As we made our way past Bunacaimb, Portnaluchaig, the glorious beach at Camusdarach and reached the bridge over the River Morar, I realised that, lost in my reverie, I had said nothing to Katie for an hour.
She was weeping, silent tears running down her cheeks.
The light was beginning to fade in the west. When we turned a corner, past the ribs of a wrecked fishing boat, there was a bench. Having no words, having no idea what was happening to her parents or her aunt and uncle, all I could do was hold her close and hold her tight as she began to sob, to let it out. Intent on Katie, waiting for the tears to run their course, I gazed at the islands on the edge of the ocean, the islands of the evening.
On the Lochiel, the Oban mailboat and ferry, we drank stewed tea with sugar as though it was nectar and ate scones, which were not young, with cheese and sticky jam. And felt better.
‘I’ll see if they have blankets so that we can sleep on the benches on the deck.’ Anxious about my fishing bag and its contents, I wanted to be apart from other passengers. Near the stern, behind the funnels, we found a good place where the breeze was not strong.
Only one other passenger joined us on deck. A tall man in a long dark overcoat, wearing a trilby hat, he stood at the rail as the ferry swung out of Mallaig harbour and turned south past Eigg and Muck on its way to the Sound of Mull and the Firth of Lorne. After a few minutes, he went below.
In the cafeteria, I bought some cigarettes and, not having had tobacco for some time, we relished them. It seemed that luck was at last with us. Oban railway station is only a step, less than a hundred yards from the ferry terminal, and by a miracle, with only moments to spare, we caught the last train to Glasgow Queen Street.
*
Under the yellow light of a telephone box, the man in the trilby hat was dialling an Edinburgh number. ‘Hi, Averill. Yes. It’s Leonard here. Yes, Leonard Gregory. He’s on his way, with his girl, and I don’t think he spotted me. And no one else is following them.’
After Gregory and Averill Thomson replaced their receivers there was a second click on the line.
POSTSCRIPT
As we walked wearily up the steep steps out of Waverley station, David stopped and turned to me. On an impulse, it seemed, he asked me to carry the fishing bag with his journal and the vital document drawn up by Professor Feldman inside it.
‘Let me go alone,’ he said. ‘I just want to be sure that nothing can go wrong. I don’t know these people, the Americans.’
It was early in the morning of January 8th 1945 when David walked across Princes Street. To allow him to get ahead of me, I waited for a moment or two on the deserted pavement. Through the pale, dawning light, I looked west along the length of the empty street. The city seemed vast, ghostly, a faded memory of itself. When he reached Heriot Row, where the US consulate was, David was about a hundred yards in front of me. While he crossed the street to walk up the steps and ring the bell, I waited with the fishing bag under the shadows of the trees of the gardens opposite.
And then he died.
Everything happened at high speed. A car swerved around the corner. A man got out. Shot my David dead. Then, after opening David’s coat, searching his clothing, the gunman got back in the car and it raced off.
I ran, ran for my life. I ran home.
EPILOGUE
Dawn, 17 June 1945
Inside the dovecote, the man shivered. For hours, almost exhausting the batteries of his torch, he had been reading, flicking back and forth through David Erskine’s remarkable account. It was as John Grant, the old soldier, had said: an entirely different version of recent history, and its conclusions upended what had become accepted as the new world order. At last, it seemed, there was hope.
But Feldman’s deception – the estimate of six months before a viable bomb could be produced – that concerned him greatly. Had the professor been able to sustain that? What would the Germans have threatened? Their wives, their families? Very likely.
But Professor Feldman’s paper also encouraged him, even though he understood little of the detail. Clearly the scientists’ work had been held back by the extraordinary events of Christmas 1944 and the first few days of January 1945. Nevertheless, they claimed that they were close to building a viable bomb, and here was all of the evidence, all of the calculations needed. Time was short. Perhaps it had already run out. But at last he had the hard, documentary evidence he desperately wanted and now he could move quickly. He wrapped the precious journal and the scientific paper carefully inside its protective oilskin.
When the man pulled open the wooden door of the dovecote and made to walk out into the early morning light, he felt the cold steel of the barrel of a gun press on his temple.
‘Do not move,’ said a voice. ‘Stay exactly where you are. Keep looking straight ahead.’
The man felt a hand take the oilskin package out of his.
‘Now, take one step forward and put your hands behind your back.’
Around his wrists, one at a time, handcuffs were clicked shut. He felt a hand push him hard in the back.
‘Start walking towards Abbey House. Quickly! Move! If you turn around, the barrel of my gun will be the last thing you see.’
A slow, pink dawn was rising behind the trees along the riverbank and, one by one, the stars disappeared as a summer sun warmed the morning chill. When they reached the car parked outside the empty house with its windows boarded up, a rear passenger door was opened and the man was bundled in. The engine sputtered into life and they moved off.
‘Tell me your name,’ said the driver. ‘Your real name, not the alias you’ve been using.’
The man could see the driver’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. ‘I’m Averill Thomson, from the US consulate. And is that Jamie Griffith-Smith’s pistol you have, Katie?’
As she drove up the steep hill out of Dryburgh, Katie’s tone did not soften. ‘You may or may not be who you say you are. Bitter experience has taught me to trust no one.’ She paused. ‘And someone I loved died outside the American consulate.’
Once over the Tweed at Mertoun Bridge, she followed the winding road into St Boswells and, at the junction at the Green, where the gallows still stood, stark against the horizon, Katie turned north on the Edinburgh road.
‘When I saw you hide from the Vigilantes who came to the hotel last night, I decided it was worth taking a chance. It took you much longer than I thought to solve it, but you persisted with the puzzle. And that encouraged me.’
The man shifted uncomfortably in the back seat. ‘Katie, if you could take off these damn handcuffs, I could give you a card with my name on it.’
She looked in the mirror, said nothing and drove on into the hills.
‘It was the dogtag, Katie,’ said Thomson. ‘I know this is painful for you to think about, but when we found David’s body on our doorstep, we were able to identify him because he was still wearing his army dogtag.’
They had begun the long climb up Lauderdale into the green folds and steep-sided valleys of the Lammermuirs. Flocks of grazing ewes moved slowly across the flanks of the hills, summering out on the high pasture.
‘And that’s what brought me down to the Borders. That’s how I was able to make contact with John Grant, your grandfather. I didn’t know what you looked like, and when you introduced us at that talk on Roman antiquities a few months ago, you didn’t give your name. And I never saw you again. Were you watching me all that time? I had no idea.’
Katie fought back the tears as she drove up to the long summit, the hill at Soutra. She could make no response, say nothing. The stone, the weight in her heart, would not shift and it stopped up her mouth. On the long, straight road across the watershed plateau, she tried and failed to begin a sentence, to ask a question. Since David’s death, she had never felt more alone, more desolate in all her life. Glancing in the rear-view mirror, she saw Thomson smile a tight smile.
‘Why don’t you pull over?’ he said. ‘It’s a beautiful morning. Perhaps we co
uld sit and talk for a while?’
It seemed that all Scotland lay before them. From the roadside they looked down over the Lothians to the spires of Edinburgh and the castle rock, beyond to the Firth of Forth and across to Fife, and along the farthest horizon, the sentinel mountains of the Highland Line rose up through the morning mist. Scotland seemed unchanged, as it always was.
‘Thank you,’ said Thomson as Katie unlocked the handcuffs. But she kept her distance as they sat at either end of a crumbling old concrete bench much cracked by frost. And she kept the revolver in her hand.
‘I ran home,’ said Katie after a time, tears on the edge of her voice. ‘All I could think was to come home to the Borders, and all I had left was my grandfather, John Grant.’ She stopped and swallowed hard. ‘And I don’t have him now.’ She paused once more. ‘I made a copy of David’s journal. It was a way of keeping him with me a little longer. I added a good deal, things I knew or realised had happened, or would make things clearer. I shall never forget what the Levinsons told me of the camp at Comrie. And then I hid the journal in the dovecote.’
Thomson held up his hand. ‘Why didn’t you simply just give it and Feldman’s paper to your grandfather for safe-keeping?’
Katie shook her head and explained that she had seen what had happened to the people she loved and she could not put him in danger. So she told him a little, and set a puzzle. ‘You had come down to the Borders by that time, and I wanted to set a test. I knew that my grandfather liked you. He knew he was dying and I was certain he would pass all he had on to you. But I never asked him if he trusted you. Death always comes suddenly, even when you expect it. So, for the last few weeks, I have followed you and watched you going to Dryburgh Abbey all those times, watched you making calls from telephone boxes.’ Katie had never let go of Jamie’s revolver, simply laying it on her lap. ‘And I still don’t know if I can trust you. You may have been talking to the Germans, making calls to them. Everyone else seems to have given up, given in.’
The sun had begun to climb high in the summer sky and Thomson shaded his eyes with his hand. ‘All right, Katie. To show our bona fides, I’m going to tell you everything I know, and break several federal laws in the process. Although we didn’t get the journal or the scientists’ paper – the Germans were clearly following both of you on that morning in January – we were able to corroborate one or two elements of the story. The hangings at Berwick, St Boswells and St Andrews became common knowledge. We knew Jews were being rounded up and, from Millie’s telephone call, we understood what was going on at St Andrews. But we needed to know much, much more of what happened.’
As Thomson rubbed his welted wrists, he blew out his cheeks and sighed loudly. ‘Okay. What I’m going to tell you now is highly classified. You may not trust me, but I’m going to trust you. After my sister called me, the ambassador spoke directly with President Roosevelt. Our assessment was and remains that the Germans’ military dominance is much more apparent than real. Leaving the atomic bomb that destroyed London to one side, their army is actually in very poor shape. Although they have appropriated a great deal of our equipment and supplies, their armed forces were much more depleted than we thought, badly led after all of those purges, and exhausted. We believe that they can be defeated using conventional weapons. We’ll attempt to build a bomb with Feldman’s findings, but its use would, I’m certain, be a very last resort. And there is one other vital element. We still have eyes and ears in Germany, and it became clear that the laboratory at Oranienburg, where we think the London bomb was made, was completely destroyed by the RAF.’
Thomson paused, took a deep breath. ‘More than that – and this really is most sensitive – we’re certain that the Nazi leadership is in turmoil. Hitler may be sick. Who knows, but his decision-making appears to have simply ceased. We understand that he has become even more delusional, refusing to leave the bunker in Berlin, refusing to believe that the Russians have surrendered. Goebbels is running things. He does everything in Hitler’s name and seems able to manipulate him to sign all and any directives. We think that the Germans may indeed be bluffing about the existence of more bombs and David’s journal adds a great deal to that assessment. It’s a strategy with Goebbels’ fingerprints all over it. It’s the biggest of his Big Lies.’
Katie had been able to gather herself a little. ‘But you need the journal and Professor Feldman’s paper to convince the White House to act?’
Thomson nodded. ‘It’s the missing piece. But we also had a difficult hiatus. With President Roosevelt’s death two months ago, we could not be sure that President Truman would see things in the same way. But in our last exchange, he put forward a simple view. Somehow, we had to find a way to resist. The world would continue to plunge into an abyss of evil, or darkness, if we did not act. And I think that when the president sees the journal, or a digest of it, along with the scientific paper, he’ll act, decisively.’
Looking out over the vast panorama, over Scotland in the fresh, summer sunshine, Katie stared for a long time, breathing the clear air. ‘I need to know two things.’ And at this, her voice wavered. ‘What happened to my parents?’
She gasped and put her hand to her mouth, her breath shuddering, fighting for control, as she heard Thomson say, ‘We cannot be sure, but we think they’re alive, imprisoned with the MacDonalds and the Griffith-Smiths at the camp at Comrie. There may be a link with the work going on at St Andrews. It may be that Professor Feldman has struck some sort of bargain – maybe accelerated progress in return for their lives. Something like that. Or the Germans may want to put them on trial once they have the bomb. We simply don’t know. And please, Katie, this is not meant to sound like a condition, or some kind of bargaining chip . . . but if you feel you can let us have the journal and Professor Feldman’s paper, President Truman would be prepared to authorise a special forces raid on the camp to free them. We still have the capability to do that.’
Katie could keep back the tears no longer and she wept bitterly for what had been lost, and for what might be redeemed.
Letting her be for a few minutes, Thomson bided his time, and then asked, ‘What’s the second thing?’
She looked up at him, fixing him directly and steadily, silent tears running down her face. ‘Where is David buried?’
*
‘Hi. Jack? Yes, it’s Averill Thomson here.’ He was in a telephone box in St Andrew Square in Edinburgh. ‘At exactly 11 a.m., I’ll walk up the steps to the consulate carrying a package of the utmost importance. To reassure my contact, will you please look out for me at exactly that time and open the door without me ringing the bell?’
When they parked in Heriot Row, where David Erskine had died five months before, Katie looked along the street in both directions but could see nothing suspicious. At last, she gave Averill the package. Speaking calmly, fighting down the tears, Katie said, ‘This is all I have of him. Please take it to your ambassador and make the best use of it you can.’
And with that, she walked up the cobbled street to St Cuthbert’s Cemetery to look for David.
Acknowledgements
This novel began life in March 2020 as Britain was locking down in the face of the Covid pandemic. The idea was to supply some online diversion, what I hoped might be a ripping yarn to be serialised on my publisher’s website. A bit of fun, certainly for me, and maybe for a few readers. But when the story took on a life of its own and began to move faster and faster, I could barely keep up and completed it far in advance of any deadline.
Jan Rutherford at Birlinn encouraged me enormously in writing what was my first novel, and Hugh Andrew and Andrew Simmons added their enthusiasm and great expertise. When the manuscript was sent to Craig Hillsley to be edited, it improved once more and I learned a great deal as versions travelled back and forth on the ether. I have written a lot of non-fiction, mainly history, but I quickly discovered that novels are very different and Craig introduced me to a new set of necessary sensibilities and I am very grateful
to him.
I am blessed to have a group of long-suffering friends who read and fact-check my non-fiction, and when I sent them this manuscript, many helpful suggestions came back. I thank them all for their kindness.
I’m grateful to everyone who helped me improve The Night Before Morning and I had so much fun writing it, making stuff up.
Alistair Moffat
Selkirk
June 2021
The Night Before Morning Page 23