by Peter Watson
“But I don’t expect that to happen in your case,” I added quickly. “I should imagine that you will be kept in a secure holding centre until it is judged that the information you have is dated and no longer of use to the Germans—well after the invasion, I would think. But you’ll certainly be kept incommunicado for a time, probably in solitary confinement, so there’s no chance that what you know will pass to a wider circle.
“I’m sorry, Erich. But, by your carelessness, you put the lives of your colleagues around you—here on the beach—at risk. Or you might have done, had not Nora Heath been one of ours.”
I raised my arm and everyone turned as two men, who were standing where the shore met the grass and the rocks, now started walking towards us.
“These men will take you to wherever you are going.”
Erich looked at the men, then along the sand. For a brief moment he thought of making a run for it. But he quickly realised that would only make matters worse. He turned back to me.
“Whatever I did, I wanted to help in the war.” He gestured to the others. “Like we all did.”
“I know,” I said. “And that’s the tragedy—a tragedy for you, and for the rest of us, that we can’t make use of your organisational talents, your excellent French, and your extraordinary memory.” I waved my arm at Madeleine and the rest. “But I need the others to see the consequences of breaches of security, as well as you.”
“Do we handcuff him, sir?” said one of the military police in English, addressing me.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Not for now, anyway.”
“Very well,” said the MP. And to Erich, “This way, Captain Langres.”
Erich held out his hand to Katrine. She shook it.
And Ivan.
And Madeleine. She made a half-movement to kiss his cheek but he backed away.
“You shouldn’t have bothered to save my life,” he said gruffly.
She didn’t say anything.
He faced me.
“I only went with Nora because…”
He hesitated, then turned on his heel and, with the MPs either side of him, began his walk back across the beach to Ardlossan Manse.
Because what? Because Madeleine wouldn’t go with him? Is that what he was going to say? Was he blaming me? How did he know?
APRIL
LONDON
· 8 ·
SUNLIGHT BEAT DOWN ON THE red brick walls of the Wallace Collection, thankfully intact despite heavy bombing. The horse chestnut trees hereabouts were magnificent too, their leaves spreading thick hand-shaped patches of shade across the pavements. On the far side of the square, however, untidy mounds of rubble marked where a line of houses had once stood, Georgian beauties by the look of those left standing—but wounded—nearby. There was not the money—nor, just yet, the appetite—to start rebuilding.
Even so, it felt good to be back in London. Our offices, just off Baker Street, were a stone’s throw from Manchester Square, and I often walked by it on my way to lunch. I usually lunched at a pub in Marylebone High Street called the Red Anchor, where I liked the beer and the Scotch eggs they served when eggs were available.
I turned from the square into George Street. You had to watch where you walked in London in those days. Often there were craters next to the small ranges of stones and bricks. Some of them were six or eight feet deep, and if you fell into them you could do yourself serious damage. The craters had water in them too—you could even drown in them if you knocked yourself out in falling. The Blitz bombing had stopped, for now at least, and many of the more dangerous sites had been roped off—but not all.
I was meeting Madeleine at the Anchor. She had been in London a few days, since leaving Ardlossan, but I had had to tie up one or two loose ends and had arrived only that morning on the overnight sleeper. This would be our first meeting since Scotland, our first encounter in the vast, anonymous swathe of the capital.
I was a bit on edge. Would Madeleine have changed, now that she was back in the distractions and busyness of London? We’d only had one night of real intimacy—would that mood travel south as easily as we had done?
I turned north in to Marylebone High Street, a thoroughfare of shops mainly: grocers, hardware outlets, a famous shop selling model trains, and a pet shop with dogs and rabbits and chicks in the window, scrabbling around in the strips of newsprint with which the shopkeeper lined the floor. There was always a group of small children outside the pet shop and a few older boys hanging around the train shop window, where, occasionally, when the owner was in the mood, clockwork locomotives hurried round a figure of eight, under model bridges and signal gantries. I’d been a model train fanatic as a boy—the best of my collection being, ironically enough, an engine of the German make, Märklin. It was packed up now, in my flat near Lord’s Cricket Ground, in a box and out of sight.
The Anchor had seen better days, but the level of devastation around it—there was a bomb site right next door—lent it an almost heroic quality. Still standing, it had been freshly painted by the brewery company, as if in celebration of this very fact. Its front was shiny black with gold trimmings. The Red Anchor sign was new too.
I pushed open the heavy glass door and went in. Andy, the daytime barman, was there as always, as was Barry, the landlord. Barry looked after three pubs for the brewery so he wasn’t behind the counter all the time, as Andy was during the day. In the evenings, Barry employed a barmaid called Belinda.
I ordered my usual half-pint of bitter and sat at a table by the window. I had taken care to arrive a little early because I knew that Madeleine, like most women, hated to be alone in pubs—she said it sent out the wrong signals.
I looked about me. I recognized a few faces—two off-duty naval ratings, an official from the zoo nearby, a male nurse from Harley Street, and others I didn’t know. No sign of any Scotch eggs today.
I opened my paper. In Portsmouth, the eight-day trial of a medium charged under the 1735 Witchcraft Act had just ended: she’d been given a nine-month jail sentence for tricking people who’d lost their sons in the war into believing they could contact them in her living room over a chemist’s shop. The Poles had blown up a German troop train, killing hundreds—what reprisals would there be? I wondered. The German battleship Tirpitz had been attacked in a fjord in Norway.
“There you are.”
I looked up. “My God!” I said. “I hardly recognise you. Make-up, a necklace, a new dress.”
She was even more striking in London than in Ardlossan. The desire that I had been keeping caged broke free.
Madeleine, seemingly unaware of the dangerous effect she was having on me, smiled and sat down, giving me a peck on the cheek as she did so. “If you remember, I arrived in Scotland by Lysander—a very small plane.” She looked down at herself. “This is a long way from being a new dress, though. But yes, it’s one you haven’t seen before. Do you like it?”
“If Hitler saw you, he’d have thrown over the Riefenstahl woman in no time.”
She grinned. “I thought that if I’m going to be kitted out in genuine false French clothes, I’d better get some wear out of this frock before it’s too late.”
“If your hair were less wild,” I said, standing up, “you’d look like Veronica Lake in Sullivan’s Travels. What would you like to drink? I’m afraid the Scotch eggs I promised you haven’t been laid yet.”
“A very weak gin and tonic, please. And don’t worry about the eggs. I can barely get into this frock as it is.”
I was back in no time, putting her drink on the table between us.
“So,” I said after a moment’s silence. “I only got in this morning and I’ve just been catching up with paperwork, or trying to. How are you getting on?”
She pulled her French face. “Okay, I think. These political lessons we get, about the ins and outs of the French situation, are interesting, at this distance at least. It won’t be nearly as much fun when I get into the field and have to take sides.”
She smiled back.
“I probably shouldn’t say this,” I said, “but I’m going to anyway. I’ve missed you. I know it’s been only a few days but—”
“Me too,” she whispered, putting the tips of her fingers against my lips. “And…” She hesitated. “I probably shouldn’t say this either but…in case it makes it any easier…my digs…well, they are just awful. For a start they are in Wembley—Wembley! That’s miles away. Twelve stops on the Bakerloo Line and halfway to Montreal. And I have to share with another girl, and the bathroom is miles down the corridor, and the food is terrible. Are you going to take me away from all that? You said you would.”
“Well,” I said softly. “Although I missed you, I thought it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, us being apart for a few days. After the hothouse of Ardlossan, it gave us a breathing space, to see if—”
“Is this some kind of tease, or a joke?” She drank some gin and tonic and tugged the pearls at her neck. “You’ve got to take your chances in life, Colonel, and I, for one, didn’t need three days apart to assess my feelings like some bloody accountant.” She set down her glass on the table with a clatter. “Now, please don’t send me back to Wembley. Remind me where your flat is?”
“Hamilton Place, off Chepstow Place. Lisson Grove.”
“And do you have a double bed—or do we need to buy one?”
A couple of other customers, in some sort of uniform, looked over at us. “Keep your voice down,” I whispered, blushing. “Yes, I have a double bed.”
“Hallelujah!” she cried, but softly. “What’s more, I have this afternoon off.” She grinned.
“Well, I don’t,” I replied quickly. “It’s my first day back in the office. I can’t just abandon all the paperwork I need to catch up with.” I lowered my voice. “And there’s new stuff coming in all the time. In fact, I’m not at all sure how early I can get away tonight.”
“I’m flexible,” she said, holding out her hand. “Give me the keys to your flat, and tell me the exact address. I can go back to Wembley this afternoon, collect my belongings, and move in with you. By the time you get home it will be like you’re back in France—you will be living in occupied territory…my wash things, my underwear, my frocks…everywhere. You’ll have been invaded.” She grinned. “Now give me the keys.”
I handed them over.
That simple gesture filled me with a feeling of warmth, too. All my time in London, I’d lived alone. Sharing my flat with Madeleine, sharing a bed…
“We haven’t talked about Erich—”
She reached out and again put a finger to my lips. “Later. Plenty of time for that.”
She sipped her gin and tonic.
“Any news of the date of the invasion? Are you in on the secret yet?”
I shook my head.
“In that case, is there anything I should know about your flat? Does it have any bad habits? Does the door need kicking? Is the gas dangerous?”
“No, it’s all fairly tame. But…you should know that I have a dog. I haven’t mentioned it before because…because he’s not as dashing as Rolfe. I picked him up this morning, from a friend he was staying with.”
“Is he fierce? Does he know I’ve a specialist training in unarmed combat?”
“He’s a West Highland terrier, very white and reasonably good-natured. He’ll growl at you, bark a bit, then roll over to have his tummy tickled. Take him for a walk in Regent’s Park and he’ll fall for you like I have.”
“So now there are two males in my life—that is very satisfactory.” She smiled. “What’s his name?”
“Zola.”
“A French writer? Why?”
“Not quite. It was the code name of the surgeon in the Resistance who took out my lung, and saved my life.”
She smiled and nodded, dropping my house keys into her bag. “Does he know he’s had a dog named after him?”
I paused briefly. “No. He was arrested six months later and sent east. No one has heard from him since. He may be dead. It’s my way of keeping him alive.”
She looked at me, leaned forward, and kissed my cheek.
“You are a good man. Try not to be home too late. I’ll take your mind off the Resistance.”
—
THE LIFT AT TEWKESBURY HOUSE, in Cathcart Place, was one of those rickety mahogany and glass affairs. It rose and fell unsteadily, encased in what seemed like a metal cage, with all its cables and pulleys on show, its operation accompanied by a whirring-wheezing sound that only underlined its advanced age. It did not inspire confidence.
So far as I was aware, the Ministry of War owned the entire building in Cathcart Place. Our offices lay entirely behind a set of frosted-glass double doors, on which were inscribed, in gold capitals, the words SOVEREIGN SCIENTIFIC. Immediately inside the double doors were two desks, occupied by two women, Hattie and Freda, whose job it was to sound like receptionists while deterring casual visitors, should there be any, from enquiring further about the purpose of the company they served. Posters showing Sovereign Scientific “products” lined the walls—telephones, radios, speedometers, pressure gauges of one kind or another. In other words, nothing of direct military use.
The fourth floor of Tewkesbury House, which had its own second set of security doors, was given over entirely to the French section of SC2. The two floors beneath us housed the smaller Italian, Dutch, Scandinavian, Greek, and Cypriot sections. The ground floor was where the recruits received their lectures on politics and social matters, which were kept up-to-date by recent arrivals from the field. The top brass were housed, fittingly, on the top floor, the fifth.
On our fourth floor there was a large central typing pool, what seemed at times like an acre of grey metal desks, with black tops, where the clack of typewriters was as insistent as the roar of the sea at Ardlossan. The offices of the senior staff were down one side, giving on to Cathcart Place. Around the other edges were the cryptographers, telegraph rooms, logistics, finance, special ops (for unusual pieces of equipment), the forgery department, translation, weather, and transport. At any one time, between sixty and seventy people worked in our section.
It was a hybrid building, half red brick and solid as stone. Its echoing corridors made that part of Tewkesbury House seem like a courthouse without lawyers or police. The rest was 1930s brutal, under-windowed, with square, plain, box-like rooms, prefabricated walls, and windows that threatened to fall off their moorings when a strong wind swept up Baker Street.
My “office”—to use a word that was too grand for what was barely more than a cupboard—was run-down and badly in need of a lick of paint. It had just one window, looking out on to Cathcart Place, a dead-end lane that had once housed a collection of garages, ironmongers’ yards, and warehouses but was now a line of bomb-ravaged rubble. The “office” had room—just—for a small wooden desk, which would not have been out of place in a country school; two chairs, one either side of the desk; a bookcase; a radiator; a metal filing cabinet; a coat hook on the back of the door; and framed photographs of exotic railway destinations—Prestatyn, Margate, and Truro—on the walls. The only signs of what I really did in the war effort were the pile of folders on the desk and the three telephones next to it.
I had half a secretary—Geraldine, always known simply as “G.”—whom I shared with Toby Sheldrake, head of encryption/decryption. I was for ever irritated with G.—I felt sure she used the fact that she had two bosses to avoid both of us most of the time, by pretending to be with the other. Certainly, she was never nearby when I wanted her, or so it seemed.
As I walked along the marble-floored corridor that afternoon, my steps clattered like Wehrmacht jackboots on Friedrichstrasse. A tall man with a long lugubrious face and a length of lank hair hanging down over his forehead was just emerging from my office.
“Ah, Matt, there you are. Go
od.” He stood to one side but followed me back in, closed the door behind him, and sat down on the chair reserved for visitors.
I hung my coat on the coat hook, sat down too, and gestured to the pile of folders on my desk. “Sir, this is how far behind I am with my paperwork, after my weeks in Ardlossan. Can it wait?”
He shook his head so that his spectacles caught the light. “No, I’m afraid it can’t.”
Hilary Armstrong, the Honourable Hilary Armstrong, as his father was a baronet, was the top man in F Section. He was my immediate boss, and at only one remove from the minister of war himself. In theory, that also made him just two away from Churchill.
Hilary was the perfect example of what our French colleagues called a rosbif, a “roast beef.” He had ruddy cheeks, a moustache that bristled like a lavatory brush, and a voice with the longest vowels in history. He came from a “goooood” family of soldiers, who had served in every conflict since Waterloo. This made him a man of supreme self-confidence, intensely patriotic even by the standards of the time, who was never seen without his regimental tie, hand-cut suits, and brown brogues—he clearly did not depend on his wage packet as so many of us did. He was older than me but only just and until now had served the entire war behind a desk. So far as I was concerned, in this he had betrayed his family tradition, and, however talented an SC2 commander he was, I held it against him that he had not seen action in the field. I could not forgive him this, though in the office I had to disguise my true feelings. All the people we were sending into France and elsewhere were taking bigger risks with their lives than he was.
I looked at him now. He had rather droopy eyelids, half covering eyes that never gave anything away—they played the Whitehall poker game to perfection. He had boxed at school, he told me, and had once been cut over the eye. The scar that had formed afterwards had never quite gone away and he sometimes rubbed his thumb over it. He did that now.
“We’ve had a curious message from Trident.”
I hunched forward on my chair. Trident, I knew, was the code name for Alex MacGibbon, our man in the Banquet circuit operating in the Rennes region of France. Current rumour, which is all it was at that stage, held that the invasion would occur in the Pas de Calais. But if it came in Normandy, which was another possibility, Rennes would be vital.
