The Hansa Protocol (12 page)

‘The lady in the office, sir – Mrs Prout – is she the owner?’

Colonel Kershaw smiled. He looked secretly amused at Box’s
question
.

‘The lady in the office is quite content to let people assume that she’s the owner of Bagot’s. But the ultimate owner, Mr Box, is a widowed lady, who lives in a castle at Windsor. This place belongs to her. And so, of course, do I.’

‘Well, Monsieur Veidt, are you making any progress? Is there any way in which I can be of assistance?’

Box had received Colonel Kershaw’s emissary at the door of King James’s Rents, and had conducted him immediately to the drill hall. He had wondered what to make of the very tall, thin and bearded man who had glared at him rather balefully through blue-tinted spectacles. He looked more like an enemy than an ally.

‘All I need,
monsieur
,’
said Veidt, ‘is a little space, and a little quiet. Remember your story of the tortoise and the snail. The tortoise ran fast, but it was the snail who won the race.’

An interesting man, thought Box. Very few men had such black beards as his, or such a black hat, or such a very black suit. What was that word? Funereal, that was it. Give him a glass-sided hearse and a few plumes, and he’d be in business.

The tortoise and the snail …. Surely it had been a hare? These foreigners could never get anything right.

Monsieur Veidt suddenly sighed with satisfaction, and thrust a magnifying glass that he had been using into one of the capacious pockets of his flapping black coat. He turned round from the table where he had been working, and treated Box to an unnervingly brilliant smile.

‘There was very little to go upon,
monsieur
.
So many of these
fragments
are too small for any of the characters printed on them to suggest anything of much significance. Nevertheless, I have solved the riddle.’

Monsieur Veidt pointed to one of the fragments with the little finger of his right hand. The gesture had all the delicacy of a connoisseur examining a rare painting.

‘This piece, for instance, contains the letters “
übec
”,
and this one “
eifswal
”.
This third piece had a complete word: “
Wismar
.” I suggest that “
übec
”
is “Lübeck”, and “
eifswal
”
is “Greifswald”. Both those places were members of the Hanseatic League. The other principal cities were Visby, Reval and Danzig.’

Monsieur Veidt walked over to the second table, where most of the fragments collected together by PC Kershaw had been laid out for inspection.

‘There are nearly forty fragments of paper here,
monsieur
,
and I have noted seven different typefaces in use. They may look the same to you, because they are all variants of the German script, what many English people call Gothic. Twelve fragments are in the same typeface as the piece of paper containing the word “Greifswald”. Nine belong to “Lübeck”, and fourteen to “Wismar”. Does that suggest anything to you?’

‘It does, Mr Veidt. It suggests a system of classification—’

‘Precisely. And perhaps the most important fragment, M. Box, is this piece, here, which you have placed in a little frame of its own. It is the most fully preserved, and, as you may see, it is in the Roman typeface used in England, and elsewhere on the Continent. This, then, belongs to a further document, all of which has been lost. It reads, translated
into English: “The Hansa Protocol: Greifswald. Codes of the Imperial ….” And there it ends.’

‘What do you make of it, Mr Veidt?’

‘I suggest that there once existed in the Belvedere a volume entitled
The
Hansa
Protocol:
Greifswald.
Codes
of
the
Imperial
German
Navy.
I suggest that for two reasons. First, I know that such a volume exists. It is a closely guarded secret in Berlin. Secondly, a number of these fragments confirm my suggestion. For instance, these twelve pieces that match the typeface of “Greifswald” contain brief fragments of words that look like the names of ships, displacement in tons, number of guns, and so on.’

‘This protocol – it would be a secret document?’

‘It is,
monsieur
.
It contains not merely descriptions of all the vessels in the Imperial Marine, but the naval codes, and their periodic changes, as they will be used up to the year 1900. The Greifswald volume is one only of a series of eight books which together comprise
The
Hansa
Protocol.
The others, named after the other Hanseatic towns, deal with army dispositions, military signals, the location of the secret munition dumps, and many other facts of vital importance to the Imperial German war machine.’

Box surveyed the neatly docketed items in their chalked rings, and felt a sudden glow of pride in what he and PC Kenwright had achieved together. He would have to tell Superintendent Mackharness, of course, and he would use the occasion to bring up the question of Kenwright’s rank.

He looked at the tall, thin man in blue-tinted glasses, and suddenly saw behind the lugubrious man in black to the encyclopaedic expert on German naval and military practice. This oddly named man with the French title and German name was one of Colonel Kershaw’s secret servants.

‘Monsieur Veidt,’ asked Box, ‘I was wondering whether you’re a German yourself. There seem to be a lot of Germans mixed up in this business—’

‘I come from Alsace, Monsieur Box. You will have heard of it, no doubt. My family once lived in Strasbourg, but we were driven out of there in 1871, by the people who are currently passing themselves off as the true Germans – the Prussians, and their growing empire.’

Monsieur Veidt pulled on a pair of woollen gloves, and turned
towards the passage leading out of the drill hall. Then he stopped for a moment, and looked at Box. His eyes were hidden behind his tinted glasses, and there was something rather inscrutable about him.

‘We people of Alsace, Monsieur Box,’ he said, ‘have never really known who or what we are. Sometimes we’re Germans, other times we’re French. Such are the accidents of history. I have a German name, and my native language is a form of German. But,
monsieur
, I am in my heart a Frenchman, exiled from his native land.’

Sir Charles Napier stared sombrely from the window of his room in the Foreign Office at the gaunt leafless trees on Duck Island, the bird
sanctuary
beside the lake in St James’s Park. He hated the winter. Its chill grip transformed the most enchanting prospect to a bleak wasteland.

‘There’ll be heavy snow by weekend, Kershaw,’ he said.

Colonel Kershaw made a sound of assent. Napier turned away from the window, and sat down at his vast mahogany desk. It was late
afternoon
, and it had been necessary to have the lamps lit. A banked-up coal fire blazed in the grate.

Napier surveyed his visitor for a moment. Colonel Kershaw had carefully selected a chair some distance from the Under-Secretary’s desk, as though to emphasize his status as a mere visitor to one of the great centres of governance. He had also declined to remove his smart, double-breasted overcoat, and had placed his silk hat and ebony walking-stick on the floor beside him. Napier wryly assumed that he was expected to collude in the fiction that Colonel Kershaw had just dropped in for a chat, and that he wouldn’t stay, thank you.

‘What did Her Majesty think of the business at Chelsea?’ asked Kershaw.

Napier ran his hand through his hair. Dash it all, why should he feel as nervous as a junior clerk whenever Kershaw turned up? The fellow only ever darkened the Foreign Office doorstep when something,
somewhere
, had gone wrong.

‘Her Majesty was not pleased,’ said Napier. ‘She sent for me at some ungodly hour of the night, and I stood for half an hour while she poured scorn on the Foreign Office, its heads of department, and its servants. It was not a pleasant half-hour, Kershaw. She was very cool, and very distant. When she’s in that mood, she frightens me to death.’

Kershaw felt a pang of commiseration for Napier. Queen Victoria in censorious mood could be devastating. Perhaps it would be his turn, next.

‘Did you tell her about Seligmann’s memorandum?’ he asked. ‘Young Fenlake almost literally snatched the thing out of the jaws of death and delivered it to you unscathed.’

Sir Charles Napier smiled rather cynically. Fenlake and Kershaw were both officers in the Royal Artillery, that vast body of 13,000 gunners constituting a single enormous regiment of Her Majesty’s Army. A number of Kershaw’s agents – ‘secret servants’ as they were called – had been recruited from the Artillery. Perhaps Kershaw would try to poach young Fenlake from the Foreign Office?

‘I managed to stammer out my excuses, Kershaw, and then told Her Majesty about Fenlake’s success, and that, when the right moment came, the memorandum would be sent speeding across Europe to the Chancellery in Berlin. She was – well, she was not impressed. She said … she said terrible things.’

‘What kind of things?’

‘She said that it was really not a matter for congratulation that a trained courier should succeed in delivering a letter from one part of Chelsea to another. As for speeding across Europe, she said she’d deliver the memorandum herself, if that would help me. I can recall her exact words, Kershaw. I’m not likely ever to forget them! “I dare say, Under-Secretary”, she said, “that with a certain measure of luck I might survive a private visit to Berlin without the butchers of the Wilhelmstrasse impeding my progress. But if all else fails, you might care to deliver the memorandum by means of the general post!”’

Sir Charles Napier expected Kershaw to conceal a smile behind his hand. Instead, the colonel sat in thought for what seemed like a whole minute. Then he spoke.

‘Why not let my crowd deliver it? Seligmann’s memorandum, I mean.’

Sir Charles sprang up angrily from his desk. He had been waiting for this moment. It was not welcome, even though he had secretly
determined
to accept any offer of help that Kershaw cared to make.

‘Is that why you’ve come here today?’ he demanded. ‘What’s your game, man? Do you think my couriers are incapable of doing the thing properly?’

‘What did the Queen think?’ asked Colonel Kershaw softly. Napier blushed.

‘The Queen—’

‘The Queen, Napier, has more experience of secret diplomacy than the two of us put together. She’s been the confidant of prime ministers and foreign secretaries for over fifty years. I’m not disparaging your men, but I’m suggesting that your methods lend themselves to dangerous manipulation. Fenlake’s a good fellow, but he’s the type of man who sticks to the rule-book. That’s why I’ve never attempted to steal him from you. You know what I mean by the rule-book. Your couriers follow the folio code of the day—’

‘Precisely! So the Foreign Secretary, and anyone else in high authority, can find out where my couriers are at any single minute of any single day. That is the strength of the folio code assignments. They’ve been in use since Palmerston’s time. I know all about your
so-called
“crowd”, Kershaw, your secret servants, and your amorphous band of “nobodies”, as you like to call them—’

‘You’re wrong, Napier! You
don’t
know about them! That’s the whole point. All my crowd operate by word of mouth only. Nothing is written down. One of my very best people, for instance, has just booked in to the hotel where I’m staying. He knows I’m there. I know he’s there. We don’t need to pass each other pieces of paper.’

‘My couriers—’

‘Your couriers, Napier, because of the folio codes, can be located, followed, and spied upon, by anyone who has access to the folios of the day. The system is fraught with terrible dangers. Look what happened to Stefan Oliver. Did Her Majesty mention
him
when she was being scornful at your expense?’

Sir Charles Napier jumped as though he had been shot. ‘You know about him?’

‘Well, of course I do! And so did somebody else – somebody lethal, Napier. Young Fenlake escaped with his life by sheer good fortune, I’ve no doubt. Our enemies are determined that Baron von Dessau shall not receive that memorandum from poor Seligmann. They want him unimpeded by prudence for their great rabble-rousing meeting in Berlin on Friday the thirteenth. Nine days hence, Napier! So let my crowd deliver the memorandum. My crowd don’t write things down, you know. We all follow the old army adage: “No names, no pack-drill”.
They will succeed, you see, because nobody knows who my crowd are.’

Sir Charles sat down again at his desk. It was no good getting hot under the collar with Kershaw. He’d known him since boyhood. He was a man of sterling worth, and a supremely clear thinker. He spoke bluntly at times, but he never did so for personal advantage. He was wrong about the folio code system, of course. There must be another reason for this sudden unexpected interference.

‘You’re up to something, aren’t you? You’re plotting something devious, Kershaw. Why should I give you Seligmann’s memorandum? Surely you’re not contemplating dragging yourself across Europe in this confounded winter weather—’

Colonel Kershaw laughed, and held up a hand to stem the Under-Secretary’s flow of words.

‘My dear Napier! If you will give me the memorandum, I will
undertake
to see it delivered safely into the hands of Baron von Dessau at his residence in Berlin-Charlottenburg well in time to dim his ardour for war. The man who just booked in to Bagot’s Hotel is the man who will make the delivery. He is one of the most experienced of my secret servants.’

‘All right, Kershaw. You shall have it your own way. To be quite honest with you, I was prepared to go along with you, anyway. We’re not running rival services. But I insist on being present when you hand over Seligmann’s memorandum to this nameless prodigy who is going to deliver it.’

‘Of course. And the “nameless prodigy” will be Major Lankester, a man who is not unknown to you.’

Napier sat back in his chair, and gave a sigh of satisfaction.