by William Boyd
And so she did, with impressive recall, she thought, and he sat and listened carefully, nodding from time to time, asking her to repeat a detail. He took no notes. Now she watched him standing by the window where, with the palp of his forefinger, he followed a rain droplet wiggling its way down the pane.
“So,” he said, not turning round, “one man is dead and two British secret agents are prisoners of the Germans.”
“That’s not my fault. I was there only to be your eyes and ears, you said.”
“They’re amateurs,” he said, the scorn in his voice making it harsh. “Fools and amateurs who’re still reading Sapper and Buchan and Erskine Childers. The ‘Great Game’—it makes me want to vomit.” He turned back to her. “What a coup for the Sicherheitsdienst—they must be amazed how it was so easy to hoodwink and capture two senior British agents and whisk them across the border. We must seem like complete idiots. We are complete idiots—well, not all of us…” He paused, thinking again. “Joos was definitely killed, you say.”
“I would say so—definitely. They must have shot him four or five times. But I’ve never seen a man shot dead before.”
“But they took his body away, anyway. Interesting.” Now he turned and pointed a finger at her. “Why didn’t you warn the two British agents when Joos failed the second password? For all you knew, Joos could have been part of the German plan. He could have been working with them.”
Eva kept her anger banked down. “You know what we’re meant to do. The rule is abort—instantly. If you think something is wrong you don’t hang around to see if you’re right—and then try to patch things up. You just get out, fast. Which is exactly what I did. If I’d gone into that room to warn them…” She managed a laugh. “There were the other two Germans with them anyway. I don’t think I’d be sitting here talking to you.”
Romer paced around, then stopped, facing her.
“No, you’re right. You’re absolutely right. What you did—operationally—was absolutely correct. Everyone else around you was making mistakes, acting like complacent fools.” He gave her his wide white smile. “Well done, Eva. Good work. Let them clean up their own filthy mess.”
She stood up. “Can I go now?”
“Do you fancy a stroll? Let’s have a drink to celebrate your baptism by fire.”
They caught a tram and it took them to the Digue, Ostend’s lengthy and imposing sea-wall-cum-esplanade, with its grand hotels and boarding-houses, dominated at one end by the vast oriental bulk of the Kursaal, with its domes and tall arched windows giving on to its gaming rooms, its ballroom and concert-hall, at the other extreme of the gentle curve of the promenade, sat the solid bulky presence of the Royal Palace Hotel. The cafes on the Kursaal terraces were all closed so they went to the bar of the Continental Hotel, where Romer ordered a whisky and Eva chose a dry martini. The rain had let up and the evening slowly cleared enough for them to watch, out at sea, the twinkling lights of a ferry cruising slowly by. Eva felt the alcohol ease and calm her as she listened to Romer repeatedly running over the events of the ‘Prenslo Incident’, as he now termed it, warning Eva that he might require her to add to or corroborate the report he intended to submit to London.
“Schoolboys would have made a better fist of it than those fools,” he said, still seeming to be brooding on British incompetence, as if the fiasco was a personal slight, somehow. “Why did they agree to meet so close to the border?” He shook his head in genuine disgust. “We’re at war with Germany, for God’s sake.” He called for another drink. “They still see it as a kind of game where a certain kind of English attitude will always prevail—all fair play, pluck and derring-do.” He paused and stared at the table-top. “You’ve no idea how difficult it’s been for me,” he said, suddenly looking weary, older. It was the first time, Eva realised, that she had ever heard him admit to or exhibit a trace of vulnerability. “The people at the top—in our business—have to be seen to be believed…” he said, then, as if he was aware of the slip, he sat up smartly, smiling again.
Eva shrugged. “What can we do?”
“Nothing. Or rather—the best we can under the circumstances. At least you were all right,” he said. “You can imagine what I was thinking when I saw those cars race across the border and stop outside. Then I saw all the running about, heard the shooting.”
“I was in the woods by then,” Eva said, thinking back, seeing once again Joos in his tight suit sprint out of the café, firing his revolver. “Everyone had just had lunch—still doesn’t seem real, somehow.”
They left the Continental and walked back out on to the Digue and looked out across the Channel in the direction of England. The tide was out and the beach gleamed silver and orange in the esplanade lights.
“Black-out in England,” Romer said. “I suppose we shouldn’t complain.”
They strolled down towards the Chalet Royal then turned down the Avenue de la Reine—it would lead then back to Eva’s apartment. They were like a couple of tourists, she thought, or honeymooners—she checked herself.
“You know, I always feel uneasy in Belgium,” Romer said, continuing in this unusual personal vein. “Always keen to leave.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I was almost killed here,” he said. “In the war. In 1918. I feel I’ve used up all my Belgian luck.”
Romer in the war, she thought: he must have been very young in 1918—barely twenty, in his teens perhaps. She considered her vast ignorance about this man she was walking beside and thought about what she had done and risked in Prenslo at his behest. Perhaps this is what happens in wartime, she thought: perhaps this is entirely normal. They had reached her street.
“I’m just down here,” she said.
“I’ll walk you to the door,” he said. “I’ve got to go back to the agency.” Then after a brief pause he added: “That was very nice. Thank you: I enjoyed myself. All work and no play—etcetera.”
Eva stopped at the door and took out her keys. “Yes, it was very nice,” she said, carefully matching his banalities. Their eyes met and they both smiled.
For a split second Eva thought that Romer was going to reach for her and kiss her and she felt a fierce giddy panic rise in her chest.
“Night,” was all he said, however. “See you tomorrow.” He sauntered off, with one of his half-wave, half-salutes, pulling on his raincoat as the drizzle began again.
Eva stood at her door, more disturbed than she could have thought possible. It was not so much the idea of Lucas Romer kissing her that had shaken her—it was the fact that she realised, now the moment had passed and gone for ever, that she had actually rather wanted it to happen.
FIVE
Red Army Faction
BOBBIE YORK POURED ME a small whisky, “a tiny one,” he said, adding a splash of water, then he poured himself an extremely large whisky and filled water up to the glass’s brim. He ‘deplored’ sherry, Bobbie would frequently say—filth, the worst drink in the world. He reminded me of my mother in the histrionic violence of his over-reaction—but only in this.
Robert York MA (Oxon) was, I had calculated, in his late fifties or early sixties. He was a tall portly man with a head of thin grey hair, the strands of which were swept back and kept under control by some pomade or unguent that smelt powerfully of violets. His room, winter or summer, was redolent of violets. He wore handmade tweed suits and heavy orange brogues and he furnished his large study in college like a country house: deep sofas, Persian rugs, some interesting paintings (a small Peploe, a Ben Nicholson drawing, a large, sombre Alan Reynolds apple tree) and, hidden in some glassed cabinets, were a few books and some fine Staffordshire figures. You would not think you were in the study of an Oxford don.
He approached me from the drinks table with my whisky, and his, set my drink down on a side-table and eased himself carefully into an armchair opposite. Every time I saw Bobbie I realised anew that he was really quite fat, but his height, a certain swiftness and balletic precision of move
ment and his excellent tailoring had the effect of delaying that judgement a good five minutes or so.
“That’s a very attractive dress,” he said suavely. “Suits you to a tee—shame about the bandage but one almost doesn’t notice it, I assure you.”
The night before I had scalded my shoulder and neck badly in the bath and had been obliged today to wear one of my skimpier summer dresses, with slim spaghetti straps, so that no material rubbed on my burn—now covered with a gauze and Elastoplast dressing (applied by Veronica), the size of a large folded napkin, situated on the junction of my neck and my left shoulder. I wondered if I should be drinking whisky, given all the powerful painkillers Veronica had plied me with, but they seemed to be working well: I felt no pain—but I moved very carefully.
“Most attractive,” Bobbie repeated, trying not to look at my breasts, “and, I dare say, in this infernal heat most comfortable. Anyway, slangevar,” he concluded, raising his glass and taking three great gulps of his whisky, like a man dying of thirst. I drank too, more circumspectly, yet felt the whisky burn my throat and stomach.
“Could I have a drop more water?” I asked. “No, let me get it.” Bobby had surged and struggled in his chair at my request but had not managed to leave it, so I crossed a couple of densely patterned rugs, heading for the drinks table with its small Manhattan of clustered bottles. He seemed to have every drink in Europe I thought—I saw pastis, ouzo, grappa, slivovitz—as I filled my glass with cold water from the carafe.
“I’m afraid I’ve got nothing to show you,” I said over my scalded shoulder with its dressing. “I’m rather stuck in 1923—the Beer Hall Putsch. Can’t quite fit everything in with the Freikorps and the BVP, all the intrigues in the Knilling government: the Schweyer-Wutzlhofer argument, Krausneck’s resignation—all that.” I was busking, but I thought it would impress Bobbie.
“Yeeesss…tricky,” he said, suddenly looking a little panicked. “It is very complicated. Mmm, I can see that…Still, the main thing is that we’ve finally met, you see. I have to write a short report on all my graduates—boring but obligatory. The Beer Hall Putsch, you say. I’ll look out some books and send you a reading list. A short one, don’t worry.”
He chuckled as I sat down again.
“Lovely to see you, Ruth,” he said. “You’re looking very nubile and summery, I must say. How’s little Johannes?”
We talked about Jochen for a while. Bobbie was married to a woman he called ‘the Lady Ursula’ and they had two married daughters—“Grandchildren imminent, so I’m told. That’s when I commit suicide”—and he and the Lady Ursula lived in a vast Victorian brick villa on the Woodstock Road, not that far from Mr Scott, our dentist. Bobbie had published one book in 1948 called Germany: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow that I had ordered up from the Bodleian stacks once out of interest. It was 140 pages long, printed on poor paper and had no index, and as far as I could determine it was his sole contribution to historical scholarship. As a boy he had holidayed in Germany and had spent a year at university in Vienna before the Anschluss intervened and necessitated his repatriation. During the war he had been a staff officer attached to the War Office and at its end had gone back to Oxford as a young don in 1945, married the Lady Ursula, published his slim book and had been a member of the History Faculty and a Fellow of his college ever since, pursuing, as he candidly put it, the ‘way of least resistance’. He had a wide and sophisticated circle of friends in London and a large and decrepit house (thanks to the Lady Ursula) in County Cork, where he spent his summers.
“Did you have any luck with this Lucas Romer person?” I asked him, casually. I had phoned him that morning, thinking if anyone could help me, Bobbie York could.
“Romer, Romer…” he had said. “Is he one of the Darlington Romers?”
“No, I don’t think so. All I can tell you is that he was some kind of spy in the war and has some kind of a title. I think.”
He had said he would see what he could dig up.
Now he heaved himself out of his armchair, tugged his waistcoat down over his gut and went to his desk and searched among the papers there.
“He’s not in Who’s Who or Debrett’s, ” said Bobbie.
“I know: I did check,” I said.
“Doesn’t mean a thing, of course. I assume he’s still alive and kicking,”
“I assume so.”
He took some half-moon spectacles out of a pocket and put them on. “Here it is,” he said, and looked over the rims at me. “I called one of my brighter undergraduates who’s become a clerk at the House of Commons. He did a little digging around and came up with someone called Baron Mansfield of Hampton Cleeve—family name Romer.” He shrugged. “Could that be your man?” He read off the sheet of paper.
“Mansfield, Baron, created 1953 (Life Peer), of Hampton Cleeve. L.M. Romer, chairman Romer, Radclyffe Ltd—ah, the publishers, that’s the bell that rang—1946 to the present day. That’s all I’ve got, I’m afraid. He does seem to live very discreetly.”
“Could be,” I said. “I’ll check him out, anyway. Many thanks.”
He looked at me shrewdly. “Now, why would you be so interested in Baron Mansfield of Hampton Cleeve?”
“Oh, just someone my mother was mentioning.”
My mother had said two things in the Turf Tavern: one, that she was sure Romer was alive and, two, that he had been ennobled in some way—“A knight, a lord, or something, I’m sure I read about it,” she had said. “Mind you, that was ages ago.” We left the pub and strolled towards Keble College, where she had parked her car.
“Why do you want to find Romer?” I asked.
“I think the time has come.” was all she said and from her tone of voice I knew further questioning would be fruitless.
She ran me to the end of Moreton Road: Hamid was due in five minutes and, sure enough, there he was, sitting on the top of the steps.
We spent two hours with the Ambersons, enjoying their delayed holiday near Corfe Castle, Dorset. There were a great many remonstrations about what Keith Amberson ‘should have done’ and many complaints from affronted wife and children about his oversights. Keith was abashed and apologetic. Hamid seemed to have caught Keith’s mood as he seemed a little subdued throughout and over-studious in an untypical way, stopping me frequently to make long and laborious notes in his jotter. I wound things up earlier than usual and asked him if there was anything on his mind.
“You have still not responded to my dinner invitation,” he said.
“Oh, yes, any time,” I said, having forgotten all about it, of course. “Just give me a couple of days’ notice so I can get a babysitter.”
“What about this Saturday night?”
“Fine, fine. Jochen can stay with his grandmother. Saturday would be lovely.”
“There is a new restaurant on the Woodstock Road—Browns.”
“So there is, yes—Browns, that’s it—I haven’t been, that would be lovely.”
Hamid visibly brightened. “Good—so, Saturday at Browns. I’ll call here and collect you.”
We made the arrangements and I walked him through to the back door. Ludger was in the kitchen, eating a sandwich. He paused, licked his fingers and shook Hamid’s hand.
“Hey, brother. Inshallah. Where are you going?”
“Summertown.”
“I’ll come with you. See you later, Ruth.” He took his sandwich with him and followed Hamid down the stairs—I could hear the dull metallic boom of their steps as they clattered down.
I looked at my watch: ten to four—ten to five in Germany. I went to the phone in the hall, lit a cigarette and called Karl-Heinz on his private line at his office. I heard the phone ringing. I could picture his room, picture the corridor it was on, the building it was in, the nondescript suburb of Hamburg where it was to be found.
“Karl-Heinz Kleist.” I heard his voice for the first time in over a year and I felt it, for a second, sap all my strength. But only for a second.
“It�
��s me,” I said.
“Ruth…” The pause was minimal, the surprise wholly disguised. “Very good to hear your sweet English voice. I have your photo here on my desk in front of me.”
The lie was as fluent and as unfalsifiable as ever.
“Ludger’s here,” I said.
“Where?”
“Here in Oxford. My flat.”
“Is he behaving himself?”
“So far.” I told him how Ludger had showed up, unannounced.
“I haven’t spoken to Ludger for…oh, ten months,” Karl-Heinz said. “We had a disagreement. I won’t see him again.”
“What do you mean?” I heard him find and light a cigarette.
“I told him: You are no longer my brother.”
“Why? What had he done?”
“He’s a bit crazy, Ludger. A bit dangerous, even. He was mixing with a crazy crowd. RAF I think.”
“RAF?”
“Red Army Faction. Baader-Meinhof, you know.”
I did. There was an interminable trial going on in Germany of Baader-Meinhof members. Ulrike Meinhof had committed suicide in May. It was all a bit vague—I seemed never to find the time to read newspapers these days. “Is Ludger mixed up with these people?”
“Who knows? He talked about them as if he knew them. I told you I don’t speak to him anymore. He stole a lot of money from me. I kicked him out of my life.” Karl-Heinz’s voice was very matter-of-fact—it was as if he was telling me he had just sold his car.
“Is that why Ludger came to England?”
“I don’t know—I don’t care. You have to ask him. I think he always liked you, Ruth. You were kind to him.”
“No I wasn’t—not particularly.”
“Well, you were never unkind.” There was a pause. “I can’t say this for sure but I think he may be wanted by the police. I think he did some stupid crazy things. Bad things. You should be careful. I think maybe he is on the runaway.”