Raid 42

by Graham Hurley

  Moncrieff nodded. Spiegelhalte lifted the phone. A brief conversation established that Bella hadn’t paid the embassy a visit. Not today. Not yesterday. Not ever.

  ‘This is to do with Hess, ja? And the copy of the letter Wilhelm brought down from Berlin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You want to tell me more?’

  ‘By all means. I’m told you’ve had second thoughts about the letter. That you want it back.’

  ‘Us? Here in the embassy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why would we want to do that?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I just want to find out whether it’s true or not. Given the position you hold, I imagine you’d know.’

  ‘You imagine right, Herr Moncrieff. Of course I’d know. Schultz is several ranks my senior. In Berlin he has a very big desk. Unless I want a sudden change of career I’d be very wise to do his bidding. He arrives here in Lisbon with the Hess document. He gives it to you. Why on earth would I ever want it back?’

  Moncrieff got to his feet and extended a hand across the desk. He was grateful for Herr Spiegelhalte’s time, especially so late in the day. Under the circumstances, he’d been more than helpful. Then he paused.

  ‘You know people in the PVDE? Security police?’

  ‘Of course. We helped train them.’

  ‘I understand they’re investigating the incident I mentioned.’

  ‘They are. You’re right. I apologised on behalf of Schultz. Occasionally he can be a little forceful.’

  ‘And they’re happy with that?’

  ‘They were kind enough to tell me they understood but they, too, have bosses and bosses demand results.’

  ‘You mean an arrest?’

  ‘Of course. In the end there has to be a body. Alive or dead, in this city it doesn’t matter. Just as long as someone has accepted full responsibility and paid the appropriate price.’

  ‘But not Schultz?’

  ‘Obviously not.’

  Moncrieff nodded. So simple, he thought. And so sweetly right.

  ‘Here’s a name,’ he said. ‘Gordon Millord Hesketh. You’ll find him in the top apartment in a block on the Largo de Santa Luzia. Number 17. The door to the street is blue and there are tiles on either side.’

  Spiegelhalte made a note of the name and address. Then his head came up.

  ‘I know this man,’ he said. ‘He’s one of yours.’

  ‘Was,’ Moncrieff smiled. ‘Until his luck ran out.’

  *

  From the embassy it was a forty-minute walk back to Bella’s hotel. When Moncrieff appeared at reception, the manager emerged from his office and asked for a word. Security police had been here earlier and demanded access to Senhorita Menzies’ room. They’d left after less than twenty minutes. Might Senhor Moncrieff throw any light on this surprise visit?

  Moncrieff shook his head and promised to ask the senhorita when she returned.

  ‘You’re expecting her back?’

  ‘I am, yes.’

  ‘I’m relieved, Senhor. We always have the welfare of our guests at heart but these days that can sometimes be a complicated proposition. I wish you luck. And the senhorita, of course.’

  Moncrieff collected the key from reception and took the stairs to the room. It had been torn apart: the bedding all over the floor, the mattress knifed open, drawers emptied, clothes from the wardrobe in a heap outside the bathroom door. Moncrieff checked the bathroom itself. The message fingered in soap on the mirror had been wiped clean. No more Sevilla, he thought. Had the PVDE agents taken offence at a message like this? Had it in some way insulted their sense of order? He returned to the bedroom and stared down at a hole at floor level in the corner. The metal vent had been prised away and now lay on the carpet. Moncrieff knelt quickly, feeling inside, but already he knew that any further search was pointless. The English translation of the Hess document had gone.

  It was dark before Moncrieff heard the knock on the door. He’d been lying on the bed for hours, the gun beside him, hidden by the sheet. Either Bella will be back, he told himself, or someone will come looking. His hand found the gun beneath the sheet. Barefoot, he went to the door. Another knock. A pause. And then he opened it, raising the gun.

  He’d seen the face in the corridor before, he knew he had. The same centre parting. The same well-cut suit. The same heavy glasses. Recently, he thought. Maybe just a day ago. The restaurant downstairs. When he’d met Bella for the first time.

  ‘Come in,’ Moncrieff stepped aside and gestured the stranger into the room. ‘You’ve been following me?’

  The stranger nodded. Moncrieff was to call him Rupio. It wasn’t his real name but it might make what had to follow more civilised.

  ‘Civilised?’ Moncrieff gestured at the wreckage of the room. ‘After this?’

  ‘Regrettable, Senhor. But doubtless necessary.’

  ‘You’re Portuguese?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You work for the security people?’

  ‘Only when they meet my terms.’

  ‘You mean money?’

  ‘Of course. In this city nothing talks louder.’

  ‘And now? They’re paying you well?’

  Rupio shook his head. He wasn’t going to say who he was working for. His English was good, if heavily accented. He had presence, too. The sight of the gun hadn’t disturbed him in the least.

  ‘We have business, Senhor,’ he said. ‘I am to take you to the lady. The terms of the exchange are very simple. We have her in our custody. In return for Herr Schultz’s document, she will be released to your care. You therefore have a choice. You keep either the lady or the document.’

  ‘And if I say no?’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘To giving you the document?’

  ‘Then the lady will suffer. First we will hurt her. And then we will kill her. No one will ever know about either. Except you. In this room. Now. As I say, Senhor, it’s your choice.’

  ‘And you?’ Moncrieff said again. ‘Who are you working for? Who’s bought your services? The Germans? Unlikely. The Russians? No. The PVDE? I doubt it.’

  A smile briefly warmed Rupio’s face. Then he nodded down at the gun.

  ‘Unless you want to kill me,’ he said, ‘I suggest you put that away. We need to stay friends and transact this business as quickly as possible. I have a car downstairs, Senhor. At this time of night, your lady is less than an hour away.’

  Moncrieff accompanied the stranger downstairs. As they walked through the reception area, the woman at the desk didn’t lift her head. Out in the street, parked at the kerbside, was a Citroën. Rupio invited Moncrieff to take the front seat beside the driver before slipping into the seat behind. The driver, who was black, eyed the face in the mirror, spared Moncrieff the merest sideways glance and then stirred the engine into life.

  ‘The plates on this car are false,’ Rubio murmured, ‘in case you stole a look.’

  The car began to move and, as it did so, Moncrieff became aware of another figure in the back. Then came hands reaching over the seat, and the sudden embrace of a blindfold, something soft, maybe even silk, and fingers working busily behind his head, drawing the knot tighter and tighter until he could see nothing but darkness.

  ‘Draw a breath, Senhor…’ Rupio again, ‘… and tell me who you can smell.’

  Moncrieff knew he had no choice. He still had the gun but the gun was useless if he wanted to get to the end of this journey. He sniffed lightly. Then again. Bella, he thought. Her smell. Her perfume.

  The car was moving faster now, slowing only occasionally for other traffic. Once they’d left the city, Moncrieff could hear nothing but the thrumming of the wheels on the tarmac. Twice he half turned in the seat and put a question to Rupio. Why all the drama? And what might he expect if Senhorita Menzies was released to his custody? Were they supposed to walk back to Lisbon?

  ‘Bella,’ Rupio said softly. ‘You call her Bella. I heard you in the restaurant. And so we too will c
all her Bella. All will be well, Senhor. We’re civilised people. You have my word.’

  After a while, the car began to slow. Then Moncrieff heard the soft clunk as the indicator signalled left and there came the merest whisper from the tyres as the driver made the turn. The road surface here was abruptly much rougher, the car bouncing from pothole to pothole, and Moncrieff could hear the crunch of gravel as the Citroën finally came to a stop.

  A door opened, then another. Moncrieff felt a hand on his arm and he slipped out of the car and shook the stiffness from his limbs. From somewhere close came the stir of the ocean and he could hear gulls. A hand removed Schultz’s gun from the waistband of his trousers before the gentlest pressure in the small of his back propelled him forward.

  Rupio was very close. He promised there was a path ahead, easier going, and then they’d be at their destination. Moncrieff walked slowly forward, one step at a time, feeling his way, trying to imagine what might lie at the end of this surreal journey. Was he really about to meet Bella again? And in this land of deals, was he prepared to meet the price of keeping her alive?

  The path came as a relief. He could hear cicadas now and the drip-drip of water from a leaky tap. Then an unseen hand brought him to a halt.

  ‘Reach forward, Senhor.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just do it.’

  Moncrieff shrugged and reached forward, his long fingers out straight, a blind man seeking reassurance. Then he found something soft, with a hard boniness beneath. Hair. Cheeks. The tilt of a chin. Lips. And the creases of another blindfold. Bella? He couldn’t tell.

  ‘Say something,’ he whispered. ‘Tell me what you wrote on the mirror.’

  ‘I wrote Sevilla.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nothing else. It’s a city in Spain. Sevilla.’

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’ve threatened you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Told you what they’d do?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you believe them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Moncrieff nodded, taking his time. When he asked for the blindfold to be removed the request was refused.

  ‘You’ve spoken to her, Senhor. You’ve heard her voice. What more proof do you need? This is Bella. You know it’s Bella. So now you have to make your decision. We could simply take the document. Help ourselves. Keep the woman. Kill the woman. Maybe even kill you, too. But that wasn’t what we promised. We promised you a decision. In good faith. And here it is. Give us the document now, and the woman rides back with you to the city. Keep the document, and there will be consequences. Not for you, Senhor, but for the woman, for Bella.’

  Moncrieff muttered assent, said he understood. For a long moment his fingertips explored her face again, the tautness of the flesh around her cheeks, the shape of her lips, tiny mole to the left of one eyebrow. When he finally found the pulse point beneath her ear he could sense the steady beat of her heart. She was showing absolutely no fear. Did this mean the threat to her life was a fiction? Had Moncrieff, in this city of lies, fallen into yet another trap?

  He paused a moment, realising that the answer was irrelevant. Nothing mattered more than this woman’s life. Not the peace treaty so carefully confected in Berlin. Not the army of conspirators back home, prepared to trade their elected Prime Minister for a new role under the Nazi jackboot. Not even the smaller irrelevance of his own survival.

  He pulled the envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket and held it out in the darkness. There was a long moment when nothing happened. Then he felt the weight in his hand lift and disappear and he was being led again, back along the path, back across the roughness of the track, back to the car. A door opened, then another.

  ‘Make yourself comfortable, Senhor. You, too, Senhorita.’

  They rode back into the city. Neither Moncrieff nor Bella said a word. His hand tried to find hers but she withdrew it. Finally, the car rolled to a halt. Rupio told them to take off the blindfolds. After Moncrieff had removed his own he helped Bella loosen the knot at the back of her head. Moncrieff looked out. They were parked in front of the hotel.

  ‘You may leave, Senhor. Take great care.’

  Moncrieff ignored the proffered handshake over the back of the seat. Opening the door, he stepped into the warmth of the late evening. Bella was already standing on the pavement. She looked pale in the lights from the hotel, as she watched the car drive away.

  Moncrieff nodded at the hotel steps. So much to talk about. So much to tease out.

  ‘Shall we?’ he said.

  She gazed at him for a long moment.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said at last.

  ‘You’re coming in?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘One day you may understand.’ She forced a smile. ‘Is a girl allowed to say that?’

  20

  Moncrieff arrived back in Britain late the following evening. On his way to Sintra airfield, he’d asked the taxi driver to make a detour via Hesketh’s flat. The police presence outside extended to three uniformed officers and a marked car. Moncrieff told the driver not to stop. By now he assumed that Hesketh would have spent an entire night in PVDE custody. Not a pleasant prospect, Moncrieff thought, but richly deserved. Souk had lied for no cause but his own. And now, unless he could weave some of the old magic, he’d doubtless be paying for it.

  Ursula Barton, alerted by Moncrieff’s phone call from the hotel in Lisbon, was on hand at Hendon airfield to welcome him home. Moncrieff had spent most of the flight north committing every detail he could remember of the Hess document to paper. The offer of an honourable settlement. Freedom in every corner of the Empire. The withdrawal of German troops from most of Western Europe.

  ‘They’d turn back the clock to September 1939?’ They were driving into London. Ursula was astonished.

  ‘May 1940. But it still wouldn’t pay to be Polish or Czech.’

  ‘Even so…’ She shook her head. ‘Christ. Don’t let the bloody thing out of your sight.’

  ‘It’s too late. I haven’t got it. It’s gone.’

  Moncrieff explained about the events of the last two days. Schultz arriving with Dieter Merz. The rumpus in the street. The wrath of Salazar’s secret police. And finally Bella.

  ‘You think Souk had a hand in that?’

  ‘I’m sure he did. I don’t know how but why’s a whole lot simpler. Someone paid him a great deal of money. Blaming the Germans was a blind. The one thing he hadn’t taken into account was Schultz’s man at the embassy. Get found out in one lie and the rest falls apart. He was drunk yesterday afternoon. That might have been a mistake.’

  ‘So as far as Hess is concerned we have no evidence. Nothing on paper. Is that what you’re telling me?’

  ‘Alas, yes.’

  ‘Status quo ante? After everything you’ve been through, that would be a shame.’

  Moncrieff shrugged. He said he had perfect recall of the document. Every paragraph. Practically every line.

  ‘But it’s not the same, is it? With the document, with words on Chancellery paper, we can beat the enemy to death.’

  Beat the enemy to death. Moncrieff permitted himself a smile.

  ‘Which enemy?’ he enquired.

  ‘Is that a serious question?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ursula shot him a look and then took the next turn off the arterial road. In a side street, beneath the spreading branches of a chestnut tree, she pulled to a halt. Moncrieff gazed out. Brentford, he thought.

  ‘It’s MI6, Tam. SIS. ‘C’. It couldn’t be more obvious. They stole Hess’s copy and now they’ve stolen yours, probably both of them. Why? Because they can’t afford the likes of Churchill to take a look. And why might that be? Because Churchill, who can sometimes be sharper than he seems, will finally know for certain that this whole pantomime was scripted in Broadway. They made the first contacts with Hess. They made it th
eir business to lure him over. To their considerable irritation, we muddied the waters by taking a peek at that first letter to Hamilton and despatching a reply of our own. This wasn’t in their script and neither was Hess arriving by parachute. The strength of our interest since has been a real threat, which is why life has been so hard for you.’ She paused, her face inches from his, intense, concerned, determined to push this debacle to its logical conclusion. ‘They’d backed both horses, Tam. With a peace proposal like that, they’d be only too happy to see Churchill gone. The document was eyes-only for the peace lobby. Had they read it, had they believed it, everything would have followed. They’d have spread the word. They’d have found a way to table it in Parliament. They’d have forced a vote. Their misfortune was that Hess ran out of fuel. And that the bloody letter ended up in the hands of the Home Guard. You’re with me, Tam. You follow the logic?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Good. Because the rest, as the Great Man likes to say, will be history.’

  ‘Great Man?’

  ‘Churchill.’

  *

  At St James’s Street, Liddell brought a late meeting to an early close in order to take Ursula and Moncrieff to his club for supper. Moncrieff enjoyed the walk across the park, the soft twilight, the trees heavy with blossom, the squirrels darting from branch to branch. German bombers hadn’t paid the capital a visit for more than a week and Londoners were beginning to relax. You could see it, Tam thought, in every passing face. Even the ducks on the pond were looking forward to a good night’s sleep.

  At the Reform Club, Liddell settled in an armchair and ordered sherry while awaiting the arrival of the menus. Hess, he said, was still in the Tower of London but was shortly expecting a move to Surrey. He was beginning to worry about his health and the food he was expected to eat and plans were evidently afoot for a proper psychiatric assessment.

  ‘On whose part?’

  ‘MI6. They appear to have taken formal ownership of our new friend. In private they refer to him as a pain in the backside. Churchill thinks that’s funny. Be careful what you wish for in life, he told me yesterday. MI6 invited him over in the first place so MI6 can damn well keep him amused.’