‘Why?’
‘Because they’ve obviously got a great deal to talk about.’
‘Who says?’
‘Souk,’ she held Moncrieff’s gaze. ‘Which is all we have to go on until you take a view.’
Accordingly, Moncrieff busied himself with a tangle of other commitments – all of them wearisome – until, forty-eight hours later, the moment came to leave for Poole. Of Cathy Phelps, a little to his disappointment, he’d seen very little. The one occasion they’d managed to share a brief weekend together, she’d spent most of the time sleeping. Royal service at the Palace, she’d mumbled, was bloody hard work. Memories of life at the Glebe House seemed rosier and rosier.
Poole, in late February, was umpteen shades of grey. Grey for the limitless expanse of the harbour. Grey for the open water beyond. Grey for the heavy overcast sky and the threat of imminent rain. Half close your eyes, and even the Empire flying boat, rocking gently at her moorings beside the long pontoon, was grey. A landscape in tune with the times, thought Moncrieff. Spiritless. Monochrome. Infinitely depressing.
Departure fell victim to an abrupt fall in oil pressure in one of the engines. The captain abandoned the take-off run moments before lift-off and returned to the pontoon for checks. More than two hours later, after mechanics had found the ruptured lubrication line, the captain tried again. The roar of the engines stilled conversation in the cabin and, in the thickening dusk, the big flying boat finally lifted clear of the harbour. Transit to Lisbon was nearly six hours. By the time Moncrieff awoke to find the lights of Lisbon beneath the port wing, it was nearly midnight.
Hesketh was waiting in the arrivals hall at the end of the pontoon. A light tan told Moncrieff that the weather in Lisbon had been far from grey. When Hesketh offered to take him to the hotel he’d booked, Moncrieff shook his head. He’d slept on the plane. If Hesketh cared to find them a café, a discreet table and a decent bottle of wine, he’d be very happy to pick up the bill.
‘Done, sir.’ Hesketh was beaming. ‘Exactly what I expected. Bem vindo a Lisboa.’
The café was deep in a working-class area a fifteen-minute taxi ride from the flying boat terminal. Stepping into the crowded little space beyond the half-closed door, Moncrieff was reminded of Stockholm: the colour, the fug of cigarette smoke, the swirl of a dozen conversations, a lone guitarist on a stool in the corner, the promise of fresh ingredients and a woman’s touch at the stove. The only problem was privacy.
‘Upstairs,’ Hesketh nodded at a door in the corner at the back. ‘Maria’s a good friend. Trust me.’
The room was perfect: small, intimate, insulated from the world outside. One of the two tables was bare. On the other was an uncorked bottle of wine and two glasses. Beside the wine was a basket of bread and a bowl brimming with olives.
Moncrieff realised he was starving. He tried the bread. Even at this time of night, it was warm from the oven.
Hesketh watched him eat. Then he poured the wine and pushed one glass gently towards Moncrieff.
‘This is a red I ordered specially. It comes from the Alentejo. If you’re sensible enough to order Maria’s goat stew we’ll have another bottle and you’ll sleep a happy man.’
Moncrieff tasted the wine and smiled. If the rest of whatever Hesketh had to offer was as good as this then MI5 had acquired an asset of genuine value.
If.
‘Haushofer’s gone?’
‘This morning. I’m glad to say he arrived in some style. Personal plane, his own pilot. The Reich know how to look after their own.’
‘And we don’t?’
‘I didn’t say that. It was a pleasure to catch up with Albrecht. And, I must say, something of a surprise.’
Moncrieff wanted to know about the letter Hesketh had been sent from London.
‘You gave it to him?’
‘Of course I did.’
‘And?’
‘Albrecht was delighted. I think he’d assumed the friendship was dead, or at least shelved for the duration. He holds Duglo very close to his heart. I suspect he was disappointed that they won’t be getting together down here but, as I tried to explain, there might be other ways.’
‘Of what?’
‘Of achieving the same ends.’
Hesketh let the sentence hang in the air. Then came the clatter of footsteps on the wooden stairs and the door opened. Hesketh was on his feet and for a split second Moncrieff assumed the worst. After the long flight, his defences were down. He’d been here before. Police, probably armed. A hand on his shoulder, a rough descent to the restaurant below, a windowless van parked outside, and the beginnings of a long journey to God knows where. Instead he found himself looking at a woman in late middle age with burn marks on the plumpness of her arms.
‘Maria.’ Hesketh did the introductions.
Moncrieff got to his feet, hoping the relief didn’t show. After an awkward conversation, fathered by Hesketh, he seemed to have agreed to a dish of chanfana.
‘Chanfana?’ Maria had disappeared.
‘Goat stew, my friend.’
They’d sat down again. Two middle-aged Englishmen, Moncrieff thought, perched above an artists’ café in the depths of Lisbon. The door was an inch or so ajar and the conversation below had stilled to make way for the guitarist. He strummed a couple of mournful chords before a woman began to sing. Her voice was bold, almost incantatory, swelling and dying as the guitarist played on.
‘Fado,’ Hesketh said. ‘The music of fate. The Portuguese adore melancholy. They call it saudade. They set out to discover the New World and ended up missing the old one. Maybe that’s the price of empire, though our lot seem untroubled.’
‘Our lot?’
‘The English. It’s something that Albrecht’s always remarked upon. We painted half the world pink and it never crossed our mind it might belong to someone else. No guilt. And absolutely no melancholy. Personally speaking, he’s honest enough to find that rather admirable. I suspect someone in his bloodline got fucked by an Englishman. Male or female, it probably doesn’t matter. Either way, that might explain his passion for Duglo.’
‘You think…?’
‘I’m making no assumptions. Albrecht is extremely good-looking in a rather un-German way and judging from photographs Duglo more than holds his own. Here and now you want me to report on what happened over the last couple of days and that’s very sensible. I just offer the thought im Vorbeigehen.’
In passing? Moncrieff reached for his glass. Nothing Hesketh brought to the table was by accident.
‘You think they had some kind of relationship?’
‘It’s possible. Duglo’s a man of action. Boxing champion. Record-breaking aviator. Fighter pilot. In fact a true Corinthian.’ He smiled. ‘And you know what those Greeks got up to.’
‘Proof? Evidence?’
‘None. As I just said, they’re good-looking chaps. They have lots in common. He and Duglo shared times together back in the thirties. Which I suspect is rather the point.’
‘So what did he have to say? Haushofer?’
‘Probably more than might have been wise.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I wined and dined him. Not here. I took him to a hotel in the Baixa. Proper tablecloths, silver service, and some seriously expensive wines. Please don’t blame me when you see the bill. This was last night, by the way. Bear in mind the man’s always trusted me. Most Germans, especially nowadays, like to think of themselves as locked doors. It goes with the uniforms and all the Blood Flag nonsense. Not our Albrecht. He’s subtler than that.’
‘You got him drunk?’
‘Very.’
‘And?’
‘More wine?’ Hesketh was reaching for the bottle. He was plainly enjoying this. Moncrieff shook his head and covered his glass with his hand.
‘Explain,’ he said. ‘Tell me what happened.’
Hesketh paused a moment, then shrugged and refilled his own glass. Haushofer, he said, had arrived as an env
oy. From his father, he’d inherited an understanding of what bound nations together. From his connections in Berlin, he understood the inner workings of the Reich. And his knowledge of history had given him an extra insight or two.
‘Last night Albrecht put it rather well. At this point, he was still sober, still cogent. We were talking about the earthquake that flattened this place, back in the eighteenth century. It’s 1755. It’s All Saints’ Day. It’s mid-morning. One minute you’re at your window looking out at a medieval city. Six minutes later most of those buildings are rubble. But one escaped and the clinching evidence, which Albrecht understands only too well, is that the building is still there.’
‘Where?’
‘At the top of the hill. Where you’ll always find them.’
‘You mean a castle?’
‘The castle. Castelo de São Jorge. I’ll show you tomorrow, but you don’t have to see it to understand.’
‘About the earthquake?’
‘About Albrecht. He understands fortifications, buildings designed to protect, buildings designed to last. That, dare I say it, is what history teaches us, and it’s a lesson that applies equally to nation states. Some, like France, fall over. Others, like ours, don’t. Lisbon surrendered herself to an earthquake. France lay down in front of the Wehrmacht and spread her shapely legs. Hitler had something similar in mind for us but I gather he’s now decided that it isn’t going to happen.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning there has to be another way. By and large, Hitler is a man without weaknesses. Except for one. He loves the English, he counts them as Blutsbruder, and, worse still, he thinks he understands them. He’s wrong, of course, but life is all about opportunity and here, dare I say it, is the perfect example.’
Blutsbruder. Blood brothers.
Moncrieff nodded. After the first couple of sips, he’d barely touched his wine.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘Hitler, of course, has other things on his mind. History is full of pleasing little ironies and here’s one of them. Albrecht’s father, as you may know, planted the seed of Lebensraum in Hitler’s fertile little brain. It came via Hess, Hitler’s Deputy, and it stuck there among all the other rubbish. Living room in the east. The prospect of ceaseless plunder, of limitless blood and untold treasure. Hitler needed no prompting. If I was a Russian I’d have taken a good look at Mein Kampf before I had anything to do with Ribbentrop, but now it’s probably too late. In certain circles in Germany they’re laying bets on exactly when the men in grey will roll east. Albrecht’s bet the family fortune on late May. Hitler always invades on a Sunday. It’s become a habit. Barring accidents, that means either the eighteenth or the twenty-fifth. A war on two fronts, if you’re sane, would be unthinkable. No one’s quite sure about Hitler’s sanity but everyone assumes he can count. Heading for Moscow with Churchill up his arse conjures all kinds of nightmares. So there has to be a better way.’
‘According to Hitler?’
‘Emphatically. Horse’s mouth.’
‘Says who?’
‘Our Albrecht.’ Hesketh reached for his glass. ‘And we hadn’t even started on the third bottle.’
*
Moncrieff slept at a hotel elsewhere in the city. Before turning out the light, he made notes on the evening’s discussions with Hesketh and awoke twice in the middle of the night to add one or two afterthoughts. Next morning, he made his way downstairs to the hotel’s restaurant to find Hesketh already at a table beside the window. He was enjoying a cigarette and crumbs on his plate suggested he’d already had breakfast.
‘Try the pastéis de nata.’ He gestured towards a pile of golden tartlets on the table beside the door.
Moncrieff preferred to wait for coffee. The view from the window seemed to take in half the city: a tumble of red roofs falling towards the startling blue of the water. Tiny yellow trams rumbled up the hill towards the hotel and from the river came the distant parp-parp of a departing freighter. Watching the sheer busyness of the city, Moncrieff was reminded of Napoleon’s luckless attempts to throttle Portuguese trade. These people lived to barter, he thought. Much like Hesketh.
After breakfast, at Hesketh’s insistence, they left the hotel to make for a nearby park. The park was huge, acres and acres of carefully tended grassy slopes that offered yet more views of the city. Near a soaring greenhouse towards the top of the park lay a pond full of lazy carp. Children, often in the care of much older women, fed the carp with scraps of bread before running off to a play area shaped like a galleon in full sail. Hesketh found a bench. It was already mid-morning, and Moncrieff could feel a thin warmth in the early spring sunshine.
‘I should take you to the Jerónimos Monastery. Vasco da Gama’s buried there. And we ought to pay the Belém Tower a visit. That’s where the imperial story begins and ends.’
Moncrieff shook his head. He hadn’t come here as a tourist with a list of must-see locations. He was more than content to let the city grow on him, street corner by street corner. It was a scruffy place and he liked that. Every time they’d stopped en route to the park he’d noticed faces at the tram stops, housewives shopping for bread and pastries, huddled in endless conversations, queues of refugees seeking visas outside the foreign consulates, an old man with a pigeon on his shoulder gazing thoughtfully into a fountain. The city was full of these little glimpses. What the Portuguese seemed to treasure above all was peace.
Moncrieff asked where Hesketh lived. He’d just lit yet another cigarette. He waved vaguely across the city beyond the castle.
‘There,’ he said. The gesture meant nothing.
‘An apartment? A whole house?’
‘The former. Nothing grand but perfectly serviceable. Everyone here lives in layers, floor by floor. Fundamentally it’s a balance between privacy and neighbourliness. It’s a trick you learn when you stop being so poor that you rely entirely on others. They’ve spent centuries practising and now they’re very good at it.’
‘And it’s cheap?’
‘Extremely. That’s one of the charms of the place. In case you’re wondering, I have a modest trust fund. I owe my dear pa for that. This far south it buys you everything you need. Not that a little extra wouldn’t be more than welcome.’
They spent several minutes wrangling about money. Moncrieff made it plain that he could authorise a supplementary payment but it had to be against results. So far he knew that Haushofer was representing powerful elements within the Reich and seemed to carry authorisation from the very top. It seemed that Berlin was in the process of finalising a peace offer and Moncrieff was now relying on Haushofer’s intelligence contacts to nominate the British faces they wanted to see at the table.
‘Last night you told me anyone but Churchill or those warrior chums of his,’ Moncrieff said. ‘As it happens, they wouldn’t be interested anyway. Churchill won’t let anyone in his circle close to a German. House rules.’
‘So I gather,’ Hesketh was smiling. ‘Which leaves us spoiled for choice. Senior businessmen, perhaps? A handful of backwoods aristocrats? And a sprinkle of the haute juiverie to add a little savoir faire?’
‘You mean bankers?’
‘I do.’
‘And Duglo?’
‘I’m not sure. That’s a personal view, of course. Albrecht believes the good Duke is aching for an outbreak of sanity and, God knows, he might be right. Duglo is Albrecht’s key to lots of doors.’
‘You know he’s Lord Steward of the Household, now? The King’s representative in Scotland?’
‘Of course I do, and so does Albrecht. These people are highly intelligent. They have the finest army in Europe. They eat entire countries for breakfast. But they have very strange ideas about the way we run our constitution. Albrecht and his father are the same. They both think that real power rests with the monarch. All you have to do is to gain Bertie’s ear. Remind him what happened to the Romanovs. Assure him that Berlin will put the Communists out of their misery. Do that, they say, and
we’ll all be watching the ink dry on the peace treaty. I do my best to point out that we English live in a democracy. That power lies in Parliament. And that Churchill, as Prime Minister, wants nothing to do with peace treaties. But all this tiresome detail falls on deaf ears. The Germans assume that Bertie can snap his fingers and Churchill will be gone. Sadly, they’re wrong.’
Moncrieff nodded. ‘Bertie’ was Palace-speak for King George VI. He’d heard Cathy Phelps use the same nickname.
‘They have a meeting place in mind? For these negotiations?’
‘Albrecht mentioned Sylt.’
‘That’s where it happened last time. Is this Goering’s little party?’
‘Albrecht wouldn’t say. Sylt’s an island, of course. It’s part of the Reich now but Berlin would guarantee safe passage. And there’s something else that might please your lords and masters.’
‘What, exactly?’
‘Hitler would be there. As long as we’re in good faith.’
Good faith. Moncrieff had no idea whether Hesketh was bluffing. He was both plausible and fluent but there was absolutely no proof that any of these stories were true. A well-spoken fantasist, he thought. Relaxing in the Lisbon sunshine.
‘Well?’ Hesketh still wanted to know about the money.
‘I need more detail from Haushofer.’
‘In what respect?’
‘I need to know exactly where we go from here. I need an assurance that Haushofer can deliver what he’s promising. And I need sight of the terms of the German offer.’
‘And after that?’
‘We have another conversation.’
‘About a bigger fee?’
‘Yes.’
‘I see.’
There was a long silence. Hesketh tapped ash onto the grass, and then tipped his face to the sun. Moncrieff was looking across at the pond.
‘Over there,’ he said. ‘Beside the water.’ Hesketh opened his eyes and followed Tam’s pointing finger. ‘Did you ever come across the parable of the dog with the bone?’
‘I’m afraid not. Is this something I need to know?’
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