by Winona Kent
“Primitive Metropolis,” his father judged, putting away his reading glasses, and considering the padded grey vinyl chairs, the striped yellow and grey wallpaper, the art nouveau chrome light fixtures, “with subtle undertones of Bride of Frankenstein.” He put his hand over the coffee cup as a spotty youth in a stained waiters’ jacket appeared with an aluminum teapot in one hand, and a matching coffee urn in the other. “I’ve taken the liberty of ordering you lunch.”
“Thanks.”
His youngest offspring had turned, Evan mused, into a rather pleasant-looking young man. Interesting blue eyes, netted out of the genetic fishing pool by way of some ancient recessive patriarch nobody’d ever been able to recall to any degree of accuracy. Lashes that were red-flecked and thick, and hair that had always been fair, without any hint of the copper that had infiltrated down to Ian.
He was wearing faded jeans and a bright blue cotton t-shirt, and he’d slung a small canvas knapsack over the back of his chair.
Evan enjoyed Robin’s company and it was true—he had been taken by surprise. Such gestures from his youngest son had, in the past, been rare.
“Did you have any trouble getting the time off work?”
“I probably won’t have a job when I get back, but no,” Robin said, as two plates of fast-fried fish sticks and chips and a generous helping of boiled peas arrived, along with a bottle of salad cream and a plastic ketchup container in the shape of an overly-ripe tomato. “Do you actually eat this stuff over here?”
“I generally do my utmost to avoid it, in fact.”
Robin gave his father a look, and heaped the peas onto his plate with a spoon. He gave one of the fish sticks an experimental poke with his fork.
“And while I’m at it,” he said, as his father transferred the large helping of peas onto a nearby saucer and covered them, mercifully, with a paper napkin, “would it be too presumptuous of me to inquire why you require my presence in London on such short notice?”
Rupert held the stage door of the Fitzroy Theatre open for his superior, then followed Victor Barnfather in, past the porter, and down.
Buried beneath the theatre was a sub-basement, concrete and brick, wires and pipes. Underneath the sub-basement lay the underpinnings, ancient foundations embedded in the various layers of sand, gravel and clay common to London’s West End. The staircase here reverted to steep, hewn stone; the brick ceiling was low and uneven, the atmosphere musty, damp and dark. Rupert had brought a torch, but it was unnecessary. A strand of temporary service lights had been strung along a wire to show them the way.
“All right, sir?” Rupert checked.
“So far,” Victor answered, testily. He disliked closed-in places. It was a weakness that had been duly noted on his personnel file, one of those things that had branded him a low-grade risk very early on in his career, an agent who possessed a vulnerability that could, under certain rare circumstances, render him a target.
He continued the descent, slowly, suppressing the panic, until he reached the bottom, and a vault, the dimensions of which he estimated as some 70 feet long and 40 feet wide. A row of half a dozen stone pillars divided the cavern in two, supporting an ecclesiastically-arched ceiling which rose at least 20 feet above the terracotta floor.
At the far end of this grotto, a number of the ancient bricks had been levered up and stacked neatly against the wall. Beside the brickpile was a small mountain of wet gravel. Perching on the ledge of bricks was a wizened little man with greying hair and a black umbrella.
“Good afternoon,” he said, getting up, extending his hand. “Jeremy Litchfield, Thames Water Authority.”
“Victor Barnfather, MI5. And this is Rupert Chadwick.”
“How do you do?” Rupert said. He peered into the excavation. “What is it?”
“A water pipe with a hole in it,” the little man replied.
“A sewer?”
“Bit of a hybrid, really—the Cranbourne. Sewer, river, not quite one or the other. The general feeling is that it was an illegal sewer put in by Richard Frith when he was building Soho in the late 1600s. It would have taken waste water away to an ancient drain around Seven Dials. Roundabout the end of the last century it was used to supply the Hippodrome for its water shows. It empties into the Thames at Aldwych.”
“Tell me what happened to the pipe,” Victor prompted, impatiently.
“For all intents and purposes, it collapsed. And with a rather loud bang, too. The cellar was flooded: you can see the high water mark on the walls.”
“What would have caused the noise? The pipe itself?”
“You arrive at your own conclusions,” said Jeremy Litchfield. “We’ve diverted the water so you can observe the actual damage. The pipe’s in a number of pieces, as you can see. Shattered, I think, would be an appropriate description. Quite disintegrated. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it had been smashed with a large, blunt object. But, of course, it wasn’t: the pipe’s buried, and totally inaccessible.”
Rupert bent over to study the hole. In the distance, there was a faint grumble. He jumped to his feet, alarmed, as the grumble grew into a thundering roar beneath his feet, too loud for a river torrent, shaking the bricks, the masonry, sending dust sifting down from the ceiling and dislodging loose stones from the mound of wet gravel.
“Never fear,” the little man chuckled. “It’s only the Northern Line.” He tapped the floor with the tip of his furled umbrella. “We’re right on top of their southbound tunnel. Amazing what comes to light when you go meddling beneath the streets, isn’t it?”
Dark and dripping, buried under the arches off Tooley Street and crossed with the wandering souls of both the morbidly curious, and the outrageously amused, the London Dungeon oozed atmosphere. Perhaps, Nora thought, as she picked her way among the instruments of torture, the lurid tales and the graphic tableaux replete with sound effects and wet blood, some of its more frequent visitors might even have been secretly stimulated.
The establishment was doing a roaring tourist trade, at any rate. The incipient darkness under the high brick vaults thoroughly lent itself to clandestine meetings of the most notorious variety.
Casually, she looked about for the gentleman who had rung her. I am older, he had said. I am grey-haired.
There was indeed such a fellow—with thick grey eyebrows and a receding hairline, and a rather eager interest in a display devoted to the goring of a grimacing soldier by a fur-clad zealot wielding a long wooden spear.
“Charming, I must say,” Nora remarked.
The gentleman turned. “But of such historical interest.”
“You are Mr. Lügner, I take it?”
“And you are Frau Darrow,” he replied. “Lügner is not, you must understand, my true name—but true names in my occupation are at times such a dangerous liability.”
“What is it you wanted to show me?” Nora inquired.
The German withdrew from his green and white Harrod’s bag some photocopied pages of a handwritten text.
“What is this?”
“It is a journal—or rather, some pages from a journal, some copies I have had made. So, you see—” And he stood beside Nora as she read what was written there, slowly, turning the pages.
“Whose diary is this?” she demanded, when she had reached the end.
“It belonged,” said Lügner, “to a young gentleman who was, some 25 years ago, an employee of the British intelligence community. His name was Trevor Jackson.”
Nora did not say anything.
“The young man was driven,” Lügner continued, “so it seems, to suicide. But he committed his thoughts to paper—here, in this journal, as you see.”
“How did you get it?”
“How does anybody come to possess such hidden treasures? It must be luck, I think…and perhaps some small acts of piracy. It is best not to ask such things of me, Frau Darrow. I will not tell you, in any case.” He paused. “It is compelling reading…is it not? Here you see the ship, the Cilla Rose—and her true pur
pose, as ordered by the Soviet KGB. And here…you see Simon Darrow—who escapes the ship before it is sent to the bottom. And here, also—ah, yes…here you are, Frau Darrow—in conversation with the young man, Trevor Jackson—your very words, are they not?”
“How much,” Nora countered, “do you want for this?”
“Dear lady…I am a servant of the market driven economy. The journal has only just become available…and I confess—I know of one other who has expressed an interest in obtaining it—”
“Who?” Nora demanded.
“A certain agent of the Canadian intelligence—”
“Harris,” she said, with contempt. “How much, Mr. Lügner?”
“Good lady,” the German replied, “for this…the bidding begins at 10,000 pounds.”
“The bidding!” Nora laughed, derisively. “You don’t mean to say you’re auctioning it off!”
“But that is exactly what I mean, yes. And I shall extend to you the same courtesy I have shown to Herr Harris…please—to provide me with your bid in a sealed envelope—bank notes only—any currency which is convenient to you…”
“When?”
“We shall say next Wednesday, at four o’clock in the afternoon…here.”
He presented her with a hand-drawn map of the village of Quidhampton, near Salisbury, a bold red X marking the rendezvous point.
“And Harris will be there as well?”
“I am certain of it, yes.”
“If I should fail to appear—what then?”
“Then I shall presume the diary no longer interests you,” Lügner said, simply. He took Nora’s hand, and kissed it. “Auf Wiedersehen, Frau Darrow. Until next week.”
The day had begun badly: 45 minutes that morning stuck between Baker Street and Bond Street in the tube, then Maureen giving her the once-over for daring to be late. It was all right for Maureen. She had a view from the windows of her train.
Her mood foul, Sara Jane Woodford sat down and dragged out the itinerary she’d begun yesterday, a zigzagging mystery tour across Europe and Asia that was giving her ample opportunity to apply all of the specialized knowledge she’d picked up at college.
Out of the corner of her eye she caught old Mr. Tidman from the alleyway, his cardigan tied together with a length of old rope, his fingers stained with nicotine, his long, straggly hair the colour of the great killer fogs of the 1950’s and 60’s: peasoup yellow. He was staring in the window, the sum total of his worldly possessions bundled into a geriatric pram.
She wondered if he was going to come in. He had last time, to ask about ships.
“Thinking of a cruise?” Maureen had inquired, rudely, but Sara had gone into the back and had rummaged around in the boxes and had dug out three old brochures from P&O, and Mr. Tidman had gone away happy.
No…not this time. His curiosity satiated, he pushed off, leaning on the handle of his pram to spare the bunions inside his boots.
“Sod!”
Maureen was sitting in front of the computer.
“You bastard!” she said, hitting it.
PMS, Sara thought, unkindly, putting down her pen. Things not going well with the married architect in Esher. “Can I help you?” she inquired, politely.
“It’s gone down. The bloody thing’s gone down in the middle of my reservation. I hadn’t even closed the file. I’ll lose those rotten seats now. That’s all I need last thing on a Friday afternoon.”
“It’s all I need,” Sara said. “I’ve got a client coming in at four for his tickets to New York and then I’m off early to catch that train to Bournemouth.” She got up. “Have you still got your cursor?”
“I’ll bloody well give somebody cursors,” Maureen muttered. “No. It’s gone absolutely blank. Dead.”
She hurled a stack of reservation cards at the computer in disgust.
“Your turn to ring the Help Desk,” she said. “I’ve got to get those two seats back.”
She was already dialling British Airways’ agency line.
Wearily, Sara looked up the number in her card file and punched the buttons on her telephone. A downed computer meant being thrown back to the dark ages: it took twice as long to get anything done.
“I wonder how everyone managed before the dawn of automation,” she said. The Help Desk was busy. Typical. She put the recording on hold, and went into the back and unlocked the safe and dragged out the box that held the two- and four-stage manual ticket stock. She reseated herself at the spare desk in the rear, picked up the phone again, and, jamming the receiver under her chin, wrote out two tickets, laboriously, pressing down hard to go through all the carbon copies. She tore off the auditor’s coupons and the agency copies and stuffed what was left into a pair of paper wallets with Young and Dailey’s blue and white crest printed on the front.
The old pre-computer itinerary pads were kept in a drawer. Sara rolled a page into the dusty manual typewriter that was kept under a stack of brochures for just such emergencies.
WE RECOMMEND YOU RECONFIRM YOUR FLIGHT AT LEAST THREE DAYS PRIOR TO TRAVEL. U.S. CUSTOMS AND IMMIGRATION UPON ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK. HAVE A PLEASANT JOURNEY AND THANK YOU FOR BOOKING WITH YOUNG AND DAILEY.
She prepared an invoice, wrapped one copy around the tickets and itinerary, stapled the auditor’s coupons to the second and tossed the third into a box for their files.
“Woodford!” Maureen shouted, from the front. “Personal caller on the other line for you!”
“Hang on,” Sara muttered, bad-temperedly, just as the Agency Automation girl picked up her end and inquired if she could be of help. “No, not you, sorry. Young and Dailey, Romilly Square. Is everyone down this afternoon, or is it just our rotten luck again?”
Chapter Fourteen
Saturday, 31 August 1991
Victor Barnfather descended the short flight of steps that led from King Charles Street to the underground cavern that represented the sheltered haven of Winston Churchill and his governing wartime cabinet. He paid his admission, and picked up a guide and a portable cassette player and headsets, and entered the foyer, stopping for a few moments to acclimatize himself. It wasn’t as bad as he had expected: the restoration of the facility had lent it an aspect of spaciousness, and his feelings of claustrophobia were only fleeting. As long as he knew the way out—and he did—he had the floor plan in his hand—he would be all right.
He rounded the corner and entered the first viewing area, the room used by the War Cabinet for its meetings, and stopped briefly to examine the wooden hatchway which led to the building’s sub-basement, and where, according to the guide, many War Room staffers had slept in dismal conditions during the worst periods of bombing.
Continuing his tour, he passed the door to the former Mess Room—now a shop stocked with Blitz memorabilia, teaching kits, mugs, posters and keychains—and turned another corner, and found himself at the northern end of the main basement corridor.
The passageway was deserted. Victor stopped to look at a wooden holder containing indicator boards that had been used to inform those below about the weather above. During air raids, windy had been a standing joke.
On the opposite side of the corridor was an office allocated to Churchill’s Private Principal Secretary and, a little further along, the Transatlantic Telephone Room, from which Churchill had conversed with Roosevelt via a scrambler installed in the basement of Selfridges.
Victor checked his watch. Just beyond the viewing window was the original outer door to the room, disguised as the entrance to a toilet, its special lock indicating “Vacant” or “Engaged”, as the situation warranted. Jutting out into the corridor at this point was a blast wall, put up to diffuse the effects of the shock wave from an exploding bomb. It was here that he had been instructed to stop and so, hands clasped behind his back, he waited.
His counterpart at the Soviet Embassy was not long in arriving.
“Leonid. Thank you for taking the time.”
“Victor,” the Russian answered, cheerfully, clapping
him on the back. “Good to see you. Walk with me a little, yes?”
They continued the tour together, swinging around to enter the glassed-in corridor that showcased the War Rooms’ offices and sleeping quarters.
“How are things with you, Victor?”
“We’ve put an advert in the paper, Leonid. Eight situations vacant, starting salary of ₤15,929 plus ₤1,750 London weighting. Higher Intelligence Officers—principally concerned with the collation, analysis, assessment and dissemination of information on the composition, organization, doctrine, activities and capabilities of the armed forces and of certain foreign countries together with associated politico-military studies.”
“Good God,” Leonid laughed. “You need Enigma machine just to translate.”
“And how goes it with you?” Victor inquired, carefully.
“Worrying times in Moscow,” the Russian said, shaking his head. “This time next week, I think there will be no more Communist Party. This time next year, no more Soviet Union. What the future will bring, nobody knows. As for me,” he shrugged, “I will survive. Gorbachev, Yeltsin…makes no difference. I dance for whatever master plays the music.”
He paused, to ascertain the corridor was empty.
“What is it, Victor, I can help you with?”
“I’ve heard that a certain piece of writing is being offered for sale—a journal that once belonged to someone by the name of Trevor Jackson.”
“I have heard this, too, Victor, yes.”
“Who is he, this Jackson?”
The Russian shrugged. “Minor player, 1960s. One of yours, spied for us. Hanged himself, so I am told. Was run by Nora Maynard.”
Victor didn’t say anything for a moment. “Ought I to be concerned?”
“Journal contains information, I am told—some things to do with Jackson…some things to do with the woman. Could be dangerous, I suppose, if placed in the wrong hands.”
“Who is the vendor?”
“I do not know him, Victor. A German. His name is Lügner.”
“And the interested party…?”
