Knox nodded. ‘Couldn’t pick it out easily. Could take the lot for translation, but then they’d know; probably end of story for that channel. We’d have to be damn sure it was worth it.’
‘And I’m not.’
‘Good man. Not good to lose your head on these things.’
‘Pity, though.’
‘We’ll give it some thought, shall we? You’ve got me a day or so. There’s a place I’m hoping to find; maybe you can help – or one of your bods here in the office.’
‘If I can.’ Cade smiled, magnanimous. The customer seemed pretty content with Cade & Cade.
CONFIDENTIAL M.O.5
28th May 1914
Reference your enquiry of 25 inst. No record in our files of BELCREDI. Only one occurrence of name, wireless intercept dated 28 April 1914, relay from Berlin of message apparently origin Constantinople. TO: HVE, CARE OF EMBASSY BRUSSELS, FROM ATHENESINSTITUT. ORIGINAL MESSAGE BEGINS. WILL DEPART FOR ALBANIA THIS WEEK. EXPECT GOOD PROSPECTS DESPITE REPEAT DESPITE INTERFERENCE YOUR COMPATRIOTS. EXCELLENT PROGRESS CONSTANTINOPLE. ONE DAY WE SHALL CELEBRATE TOGETHER IN GARDEN OF ROSY HOURS. BELCREDI. ENDS. (Translated)
[SS G/1/891/17]
The Sub-Committee of the Committee for Imperial Defence:
‘Ghastly news of Canada.’
‘A thousand souls drowned? And the boat wasn’t even in open sea?’
‘Our reports say slightly over.’
‘But how?’
‘They’re saying it was fog.’
‘Not enough excuse. Not with navigation lights, whistles, all that engineering. This was a four-funnel liner, not a rowing-boat.’
‘One source says there’s a strong supposition – strong supposition, mind you – of deliberate action.’
‘Germans involved, I heard.’
‘The ship that hit her was Norwegian, not German.’
‘Well…’
‘We’re not taking this seriously enough. I’ve said it before.’ Shifting around the table. He had, often, said it before. ‘The Aquitania sails today, gentlemen. Her first voyage. More than three thousand aboard—’
‘Three thousand?’
‘They’re going ahead despite what happened in Quebec?’
‘The point is that we have a wholesale failure of security in our yards. Look, my people have collated the police reports on this.’ There had been collated reports before, too. ‘In the Clydebank yard, in the three months before the Aquitania launched, ten incidents logged where trespassers were evicted, cautioned, or arrested; the Lord knows how many unlogged. Separately—’
‘Gentlemen, I wonder if we—’
‘If I may just finish this point, Chairman. Records of dockyard staff.’ A finger tapping on another paper, a grimace. ‘From a sample of two hundred personnel, fully 29 per cent had criminal records of some kind, and—’
‘They’re dockers; the dregs of—’
‘And four per cent had some connection of family, history or professed interest in Germany.’
‘Statistically—’
‘Statistics be hanged. We know what we’re talking about. The Germans have a net of agents in this country. A rash. Small fry, but inconspicuous. Shopkeepers, tradesmen, travellers. An eye on a barracks here; an ear in a council meeting there; a visit to a dockyard. All going back to Berlin.’
‘That’s the interesting point, surely? The communication.’ The old man; they didn’t think it was interesting.
‘Are we talking about interfering with the mails again?’
‘There’s no other—’
‘Whole thing’s a mare’s nest.’
‘There’s a question of the mails, and a question of wireless telegraphy.’
‘We should be doing more to intercept German messages.’
‘I doubt all these blasted German grocers have got wireless transmitters.’
‘I was also referring to the security of our own communications.’ The old man again; always obsessive about these technical points.
‘I, ah, had a chap get into the German station outside Berlin – not an S.I.B. man, but a local we’ve trained up as a plumber – place called Nauen. I mean to say, it’s vast. Absolutely vast. Our technical bods are doing some calculations based on antenna length; the Germans can transmit to the Pacific, and the distance at which they can intercept—’
‘Even the Admiralty can’t reach the Pacific.’
‘So we should be sticking to cable.’
‘We shouldn’t be letting ourselves fall so behind in wireless.’
The conversation petered out, and the chairman drew their attention to the questions of funding requisitions from Ulster and the attaché network in South America.
The old man faded.
Duval had spent his first night in St Petersburg drifting between worlds. Supper at the Astoria, everything glass and gold, every throat white-tied or sparkling, a bottle of excellent champagne to celebrate Lisson’s banknotes, and a fussiness of service and ritual that irritated him into leaving before the second part of dessert. A drink in a tavern near the Fontanka, firewater vicious in his throat, a circle of faces, broken and dirty and staring blank out of the world, and a stench, and a consciousness of his clean face and comfortable unleaking shoes that shamed him into leaving before he could force the last mouthful down. The faces didn’t move at all as he left. Between the Astoria and the pit, he wandered; in and out of clubs, in and out of constellations of candles and shadows that were slimy underfoot; past the Marinsky, ghostly and astonishing above the streetlights; past clumps of decrepit humanity who huddled around braziers and shivered and moaned and gaped, and who watched him as if they were rats and he a dog – or perhaps it was the other way around.
Then sleep, blissful white sheets and the promise of breakfast, and faces that watched him in the night.
‘This doesn’t look too good, Duval.’
Duval was learning to ignore Lisson’s anxieties. ‘My restaurant bill?’
‘They intercepted a wireless telegraph message – addressed to an outfit here in St P., one we’ve had our eye on – from an outfit in Kiel calling itself the Baltic Design Bureau.’
He looked up at Duval; waited.
‘I’ve never heard of it.’
Lisson smiled, heavy and satisfied. ‘But they’ve heard of you. The only word in the message in plain text was your name. Now why should that be?’
Duval shrugged. ‘It seems as though they’re… some sort of front.’
‘It seems as though they’re on your well-polished heels.’
The point had not escaped Duval; it had started to fester immediately.
Lisson watched him a moment longer. ‘The information about the Foster sight, that went down well. But this… You’re getting a little too hot to handle, Duval.’
‘Then let me go.’
‘Might have to.’ He smiled. ‘No hard feelings. But not yet.’ Then thoughtful: ‘Don’t mind the Hun so much, but if the Okhrana get interested…’
‘The what?’
‘Secret police. Brutes.’
‘Why should they care about me?’
‘Well, they’re a tricky lot. Out of control, some would say. Bit of skullduggery’s all right, but they’ve taken provocation to lunatic levels. Half the anarchists in the city are working for them to stir up the other half. At least two assassinations of public figures caused by this sort of nonsense. I mean to say, you can’t have the police egging on revolutionaries to blow up the minister of police, can you?’ He shook his head. ‘We don’t want to get dragged into that muddle. So keep your head down. London have something in mind for you.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘They gather you’ve a touch of the Irish.’ He said it as though pointing out that Duval had excrement on his boot.
A flicker in his gut. London not so slow after all? ‘Spent a bit of time there, that’s all.’
‘Mmm.’ The smell lingered. ‘London seem to think it might come in handy.’
On the frin
ges of the Sub-Committee meeting. ‘It wasn’t going to help to say it in the meeting, sir, but I suspect you’re right about our communications.’
A smile from the old man, rueful. ‘Thank you, Thomson. And no, there’s little point trying to get the committee to focus on the point.’ Nods of farewell to two other departing officials. ‘How’s Special Branch getting on with the German net?’
‘Badly. We can pick up the odd one here and there if he does something particularly stupid, but it achieves nothing except alerting the enemy to our procedures.’ Thomson’s voice never wavered from its monotone. ‘We’ve no idea of the size and reach of the network.’
‘There must be some co-ordinating contact.’
‘Mm. German Embassy, of course. Funnily enough, we’ve an idea where the linkman might be; passes himself off as a barber on the Caledonian Road, of all places. But other than keeping a constant watch, there’s little we can do about it.’
‘And you don’t want to… sweat this chap, of course.’
Thomson was wooden. ‘Not that I’ve any scruples left, but we’d have no guarantee that anything he said was accurate, or more than a small proportion of the network.’
‘And they’ve probably a way to warn off the network if anything odd happened.’
‘Quite. They’ll all have some agreed code; and no doubt there’s a way to change it if they fear it broken.’
‘They can’t be communicating by wireless.’
‘Lord no. Impossible to assemble the equipment discreetly, let alone keep it hidden. Probably something simple through the mails. Some commercial disguise.’
The old man nodded. ‘So much for the Germans. A pretty puzzle for you. But the other…’
Thomson grunted his interest into the silence.
‘Thomson, I must reflect on something. Would you be so good as to call, tomorrow? I may have a little suggestion for you.’
That night, the offices of the Russian Trade Legation in Constantinople suffered a small fire. No one was present, mercifully, and it burned itself out quickly without damaging the building.
Difficult to say how these things start; the electric wiring in the city is not always of the highest quality.
Only one room was significantly affected. In it, papers and curtains and furniture – including one cupboard – were partly or completely destroyed.
The next day, as part of their clearing up – his boss was sitting in his charred office, mourning his favourite chair and a signed photograph of the ballerina Rodionova – clerk Jozef Radek took the initiative to request from St Petersburg and elsewhere replacement copies of certain strategic documents.
The journey from the island to the port of Split took most of two days. As if to prove a point, on the second day the wind dropped almost to nothing and they had to motor against the tide. They’d developed, unspoken, routines and responsibilities on the boat. Their passion was tender, and rather sad.
On the second afternoon, the limestone ramparts of Diocletian’s palace rose out of the sea to meet them. Isabella was grown petulant at Ballentyne’s impending departure, and he was pedantic with checks of borrowed rucksack and maps. With the boat nuzzling against the quay, he kissed her – on the eyes, on the forehead; and then on the lips, with sudden hunger. Then he stepped ashore.
Split did not appeal. Its beautiful façade was obscured with market stalls, and concealed a mediaeval city; alleys of slime and commerce and sin. It murmured of all the things that men will do when they gather too closely together.
The engine chuckled hollow under the water. He gave a gesture of rueful farewell, half wave, half salute, and turned away.
‘Dear stranger!’ He turned back. ‘You don’t go into the villages because you want to understand. You go because you want to belong!’ Her voice, high over the engine’s throb, was almost sung. Then, quieter, sadder, hopeful: ‘Ciao.’
She bent and shifted the motor into gear and the boat surged away. He watched her as she dwindled, standing tall, the edges of the blouse glowing against the sun, hair streaming out from under the scarf, then with a little growl he hefted the rucksack on his shoulder and turned and began to stride into the town.
In a cabin along the quayside, the harbour master lowered his binoculars and yelled; a boy stuck his head in, and the harbour master spat a message and immediately the boy was running hard, feet slapping on the warm stones.
With Ali still out of action, Cade was inavariably first to his office, early for Constantinople business; get a head-start on the day. Half an hour or so later the clerks would appear, once he’d decided the priorities for the day.
This morning, Cade found the door unlocked when he arrived. Was Ali now mobile? If he was, he’d obviously left again pretty quickly.
It didn’t take long to see why that might have been.
In the middle of Cade’s office, sprawled out on the carpet which he’d been gently rather pleased with, was the body of Muhtar. There was an ugly wound in the temple, turning black.
Shock, then revulsion, and then the need to check, to test. The body was cold – and clearly dead.
Speculations, and understanding: Ali? Some revenge or scuffle, but it was inconceivable that the boy would dare, or have a gun, even if he could get about; and the body didn’t seem recently dead – wasn’t that the point about the temperature?
But if not Ali, then whom?
And the answer, very obviously, was himself.
Now James Cade felt cold, and a little sick.
It hardly improved his feelings about Muhtar. He suppressed an instinct to kick the body at his feet. The man had been a walking disaster from the beginning, and dying on Cade’s carpet was only a development of his trouble-making. Some part of Cade’s mind noticed that the wound hadn’t stained the carpet much.
Had he killed himself? This much of an oaf surely had reason to. But why here? Some obscure revenge? Or had someone else…?
It made no sense. And it wasn’t fair, not hardly. Everything had been going so well…
Sense glimmered again, and with it the fear. For it didn’t matter what had really happened. What mattered was that the body was on Cade’s carpet.
The telephone rang.
Major Knox. Parts of his world colliding.
The telephone was still ringing.
At the back of his mind, the vague sense that the worst of it would be having to explain to his parents.
Distracted, he picked up the earpiece and mouthpiece. ‘Mr Cade?’ The voice when it was connected was tinny and accented and could have been anyone from Sultan Mehmed to Greyfriars Bobby. ‘It is Riza speaking to you.’ Cade murmured a greeting. ‘Do I disturb you?’
‘No – no, I’m…’
‘Mr Cade, are you quite well?’
‘Fine! Yes, I’m fine. No problem.’
‘You do not sound well, sir; pardon me.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Some problem, perhaps. May I help you?’
And yet, could he though? ‘No. No, it’s nothing. Well, a difficulty, I don’t—’
‘Mr Cade, I will be at your premises within ten minutes.’
And he was. He had to show himself in. He found Cade sitting behind his desk, watching him with the greatest discomfort. Then he saw the body on the carpet.
‘Great heavens!’
‘You’ll not believe it, but I swear to you this was not my doing.’
Riza stared into his face. Eventually he said, slowly, ‘You’re a man of passion, Mr Cade, but not of stupidity. I think this deed would have taken both.’ Cade breathed out. ‘And yet the fact remains: the fellow is on your carpet.’
‘Ain’t he, though?’
‘This is something to do with your… your embassy work?’
Cade shook his head. ‘He and I… We had… we had business, Mr Riza. A matter of, er…’
‘Mr Cade, the whole bazaar knows what your business with Muhtar was. And whatever you may say, whatever you may prove, the bazaar will decide it
s own truth about this.’
James Cade folded his hands in front of him, and regarded the corpse on his carpet.
‘I have wanted to play by the rules,’ he said sourly.
‘If you did not do this thing, then he or someone else wished to do you great ill by— but forgive me, you have considered all this, I am sure.’ His lips twisted uncomfortably. ‘And the Varujans will have been calculating their advantage—’
‘The hell they…’ He stopped, running out of certainties. ‘Mr Riza, is there any way that I can… manage this?’
Again the trim little face gazed into his. At last: ‘Mr Cade, you must put your trust in me.’
‘You have long had it.’
A formal nod. ‘There is a man… Not of this city, but with many contacts and much influence here. A man of business like you; but, if you permit me, of much greater scale. A man of affairs.’ Cade found himself leaning forwards instinctively. ‘Frankly, a man whom it would profit you to know in any case. If you will take my advice, you will let me entrust this matter to his agents.’
Another deep breath. Another long glance at the obscene heap on the carpet.
‘Please do so, Mr Riza.’
Muhtar disappeared. When Mr Cade’s two clerks arrived, it was to a note on the door informing them that their employer was busy around town that morning and that they were accordingly free until the afternoon. An hour later, a cart appeared in the street next to the office, delivering a new carpet for Mr Cade; it was carried in and the old one, likewise loosely rolled, was carried out onto the cart. It rattled away into the back streets of the metropolis, destination unknown.
Cade watched it go, relief and unease. Without the body gaping up at him, the episode seemed less real. His office was purified. And since he hadn’t killed Muhtar, and the remains had been dragged away in a carpet, there was nothing to link him to the business. The aberration had disappeared. Business as usual.
And yet… Two matters nagged at him. First and most dramatically: who on earth had killed Muhtar and wished Cade such mischief as to dump the corpse on him? It surely hadn’t been Ali who’d shot the man. Could he really have killed himself over some small business setbacks, and decided to implicate Cade as a revenge? Knowing the man, he was surely more likely to have used a gun on his tormentor than himself. But if not Muhtar himself, who?
The Spider of Sarajevo Page 25