by William Boyd
The three men sat on the available chairs. Munro offered refreshments – tea – and was politely declined. Massinger asked Lysander how he was feeling and Lysander said he felt pretty much back to normal, thank you. A train clattered over the railway bridge from Charing Cross and, as its whistle sounded, as if on cue, the door opened and a grey-haired elderly man in a naval captain’s uniform limped in. The clumping sound as he set his right leg down made Lysander think the limb was artificial. He had a mild, smiley manner – everything about him, apart from the wooden leg, seemed unexceptional. He was not introduced.
‘This is Lieutenant Rief, sir,’ Munro said. ‘Who did the splendid job in Geneva.’
‘Exceptional,’ Massinger chipped in, proprietorially. Switzerland was his territory, Lysander remembered.
‘Congratulations,’ the captain said. ‘So you’re the man who found our rotten apple.’
‘We haven’t quite found him yet, sir,’ Lysander said. ‘But we think we may know what barrel he’s in.’
The captain chuckled, enjoying the metaphor’s resonances.
‘So, what do we do next?’ he said, looking at Massinger and Munro.
‘Not really my area,’ Massinger said, defensively, and once again Lysander wondered about the hierarchy in the room. The captain was the big chief, clearly, but who was the senior between Massinger and Munro? What autonomy did either of them have, if any?
‘I think we have to get Rief into the War Office somehow,’ Munro said. ‘His best asset is that he’s completely unknown – unlike us. Fresh face – a stranger.’
The captain was drumming his fingers on his desk top. ‘How?’ he said. ‘He’s just a lieutenant. Nothing but bigwigs in the War Office.’
‘We set up a commission of enquiry,’ Munro said. ‘Something very boring. Send in Rief with authorization to ask questions and examine documents.’
‘Sir Horace Ede chaired a commission last year on transportation,’ the captain said. ‘There could be some supplementary matters arising –’
‘Exactly. That Lieutenant Rief had to cover and account for.’
‘And there’s a joint nations’ conference coming up which would explain why we have to have everything ship-shape.’
‘Couldn’t be better.’
Massinger was looking increasingly uncomfortable at being sidelined in this way with nothing to contribute. He cleared his throat loudly and everybody stopped talking and looked at him. He held up both hands in apology. Then took out his handkerchief and blew his nose.
‘How long would you need, sir?’ Munro asked.
‘Give me a couple of days,’ the captain said. ‘The higher the authorization the easier it’ll be for Rief, here.’ He turned to Lysander. ‘Hold yourself in readiness, Rief. If we want you right at the heart of things then we need to give you some power.’
Massinger finally spoke. ‘You don’t think we’re treading on M.O. 5’s toes, do you, sir?’
‘This wretched mess all originated out of Geneva,’ the captain said with a trace of impatience in his voice. ‘It was your show – so it’s our show. I’ll square things with Kell. He doesn’t have any men to spare, anyway.’
Lysander didn’t know what they were talking about. He picked at a loose shred of skin on his forefinger.
‘Right, let me get on to it,’ the captain said. ‘We’d better give our rotten apple a codename so we can talk about him.’
‘Any preferences?’ Munro asked.
Lysander thought quickly. ‘How about Andromeda?’ he said, his eyes fixed on Munro. Munro’s face didn’t move.
‘Andromeda it is – so let’s find him, fast,’ the captain said, and rose to his feet. The meeting was over. He crossed the room to Lysander and shook his hand. ‘I saw your father play Macbeth,’ he said. ‘Scared me to bits. Good luck, Rief. Or should I say welcome aboard?’
3. The Annexe on the Embankment
Munro told him to go away and enjoy himself for a few days until he was called for. Once everything had been set up he would be briefed and given precise instructions. So he returned to the White Palace Hotel in Pimlico and tried to keep himself distracted and amused even though he was aware of a steadily increasing undercurrent of uneasiness flowing beneath the surface of his life. Who was this all-powerful captain-figure? What role and sway did he enjoy? To what extent, if at all, could he rely on Munro and Massinger? Could he trust either of them? And why had be been selected, once again, to do his duty as a soldier? Perhaps he’d gain some answers in the coming days, he reflected, but the complete absence of answers – even provisional ones – was troubling.
He went to his tailor, Jobling, and had a small buttonhole fitted for his wound-stripe – an inch-long vertical brass bar worn on the left forearm – sown into the sleeves of his uniform jackets. Jobling was obviously moved when he told him the nature of his injuries. Three of his cutters had joined up and two had already died. ‘Don’t go back there, Mr Rief,’ he said. ‘You’ve done your bloody bit, all right.’ He also adjusted the fit of his jacket – Lysander had lost weight during his convalescence.
He went to see Blanche in The Hour of Danger at the Comedy. Backstage in her dressing room she didn’t allow him to kiss her on the lips. He asked her to supper but she said she couldn’t go as she was ‘seeing someone’. Lysander asked his name but she wouldn’t tell him and they parted coolly, not to say acrimoniously. He sent her flowers the next day to apologize.
He quickly organized a small dinner party in a private room at the Hyde Park Hotel for four of his actor friends with the precise intention of finding out the name of Blanche’s new beau. Everybody knew and, to his alarm, it turned out to be someone he was slightly acquainted with as well – a rather successful playwright that he’d read for called James Ashburnham, a man in his late forties, a widower. A handsome older man with a reputation in the theatre as something of a philanderer, Lysander thought, feeling betrayed, though a moment’s reflection made him realize he had no right to the emotion – he was the one who had broken off their engagement, not Blanche. As Blanche had reminded him, they had decided to remain friends, that was all, consequently her private life was her concern alone.
Of course, being rejected for someone else made him feel hurt and his old feelings for Blanche re-established themselves effortlessly. She was an extremely beautiful, sweet young woman and whatever they had shared together couldn’t be simply tossed aside that easily. What was she doing having an affair with a middle-aged playwright old enough – well, almost – to be her father? He was surprised at how agitated he felt.
On the Friday morning there was a knock at his door and Plumtree, the young chambermaid, told him there was a gentleman to see him in the back parlour. Lysander went downstairs with some trepidation – it was underway, the play was about to start again – orchestra and beginners, please. Fyfe-Miller was waiting for him, smart in a commander’s uniform, with a file of papers under his arm. He locked the door and spread them on the table. He and Munro had analysed the variety of information in the Glockner letter decrypts and were convinced they could only have come from one department in the War Office – the Directorate of Movements. This department was currently housed in an annexe to the War Office on the Embankment in a building near Waterloo Bridge. Lysander was to report there at once to the director, one Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel Osborne-Way, who would ensure that Lysander was provided with his own office and a telephone. He was expected this afternoon – there was no time to waste.
‘Can’t it wait until Monday?’ Lysander asked, plaintively.
‘There’s a war on, Rief, in case you hadn’t noticed,’ Fyfe-Miller said, not smiling for once. ‘What kind of attitude is that? The sooner we find out who this person is, the safer we shall all be.’
At two-thirty that afternoon, Lysander stood across the street from the seven-storey building that housed the Directorate of Movements. He was standing approximately half way between Waterloo Bridge and the Charing Cross Railway Bridge. Cleo
patra’s Needle was a few yards away to his left. The phrase ‘searching for a needle in a haystack’ came pessimistically into his head. The Thames was at his back and he could hear the wash of water swirling round the jetties and the moored boats as the tide ebbed. He was smart in his new uniform with his brass wound-bar and with highly polished, buckled leather gaiters encasing his legs from knee to boot. He took his cap off, smoothed his hair and resettled it on his head. He felt strangely nervous but he knew that, above all, he now had to act confident. He lit a cigarette – no hurry. He heard a flap of wings and turned to see a big black crow swoop down and settle on the pavement two yards from him. Big birds, up close, he thought – size of a small hen. Black beak, black eyes, black feathers, black legs. ‘City of kites and crows,’ Shakespeare had said about London, somewhere. He watched as the bird made its hippity-hoppity way towards half a discarded currant bun in the gutter. It pecked away for a while, looking around suspiciously, then a motor car passed too close and it flew off into a plane tree with an irritated squawk.
Lysander realized he could think of three or four symbolic, doom-laden interpretations of this encounter with a London crow but decided to investigate none of them further. He threw his cigarette into the Thames, picked up his attaché case and, watching out for the speeding traffic, made his way across the Embankment to the Annexe’s front door.
Once he’d presented his credentials, Lysander was taken by an orderly up to the fourth floor. They pushed through swing doors into a lobby with two corridors on either side. On the wall were lists of various departments and meaningless acronyms and small arrows indicating which corridor to take – DGMR, Port & Transport Ctte, Railway and Road Engineering, DC (War Office), Ordnance (France), Food Controller (Dover), DART (Mesopotamia), ROD (II), and the like. Lysander and the orderly turned right and walked down a wide linoleum-floored passageway with many doors off it. The sound of typewriters and ringing telephone bells followed them all the way to a door marked ‘Director of Movements’. The orderly knocked and Lysander was admitted.
The Director of Movements, Brevet Lt.-Colonel Osborne-Way (Worcester Regiment) was not at all pleased to see him, so Lysander recognized in about two seconds. His manner was unapologetically brusque and cold. Lysander was not offered a seat, Osborne-Way did not attempt to shake his hand, nor return his salute. Lysander handed him over his magic laissez-passer to the kingdom of the Directorate – a sheet of headed notepaper signed by the Chief of the Imperial General Staff himself, Lieutenant-General Sir James Murray, KCB, that said that ‘the under-named officer, Lieutenant L.U.Rief, is to be afforded every possible assistance and access. He is acting under my personal instructions and is reporting directly to me.’
Osborne-Way read this missive several times as if he couldn’t believe what was actually written down in black and white. He was a short man with a grey toothbrush moustache, and large puffy bags under his eyes. There were seven telephones in a row on his desk and a camp bed with a blanket was set up in the corner of his office.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said, finally. ‘What’s it got to do with the C.I.G.S., himself? Why’s he sending you? Doesn’t he realize how busy we are here?’
As if to illustrate this claim two of the telephones on his desk began to ring simultaneously. He picked up the first and said ‘Yes. Yes . . . repeat, yes. Affirmative.’ Then he picked up the second, listened for a moment and said ‘No,’ and hung up.
‘This is not my idea, sir,’ Lysander said, reasonably. He was affecting a slightly drawling, nasal voice, faintly caddish and bored-sounding, he thought, conscious that this tone would make Osborne-Way like him even less. He didn’t care – he wasn’t entering a popularity contest. ‘I’m just following orders. Some unfinished, supplementary business to Sir Horace Ede’s commission of inquiry on transportation. Matter of some urgency given the up-coming all-nations’ conference.’
‘What do you need from us, then?’ Osborne-Way said, handing the letter back as if it was burning his hand.
‘I’d like a list of all personnel in the Directorate and their distribution of duties. And I’d be grateful if you’d alert everyone in the Directorate to the fact that I am here and have a job to do. At some stage I will want to interview them. The sooner I’m finished the sooner you’ll see the back of me,’ he smiled. ‘Sir.’
‘Very well.’
‘I believe I have an office assigned to me.’
Osborne-Way picked up a telephone and shouted, ‘Tremlett!’ into the mouthpiece.
In about thirty seconds a lance-corporal appeared at the door. He had a black patch over one eye.
‘Tremlett, this is Lieutenant Rief. Take him to Room 205.’ Then to Lysander he said, ‘Tremlett will fetch you any files or documents you need, any person you wish to interview and will provide you with tea and biscuits. Good day.’ He opened a drawer on his desk and began removing papers. The meeting was clearly over. Lysander followed Tremlett back along the wide passageway, taking two right-angled turns as they made for Room 205.
‘Good to have you aboard, sir,’ Tremlett said, turning and giving him a lopsided smile, the portion of his face below the patch not moving. He was a young man in his early twenties, with a London accent. ‘I’m on extension 11. Give me a tinkle whenever you need me. Here we are, sir.’
He opened the door to Room 205. It was a windowless box with a dirty skylight. Here was a table, two wooden chairs and a very old filing cabinet. On the table was a telephone. It was not a room one would want to spend many hours in, Lysander thought.
‘What’s that curious smell?’ he asked.
‘Disinfectant, sir. Colonel Osborne-Way thought we should give the place a good swab-out before you arrived.’
He told Tremlett to bring him Osborne-Way’s list as soon as possible, sat down and lit a cigarette. His eyes were already stinging slightly from the astringency of the disinfectant. The battle lines had been drawn – the Director of Movements had made a pre-emptive strike.
There were twenty-seven members of the Directorate of Movements on the fourth floor of the Annexe, and many clerical and secretarial staff to serve them. Almost all of them were army officers who had been wounded and were unfit for active service. As he looked down the list of names Lysander found himself wondering – which one of you is Andromeda? Which one of you has been sending coded messages to Manfred Glockner in Geneva? Who has access to the astounding detail those letters contained? Where are you, Andromeda? Temporary Captain J.C.T. Baillie (Royal Scots)? Or temporary Major S.A.M.M. Goodforth (Irish Guards)? . . . He leafed through the typed pages, wondering what had made him choose Andromeda as the name of the traitor in the Directorate. Andromeda – a helpless, naked, beautiful young woman chained to the rocks at the ocean’s edge, waiting terrified for the approach of the sea monster Cetus – didn’t exactly conform to the stereotypical image of a man actively and efficiently betraying his country. ‘Cetus’ might have been more apt – but he liked the ring and the idea of looking for an ‘Andromeda’. The paradox was more intriguing.
But he quickly became aware as he contemplated Osborne-Way’s list that it would not be an easy process. He picked a name at random: temporary Captain M.J. McCrimmon (Royal Sussex Regiment). Duties – 1. Despatch of units and drafts to India and Mesopotamia. 2. Inter-colonial moves. 3. Admiralty transport claims and individual passage claims to and from India. He picked another – temporary Major E.C. Lloyd-Russell (Retired. Special Reserve). Duties – 1. Despatch of units and drafts from India to France (Force ‘A’) and Egypt (Force ‘E’). 2. Union of South Africa contingent. Labour corps from South Africa and India to France. 3. Supervision of Stores Service from the USA and Canada to the United Kingdom. Then there was Major L.L. Eardley (Royal Engineers). Duties – 1. Travelling concessions and irregularities. 2. Issue of railway warrants unconnected with embarkation. 3. General questions concerning railways and canals in the United Kingdom.
And so it went on, Lysander beginning to feel a mild nausea as he
tried to take all this amount of work – these ‘duties’ – on board. He ordered a pot of tea and some biscuits from Tremlett. He thought of himself as a child on the roof of a vast factory peering down through a skylight at all the machinery and the people inside. Who were they? What were they doing? What was being made? All these strange jobs and responsibilities – ‘Railway Engineering Services. Accounts for work services. Occupation and rent of railway property. Shipping statistics. Labour Corps to France. Re-mounts to France. Long-voyage hospital ships. Despatches of stores to theatres of war other than France. Construction of sidings . . .’ They went on and on. And this was only one department in the War Office. And there were thousands of people working in the War Office. And this was only one country at war. The Directorate of Movements would have its equivalent in France, in Germany, in Russia, in Austria-Hungary . . .
He began to feel dizzy as he sat there trying to conceptualize the massive scale of this industrial bureaucracy in the civilized world, all directed to the common end of providing for its warring armies. What gigantic effort, what millions of man-hours expended, day after day, week after week, month after month. As he tried to come to terms with it, to visualize in some way this prodigious daily struggle, he found himself perversely glad that he had actually been in the front line. Maybe that was why they employed wounded soldiers rather than civil servants or other professional functionaries. These temporary Captains and Majors in the Directorate of Movements at least knew the physical, intimate consequences of the ‘movement of stores’ that they ordered.
Lysander personalized it, grimly. When he had thrown that Mills no.5 bomb into the sap beneath the ruined tomb it was the final moment in the history of travel of that small piece of ordnance – a history that stretched back through space and time like a ghoulish, spreading wake. From ore mined in Canada, shipped to Britain, smelted, moulded, turned, filled and packed in a box, designated as ‘stores to be transported from the United Kingdom to France’. Perhaps new sidings had been built in a rural railway station in northern France to accommodate the train carrying these stores (and what was involved in constructing a siding, he wondered). And from there it would be transferred to a dump or depot by animal transport whose forage was supplied through Rouen and Havre, also. Then soldiers would carry the boxes of bombs up to the line through communication trenches dug by ‘labour from the Union of South Africa’. And then that Mills no. 5 bomb eventually found itself in the kitbag of Lt. Lysander Rief, who threw it into a sap beneath a tomb in no man’s land and a man with a moustache and a fair-haired boy struggled to find it in the dark amongst the tumbled masonry, hoping and praying that some defect in its manufacture, or some malfunction caused by its long journey, would cause it not to detonate . . . No such luck.