by Iain Pears
I took an omnibus to my destination; a sign on the front said it was going to the Gare de l’Est and I believed it, so at least I managed a short slumber in the twenty-five minutes it took to get there. This happy chance, however, meant that I arrived an hour early, and there was nothing to do except tramp the streets to try and keep warm, and sit next to the brazier in the empty waiting room as I grew more and more aware of how empty my stomach was. I was cold, hungry, bored and perplexed all at the same time and still I did not query what I was doing. Not once did I shake myself awake and consider heading straight for the bank and a normal day’s work.
I did not follow instructions completely though; rather than waiting in the railway buffet, I positioned myself in a discreet place outside, as I somehow felt it would be subservient to be there first. I wished Lefevre to arrive and worry that I was not going to come, that he had failed to sway me. Then I would go in and greet him.
Alas, he did not turn up either. Slowly more people were filling the station, from trains arriving and for others leaving. I watched every single person who went into the buffet, and as there was only one entrance there was no chance of missing anyone. I was feeling ill. For the first time the full absurdity of the situation swept over me. I was working in a bank, for heaven’s sake. What on earth was I doing here? I would have some coffee and some bread, then resume a normal life. Enough of this nonsense. It was going to be hard enough already to explain myself.
I stood at the counter waiting, next to a gentleman similarly consuming a rapid cup of coffee. We ignored each other, as total strangers do, until he had finished and paid.
“Come along then,” he said abruptly. “Or we’ll miss the train. Do you have any luggage?”
I turned to stare at him. A well-dressed man, wearing an expensive cravat and shiny top hat, immaculately brushed shoes, and a heavy grey overcoat. He bowed his head slightly in greeting as I looked. Handsome, clean shaven, about fifty years of age but with an air of strength about him. And a thin scar on his cheek. Despite his years, no one would ever consider him to be old. A faint air of eau-de-cologne hung around him as it does those who spend time and money on their appearance.
“Do you mean to say you didn’t recognise me?”
It was Lefevre, now as elegant as he was scruffy before, as well manicured as he had been unshaven, as bourgeois as he had been plebeian. Only the eyes, pale and questing, and the scar seemed to remain from the person I had encountered the previous evening.
I shook my head. “Oh, my Lord,” he said quietly. “This is going to be hard work.”
And without any further comment, he turned and walked out onto the station forecourt. I followed, as I supposed I was meant to, getting angrier by the minute. I walked up behind him and grabbed him by the arm. He shook it off and murmured, “Not here, you idiot!” and continued walking onto platform 3, where a train stood, hissing away. Twirling his cane in a nonchalant fashion, he walked up to the first-class carriages and got in. I followed him into an empty compartment and waited while he went out to discuss his baggage with a porter. Then he came back in, shut the door, pulled down the blinds and sat opposite me.
“Don’t be so angry,” he said, reverting to English. “You look as though you are about to explode.”
“For two pins I would get straight off this train and go to work,” I said. “You are behaving in a most uncivil fashion and… and…” I knew how childish I sounded even before I had got a few words out.
“So have a good cry,” Lefevre said, equably but unsympathetically. “I’m no more happy about your presence than you are, I assure you. But it seems that we must work together.”
“Doing what, for heaven’s sake?” I cried. “Just tell me what I am doing here, and why?”
“Do keep your voice down, please,” he said wearily.
There was a sudden bustle on the station, and whistles. The train gave a shudder and, in a cloud of steam and with an abominable squeaking, it lurched forward a few inches, then a few inches more. We were under way—although where to I did not know.
Lefevre ignored me as the train drew out of the dingy, smoky station and into the light of morning. “I love trains,” he said. “I always feel safe on them. I’ve never understood people who find them frightening or dangerous.”
He fell silent, watching the streets of Paris pass slowly by until we came to the outlying fortifications and into the countryside beyond. Then he gave a slight sigh, and turned his attention to me.
“You are feeling indignant and angry, is that it?”
I nodded. “Wouldn’t you be, in my situation?”
“No. At your age I had been fighting in a war for nearly two years. However, as you want all of these unpleasant emotions dissipated, and I need you to be calm and able to concentrate for the next few weeks—”
“The next few weeks?” I interrupted in what I fear was a squeak of alarm.
“Do try and keep quiet for a while,” he said. “I will explain as best I can. Then you must decide on your course of action. When we arrive at our destination you can choose either to get on the next train back to Paris, or you can stay with me. Mr. Wilkinson evidently desires that you choose the latter option. From your performance so far I would prefer the former.
“To begin at the beginning. You have been chosen for special qualities which have not yet manifested themselves to me to become what used to be called an intelligencer, and is now rather vulgarly called a spy. Britain is alone in the world, much envied and resented for her wealth and the vastness of her Empire. Many wish to tear her down. She must be self-reliant and can count no one as her friend. She must be aware of everything, and able to sow discord amongst her enemies. That, in brief, is to be your job.”
I stared at him. Surely this was some sort of bad joke?
“Silence, at last,” he continued. “You are learning. If Mr. Wilkinson decides the national interest is best served by continental peace, you will endeavour—in your small but allotted way—to accomplish it. If he suddenly changes his mind and decides a war is necessary, you will try to set neighbour against neighbour. And above all you will try to discover who is thinking what and when.”
“Me?”
“Good question. A very good question. You are, obviously, unsuited. But perhaps you have some qualities that might make you useful.”
“And those are?”
“Money.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Money,” he said wearily, looking out of the window as though he was seeing a golden age going by. “All the world is now convertible to money. Power, influence, peace and war. It used to be that the sole determinant was the number of men you could march out to meet your enemies. Now more depends on the convertibility of your currency, its reputation among the bankers. That is something I do not know and you do.”
He smiled, but it was not a happy smile. “The world changed, in America, some thirty years ago. I suppose we should have seen it coming, but we did not. It was not won or lost by bravery, or skill or numbers of men, but by factories and gold. It was a war of industry against farmers, companies against cavaliers. The losers had fewer resources, less ability to produce the material of war. And those we thought our friends abandoned us for the sake of trade with the richer side.”
“We?”
He ignored the question. “And what was pioneered there will be even more strongly seen here, next time.”
“You think there will be a war here?”
“I am sure of it. There must be. Because you think that it will be as before and so will not care to prevent it. It will not be armies fighting next time, but economies. Vaults of gold in perpetual contest until all are exhausted. The countries of Europe will fight until they cannot afford to fight anymore.”
“I think many in the City already worry about that.” “But they will be outnumbered by those who will make money from the business. The Vickers, the Krupps and the Schneiders. Men like John Stone and his weaponry. The bankers wh
o provide the money for them, the investors who get their 15 per cent dividends. War and peace will be decided by the movement of capital.”
“And how does this involve me?”
“You understand that world; I do not. I do not want to.”
“You say ’our’ and ’we’ and refer to two different countries.”
He nodded. “I am a man without a country. Not French, not British, not even American, although once I was. I work for hire and give good service.”
I considered this. I was not sure I liked this man who called himself Lefevre, and I certainly did not trust him, but he had a presence which could not be lightly ignored. He could command, and it was comfortable to follow him. But I was very far from certain it was wise.
“And if someone offered more?”
“Then I would consider the offer. Men without homes must look after themselves, for they cannot surrender to the comforts of patriotism. I did that once, and will not repeat the mistake. But I am no mercenary. Part of good service is loyalty. And my masters—your masters as well, it now seems—pay me.”
I leaned back in my seat and, like him, watched the landscape outside the window pass by. The train was going fast now, and the city had long since been left behind. We were in the open countryside, heading east—to Metz, so the sign in the station had said.
But if Lefevre saw worlds disappearing, I perceived a different analogy as I headed unstoppingly into the unknown. Why had I so easily acquiesced in his instructions? It was simple; I was bored, and wanted diversion. I even was prepared to risk dismissal from a job which I found wearisome. Had I really been placed on this earth to arrange discounts for South American railway lines? Was my mark on humanity to be the 3⅛ per cent coupon on Leeds Water Works debenture stock? I had never dreamed of excitement as a young boy; unlike my comrades, my imagination was not full of dreams of marching at the head of (utterly devoted) men into a dangerous battle, emerging victorious through my courage and skill. But I had dreamed of something, and it is the more difficult to put aside dreams which are unformed, for they can never be exposed as mere childishness.
Lefevre, in his squalid accommodation, with his ease amongst the rascals and rogues, his metamorphosis into a gentleman seemingly at will, touched a chord in me. Do not misunderstand. I was not a reckless man, and never have been. No one, I believe, brought up in the particular circumstances of my family would ever be so foolish as to take risks unnecessarily. I knew, and from an early age, how fragile is the net which prevents the respectable from falling into the abyss. The onset of illness, a misfortune in the markets, an unfortunate accident, a foolish mistake, and all can unravel. Even though my employers paid me well enough I never spent money wildly, and nurtured my pile with care and caution. I could easily foresee a time when it might be needed.
I was, accordingly, all the more fascinated by a man like Lefevre who, whatever his natural desire to stay alive, clearly approached life in a very different fashion. Not for him the caution of respectability, the fear of poverty or the desire for comfort. He was like a member of a different species, although whether superior or inferior to mine I could not tell. My sensible self told me that my way was the more responsible, that I was fitted for the age and environment in which I lived. But part of me was drawn to the irresponsibility, the recklessness of Lefevre’s way. It was a contradiction in my being and, it seemed, one which Henry Wilkinson had both spotted and decided to exploit. A man more comfortable with his choices would never have been on that train.
An odd thing, memory. I remember almost every moment of that interminable train ride—the flat countryside, the stops to pick up and set down passengers, the fields of vines and crops passing by, the smell of the carriage, the lunch in the dining car, the reluctant conversation. What followed thereafter can only be recalled with an effort. It is not that I have forgotten, but that I think of it in abstract, while my memory of the journey takes me back to that carriage as if I was still there.
And yet what passed after we left the train was far more interesting, in the usual way of reckoning. Lefevre—I will continue to call him so until a more appropriate moment—began to teach me the business of self-preservation in a far more real sense. And if I never mastered all his skills, it was because never in my wildest dreams and nightmares did I ever imagine I might need them. He took me to Nancy, then a frontier town very much closer to the German border than it wished to be. Also, as he said, a good starting point for all that we had to do.
The frontier was not that closely guarded, but the area on both sides of the border was stiff with soldiers, as it was generally anticipated that the next round of the eternal conflict between France and Germany would begin there. But when? How? Would it be a considered policy, decided on high by one side or the other, or would it be an accident, a few words spoken in haste, a riposte, fisticuffs, a few shots—and then whole armies on the march, the generals and politicians trailing behind, desperately trying to control a situation that had run on before them.
“People make the mistake of assuming far too many things about armies,” Lefevre told me one evening. “They assume, for a start, that generals know what they are doing and know what is going on. They assume that orders pass down from top to bottom in a smooth and regulated fashion. And above all they assume that wars start only when people decide to start them.”
“You are going to tell me that is not the case?”
“Wars begin when they are ready, when humanity needs a blood letting. Kings and politicians and generals have little say in it. You can feel it in the air when one is brewing. There is a tension and nervousness on the face of the least soldier. They can smell it coming in a way politicians cannot. The desire to hurt and destroy spreads over a region and over the troops. And then the generals can only hope to have the vaguest notion of what they are doing.”
“So what is the point of all this intelligencing?”
“To most people—those who even admit a man like myself exists—I am as you saw me the other night in Paris. Little better than a crook, a thief and maybe worse. In fact, very much worse. You are invited to become scum, the loathed of society. Only by disguising what you are will you maintain a respectable place in society. But you will also probe your way into the soul of this terrible continent. Think of the doctor. You do not go along to him and say, I am going to die next Tuesday, and hope he can do something about it. No; you present yourself, feeling a touch off-colour. And he looks at you, checks your heartbeat, takes your blood pressure, asks questions about your sleeping and your appetite. Do you have trouble climbing stairs? Are you eating? Having headaches? And from these fragments of individually meaningless information, he pieces together his conclusion: you have a heart condition. It may not stop you from dying next Tuesday, but it is some comfort to know.
“And that is your—our—job. Do not think you will ever come across a memorandum saying ’We invade next week.’ What you get is a sense of nerves in the barracks, a feeling that something is happening, for soldiers are the most sensitive people on earth to a change in atmosphere. Then perhaps you notice trains being cancelled. Perhaps more smugglers get caught slipping over borders. You hear of more fights in bars in garrison towns. Of leave being cancelled. And you put it all together and conclude that someone, somewhere is about to throw the dice.”
“And this is your idea, or can you demonstrate this to me?”
“Oh, I can demonstrate it. In big wars and little ones. Although I imagine you would prefer to finish your drink and have a good night’s sleep before you hear me on the origins of the last war between France and the Germans. But I was there, I saw it all. And the next time will be little different.”
“But in that case, I believe, the Emperor decided to go to war and everyone backed him.”
“True. But why did he decide? Why then? Especially as a limited amount of study would have demonstrated that the Prussians would roll all over them. Because it was in the air. It was necessary. The gods had
decreed it.”
He drank down his brandy in one go and nodded ironically. “A marionette, as are we all. Your job is to report the doings of puppets to other puppets. A worthy and useful employment.
“For which you need a good night’s sleep. I am going to make your life miserable tomorrow. So don’t stay up writing your diary. You don’t write a diary, do you?”
“No.”
“That’s a blessing.”
CHAPTER 4
His loquacity and virtual good humour did not last long, alas. The next day began what I consider to be one of the most miserable, and extra ordinary, six weeks of my life. He woke me at dawn and announced that my task for the day was to get bread from a town some five miles into the occupied part of Alsace. However, I was to accomplish this without any papers to give me free passage over the border, without any money and without any maps. Then I was told to steal the bust of Marianne from the town hall in the next city. Then to spend two nights in complete hiding, counting the number of people who crossed the border. Then to leave a package on a bridge crossing the Rhine, high up in the girders of the ironwork. Then to retrieve a file of papers from a bank, detailing the accounts of a man whose name he gave me. And we did it again, and again, and again. How to follow a man so he does not know you are there. How to lose a man who is following you; we chased each other around different towns for days until I became almost as good at it as he was. Then he would set me to trailing an army officer selected more or less at random. Then again, with a German officer over the border. Then to burgling his house. In between these bizarre activities, he would take me into the forests with a gun, and teach me how to shoot. This was something I never became proficient at, nor ever enjoyed. I would rather be captured by an enemy than have that noise going off in my ears. Or we would spend an evening in a soldiers’ bar, buying drinks and listening to their complaints and bravado. Or he would show me how to persuade someone to become an informer; a traitor to their friends and country.
