Corpus

by Rory Clements

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as her politics. Her links to the Communist Party.’

  ‘Then talk to him.’ Wilde jutted his chin in the direction of Eaton. ‘I’m sure MI6 knows a great deal more about Nancy Hereward’s activities and politics than I do.’ Wilde waited for Eaton to respond and when he didn’t, he stood up. ‘I really have nothing more to say, superintendent. I need my bed.’

  Bower wasn’t ready to let go. ‘Do you think Kholtov was the other man in the car with Braithwaite?’

  ‘What do you think, Philip?’ Wilde turned to Eaton. ‘After all, it was only a few hours ago that you were drinking with him.’

  ‘Is this true?’ Bower said, surprised.

  Eaton appeared unfazed by the question. ‘He wasn’t a suspect then. At least, not to my knowledge.’

  It felt to Wilde as if he and Bower were in a dark room, surrounded by hazards. Each time they moved, they were assailed by something new. Was Eaton the only one with a key and a torch to light the way? If so, why did he not produce them?

  ‘But he is a suspect now,’ Bower said. ‘In fact he is our one and only suspect. I have a warrant for his arrest, Eaton.’

  ‘I don’t know where he is. He left the Bull shortly after Professor Wilde. You could try Horace Dill. He was supposed to be staying at his lodgings.’

  ‘No,’ Bower said, ‘Kholtov’s not there. But I’ll find him. All ports – air and sea – have been alerted to detain him. He fits our bill. He is known to be a Red agent.’

  Wilde laughed.

  ‘I don’t see what’s funny,’ Bower said.

  ‘ “Red agent” isn’t the half of it! Kholtov is an assassin, one of Joe Stalin’s favourites – as Eaton will confirm.’ Wilde gripped the back of the chair. ‘Look – I don’t necessarily think that this is a Soviet conspiracy. I’m keeping an open mind, and I think you should, too. The murders of Sir Vyvyan and the Langleys are meant to look like a communist plot – the bloody writing on the wall at Kilmington, the hammer and sickle murder weapons at Brandham Hall. So the one thing we can be sure of is that it’s political and meant to provoke a reaction. Throw in the presence of Kholtov and I can understand the government’s fears.’

  ‘Can you?’ Bower said. ‘You do realise we believe this is to do with the royal crisis?’

  Wilde nodded.

  ‘Our enemies are trying to turn a crisis into an emergency,’ Bower said. ‘Engender fear. Destabilise the country. I’ve read enough about the communists to know that when they see a little local difficulty they do their best to stir it into riot, civil disobedience and full-blown revolution.’

  CHAPTER 27

  At around 4.30 that morning Wilde left the police station. Eaton hurried out after him. Wilde strode on ahead in silence. In the cold night air, the town was deserted and the lights were long since switched off. The dead of night.

  ‘I think it’s about time you came clean with me, Eaton,’ Wilde said over his shoulder.

  ‘But you were the one holding back. Why didn’t you tell Bower about the trip to Berlin and the North Sea list?’

  ‘I thought that was your job. You obviously know the man well. What is Bower exactly?’

  ‘Scotland Yard Special Branch. Public face of the intelligence services, if you like. And I should tell you that the prime minister has been on the telephone to his Cabinet colleagues throughout the early hours. He’s spitting tacks.’

  ‘Good. So he should be.’

  ‘More than that, he’s desperate to keep this all under the bedclothes. Nothing must interfere with his prime concern, which is the avoidance of a constitutional crisis. He may seem avuncular, but when Baldwin goes for something, he’s as lethal as a cat.’

  Wilde stopped in his tracks. ‘Is he now? Well, his enemies – whoever they might be – seem pretty damned lethal, too. So you tell me, what’s your part in all this?’

  Eaton reached for his cigarettes. ‘I think I probably need one of these after all.’

  Wilde waved the case away. Eaton removed a cigarette and lit it.

  ‘Look, Eaton, like it or not, I’m involved now. So is Lydia. You owe us answers. If this has anything to do with Kholtov – and that feels like a frame-up to me – then there must be some connection to Spain. Something he discovered in Spain. He was about to tell me at our dinner. At first I thought Horace Dill had kicked him under the table, but it was you he was looking at, wasn’t it?’

  Eaton drew in smoke, grimaced, dropped the cigarette and ground it into the flagstone.

  ‘Comrade Kholtov is a loose cannon.’

  ‘Is he involved in these murders?’

  ‘I have no evidence to suggest that he is, but nor do I feel confident enough to say that he isn’t.’

  ‘But what is your connection to Kholtov, to Spain . . . to all this? None of it’s coincidence, is it? You being here? Kholtov being in town? There’s something specific about Cambridge that brought him here – and something a great deal more important than simply inspiring a few undergraduates to join the International Brigades.’

  Eaton was not smiling. ‘He offered me something. And he wanted something in return. That’s all I can reveal. But I’ll tell you this, because you understand intelligence: we need men on the inside of the Soviet Union, particularly highly placed ones like Yuri Kholtov.’

  ‘Then tell me what he’s offering – and what he wants.’

  ‘He’s offering information.’

  ‘I need more than that.’

  Eaton’s smooth veneer had long since gone. ‘Information which, when I have it, might prevent a great deal of bloodshed.’

  ‘Something he learnt in Spain?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And there’s some connection to the murders here in Cambridge.’

  ‘I believe so. But acquiring this information is not easy. It is, let us say, a matter of delicate negotiation.’

  ‘What about the gold? Is that part of the deal?’

  ‘Gold?’

  ‘Don’t go coy on me. You know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘Ah, the gold coin. Careless of Comrade Kholtov. He’s trying to buy arms for the republican cause which is, of course, wholly contrary to our government’s non-intervention agreement.’

  ‘With one gold coin?’

  ‘He says there’s a great deal more. If I get him a buyer, he will give me the information I need.’

  ‘Do you believe him?’

  ‘I did. I no longer know.’

  ‘So where is he now?’

  ‘He’s in a safe place. Come on, let’s get you home. You really have to leave this to the professionals, like Bower said.’

  Wilde gave a scornful laugh. ‘You know as well as I do that this wasn’t something I’m involved in by choice. And that brings me to one of the questions I’d really like answered: why does this all seem to be connected to Lydia? Her friend is murdered, her lodger kills a man and is then thrown or falls from a car for his pains, and a Russian whose visit she helped organise has become a fugitive. Why?’ As he spoke, he realised that wasn’t all. There were other connections – she knew the Langleys, and she knew the strange German who had turned up so suddenly last night.

  ‘I don’t know what Lydia has to do with it,’ Eaton said at last. ‘But it makes me fear for her – for both of you.’

  *

  Lydia’s lights were blazing and they saw her silhouette passing across the window in one of the front rooms. They knocked at the door.

  ‘I can’t bloody sleep,’ she said.

  ‘Can we come in?’

  ‘Tea and toast? Eggs and bacon if you like.’ She was doing her best to be bright.

  ‘No to the eggs and bacon, but yes to the tea and toast,’ Wilde said. ‘Any chance of a Scotch with that?’

  ‘No. We need clear heads.’

  ‘Shame.’

  Lydia was still in the clothes she wore on the ride to Brandham Hall, including her duffle coat because the fire in the hearth had died an
d she hadn’t bothered to turn on any of the electric fires. Her hair was a mess.

  ‘It’s Saturday,’ Eaton said, breaking into Wilde’s thoughts. ‘Bloody awful day for a funeral.’

  ‘Any day’s bloody for a friend’s funeral,’ Lydia said.

  The two men sat facing each other across the kitchen table while Lydia busied herself with the toast. Wilde leant forwards. ‘There is one more thing. With a little assistance from Horace Dill, I now know a fair amount about Nancy’s trip to Berlin. More than you ever told me. Have you ever heard of a man called Arnold Lindberg?’

  Eaton sighed wearily. ‘Yes, I know of Lindberg, poor bastard.’ He stopped and turned towards Lydia. ‘But I have to say I’m a lot more interested in another German. A man called Hartmut Dorfen.’

  *

  Vladimir Rybakov sipped the ersatz coffee and grimaced. What was it made of? It tasted nothing like coffee. How could a nation such as Germany, with its technological advances, its artistic history and its excellent beers, produce a coffee substitute that tasted like shit – and pig shit at that – and expect anyone to drink it at breakfast?

  He spooned in more sugar and took another sip. Sweet, it wasn’t so bad. Anyway, there was little else to do while they waited in this dull and functional messroom. Some of his men played cards, a few read books or leafed through German magazines, which were no use to any of them except Rybakov. They looked more like bandits than military men, for they had all been supplied with scratched and worn leather jackets and rough woollen trousers, sourced, so it was said, from various second-hand shops in Berlin. Most of them had scarfs around their necks and carried caps, either worn carelessly or stowed in their pockets. All eleven of them smoked.

  Rybakov was a big man. He was tall with broad shoulders, a thick beard – black flecked with grey – and shaggy hair. Some said he had the look and body of a bear. In Paris he was known as Monsieur Grizzli, a sobriquet he was happy to accept, for he was powerful, a natural leader of men.

  From outside, the drone of aircraft engines was unceasing, even in the grey dawn. They were at an airfield attached to the giant Focke-Wulf plant, a little way south of Bremen. Every day, there seemed to be more fighter planes on the asphalt, more activity in the immense and burgeoning hangars. Rybakov was impressed. He had been told in confidence that the Third Reich now had almost two thousand warplanes, more than twice the number possessed by the British. And that the gap was growing week by week.

  He put his cap on his head and pulled down the earflaps, securing them with a tie beneath his thick beard, wrapped his scarf around his neck, stood up and lumbered to the door. The room was stuffy and smelt of sweat, cologne, tobacco smoke and engine oil, a foul and noxious brew. He stepped outside and closed the door behind him. The fresh cold air of early morning made him gasp and he wrapped his bare hands into his armpits. A bitter wind was blowing in across the runway from the north. The sky was white; there were intimations of snow.

  A triple-engine JU-52 was taxiing from the runway in his direction. Rybakov watched it with interest. Behind him, the door opened again. Ivan Chernuk, almost as tall as Rybakov but with none of his presence, appeared at his shoulder.

  ‘It’s warmer than Moscow, sir.’

  ‘Are you sure, Chernuk?’ He nodded towards the windsock flying above the control tower. ‘This wind comes straight from St Petersburg.’

  The JU-52 had come to a stop. They continued to watch as the three propellers slowed to a standstill. Two uniformed pilots disembarked and strode across the asphalt towards them.

  Neither pilot bothered with the Hitler salute. One of them held out his hand. ‘Captain Rybakov?’

  ‘At your service.’ Rybakov made a mock bow.

  ‘The famous Monsieur Grizzli!’ The pilot grinned. ‘Standartenführer Baur, your pilot.’ He was a handsome man, happy, confident, the sort of pilot to trust with your life, perhaps. ‘It seems we are to go on a little trip together, Mr Rybakov.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘This weekend, almost certainly. Hopefully today. First north, then westwards along the Friesian Islands, coming into England from the north coast of East Anglia. I estimate seven hundred and fifty kilometres, mostly over the sea and in the dark. We will not be seen, but just to be on the safe side, the painters have altered the markings.’ Baur laughed. ‘I see Le Grizzli is worried! Have no fear, captain. There is no pilot in the world better at night-flying than me.’

  Rybakov gave the man a hard stare. ‘If I was afraid, Standartenführer Baur, I would not have agreed to undertake this mission.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ Baur attempted to mollify the Russian. ‘I meant nothing by it. I am accustomed to allaying the fears of those who are terrified of flying.’

  Rybakov was not interested in Baur’s views on his courage. He wanted final details of the operation that lay ahead. More than anything he wished to confirm them with his German commanding officer. ‘So then, Standartenführer Baur, perhaps you can tell me where I might find Sturmbannführer Dorfen? We have been waiting at this bloody airfield for a week now. Where is he?’

  *

  It hadn’t taken courage for Rybakov to be here at this windswept airfield near Bremen, merely the sheer filthy boredom of his existence in the western suburbs of Paris.

  Everyone talked about Russia. But no one did anything. Everyone he knew was a Russian emigré, or the child of emigrés, and more than half of them worked at the Renault factory. It was a mindless, unending existence of tea-rooms, vodka, car components, tales of the old days and boasts of the good days to come. But there would be no good days, not while Stalin and his crew of Red criminals ran Russia into the ground.

  Oh, they all talked big, these emigrés. They all belonged to the Russkie Obschche-Voinsky Soyuz – the Russian Armed Services Union – the pathetic remnants of the White Army, and they all had courage. But no one had the energy or organisational skills to do anything.

  Then, in the summer, late August, he had had a visitor. It was soon after the end of the Olympics, civil war had been raging in Spain for over a month and the Moscow show trials had begun with a death sentence pronounced in absentia on that grubby little revolutionary Trotsky, God damn his godless soul. That, at least, had provided the ROVS boys with some entertainment. Old General Peshnia even offered to go to Russia and pull the trigger himself if ever Trotsky was caught and if only someone would pay his fare. One young wag pointed out to the general that as he now worked as a taxi driver, he could hire himself and drive there. It was only three thousand kilometres, after all. Peshnia was not amused.

  The visitor had approached him out of the blue after the weekly service at the Russian Orthodox Church. As usual, Rybakov had taken his mother, and they were walking slowly back in the midday warmth, keeping to the shade where they could. The street was dusty and there was a smell of dead cat in the still, dry air. Though she was only sixty, his mother was frail and shrunken and dressed in black, in eternal mourning for her husband, a victim of the Bolsheviks, and for the loss of her homeland. The stranger was also small – hardly taller than the old woman – dark-haired and bespectacled. He wore a fedora low over his brow. ‘Vladimir Rybakov?’ he said.

  Rybakov stopped. ‘Who wants to know?’ He spoke in French, body tense. As an emigré leader he was a target for Stalin’s death squads.

  ‘May I talk with you?’

  ‘I’m walking my mother home.’ Rybakov noted the stranger’s German accent and relaxed. The little man looked like a Hollywood secret agent or private dick. ‘Are you a spy?’ he demanded in German, laughing.

  The German did not seem to understand the joke. ‘May I walk with you? I mean you no harm. My name is Dietrich Mann. I am attached to the German embassy.’

  ‘What do you want of me, Mr Mann?’

  ‘Just to walk and talk. You have been recommended to me as a man of passion and energy. And a man fluent in German.’

  ‘Then let us walk and talk slowly, for my mother cannot move quickly.’

/>   *

  Mann told him that he had been sent on the orders of the German government, in particular Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. It was believed that there were many among the Russian exiles in France – a refugee population of perhaps half a million – who were willing to fight to win their country back from the heathen Bolsheviks. Germany, he said, would very much like to assist them achieve their goal.

  ‘Of course, it is something we all dream of, Mr Mann, but what can Germany do for us where we have so dismally failed ourselves?’ Rybakov patted his mother’s arm reassuringly. He had no wish to alarm her.

  ‘I believe you saw some action against the Red Army?’

  ‘I was a captain in the Kornilov Battalion, much good it did us. Now I am reduced to bolting car components into place.’

  Mann looked up at the bearded Russian bear. ‘You have been commended to us as a man of valour.’

  ‘Hah! I need more than courage to maintain my sanity in this living death.’

  ‘Please, hear me out.’

  The German explained that Himmler, after discussions with Goering and Hitler, wished to form a White Russian regiment, under the auspices of the SS. The most modern equipment, arms and specialist training would be offered to a select band of young men who were truly committed to the cause. ‘Initially, when the regiment – or battalion, depending on numbers – is fully trained, you could expect to be sent to Spain to work with the falangists under General Franco. They need our help if they are to advance on Madrid. Your enemy there will largely consist of communists, including Soviet agents. But you would have better armaments and better training than those you face.’

  ‘And how would that help us win back the Motherland?’

  ‘First we must stem the tide of Bolshevism. In doing so, your men will become battle-hardened soldiers and will hopefully grow in numbers. As for the next step, well, I cannot speak for the Führer, but it is no secret that he considers Stalin and the Bolsheviks to be our most bitter enemy.’