There was a pause. Alex could almost hear the Beaver timing it like the true ham he was.
‘I asked Winston if I could see Hess, you know.’
Ah. At last the nub. Beaverbrook was rubbing his nose in it.
‘Did he say yes?’
‘He didn’t say no.’
At the back of his mind Alex felt vaguely certain he’d heard this repartee before somewhere.
‘What did he say?’
‘Later. He said later. When the Foreign Office are through with him.’
‘Well Max, there you are, another scoop.’
Beaverbrook did not react to the sarcasm.
‘Who have they sent?’ Alex asked.
‘Kirkpatrick.’
For a second all Alex could think of was a young American journalist who’d been in London covering the war for one paper or another-Helen? Hannah? H-something Kirkpatrick. Then he remembered-Ivone Kirkpatrick, the diplomat at the Berlin embassy who’d come to the attention of the British press when he’d been stuck with the unenviable task of translating for Chamberlain at Munich.
‘He’s not the man for the job.’
‘Do you know him? He’s considered an expert on Berlin.’
‘No, I’ve never met the man. But it’s not a job for a career diplomat. It’s an expert in interrogation they need, not an expert on Berlin. They should send in the toughest nut they have. An English Yezhov or a Beria, if there is such a beast. Ernie Bevin on a bad day. And if that doesn’t work I would not be at all surprised if Winston didn’t just put the bugger up against a wall and have him shot.’
Beaverbrook grinned, Beaverbrook chuckled, Beaverbrook guffawed. The monkey face split from side to side-head back, eyes popping. It was unthinkable-but Churchill might just do it. The wave of laughter subsided in him. He wiped the corner of one eye and indulged in another meaningful pause.
‘If you were interrogating Hess now, what would you want from him? If you could ask him just one question, Alex, what would it be?’
And yet more-Beaverbrook was rubbing his nose in it at the same time as he sought to pick his brains. Alex saw no point in lying to the little sod. There could only be one plausible answer.
‘I would want to know the intentions of the Third Reich towards Russia. To be precise, I would want the date and the battle formation for Hitler’s invasion of the USSR. I would want to know when the lunatic proposes to lead his country into mass suicide.’
‘Do you really think it would be that? Most of my Cabinet colleagues seem to think Russia would last three weeks. A month at the most.’
‘Have a little faith, Max. Think of Russia’s power to resist. Almost a passive quality. But what a power! Remember Napoleon. Read War and Peace. It will be suicide on the grand scale. If Russia comes into this war, then Germany is doomed. And Russia will pay the price in suffering that we British seem to have been spared thus far.’
‘We British,’ said Beaverbrook, grinning. ‘A Canadian and a Russian.’
It seemed to Old Troy to be neither statement nor question. He answered in kind.
‘We British. A couple of wogs. A baron and a baronet-rewarded for nothing more significant than our wealth and influence. What a curious country this is.’
Sarcasm was so often wasted on the Beaver.
§ 30
‘The Yard’, as in ‘Let’s nip over to the Yard’, was a cheering phrase-a movie cliché to rank with ‘Let’s form a posse’ and ‘Come out with your hands up, we’ve got you surrounded.’
In reality it had meant more sitting on his butt while Walter had the sketch copied by Scotland Yard’s photographic section. Cal had dreamt of a day when you could stick a piece of paper in one end of a machine and get a copy out the other end in two seconds. It was like something out of H. G. Wells or Aldous Huxley. It went with food synthesisation and the Feelies. He even had a name for the machine-the Instant Image Replicator, very catchy. If he knew the first thing about science he’d’ve doodled a sketch and dashed to the patent office. Instead he had sat, getting angrier and angrier, until Walter reappeared with a bundle of photos, stuck one in his hand and said, ‘Pubs’re open.’
In the car, heading north up the Charing Cross Road, he said to Stilton, ‘Does everything take place in pubs?’
‘Pretty well.’
‘How many are there?’
Stilton laughed. ‘God knows. I’ve never counted and I couldn’t begin to guess. Mind, I did once count every pub, church and chapel in the town I grew up in. As I recall, thirty-five pubs and seventeen assorted churches and chapels.’
‘For how many people?’
‘Not a lot. A few thousand.’
‘Jesus. Is that what the English do, sin all Saturday and repent on Sunday?’
‘Pretty well,’ said Stilton.
When they pulled up in front of the Marquis of Lincoln, Cal asked ‘Why this one?’
‘The one time we lost Smulders, it was a few yards from here. It gets its fair share of refugees. Time to ask who was in that night.’
Considering the public house appeared to be the pivot of English social life, Cal was surprised they were not more friendly. More friendly, more clean, more warm-more everything. By and large this one did little to alter his first impression of the night before-they were grim places. Worse still, a bit of mugging to the wireless notwithstanding, they were joyless places. The wall of faces that now faced him across the ranks of half-empty pint glasses on every table looked to him like gargoyles. The barman was no exception-a nose like Punchinello, bright enough to light his way home and constitute a breach of the blackout regulations.
Stilton called him ‘Ernie’ and beckoned to him.
‘Mr Stilton. What brings you in, might I ask?’
‘Business, Ernie, business. Were you on, Monday night?’
‘I’m on every night.’
Stilton laid the sketch of Stahl on the bar.
‘Was this bloke in?’
‘Dunno,’ said the barman.
Stilton put a photograph of Smulders next to it.
‘Nor ‘im. Look Mr Stilton, why don’t you ask some of the regulars? They got nothing better to do than look who’s new and who ain’t. Me, I’m pullin’ pints all night.’
Stilton turned to Cal, said, ‘Have a seat for five minutes. I’ll just have a word with this lot.’
Cal watched him move from table to table, watched his face run a gamut of hammy theatrical expressions, each one donned and doffed like a Commedia del Arte mask. One man needed to be cajoled, another bullied and another wheedled. It took him ten minutes or more, but one way or another every look of suspicion with which they greeted him was overcome or outflanked. Stilton moved among these shabby little men-and it was men, not a woman in the place-like a colossus among the threadbare remnants of a tatty, defeated army. The weight of the word sank into Cal’s imagination. There was misery here. For the first time the English looked defeated-as he had thought when he first walked in, joyless. He’d often heard the phrase ‘crying into your beer’-maybe that’s what beer was for?
His attention came to rest on a couple in the corner. A blind man and his minder. A stout old man in a ragged blue overcoat. A few wisps of white hair seemed to stand up on his skull as though blown by the draught. His eyes were lost behind glasses that were not simply dark, but utterly opaque. Stilton was making his ‘way across the room to them now. Cal followed, picking his way between the whispering, surly faces at the tables.
‘Well, if it isn’t Mr Potts,’ said Stilton.
The blind man spoke to his minder, a surprisingly cultured voice, ‘I know that step better than I know that voice. The heavy tread of Old Bill. I take it the constabulary are in tonight, Leckie?’
‘It’s me, Walter Stilton. I just wanted a quick word.’
‘Always at your service sir,’ Potts answered. ‘Anything for the Met, Chief Inspector.’
Walter set the two pictures on the table, ‘I’m looking for two men. One or both of ‘em might have been in on Monday.’