Rectum defendere, indeed.
De Vere Green’s papers were the usual hotchpotch of espionage bureaucracy.
Venona decrypts that Herbert had already seen.
Memoranda about expenses and another proposed departmental reorganization.
An envelope marked Weekend Updates, 6–7th December 1952. De Vere Green could not possibly have seen this before he died, so Herbert did not bother opening it.
Herbert was reminded of the way he had rootled through Stensness’ house after Kazantsev had fled. It paid to be thorough.
His search for pertinent information in de Vere Green’s office suddenly seemed much more urgent.
He rummaged through more papers and yet more. Nothing, still nothing, and he had checked everything.
No, he remembered; not quite everything.
He opened the Weekend Updates envelope which he had previously ignored, and tipped the contents onto the desk.
Two agents’ reports, one from Birmingham and the other Cardiff, both concerning trade unions; an agenda for a meeting with Six; and three more Venona decrypts. Herbert shook them free and read them.
The first two seemed nothing special: one an exchange of pleasantries between a chargé d’affaires and a second secretary, which may or may not have been code; the other a White House schedule for Truman, consisting of various departmental meetings and a lunch with the Ohio Women’s Association.
The third was about Achilles.
It was not long, but then it did not have to be. It had been sent from Washington on 10th October 1946, and confirmed the assimilation of 174 German scientists into the American industrial and academic network. “Administration unaware” it added; admission that Truman had been left in the dark.
The war had ended in August 1945. De Vere Green had been in Washington for the nine months after-wards; he had left sometime in the early summer of 1946.
The decrypt was dated October, so Achilles could not have been de Vere Green.
Which meant that Achilles had to be Papworth.
Dear God, Herbert thought.
Achilles was a Soviet agent.
Kazantsev was not working for Papworth; Papworth was working for Kazantsev.
And Papworth received the decrypts, too. This last one had come over the weekend. Papworth had been at the Embassy yesterday. He would have seen it; he would have known that de Vere Green would see it too, first thing on Monday morning.
Find me a single Achilles decrypt which you could categorically not have been involved with, Papworth had told de Vere Green in the church the previous morning, and I’ll retract it all.
Had he known, even as he spoke that line, that the proof would be on their desks so soon? Papworth had turned the accusation of espionage back on de Vere Green once; with this proof, he would not have been able to do so again.
So he had killed de Vere Green, before de Vere Green had been able to turn suspicion into evidence.
De Vere Green kept Leconfield House’s internal directory next to his telephone. Herbert found the number for the director-general’s office, and dialed.
No, said the secretary; Sir Percy was not in the building at the moment. No, she couldn’t say where he was.
It was a matter of national security, Herbert said.
Things tended to be in this building, she replied coolly.
He had evidence that a CIA officer was a Soviet spy and had murdered a senior MI5 man. Wouldn’t Sir Percy want to know that?
She would let Sir Percy know, she said.
If she didn’t tell him where Sir Percy was, Herbert said, he would have her arrested on charges of obstruction of justice.
She was silent, weighing things up; then she said that Sir Percy was at Minimax.
Herbert knew what she meant. Minimax was 54 Broadway, Six’s headquarters just south of St. James’ Park; so-called because, almost thirty years after Six had moved in, the plaque on the door still bore the name of the previous occupants, the Minimax Fire Extinguisher Company.
Herbert had little doubt what—or, more precisely, who—the top brass of Five and Six would be discussing.
He rang Tyce and told him everything that had happened.
“Good Christ, Herbert,” Tyce said when Herbert had finished. “Good Christ.” He took a deep breath. “Right. I’ll put out an APB for Papworth and Kazantsev—all police, all port authorities. Bugger what Five might want, Six too. We waited yesterday, and look where that got us. What are you going to do?”
“Find Papworth.”
“On your own? After being attacked this morning? Not on your life. You wait there. I’ll send a posse of uniforms around, then you can go. No ifs and buts, Herbert, and sod the politics. This is a straight murder hunt now.”
“Fine. Tell them I’ll meet them outside the main entrance.”
Herbert hung up, pocketed the Venona decrypt, walked back through the corridors, and went out through reception into the street. The radio had been correct. There was light outside, for the first time in four days. Dull and patchy, for sure, but light nonetheless, and its very presence made Herbert start. The sun was showing rather than shining, hanging sulkily in a dirty sky, and Herbert felt on his face the faintest stirrings of a breeze, blowing the fog down the river.
Visibility was still barely more than a couple of hundred yards, but in comparison to what he had been used to, Herbert felt as if he could see to Manchester.
After a few minutes, a car pulled up to the curb beside Herbert. He looked to see whether it was Tyce’s men.
It was not. It was Papworth and Fischer.
Herbert knew that he should run, or shout, or both; but he had enjoyed precious little sleep, his mind was still trying to process the implications of what he had just learned, and now to see Papworth, the murderer made flesh, was, in his current state, just that last bit too much.
They opened the doors and came for him, one each side, backing him up against a wall—the wall of the headquarters of Britain’s security service, for heaven’s sake, and there was no one watching who could help.
Papworth reached into his coat pocket and brought out a small switchblade. There was just enough sunshine for the metal to glint dully as Papworth placed it against Herbert’s coat, an inch or so beneath his ribs.
“Where is it?” Papworth hissed.
Was this the same man who had come to Hannah’s flat in the small hours and asked him the same question? Herbert could not tell.
“Where’s what?”
It was not an idle question; Herbert genuinely did not know whether Papworth meant the microdots or the Venona decrypt.
“What Stensness was offering,” Papworth said. “Tell me where it is, or I’ll kill you, and I’ll make it slow.”
Funny, Herbert thought, how every person had in them something that one might not see for years, decades even, perhaps never; but when one did, one could never look at that person in the same way again. They were changed, and that could not be undone.
That was how Papworth appeared to Herbert now. The features were Papworth’s, the voice too, but the expression and tones into which they were arranged were something Herbert had never seen on him before. Papworth’s bluff overloud American bonhomie was abruptly gone, wiped clean as if from a restaurant slate.
Playing ignorant would no longer work, Herbert knew; nor would holding out.
Was it worth dying for?
No.
Would they kill him anyway?
Perhaps.
But if he continued to resist, they would kill him, of that he was sure.
It was no contest, really.
“It’s in Guy’s Hospital,” Herbert said.
“Guy’s?” Papworth said. “Good.”
Herbert could not see why that should be an especially propitious location, and from the look on his face nor could Fischer, but that was hardly the most pressing of Herbert’s problems.
They ushered him into the backseat—no internal locks, he noticed—climbed into th
e front seats themselves, and set off.
“There you go,” Papworth said, more to Fischer than to Herbert. “I told you he’d be there.”
“A stroke of luck,” Fischer said.
“Luck be damned! Intuition.” Papworth chuckled. “Always trust your hunches.”
Papworth drove with skill and no little verve, slicing past the slower cars which had ventured cautiously out this morning.
Herbert looked out of the window and tried to calculate his options.
Papworth knew why Herbert had gone to Leconfield House, that much was clear. He would not have gone there himself otherwise. So should Herbert tell Papworth that he had the decrypt, or should he act as though he had found nothing?
The latter, clearly. The proof of Papworth’s treachery was Herbert’s only piece of leverage; to let Papworth know that he had it would seal his fate. Herbert’s elimination would then become desirable, even necessary.
No; his only hope of getting out of this alive was to give Papworth what he wanted and get away as quickly as possible.
When they crossed Waterloo Bridge, Herbert saw that the river was still shrouded in miasma, and the boats remained at anchor; no surprise, as waterways tended to be where fog settled first and lifted last.
A few minutes later, now on the south bank, they passed the approach road to Blackfriars Bridge.
From this point on, Herbert realized, they would follow the same route he had taken this morning in the ambulance.
In the half-light, seeing all the traffic islands and potholes, he caught his breath. He had been very, very lucky to get away unscathed on that drive.
The road outside London Bridge station was clogged by buses. Herbert counted seventeen in all, halted nose-to-tail in a gigantic red metal caterpillar, doubtless waiting for their drivers to come back and claim them.
Papworth parked as near to the foyer as he could without actually driving in, and they went inside.
The Emergency Bed Service warning was now at yellow, Herbert saw; the ratio of admissions to applications had dropped the wrong side of 80 percent.
Staccato whispers in the corridor, like bushfire.
There were no longer enough shrouds to wrap all the corpses in the mortuary.
There were more deaths than there had been in the cholera and influenza epidemics of times past.
In flats opposite Battersea power station, windows had fallen from their frames after sulfur dioxide had eaten through the metal hinges. Imagine what that was doing to your lungs.
Through corridors Herbert now knew well, walls smeared in blue green.
They passed two doctors chatting.
“I’m telling you, Reginald,” one was saying, “the best cure for a hemorrhaged ulcer is a large soluble capsule filled with Dreft washing powder and washed down with a gin and tonic. One every morning, that’s the prescription. It worked for Rodgers.”
“Rodgers?”
“Rodgers and Hammerstein. He’s the whitest man I know.”
Herbert kicked away the mocking bubbles of their laughter.
They reached the ward Hannah had been placed in.
“It’s in here,” Herbert said. “I’ll just get it for you.”
“We’re coming in with you,” Papworth said.
Herbert did not want to expose Hannah to any more danger than he had to; but there were plenty of people around, and if he could minimize the time spent there with her, then that would surely be all right.
He pushed open the door and walked in.
Hannah’s bed was empty.
“Where the hell is she?” Herbert said, to no one in particular.
“Are you her gentleman friend?”
The question had come from one of the other beds; a young man with a yellowing plaster on his left temple.
“That’s right.”
“She’s gone to see your mother. She said to tell you if you came back.”
“My mother?”
“Yes. One of the nurses was talking about what a coincidence it was, that they ended up in the same hospital. So she went to see her.”
Typical Hannah, Herbert thought; anyone else in her situation would have stayed in bed, rather than tapped her way through unknown corridors to make friends with a woman she had never met.
Herbert looked at Hannah’s bed again. Her cane was not there.
“Let’s go and see your mother, then,” Papworth said, his voice sunny for the benefit of the young man and anyone else who might have been listening.
“Yes,” Herbert said, forcing jollity into his voice, “let’s.”
They continued through the warren until they came to Mary’s ward.
She was not there either.
Angela was busying herself in the corner with one of the other patients.
“Angela,” Herbert said, “where’s my mother?”
“Oh, hello, Herbert.” She smiled at him, then at Papworth and Fischer. “Hello.”
They smiled back; Herbert’s friends, no need to worry.
“Two doors down, on the right.”
“Why did you move her?”
“A private room became available, and she kicked up such a fuss that we moved her there. More for our own peace and quiet than anything else, you know?”
She laughed, to let Herbert know she was joking—well, half-joking—and then turned back to the patient she had been attending.
Herbert was about to ask where Guy’s had got the spare room from, since they were on the yellow warning.
Then he realized that the previous occupant had probably joined the ranks of those on whom the fog had taken its toll in the most crowded part of the hospital: the mortuary.
They found Mary and Hannah at the third time of asking.
The room was small and almost dark; a small bedside lamp provided the only illumination. Mary was sitting up in bed, with Hannah wrapped in blankets on the chair next to her.
“Is very simple,” Hannah was saying. “Marriage is love. Love is blind. So, marriage is institution for blind.”
“Stop it, dear,” Mary said through her chuckles. “It hurts me to laugh.”
“Hello,” Hannah said, having heard Herbert, or smelled him, or just had some sixth sense of his presence.
“Herbert!” Mary said. “Told you they’d find me a room, in the end. And your lady friend is making me laugh far more than is good for me.”
She looked at Papworth and Fischer, as though noticing them for the first time. “Who are you?” she asked.
Papworth closed the door behind him and stood in front of it, arms folded and shoulders out, like a linebacker.
“Hannah, I need your cane,” Herbert said.
“It’s in her cane?” Papworth asked.
When Herbert nodded, Papworth looked at Fischer, as if to ask, How could we have missed that?
Fischer shrugged, and said nothing.
“What on earth is going on?” Mary asked.
“Is not here,” Hannah said.
“It’s not on your bed.”
“Must be down side.”
“I’ve had enough of this,” Papworth said.
“Without your cane, how did you get from your ward to here?” Herbert asked.
“Nurse bring me.”
Herbert turned to Papworth. “We’ll have to go back and get it.”
“She’s lying,” Fischer said. “The cane’s here.”
Hannah slumped suddenly, her eyes wide against skin quickly pale; a relapse. Herbert grabbed her under the armpits and held her upright. Her face was slippery with sweat, as though her skin had sprung a leak.
“Get a doctor!” Herbert yelled at Papworth.
“I’m a doctor,” Fischer said.
“A real doctor, damn you!”
“I am a real doctor.”
Hannah was staring at Fischer. Her gaze was so intense that Herbert could hardly believe she could not see. She was stammering, and Herbert had never seen her so uncollected.
Then, in the split
second before she managed to get the words out, he knew what she knew, and what she was going to say.
“Hello, Uncle Pepi,” she said.
Mengele, Herbert thought uselessly; Mengele, Mengele. Mengele was here.
So obvious, when one knew. So obvious, when one put together the pieces.
Genetics, the new frontier of science; the battleground for the next world war.
Mengele, who had vanished from postwar Germany.
The Americans, recruiting Nazi scientists to stop them working for the Soviets.
Operation Paperclip, which had whitewashed the German scientists’ records and given them false names if necessary.
Dr. Fischer’s pursuit of DNA was the natural continuation of Mengele’s fiendish work in Auschwitz.
So obvious, when one saw Mengele’s unblinking basilisk stare, with all the biblical connotations, his eyelids so heavily hooded that only half of his greenish brown irises were visible.
So obvious, when one considered Hannah’s reactions.
In Wheeler’s, she had excused herself instantly, almost as though she had taken a sudden turn. Mengele had been there. Even though he had not spoken in her presence, she must have sensed something, an injustice whose memory was locked so deep within her that, on reflection, she had simply refused to consider it.
The terror on her face in the small hours as the intruder rampaged through the flat; again, she must have known, even without knowing that she knew.
So obvious, when Herbert thought of the way in which that intruder had threatened to blind him.
So obvious, that here was pure iniquity, pulsing in endless waves of fission.
Hannah’s shrinking was almost visible. She had bowed her head and dropped her shoulders, clasping her hands in her lap. Suddenly she was fifteen again, the shy twin who would not have said boo to a goose, all her sparkling defiance—all Esther’s stubborn refusals—gone. She looked halfway catatonic; too far gone to speak.
For days, the radio had spoken of little but visibility, or the lack of it. With grudging admiration Herbert had to doff an imaginary cap to Mengele, for what could be more visible than a man hiding in plain view?
Mengele, too proud to go to ground in a Paraguayan jungle. While all those Jewish commandos were tramping around South America, their quarry was going about his unobtrusive daily business at the heart of the enemy.
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