by Gavin Lyall
I wouldn’t be surprised, thought the Commander as he squinted through his pipe smoke, if I wasn’t looking at a happy man. Remarkable.
“And what we got,” Erith went on, “was your Bureau. A big step but not, I’m sure you’ll forgive me, a seven-league stride. What do you feel the next step should be?”
“The right men and more money,” the Commander said promptly.
“Hmm. I was afraid you’d say that. Aren’t you forgetting our national custom of giving the means to do the job as a reward for having done it without them?” He smiled gently. “Now, if you could achieve some earth-shaking – but of course quite confidential – coup, such as discovering the secret fleet with which Germany plans to invade us …? Indeed, I recall that collecting and giving an independent assessment of such invasion rumours was an argument we used for setting up your Bureau. May I ask how the invasion is coming?”
The Commander gave a pained smile. “Apart from a dozen shilling shockers, about the same amount of wordage masquerading as journalism and a successful stage play – no, I have no evidence of any coming invasion at all.”
“Then let me ask this: could you produce evidence that such an invasion is not coming?”
The Commander waved his pipe in a helpless gesture, leaving an S of smoke drifting in the air. “Evidence of a negative? Can I produce evidence that a witch is not about to fly down the chimney and turn us both into toads? I can offer reasoned argument, but to those of your Committee determined to believe in witches …”
Erith’s nod encouraged him to go on anyway. He clasped both hands on the bowl of his pipe and said firmly: “Can we start by forgetting this secret fleet of shallow-draught barges being built in the Ostfriesland creeks? It simply isn’t necessary. All that’s necessary to invade Britain is to sink the Royal Navy. If you can do that, you can invade; if you can’t, you can’t. It’s that simple.
“And may we also forget the notion of distracting the Navy just long enough to sneak an invasion ashore somewhere? An invasion isn’t an assassination, one-shot-and-away; it’s just the start of a campaign – one that needs reinforcement and resupply just as any other. What happens when the Navy wakes up and cuts the supply line – which would have to be a regular steamship service across two hundred miles of open sea? You’d have tens of thousands of Prussians stranded in Norfolk or Lincolnshire, running out of ammunition and not a decent Bierkeller or brothel within miles.”
Erith frowned. “I beg you, this is a serious – ”
“I am being quite as serious as those Committee members who persist in believing in an invasion without, apparently, believing that the Navy would have to be defeated first.”
Erith sighed and gazed out of the window at the already smoke-stained cupolas of the new War Office building across the street. “You’re quite right, I’m sure.” His voice and thoughts seemed distant. “But there is some excuse for those military and naval gentlemen who have cried ‘wolf!’ without really believing in invasion at all. The public at large does not see why we might have to become involved in a Continental war. But it does believe – thanks to those shilling shockers – in the wolf of invasion (uneducated literacy has much to answer for). And we must be thankful that they accept increased expenditure on the Army and Navy for any reason, right or wrong. But now …”
“Now, the wolf having scared the taxpayer into emptying his pockets, you want my agents to hunt it down?”
“Not kill it, by no means kill it. But cage it, tame it, at the very least get it out of the hands of the Lords of Admiralty. Have you heard their latest ploy?”
News of the misbehaviour of his nominal masters at the Admiralty always cheered the Commander up. He grinned impishly. “Usually I have, by this time of day, but please continue.”
Men of Erith’s age – past sixty – and dignity did not spring to their feet, but he rose impatiently. “They want two whole divisions – forty thousand men – out of the seven we plan to send to the Continent in the event of war, left behind to guard against invasion. Forty thousand of our best men, nearly a third of our whole regular force!” He stalked himself restlessly round his chair. “And when no invasion comes? – then, I wager, the Admiralty will affect to notice those troops for the first time and say: ‘But we can’t have these fellows standing idle, let’s carry them off on an invasion of our own. On the islands of Heligoland or Borkum, or even the German coast itself.’”
The Commander leant back puffing contentedly. “Well, I hope they remember to sink the German fleet on the way. Jackie Fisher’s been hawking schemes like that for years – or is it young Winston wanting a cavalry charge by sea if he can’t get one by land?”
Erith sat down again and said sombrely: “I grant you this isn’t a new idea of the Navy’s. The new idea is how to lay hold of the troops. Forty thousand of them!”
“Unless I can cage the wolf. I can submit another report …”
“It would have to be convincing enough for the Army members to over-ride the Navy’s dire warnings. I’m afraid that simply rephrasing the old lack of evidence of invasion won’t do it.”
“What you need is a new lack of evidence? That my agents have scoured the German coastline within the last few weeks and found nothing?” The Commander frowned. “There is one problem to that.” He thought carefully, then said: “Whenever I go on a picnic, I try to remember to take a near-empty jar of jam or honey along. This I half fill with water and set aside for the wasps. They swarm in to reach the jam, fall into the water, and drown. And I am left to eat my hard-boiled egg unstung.
“The Germans know all about our obsession with invasion from the sea. They also know that any invasion, theirs or ours, involves just eighty miles of their coast, from the Dutch frontier to the mouth of the Elbe. It’s a coastline that’s well worth our attention, since it holds three major naval harbours, most of their shipbuilding yards, one end of the Kiel Canal and all those fortifications that Brandon and Trench got caught looking at. But …” He paused to relight his pipe. “… but I sometimes wonder how many German invasion rumours that so excite your Committee are pure jam, spread deliberately to get my agents – and the Navy’s – swarming in to drown themselves. And not in trying to learn something useful about their battle fleet or the Kiel Canal, but just pottering about looking for a non-existent invasion armada in some muddy creek. That is the problem.”
Erith sat very still and silent. He hadn’t thought of that at all. And to do him credit, he was thinking very hard about it now.
Finally he said: “Thank you for pointing that out. I shall most certainly pass it on to my colleagues.” And if the hints I drop to certain admirals and cabinet ministers that they may be dupes of the German counter-espionage system are not phrased delicately enough … well, doubtless they will let me know.
“So,” he added, “you do not propose to send our agents pottering up those muddy creeks?”
“Not of my own choice, My Lord.”
Erith’s circle of influence was probably wider than any in the country; men who would defy the King might defer to him. But in the end, it was only influence, not power. He could give orders to nobody but his own servants, and the Commander had just shown he knew it; had in effect said: “Find someone who can give me orders, and influence him.”
He sighed to himself. Was powerlessness the price of influence? Well, he had been offered power often enough, as minister, editor, governor, but had shied away from the hurly-burly of command. He had chosen; he could live with his choice.
He stood up and let the Commander pass him his hat and gloves. “With the situation in the Balkans, the storm could break on us almost any day now.” It was one last dignified plea.
“Indeed,” the Commander said, just as gravely. “I shall need all my men – and more – on that day.”
When he had escorted Erith to the more public part of the building, the Commander pushed his chair back behind his desk and took out a sheaf of papers hidden under a Naval logbook. He read
each one carefully, then signed it in green ink, a single bold letter: C.
He enjoyed that signature.
A POSTCARD FROM KIEL
19
Ranklin was gazing courteously rather than studiously at a large canvas of Admiral Tromp trouncing the British fleet in 1653 when an English voice beside him said: “I must say I prefer flower paintings myself.”
So would any true-blooded Briton, of course, but all Ranklin said was: “It’s odd that they never show any seagulls in such pictures. Probably assume the cannon-fire would scare them off.”
A mention of flowers had been answered with a mention of birds, so they wandered on together, and soon out of the Rijks-museum.
The new man was some years younger than Ranklin and seemed some years brisker, with curly fair hair and a fresh open smile. He wore a hairy brown tweed travelling suit that looked far too warm for the day.
“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “those pictures give quite the wrong impression. The Navy didn’t do at all badly in that year. The Dutch outnumbered us in most of those battles.”
“Unsporting,” Ranklin agreed, steering them back into the city in the general direction of, but not getting too close to, the Rembrandts Plein. Then he led the way into a small smoky café where the tables were covered in strips of patterned carpet – the patterns by now being mostly foodstains and tobacco burns.
“I thought there were two of you?”
“He’ll be along,” Ranklin said, and ordered three beers.
“I’m Dickie Cross – sort of ex-RN.” Ranklin had already guessed the Naval connection.
“Ranklin,” he said, then added: “And O’Gilroy,” as he appeared and sat beside him with a little shake of his head that Cross intercepted with a smile.
“So nobody was following us? Jolly good.” He pushed across a folded copy of The Times. “I don’t know if you’d like to see what you missed at Ascot …” Ranklin moved the paper to one side, feeling the bulk of the packages inside. So despite looking like an overgrown schoolboy, Cross actually knew something about their trade. Probably a lot more than he did himself.
Cross insisted on ordering Ertwensoep, which they had eaten themselves the night before as part of Ranklin’s plan to force-feed O’Gilroy with typical dishes wherever they went. But a thick pea soup crammed with leeks, sausage and pigs’ feet wasn’t his idea of lunch on a warm June day, so they chose bread, ham and cheese.
When the waiter had vanished into the chattering gloom – a journey of about three feet – Cross said: “You’re going on to Brussels, I believe?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to interfere, but have you had much of a brief?”
“Hardly anything,” Ranklin confessed.
“Pushing you in the deep end. Well, it is the deep end in our trade – along with Vienna. A lot of information for sale and not all of it twenty-four carat. So unless you want trouble with your expenses … Among others, you might run across somebody calling himself van der Brock.”
Ranklin let a small puzzled frown show on his face, then turned deliberately to O’Gilroy to see if he could help.
“I might know the man,” O’Gilroy seemed to recall. “Would he be fat and dark and wearing glasses?”
“Well, one of them is,” Cross smiled. “It’s a name they pass around a little group. If you challenged one of them, he’d say: ‘Oh, you must have met my brother; he’s in the firm, too.’ Cigars is their shop front. That’s quite real: they’ve got a place here, in Amsterdam.”
They knew that already, having looked up the address and strolled past it, but not risked doing anything more.
“The one you met,” Cross said, “actually he hasn’t been around for some time. Been ill, I heard.”
“Has he, now?” O’Gilroy was politely uninterested.
“So they say. What I was going to say was, they’re the upper end of the market. Purveyors of secrets to the crowned heads of Europe, you might say. So if they offer to sell you anything, it’ll probably be genuine, just as somebody else’s probably won’t be. But I can’t help much more than that. The best way to judge information is to have most of it already as I’m sure you know.”
Their lunch loomed out of the atmosphere and kept them busy for a time. Then Cross, who had been frowning and hesitating for a time, suddenly said: “I’m going on to Kiel.”
Knowing at least that unnecessary questions and volunteering unnecessary information was Not Done, Ranklin was a little surprised.
“For Kiel Week?” He must remember to explain to O’Gilroy that this yachting regatta was Germany’s answer to Cowes Week, but held in a harbour that was also German Naval HQ, had several warship-building yards and one end of the now-being-enlarged Kiel Canal.
“I’ve been going for years,” Cross said. “My club’s got an arrangement with the Kaiser Yacht Club, so they’re quite used to me by now.”
“I hope it won’t be too warm for you there,” Ranklin said politely. Kiel had to be a sensitive place at the moment, and particularly for anybody with a British Naval background.
Cross acknowledged the comment with a brief smile. “Yes – but, you know, it isn’t a crime to be an agent. Only to be caught doing some – well, agenting. They may suspect, but if they can’t prove anything …”
O’Gilroy smiled sourly at the idea that the police would never touch you on mere suspicion, but said nothing.
“Anyway,” Cross went on, “I’ve got some unfinished business there – and it’s the Russians that worry me as much as anything.”
“I thought the Russians was on yer side?” O’Gilroy said, puzzled, but maintaining Irish independence.
“The Czar may be, but I wouldn’t vouch for his Okhrana – their secret service. Too many of them are playing a double game, making sure whatever happens in the next revolution, they’ll be on the winning side. There’s some pretty entomological specimens involved.”
“Insect-like,” Ranklin interpreted to O’Gilroy.
“Maybe we met one,” O’Gilroy said, looking at Ranklin. “Back in Ireland. But he died before we could be sure.”
“What’s happened to that waiter?” Ranklin asked, not quite loud enough to be heard in St Petersburg.
As they shook hands on the pavement outside, Cross said cheerfully: “Those smoky little dens seem so secret – but I suppose that’s their trouble. People can get too close. I prefer an open-air café, wide-spaced tables …”
The galling thing was that O’Gilroy had said exactly that earlier, and Ranklin had overruled him. And O’Gilroy hadn’t forgotten: “Knows the trade, that boy. Good to know he’s one of ours.”
“Well, he isn’t,” Ranklin said ten minutes later, in the security of the hotel room. He was reading a note included in his envelope, which O’Gilroy had checked to make sure it hadn’t been opened. “He’s Naval Intelligence, not the Bureau. Our people had asked if there was anyone coming this way who could act as courier.”
“I see if the Navy’s got a good man they wouldn’t let him go,” O’Gilroy rubbed it in.
“Quite. What did you make of that business about van der Brock? I suppose it means Gunther wasn’t actually a German spy.”
“He didn’t learn his bayonet drill in the Dutch Boy Scouts.”
“No, he could still be German by birth … could have been working for them on that occasion …” He was trying to prepare his thinking to cope with professional spies-for-hire; it sounded as if they might meet more than one in Brussels – indeed, they were being sent there to sample that world. And what, after all, was O’Gilroy? But that was a question Ranklin had long since decided not to ask, nor force O’Gilroy to ask himself.
He hastily emptied the rest of the envelope onto the table by the window and unfolded his new passport. It showed him to be James Spencer, merchant, of Lahore, India, travelling with his servant Terence Gorman.
“Just like I was yer dog,” O’Gilroy commented, realising he had to give up having a passport of h
is own.
“It would be the same if you were my wife or child.”
“English gentlemen surely love owning people.”
“Look, we talked this over …”
And had agreed to experiment with a master-and-servant act to widen their social coverage. O’Gilroy might now pick up gossip from other servants and go unnoticed where a gentleman would arouse suspicion. And, within limits, they had been free to invent their own new selves.
Ranklin’s had been the trickiest, since a gentleman leaves a well-marked trail of family, schools, university or one of the services, job – if he has one – his clubs and London friends. Now each such footprint he had left in Time had to be considered, then altered or erased.
Spencer had once been real enough, a schoolboy friend who had vanished from Oxford after a scandal that had been called “unspeakable” because, no matter how hard people had spoken of it, nobody could understand its complications. However, if only half those complications were true, it was reasonable to assume that Spencer was long dead, and the only relatives the Bureau could trace were in Canada. Ranklin had simply given him a new life in India where he had served for three years himself – and the Bureau had rounded it off with the proper passport, driving licence, calling cards, letter of credit and tailors’ labels to replace those on his clothes which, of course, bore his real name.
Ranklin now looked at these gloomily. Like his clothes, he was used to an identity that fitted and was his alone, and James Spencer did not really fit. He was second-hand and awkward, and like most short people, Ranklin hated seeming awkward.
But perhaps worst of all, he was quite incompetent with a needle and thread. “Can you sew?” he asked.
“Yez asking a soldier with ten years’ service?”
“Of course! Then would you be so kind?”
O’Gilroy’s new identity had excited him: he liked being secret and unknown. The Bureau had found his problem to be the very opposite of Ranklin’s: to leave his background as vague as he preferred it, would, they thought, itself be suspicious. So they had added longer periods of service with Anglo-Irish (“West British” as they called themselves) families, and a misspelt letter from a sister in America urging him to emigrate after her.