by Walter Ellis
No response. The veteran intelligence officer waved him silent and carried on reading.
Bramall groaned and clasped his hands together behind his neck. The man was deliberately ignoring him, which was bloody rude. After a further prolonged pause he said: “Look, you’re obviously busy, but shouldn’t I be on my way to France by now? Isn’t that where the war is?”
There was a slight snort from the far side of the desk, either of amusement or derision, it was impossible to say which. Braithwaite pushed the centre link of his spectacles up the bridge of his nose with the end of his middle finger and leaned forward in his chair. “Oh do grow up, Bramall,” he said, squinting. “That particular war is over. France has fallen.”
“They’re still fighting.”
“Are they? You could have fooled me.”
“So that’s it, is it? We got our chaps back from Dunkirk. Most of them, anyway. The French are ready to surrender. Everything’s hunky-dory. That it?”
“Oh, do grow up, Bramall,” came the withering reply.
Braithwaite, small and balding, with sprigs of hair over his ears, removed his glasses, breathed on the lenses one at a time and polished them vigorously, using a large white handkerchief that appeared in his hand, as if by magic. He was a Yorkshireman – one of many thousands of Britons up and down the country for whom the coming of the war had provided a fresh lease on life – and was clearly not lacking in self-assurance. “Mr Bramall,” he began, “are you familiar with what the Prime Minister says in the House when he is asked variants of the same question over and over again.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t see ...”
“ – He says, ‘I refer the honourable gentleman to the answer I gave earlier.’”
“What?”
“That’s what I think I’m going to have to do with you. Whenever you ask damn-fool questions, I shall refer you to the answer – or at any rate, the comment – I made earlier.”
“Which was …?”
“ – ‘Oh, do grow up, Bramall.’”
Christ al-fucking-mighty!
The intelligence man coiled the stems of his glasses back over his ears and peered for several seconds at the tall, elegant figure sat opposite him. Looked like someone had just slapped his face and he wasn’t quite sure how to respond. His hair was thick and sun-bleached; his skin was a light olive colour, as if he had spent years in the tropics.
As Bramall looked on, Braithwaite, removed a briar pipe from his top pocket and began to nibble at the stem with his front teeth. “So what do you think of this place?” he said at last. “Bit of a change from Narvik.”
“You could say that. Like an asylum. The house itself, what is it? – late seventeenth century?”
“Something like that.”
“Will you be staying here?”
“I’ve got a home, if that’s what you mean.”
“I meant, wouldn’t it make more sense to be in town?”
“I suppose you think we should be in Whitehall.”
“It’d be closer to the action.”
Braithwaite cast his eyes up to his office’s ornate ceiling. “Too close, quite possibly. Meanwhile, I get to enjoy the open spaces of Buckinghamshire. A chequered history this place, or so they tell me. Murder and intrigue. Appropriate, really. Sir John French used to visit quite a bit before the war – the last one, I mean. Squire’s wife were his niece.” He paused. “But then, I expect he and your father knew each other.”
“French? Absolutely. Pa fought under him at Ypres. Came to stay with us once when he was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. But I was only a child at the time. I don’t really remember. You know how it is.”
“Not really,” said Braithwaite stiffly. His memories of Ireland were very different. “But let’s get to the business in hand. Spain is what you know best, Mr Bramall.” He looked up, spreading his hands flat on the desk in front of him. They were very pink. “You don’t mind my calling you ‘mister,’ do you? You’re not in uniform now. So, like I say … Spain. You studied there, reported the war, speak the lingo, and, as we both know, you’ve got a history of – what shall we say? – ‘co-operating’ with the authorities.”
Bramall sighed. So that was it. So much for organising a Resistance group in France. He was a bloody fool. He should have realised what was coming the second the Special Branch sergeant turned up on his doorstep. “Look,” he said, speaking slowly and with emphasis, “what I did back then – it’s over. Finished. Dues paid. A closed book. When I put on uniform, it was to fight the Germans, not to re-live my past. So let’s not waste each other’s time, shall we?” He rose from his chair to indicate that the interview was over.
Braithwaite shook his head, but didn’t look particularly put out. “Oh my, you do get yourself in a lather, don’t you? We’ll have to watch that. But never mind, there’s work to be done and it’s time you came down off your high horse.” He rested his arms on his belly. His hair, or what little remained of it, bore the unmistakable sheen of Brylcreem. “It may have escaped your notice, but the war has not been organised for your personal convenience.”
Bramall looked as if he was about to say something, but all that emerged was a stifled sigh.
“Look,” said Braithwaite. “We could go on like this for the rest of the day, but what’s the point? My business is matching good people to bad situations. You’re part of that, like it or not. I’ve been reading your file. You’re a lost soul, Mr Bramall – not quite sure what you’re about, restless and rootless, looking for a chance to do something worthwhile in the big, bad world. It could go on like that, believe you me. You could end up my age, asking yourself what the hell was it all about. But, like they used to say in church on Sunday, there’s good news.”
Running a hand up his cheek, Bramall realised he should have shaved more closely that morning. Perhaps he’d been hoping to make the wrong sort of impression. “You’ll forgive me,” he said, “if I don’t throw my hat in the air.”
“Cheeky bugger,” Braithwaite said. “But I’ll allow you that. Fact of the matter is, you fit a very specific profile, Mr Bramall. A star-shaped peg in a star-shaped hole. If you were an actor, you’d say this was the role you were born to play.”
“But since I’m not …”
“Not yet.” Braithwaite tapped the side of his head. “But the text is right here, just waiting to be sent off to the printer’s. So here’s the thing. You’re a linguist. You’ve been a soldier – a pretty decent one at that – and a diplomat. More to the point, you spent two years as a war correspondent in Spain, moving with admirable ease, I’d have to say, among the bigwigs of the Falange.”
He stopped for a second and stared across to the opposite side of the desk, wondering what response his deliberately chosen words would provoke. Bramall’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.
“At the same time, your father, as I’m sure you’re only too aware, is one of the most right wing men this side of the parade ground at Nuremberg. His reputation goes before him.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Bramall didn’t approve of his father’s politics, but he was no Nazi.
Braithwaite wiggled his fingers to indicate that he wasn’t in a mood for nit-picking. “Such tomfoolery, it seems, runs in the family. You not only spent time, as we know, with Sir Oswald Mosley, you travelled with him as far as Berlin, where you met none other than Adolf Hitler, the Führer, Chancellor of the Third Reich, your country’s greatest enemy, and passed some 15 minutes contentedly in his company. There’s not many as can say that. In fact, you’ve been all over, haven’t you? Austria, Argentina, Burma, Spain, Norway. Quite the travelling man.”
Bramall felt weary all of a sudden. “Go on,” he said.
“Oh, I will, “ said Braithwaite. “You seem to ricochet through life, looking for a cause you can believe in. Have you ever see
n a pinball machine?”
“No.”
“An American game. Most diverting. You pull back a knob on a spring. It shoots forward and knocks a metal ball into play. You try and guide it to the opening at the far end, via a series of obstacles, with a set of nudges. That’s what you put me in mind of. Ping! You’re dining with Mosley, hobnobbing with Hitler. Ping! You’ve had enough of that. Now you’re informing on the BUF to MI5. Ping! You’re in Spain, reporting on the agonies of Republican troops as they struggle against the odds to avert catastrophe. Ping! You’re stood next to your old college pal Kim Philby as he picks up a gong from Franco. Ping! You’re in Norway, defending democracy from the Nazis. I could go on, but do you see what I’m driving at?”
“I’m just waiting for you to ram it home.”
“My point is, Mr Bramall, that you are a man of proven courage, skill and resource, not to say duplicity, and once again your country needs you.”
“Bugger!”
The spymaster looked pained. “It was a colleague in Five drew you to my attention. You were right about that. I’d never heard of you. But he’d worked with you back in ’36, said you knew what you were about, even if you were a bit bolshy.”
“Am I supposed to be grateful?”
“Only if you think he was right. When I heard you were in Norway, I thought, oh, here we go, now he’s going to turn up dead. But I was wrong. Not only did you get through, you were mentioned in dispatches. Kept your head. Seems as if you lead a bit of a charmed life.”
“Is that what you’re looking for?”
“It’s handy in our game. Remember what Napoleon said: ‘Give me a general who’s lucky’.” Braithwaite turned to the file of papers in front of him. “Speaking of which, you will be aware that General Franco has been thinking of joining the Axis powers?”
“You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to work that out.”
Braithwaite ignored the crack. “No. But what do you suppose would happen if he did?”
“I expect they’d have to double the guard at Gibraltar.”
“A bit more than that, I’m afraid. But the right track. First thing to happen, probably just days after the announcement, is that Gibraltar will come under a combined assault. The Luftwaffe will go in, then the Wehrmacht, backed by Spanish troops I shouldn’t wonder. We may, just, survive the onslaught – though I rather think not – but the Fleet would have to put to sea or else be blown out of the water. Gib would no longer be a stronghold. It’d be a bloody liability, vulnerable to a takeover at any time.”
He paused for a second to see how all this was going down.
“What’s more, Spanish entry into the war on the German side would mean U-boat bases at Cadiz and Vigo. The Canaries, too, if we let them. There could even be a Spanish threat to our forces in North Africa – to say nothing of the example set to Dr Salazar in Portugal. Do I make myself plain?”
“All except the bit about how I’m supposed to put a stop to it.”
Braithwaite laughed – a deep-throated, derisive chuckle that seemed at odds with his faintly music hall appearance. “Oh yes, Mr Bramall. They told me you were a particular sort of chap, but they didn’t say you were a card.”
Part of Bramall wanted to wring Braithwaite’s dewlapped neck. But at the same time he was intrigued. “All right,” he said, “so I’m not your principle weapon in this war, but I do have some part to play, right?”
“Exactly. But before we go any further, let’s have some tea, shall we?” He rose from his chair, drew open his office door and called out. “Two teas, please, Ethel – quick as you like, there’s a good girl.” Shutting the door again, he spun round, surprisingly nimble for a man of his age. “What we want from you is information, Mr Bramall. Information about what the Spanish are thinking, what they’re talking about at party gatherings, what sort of pressures and inducements are coming from Berlin.”
“You mean I’d be a spy?”
Braithwaite pursed his lips and leaned forward once more. “That is one description. The fact is, our embassy in Madrid has not exactly been on best of terms with Franco and his people. They’re suspicious of us – understandably enough. They don’t like the fact we’re at war with Hitler and could at any moment take the fight to Mussolini as well. They think we’re soft on the Left and unwilling to make an accommodation with what they regard as the New Order.”
Bramall massaged the backs of his hands. “Shouldn’t you put someone in who would better suit the mood?”
“Ah, but we have, Mr Bramall. It may have escaped your notice, but Sir Samuel Hoare has just been appointed His Majesty’s Ambassador to Madrid.”
Bramall snorted. Hoare was a former foreign secretary, best known for the Hoare-Laval Pact in 1935, concluded with the French, which gave Mussolini a free hand in Abyssinia and thus scuppered the League of Nations. “Man’s an appeaser,” he said.
Braithwaite rubbed the side of his nose. “Can you think of a better man for the job?”
“Touché. So what do you need me for?”
“You can pour the tea, for a start.” Braithwaite looked up as his secretary came in with a pot of tea and two mugs on a tray. “Thanks Ethel,” he said. “No biscuits, I see.”
“You’ve had two already this morning,” she replied.
The Yorkshireman frowned and turned to Bramall. “See what I have to contend with. Have to watch my weight, she says.
As Bramall poured the tea, Braithwaite continued his monologue. “You do realise,” he said, “that what I’m about to tell you must go no further than this room?”
Bramall, nodded, adding milk to both teas.
“We’re talking about a sensitive aspect of national security.”
“Say when.”
“When! Don’t drown it.” Bramall harrumphed and placed a steaming mug on Braithwaite’s desk. Reaching into a side drawer, the veteran spymaster withdrew a cup of sugar, a spoonful of which he ladled into his tea before stirring briskly. He did not offer his guest the opportunity to indulge any sweet tooth he may have had, but replaced the cup in the drawer, complete with spoon. Sugar was a prized wartime commodity and rationing made misers out of the most unexpected people.
Braithwaite raised his mug. “Cheers!” he said. “Thing is, Hoare’s already got his work cut out for him. Just getting into flaming embassy each morning is half a day’s work. Has to shove past hordes of bloody Falangists shouting out, ‘Gibraltar Españole!’ Bloody cheek! He’s on special mission, under direct orders from Downing Street, and he’ll be working at the highest level.”
“So who do I report to, then?”
“Good question.”
Bramall raised an eyebrow. He was puzzled. “I’m assuming I won’t be working on my own?”
What seemed to the young officer a logical assumption evoked a pained expression from Braithwaite “That’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “Franco has made it crystal clear that he won’t tolerate British Intelligence operating inside Spain. He doesn’t object to Jerry. Positively relishes having the Sicherheitsdienst around. You might even say the SD runs the bloody place. But MI6? Nothing doing. Anyone from our side gets caught is on his own, and that means instant expulsion, or a firing squad at dawn. That’s the reason you’re tailor-made for the job.”
“Oh, please! … You’re not serious.”
“Never more so. Mr Bramall. You are to be our eyes and ears in Spain’s dark corners. I have this on the authority of no less than the Prime Minister.”
“Churchill?”
Who else? He has asked that you should keep open channels that might otherwise close.” He took another slurp of tea. “You may also, as the occasion arises, be required to perform certain … services.”
“Such as …?”
“Well now, let me think … liaison, negotiation, bag-carr
ying.”
“Assassination?”
“I hardly think it will come to that.”
“But it might?”
Braithwaite halted, an almost imperceptible smile crossing his features. “It might,” he said at last.
“And Sir Samuel in that event would naturally deny me his protection?”
“Naturally.”
“Well, I’m flattered that the Prime Minister has confidence in my abilities, but what makes you think the Spanish wouldn’t rumble me?”
Braithwaite offered a thin smile. “There are few certainties in this world, Mr Bramall. It’s a calculated risk. Before you left for Spain, you were thick as thieves with Mosley and the BUF. They’ll know that. Not only that. During the fighting, you met several of the top people in the Falange and got on well with them by all accounts. That’ll be in the file. Your father’s reputation goes before you, of course. Finally, there’s the small matter of your meeting the Führer in Berlin. It all adds up. I won’t pretend it’s cut and dried. Not yet, any road. But if anyone has a better c.v. for this business than you, I’ve yet to meet him.”
A resigned look crept over Bramall’s face. “You’ve obviously done your homework,” he said. “I feel like a trussed chicken about to be popped in the oven. But if I’m to do this I’m going to need help. There has to be someone I can turn to.”
Braithwaite sniffed noisily and pinched the end of his nose. “You’ll have a contact at the embassy. Not MI6 exactly. Too close to Franco, if you ask me. But a conduit – a last refuge, if you like. Your main port of call will be our man in Lisbon. He’ll brief you. Then there’s the SIS station in Gibraltar, – assuming, that is, that you ever make it across. The Abwehr has the place surrounded and they don’t miss a trick. And I’m afraid to say, that’s it.”