by Bill Walker
“That’s not important right now, Michael,” Sir Basil said, relighting his Meerschaum. “What is important is that we have a man whom we can trust, a man who can see past any attempt to lie to us. Can you understand that?”
Thorley nodded.
“Of course,” MacIlvey said, “you’ll have to be commissioned as a formality. None of my operatives are civilians.”
“You’ll become a Major in the Royal Guards with a significant increase in your current pay. Is that agreeable?” Atwater smiled, his face taking on a paternal glow.
“Before I say anything one way or the other,” Thorley replied, leveling his gaze at the others, “I want to know what you’re holding back.”
The three older men glanced at one another, their expressions guarded, then Sir Basil nodded, his sober countenance softening with a smile. “I knew you were the right man,” he said, “even if old Pete here still has his doubts. You’ve always looked beyond the obvious. “Unfortunately, we can’t tell you anything more. We don’t know what it is they want to show us, and they won’t say. All they will say is that it’s a matter of the utmost importance. That the entire course of the war will be affected by it.”
Michael raised an eyebrow. “A surrender, perhaps.”
“We thought of that, and we aren’t ruling it out, but this doesn’t have the same ring to it as their entreaties in the past. It’s something else, something altogether bad, I’m afraid.” The older man approached Thorley and laid a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “Michael, I’ve known for some time that you’ve been dissatisfied with your job. I would have to be a doddering old fool not to have seen it. And while your work has always been impeccable, even a doddering old fool can see that sitting out this war’s killing you from the inside out.”
Thorley glanced up at Sir Basil, noting the older man’s impassioned gaze.
“I know it’s risky,” Sir Basil continued, “but we need to find out what’s behind all this. If what they’re saying is true, we might shorten this bloody war. I think we all want that.”
“Yes, sir,” Michael said.
“The Germans have assured us that you’ll be protected at all times. And you won’t be alone; the Swiss will be there, as well.” He paused again, his emotions welling. “I don’t want to see you consume yourself, Michael. You’re too bloody valuable to waste. That’s why we’re giving you this chance. And I hope you’ll take it, but if you don’t, I’ll certainly understand.”
Thorley found his mind a raging torrent of conflicting emotions. Here was the chance to take a stand, to really contribute to the war in a way that no one could ever dispute. On the other hand, it was very likely a contribution he would never be able to talk about, and worse, one from which he might never return. Still, there were thousands of men taking the same risks every day, and dying. What right did he have to refuse?
And then there was Sir Basil. That the old man had thought highly enough of him to trust him with this mission touched him deeply. He only hoped he could live up to the other man’s image of him.
Thorley let out a breath, feeling the tensions of the day leave him in a rush. “All right then,” he said finally, “I’ll do it, if you’ll have me.”
Sir Basil nodded, his proud expression turning serious. “There’s just one other thing,” he added, returning to his place beside the hearth. “You must leave tonight, now in fact.”
Thorley’s eyes widened. “Now? But my wife, I’ll need to tell her.”
MacIlvey was shaking his head vigorously. “Not possible. You accept the assignment—it must be on our terms.”
They had him. They’d played him like a prized fiddle, as the Americans were so fond of saying—knew exactly what it would take to win him over. The odd thing was, he didn’t even mind so much.
Thorley went to the window and gazed onto the London skyline. In years past, the lights would have made the city glow like a magical place, a place of myriad possibilities. Now, the grand old town was dark, a place of shadows and furtive machinations. Now, he was being asked to be a part of those machinations.
Looking southeast past the houses of Parliament, he imagined he could see all the way to Brixton, to his house on Benedict Road with its fenced-in yard and the cast iron bird bath adjacent to the narrow flagstone walk.
I’m sorry, sweetheart, but it’s something that I need to do. I hope you’ll understand.
He turned from the window and faced the three older men. “All right, then, let’s have it.”
Then they told him.
As he listened to them quietly and calmly outlining the mission, he wondered if perhaps he wasn’t making the biggest mistake of his life.
Chapter Five
While Paul lay sleeping, his bearlike form curled into a fetal ball, Lillian slipped out from under the cool silk sheets, and began putting on her clothes. She dressed quickly, not wanting him to awaken and find her still there.
God forgive her for it, but she’d let Paul continue to believe that he was the baby’s father. And now, there was no turning back. She would always have a link with him, and a power over him, where before the power had all been his. Now, he would not be able to force her into any more compromising situations. She was retired, Paul had insisted on it. She found it strange that he would allow the child to be raised by another man, but his position was too important to be jeopardized by any hints of scandal. He would keep tabs on her and the child, he’d said, and make sure they had everything they needed. But Lillian had refused, and their evening of love had almost turned into a row.
After their passions had been spent, all she wanted was to flee, run home to her husband and hope that she could put it all behind her.
Slipping on her shoes, Lillian checked the clock on the bedside table, its radium dial glowing faintly. 8:45.
Michael’s meeting had started an hour and forty-five minutes ago, and would no doubt go on for a while. She had plenty of time to make it home before him, so why did she feel so anxious?
Perhaps, it was that ominous tone in his voice when he’d called her, that certain hesitation that signaled that something was amiss. Then again, why was she trying to fool herself? It was guilt, plain old guilt that made her feel this way. And time would be the only purgative that would rid her of it. Time...and Michael’s love. She’d betrayed him in body and soul, but now she would stick by him, no matter what happened. Paul had promised to stay out of her life unless absolutely necessary. Lillian said a small prayer that he was as good as his word. She wanted no more of his secretive ways.
Retrieving her coat from the chaise lounge, she took one last look at her lover, her eyes tracing the heavy line of his jaw and the soft pout of his lips. Then she left the room, taking the back stairs and exiting the hotel through a fire door leading into the alley.
She hailed a cab on the Strand, taking it to Charing Cross station, where she boarded the 8:55 train to East Brixton. It was blessedly empty, allowing her to sit and compose the thoughts that raged through her jumbled mind. She wanted to be home before Michael, she wanted to feel his arms around her and know that everything would be all right. And when he walked in that door, she would have the candles lit and the news of his child on her lips.
When the cab pulled up in front of 28 Benedict Road at 9:23, Lillian paid the driver and then rushed inside, slamming the door behind her, a sigh of relief escaping her lips. She left the lights out, preferring the dark, and padded into the kitchen where she brewed up a pot of Darjeeling. The odor of the warm, fragrant tea filled the tiny kitchen, reminding her of her youth and bringing unwanted tears to her eyes. It was a childhood far different than the one she’d told Michael when they first met, one that would horrify him for a vastly different reason. It was one more lie, one more secret between them, and she wanted it all to stop—here and now. She vowed that someday, when this ghastly war was over, and their futures were more secure, she would risk the loss of his love and tell him the truth.
For now, however, the truth
must remain where she had always lived...in the shadows.
Chapter Six
The sleek black Humber staff car shot northward on the A113, its eight-cylinder engine thrumming with unchecked power. At this late hour, the road was all but deserted, a narrow winding black ribbon pelted by a driving rain. The tires swished through puddles and the wipers marked cadence in time with the dull throbbing in Thorley’s temple.
Slouched on the butter-soft maroon leather seat directly behind the uniformed driver, Thorley listened as Peter MacIlvey continued briefing him on his mission. The older man’s voice was a heated whisper, as he hammered home the facts over and over again. For a brief moment all the sounds he heard blended into a soft roar and his vision blurred.
It was hard to believe that scant hours before, he’d been sitting comfortably in his little rabbit hole listening to the radio. Now, he sat in an overheated staff car headed north toward an airfield outside Chipping Ongar, where a plane waited expressly for him. Thorley found it odd they were heading away from the coast and asked MacIlvey why he wasn’t flying out of Croydon or Lympne. He was told that his mission was so secret, they couldn’t risk even the slightest attention by civilian or other military personnel.
Watching as the dense, crowded city turned to soot-stained suburbia, Thorley found he couldn’t keep Lillian from intruding into his thoughts. It was now just after 10:00 p.m. and he knew she would be frantic with worry, wondering if something had happened to him. Sir Basil had promised him he would personally inform her as to Thorley’s circumstances, all within the limitations of the Official Secrets Act, of course. But that promise was little comfort.
Feeling dizzy, Thorley cracked open the window next to him, letting the frigid night air and the cool rain blow into his face. It felt wonderful.
“Thorley, be a good man and close the window,” MacIlvey said, his lips pursed with disapproval. “It’s bloody freezing.”
He shot the older man what he hoped was a hateful glare, and cranked up the window, instantly raising the temperature in the car back to its former oven like state.
“How much further is it?” Thorley asked.
MacIlvey squinted into the dark, as if trying to spy a familiar landmark by the two tiny pinpoints of light emanating from the Humber’s masked headlights. “About five miles. Are you clear on everything? Do you want to go over it again?”
“No thank you. I think if I have to hear it all one more time, I’ll go mad. How could something like this have happened?”
MacIlvey’s eyes narrowed and he focused his attentions somewhere out in the dark. “I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you that it’s the fortunes of war, and all that rot.” He paused, letting that thought sink in. “Let us just say that sometimes politics and expediency are more important than people.”
“If that’s true, then we really don’t deserve to beat that bloody corporal.”
MacIlvey’s laugh sounded dry and humorless. “You have a lot to learn, my boy, a lot to learn.”
Thorley was about to rejoin with something pithy, when the Humber turned off the narrow two-lane road onto a dirt track hemmed on either side by tall fir trees. The heavy boughs scraped the roof of the car as they bumped and jounced their way along the deeply rutted road. A moment later the car broke out of the trees and Thorley spotted the airfield.
Little more than a large pasture pounded flat by steamrollers, it consisted of a single concrete runway with several aircraft parking areas branching off it along its length and a Nissen hut. A windsock hung limply from a pole standing several yards from the control tower: a two-story concrete blockhouse with its control nest and observation deck atop the roof. The windows on the ground floor glowed with a golden light, and Thorley saw a shadow cross in front of one them. Someone awaited them.
The Humber made for the blockhouse, and a moment later the car screeched to a halt and the driver scurried to open the door. MacIlvey climbed out and marched into the blockhouse. Thorley followed, feeling queasy. The throbbing in his temple had worsened.
Inside, Thorley saw a sea of empty wooden desks, their scarred surfaces littered with papers and other debris left over from a day’s work. The walls were covered with various maps stuck with pins, and a Teletype clattered lazily somewhere off to his right. But straight ahead, inside one of the enclosed offices, Thorley spotted MacIlvey arguing with an RAF officer.
“...I don’t give two bloody shits about priorities, mate. I want that plane here within the hour, fully fueled and ready to go with the crew I ordered. Is that clear?”
As Thorley approached, the conversation died. The officer stalked past him, muttering, his face flushed and his gaze focused on the floor.
“Close the door, Thorley,” MacIlvey ordered. He then pointed to a document on the otherwise immaculate desk. “These are your commission papers, please sign and date all three copies. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that you are still bound by the Official Secrets Act, or the penalties for divulging any particulars of your mission....”
Thorley sat down in the wooden swivel chair and took up the fountain pen lying next to the commission papers. He stared at them a moment, the official-looking language swimming before his eyes like a cloud of black flies.
He almost put the pen down then, almost told MacIlvey where to shove his bloody papers and his tawdry secrets. But then, as if in a dream, he found himself signing the papers, first one copy, then the next, and finally the last—everything in triplicate.
“Welcome to His Majesty’s Armed Forces,” MacIlvey said without a trace of irony.
Thorley looked up at the man and thought he saw something in those steel-colored eyes, something akin to envy; and he realized that, given the choice, MacIlvey would take his place in a heartbeat, had probably been a topnotch operative before age and infirmity had taken its inevitable toll. For the briefest of moments, Thorley and MacIlvey connected.
“You’ll find your uniform in the cabinet behind you,” MacIlvey said, breaking the mood. “I’ll wait outside while you change.”
And then he was gone, leaving Thorley alone with his thoughts again. Standing, he turned and opened the gun-metal gray cabinet. He found the uniform arrayed on the middle shelf: Cap, socks, underwear, tunic, and trousers, all neatly folded and arranged pyramidally. Next to the pile sat a pair of brown brogans polished to a mirror shine.
The uniform draped his body as if it had been tailored for him, and that made him uneasy. To have known all his measurements so thoroughly meant that they knew him far better than he would have liked. The inside of the metal cabinet held a full-length mirror, and Thorley gazed at his reflection. To everyone but himself he would appear to be the essence of a Major in the Royal Guards, replete with the proper medal ribbons for a man of his age and rank, decorations he did not deserve.
Suddenly depressed, he shut the cabinet and left the room. He found MacIlvey waiting just outside the blockhouse staring up at the night sky. He turned and gave Thorley an appraising glance, then returned his attention to the stars. The sight was awe-inspiring. Unlike the skies over London, where one was lucky to see the odd star through the smog, here the air was cool, clear as crystal, and smelled of pine tar and wildflowers, laced with a hint of cow manure.
MacIlvey broke the silence. “My father gave me a telescope when I was twelve. Since that time, I’ve never gotten tired of looking up. When you understand what’s out there, and the obscene distances involved, you realize how small and insignificant man is.”
“Heavy stuff for—”
“—an old coot?”
Thorley nodded, embarrassed.
MacIlvey chuckled. “Well, I wasn’t always so philosophical, or so old, for that matter. What I said about politics being more important than people.... It’s the way the world is, Thorley. I wish to Christ it wasn’t, but there it is. I learned long ago that I had to play the game their way or I’d be out of it.”
“And that was important to you, to be in ‘the game’?”
“Bloody right on that one. I wanted in because I thought I could change it from the inside. Instead—”
“—It changed you.”
MacIlvey nodded. “Someone once said, I forget who it was, that all cynics are disillusioned romantics. That’s me, to a tee.”
Thorley was about to offer a comeback when the sound of engines floated in on the wind. MacIlvey gave a curt nod. “Well done, Gormley, well done.”
Thorley looked toward the source of the sound and saw, off to the west, the landing lights of a lone plane flying toward the field. When it drew closer, he saw that it was a Vickers-Wellington, a dual-engine medium bomber. It was painted a drab brown, and had the RAF bull’s-eye painted on both wings and the rear fuselage, along with a series of numbers in a pale yellow. Wagging its wings, the Wellington made a sweeping pass around the field, then landed, coming to a stop about fifty yards away from where Thorley and MacIlvey stood. From off to their left the fuel truck drove up and two ground crewmen uncoiled a hose, connected it to a spot on the wing and the refueling process began.
“Let’s go,” MacIlvey said, motioning for Thorley to follow him. He found he had to trot to keep up with the older man, who marched across the runway with long impatient strides, barking orders at the ground crew to hurry it up. When they closed in on the plane, Thorley noticed more details about the aircraft: the drab brown was really an intricate camouflage pattern. Conversely, the underbelly was painted a light sky blue, an odd-looking combination until one realized that, from the ground, the plane would be less easy to spot by trigger-happy German anti-aircraft gunners. The other thing he noticed about the Wellington made him uneasy. It bristled with .303 calibre machine guns.
Thorley caught up with MacIlvey as a hatch under the plane’s belly, just to the rear of the cockpit, swung open and the pilot dropped out onto the runway. Exuding the natural confidence of men who daily risked their lives, the pilot strode toward them, the buckles and zippers of his flight gear clacking together. He was tall, recruiting-poster handsome, with a pencil mustache, and cleft chin. The pilot stopped in front of MacIlvey and nodded. “Right. This the package?”
