John Bone sat at one of the long tables in the eighth-floor South Reading Room of the Library of Congress Annex on South Second Street and continued to make his neatly penciled findings in a three-ring student’s notebook. He had been working in the annex for the past two days and had collected a great deal of the background information that he felt was necessary to complete his task. In Europe or in Latin America such information was a tightly guarded secret. Here it was available by consulting the thirteen thousand trays in the Card Index Room across the hall, or the Newspaper Reference Room on the ground floor.
According to various newspaper accounts and several volumes Bone had checked describing royal tours by previous English monarchs, security around the royal figures was surprisingly light. When traveling within England the king and queen had only their personal constables for protection, both from A Division of the London Metropolitan Police. In the case of the king, the policeman was a man named Hugh Cameron, while the queen’s policeman was named Giles. Both the royal bodyguards had offices in Buckingham Palace, and unlike the rest of their colleagues in Scotland Yard, Giles and Cameron were invariably armed with Belgian Browning 9mm automatic pistols worn in underarm shoulder rigs. Cameron had been a royal bodyguard since 1932, Giles since 1934. Prior to that both had been uniformed policemen. Both were much taller than either the king or queen and both came from strongly athletic backgrounds.
On trips abroad the king and queen traveled with an added contingent of Special Branch officers as well as the bodyguards, but for the most part the only real function of the Special Branch men was to coordinate security efforts with the police of the city or country where the royals were traveling. According to what Bone had read so far, this meant that the bulk of the security duties during the Canadian portion of the royal visit would fall to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, while in the United States, the onus, at least from a federal point of view, would be on the State Department and a little-known force of agents known collectively as the Bureau of Secret Intelligence.
The Bureau had originally been created to investigate passport and visa applications, but over time their operations had expanded to include security for U.S. diplomats abroad and the well-being of foreign dignitaries, diplomats and heads of state visiting the United States. Bone smiled at the thought. The broadening of the Bureau’s mandate was presumably to avoid such embarrassing incidents as the assassination of the Yugoslavian king, Alexander Karageorgevic, on French soil.
Reading between the lines, however, Bone saw that even if every one of its forty agents was assigned to the royal party the Bureau could not hope to provide any real security for the king and queen. While they were with Roosevelt they would fall under the protective umbrella of the White House Secret Service Detail, but since the majority of their time in the United States would be spent in Washington and New York, responsibility for the royals’ safety would fall chiefly to the Washington Metropolitan Police, the New York State Troopers, and the New York City Police Department. In other words, it was a logistical, tactical and jurisdictional nightmare. This was complicated even more by an itinerary that included side trips to Mount Vernon in Virginia, a possible cruise on the Potomac aboard the presidential yacht, as well as travel by train, automobile and even the Warrington, a U.S. navy destroyer. Initially, Bone had been surprised to discover that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its publicity-hungry director were playing no active role in the royal tour. Now he knew why—the security plan for the visit was a ship without a captain, and unless Hoover was at the helm he wasn’t interested in simply being part of the crew.
The protection of the United States president was also a matter of public record, and as far as Bone could see the general security around Roosevelt would be very little altered by the presence of King George and the Queen Consort. At all times, whether at the White House, the Warm Springs, Georgia, polio spa or the Roosevelt estate in Hyde Park, New York, the president would be guarded by the White House Secret Service Detail headed by Colonel Edmund Starling, an ex–railway detective who had been with the White House detail since 1914 and directing its activities since the Coolidge administration. In addition to the official detail Roosevelt also had two private bodyguards from his days as governor of New York—Gus Gennerich, an ex–New York City policeman, and Earl Miller, a veteran of the New York State Troopers.
Day or night the White House detail consisted of a minimum of eight agents and sometimes as many as thirty. The presidential automobiles, mostly Lincolns, Packards and Cadillacs, were all bulletproof with extra-wide running boards and exterior handles for up to six agents, and the vehicle used by the president was always guarded front and rear by Secret Service cars, each one carrying four agents, all armed with automatic pistols, sawed-off shotguns and Thompson submachine guns. Roosevelt considered the safeguards excessive, but there had already been one attempt on the president’s life in February 1933 in Miami, shortly before his inauguration. Colonel Starling was on record as stating that there would be no president assassinated while he was head of the detail. Bone glanced at the tall window on his left, then checked his wristwatch. It was past six and daylight was beginning to fade. He reached out and switched off the little parchment-shaded lamp at the front of the table. He closed his notebook and stood up, a faint smile on his face. Colonel Starling’s statement would soon be put to the test.
Taking the elevator down to ground level, Bone exited the annex building, stepping out into a light spring rain. Slipping the notebook under his jacket, he turned up his collar, crossed Independence Avenue, then followed First Street as it ran behind Capitol Hill. The dull skies and the rain had driven almost everyone from the sidewalks, and the city was quiet except for the hissing of tires from passing taxicabs on the wet streets. Continuing down toward D Street, enjoying the misty rain, Bone thought about the trail he was leaving behind and wondered if it was cause for significant worry. He’d traveled from Louisiana to Washington by train, paying for a drawing room under the name of Nash. Arriving here he’d booked into his hotel under the same name, and so far he hadn’t been asked to formally identify himself to anyone and doubted that he would be.
At the Library of Congress he’d continued to use the name Nash, explaining to the librarian he’d dealt with that he was a reporter for the Oakland Tribune, using the facilities of the library to research the upcoming arrival of the king and queen, scheduled to arrive in six weeks or so—hence his interest in the couple and his request for detailed information about them, and also about President Roosevelt. It was unlikely that the librarian would even remember him after six weeks, but his requests for both books and periodicals would be on file somewhere. Given the monumental importance of his targets he could presume that any investigation following the completion of his work would be incredibly thorough, and there was no doubt at all in Bone’s mind that Hoover’s FBI would be the agency in charge. While his visits to the Library of Congress as Charles Nash of the Oakland Tribune might not be noticed, they would however be noted and a fragile hidden link would be established. It was a link he could not abide.
Bone crossed Louisiana Avenue to North Capitol Street, turning into the anonymous eight-story bulk of the Hotel Continental. Retrieving his key he rode up to his room, packed his single small case and rode back down to the lobby. He checked out of the hotel, shook off the doorman who offered to get him a taxi, and walked across Capitol Plaza to the gigantic white granite arches of Union Station. Stepping out of the rain and into the grand concourse that stretched the length of the station, he purchased a sleeping car ticket to New York as Bill Joyner, a name he’d seen on the jacket of the assistant manager at the front desk of the Hotel Continental. An hour later, with darkness falling and the rain coming down much harder, the New York train left Washington. By the next morning Charles Nash and Bill Joyner would be no more, and finally after years of faithful service, Edwin Dow, petroleum geologist, would vanish as well.
Jane Todd sat in the Schrafft’s at Forty-seventh and Fifth, waiting for the Sinatra kid to show up. The waiter from the Rustic Cabin was supposedly doing a fifteen-minute singing spot at WNEW, a few doors down on Fifth, but he was already an hour late. The restaurant was its usual genteel self, lots of padded leather, artificial flowers and a menu to suit the needs of matrons out shopping, blue-haired old ladies and their equally ancient dogs searching for something sweet and soft enough to slip past their dentures and through their digestive tracts. Jane was already on her third pot of tea and her second plate of chocolate-covered biscuits, which was going to give her a complexion just like Ricky the soda jerk in Walgreens if she didn’t watch out. She ate the last one on the plate, silently cursed herself for agreeing to meet in a place where they didn’t sell beer and lit a cigarette.
According to the information she’d received from Hat Rack, Sinatra wasn’t really a kid at all, he was just a young-looking twenty-four. He was determined to be the next Crosby, but so far the best he’d done was a brief stint as one of the Hoboken Four, now the Hoboken Trio, and his present job as singing waiter and emcee at the Rustic Cabin. He was married to a girl named Nancy and his mother’s nickname for him was Slacksy because he bought so many clothes. The mother really was an abortionist, presently on parole for almost butchering a teenager. She was also a longtime ward heeler, doing favors for the local pols and the people in her Madison Street neighborhood. She thought Frankie was a fool for trying to be a singer, but on the other hand he hadn’t had any other kind of job since he was seventeen, so she’d called in a couple of favors and made sure he got a membership in the Musician’s Union local so he could keep on singing at the Cabin and even do some side work like the WNEW spots.
Sinatra slid into the booth across from Jane, a big, tight grin on his thin face. He was wearing a dark green suit, a white shirt, a blue-and-white polka-dot bow tie and a porkpie hat. He took off the too-small hat and dropped it onto the seat beside him. His hair was slicked down and shiny with hair cream, showing off his round, protruding ears. With his big forehead and his knife-sharp high cheekbones he looked like some sort of bright-eyed rodent. He shot his cuffs a couple of times, making sure Jane saw the big gold and onyx links he was wearing and he gave her a practiced look that probably worked pretty well on seventeen-year-old girls. It was even working a little bit on her. She crossed her legs under the table and tried not to think about it. When Sinatra spoke Jane could tell that he’d spent a fair amount of time putting a polish on his voice and shaving off the corkscrew New Jersey vowel sounds.
“You’re the chick I saw at the Cabin.” He gave it just enough sneer to irritate, but not quite enough to anger.
“You’re the singing waiter.”
“I ain’t no waiter. They don’t hire waiters to sing on the radio, do they?”
“And they don’t get chicks to snap pictures of corpses.” Jane smiled.
Sinatra ignored the comeback. “Dolly said I should talk to you.” Dolly, Jane knew, was the mother. A twenty-four-year-old who did what his mother told him meant either she was a tough old lady or he was a mama’s boy. Maybe both.
“Why would she want you to do that?” asked Jane. It was a serious question, not a taunt.
“Because that guy getting whacked and thrown in the ditch ain’t what you think, and Dolly and some other ginks don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”
“What would the wrong idea be?”
“The wrong idea would be that Mr. Moretti or his people had anything to do with the dead guy and him getting that way.”
“Everything about it says it was a Mob hit, Frankie.”
“It’s Frank, not Frankie, and the guys that dumped the body weren’t from any Mob I ever heard of.”
“You saw it happen?”
“I saw the body being dumped.”
“You told the cops you were taking a piss in the ditch and that’s when you saw the body.”
“Nice dirty mouth on you.”
“I like it. Why didn’t you tell the cops what really happened?”
“What I tell the cops is what I tell the cops.”
“So you did see it happen?”
“Not him getting whacked. I told you that. I saw him get dumped. Maroon Lincoln, couple of years old. New York plates.”
“Bet you don’t remember the numbers.”
“You’d be a loser.” The easy smile came on again, then switched off just as fast. He reached two fingers into the breast pocket of his jacket and took out a folded piece of paper. He flipped it onto the table. Jane opened it up.
“It’s 5N 30-94.”
“You got it, sweetheart.” He started to slide out from the table. “And that’s all you’re going to get.”
“One more thing,” said Jane.
“What?” Sinatra paused, half standing, his small hands on the table.
“You said the guys you saw weren’t from any Mob you knew about. Why?”
“Mob guys don’t dress that way.” He lifted one hand and ran his thumb and forefinger down one lapel of his jacket. “Most Mob guys got style. Sharp dressers, maybe a bit flashy.”
“And these guys weren’t like that?”
“No. I mean, it’s like the Lincoln. What Mob guys drive around in a maroon Lincoln Zephyr? If they did, at least it would be this year’s model.” He stood up fully and shot his cuffs again. “No cars like that, and no brown suits. All three of them, brown suits, brown shoes, brown hats.” Sinatra let out a short, barking laugh. “You ask me, babe, they looked like FBI agents or something.” He reached down, tipped the porkpie onto his head and snapped his index finger against the brim. “So long, toots. See you in the funny papers.” Sinatra turned and left the restaurant, his walk a rubber-kneed strut that would have looked great in a Fred and Ginger movie. Jane watched him go, then looked down at the little slip of paper in her hand.
“A clue,” she said. “I’ll be damned.”
Holland and Barry sat in the Mayfair Lounge taking afternoon tea, watching their quarry doing the same on the other side of the cavernous, glass-ceilinged eighty-by-seventy-foot space, the largest public room on the Empress. It was decorated like an Edwardian men’s club, with deep, comfortable upholstered chairs and walnut paneling, and as a backdrop to a raised stage at the far end of the room there was a huge tapestry depicting the hunting exploits of Emperor Maximilian I.
A frieze running around the edge of the amber-colored glass ceiling included snowshoes, maple leaves and canoe paddles in a discreet homage to the ship’s Canadian ownership. A six-piece chamber orchestra was playing on the stage and a dozen or so stewards made the rounds with trays of tea and biscuits and small sandwiches of various kinds. After four days on the ship Barry had decided that he liked the salmon pâté sandwiches the best, and the cucumber least, since they gave him gas. By observation he had noted that Miss Sheila Connelly, also known as Mary Coogan, purportedly from Enniscorthy, seemed to favor cheese and ham and drank coffee rather than tea. He’d also noted that she was extremely attractive, a classic Irish type with long, ink-black hair done up in a twist and dark Spanish eyes a man could drown in if he wasn’t careful. He tried not to think too hard about her, about the eyes and the way her legs moved under her skirt. The truth of it was that the strength of his feelings, his feelings as a man, sometimes frightened him with their power, and he knew perfectly well that those feelings could never be reciprocated by the likes of Miss Sheila Connelly, if for no other reason than he was a policeman, and worse, a policeman whose ineptness with the opposite sex almost certainly shone like the beacon of a lighthouse. Maybe the monks were right, better to abandon such feelings entirely.
“By God, she is a peach, isn’t she?”
“I beg your pardon?” Barry felt completely the fool and knew his face was beginning to flush with embarrassment like a schoolboy.
“Don’t be a prig, old fellow. She’s a spectacular bit of fluff and don’t tell me you hadn’t noticed.”
“We’re supposed to be keeping a watch on her.”
“Precisely, and a very enjoyable watch it is.”
“Please. I’d rather you didn’t speak that way.”
“Make you feel a little uncomfortable?”
“I suppose you could say that.” He could feel the flush darken and he felt ridiculously light-headed, his secret revealed. He’d noticed everything about her, of course—her skin, the line of her jaw, her breasts against the fabric of her blouse, the eyes, the hair. He gritted his teeth and forced down the images rising in his mind’s eye.
“I wonder if Ridder will ever show up at all,” Holland murmured, blessedly changing the subject.
There was no sign of Herr Ridder in the lounge, or anywhere else for that matter. Since leaving Southampton the man had only left his cabin for dinner, making his painful two-caned way to his table in the Salle Jacques Cartier Dining Room. He invariably took the first seating, while the Connelly woman appeared at her table for the second. There was also no sign that the two had ever met.
“Maybe there is no connection between them,” Barry said, swallowing one of the tiny triangular sandwiches whole.
“I don’t believe in coincidences, Barry, and neither do you. Ridder could have traveled on a ship that took him directly to New York instead of roundabout via Montreal. It makes no sense.” Holland sipped his tea, his eyes on the woman across the room. “Did you notice the book?”
Barry nodded. “The Mask of Dimitrios.”
“Written by that Ambler fellow. Quite good, I hear, if you like that sort of thing.” Barry did like that sort of thing, but he wasn’t about to tell that to Holland. “Notice anything odd?” Holland continued.
“She never reads it,” Barry said. “Not while she’s in here anyway.”
“I don’t think she reads it at all,” said Holland. “No bookmark, the dust jacket isn’t poked into the pages. She just carries it about with her.”
“You think the book is significant?”
“Not really. Just odd. Like a crippled man taking a ship that doesn’t go where he wants to go.”
“We dock in Montreal the day after tomorrow. Once they’re off the ship we’re sure to lose one or the other of them.”
“You’re suggesting action of some kind?”
“Yes.”
“I agree. It may be our last chance,” said Holland. “Just so long as we don’t flush our birds prematurely. If either one of them discovers that they’re under surveillance they’ll get a message to Russell and ensure that he goes to ground. We can’t have that.”
“So?”
“So I suggest a visit to Herr Ridder’s cabin at the earliest opportunity.”
Barry glanced at his watch. “Five-thirty. First sitting for dinner is in half an hour.”
“Our sitting,” said Holland a little wistfully. “They’re having Gateaux St. Honoré for the sweet tonight.”
“Ah, well,” said Barry, “we all have to make sacrifices.”
Ridder’s B-deck cabin was on the port side, midship, almost directly opposite the barber shop and the telephone exchange. While Holland fetched a pass key from his friend in the purser’s office, Barry stayed in the exchange, pretending to place a ship-to-shore call. At five past six Ridder appeared in the corridor, dressed formally and leaning on his canes. He locked the door of his cabin, then made his way painfully down the passage toward the elevator, his progress slowed even more by the slight corkscrewing motion of the ship. Barry peeked out the door of the exchange and watched as the crippled man tapped the elevator call button and waited. The elevator arrived quickly and Ridder climbed into the cab and disappeared. A few seconds later Holland returned, coming from the direction of the forward first-class stairway. He ignored Barry, using his newly acquired key to let himself into cabin 217. Barry left the telephone exchange, crossed the corridor and followed suit, closing the door firmly behind him.
Like all of the cabins on the Empress, 217 had a porthole and an ocean view. The room was long and narrow, the walls paneled in a light fruitwood, the curtains, light fixtures and bedclothes done in varying shades of pale yellow. There was a wood-veneered chest of drawers between the beds, a desk under the porthole and several chairs. On the bulkhead wall across from the beds there was a brass-cased octagonal clock. The small table on the bed closest to the door had an empty cup on it and the coverlet was rumpled, so presumably that was the bed Ridder actually slept in.
Holland slid back the mirrored doors on the cabin’s single closet and began going through the two suitcases he found there. Barry, meanwhile, began going through the chest of drawers, the desk, and finally the bedside table. The policeman made a small noise of surprise and lifted an object from the drawer. “Another copy of the Ambler book,” he said.
“Perhaps it’s just a coincidence,” Holland offered, sliding the cupboard door closed. He crossed to the bed and sat down beside Barry. The two men looked at the book. There didn’t seem to be anything special about it. The book was a standard edition with a white theatrical mask as illustration on a bright blue background, the title and author’s name in white as well, the type and colors clearly designed to evoke a Greek flavor. Barry flipped through the pages. No turned-down corners, no obvious markings or underlining.
“Nothing that I can see.”
“Hold the pages up to the light. Maybe he’s pricked words with a pin,” Holland said. Barry held the book up to the overhead fixture, flipping the pages slowly. It was all very silly, really, like something out of Baden Powell’s Boy Scout Manual or a novel by John Buchan.
“Nothing.”
Holland poked his glasses back up onto his nose. “There’s got to be some meaning to it.”
“A recognition signal?” Barry offered.
“A little cumbersome, don’t you think?” Holland answered. “Why not a red carnation in a buttonhole or a couplet from a sonnet? ‘Fair stood the wind for France.” ’ He held out his hand and Barry gave him the book. The policeman glanced up at the clock over the bed. They’d been in the room for a little more than ten minutes. Ridder had probably barely begun to eat.
Holland opened the book until it was almost flat, letting the pages hang down from the spine. He shook the covers but there was nothing hidden between the pages. He peered down the space between the spine and the binding but there was nothing there either. “Bloody hell,” he muttered.
Barry felt the corners of his mouth twitch upward and he quickly lifted one fisted hand and cleared his throat, dismissing the rising smile with the gesture. Holland, the hardened professional, self-professed grizzled veteran of the Balkans and the Ulster Counties, was being confounded by a pair of amateurs, one of them a woman.
“So,” said Barry, “what do we do now?” He looked up at the clock again. Ridder would barely be past the soup. They still had lots of time but very little to do with it.
Holland stood up and looked around the narrow room, hands on hips. “I suppose we could search her cabin.”
“To what end?” Barry asked. According to Holland’s information Ridder was in the employ of a colonel in Nazi Military Intelligence named Erwin Von Lahousen, whose forte was sabotage and sedition and who was also in charge of the Irish Section. Since Ridder was an American it was assumed that it was he who would be passing information to the Connelly woman and not the other way around.
“All right then, what’s your suggestion?”
“Wait. Their Majesties aren’t due to arrive in Canada for the better part of a month, and it will be another two weeks after that before they cross into the United States. Anyway, the object has always been to let Miss Connelly lead us to Russell, not to arrest her.”
“And lead us she will,” said Holland. “But a little real evidence of this so-called plot would go a long way to proving a case to our American friends. One way or another we are going to need their help. The Republican cause has a lot of supporters in the States—when we do get Russell we’re going to have trouble keeping him for very long unless we can prove he was going to kill Roosevelt and the royals.”
“Well, it doesn’t look like we’re going to find any evidence here.” Barry shrugged. “I doubt we’d find anything in Connelly’s cabin either.” He leaned over, slipped the book back into the open drawer of the night table and then closed it. He stood up.
“I suppose you’re right.” Holland adjusted his glasses again. “But it’s damnably frustrating.”
“Now isn’t that just like the Irish for you,” Barry said and smiled. “Come along. If we hurry we can get up to the dining room for some of that Gateaux St. Honoré.”
Sir Stewart Menzies, Deputy Director of MI6, England’s secret intelligence service, sat having a late dinner in one of the private rooms at the Army and Navy Club in Pall Mall, methodically trimming the fat from a large slice of prime rib while waiting for Chamberlain’s young toadie to get to the point. Like a true politician Douglas-Home had managed to be utterly evasive all the way through the soup and the fish, but so far Menzies had managed to keep his temper. The fact that Douglas-Home was PPS to the prime minister was irrelevant—PMs came and PMs went with regularity, but Douglas-Home, like Menzies himself, knew people, which, if you wanted to get ahead, really was the most important thing. Obsequious little twit or not, the man had to be cultivated.
Menzies speared a small square of fatless meat, added a cube of Yorkshire pudding and popped the end of the fork into his mouth. He put down his knife and fork, chewed, swallowed, patted lips and neatly trimmed mustache, then picked up the knife and fork again while smiling pleasantly in Douglas-Home’s general direction. The younger man cleared his throat and Menzies deferred his next mouthful, waiting for him to speak.
“We have a delicate situation before us.”
“Ah,” said Menzies. “We being . . . ?”
“The prime minister’s office.”
“I see.”
“As you are no doubt aware, the prime minister is not well.”
Something of an understatement, thought Menzies, considering Chamberlain had cancer of the throat. “Yes, I was aware of that.”
“Given the state of his health it has been decided that certain . . . events and circumstances shouldn’t be brought to his attention unless absolutely necessary.”
“Events and circumstances?” Menzies ate another bite of food.
“Ones which the Prime Minister might find particularly . . . vexing.”
“Such as?”
“Security questions relating to the royal tour of North America.”
“Ah,” said Menzies.
“Indeed,” said Douglas-Home.
Menzies put down his knife and fork again, deciding to put the man out of his misery. “Presumably you mean the question of the Irish assassination plot.”
“Sean Russell.”
“We are aware of a rumor concerning an assassination attempt but I was under the impression it was just that, a rumor.”
“Yes. So far we have very little to go on.”
“I would have thought Special Branch and the local authorities in Canada and the United States would have security well in hand.”
“They do, certainly.” said Douglas-Home. “It’s just that . . .”
The man had an irritating habit of letting sentences dangle. Menzies allowed himself a small sigh, then smiled once again. “It’s just that you’d like to be kept advised if we come up with anything at MI6.”
“Precisely.” Douglas-Home sat back in his chair, clearly relieved that it was out in the open. The politician paused, smoothing a nonexistent crease in the tablecloth with his index finger. “About this Holland fellow of yours . . .”
“What about him?”
“He seems a little . . . independent . . . if you know what I mean.”
“No, actually, I don’t,” said Menzies. He tipped a little horseradish onto his next bite of beef and waited for Douglas-Home to go on.
“Some of our people are having second thoughts about the investigation of Russell.”
Here it comes, thought Menzies. He’s finally getting down to it. “What sort of second thoughts?”
“There is some concern that any adverse publicity arising out of the investigation could exacerbate the situation here.”
“More bombing of water closets, you mean.”
“Quite so.”
Menzies put down his knife and fork for good, the erosion of his appetite complete. It was clear now that Douglas-Home had never really believed there was an assassination plot and that the prospect of continued Republican bombings in England was obviously a more relevant concern. Menzies wiped his mouth and tossed the napkin down on the table. “In other words you want the investigation to end.”
“Curtailed would be a better term, I think.”
“By withdrawing Holland?”
“It had occurred to us.”
“On what authority?”
“I thought perhaps you’d know of some discreet method.”
Menzies smiled. The little shit seated across from him would go far and Menzies had every intention of going along with him. Chamberlain was sick, but Admiral Sinclair, head of MI6, was even sicker and not expected to last out the year.
“He was wounded in the Balkans,” said Menzies.
“Oh dear,” said Douglas-Home. “Health problems?”
“Chronic,” Menzies offered. “Lungs.” A good enough excuse to have him brought back to England and put behind a desk in the research division again.
“What about the other one, the policeman?”
“That would be up to the Yard.” Both men knew that without Holland the investigation would effectively come to an end. Detective Inspector Barry could be seconded to the Special Branch contingent traveling with the royal party, or simply recalled.
“You’ll keep me informed?”
“I don’t have any problem with that.” Menzies made a calculated assumption. “I’m assuming that rather than formally advising the prime minister’s office you’d prefer that any information be passed on to you personally.”
“Quite so,” agreed Douglas-Home.
“So as not to vex Mr. Chamberlain unnecessarily.”
“Indeed.”
Knowledge is power, thought Menzies, and secret knowledge is the most powerful of all. Douglas-Home would go very far indeed. Menzies reached out and picked the dusty chateau bottle out of its basket in the center of the table. “More wine?”