It 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 with 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.
‘Don’t worry, Lieutenant. This is just a chat.’ Gilbert must have seen him flinch. There was a supercilious little smile on his face.
‘No unpleasantness,’ then, as if an afterthought, ‘for now.’
The door opened behind Lindsay and light from the landing crept across the floor and under the table. Lindsay turned his back on Gilbert and walked towards it.
‘Goodbye, Lieutenant. We will be seeing each other again, I’m sure. Oh, and there is a delivery — pick it up on the way out, would you.’
Lindsay did not reply but brushed past the thug at the door and began to thump down the wooden stairs. The angry rhythm of his feet echoed through the shop. Verdammter Mist! He gripped the banister and muttered it to himself. What a mess.
It took him more than an hour to walk home. He was glad of the time and the cool air and the darkness of the blackout, its emptiness and anonymity. It felt unfamiliar, as if he was walking through a New World city, roughly planned, a vast building site of half-finished streets, the sidewalks criss-crossed in the moonlight by broken shadows. At the Tower of London he was stopped by a policeman who wanted to know his business at that hour. More than once he looked back to see if he was being followed, without expecting to see anyone. And slowly the anger he felt, with Gilbert, with Fleming, with Checkland, with the Navy, was replaced by a sadness that glowed deeper, like the wooden heart of a fire.
The apartment in St James’s Square was empty. He had given Mary a key but she never used it and there was nothing to suggest there had been uninvited visitors. Lindsay flung MI5’s parting gift — a large manila envelope — on to the couch and walked over to the mahogany sideboard to pour himself a whisky. Before he could reach it the telephone on the desk by the window began to jangle. It was nearly one o’clock in the morning, late even for Mary to call.
‘Douglas?’
His father’s voice was strained with anxiety.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘The police were here to speak to your mother. I’m afraid she’s in a bit of a state. They want to know about our family.’
Two of Glasgow’s finest had presented themselves at the engineering works and accompanied his father home. They wanted photographs of the Clausen family, their ages, occupations, correspondence and last contact details.
‘They were especially interested in Martin. They knew a good deal about him already.’ There was a cautious note in his father’s voice and Lindsay wondered if it had occurred to him too, that someone might be eavesdropping. His mother had told them she had heard nothing from her nephew for two years but that was not enough to satisfy them. They had wanted to know if anyone in the family was in contact with Martin.
‘They asked about you in particular, Douglas.’
‘Yes.’
‘They were a little unpleasant to your mother.’
‘How unpleasant?’
His father did not answer.
‘How unpleasant?’
‘Very unpleasant. But I will speak to the Chief Constable about it tomorrow.’
There was some concern about ‘Mrs Lindsay’s status’, they said. ‘Nazi connections’, they said. She was a ‘low-risk Category C’ alien but that might change and they had spoken of new restrictions.
‘The wee buggers had the nerve to talk of internment.’ His father’s voice shook with emotion. ‘I pointed out that our sons were fighting for their country.’
‘They threatened her?’
‘In so many words. Honestly, Douglas, we are beginning to behave like the Nazis.’ His father had asked the policemen to leave at once and they went without protest.
Lindsay did his best to be calm and reassuring, to talk of ‘misunderstandings’ and ‘silly mistakes’, but there was no mistake. When his father hung up he lit a cigarette and sat at the desk with his glass. He had heard that the Security Service interrogators at Camp 020 called it ‘the game’. One old player had told him that ends always justified means in war. His rules permitted everything but the rack and the thumbscrew and perhaps there would be a time when those would be necessary too. And in such a game your friends could sometimes become enemies.
The little carriage clock on the chimneypiece struck two. He got wearily to his feet, took off his jacket and draped it over the couch. It slipped down the back on to the envelope he had been given at Five’s little shop. It was addressed to Room 39 and stamped MOST SECRET. Lindsay picked it up, rubbing the rough paper between his fingers. Then, on an impulse, he reached over to the desk for a paperknife and slit it open with ruthless precision. There were two sheets of foolscap inside. The first was a cover page with a circulation list that included DNI — the Director of Naval Intelligence. Subject: ‘A Breach of Security in the Division’. He turned to the second page.
1. The following extracts are from a letter sent by a German prisoner at Number One Officer’s Camp. The prisoner, Captain Mohr, is well known in his own country and has achieved some notoriety in this. In the early months of the war he sent a signal to the First Lord of the Admiralty with the position of survivors from a ship his U-boat had sunk. He is the most senior Kriegsmarine officer in our hands and a possible source of important intelligence.
2. The letter was sent on 12 ^th July 1941 and is addressed via the usual channels to a Marianne Rasch. From its tone and content it can be assumed that Miss Rasch is intimate with Captain Mohr.
3. It contains the following passage:
‘By an extraordinary coincidence I have had the unexpected pleasure of conversing at length with a cousin of my old comrade Schultze. Do you remember Schultze? His cousin is an interesting young man who shares many of our ideas. He entertained one of our officers at a jazz club and introduced him to his girlfriend. My meetings with him made me even more convinced that this war between Germans and Anglo-Saxons is some sort of madness. It will be over soon, I am sure. In the meantime, please write to Schultze and let him know his cousin prospers, although he looks tired and must be working too hard.’
Lindsay gave a short humourless laugh. It was impossible not to admire the audacity of the man. He closed his eyes for a moment and rumpled his fingers through his hair. Mohr had the instinctive cunning of the true hunter. It had let him down only once and he had become a prisoner but now it was serving him well.
4. Further investigation with the co-operation of ADNI and personnel in NID sections 8, 10 and 11 has revealed the identity of Schultze to be that of a U-boat commander, Lieutenant-Commander Martin Schultze. His cousin has been identified as Lieutenant DAC Lindsay RNVR Until recently Lieutenant Lindsay has been serving as an interrogator at C.S.D.I.C. and he was responsible for questioning Captain Mohr. Although something of his family background was known to the relevant sections in the Division, this close connection to the German Navy was not, nor his apparent sympathy with ‘Nazi ideas’. It is the opinion of this officer that further inquiries should be carried out at once to prevent any risk of a damaging breach of security and that the Security Service should be asked to investigate.
The report was signed by a Major Macfarlane of Military Counter-Intelligence Western Command. At the bottom, someone else — perhaps Gilbert of MI5 — had scrawled in pencil: Concur. Recommend removal of officer at once and immediate follow-up.
Lindsay slipped the report back into the envelope. He wondered if Colonel Gilbert had expected him to read it. Perhaps the report was part of the game too? It must stop, stop at once. This spiral of suspicion was not malicious, it was cold policy, but his mother and Mary were in danger of being caught up in it too. He dropped the envelope on the couch and walked over to the window, stepping carefully behind the heavy blackout drapes. His lip was throbbing.
The black Morris was parked in the north-east corner of the square again. It was too dark to see behind the wheel but he felt sure the same ugly driver was there. He was too tired to care any more. His file could be stamped ‘Security Risk’ and sent to the Admiralty Registry for burial.