A Gathering of Saints

by A Gathering of Saints (retail) (epub)

  Pausing for a moment, he reached out one hand and pushed it in between the cable bundles until his splayed fingers touched the rough wall of the tunnel. He closed his eyes, listening to the count of his heart, whispering the numbers, feeling the deep, rhythmic pulse of the earth itself, groaning under the catastrophic weight of the city overhead. Soon there would be release.

  He continued down the tunnel until he reached the storage shed. Unlocking it, he stepped inside, squeezing around the rudely organised equipment. Reaching upward, he found the battery-operated railway lamp he’d hung from the roof and switched it on, flooding the coffin-like chamber with light.

  The Number squinted, checking the small ammeter he’d wired into the cable circuit and nodded to himself. The impedance on the cable shunt from the Air Ministry teleprinter was being matched exactly; as far as anyone else was concerned the circuit was unbroken, stretching virginally from the Ultra cryptanalysts at Bletchley Hall, sixty miles away, to Air Ministry Communications Headquarters, deep beneath Horse Guards Avenue in Whitehall.

  The device filling up the tiny room was an altered Stearns differential duplex telegraph system modified to combine with a standard government teleprinter and brought in piece by piece over a period of many days. The modified Stearns system employed a relay wound with two sets of coils, which allowed current flow in opposite directions.

  Combined as it was with an ordinary telegraphic repeater, the machine stole the Bletchley signal, shunted it onto the secondary length of coaxial cable and ran it through the teleprinter, simultaneously printing out the messages and repeating the signal, sending it back down the same cable and into the main circuit after a slight current boost to match the signal strength. In essence the system was the telegraphic version of a telephone extension set. A variation of the same device had been developed at Dollis Hill some time before and was now being used by Special Branch to tap into a selection of diplomatic telephone lines in London, including those of the Soviet embassy.

  The hopper under the teleprinter unit was filled almost to overflowing but The Number wasted no time reading through the day’s accumulation of signals. Counting anxiously under his breath, he tore the upper end of the paper roll across the serrated blade behind the teleprinter platen, gathered up the signals and stuffed them into his satchel. He reset the paper, threading it under the blade and down to the hopper, checked the ammeter again then straightened. By his perfect count he had less than three minutes to get back to the Holborn platform and catch the next train on its return circuit to King Edward Street.

  If he missed it, there would be a seven-minute wait – much too long to spend on the Holborn platform, which was half the size of the one at GPO headquarters. Missing the train would also constitute an unacceptable failure in his calculations and the thought of it made small beads of sweat spring up at his forehead and along his jaw.

  Even such a small mistake meant punishment and that was almost too terrible to think about. In his mind’s eye he could see the waiting, locked, blank door leading to the third-floor rooms of his mother’s house and he made a small mewling sound as he fumbled with the satchel catch.

  Securing it at last, he turned out the battery light, backed out of the enclosure and locked the door behind him. Counting carefully, fear-flecks of spittle gathering at the corners of his mouth, he scuttled quickly down the passage, back the way he’d come.

  * * *

  Number 5 Bentinck Street in Bloomsbury was a five-storey Queen Anne town house identical to its neighbours. Visibly, the block-long street connecting Marylebone Lane to Welbeck Street had changed little in two hundred years. By all appearances it was still very much an enclave of the wealthy, the brickwork scrubbed each year, wrought-iron fences painted black, brass bell pushes on white door frames brightly polished.

  Time had taken its toll, however; the houses, once the private London pied-à-terre of the ruling class, had long ago been broken into flats for civil servants and BBC employees, who liked them for their convenient location only a dozen blocks or so south of Broadcasting House. Marylebone Lane, once the winding main street of the original parish, had been almost totally rebuilt since the previous war and was now home to dozens of family shops and a seemingly endless supply of Italian restaurants.

  Number 5 Bentinck Street, which housed the offices of the London Practitioner magazine on its upper floors, had been purchased only the year before by Lord Victor Rothschild, supposedly as an investment. Rothschild, a Cambridge graduate in sciences, had given over his mansion off Park Lane for government use at the beginning of the war and now lived with his wife and children at the Dorchester Hotel, but according to one of Charles Tennant’s patients, the real reason Rothschild had purchased the house had been to house his mistress, Theresa Major, in the basement flat along with her old school friend, Patricia Rawdon-Smith, who, it seemed, was also amorously involved with a member of the peerage.

  Standing in a far corner of the living room in the large, low-ceilinged apartment, Tennant now knew what his talkative patient had meant when he described the Bentinck Street flat as a high-class male brothel.

  Guy Burgess, from whom Tennant had managed to cadge an invitation, was seated at the grand piano in the opposite corner of the room, dressed in a pale green silk dressing gown over matching pyjamas, plump fingers giving a tinkling accompaniment to Perry Como singing ‘Prisoner of Love’ on the phonograph. Seated beside him, but facing into the room, was a very young man with long blond hair dressed in a cream-coloured suit and expensive-looking Italian shoes in dark blue leather.

  To the right of the piano, seated in a grouping of astonishingly ornate Napoleon III carved, gilt-wood chairs, were three men, all in their late twenties or early thirties, dressed in evening clothes, talking earnestly together. From where he was standing it looked to Tennant as though the chairs were upholstered in some sort of hideous Aubusson tapestry in shades of red, green, pink and beige.

  Another man, his back to Tennant, was standing at a row of bookcases behind the Aubusson chairs, leafing through a slim, leather-bound volume and smoking a cigarette in a long ebony holder. Every few seconds he tossed his head elegantly, then looked around the room to see if anyone was watching.

  A dozen other men and women, almost all of them young and dressed stylishly, were milling about in the centre of the room, chattering brightly, drinking, laughing loudly and striking an ever-shifting assortment of poses ranging from Isadora Duncans languorously holding on to the pale pink marble fireplace mantel to latter-day Oscar Wildes like the one at the bookcase.

  Across from the fireplace, against the far wall, another half dozen guests were seated on a matched set of Biedermeier sofas upholstered in yellow shot silk, while others lounged on luxurious chairs of high historical pedigree. An absurd youth with obviously dyed, carrot-coloured hair, wearing a short, black cloak. A tiny man with thinning dark hair, half-hidden by a huge potted plant, watching the partygoers with large, wary eyes. A man in wrinkled seersucker, mouse-brown hair sweat-plastered across his forehead, asleep, mouth gaping, thick spectacles balanced on the oily red tip of his bulbous nose.

  A variety of foods, mostly cakes of one sort or another, were laid out on a long dining table next to Tennant and drinks were being served from the shelf of an enormous sixteenth-century burled-mahogany secretaire on the far side of the fireplace.

  Sipping his small sherry, Tennant felt the beginnings of a splitting headache begin to clamp like a spring-steel band around his temples. The overall effect of the room was grotesque, the voices and the laughter tinged with the hysteria of an asylum. He’d hoped to meet Liddell here tonight, or at least see him, but the cello-playing MI5 man hadn’t made an appearance. It was time to go. Coming here had been an utter waste of time.

  On the far side of the room dimly seen through the smoke haze, Burgess had begun to sing along with the gramophone record, his heavy tenor washing over the recording as he edged along the piano bench, his broad, fleshy buttocks in the silk
robe pressing against the thigh of his much younger seatmate. In the middle of the song, Burgess, smiling dreamily, turned on the bench, leaned to one side and pressed his lips into the curve of the young man’s neck. Sighing, Tennant put his glass down on the table to his left and prepared to leave. He’d had more than enough of 5 Bentinck Street and its decadent, dandified troglodytes.

  He had a brief, surreal vision of Heydrich standing in the centre of the room and almost burst out laughing. Heydrich, the imperious Spartan, psychopathic demigod of a new race, the quintessence of the Übermensch, versus Guy Burgess, Etonian mud lark, Milquetoast booby squatting in this millionaire’s nest, leader of an army of peroxide street pickups, pimps and ponces. There was no doubt who the victor would be.

  A woman standing at the table was looking at him very directly. She took a sliver of cake from a silver tray on the table and popped it into her mouth, still staring. She looked to be about twenty-one or -two, not pretty, but attractive, high-cheeked, strong-chinned and broad-mouthed. The large, staring eyes were hazel, the bobbed, slightly waved hair a glorious, coppery auburn that seemed to be natural. She was the same height as Tennant, slim and small-breasted, wearing a black velvet skirt and a white silk blouse. At least a dozen gypsy bangles were on her narrow wrists. Long legs ended in small feet enclosed prettily in black patent Lilywhites with velvet bows and high, block heels.

  ‘You don’t look as though you belong,’ she said, speaking around the cake. She swallowed then licked her fingers delicately.

  Tennant shrugged. ‘I don’t feel as though I belong.’

  ‘Then why are you here?’

  ‘I was invited.’

  ‘One doesn’t necessarily go where one is invited.’ The accent was somewhere out of London, but educated.

  ‘I was curious.’

  ‘We all know what that did to pussy,’ she said coyly.

  ‘I’m not pussy.’

  ‘So who are you then?’

  ‘My name is Tennant. Charles Tennant.’

  ‘Caroline Pope-Hennessy. My friends call me Poppet. What do your friends call you?’

  ‘Charles.’ He smiled.

  ‘Well, Charles, which of them invited you, Guy or Tony?’

  ‘Burgess. I don’t even know who Tony is.’

  ‘Tony Blunt,’ Poppet said, nodding towards the small group in the chairs by the bookcase. ‘He’s the horsey-faced one with his hands on Donald’s knee. Trying to get him into bed again by the looks of it. Keeps on telling him he’s the reborn essence of the Pre-Raphaelites or some such nonsense. Good bloody luck to him!’ Tennant nodded; he remembered Maclean now – a ‘promising’ man at the Foreign Office he’d been introduced to once at Whites.

  Beside him the young woman frowned. ‘Close friend of Guy’s, are you?’

  ‘Not really. We’ve met once or twice.’

  ‘Oh, good.’ Poppet sounded relieved.

  ‘You don’t like him?’

  ‘I think he’s a dear, but if you’re a friend of Guy’s, that probably means you don’t like girls very much, which means I shan’t be able to go to bed with you.’

  ‘I see.’ Tennant smiled. She was trying very hard to shock.

  ‘You’re not a Jew are you?’

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘I’ve never been to bed with a Jew. I’ve thought about going to bed with Victor, but he’s not here, and anyway, he’s all in a dither about Tess, so I suppose I should just forget about it. Mind you, I’ve never been to bed with a black man either. Perhaps I should try that.’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you. On both counts.’

  ‘If you’re not a Jew, then what are you?’

  ‘Church of England, if I’m anything at all.’

  Poppet shook her head. She swayed slightly, clearly a little drunk. ‘No, I mean what is it that you do? Everyone else here is either an unemployed actor or works with the rest of us at the Circus.’

  ‘The Circus?’

  ‘BSS, MI5, whatever you like.’

  ‘You’re a spy?’

  ‘Secretary, actually. I model at Harrods at the weekends, though. Ladies’ wear and undergarments.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘You still haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘I’m a psychiatrist. From time to time I vet new applicants for the Circus as you call it.’

  ‘Freud was a psychiatrist wasn’t he?’ Poppet blinked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And a Jew as well.’

  ‘Yes. But it’s not a prerequisite to join the profession.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She smiled brightly. ‘I’ve never gone to bed with a psychiatrist either.’ There was a loud piano flourish from the far side of the room and Burgess began to sing again. ‘Oh, Christ!’ Poppet groaned. ‘It’s drinking songs now! Next it’ll be limericks.’

  ‘I really should be going,’ said Tennant. Burgess hooted on, describing Abdul A-Bul-Bul’s confrontation with Ivan Skivinsky Skavar and his Muscovite maid. By the time he’d reached the next verse, the rest of the room had taken up the chorus.

  ‘I think I’ll come along,’ said Poppet, slipping her arm under Tennant’s. ‘All the singing is going to wake up Muggeridge and Tony will get into another of his arguments with him about why sweet little Kenny Clark is National Gallery director and he isn’t. Puts me right to sleep. All Malcolm wants to do is feel superior.’ She looked brightly up at Tennant. ‘Where shall we go, then?’

  They took a cab through the empty streets to Piccadilly and the Ritz Hotel, Poppet commenting on how quiet it was without the ack-ack pounding away and how dark without the twisting, brilliant beams of the searchlight batteries next door in Green Park. The bar at the hotel was almost empty at that time of night, even without the threat of a raid.

  ‘Do you do dreams?’ asked Poppet, one long nail tracing a line of condensation down the glass holding her gimlet. ‘Interpret them, I mean?’

  ‘I have done,’ Tennant admitted. ‘I’m not sure I give them as much importance as Dr Freud, though.’

  ‘I have one quite often.’

  ‘The same one?’

  ‘Umm.’ She nodded, sipping her drink. ‘I’m being followed about in the garden of my parents’ house by a dead male torso. Nude, I’m afraid, all waxy. The head is on, but I can’t tell who it is. It stumps about on its knees because the legs are all folded up behind.’

  ‘Is that the extent of it?’

  ‘No. After a bit I notice that I’m stumbling over things in the grass as I go along and then I realise that I’m tripping on bits and pieces of the dead body. It’s rotting away you see, shedding like a snake, ears, fingers, nose. The worst is when the cock falls off. Rather a large one and very pink. That’s when I scream and wake up.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound much like a woman’s dream.’

  ‘Well, no,’ Poppet agreed, her expression serious. ‘That’s what bothers me. I mean, I don’t have a cock to worry about falling off, do I?’

  ‘Perhaps it’s the company you keep.’ Tennant smiled. ‘The boys?’ she said. Tennant nodded. ‘They’re not so bad.’ She took another sip of her drink. ‘Guy’s a bit… aggressive in his affections and he drinks too much but they all mean well. It’s very hard for them you know.’

  ‘What? The war?’

  ‘No, not that,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘It’s the way things have turned out. Guy’s father and stepfather were both Navy types, Donald’s father was an MP, Tony’s father is a vicar and the King’s cousin…’

  ‘A privileged lot, then.’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s not that. Well, I suppose it is that but it’s more the fact that when they were at school they all knew exactly where they were going, don’t you see? They were the avant-garde. The great la-de-da. It was going to be a brand-new world and they were going to be the ones at the helm.’

  ‘And now that’s all changed.’

  ‘Umm. Donald goes on about it all the time.’

  ‘Donald? You mean Maclean?’

/>   ‘That’s right. The one in the natty suit Tony was seducing in the corner.’ She swallowed the last of her gimlet. ‘He says it’s as though the lot of them are back at Eton in the lower school wearing straw boaters and playing at games. It’s all prefects and masters and fagging. They’re forever the lower-form boys trapped in their youth.’

  ‘And railing against it,’ said Tennant, nodding. The analogy was probably quite astute. Boys repressed by their fathers, unable to take their places in the world, venting their frustrations through outrageous behaviour. ‘How does Liddell fit into the pattern?’ he asked, casting a tentative line into the pool. Poppet looked a little surprised at hearing the name.

  ‘You know Captain Liddell?’

  ‘Only through Burgess.’

  ‘He doesn’t fit at all, I suppose. I mean, other than the fact that Tony works for him. So do I for that matter.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, he is head of B, after all. Tony’s his assistant and I work in the typing pool.’

  ‘So Liddell is the grand old man, then?’

  ‘The other way round, actually. He comes round to the flat now and again to play his cello and for drinks but I think he likes being with them because they’re young and angry. I think that part of him has faded away. He’s at least ten years older than the rest of them.’

  ‘I wonder what they’d think if they knew you were telling tales about them out of school.’

  ‘I doubt if they’d think about it at all.’

  ‘You never know.’ The psychiatrist smiled, raising an eyebrow. ‘I might be a Nazi spy.’

  ‘You could be Hermann Goering on a milk float for all they’d mind.’ She laughed. ‘No one pays much attention to security.’ She made a snorting sound and twiddled with the stem of her glass. ‘Half our documentation has been moved to Blenheim Palace for the duration and whenever we need something they bring it down by motorcycle driver. Sometimes the panniers aren’t tied down properly and we’ve got secret documents blowing about in the street. We once had a dossier on German war production handed in to us by a streetsweeper. The clippie on the omnibus calls out the Blenheim stop as, ‘All change for MI5.’ It’s a bit of a joke really.’