After his second whisky he could not but muse out loud.
‘I mean, I can’t just dump the fellow, can I?’
‘Doesn’t seem fair,’ said Charlie, pandering.
‘That’s what the old man doesn’t grasp-“fairness”. Everything is contingent to Gordon.’
‘I rather think that’s the nature of war, total contingency,’ said Charlie. ‘However, I’ve an idea. There’s Orlando Thesiger over by the bar…’
‘Is he? Where?’
‘Two tables to the left, chatting to Margot Asquith.’
Reggie strained his eyes. He could just make out the languid figure of Thesiger sprawled in a bucket chair, long legs crossed, knees jutting, head nodding gently, in perfect listening mode-listening to something old Margot was telling him, smiling, then laughing. She was known for her wit. She’d been outrageous since long before he or Thesiger were born.
‘OK. I see him now. What’s your point?’
‘Well, before I got moved to Six, I had four months working for Orlando just after the fall of France. He spends his time quizzing suspected spies out at Burnham-on-Crouch. They fish them out of the water and Orlando has to decide whether they’re kosher or not. They come across in rowing boats, on rafts and God knows what. Most of them are completely innocent, but every so often the Germans try and slip one through. As well as chaps like me, Orlando’s got a bunch of Special Branch coppers working under him-they do the surveillance, arrests, all the legwork, that sort of thing. He must have someone who can look after your Yank. Show him around London, take him to all the likely places.’
‘A German speaker would be useful.’
‘A German speaker in the Met? You’ll be lucky. Most of ‘em hardly speak English!’
Reggie got to his feet.
‘Well, I suppose it’s worth a try. Do you think you’re up to entertaining the Countess while I buttonhole him?’
‘Dunno,’ said Charlie, ‘but I’ve always wanted to try.’
§ 19
Thesiger caught Stilton the next day, just as he was leaving Scotland Yard. Hat and coat on, out of the door and halfway down the corridor when a constable called him back to the telephone. ‘Do you still want a chance to use your German?’ Thesiger asked.
‘Hess…?’
“Fraid not. But there’s an American who needs your services. He’s been brought in from somewhere or other, based at the embassy, and I gather they’ve given him a room at Claridge’s. Name of Cormack. First name Calvin. A captain.’
‘An American. I don’t…’
‘I can’t tell you any more. In fact it isn’t my show. It isn’t even Five. You’ll report to Colonel Ruthven-Greene at Six. You’d better get in touch with him straight away. Trust me. It’s big. Bigger than anything you’ve done for me. It matters. And you’ll be on the trail of a real live Jerry of your own.’
‘A Jerry?’
‘Yes, a wild card. A loose cannon, from what I can gather. Now, about our Dutchman, Smulders.’
‘He’s been up West a couple of times. Once to a printing house in Covent Garden. Didn’t get the job.’
Stilton stopped. He’d said a word too much already. He hoped Thesiger would just accept it all at face value and ring off. Thesiger was not the sort of man to let a casual remark have a casual escape.
‘A couple of times, you said?’
‘One or two, aye.’
‘You lost him. Is that what you’re saying?’
It had been one of Stilton’s constables, but it was a pathetic Chief Inspector who blamed his men. He’d bollocked the constable. If Thesiger now wanted to bollock him he’d just have to take it.
‘Last night, as it happens. Just north of Oxford Street, close by the Marquis of Lincoln. Pitch dark in the blackout. Couldn’t be helped. He was home before midnight. No harm done.’
‘Walter, I don’t want to make obstacles for you, but if you take on the American are you sure you can still handle Smulders?’
When Thesiger called him Walter it was usually a preface to him being put on a spot.
‘It won’t happen again, sir. We’ll be watching him day and night.’
§ 20
Frederick Troy had arrived at Church Row, Hampstead, for an early dinner with his parents. His mother had insisted. They were so rarely in town these days, and Troy so rarely found his way out to Mimram, the country home in Hertfordshire, that she had taken to nagging him. Particularly if his brother Rod was on leave.
‘How else am I ever to see my family all together?’ she asked pointlessly. And once in a while it worked. Troy would have a day off that coincided with Rod’s leave, and their sisters, the twins, Maria and Alexandra, would be whipped in from their conjugal homes.
‘Dinner will be a little late,’ said his mother as he kicked the front door shut and hung up his coat. He dutifully pecked her on the cheek-she stood, shorter than he, poised for the gesture as of right-before she finished what she had to say.
‘Your father and Rod are in the study. We have a visitor.’
‘Who?’ Troy asked her vanishing back.
‘You’ll see.’
She was full of phrases like that. She was not past saying to a man of twenty-five, and at that a Scotland Yard detective, that if he asked no questions he’d be told no lies.
Troy looked in through the open study door. Rod was perched on the edge of a sagging, tatty armchair, an eager, argumentative look on his face. Troy knew that look. The keenness of argument, the triumph of intellect over adversity could lead him to a single-minded honesty that knew no tact. His father was behind his desk. Another blue notepad in front of him. A pencil behind one ear and a pile of balled blue pages tumbling forth from the upturned wastepaper basket. Today he had shaved. Today he had dressed. A stout man sat on the chesterfield with his back to Troy. All Troy could see of him was a thinning pate and the broad expanse of back in its brown striped jacket.
‘No,’ said Rod.
‘No,’ said his father, and then he noticed Troy.
‘Freddie,’ he beckoned him closer. ‘You know Bert, do you not?’
Troy moved tentatively into the room-if they were arguing about Russia again, he was just going to leg it and leave them to stew-and the stout body turned to look at him. A round, ruddy face, a small moustache, beady eyes. It was Wells. Herbert George Wells. HG to the world, Bert to his friends.
‘I was just saying,’ he began in a high, strained, middling-posh English voice, ‘who was it uttered the platitude about Russia-about the Soviet Union?’
‘Which platitude?’ said Troy. ‘There’ve been so many.’
His father smiled at this. Rod didn’t. Wells looked plainly puzzled.
‘I meant,’ he continued, ‘the one about “I have seen the future and it works”.’
‘Don’t say Shaw,’ Rod chipped in. ‘We’ve done Shaw.’
‘I thought it was you,’ said Troy.
‘Me? Surely I’d remember if I’d said it myself!’
‘Wasn’t it in The Shape of Things to Come?’ Troy persisted.
‘No it wasn’t!’ said Wells, and Troy could see him reddening into annoyance. Wells could be such a crosspatch.
‘You’ve said so much, Bert,’ Alex said. ‘Who could blame you if you forget?’
‘I didn’t forget it. I never bloody said it in the first place!’
Rod-ever the peacemaker, ever the inadvertent troublemaker, arbiter of truth, dispenser of English decency-stepped in with, ‘Bertrand Russell? That thing of his. Theory and Practice of Bolshevism.’
Alex and Wells shook their heads and said a simultaneous ‘no’.
Alex picked up the thread. ‘Didn’t Philip Snowden’s wife do a book after her Russian trip? Across Bolshevist Russia by Dog Sled or something? About ten years ago it seemed that anyone who got to go there wrote a damn book about it.’