“Don’t you see how that puts them back in the same relative position of 1914? They’re ready for another crack at getting their place in the sun. Eastern Europe was nice. But it really was only their first course. If they don’t feel ready yet to carve out Hitler’s Lebensraum in Russia, they’ve got their eyes on a formal protectorate over the whole Near East. Getting us into renewed difficulties with America is exactly what they need to move us out of their way.
“And there are other things—though I really can’t tell you about these. It isn’t a matter of distrust. It’s just that these are things known at the moment only to me and Halifax. If Butler and all the others are still in the dark, you can hardly complain if I don’t tell you about them.” He laughed and, with his foot, carefully moved a log back into the centre of the grate. He turned back to me with a broader smile.
“Now, Anthony, I’ve been as frank with you as I can possibly be. If you will now hand over the Churchill Memorandum, I can have you taken off to a nice warm bed for the night. Of course, you’ll be my guest in the house until such time as it’s safe for you to be taken back to your own flat in London. You can take it as read that we’ll fix things with the press. If you’ll just leave it to a spot of shadow boxing between the lawyers, I think you can even look forward to some nice libel damages.”
The damages sounded nice. But I’d already frozen in my chair. A half inch away from my lips, the cigarette glowed between fingers that seemed about to go limp, but were somehow fixed in position.
“I don’t have it,” I said. Macmillan’s face took on a look of pure nothingness. He came forward from the fire grate and stood by his place at the table. I explained about Pakeshi and his idea of getting himself and the Memorandum on the next available ferry out of Hull.
“I see,” he said at last. His pipe had burned out, and he covered whatever was in his mind by a minute of fussing to get the thing refilled and alight. He looked up at me, now smiling again. “Of course, all this puts things in a different light.” He looked steadily at me. I could feel sweat beginning to break out all over my back. “It puts things in a very different light. Of course, we still have to look after you. But we’ll now need your active help in tracking down this Dr Pakeshi. We can’t have him on the loose with that document in his pocket. Perhaps the worst thing about all this is that he probably knows that he’s a walking atom bomb.” He laughed bleakly and went across to the room to pull on a bell cord.
“Naturally, Harold,” I said, clearing my throat, “I’ll give your people a full description of Pakeshi. But Inspector O’Brien already has all that. I’m sure he can be waiting on the docks at Hull.”
“This is not one for the police, Anthony,” came the firm reply. He pulled again on the bell cord. “Your Inspector O’Brien may be a most splendid fellow. But we are talking affairs of state. We have our own people for that.
“Now, we’ll need the fullest description you can provide. We really do need to head him off before he gets too far….”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I groaned and turned over in bed. It was a firm if elderly feather mattress. It wasn’t my own bed. But it was a fair substitute when it came to comfort. I reached over and looked at the luminous dial on the alarm clock. It was just gone 3am. After the endless questions regarding Pakeshi’s appearance and likely response to being stopped, I’d been brought up here by Macmillan himself. “Anything you want dear boy—anything at all,” he’d said before turning the light off and closing the door, “do just pull on the bell cord. It’s what I pay the servants to provide, and you are my honoured guest.
“Yes, yes,” he’d repeated with a strange chuckle—“my most honoured guest.”
Nice to be treated like this by the second or third most important man in the country. I’d lain awhile, thinking over his brief remark about libel actions. What those newspapers had said about me was vicious beyond normal imagination. Even if it was to be a stitch-up between the Government and the proprietors, I was looking forward to the apology and the out of court settlement—oh, the settlement: I could do with that. I remembered the case, a few years before, where some pianist refugee from America—as obvious a degenerate as you could ever wish to see—had got £8,000 from The Daily Mirror for much less than had been said about me. £8,000—you could buy half a terrace with that. And I’d surely get more, even in an out of court settlement. It might even put me back where I had been. This time, to be sure, I’d not stuff it down any gold mines.
Thoughts of that had got me off to sleep a first time. Tired as I was, I was awake within half an hour, and looking at the glow on the ceiling from the dying embers of the fire that had been laid out in the room for me. Outside, it was raining hard again, and I could hear the patter on the window panes whenever the wind blew harder. Why had all these horrid tales about me been given in the first place to the newspapers? What was all this nonsense about the murder of Pakeshi? And, if we were drifting to war with Germany, why had we just signed that agreement in which the Germans would share all their rocket advances with us so that, before 1980, we could put a man jointly into space? Some of these questions I’d wanted to ask of Macmillan. Some were only coming to me now I was in bed. Perhaps I’d be able to raise these and other matters over breakfast. But, the more I thought about it, the more dinner seemed a lost opportunity.
For sure, I hadn’t raised the possibility of switching publishers. Macmillan was a much bigger house than Richardson. It could pay higher advances. It had more clout with the reviewers. I hadn’t raised this at our first meeting at the Foreign Office. Back then, it had been a matter of getting through a long list of questions about Churchill and the general debate over the first Munich Settlement. This evening, though, might have been a good time to discuss the possibility of switching publisher. Since being brought back into government, Harold himself had given up day to day management of the family business. But he could surely put in a word for me. Another point to raise over breakfast, perhaps. Or, since it looked as if I’d be a guest for at least several days, while this plot was foiled, I could raise it at another dinner….
I’d now had about three full hours of sleep. I might have dreamed, though I couldn’t remember. I also couldn’t remember what it was that had got me awake again. Was it the stiffness in my neck? Or the continued throbbing of my sore head. If I was lucky to have landed from that railway train in one piece, it was plain that I’d hurt for days and days to come.
Then I heard the quiet breathing of someone else in the room. Yes—that was it. I’d woken with a strong sense of not being alone. And there was someone else in the room. I resisted the urge to pull the blankets over my head and pretend to be asleep again. Trying not to make any sound, I reached for the bedside lamp. The fire now had burned right down, and the room was very dark.
“Not so fast, Professor Markham!” someone young said, speaking low in a faintly American accent. A hand closed on my wrist and gently moved me away from the switch.
“Come with me if you want to stay alive.”
“What do you mean?” I asked again. I was fast getting over the shock, and I think my voice sounded pretty normal. His face showing dimly in the reflected light of the torch he put on, Macmillan’s footman sat very still beside my bed. Even before the torch had gone on, I’d guessed it was him. Though a touch Hebraic in some of his features, he looked very young. And I hadn’t been able to avoid noticing him as he served at dinner. Whatever first thoughts may have passed through my mind, I was now simply curious about his meaning.