Gifts of War

by Mackenzie Ford

  “Yes, of course, of course. But I was talking to Lottie the other night, when she was working on the posters for Will’s room, and we were discussing how the war is changing us. There’s never been a war like this one, as that speaker was saying, never one that involved civilians so much … it’s changing our psychology and, I think, making us more emotional in public. We’re not buttoning things up as much as we used to.”

  “Maybe that’s a good thing!” she almost shouted. “Think how much I have to keep buttoned up.”

  Neither of us spoke for a moment. Had Sam said more than she meant?

  “I mean, I can’t tell anyone we aren’t married.”

  I said nothing as three young children, chasing a dog, nearly ran into us.

  “You can’t tell anyone—anyone except Lottie and me—about Wilhelm, that’s what you meant. And, assuming we don’t lose the war, and if Wilhelm has been killed, you won’t be able to unbutton even afterward. Will can never wear his medals.”

  Another pause. “No.”

  We walked by what had been, before the war, a flower bed. No money for such luxuries now.

  I was buttoned up, too, of course, though Sam didn’t know how much. It seemed that at every turn, these days, she was torn by her past, stranded by it, and I had it in my power, if not to remove her torment completely, at least to ease the burden. How simple it would be to tell her what I knew.

  In the distance I could see the Albert Memorial. We’d be home in half an hour.

  Two things came out of my meeting with Brigadier Malahyde, in regard to the Samuel Hood. First, as he had insisted, I was transferred to the brigadier’s office later the same day, occupying a makeshift desk near Margaret, his formidable secretary. We soon found out that the ship was indeed unloading its cargo of pyrethrum in Agadir, and replacing it with dried olives before going on to Uruguay. Our people in Morocco produced photographs of both the unloading and the loading. But our side in London also uncovered the possibly even more revealing statistic that, despite the submarine attacks that were playing havoc with our merchant fleet, none of the Hood company ships had ever been attacked by German subs, let alone sunk. So the whole thing suddenly looked very suspicious.

  The second thing I have to put down to the brigadier himself. He called me in one day, late in the afternoon, and offered me a whisky. He made it clear he was going to have one himself, so I accepted. It was a dismal day outside and the lamps in his office threw warm cones of yellow light, which winked in the golden liquid.

  “That was pretty nifty thinking, Hal,” he said after trying the whisky. “Just like your idea about Lenin. You’ve got a good intelligence brain. Well done.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “But we can’t sit on our laurels.” He fixed me with a look he had. It was halfway to a smile but it was a shrewd sizing-up glance as well. That look said, “Can you see where I’m headed in this conversation?”

  I couldn’t second-guess him. “Go on, sir.”

  “You yourself said that the Hood share price has been doing well.”

  “Yes sir, that’s what attracted me to them in the first place.”

  “Very well. But think: if the share price is doing well, it means they are making a healthy profit.”

  I nodded.

  “Which means they need a healthy income.”

  I sipped more whisky. Some things were obvious.

  “So it’s unlikely Hood would have given its pyrethrum to Frankel.”

  I saw what he was getting at. “Money will have changed hands.”

  His half smile became a 60 percent smile.

  But not in Morocco, I breathed. “Too risky.”

  He let a silence elapse, so I could digest what I had just worked out.

  “If not Morocco, where?”

  “America?”

  He shook his head. “Too far away. Risky as well—they are allies, after all. Now.”

  “Uruguay?” But I shook my head immediately. “That’s too far away as well.”

  “Which leaves … ?”

  “Switzerland?”

  “That’s my guess,” he said, nodding. He drank more of his whisky, stood up, retrieved the bottle from the cabinet, and gave us both a refill.

  He sat down again.

  “The photographs from Agadir confirm that what you thought might be happening is actually happening. However, before we go public, or put the directors of Hood in jail or the Tower of London, we need to box clever. If we barge in, we stop Hood from doing what they have been doing for God knows how long … But if we were to find out how they are paid, we might found out a whole lot more. Germany, we know, is feeling the pinch so far as raw materials are concerned. They must have some way of paying for illicit goods on the black market—and my guess is that such an operation, if it exists, must be in Switzerland.”

  “I agree with your reasoning, sir, but how would we ever close in on the payment mechanism? I, for one, wouldn’t know where to start looking.”

  “Try this.” He unbuttoned his jacket, something he hardly ever did. “Neither the Germans nor Hood would want a paper trail—too incriminating. It could be leaked at any time, even after the war. The Hood people could never sleep soundly in their beds, for fear of the early morning knock from the police or MI5.” He paused, sipped his whisky, savored the taste. “No, the transactions have to be made in cash. Someone from Frankel or some special German government ‘front’ organization must meet someone from Hood, who will be in Switzerland under some pretext or another.”

  I didn’t respond. He had this worked out—he was that kind of man. I waited for the punch line.

  “Anyone from Hood who went to Switzerland would need to go officially—because, again, it would be too risky not to. Which means they must have registered with our embassy in Bern. What we need, therefore, is someone from here to go to Bern—under cover, of course—check out the records, and see where it takes us.”

  It all dropped into place. The late hour of the meeting, the two whiskies, the unbuttoned jacket.

  “But sir,” I said. “I have a limp; I sometimes need a cane. I’m not properly fit.”

  He sipped his whisky and gave me a 90 percent smile. “It may surprise you to know that your limp has all but disappeared. But, in any case, take your cane if you want. That, to my way of thinking, is the perfect cover.”

  Sam didn’t like this piece of news one little bit.

  “Switzerland? For how long? Is it dangerous?”

  “I don’t know for how long, Sam. Until I get a result, I suppose. The only risk is in getting there. I have to travel through France—well behind the front lines—then cross Lake Geneva. Switzerland itself will be quite safe.”

  “Did you even try to get out of it, Hal? Will’s going to be devastated. Remember how he was when you came home late that night?”

  I nodded but tried to make light of it. “He’ll probably forget all about me when I’ve been gone a week.”

  “Don’t say that! He’s surrounded by too many women as it is. Oh Hal, this is horrible—horrible, horrible, horrible!”

  When we told Will, his first question was “Will come?” This was his way of saying “Can I come?” He had the habit just then of referring to himself by name rather than the personal pronoun.

  When I gently told him he couldn’t come, he went very quiet and clung to his mother.

  Dinner was a dismal affair that evening and, later, as soon as Sam and I retired to bed, Will came into our room and slid under the sheets between us. He was exhausted, however, and as soon as he had fallen asleep, I carried him back to his own bed.

  When I returned to our room, Sam had turned out her bedside lamp and had pulled the blankets right up over her shoulder.

  “Look, Sam, I’m sorry about this, but… come on. It’s the war. It plays with all our lives. You want me to refuse to obey orders? I could be prosecuted for treason, jailed. It would certainly be the end of my career, or my chance to be useful in the war. Don�
��t be unreasonable— please. This is our last night together for… for however long it is. Don’t spoil it.”

  She just lay there, not moving, not speaking.

  “It’s not as if I’m going back to the Front, being shot at. I’m not going into any real danger.”

  Now she did turn and face me. “How do you know? How can you be so certain? You’ll be some sort of spy—I’m not stupid. I know you can’t tell me why you’re going—and I don’t want to know, not really. But spies, in wartime, even in neutral Switzerland, kill each other.” She sat up, her breasts rising and falling under her nightdress. “We were doing so well… now you’re doing a Wilhelm on me, only this time it’s on us, both of us, Will and me. What if you don’t come back, Hal… I don’t think I could bear that… to be left, to be abandoned … war-widowed twice. I’ve seen the children at school who’ve lost their fathers, I’ve seen what happens to them, how they close up, how they are diminished, smaller, less complete than they used to be, quieter, locked away somewhere, as if something that was inside them has escaped… Is that going to happen to Will? Please God, no!”

  She gasped these last words and fell toward me. I put my arms around her and kissed her. Her cheeks were wet from tears. I found the slight salt taste arousing. I placed my mouth on her breast, under her thin nightshirt, and she cried out.

  She cried out again and again that night.

  I arrived in Switzerland four days later. I traveled by train—by several trains, in fact, changing every few hours at such backwaters as Langres, Saint-Amour, and Annecy. The brigadier had seen to it that I had some pretty impressive documentation to take with me, so although the journey was arduous, I was treated well. I had books to read but my thoughts kept straying to Sam. Our last night together had been a new experience for both of us, I think. We had explored each other’s bodies with a… an almost violent intensity. We were more like animals than people that night. I had been slightly unnerved by the intensity we had shown and so, I think, had Sam. But, sitting in those French trains, with their smell of strong French tobacco, and watching the rolling countryside go by, I kept revisiting some of the things we had done. And I was aroused all over again.

  Eventually, after three nights of being shunted from the shadows to the sharp end, and shortly after lunchtime on the fourth day, my train—my sixth train, as I recall—pulled into Evian, a spa town on the southern shore of Lake Geneva. Here I had a three-hour wait before transferring to a steamer. Switzerland’s neutrality meant that, despite the war, the regular steamer service still circumnavigated the lake: Geneva, Evian, Montreux, Lausanne, and back to Geneva. It was one of the most popular routes in and out of Switzerland, used by spies of all nationalities.

  I wasn’t met. My only instructions from Malahyde were to act purposefully on arrival and to disembark quickly, as if I had made the journey many times before. If anyone was on the lookout for a spook behaving furtively they would be disappointed. I was to take a taxi to Lausanne station and board the first train for Zurich. The destination had been changed because although our embassy was in Bern, Zurich was the banking center of Switzerland. We didn’t have an embassy in Zurich but there was a consulate, where I would be based. I was told the name of a hotel in Zurich—the Olden—where a room had been reserved. I arrived just after seven in the evening, unpacked, had a bath, then ate a solitary dinner at a brasserie near the lake. It was the lake featured in the travel poster that was on the wall of Will’s bedroom, and it naturally made me think of him, and of Sam. Not that I needed any reason to think of them—this would be my fourth night without them, and their fourth night without me.

  I could still hear Sam’s cries from our last night together.

  The next morning I was at the consulate promptly at nine, where I met my contact, a Major Gregory Gaimster. Not only was he my contact, I found I was also to share an office with him. It was cramped, on the second floor, with a small window that looked out onto a narrow street with tramlines down the middle. Directly opposite was a dingy joint, the Bar Venner.

  “It’s more interesting in the evening,” Greg said. “There’s a knocking shop over the bar. Some of the girls aren’t bad.” He was from Nottingham, which, it is always said, has the prettiest girls in England.

  That morning I was introduced to one or two other members of the consulate; then Greg went into a small kitchen, made us both some coffee, and closed the door of our office behind him.

  “I’ve had a wire from the brigadier, but there’s never much detail in a telegram. Give me your version. No hurry. We’ve got all day.”

  I did just that. He sat and listened without interrupting, though occasionally he scribbled notes. He was a tall, emaciated man with sunken cheeks, hollows around his eyes, and a strong jawline. He wore a tweed jacket and a checked shirt with a knitted tie. He looked as if he were just off shooting, or fishing. I liked him.

  When I had finished, he sat, drumming his fingers along his lips. After a while, he murmured, “May I ask you a question?”

  I nodded. “Shoot.”

  “How many ships do you think Hood has?”

  “I don’t have to think. I checked before I left. Three.”

  “And if a ship goes to Uruguay, say, how long before it comes back?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Guess.”

  “Say a week to ten days to get there. Four days to turn around. She’d be back in just under a month.”

  “Which means …” said Greg slowly, “that if the Hood people put their minds to it, their three ships could make three deliveries a month.”

  “But they don’t. The husband of my wife’s friend, the man who works in the Port of London, says that the Samuel Hood comes up the Thames only two or three times a year.”

  “She could transport pyrethrum from other ports.”

  “Unlikely. It would be wasteful, for Hood, to have insecticide depots spread out all over the country. And their extraction works are in the East End. The Port of London is convenient.”

  Again, Greg drummed his fingers against his lips. “That fits.”

  “Fits? What fits? Fits what?”

  “We think it works slightly different from the way you have it.”

  “What are you talking about? What do you know?”

  He pushed back his chair and lifted his feet onto his desk. His brown brogues could have been cleaner. “We’re not complete turnips out here, you know. We recognize what Switzerland can be used for— that’s one of the reasons we’re stationed here in the first place. But your information could be the final link in the chain.”

  I didn’t say anything immediately. He would explain in his own good time. “What chain?”

  “More coffee?”

  “Have we still got all day?”

  He looked at his watch. “Long enough. It’s your turn in the kitchen.”

  I made the coffee.

  Again he made sure the door was shut.

  He tried his coffee, winced, and said, “More beans next time. One of the perks of living in Switzerland is the coffee—can’t get this back home, can we? So don’t spoil it—and that means don’t stint it. Okay?”

  I nodded.

  “Now, let me fill you in. It works differently in Geneva and in Lausanne, and even in Bern, but in Zurich and Basel we are very aggressive—discreet but aggressive—in our attitude to Brits in Switzerland. Yes, the damn country’s neutral, but we want to know why every Brit who’s here is here. A lot of legitimate business goes on during a war, of course, which means that some people are here for perfectly proper reasons. But some aren’t.”

  He dolloped sugar into the coffee and that seemed to help, judging by the expression—or lack of it—on his face.

  “We’ve infiltrated the Swiss border guards and their police, and so we get discreet lists of all Brits—and all others, too—arriving either by steamer on the lake or by train at Geneva. The police lists give us passport details and addresses inside Switzerland. We ca
n’t check out everyone, but anyone who stays in central Zurich or Basel gets our attention. Again, discreetly, of course. They are followed, their hotel rooms are, shall we say, inspected while they are out. Their contacts are followed too.

  “A lot of it is a waste of time, of course, but now and then we turn up an interesting pattern. And we have identified one pattern that we don’t fully understand but may just—just—fit with yours.”

  I drank my coffee. I didn’t think it was so bad. But then I had been living in London. And it was good to have some sugar.

  “One of the people we have highlighted is a certain Bryan Amery. He registered at the consulate in the normal way. He’s in his early thirties, was born in Leamington Spa but has spent time in London. According to such digging as we have been able to do—at this distance and while there is a war on—Amery is a precious-metals man. He works for a small firm with headquarters in Hatton Garden and his job is to keep his ear to the ground in Zurich and give his masters back home advice on when to buy and when to sell gold, silver, platinum, and copper. We haven’t actually faced him with this, you understand. This is all research on our part, back home.”

  “But you doubt that gold and silver are his real job?”

  “We don’t know. He has a small office here, in the Thuringstrasse, but we haven’t been able to get in there yet. He has a suite at the Bar au Lac, the best hotel in town, overlooking the lake, and although we’ve taken a look, the entire suite is almost document-free. No use to us at all.” He drained his cup and laid it on the desk in front of him.

  “So what makes him suspicious?”

  Greg made a face. “He meets a lot of people. Usually in cafés where they speak only in German. We have followed these individuals after the meetings and, although a lot of them are perfectly innocent Swiss, a handful of them—more than a handful, in fact—are Germans who are representatives of companies that are like Hood-Frankel. That is to say, Anglo-German firms that, before the war, were one and the same company or very close business partners.”