by John Harris
‘But what?’
‘But in the Redmond version there could have been an element of truth.’
In the silence that followed Pullinger fished in a drawer and produced a couple of photographs. They were old, grainy and faded, and he placed them side by side facing Woodyatt. One was of a man in the uniform of a British general of the turn of the century, wearing a bicorn hat, with gold braid on his collar and a row of decorations across his left breast. The face was heavily moustached in the fashion of the day, with the same straight nose, firm jaw and deep-set eyes that Woodyatt had noticed on the photograph among the file papers. ‘Redmond,’ Pullinger said.
He pushed the other one forward. This time the photograph was of an older man, wearing the busby and frogged uniform of a German Death’s Head Hussar. The nose seemed identical and so did the deep-set eyes. Though the moustache was similar, it had acquired the upward twist so beloved of the Kaiser and his generals.
‘Von Rothügel,’ Pullinger said. ‘Look at the eyes. The nose. The mouth. The lobes of the ears.’
Two more photographs were pushed across the desk. One showed a British general shaking hands with Edward VII. The other showed an older man – also shaking hands, but this time with the Kaiser. These photographs showed the features of the two men in profile, and the noses, jaws, eyes, and ears were clear. Apart from the difference in age, they were identical.
Woodyatt looked up. ‘They could be the same man,’ he said.
Pullinger’s face was hard and set. ‘They are the same man,’ he said. ‘For once the great British sporting public had got it right.’
‘Redmond didn’t shoot himself?’ Woodyatt jerked his chair forward. ‘What in God’s name are you trying to tell me?’
Pullinger removed the photographs. ‘It was a put-up job. Doubtless the suicide of MacDonald the year before suggested it.’
‘So what happened?’
‘Redmond was von Rothügel.’ Pullinger gestured again. ‘Redmond’s reputation wasn’t just based on his record as a fighting soldier. He had another based on his command of languages and that period he spent in Potsdam. Just before the Boer War he had been attached to Intelligence, and was considered to be very thorough. There’s a story that once, when he searched the house of an officer suspected of passing secrets and found nothing, he took the man’s six-year-old daughter aside and got her to show him a secret drawer she knew about in Daddy’s desk. The officer was sent to prison and the child lost her father. After that Redmond became Chief of Staff to the Reserve Army which, of course, would be incorporated in the event of a major war.’
‘This is all certain?’
‘Files exist. But they were reviewed in 1905 and stripped of anything that was considered dangerous. A lot of nonsense was put out about Redmond’s suicide being due to overwork and neurasthenia, but unpleasant evidence of his sexual proclivities had turned up by then. Nothing was proved.’
Again Woodyatt wondered why only Darby had thought to collect the material on the case, why Pullinger’s father had not spotted the potentials. Had he, he wondered, been one of the people who had been concerned to avoid a scandal and had destroyed the files?
‘Go on,’ he said.
Pullinger took his time. ‘When war broke out in 1914,’ he said, ‘they remembered the stories that had gone round and started looking into them again. This time they found they were true. The German High Command had arranged everything.’
‘But there was a body.’
‘Oh, there was a body all right. But it wasn’t Redmond’s. Who it was, God only knows. That’s something that was never found out. The bullet through the head and the absence of fingerprints saw to that.’
‘So how did we find out that Redmond was alive?’
‘When this chap Rothügel turned up, somebody noticed it was a free and easy translation of Redmond. “Rot” – red. “Hügel” – hill, mound; Red mound. Redmond. I suppose the similarity in the name is what led people to think Mackensen was MacDonald. In his case he wasn’t. In Redmond’s case he was.’
‘A name’s not much to go on.’
‘No. But it was decided afterwards that the Germans had got on to Redmond’s habits when he was on his language course at Potsdam – which, of course, would be very likely because they’d have been sure to watch him. The enquiry at the War Office after it was all over decided he’d been working for them for some time, but the business in Burma brought things rather suddenly to a head so that something had to be done quickly.’
Pullinger pushed the papers on his desk about thoughtfully. ‘In the last war,’ he said, ‘the Germans out-thought us all along the line. Because they were cleverer? It wasn’t an age of clever generalship anywhere. But think of the first day of the Somme. They were ready for us. They’d built deep dugouts where they sheltered from our bombardment. Why? Could they have known we were going to throw the biggest barrage ever at them?’
Pullinger ran his fingers along the edge of the desk, thinking. ‘We went over in straight lines and, because they’d survived the barrage and knew we were coming in straight lines, that’s how they mowed us down. I was there. I was eighteen. They carted me off the field with three bullets in me.’ He sounded bitter. ‘I think they knew. We all thought they knew. So how? Was it because some swine who knew British generalship told them? For instance someone who’d known Haig, who was running the show.’
Pullinger paused again. ‘What about Passchendaele? Cambrai? We often thought there was someone on the other side of the lines who knew exactly what we’d do. It adds up. As a senior British Intelligence officer, Redmond must surely have known how the army was thinking after the Boer War. I dare bet he told the Germans all the top jobs were held by cavalrymen so that they worked out their machine-guns-and-barbed-wire defences to stop them.’
Again, Woodyatt couldn’t help feeling that Pullinger was making excuses for his father’s lapse of judgement thirty-six years before. By this time, in fact, he was convinced that Pullinger senior, who had failed to connect the possibility of blackmail with a reported sighting of Redmond near the German Embassy in London, had badly failed in his duty; and his son, now that the opportunity had arisen, had dredged up the old scandal in an effort to produce something that would soothe the family conscience.
‘A newspaper would ask for better proof than that,’ he said stubbornly.
‘We have better proof,’ Pullinger said stiffly. ‘A man called Karel Pichurek. Captain on the Austrian staff. He crossed the lines in 1917 and gave us the story from that side. Redmond was taken to Berlin and later turned up on the Eastern Front as General von Rothügel who pulled a few German chestnuts out of the fire at a place called Gumbikunen.’
‘Why did he go over?’
‘Have you heard of Benedict Arnold? He was an American who changed sides in the American War of Independence. He felt he wasn’t appreciated because other officers of less skill had been advanced ahead of him. There was a worm of bitterness in his mind about it. Perhaps Redmond was the same.’ Pullinger produced a sheet of paper, yellow with age and printed in old-fashioned German script, all spiky ends and unnecessary curlicues.
‘Read German?’
‘Not very well.’
‘It’s a propaganda pamphlet that came out just before the Somme. It was issued by the German Foreign Office.’ A typed sheet followed the pamphlet across the desk. ‘That’s a translation.’
‘Is it not marvellous,’ the translation said, ‘that one of our most famous commanders was born a poor man in the North of England? General Georg von Rothügel, conqueror of Gumbikunen, joined the British army as a common soldier. Disliking the powerful British hierarchy, he sought service with the Kaiser and was given the name of another officer who was on the point of death.’
Woodyatt examined the pamphlet carefully. ‘It doesn’t mention Redmond by name,’ he said.
‘It gives his birthplace and the date. It also hints, you’ll notice, at the bogus suicide. And, you’ll notice, it
says that in 1894 a certain Colonel Maximilien von Schwartzkoppen, at the time serving in the German Embassy in Paris, contacted a senior British officer. For your information, Schwartzkoppen was the German officer involved in the spying that started the Dreyfus case.’
Pullinger gestured at the pamphlet. ‘A chap called Georg von Rothügel, aged fifty-one, is mentioned on the German staff list at manoeuvres in 1904,’ he said. ‘We know he died of cancer in a Dresden clinic that year. But his name remained firmly on the German army list. When Intelligence started to check the story all they drew were tantalising blanks. There’s no longer a record of Redmond’s career in the War Office files. Not a scrap. A file on his suicide? It doesn’t exist. The Paris Prefecture of Police lost everything they had. Biographies of von Rothügel? Two came out just after the war. They don’t even touch on his early life. Everywhere you look you meet dead ends. Why, our people asked themselves, was everybody so anxious to prevent anybody knowing anything if there was nothing to know? That pamphlet confirmed what they’d already guessed. Pichurek brought the final proof when he came over.
‘This is a hell of a story,’ Woodyatt said. ‘Is it generally known?’
‘I’ve known about it all my life.’
‘What happened to him in the end?’
‘He left Germany in 1936. When the Nazis came to power Hitler wanted to gain control of the armed forces, so in 1938 General von Fritsch was accused on fabricated evidence of being a homosexual and Field Marshal von Blomberg was brought down by accusations against his wife. You’re a newspaperman. You surely remember those Stories.’
Woodyatt nodded and Pullinger pressed on. ‘I expect,’ he said, ‘that, being cleverer than most, von Rothügel/Redmond had seen the writing on the wall and got out ahead of it.’
‘What happened after he left Germany?’
‘According to the Germans, he died in his bed at the age of seventy-six.’
‘So that’s that.’
‘That is by no means that,’ Pullinger snapped. ‘I’ve told you. He didn’t die.’
‘You mean he’s still alive.’
‘Why not, for God’s sake? It’s 1940 now. Thirty-six years since it all happened. He was a contemporary of Marshal Pétain, the hero of Verdun. He was born in 1856 and at the moment he’s French ambassador to Spain. My father’s still active at eighty-two in spite of wounds he got at Spion Kop in 1900, and in spite of being ruined by this damn business. If he can be active at eighty-two, if Pétain can be active, why can’t Redmond?’
Pullinger fished into his drawer again and produced another photograph. He brought them out as if they were rabbits out of a magician’s hat. This time the man in the picture was in civilian clothes and was very old. The hair was white but the moustache was still there, less cared for now and drooping a little, but still thick and strong.
‘Same chap,’ Pullinger said. ‘It was taken secretly by one of our chaps in Lucerne. That’s what he looks like now. Or roughly. We aren’t sure because soon afterwards, in 1937, he slipped into France.’
‘So?’ Woodyatt was still puzzled. ‘Are we trying to contact him or something?’
‘Of course.’
‘To bring him back and charge him with high treason?’
Pullinger’s smile was hard and mirthless, ‘We would have done a few years back. It’s different now. He could help us. If the Germans could turn him, can we? We’re willing to offer an alternative.’
‘What good can it do now?’
‘If Redmond was on the German staff as General von Rothügel and worked with their Intelligence Service he’ll very likely know the route they intend for their attack in France when it comes. So we want him. We’ve always wanted him. I’ve always thought I might get him. It would give me a lot of pleasure.’ Pullinger’s face was like granite.
Woodyatt studied him. How much vindictiveness was there in the decision to bring Redmond back? How much of what was being planned sprang from spite? Pullinger, he knew, was a man who had fought his way up not always by fair means. It wouldn’t be out of character for him to feel the need for a little revenge.
Pullinger was speaking again. ‘A few years back when he was younger,’ he was saying, ‘we’d have charged him if we could have got our hands on him. But it’s been talked through and it’s felt now that to drag back a man of eighty to face charges of selling secrets forty years ago would make British Intelligence – the British army, the British government, if you like – seem to the world to be monsters. However–’ he drew a deep breath as though struggling to control himself ‘–it would come to the same thing in the end, wouldn’t it? He’d be given a house but there’d be a permanent guard. He wouldn’t be referred to as “the prisoner” but that’s exactly what he’d be.’ Pullinger seemed to derive considerable pleasure from the thought.
‘So we’re going to dig him up and transport him back here?’
‘Since he very likely has a shrewd idea what the Germans are intending, he might well be looking for an opportunity to use it to change sides again.’
Woodyatt couldn’t resist a comment. ‘What a cynical lot of shits we are, aren’t we? Imagine dealing with a man who changes sides as he changes his shirts.’
Pullinger’s face twisted into a thin smile. ‘We’re at war and Redmond’s suddenly become important.’
‘He’d hardly be called Georg von Rothügel.’
‘He isn’t. Not any more. He became Georges Montrouge. Notice the name again? “Rouge” – red. “Mont” – same as Mond. Montrouge. Rot-hugel. Red-mond. People who take an alias often try to keep something in their new name from their old one. Ask any policeman. His family–’
‘He’s got another family?’
‘Well, a wife–’
‘He married again?’
‘Yes. And he was unwise enough to marry a Jewess.’
‘He really did do for himself, didn’t he?’
‘He did indeed. Name of Jeanne Picard. But she died and the last we heard of him was in Metz in Lorraine. We want him to come to England. Willingly if possible. If not, unwillingly. It shouldn’t be impossible to dig him out.’
‘And if we do?’
‘First we identify him.’ Pullinger smiled grimly. ‘At some point in his career, our friend, Bertillon, of the body measurements, came to England to demonstrate his methods to the British police. He was allowed to try his hand on a group of soldiers. Redmond was among them. We have Bertillon’s findings. Which means that if we can just get our hands on the bugger we can apply Bertillon’s system. All it requires is someone to go and find him.’
‘Who gets the job?’ Pullinger’s smile was a little malicious. ‘You,’ he said.
Part Two
One
It was a staggering prospect. Woodyatt was being asked to leap nearly forty years back into the past to persuade some old soldier – a treacherous old soldier into the bargain and by now doubtless crotchety and unwilling – to return to the scene of his humiliation. It seemed a hell of a job. He was going to have to find out a great deal more about him first.
He learned that two of the major participants in the drama were still alive. Sir Horace Varah was living in a set of London flats occupied largely by old people. He was now eighty-nine and widowed but was willing to see Woodyatt. The other was the army doctor who, it was alleged, had caught Redmond in the act in Burma. He was now Brigadier Witkins and living in Winchester. There was one other man worth seeing – Field Marshal Sir Martin Gerrit, who had been a major in the 51st Foot when Redmond had first been commissioned and had known him well. All three might be able to contribute something that would help identify him when he was found.
Sir Horace Varah turned out to be a total blank. He was very old and wasn’t clear in his thoughts and, what was more, behaved as he had in 1904 and avoided committing himself to an opinion.
‘Funny chap,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t make head or tail of him.’
Sir Martin Gerrit was willing to help but also didn’t have
much to offer. ‘Odd chap,’ he said, echoing Varah. ‘Lots of people tried to make him feel easy. These men who come up through the ranks are sometimes a bit touchy at first and in those days it was harder for them than it is now. But everybody – except a few damn fools, and there are always some of those – tried to put him at his ease. But he had a bit of a chip on his shoulder.’ The Field Marshal frowned. ‘Yet he was intelligent and a very likeable chap in many ways in spite of all that. Sense of humour. No end of a brain. Not surprising he did well. Could never understand why he did what he did.’
For an army man of the old school he was remarkably broadminded. He listened to Woodyatt’s next question and shrugged. ‘Well, the case in Burma was never proved, was it?’ he said. ‘Because there was never a trial. But he might have been that way inclined. I have to admit there were little things that could make you suspicious.’
He couldn’t remember a lot about Redmond or any of his habits that might identify him, but he remembered that he had a trick of rubbing his nose with his finger when asked an awkward question.
‘To give him time to think of the answer, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Getting it right was important to a man who’d come up from the ranks. Why all the questions, anyway? Is he still alive?’
Woodyatt smiled. ‘It seems very much, sir,’ he said, ‘as if he might be.’
Despite his age, Brigadier Witkins was in uniform again, running an army hospital near Winchester, and Woodyatt found him in his office. He was a brisk helpful man but he hadn’t known Redmond long.
‘I’d only just arrived out there,’ he said. ‘And of course, soon after that Redmond went home to confer with his superiors. He didn’t come back, so I never saw him again.’
‘According to the reports, you actually caught him in the act.’