The British spy known only as 007 trained his gun on the menace in the shadows. “You cannot escape,” he said. “I’ve blocked the passage. Now let’s see who’s really behind the Fencer’s mask—”
He was still scribbling when Grace called him to the phone thirty-seven minutes later.
—
“C-C-CABLE traffic c-c-calls it Unternehmen Weitsprung,” Turing said. He took his time with the German and it came out clearly. “That’s—”
“Operation Long Jump,” Ian supplied. He was fluent in German, thanks to those adolescent months in Austria and Switzerland. “What’s it about, Prof?”
He waited for the scrambler to deliver his words and for Turing’s to return: an eerie sound, like the howling trapped in a seashell.
“No idea. Got Hitler’s approval. I g-g-gather he knows about your p-p-party in Tehran. Some Amer-mer-mer-ican traffic went m-m-missing. Turned up in B-B-Berlin.”
So the Germans knew the Allies were gathering in Persia in thirty-six hours. Most of the world was in the dark; security was so tight even Pug Ismay had pretended to come down with the flu, rather than reveal he was leaving England.
“You’ve definitely placed the Fencer in Cairo?”
“With an operative. F-F-First time I’ve known him to g-g-go halves on anything. Cable c-c-calls her das Kätzchen.”
“The Kitten?” Ian said blankly. “Run across that code name before?”
“Never. She c-c-c-could be merely c-c-cover, of c-c-course.”
“Must be. He’d never risk revealing who he is.”
“Unless she’s m-m-meant to die.”
Yes, Ian thought. The operative was probably dead from the moment she earned her pet name.
“In any c-c-case, Ian, your f-f-f-friends are in the Fencer’s sights. And he knows too d-d-damn much. Traffic’s full of the PM’s c-c-cold and a bad j-j-joke FDR told the Chinawoman. Ismay foaming b-b-b-because Roosevelt wants B-B-British b-b-bombers under American c-c-command.”
“Good guesses,” Ian attempted. “Not reporting.”
“Then why does H-H-Hitler know your American ch-ch-chum is hot for Harriman’s m-m-mistress? Or that our own S-S-Sarah is having it off with the A-mer-mer-ican ambassador?”
Ian’s fingers gripped the receiver. “What the hell are you trying to say, Alan?”
“He’s there, old thing,” Turing said distinctly. “Right in the m-m-middle of Mena House. B-B-B-Buggering all of you. The Fencer’s one of us. And he’s wormed his way r-r-right up your arse.”
The thriller to end all thrillers. He’d never meant it to be true.
Static howled along the continents between them.
CHAPTER 3
That final month at Durnford before they broke for the summer was a strange one for nine-year-old Ian. He woke up each day with the knowledge that something horrible had occurred, something terrifying he must fight. He would lie on his cot with the sweat-damp sheet twined around him, face buried in the pillow, and will the fear to stay at arm’s length. While his half-conscious mind directed all its fury on this single task, the rest of him was waking. Hearing the other boys as they trudged to the cold washbasins and privies. The slap of towels on naked bottoms. Hudders, sitting patiently with his knees under his chin, trying not to breathe too loudly as he stared at Ian’s rigid back.
And then he would remember.
Mokie. Blown to bits by a mortar. Pieces of him on the ground.
“It gets easier, you know,” Hudders whispered the first day after Ian heard. “You start to forget what they look like. At first that makes you feel lousy. Because if you can’t see them—in your head, I mean—then they’re really dead. But after a while it’s okay, Johnnie. You have to forget.”
Michael Hudson had no idea what the Cult of Heroes was like in the Fleming household. None of Val’s four sons would ever be allowed to forget him. Eve intended them to be martyrs. To yearn for the approval of a phantom. It was, she said, the Fleming Way.
Ian sleepwalked through the end of term. He stopped even trying in the subjects his headmaster, Tom Pellat, loved—Latin and Greek and English poetry. He could not declaim his passages of Tennyson. He was slippered with astonishing frequency, until the bruises refused to wane and he was seen, when stripped down for swims on Dancing Ledge, to sport an arse as violent as a thunderhead.
These swims were his sole relief. There was something about plunging from the heat of the afternoon into the chilly wash of the Channel that cut dead every sensation of self-pity and horror that dragged at Ian’s mind. He would dive downward, skimming his fingertips along the edges of the granite shelves that made up Dancing Ledge, and stare until his eyeballs ached at the diffuse cloud of bubbles that carried his life back to the surface. Usually he flipped and caromed to the sun, breaking through the aquamarine in a shower of benediction. A huge breath. A float on his back. Water filled his ears and he was free of the Durnford oppression, the ceaseless caterwauling of prepubescent boys. No sound but the unplumbed soundings of the sea.
On this day, however, he stayed down with the stones.
His fingers trailed along the shelving. He forced his eyes open, forced himself deeper. His legs pumped into blackness. What lurked in the granite shadows? What monster might he find, if only his breath held out?
Death, said the voice in his head. It had been talking to him for days now.
Gooseflesh rose on his ribs. His lungs were taut as a hot-air balloon. It was important, Ian thought, as his legs rippled through green, to reach the bottom. The true bottom. And see if Death was there. With Mokie. If he could see Mokie just once, and apologize—for not being worthy of him . . .
It would be good to stay below. Safe in the stones and darkness.
He had dived beyond light. The water was very cold, and his aching eyes saw nothing. His lungs were going to burst and then he would be in pieces on the bottom, just like his father.
A claw drove through his scalp, tearing back his hair and snapping his chin up. He shook his head in a frenzy, trying to free himself, and then another claw was on his arm and he was being pulled upward, helpless, away from the freeing dark. The claw in his hair and the one on his arm were pitifully small, and as they rose toward the light Ian could see the grubbiness under the bitten fingernails, the scabs on the knuckles where Hudders had punched a wall. You’re too weak, Ian thought desperately, too weak to save me—and he expelled all the air in his lungs in a single burst, waiting for the sea to fill them instead.
They were almost there—almost to the surface—when Hudders let go.
It was his feet, pumping like a dynamo, that wavered first. Then the claws released one by one—first the hair, then the arm—and Ian was rising while Hudders fell back, a staring stone dropping soundlessly into the depths. Ian kicked upward, his chest viciously compressed, and broke through to air, gasping. Gasping. He was going to be sick, but he did not have time for it, and so he hurled himself back down on the gift of clean air, everything pins and needles, his whole body aching. He kept his eyes open. There was a trail of bubbles. Hudders’s breath. He reached for it and won.
—
LATER, TP—TOM PELLAT—said that Ian was a hero. That he had saved the life of the New Boy who did not really know how to swim, being a Yank and one raised by Huns, at that. It was too complicated to explain to TP, and besides, Ian thought, it was Hudders who ended up in the infirmary for two days, being fussed over by Nell. They were both special in their own way—Ian the Hero, Hudders who’d Cheated Death.
They never talked about it until the final afternoon, when Eve’s chauffeur came for Ian. Hudders’s father—a thin, desolate-looking man who worried the brim of his homburg between his fingers—waited by a car Ian thought was hired.
“Remember,” Hudders said fiercely as he gripped Ian’s hand. “We’re both of us too bad. See you after the Long Vac.”
&nb
sp; —
“GRACIE.”
She’d given him privacy during the Secraphone call, closing the Signals Room door while she smoked in the sitting room beyond. Now she stubbed out her cigarette and uncrossed her legs; she looked tired, Ian thought, and he wondered if she, too, was prey to faceless terrors. But when she got to her feet she was Grace again.
“What’s the PM’s night look like?”
Her brow creased. “Brandy with FDR, then bed. Must you brief him?”
Ian hesitated. Every nerve in his body screamed at him to run—straight to the President’s villa, where even now dessert plates were being cleared and wineglasses topped off with Roosevelt’s Bordeaux and Michael Hudson was leaning close to catch what Pamela Churchill had to say in her breathy nursery voice. Music in the distance and Sarah’s dance pump trailing along Gil Winant’s leg beneath the gleaming table . . . until the flash of light and the sound of earth rending and the dense smoke mingling with cries of agony . . .
But no. The Fencer must be sitting at that table. He wasn’t likely to blow himself up.
And what would Ian say if he burst breathlessly into that room?
He had a warning without proof. He had Alan Turing’s word about a decoded message. There were people in Churchill’s government who thought Turing was mad. If Ian cried Wolf!—with no name for the wolf and no idea whose throat it was savaging—he’d be sent home on the next plane and dismissed from the service.
“He asked me to let him know what it was all about,” he temporized. “But, frankly, the PM looks all in. I’d rather put it off, and let the Old Man get some shut-eye.”
Her lip curled scornfully. “So there was nothing Urgent about that call. Just another of Turing’s queer starts.”
“If you like. Thanks for letting me use the Secraphone, all the same.”
She shrugged off Ian’s gratitude. “Don’t tell anybody it exists. It’s meant to be frightfully hush-hush.”
“Gracie! Did you risk your job for me?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Ian. I had the PM’s blessing,” she said curtly.
And closed the Signals Room door in his face.
—
HE FOUND Michael Hudson seated at Alex Kirk’s excellent baby grand in the President’s borrowed villa, his fingers flickering through a Cole Porter tune. I’ve got you under my skin . . .
Michael had a good voice. Not that Ian knew much about singing—the cinema was more in his line—but he could listen to Hudders without wanting to plug his ears or strangle his friend. And Michael’s piano held the room. Everybody except Roosevelt was swaying around the baby grand, drinks in hand, as though Rommel had never shelled his way through Egypt a year ago. That was Hudders’s gift: he could transport people. He was a ray of sun, a counterpoint to Ian’s darkness.
Ian closed his eyes and let the music take him back. To other rooms, filled with people who suddenly found Michael Hudson attractive. Who yearned to be his friend. With his hawkish nose and thin, vivid face, he was no beauty. But strangers immediately trusted him. They never trusted Ian.
He remembered a girl both of them had known about ten years ago. Her stage name was Storm. A “bubble girl,” as they were called, music hall dancers who bounced about with very little on. Ian had pursued her for months, awed by the careless glamour she trailed behind her like a feather boa. Not tonight, dear, she would tell him mournfully. I’m too tired. There’s a special performance tomorrow for some City toffs. It was only after Michael asked to borrow Eve Fleming’s Daimler that Ian realized he’d been ruthlessly cut out by his best friend. The Daimler’s backseat was littered with black boa feathers.
How did Michael do it, exactly?
It was the introvert’s eternal question, Ian thought. He loved Michael Hudson more, perhaps, than he loved any of his brothers, even Peter—and yet he was no closer to understanding his friend than he had been when they were nine. Michael’s charm was effortless; he won hearts without even realizing they were in play. He looked so boyish, genuine, open, guileless—the entire world took him on faith. Except, perhaps, Ian. Ian knew the subtleties of Michael’s mind, the way his restless intelligence constantly sifted facts for deeper truths, stranger warnings. Michael loved to pick apart arguments. He questioned Ian’s assumptions and turned principles on their heads. Following his logic was like tracking the path of a Ping-Pong ball.
Ian was bemused, this evening, by his friend’s apparent enslavement to Pamela Churchill. Hudders liked to seduce women for the same reason Ian did—purely to prove to himself that he could. He was convinced that his wit would always be more devastating than Ian’s looks. He was right, but Ian didn’t mind. The game mattered more to Hudders than it did to him.
Ian glanced away from the piano and noticed Pug Ismay in conversation with Harry Hopkins. Hopkins was gaunt and unpolished, and inclined to be querulous when he’d had a drink; he seemed determined to kill his stomach cancer with alcohol. Gil Winant, an arrested expression on his face, was listening closely to John Boettiger, Roosevelt’s son-in-law. Boettiger published one of Hearst’s newspapers, Hudders had said, but he was wearing a uniform now. Like all of them.
Hudders’s voice rose over the babble of conversation, pulling Ian’s gaze back.
Don’t you know little fool, you never can win?
Use your mentality, wake up to reality,
But each time that I do, just the thought of you,
Makes me stop before I begin,
’Cause I’ve got you under my skin . . .
Christ. For Michael, Pam Churchill was the only person in the room. Ian couldn’t entirely blame him—if you didn’t know Pam, she was a potent cocktail of sex and class. When she zeroed in on a man, even one like Hudders who really didn’t interest her in the slightest, she could make him feel like the most desirable animal on earth. She was gazing at Michael now, as though he was all she’d ever wanted. A fiction she’d adopted to suit the setting and her mood. Having Little Winston two years ago had improved her public poses, Ian thought; she’d learned this one from photographer Cecil Beaton. Her arms were loosely folded around her drink, cradling her sumptuous breasts; her head was slightly bent, like a Madonna’s. Pam’s secret was that she never looked like a tart. It was only later, Ian reflected, when she’d taken everything you had, that you found out what she was.
He was conscious of eyes on his back, and glanced over his shoulder. Roosevelt was leaning heavily in his wheelchair, a cheroot between his fingers, a wide and fixed smile on his face as he watched Hudders perform. At that moment, his son Elliott—a man roughly Ian’s own age and already twice married—reached impulsively for Madame Chiang and swung her into a makeshift tango. Too intimate a dance for the company and their level of acquaintance, but the music demanded it. May-ling looked both startled and oddly pleased. Elliott was grinning broadly.
The President’s pince-nez reflected the light in such a way that Ian could not read his gaze. But Roosevelt was plainly staring at him.
“Sir,” he said.
“You’re Fleming. Hudson’s friend from boarding school.”
“I am, indeed.” Ian inclined his head, hands grasped behind his back—the traditional British act of condescension, masked as deference.
“Perhaps you can explain something to me.”
“I’m at your service, Mr. President.”
“Why is there suddenly an RAF gun sight on top of the Great Pyramid?”
“Because the best hope of civilization is collected here in one smallish villa.”
Roosevelt cocked his head. For the first time the light shifted and Ian caught the shrewdness in his eyes. “The best hope collected days ago. The gun sight showed up this morning. Sure nothing in particular inspired you?”
“A stray Dornier, sir. Reported over Tunis. Not seen, to my knowledge, since.”
“That’s the second-generat
ion Nazi bomber, correct?”
“It is. We knocked a few out of the sky in Rommel’s retreat last winter, and have been chasing them ever since.”
Roosevelt inhaled some smoke and released it, lips pursed. “If anything that interesting comes up between here and Tehran, you’ll talk to Sam, won’t you?”
“Sam?”
“Schwartz. Head of my Secret Service detail. He’s a fellow you should know.”
“Then I’ll remember his name,” Ian said.
He was aware of the piano keys drifting into silence. Hudders rising from the bench, laughing in a self-deprecating way. Madame Chiang was bowing politely as though she’d enjoyed her tango crucifixion. Her husband looked dangerous—like he might slap his glove across Elliott Roosevelt’s face—but Pamela Churchill drifted by, murmuring to Chiang with a smile, and the moment passed.
Hudders’s eyes flicked up and met Ian’s. His expression of good humor faded. Without the slightest appearance of haste or alarm, he slipped out of his charmed circle and made his way to Ian’s side. Leaned toward him and offered a light.
“What is it?” he asked quietly.
“High Drama. Conflagration.” Ian expelled a lungful of smoke. “The Too Bad Club meets in my room in a quarter of an hour.”
CHAPTER 4
A collar stiff with starch. A waistcoat, tails, and top hat. Pin-striped morning trousers. Eve made him wear the new school uniform for a fortnight before he arrived at Eton during the Michaelmas half term in 1921. Peter had already been there for two years, and they were both stuck in the Timbralls, a redbrick house that sat on the Slough road, because it had been Mokie’s house when he was at Eton. Everybody referred to it as Slater’s. Sam Slater, the master, was feared by his boys. They might not know the word sadist, but they could have defined it for anybody who asked.
Michael Hudson’s house was College, which meant he was a King’s Scholar and his fees were mostly paid by the school. This was embarrassing to both of them for several reasons. Ian didn’t want to ask if Hudders was at Eton on charity, and Michael didn’t want to say. The alternative—that Hudders was so brilliant he’d been awarded a scholarship for his wits alone—was too awful to contemplate. It meant that Hudders was a grind. Worse, he was a grind who never acted like one. Ian could not recall Michael burying himself in books at Durnford. He was more likely to pinch an older boy’s bicycle and cut class entirely. The idea that Hudders was capable of pretending to be a rotter when in fact he was a grind was mind-boggling to Ian. It threatened the entire foundation of the Too Bad Club. He preferred to believe that Hudson’s father was simply impoverished, no matter how many embassies he toiled in.
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