He huffed. ‘Suit yourself, missus.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to be so short.’
‘That’s all right, Mrs Wilde. I’ll be on my way – you get the professor to bed.’
Lydia put her hands under Wilde’s armpits and tried to pull him up. He groaned again, then shook his head. ‘God in heaven,’ he said.
‘Daddy hurting!’
‘Tom, what on earth is going on? Why did you sleep here? Even if you’ve lost your key, I would have woken up and let you in.’
‘Just give me a moment.’ He was on his knees now, clasping the edge of the front door. Gradually he pulled himself up. ‘Dear God, Lydia, I’ve got the hangover to end all hangovers.’
‘You must have drunk a whole bottle of Scotch. You smell like a distillery.’
‘One glass, that’s all. It was doped.’
‘By whom? Why?’
‘Templeman. Lord bloody Templeman.’
‘You’re not making sense, Tom. Why would a man like Dagger Templeman drug you?’
‘To make me talk, I think. Come on, let’s get inside. Make some coffee and I’ll try and tell you everything. Or what I can remember. At the moment it’s all as fuzzy as hell.’
*
Coffee, weak though it was, helped him feel more human, but it did little to improve his memory. He was aware that he had been abducted from the street outside St Thomas’ Hospital by Philip Eaton and two of his agents. He was aware, too, that he had been taken to Latimer Hall and held against his will and he suspected he had been questioned regarding the whereabouts of Harriet Hartwell. ‘Beyond that I can remember almost nothing.’
‘Well, perhaps it will all come back during the day, darling,’ Lydia said. ‘But don’t you think you had better tell me where you have been – and who exactly your new friend is? I don’t much like the sound of Harriet Hartwell.’
‘She’s all right, I think – a serious woman.’ He realised he was parroting her own words to describe herself.
‘Is she now? You might be interested to know that she phoned here last night and asked me to give you a message.’
Wilde was suddenly alert. ‘Yes? Did she say where she was?’
‘I really don’t know. It was rather strange actually. She just said, “Tell him the shed.” At least I think that’s what it was. Does she know you have a partner and a child?’
‘Did she leave a phone number?’
‘No. I tried to question her, but she just cut the call dead. There had been a click on the line, as usual nowadays. Someone is listening in.’
‘Templeman’s men, I imagine.’
‘I assume the shed means something to you?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, I think it does.’
‘Then what are you going to do, Tom? Don’t you think you’ve had enough of this game? If you ask me, you need to do one of two things – either trot along to St Andrew’s Street, talk to the police and clear your name, or get yourself to the embassy in London and do it through diplomatic channels. You can’t just go chasing after this woman, a fugitive about whom you know bugger all. And I’m pretty sick of visits from the local police and others asking if I’ve heard from you.’
‘I’ll call Bill Phillips and get his take on it.’
‘And you know what he’ll say? Kill this nonsense stone dead. The last thing he’ll want is any sort of rift between allies.’
First though, he wanted to talk to Jimmy Orde in Caithness. He wanted an affidavit of what he had seen – Sunderland 4026 arriving in Scotland, not leaving. He wanted it so that whatever came of this affair, he had something on paper to prove he wasn’t merely chasing shadows.
*
Jean Orde answered the phone in her low, lilting brogue, but a little flatter than he remembered it. ‘Hello, Mrs Orde speaking.’
‘Jean, it’s Tom Wilde.’
‘Oh yes, hello, Tom.’
‘Is Jimmy there? I’d like to have a quick word with him.’
There was a slight pause; he could almost hear the catching of emotion in her throat from 600 miles away.
‘Is something the matter?’
‘He’s missing, Tom. The boat’s missing.’
He went cold. ‘How long? How long has it been missing?’
‘They were due back yesterday evening. This has never happened before.’
‘Is the weather bad?’
‘No, it’s been fine these past two days and nights. I’m scared, Tom. We all are, all the wives. All sorts of possibilities go through your mind, none of them good. Some say they’ve been . . . torpedoed.’
The final word was uttered so faintly that Wilde wondered for a moment whether it had been spoken. But that was merely wishful thinking, for he knew it had been said. He felt utterly helpless. He had met a man after his own heart in Jimmy Orde, and his wife Jean was every bit his match. He thought of their warm, welcoming house with the splendid food and the children running around and imagined it cold and full of fear.
‘Would they have had a lifeboat aboard?’
‘Aye, and the search has been on all night. But there’s not a sign – and there was no mayday call. We’re all in despair up here.’
‘Perhaps the trawler is drifting through loss of power.’
‘Aye, perhaps . . .’
‘I’m so sorry, Jean. I can’t imagine what this is like for you and the bairns, and the families of the other men.’
‘It’s what I’ve lived with every day since childhood. My uncle Alec was taken by the sea back in 1913, but that was God and nature doing their worst. This feels like man’s doing.’
‘Can I give you my number in case you hear anything?’
‘Aye, I’ll let you know – either way. Jimmy liked you and trusted you, Tom.’
Wilde didn’t know what more to say. The stoicism of the woman was, in itself, enough to bring a man to tears. Lydia and Johnny were watching him in silence. Even the boy seemed to understand that this was no moment for childish prattle.
Slowly he replaced the receiver.
‘I understand,’ Lydia said. She had seen the darkness in his eyes, and she knew that any hope of his giving up on the strange, perambulating quest that was consuming him had just disappeared.
Chapter 23
He washed, shaved and ate breakfast at speed, then kissed them both and walked to the side of the house where the Rudge Special was parked.
Removing the tarpaulin, he wheeled the 500cc motorcycle down to the road, checked the oil and the petrol – his whole ration for the month intact – and fired her up. He knew Lydia and Johnny would be at the front window watching him, so he threw them a smile and a wave, then turned the throttle and hit the road out of Cambridge at high speed.
The roads were clear of all but military and farm traffic and he made good time, reaching Clade in an hour and a half. He realised it wouldn’t be term time yet, so the school should be empty except for the permanent staff. More than anything, he was worried that he might be recognised if his photograph had been circulated among the local police or if he encountered the postwoman or the woman who had given him directions, so he kept his face concealed behind goggles and flying helmet.
He rode through the ancient gateposts – which had no gate or other security – up to the front of the old school. A couple of cars were parked to the right of the building. Stopping the bike, he stretched his legs and gazed up at the ancient edifice. It wasn’t very large and nor was it imposing. Built of limestone in, he guessed, the eleventh or twelfth century, it had mullions and transoms on its windows and it had the look of a religious institution – priory or abbey.
So this was Athelstans. He had expected something larger and more dramatic, but of course the true grandeur lay in its alumni and its pre-eminent position in England’s Establishment. He doubted whether this place could hold more than 300 boys at a time. Perhaps fifty to sixty boys a year, depending on what year they started. He actually knew very little about the school but imag
ined that its diminutive size served to add to its sense of exclusivity. Gardens stretched off to the left of the building and, in the distance, he could see a long, high wall and orchards. Behind the wall, there would be a vegetable and fruit garden and probably, beyond that, there would be glasshouses and sheds. He guessed that the old disused shed that Harriet had mentioned as her trysting place with Cazerove would be somewhere around there.
A figure passed across a ground-floor window. Wilde twisted the throttle and put the Rudge into a tight circle, then steered it back along the drive, through the gateposts on to the road. Opposite him was the track up to the Hartwells’ house. To the left was the way into Clade, to the right the road back to Cambridge and, not more than a hundred yards away, a patch of unfenced woodland, where he concealed the bike and set off on foot.
The outer wall around the school grounds was easy to scale and beyond it there was mostly more woodland. He understood his direction of travel now, and quickly made his way through the trees to the edge of the extensive gardens. There were several outhouses near the walled garden. Could one of those be the old gardening shed? The problem was, they were so near the other buildings that Harriet Hartwell and Peter Cazerove would not have had much in the way of privacy there.
Surely, the shed she referred to had to be further away?
Staying as concealed as he could, he eased his way through the woods trying to spy out a likely wooden building. Sometimes he stopped as gardeners or maintenance workers made their way across his field of vision. The issue was, he was not at all sure what he was looking for – something rickety and old, but that was all. And he was even less certain that Harriet would be there anyway.
At last he spotted it, on the far side of the games pitches beyond the cricket pavilion. Not obvious but visible. It looked like the sort of place they might have gone for their secret assignments.
Keeping a wary eye open for groundsmen and other workers, he arrived at the building. The door opened with a creak. Inside there was nothing but cobwebs, a pile of planks, an old broken cup. It was just the one room. There were scuffed footprints in the dust, but they could have been made any time in the past five years. He didn’t have to look around long to realise that she had either been here and departed, or that she hadn’t arrived yet.
The door creaked behind him and a figure blanked out the light. He turned. A man was standing in the doorway, one hand in the pocket of his faded boiler suit, another holding a long-handled hoe.
‘Who are you?’ the man said. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I was looking for someone.’
‘Oh yes? And who might that be?’
The obvious move was to attack. The man was white-haired, about sixty years old and strong. Wilde’s fists could get him past most men, this one included, probably, but something held him back.
‘A woman,’ Wilde said.
The gardener grinned. ‘Well, if you’re looking for a woman, I take it you’ll be Professor Thomas Wilde. You fit the description all right.’ It was a statement of assumption rather than a question.
Wilde hesitated.
‘Don’t worry,’ the gardener said. ‘You’re safe with me. I’ll take you to her.’
‘Who are you?’
‘A friend. I’m Dolby.’ He offered his hand and Wilde took it. ‘How did you get here, prof ? Car?’
‘Motorbike.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Woodland, by the road.’
‘Let’s go to it. You go ahead, I’ll follow you. Try not to be seen this time. You were a bit obvious, if you don’t mind my saying so. Luckily there’s not many of us about, what with the call-up. We’ve to do two men’s work apiece, for the same money of course.’
Within five minutes, they were riding back north to the next hamlet, which didn’t seem to have a name. Dolby was riding pillion. He patted Wilde on the shoulder, signalling him to stop, then looked around to check no one was following. ‘Take the path on the left,’ he said, his mouth close to Wilde’s ear.
Wilde turned on to the track. It led to a rather modern house – late 1920s, early 1930s – at the edge of a field. A car was parked outside – a cream-coloured Austin Seven.
‘Here we are,’ Dolby said. ‘Home sweet home.’
*
Heinrich Müller always watched Adolf Eichmann with amusement. He liked the way he twisted his arms and twitched the side of his mouth, the way his body tautened as he strove to ensure he did not put a foot wrong or say anything that might be misunderstood. His fastidiousness was especially interesting for no one was better than Müller at seeking out and exploiting men’s weak points. Such were the requisite qualities of a secret policeman. As chief of the Gestapo, Müller had had to use these exceptional skills on many occasions. Sometimes all that was needed to make a man talk was to make him uncomfortable but, at other times, a couple of blows from a schlag at that special point behind the ear was called for. There was no finer way of inflicting intense pain or, if there was, the Gestapo and its compliant medical department hadn’t yet discovered it. But the schlag – the rubber truncheon – would never be necessary with a man like Eichmann. He cringed like a puppy, so desperate was he to please his master.
Of course, Müller was every bit as dedicated to his work as Eichmann. The difference was that Eichmann believed all the Nazi shit.
Eichmann’s life had to be just so because otherwise none of this historic mission would work; there had to be painstaking attention to detail. That had always been the way things were done in Department IVA4b of the Reich Security Main Office.
Thus if a subordinate made an error, he or she would suffer a dressing-down of seismic proportions – and Eichmann would make a mental note never to trust that person again. Two errors, and the Russian front or an educational stay in Sachsenhausen would beckon. Eichmann was unbending in such matters.
It was the same with his uniforms. They were pressed every day, his high boots shone like glass, his military cap was inspected for motes of dust morning and night. He expected no less of those who worked for him. That was the way things were done here in Eichmann’s rather functional office within the Jewish department at 115/116 Kurfürstenstrasse, Berlin. If Eichmann made a mistake . . . well, he never did make a mistake, did he? The filing cabinets full of every detail of his work gave testimony to that. Everything was recorded here.
And yet Eichmann the perfectionist had made a grievous error, which was why he was here, standing like a schoolboy and squirming.
‘We have word,’ Müller said. ‘About your man Coburg.’
‘He’s not my man. He was transferred to the staff of Prince Philipp von Hessen.’
‘Don’t answer me back, Eichmann. He was your shitty man. And that is all that matters. Reichsführer Himmler is speechless with anger. He is inclined to apprise the Führer himself of your unimaginable carelessness. Have you any idea what that will mean to your career?’
Eichmann clicked his heels involuntarily. He blinked behind his clerk’s glasses and his small mouth writhed like an earthworm. ‘Of course, Herr Gruppenführer, but I can assure you . . .’
‘I don’t want your damned assurances, Eichmann – I want this dealt with. This Coburg of yours has been in touch with the British and now he has disappeared in Sweden. We have reason to believe he is in possession of sensitive confidential papers – from your office. Can you think what those might be?’
The blood drained from Eichmann’s already pale brow. ‘Missing papers? There are no missing papers, sir.’
‘Are you calling me a liar?’
‘No, of course not, Herr Gruppenführer. I will double-check all our records to see if anything is missing. But I cannot believe—’
‘Damn you, Eichmann, I don’t want your ridiculous assurances. I want to know what papers have gone! Do you understand me?’
Eichmann nodded and clicked his heels again. He was sweating profusely. Before Müller, he had answered to Heydrich, who had trained him i
n his own image. But now Heydrich was dead, victim of an assassin in Prague, and so Eichmann had to obey this man and he didn’t know how to deal with him.
Müller knew that Eichmann feared him. He knew that he considered him a brutal, selfish careerist who didn’t share the ideology of his predecessor or even have the interests of the race at heart. But so what? He watched Eichmann’s tell-tale signs of imminent capitulation, the twisting of the neck to relieve the pricking of the tight, sweat-soaked collar.
‘You have some idea, don’t you, Eichmann? You think you know what is missing from your department?’
‘No, sir. I have no idea.’ But his sweat and discomfort told a different story. It said that he had a horrible idea what the papers might be.
‘So tell me about your man Coburg. Was he a good worker?’
‘I considered him an excellent worker. No one understood the transports and cargoes better. His filing was beyond reproach. Had he been an army man, he would have made a first-rate quartermaster. I would say he was an important part of my team and I was sorry to lose him.’
‘Then why did you let him go?’
‘I had instructions that he was to be transferred to Prince Philipp von Hessen at the Führer’s headquarters. It was an order that came out of the blue, but one I was powerless to countermand.’
‘This was quite soon after our little morale-boosting trip to Poland, yes?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And what was Coburg’s reaction to the trip?’
‘I had thought him invigorated by it, Herr Müller. It was good for him to see the fruits of his labours – the destination of the transports.’
‘So I ask again, why did he leave your department so precipitously?’
Eichmann blinked furiously. ‘In truth, I had been minded to argue against the move, but I knew that the prince had the Führer’s ear, and I felt that I was in no position to say anything.’
‘And the missing papers?’
‘I know of no—’
Müller cut him short. ‘Why do I have to learn this from our people in England, Eichmann? Why do you not know your papers are missing and report their loss to me?’
A Prince and a Spy Page 18
