Behind the desk was a hallway, and down it Basil could see a larger room, a banquet hall or something, full of drowsy-looking men sitting around listlessly, while a few further back slept on sofas pushed in for just that purpose. It looked police.
That settled it. This was the German headquarters.
He moseyed out and knew he had one more stop before tomorrow.
He had to examine his objective.
A FEW DAYS PREVIOUSLY (CONT’D.)
“Another book? Exactly yes and exactly no,” said Sir Colin.
“How could there be a second original? By definition there can be only one original, or so it was taught when I was at university.”
“It does seem like a conundrum, does it not?” said Sir Colin. “But indeed, we are dealing with a very rare case of a second original. Well, of sorts.”
“Not sure I like the sound of that,” said Basil.
“Nor should you. It takes us to a certain awkwardness that, again, an ironist would find heartily amusing.”
“You see,” said Basil, “I am fond of irony, but only when applied to other chaps.”
“Yes, it can sting, can it not?” said General Cavendish. “And I must say, this one stings quite exhaustively. It will cause historians many a chuckle when they write the secret history of the war in the twenty-first century after all the files are finally opened.”
“But we get ahead of ourselves,” said Sir Colin. “There’s more tale to tell. And the sooner we tell it, the sooner the cocktail hour.”
“Tell on, then, Sir Colin.”
“It all turns on the fulcrum of folly and vanity known as the human heart, especially when basted in ambition, guilt, remorse, and greed. What a marvelous stew, all of it simmering within the head of the Reverend MacBurney. When last we left him, our God-fearing MacBurney had become a millionaire because his pamphlet The Path to Jesus had sold endlessly, bringing him a shilling a tot. As I said, he retired to a country estate and spent some years happily wenching and drinking in happy debauchery.”
“As who would not?” asked Basil, though he doubted this lot would.
“Of course. But then in the year 1789, twenty-two years later, he was approached by a representative of the bishop of Gladney and asked to make a presentation to the Church. To commemorate his achievement, the thousands of souls he had shepherded safely upon the aforenamed path, the bishop wanted him appointed deacon at St. Blazefield’s in Glasgow, the highest church rank a fellow like him could achieve. And Thomas wanted it badly. But the bishop wanted him to donate the original manuscript to the church, for eternal display in its ambulatory. Except Thomas had no idea where the original was and hadn’t thought about it in years. So he sat down, practical Scot that he was, and from the pamphlet itself he back-engineered, so to speak, another ‘original’ manuscript in his own hand, a perfect facsimile, or as perfect as he could make it, even, one must assume, to the little crucifix doodles that so amused the Cambridge librarian. That was shipped to Glasgow, and that is why to this day Thomas MacBurney lounges in heaven, surrounded by seraphim and cherubim who sing his praises and throw petals where he walks.”
“It was kind of God to provide us with the second copy,” said Basil.
“Proof,” said the admiral, “that He is on our side.”
“Yes. The provenance of the first manuscript is well established; as I say, it has pencil marks to guide the printer in the print shop owner’s hand. That is why it is so prized at Cambridge. The second was displayed for a century in Glasgow, but then the original St. Blazefield’s was torn down for a newer, more imposing one in 1857, and the manuscript somehow disappeared. However, it was discovered in 1913 in Paris. Who knows by what mischief it ended up there? But to prevent action by the French police, the owner anonymously donated it to a cultural institution, in whose vaults it to this day resides.”
“So I am to go and fetch it. Under the Nazis’ noses?”
“Well, not exactly,” said Sir Colin. “The manuscript itself must not be removed, as someone might notice and word might reach the Russians. What you must do is photograph certain pages using a Riga Minox. Those are what must be fetched.”
“And when I fetch them, they can be relied upon to provide the key for the code and thus give up the name of the Russian spy at Bletchley Park, and thus you will be able to slip into his hands the German plans for Operation Citadel, and thus Stalin will fortify the Kursk salient, and thus the massive German summer offensive will have its back broken, and thus the boys will be home alive in ’45 instead of dead in heaven in ’47. Our boys, their boys, all boys.”
“In theory,” said Sir Colin Gubbins.
“Hmm, not sure I like ‘in theory,’ ” said Basil.
“You will be flown in by Lysander, dispatched in the care of Resistance Group Philippe, which will handle logistics. They have not been alerted to the nature of the mission as yet, as the fewer who know, of course, the better. You will explain it to them, they will get you to Paris for recon and supply equipment, manpower, distraction, and other kinds of support, then get you back out for Lysander pickup, if everything goes well.”
“And if it does not?”
“That is where your expertise will come in handy. In that case, it will be a maximum hugger-mugger sort of effort. I am sure you will prevail.”
“I am not,” said Basil. “It sounds awfully dodgy.”
“And you know, of course, that you will be given an L-pill so that headful of secrets of yours will never fall in German hands.”
“I will be certain to throw it away at the first chance,” said Basil.
“There’s the spirit, old man,” said Sir Colin.
“And where am I headed?”
“Ah, yes. An address on the Quai de Conti, the Left Bank, near the Seine.”
“Excellent,” said Basil. “Only the Institut de France, the most profound and colossal assemblage of French cultural icons in the world, and the most heavily guarded.”
“Known for its excellent library,” said Sir Colin.
“It sounds like quite a pickle,” said Basil.
“And you haven’t even heard the bad part.”
THE FOURTH DAY, NEAR MIDNIGHT
In the old days, and perhaps again after the war if von Choltitz didn’t blow the place up, the Institut de France was one of the glories of the nation, emblazoned in the night under a rippling tricolor to express the high moral purpose of French culture. But in the war it, too, had to fall into line.
Thus the blazing lights no longer blazed and the cupola ruling over the many stately branches of the singularly complex building overlooking the Seine on the Quai de Conti, right at the toe of the Île de la Cité and directly across from the Louvre, in the sixth arrondissement, no longer ruled. One had to squint, as did Basil, to make it out, though helpfully a searchlight from some far-distant German antiaircraft battery would backlight it and at least accentuate its bulk and shape. The Germans had not painted it feldgrau, thank God, and so its white stone seemed to gleam in the night, at least in contrast to other French buildings in the environs. A slight rain fell; the cobblestones glistened; the whole thing had a cinematic look that Basil paid no attention to, as it did him no good at all and he was by no means a romantic.
Instead he saw the architectural tropes of the place, the brilliant façade of colonnades, the precision of the intersecting angles, the dramatically arrayed approaches to the broad steps of the grand entrance under the cupola, from which nexus one proceeded to its many divisions, housed each in a separate wing. The whole expressed the complexity, the difficulty, the arrogance, the insolence, the ego, the whole je ne sais quoi of the French: their smug, prosperous country, their easy treachery, their utter lack of conscience, their powerful sense of entitlement.
From his briefing, he knew that his particular goal was the Bibliothèque Mazarine, housed in the gre
at marble edifice but a few hundred meters from the center. He slid that way, while close at hand the Seine lapped against its stone banks, the odd taxi or bicycle taxi hurtled down Quai de Conti, the searchlights crisscrossed the sky. Soon midnight, and curfew. But he had to see.
On its own the Mazarine was an imposing building, though without the columns. Instead it affected the French country palace look, with a cobblestone yard which in an earlier age had allowed for carriages but now was merely a car park. Two giant oak doors, guarding French propriety, kept interlopers out. At this moment it was locked up like a vault; tomorrow the doors would open and he would somehow make his penetration.
But how?
With Resistance help he could have mounted an elaborate ruse, spring himself to the upper floors while the guards tried to deal with the unruliness beneath. But he had chosen not to go that way. In the networks somebody always talked, somebody always whispered, and nothing was really a secret. The Resistance could get him close, but it could also earn him an appetizer of strychnine L-pill.
The other, safer possibility was to develop contacts in the French underworld and hire a professional thief to come in from below or above, via a back entrance, and somehow steal the booklet, then replace it the next day. But that took time, and there was no time.
In the end, he only confirmed what he already knew: there was but one way. It was as fragile as a Fabergé egg, at any time given to yield its counterfeit nature to anyone paying the slightest attention. Particularly with the Germans knowing something was up and at high alert, ready to flood the place with cops and thugs at any second. It would take nerve, a talent for the dramatic, and, most important, the right credentials.
A FEW DAYS PREVIOUSLY (FINI)
“Are you willing?” said Sir Colin. “Knowing all this, are you willing?”
“Sir, you send men to their death every day with less fastidiousness. You consign battalions to their slaughter without blinking an eye. The stricken gray ships turn to coffins and slide beneath the ocean with their hundreds; c’est la guerre. The airplanes explode into falling pyres and nobody sheds a tear. Everyone must do his bit, you say. And yet now, for me, on this, you’re suddenly squeamish to an odd degree, telling me every danger and improbability and how low the odds of success are. I have to know why. It has a doomed feel to it. If I must die, so be it, but somebody wants nothing on his conscience.”
“That is very true.”
“Is this a secret you will not divulge?”
“I will divulge, and what’s more, now is the time to divulge, before we all die of starvation or alcohol withdrawal symptoms.”
“How very interesting.”
“A man on this panel has the ear of the prime minister. He holds great power. It is he who insisted on this highly unusual approach, it is he who forces us to overbrief you and send you off with far too much classified information. Let him speak, then.”
“General Sir Colin means me,” said the professor. “Because of my code-breaking success, I find myself uniquely powerful. Mr. Churchill likes me, and wants me to have my way. That is why I sit on a panel with the barons of war, myself a humble professor, not even at Oxford or Cambridge but at Manchester.”
“Professor, is this a moral quest? Do you seek forgiveness beforehand, should I die? It’s really not necessary. I owe God a death, and he will take it when he sees fit. Many times over the years he has seen fit not to do so. Perhaps he’s bored with me and wants me off the board. Perhaps he tires of my completely overblown legendary wit and sangfroid and realizes I’m just as scared as the next fellow, am a bully to boot, and that it ended on a rather beastly note with my father, a regret I shall always carry. So, Professor, you who have saved millions, if I go, it’s on the chap upstairs, not you.”
“Well spoken, Captain St. Florian, like the hero I already knew you to be. But that’s not quite it. Another horror lies ahead and I must burden you with it, so I will be let alone enough by all those noisy screamers between my ears to do my work if the time comes.”
“Please enlighten.”
“You see, everyone thinks I’m a genius. Of course I am really a frail man of many weaknesses. I needn’t elucidate. But I am terrified of one possibility. You should know it’s there before you undertake.”
“Go ahead.”
“Let us say you prevail. At great cost, by great ordeal, blood, psychic energy, morale, whatever it takes from you. And perhaps other people die as well—a pilot, a Resistance worker, someone caught by a stray bullet, any of the routine whimsies of war.”
“Yes.”
“Suppose all that is true, you bring it back, you sit before me exhausted, spent, having been burned in the fire, you put it to me, the product of your hard labors, and I cannot decode the damned thing.”
“Sir, I—”
“They think I can, these barons of war. Put the tag ‘genius’ on a fellow and it solves all problems. However, there are no, and I do mean no, assurances that the pages you bring back will accord closely enough with the original to yield a meaningful answer.”
“We’ve been through this a thousand times, Professor Turing,” said the general. “You will be able, we believe, to handle this. We are quite confident in your ability and attribute your reluctance to a high-strung personality and a bit of stage fright, that’s all. The variations cannot be that great, and your Turing engine or one of those things you call a bombe ought to be able to run down other possible solutions quickly and we will get what we need.”
“I’m so happy the men who know nothing of this sort of work are so confident. But I had to face you, Captain St. Florian, with this truth. It may be for naught. It may be undoable, even by the great Turing. If that is the case, then I humbly request your forgiveness.”
“Oh, bosh,” said Basil. “If it turns out that the smartest man in England can’t do it, it wasn’t meant to be done. Don’t give it a thought, Professor. I’ll simply go off and have an inning, as best I know how, and if I get back, then you have your inning. What happens, then that’s what happens. Now, please, gentleman, can we hasten? My arse feels as if Queen Victoria used it for needlepoint!”
ACTION THIS DAY
Of course one normally never went about in anything but bespoke. Just wasn’t done. Basil’s tailor was Steed-Aspell, of Davies & Son, 15 Jermyn Street, and Steed-Aspell (“Steedy” to his clients) was a student of Frederick Scholte, the Duke of Windsor’s genius tailor, which meant he was a master of the English drape. His clothes hung with an almost scary brilliance, perfect. They never just crumpled. As gravity took them, they formed extraordinary shapes, presented new faces to the world, gave the sun a canvas for compositions playing light against dark, with gray working an uneasy region between, rather like the Sudetenland. Basil had at least three jackets for which he had been offered immense sums (Steed-Aspell was taking no new clients, though the war might eventually open up some room on his waiting list, if it hadn’t already), and of course Basil merely smiled drily at the evocations of want, issued a brief but sincere look of commiseration, and moved onward, a lord in tweed, perhaps the lord of the tweeds.
Thus the suit he now wore was a severe disappointment. He had bought it in a secondhand shop, and monsieur had expressed great confidence that it was of premium quality, and yet its drape was all wrong, because of course the wool was all wrong. One didn’t simply use any wool, as its provincial tailor believed. Thus it got itself into twists and rumples and couldn’t get out, its creases blunted themselves in moments, and it had already popped a button. Its rise bagged, sagged, and gave up. It rather glowed in the sunlight. Buttoned, its two breasts encased him like a girdle; unbuttoned, it looked like he wore several flags of blue pinstripe about himself, ready to unfurl in the wind. He was certain his clubman would not let him enter if he tried.
And he wanted very much to look his best this morning. He was, after all, going to blow up somethin
g big with Germans inside.
* * *
—
“I tell you, we should be more severe,” argued SS Hauptsturmführer Otto Boch. “These Paris bastards, they take us too lightly. In Poland we enacted laws and enforced them with blood and steel and incidents quickly trickled away to nothing. Every Pole knew that disobedience meant a polka at the end of a rope in the main square.”
“Perhaps they were too enervated on lack of food to rebel,” said Macht. “You see, you have a different objective. You are interested in public order and the thrill of public obedience. These seem to you necessary goals, which must be enforced for our quest to succeed. My goal is far more limited. I merely want to catch the British agent. To do so, I must isolate him against a calm background, almost a still life, and that way locate him. It’s the system that will catch him, not a single guns-blazing raid. If you stir things up, Herr Hauptsturmführer, I guarantee you it will come to nothing. Please trust me on this. I have run manhunts, many times successfully.”
Boch had no remonstrance, of course. He was not a professional like Macht and in fact before the war had been a salesman of vacuums, and not a very good one.
“We have observers everywhere,” Macht continued. “We have a photograph of M. Piens, delicately altered so that it closely resembles the man that idiot Scholl sat next to, which should help our people enormously. We have good weather. The sun is shining, so our watchers won’t hide themselves under shades or awnings to get out of the rain and thus cut down their visibility. The lack of rain also means our roving autos won’t be searching through the slosh and squeal of wiper blades, again reducing what they see. We continue to monitor sources we have carefully been nurturing since we arrived. Our system will work. We will get a break today, I guarantee it.”
The Big Book of Espionage Page 61
