn his head away slightly, in an embarrassed gesture she knew well.

  “He’s rather more than that,” she said with indignation. “I shall ring for him at once.” She stood up and pressed a large buzzer. “He’s not just our man, he’s the sharpest agent in the Service.”

  11

  The sharpest agent in the Service was in position below stairs, at the servants’ long kitchen table, eyeing with glee the second half of his second stein of north German lager. He licked his foamy lips. “That is mint,” he said to no one in particular.

  A large bell clanged, and the porter on duty—a sallow redhead with a pale mustache—pointed at Wiggins. “Sie oben.”

  Wiggins nodded slowly and downed the last of his stein. He breathed out and said to the porter, “That is knock-down honest the best pint I’ve ever had.”

  The porter shook his head sadly, seemingly uncomprehending. “British,” he said.

  He walked through the hotel. Stacks of trunks, suitcases, and hatboxes labeled NEW YORK and BALTIMORE dotted the large lobby; great throngs of well-heeled and excited patrons buzzed to and fro, two-deep at the bar; and the hotel restaurant clattered and sang and steamed from six in the morning until eleven at night. But this was a German crowd and they weren’t staying at Hillman’s in order to see Bremen. It was a transatlantic steamer port, and they were all due to board ships to the United States.

  Wiggins wandered down a long, wide corridor and tried not to think too much about America, and who might now be living there. He tried not to think of Bela at all. He knocked at Kell’s door and went in. Only Constance looked pleased to see him. She sat on the settee and smiled at him. Kell sat at the table with Mansfield Cumming, the crusty toff who ran the foreign arm of the Service and who, apparently, they were in the process of saving. A third man stood at the window. He leaned against the frame, looking out, and pulled languidly at a cigarette.

  “Ah, here’s the help. Now we can begin.”

  Constance nodded at the man almost imperceptibly, but Wiggins caught it. “Sorry, gents,” he said and winked at her. “Doing a bit of the old recon.”

  “Really,” H2O said as he strode to the table. “I’m sure that’s most interesting.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Bywater,” Wiggins said.

  Bywater stopped for a moment, surprised.

  “How do you know his name?” Cumming asked angrily.

  “What else?” Constance said with glee.

  “I’m not used to dealing with Yankees, though I reckon you’s English-born. Newspaperman? Drinker.”

  “How dare you!” Cumming said.

  “That’s a compliment. Good nerves. Sea lover. Enough?” He looked at Constance, who nodded in reply.

  Bywater sat down. He looked hard at Wiggins, glanced at Constance, and then at Kell.

  “Neat tricks,” he said. “Let me know how it’s done sometime.”

  “The situation is this.” Cumming had been itching to start. He glared at Bywater, who had half turned to include Wiggins in the conversation. “Two of my agents, Counterscarp and Bonfire—”

  “Oh, there’s no need for that,” Kell said. “We all know the two men you speak of are called Brandon and Trench. Calling them by any other name will only confuse us.”

  Cumming pouted. “Very well. Earlier this summer, Brandon and Trench sailed to Holland. Under the cover of a walking tour of the northern German, Dutch, and Danish coasts they have been trying to collect information on German naval positions. They are amateurs, and although Royal Marines, are not on the active service list at present.”

  “Are they trained?” Bywater asked.

  “Barely,” Kell said.

  “Madness,” Bywater muttered.

  “Plucky amateurs!” Constance exclaimed from the settee. “It’s as if they read that Childers novel, The Riddle of the Sands, and thought they’d join in the fun.”

  Cumming coughed into his fist. “Yes, well, I wouldn’t like to, you know—inspiration comes from many sources.”

  Constance stifled a cry of triumph.

  “Can’t you control your wife, Kell?” Cumming rasped under his breath.

  “No,” Kell said.

  “Let’s keep on point, shall we? I’m due back in Berlin and then Dresden posthaste. I do have a job, even if the rest of your mob is amateur.” Bywater cast a glance at Wiggins.

  Cumming went on. “They have traveled along the coast from Holland, gathering data—sketches of fortifications, maps, notes, and the like. I was to reach them at Thomas Cook’s in Hamburg and they were to post updates back to me. The updates have stopped.”

  “What have they been doing with their reports?” Kell said.

  “Posting them to me, at an address in Holland.”

  “No misdirection, no secondary address?”

  Cumming shook his head.

  “We told you,” Wiggins said, appalled. “A cutout address in the same country, a handwritten letter with the treasure.” He shook his head.

  Bywater raised an eyebrow. “Good idea,” he acknowledged. “But we don’t know they’re blown yet.”

  “How fly are the coppers?” Wiggins asked. “Would they put the gen back in the post, keep us off the scent?”

  Bywater nodded thoughtfully. “Crafty. Local police, no chance. But some of the naval intelligence chaps might just be up to that—although it is very un-German.”

  “Been nabbed then?”

  “If so, it must be very recent. They’d surely publicize it otherwise.”

  “What will happen to them if they are arrested?” Constance asked.

  “Hanged!” Cumming butted in, eager to break up the conversation between Wiggins and Bywater, who’d clearly reached some kind of understanding.

  Bywater waved his cigarette vaguely in Cumming’s direction. “I’m not so sure. The fact that they are serving army officers could save them. Honor, et cetera. I doubt if I or”—he nodded at Wiggins—“your man here would be so lucky. As civilians, we’d be branded spies. Geheimagenten.”

  “Much more importantly,” Cumming bellowed, “His Majesty’s Government, His Majesty himself, would be severely embarrassed were anyone to be arrested. We must spare the new King this, in his months of mourning.”

  Wiggins puffed out his cheeks, ready for the smart reply—like swinging at the end of a German rope was a price worth paying to save the King’s blushes. He was about to say this, when he
caught Constance’s raised eyebrow. At least the room wasn’t full of idiots.

  He’d known men in the army, most of the officers in fact, who’d happily lay down their lives just to make sure the colonel-in-chief of the regiment (normally some syphilitic rake of a minor royal) could hold his head up high at the next Aldershot parade.

  Kell tapped the table. “Let’s get back to the point, Cumming. What were you planning to do by coming here, and how can we help?”

  “If you must know, Kelly—Kell—I didn’t expect you to come quite so quickly and be, er, so well equipped.” He looked up at Wiggins slightly hopelessly, as if he wanted to upbraid the man for being so low-born but didn’t quite have it in him. “If Brandon and Trench are on schedule, they should be in Emden any day now, primarily with the aim of reconnoitering the naval base at Borkum.”

  “Borkum? It’s as tight as a drum,” Bywater said. “These blundering amateurs could ruin everything. I supplied you with what I could.”

  “It wasn’t enough,” Cumming said. “Brandon and Trench are to make photographs, full sketches, dimensions, and, if possible, the signals.”

  “Not a hope, old man,” Bywater muttered. “About the signals book anyway.”

  “They are going to do their British best,” Cumming huffed. “We are the greatest nation the world has ever known, and these men will represent us accordingly.”

  “And what were you going to do?” Constance asked from the settee.

  Cumming ignored her, until Kell pushed him. “That is rather the point. What are you planning to do?”

  “Look here, Kell, this really should be a conversation between us three here. Your wife, I accept, is good cover. But surely Agent W is for the rough and tumble. We three should plan—we three are in it.”

  “I rather think we’re all in it,” Bywater drawled. “Thanks to you.”

  After a moment’s silence, Cumming went on. “Very well. I hope they are still in Emden. I plan to intercept them there, to relieve them of any of the important documents they have on them—”

  “If they ain’t been caught already,” Wiggins interjected.

  Cumming ignored the interruption. “And thence order them to abandon the scheme. To sail home, while I take the train back to Holland.”

  A long silence greeted this. Eventually, Bywater walked to the window and pulled out a smoke. Kell glanced at Wiggins, then back to Cumming.

  “Do you think you are up to it?” Kell said at last.

  “Ain’t being funny,” Wiggins added, “but you stick out like a vicar in an whorehou—”

  “He means,” Kell said quickly, “that you rather look like a British officer.”

  “And some!”

  “I have a false beard.”

  Wiggins would have laughed, if it weren’t so serious. It was all right for Kell and Cumming, they’d be treated like officers and gentlemen. But if Bywater was right—and judging by the cut of the man, Wiggins guessed he was usually right—then it was the two of them liable for the chop if things went south.

  He liked pressmen, generally. They were easy with the drink, easy with their paper’s money, and not too bothered about those in authority. They weren’t too bothered about the truth neither, but at least they were honest about that. And not much else, except a deadline. But then, trust was overrated. What you needed to depend on in a person was that they’d behave according to their lights.

  “I wonder if that’s wise,” Kell said to Cumming. “It’s probable you’re already being watched.”

  “We’re all being watched,” Constance said lightly.

  They all stared at her, even the dismissive Cumming. She turned the page of a book on her lap, unconcerned.

  “What was that, dear?”

  “The porter who took our bags at the station earlier today. I saw him this evening in the hotel lobby. Dressed very well-to-do.”

  “Coincidence?” Kell asked.

  “Not a chance, I’m afraid,” Bywater said. “Porters’ wages wouldn’t get you through the door here, let alone pukka duds.” He tapped out a cigarette and idly offered one to Wiggins, who declined. Still, Wiggins thought, you’re the first toff I know that’s ever offered. He tipped his head.

  “All this means,” Cumming said, “is that you, the Kells, and your man here are being watched. I am still in the clear.”

  “After visiting this hotel room?” Kell said. “No, Mrs. Kell is right. We’re all under the magnifying glass now.”

  Constance nodded to herself as Kell was speaking. Wiggins noted the jut of her shoulders, though, away from her husband; she didn’t meet his eye, even when he referred to her as Mrs. Kell.

  All was not right in the house of Kell. Ever since he’d given Constance a few tips—how to spot and avoid a tail, most notably—he’d been troubled by the act. It seemed like treachery; for all Constance claimed she wasn’t doing the dirty, Wiggins wasn’t so sure. He could never quite read women, but she held something secret in her heart, from her husband and possibly even from herself. He closed his eyes as Kell chattered on, persuading Cumming to reconsider, and thought of the last woman he’d misread.

  “You disagree, Agent W?” Bywater said.

  “Sorry, miles away.”

  “Lager can do that to a man,” Bywater replied and turned to look out the window once more.

  Kell ignored them both. “Bywater—or whatever your name is—you seriously think that Mrs. Kell and I may be above suspicion?”

  “Almost certainly. They would have had you followed as a matter of course, given your military connection. But the fact that Mrs. Kell is here too is—how shall I put it?—perfect,” he said, smiling at her.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “For the Germans simply would not believe, not in a thousand years, that a British officer and gentleman such as yourself would ever bring a woman—his wife indeed—on any kind of a mission, let alone a clandestine one.”

  Constance’s smile faded.

  “They wouldn’t think you had it in you, Captain Kell, if I’m totally honest. They wouldn’t think you such a brute.”

  “So you are congratulating my husband on his dishonor, are you, Mr. Bywater?”

  “It is a stroke of genius, Mrs. Kell. As long as you are by his side, Captain Kell is above suspicion.”

  “That don’t follow for you, though, does it?” Wiggins said. “Nor him, neither.” He nudged his head at Cumming.

  “No, it does not. Not now we’ve met.”

  “We carry on,” Wiggins said, thinking fast. He pointed at Cumming. “You’s got to run the dodge. Out westward, look like you’re scouting, but fast train out of here.” To Bywater he said, “You, back to Berlin.”

  “But I am here to help,” Bywater said.

  “And you can. Get back to Berlin. Again, act fly, but turn out true. You’s got a job, ain’t ya? Go back to it.”

  Kell nodded slowly. “That’s exactly what I was thinking. Only rather more clearly. We cannot risk Bywater, not now.”

  The implication was clear: Bywater was twice the man, and certainly many times the agent, that either Bernie or Viv was. If push came to shove, rather the buffoons in chokey than anyone with a brain and legs.

  “They might tail you both, but odds are, if yous are right”—he looked at Bywater—“they won’t take too much trouble over the Kells on their ’ols.”

  Bywater considered for a moment. “It’s the only way,” he said at last. “It will give you a chance to get there and take them out of the field. As for cover, Emden and Borkum have some decent birdwatching.”

  “Praise be,” Constance said.

  “Quite, but if you take the kit it will help.”

  “I had always assumed . . .” Constance went on. She seemed to be the only one enjoying herself, “. . . that spying was a matter of infiltration. The poor fellow in Woolwich, for example. But now I see we are playing a quite different game. We are about to perform an exfiltration.”

  “Tommy rot,” Cumming
muttered.

  “Perhaps we should give it a code word?” She twinkled. “An exfil?”

  Kell looked at her, his expression difficult to read. “I hope we never have to do one again,” he said. “Whatever it’s called.”

  “If you’re too shy, why don’t I do it alone?” Constance said. “It seems I have the best cover of all.”

  Wiggins stifled a laugh. Cumming shot up out of his chair. He took a deep breath, then nodded at Kell and Bywater. “Gentlemen, I really should retire. It is late, and I must prepare for the morrow. Mrs. Kell.” He bowed vaguely in her direction, glanced at Wiggins, then went to the door.

  The others muttered their good nights. Wiggins said nothing.

  With his hand on the doorknob, Cumming turned back to the room. “Captain Kell, I must say the thought, the very idea of a woman going alone on such a mission is, well, it is outrageous. Indeed, if you proceed with such a venture I might have to inform our masters back in London. I am sure no one in Whitehall would approve, and it might very well end your involvement in the Service. It is shocking.”

  Before Kell could protest, Constance stood up and replied for herself. “Please accept my apologies, sir. It was my idea of a silly joke. For one thing, Brandon and Trench are strangers, so why would they follow me?”

  “I’d wager two red-blooded Royal Marines would follow you anywhere, Mrs. Kell,” Bywater said under his breath.

  “Not if you knew Bernie and Viv,” Wiggins muttered in reply.

  Constance went on. “In any case, I am quite aware that a woman such as myself traveling alone in northern Germany is far more likely to cause comment and consternation than even an army of English gentlemen and officers, however eccentrically dressed.”

  “Madam.” Cumming bowed. “Forgive me. I am not in the mood for levity. Kell, we will meet at breakfast to enact your plan? Very good.”

  The old man pulled open the door stiffly and limped out into the dim corridor. Kell called after him, “Yes, thank you, Cunningham. Sleep well.”

  A silence fell on the room, Wiggins and Bywater still standing, Constance back on the settee, and Kell at the table, hands spread wide.