The barman was ringing the bell. Five minutes to curtain up. There was a surge of movement as people began to head for the door.
Cathy reached for her Mackeson and emptied the glass before wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, a gesture Tam had never seen before. He downed the last of his beer and helped her to her feet. London has begun to coarsen her, he thought. Ironic, when she’s working for the King.
They made for the nearest exit leading to the stalls and Moncrieff led the way to their seats. The performance was played with immense brio. Cathy sat beside Moncrieff, rocking with laughter, and in the half-darkness, whenever Tam stole a glance, she looked younger than ever. In theory, he’d always assumed that this new job of hers would take its toll but despite her impatience on the phone she appeared to be thriving on the non-stop pressure. Her responsibility, she said, was to help keep the senior royals out of trouble. At Balmoral, she’d seen lots of evidence of just how quickly things could go wrong and so now she was only too happy to play the sheepdog and head off the more unruly members of the flock. Pressed for a name in the interval, Cathy checked carefully around her.
‘The Duke of Kent,’ she murmured. ‘Even the Queen can’t cope with him.’
The second half was, if anything, better than the first and as the curtain fell the four members of the Bliss family tiptoed offstage, turning their backs on the untold disorder behind them. As the pair of them queued in the aisle to leave, Cathy beckoned Moncrieff closer.
‘It’s like that every day at BP,’ she said. ‘Noël Coward must be psychic.’
The play over and the theatre-goers flooding onto the darkened streets, Moncrieff was looking for a taxi. When a cab finally appeared, he stepped into the street, brought it to a halt and opened the rear door. Cathy gave him a brief peck on the cheek and climbed in.
‘Move over,’ Moncrieff bent his long frame to get in beside her.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Coming with you. I thought we might go back to my place for a nightcap or two.’
His face was inches from Cathy’s. With one leg still in the road, he felt slightly ridiculous.
‘But I’ve got to go back to BP.’
‘Why?’
‘They give me hell if I’m late. I thought you knew that.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
Moncrieff held her gaze for a moment or two, then stepped back in the road and shrugged.
‘Ah…’ he straightened his coat. ‘My mistake.’
*
Next morning, tired looking and a little hungover, the Director returned from Nova Scotia. Ursula Barton conferred with him for a little over an hour and then despatched Liddell home. Moncrieff was in his office putting the finishing touches to the MI5 watch list when she appeared at his door. She was carrying a thickish file. When she asked for a look at the list of names he’d compiled, Moncrieff pushed it towards her.
She scanned it quickly, tiny nods of her head.
‘Perfect,’ she said. ‘No real surprises.’
She sat down, the file on her lap. Expecting at the very least some kind of discussion about the weight of surveillance these people could expect, Tam found himself on the receiving end of an entirely different operation.
‘September the 14th last year?’ Ursula began. ‘The Blitz barely a week old? You remember what happened at the Savoy?’
Moncrieff leaned back. The late summer of last year already seemed an age ago. Aerial dogfights over the Weald of Kent, he thought. The front-line RAF airfields suddenly spared as Goering switched his attentions to London. But the Savoy Hotel? He shook his head.
‘It was occupied,’ Ursula said. ‘Briefly, I admit, but the mob got its way.’
She selected a number of photos from the file and spread them on the desk. The first showed a thinnish column of marchers on the Thames Embankment. One of the banners read Stepney Young Communist League. Another, pithier, Ration the Rich!
‘These people were en route to the Savoy?’
‘Yes. Eight nights of the Luftwaffe had worn them out. Air raid provision in the East End isn’t all it might be. One of them knew a chambermaid at the hotel. What she had to say about the shelter under the Savoy won their full attention and so they decided to move in. Strictly speaking it wasn’t illegal. All shelters are obliged to accept visitors during a raid. But you can imagine what the guests had to say.’
More photos, this time of the shelter itself. It was a biggish space with a dance floor on one side and some kind of dormitory on the other. According to Ursula, there were separate sleeping arrangements for single men, single women and couples. The hotel supplied mattresses with matching sheets and pillows in pink and red, plus a discreet recess for the Duke and Duchess of Kent on the descent from their suite above.
‘They also have a Snore Warden,’ Ursula observed drily, ‘for when times get really trying.’
Moncrieff was back with the column of marchers. In a third photograph, they’d been snapped milling around outside the hotel itself.
‘So who are these people?’
‘Workers from the rag trade. Dockers. Bootmakers. Salt of the bloody earth. You get their point, of course. One war for the rich, another for the poor. The face we’re really interested in is this one.’
A perfect fingernail settled on a young looking figure beside the open doors of the hotel. Moncrieff recognised him from the earlier shot on the Embankment. Grubby trousers, open-necked white shirt, unruly black hair and a clenched right fist, raised above the milling crowd.
‘His name’s Doherty,’ Ursula said. ‘Patrick Doherty. Irish by birth. Big Catholic family. Grew up in Liverpool. Now then, something a little more recent— ’
‘But what happened at the Savoy? Did they get in? Spend the night there? Make friends with the Snore Warden?’
‘They got in for fifteen minutes. Most of them reckoned that was a major victory. In the end the police escorted them out but it was very peaceable. Here. Take a look at this…’
She handed him yet another photo. This time Moncrieff was looking at a hall bursting with demonstrators. Many of them were on their feet, cheering a handful of speakers on the low stage. He recognised the venue.
‘That’s the Royal Hotel in Bloomsbury,’ he said. ‘It’s just round the corner from where I live.’
‘You’ve been inside?’
‘I have. Once. And that’s the big public rally they had last month. The People’s Convention? Am I right?’
‘You are. Were you there, by any chance?’
‘No.’
‘But you’d recognise this chap?’
Another photograph, a close-up this time. Same trousers. Same clenched fist. But it wasn’t Doherty who won Moncrieff’s attention. It was the figure beside him. Smaller. Younger. And far prettier.
‘That’s Cathy Phelps.’
‘Indeed.’
‘So tell me more about Doherty.’
‘Bright boy. A Bolshie, of course. Hard left. But unlike most of them he made an investment or two in the class war.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘He wanted, in his own phrase, to get to know the enemy. And so he made it his business to enlist in their ranks.’
Moncrieff nodded. He was still staring at the two faces in the photo. The truth, much though he tried to resist the word, was slowly beginning to dawn.
‘He was a footman,’ he said softly. ‘At Balmoral.’
‘He was indeed.’
‘Sacked?’
‘In the end, yes. I gather they rumbled him the morning they found sand in the fuel tank of one of the Rolls-Royces. He denied it, of course, but it made no difference. He was gone by lunchtime.’
She reached for the file and extracted yet another photograph.
‘One last glimpse of the enemy,’ she said. ‘Are you ready?’
Moncrieff nodded, said nothing. The invasion of the Savoy appeared to be over. This shot had been taken in some pub or other. The sc
ene had all the makings of a victory rally. Doherty was standing on a table. Cathy was beside him. Their hands were linked and they were acknowledging roars of applause from the faces below.
‘She’s obviously a girl with a taste for the limelight,’ Ursula murmured. ‘We think that’s remarkably brave of her, given the position she now holds. Brave or perhaps foolish.’
Moncrieff was still staring at Doherty.
‘He’s wearing a beret,’ he said. ‘Do you happen to know what colour it was?’
‘I do. I was there.’
‘And?’
‘It was red.’ She smiled. ‘With a rather fetching silk tassel on the back.’
Moncrieff nodded. At last he understood. Cathy Phelps hadn’t turned her back on the Glebe House to spend more time with him. She’d come south to be with Doherty, and his socialist friends, and perhaps her own family. In the shape of the Irishman she’d found a cause.
Moncrieff shook his head, wondering whether he should have read the weather earlier. Her recent reluctance to spend the night with him. Last night’s scene in the taxi outside the theatre. The fact that she was always so busy, so beyond reach. And lately those other little indications that she’d been keeping rough company. Did he feel betrayed? No. Angry? A little.
Ursula was watching him carefully. At length she gathered up the photos and returned them to the file.
‘Shall I inform the Palace or will you?’
‘Neither,’ he nodded at one of the names on the watch list. ‘We keep her in post. For when we might need her.’
‘An agent in place?’
‘Indeed.’
‘Run by your good self?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Very neat,’ Ursula was smiling. ‘If I may say so.’
*
Three days later Dieter Merz was summoned to the Führer Squadron out at Tempelhof. It was early afternoon and the squadron adjutant told him that an aircraft was inbound from Paris with Goering and Hess on board. An Me-110 was out on the hardstanding and ground crew were busy with the refuelling hose. Merz, it seemed, was on call to fly the machine.
‘Why? Where?’
‘No idea, I’m afraid. I get the impression the sortie is local, up and down and some nonsense or other in the middle. Talk to Hans. He knows.’
The aircraft appeared from the south-west minutes later. Expecting one of the fleet of Ju-52s, Merz found himself watching a four-engined Focke-Wulf Condor pull off a perfect landing. Named Grenzmark, the huge plane had been fitted out to Ribbentrop’s personal specifications, yet another monument to the Foreign Minister’s vanity.
Merz met Hans Baur, Hitler’s personal pilot, at the foot of the aircraft’s steps. He wanted to know what Baur had in mind.
‘I want you in the 110,’ he nodded at the fighter bomber on the hardstanding. ‘Remember the conversation you had with Hahn in Augsburg the other day? About flying the blind spot under enemy bombers? Goering wants a demonstration. I get the impression the Fat One’s not a believer. Hess is interested, too. He wants to go up with you and take a look for himself. Back seat, though. You’ll be doing the fancy stuff.’
Merz nodded. Hess was already emerging from the Condor and returned Merz’s salute when he reached the bottom of the aircraft’s steps.
‘Do you mind?’ he said at once, nodding towards the 110.
‘Not at all, Herr. Hess. Glad to be of service.’
Merz returned to Baur. They had a brief conversation about comms frequencies and altitude. Baur would be flying gentle circuits north of the airfield, well away from approach and departure paths, while Merz did his best to slip in beneath him and remain invisible. The Reichsmarschall, he said, would be on board the Condor to try and spot him.
‘He’s in an evil mood,’ Baur warned. ‘Beware.’
Both aircraft were airborne within minutes. The Me-110 had a much better climb rate than the Condor but Merz throttled back immediately after take-off, letting the larger aircraft slowly gain height over the gleaming stripe of the Wannsee. The Condor, thought Dieter, offered a glimpse of what the new generation of transports and heavy bombers would look like. With its streamlined body and sleek nose, it put the trusty old carthorse, as Hans Baur termed the Ju-52, in the shade.
At two thousand metres, the Condor levelled out. Behind Merz, in the second seat, Hess had readied a borrowed Leica camera. Merz was to hunt for the perfect blind spot beneath the Condor’s silver belly and it was Hess’s responsibility to photograph the results.
On the radio, Baur announced that he was starting the turn that would take him into the circuit. Merz, trailing by a hundred metres, could see a big pale face in one of the windows towards the rear of the Condor. Goering, he thought. Taking a look for himself.
Merz pushed the joystick gently forward and fed in a dab of throttle. The 110 nosed down and picked up speed. A little too quickly, the vast spread of the Condor grew bigger above the canopy and Merz eased the throttle back. Earlier, with Baur, he’d agreed a minimum ten-metre vertical separation between the two aircraft but already the sheer size of the Condor had masked the scatter of clouds and fitful sunshine. Looking up, Merz could count the rivets on the wing roots where they joined the fuselage. He’d never been this close to an aircraft this big.
He checked with Hess in the rear seat. The Deputy Führer, to his evident delight, was taking photo after photo with the Leica. Like Merz, he was struck by the sheer novelty of this manoeuvre.
‘A little closer?’ he suggested.
Merz was happy to do his bidding, knowing that a formation this tight, this intimate, would shield the fighter bomber from the watchers above. Up and up he went, closing the gap centimetre by centimetre until the giant aircraft seemed within touching distance.
‘Genug,’ Hess whispered on the intercom. ‘Enough.’
They were back on the ground forty minutes later after Merz had experimented with a series of other configurations. None had the sheer drama of that first embrace and after the two aircraft had landed, Merz and Hess were summoned for a conference aboard the Condor.
Merz had never been on Ribbentrop’s personal aircraft before. Upholstered leather seats on the left of the cabin were separated by polished wooden tables and a soft glow came from lamps recessed above the curtained windows. Merz stood in the narrow aisle for a moment. He knew that this was the plane which had carried Ribbentrop to Moscow in the weeks before the outbreak of war. He half closed his eyes, trying to imagine the Foreign Minister flying back to Berlin with the precious treaty in his pocket. Was there champagne on offer? Had the Soviets contributed a giant jar of caviar and a supply of blinis to be warmed in the on-board oven? Was Ribbentrop already savouring the welcome he’d get from an ecstatic Führer and a grateful nation?
Merz couldn’t answer any of these questions, neither was he about to ask Goering. The Reichsmarschall had always dismissed the Foreign Minister as a social upstart and an arrogant fool, and their mutual loathing had been one of the deeper wounds that disfigured the upper reaches of the Reich. Now, Goering was sprawled over two seats and one look at his face told Merz that Baur had been right. The Reichsmarschall was spoiling for a fight.
He gestured for Merz to take a seat across the table beside Hess. Hess was fiddling with the Leica. At length he looked up at Goering.
‘Did you see us?’ he demanded. ‘Be honest.’
Goering grunted a negative but pointed out that it didn’t matter. The Luftwaffe were taking the battle to the enemy. Soon, the British would have no aircraft factories left. Without assembly lines, there’d be no giant bomber formations to shoot down. Pretty flying on Merz’s part, he said, but it proved absolutely nothing.
At this point, Baur made an appearance, stepping into the cabin from the cockpit. Uninvited, he took a seat across the aisle.
‘The English bombers will come, Herr Reichsmarschall,’ he said quietly. ‘You have my word that it will happen.’
‘How on earth do you know?’ Goering turned on hi
m.
‘Because they’ll do what we do. They’ll move the factories around. Build somewhere else. Make it tough for us to find them. Give the English a year or two and they’ll be all over us.’
‘Nonsense. You’re lucky the Führer’s not here. Talk like that, he’d have you shot.’
‘Or you, Herr Reichsmarschall,’ Baur had a twinkle in his eye. ‘You only win wars by assuming the worst.’
‘You really think they’ll come?’
‘I do, yes.’
‘Then we’ll shoot them down,’ Goering lifted a dismissive hand. ‘Better planes, better pilots, men like Merz here. Eh, Rudi?’ He cocked a bulging eye at Hess. ‘What do you think?’
Hess was looking at the canister of film he’d extracted from the camera. He appeared not to have heard the question. Goering, growing more heated by the second, leaned across the table. It was just conceivable, he hissed, that the English would produce enough bombers to survive the wall of fire that would greet them on the edges of the Reich. It was even possible that one or two might make it to Berlin. But if that were ever to happen in earnest, then the likes of Dieter Merz would send them packing.
‘Am I right, der Kleine?’
‘Of course, Herr Reichsmarschall.’
‘And you, Rudi? You agree?’
Hess looked pained. Merz knew he loathed confrontations like this. At length he checked his watch and then glanced up.
‘There’ll be no need,’ he murmured. ‘We’ll soon have no quarrel with the English.’
BOOK TWO
11
Saturday 10 May 1941.
Dieter Merz awoke to the insistent trill of the Messner family telephone. Careful not to disturb Beata, he slipped out of bed and tiptoed downstairs.
‘Compadre? You’re still there?’
‘I am.’
‘Thank God for that. Is she OK? The little one?’
‘She’s well.’
‘And her mother?’
‘She’s well also.’
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