Nemesis

by Rory Clements

  ‘You do suspect them! And now you want me to hare off on a wild goose chase so you can toodle off back to London.’

  Eaton shrugged. ‘I’ve had my eyes on them for years. But as I said, we’re short of manpower, and we can’t list it as a priority. It’s the sort of thing Five should be doing, but they haven’t a single agent left. Guy and I shouldn’t even be here. We should be in London, organising our contacts in Europe and further afield. There’s a war on, Wilde.’ He paused, then tried to lighten things up with a smile. ‘How about your little gyp, Billy?’

  ‘Bobby.’

  ‘That’s the fellow. Can’t be much going on at college and I’m sure he’d like to earn a few shillings. He could help you stake out the Samovar. You’ve used him before, after all.’

  ‘And he had his head hammered to within an inch of his life,’ said Wilde grimly. ‘So no, I won’t be asking Bobby to watch a tea shop in his spare time. What would he be looking for anyway? Illicit cakes and scones smuggled in from Mother Russia? More to the damned point, what are you hoping I could do?’ Wilde was weakening. The problem, as always, was that he was interested. He wanted answers to his questions, solutions to problems.

  ‘Find out what’s going on,’ Eaton said.

  ‘And then we’ll fix it.’ Rowlands let out a stream of smoke.

  ‘Look – I’ll do what I can, but you’d better tell me what you know. Most importantly, why are you suspicious?’

  Eaton patted Wilde’s arm. ‘Good man, Wilde. Now then, as you know the Samovar is run by the Kossoff family. Nikolai and Anna, refugees from the Bolshevik revolution. Our records show that they settled here in England with their daughter Elina in the early twenties, first in London, then moving to Cambridge in 1932, where they took over an established tea shop and changed its name to the Samovar, adding a traditional Russian twist, as you’ve probably noted if you have been there.’

  Wilde nodded. The traditional samovar urns, the photographs of the last Tsar and Tsarina and their family adorning the walls, the double-headed eagle motifs on the counter. One could almost imagine oneself in a pre-revolutionary Moscow salon. A bit too kitsch for his liking, but the coffee was sensational and the Samovar was always well patronised.

  ‘Your pretty friend Elina has been paying visits to Ivan Maisky at 13 Kensington Palace Gardens.’

  ‘The Soviet Embassy? Why would she do that?’

  ‘Why indeed? We always thought the Kossoffs had a deep loathing for the Soviets.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘No, she’s been seen at the American embassy, too.’

  ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘We thought she was probably inquiring about travelling to New York. Many people do.’

  ‘But you were already keeping a watch on her?’

  Eaton laughed. ‘No, we were watching the embassies. Well, our friends in Five were. Standard procedure. Actually, we’re pretty sure she wasn’t inquiring about a visa: she’s been in and out of the place like a cuckoo in a clock. You have a good friend there: perhaps you could inquire for us.’

  ‘Maybe Elina Kossoff just has a penchant for diplomats.’ Even as he spoke, he realised his flippancy was misplaced. There was something odd about a young tea shop manageress from a provincial university town paying visits to two important embassies in London, particularly in the case of the Soviet embassy. Did she really have access to Ambassador Maisky? ‘But – all right,’ he said, ‘you’ve got my interest. And if I were to assist you, what would you want me to do?’

  ‘Well, Wilde, I think we can leave it to you to work that one out.’

  Anything that helped Rupert Weir and his inquiries into the death of Eric Charlecote seemed like a good idea. But the idea that Elina Kossof might have any bearing on that seemed an awfully long shot.

  ‘Rowlands and I will be returning to London within the hour. You know how to contact me.’

  Wilde went to the door, but turned before opening it. ‘How’s the war going? The newspapers and wireless tell us nothing.’

  ‘That’s because there’s nothing to tell. The French and Germans are taking the occasional potshot at each other along the Maginot Line, the Germans are crushing the Poles and we’ve dropped a few desultory bombs on the Kiel Canal – oh, and ten million leaflets to tell the German populace what a beastly fellow Herr Hitler is. As if they hadn’t had opportunity to work that one out for themselves by now, had they so desired.’

  ‘And the Athenia?’

  ‘Not much to report, I’m afraid,’ Rowlands said. ‘Though I heard that the South African minister at the Hague, Dr Van Broekhuizen, has been telling everyone who will listen that he has it on good authority from the British government that the Athenia hit a British mine and was not torpedoed by the Germans at all. Nonsense, of course, but that’s the way this will be played out. Not much in the way of blood-soaked battlefields on the western front yet, but the propaganda war is raging. Perception is everything, you see.’

  ‘Any more word on survivors? Has the City of Flint made port yet?’

  ‘No, she’ll arrive next Tuesday or Wednesday. Why – do you have a special interest?’

  ‘A friend and her son are missing.’

  ‘Mrs Vanderberg?’ Eaton suggested.

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘God, I’m sorry to hear that. Damned awful. I’ll make it my business to find out what I can for you, old boy. Least I can do.’

  *

  Priscilla Hollick handed a sheet of paper to Lydia. ‘Here you are, this is my translation.’

  Lydia smoothed it down on the desk. Four or five hundred words, written in a neat hand. ‘The notebook entry looked rather longer,’ she said.

  ‘Eric’s notes could be a little clumsy, but I always edit them to a professional standard. Nothing is left out, I promise you.’

  ‘Very well.’ Lydia began to read.

  Subject: Marcus Marfield, aged 21.

  Occupation: Cambridge University undergraduate, turned mercenary. Now returned to England under the care of Professor Thomas Wilde.

  Reason for referral: Evidence of neurasthenia caused by battle fatigue.

  Symptoms: Nightmares, shakes, quick to anger.

  The subject arrived with a suggestion that he is suffering from neur-asthenia, or shell shock. Let us put that to one side for a moment. An initial diagnosis from observation might suggest this man has a severe personality disorder, which may or may not precede his recent war experiences. He is extremely resentful and difficult. He clearly does not want to be here with me. Outwardly, he may appear to some as a charming young man, but he did not act that way with me. Close to the surface is a hair-trigger. He is convinced that he cannot be hypnotised, but in fact it is extremely easy and within two minutes of his entry to my office, I have him under. He talks angrily in general terms about the cold, the lack of food and the discomfort of front-line warfare. Not once does he mention fear, which surprises me. When I ask him about his bullet wound he says it hurt, nothing more. He describes conditions in the camp in France in an offhand manner, as though he were an inspector of prisons rather than an inmate. I question him further but he descends into a long silence. He rises from the couch and paces about, then looks out of the window. He is shaking. He talks of a ravine and blood, then stops and looks at me with an unsettling smile. Or rather his eyes and mouth are formed in the shape of a smile, but his expression is blank. The session has been long, and I have had enough, so I bring him out. He smirks and says, ‘I told you I couldn’t be hypnotised.’ I disabuse him. ‘You are wrong, Mr Marfield. You were hypnotised, and very effectively.’ He becomes extremely agitated, launches himself at me and pins me to the wall, his hand at my throat. I have never seen colder eyes and I feel real fear – in myself, not him. He demands to know what he has said. ‘Very little,’ I tell him. He glares at me, then drops me like a stone, turns away and makes for the door. It occurs to me that he believes he has revealed something of himself, something he wished to keep hidden. As for s
hell shock or battle fatigue, he doesn’t have it. Was he playing with me? I am still not certain, but I have no doubt that he is both an actor and a psychopath.

  Lydia turned the page, expecting more. But there was nothing. ‘Is that it?’

  Priscilla Hollick nodded. ‘You saw the way they parted. But you should know that while Marcus Marfield might well have been anxious that he had revealed something of himself that he wished to remain hidden, the truth is he would not have done so. Despite what we read in newspapers and pulp fiction, under hypnosis we only say what we wish to say.’

  ‘But he might have believed he had divulged some secret?’

  ‘Yes, that’s entirely possible. And one more thing: just as Eric left, he muttered something under his breath.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘He said, “One of the best examples of a psychopath I’ve ever had in my office.” ’

  CHAPTER 23

  ‘Shall we go home, Henry?’ Jim Vanderberg asked his son as they drove back into the centre of Glasgow. They had been to Greenock with Jack Kennedy to talk to the officers on the destroyer Electra, one of the Royal Navy warships that had assisted with the Athenia rescue operation, and the one that had brought Henry to safety.

  ‘We can’t without Willie and Ma.’

  ‘I know, son, but, well, I think Ma would want me to take you back home. That’s where she’ll expect to find you when she turns up.’

  When she turns up. What Vanderberg had not told his son was that a lieutenant on the ship had told him that one of the survivors mentioned a woman and a boy to him. ‘She said she saw two or three people in a dinghy – much smaller than the lifeboats – but feared it had capsized. There was a lot of confusion.’

  ‘Two or three people?’

  ‘Well, a woman and a child – and perhaps someone else. She wasn’t sure.’

  ‘Do you have a name for this informant, lieutenant?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t, sir. I believe she was Canadian. Not injured as I recall, so probably not in any of the Glasgow hospitals.’

  And that was all he could uncover. No one else aboard the Electra recalled the woman’s testimony, nor could he find any information about a dinghy with two or three people in it. Vanderberg had never felt so low.

  *

  Back in his Chelsea house, Eaton flopped into his ancient morocco sofa. The scent of the old leather told him he was home. The trip to Cambridge had taken more out of him than he cared to admit, even to himself. This war was going to be the death of him, and that was before the bombs and bullets started.

  Apart from the sheer physical exhaustion, there was the mental fatigue involved in enduring the ministrations of Guy Rowlands, however well meaning he might be. It really couldn’t go on like this.

  He looked around his comfortable sitting room. His father’s paintings adorned the walls. Scenes of southern France, a couple of nudes. He loved this room. To hell with bed, he would sleep here, on the sofa. Perhaps tonight he would not wake in panic, facing the van as it drove into him full-on, accelerating as it threw him into the air so that he fell onto the road with shattering force, smashing his left leg and destroying his left arm. There were days when he felt a deep resentment that this had happened to him. The worst days were those when a well-meaning doctor told him he was lucky to be alive. He didn’t feel lucky.

  Sometimes this summer he had felt half a man, but these past few days, back in some sort of harness, he had begun to feel if not whole, then at least alive. Exhausted, but alive.

  The phone started to ring. He tried to ignore it, but eventually he swore and pulled himself up from the sofa.

  ‘Eaton here.’

  ‘Mr Eaton, you’re home.’

  ‘I am, Carstairs – and damned pleased about it.’

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but everything’s escalating. Streams of information from all stations, Moscow to Warsaw and Berlin to Paris and Rome. There are one or two I thought you should hear without delay.’

  ‘First, what’s the word on the ship that went down?’

  ‘Our Wilhelmshaven sources identify the U-boat as U-30, commanded by one Fritz-Julius Lemp, but it sounds like an error on his part. His superiors are not at all happy and have opted for the denial option.’

  ‘Nothing from the Canada-bound steamer?’

  ‘City of Flint? No, sir.’

  Damn it. He’d love to be able to help Jim Vanderberg. Do a favour, and one day you can ask one in return. Cynical, yes, but he’d been in this game far too long. ‘Keep me posted on that if you would, Carstairs.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Go on then, tell me what else you’ve got.’

  For the next fifteen minutes, Carstairs reported on the essentials of communiques from all parts of the world. Eaton listened carefully, took notes where necessary. Finally Carstairs came to a halt.

  ‘Is that everything? Can I go to sleep now?’

  ‘Just one other thing, sir. Captain Daru from the Deuxième Bureau mentioned something that may be of interest, though its relevance is not immediately obvious.’

  ‘I’ll hear it anyway.’

  ‘There was a shooting near Paris last week. An attempt on the life of Mr William Bullitt, the American ambassador.’

  ‘Why has there been no word of this in the press? Damned difficult to keep a thing like that secret.’

  ‘The thing is, no one knew it had happened. The assassin, a fellow named Talleyrand Bois, killed the wrong man and was then shot by a gendarme. This all happened in the grounds of the Chateau de Chantilly. Mr Bullitt’s main residence is the Chateau de St Firmin, which is rather smaller, but a couple of hundred yards away. A case of mistaken identity.’

  ‘How can they know that?’

  ‘Bois – who is a Bolshevik of long-standing and well known to the Deuxième – has been in a coma for the past week. Yesterday he regained consciousness, convinced he had done his bit for the revolution by doing away with a filthy capitalist Yankee swine.’

  ‘And the actual victim?’

  ‘An Australian tourist, sir. Has something of the look of Mr Bullitt. Very sad.’

  ‘Thank you, Carstairs.’ With a war under way it made sense for allies to keep each other informed, particularly when it involved their American friends.

  ‘One more thing, sir.’

  ‘Yes, Carstairs?’

  ‘Bois let slip that he had been recruited by a Comintern agent codenamed Honoré. The DB were wondering if the name meant anything to us – because it doesn’t to them.’

  *

  As Wilde entered the Samovar, a bell at the top of the door tinkled. It was nine in the morning and the tea shop was almost empty. A waitress in black skirt and white apron approached with a smile and invited him to sit wherever he wished.

  He took a seat against the far wall, close to a door to the back of the shop so that he had a clear view of the whole room.

  ‘What would you like, sir?’

  ‘Coffee, please. Java. No milk or sugar. Nice and strong.’

  ‘And something to eat? We have fresh scones or Welsh rarebit.’

  ‘None of that sounds very Russian.’

  The waitress laughed. ‘Indeed not, sir. You’re not the first person to notice.’

  ‘A scone then.’

  She turned to walk away, but he put up a hand. ‘Tell me, are you alone here?’

  ‘Yes sir, Miss Kossoff is out this morning.’

  ‘Where are her parents these days?’

  ‘Oh, they’re away in America, sir. Miss Kossoff is in charge when they’re not here.’

  ‘And she’s away, too, you say?’

  ‘She did say she’d be in this afternoon. Shall I ask her to call you?’

  ‘No, no. I’ll come back.’

  ‘What was your name, sir? I’ll tell her you were looking for her.’

  ‘Tom Wilde. Professor Tom Wilde.’ He gave her his college phone number. He doubted Elina Kossoff would call, but you never knew.

/>   He had come here this morning after a long conversation with Lydia late into the night. They had discussed Dr Charlecote’s notes and his comments on Marcus Marfield. ‘I don’t suppose I should be that surprised,’ Wilde said. ‘There must always be an element of violence to anyone who chooses to go off to war.’

  ‘Says the man who loves boxing and goes down to the gym to beat the living daylights out of some poor sparring partner.’

  ‘Vice versa more often than not these days.’

  ‘Well, just don’t expect any sympathy when you get a broken nose and lose your front teeth!’

  The conversation had moved on to Eaton and Rowlands.

  ‘And you agreed to help, of course?’

  ‘Lydia, darling, I was already working on it anyway. You’re not happy about Charlecote’s death and nor is Rupert Weir. And Charlecote’s notes go a long way to underpin our suspicions that there is something not right about Marfield. He might not even have been allowed back in the country had we not secured a passport for him – and I feel responsible for that. I don’t know what he’s up to, but I certainly don’t like it. Even his brother seems scared of him.’

  She threw him a wry look. ‘And we’ve all got to do our bit for the war effort?’

  He smiled. ‘Eaton did say something like that.’

  ‘Of course he did. It’ll be the stock phrase every time someone in authority wants to take advantage of anyone.’

  Their talk turned at last to the Samovar. They both agreed it was utterly pointless trying to stake out the place; they wouldn’t even know what they were watching for. ‘And so I might as well go ahead and talk to them,’ said Wilde. ‘Play a straight bat, as my housemaster used to say.’

  Lydia started laughing.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘The thought of you at Harrow, Professor Wilde . . . I bet you held your cricket bat like a baseball bat.’

  ‘You know me too well, Lydia.’

  *

  His visit to the Samovar had indeed yielded nothing but a fine cup of coffee. He left the waitress a good tip and walked out into the fresh, warm air. The town was busy. A small group of children carrying suitcases was being shepherded through the market and Wilde deduced that they must be evacuees from London. It was said that a substantial number of children and mothers would be coming here.