The Age of Treachery

by Gavin Scott

  The desk behind which the former naval officer sat in his wood-panelled office looked for all the world like the control centre for some vast spy network. Not only were there four British Post Office telephones in different colours, several sets of red, green and white General Electric light boards and two Marconi intercoms, but on the wall behind him was a huge map of the world, with tiny flashing lights embedded in cities from Anchorage to Addis Ababa.

  “Just journalists,” said Fleming, waving a hand airily at the map, “but one has to keep tabs on them.” The air of self deprecation on his bony, handsome, slightly querulous-looking face didn’t deceive Forrester for a moment: he knew how much Fleming had enjoyed all the trappings and excitement of Naval Intelligence during the war, and it was clear that despite the loss of the Royal Navy uniform which had suited him so well, he was trying to recreate it here. There was always something of the overgrown schoolboy about Ian Fleming.

  “It’s all for show,” said Fleming modestly. “Convinces Kemsley he’s getting his money’s worth from me.”

  Lord Kemsley had hired Fleming to help bolster the image of a newspaper group which had not come out of the war with a high reputation. Just months before the invasion of Poland its somewhat impressionable owner had blotted his copybook with the British government by rushing off to Germany to interview Hitler, and then compounded the offence by publishing intelligence which turned out to come from the top-secret Ultra programme. Now he wanted to make the paper respectable again – and had hired the well-connected Fleming as part of that process.

  Grandson of a financier, son of an MP, old Etonian, friend of Noël Coward, Fleming had failed to find any role beyond that of playboy until the war came along; once it had begun he came into his own, dreaming up grand schemes for British intelligence and even giving unsolicited advice to the Americans on how to create their own spy organisation. Forrester had met him several times at SOE training courses in various requisitioned country houses and then, memorably, in a wrecked chateau in France after the D-Day landings. Many people regarded the man as an arrogant snob, but Forrester had a somewhat perverse liking for him, sensing the insecurity behind the insouciant façade.

  Beyond his slightly ambivalent job at The Sunday Times (what did a Foreign Manager really do?) Forrester had heard rumours that Fleming had another, even more unorthodox newspaper connection in the form of a risky affair with Ann Charteris, wife of Viscount Rothermere, the owner of the Daily Mail, and one of Fleming’s closest friends.

  Their sexual congress was rumoured to be somewhat outré, and it was said that between bouts of activity they would exchange notes on how their respective papers could better compete, even as Fleming insisted on his continuing affection for Ann’s husband. It was, in short, a relationship replete with danger. But despite that, or perhaps because of it, Fleming delighted in gossip and was fascinated to hear an extra titbit about the Barnard murder.

  “Calthrop was there that night?” he said, when Forrester told him. “He must hate that. He’s such a careful man, is Calthrop.”

  “I’ve been told he’s setting up an anti-Soviet spy network.”

  Fleming raised a highly bred eyebrow. “You’re not supposed to know that. Who told you?”

  “It’s common gossip in Oxford,” said Forrester, avoiding a direct answer. “Might he have been there because of Lyall?”

  “You mean, to recruit him?”

  “Or to investigate him?”

  “It’s possible, but he most likely came to talk to your Master.”

  “Winters?”

  Fleming checked to make sure the door was closed.

  “You remember Mycroft Holmes?” he asked, unexpectedly.

  “Well, I remember reading about him in Sherlock Holmes stories,” replied Forrester. “Big fat chap, wasn’t he, and even cleverer than his brother?”

  “Éminence grise of British intelligence,” said Fleming. “Just like Michael Winters during the late hostilities. I’m sure Calthrop was there to ask Winters’ advice about setting up the new op against the Soviets.”

  Forrester paused, surprised. Somehow, he’d never thought to ask what the Master had been doing, apart from being Master, during the war.

  “He never mentioned it,” said Forrester. “Winters, I mean. I didn’t even know he’d been involved with intelligence.”

  “Well, he’s not the sort of chap to go talking about these things, but he was very highly regarded. And of course he’s very sound on communism. Calthrop may have even been asking him whether he’d be prepared to be the head boy.”

  “What, of the counter-intelligence operation?”

  “Why not? A natural step up from being Master of an Oxford college.”

  Forrester considered this. “I’ve always just thought of Winters as an academic,” he said. “This puts him in a new light.”

  Fleming glanced at his Rolex. “Look, can we continue this in my car? I’ve promised Ann I’d drop by for drinks at Warwick House. You can join me, if you like. She usually has an interesting crowd.”

  Minutes later Fleming was pulling his modest Morris Oxford out of its parking spot beside Kemsley’s blue Rolls Royce and he and Forrester were gliding through the almost car-free city towards Green Park. Forrester said, “There was a German there that night named Peter Dorfmann, did you ever hear anything about him?”

  “Professor of German Literature at Berlin University,” replied Fleming, shifting gears smoothly.

  “How did he manage to hold a job like that and avoid getting involved with the Nazis?”

  “Low cunning, I imagine.”

  “It can’t have been easy, keeping them at arm’s length in a prominent position like that.”

  They were turning into Bond Street now, and Forrester noted that Sotheby’s was in business again, as was Cartier’s. No posters were asking people to save Fabergé eggs for the children.

  “Was a German literature professor a prominent position during the war?” asked Fleming. “I mean, I can easily imagine this fellow pontificating away in the literature department without der Führer’s beady eye ever fastening on him.”

  “Don’t forget der Führer was an author,” said Forrester.

  Fleming laughed. “What a dreadful thought: having to deliver solemn lectures on Mein Kampf.”

  “And Goebbels was a book lover.”

  “He was indeed,” said Fleming. “He used to burn one before bedtime every night.” He pulled the Morris neatly into a parking space opposite Warwick House. One positive outcome of the Luftwaffe’s depredations: there were plenty of parking spaces in London these days.

  Newly refurbished, Warwick House rose magnificently out of the surrounding ruins, and from the upper drawing room there were magnificent views over the snowy expanse of Green Park, with Buckingham Palace visible through the winter trees.

  As he looked around the room it seemed to Forrester that Fleming’s mistress was using her husband’s money and her own formidable energies to recreate the salons of the 1930s. The place was thick with writers, artists, Tory politicians and the kind of aristocrats once described as being distinguished by “their intricate family relationships and curious nicknames”.

  But the centre of attention was Lady Rothermere herself, with flashing eyes and thick, dark hair, and managing, despite the opulence of her surroundings, to give an impression of bohemian recklessness. She embraced Fleming and waved her champagne glass welcomingly towards Forrester.

  “Have you heard what Time magazine says about me?” she asked. “Peter, show them the article.” Peter Quennell, recently foisted on the editor of the Daily Mail by Ann as a book critic with a salary a thousand pounds more than that of the previous incumbent, obediently brought out the cutting.

  “‘In a beautiful new red straw hat,’” he read. “‘Brought from Paris by her friend the Duchess of Westminster, the vituperative Ann, Lady Rothermere—’”

  “What nonsense,” interrupted Ann.

  “Perfectly true,
” said Fleming.

  “‘The vituperative Ann, Lady Rothermere, 32,’” continued Quennell, “‘is forcing her gloomy new husband, Lord Rothermere, 47, to pay more attention to his newspaper interests. As for him, his daily trips to the office are becoming more and more irksome, and he longs to get away from the job to travel, study, read. But his wife’s enthusiasm for the paper is preventing him.’”

  “All nonsense,” said Ann, “but it’s nice to know the people of the New World are kept informed about what sort of hat I wear.”

  “What else should we tell them?” asked Fleming mischievously. “I’m sure there are details that would fascinate them even more than your taste in headgear…” and as Fleming and Ann drifted away together Forrester accepted a champagne glass from a waiter and let his eye roam around the room, which seemed to him a kind of bubble floating above the surface of austerity Britain.

  “Hello, you,” said a voice behind him, and when he turned his fingers felt numb around the glass as he found himself looking into the eyes of Barbara Lytton.

  But he knew perfectly well that Barbara was three years dead, and with him now only in his dreams. So what was she doing here, smiling up at him, looking like a schoolgirl again? “You don’t recognise me, do you?” said the girl. He did not. “It’s me, Gillian.”

  “Good God,” said Forrester.

  “No braces,” said the girl. “Not so many spots. Well, not any, actually, I hope. And no pigtails.”

  “Gilly,” said Forrester, feeling as though the floor was tilting away beneath him. She smiled again at him, a little wistfully.

  “It’s been a long time,” she said, “since you were at our house.”

  “Yes,” said Forrester and then for what seemed to him like an eternity, could not speak. At last he said: “I did come to see your parents, actually, on my next leave after… But you were away at school.” He took her hand, and suddenly found it hard to speak. “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  The girl looked away. “Yes, it was pretty awful,” she said. “I’m not sure Mummy and Daddy have ever got over it, really.” She met his eyes again. “I try to fill the gap, but it’s no use.”

  “You look so like her,” he said.

  “So they say,” she replied. “Lot to live up to.”

  “No,” said Forrester. “That’s not the way to think about it. You’ve just got to be you.”

  “Thank you,” she said. There was a pause. Then she said: “You must miss her.”

  “I do,” said Forrester. And could not continue.

  “Listen, why don’t you come down to Cranbourne some time? I know Mummy and Daddy would be glad to see you again.”

  “I’d have thought I brought back some painful memories.”

  “But some good ones too,” said the girl. “And we don’t want her to just… vanish. Do you understand?”

  “Of course,” said Forrester.

  “Then you’ll come?”

  “Yes, I’ll come,” he said. She smiled as if he’d just given her a great gift.

  “That’s wonderful, thank you.” Forrester watched her disappear into the crowd, as if he was watching Barbara that last time at Waterloo Station.

  Then there was a hand on his arm. “Captain F as I live and breathe!” said a voice from six inches above his head, and Forrester looked up to see Major Archibald MacLean. The red hair was tinged with grey now, but the jutting cheekbones still stood out like the rocks of some highland crag.

  “MacLean!” said Forrester, with genuine pleasure. “What are you doing here?”

  “Picking up gossip,” said MacLean. “And women, when I can get them. That was a nice wee piece giving you the glad eye there.”

  “Barbara Lytton’s sister.”

  “Ah,” said MacLean, his voice softening. He knew the story.

  “Bit of a shock seeing her, actually,” said Forrester.

  “It would be,” said MacLean, and taking Forrester’s empty glass, placed it on the tray carried by a passing waiter, took a fresh one and handed it to Forrester before guiding him into a less crowded part of the room.

  “I gather you’ve been making enquiries about Peter Dorfmann,” he said.

  “How did you know that?”

  “You don’t imagine anything you tell Ian Fleming stays private for very long, do you? That man is incapable of keeping anything to himself for more than five minutes. But it’s good that he told me, because it seems to me we might be able to give each other a wee bit of help.”

  “How do you mean? What have you got to do with Dorfmann?”

  “I’m at the War Ministry,” he said. “Keeping an eye on the Control Commission.”

  Forrester looked at him in surprise. “Running Germany?”

  “Well, trying to make sense out of the shambles,” said MacLean. “And as I think you know Dorfmann is one of the laddies the Allies have decided to raise to great heights. When I say ‘the Allies’ I mean the Americans, of course.”

  “Ah.”

  “And you know how much reliance I tend to place on their judgment.”

  “You were always prejudiced.”

  “I was. I am. As far as I’m concerned all they bring to international politics is naivety and apple pie. Good souls, most of them. But not very canny, you know? Anyway I personally think we could be letting ourselves in for a lot of trouble if we let Herr Dorfmann loose on the new Germany.”

  “To be honest his politics don’t particularly concern me. The reason I’m interested in him is because he was there the night David Lyall was killed. Have you heard about that?”

  “I have, oddly enough.”

  “Well I want to know if Dorfmann had anything to do with it.”

  “So perhaps our interests run together.”

  “In what way?”

  “I’d like to know more about him too.”

  “Well, if you’re involved with the Allied Control Commission you’re in the perfect position to find out anything you want, aren’t you?” said Forrester. “I mean, the whole country’s at your feet.”

  “I’m not in as good a position as you’d imagine,” said MacLean. “The Yanks have given Dorfmann a clean bill of health and it would be very undiplomatic right now for me or any of our chaps to go second-guessing them. You, on the other hand, trying to get your friend off a murder charge, have a perfectly good non-official motivation for digging around in Dorfmann’s past. If I get you over there would you be up for spending a day or two asking around?”

  “Has he gone back already?”

  “This morning.”

  Forrester shook his head with rueful admiration.

  “Nothing ever changes, does it?” he said wryly. “How many times during the war did you take me aside in some bar and say there was a wee job it would be a great favour to you if I could do, and there was no question but that the whole thing would be wrapped up before the weekend? And forty-eight hours later I’d find myself pounding through some pine forest with a Jäger battalion on my tail?”

  “Plenty of times,” said MacLean, “and you loved every minute of it.”

  “You poor deluded fool!”

  “And you were very good at it, Duncan, one of the best, if not the best,” said MacLean, “and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

  Forrester remembered how skilfully MacLean had been able to deploy tiny drops of flattery to make the wheels of his complex machines turn.

  “But this isn’t anything like that,” he went on reassuringly, “it’s a complete doddle, just a day or two chatting to people about some obscure academic. And there’ll be nobody after you – after all, we won the war, and as you say, we’re in charge. And I’ll get you a book of chits; you can get pretty much anything for the right bit of paper in Germany these days, you know.”

  “Why do I find your words strangely un-reassuring?” asked Forrester.

  “Because you haven’t finished that drink, Duncan,” said MacLean. “Get it down you and you’ll see just how lucky you were to
have run into me again.”

  Forrester did as he was told. The champagne was good and for a moment he let himself enjoy the feeling of the alcohol going to his head.

  “I can’t go till the weekend,” he said. “I’ve got tutorials to give and essays to mark.”

  “I’ll have you fixed up with a flight from Northolt tomorrow night,” said MacLean decisively. “And what’s more – this time it’ll actually be able to put you down on the ground in Germany.”

  Forrester finished his drink.

  “I won’t have to jump out with a parachute?”

  “No,” said MacLean. “Not unless you really want to.”

  14

  HEAVY WATER

  Forrester had no idea how long the journey back to Oxford took, because he was in a world when Barbara had still been alive and their future still lay before them. As the train rattled through the snow-bound countryside he walked with her again in the woods above Cranbourne, the sunlight slanting down between the leaves onto their faces. He had been alive then; he wasn’t sure he had really been since.

  When the train finally reached Oxford and he trudged unseeing across the greasy wood of the platform and out into the grubby snow of the streets, a hundred yards from Barnard, Harrison pounced on him in a state of high excitement.

  “You up for a meeting?” he asked.

  “With whom?”

  “Ollie Sepalla – one of the Norwegians from the Eagle and Child. Seems he knows what happened to Lyall when his mission went up the spout.”

  “And he’ll talk about it?”

  “He’s dead keen to. He’ll come to your rooms if you like.”

  “Wheel him in,” said Forrester.

  Half an hour later Ollie Sepalla was sitting beside Forrester’s tiny fire looking at him with large, earnest eyes. In his early twenties, fresh-faced, eager, he seemed to epitomise uncomplicated honesty. “This was happening near my village,” he said. “The commandos were coming ashore in our fjord.”