Agent of Death (31 page)

‘So, my darling,’ said Sir Jack Comings, who might have been middle-aged, and short and fat, but was nonetheless a man with a man’s passions, and whose desire for his wife was still strong. ‘So here are the rules by which we shall play from now on.’

And in the extremity of his emotions, this learned and civilized gentleman reached out and shook his wife by the shoulders – an act which in lesser men equated to murder with the carving knife. ‘Listen to me, Margaret. First of all, of course I know that you never wanted me in any physical way. I’m not that stupid. But I thought we’d agreed that any indiscretions on your part would be discreet?’ He shook her again and feebly, pointlessly, she nodded, because that’s what she’d thought too. ‘But you’ve broken that rule, so here’s a new game. You’ve never even thought about money, have you?’

‘No,’ said her lips, without sound.

‘No!’ he said. ‘Your bills come to me and I pay them, don’t I? But listen to this. From now on, you’re going to have a monthly allowance and all your bills will come out of that, and I will pay nothing more. The allowance will be very generous, but subject to this … should I have evidence that you are deceiving me, then I shall cut the allowance by half, and then half again if you do it again, and so on. So you can go on living the way you do, but don’t make a fool of me, Margaret, or you’ll end up poor. Do you understand? And before all else – as there is a God in heaven – don’t deceive me again with David Landau. Not my little David that I knew from the cradle. Whatever you may have done before,
that
was too much to bear.’

CHAPTER 36

The
North
Atlantic
,

500
Miles
East
of
New
York.

Wednesday
7
June
,
20
.
15
hours
Eastern
Standard
Time
.

Everything worked. The whole, horrible, asphyxiating, throttling, freezing process. The slipstream blinded me as I fell out of the aircraft, the parachute opened with savage violence, the strap between my legs hit like a horse kick, and I swung and hung and grabbed lines. I saw the ocean through streaming eyes, the sea reached up for my boots, and everything went silent as P-for-Popsie’s noise faded; the wind hissed past my ears as I sank, and I turned my head and the horizon swayed. I saw the great mass of the carrier below me: faces looking, gunners at stations, antennas, aerials, anchors at bow, planked flight deck, smoking funnels, Old Glory flying from the upper-works, and a motor launch circling to get under me.

I hadn’t far to drop, and went in with a ghastly splash; I knew I would drown as my head went under and the sea froze me utterly, and all sound vanished in the drumming, numbing of cold water over my head. I thumped on the release button in the middle of my chest, and the wind hauled the chute and harness away; the Mae West pulled my head up, and I gasped and splashed, and my hand flapped out for the clinging-lines hanging from the bright yellow dingy that had inflated itself as a good little dingy should – and there I was, all alive and kicking, and I didn’t even get the chance to climb in because the Yanks got there first.

The launch came up, went astern on the engine, hove to with a growling roar, and swayed up and down as enormous as everything is when you’re floating with your head at wave level. A couple of most hospitable and generous naval ratings came over the side, fully dressed in their uniforms, to make sure I could get up the scrambling net and into the launch.

So I began to like Americans. The welcome was grand, everyone smiled, they threw a blanket over me, and gave me a mug of hot, sweet coffee brewed up for the purpose, and the soaking wet ratings sat opposite me and grinned.

Then someone cut the line to the dingy and it fell away as the launch went full ahead, and I looked round the glazed deck house, where they’d got me out of the wind, and noticed, the jolly little round white hats that US ratings wore: hats that made me think of Fred Astaire in
Follow
the
Fleet
. I thought of a film because that was all we knew of America in those days; it was the place that made ‘movies’ that we saw at the cinema, but we knew nothing of America – nothing from personal experience. It was too far away and the journey too expensive, and few Americans ever came to Europe except the super-rich that most people never met.

So Americans were exotic unknowns, and I was surprised to find that I liked them; at least I liked the US Navy because, by comparison, the Royal Navy was feudal. In it, the officers and men were separate races. They spoke different languages and lived different lives. Even aircrew didn’t mix. If you were the lieutenant pilot of a Fleet Air Arm
Swordfish
, and your gunner was a rating, you didn’t drink with him after duties. But the Yanks weren’t like that, not in reality, even if officially they were, with the same rank structure, and even if some of the old-family, Ivy League officers were as snobbish as anything British. But the overwhelming mass of US seamen – especially the conscripts – had the profoundly American belief that nobody is better than anyone else, and that anyone can rise to anything, if he tries hard enough.

So a winch whined, cables tightened, the launch went up the vast grey side of the carrier, and I was helped out. The nasal, twanging US voices sounded all around, an officer in a peaked cap saluted me, and a couple of ratings held my arms so I shouldn’t fall over.

‘
Loo
-
tenant
-Commander Bushey, sir,’ he said: my first proof that Americans really did speak like that. He was a fresh, bright man, in his thirties, with a single row of ribbons. He explained himself. ‘We’re told you’re a wing commander
Bridish
Royal Air Force,’ he said, ‘so you rank equal to a full commander, US Navy, and we haven’t got one aboard to greet you as a rank equal. So I hope you’ll make do with me, sir, as I’m Executive Officer.’ He was what the Royal Navy called the first lieutenant, so Bushey was the second most senior man aboard.

‘Thanks,’ I said, still dazed and cold, and wondering if my flying helmet constituted a hat, because we don’t salute without one in the
Bridish
services.

Then the ship got under way and the decks heaved. They heaved quite a lot actually, because the Independence class were not especially good sea boats and tended to pitch deeply if they put on speed. Then I was taken the sick bay where the ship’s doctor sat me on a stool and checked that I was undrowned, and a medical orderly gave me some dry clothes: flying overalls, shirt, shoes, socks, and underwear, and would have taken my soaked gear for drying.

‘Wait!’ I said, standing up barefoot, in vest and underpants, ‘I’ll have the tunic back, please.’ The rating contemplated miserable me with amusement and turned to Lieutenant Commander Bushey.

‘Give him the tunic!’ said Bushey. ‘He’s an officer even if he doesn’t look like one.’

‘Aye-aye!’ said the rating, and gave me the tunic. I took it and looked round the neat, white sick bay, with the doc and his orderly standing by.

‘Can I have a pair of scissors?’ I said. ‘Or a knife?’

So I had my confidential letters from Churchill and Eisenhower ready for use when I met Captain Fenner. That was up long flights of stairs and ladders to the ship’s bridge, high up over the flight deck on the starboard side, and a fine place, too, as compared with the bridge of HMS
Nantwich
. It was enclosed and glazed, with crewmen sitting or standing at their stations, and the captain – The Old Man – on a high, wooden chair, off to one side, where he had a fine view of everything.

Captain Harry P. Fenner was fifty-one, bolt upright, navy to his bones, and qualified as a pilot since 1918. He was a thick, stout man with a dark complexion and dark eyes. He came of a dynasty that had owned large chunks of the State of Rhode Island since Colonial times, and he was a gentleman. He got down from his chair as I entered the bridge, and, having no hat at all, I couldn’t salute him, but I stood to attention as anyone would, on meeting such a man aboard the ship under his command.

‘So, Wing Commander Landau,’ he said, looking at me as he would an ugly fish drawn up from below. ‘Welcome to America, because you’re standing on American soil.’ And he held out his hand.

‘Thanks for stopping your ship, sir,’ I said. ‘I’d have been in some trouble without you.’ He laughed, Lieutenant Commander Bushey laughed, but the rest of them stared at their screens and instruments and did their naval duties.

‘So, Wing Commander,’ said Captain Fenner, ‘here you are, a British special agent, aboard a US ship. So what do we do with you now?’ He looked at me with politeness, but no warmth, because there was no warmth within the US Navy towards Britain, and he wanted to know why the hell I was here, and what the hell did I want.

‘Captain,’ I said, ‘with the utmost respect to your rank, and your crew, I request that you and I speak alone, on a matter of great secrecy and utmost importance to your country.’ That didn’t go down well. Fenner and Bushey frowned. They didn’t like that: were the British telling them what was secret? And what was good for the USA? They didn’t like that at all. ‘Captain,’ I said, ‘it’ll only take a few minutes, sir, and then
you
will decide what to do next. You, sir, not me.’ Sometimes you have to grovel, so I did, and it worked. Fenner nodded and I got my private meeting, in his day cabin just astern of the bridge.

The cabin was big but austere: a bunk bed, a telephone, a loudspeaker on the wall, a table, two chairs, a rug, a few cupboards and a bookcase. But there were rows of framed pictures: one or two of family groups, but mostly covering twenty-five years of flying, showing Fenner standing proudly beside a remarkable number of aircraft: all racing machines. They ranged from doped-linen biplanes, to squat, barrel-shaped monoplanes with enormous rotary engines, to the latest in carrier-borne fighters, stripped of guns and paint, and polished for speed. They were exclusively American types and the bookcase held ranks of silver cups, secured with wires against the ship’s motion, because Captain Harry P. Fenner was one hell of a competitive flyer.

‘Sit down, Wing Commander,’ he said as a marine sentry, standing outside, closed the door behind us. I wondered if he might hear our conversation, and Fenner read my expression. ‘Don’t know how the Royal Navy manage things,’ he said, ‘but we frown on eavesdroppers aboard this ship.’

‘Of course, sir,’ I said, and he opened a small cupboard and took out two glasses, a bottle opener, and two bottles of Coca-Cola. Then he took a bowl of ice cubes out of another cupboard which turned out to be a refrigerator.

‘Best I can offer you, Wing Commander,’ he said. ‘The navy’s dry on this side of the Atlantic.’ It was my first introduction to the no-alcohol policy of the US Navy: a concept beyond the uttermost, wildest, most hideous, indescribably horrible nightmare imagination of the British Royal Navy, which frolicked and wallowed in booze. To quote Billy Bones in Stevenson’s
Treasure
Island
:

‘
I lived on rum, I tell you. It's been meat and drink, and man and wife, to me
.’

And after all that, there I was looking at two bottles of fizzy pop and a pile of ice cubes! That and Captain Fenner, who sat and faced me, took off his cap, and indicated that I should sit down too. I did so; it wasn’t a good start. But it got better at amazing speed: American speed.

He read the letters from Churchill and Eisenhower, which requested and required that he give me every possible help, at whatever risk to his ship, and maintaining radio silence. He was duly impressed, and when I told him everything I knew about Mem Tav and Svart, he believed me. Then I told him about the sub with the Mem Tav doodlebug, on its way to kill the people of New York, and at first he couldn’t believe that any missile could do such harm. But he listened as I explained, and I told him about the atom bomb, too, which came as a total surprise because it was so secret.

From that moment on he was probably the best ally I have ever worked with, and a man I came to respect enormously. When I finished talking, I was educated about the observance of US Navy policies, as Fenner pushed away the unopened bottles of Coca-Cola, went back to his cupboard, and took out a bottle of
Buffalo
Trace
, finest old Kentucky Bourbon. He drank it neat over ice so I did the same. Then he explained how things stood aboard USS
Saint Mihiel
, which wasn’t at all what I, or Churchill, or Eisenhower, had expected.

‘Wing Commander Landau,’ he said, ‘I’ll do what I can for you. I’ll do every damn thing this ship can do, to find this submarine and sink it deep!’

‘Thank you, sir,’ I said.

‘But here’s the problem,’ he said. ‘These ships – the Independence Class – are oddballs. Roosevelt rushed them into service, because they’re quicker builds than real carriers like the Essex class. We’re only converted cruisers with a short, narrow flight deck, and an air group less than half what an Essex embarks, and, since we’re supposed to be on a shakedown mission, things are even worse.’

‘
Supposed
to
be
, sir?’

‘Yes,’ he said, and poured us each another Bourbon. ‘Fact is, Wing Commander, I’m at a loss, because I thought
we
were on a top secret mission ourselves. Something to help win the war! And that’s why I fired on you when your Liberator flew round us. You were in the sun, and we couldn’t afford to get bombed.’ He smiled. ‘We thought we were important. But compared with what you’ve just told me,’ he spread his hands wide.

‘Go on, sir,’ I said.

‘The one thing we do have is speed. My ship can top thirty-two knots, and she was in the Atlantic, not worked up, not ready for war, and a good choice to go across and pick up something that our people – our spooks – got from the Norwegian resistance. We got it because one of Hitler’s own pilots,’ he looked at me, amused, ‘you’ll meet that pilot later. This pilot turned traitor and flew off with the latest, whizz-bang, top secret fighter airplane in the German air force, a Messerschmitt 262 jet fighter. It’s the fastest plane in the world, and we’ve got that airplane aboard this ship, and we’re taking it to the Annapolis Navy Yard, just as fast as we can spin the turbines.’ He gave the spread-hands gesture again. ‘And that, Wing Commander, is something our people were keeping from your people, and it looks like even from Eisenhower, because most of my planes and pilots were shipped off to fight the Japs, and all I’ve got left to chase your submarine is six Grumman Avenger torpedo bombers, all of them unserviceable, and those of my air crews, that aren’t the best, because the navy took the best, along with their airplanes.’