by Hall, Ian
He nodded, twisting his head round to us at a seemingly impossible angle. “The Luftwaffe hit here, our boys were dug in deep.”
“What about the people?” Alice asked, a concerned expression filling her face.
“Down on the tube lines mostly. Our boys left them tunnels pretty much alone, Jerry did the same. Considering the ferocity of the fighting, it was conducted in a gentlemanly fashion.”
We drove for a while in silence, although I did notice the preponderance of bicycles, rarely seen in Edinburgh with its hillier base.
We eventually turned out onto Piccadilly, a station on the underground route, so I knew our driver had been diligent with our choice of route. Soon I recognized the frontage of the Ritz building and its huge green copper lions on the roof, looming closer on our left. A host of German staff cars stood outside, and we had to pass the corner to stop out of the flow of traffic. As I paid the driver, I felt uncomfortable to some high degree.
To say the Ritz was ostentatious was to describe a peacock as just a game bird. I had no idea how much the Hotel cost to run, but both outside and inside it put anything in Edinburgh to shame. There seemed to be no expense spared in any quarter. Plush carpets, huge areas of shiny lacquered wood, the seats all leather, the finishing touches all burnished gold. Treated like royalty from the front door, we were ushered to the main desk by one of the many doormen, wearing long coats of navy blue with yellow piping, topped with a tall black bowler hat.
“We’re guests of Sir Edmund Findlay,” I said, trying to keep my accent to a minimum.
“Hold on, sir.” The clerk said, flicking through a huge ledger. “Ah, here we are. Your room is booked for a week, sir. Please wait while I summon a bell-hop.” He hit a shiny gold bell on top of the counter.
A young man arrived almost before the ring had died. A tight maroon hussar jacket fitted his lithe body to a fraction of an inch, a small black pillar-box hat completed his uniform. We were whisked away to allow the next guest to stand in line; a German general who loudly announced his name as Kessler.
Our room was larger than I expected, and wonderfully furnished. I tipped the bell-hop who may have been older than us, and settled back on the huge bed. “We’re on Honeymoon,” Considering I was going to bed Alice, I grinned like a Cheshire cat.
“Yes, we are.” She crossed to the window, which overlooked the trees of Green Park. “I’m starving.”
We were in London on business, but that didn’t start until nine a.m. on Monday morning, so for the rest of Saturday, and the entire whole of Sunday, we lived as Honey-mooning tourists. If we weren’t in bed, we were sightseeing, and if we weren’t out on the streets soaking in every sight we could think of, we were cavorting in and around our great bed. It was the best time of my life, and I’m certain Alice enjoyed it just as much as I did.
Monday morning, however, came around far too quickly. I left Alice naked in our bed, and reluctantly headed out for my meeting.
The Houses of Parliament are a sight to see for any tourist, but for me, who got to walk in the front door, they were simply breathtaking. Just walking inside I considered myself extremely fortunate. Of course it goes without saying that they would have been far more impressive without the myriad of swastikas hanging from every window and flagpole. That and the seemingly constant snap of ‘papiere!’
I waited in line at a desk similar to that in the Ritz, without the gold trim though.
“Sir Edmund Findlay,” I eventually said as if the name itself would serve as a password to halls further inside.
“Which department?”
“Eh, I don’t know. It’s at nine o’clock though.” I had no idea if the Parliamentary Intelligence Committee were something that was hush-hush or out in the open, and I wasn’t going to be the one who blabbed out of place. The man behind the desk did not try to contain his displeasure at having to go through every page before he found the correct entry. I looked at the clock behind him; eight forty-seven.
“Ah, Sir Edmund Findlay; Parliamentary Oversights.” He announced as if it would mean something to me. He pointed to a map stuck to the desktop.
I walked away with a visitor tag pinned to my jacket, and a complex series of directions in my head.
I found the door to the corridor, papiere, checked off the second turn on the right, another guard, then three turns, I found myself outside briefly, then back inside to a much lower building. I guessed this was where the ‘real work’ was done.
Outside the main conference room, I found Sir Edmund chatting to a middle-aged man, balding, thick moustache. I could see a stiff bearing in the man, and suspected some military history. Both were down to shirt sleeves, rolled up past the elbows.
“Ah, Baird, old boy,” Findlay waved me closer. “Let me introduce your boss, this is Brigadier Colin Gubbins.”
We shook hands, and he smiled warmly. “Edmund here tells me you are responsible for good relations with Jerry in Scotland.”
“I’m not really sure…”
Gubbins waved my modesty away. “Come on, I read every report, I know about the Troon affair, and the nuclear scientists. You, young man, are an asset to the organization, and a credit to your country.”
I felt like asking if he’d read all the reports, then what was I doing here, but in the end I just played the dumb kid, and let it all happen around me.
New Boss; Different from the Old Boss
The time spent with the Parliamentary Intelligence Committee tired me beyond belief. Their questions were both banal and intricate in equal measure, and when Gubbins, my boss, passed round the first copy of The Tree, I almost cringed in embarrassment.
However, the single sheet was examined in minute detail, and it was soon passed as a P.I.C. document, and recommended for immediate national use.
When the conversation died, Gubbins broke in. “We’ll have to keep every district together though.” That sure shut most of them up. “If we go fully national, we’re opening ourselves to infiltration on a national level. Each area must have its own hub, its center…”
“Is that really necessary, Brigadier?” An old type, white haired, white beard; as old as tyrannosaurus snot.
“Darcy, we are being attacked every minute of every day.” Gubbins had lowered his voice, taken away the stringent, determined side, replaced it with placating, conciliatory tones. I recognized a master at work. “Jerry would love to get his hands on the S.O.E.; it’s the biggest threat to his downfall.”
“I recognize the need for secrecy, Brigadier…” The dinosaur interrupted Gubbins’ flow. Again the derogatory use of his rank; his voice said ‘not yet a General’ very plainly. “… but surely this is overkill; the budgets would be far greater if they were distributed into separate divisions of the country.”
“And that’s exactly what keeps us alive here.” Gubbins’ tone didn’t change. “We keep the areas separate, we keep the lines between them complex, and we keep the Nazis guessing.”
“But the complexity makes it heavy…”
Gubbins rose sharply, and walked to a large blackboard behind the top chair. He drew a circle; wrote a ‘J’ in the centre. “This is our friend James here,” he indicated me, smiled, then looked round the table. The eleven men hung on his every word. “He’s a complete secret to Jerry. They haven’t a clue.” He turned to me. “How many newspapers phone you with stories?”
“Four, the…”
Again he waved me silent. He drew four small circles around the board. “Let’s say this is the Manchester Echo, the Lincoln Times, the Swansea Herald, and the Times.” He then drew lines attaching my circle to each of them. “James is the hub of the wheel, the others are the spokes.” He drew another circle. “This is Terry in Bradford, he’s got four contacts too.” New circles, with new lines joining them. He repeated the idea twice more, filling the blackboard section.
“Now!” Gubbins snapped, and several of the men jumped. “What happens if this newspaper gets infiltrated?” he crossed off one of
the circles joining Terry’s group. To me it seemed straight-forward, I’d worked the cell system for many months. “Who dies with him?”
“Terry,” a man said.
“No,” Gubbins shook his head. “Terry only dies if this newspaper breaks under interrogation. But even if he does, then we may only lose Terry and one paper. If the brown stuff really does hit the fan, then we lose people in five newspapers. The rest keep printing.”
“But, gentlemen, if these two newspapers are physically side by side…” he circled two circles in different cell groups, “…say both here in London, maybe even next door to each other, then if one cell is infiltrated, we still print in each area.”
I couldn’t contain my question. “So, Brigadier Gubbins, is Scotland considered one area?” I hardly believed I’d opened my mouth.
“Yes.”
“Then there’s at least one other newspaper printing The Tree?”
“Oh yes, maybe more.”
“But doesn’t that mean we can be grouped together by similar stories?”
“Ah, the young man finds a loop-hole in his initial method.” He walked quickly round to my position, placing his hands on my shoulders. “This is the beauty of the whole pirate newspaper system. One person writes the front copy for the whole country, the international news, Winston’s Diary. The regional news and home news is worked from each individual newspaper, so no one set of newspapers can be tracked into one cell.” He gave me a flex of his fingers. “That’s why every subsequent copy will have the slogan Printed in Britain by patriotic Britons working for the destruction of the Nazi regime.”
Yeah, it didn’t have the same feel of my line, but I recognized the reasoning behind the change. At the same time, my newspaper was going to be printed nationally. That was a singular achievement.
Back at the Ritz Alice didn’t ask me of the details of my meeting, and for once we agreed to keep the whole thing secret between us. We had dinner with Sir Edmund in the Ritz restaurant that evening, and I got to bed completely whacked.
The room being paid until Saturday, we stayed the week, back on the tourist trail, looking onto Buckingham Palace, Tower Bridge, I even paid for an hour on the pond in Hyde park, rowing Alice gently past all the other couples having their own little trysts.
On Friday evening, our last in the Hotel, we decided to eat in the Ritz’s restaurant again, and took our booked table at seven sharp. I felt uncomfortable with the many German officers and politicians seated around us, but we’d grown accustomed to their numbers since coming to London, so were able to ignore them most of the time.
Suddenly a bell-hop appeared at my side. “There’s a phone call for you, sir.”
“Me?” I could hardly believe someone could have found me. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, sir. In the foyer… for madam too, follow me if you please.”
I’d already risen, but turned to question him regarding Alice’s involvement. “Listen, mate…”
His forced expression halted my tirade. He leaned towards me, his lips now close to my ear. “Move or you will die tonight.” His face remained stoically pleasant, the image of the fawning toad, his smile just wafer thin, but his words sparked movement into my feet. I grabbed Alice’s hand, determined never to let go. The young man led us calmly through the foyer, and beyond, into the workings of the Hotel, the back rooms, then through a fire door out onto the street. “Run!” He said, grim-faced, pointing up Piccadilly. I’d seen his expression before; the mark of a man determined to die for his convictions. “Run like Hell.”
I didn’t question his command; I just pulled Alice along the pavement.
I felt the jolt under my feet before I heard the explosion; I couldn’t help but turn around to see. Behind us windows were blown out onto the roadway, flames and fire following. Passing cars veered away, then crashed, the nearest toppled over. The blast sounded so huge I doubted anyone in the Hotel was still alive. We stood like most of the people on the street, gawking at the spectacle. Within moments, the fire had caught hold, and flames were dancing outwards at every broken window. It only seemed like seconds had passed and the whole building was ablaze.
“What do we do?” Alice stood by my side, her arms entwined in mine.
“I don’t know,” Some people were staggering out of the smoke filled doorways. I felt drawn to help, yet maintained a strict sense of my own safety. “Everything is in the room.”
“No, that’s just clothes.” She turned away, and I held her tighter. “Do you have all your cash with you?”
“Yes, I grabbed it before dinner, you know, just in case we met someone or you fancied a bottle of champagne or something.”
“Train Tickets?”
I nodded. “In my wallet.”
Two fire engines arrived, bells ringing louder and louder, but they seemed to take ages to get their hoses trained onto the doorways. They were followed by a German staff car, a junior officer barking orders as he jumped out.
“How many Germans were inside?” I asked. Alice’s head still lay on my shoulder.
“Lots, thirty, forty, maybe more.”
“I saw a couple of generals.”
“Me too.”
The arrival of two trucks of troops made me turn away from the scene and begin to walk up Piccadilly. “Come on. We’re not going to do ourselves any favors getting caught up in this.”
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know, but we’re getting out of the area.” I tugged on her hand as I picked up the pace. “Right now we’re just two frightened honeymooners who got miraculously rescued from a bombing.”
I knew I’d spotted a couple of Hotels on Euston Road, and I planned to bed down in a room as quickly as possible.
I felt resistance to my grasp, then Alice pulled me to a halt. “We have to go back.”
“Why?”
“We’ll be missed, they’ll have records, we’re doing the wrong thing.”
I put my hands on her shoulders, looked into her tear-filled eyes. “We have money, ID cards, wedding rings, and our lives.”
“But we’ll be missed.”
I shook my head. “I doubt if they’ll even have a piece of paper after that fire. And apart from that, it’ll be days before they get a proper body-count. If anyone got caught near the source of the explosion, there’ll not be one bone they could identify.”
Alice reluctantly let me guide her up the street onto Shaftesbury Avenue, and I never turned a corner more thankfully as I did that evening. The sound of fire-engine bells was soon just a faint jingling in the distance.
Despite our considerable walking pace, I noticed a man passing us, jacket lapels pulled up, hat tipped over his eyes. Yet I recognized him immediately; the bell-boy who had led us to safety from the impending bomb. The words were out of my mouth before I could think. “Hey! You!”
He sprung from my challenge, drawing a revolver from his pocket. In the darkness of the dim street lights, he needn’t have worried about discovery, the pavements were quiet, everyone’s attention down by the Ritz. But the levelled barrel still pointed resolutely at my face.
“I just wanted to thank you…” I began. His eyes held a level of manic. “…from saving us from the bomb.”
Gradually his eyes focused, then as he hid his pistol, he looked around, seeing our solitude on the streets. “Sorry,” he said far louder than he needed, and I immediately realized he was suffering from some kind of shell-shock. I motioned him to be quieter, and he nodded his understanding. “My ears are still ringing. I only just got out in time.” He gave a wry grin, and pulled at my sleeve to keep our progress away from the scene.
“Well we’re grateful,” Alice said.
“Just doing my job, madam,” he gave her a cheeky grin, tipped his hat as he walked.
I could hardly believe it. “You rescued us on orders?”
“From the very top, mucker,”
I thought of my new boss, Brigadier Colin Gubbins, but didn’t want to put his nam
e out into the open. “The Brigadier?”
“The very same. You were a late addition to the whole set-up. The Ritz had been planned for weeks; Jerry flocks to the restaurant on Fridays, we just had to wait on the right combination. Tonight, we chopped three generals from Hitler’s staff.”
“And you saved us,” Alice gave as good a smile as she could, considering we’d just been ripped from certain death.
“Where are you off to?” the man asked.
“No real idea,” I grimaced. “We don’t know London, and don’t know what’s safe and what’s not.”
“I’ve got it. Follow me.”
We fled along one street after another before he stopped at a very non-descript terraced doorway, where he knocked twice. A middle-aged woman answered. “Mrs. Frank.”
“What is it, Bob?” She looked us up and down suspiciously.
“A couple needing a bed for the night.”
“How unusual,”
Bob grinned. “Don’t mind her, she’s a good soul if you dig far enough under the surface.”
“We’ll pay, of course,”
To my surprise she broke into a smile. “That’ll make a change. Most of the folks he dumps here are in hot potatoes up to their necks; most got no money at all.”
Bob left after we both insisted on shaking his hand.
I slept like the dead.
Auld Claithes and Porridge
Bob arrived back at Mrs. Franks just after seven o’clock the next morning. “Jerry has blocked the main rail stations.”
I looked over my strawberry jam home-made muffin. “So how do we get out?”
Bob grinned. “We know London better than Jerry. We’ll get you up to Finsbury Park on the Piccadilly Line. That gets you out of the way. Then you can get a more local train up to Peterborough. Make your journey in small steps, that way you’re only guilty of having been to the last place, not London.” He looked at our clothes. “You’ll need some duds I’m afraid. Both of you look like you’re out on the town, and didn’t quite make it home yet.”
