'No, Ruth, please. I am sincere. I am in love with you.'
'What's the point? You're going to Indonesia in two weeks. We'll never see each other again. Let's forget it – we're friends. We'll always be friends.'
'No, I have to be honest with you, Ruth. This is my feeling. This is what I feel in my heart. I know you don't feel the same for me but I am obliged to tell you what my feelings was.'
'Were.'
'Were.'
We sat in silence for a while, Hamid never taking his eyes off me.
'What're you going to do?' I said, finally. 'Do you want to carry on with the lessons?'
'If you don't mind.'
'Let's see how we get on, anyway. Do you want a cup of tea? I could murder a cup of tea.'
On uncanny cue, there was a knock on the door.
Ilse pushed it open and said, 'Sorry, Ruth. Where is tea? I am looking but Ludger is sleeping still.'
We went into the kitchen and I made a pot of tea for Hamid, Ilse, myself and, in due course, a sleepy Ludger.
Bobbie York feigned huge astonishment – hand on forehead, staggering backward a few feet – when I called round to see him, unannounced.
'What have I done to deserve this?' he said as he poured me one of his 'tiny' whiskies. 'Twice in one week. I feel I should – I don't know – dance a jig, run naked through the quad, slaughter a cow, or something.'
'I need to ask your advice,' I said, as flatteringly as possible.
'Where to publish your thesis?'
'Fraid not. How to arrange a meeting with Lord Mansfield of Hampton Cleeve.'
'Ah, the plot thickens. Just write a letter and ask for an appointment.'
'Life doesn't work like that, Bobbie. There's got to be a reason. He's retired, he's in his seventies, by all accounts something of a recluse. Why would he want to meet me, a complete stranger?'
'Fair point.' Bobbie handed me my drink and slowly sat down. 'How's that burn of yours, by the way?'
'Much better, thank you.'
'Well, why don't you say you're writing an essay – about something he was involved in. Publishing, journalism.'
'Or what he did in the war.'
'Or what he did in the war – even more intriguing.' Bobbie was no fool. 'I suspect that's where your interest lies. You're a historian, after all – tell him you're writing a book and that you want to interview him.'
I thought about this. 'Or a newspaper article.'
'Yes – much better. Appeal to his vanity. Say it's for the Telegraph or The Times. That might flush him out.'
On my way home I stopped at a newsagent and bought copies of all the broadsheets just to refresh my memory. I thought to myself: can one just say one is writing an article for The Times or the Telegraph? Yes, I told myself, it's not a lie – anyone can write an article for these newspapers but there's no guarantee they'll accept it; it would only be a lie if you said you'd been commissioned when you hadn't. I picked up the Telegraph, thinking this was more likely to appeal to a noble lord, but then bought the others – it had been a long time since I had read my way through a bundle of British newspapers. As I gathered the broadsheets together I saw a copy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine. On the front page was a picture of the same man who I had seen on television – Baader, the one Ludger claimed to have known in his porno days. The headline was about the trial of the Baader-Meinhof gang in Stammheim. July 4th – the trial was in its 120th day. I added it to my pile. First Ludger staying, now the mysterious Ilse – I felt I needed to reacquaint myself with the world of German urban terrorism. I drove home with my reading matter and that night, after I had put Jochen to bed (Ludger and Ilse had gone out to the pub), I wrote a letter to Lucas Romer, Baron Mansfield of Hampton Cleeve, care of the House of Lords, requesting an interview for an article I was writing for the Daily Telegraph about the British Secret Service in World War Two. I felt strange writing 'Dear Lord Mansfield', writing to this man who had been my mother's lover. I was very brief and to the point – it would be interesting to see what reply he made, if at all.
Washington DC , 1941
EVA DELECTORSKAYA CALLED ROMER in New York.
'I've struck gold,' she said and hung up.
Arranging an appointment with Mason Harding had been very straightforward. Eva took the train from New York to Washington and booked into the London Hall Apartment Hotel on 11th and M streets. She realised she was subconsciously drawn to hotels that carried some echo of England. Then she thought that if it was becoming a habit then it was one she should change – another Romer rule – but she liked her one-room apartment with its tiny galley kitchen and ice-box and the gleaming clean shower. She reserved it for two weeks and, once she had unpacked, she called the number Romer had given her.
'Mason Harding.'
She introduced herself, saying that she worked for Transoceanic Press in New York and she would like to request an interview with Mr Hopkins.
'I'm afraid Mr Hopkins is unwell,' Harding said, then added, 'Are you English?'
'Sort of. Half Russian.'
'Sounds a dangerous mixture.'
'Can I call by your office? There may be other stories we can run – Transoceanic has a huge readership in South and Latin America.'
Harding was very amenable – he suggested the end of the afternoon the following day.
Mason Harding was a young man in his early thirties, Eva guessed, whose thick brown hair was cut and severely parted like a schoolboy's. He was putting on weight and his even, handsome features were softened by a layer of fat on his cheeks and his jaw-bone. He wore a pale fawn seersucker suit and on his desk a sign said 'Mason Harding III'.
'So,' he said, offering her a seat and looking her up and down. 'Transoceanic Press – can't say I've heard of you.'
She gave him a rough outline of Transoceanic's reach and readership; he nodded, seemingly taking it in. She said she'd been sent down to Washington to interview key officials in the new administration.
'Sure. Where are you staying?'
She told him. He asked her a few questions about London, the war and had she been there in the Blitz? Then he looked at his watch.
'You want to get a drink? I think we close at five or thereabouts, these days.'
They left the Department of Commerce, a vast classical monster of a building – with a façade more like a museum than a department of state – and they walked a few blocks north on 15th Street to a dark bar that Mason – 'Please call me Mason' – knew and where, once settled inside, they both ordered Whisky Macs, Mason's suggestion. It was a chilly day: they could do with some warming up.
Eva asked some dutiful questions about Hopkins and Mason told her a few bland facts, except for the information that Hopkins had had 'half his stomach removed' in an operation some years ago for stomach cancer. Mason was careful to mention his department's and the Roosevelt administration's admiration of British resolve and pluck.
'You got to understand, Eve,' he said, savouring his second Whisky Mac, 'it's incredibly hard for Hopkins and FDR to do anything more. If it was up to us we'd be in there beside you, shoulder to shoulder, fighting those damn Nazis. Want another? Waiter! Sir?' He signalled for another drink. 'But the vote in Congress has to be won before we go to war. Roosevelt knows he'll never win it. Not now. Something has to happen to change people's attitudes. You ever been to an America First rally?'
Eva said she had. She remembered it welclass="underline" an Irish-American priest hectoring the crowd about British iniquity and duplicity. Eighty per cent of Americans were against entering the war. America had intervened in the last war and had gained nothing except the Depression. The United States was safe from attack – there was no need to help England again. England was broke, finished: don't waste American money and American lives trying to save her skin. And so on – to massive cheers and applause.