T
he security barrier lifted at last and the black Citroen lurched forward, its engine roaring impatiently as the driver searched for the gears. Deep ruts had been cut in the loose gravel track and the car bumped awkwardly across the construction site, a cloud of summer dust in its wake. Smoke was billowing from a vast rectangular trench a few metres from the track and drifting lazily across the hot white sky. Men and machines were busy at its edge, tearing at the ground as if intent on cutting a rough finger of land from the rest of Lorient. The driver of the Citroen braked hard for a column of French labourers who showed no inclination to step aside. Handkerchief pressed to nose and mouth, Leutnant Erich Radke gazed impatiently from the back seat at their sullen faces and through them to where the Reich’s engineers were marking out the ground for a vast new U-boat bunker.
‘Shit. I’m going to be too late, Albert! It’s almost two o’clock.’
Albert leant insistently on the horn and one of the German engineers looked up and shouted across at the Frenchmen. Reluctantly, they started to drift from the track and the Citroen began to creep through the gears again.
Beyond the dockyard gate, it turned left on to the quayside cobbles just as the band was striking up the ‘Sailing Against England’ song. The U-boats were moored in front of the new cathedral bunker, the tip of its concrete Gothic arch just visible above the makeshift offices and workshops that had been thrown up around the military dock. A crowd of well-wishers, secretaries with flowers, comrades in naval uniforms and soldiers from the local barracks, was gathering on the quay. Snatching his camera from the seat beside him, Radke jumped from the car, his smart leather-soled shoes slipping a little on the cobbles.
Two boats were alongside with their crews in orderly lines on the deck aft. The screws of the one closest to Radke were already churning deliberately through the oily water. As it swung gently away from the wall the crowd began to cheer and shout, ‘Good luck’, ‘Happy hunting’, and the military band struck up ‘We Sail Against England’ again.
Radke struggled to control his emotions. He was to have sailed with the U-330 but at the last minute Admiral Dönitz had refused to release him from his Staff duties. A pity: the commander of the 330 was only twenty thousand tons from a Knight’s Cross and everyone had expected him to sink enough to secure it on this war patrol. Kapitänleutnant Martin Schultze was known to be outspoken and his views on the Nazis had brought him to the attention of the Gestapo, but that had only served to cement his reputation. Radke had visited the 330 in the echoing gloom of the cathedral bunker the previous evening, as the last of the fresh food was being stowed, and had drunk a farewell glass of champagne. Schultze and his officers had been in excellent spirits, laughing, joking, and there was much talk of how the U-boat would win the war for Germany. It was refreshing because everyone at headquarters had been a little downcast since the loss of the U-112 in the spring, and anxious too – the capture of Kapitän Mohr was a grave blow. But Radke had been able to give Schultze and his men the latest figures – almost four hundred enemy ships sunk in the first half of the year. England was finished. Finished.
Someone touched his elbow. It was Siegmann, one of the other young officers on the Staff.
‘Wish you were going with them?’ he asked with a smile.
‘Of course. Don’t you?’
Siegmann gave a non-committal shrug.
There was a general murmur of excitement from the crowd and they shuffled to the edge of the quay to get a better view of the U-330. One of the boat’s officers was carrying out a formal headcount and a camera crew was filming him for the newsreel. Before it could finish there was a tremendous cheer as the commander began to make his way down the gangway.
‘There’s Schultze,’ Siegmann shouted.
The commander was wearing his white cap and a black leather jacket, tall, fair, youthful, an almost beardless thin face. He must have said something to the camera crew because it instantly scuttled up the gangway to the quay. The crowd watched him climb the ladder on the outside of the tower to the bridge as the ropes were released fore and aft.
As the 330 slipped past, Radke could see that the symbol of the lion rampant on the conning tower had been repainted. An order from the bridge and the crew began to fall out, some disappearing inside the steel body of the boat, most lingering on the cigarette deck, talking and waving, enjoying the light and the air.
A woman on the other side of the security fence at the end of the pier was screaming hysterically. Siegmann nudged Radke: ‘Listen to that. A broken heart.’
The ‘lion boat’ was clear of the dock now and swinging slowly about. For a moment it was lost in a cloud of exhaust fumes as it switched from battery to diesel engines, then it began to follow the wake of the first U-boat out into the river, gathering speed towards the fortress at the harbour entrance, the passage to the west and the wide Atlantic.
31
I
t was more than an angry impulse. It was a kind of madness. There it was, at the same time and in the same space, in the north-east corner of St James’s Square. Lindsay needed to touch the cold body of the car and speak to its driver before it disappeared again. It was real. It was parked there. The engine growled as the driver let out the clutch and the car began to pull away. Both driver and passenger were wearing soft fedoras like tinsel-town gangsters. It began to pick up speed, preparing to turn into Charles II Street or Pall Mall. A well-polished Morris Eight. The front door banged to behind him. He was running. A woman screamed and he cannoned into someone on the pavement. He could hear the car straining as the driver changed up another gear. Then the radiator grille was rushing towards him.
‘Stop, stop.’
There was a screech of brakes and another high-pitched scream and the car kangarooed and coughed to a halt. It was two feet away, shiny black and chrome, just as he had seen it in his dream. He leant forward to touch its bonnet. The driver’s mouth was hanging open in almost a parody of amazement. He was ugly but he did have a face – dark, unshaven with heavy jowls – and he was dressed in a police suit, brown and badly cut. A cigarette was burning between his yellow fingers. His friend was thinner, taller, with the crumpled greyness of a long sleepless night. They were both staring at Lindsay. Morning traffic was passing round the square to the right and left of the car.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ An elderly man in an expensive suit – perhaps a Jermyn Street tailor – was glaring at Lindsay from the pavement close by. He had his hand at the elbow of a woman who was brushing dust from her skirt. ‘You could have been killed,’ he shouted. ‘You should have been killed.’
Lindsay ignored him and began walking round the car to the driver’s door.
‘Can we talk?’
He bent his face close to the glass. The driver’s eyes were fixed on the buildings on the south side of the square.
‘Here beautiful,’ and he tapped lightly on the glass.
Slowly the driver wound down his window and flicked his cigarette end into the distance.
‘Whatcha want?’ He was a Londoner and his voice was cool and belligerent.
‘Who are you? Special Branch?’
‘What are you talking about?’ He laughed and glanced across at his friend who smiled and shook his head. ‘Mad Scottish cunt.’
‘You’re right, I am,’ and reaching into the car, Lindsay grabbed the driver by the throat and shook him hard. ‘Now stop pretending, you halfwit, and tell me.’
The door on the other side swung open and the passenger got out.
‘Leave it, all right? We don’t want trouble’, the driver croaked. ‘I’m sorry I called you a cunt. I’m even sorry I called you Scottish.’
The other man was beside him now, a hand on Lindsay’s arm: ‘Let him go.’
To make his point more directly he punched Lindsay hard and he punched him expertly, a hammer blow to the kidney that drove him to one knee, gasping for air. Just to be quite sure, he hit him again in the
face. And as far as he was concerned, that was the end of the matter. He did not wait for Lindsay to rise but began walking round the front of the car to the passenger side. Then someone beyond Lindsay’s bent shoulders caught the man’s attention: ‘Hello, Officer.’
A policeman was walking towards them.
‘Are you all right, sir?’
‘Yes, fine.’ Lindsay tried to straighten his back. ‘Fine. Thank you.’
‘You don’t look it.’ The policeman was itching to reach for his notebook. ‘Did this car hit you, sir?’
‘No.’
‘This man ran out in front of us, Officer.’ The driver was on his best behaviour.
‘My mistake,’ said Lindsay. ‘I thought I recognised him.’
An apology, a simple explanation and a few frosty pleasantries. The driver straightened his tie and winked as he pulled away. Lindsay stood and watched the Morris brake at the bottom of the square, then turn right into Pall Mall. There was the unpleasant, salty taste of blood in his mouth. He touched his bottom lip and winced.
‘All right now, sir?’
‘Yes, thank you, Officer. Thank you so much.’
Of course, it was not the way a naval interrogator should behave. But he was not an interrogator any more. He was a reserve lieutenant in search of a role. Would anyone notice if he did not present himself for duty? Perhaps his Special Branch minders in the Morris would notify their master. But the red mist had lifted and he knew he would go. What else was there to do?
Fleming had found him a temporary job in the Director’s personal office and was trying to keep him busy with little errands to various parts of the Admiralty. He was writing short radio scripts for the ‘black section’ too. Lurid tales of orgies in the flotilla messes, a well-known captain with the clap, champagne bottles commandeered by the thousand – everything and anything that might appeal to the inner Schweinhund of the German seaman. There was talk of a posting abroad to Gibraltar or North Africa, talk of a mission to capture an enemy E-boat or intelligence papers from a weather station. Talk.
No one in Room 39 expected Lindsay to be there long enough to need a desk of his own. After two weeks he was still camping across the corridor in the office used by the uniformed messengers and those waiting to see the Director. The Admiral ignored him and his personal staff were indifferent too – sometimes downright hostile. It was a question of trust. The ‘unpleasantness’ at Trent Park seemed to cling like stale cigarette smoke.
Only Fleming acknowledged him as he slipped into the room. The Director’s Assistant was standing by the west-facing windows that looked towards Horse Guards and the Foreign Office. Lindsay wanted to talk to him about his confrontation, to ask him if he knew why he was being followed, but not in front of the others.
‘I’ve a job for you tonight. A pick-up. All right?’ Fleming sounded out of sorts.
Lindsay was hoping to meet Mary that evening. She was only corridors and stairs away from him but it was harder to meet than it had ever been. He had seen her only once since the night at his flat. Once in St James’s Park when they had met for lunch. The more he struggled to fill his day, the busier she seemed to be. She did not say why she was busy and he knew better than to ask.
‘Of course Ian, where is the pick-up?’
Fleming leant across an empty desk and ground his cigarette into an ashtray.
‘What have you done to your lip?’
‘A little accident.’
‘I see. Come and see me later. I’ll have the details for you then.’ And he walked over to his own desk by the Director’s green baize door and sat down. Conversation closed.
It was dusk when the taxi dropped Lindsay beside a heap of smoke-blackened bricks on the Commercial Road.
‘You’ll have to walk the rest – second right.’
He felt he was paying for his freedom. The cab driver was a Jonah who took a perverse pleasure in the misery of others and there were tales aplenty to tell. They had driven along East End streets shattered, and some abandoned, after pitiless months of bombing. Almost a third of Stepney’s houses were damaged, the driver said, no water, no power, and rich trippers from the West End who wanted to see ‘the other half’ sheltering in tunnels and beneath railway arches.
‘Are you a tripper?’
It was a respectable question. What else would bring a smart fare in an expensive suit into this broken landscape at dusk?
If he had been able to, Lindsay would have said that he ran errands for a man called Fleming who liked dark corners and that this was just one more. It always seemed to be harder than it needed to be. The Director’s Assistant had asked him to meet ‘a friend’ from the Security Service, MI5. What Fleming’s friend was offering, and why he was offering it in the East End at dusk, he would not say. When pressed, he was evasive and then he was sharp. It was ludicrously cloak-and-dagger and it made Lindsay uneasy.
A little way up the road small groups of men and women were emptying out of a pub and trickling home past half-boarded shops, their windows taped and streaked with grime and pigeon shit. Sad, damaged people in a sad, damaged place. A couple of painted girls in summer frocks tottered uncertainly towards Lindsay, their arms draped about each other for support. They stopped and gave him a bleary look then, one of them – a frowzy blonde – swayed closer and blew him a gin-soaked kiss.
‘Do you like me?’
‘Oh, very much.’
‘Nasty lip. Who’ve you been kissing then?’
They cackled wildly. Lindsay slipped past them, picking his way through the bricks that had tumbled on to the pavement. They shouted at his back. He kept his eyes firmly to the front.
Number 350 was a sooty three-storey building with a shop front on the ground floor. Its windows were empty and the counter, too, but its shelves were coated in a generous layer of dust. No coupons needed. The front door was sloughing off its paint in large green flakes. Loose sheets of the Daily Mirror rustled on the step as a bus swept past in a cloud of fumes. It was not the sort of place the Director of Naval Intelligence would visit in person. Lindsay checked the address he had scribbled on the paper – yes, it was Number 350.
A sour-looking middle-aged man in an ill-fitting navy-blue pinstriped suit answered the door: ‘Papers?’
He was Security Service muscle, tall and square with small ears shrivelled and scarred in a rugby scrum.
Lindsay gave him his papers. If he had been asked, he would have handed over his wallet and the keys to his flat too.
‘This way, sir.’
The gatekeeper led him along a dingy corridor to the back of the house, damp nicotine-stained paper peeling from the walls, then up an uncarpeted stair case to the first floor. There were several doors on the narrow landing – his guide slipped through the nearest one. Seconds later he was back: ‘You can go in, sir.’
He stood aside to reveal a small dark room lit only by the low circle of light from an anglepoise lamp. The lamp stood on a plain wooden table in the centre of the room. A silver-haired man in a dark suit sat behind the table and a single empty chair had been placed in the light in front of it. A second man, younger, solid, was standing in shadow against the wall.
‘Please identify yourself.’
Lindsay took a step into the room and handed his papers to the man at the table: ‘Lindsay, Lieutenant Douglas Lindsay.’
The door clunked to behind him.
‘My name is Colonel Gilbert.’
His voice was smoky and hard. He glanced at Lindsay’s papers, then leant back in his chair and spread his large hands on the empty table in front of him. He was in his late fifties with a worn, angular face, his hair was white but his eyebrows were bushy black and he had sharp little blue eyes.
‘You’ve come to pick up a package?’
‘Yes.’
‘It will be here soon. Sit down, Lieutenant. Cigarette?’
The Colonel slipped a cigarette case from his jacket pocket and offered it to Lindsay. He took one and Gilbert lit it wit
h a snap of his lighter.
‘I’m sorry we’ve dragged you out here. The shop used to belong to Russian anarchists. It’s ours now.’
‘Do you have many customers?’
‘Some. The bottom end of the market.’
Gilbert stared at Lindsay for an uncomfortable, unblinking few seconds, then said: ‘You’ve family in Germany, haven’t you, Lieutenant?’
Lindsay drew deeply on his cigarette, then blew the smoke in a steady stream towards the ceiling. He was conscious of the Colonel’s creature, the younger man, close to his shoulder.
‘Is there a package?’ he asked quietly. ‘And if there is, will you give it to me?’
‘In good time,’ said Gilbert coolly. ‘Tell me about your cousin Martin. Are you close?’
Lindsay closed his eyes for a second, a forced smile on his face. He opened them again and said: ‘Lindsay. Lieutenant, Royal Navy. JX 634378.’
‘I have the authority to talk to you, you know. Commander Fleming sent you to me.’
‘To collect a package.’
‘Do you have something to hide?’
‘Are those your men outside my home?’
‘A prisoner called Lange sent you a note. He wanted to thank you, didn’t he – why?’
Lindsay stretched forward and pressed the end of his cigarette into the tabletop. The stub lay there looking almost obscene beside the small black ring it had burnt in the varnish.
‘If you don’t have what I want, I’ll leave.’
Gilbert brushed the stub on to the floor with the back of his hand and leant across the table, his hair a strange yellow-white in the light of the anglepoise: ‘Is there something you’re not prepared to tell us?’
‘Lots of things, Colonel,’ said Lindsay quietly. ‘Perhaps – if there is a package – you will make sure it reaches Commander Fleming.’ And he pushed back his chair as if to rise. Tight little frown lines had appeared on Gilbert’s face. Slowly, deliberately, he looked over Lindsay’s shoulder at his large silent companion and nodded his head.
Almost unconsciously, Lindsay stiffened, braced for a blow from behind.
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