Vanderberg snorted. ‘It’s overrated. Look – I heard something on the sly that I thought might interest you. Your pal Yuri Kholtov has turned up in Moscow.’
‘Really?’ Wilde was instantly intrigued, and puzzled. ‘Last I heard, Eaton had him under lock and key, pumping him for information. And Kholtov gave me the impression he was afraid of what might await him in Russia. How the hell did he end up there?’
‘No idea. But it seems he has been consigned to a Lubyanka cellar. I wouldn’t give a dime for his chances.’
‘Are you absolutely sure about this? I can’t believe Eaton would have let him slip his grasp.’
‘Maybe he shipped him home deliberately. Because I’ve also heard that Moscow is awash with Spanish gold just now. More than five hundred tonnes, aboard four ships. Came in through Odessa . . .’
*
The Black Work cell, the place of execution. The stench of blood was strong. There was no window, no bed, not even a table and chair. There was only one purpose to this room deep in the unholy bowels of the Lubyanka prison.
Perhaps he should have taken a cosy desk job? But Stalin liked to keep people doing what they were good at – and with his command of languages and easy manner, Kholtov had been the obvious choice to run the Soviet espionage networks in France, Spain, Scandinavia and England, the obvious choice to recruit men like Horace Dill. And now this, not even a trial. Not even a visit from his wife or children. How would they survive the inevitable labour camp?
He should be angry. He should be raging against his old friends: Stalin and Slutsky, against NKVD chiefs Yagoda and Yezhov, but he no longer had the energy. Not even against Philip Eaton.
The door opened and a figure emerged from the dark corridor, filling the doorway. Vasily Blokhin. The brute beast.
Even as Blokhin entered, the smile did not leave Kholtov’s eyes. He nodded to his executioner, noting the pistol in his hand, a German-made Walther. Blokhin had never trusted the Soviet-made Tok. At least Blokhin was a professional, the veteran of hundreds if not thousands of killings. It would be quick and easy. No nervous beginner to leave you half-dead and paralysed in a pool of your own blood. Kholtov turned away to face the wall and waited for the darkness. He did not close his eyes.
Blokhin said nothing. It was just the work of a moment for him. He held the automatic pistol to the base of Kholtov’s skull, and pulled the trigger with the indifference of a slaughterman dispatching cattle.
*
Over the next few days, Wilde found himself wondering more and more about Philip Eaton. The peseta coin sat on his desk and he would pick it up from time to time, turning it in his fingers. Yuri Kholtov was not the only one to have gone to Spain: Eaton had been there, too. Wilde thought about Eaton’s youthful flirtation with communism. Could it have been more enduring than he cared to let on? That might go some way to explain why Kholtov had been flung back to the wolves in Moscow. It was certainly a strange thing for a British secret service man to do.
A fortune in gold coins hidden on an old trawler . . . and a single, pathetic peseta coin found in the room of a dead girl. If an undergraduate had come to him with this sort of flimsy evidence to back up a piece of historical research he would have sent him packing.
And yet . . . and yet it was part of a narrative that had begun to form in his mind since the lunch in Eaton’s club, a narrative that was beginning to make sense of many things.
If Sir Robert Cecil or Walsingham had been running Soviet secret intelligence, what would they have said to a man of Eaton’s potential? It was obvious: Forget the Communist Party, Mr Eaton, work for the Comintern in other ways. Secret ways. You will be a thousand times more useful to the cause than any rabble-rouser with a banner. The implications of such a possibility were chilling. And who had been Eaton’s mentor? Horace Dill.
Wilde abandoned caution and let his imagination run riot. What if Eaton had learned of Nancy’s work in Berlin from Horace Dill? Berlin might have been Dill’s idea, but perhaps Eaton realised he could get Nancy to find out what her own father was up to. Who better?
He paused for a moment. What if Eaton had gone one step further. What if he had tried to recruit Nancy not just to work against the Nazis but to work for the Soviet Union. Nancy was clever, one of the brightest of her generation. And what if that had gone badly wrong? What if Nancy saw the distinction immediately: working for a foreign power was not the same as working for a political movement. Working for a foreign power was treason.
Wilde pulled out Nancy’s letter to Dave Johnson from beneath the pile of books on his table, He read through it again. One sentence, one question stuck out: is there a line between fighting for a cause and fighting for the enemy? Berlin was an honourable undertaking, helping a renowned scientist. But the letter to Dave Johnson was written months later. What had gone wrong in the meantime? Had Eaton indeed tried to recruit her – or had she seen his name on the North Sea list? What if Nancy had become seriously rattled? Eaton would surely have worried that she would expose him. He would never be safe while she was alive.
It would have been a simple matter for Eaton to call on Moscow for something undetectable to slip into her heroin dose while visiting her in Chesterton, perhaps? Something she could slide, unknowing, into her own arm with her silver syringe. And what if a forgotten peseta had fallen from his pocket . . .
But if any of this was true, why had Eaton befriended him? Why did he suggest that Nancy had worked for the Comintern in Berlin? Why draw attention to himself in such a manner? Wilde thought again of Sir Francis Walsingham and Sir Robert Cecil, Elizabeth’s great masters of intelligence. A little truth goes a long way in concealing a more damning truth. And Eaton was a professional. He knew of Wilde’s connections with the US diplomatic service. Meeting men like Wilde would have been part of his job – whether for MI6 or the NKVD. Eaton saw an opening – and he was in.
The kettle was boiling. Wilde took it from the hob; he didn’t want tea. He wondered where he had left the bloody whisky. His mind was taking him to dark places. Too much Machiavelli. Too much Walsingham. And all utterly futile, because in the case of the death of Nancy Hereward there was no proof that a crime had even been committed. Nor was there ever likely to be.
He found the whisky and poured a small shot. Then thought better of it and put it aside, untouched. Instead he stretched his arms and looked out of the window.
The days were getting longer. A little more light. Intimations of warm days to come.
He put on his coat and boots and gauntlet gloves and left his rooms, nodding a greeting to Bobby.
‘I’ve got another horse, professor.’
‘What happened to the last one? Winter Blood, wasn’t it?’
‘Fell at the first fence, sir. But this one’s a certainty. Golden Miller.’
‘Half a crown each way then.’
‘Put it on the nose, professor.’
‘Whatever you say, Bobby.’
Wilde walked out into the brisk February air. Lydia would be waiting for him, huddled into her duffle coat up at Cornflowers. Together, they would ride out into the countryside aboard the Rudge and she would wrap her arms round his waist and nestle her head into his shoulder. In bed last night, she had told him she wanted to see some snowdrops, some sign of new growth. New life. And he had promised they would.
Read on for a message from Rory Clements
Dear Reader
Corpus is different from anything I have tried before, but I hope that those of you who have supported the John Shakespeare series so enthusiastically have enjoyed reading it as much I enjoyed writing and researching it.
For all its international background, Corpus always returns to Cambridge and an unconventional history professor named Tom Wilde. As a character he intrigued me from the very start and I knew he had many other stories to tell - and so this has proved. Even as I was finishing Corpus, my next novel, Nucleus, had begun to evolve. It opens in June 1939, the period in the build-up to th
e ‘Phoney War’, a summer during which England partied like there was no tomorrow, with gas masks at the ready. In Cambridge, the May Balls were played out with a frantic intensity, but only the most optimistic believed that the good times would last. Germany had invaded the free Czechoslovak territories, with flagrant contempt for the 1938 Munich Agreement. The persecution of the Jews in Occupied Europe had gathered pace to such an extent that desperate parents were sending their children to safety in Britain aboard the Kindertransport. Closer to home, the IRA had launched its S-Plan campaign, perpetrating more than 100 terrorist outrages around England.
However, in hindsight, perhaps the most far-reaching event of this time went largely unreported: in Germany, Otto Hahn had discovered nuclear fission and an atomic device was now a very real possibility. In the immediate wake of his breakthrough, the Nazis set up the Uranverein group of physicists. Its task: to build a superbomb. Aware that there were scientists working on similar lines in England and the US, the German high command needed to discover how soon the West might be able to produce such a bomb, and prevent that happening. Only then would it be safe to go to war.
The obvious target was the famous Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, home to the world’s greatest physicists and the place where the atom was first split. Scientists there were alert to the dangers posed by the Uranverein. So were the British secret services. And when one of the Cavendish’s finest brains is murdered, Tom Wilde is once more drawn into an intrigue from which there seems no escape. In a conspiracy that stretches from Cambridge to Berlin and from Washington DC to the west coast of Ireland, he faces deadly forces that threaten the fate of the world.
If you would like to hear more from me about Nucleus and my other future books, you can sign up here and join the Rory Clements Readers Club. It only takes a moment, there is no catch and new members will automatically receive Corpus: Beginnings, an exclusive short story that throws a little more light on to Hartmut Dorfen and the background to Corpus. Your data is private and confidential and will never be passed on to a third party and I promise that I will only be in touch now and again with book news. If you want to unsubscribe, you can of course do that at any time.
However, if you would like to be involved and spread the word about my books, you can review Corpus on Amazon, on GoodReads, on any other e-store, on your own blogs and social media accounts, or, of course, by actually speaking to another human being! You’ll help other readers if you share your thoughts and you will help me, too: I love hearing from readers about what they experience from my books – and I always read my reviews!
But for now, thanks again for reading and for your interest in Tom Wilde and his Cambridge world. I’m lucky to have had so many committed and intelligent readers for my John Shakespeare series and I look forward to hearing from you about my new venture.
With my best wishes
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I could not have written this book without the tireless help of my editor, Kate Parkin, and agent, Teresa Chris. I like to think of them as my Lendls.
Nor could I have survived the long, difficult days without the support of my family, who always bore the brunt of my ill temper when things weren’t going quite as planned.
In addition, I would like to mention Andrew Neall of the wonderful Norfolk Motorcycle Museum in North Walsham. Andrew is a motorcycle enthusiast who introduced me to the delights of the Rudge Special, a bike he has lovingly re-commissioned and made fit to ride once more.
Last, but certainly not least, I am immensely grateful to Greg Fisher, who lent me many books on the 1930s and assisted me with his knowledge of Cambridge University life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
RORY CLEMENTS was born on the edge of England in Dover. He was an associate editor at Today newspaper, followed by stints at the Daily Mail and Evening Standard.
Since 2007, Rory has been writing full-time in a quiet corner of Norfolk, England, where he lives with his family. He is married to the artist Naomi Clements-Wright. He won the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award in 2010 for his second novel, Revenger, and three of his other novels – Martyr, Prince and The Heretics – have all been shortlisted for awards. A TV series of the John Shakespeare novels is currently in development.
Find out more at roryclements.co.uk
First published in Great Britain in 2017 by
ZAFFRE PUBLISHING
80–81 Wimpole St, London W1G 9RE
www.zaffrebooks.co.uk
Text copyright © Rory Clements, 2017
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
The right of Rory Clements to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-785-76263-1
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Printed and bound by Clays Ltd, St Ives Plc
Zaffre Publishing is an imprint of Bonnier Zaffre,
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www.bonnierzaffre.co.uk
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Table of Contents
Praise
Title Page
Contents
Dedication
Berlin, August 1936
Chapter 1
England, Monday November 30, 1936
Chapter 2
Tuesday December 1, 1936
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Wednesday December 2, 1936
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Thursday December 3, 1936
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Friday December 4, 1936
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Saturday December 5, 1936
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Sunday December 6, 1936
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Monday December 7, 1936
Chapter 41
Aftermath
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
A message from author
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
Corpus Page 36