The Spy (30 page)

His trained eyes experienced in discerning movements, the Commander peered down the street. It was approaching out of the darkness, hunched and running, often stopping, and staring up. It was formed like a werewolf, and its name was
doubt
. He got up from the bench, stepping closer to the curb. The werewolfs shadow, splintered by rain, and moving along the wall of a warehouse was down-funnelling now into the form of a man: fighting the wind, and navigating the comer. A branch crashed! Someone jumped, he raised his arm.

“Over here!”

Pierre came up, drenched.

Collar turned, he greeted the Englishman cheerfully. “
Bonsoir
! Or, should I say
bonne chance
?” Hamilton's frown welled up from the sounds of the sea.

Pierre grinned. “I hear she's not going with us.” On arriving from London, he had checked it out.
It looked like Blackstone
.

“So it seems.”

Messages burned in Hamilton's brain. He stepped forward, urgency in his voice. “We mustn't keep our rendezvous waiting.” He led the Frenchman to a small launch. Unseen before now, it bobbed uneasily in a protected shield of the quay. From the boat, the pilot saluted them sharply.

“Filthy night, Pryor!”

“Yes, sir!”

Hamilton and the Frenchman jumped aboard, breaking out oilskins and sou'westers. Lines were cast. Free of the marina and the inlet, Lieutenant Pryor and the Commander compared coordinates. The launch circled east. Polperro's harbor flattened behind them, the shores of Britain disappearing into a black line.

Air-dropped, would she come by moon plane, or—
?

“Better allow for a second sub, Pryor!”

“Right, sir!” The pilot refigured his bearing, he needed to look at the charts.

“Me for the Con!” the Commander announced.

Taking over, he slammed the hatchway. Gripping the wheel, Pryor forward, Hamilton thought he heard something, but at a distance:
a vibration of some sort
, more like a ship's engine, and driven by the shriek of the wind. There were no running lights on the horizon; and, for that matter, no other shipping of any kind tonight, according to Weather. No one but a madman would take a boat out on a night like this! Hamilton tugged at his hat and wondered if they were being watched, if the enemy could possibly be aware of their purpose. He was not a man to take chances; yet he felt reasonably certain that no one had seen them leave.
Nothing recent on The Spy, was there
? He had meant to call Seymour; and he glanced over his shoulder. He listened. Whatever it was, it was not there now. The wind slipped for a moment, and he eased forward on the throttle. The air was black, and slippery with rain.

He had dreamt of such nights as a boy. Propped on his elbows before the fire, intent on the book before him, he had stood then where he stood now. The great sea novels of Herman Melville, Howard Pease, and Jack London had decided his life as much as the uncompromising naval sternness of his father. Later, studying Maritime Law at King Alfred College, at Brighton and Hove, David Hamilton had carried a thin volume of John Masefield in his coat the way other men carried cigarettes. He had read all of these books by the end of his first term, dreaming at night of tramp steamers...ships with names like
Maura Queen
and
Excalibur
and
Singapore Hattie
...ships carrying Peter Lorre-looking people in white hats...slicing through Oriental waters, and furrowing through fog.

His career in the Royal Navy had been a good one.

The gale brought him out of his reverie, cold water pouring into his shoes. “Bloody bastard!” Hamilton swore, and the spoke hit him sharply on the wrist. The Commander grabbed at the helm, turned it with all his might, and brought them about. The launch plowed forward, and yawed! He couldn't hold it! The wheel was spinning!

“De Beck!”

Together, they turned it.

A bolt shot across the sky
.

He could see their battered craft moving across the top of the awesome swirl. Lightning swept across yellowed oilskin, casting its unearthly pallor over de Beck, who had returned to the gunwale, his face impassive in the blinding light. Awaiting France, he was keeping a tight grip on himself. The bow shot upwards, held, and dropped, crashing back into the sea.

He had his orders
...

Hamilton shouted, his voice lost in the wind. “We couldn't have picked a worse night!” Yet they both knew this was exactly why MI.5 had picked it. The launch plunged, then rose again, threatening to broach.

“Lieutenant Pryor!” shouted the Commander, “you'd better take her!” In a field of sterling qualities, Hamilton knew his limits. Pryor snapped out the light. The forward hatch burst open and he hit the deck.

The pilot grabbed the Con and spun it like a maniac, bringing them sharply about. The storm was howling downwind. They had leveled to the curve of the sea. Pryor's voice rose above the rain.

“There she is, sir, to the starboard!”

He pointed.

The sub emerged out of the Channel like a giant eel, hissing and looking about for its prey. Surfaced a hundred yards to their stem, trajectories closing, they could see the great snout streaming water and cleaving darkly through the swells. Pryor had throttled the motor, and was lining them up. Salt blew across their faces. “Easy does it,” Hamilton said. He had turned.

The Frenchman was smiling.

Teeth, like piano keys, flashed in a broad white grin.

Following her conversion at Elstree, the Spy had told his bodyguard what she looked like; and Ryan, following orders, had made certain those orders had been carried through.

That Valerie was again up for grabs came as no surprise to the mysterious figure who had been tracking her movements like a shadow. Not so, however, could the same be said for the Prime Minister, unaware that Sinclair was now in motion on her own. His long weekend coming to a close, and still at Chartwell Manor where he was wrapping up War Office business, Churchill was finding that he was having to spend most of his time on the telephone—and on his private line, at that.

GOLDILOCKS, launched earlier this evening from Polperro, was as good as in the history books; but had passed up the bedtime story, and was refusing to go to sleep. It was Lord Louis Mountbatten, home for the evening at Broadlands, keeping her up. Lewis Carroll came to mind.
The Walrus
may have had a word for it, but the Prime Minister couldn't think of it.

Besides, he was on the ringer.

More than once, and again this evening, Churchill's wife Clementine had asked him about the “child spy”. At fifty-nine, “Clemmy” was tall and slim; and her long grey hair was drawn behind her ears. Churchill joked about it: she did a lot of listening. Theirs was a marriage made in heaven, presuming that's where politicians went, and Clementine was very happy with Winston; but she had also become interested in Valerie Sinclair, having been the first to bring the girl to the attention of her husband. Churchill looked up. She had interrupted him.

“Oh dear,” she said. “Important?”

Winston explained, he never told her all of it. Clementine returned to her room. Hand drumming on his desk, he eyed her departure over the ivory figurines; then returned to his call. As he did so, he swiveled around, so as to better observe the events of the evening.

Sunday's sun had already set.

French windows overlooked the garden, where the smell of jasmine and summer roses permeated the air. A row of birch trees, serving as a windbreak, stood at attention on the horizon—guardsmen of a nobler time; and he saw them now as he had then: as toy soldiers, marching over the hills of a younger man's summer. But yesterday's soldiers had all gone away—their sheet-draped pianos and dusty oil paintings with them—put into storage for the duration of this brighter, and more terrible age; where round-the-clock security had surrounded, as if by walls, each personal and private aspect of his life. The Prime Minister could not envision, then, where the next few moments would take him; but he hoped they would take him to where he wanted to go. Right now, he wanted to go to bed. If he could get through this present Donnybrook with Lord Louis, at least he would be one stairwell closer. Alone in the private study, and cradled on his red telephone, he would settle for it.

This Sunday night's call from Britain's Supreme Commander, Asia, could not have come at a worse time. The briefcases were bulging. What the Prime Minister had not accomplished this weekend, he must finish up tonight. Well then, he must get to the bottom of it! With Mountbatten, that could take some doing.

“—just my own hunch, really,” his Supremo had told him, but Churchill had caught his inference on the sharp edge of fury. In a word, on a tip from Alan Turing, Lord Louis had just had a look at the Bletchley files—specifically, Conrad Parker's—and what he had found there were
the codes
that did not fit.

“What codes?” asked Churchill.

“Those for us,” responded Mountbatten, “and those for—how shall I put it—third parties?” and he proceeded to link an alternate mission; one that could tie von Schroeder to Blackstone, and von Braun to Britain. “Bankers, not all of them ours, who may be deep in Navy business.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” fumed the Prime Minister. “What do you think makes the world go round?” It was as clear as crystal: the linkage was prewar. Until Germany sued for peace then, these
facts
, as Mountbatten called them, while not generally known, appeared to be out of time. If the P.M. thought about it, he might even supply a few of his own.

“There is more,” Mountbatten said. He was naming names. Like spokes on a wheel, Churchill noticed, they were all pointing to one man.

John Blackstone?

Churchill listened, not at all amused; and his hand went raking through the private files in his desk for the document that would refute it.
Dammit, where was it?
The red telephone, its receiver thrown repeatedly on the desk, was in his hand again.

“So then, Sire, this business with von Schroeder, you see? Smoke leading to fire, and so on. The very fact that John Blackstone didn't
file
it—”

“—means what?
What
—?”

“—means, in my mind at least, that there may be justification for putting a stop to it. We have turned her over to this Frenchman, Pierre de Beck—yet look who installed him.” Blackstone, not Hamilton. Mountbatten had gathered as much from Seymour. “Suppose the results of the mission are being diverted? Even though GOLDILOCKS is underway, we don't know what road home shell be taking, do we? Who's to say that Blackstone and company won't be there first? An international catch-as-catch-can, you see, with the technology up for grabs.”

“Bankers, I presume,” Churchill said, and he could see it now: not
theirs
? These allegations on Mountbatten's part, he knew, could not possibly arise from jealousy. That is why he was listening. The other man's dogged persistence, going on little more than a seasoned hunch, was suddenly turning this otherwise pleasant evening into something just short of bizarre.

“Well, Louis, what must I tell you? Just this, umm? There are channels that—”

“No no, sir,” Lord Louis cut in, his voice strained, “it isn't about cloak-and-dagger, at all. I am not questioning his conduct, as an officer. What I
do
question is that fifteen previous agents, all female, were sent by
Bletchley
.” Churchill could smell it, the abscess had opened at SOE.

Mountbatten said, “I had no direct jurisdiction at the time, if you recall. That's why—”

“No one is blaming you, sir. Your conduct throughout GOLDILOCKS has been exemplary. Still, I fail to see why you insist on pursuing this as though it were a
personal
matter. If we have a conspiracy on our hands, and you think it's Navy business, then you should have rightly placed this call to the Lord of the Admiralty.”

“I did. They told me you were here.”

Acknowledged by Navy men, yesterday's courtesy as it were, Churchill liked the compliment. What he wasn't liking, was the timing of this call.

Mountbatten knew that, he was thinking of the murdered women: “And Valerie Sinclair may be next.”

Churchill said: “Chance we take. Get to the point.”

“But the point is
loyalty
!”

“Bosh! Loyalty to whom?” Was Mountbatten calling the British Navy into question? Had black become white? Churchill sat up straight, his bottom lip was trembling. “You are speaking madness, sir! If Blackstone, in your view, is a bastard, at least he is a
loyal
bastard!”
Order of the British Empire, the Victoria Cross
? “A thirty-year
record
of loyalty, sir!”

Lord Louis, perhaps sitting too close to the fireplace, wiped his brow. Mountbatten put it bluntly: “I feel there is another force at work here, a force for the good of England, and the world. I hate to say this, but it's looking increasingly as though it could be that outside Operative. You remember, I'm sure. David's Report, from Weymouth?”

“Yes, of course.” He had shared it with Clemmy. She had thought Edwina might appreciate it.

Mountbatten listened.

The specter of The Spy, which had haunted his days, had also advanced and deepened his dread, intruding into the most inviolable part of personal thought, where decisions were kept; so too, the ghostly footsteps, that had walked into his dreams.

“Hold it, will you?”

Reaching to make a note, an agreement to Churchill's position, the navy man had dropped his fountain pen. Bending to retrieve it, he had felt another's presence, as though the pen had been knocked from his hand. Lord Louis sat perfectly still, and yearned to be with his friends. One of them had just asked him a question.

“Yes, I think she's fine,” Mountbatten said.

They were talking about Sinclair.