The waiter appeared with a bottle of champagne and two flutes. With their glasses filled, Simon inclined his to her. “Now what shall we toast to?”
Diana never wanted to waste a toast again. “The war is here, Little Canary.” Diana conjured her best Sophie Villiers voice for Simon. “Sherry is in near drought. Don’t sip until you’ve acknowledged the moment! There are so few of them, darling. Here. Sláinte!”
Many of those moments Diana had noticed how Simon looked at her tall brunette friend and Sophie at Simon the same. “To Villiers!” Diana raised her glass.
To Simon’s credit, he didn’t falter beyond a slight flash in his blue eyes. “To . . . friendship.” They clinked their glasses. Sipped. Diana’s heartbeat accelerated. Here she was, delighted to be back in Brent’s arms and yet feeling the safety in a familiar face.
To the untrained eye Simon’s transformation was not apparent. It wasn’t just in the removal of the gold-rimmed glasses he had always shoved to the bridge of his nose, the knit vests and shirts replaced with creased cotton under a double-breasted pinstriped suit. It was in his carriage. His shoulders were straight and his eyes focused on everything with shrewd intelligence. The elegance of The Savoy fit Simon with the careful measurements of a bespoke suit.
Diana set her glass down. “Better than cocoa.”
“We never lacked for cocoa.”
The tea arrived. Diana reached for a muffin and slathered on strawberry jam so it settled into the grooves and puckers of the toasted pastry. She tucked in, feeling almost guilty at her ease of appetite with Simon when her stomach had been in knots with Brent the day before.
The posh atmosphere and high society settled over Simon like a cavalier embrace.
“We went to All Hallows last night.”
“We?” Simon arched an eyebrow.
“What was I supposed to do, Simon?” Her exasperated tone drew a look from a nearby table. She lowered her voice. “I hadn’t seen him in years and our first day back together I leave him with my luggage?”
“So he bought your story?”
“He isn’t buying any of my stories. Certainly not my consultations on the churches, and that is what hurts me even more than merely lying to him.” Diana swallowed too quickly. Choked. “I want this war to be over. Your war. Their war. The war.”
“Who interrupted you?”
“A man with a gun.”
Simon subtly assessed his surroundings without looking over his shoulder. He carefully surveyed the other diners. She tensed with awareness: a dropped fork, a clinked glass, the pop of a champagne cork. He straightened. “A gun?”
“Was it one of your men?” She searched his face. “Was someone anticipating . . . ?” Diana didn’t know how to phrase the end of her sentence.
Simon didn’t answer either way, just shook his head. “But the new war is boiling under the surface. It won’t be the one we just saw with guns and artillery fire and bombs desecrating our city. It will be a quieter one of propaganda and intelligence.” Everyone else’s confidence faded under the weight of Jerry bombs and rations, but not Simon Barre’s. It was forged and finessed in crisis. He sipped his champagne. “I still need your help.”
Diana exhaled her frustration. “I did what you asked. I made good on our exchange.”
“I know. But I still need you. Langer has another lead on Eternity from Vienna today.”
“Churches. Bombed churches in rubble.” Diana smoothed the napkin on her lap. “There is an actual committee of architects from the Royal Society consulting on them.”
Simon nodded. “So perhaps you need to try to be at the churches for community events. I thought of this.”
“Simon. Isn’t there someone at MI6 . . . someone qualified?”
“Oh please, Diana. Anyone can list off facts. Who can put in their heart?”
“Romanticism doesn’t become you.”
Simon reached into the inner pocket of his jacket to retrieve a few sheets of paper. “Pamphlets. Charity concert. Evensong. Weddings. Sunday services. Charity drives.” He spread his hands. “Everything. You just need to know where to start. To find a pattern. You love patterns. You’ll see something. I just know it.”
Diana reached for the papers occupying the pristine white tablecloth as Simon continued to speak. “I cannot see how you would be able to keep yourself three feet from any Wren—bombed or not. They are your certainty. Maybe start there. Just the Wren churches?”
Simon leaned forward. “My certainty is Eternity. MI6 has been able to intercept Soviet rings here. But none with any tie to churches. But I have a hunch, Diana. And you know my hunches.”
She tilted her head. “Well, Eternity certainly wasn’t there last night. Just some man with a gun. You said he never carries one.” Diana shrugged. “But he may just be a ghost. So . . .” She plucked a petit four from the tray. “I don’t even know what to look for, and don’t you think you have spent enough time for King and Country? Simon, aren’t you tired? Especially because this is not an actual assignment, rather a theory?”
He shifted in his seat. If he had been wearing his gold-rimmed spectacles, he would have taken them off and cleaned them. “Of course, a million and one loose threads were left by V-E Day. Why would anyone care about unfiled paperwork or an unresolved mission? It’s all over. But I didn’t finish what I set out to do. I told you that MI6 had me at Bletchley to seek out any traitorous activity. And they did find a traitor . . . Yes, you can gasp. But he wasn’t found by me, and I carry this sense of unfulfillment. But the traitor they found isn’t Eternity. I’ve had this hunch about him since Coventry, and war or no war . . .” Simon turned over the spoon by his plate so the silver caught the gleam of the chandeliers.
She sighed. “I don’t believe you. You wouldn’t risk my life for a sense of unfulfillment.”
“This is bigger than you know, Diana. The scary thing about loud ideologies at a time when a country is broken is that the loudest and most assured ones dominate until they seem right, they seem conscionable. Look at Hitler. Once he was a poor artist. Then he stood up in a beer hall against a problematic republic. You said the Soviets were our allies, yes. Against a common threat. Doesn’t mean they aren’t a threat.”
“We’re too tired for another war.”
“And this ideology will prey on that. Because it isn’t warfare. It isn’t something people can see or be physically scarred from in combat. It sinks deep until you’re not sure where your belief system ends and it begins. It will seep through quietly with respected men with titles and political ambitions and diplomas. Men we should respect. When people are vulnerable, they look for any rock to hold on to. Everyone wants to know what the past six years were for. When I came back, I couldn’t walk two steps without one of those Labour pamphlets landing on my shoe. It was like manna to people because it appears to set to right what was wrong.”
“And you think you can contain it? With this file?”
“You and I never fought a war on a grand level, Diana. Not like your husband did at the Front, even. We took it one code at a time. One radio interception at a time. One file and one church at a time.” He sipped his tea. Shook his head. “I won’t lose my country to this. Not to this war of thought as scary as warfare or the American bombs. Scarier because it grips the very soul of a man. It will burrow deep in our nation’s consciousness if we’re not careful, and before we know it, we will be trapped. This is the type of silent war that leads to the one we just lived through. You don’t want that for your future children. I don’t want it for mine.”
Diana chewed her lip and fingered a petit four. “It seems too important for one of your hunches.”
He chuckled and averted his eyes. “Everyone in my line of work relies on hunches. But don’t go spreading that around.”
“I don’t want to be one of your hunches, Simon. We’re friends.”
He nodded. “Friends.”
“Yes. Why not get another agent to help you?”
“Becau
se another agent doesn’t love churches the way you do. And no one in the London office is listening to me. My supervisor is this close to putting me on probation. I have to get back to my actual assignments. This is—how shall we put it?—extracurricular.”
“As you said, this entire reliance on churches is a whim, a hunch.”
“Since Coventry . . .”
“Spare me. Since Coventry you think you found a man who is using churches as an easy-to-find and public place to exchange information. Only you could peel back that devastation and national disaster and focus on what you thought was a Soviet sympathizer.”
Simon leaned across the tablecloth. “Everything must mean something. If we throw something out or dismiss it, we might miss it, Diana. Don’t you see? Coventry was bombed while the Soviets were still our allies. Our friends. I was starting to see dissonance and no one believed me.” He took a moment. “You went to All Hallows last night?”
“A sentimental trip. You know I was married there.”
“Did you tell your husband—?”
Diana stepped on his question. “What? What could I possibly tell him? I was working far away for five weeks on one of your hunches!”
“Ah.” Simon smiled. “Do you see why I need you? You’re thinking even with nothing to go on. Like that Mozart catalogue back at Peterskirche.”
Diana wanted to seethe and rail. The opulent interior surrounding their tea stalled her. “I don’t know if the relic means anything at all. It seems odd that something so priceless would have been so easily found, of course. And it didn’t help my cause with Brent.” Diana sipped her champagne. Instead of bubbling her nose delightfully, it soured her stomach. “Why do I have to play inside your lines when you color outside MI6’s?”
“Diana.”
“You hire civilians without official paperwork. Yes, I am one of those civilians, Simon. You have this grand idea that Eternity is a spy connected with churches since Coventry Cathedral even though there is no proof that we knew about that devastation. You work in theories you uncover with your smart demeanor and intelligence.”
“I just want to see this through to the end. You cannot forget what I did for you.”
“A true friend, Simon, does things for a friend without exacting quid pro quo and . . .” Diana stopped when she noticed a slight shadow cross his eyes. “I know you mean well,” she said in a softer tone. “I am going to follow it to another Roman church anyway.” Diana played with the stem of her champagne glass. “Stephen Walbrook. Built over an old river. There was no message, so I am making up my own hunches.”
“Walbrook . . . Walbrook . . .” He tilted his head. “Oeil-de-boeuf?”
“You remembered.” Diana smiled. She had taught him a lot of architectural terms during their time together.
Simon straightened his tie. “That’s when I realized that you were exactly what I was looking for.”
“And is your quarry still a rumored file?”
He waved his hand, but the gesture was belied by the seriousness in his tone when he said, “A rumored file to you, perhaps. But to me? Everything. Diana, this new war and the rise of Soviet Communism depend on men . . . smart men who will buy into its message. But it also relies on men of influence and means to wield the weapons at their disposal. Not just guns, but ideologies. I told you before Vienna about the file.”
“The Eternity file. The one that contains a list.”
“Not just a list of almost guaranteed supporters of grave financial, philosophical, and reputable influence, but of those who have access to everything one might need to start a new war. Scientific ideas for warfare. These are smart people, Diana. Academics like you. Not just here, but in America.”
Simon took a sip of champagne. “Don’t you see? America entered the war, albeit late, and things turned around. They bombed Japan and sent a message. Now the war is over . . . temporarily. Do you think the Soviets didn’t notice how with one explosive the Americans obliterated nearly an entire city? What if the same physics, the same recipe for destruction, ended up in the wrong hands? Can you imagine where Britain might be?”
“But you only have a hunch.”
“Eternity has this file. His associates contribute to it through messages. My SOE agent decoded a cipher that placed it in London. It’s why I let you leave Vienna.”
“You let me?”
“And if messages are going to be passed off during some clandestine meeting in the shadow of a pew at a bloody church, then we will be there. Hence, if I must stress it again . . . the need for you.”
She almost missed the intrigue. She supposed because it felt far safer and normal than sitting with Simon Barre sipping champagne and talking about spies.
“Please, may I tell Brent?”
“Pardon me?”
“You owe me, Simon.”
“For what?”
“I went above and beyond our agreement and you owe me out of friendship. In Brent’s letters he talked about his fellow soldiers at the Front who had an immediate unshakable bond.” She waved between them. “That’s us. You and I. Shouldn’t we have someone else in our corner?”
“For this immediate unshakable bond?”
“Don’t be sarcastic. But, yes. And perhaps we weren’t in the thick of it, but we are now. Again. Still. You put me here. You made me spend five more weeks without him. I can’t get around what I signed in Commander Denniston’s office at Bletchley without being drawn and quartered, but I can get around you.”
“Do you really want to put him in danger?”
“If I’m in danger, he already is. He will just follow me everywhere. And how dangerous are a few nights of music? Evensongs? Choral performances?”
“Diana . . .”
“You don’t expect him to sit at home and smoke his pipe while I go to churches at night, do you? I told him to supply the spiritual perspective, but that was about as convincing to him as my working for the committees. You know the workers there during the day are the actual committees surveying them. At best, I hope we will just be seen as two odd relic hunters while we sniff out what you need.”
Simon studied his fork. “You can’t tell him.”
“I won’t ruin my marriage for you. I am already so precariously . . .” She stopped. She didn’t want to cry, but her lip was trembling and the napkin she had begun wringing in her hands was in a tight knot.
“I am calling in a favor,” Simon said, though his voice was soft and his eyes warm on hers.
“You already called it in.”
“You promised me, Diana.”
“And I promised him. I promised him a million and one things the day I married him at All Hallows. I don’t have to choose between you. I just need to tell him. Just this one thing. That you need civilian aid and . . .”
Simon’s unfathomable bright-blue eyes blinked but didn’t waver. Well, at least for one long moment. Then he motioned the waiter over with a fluid movement. “Hunches are not bad things. Sometimes one clue can ripple into another, and you of all people know that a wave of sound or a misplaced comma can determine anything.”
“Please, Simon. I didn’t see him in hospital. I didn’t return when he did. I hate lying to him.”
Simon folded his napkin gracefully on the table. “You’re not lying about your desire to see those churches again.” He studied her. “A man would want a woman who shared his . . .”
“Interests and passions?”
“Exactly.”
She frowned. “There you go acting so cool and collected. Do you know where she is?”
“Who?”
“Simon . . .”
“Evensong. Vespers. Sunday services. If there are people around, then the city workers won’t be suspicious and neither will Eternity. And while you’re there, you can find a way . . . You can . . .”
“I can find a way to reconcile my love for bombed churches with this invisible string you are following?”
“Precisely.” His smile indented attractive lines l
ike commas on either side of his mouth. “When you’re going on nothing, you have everything to work with.”
“We’re not back in Hut 3 with you telling Fisher and me what to do.”
“You’ll have time to spend in the churches you love, Diana. You can blend in with the other parishioners moved by beautiful pieces of music.”
“I’ll have one more secret to keep. It wasn’t enough that there were four years of my life and an official parliamentary act. Now I’ll have you too.”
“But what a secret.” He adjusted his tie.
Diana rolled her eyes. “Fine. If you’re going to work off a hunch, then so am I. Brent found a priceless vial last night at All Hallows. Dating to the time of the Roman period here. There are several churches within the city center that have some Roman influence. It’s a hunch, but it’s a start.”
“I like this. In any of the intelligence I have collected on Eternity—”
“On your ghost . . .”
“—it was within the center of cities. It’s why I had you and Langer at Stephansdom and Peterskirche. Central.”
“And what about your former SOE agent? Do I get to meet him?”
Simon peeled a few pound notes from a silver clip and set them on the tablecloth. “I’ll ring tomorrow. No, don’t get up. Finish your tea.”
Diana watched him walk away, shoulders straight and stride purposeful. As if he owned the world. He did own one world, she thought ruefully, watching the last bubbles fizzle in her now-flat champagne—hers.
Chapter 9
Brent assumed he would fall into the ease of lecturing again. After all, he had craved the normalcy of it so often at the Front. After his student meeting and subsequent lecture, he shuffled his notes and closed the door of his office where Diana’s scent still lingered. He straightened his shoulders and recited a lecture he had given multiple times while his brain drifted to the day before. Diana was back. She had a secret. Someone had a gun in a churchyard.
The London Restoration Page 9