The Hansa Protocol

by Norman Russell

  One of the intruders stood on guard at the door. A second unfastened the major’s jacket and held it open, while the nimble fingers of the third carefully unstitched the lining. The memorandum was deftly removed, and a seemingly identical packet substituted. Once again the skilled hands worked with needle and thread, sewing up the lining. The second intruder rebuttoned the jacket and extinguished the candle. The night visitors quietly left the room, and once again the key turned in the lock as though moved by a hidden hand. Not a word had been spoken. Major Lankester continued to be held in the grip of a profound sleep.

  11

  Evening at High Cedars

  Major Lankester’s eyes slowly opened and focused on the bright white of the ceiling. For a moment he wondered where he was, but then was reassured to see that he was in his familiar snug room in Bagot’s Hotel. He felt stiff and cold, part of the penalty of sleeping in his clothes.

  Memories of the previous evening returned with a rush of images, and he jerked upright with a surge of fear. What time was it? How long had he been asleep?

  He pulled open his jacket, saw the neat stitching in the lining, and felt the reassuring bulk of the packet behind it. But he felt no sense of relief. Something had happened, something that threatened danger. But what was it? Why did he feel so heavy and leaden? Surely it couldn’t have been those few brandies last night with old Goldsmith?

  Major Lankester’s spirits revived when he came down into the dining-room. It was only eight o’clock, but there were quite a few people taking breakfast. Cups and saucers tinkled, waiters flitted across the room, bearing trays. One of the porters came across from the lodge with his copy of The Times. It looked as though all was well.

  Colonel Kershaw stood in a small, cramped, glass-sided booth, which clung like a limpet to one of the walls high above the platforms of Victoria Station. He looked down intently for a few moments through a pair of field-glasses, and then turned to look at Vanessa Drake, who was standing rather disconsolately near a table covered with railway guides and timetables. She had proved to be a brave girl, but she was very young, and in need of encouragement.

  ‘Come on, missy,’ he said, gently. ‘You’re to be in on this.’

  ‘I don’t like to,’ Vanessa whispered. ‘He was so kind to poor Arthur—’

  ‘I know. But people are very complex, Miss Drake, and they can do good things one day, and bad things the next. You did your task superbly last night, so Mr Box tells me. You, and Miss Whittaker there, who bullied me into letting her go with you into Lankester’s room. So come and stand here beside me, missy, and do as you’re told. The Dover train will be here in less than a minute.’

  Vanessa crossed the small room, and stood beside Kershaw. He smiled at her, and for a moment she fancied that he had given her a very slight wink. Then he addressed her friend Louise.

  ‘You’d better come here, too, Miss Whittaker,’ he said. ‘You’re not one of my crowd, like missy here, but you were in at the start of this venture, so it’s only fitting that you should be in at the end.’

  Louise crossed the wooden floor of the little room and joined Kershaw at the long glazed window. Far below she could see the thronging platforms of the great terminus, and smell the sulphurous smoke rising from the many locomotives standing with steam up at the buffers. Arnold Box was down there. Perhaps he’d bring that great bear of a man with him. What was his name? Knollys. Sergeant Knollys.

  From where they stood they could see one of the great clock-faces, and just as the large hands signalled ten o’clock, the train from Dover came smoothly to a stop at the platform below them, and proceeded to emit a devastating shriek of steam.

  The platform staff leapt into life, opening doors, trundling trolleys, and sliding open the doors of the luggage van. What appeared to be hundreds of passengers alighted from the train to join the mêlée of confusion on the platform.

  In the glass booth, Colonel Kershaw trained his field-glasses on the crowd.

  ‘There he is,’ said Kershaw softly. ‘He’s walking along towards the first-class carriages. He’s carrying a small valise, and a folded newspaper. Dear me! How very unoriginal!’

  Louise and Vanessa could both see the smartly dressed figure of Major Lankester weaving purposefully through the crowd towards the first-class coach, which was immediately behind the engine and its tender.

  Kershaw trailed the glasses slowly along the platform towards a magazine stall, where a rather portly middle-aged man with gold spectacles and a deerstalker hat was leafing through a periodical.

  ‘Do you see that man in the deerstalker? The man by the stall? That’s Ephraim Stolberg, a trader in State documents. I thought he’d be here. Either Stolberg, or Klaus Müller, who’s another trafficker in secrets. Now – watch!’

  They saw Major Lankester pause for a moment by the stall, and pass his folded newspaper to the man called Stolberg, who immediately disappeared into the press of people on the platform.

  Major Lankester kept his eyes on the magazine stall near the end of the platform. Was he there? Yes! Mr Stolberg was seemingly dipping into a magazine, as though wondering whether to buy it or not. Lankester smiled, and grasped his copy of The Times firmly in his right hand.

  His thoughts turned almost involuntarily to Mr Gordon. Mr Gordon had been very civilized about Lankester’s unpaid account. That, of course, was how it should have been. Lankester was no shrinking amateur at the tables, and Gordon had been accommodating like this before. But there were limits to credit – limits on both sides. He sometimes made fun of Gordon’s foppish attempts to look like an English gentleman, but he respected him, nonetheless. It was not right that the man should have to drop discreet hints about payment by making polite enquiries after his health at Bagot’s Hotel. He now owed Gordon just over one thousand pounds. With luck, he would repay that debt by the weekend.

  As he passed the stall, Lankester paused briefly, and thrust the newspaper into Stolberg’s waiting hand. At the same time, he felt an envelope being put into the pocket of his overcoat. Neither man had so much as glanced at the other. He now had £1,500 in negotiable bonds in his pocket. Wrapped up in the newspaper that he had given to Ephraim Stolberg was the late Dr Seligmann’s memorandum to Baron von Dessau.

  Part of the throng and press on the platform seemed to realign itself, and become an alarming circle of hostile men. Lankester felt the colour drain from his face, and heard the blood pounding in his ears. There were other noises – the hiss of steam, the babble of voices, the rumbling of trolleys, and then a single voice asking him the most deadly question of all.

  ‘You are William George Lankester?’

  He lunged desperately at the little Cockney policeman in the bowler hat, but in a second he had been pinioned by a huge, scar-faced brute of a man. The little Cockney tugged open Lankester’s overcoat and jacket, to reveal the torn lining which he had hastily ripped open in the cloakroom at Bagot’s before leaving for Victoria.

  ‘William George Lankester, I arrest you on the charge that you did, at London, on the twelfth of January of the current year ….’

  The man who had pinioned him now clapped him in handcuffs like a felon. Two other men, who looked liked soldiers out of uniform, began to frog-march him away from the Dover train while the policeman was still speaking. Where were they taking him? He was conscious of mute, staring faces in the crowd, and heard whispered questions from startled passengers. ‘What’s he done?’ ‘Pickpocket, most likely.’ And then, from somewhere near the ticket barrier, he heard someone say, ‘Good God, it’s Lankester! Look at his face! He’s handcuffed …. What’s he done? He’s a major in our regiment. Artillery ….’

  They left the safety of the platforms, and a stolid railwayman guided them across the maze of snow-pocked tracks until they came to a grimy engine coupled to a single carriage, standing at a service bay. The posse of silent men hauled Lankester up into a cold compartment, where they joined him. The Cockney policeman handed what was evidently an arrest warr
ant to one of the men, and then slammed the door. The railwayman locked it from the outside with a brass-handled key. In moments, the dark, unscheduled train was moving out of Victoria Station.

  Inspector Box’s boots crunched on the ballast as he made his way back along the line to the public platforms, secure and dry under the great arched span of the station roof. He walked slowly up the incline towards the buffers, and saw that Colonel Kershaw was waiting for him.

  ‘Well done, Box,’ he said. ‘I’m more pleased than I can say. Lankester was one of my best men, but in the last year quite simple missions in which he was involved managed to fail. And then, his private means were quite modest, but he never lacked for money. He was an inveterate gambler – well, you know that, of course. Perhaps I kept him in my service longer than I should have done.’

  Arnold Box smiled to himself. Did Kershaw think he was an utter chump?

  ‘Colonel,’ he said, ‘what you’ve just told me about Lankester is very touching. But I rather suspect that there was more to this morning’s little exercise than merely catching a dubious character who could have been picked off more privately, and certainly more cheaply, than in full public view at a railway terminus. I think you were on the look-out in case Colin McColl turned up, and that you were very pleased when he didn’t. Turn up, I mean.’

  They walked in silence along the platform for a while. The Dover train had departed, and there were now few people about. Colonel Kershaw looked approvingly at his companion.

  ‘So you saw that, did you? Well done, Mr Box. Yes, I was hoping that McColl wouldn’t turn up, because his absence confirms in my mind that – well, I think you know what’s in my mind.’

  ‘What will you do now, sir?’

  ‘Do? I’ll think, Box, and wait. That man Stolberg has gone off in great glee with a sealed packet containing blank paper. The real memorandum, so expertly extracted from Lankester’s jacket last night by Miss Drake, is at this very moment speeding on its way to Berlin.’

  ‘You put a man on the Dover train?’

  ‘Oh, no, Box. The man I sent is a quite unimportant fellow who works as a traveller for a wine merchant. He left on a train for Harwich at five o’clock this morning. He’ll pass into Germany by way of the Hook of Holland.’

  They had reached the station concourse when Kershaw seemed to make up his mind about something.

  ‘Box,’ he said, ‘have you heard of High Cedars, Lord Mount Vernon’s place in Warwickshire? Well, there’s going to be what the papers call a “glittering reception” there this weekend, and most of the guests have already arrived. I’m going there tonight, and so is Sir Charles Napier. Will you come down there, too? I can easily square things with the commissioner, if that’s necessary. There are things I need to tell you, Mr Box, which are best not blurted out in public.’

  ‘Won’t Lord Mount Vernon object to someone of my class turning up at his country seat? I don’t have evening togs, and all that kind of thing, Colonel Kershaw.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Box. We’ll keep you well out of sight, so as not to scandalize the company! And Lord Mount Vernon won’t object in the least. He’s one of my secret servants.’

  *

  Arnold Box took his seat beside Colonel Kershaw in the closed carriage that had been sent to meet them at Upper Henkley Halt, a deserted railway platform set among the encroaching fir plantations of Lord Mount Vernon’s country estate in Warwickshire. They had been the only passengers in the little train that had toiled there from Warwick. The driver and fireman were already preparing the locomotive to reverse out of the trees, and back on to the main line.

  Colonel Kershaw pointed out of the carriage window to his left.

  ‘Do you see that little spur of line passing through the trees over there, Box? That’s a rather special way of reaching High Cedars, but it’s not available to the public at large. That’s the grim road Lankester travelled when the special train took him away from Victoria this morning. There’s a secret government facility at High Cedars, Box, and my traitor is lodged in a cell there for the duration. He’s not the first to be brought here to Warwickshire, and I don’t suppose he’ll be the last.’

  The carriage driver turned the horse’s head away from the railway line, and they plunged through a dense wood of conifers. After a drive of nearly half an hour, the trees quite suddenly fell away, and Box saw an enormous rectangular sandstone mansion rising dramatically from a hillside.

  ‘High Cedars,’ Kershaw volunteered. ‘Apparently, it was built in the 1830s – a true product of the Railway Age. Lord Mount Vernon told me that it was designed by Cubitt for a newly ennobled corn-chandler. It was meant to overawe by its sheer size, and as you can see, it has a quite bewildering number of square windows. It has a few other useful features, as well – but that’s between you and me. Cubitt claimed that it was built in the Grecian style. Maybe it was, I don’t know. All these trees pre-date the house. They’re firs of some kind, certainly, but whether they’re actually cedars is a moot point. Cubitt said that they were cedars.’

  ‘And what happened to the ennobled corn-chandler, sir?’

  ‘Well, he went bankrupt in 1840. The house was in the ghostly care of an aged caretaker for a few years, and then it was bought by the eighth Lord Mount Vernon, a gentleman who had an eye for a bargain. It’s his son, the ninth Lord Mount Vernon, who lives there now. He was once renowned as a crack shot, a cricketer, and a big-game hunter. As I told you this morning, he’s one of my crowd.’

  The carriage came to a halt under a massive porte-cochère, and a liveried footman appeared at the front entrance of the mansion. Box made to alight, but Kershaw placed a retaining hand on his sleeve.

  ‘Box,’ he said, ‘you and I will of necessity part company here for a while. You’ll be taken up to the top floor, where you’ll find some very decent accommodation waiting for you. I have business of a social and professional nature to attend to for most of this evening, but I will see you up there without fail before midnight.’

  Colonel Kershaw alighted from the carriage, and Box followed him.

  ‘Incidentally,’ said Kershaw, ‘although most of this house belongs to my friend Lord Mount Vernon, the top floor, and the cellarage, have been permanently commandeered by me.’

  A talented string orchestra played cheerful but soothing music as a fitting background to the many conversations taking place in the Grand Salon of High Cedars. A vast hall, rising through three storeys to a coffered ceiling, it was renowned for its grand staircase and the galleries leading from it. There would be dancing later in the evening, and at midnight a display of fireworks on the rear terrace.

  Throughout the Grand Salon, and in the galleries, many small tables had been set, and there were buffets near at hand, attended by liveried footmen. Wines of choice vintage had appeared from the cellars, and conversation was animated.

  At one of the tables laid out in an upper gallery, Colonel Kershaw sipped dry champagne, and glanced from time to time over the balustrade at the brilliant assembly in the hall below. At the same table with him sat a very heavy, healthy man in evening dress, a man whose florid face broke from time to time into an attractive smile.

  ‘You know, Kershaw,’ he said, ‘I can’t think why you persuaded Mount Vernon to invite me to this do. Dashed odd, the whole thing. Far too many foreigners gabbling away. They’ll be the ruin of this country.’

  ‘You’re becoming too bluff and insular, Hamish,’ said Kershaw. ‘That’s what comes of living up there in the barren wastes of Caithness. It’ll do you good to mingle with a few exotic foreigners here at High Cedars.’

  Kershaw’s companion laughed good-humouredly, and glanced up as a man in faultless evening dress approached their table. Kershaw turned round, and stiffened with something approaching excitement. Thalberg! He’d no idea that he’d be at High Cedars.

  ‘Now here’s a chap after my own heart, Kershaw,’ said the man called Hamish. ‘I like this fellow. I met him in London at one of Salisbury’s
receptions for diplomats. I can understand him when he speaks. Damned if I can remember his name, though.’

  ‘I like him too, Hamish. I also like the things he tells me. He’s rather in the same line of business as I am, you know.’

  ‘Oh! Do you want me to go, then?’

  Hamish half rose from his chair, but Kershaw pushed him back with a laugh. ‘Oh, stay where you are! Try to imagine that you’re still at school: just listen, and shut up.’

  The new man bowed in the German fashion, and Kershaw introduced him. ‘Sir Hamish Bull of Caithness. Hamish, this is Count von und zu Thalberg.’

  The count, who was clutching a glass of champagne, sat down in a vacant chair.

  ‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said in perfect English, ‘this is very nice. One can pretend here for a brief weekend that the world is civilized. Everybody seems to be here, as far as I can make out. Mrs Pole-James, novelist and reformer, is here, and has kept me in a state of desperate politeness for the last half-hour. Lady Mary Horton-Stuart, the darling of the salons, is as fascinating as ever. She confided to me that she is actually thirty-five! “Impossible”, I said. I happen to know that she’s forty-two!’

  His two companions laughed, and Sir Hamish Bull visibly relaxed. Then the count caught Kershaw’s eye with a special glance that Kershaw recognized. Thalberg was a high-ranking officer in Prussian Military Intelligence. He was also a fervent Anglophile.

  Kershaw knew that he was about to be told some things of interest, probably served up in a roundabout way. The business of Lady Mary’s age had been the signal.

  ‘Lady Mary, you know, reminds me a little of Adelheid von Braun. Did you ever meet her? She left Germany about four years ago, and I thought she’d come to England. But it may have been Paris. A very charming young lady, but not perhaps as young as she seems. Like Lady Mary, you know. It must have been Paris, otherwise she’d have been here tonight, I’m sure.’