by Seb Spence
“All right then, looks like I’m the one who’ll have to get wet,” Barton responded slightly peevishly, and then made to get out of the car.
“Hang on, you’d better take this,” Bronx said, getting the Browning automatic out of the glove compartment and passing it to him. Barton slipped it into the side pocket of his tunic and got out.
As he approached the ford, he noticed that fumes were coming from the Riley’s exhaust and realised with some uneasiness that it had not stalled after all. The purring of its running engine could not be detected above the sound of the Alvis and the babbling of the river. He wondered why Vivian Adair had stopped: she must have decided the game was up.
The river was no more than a dozen paces wide at that point, and less than a foot deep. Barton stepped in and was surprised to find how cold the water was, given that it was late spring. Simultaneously, Vivian Adair got out of the Riley. She was wearing a tweed skirt and light grey two-piece, and her blonde hair was swept back and tied tightly in a bun at the nape of her neck. With a string of pearls and brogues as accessories, she looked the perfect English country lady, which was no doubt the image she was trying to convey. Staring impassively at Barton, she took a few steps down the side of the Riley and then, opening the rear door, leant in to get something. Barton moved his right hand closer to his tunic pocket, ready to pull out the automatic if necessary. At that moment, he noticed through the rear window of the Riley that Grace, sitting in the front passenger seat, had turned round to look at him. She seemed anxious.
In the meantime, Vivian Adair had retrieved what she was looking for in the back of the car, and when Barton turned his attention once more to her, he found himself staring down the barrel of a Schmeisser machine pistol. He recognised it from the long magazine at the front, having seen one in a training film he had had to sit through shortly after joining up.
Vivian Adair gazed at him coolly as she trained the weapon on him. By this point he had reached the middle of the ford. He stopped and there was an uncomfortable pause during which he considered whether he should dive for cover but decided against it as he thought any sudden movement might set her firing. Besides, there was no cover to dive behind – if he threw himself down he would just succeed in getting soaked.
He elected to try and talk his way out, but before he could start, Vivian Adair swung the barrel a few degrees away from his direction and opened up on the Alvis, causing Bronx to duck down rapidly behind the dashboard. First, she shot out the two front tyres and the spare at the side, then fired a long burst into the radiator, and finally raked the engine compartment.
Suddenly, she stopped and looked towards Barton. “Take that as a warning: don’t get in my way again, or you’ll regret it.” With those words, she got back in the Riley and set off at high speed.
As soon as she got in the car, Barton, his hand shaking slightly after this unnerving experience, fumbled in his pocket for the automatic and pulled it out, intending to shoot at her tyres. But by the time he had raised it to get a bead, the Riley had disappeared round a bend in the road. Concerned that Bronx might have been hit in the hail of fire, Barton turned and walked hurriedly back towards the Alvis. However, he was relieved to see Moncur’s head appear gingerly over the dashboard.
“Has she gone?” Bronx shouted, and without waiting for an answer, got out and walked round to the front of the Alvis to inspect the damage. “What a bitch! She’s wrecked it,” he exclaimed, surveying the bullet-holed fenders and bonnet, smashed headlights and shattered windscreen. “She must have emptied a whole magazine into it.”
“Well, look on the bright side – it could have been me she riddled.”
Bronx looked at him stonily. “Be serious Barton: you’re replaceable – Pilot Officers are two a penny. This was my baby – she was one of a kind.”
Barton was not offended. He realised Bronx was feeling a little emotional at this moment and did not really mean what he had just said. Besides, there were more important things to consider: what should they do next to continue their pursuit of Cobalt? Barton thought that if they could get to a nearby farm they might find transport, or a phone to call for assistance. He looked around for some sign of habitation but saw nothing that might indicate a farmhouse in the vicinity.
However, in the process of scanning his surroundings, he noticed something white on the roadside verge at the other side of the ford. He expected it was just a piece of litter, but something told him he should investigate anyway. Once more he stepped into the water but this time crossed all the way to the other side. He walked a few yards beyond the ford and noticed that the roadway there was littered with the spent bullet casings from the Schmeisser. The white object turned out to be a small handkerchief: the monogram GH was embroidered at one corner, and written on it in lipstick in large characters was ‘A68’.
He took it back over the ford and showed it to Bronx. “I think this is a message from Grace. What do you make of it?”
Bronx shrugged. “The only A68 I know is a main road – it runs from Darlington to Edinburgh. Maybe she’s trying to tell us they’re heading north.”
“Edinburgh, eh? I think you’ve hit on it, Bronx – that’s where Grace was supposed to be this week; she and Miller had a booking there.” Barton mused: “They’ve a fair way to go to get to Darlington; it must be about 200 miles from here. They can’t go flat out all the way. My guess is it’ll take them at least three-and-a-half to four hours to get there. Incidentally, did you get the registration of the Riley”
“Sorry – in all the excitement it never occurred to me to note it.”
“Blast! Neither did I.” A thought occurred to Barton: “Does the A68 go anywhere near Newcastle?”
“It doesn’t go through it. The nearest it gets is about 20 miles away. Why?”
“I have a contact in Newcastle who could provide us with transport. If we could get a train there and pick up a vehicle, we could join the A68 at that point. With a bit of luck we might be able to catch up with them.”
“Sounds like a good plan to me,” Bronx responded, his face set in a grim expression. “I’m game for anything that’ll let me get even with that woman. So how do we get to a station?”
“We can maybe get a lift at the nearest farmhouse, if we can find one. I think we passed a farm track a couple of miles ago, just before we went through that wood.”
They pushed the Alvis onto the verge and then set off at a trot back up the road they had come along.
#
An hour and a half later they were at Peterborough station, boarding an LNER express service to Newcastle. They had been driven to the station by a very obliging land girl who was staying at the farmhouse they had eventually located. She had also stopped at a phone box en route to allow Barton to make two calls. First, he had phoned his contact in Newcastle to arrange for a vehicle to be waiting for them when they arrived there; and then, for the second time that morning, he had phoned Colonel Minton. He told him about the recent car chase and warned him that Cobalt was heading for the A68. Minton said he would arrange for the road to be watched and instructed Barton not to get involved further. In view of this injunction, Barton decided not to mention that he was planning to continue his pursuit and intercept Vivian Adair outside Newcastle. The way he saw it, Grace Harrison could be in grave danger, and he was not willing to wait idly by and simply trust that MI5 would rescue her: the security services were not omnipotent, as the murder of Cheyne and Maxwell had demonstrated.
#
Inevitably, the train was heaving, but they were fortunate to find a crate to sit on in a deserted corner of the guard’s van. If there were no delays, they would be in Newcastle in about three hours.
“By the way, Barton,” Bronx enquired as the train pulled out, “who is this contact of yours in Newcastle?”
“Tom Foster’s his name. He’s with 936 Balloon Squadron, based at Longbenton – only a few miles from the centre of the city. He’s a good man: one hundred percent reliable. We wer
e at Balloon School, together but afterwards he was transferred up north, and I went to Stanmore”.
Bronx smiled, his good humour slowly returning after the mangling of the Alvis: “Ah, Balloon School! What a charming picture that conjures up: lots of youngsters sitting in a circle learning how to tie a knot in the neck of their balloons.”
“You’ve never taken my work seriously, have you Moncur?”
Chapter 8
1.
Tuesday, 20th May, 1941, 11.00 – 12.00hrs: MI5 headquarters, 57-58 St James’s Street, London
Colonel Minton’s first task that morning had been to prepare for his interrogation of a Dutch seaman who had been found in suspicious circumstances on a Suffolk beach the previous day. The Colonel was in the process of examining the man’s belongings when, around 8.15am, he received Barton’s first call, reporting that Cheyne and Maxwell had been shot dead. Minton had immediately informed the Director of MI18, who had received the news dispassionately: he simply told Minton that they would deal with the incident and there was no need for him to take any further action.
Barton’s second call had come about an hour later, and Minton had again phoned the Director immediately afterwards, informing him that Cobalt, accompanied by Grace Harrison, had left Northampton and was possibly heading for the A68. This time, the Director had sounded relieved, even pleased, to hear this, and had thanked him for reporting it.
Minton was starting to have severe misgivings about the Cobalt case, but he put the morning’s developments to the back of his mind and concentrated on his work. An hour after this second call, around 10.15am, he was in the middle of cross-examining the Dutchman when an officer on his staff came hurriedly into the interrogation room to pass on a message from General Cunningham: Minton was to go immediately to the St James’s Street headquarters on a matter of the utmost importance and urgency. Minton handed over the questioning to one of his subordinates and left straightaway.
#
Just after 11am he was standing at the reception desk at the St James’s Street building. As on his last visit, he was directed to Room Twenty and once again found himself before the door with a sign bearing the Roman numerals XX. He recalled it had been nine months since his previous conversation with Cunningham in this room. He knocked and was immediately summoned in. General Cunningham was seated at the head of the large, rectangular committee table that stood in the middle of the room. He had a thick folder open in front of him and was examining the contents, but looked up as Minton entered. Cunningham was not a man for chit-chat – there was no apology for dragging Minton away from his work at a moment’s notice; he launched straight into his business.
“Christ! What a hell of a morning it’s been, Minton. This Cobalt affair is turning into a nightmare.” He indicated one of the chairs at his end of the table: “Take a seat. I thought we’d meet here rather than in my office as someone else will be joining us.”
“What steps are being taken to catch her?” Minton asked as he sat down.
“Every police force in the country has been sent descriptions of Vivian Adair and her accomplices. We have also set up patrols on the A68. From other information we’ve obtained, we’re fairly certain they’re heading north with the intention of making a rendezvous with a U-boat somewhere off the Scottish coast, but we don’t know exactly where. There’s nothing more we can do until we get a sighting of them.”
Cunningham paused and, sitting up stiffly in his chair, regarded Minton in silence for a few moments before continuing. “Several times in the last few months you’ve contacted me requesting an update on the Cobalt case. I have to say I’ve been holding out on you, Minton. We’ve had her and her cell under close surveillance since January. I don’t apologise for keeping you in the dark about her. You know as well as I do that this is a hard game we’re playing; we have to operate on a need-to-know basis, and you didn’t need to know. The only reason I’m letting you in on the secret now is that something’s come up and as a result it’s necessary to have you on board.”
Minton was annoyed by this revelation but said nothing. “As you are aware,” Cunningham went on, “from the start of the war in September ’39 until the end of last year, we have rounded up a number of German agents operating in the UK. During this period, we either imprisoned them or, in some cases, executed them. A committee was set up back in January this year to review this policy, and it came up with a proposal for a rather subtler approach; we call it the ‘Double Cross’ scheme because the committee who now run it meet here in Room Twenty – you will have seen the Roman numerals XX on the door?”
“Yes, I did notice.”
“You know from your own experience that, if handled skilfully by their interrogators, captured agents can be turned. Since January, we have been putting pressure on many of the agents we’ve arrested, trying to get them to work for our side – to operate as double agents. As a result, we now have a stable of erstwhile Abwehr operatives controlled by us. They are sending back a stream of false reports and disinformation to the Germans, and the system seems to be working very well.
“However, when we were devising this scheme back in January, we realised that eventually the Germans would decide to recall some of their agents – bring them back for face-to-face debriefing. Of course, we could not allow any of these double agents to go back as they are completely untrustworthy – they are only working for us out of fear or greed. They do what we tell them because we are watching over them constantly. If we sent one back to Germany, the chances are that they would almost certainly give the game away.
“We thought that initially, when the Germans requested one of these controlled agents to return, we could withdraw the man from operation and get one of the other ‘Double Cross’ agents to feed the Germans some story: perhaps that the man had been arrested by MI5, or killed in a bombing raid or some such fiction. We realised, however, that we couldn’t go on evading these requests indefinitely – eventually the Germans would get suspicious, and then our game would be up.”
“Yes, I see – sounds like a bit of a stumbling block.”
“To get round this problem, it was suggested that when we next discovered someone working for the Germans, instead of arresting him and trying to make him a ‘Double Cross’ agent, why not allow him to operate freely but keep him under close surveillance. We would monitor exactly what he was doing and what information he was sending back, but we would not interfere unless the information was too sensitive – if he were to start getting too close to important intelligence, we would nudge him elsewhere. Eventually, when the Germans recall the agent, we could allow him to go back.”
“What happens if he’s not at the top of their list for recall and they ask for one of your controlled agents first?”
“Yes, that occurred to us. We think there’s a way round it, but it would take some choreographing. We’d have to stall initially and use the time to somehow effect a meeting between the man and our controlled agent, a meeting at which they would reveal to each other that they were working for the Germans. Our ‘Double Cross’ agent would then mention to the Germans that he had established contact with the other man and try to persuade them to recall him instead.”
This sounded dubious and rather clumsy to Minton: he wondered if the Germans would really be gullible enough to be taken in by it, but he kept his opinion to himself.
Cunningham continued with his description of the scheme: “Preferably, we needed to find one of their agents who was not particularly proficient at the job. Back in December last year, just before we began to formulate the ‘Double Cross’ plan, MI5 had started to take an interest in a man called Elliott, a former wine salesman with a passion for amateur dramatics who had recently become a professional actor. An officer of the Deuxième Bureau who had escaped to England after the Fall of France happened to be in the audience of a West End play that Elliott was in. The officer recognized him as someone the Bureau knew to be working for the Germans and immediately contacted MI5 to
warn them. He gave us a very useful briefing about Elliott’s activities.”
Cunningham picked out a document from the folder in front of him and passed it to Minton. “This is his dossier. Apparently, Elliott had been approached by the Abwehr shortly before the start of the war when he was visiting wine producers in the Rhineland. He had right-wing sympathies and a taste for fine living that was beyond his means as a wine salesman, and so he had agreed to spy for the Germans in return for generous remuneration.
“One of the first tasks his German controllers gave him was to tour the Alsace-Lorraine region in north-eastern France, ostensibly to purchase wine, but in fact to report on improvements that were being made to the Maginot fortifications. His rather clumsy attempts at spying drew the attention of the Bureau, who put him under surveillance. However, he shortly returned to England and they shelved his case.
“We have discovered subsequently that Elliott had received little training from the Abwehr other than some instruction on the use of codes and operating a transmitter. He looked like a good bet for our purposes, so rather than arrest him, we decided just to keep him under observation. This task was given to MI18, who assigned Cheyne to oversee the operation. Cheyne and his team monitored every step Elliott took: as well as following him, they had his phone tapped and planted listening devices in his London house. They were also intercepting all his radio messages, both incoming and outgoing. We soon realised that this must be the Elliott in Lucy Walker’s story.”
“Incidentally, what exactly is the remit of MI18?”
“One thing and another,” Cunningham replied vaguely. “Anyway, it transpired that at that time Elliott was trying to recruit new members to his cell and had approached a woman who was working in a club in Mayfair.”
