Hunter was just about to consider his next move when he heard the living room door below him open and then shut again. Then footsteps from downstairs. The living room! How had he been so stupid? They’d been in there all this time. His heart started to race again and then he heard the front door carefully being pulled to. Hunter was already at the window. Cautiously he leant forward just in time to catch sight of the back of a man’s shaven head. Hunter was grateful he’d not encountered him with or without a gun. He looked enormous. In one hand a dull black firearm. Hunter knew very little about guns, but he’d watched enough films to recognise a pistol with a silencer when he saw one. A powerful arm shot out and easily shoved the brown recycling bin out of his way. A flash of silver. A silver wedding ring, above it a tattoo Hunter couldn’t quite make out but which seemed to stop abruptly at the wrist like a shirt, and travelled up the man’s left arm before disappearing under a black t-shirt. He watched as the man shot a look up the road and then disappeared behind a row of trees. There was the sound of a door slamming and a car driving off.
Hunter pulled up a chair and sat down. His legs felt week, his heart was pounding. He needed to take stock. On the table lay all his notes, his ring binder roughly opened and then discarded, computer discs scattered here and there. And then he saw it. The last thing the killer had seen in their bedroom. A letter to Amy from her work offering her longer hours and a meeting to discuss any National Insurance or income tax ramifications. At the top, in large clear print the address of her offices.
‘Amy?’
‘Scott, what is it, I’m kind of busy?’
‘Listen, you’re going to have to trust me and do as I say.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Meet me at the railway station now.’
‘Scott, what are you talking about? I’m at work, you know that.’
He started to raise his voice.
‘Amy, go to the station as quickly as you can. I’ll explain everything when I see you. I’ve never asked you to do anything like this before. Please trust me and get there as soon as you can, okay?’
‘All right Scott, but you’re kind of freaking me out.’
‘Just do it.’
Hunter needed to move quickly. He saw Wiseman's book carelessly thrown on the floor, and shoved it in his shoulder bag. In the kitchen, next to his house keys he found Joth’s wallet. Hunter didn’t hesitate. He put that in his bag too. Any thoughts that it could have been a burglary gone wrong now put completely from his mind. Then Hunter phoned the emergency services and reported a fire at the premises.
The house next door was rented by a group of students. Hunter took a quick look over their front wall confident at what he would find. A bicycle.
Amy was already waiting under one of the arches outside Cambridge Station when he arrived. He abandoned the bike with the hundreds of others and rushed to her.
‘Are you all right?’ He took her in his arms holding her tight.
‘Scott, what the hell is going on? I’m going to have to get back to work and...’
‘Joth’s dead.’
As he’d cycled from the house to the station he had gone through all the ways he would break the news to her. What he hadn’t wanted to do was blurt it out.
‘What? What did you say?’ Amy half smiled at him. This was some terrible idea of a joke, a sick prank. But as she looked at his face there was no sign of him relenting.
‘It’s Joth. Oh God Amy I’m so sorry. Joth’s dead. He’s been shot.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I found him.’
‘Oh my God. Well, shouldn’t you be with the police?’
‘You don’t understand Amy. I think it should have been me.’
‘What?’
‘There isn’t time to explain. We need to get as far away from here as we can and quickly.’
‘But Scott,’ she was looking at him pleadingly now, on the verge of tears.
‘Amy, you’ve got to trust me, we’re both in danger and we need to leave now.’ He took her arm and guided her towards the station.
‘Where are we going? I need to call the office.’
‘There’s no time. The first train leaves for Kings Cross in three minutes. That’ll have to do. I’ll explain everything I can once we’re on it, now go.’
Hunter spent the journey into London comforting Amy and gently relating to her exactly what he had discovered on returning to their house. He told her everything, how he’d found the code on their doormat, his lunch with Alec, the subsequent trip to London and his meeting with the author George Wiseman. He’d struggled to describe the irascible old man, explaining how he felt he might have helped, whether consciously or not, to break the code. And finally he read her the list of names his algorithm had produced, all the while praying silently that she would have an answer, a solution to it all. Then, when she tearfully admitted to being as bewildered as he was, he persuaded her to drink some sweet tea from the trolley and close her eyes. An hour and a half later they stood beneath the flickering information board at Kings Cross Station.
‘We have to go to South Ken.,’ Amy said.
‘Wiseman?’
‘He clearly knows something, you said so yourself.’
‘You haven’t met him. He’s a throw back. A relic of the Cold War. He lives in this ridiculous apartment in one of the flashiest parts of London. I’m sorry but you don’t afford that writing whimsical reminiscences about your father and the Second World War.’
‘Let me meet him?’
‘He won’t tell you anything. He’s all paranoid and unhelpful.’
‘That’s why we need to go and see him. We need to find out exactly what it is he knows.’
‘But Amy, even if I felt that we could trust him, which I don’t, he won’t tell us anything. He could be involved for all we know.’
She looked up at Hunter, her eyes still red from crying but soft and kind. ‘Let me meet him. I’m a fairly good judge of character, wouldn’t you say?’ She bent forward to kiss him. ‘Poor Joth,’ she said quietly.
5
For the second time in as many days Scott Hunter watched as the heavy curtain lifted and just as quickly fell back into place again. The briefest glimpse of the man inside. A hand, a cuff, a flash of jewellery the only signs of occupancy. Wiseman observed them dispassionately from his fortress and then Hunter listened impatiently as Amy attempted to persuade the grand old man to permit them entry.
‘We desperately need your help?’
‘I can’t help you, I told Mr Hunter that. You have no right coming here. No right at all. I’m a sick old man, so please leave me alone, or I shall be forced to telephone the police.’ But Wiseman was sounding anything but sick or old.
‘We just want to talk to you.’
‘There’s nothing more to said. That young man should never have...’
‘Please will you let us in? Something’s happened.’
Silence as Wiseman contemplated Amy’s last roll of the dice.
‘Very well young lady.’ The entry buzzer sounded and Hunter pushed past her and inside.
The door to Wiseman’s flat opened just enough that he could address them over the taught silver security chain.
‘What do you want?’
‘Answers.’
‘Answers to what?’
‘You know damn well.’
George thrust out a confident pad and guided the delivery away. He was not going to be dictated to by this young pup and his companion. ‘You said something had happened?’
‘Yes.’
‘You went home?’
‘Yes, I fucking well went home, and do you know what I found? My best friend with his brains blown out, so you had better start coming up with some answers otherwise I will be the one going to the police.’
‘Shot?’
‘Yes, by a giant with a shaven head.’
Hunter observed Wiseman’s face. An involuntary flicker of what, emotion, remorse? he couldn’t say
, but in that moment of morbid revelation, he was certain Wiseman changed.
‘You had better come in.’
Hunter gave Amy an exasperated look as the old man pushed the door to and then removed the security chain.
‘You saw his killer?’
‘Leaving, yes. After he’d turned our bedroom upside down. Looking for this I presume.’ Hunter handed Wiseman the list of names and as he took the page in his bent and brittle fingers it was as if the elderly gentleman shrunk before their eyes. His shoulders drooped and Amy noticed his hand begin to tremble. They followed him into the front room where he immediately went to pour himself a drink.
‘Let me do that,’ she said taking the decanter from Wiseman’s shaking hand, ‘you sit down.’ Amy’s eyes travelled to Hunter’s and she silently begged him to take it easy. Then without asking she splashed some whisky into three glasses whilst George lead Hunter away.
‘How did you get here?’
‘Train.’
‘Which train?’
‘The quarter past from Cambridge.’
‘Where did it get in?’
‘Liverpool Street.’
‘Then what did you do?’
‘The tube.’
‘Christ. Which tube? Circle line or through town?’
‘We took the Central line to Holborn and then changed to the Piccadilly, I think.’
Wiseman snatched at the glass Amy offered.
‘You think?’
‘Yes, the Piccadilly Line.’
‘Were you followed?’
‘Were we what?’
‘Followed. Followed.’
‘How the hell should we know?’ Amy chipped in a little resentfully.
‘Did you see any one consistently on your journey across London? Someone you might have seen on the train from Cambridge? Were you followed?’
‘Scott, what is this all about?’
Wiseman was in Hunter’s face, ignoring Amy’s brief protestation, any fleeting moment of weakness long forgotten. ‘Were you followed?’
‘I don’t know,’ Hunter offered meekly.
‘Christ. All right. What about the tube. Which station did you come from?’
‘Gloucester Road.’
‘Then straight up Queen’s Gate?’
‘Of course,’ Amy put in, missing the point.
‘Is this relevant?’ Hunter asked.
‘To me, extremely, yes.’
‘Look, I don’t know if we were followed or not. I’d like to know why my friend was killed for this though,’ Hunter said gesturing to the page Wiseman still clutched, ‘and I’m guessing you had something to do with it.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never seen this before.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t believe you George. Not only do I not believe you but I think you know exactly who these people are, or were.’
Amy gave the two men another healthy scotch and quietly insisted that Hunter try to calm down, but to little avail.
‘All right. Let me tell you what I know,’ he continued. ‘I received an unbreakable code a couple of days ago. It came to me from god knows who with not a scratch of information on it except my name on the envelope. Then I came out here to see you and you were pretty damn cagey. But just before you ushered me out you let something slip, didn’t you? You brought up Bill Tutte. Now why did you do that, I wonder? He never worked on Enigma, as I’m sure you knew, but he did work on Lorenz. I could have put that down to a simple slip, but then I recalled that little speech you gave. A young man in the company of his wartime heroes, you said. A little more respect for their sacrifice, you said. Surely you remember? What could have made you think of Bill Tutte and Lorenz if you’d genuinely never seen this before?’ Hunter said holding up the original.
‘Young man, I have seen hundreds, possibly even thousands of such codes. I think you will agree with me, that in one respect they are all identical. You talked to me of their beauty. In a sense that is their beauty is it not? Nothing can be gleaned from them, they are simply as they are, a string of letters.’ Wiseman fixed Hunter with an unequivocal stare and jabbed a crooked finger at him. ‘The code you showed me yesterday looked no different to any of the other hundreds I have seen. I was as fooled by it as you clearly were.’
‘Why did you suggest the Lorenz machine then?’
‘I didn’t, not intentionally. I simply thought it was an avenue you might wish to explore. Nothing more, nothing less.’
‘But you admit you tried to guide me towards Lorenz?’
Wiseman screwed up his face and fiddled with his hearing aid. ‘Guide, suggest, advise? I don’t recall.’
‘And I don’t buy it,’ Hunter said shaking his head.
‘I’m afraid that is the truth, whether you buy it or not. You will see, if you choose to think about it that no two codes are the same, yet they are all identical in their appearance. Am I not correct?’
Hunter understood the old man perfectly. When you looked at a page, unless you had a photographic memory, they did all seem the same. You might remember the first four or five letters but after that it would take an incredible act of concentration to remember even ten letters. Perhaps there was some truth in what the old man said. But there was still that niggling doubt.
‘When I called you, you told me not to go home. Why? You must have recognised the names? These people, who are they?’
‘I’ve never heard of them.’
‘So why the warning?’
‘Just a feeling.’
‘Rubbish. You don’t do feelings any more than I do.’ Hunter blanched on hearing his murdered friend’s aphorism. ‘Sorry George, you may not have recognised the code, but you sure as hell recognise those names, don’t you? Something about that list really got you rattled. You put the phone down on me. Do you remember that?’
Whilst the two men had been talking Amy had been looking over the photographs on the piano. She’d found some of George Wiseman in uniform, doing his National Service. Then, she discovered, there was another side to the man. A picture of him coming out of a church with his bride on his arm, flowers in her hand and confetti in the air. She’d found pictures of him at a typewriter too, next to him an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. A book launch, George behind a huge table, books stacked high and a young lady craning forward, Amy imagined, asking for a dedication. There was George lying on the deck of a yacht, propped up on one elbow, the other hand holding a cigarette, a smile of intense happiness on his face and the sea wind blowing in his hair. Bloody Hell, she thought as she carefully picked up one silver framed portrait.
‘Is this you with Jean Seberg?’
George replaced the cigar he had been about to light and joined Amy at the piano, relieved to be away from Hunter.
‘Indeed it is,’ he said taking the photograph from her. ‘She was working on a film I was advising on. Nothing came of it in the end, the film I mean. She was kind enough to have her picture taken with me. A charming lady. Such a tragedy, the manner of her passing.’
Wiseman was talking about Jean Seberg as though they were old friends.
‘I must say I’m surprised at someone of your age knowing who she is,’ he continued.
‘Of course I know who she is. She was in Breathless and Joan of Arc.’
‘A tragically short career.’
Amy started looking through the rest of the pictures. There were more, Claudia Cardinale, Tina Louise and Anita Ekberg. George, in his day, had clearly been quite the ladies’ man.
‘What exactly was it you said you did Mr Wiseman?’
‘I was lucky enough to have been quintessentially English at a time when it was a blessing and not the curse it has become in more recent years.’
‘And you met all of these people?’ She cast her hand around the array of Hollywood starlets adorning Wiseman’s piano.
‘As I said, I was extremely fortunate.’ The elderly man smiled, bowing modestly.
Amy had a million questi
ons. She hardly knew where to begin. She’d never met anyone who had actually worked in Hollywood before, let alone a Hollywood unadulterated by green screen and CGI. The Hollywood she adored, when film stars had really been stars and worthy of the epithet. She continued to look through the pictures of her heroes. And then she spotted it. The photograph Hunter had shown her on the train. The photograph Hunter had told her was at the heart of it all. Except it wasn’t. Not quite. The one in the book had shown George and his father sat proudly behind the ugly machine with the strange name, but this was a larger picture. The one in the book had been cropped. This one contained more people. A group of six stood in a row behind the Wisemans. Five men and a woman. Amy picked it up.
‘I’ve seen this before haven’t I? Isn’t it in your book?’
‘Is it?’ asked Wiseman taking it from her a little too firmly, whilst in the same breath acknowledging his deceit. ‘Mr Hunter,’ he called over his shoulder, compounding the lie, ‘I feel we could all do with something to eat. If you would be so kind as to go into my kitchen where you will find some bread and cheese. Would you mind making us up some sandwiches? This charming young lady has had a terrible shock and is no doubt in need of sustenance.’
Hunter wasn’t overly keen on being ordered around like a skivvy, but he had to admit he’d not eaten all day and suspected that neither had Amy. Wiseman waited until he had left the room before returning the picture to the piano.
‘You know he thinks you’re a spy, don’t you?’
Wiseman coughed quietly and Amy wondered if he had heard her at all. He gripped the lid of the piano, his head slowly nodding, moist lips moving silently, as he contemplated his return. Play with a straight bat, take no chances, always think of the long game, come out fighting, try and drive it back over the bowler’s head and to hell with the consequences or George’s particular favourite, the subtle nick past third man, the cunning feint, the infuriating deflection, the elegant deceit.
Birth of a Spy Page 10