Orders from Berlin (6 page)

‘Except for when the Luftwaffe switched their attention from the aerodromes to London. He didn’t tell us about that, did he? Might have spoilt the surprise,’ said Thorn, whose doubts about the authenticity of Seaforth’s intelligence had mushroomed in the three days since their visit to Churchill’s bunker.

‘Well, there really wasn’t time for that, was there?’ said C equably. ‘The Germans were provoked into bombing London by us bombing Berlin. Stupid fools! Winston tricked them. The RAF couldn’t have withstood it much longer if the Luftwaffe had carried on attacking planes rather than people, or at least that’s what I’ve heard on the grapevine. There were just not enough Spitfires to go round. Instead Goering’s given them a chance to catch their breath and reinforce.’

‘You asked me a question,’ said Thorn, looking C in the eye and acting as though he hadn’t heard anything C had just said. ‘And here’s my answer: No, I don’t trust the source, and I don’t buy the idea that his access has improved because he’s just been promoted. It’s too damned convenient if you ask me.’

‘But people get promoted in wartime, Alec,’ C said smoothly. ‘You should know that – it’s one of the facts of life.’

‘I know it is. And not just in Berlin, either,’ said Thorn, making no effort to disguise his meaning as he darted a furious glance down the table at Seaforth and angrily ground out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. C watched his deputy carefully for a moment and then began to speak again.

‘So, moving on, our agent tells us that Hitler’s ordered a short delay to Operation Sea Lion while the expeditionary force is expanded and the rest of the heavy armour is brought up to the coast,’ he said, holding up Seaforth’s briefing paper again. ‘So this is what I need, gentlemen: reliable information about what’s actually happening on the ground – in Belgium, in France, all the way round to bloody Scandinavia. Soldiers practising amphibious landings; sailors kissing their sweethearts goodbye … you know what I’m talking about. We need to fill in the blanks. And quickly, gentlemen, quickly.’

C paused, glancing around the table, but no one spoke. Jarvis, standing behind his boss’s chair, darted forward and filled up C’s glass from a decanter of cloudy water.

‘All right, then,’ said C. ‘Let’s get to work. Is there anything else?’

‘We’ve had several decodes in this morning,’ said Hargreaves, a small bespectacled man sitting opposite Seaforth who was in charge of liaison with the boffins, as the communications branch of the Secret Service was
euphemistically
known. He had thick grey eyebrows that incongruously matched his grey woollen cardigan. ‘One of them’s interesting – it’s an intercept from yesterday. It’s quite short: “Provide detailed written report. What are the chances of success? C.” Seems like it’s someone called C somewhere in Germany who’s communicating with an agent here in England, although apparently there’s no way of pinpointing the receiver’s location without more messages. They’re checking to see if there are any other messages that have come in up to now using the same code, although it could well be the agent is using a different code to communicate back to Germany. That’s an extra precaution they take sometimes. I’ll let you know what they come up with.’

‘Someone pretending to be me,’ said C with a hollow laugh. ‘I’m flattered. Well, we all know that the Abwehr’s been dropping spies on parachutes and landing them from U-boats all over the place this year. But they’re in a rush – none of the agents are well trained, and some of them can’t even speak proper English from what I’ve heard. MI5 catches up with them all in a few days, and I believe they’ve even turned one or two, so I can’t imagine this one’s going to be any different.’

‘Except that most of them don’t have radios,’ said Thorn. ‘Can I see that?’ he asked, leaning forward to take the piece of paper that the small man had just read from.

‘Well, thank you, Hargreaves,’ said C after a moment, with a glance of slight irritation at his deputy, who was continuing to turn the paper over in his hand. ‘Like I said, I’m sure MI5 will deal with the problem. Now, let’s get to work. Alec, you stay behind. I need to pick your brains for a moment.’

C stared ahead with a fixed smile as the people around him got up from their chairs, gathered their papers together, and headed for the door. Once it was closed and the sound of voices had disappeared down the corridor, C turned to Thorn.

‘This has got to stop, Alec, you hear me? You and Seaforth have got to work together—’

‘Not together,’ interrupted Thorn angrily. ‘He works
for
me, in case you’ve forgotten. I’m his section chief, although you’d never know it to hear him talk.’

‘All right, he works for you. But he also works for me and for the PM and for the good of this dangerously imperilled country, and his agent in Berlin is producing intelligence product of a quality that we haven’t seen out of Nazi Germany in years. And just when we need it the most …’

‘Exactly,’ said Thorn, banging his fist on the table. ‘Doesn’t that make you suspicious?’

‘No,’ said C. ‘Because it’s corroborated by other reports. And by what happens after Seaforth receives the intelligence. His agent says they aren’t going to invade in the next two weeks and they don’t. He says they’re about to station heavy artillery across the strait from Dover and that’s exactly what they do. Yes, treating what we get with caution is healthy, but refusing to use it is stupid. Yes, stupid, Alec,’ said C, holding up his hand to ward off Thorn’s protest. ‘You know how Whitehall used to treat us before Winston took over – like the last man on the bloody totem pole. And now we’re given everything we want. More money; more agents; more access. You’ve seen the change in attitude yourself when you go and see the old man.’

‘It’s not me he wants to see any more; it’s Seaforth,’ Thorn said irritably. ‘I sat at the back of the room three days ago saying sweet Fanny Adams while Churchill practically ate out of the little runt’s hand. You should have seen it.’

‘And you’ll just have to bloody well put up with it. Of course the boy’s ambitious – he probably wants your job. But that’s not a bad thing. We need youth and energy if we’re going to win this war. Most of those RAF pilots who’ve saved our necks up to now are barely out of school, and it doesn’t matter what school they went to, either, or whether their parents are in trade if they can shoot down Junkers and Heinkels before they drop their bombs,’ he added with a sharp look at his deputy.

‘Well, it’s easy for you to say,’ said Thorn sourly. ‘You’re the one in charge.’

‘And I know what you’re thinking – you’re the one who should be sitting where I am now,’ C shot back. ‘Well, perhaps you should. You were the crown prince, weren’t you? Albert’s heir anointed, with more years of service under your belt than anyone in the building except old Jarvis? But then when it came to it, Whitehall didn’t agree, did they? They chose me instead of you. I wonder why. Do you think it was maybe because they’d had enough of Albert Morrison’s non-stop navel-gazing? You and he were so obsessed with searching for your elusive mole inside the Service that you ended up doing nothing else. Morale was at rock bottom, intelligence production was down every year – we were in danger of being shut down. And look at us now, riding the crest of the wave. And that’s thanks in good part to young Seaforth. So get off his back, Alec, you hear me? I won’t stand for any more trouble from you where he’s involved.’

C got up from his chair without waiting for an answer and headed for the door. Left alone, Thorn glanced down at the decoded radio message that he’d taken from Hargreaves during the meeting: ‘Provide detailed written report. What are the chances of success? C.’ Asking for a written report implied that the agent had a means of sending a document back to Germany. But how? There was something about the decode that bothered Thorn, some scrap of memory tickling at the back of his mind that he couldn’t put his finger on. Maybe it was nothing, but he needed to be sure. Carefully, Thorn folded the paper and tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket. He’d go and ask Albert about it. That’s what he’d do. Albert was no fool, whatever C liked to say. It was bloody stupid the way he’d been put out to grass since his retirement with all he knew about the Nazis. Thorn rubbed his hands, pleased with his decision. It was a long time since he’d seen his old chief and even longer since he’d seen Ava. A visit was overdue.

Albert stood waiting at the bus stop for a full half-hour before he gave up. He’d have taken a taxi if he’d had the chance, but the only ones that passed were already taken. He cursed the driver that had brought him over from Battersea and refused to wait – a stupid little man who’d gone the longer way deliberately just so he could charge a higher fare. The only choice now was the Underground. It was getting late and Albert knew he should have bitten the bullet and taken the Tube earlier, but he had delayed because
he hated it below ground. He always had. It was why he made his daughter so angry, refusing to go down in the basement with the rest of his neighbours at Gloucester Mansions during air raids until she’d started coming round and forcing him. Ever since the last war, he’d had nightmares about being buried alive. He didn’t want it to happen even after he was dead, and he’d left strict instructions in his will that he was to be cremated. He’d even made Bertram swear an oath to carry out his wishes, and Bertie, not Ava, was his executor. Albert was no fool. He knew that his son-in-law was never going to set the world on fire, but he’d do what he was told. Not like his daughter, Ava, who always thought she knew best. She’d abandoned him just when he’d needed her most – after her mother died and he’d been forced out of HQ and his world had come tumbling down on him like an avalanche of broken rocks.

Buried alive … Albert was claustrophobic, chronically claustrophobic, and now he had no choice but to confront his fears. He couldn’t stay where he was, waiting for darkness and the German bombers to appear overhead, and besides, he was convinced he was being watched. He was a sitting duck out here in the open; he’d be much better off below among the crowds sheltering on the platforms and the stairs, even though his hands shook and his heart thumped at the prospect of being pursued through the subterranean passages under the flickering lights, stepping over the shelterers, tripping on their possessions until at last he fell.

Unless his imagination was playing tricks on him, of course, and there was no one observing him from across the street or around the corner, waiting for the chance to strike. God knows it was possible. The sensation that he was being watched was just that, a sixth sense, nothing more. He hadn’t actually seen anything suspicious since he got out of the taxi. Once upon a time, he would have known how to secure his position; how to find out for sure if anyone was there. Thirty years earlier, in another lifetime, he had been an agent himself, out in the field in Austria-Hungary and the Kaiser’s Germany, with a mission to scent out war plans and assess military intentions in the years before Sarajevo, before the old order crumbled and fell to the ground. His language skills had qualified him – he was fluent in German – and as a young man he had been quick on his feet and clever with people. He’d known how to look after himself in a hostile environment – how to check for telltale shapes in the shadows, how to tell innocent from purposeful footsteps, how to double back on himself at the critical moment of a pursuit. But it was all too long ago: he’d spent too many years since then sitting behind a desk reading the reports of other agents to know how to survive as one himself, so he would just have to trust to luck and hope that his anxiety was the product of an old man’s overactive imagination. After all, wasn’t that what Ava said when he worried too much about his health?

Reluctantly, he crossed the road and joined the straggling queue of people who were heading down the concrete steps into the Underground. They were a ragtag lot, these refugees from the bombing, Albert thought. Whole families with blankets and pillows and portable stoves and in one case even a wind-up gramophone, all desperate to get below and claim the best pitches until every inch of platform space was taken and latecomers had to sleep as best they could, sitting up on the winding stairs or flattened against the walls in the narrow corridors. All of them crammed in together like sardines because they thought they’d be safe, except that that was an illusion. Albert knew that even if they didn’t. Only the day before a heavy bomb had fallen on Marble Arch station, rupturing the water mains and fracturing the gas pipes. Seven people had died, enduring horrible deaths that didn’t bear thinking about, buried under piles of broken masonry, slowly drowning in sewage and seeping water, choking on the dust and gas. And the Tube would be hit again. It was only a matter of time. Nowhere was safe any more in this God-forsaken city.

Albert bought his ticket and picked his way down the stairs to the westbound platform, holding his nose against the stench of the overflowing toilets in the booking hall. And down below it was even worse, with the stink of hundreds of unwashed bodies crammed together in the fetid, airless atmosphere. The heat was extraordinary after the cold outside; some of the men were stripped to the waist, and most of the children were half naked. And the noise too was overwhelming. People were singing and shouting; a few were even playing mouth organs and beating on home-made drums. Albert was astonished by their cheerfulness inside this living hell. At least the overpowering assault on his senses meant that he no longer had the sensation of being followed. Someone could have been right on his shoulder and he would have neither known nor cared. All he wanted to do was get on a train and escape.

Slowly and laboriously, concentrating only on remaining upright, Albert picked his way between the shelterers and their possessions – filthy mattresses and battered suitcases, several that were serving as beds for tiny babies – until he reached the edge of the platform, where he waited nervously for his train, staring down at the columns of mice running this way and that between the tracks.