Raid 42

by Graham Hurley

  She ducked her head, took a long pull at the bottle, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She might have been a man, he thought. Except she was still very pretty.

  ‘I loved that place of yours,’ she said. ‘I truly did. It spoke to me. You know that feeling? You can be alone but you’re not alone? There were spirits there. On windy nights I’d talk to them. It never frightened me, not for a moment. Odd. The place was always freezing but I’d never felt so warm, so loved.’

  ‘Is that why you stole the beret?’

  She studied him a moment over the bottle, then took the beret off and laid it carefully on the table.

  ‘It’s yours,’ she shook her curls out, ran her fingers through her hair. ‘Take it.’

  ‘Tell me about Doherty.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell. We met at Balmoral. After a while they got rid of him. All the time I was with you, I never heard a word, not a peep. Then he turned up one night and we were together again.’

  ‘Was that when you decided to come to London?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because of Doherty?’

  ‘Yes. I made contact with Jack Riordan. He got me the job at Buckingham Palace.’

  ‘So why didn’t you tell me? Why pretend?’

  She frowned, took her time to answer.

  ‘I didn’t want to hurt you,’ she said at last.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘It’s true. We were good together. You’re a lovely man. It seemed such a shame to wreck all that so I thought I’d just turn the gas down, let things cool off, and fingers crossed we’d end up friends.’

  ‘You could have simply told me. That might have been kinder.’

  ‘I wasn’t brave enough for that. I’m sorry.’ She ducked her head. She seemed to be crying. Moncrieff wanted to reach out for her but knew it was pointless. Every relationship got one chance to work. And this one hadn’t.

  ‘You’re still at the Palace? BP?’

  ‘Of course.’ Her head came up. Her eyes were shiny.

  ‘And you’re still organising all those trips?’

  ‘Helping, yes.’

  ‘A German arrived at the weekend. Up in Scotland. You might have heard.’

  ‘Hess,’ she said tonelessly. ‘Rudolf Hess.’

  ‘You know about him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘It’s been in the papers, on the radio. People like me take an interest, believe it or not. He was Hitler’s deputy. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘Yes. So what’s the word at BP? About our new friend?’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand. What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m talking about the royals, the people who employ you. Do they talk about him? Have you heard any…’ he shrugged, ‘… gossip? I understand the footmen are there at every meal. They’d listen. They’d know.’

  She stared at him. She wasn’t tearful any more.

  ‘I’ve heard nothing,’ she said at last. ‘But that’s not the point, is it. That’s not what this is about. You want me to make some enquiries?’

  ‘That would be very helpful. The details are important. We need to know if anyone was planning to meet him.’

  ‘Hess, you mean? In Scotland? When he arrived?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You think that’s possible? You think that might have happened?’

  ‘Yes. But the royals are obviously the ones in the swim. And just now I can think of no better way of finding out.’

  ‘And if I say no?’

  ‘Your job will come to an abrupt end. I can also have you arrested.’

  ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. You don’t need grounds any more. Suspicion is enough, believe me.’

  ‘And you’d do that?’

  ‘I would, yes.’

  Cathy nodded. Then she studied her hands, twisting a ring on her little finger that Moncrieff hadn’t seen before.

  ‘You want to turn me into a spy,’ she said at last.

  ‘You’re right.’ Moncrieff got to his feet. He hadn’t touched his beer. ‘Just think of it as an episode in the class war.’ He reached down for his father’s beret. ‘And if that doesn’t work, pretend you owe me a favour or two.’

  *

  It was nearly midnight when Wilhelm Schultz received the summons to the Air Ministry. He’d left his desk barely an hour before and was enjoying a plate of Wildschwein at a discreet restaurant off the Wilhelmstrasse that served as an all-hours canteen for intelligence officers from Abwehr headquarters. The waiter with the telephone knew him well.

  ‘For you, Herr Schultz. It’s der Eiserne’s adjutant.’

  The Iron Man? What could Goering want?

  Schultz wiped his mouth and bent to the phone. The Reichsmarschall apologised for the lateness of the hour but would appreciate a little of Schultz’s time. A car was waiting outside the restaurant.

  Schultz eyed his unfinished supper and helped himself to a little more gravy.

  ‘Give me ten minutes,’ he growled.

  The lights were burning late at the Air Ministry. Goering’s adjutant escorted Schultz past the guards inside the big main door and up the main staircase to the first floor. Uniformed officers were everywhere, hurrying from office to office, laden with files. The Reichsmarschall’s new suite occupied one corner of the building. Schultz hadn’t been here before and the moment he stepped in he knew that Goering had stolen a march on his fellow chieftains. The room was enormous. Even Ribbentrop couldn’t match this.

  ‘Schultz’.

  Goering waved his visitor into the chair that had been set in front of the desk. A soft light from the single lamp pooled on an untidy pile of papers. A box of cigars lay beside them. Goering told Schultz to help himself.

  Schultz nodded his thanks and gestured towards the door. What was so important it kept so many men from their beds?

  ‘Crete.’ Goering, for once, looked weary. ‘The Führer has designs on the bloody island. The Kriegsmarine aren’t up to it. The wrong ships in the wrong place. So I have to find twenty thousand paratroopers and God knows how many aircraft to fly them there. If this was a training exercise I’d have a month or so to make the arrangements. He wants the island by next Tuesday.’

  ‘So when did you get the word?’

  ‘This morning. The man’s all appetite. In principle I have no objection to gluttony but preparing a meal like that isn’t simple. Sometimes I wonder whether the people round that man shouldn’t answer back. Just a little more notice might have been kind.’

  ‘You think there are limits? You think we’re pushing too fast? Too hard?’

  Goering gazed at him a moment. Then he roared with laughter.

  ‘Think, Schultz? Since when did anyone have an opinion round here? Listen, my friend. You’re right. We bite off far too much. We risk indigestion. We fart a lot and stink Europe out. But that’s the beauty of the game. It works. The Reich gets fatter by the day. And so far that’s all that matters. We take our chances, Schultz. But no one in his right mind should ever rely on luck. This request of yours…’ he extracted a message from the pile of papers ‘… you’re telling me it came from our friend Birger?’

  ‘Dahlerus, yes.’

  ‘And thus the English?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is about Hess. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what, precisely, do they want?’

  Schultz at last reached for a cigar. He said that the request had come from an English intelligence officer, Tam Moncrieff.

  ‘I know Moncrieff. You were kind enough to bring him to meet me at Nuremberg. We punished a bottle or two of that shit Spanish brandy. Tall man. Needs to laugh more.’

  Schultz nodded. According to Moncrieff, Hess had arrived with a letter. No one knew what was in the letter because it had disappeared. Moncrieff had grounds for thinking that it had been destroyed.

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘He didn’t say
.’ Schultz paused, fingering the unlit cigar. ‘Was there a letter, Herr Reichsmarschall?’

  ‘Of course there was a letter. That’s why he went. Rudi Hess. The Reich’s favourite postman.’

  ‘And what was in it? What did it say?’

  There was a long silence. Schultz worked for Army Intelligence. He was highly placed. He had the ear of Admiral Canaris. He knew that powerful figures here in Berlin wanted to bring the Abwehr to its knees. But he also knew that Goering wasn’t one of them.

  ‘Hess was carrying a peace treaty,’ he said at length. ‘On Chancellery notepaper.’

  ‘It came from the Führer?’ Schultz was astonished.

  ‘Not personally, no. Even he’s not that reckless. It carried another signature. But it had our Leader’s backing and Hess knows that.’

  Schultz sat back a moment. Goering passed him a lighter. Schultz lit the cigar, inhaled, tipped his head back, expelled a perfect smoke ring.

  ‘This was a treaty?’ he asked. ‘Or proposals?’

  ‘Proposals. Detailed proposals. A treaty in all but name.’

  ‘And might the British buy it?’

  ‘Some of them, undoubtedly.’

  ‘But not Churchill?’

  ‘Churchill won’t buy anything. He won’t even read a letter with a Berlin postmark. If you want to see the Führer eating the carpet just mention Churchill’s name. Hitler loathes the bloody man. He wants him gone.’

  ‘Hence the letter?’

  ‘Of course. And hence Hess. No one expected him to arrive on the end of a parachute, least of all Rudi, but this is war, my friend, and sillier things happen.’ Goering hadn’t taken his eyes off Schultz. ‘I assume Moncrieff wants a copy of the letter?’

  ‘That would be your decision, Herr Reichsmarschall.’

  ‘And you’d play the postman? Be Rudi?’

  ‘Of course. I can contact Moncrieff through Dahlerus. I’d hand the thing over personally. If that’s what you all want.’

  Goering nodded, then he struggled to his feet. The meeting was evidently over. He said he’d need to make a call or two and if things went well then Schultz should expect to be summoned again.

  ‘To pick up a copy of the letter?’

  ‘Ja. The envelope will be sealed, Schultz. If you open it, my friend, I’ll have you shot.’

  Schultz nodded. When Goering was joking he had a twinkle in his eye. No twinkle. He studied Schultz for a moment or two, and then his gaze settled on the pile of paper.

  ‘Crete?’ he murmured. ‘By Tuesday? When we have so much else to get done?’ He shook his head. ‘Madness.’

  16

  At the end of the week, Rudolf Hess was removed from Buchanan Castle and taken by train to London. There, he was lodged in officers’ quarters in the Tower of London, pending a transfer to secure accommodation in preparation elsewhere. Between them, the Duke of Hamilton and Ivone Kirkpatrick had conducted three lengthy interviews with the Deputy Führer and a detailed account was delivered by hand to Downing Street to await the Prime Minister’s perusal.

  That night Liddell summoned a meeting in the MI5 safe house in Mayfair. Moncrieff had been here before. It was tucked away in the maze of streets around Grosvenor Square, a top-floor perch in a brick-built block of apartments. He attended with Ursula Barton. The gates to the lift were secured with a chain and padlock and so they climbed the six flights of steps from the street. Ursula had a key to the flat. She knocked twice, and then a third time before opening the door. Liddell was waiting in the living room. He had a decanter of sherry in one hand and a glass in the other.

  ‘Perfect timing,’ he murmured. ‘Sorry about the lift. The wretched thing’s broken again. It happens to be a German design, but I don’t think they meant it.’

  They all sat down. Liddell, it seemed, had just arrived from Downing Street. He’d spent an uncomfortable twenty minutes with the Prime Minister but had emerged, he thought, with some good news.

  Ursula wanted to know whether this was about Hess.

  ‘It is. I’ve been pushing for access to our distinguished visitor but so far to absolutely no effect. Menzies has got him locked away. As well he might.’

  ‘So what’s changed, sir?’ Ursula again.

  ‘The PM’s read the account of the interviews and he’s not entirely convinced.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘That he’s getting the whole truth. He suspects Hess may be withholding something.’

  ‘Hess?’ Moncrieff this time. ‘Or MI6?’

  ‘That’s a nice distinction, Tam, if I may say so. And it goes to the heart of the matter. The PM wants a second opinion. Ideally from someone who speaks German.’

  ‘Kirkpatrick speaks German. He was in Berlin for years.’

  ‘Indeed. And the PM’s casting no aspersions. He regards Kirkpatrick as sound. That’s why he sent him up there.’

  ‘So what can anyone else bring to the feast?’

  ‘We’ve no idea, and neither does the PM. Call it an insurance policy. Call it whatever you will. The truth, I suspect, is that the PM and probably the people at the Foreign Office are smelling a rat.’

  Moncrieff nodded and then exchanged glances with Ursula.

  ‘Did the PM mention any letter, at all? Something Hess might have brought with him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you mention it, sir?’

  ‘No.’ He reached for the decanter and then paused to glance across at Moncrieff. ‘You’re expected at the Tower at ten o’clock tomorrow morning, by which time I gather Herr Hess will have had his breakfast. You should be aware that MI6 have a presence at the Tower. They may not be pleased to see you.’

  *

  The expedition to the casino at Estoril was Hesketh’s idea. After a long winter in Moscow, he suggested, Isabel Menzies deserved a therapeutic peek at the fleshpots of capitalism. With luck, it might revive her appetite for a little recreational wickedness. At the very worst, she might lose an escudo or two.

  ‘This is a regular treat? Are you a betting man?’

  ‘Emphatically not. Life’s a gamble as it is. Why lengthen the odds any further?’

  They were sitting at a restaurant table overlooking the gaggle of players around the roulette wheel. A sleek woman with an American accent had just won a sizeable pile of chips on 19. An older man beside her was trying to persuade her to cash in. Hesketh pointed the couple out.

  ‘She flew in a couple of days ago,’ he said. ‘She talks about Hollywood a lot. The locals assume she’s some kind of film star but that’s because they’re too lazy to look any harder.’

  ‘And him?’

  ‘He’s her pimp. She sleeps with a variety of clients and he rakes in the proceeds.’

  ‘We’re talking lots of money?’

  ‘We’re talking information. In this neck of the woods the two things are indivisible. The right information can earn you a fortune if you know where to place it.’

  ‘You’d know that?’

  ‘I would.’

  ‘So does that make you rich?’

  ‘Only in the smallness of my wants.’

  Hesketh smiled at her. He loved occasions like these, a new face in town, a fresh opportunity to cast his net, and give it a shake, and see what wriggled out. She Isobel had already impressed him. She was obviously bright, and she seemed undaunted by any challenge, but her days of falling under the Soviet spell were clearly over. She carried a hint of weariness, of faint but perceptible disillusion, and most promising of all was the fact that she didn’t bother to hide it. Hesketh had met people like her before. And they always surprised you, especially in bed.

  ‘Can good looks be a handicap in Moscow?’ he was still watching the woman at the roulette table. ‘Be honest.’

  ‘Good looks can be a handicap anywhere. As it happens, Moscow is full of beautiful women. Russian men don’t know how lucky they are.’

  ‘But you, my dear. Tell me about you.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell. I fell in lov
e with a crazy man who thought he’d found God. I was nineteen years old. He was twenty. God lived in Moscow. God knew exactly what was wrong with the rest of the world and was taking steps to put it right. My crazy young man went to Spain to give God a hand. And that’s where he died.’

  ‘Fighting the Fascists?’

  ‘Of course. In the end they put him against a wall and shot him. He died in the light of car headlamps on a bomb site in Madrid. Later I met someone who’d been there. He visited the place where they took all the bodies the next day. He might even have died happy. I’ve no idea.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I was heartbroken. As a girl should be.’

  ‘And went into mourning? Widow’s weeds? An anguished verse or two?’

  ‘I joined the Party. It might be the same thing.’

  ‘And did it work?’

  ‘Oddly enough, it did. For a while. Being a spy can be quite exciting. You pass on all kinds of information. You’ve no idea what’s happening at the other end, whether they even believe you or not, but you tell yourself you’re making a difference. That’s in the short term. That’s when you’re fresh to the job. Later you realise that Communism is just another cul-de-sac and you end up trying to manage your own schizophrenia. That can be exhausting.’ She smiled. ‘But then you’d know that.’

  ‘You think I’m a spy?’

  ‘I think you’re a rogue. And you make me laugh. In certain moods, that can be a happy combination.’

  Hesketh nodded, and lit another cigarette. He thought she might have just offered him a compliment, but he wasn’t sure.

  ‘What about Moncrieff?’ he said.

  ‘Tam?’ She helped herself to one of Hesketh’s cigarettes. ‘He was another cul-de-sac. My life’s been full of them. Funny, that.’

  ‘But what did you make of him?’

  ‘He’s good. He’s shrewd. He’s brave. He listens. I also lusted after him. He was my Scottish mountain in the wilderness, my very own Cairngorm. I wanted to clamber all over him. I wanted to conquer him. But he was never an easy man.’

  ‘On other people?’

  ‘On himself. He’s a throwback, really. The twentieth century is wasted on people like Tam. Even the Victorians would probably be a bit racy for his taste. He’d be a hard person to live with. I never doubted that for a moment. But in a strange way, that was the appeal.’