by Mick Hare
He stooped to his pint again, looking into the eyes of his ex-comrade. He was saddened to see the obvious disappointment there.
“I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong man, Eamonn. Those days are behind me. I’m sorry but my answer is no!”
Eamonn said nothing for a couple of moments. He sat back in his chair staring into Sean’s face. Always one to wear his emotions on his face, Eamonn could do nothing but let Sean see the disappointment turning to annoyance then anger and dislike. Eventually he spoke. “Patriotism isn’t a fashion accessory, Sean. You can’t pick it up or put it down when you feel like it. You’re either for the cause or against it.”
Sean knew he was on dangerous ground here. “We all have to find our own way of expressing our patriotism, Eamonn. I do it the best way I can. My way now is to heal the sick. Tell your masters I have nothing to be ashamed of. I carried arms in defence of this country. I have no ill will towards them. But I am now seeking my own way to do my patriotic duty.”
Eamonn put down his still half-filled glass. “I would not have believed it of you Sean. Sean Colquhoun of all people. I’ll drink no more with you. Let me give you a friendly warning before I get out of your hair. You will upset some mighty powerful people with this answer. Watch your back is all I say. Watch your back!”
With that Eamonn threw back his seat, toppling it to the floor as he stood.
“For the love of God, Eamonn,” Sean began. “You’d throw away all we went through together over this?”
But Eamonn had turned his back and left the bar.
Fifteen
1943
“This is London, St Pancras,” announced the tinny wall speakers as Lily stepped down from the Leicester train. She looked at her written instructions once again and confirmed that she was to take a taxi to Onslow Gardens in Kensington. There she must ring the bell of apartment number one delineated by the name Mr Belshaw.
Lily stood at the top of the steps leading up to the door from the pavement. She stood between the grand pillars that held the porch and pushed the bell. A middle aged woman in a floral print dress answered the door and invited her in.
Lily was shown into a large carpeted room fronting the street. There were two large sofas either side of a low table and a fire blazed encouragingly in the grate. Above the grand mantel there was a full length oil painting of King George VI in ceremonial dress. After studying it for a moment Lily walked to the large bay window and observed the desultory activity in the street below. From here, London looked unaffected by the war, but her journey across town in the taxi had shown her some of last night’s damage caused by the Luftwaffe. However, life and work continued unbowed by the devastation.
Lily wondered if Goering knew that his efforts were not denting English morale but perversely drawing the people closer together. If anyone dared tell him she wondered if he would believe it.
The smart woman re-appeared and invited Lily to follow her upstairs. They went as far as the first landing where Lily was shown into the room directly above the one she had waited in. There were two men in the room; one she knew, one she didn’t.
“Welcome Lily,” said Andrew Trubshaw warmly as he came around a large solid desk to greet her. “Allow me to introduce a valued colleague of mine.”
Lily let go of Andrew’s hand and turned to face the stranger. She saw a tall, blonde, handsome man who was reaching out a hand to greet her. Although his smile was strong there was something missing in his eyes which meant they were not illuminated as they should have been. It was as if some tragedy shadowed his expression.
“This is Sean Colquhoun,” Andrew said. “We are hoping you will get along together. We have high hopes for you.”
The man said, “Pleased to meet you Lily. I’ve been hearing all about you.”
Lily had been in Britain long enough to recognise his soft lilting accent as Irish. She felt his hand encircling her own. It was weathered but warm and she warned herself not to be fooled by first impressions even though this one was very positive.
“I have been telling Sean about your recent experience of British justice.”
Sean gave an ironic snort. “It comes as no surprise to me. We Irish are well versed in the behaviour of our next door neighbours.”
“Joking aside,” said Andrew. “I want you to know that what happened to you is unacceptable and that Peter Herbert has been dealt with. He has been dismissed from the force for gross misconduct. That was as much to do with his treatment of you as with his inappropriate membership of a banned, fascist political party. He is currently interned in Norfolk as a potential threat to the safety of the realm.”
“I’d rather not think about Mr Herbert,” said Lily.
* * *
Trubshaw had visited Lily in Leicester Prison. After his second visit she was released to his custody and was allowed home. He visited her every day in her home and interrogated her. He had queried every detail of her past. He had attempted to flush out any latent Nazism that might have remained within her whilst feigning liberal attitudes. He argued in favour of eugenics; he suggested that all Christians were anti-Semites and that Hitler was just more honest than everyone else; he introduced discussions on race policy and put forward convincing proofs of Slavic and Negro inferiority. Lily could not be trapped. She was consistent in her beliefs. She became vehement in her opposition to his loathsome attitudes.
Finally, one afternoon as Andrew was putting on his coat to return to his hotel, he said, “But the trouble is Lily, you and I both know this is all play-acting. Your position in all of our arguments could be just as false as mine.”
“I know,” she said. “I wish I had never volunteered myself for His Majesty’s Service.” Tears pricked her eyes as she went on. “I truly wanted to help. I thought my inside knowledge of German and Germany might make a small contribution to helping win the war. Now I wish I had kept my head down.”
She put a handkerchief to her eyes and could not look at Andrew. “Why don’t you forget about me?” she asked. “If you cannot be sure, why not just go away and leave me to go back to nursing.”
Andrew looked at her realising that here was the nub of the situation. Yes he could easily go away and let her get on with her nursing. But then he might be turning down the opportunity of deploying an agent of incalculable value; a woman whose activities might save hundreds or even thousands of British soldiers’ lives if used in the right way. It was then that he decided to give up on the routine he was employing and to put her through a final test.
He had left saying nothing more than, “I will be in touch.”
When the test came, Lily proved herself in a way that Trubshaw could not have expected. Her instructions had arrived in sequence. First, the local lamplighter had knocked on her door and handed her a note that he said a stranger had paid him to deliver. The message was in an encrypted code which she deciphered using the book Andrew had provided for her. Go to London Road Station, it said, buy a platform ticket and wait under the clock on platform 2.
Watching travellers disembark from the recent arrival from Sheffield, she was approached by a young woman in a military uniform and handed a ticket, an envelope and a small brown package. The woman briskly walked away.
Lily had opened the envelope and read, “Go to Central Station and catch the 2.40pm to Coventry. Do not open the package until you arrive in Coventry. Visit the Ladies on Coventry station and open it there. Further instructions will follow.”
Lily went out of London Road Station and walked across town to Central Station. It was a sunny but cold spring afternoon and she wondered at the birds singing in the trees lining New Walk as if it was a normal day.
Her train to Coventry took over an hour and had no heating. In the Ladies convenience she locked herself in a cubicle and opened her package. She was not altogether surprised to find herself holding a service revolver, the handle cold in her hand. She opened the barrel and examined the six bullets. An ironic smile twisted her lips. ‘If this is a g
ame’ she thought ‘it’s getting damn silly.’ But if it is not she would show them she could go through with it.
Strapped to the barrel of the revolver with an elastic band was another note, “The bus station cafeteria. Buy a pot of tea and a piece of toast. You will be met. Treat stranger as a close friend.”
The walk across Coventry could not have been a greater contrast to the walk across Leicester. Here was a war zone. The remnants of the destroyed cathedral stood against a greying sky like the ruins of a medieval castle. There were ragged children in the street in flimsy clothes that would provide no protection against the cold.
The bus station cafeteria was deserted apart from one grizzled old man in a corner beside a wall heater. Lily was waited on by a woman in her fifties who dangled a cigarette from her lips as she took the order for tea and toast.
Lily was finding it difficult to squeeze another drop of tea out of the pot when finally the door swung open and, along with a bitter draught from the street, in swept a man in his late twenties. He was clean shaven and wore a belted brown gabardine mac and a brown trilby. He approached her table removing his hat, exposing some premature hair loss.
“Mary,” he called out attracting as much attention as he could from the grizzled tramp and the smoking waitress. “How good to see you!”
Lily rose not knowing what to say except, “It’s good to see you too.”
To her horror he threw his arms around her and kissed her full on the mouth. She caught the intimate smell of beer on his breath and felt his hands caress her back. She pushed herself carefully but forcefully away. He had a wicked grin on his face as he looked into her eyes. “Come on, love,” he said. “We must get going. We’ll miss our bus.”
Lily paid her bill and they exited into the gathering gloom of the cold dusk. They sat upstairs on a number 33 bus and her companion smoked without offering her a cigarette. They left the city centre behind and came to a downtown housing area with row after row of terraces. Some children played in the streets between the houses and women stood on doorsteps, smoking and chatting with neighbours. On every street there were houses splintered in ruins. Sometimes whole rows were missing, only rubble providing an adventure playground for the children. Miraculously, some houses stood out unscathed. They could not help appearing proud and disdainful of their absent neighbours.
They came to an area where tall factory chimneys belched out smoke that hastened the black of night and Lily’s companion stood up. They went downstairs and jumped off at the next stop. As they walked along the street Lily felt her arm gripped by her companion and they strode along like any couple. Suddenly he pulled her into a factory doorway and leant up against her.
“Okay Mary. Listen well! Your job today is to assassinate a German agent who has been guiding the Luftwaffe to the most sensitive areas of this ravaged city. He is responsible for hundreds of lost civilian lives. This is how we are going to do it. He works as a clerk in the offices of this factory. We are going to enter the offices and I will show my counterfeit papers which declare that I am an undercover military policeman. We will request a tour of their stockroom to check that their supplies agree with the paperwork they have submitted. We are investigating black marketeering. We will insist that this agent accompanies us. When we reach the stockroom and are away from the rest of the workforce I will offer him a cigarette. I will ensure that he has his back to you as I light his cigarette. At this point you will call out in German. You will say, ‘This is a trap. That cigarette is poisoned.’ If he refuses to smoke the cigarette we will know that he has understood your German. He will not want us to know he is a German speaker but he will die if he smokes the cigarette. If he does not smoke – you kill him.” He stared into Lily’s eyes looking for a reaction. There was none.
Everything went just as her contact had said it would, except, that is, for Lily’s part. Her partner was extremely convincing. His papers and his authoritative manner convinced the office receptionist immediately of their credentials and when the factory manager came out to the front desk he too was immediately cowed into agreeing to their demands to see the administrative clerk. The clerk looked confused and flustered but agreed to take them to the stockroom and bring his files along with him. On entering the stockroom Lily’s partner made sure they would not be disturbed by locking the door. He then took out his cigarettes and lighter and offered the increasingly anxious clerk a smoke. He manoeuvred himself so that he was facing Lily. The man stooped to put his cigarette to the lighter flame and Lily raised the gun. Her partner glanced at her over the clerk’s shoulder. His eyes screamed ‘get on with it!’
In a calm, clear voice Lily called out, “Dies ist ein Witz. Die Zigarette ist Kandi.” As she expected, the clerk’s face dissolved into panic and he threw the cigarette away from him across the storeroom floor. Lily strode across the room towards them, her gun held at shoulder height. Her partner stepped to one side, out of the line of fire. He studied her closely. Why was she approaching? Why did she not fire? She had a clear shot! His eyes began to widen in non-comprehension and the clerk turned fully to face her. He found himself staring into the barrel of Lily’s gun, now held an inch from his face. The clerk fell to his knees and began pleading. In that instant, Lily pulled the trigger. The stockroom echoed to the empty sound of a resounding click. The barrel had been empty. The clerk and the agent stared at her in shocked silence. Before they could recover their wits, Lily threw the gun to the floor. Then out of her other hand she let the six cartridges spill, she had removed them before entering the stockroom.
“Tell Andrew Trubshaw, if that’s who set up this farce, that I wanted to be involved in serious work against the German Nazis. I do not want to take part in ridiculous charades. If this is the best he can come up with, tell him I’ll get back to nursing.”
Lily strode out of the stockroom. She knew that the cartridges were blanks and she became convinced that the whole thing was a set up when the clerk threw his cigarette away in horror when she informed him in German that his cigarette was made of candy. The smile on her lips was more satisfaction than humour.
When John Rigger, for that was the security agent’s name, reported back to Andrew, he could not keep the enthusiasm from his voice when he described Lily’s behaviour.
“She had us both going for a minute. Poor old Peter. He knew we’d got blanks in the gun but when he saw how close she was to his face he nearly shit himself. She was cool Andrew. Cool as a cucumber. If you take her on I’ll work with her anytime you say.”
Andrew Trubshaw spent a long time considering Rigger’s report. He was pleased that Rigger was so positive about Lily. An experienced agent’s gut feeling is often the best guide a spy master can have. But he knew it was not conclusive. He played out the options in his mind. If Lily was a Nazi agent she would have had no problem in eliminating another Nazi if her mission was to penetrate the British Secret Service. However, if she had guessed the ruse, why not go ahead with the fake assassination? What impressed him the most, as it had Rigger, was her honesty. Taking on Lily would be a judgement call. But all of his work was. Despite his strong desire to enlist her he might have erred on the side of safety and sent her back to nursing in Leicester. However, in the early days of nineteen forty-three a certain project folder had landed on his desk. He immediately realised she was the one agent who could possible carry out this mission; if only she could be successfully paired up with a certain Irish agent who was already experienced in the field.
Andrew Trubshaw began to explain the nature of the mission they were being asked to consider, “The first thing I have to say is that neither of you are under any obligation to carry out this mission. As well as extremely dangerous, with strong possibilities that things could go wrong, you may find the proposal extremely distasteful. Even in the context of the work we do the proposal might repel you.”
Lily and Sean looked at each other, neither quite knowing what to say.
“What I must say is that you will need t
o keep the bigger picture in mind as you delve into the details of this proposed operation. I also, in fairness, have to tell you this. If you two do not agree to go operational on this, the whole project will be shelved. It is not possible for us to find another two people with your unique qualities and experiences to be able to continue. In the truest of senses, this is your mission.”