Luis nodded.
“How awfully gratifying.” But Walter Witteridge seemed saddened.
“I have read all your books,” Luis said.
Witteridge slowly looked up. “Have you really?” he said. “Really all?” Now he seemed thoroughly depressed. There was a long pause while he stared past Luis’s left ear. Then he braced himself, and engineered a brave, tormented smile. “I expect you’d like some tea,” he suggested.
“No,” said Luis, firmly. “I want to tell you why I’m here.”
Witteridge opened his arms wide, and appealed to an invisible audience. “Why not?” he asked.
Luis told him.
“How fascinating.” Witteridge said, “And how totally admirable.”
“Well … thank you.”
“Not only have you duped the Abwehr in a commendably skillful manner, but you have contrived to make a comfortable living out of it.”
“I suppose so.”
“Then I must congratulate you.” Witteridge came around the desk and shook his hand. “I do congratulate you,” He completed the circuit and got back into his chair.
“You’re very kind,” Luis said. “I was rather hoping that you would give me some help.”
“My dear chap, I doubt if the British Secret Service could negotiate better terms with the Abwehr on your behalf. My advice is to carry on.”
Luis explained his concern about the risk of inventing information which might accidentally benefit the German war effort.
“Oh …” Walter Witteridge squeezed and squashed his face into an expression of intense thought. “Frightfully remote possibility, don’t you think? I mean, you would have to be jolly good, wouldn’t you? I know you are jolly good. What I’m saying, I suppose, is you’d have to be jolly jolly good, quite phenomenally jolly good.”
“It could happen, all the same.”
Witteridge entwined his legs, and hooked an arm over and under the arm of his chair, “If it did ever happen,” he suggested, “you could always pop round and tell us about it.”
“How could I? I’ve no way of knowing whether it’s happened or not. That’s why I thought it was time I started working with your people.”
“My dear boy,” Witteridge said, “if you think our chaps are going to supply you with dummy information so that you can stay in business with the enemy—”
“No, no. I’m proposing to come and join you, work for you.”
“While continuing to take money from the Germans?”
Luis gestured helplessly. “There’s no alternative to that. They’ve got to pay me, otherwise—”
Witteridge was shaking his head. “I don’t think the British Secret Service goes in for that sort of thing, old chap. I mean, we’re still very oldfashioned about loyalties: if you come to work for us, then you really ought to resign from the competition. Frightfully stuffy and Victorian, I agree, and frankly I very much question the value of it, but there you are.”
“But if I leave the Abwehr,” Luis said, “what use will I be to the British Secret Service?”
Walter Witteridge sucked his lips while he considered the question. He slid open a drawer and took out a typewritten paper. “How willing are you,” he asked, “to be parachuted into Occupied Europe?”
“Not at all.”
“Then I’m afraid that settles the matter.” Witteridge put the paper back. “At the moment, so I’m told, we’re only looking for chaps who don’t mind leaping into the night over France. I wouldn’t do it, either; not in a million years.”
Luis stared at him. Witteridge grinned reassuringly. “So you don’t need me at all, then,” Luis said.
“Isn’t it more a case of your not needing us? Let me be wildly indiscreet, Mr. Cabrillo. I honestly don’t believe you would benefit terribly from contact with the people here. Most of them, I’ve found, are rather dense.”
“Dense?”
“Unimaginative. I may say I was disappointed. I certainly expected better things when they recruited me. Brighter things.”
Luis stood. “All the same,” he said, “I wish there were some way of eliminating that risk.”
“Put it out of your mind, dear boy,” Witteridge assured him. “Your little business will obviously go bust within six months, so your anxiety is redundant.”
“Six months, you reckon?” Luis said.
“At the absolute extreme. Nothing lasts in wartime, old chap; nothing. Come back in six months and I doubt very much if even I shall be here.”
Luis returned to the office. Julie stopped typing. “What did they say?” she asked.
“Buzz off,” Luis said.
She waited. “Was that all?”
“All that mattered. By the way, I called at the bank afterward.” He showed her the bank statement. “See? Another fat bonus. Somebody appreciates us.”
Chapter 48
Eagle, at his third attempt, laid a golden egg. It made Otto Krafft, his controller, quite proud.
“Operation Bandstand,” Christian (now a brigadier) read aloud. “The invasion of Norway by an Allied force of not less than six divisions including airborne troops, supported by major elements of the British Home Fleet and …” He fell silent, and raced through the rest of the report with only an occasional muttered comment: “… massive minelaying in the Skagerrak … coordinated civilian uprising … decoy attack on Stavanger … main bridgehead south of Bergen …” At the end he sat for a moment, staring at the final words while his fingers made a little ripple of sound on the paper. He looked up. “Good for Eagle,” he said.
“I think he deserves an extra bag of birdseed, sir,” said Otto.
“Yes indeed. Send the man buckets of birdseed. I told you Canaris approved my budget proposals? Well, that’s what money is for: to keep people like Eagle happy and productive. Chuck the stuff at him with both hands. This is excellent, isn’t it? A lot better than his other efforts.”
“I don’t think he quite got the hang of it at first, sir,” Otto said. “But now that he’s in London on a long visit, I expect we’ll hear a lot from him.”
Christian glanced at the date on the front. “Only four days old,” he said. “That’s fast.”
“Airmail via Oporto. Eagle’s branch office.”
“Yes, of course. Every eagle needs a branch.” Christian flipped through the pages again. “Norway is a very attractive target for the British, you know. Not far from Scotland, lots of sea for their great big navy to play in, and a chance to cut off supplies of whatever-it-is we get from Scandinavia.”
“Iron ore, sir.”
“Yes. You know, I might prepare a few deft observations on the subject, for Berlin.”
“Don’t forget the Russian aspect, sir. I mean to say, with Leningrad about to fall, Stalin must be screaming at the British to do something to relieve the pressure. Operation Bandstand could well be it.”
“Very good, Otto!” Christian bounced to his feet and thrust Eagle’s report into his hands. “By the time you’ve got that coded I’ll have the covering signal ready. Schnell, schnell!” He sent Otto trotting happily from the room.
*
It was early evening, and the light was as soft as honey. Luis Cabrillo was paging through the 1923 Michelin Guide, looking for Derby, because he thought Rolls-Royce had a factory there, when Stalactite Caverns caught his eye. According to Michelin they were something to see in Cheddar (Somerset), population 1,975, market day Wednesday. How interesting.
He left Derby and looked up Somerset in Jasper Stembridge. Jasper knew all about Cheddar and its limestone. He said the rain ran into cracks, dissolved the limestone, and hollowed out caves. There was even a photograph of one, looking very cold. Luis turned to the GWR Holiday Haunts. It went on at some length about the famous Cheddar caverns that run for more than 600 yards, and included a smart backhander at unthinking people who condemned their exploitation without appreciating how much it cost to install the electric lighting.
“Damn right,” Luis said, making
a note of the page. Julie looked up from the latest Abwehr briefing letter. “Caves,” he explained. “I can use caves.”
“Oh yes,” she said. “I remember the picture. They look kind of like railroad tunnels, don’t they?”
Luis went back to the photograph. The cave interior looked more like a heap of coal, and there was definitely only one of it. “Railroad tunnels?” he said. “This?”
She took the book from him and thumbed through it until she found a picture of a rugged hillside with two big, black, circular holes in it. “You want caves,” she said, “we got the best.”
“‘Dovedale …’ Hey, that’s near Derby!” Luis scanned the text. “‘These beautiful dales,’” he read, “‘through whose narrow troughs the glistening streams are ever eating their way deeper and deeper into the porous limestone.’ I say, that’s excellent.”
“Sounds kind of purple, if you ask me.” Julie stared at the Dovedale photograph. “Luis, how long since we made love?”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute … Here we are, it’s under Ashbourne: ‘Thor’s Cave (prehistoric) … Derby 13 miles.’” He flourished the Michelin. “That’s the answer!”
“No, I don’t think it was 1923,” she said.
“A vast underground arms depot! A whole new secret communications center! Perfect!”
“Didn’t we do it once during the Thirties? Late ’34 or maybe early ’35?”
Luis was scribbling notes. “Rolls-Royce. They put their factory down in the cave. Bombproof. Obvious!”
“I think I’ve forgotten how,” she said. “Is it like the foxtrot or the tango? Which leg do you put forward first? Where do you hold your handbag?”
“Caves,” Luis exulted. “I’m going to fill up every damn cave in Britain, you watch.”
“We led such sheltered lives at the mission school,” she said, fondling his lapels. “Please be gentle, or I’ll break your arms.”
“I don’t know what’s the matter with you, Julie,” he said. “We made love last night. Twice.”
“As long ago as that?” She put the big black hat on his head. “Come on, let’s get out of here. You’ve done enough for one day.”
As they went downstairs, she said: “By the way: Madrid wants you to go to Glasgow.”
“How can I? I’ve got all this work to do in Cheddar and Derby.”
“So don’t go. Send someone else.”
He thought about it all the way to the street, “I need more help,” he said. “The business is getting too big for me. It’s time I had more sub-agents.”
She took his arm. “Damn right. You can’t be expected to do everything, can you? Learn to delegate, that’s the secret of success.”
“Exactly.” He waved at a taxi. “On the other hand, if I take on a new sub-agent I shall have to do all his work.”
“But you’ll get all his pay.”
“I know, I know.” They climbed into the taxi. “Glasgow,” Luis said gloomily, and it was several seconds before he realized why the driver was looking at him like that.
Chapter 49
Wolfgang Adler put all the blame for his decline on Luis Cabrillo. The Spaniard had willfuly and irresponsibly caused him permanent physical suffering, and as a direct result of that, nobody in the Abwehr now took him seriously when he tried to expose the man’s frauds and failures.
Whenever his clerical duties allowed, Wolfgang read and re-read the Eldorado reports, searching for one fatal flaw, just one clear and unarguable blunder which he could take to Christian as proof of what he knew to be true: that Eldorado’s success was totally undeserved. Just one. It had to be there, sooner or later. Otherwise what was the point of going on?
A week after his visit to Berlin, Christian sent for Wolfgang. When he got to the brigadier’s room the four controllers were already there, drinking coffee.
“Maniacs,” Christian said flatly. “Fools, mules and gibbering idiots.” He had been reading a long teleprinter signal; now he concertina-ed. it flat and impaled it on a spike. “Despite all my urgent recommendations to Canaris, Berlin has ordered that Krafft, Fischer, Werth and Hartmann be promoted forthwith.”
Gasps of surprise and small whoops of pleasure.
“You are all equally unworthy, so at least Berlin is consistent,” Christian said, spinning the signal on its spike like a propeller. “Nevertheless I can explain this disastrous decision only as the evil fruits of infiltration at the highest level by the British Secret Service.”
General amusement and scattered applause.
“As an act of sabotage,” Christian added, “it makes the burning of the Reichstag look like an infringement of the blackout regulations.”
More all-round laughter, except from Wolfgang. Nobody looked at him.
“And now to work,” Christian said.
They spent an hour reviewing the recent output of Eldorado, Seagull, Knickers and Eagle. Discussion centered mainly on Seagull’s report that Britain was suddenly expanding and improving her meteorological stations in Iceland and Greenland and was planning to install a clandestine station on the Azores; the implication was that transatlantic convoys might take a far more northerly route when the weather allowed, in order to avoid U-boats. There was also a lot of interest in Eagle’s news that a Cabinet Minister, an Air Vice Marshal and a bishop’s wife were involved in a financial and sexual scandal which the Government had hushed up by invoking the Official Secrets Act.
Wolfgang took no part in the discussion.
“One small thought,” Christian said at the end. “Canaris told me that the various Abwehr sections in Europe are, at present, running a total of twenty-seven active agents in Britain and Ireland. He rates Eldorado as one of the two most valuable; somebody controlled by Brussels Abwehr is the other. Eagle ranks fourth or fifth and is rising steadily.”
Everyone except Wolfgang looked pleased.
“My small thought is this,” Christian went on. “Here we have Eldorado and Eagle, both working the same territory and both getting remarkably good results. Suppose we were to bring them back to Madrid for a very brief, very high-level conference or seminar? A chance for the top men in the Abwehr to find out how the experts operate. Does that excite anybody?”
He reorganized the papers on his desk, while the idea sank in.
Richard Fischer was first. “I’m excited,” he said.
“It could provide the basis of a whole new training program,” Dr. Hartmann suggested.
“Just a very brief gathering,” Christian said. “Only the very top men.”
“Eagle won’t come,” Otto said.
They all looked at him.
“In my opinion it would be dangerous even to suggest it to him,” Otto said. “Eagle made it very clear to me at the start that he wanted no personal contact with anyone, ever.”
“But surely this is different,” Fischer protested. “I mean, Admiral Canaris himself might—”
“It’s not different for Eagle,” Otto insisted. “He won’t come, I tell you. He just won’t.” Otto folded his arms and tightened his lips. There had been an impressive note of conviction in his voice.
“Do we really need two speakers?” Franz Werth asked. “What’s wrong with …” He gave up when he saw the brigadier twitch his nostrils.
“It wouldn’t be the same without Eagle,” Christian said. “The whole point is to demonstrate a contrast in styles, a difference in approach. And by the way: Otto Krafft is absolutely right to protect Eagle in that way. A good controller identifies himself with his agent utterly and completely.”
Otto ducked his head modestly.
“One last piece of business,” Christian said. “Eldorado has recruited another new sub-agent.”
“What a man!” Fischer exclaimed, “If he keeps this up, we shan’t need to invade.”
“He’s a Venezuelan studying medicine at Glasgow University,” Christian told them. “His codename is ‘Garlic.’ I’ve given some considerable thought to the choice of a controller for Garlic.
” Wolfgang held his breath. “As you know, I believe that a selfless dedication to routine work deserves to be rewarded.” He shot his cuffs, and glanced at a piece of paper, as if to remind himself of something. “That being so, the man for the job is Dr. Hartmann.”
Wolfgang let his breath out and looked away. He felt as if he had swallowed a gutful of lead shot. Christian was telling Hartmann something about Garlic’s scale of payment but Wolfgang scarcely heard.
He stood up when the others stood, moved to the door when they moved. The meeting was over and not one person had spoken to him.
“Oh, Adler,” Christian said. “Did you want to see me about something?”
They all paused, politely interested.
“You sent for me,” Wolfgang said.
“Did I? Why?”
Wolfgang stood and looked at him.
“There must have been a reason, surely,” Christian said.
Wolfgang shifted his weight from his bad leg.
“Well, if you think of it, come back and let me know.” Christian said. The others laughed, and Wolfgang felt a drum-roll of hatred building inside him. This injustice could not go on. He felt sick to death with bitterness. It would kill him if he didn’t destroy it first, and that meant destroying its cause. Christian was watching him carefully, studying him. Wolfgang turned and went out.
Chapter 50
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Huguenot refugees settled in Derby, Macclesfleld and Leek and established the silk industry in these towns.
Luis Cabrillo put Jasper Stembridge aside and made a note: Derby/Macclesfield/Leek—silk. Parachutes? Knickers? He thought for a moment, and added: Black-market stockings?
He looked up Macclesfield in the 1923 Michelin. It was 41 miles from Liverpool. There was a reference to the Cat and Fiddle public house, reputed to be the highest licensed inn in England.
He made a note of that. Seagull visits pub-owning relatives at weekend, he wrote. Landmark? Radio station? Robot bomber?
The afternoon sun had reached the edge of his paper. He scribbled with his pen in the sunny strip, just for the pleasure of watching the ink dry, and he thought of holidays. It was summer; vacation-time. Why keep Garlic stuck in Glasgow?
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