She shrugged and blew smoke at the yellowing paint of the deckhead. ‘I rather think it depends upon Herr Hitler, M’sieur Daladier and Mister Chamberlain. We are just pawns.’ She gestured at the brown envelope. ‘Put that away for now and keep it safe. It is very important, I think, and I am certain Kurt has risked a great deal to make sure you have it.’ She paused and then said, ‘John, I do not think I shall ever see Kurt again…’
‘Why ever not? Even if there is a war…’
‘Kurt will not survive contact with those bastard Nazis. His brother or his father will betray him, or he will give himself away.’
‘He is an officer in the Kriegsmarine. If he does his duty, which may include killing me just as my brother was killed in the last war…’
‘I’d forgotten that you had a brother,’ she said, then shook her head, adding, ‘What Kurt has given you is enough to have him shot, war or not. He has worked on Grand Admiral Räder’s staff, that much I do know. Just make sure it falls into the right hands.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ Clark said doubtfully. He had never heard of Grand Admiral Räder.
‘Your father has influence,’ Magda insisted.
‘Yes, but he is in commercial shipping and has no access to government or the Admiralty.’
‘Surely someone on his board will know someone who knows someone. Isn’t that how you English arrange things?’ She changed from German to English and added, ‘The old boys’ networking, yes?’
Despite himself Clark smiled ruefully at her distortion. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Now, I had better wish you goodnight.’
‘Yes,’ she responded, still in English: ‘Goodnight.’
Then, leaning forward, he kissed her on the cheek. He felt dizzy and lightheaded as he stepped out into the alleyway and walked to his own cabin. The ship was under way and, peering through the small porthole, he watched the lights of the berth and the railway station alongside fall away.
Clark contemplated the package Magda had given him. Its plain surface was unaddressed. He considered leaving it sealed until he was safe ashore in England, but then curiosity got the better of him and, after a momentary hesitation, he opened it and drew out a thick wad of tightly folded foolscap sheets. They were stapled together and handwritten in German. Clipped to the first was a smaller sheet of paper; one glance told Clark that it was a personal note to him. It read simply:
My Dear Cousin,
You must see the importance of the attached, both to Germany and to Great Britain. Please ensure that it is shown to a senior officer in your Admiralty. You will understand the danger I am in by this confidence.
K
‘Oh, my God,’ Clark breathed, his heart pounding in his chest. He laid the letter aside and turned to the foolscap sheets. He read halfway down the first, then rose and locked the cabin door. As he turned, the ferry cleared the breakwaters and met the first swells of the North Sea. He had lost his sea legs and staggered a little, catching sight of his face in the mirror over the small sink the Great Eastern Railway Company had thoughtfully provided for him. He recalled Sanders’s remark about neither of them being Bulldog Drummond, an allusion to a popular, fictional British Secret Service agent. Suddenly he gave an involuntary shiver, then he sat on the edge of the bunk and began to read again from the beginning.
When he had finished he stared at the bulkhead for a long time before he folded the papers, put them back into the envelope and secreted it in his bag. Then he stripped to his underwear and turned in.
But for a long time he lay staring up at the deckhead in the darkness.
England
September–October 1939
‘How did you get this, Mr Clark?’ The naval captain looked across the desk over Kurt’s papers, which trembled slightly in the ageing officer’s hands. He was in his fifties, with thin grey hair plastered back over his head and a gaunt face which bore a stonily sceptical expression. Clark felt his mouth go dry. He was beginning to realise that his action in producing Kurt’s document laid a burden of suspicion upon himself. He was also beginning to feel angry, suspecting the source of that suspicion. He looked at the other officer sitting alongside the naval captain’s desk, to whom he had already spent the previous hour explaining himself. Having pronounced himself satisfied, Commander Gifford had asked him to wait and then, a few moments later, ushered him into the office of Captain Inglis, his superior. Gifford, whose manner had been perfectly amicable up to that moment, now avoided Clark’s eyes.
‘Captain Inglis, I have just explained all this to your colleague, Commander Gifford.’ Clark’s tone was exasperated, but Inglis was unmoved.
‘Then you may repeat it.’
Clark shifted uneasily in his seat. ‘Look, gentlemen, I am acting in good faith over this after having discussed the matter with Vice-Admiral Bulteel who initiated this appointment…’
Inglis slowly laid the sheets of paper down on the desk in front of him. ‘Under the Emergency Powers Act, Mr Clark, I can have you locked up if you do not cooperate and answer me as I wish.’
Clark gave up on Gifford, who was studying his nails, and met the captain’s eyes; anger removed the threat inherent in Inglis’s intimidation. ‘Very well,’ he began. ‘As you seem to be aware, my late mother was German and I have German relatives. I have been standing-by a ship being built in Hamburg for the Eastern Steam Navigation Company of Liverpool. My family has long-standing connections with this shipping house and my father is a member of its board. Up until the last war Eastern Steam and a Hamburg shipping company ran a joint service to China. My familiarity with the German language made me an obvious choice as the chief officer of the new vessel. From time to time, whilst in Hamburg, I was in contact with my aunt and uncle in Altona, just outside…’
‘I know where Altona is,’ Inglis interrupted. ‘Pray go on.’
Clark paused after the interruption. ‘My cousin Kurt, a Korvettenkapitän in the Kriegsmarine, came home from Berlin, where, I gather, he has been serving on the staff of an Admiral Räder. Kurt is not a Party member and I contrived to bring his Jewish fiancée out of Germany when I returned home. It was she to whom my cousin had given the document you now have in your possession.’
‘Very well…’
‘There is a little more in which I think you might be interested.’
‘Oh?’
‘When I was told to leave – by a man named Sanders who claimed to come from the British consulate in Hamburg and, incidentally, appeared perfectly genuine, with diplomatic papers to prove it – it occurred to me that events might be linked with a circumstance that had recently arisen in the shipyard.’
‘And what was that, pray?’ Inglis asked archly.
‘I had become aware that the presence of my cousin, along with a small party of German naval officers active in the shipyard, might bode ill for my ship. To be strictly accurate, the notion had been put in my head by my colleague, the second engineer who was also standing-by the vessel.
‘Accordingly, just before I left, I confronted my cousin with my sense of outrage and – somewhat unfairly I suppose – invoked the family connection. For his part, he admitted to there being a plan to commandeer the ship. I got the impression that the admission was an indiscretion, an unguarded remark that he regretted, but it may be that it precipitated the confidences in the papers you have before you. I formed the opinion on this slender evidence that a plan for German naval reinforcement was in train whereby ships such as the Ernest Shackleton could be acquired as naval auxiliaries or commerce raiders. The odd thing…’
‘Yes, yes, Mr Clark, this speculation is all very interesting, but I hardly think you as a merchant officer are able to analyse…’
‘Damn it, sir,’ Clark snapped as Gifford looked at him sharply, ‘Admiral Bulteel thought my modest speculation of sufficient interest to extract an undertaking that I laid it before someone in the Admiralty capable of having the courtesy to listen…’
‘Admiral Bulteel is a retired officer and yo
u had better mind your tongue, young man!’
Gifford coughed, then brushed some imaginary dust from the knee of his immaculate uniform. Clark ignored him. He was thoroughly irritated by Inglis’s tone. For a moment he and Inglis glared at each other in silence, then Clark said, ‘I think you had better arrest me, Captain Inglis, and let me explain this to an officer from military intelligence.’
The effrontery of the remark took Inglis by surprise, and even Gifford momentarily ceased preening himself. ‘I am in naval intelligence, Mr Clark,’ Inglis said savagely, ‘and if you were a naval officer, I should…’
‘But I am not a naval officer, Captain Inglis, and I suggest you either hear me out, or do as I suggest and place me under arrest. The war is only five days old and it strikes me we should be fighting the enemy that carried out the air raid of yesterday, rather than each other.’
Gifford coughed again and leaned forward to murmur something in Inglis’s ear. There was another silence as Inglis weighed Clark up. ‘Go on,’ he said at last.
Clark paused to compose himself and then resumed his story. ‘The odd thing that struck me at the time was that although it was clear the German naval authorities had some sort of contingency plan to requisition or seize the Ernest Shackleton…’
‘That being the name of the ship you were standing-by?’
‘Quite so,’ confirmed Clark, slightly surprised at the captain’s question. ‘Nevertheless,’ he went on, ‘my cousin seemed genuinely surprised that I had been recalled home…’
‘You told him you had been recalled?’ Inglis asked sharply.
‘Yes. Perhaps it was a slip on my part, but please don’t forget that until a few days ago we were not at war with the Germans and Kurt was a relative with whom I was friendly. Besides, I think it did little harm and, quite fortuitously, it revealed what I think may be an important point.’
‘And that is?’
‘Well, for all the high-handedness of the plan to take over the Ernest Shackleton, Kurt seemed very genuinely surprised that total rupture with Great Britain was a possibility.’
‘That is tautological.’
Clark frowned. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand. What is tautological?’
‘“Very genuine surprise”, Mr Clark.’ Inglis seemed oddly pleased with his little victory.
‘Tautological or not, sir, Kurt seemed discomfited by the intelligence. If he was a staff officer…’
‘Yes, yes. You mean Berlin might have been surprised at our reaction, proceeding to an outright declaration of war.’
‘Well, the German Admiralty at least.’
‘Does that really square with an alleged plan to seize a foreign ship building legitimately in a German shipyard?’ Inglis asked, laying a sarcastic emphasis upon the noun ‘plan’.
‘Well, I’m not certain myself, but in discussing this point it was Admiral Bulteel who pointed out that I should mention it to you, because, as he said, it has been Hitler’s policy to advance by stealth, taking a little and then, when he gets away with it, taking a little more.’
Gifford grunted and Clark saw him nod to Inglis. ‘That is a point, sir.’
‘Possibly,’ Inglis admitted. He fell silent and regarded the sheets of foolscap in front of him again.
‘It is, of course, the other intelligence that I think my cousin most wished you to see. You will appreciate the considerable risk he has exposed himself to by passing on the information in this document.’
‘What do you think his motives are?’ Gifford asked, speaking directly to Clark for the first time since he had ushered him into Inglis’s office.
‘Well, he is clearly opposed to the Nazis and I think that whatever else one can say about him, he is a man of honour. I formed the opinion that he did not think Hitler’s government was in the best, long-term interests of Germany. The spectre of a second war with this country clearly rattled him. His family fortune was ruined by the last war…’
‘Yet he is an officer in the German navy.’
‘That does not make him dishonourable,’ Clark argued with unconscious irony.
Gifford suppressed a smile. ‘Perhaps not, but it would suggest an act of treachery.’
‘Or of conscience,’ Clark said. ‘And one must recall that he is engaged to a Jewish woman.’
‘Is that so very significant?’ Inglis asked, looking up.
‘It would seem so, Captain Inglis. Moreover, he is also aware that I lost a brother sunk in the last war by a German U-boat.’
‘You have a somewhat confusing family history, Mr Clark,’ Gifford said, not unkindly.
But Clark was unmollified by Gifford’s late intervention. ‘I should have thought the fact that my family’s confusion has laid those documents before you, gentlemen, was a matter for some expression of gratitude.’
Gifford looked pained and Inglis stared at him again. ‘You are an impertinent young man, Clark,’ he said.
‘It seems necessary, sir,’ Clark said standing up, ‘in order to do what I conceive to be my duty. Now, perhaps you will be kind enough to let me know whether I am to be arrested, or allowed to go home.’
‘Gifford, get Clark out of the building.’
In the corridor outside, Clark felt his elbow taken by Gifford. At first he thought Gifford’s precipitate action sinister, but at the end of the corridor Gifford apologised.
‘I’m very sorry about all that, Clark. You have to understand Captain Inglis is anxious, very anxious, about the activities of German intelligence.’
‘You mean I am under suspicion of being a spy?’ Clark asked incredulously.
‘Well, not exactly a spy, but this information – or perhaps I should call it disinformation – could have been planted on you.’
‘Damn it, Commander, the circumstances under which I was given it don’t in the least suggest such a thing.’
‘Come, come, Clark, consider: you are asked to help evacuate a young Jewish woman by a relative of whom you are fond. You are a kind man and are sympathetic, but the fact of the matter is that your cousin is an officer in the Kriegsmarine who was on duty in your shipyard.’
‘But Commander, you cannot seriously think that the facts contained in that document can be false information, surely? I mean, it simply does not make sense. It is clearly a hurriedly produced memorandum outlining the enormity of the threat to our commerce, a threat similar to that which nearly brought this country to its knees in 1917. Kurt clearly states the general plan of the German navy is to…’
‘I understand your anxiety, Mr Clark,’ Gifford broke in, ‘but this is neither the time nor the place. You must leave the matter with us. You are staying with Admiral Bulteel, I gather.’
‘Yes, he has a flat in St John’s Wood, but I was only availing myself of the Admiral’s offer of hospitality until after this interview. I shall be returning to Liverpool tomorrow.’
‘Very well. You will be serving with the Eastern Steam Navigation Company, I imagine?’
‘Yes. I can hardly see you offering me a commission in the Reserve after this afternoon.’
The two men smiled. ‘Not if the war’s over by Christmas, but who knows?’ Gifford said with a rueful smile, ‘Unfortunately they have a habit of lasting rather longer. Thank you anyway for coming to see us. Now follow me and I shall find someone to escort you to the street.’
And there, Clark thought, the matter would end.
* * *
‘Over by Christmas? What a bloody preposterous thing to say!’ Vice-Admiral Bulteel spluttered over his cheese and biscuits, refilling his port glass. ‘You seem to have had your nose bloodied, my boy.’
‘Well, I suppose that when a merchant jack walks in off the street with a document purporting to reveal German naval plans…’
‘Damn it, Jack, you’re hardly an ordinary merchant jack!’ Bulteel crunched the Bath Oliver into a powder, some of which he discharged across the table as an expression of his outrage. ‘Inglis, Inglis?’ Bulteel drummed his fingers on the tabl
e as though the gesture would tease the recollection out of his ageing brain. ‘Ah yes, I recall the fellow now. Not particularly gifted, though a reasonable staff man if left to himself. Not quick on the uptake, though. How on earth do such johnnies get into intelligence?’
‘I don’t know, sir, but that sounds like the fellow. His deputy, Gifford, seemed like a brighter spark.’
‘Hmmm,’ Bulteel grunted. ‘Don’t know him. After my time, I suppose,’ he added with a sigh.
‘Never mind. The matter’s been dealt with and we can do no more.’
‘You’ll be off tomorrow then?’
‘Yes, I had better see how my father is coping with Magda Liepmann.’
‘What is the poor girl going to do?’
‘I really have no idea, sir, but I daresay she will find some war work in due course.’
Their conversation was interrupted by the sinister whine of the air-raid warning. The Admiral sighed and laid down his knife, then he picked it up again and cut the apple he had just selected from the bowl in front of him. ‘I’m damned if the Germans are going to interrupt my dinner. Pass the port before you run off.’
‘I’m in no hurry, sir,’ Clark said.
‘Good man. I suppose you’ll be appointed to another ship?’
‘I imagine we’ll all be needed.’
‘You will if it’s anything like the last flap. Ever thought of joining the Reserve?’
Clark laughed. ‘I think I’ve blighted my chances of that, sir. As I mentioned to Gifford, my little contretemps with Inglis should have put paid to any such idea.’
‘Oh, Inglis isn’t the Royal Navy. You’d be wasted at sea in a merchantman, Jack. What with your fluency in German.’
‘I think to commend me to their Lordships I have to have that ability without the inconvenience of a German mother, Admiral,’ he countered with a note of irony.
Bulteel looked at him. ‘Damn it, I meant no offence!’
Clark met the old man’s eyes. ‘There’s none taken.’ Clark smiled at him. ‘None at all. Anyway, I’m not at all sure that I want a shore posting. I’m a seaman…’
Dead Man Talking Page 6
