by Marc Eden
His career in the Royal Navy had been a good one.
The gale brought him out of his reverie, cold water pouring into his shoes. “Bloody bastard!” Hamilton swore, and the spoke hit him sharply on the wrist. The Commander grabbed at the helm, turned it with all his might, and brought them about. The launch plowed forward, and yawed! He couldn’t hold it! The wheel was spinning!
“De Beck!”
Together, they turned it.
A bolt shot across the sky.
He could see their battered craft moving across the top of the awesome swirl. Lightning swept across yellowed oilskin, casting its unearthly pallor over de Beck, who had returned to the gunwale, his face impassive in the blinding light. Awaiting France, he was keeping a tight grip on himself. The bow shot upwards, held, and dropped, crashing back into the sea.
He had his orders...
Hamilton shouted, his voice lost in the wind. “We couldn’t have picked a worse night!” Yet they both knew this was exactly why MI.5 had picked it. The launch plunged, then rose again, threatening to broach.
“Lieutenant Pryor!” shouted the Commander, “you’d better take her!” In a field of sterling qualities, Hamilton knew his limits. Pryor snapped out the light. The forward hatch burst open and he hit the deck.
The pilot grabbed the Con and spun it like a maniac, bringing them sharply about. The storm was howling downwind. They had leveled to the curve of the sea. Pryor’s voice rose above the rain.
“There she is, sir, to the starboard!”
He pointed.
The sub emerged out of the Channel like a giant eel, hissing and looking about for its prey. Surfaced a hundred yards to their stem, trajectories closing, they could see the great snout streaming water and cleaving darkly through the swells. Pryor had throttled the motor, and was lining them up. Salt blew across their faces. “Easy does it,” Hamilton said. He had turned.
The Frenchman was smiling.
Teeth, like piano keys, flashed in a broad white grin.
Following her conversion at Elstree, the Spy had told his bodyguard what she looked like; and Ryan, following orders, had made certain those orders had been carried through.
That Valerie was again up for grabs came as no surprise to the mysterious figure who had been tracking her movements like a shadow. Not so, however, could the same be said for the Prime Minister, unaware that Sinclair was now in motion on her own. His long weekend coming to a close, and still at Chartwell Manor where he was wrapping up War Office business, Churchill was finding that he was having to spend most of his time on the telephone—and on his private line, at that.
GOLDILOCKS, launched earlier this evening from Polperro, was as good as in the history books; but had passed up the bedtime story, and was refusing to go to sleep. It was Lord Louis Mountbatten, home for the evening at Broadlands, keeping her up. Lewis Carroll came to mind. The Walrus may have had a word for it, but the Prime Minister couldn’t think of it.
Besides, he was on the ringer.
More than once, and again this evening, Churchill’s wife Clementine had asked him about the “child spy”. At fifty-nine, “Clemmy” was tall and slim; and her long grey hair was drawn behind her ears. Churchill joked about it: she did a lot of listening. Theirs was a marriage made in heaven, presuming that’s where politicians went, and Clementine was very happy with Winston; but she had also become interested in Valerie Sinclair, having been the first to bring the girl to the attention of her husband. Churchill looked up. She had interrupted him.
“Oh dear,” she said. “Important?”
Winston explained, he never told her all of it. Clementine returned to her room. Hand drumming on his desk, he eyed her departure over the ivory figurines; then returned to his call. As he did so, he swiveled around, so as to better observe the events of the evening.
Sunday’s sun had already set.
French windows overlooked the garden, where the smell of jasmine and summer roses permeated the air. A row of birch trees, serving as a windbreak, stood at attention on the horizon—guardsmen of a nobler time; and he saw them now as he had then: as toy soldiers, marching over the hills of a younger man’s summer. But yesterday’s soldiers had all gone away—their sheet-draped pianos and dusty oil paintings with them—put into storage for the duration of this brighter, and more terrible age; where round-the-clock security had surrounded, as if by walls, each personal and private aspect of his life. The Prime Minister could not envision, then, where the next few moments would take him; but he hoped they would take him to where he wanted to go. Right now, he wanted to go to bed. If he could get through this present Donnybrook with Lord Louis, at least he would be one stairwell closer. Alone in the private study, and cradled on his red telephone, he would settle for it.
This Sunday night’s call from Britain’s Supreme Commander, Asia, could not have come at a worse time. The briefcases were bulging. What the Prime Minister had not accomplished this weekend, he must finish up tonight. Well then, he must get to the bottom of it! With Mountbatten, that could take some doing.
“—just my own hunch, really,” his Supremo had told him, but Churchill had caught his inference on the sharp edge of fury. In a word, on a tip from Alan Turing, Lord Louis had just had a look at the Bletchley files—specifically, Conrad Parker’s—and what he had found there were the codes that did not fit.
“What codes?” asked Churchill.
“Those for us,” responded Mountbatten, “and those for—how shall I put it—third parties?” and he proceeded to link an alternate mission; one that could tie von Schroeder to Blackstone, and von Braun to Britain. “Bankers, not all of them ours, who may be deep in Navy business.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” fumed the Prime Minister. “What do you think makes the world go round?” It was as clear as crystal: the linkage was prewar. Until Germany sued for peace then, these facts, as Mountbatten called them, while not generally known, appeared to be out of time. If the P.M. thought about it, he might even supply a few of his own.
“There is more,” Mountbatten said. He was naming names. Like spokes on a wheel, Churchill noticed, they were all pointing to one man.
John Blackstone?
Churchill listened, not at all amused; and his hand went raking through the private files in his desk for the document that would refute it. Dammit, where was it? The red telephone, its receiver thrown repeatedly on the desk, was in his hand again.
“So then, Sire, this business with von Schroeder, you see? Smoke leading to fire, and so on. The very fact that John Blackstone didn’t file it—”
“—means what? What—?”
“—means, in my mind at least, that there may be justification for putting a stop to it. We have turned her over to this Frenchman, Pierre de Beck—yet look who installed him.” Blackstone, not Hamilton. Mountbatten had gathered as much from Seymour. “Suppose the results of the mission are being diverted? Even though GOLDILOCKS is underway, we don’t know what road home shell be taking, do we? Who’s to say that Blackstone and company won’t be there first? An international catch-as-catch-can, you see, with the technology up for grabs.”
“Bankers, I presume,” Churchill said, and he could see it now: not theirs? These allegations on Mountbatten’s part, he knew, could not possibly arise from jealousy. That is why he was listening. The other man’s dogged persistence, going on little more than a seasoned hunch, was suddenly turning this otherwise pleasant evening into something just short of bizarre.
“Well, Louis, what must I tell you? Just this, umm? There are channels that—”
“No no, sir,” Lord Louis cut in, his voice strained, “it isn’t about cloak-and-dagger, at all. I am not questioning his conduct, as an officer. What I do question is that fifteen previous agents, all female, were sent by Bletchley.” Churchill could smell it, the abscess had opened at SOE.
Mountbatten said, “I had no direct jurisdiction at the time, if you recall. That’s why—”
“No one is blaming you,
sir. Your conduct throughout GOLDILOCKS has been exemplary. Still, I fail to see why you insist on pursuing this as though it were a personal matter. If we have a conspiracy on our hands, and you think it’s Navy business, then you should have rightly placed this call to the Lord of the Admiralty.”
“I did. They told me you were here.”
Acknowledged by Navy men, yesterday’s courtesy as it were, Churchill liked the compliment. What he wasn’t liking, was the timing of this call.
Mountbatten knew that, he was thinking of the murdered women: “And Valerie Sinclair may be next.”
Churchill said: “Chance we take. Get to the point.”
“But the point is loyalty!”
“Bosh! Loyalty to whom?” Was Mountbatten calling the British Navy into question? Had black become white? Churchill sat up straight, his bottom lip was trembling. “You are speaking madness, sir! If Blackstone, in your view, is a bastard, at least he is a loyal bastard!” Order of the British Empire, the Victoria Cross? “A thirty-year record of loyalty, sir!”
Lord Louis, perhaps sitting too close to the fireplace, wiped his brow. Mountbatten put it bluntly: “I feel there is another force at work here, a force for the good of England, and the world. I hate to say this, but it’s looking increasingly as though it could be that outside Operative. You remember, I’m sure. David’s Report, from Weymouth?”
“Yes, of course.” He had shared it with Clemmy. She had thought Edwina might appreciate it.
Mountbatten listened.
The specter of The Spy, which had haunted his days, had also advanced and deepened his dread, intruding into the most inviolable part of personal thought, where decisions were kept; so too, the ghostly footsteps, that had walked into his dreams.
“Hold it, will you?”
Reaching to make a note, an agreement to Churchill’s position, the navy man had dropped his fountain pen. Bending to retrieve it, he had felt another’s presence, as though the pen had been knocked from his hand. Lord Louis sat perfectly still, and yearned to be with his friends. One of them had just asked him a question.
“Yes, I think she’s fine,” Mountbatten said.
They were talking about Sinclair.
“I am glad to hear that,” Churchill replied. Allegiance to an agent was important to him, as long as it was his.
Mountbatten assured him that she was.
They discussed Hamilton, who had launched the mission; and who was already en route to his rendezvous in the English Channel. Weather Command was reporting dangerous seas. Mountbatten felt apprehensive about the safety of the girl. Churchill nodded. The Frenchman though, he would be all right. Lord Louis got up from his desk and closed the door, leaving the phone talking: it took just a few seconds. He returned to his chair.
Churchill: “—well then! Presuming David rides it out, so will his agents.” Word had it that Hamilton’s Security Team, having delivered, were in high spirits at The Red Lion. “Blackstone has not yet called in—”
It was a dagger, but a sweet one.
Mountbatten listened, still not convinced. Cats did come out of bags; yet this one might have to be drowned at sea. If Lord Louis had to make another call, it would not be to John Blackstone.
“Calm down, Louis.” The Prime Minister was on his side. What mattered, the central and real reason for the mission, Churchill had made clear, was to beat The First Army to the punch and to acquire the Bomb before they had to buy it. If Mountbatten had doubts, it was too late to change them; and there, effectively, rested the Prime Minister’s case. For if Germany delivered it first...
They would lose.
“Come about, Louis...”
The man at Broadlands had tried harder than most to exceed. The great-grandson of Victoria, and stubborn, it was not his custom to surrender to another in matters of public opinion. If time to join the battle, the night was new. Outgunned, Lord Louis laid it on the line, the other end of which was tightly clasped in the Prime Minister’s hand. “From a purely tactical view, perhaps GOLDILOCKS should not go swimming tonight.”
“I am sorry, Louis,” Churchill coughed, “but you are wrong about that.”
Mountbatten said something.
The other said it better: “No,” he said. Mountbatten of Burma, who had fought him to get the mission back, had embarrassed him with Ike. Mountbatten acknowledged it, but not very much. They went into it.
It was Blackstone.
The P.M. demanded to know the charges, along with the facts—Kay Summersby?—it wouldn’t wash. “Try this,” Mountbatten said. Blackstone’s mysterious network of connections could also be suspect; and what about the Free French—his Appointments!
De Beck, he meant.
“What about him?” This was the second time. What was the problem? The Prime Minister went on explaining his official position: suspicions were not guilt; and sources, unnamed or withheld, were not worth a damn! Besides, who were they? Turing? Turing didn’t know. Mountbatten couldn’t say. It had come to him, that’s all. His Informant did not have a name.
Just a voice...
“There! You see?” Churchill was assuring him that it was all right to be wrong. At the same time, he was revealing the nature of truth:
It was his.
“—how’s that?” Lord Louis said. The German launch date for the Waterfall had come into question. The Prime Minister’s own new sources—civilian clearance—were making clear to him that they’d been off in their assessment by over a week: July 24th then, not August 6th.
Three weeks.
If true, and he had no reason to think otherwise, the Prime Minister’s chilling disclosure had greatly weakened Mountbatten’s case. Not subject to argument, it was the Voice at the Top. Churchill had reversed the players. Of course, if Lord Louis wanted to share this information with John Blackstone—? He didn’t? “Well now,” said Churchill, “is there something that I know that you don’t know?”
Mountbatten grinned. “Bloody right!” he shot back, hoping for more. “I would certainly think that there is.” All cards up, Churchill had spread the deck. It was on the table of the War Office. Blackstone’s cards were not among them. Mountbatten looked: Pierre de Beck’s wouldn’t be there, either. Word had it that he had been rubber-stamped by Parker. Fact had it that he had been personally cleared by General LeClerc.
Winston had won.
Lord Louis acknowledged it. A leader perceived of grace and honesty, and born to it, ruthless in his own case, he threw it out. Friday’s admonition had repeated itself; some Commodores never learn, and Mountbatten had again taken it on the chin. The Prime Minister assured him that he was free to call back. But later, of course, if there were still bothersome questions. In any event, GOLDILOCKS was squarely in Mountbatten’s hands now, and any further decisions would be his. That settled, there were still a few odds and ends that needed to be gone over; and would Lord Louis mind not hanging up just yet? Not at all, and Mountbatten looked at his watch.
“I think I have it now,” Supremo said.
“As I have already told you, you have it faster than imagined,” Churchill crooned.
“Sir!”
He had put the phone down. Mountbatten was on hold.
Lord Louis had opened the drapes.
Rain blew against his window. Faces of life, of his sudden and greater duty, had arrived at his Estate unannounced. Wealth notwithstanding, it was the Estate of a man. He thought back to the First War, where like the remembered cry of a French urchin in the street, they—these faces of future responsibility—would be pressing themselves up against the glass. Through that mirror would come the children of the world, of all the worlds; and he knew: they would be looking back at him, through time.
“Louis—?”
There was crackling on the line.
Time is on out side...
Mountbatten glanced up. The clock on the wall was nearing midnight. He mentioned it. GOLDILOCKS would be aboard the sub in two hours. Forty-five miles away, the P.M. mad
e a note. He spent a few moments remarking on the weather: considered essential.
Lord Louis inquired how it was.
Churchill looked.
Outside, wind was rising through the trellises, churning heat and dust against the wall of the distant storm. He asked Mountbatten to hold. “Two minutes,” he said, and he turned the page.
“Governments,” wrote Winston Churchill, “were invented by people who are too lazy to work...” True enough, he conceded. His own philosophic honesty, however publicly unadmitted, could be just the ticket here. No? He scratched through it, changing the directive, if not history itself, in the letter he had been composing to Marshal Stalin. Mountbatten was waiting. Churchill picked up the phone.
“You may well imagine what the demands are here.”
Still, Sinclair had not been settled.
“So, Louis, my best advice to you is to let GOLDILOCKS have her romp. Do what you do best, dear man, but give me your word that you have laid these frightful fears to rest.”
Mountbatten couldn’t do that, but he agreed.
Important, from Churchill’s view, his own loyalty had not been questioned. “We shall be expecting results. Good luck!”
He was wrapping it up.
“Ring you on Tuesday!” Mountbatten’s voice had strengthened. James Bridley would rejoin him before dawn; they would be returning at once to Kandy. In terms of Record, Louis Mountbatten would not have been here.
“Tuesday then,” the P.M. said, his voice was on the war.
Mountbatten hung up.
The clock struck midnight.
Churchill smiled, his gaze spanning the room. There from behind the antique glass of the Chippendale bookcase, toy soldiers, standing guard before the Creasey collection, stormed forth upon the world. At the moment, men like he and Joseph Stalin owned it. Churchill arose from his desk and walked to the door. An Aide reached in, turned off the light, and closed it.