Ursula beckoned the Director a little closer and asked Moncrieff to outline the proposals in the Hess document. Liddell listened carefully, expressing no surprise. Finally, he plucked at the creases in his trousers and sat back while a waiter arrived with glasses and a decanter of sherry. The waiter gone, he resumed the discussion.
‘The PM asked for a full report on the interviews Hamilton and Kirkpatrick conducted with Hess up in Scotland,’ he said. ‘Once he’d read them, he demanded a redraft. Why? Because Hess had outlined precisely the proposals you’ve just described. The reports from Scotland now contain no mention of what the bloody man had to say on Berlin’s behalf. All that has been expunged from the record and what’s left, to be frank, isn’t worth keeping.’
‘Does Hamilton know that? Does Kirkpatrick?’
‘They may. They may not. In any event it doesn’t matter. Hamilton is owed fourteen days’ leave. The PM has assigned him a Hurricane and despatched him around the kingdom to make house calls on his treacherous friends. The thrust of these conversations is very plain. They’ve all been rumbled. Downing Street is on top of the plot and they all have a choice to make. The country isn’t short of internment camps. Nor is it difficult to find judges prepared to sentence traitors to death. Rather brilliant on the PM’s part, if I may say so.’
A choice to make.
Moncrieff sat back in the buttoned leather armchair, nursing his glass of sherry. Hess had made his choice. He’d been unquestionably brave, possibly misguided, definitely reckless. Souk had made his choice, or perhaps choices, playing both ends against the middle. And he, Tam Moncrieff, ex-Marine, current Laird of the Glebe House, had also been confronted with a decision.
Oddly enough, he believed Rupio. He could have returned to the city that night with the Hess proposals in his pocket, leaving Bella to face whatever might follow. But would that have made the slightest difference? Here and now? A stone’s throw from Downing Street? Would his physical possession of thirteen typed sheets of paper alter the fact that a coup d’état had been nipped in the bud? Moncrieff rather suspected not.
The Director, with the waiter at his elbow, had decided on a saddle of hare with pommes duchesse and lightly creamed carrots. Handed the wine list, his finger ran down the champagnes on offer before settling on a bottle of Mouton Cadet. Another choice, Moncrieff thought. Infinitely more civilised.
‘I sense a modest celebration might be in order,’ the Director glanced up at the waiter. ‘Two bottles please…’ he turned to beam at Moncrieff, ‘… and a toast to our vanquished friends in Broadway.’
*
Moncrieff was back in his Bloomsbury flat by midnight. An envelope with his name on it lay on the doormat beneath the letterbox. He took it upstairs and read it at the kitchen table.
The letter was typed on light blue paper and if Moncrieff believed the signature at the foot of the page it must have come from Cathy Phelps. She said she’d had second thoughts about working in the Palace and had handed in her notice. She’d also got tired of London, of the bombing, of the acres of rubble, of the queues during the day and the blackout at night. She was sorry about the dance she’d led Tam but she wanted him to know that he’d always have a place in her affections. Just now she was undecided about any kind of future but she had a distant cousin who lived in the wilds of Pembrokeshire and needed a little company. There, she wrote, she might at least get a decent night’s sleep. As an afterthought, she’d added a PS. ‘Ignore what I said about the Duke of Kent,’ she’d typed. ‘I was wrong.’
Moncrieff stared at the letter for a long time. To his knowledge, Cathy always wrote in longhand. The fact that the letter had been typed rang all manner of alarm bells but he wondered whether he had the energy to enquire further. Maybe someone else had written this. Maybe they’d sat beside her, the way a detective might coax out a statement, keen to explain Cathy’s sudden absence at the Palace in case Moncrieff ever tried to get in touch. Maybe they were keen to correct the record as far as the Duke of Kent was concerned. Maybe. But did he really care? Moncrieff knew the answer was yes but just now he was exhausted.
The following day, back at his desk in St James’s Street, Moncrieff did some typing of his own. By mid-afternoon he’d prepared a full account of his visit to Lisbon, with an addendum that set out, in full, everything he could remember about the Hess peace proposals.
When he knocked on the Director’s door, Liddell invited him in. He put the report carefully to one side. He wanted Moncrieff to know that the Security Service, and indeed Downing Street itself, were deeply grateful for all his efforts. His curiosity about the peace lobby had hardened into something a great deal more menacing and, now that the dust had settled, Liddell said that he had every reason to be proud of himself.
These days there were many threats to democracy, murmured the Director, but the deadliest were often the most unexpected. It was prudent to prepare for more aerial bombardments, and a full-scale invasion was still a possibility, but the last thing you might anticipate was an assault from within.
‘A triumph, Tam,’ Liddell smiled. ‘Maybe a week or two off?’
*
Georg Messner was back in Berlin for the second week of June. He put a call through to Beata and asked her whether she minded if he spent a couple of hours with young Lottie. She said he was very welcome, and they agreed a time. Surprised and gladdened, he drove out to the house beside the Wannsee, only to find his daughter at the door in the arms of Dieter Merz.
‘Beata?’ Messner enquired. ‘My wife?’
‘She’s out all day.’
‘You live here now?’
‘I do, compadre. But you know that. You’ve known that for months.’
‘I have. I just…’ Messner shrugged, ‘… hoped things might have changed.’
They hadn’t. Merz had bought a small rowing boat from a family further along the lake who’d decided to move away from Berlin before the RAF learned how to bomb in earnest. The weather was perfect: a cloudless sky and a light wind from the east. All afternoon, he rowed Messner and Lottie up and down the lake, trying to ignore the mess of scar tissue that had once been his wingman’s face. Messner sat in the stern with his daughter in his lap, trailing his fingers in the water, telling Merz about the night he’d survived to bring Klopp’s Heinkel back from near-catastrophe over London.
‘Klopp?’
‘The Oberstleutnant. I was there at his invitation.’
‘He didn’t make it?’
‘A chunk of shrapnel took his head off at the throat. One moment it was there. The next it was rolling around on the floor beneath his feet.’ Messner nuzzled his daughter and then gave her a kiss. ‘Blood, too. Lots of it. The heart must keep pumping for a bit. You’d never think, would you?’ He gazed out across the lake. ‘I miss this place, I really do. How’s my wife?’
‘She’s lovely.’
‘Missing me?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Did she send her love? Anything like that?’
‘No.’ Merz rested a moment at the oars. He’d taken his shirt off and he loved the warmth of the sun on his back. ‘Your film star friend was a very bad idea, compadre. Didn’t that ever occur to you?’
‘Of course it didn’t, not that first time. She was crazy about body oils and we managed some incredible things. I wanted to stick it to Goebbels, too. And I did. After that I couldn’t get her out of my mind.’
Merz nodded. For him, the memory that lingered was the day Goebbels and his Slav starlet turned up at the Charité hospital, not to celebrate Christmas but to teach Georg Messner a lesson. Propped either side of him on the bed, Messner’s humiliation had been complete, though at the time Merz suspected he hadn’t a clue what was going on.
‘So she was worth it? Is that what you’re telling me?’
‘I’m telling you nothing. Except I’m glad it’s you in this boat and not some other fucker.’
Merz knew that Messner was in Berlin to receive his Ritterkreuz from t
he Führer himself. He also knew that he was permitted one guest – friend or family – to witness the happy event, and it came as no surprise when Messner enquired whether he was free tomorrow morning.
‘It might as well be you,’ he said. ‘No one else I know would dream of saying yes.’
Next day, Merz arrived at the Chancellery with five minutes to spare. In deference to the occasion he was wearing full dress uniform, as was Messner. Goering and a small selection of other notables were in attendance, and Merz watched as Messner’s name was called and he marched smartly across the endless expanse of Hitler’s office and offered a perfect salute, his arm raised, his chin up, the ghost of a smile on his ruined face. Hitler pinned the dull grey metal cross to his uniform jacket, looked him in the eyes, and held his hand for several moments. The pair enjoyed a whispered conversation before a name was called and Hitler turned to be saluted by yet another hero of the Reich.
Afterwards, leaving the Chancellery, Merz wanted to know what Hitler had been saying. Messner stopped on the pavement, aware of curiosity in the eyes of passing women. The weather was still flawless. These days, thought Merz, the sunshine lasts forever.
‘Well?’ he asked. ‘What did our Leader say?’
Messner’s fingers were playing with the Ritterkreuz.
‘He told me Goering has something special lined up.’
‘For all of us?’
‘For me, compadre.’ He leaned closer. ‘It has to be Russia, hasn’t it?’
*
Moncrieff delayed his windfall holiday, hoping to take advantage of the weather in the hills in high summer. The Germans invaded Russia on 22 June and, in the hectic days and nights that followed, the lights burned late behind the blackout curtains in St James’s Street. In the rare hours that Moncrieff had to himself, he thought about neither Cathy nor Bella. Thanks to Hitler, as ungovernable as ever, there were fresh piles of paperwork on his desk every morning. This, Moncrieff counted as a blessing.
Then, in early August, with Stalin shipping entire factories east from Moscow and the Germans closing on Kiev, Moncrieff knew the time had come to cash in the Director’s promissory note and take a little time off. The night sleeper delivered him to Edinburgh and by noon the next day Moncrieff was sprawled on a bench outside the Glebe House, munching an early apple from his father’s precious orchard.
The days that followed, unseasonably hot, took him to the mountains with a gun. He shot hare and a variety of game birds and spent the evenings after a home-cooked supper enjoying a glass or two of malt whisky while the sun settled slowly over the mountains to the west. Years had passed since he’d been here in high summer and he’d forgotten how the light never quite drained from the night sky.
Then, at the start of his second week, he heard the crunch of gravel under tyres in the drive. He was upstairs in the room that had once belonged to Cathy Phelps, re-laying the floorboards. He got to his feet and went across to the window. He didn’t recognise the car. A brisk three-point turn angled the bonnet down the drive again before the passenger door opened and a woman got out. She was carrying a suitcase. A couple of steps took her to the front door. The front door, Moncrieff knew, was open. She knocked twice, then glanced over her shoulder at the driver of the car and gave him a wave. The car began to move. A departing hoot, and it was gone.
Intrigued, Moncrieff made his way downstairs. From his bedroom he hadn’t a clue who this woman might be. She was standing on the flagstones in the hall, looking round. It was Bella.
They stared at each other, then Bella began to laugh.
‘You’re supposed to say hello,’ she said. ‘You’re supposed to fling your arms around me and sob your heart out. Or maybe that’s my role. This place is glorious. Why on earth did you ever leave?’
Good question. Moncrieff led her through to the kitchen, sat her down at the table, demanded to know what was going on, how come she’d found her way up here, what might happen next. She gazed at him and then began to giggle. If anyone ever told her again that all was fair in love and war, she’d at last be inclined to believe them.
The Germans, she said, would soon be hammering at the gates of Moscow. Even Stalin had concluded that they had to make friends with the British and the Americans, otherwise all would be lost. And so, with the blessing of her former colleagues in St James’s Street, she’d been welcomed back home as a kind of liaison officer, someone who spoke both languages, someone who could help iron out the wrinkles in this hasty shotgun marriage.
‘We forgive and we forget,’ she said. ‘At least that’s the theory.’
‘So why didn’t anyone tell me?’
‘Because you weren’t there, foolish boy. And who can blame you?’ She was looking round again, shaking her head.
Moncrieff was still letting the news sink in. Bella Menzies. Back on home soil. Intact. Then he looked up.
‘So who was that?’ He nodded towards the window. ‘In the car?’
‘My lift from London.’
‘Does he have a name?’
‘Of course he does. Everyone has a name. Philby. Kim Philby. And he’s on holiday, too. From Lisbon.’ She paused. ‘I gather you bumped into him recently. On a flying boat.’
‘I did,’ Moncrieff nodded. ‘So when is he coming back to collect you?’
Bella studied him for a moment, then extended a hand across the table.
‘He’s not,’ she said. ‘I thought I might stay a while.’
‘You’re serious?’
‘Always.’
‘For how long?’
‘Weeks? Months? Who knows?’ She shrugged. ‘Until my chums in Moscow call me home again.’
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Graham Hurley is the author of the acclaimed Faraday and Winter crime novels and an award-winning TV documentary maker. Two of the critically lauded series have been shortlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Award for Best Crime Novel. His French TV series, based on the Faraday and Winter novels, has won huge audiences. The first Wars Within novel, Finisterre, was shortlisted for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize. Graham now writes full-time and lives with his wife, Lin, in Exmouth.
www.grahamhurley.co.uk
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