‘Sardine and Bovril,’ said Thesiger. ‘My favourite. Ever since
Nanny used to make them when I was a boy. Many’s the time Walter and I ate sardine and Bovril butties together.’
Cal forced down a lump. Very salty, very fishy, with a curious undertaste of beef. ‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Walter.’
‘Quite. No point in beating about the bush, is there? My line isn’t the front line. I’ve never lost a man before. If you can see what I mean. Walter’s death was shocking, simply shocking. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you, but by the time those thick buggers in Scotland Yard bothered to tell me what had happened, someone else had already got you out. If I’d known, I’d have cleared you right away. I gather you had rather an awful couple of days. And after that, well, it was Reggie’s show, so I kept out of it until now. But you’re right, it is Walter that brings me here. I want to know exactly how he died.’
Cal told him.
For several minutes Thesiger sat in silence, slowly finishing his sandwiches.
Then he said, ‘You say he felt nothing?’
‘I think he died instantly.’
Thesiger thought for a while.
‘This is tricky. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but could Walter’s death have been avoided?’
‘If I’d got there on time.’
‘No, no. I don’t mean in terms of such detail. And please don’t start blaming yourself. I mean, as simply as I can put it, did my colleagues throw Walter away?’
‘Squadron Leader, right now I’m not the greatest fan of your colleagues. The Special Branch treated me like a criminal. If this were the USA I could cite you the clauses in the Bill of Rights they violated. But as you don’t have a bill of rights, let’s say they treated me like shit and leave it at that. But your more secret colleagues have given me the runaround from the moment I got here. Reggie’s a decent guy, I’m sure, but he feels no obligation to share anything with me and certainly not to tell me the truth. Since I got here I’ve been expecting to see a nation locked into total war-what have I seen? Playboys who know where the Krug ‘20 is always to be found. Society women playing at being interim cops while they wait for the next London Season-or serving sherry and smoked salmon in East End shelters… old generals lost to the present in re-living old battles… I could go on, but we’ll take it as read. England shocks me. They talk the war, they live the war, but they don’t seem to know it’s happening. The worst things happen-the Hood going down, dammit even the sinking of the Bismarck-and still something in England is unmoved by this. Some eternal core is unchanged. The crassest, the stupidest things happen… but throwing away Walter wasn’t one of them. I can’t blame your people for that. I’d love to, but it was my people killed Walter. There are moments I wish they’d killed me instead.’
Thesiger thought about this too. Where Reggie would have an answer on the tip of his tongue, Thesiger seemed to have to ruminate.
‘You’re right. Of course. The worst things happen. I don’t know whether the English were unmoved by the death of all those German sailors. You might say they were already numbed by the loss of the Hood. Perhaps you could say we accepted the necessity. What I saw was not celebration, it was acceptance. Personally, I was moved. You may have noticed, I’ve a German surname.’
Cal hadn’t noticed, but if he thought about it he supposed Thesiger might be as German as Reininger or Shaeffer or von Schell-his grandmother’s maiden name.
‘I had second and third cousins fighting on the other side in the last war,’ Thesiger went on. ‘And doubtless their children fight me in this. But don’t underestimate us. It is, as you so rightly say, total war. Deep down the English know this. Deep down, that’s why we’ll win.’
Cal forced down a whole triangle of surf and turf, just to be polite.
‘You say your nanny taught you how to make these?’
‘Yes-doubtless another English indulgence, another denial of reality-this fondness for nursery food.’
‘Walter had a thing about spotted dick.’
‘Ah, my dear chap-the hymns I could sing you in praise of spotted dick
Cal let him. It was their wake for Walter Stilton.
§ 91
Stahl was shaving. The dye in his hair would take weeks to grow out. The shaved patches at the forehead just as long. The moustache could come off now. He shaved blind, eyes closed, feeling for the bristles with his fingertips, braille-tracing. He had managed not to look in a mirror since they brought him in. Now, the moustache gone, he opened his eyes, saw a face in the mirror he could not recognise, and the presence or absence of a moustache seemed to have nothing to do with it. He did not know this man. He reminded him of someone he once knew years ago before… before all this nonsense began. A talented Viennese youth, a bit gawky, with blowaway, fine blond hair and bright blue eyes, who had played piano with an occasional quintet at school, made up of the school’s usual string quartet and him. Schubert. Always the Schubert. The school’s principal insisted on hearing it every year. He tried to think when he had last played the Schubert Trout Quintet in A. 1927 or ‘28 perhaps-and when had he last seen any of the quartet? That required no thought, he knew that. It had been in the March of 1938-he had seen Turli Cantor, second violin, scrubbing flagstones with a brush in the gutters of Vienna. Vienna-her greatest son Franz Schubert. Dead at thirty-one. Stahl was thirty-one.
§ 92
When Cal got back to the hospital Stahl was dressed. Someone had brought him his suit, cleaned and pressed. He sat, jacketless, in a starched white shirt upon the window-sill looking out at the Thames, his image all but bleached out to Cal’s eyes by the searing glare of June light through the open window.
Stahl said, ‘I can read it in your face. You are not happy.’
‘I thought it would be crucial,’ Cal said. ‘I thought this was vital-everything they’ve been chasing these last few weeks.’
‘And?’ said Stahl.
‘And they’re in huddles. They’re cutting me out again. They’re not jumping for joy, they’re not even openly analysing what you said. They’re… goddammit, they’re playing cloak and dagger.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Calvin.’
‘I’m not. I know what my eyes tell me.’
‘I meant-what else could you expect? They’re English, secrecy is their nature. And if it were not, it is, is it not, our trade? To expect anything else from them is stupid.’
‘You’ve just handed them a gem-Jeez, that’s understatement. You’ve given them information that could save thousands of lives, hundreds of thousands of lives.’
Stahl seemed so calm, so unruffled by all this. ‘No it won’t,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
Stahl shrugged.
‘Is there such a thing as a secret? Ruthven-Greene may have feigned surprise at what I knew about him, but he knows just as much about me. I have told the English what they already knew. I doubt it was more than that. The detail, yes, the fine print of battle formation, yes… the fundamental truth, no… I think you have a saying in English, “the world and his wife”?… Let us update it for our time, the world and his ragtag army of camp-following, light-fingered, cut-purse, throat-slitting whores know that Russia is going to be invaded. What, then, have I given the English?’
‘The time, the place, the battle order. Enough for the Red Army to prepare.’
‘And you think that will save a single life? You think you and I can save a single life? Could you save Walter Stilton?’
‘No… but…’
‘No buts-you were not there to save Walter. Calvin, believe me, I have been there and I still could not save a life.’
Cal waited. He did not know what to say to this. He hoped Stahl would go on.