Peter accepted the paper, a Turkish cigarette, and a cup of china tea from the pot on the desk. The crossword was complete. He glanced over the jottings in the margin. The typing stopped. Glancing up, he saw the sergeant was observing him with interest.
‘Just admiring your handwriting, sergeant. Some version of copperplate?’
‘Call me Hugh. A medievalist who taught us at school insisted on church script or he wouldn’t read our work.’ He bent his head back over the keyboard, the yellow hair flopping down.
Administration was to be found in a cavalry barracks, in a street not far from the zoo, at the other end of Regent’s Park from the mansion flats where they were sitting. At the guardroom, he should ask for Section K and show his letter of authorisation. ‘See you at 1810 hours. I’ll have the teapot on the hob. Don’t forget your respirator.’ A door opened. The colonel called for tea. ‘Urgentest, and some squashed fly biscuits.’
****
The staircase was just by the lift. Peter chose to walk down. On the next floor, he came back into the hall and turned into the first corridor to find the service stairs—why he couldn’t really say. A flat door opened and a woman came out, tall, perhaps early 30s, in a long cream linen coat and a red toque hat over rich brown hair. Catching sight of him, she hesitated, then stood in the doorway as if uncertain whether to flee back inside.
Should he turn tail, he wondered, to reassure her. But that would be to send a guilty signal. He pressed on, removing his cap and asking if she could very kindly point out the service stairs.
‘You’re going the wrong way. At the other end, just before the last flat. But’– with the hint of a smile – ‘what objection could there be to a soldier’s using the lift?’
He glimpsed a painting on the wall behind her and instinctively craned his neck to see it better. Lavish colour, strong but not garish, reds and greens. A vibrant, vibrating room – a studio? – with a window open to a brilliant square. She waited in the doorway, the smile dawning.
‘Matisse.’
‘Yes. Please take a full look.’ She had a low, throaty voice.
‘Thank you.’ He put down his respirator and inched past her, his nostrils filling with her fragrance – sweet, peppery, pungent. Her skin was soft ivory.
‘It’s very exciting. An early work? Fauvist?’
‘1912. We have some other post-impressionists, if you would like to see them.’ She was giving him a strangely searching look.
‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure, but I regret I haven’t the time. I have to report.’
‘Another morning, perhaps, when you’re passing. We could have some tea.’ She took a card and a slim gold pencil from her handbag, jotted a number on the back and gave it to him. “Rozalia Gutmannova The Risen Phoenix Gallery Cork Street Mews”. ‘Or come to our gallery. Perhaps you know it already?’
‘Peter Hill, Madame Gutmannova. I’m ashamed to say I’m not acquainted with The Risen Phoenix, but I’ll change that with pleasure.’
‘May I call you Peter?’ She was still searching his features. ‘Please call me Rozalia.’
‘Rozalia, forgive my asking, shouldn’t you send your collection away, into store?’
‘My father cannot bear to be parted from them. They are more than works of art. They are his life in another day. Another life in another day.’
‘I have heard that the time might well be coming when we should send our loved ones out of London.’
‘I will tell him what you say.’ Her blue-grey eyes under long, dark lashes held his as though she already knew him. ‘Do please call me if you are interested in seeing the rest of the collection. My father bought them all from the ateliers. The service staircase is that way.’ She held out her hand.
He took it, bending his head over it.
As he straightened, she kept hold of his hand. ‘Go with great care. Around you is an aura of danger. I see it clearly.’
Was that an infinitesimal electric charge he felt, passing from her hand, warm and soft, to his?
‘Others’ ill thoughts are bent upon you.’ She closed her flat door and gestured to him to precede her down the corridor. ‘When you return from your mission, l would like to know you are safe.’
He paused on the bare stone service stairs to read her card again. “Rozalia Gutmannova The Risen Phoenix Gallery Cork Street Mews.” “Please call me Rozalia.” On the back she had written the flat’s telephone number, crossing her seven and giving a long stroke to her one. He raised the card to his nose. That sweet but pungent scent. That feeling as though she had known him. That strange warning. She and Podger should get together. But then, what instinct had brought him to look for the service stairs? Two warnings. A third and he would become neurotic. He put the card into his pocket book. The rest of the paintings – yes, he would like to see them. Over tea.
****
He ran for a bus, just scrambling aboard – ‘Dunkirk ’op’, smirked the conductor – and was still thinking of her, of the whole encounter, when he arrived at the barracks.
‘Section K? In the old Infirmary, and quite right too, if you ask me,’ said the guardroom sergeant. ‘Madhouse.’
Chapter Two
Stepping outside the barracks’ main gate, he paused to consider where next, conscious of the three stripes newly on his sleeves and the rewritten pay book in his pocket, of the Home Forces Headquarters badges that had replaced, probably bid farewell to, the ELR.
He was even more conscious of the weight in the small pack they’d produced for him, a Browning revolver – a reconditioned leftover from 1918 – and a handful of rounds to go with it, handed over with a lecture on the weapons shortage by a craggy quartermaster whose deep Ulster accent he could scarcely understand, particularly when he’d insisted that Peter was also drawing a knife. Not the standard issue clasp-knife but a short-bladed dagger, one designed for stabbing.
****
A bright and bouncy young woman in a cardigan and linen skirt had greeted him at the Infirmary door. ‘Amelia Phillips, lady clerk to the section administrator.’ She’d put him in a waiting room, “Other Ranks” in Victorian official script just discernible on the lintel. ‘The administrator won’t be long. I may as well take your pay book. And the battledress top, if you could empty your pockets, please.’
Narrow vestry windows, patched-up brown linoleum flooring, pew-like brown wooden benches lining three sides. The solid mahogany table in the middle bare apart from one crisp copy of War Illustrated. Just published, it featured “The Immortal Story of Dunkirk”. He’d turned the pages. “AT DUNKIRK TRAGEDY WAS TURNED INTO TRIUMPH” – British forces had faced the enemy “beaten but unconquered, in shining splendour. It is the great tradition of democracy. It is the future. It is victory.”
Then a small, dark-suited man, plump with greying auburn hair brushed back from an unlined forehead, was at his side, holding his pay book. ‘Lavell, Stephen Lavell. Administrator. You are Acting-Sergeant Hill? You understand that everything here, the very existence of the unit, is secret. Every word confidential. Follow me, would you.’
They’d passed through an office where Miss Phillips sat with his battledress on her knee. Tossing a lock of blond hair out of her eyes, she had been concentrating on threading a needle; a silver thimble and embroidery scissors lay on the table beside her with his discarded ELR flashes.
‘Can’t use the barracks regimental tailor, of course. Too insecure. And the Section establishment doesn’t warrant one of our own.’ Lavell was showing him into a small bare office, windowless, just a desk and two chairs. ‘Luckily Amelia’s a cracker with the needle. Went to a convent.’
‘So did my sister. But she hates sewing.’
Lavell appeared not to hear. Behind his back, Amelia had nodded vigorously.
His personal file had been on the desk. Lavell had fingered it for a moment and then pushed it aside. ‘Normally, so far as there is anything that could ever be described as normal here, we would aim to do our own recruiting.
You … well, not to put too fine a point on it, you’ve been wished on us. So we’ve had to jump you in, in a manner of speaking, had to improvise a short cut for you.’ He’d pursed his lips. ‘Still, it is wartime. Any idea why they’re so anxious for us to take you on? Some special skill?’
He’d shaken his head. Killing Germans – in spontaneous self-defence – scarcely a skill. ‘Not to my knowledge.’
Lavell had remained silent, his fingers performing a little dance on Peter’s file.
‘Could you tell me a bit about the Special Duties Section or Section K? What it’s for, background and so on? I’ve no idea, apart from Colonel Ponsonby’s sending for me and then ordering me to report here.’
Lavell had sighed. He’d picked up the file and balanced it between his forefingers. ‘Special Duties? It’s one of Winston’s brainwaves. Action this day. His big idea is to have people available for unconventional missions to be handled in unconventional ways. A secret organisation that sits outside the normal chains of command and isn’t fettered by traditional ways of doing things, as he sees it, not blinkered, not hidebound. One that can act freely, is flexible, buccaneering, imaginative.’ He’d pronounced the last three words as if dropping them into a wastebasket. ‘One that gets results, bringing off missions regular forces don’t or wouldn’t consider, working single-handedly or in small teams, depending.’
He’d put down the file and placed it so that its corners lay exactly along the corners of the desk, in silence running his fingers down the sides. ‘Some of that’s nonsense of course. No government organisation can stray far from tried and tested administrative procedures, budget, audit, channels to ministries and agencies. And Whitehall isn’t to be disposed of that readily. Procedures exist for a purpose. However…’ He’d stopped. In the pause, he’d moved the file across the desk to the other corner. ‘However, you asked about Section K. It’s the administrative basis of Special Duties. Other sections will be coming along – developing specialised weapons and munitions, communications, non-conventional sources of intelligence – but you needn’t bother with those. Colonel Ponsonby has a small operations staff reporting directly to him.’ He’d put his hands into his sleeves like a monk and leaned forward on his forearms. ‘And that’s Special Duties. On board so far?’
‘Do I gather that some missions might not be considered altogether proper by regular forces?’
‘We’re putting together an introductory course with initial specialised training. Getting one or two people with Spanish experience in as instructors. I’ll send you on it when you return from your mission. The intro will make clear that while Special Duties has been set up precisely to be flexible and to act freely, the fundamental laws and rules of war still govern its members’ actions. Unconventional, yes. Criminal, no. Britain isn’t fighting to be become the mirror image of our enemy. It will require a strong sense of personal responsibility from agents. That will be one of the basic qualifications. I trust you have it.’
‘I hope so.’
****
Amelia had taken him to the quartermaster/armourer’s lair in what had probably been an operating theatre. They’d passed a porter in a blue serge suit sitting at the foot of a flight of stairs, a policeman in every inch of his 6ft, from his heavy black shoes to his short-back-and-sides. He’d looked through Peter but Amelia had a nod.
‘None of us knows what lurks up there,’ she’d said. ‘You need a special pass. Even Mr Lavell hasn’t one.’ Further on, a door had opened and closed at once, but not before he’d glimpsed an astrological chart on the wall and a pentacle on the floor. Amelia had caught his eye and whispered: ‘Searching the astral plane for Adolf’s invasion plans. He’s doing my horoscope.’
Armed, back in his battledress with new insignia and sergeant’s stripes, he’d been returned to Lavell. In front of the administrator, pinned to Peter’s personal file, lay a new file, green with a red diagonal stripe; down the side, Peter’s name in large capitals, “A/Sergeant”.
‘All kitted up? Good. You’re required to sign a couple of declarations before we go any further.’ From the green file he’d taken two sheets, each with a red diagonal stripe across one corner. One was to acknowledge that he understood that all matters in connection with the Special Duties Section (Co-ordination Staff) were secret and not to be communicated to any unauthorised person. Such communication would render him liable etc, etc. The other was to acknowledge that he had been advised that in certain circumstances SDS (CS) might deny all knowledge of him and his activities if, in the opinion of SDS (CS) officers, SDS (CS) security and/or national security required it.
‘You don’t have to sign. The choice whether to sign or not is yours. If you decide not, and you can still, you simply return to your unit.’ He’d paused, then handed Peter a pen and piece of blotting paper.
Without hesitation, he’d signed each one, blotting them carefully.
‘Welcome aboard. Congratulations on your promotion. With this fresh start, I’m sure it won’t be the last.’ Lavell had stood to shake his hand. Then he’d resumed his seat and reached into the file again and given him a new pay book – ‘Your new birth certificate’ – and into a desk drawer and taken out an envelope of French francs. ‘These have been requisitioned for your use. Another signature, I’m afraid. Keep as many receipts as you can. The Treasury have no idea of conditions in the field.’ A sheet taken from the desk drawer had telephone numbers. ‘Memorise them and dispose of it.’ He’d talked about Peter’s reporting on his return. Then, ‘I’ll show you out.’
Peter had stopped at her desk to thank Amelia for her help. She’d shaken his hand enthusiastically. ‘Good luck. I’ll ask Hugh to include you in his prayers.’
When he’d turned away from the front door to walk back through the barracks, he’d seen a flash of blond hair in an upstairs window.
****
The street in which the barracks stood was long and straight, dusty and warm in the June sunshine. A little further up, where a mass of flowering cherries arched out from the garden of a porticoed Victorian villa, a taxi was standing with its flag down. As Peter shifted his pack and turned to walk off, the driver looked at his watch, raised his flag, and drove off. When he came abreast of Peter, he pulled into the kerb and leaned over, the engine running. ‘I’m off down the West End. Want a lift to the bottom of Portland Place? On me.’
‘That’s very decent of you.’
‘Anything I can do for our lads. In reason, of course.’ The driver put a glove over the flag. ‘In case I’m hailed.’
Halfway down the street, he turned right, crossing into the park. ‘Quicker. Shouldn’t really be in a royal park but they’re turning a blind eye.’ Then he abruptly swung the cab into another turning, leading deeper into the park.
Peter had been mulling over his experience in Section K. Now he jumped forward, ‘Hang on, cabbie. This doesn’t get us to Portland Place.’
The driver hunched his shoulders and accelerated. Peter grabbed at his pack, shouting to him to pull over. Was the man mad or was this another attempt? He heard Podger’s warning. As he snatched at the buckles, the taxi slowed sharply and stopped, engine running, by a man sitting on a bench. He was relaxing in the June sunshine, reading the lunchtime paper and smoking a stubby pipe. Calmly folding the paper, he got into the taxi and without a word settled himself by Peter. The taxi did a circle in the road and went back the way it had come.
The man turned towards him. ‘Hello, Peter. Good to see you. Glad you got home safely.’
Peter sat back. ‘I suppose there’s no point in my asking how, or why, or why like this.’
‘Within reason, why not? How? Trade secret, but we like to keep an eye on our references. Why? I thought we could have lunch and catch up. Why like this?’ Nick Harry smiled, his eyes knowing. His teeth seemed to be more tobacco-stained. ‘Couldn’t I have written out the rendezvous by a crossword, you mean?’ The taxi was rattling along; they had crossed Oxford Circus and turned into the maze
of streets around Soho. ‘Let’s say this got us together, didn’t it.’
In the margin by his crossword, the floppy-haired sergeant had written ‘JEHU’ and ringed it. ‘Where is our Jehu taking us?’
‘Jehu? Jehu? Coachman, you mean? You might have recognised him. Partridge. He’s taking us to Pat Patrick’s. D’y know it? Bar in front, dining room behind, just the job for a cosy chat. Sorry it’s not your favourite Italian. They were all rounded up yesterday and today. Even Winston’s old friends – Quaglino brothers, Bianchi at the Café Royal.’
****
Dark wood, two-person booths, cigarette smoke coiling in the steamy atmosphere, lively chatter from the long counter of the bar in front, the dining room was perfect for Nick’s cosy chat. The menu was a single handwritten sheet covered in smudged cellophane. He raised his arm and the short, barrel-shaped waiter came over.
‘Pea soup, steak pudding, treacle tart. Peter? Twice please.’
The waiter, whose head merged directly into his shoulders, nodded imperceptibly. ‘To drink?’
‘Glass of stout? Twice please.’ The order given, Nick placed his pipe on the table. With grave deliberation, he positioned his tobacco pouch alongside it, his pipe-cleaners alongside the pouch, and his pipe-scraper along them. Then he looked up. ‘You were in France.’
He listened silently as Peter took him through the French journey and back, up to the point when he was given the secure order, pausing only for their meal to be served and to eat.
‘So you were right out of position?’
‘Luckily for us. The adjutant couldn’t believe it.’
‘Your officer couldn’t map-read?’
‘We came up in the dark. Anyway, I think the sergeant took the decisions. They always kept close and he had the experience.’
‘A bit too much experience for the Brigade, I heard.’ He began to stuff the stubby pipe. ‘And now, suddenly, pastures new.’
Innocence To Die For Page 25