by John Lawton
Cal stopped listening. Any minute now Berg would show him how the pencil sharpener worked and give him a key to the executive washroom. He wondered if this hive of activity spelt out the same message to Berg as it did to him-a nation gearing up for war.
‘Can I use the phone, Henry?’
Berg pushed the telephone across the desk to him. Cal rang the Savoy and was told that Colonel Ruthven-Greene had already gone out. They didn’t know when he’d be back. Odd, thought Cal, he’d’ve expected Reggie to be raring to start.
He found himself staring into nothing across the bent back of a workman, busy hanging the door. Then the figure on the other side came into focus. A tall, gangly, middle-aged man. Frank Reininger.
Reininger grabbed his hand and shook it vigorously. Only Berg’s presence saved him from the usual bear hug.
‘Good to see you, Calvin. Henry here showing you around?’
‘Yes sir-big changes, I see.’
‘You’re well? And your daddy?’
Reininger and his father went back a long way. Frank had always been a little blind to the tensions between father and son.
‘Oh, he’s fine,’ Cal lied, without a clue as to his father’s well-being.
‘Come into my office. This isn’t really my show. Deke Shaeffer just wants a quick word. He’s in charge of security now-did I tell you that?’
Reininger steered Cal into another, far less makeshift room. FDR’s portrait on the back wall, Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt on the sides. Major Shaeffer sat behind an expensive, imported, antique desk. Reininger had paid for it to be shipped from Paris. It went where he went. Plywood was strictly for the other ranks.
Cal had never known Frank to be anything but the soul of bonhomie-but he’d never known Deke Shaeffer to smile and mean it. They were like chalk and cheese, a garrulous, thin man and a surly oaf built like Tarzan of the apes, but everybody said they were a first-class team.
‘I just want to spell out the security implications of what you’re doing,’ Shaeffer said. ‘And don’t volunteer anything just because the pleasure of the chat carries you away. The general’s playing this one close to his chest. All we’ve been told is that you’re being loaned to the British. If the General sees fit not to tell us why, that’s fine by me. Got it?’
This was obtuse in the extreme. They both knew what Cal did. He ran the Tin Man, whoever he was. He doubted it was true of Frank-but Shaeffer was putting official distance between himself and Cal.
‘I’ll put it as plainly as I can. I don’t want any incidents.’
Cal looked at Reininger, but Reininger said nothing.
‘Incidents?’
‘Any incident. Especially as in “diplomatic incident”.’
‘Diplomatic incident? Major, the British asked, dammit, escorted me here. What could they possibly construe as a diplomatic incident?’
‘I wasn’t thinking of the British,’ Shaeffer said. ‘They’re not the only ones in this war. And until we’re in it, whatever the reality, let’s at least have it look like we’re neutral. You get yourself in trouble Captain and you’re on your own. Capiche?’
‘Absolutely,’ Cal said. ‘I capiche.’
Shaeffer flickered up a phoney smile, the merest flash of pearly teeth, got up and left-the audience, which was what it felt like to Cal, was clearly over. Reininger stayed. Got up, stretched, and sat himself down in the chair ShaefFer had vacated.
‘He can’t mean that, sir. He can’t possibly mean that?’
Reininger sighed, a sigh meant to sound knowing and worldly.
‘Calvin, I’ve known you since you were a boy. Behind closed doors I’m Frank. You don’t have to call me sir or Colonel. And yes-Deke means exactly what he said. You’re going to have to be very, very careful.’
‘Sir… Frank… I find it very hard to believe that anyone in this embassy or the War Department in Washington seriously gives a damn what opinion in Berlin thinks of what we’re doing. If they did, then perhaps we shouldn’t be spying on them in the first place?’
‘Well… that’s just Deke’s way. The guy’s a frustrated diplomat at heart. But you’re wrong all the same. What we do here matters mightily back in Washington. Not in the WD maybe, but up on the hill. Calvin, you just ask your daddy.’
Cal knew Reininger was right-every letter from the old man (old him that-but the remark rankled.
‘These days I tend not to ask my father quite as much as I used to.’
Reininger grinned.
‘We all grow up. Eventually. And-you should understand this. Deke has a way of overstating things, but the embassy’s been through turmoil since you were last here. We’ve had a clerk busted by the British for spying-I can’t emphasise too strongly the effect of Tyler Kent’s arrest on Anglo-Am relations. It was a transatlantic disaster. And we’ve had an ambassador practically demand to be recalled-and a new man appointed who’s something of an unknown quantity. And on top of that-and strictly between the two of us-we have the General. Bright as a button and ornery as a jackass. Gelbroaster hates Joe Kennedy. And he doesn’t care who knows it… if Kennedy hadn’t gone back home I hate to think what might have blown up between the two of them.’
‘I know,’ said Cal. ‘He told me.’
‘You’ve seen him already?’
‘At the hotel on Saturday night. Just sort of bumped into him.’
‘Then you don’t need me to tell you-as far as Gelbroaster’s concerned we’re already at war. Don’t be misled by that. It’s his policy-it can’t be American policy. Right now, from now until the day FDR goes to Congress and asks to declare war… we are neutral and we act neutral. Which kind of brings me to the point. Calvin, you can’t do this in uniform.’
Cal was nonplussed. From the global to the downright trivial in three sentences.
‘I don’t have anything else. They left me no time to pack. I’ve the uniform, a spare pair of pants and the usual stuff.’
Reininger stood up again. Stuck his left hand in his inside pocket.
‘That’s easily fixed,’ he said. ‘Take these and go to a fifty shilling tailor.’
Cal took a small bundle of printed paper strips from him.
‘What are they?’
‘Clothing coupons. Should be enough there for a suit. Can’t get one without ‘em. Everything’s rationed now. Try Soho-one of those narrow little streets the other side of Regent Street. If there’s one shop there doing suits at ten bucks apiece there must be a hundred.’
§ 15
Across Regent Street at Mappin and Webb’s jeweller’s, down a dark alley-London had more than its fair share of those-along the side of a mock-gothic Victorian church and Cal emerged into a narrow Soho street of the kind he thought Reininger had meant. A couple of turns later and he stood in an alley off Carnaby Street facing the green, peeling shopfront of a fifty shilling tailor. Above the door in faded gold lettering…
Lazarus & Moses Lippschitz Bespoke Tailors
by app’t to
His Highness Duke Griswald of Transylvania
est 1891
and in the window in crayon on cardboard…
50/- a suit-You vant it ve gottit!
He pushed at the door. The pressure of his foot on the rubber mat triggered a bell somewhere in the deep recesses of the shop. Cal stood amid roll upon roll of dull, male-coloured cloth-the un-peacock hues of black, brown and grey, and the scarcely enlivening dark blue-the stripes of chalk and oxblood. Still the bell rang. Persistent to the point of annoyance. He stepped back onto the mat to see if a second step undid the effect of the first and out of nowhere a short, old, white-haired man in a yarmulke appeared at the speed of sound, pressed a button by the counter and the ringing stopped. The man smiled a small, fleeting, professional smile and looked over his shoulder.
‘Mo! Mo! Shmegege. The Yanks have landed! Mach schnelll’
He turned back to Cal. Looked Cal up and down, measuring him with the eye as only tailors and undertakers could do. Cal look
ed back. A tiny man, less than five foot four-the yarmulke held on to his thinning hair with kirby grips, a rim of close-cropped white beard, a tape measure slung around his neck, a grubby waistcoat on top of a threadbare cardigan, pins stuck in all over it and chalk dust smeared at the rims of its pockets.
‘Mo! Mo! Mach schnell, you momzer!’
Another man, identical in every respect to the first, scurried out from the back room. Eyed him up and down in the same way.
‘Vot? Just the one? You said Yanks. All I see is one Yank. Vot use you tink is one Yank?’
‘How should I know? All I said was come see. We gottem Yank. It could be 1917 all over again.’
The second tailor fixed Cal with one squinting eye, looking up at him.
‘And how many you boys are over here?’
‘I don’t know, a few dozen I guess.’
‘A few dozen! My Gott. Last time they sent whole regiments! How you expect to lick Hitler with just a few dozen?’
Cal did not want to say it. He was getting heartily sick of stating the obvious, but he said it all the same. ‘We’re not actually in the war, you know.’
‘Not in the war! Young man, everybody is in this war! You tink Hitler will stop at Irish Sea? You tink crazy Adolf stop at Atlantic Ocean? You tink the brownshirts turn around when they see Statue of Liberty? Scared off by big green woman mit the torch an’ the silly hat? Alla them Jews in Brooklyn-you tink the Nazis just gonna let ‘em be?’
‘Mo, Mo. Leave the boy be,’ said the first tailor. ‘Maybe he not here to invade France, maybe just want to buy a suit.’
‘So? Am I arguin’? I was only askin’.’
‘That’s right,’ said Cal, getting a word in edgeways.
‘Vot’s right? You here to invade France?’
‘No, I’d like to buy a suit.’
‘You want suit?’
‘If that’s at all possible,’ Cal said.
‘Gentleman wants suit!’ the first brother all but yelled in the other brother’s ear.
‘A suit you say? He wants suit?’
And then to Cal. ‘You want suit? You got coupons?’
Cal dug around in his pockets and found the clothing coupons Reininger had given him. Mo took them and riffled through them like a cardsharp, a glint of commerce in his eye.
‘Larry, the gentleman got coupons!’
Mo? Larry? Cal was beginning to find something chillingly familiar in this routine. There’d better not be a third brother.
‘Well, young man. You got coupons, the world is your oyster an’ we gottem pearls. Vot kind of suit you was wanting?’
Cal looked at the bewildering mass of rolls. One of the reasons he liked a uniform was that it saved a lot of decisions.
‘Er… what colour’s in this year?’
‘In?’ said Mo. ‘He wants to know vot is in. Khaki is in this year, that’s vot’s in!’
‘Khaki I got,’ said Cal.
Larry fingered the fabric of his battledress.
‘Khaki? I call it sea green mit a dash of chestnut-nice schmutter though. I think you look good in blue.’
‘Blue,’ said Mo, ‘with the double breasteds…’
‘And a nice pinstripe in pale grey,’ added Larry. ‘You look like a million dollars.’
‘Blue and grey?’ Cal queried.
‘Grey and blue,’ they answered, ‘Blue and grey…’ A head shook, another nodded, a hand equivocated in the air to express balance-six of one, half a dozen of the other.
‘OK.’
One tackled his buttons, the other zipped around behind him and they pulled off his battledress and flourished their tape measures.
‘Mit this measure I fitted out Duke Griswald mit his burial outfit in 1888,’ said Mo. Then Larry took up the tale and they alternated line for line in worst vaudeville.
‘Finest suit we ever make.’
‘Then the following year comes the pogrom, so we pack up the shop and come to England.’
‘You know vot-not one single royal customer do we get,’
‘We, who made suits for the Dukes of Transylvania!’
‘The Prince of Wales-votta snappy dresser.’
‘Does he come to us?’
‘Does he bollocks!’
‘So, I measure you mit the same measure I use on royalty!’
Cal tried to feel honoured and failed. 1888 was more than a lifetime away, Transylvania a nation that had ceased, if it ever had existed, to exist.
They both measured him. Two tapes around his chest.
‘Forty,’ said Mo.
‘Thirty-eight,’ said Larry, and each noted down his own figure.
Inside leg.
‘Thirty-six.’
‘Thirty-four.’
Waist.
‘Thirty.’
‘Thirty-two.’
And so it went on. When they’d finished on his sleeves Cal asked the obvious question.
‘Do you guys have a method?’
‘Method, schmethod. Sure we gotta method, we split the difference.’
Cal felt a slight frisson of misgiving. He could walk out of the shop now. He could walk right out and never look back.
‘Could I get some shoes too?’ he asked.
‘Shoes? Next door is shoes. Isaac Horwitz. He sell you nice pair of shoes. You got shoe coupons?’
‘No. Do I need shoe coupons?’
‘These days you need coupon to blow nose or break wind. No coupon, no shoes.’
Cal looked down at his army-issue, brown roundies.
‘Is no problem,’ said the brothers.
‘Nize blue suit.’
‘Nize brown shoes.’
‘Poifect!’
Somehow, Cal could not quite believe them, but it was too late now. Besides, who ever looked at your feet? He slipped his battledress back on.
‘When can I pick it up?’
‘You come by Friday,’ Mo said. ‘We have it all ready for you.’
‘Could you manage it any sooner?’
‘For Uncle Sam and his dozen brave buddies,’ Larry added, ‘we make it Thursday.’
‘Thanks,’ said Cal, glad another English moment had passed, even if this was the Transylvanian version translated loosely from the Yiddish.
Mo scribbled down his address as he dictated it, but in the end Cal could not resist the nagging question.
‘Mo, Larry? Where,’ he asked, ‘is Curly?’
Back home there would have been two possible reactions to this. The good-natured would smile or laugh, the sourpusses would tell you pointedly that this was the hundredth time they’d heard that joke this week, day or hour. The Lippschitz brothers looked at each other, more than slightly baffled, then they looked at him, then they looked at each other and shrugged, then they both yelled ‘Curly!’
And from the back room a gangly, spindly youth of fifteen or so, plastered with acne, beardless but ringletted about the ears, appeared pushing a broom.
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don’t get yer knickers in a twist. Now, wossamatter wiv you two?’
‘Gentleman wants to see you.’
In the mind’s ear Cal heard a wooden mallet bashing against the side of a skull with a hollow report.
‘Thursday it is,’ he said, and ran for it.
§ 16
The front desk at the Savoy handed Reggie half a dozen messages. All the same. ‘Captain Cormack called-please call back.’
Up in his room the telephone was ringing.
‘Reggie-where in hell have you been? I’ve been calling you all day.’
‘Something came up. I’m afraid we may have to delay our little adventure for a while.’
‘What?’
‘Something rather important.’
‘Reggie, what’s up?’
‘I can’t tell you that, really I can’t.’
‘I know. You told me-we’re not allies yet.’
§ 17
Walter Stilton was making his report to Thesiger. Thesiger had come up to town and
phoned him in person from his hotel.
‘Our Dutchman’s in digs in Hoxton Lane. He’s signed on at the local Labour Exchange. Gave his trade as printer and got a short lecture about the paper shortage and nobody needing printers any more. He’s registered with the local nick, and he seems to know absolutely nobody in London. He spent yesterday afternoon in a cafe reading the small ads in the local newspaper.’
‘Did you get a copy? Coded messages?’
‘No sir-he was putting rings round items in the sits vac column.’
‘He’ll break cover. Sooner or later.’
‘I’m quite sure he will sir, but in the meantime there is something useful I could be doing.’
‘Which is?’
‘Hess, sir.’
‘My God, word travels fast. Is there anyone in England who doesn’t know?’
‘The Branch, sir-not England. We do get to hear things in the Branch. There’ll be a team of our blokes going up to Scotland to interrogate Hess. I’d like to be one of them, sir.’
Stilton could hear Thesiger sigh. He had known even as he said it that it was an absurd request.
‘If I could do this for you I would. If it were a matter of recommendations, you’d get mine. But I don’t have the authority to assign you to that, really I don’t. I don’t even have the authority to forward your request. All I can say is if they wanted you… well… they’d have sent for you, wouldn’t they?’
§ 18
Reggie called McKendrick from his room. One last try. Would Gordon even talk to him on an unscrambled line?
‘I can’t just dump the fellow, now we’ve got him here.’
‘We don’t need him. Briggs changes everything. This bloke your American knows is a sprat. We’ve got the kingfish now. The PM’s told us to get Briggs to talk.’
‘All the same, we can’t just leave Jerry wandering around London-even if he is on our side.’
‘I rather think you’re going to have to, Reggie.’
McKendrick rang off. It was still only six o’clock. They had an hour before their driver was due. Reggie decided to nip down to the bar, and pass the hour over a drink with Charlie.