The Revd R. T. Satterby
Grange House
Buxton
26th March 1914
My dear _____,
I recall you saying when last we met that you had difficulty finding good and intrepid researchers, particularly women, and that I would oblige you if I should happen across some promising young person and bring them to your notice.
If this concern of yours holds, I wonder if I might recommend to you Miss Flora Hathaway.
You may understand something of the daughter through the parents. He is a doctor, whose assiduity is matched only by his suspicion of the novelties of his profession (I once joked that he probably found Harvey’s work unproven and Jenner a veritable charlatan, which he found not at all amusing), she is a woman of the most energetic devotion to deserving social cases, and the severest judgement of the ills that cause them. They incline more, I may say, to the Old Testament than the New, and the girl has been raised in an atmosphere of uncompromising – one might say puritanical – rigour. The lack of sentiment of the parents has meant that they have made no allowances for their eldest child being of the gentler sex; a first-born son would have had no more robust an upbringing.
That these two should produce a daughter of unusual determination and steadiness is no surprise. But it is only to providence that we may ascribe the force of her intellect. (There is a younger brother, but he enjoys neither the strength nor the strictness of critical reasoning to transcend the limits of his world.) She is highly perceptive, and Amazonian in power of logic. The generosity of a local benefactress enabled her to study a year at the University of London, where I believe she did very well.
She is in her later twenties, I should say. There was to have been a marriage to a doctor, but he died; now there is talk of clerical work in Manchester. If the young woman should prove fit for some academic or administrative work of benefit to you, I should be delighted to have been of service; and I must confess it would please me to see her out of this place and stretched, for otherwise I fear her lot will be marriage to a man stupider than she, or governess.
Are you out and about much these days? From up here in the wilds I confess I still assume the life of you London chaps positively Babylonian, even a guarded old elephant such as you. I have ordered young Rolfe’s new Suetonius, and I hear that Stanislaus’s boy is off to Antarctica (‘young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication’, indeed). Beyond these, and the sheep-centred insights of the local quidnuncs, I am ignorant – while yet remaining,
Yours ever,
Satterby
[SS G/1/894/1]
How many carriages on the train? Six, was it? And eight compartments to a carriage. Assuming—
James Cade caught himself. Supposition multiplied by supposition equals gross error. He stood, stepped over the outstretched legs of the other inhabitant of the compartment, yanked down the window and stuck his head out. The whole world roared and he recoiled, as the windows of another train flashed past in front of him. Out again. But the track was too straight to—
A tapping nearby, and he looked down. The other man in the carriage, tapping on the window and looking none too chirpy. He pulled his head in, smiled, offered a placating gesture and returned to the sixty-mile-an-hour wind. Fifteen seconds of gulped breaths and whipping hair and at last the track made an obliging concave bend.
Six passenger carriages. He pulled in his head and closed the window with deliberate completeness. ‘Do beg your pardon. One must be sure, you see?’ He smiled at the frown, stepped back over the legs, slid open the compartment door and stuck his head into the corridor. Not eight compartments but ten.
He sat. Sixty compartments; maximum three hundred and sixty passengers. How many termini were there in London? Half a dozen? How many long-distance train journeys a day? Ten thousand passenger up-journeys a day? What would they want on a train? Food, surely. A hot drink. Soup? Available at stations, of course. But on a longer journey… Longer journeys often expresses, and therefore a higher proportion of richer passengers. But now problems of supply and storage; potential mishaps at point of sale. Pretty girl in an apron?
The door slid open, and a soldier’s distinctive uniform cap thrust in. Young face. Military supplies? Cade smiled, the other occupant frowned, and the soldier murmured something to a companion in the corridor and moved on. Cade pushed the door shut. Something to read. Newspapers? Delivery and licensing. Books? To sell or borrow? Average length of journey…
He turned to his fellow resident, and smiled. ‘Pardon the interruption, but I noticed the size of your trunk up there. Is it a long journey you’re making?’ London. ‘Yes, of course. And we’re fearfully under-supplied, aren’t we? Something to eat, perhaps. Something to read.’ A grunt of acknowledgement and, as if to reinforce the point, the other man pulled out a copy of the Glasgow Herald and walled himself in with it.
Cade skimmed the advertisements on the front page – surely a ludicrously low price for a pair of boots; where had the false economy been made? – and settled back into his seat.
A conversation between two strangers. A conversation in the Philosophical Club that had become a supper. The older man’s interest in the firm of Cade & Cade; interest in his ideas; sympathy for the limitations of commercial life in Edinburgh.
And then a letter from London; a business proposition for the firm of Cade & Cade, and in particular for Mr James Cade.
Nine times out of ten a bust: someone wanting money, or a partner to do all the work. But he was due a trip to London anyway. How many termini in London?
David Duval drained the cup, licked the taste of cold tea from his teeth, and surveyed the wreckage of the bed-linen. Through the half-open door, the sound of plumbing.
Cheap plumbing; an ugly counterpoint to her singing. Cheap plumbing, threadbare rug, an early night, cold tea and a familiar unease.
It might be time for tears; for a letter and a rose. He was becoming over-critical and sentimental, both of which were rather nauseating. She was becoming habituated and faintly desperate, both of which were alarming. Any more of this would be futile and unfair; destructive only. He saw his jacket on the chair-back, his bag beneath it; a pretty shabby total of a life.
He pulled himself up against the pillow, felt the cold thrill of the bed-frame on his neck, and forced his shoulders back against it. Sentiment was bad; self-loathing was worse. He ran a hand over his jaw, then smoothed the moustache with finger and thumb. A touch of Victorian melodrama in the moustache; life needed a bit more of the spirit of that moustache. Must keep moving.
The jacket, and consequently the thought of the letter inside it. Hadn’t forgotten our entertaining conversation over drinks – Duval had; rather festive evening – which might explain it; but thoroughly enjoyed talking to you – of course; a scholar but not one of these stay-at-home chaps – no indeed; and wondered if you might be the man for a job –
Always.
Under his hand, the residual warmth from where her rump had recently been, and from the bathroom the singing. Dark against the net curtain, his jacket, with the letter.
From the chair beside the bed, David Duval picked up a sixpence. He settled it precisely on finger and thumb, brought it in front of his face, and flicked it high.
Ronald Ballentyne reached Whitehall early, and did one circuit of St James’s Park to fill the time. The lake felt like a lung in the middle of London’s monumental greyness, where the smallest building was an institution. He weaved among the prams trying to keep his eyes on the water, the trees, the white morning sky.
The porter in the Foreign Office lobby, all sleepy mahogany, took a second glance at his face while checking the list of visitors, and Ballentyne ran an instinctive finger along his cheek. The scar was fading, but felt tender and wide.
As he moved towards a bench, a man in uniform stood up in front of him. A flicked glance in the direction of the porter, and then: ‘Mr Ronald Ballentyne?’
Ballentyne hadn’t had much to do with uniforms. This one, sickly brown, looked like army.
He nodded.
The soldier – officer, presumably – something in the face and the confidence – held out a hand. ‘Knox. Major Valentine Knox.’
A face about his own age, dark eyes under dark brows, and a splendid Kitchener moustache. Ballentyne shook hands and, to fill the silence: ‘I’m… pleased to meet you.’
Major Valentine Knox seemed to consider this, as if unused to the reaction. The eyes narrowed a fraction. He said: ‘I’m your liaison officer, Mr Ballentyne.’
‘Liaison… for what?’
The old man had a room of his own in the Foreign Office; a plaque on the door – one of the opaque titles favoured by bureaucracy, as if faintly ashamed of itself; the old man’s name not mentioned. Near the end of a corridor; not among the carpets and vast allegorical paintings of the great men, but not far away.
Mayhew knocked. The location reflected the role: an occasional word of wisdom from an age now passing. He was bidden to enter.
Mayhew had the impression that, if the old man were to rise from the high-backed leather chair, he would leave his shadow precisely marked in the dust.
‘They’ll be starting to arrive shortly,’ he said. One always seemed to speak quieter in these dusty bureaucratic places. He wished himself back in an officers’ mess. ‘The businessman first. At… ten.’
The old man took a moment to consider, as if recalling himself to the twentieth century. ‘Thank you, Colonel.’ He stared into the empty blotter on the empty desk. ‘Good of you to keep me involved. Cade. I’ll sit in on that one. Might stick my head in on the ethnographer; touch of the old don. Duval you should do yourself; I fancy he’ll feel cleverer on his own with you. And you could let him think that, couldn’t you, Colonel?’ The eyes flicked up at him; Mayhew was piecing together the implication. Back into the distance. ‘Hathaway… I shall do myself. All right with you?’ The eyes into his again. ‘Merely suggestions.’
Mayhew found himself nodding. He was a soldier. He recognized decisions; he recognized commands.
Half a continent away, two men looked down from a gallery onto the audience chamber of an emperor – a Kaiser, the second Wilhelm of the Hohenzollerns of Germany.
Below them, a final platitude from the emperor’s Austrian guest. ‘To it! To it!’ from the emperor, and silence. A moment of uncertainty as the protocol faltered, and then he led the party from the room in procession, German paired with Austrian. The slam of the door echoed around the marble.
In the gallery, movement at last.
‘Why thank you, Colonel; that was most entertaining.’
‘You are my honoured guest, sir. Yet I hope you realize the unique privilege you have been afforded.’
The honoured guest was dressed in a frock-coat, and he ran a palm down over the lapels as if checking his own sleekness. ‘Indeed, Colonel. Indeed I do. Not, of course, that we heard any surprises. One of your emperor’s many… virtues is his honesty. So no surprises. But two men of the shadows do not need to be reminded that the importance is not in the information itself, but in the perspective from which the information is gained.’ A finger slid along the marble balustrade. ‘Most impressive, Colonel.’ A smile. ‘Like so much in Germany.’
Colonel Walter Nicolai removed his cap, pushed his hand over the bristles of his head and down the back of it – even those shaven hairs, his visitor thought, must be kept down – and covered up again. The perpetual frown, the world a constant affront, and a stiff nod. ‘We must be ready to crush them.’
‘Them? All—’
‘The British. The British Empire. There will be war in Europe.’ A gloved fist thumped on the balustrade at the end of each sentence, stamping it as official. ‘In the end Britain will be our greatest enemy. We must be ready to crush them.’
‘Indeed.’ Again the smile. ‘Yes indeed, Colonel. And yet the British will take some crushing, will they not?’ Another glance after the official party below. ‘As great men have found before, the Channel is not easily crossed. That empire is not easily overmastered.’ He saw the frown, saw the fist ready to have another go at the balustrade. ‘Which is why you and I, the men of the shadows, must do a little business, is it not? Why you come to me.’
‘Correct. A great blow. A great coup of destabilization or sabotage—’ Nicolai stopped; the lines above his nose sharpened. An elegant hand had been held up in front of him.
It withdrew to cover a discreet cough. ‘Perhaps. And perhaps not, Colonel. If I may suggest, the weakness of Great Britain is… her greatness itself. So vast an empire – so many sheep to watch, so many threats in the night – it is easily distracted.’ The hand conjured its truths out of the air. ‘Your colleague von Tirpitz may anchor his fleet opposite the Royal Navy and have them make faces at each other. Your armies may be ready to throw the British back into the Channel if they should cross it. But we… we shall be where their forces are not. We shall be… at once everywhere.’
James Cade took in the character of the office: formal; leather-topped desk, kept well polished, but it wasn’t in regular use. He took in the two men opposite him: man in army uniform, lots of ribbons and brooches and what-not, good shoes; and an older man half hidden against the wall, face in shadow next to the window. And he took in his own position in this room.
Am I buyer here or seller?
The front man at the desk, the pitch man. And the chevy behind. Give him a top hat or a tattie, he’s still trying to sell.
Hie away, old Dad of mine, where’s the deal here?
‘Very good of you to come here today, Mr Cade. Quite a journey.’ And this is the British government. Puts up a good front, don’t he? ‘My name is Mayhew; I’m a soldier, as you see. This is Mr – Robertson.’
And I’m Wullie Wallace. He said something appropriate. Lord, was this real? Was this how the government men did their business? And Jimmy Cade round for tea.
‘Mr Cade, I won’t waste your time reciting your abilities to you. You’re a businessman; you know your own worth, I dare say. From various recommendations, we have a sense of that worth too.’
I’m to be a buyer, it seems. Oh aye, keep it coming, pitch man.
‘We keep an eye out for men – men in all walks of life – with a certain resourcefulness; initiative. We have a particular need for men of business. It’s a world that has its own qualities, of course. But we want a man who can also, under his own name and credibly, sustain a position as a businessman of repute and success. We could spend time and money setting up someone or other with a business front. Or we could take a man of established name; a name like Cade & Cade.’
Could you now?
Rather a frolic, though, wasn’t it?
‘You don’t take the low road, do you, Mr Mayhew? You come right out with it. Is this how you normally do these things?’
The ghost of a smile from the chevy behind.
The front man again. ‘To be honest, Mr Cade, it varies with… well, at root you’re a salesman, aren’t you? You know well enough how it’s played.’
Cade smiled encouragingly.
‘To come straight at it: we want to set you up – you as James Cade, known representative of your family firm – in a business situation abroad. Let you run it as you choose, run it as a going concern. And at the same time you would act as… as agent, for His Majesty’s Government, keeping us in touch with… with—’
Cade leaned forwards. ‘With the business climate as it affects your interests?’
Again the smile from the shadows – patronizing sort of smile – and this time it stayed. Aye, keep smiling, old man.
‘Quite right, Mr Cade.’
Long as you fellows don’t think you’ve got a fixed price.
‘Frankly, Mr Duval, we need men who are bit… a bit out of the ordinary. Who take the initiative.’
Duval took a moment before answering. There was something about the soldier’s manner – snooty, maybe. With him, authority figures always were a bit. ‘I’ll be honest, Mr Mayhew.’ He fancied a flinch across the desk. Gotcha; you’ll get no ranks and sirs from me. ‘I’m not much of a boy for following orders.’
‘Mm. Creativity, Duval, takes different forms.’ No ‘Mr’. Fifteen-all, is it? ‘Your architect’s training means an eye to perceive and an eye to envision. We need both.’
‘Do I get one of those uniforms?’
‘No.’ Stronger than intended. ‘No, Mr Duval. No uniform, no rank. You will be who you are: David Duval, travelling student of architecture.’
He’s uncomfortable. Not only disapproving, but uncomfortable. The world of the Colonel Mayhews was not supposed to involve being polite to the David Duvals. Things must be getting bad, mustn’t they?
‘Is that who I am? I’d often—’
‘Mr Duval.’ Hard, and then strangely a smile across the soldier’s face. You’re not stupid, are you, Colonel? ‘Your lack of deference suits me as much as it amuses you. A man who unthinkingly accepts and does what he’s told in this office will do the same in Rome or Berlin. That man is useless to me. I need a man who questions, who challenges, who’s always looking beyond what he sees and hears.’
Duval nodded slightly. ‘Mayhew, I love old England dearly, but I can’t—’
‘Thirty pounds a month.’
‘Not enough.’
The eyebrows rose slowly under the careful haircut. ‘Not enough for what?’
‘To live. To live… as flexibly as I’d need to. Cultivate useful friendships. I won’t corrupt the Kaiser’s wife from a railway hotel, will I?’
Again the smile. ‘You’re even more impressed by your potential than we are. What’s the going rate these days, then? For a corrupter of queens?’
‘One hundred.’
‘Fifty, and you’ll get three months of it in advance.’
‘Taking rather a risk with me, aren’t you, Colonel?’
‘The benefit of a rank and a uniform, Mr Duval, is that one is less likely to get hanged as a spy.’ He stood. ‘If at any time, on reflection, you decide you’d rather join the regulars, you’ll find we’ve always room for enterprising young men there too.’
The world of men.
Flora Hathaway sat with deliberate poise, and considered the waiting room. Mosaic floor; dull rug. Furniture solid; functionality as done by an affluent people wishing to impress others and reassure themselves. One chair a piece of ludicrous baroque; some imperial souvenir. Fire laid economically but burning steady – that hadn’t been done by one of the elegant sons of glory who glid along these corridors – and the hearth swept immediately afterwards. A clock on a dark stone mantelpiece, grotesque and thumping the seconds at her. Two portraits: middle-aged men in the formal wear of two decades ago. To help the awestruck visitor know what to look for; like the signs on the cages at the zoo.
The letter had been a surprise. Unexpected, of course. But also the style: neither patronizing nor commanding; courteous; frank about her achievements and frank – albeit in opaque terms – about what would be expected of her. Research, requiring a high degree of discernment and initiative, while remaining directed and in the service of a wider object. It appealed to her, certainly.
It had been written by someone who understood people. Someone who understood her.
Her parents’ reaction: once again the weary hope that their troublesome-but-beloved might find something to meet her unrealistic standards; and then, unspoken after too many past missteps but still clear in their faces – the sudden formality in her father’s, her mother’s glance at her clothes – the admonitions to propriety and to the highest achievement.
Her parents in their distant parlour, set against this palace of national greatness.
I shall be worthy of the rare chances I am given.
Glancing down into the courtyard – and this time she thought of an aquarium – she watched two of the resident creatures striding across it, two men.
Ballentyne felt the odd dislocation washing over him again: the sense that the familiar world was unfamiliar, as if he were seeing it in a mirror, or in a dream.
The delirium of the fall, of the pain of rocks and the icy water, of unknown hands and a week of fever, of emerging weak and bewildered from the Albanian highlands; of huddling on station platforms, drowsing in night trains. Then England at last, the details of the dream fading with each full night’s sleep, each familiar face. But now the soldier, this Knox: into his world of colleges and mountains a uniform, the lunatic distortion that convinces you you are dreaming.
‘Easier if I explain as we walk,’ Knox had said, ushering them into movement. Which might have been true, and yet he had not taken advantage of this easiness. Ballentyne walked across the Foreign Office courtyard in expectation, head half turned, waiting for words that never came.
They strode up the steps and into the porch – and moved as promptly backwards again, as the double doors swung outwards and a woman emerged. Murmured etiquettes from the two men, then: ‘Why, young Ronald Ballentyne!’
Ballentyne focused properly on the face. ‘Miss Durham. Good to see you.’
Knox frowned slightly; the visit was already even more public than he’d feared. Woman in her fifties. Solid-built and caped, a strong face under a tam-o’-shanter. Ballentyne’s courtesy seemed genuine.
She glanced critically at Knox, and back again. ‘Been in the mountains yet this season?’
‘Yes. Yes – in the valley of Shala, and thereabouts.’
‘How do our friends?’
‘Well enough. I stopped with the priest in Breg Lumi.’
‘And off there again, I hear.’
Ballentyne hesitated. ‘No – well, I haven’t planned—’
She flicked at him with a pair of gloves. ‘Quite right, Ronald Ballentyne. No good shouting about it before you’ve got the thing worked out yourself, eh?’
‘Well, I…’ He gave up trying to understand. ‘And how are you, anyway?’
The mighty torso heaved. ‘Oh… Well enough, for myself. Mustn’t grumble. But Albania! It’s grim. Have you heard what’s happening in the south? Ghastly. Ghastly.’
Ballentyne nodded.
‘And trying to get these people to—’ She shuddered, and shifted her shoulders under the cape as if trying to shake the whole of Whitehall behind her. ‘I’ve just come from Terrence, and that was a waste of time, of course. I don’t say he’s half-witted, though he might be, but the most insipid, wheedling little excuse of an official you ever saw.’ Another shudder. ‘And now I’ve got this young woman along with me’ – she gestured over her shoulder, and the voice didn’t make clear if it was help or hindrance – ‘wants to follow in my footsteps, or something.’ A jolly guffaw. ‘Well, if she’s that determined!’
In the shadow, Ballentyne saw a younger, slighter version of Durham herself: the handsome profile, the close-bobbed hair, the strong shoulders; in her thirties, perhaps, and festooned with bags.
The gloves flicked at him again. ‘Have a go at Terrence yourself, will you? He might take it better from you. Tell him it’s not cricket, or straight shooting, or whatever it is men say.’ The eyes were grave. ‘They must see, Ballentyne. Those poor folk in the villages.’
Then she pulled herself straighter, and set her profile towards the courtyard. ‘Come along, Miss Gowing!’ she said over her shoulder. ‘They’ll be waiting for us at Precha’s.’
She strode off, the younger woman following resolute in her wake and glancing at Ballentyne with a warm, distracted smile.
Where does she think I’m going? Ballentyne watched the two women sailing across the courtyard; then turned back to the porch and to Knox. Where am I going?
Knox was looking the question.
‘Edith Durham. Sort of the… patron saint of those of us trying to open up and understand south-eastern Europe. And a heroine to the Albanians, for all she’s done for them.’ He reached for the door, and hesitated. ‘Well, Mr Liaison Officer? Do you know what she seems to know?’
Knox pushed the door open for him. ‘Better not keep this Foreign Office johnny waiting, eh?’
Terrence, departmental sub-chief for the Adriatic and south-eastern Europe, was slumped in his chair, fingers pressed into his forehead. On the blotter in front of him, a pair of scarlet knitted objects.
The fingers came away as Ronald Ballentyne was shown in with Knox a pace behind him, and the head lolled back against the chair. He glared at Ballentyne.
‘I’ve just had Mad Edith in,’ he said bitterly. ‘It’s all terrible and it’s all my fault, apparently. Gave me these… these slippers.’ He waved a hand towards the objects on the desk.
‘Opinga,’ Ballentyne said. ‘Rather a good example. You give them to guests to use in your house.’
‘I…’ Terrence was clearly trying to recapture a picture of whatever suburban villa was home. ‘Look, Ballentyne, I won’t waste your time. You’re off again, I know, and I’ve been told I’ve got better things to worry about.’
‘But don’t you want to hear—’
‘Love to, old chap. But no point you doing it twice. You’re down to meet someone else; not sure I had the name…’ – he looked warily towards his desk, reluctant to disturb the slippers – ‘military involved, somehow.’ He nodded towards Knox.
Ballentyne turned, face grim. Knox, neutral smile, had the door open and was gesturing him out.
For as long as he could remember, James Cade had loved ports. From Whitehall he followed the open sky the short distance to the river, and on the Embankment he turned left, for the heart of the City and the sea.
Fresher air and the sense of the world’s possibilities. No better place than a port to make a decision.
As he walked, juggling the balance sheets of enterprises present and prospective, watching the crowds around him and wondering as always at London the great market, the ships got bigger. Bridge by bridge they evolved, sprouting funnels and the funnels multiplying, as if the river was itself a parade of the history of maritime engineering.
Risk. Some drop of impetus and activity at home; brother Tam must compensate. The image of a dwindling office; the old ’un would present it as expansion. Financial loss; beyond the negligible effects of the above, limited. The government investment in setting him up would make stock his only net outlay; and a Cade who couldn’t make a running profit in one of the world’s great bazaars didn’t deserve the name. Personal risk?
He found himself slowing. Impossible to quantify. A calculation he wasn’t used to, algebra with unfamiliar variables.
Fifteen minutes’ walking had brought him into the City – the old London, the London of merchants and bankers and insurers that predated by centuries and pre-conditioned the London of imperialists and diplomats he had just left. Across the water, the wharves and warehouses of the great merchant houses. To his left, the ground rising, up to where the Romans had had their forum and where the Bank of England now ruled the world. Still he went east. Now the ships soared up beside him, three- and four-masters, fully 500 feet long, bringing the world to London for men like the Cades to deal. The fat squat bow of a cargo steamer darkening the day next to him, a dribble of smoke escaping from her funnel into the jungle of masts and spars beyond. Below, between the behemoths, tugs and single-sailed traders and ferries chanced the swell.
Return. A potential new sector for Cade & Cade, with the risks underwritten by others. The possibility of turning a profit on it. And – he tried to scold himself, tried to hear his father – in a way, a little bit of a spree.
He came clear of the steamer and gasped in the pleasure of the sight: a windjammer, a four-master, six spars to a mast, able to unfurl an acre of sail: among the dark funnels a queen of elegance. Careful, old lad. In business, money can buy a dream but a dream can’t buy money. Beyond her, her sea grey making her a ghost against the morning, a warship.
No better place than a port to make a decision; but not necessarily an even-minded decision.
As Duval stepped out into the corridor in front of Colonel Mayhew, another soldier rose from a bench to meet him. Perhaps his own height, his own age or a bit older; bigger built. Duval took him in, polished leather peak to polished leather boots. This one wore the uniform well; fit sort of fellow.
He glanced back at Mayhew. ‘Now that,’ he said, ‘is the moustache I want. If not a uniform, do I at least get one of those?’
‘This is Major Valentine Knox. He’ll be your liaison officer.’
Duval mouthed the first name, and then stepped forwards. ‘So what does that mean? Bodyguard, prefect, nursemaid?’ Knox was still; his face was still. Duval held out a hand. ‘You’re the fellow who’ll stop me getting into trouble, is that it?’
The moustache chewed on this. ‘I like trouble, Mr Duval. I might be the man who gets you into it.’ And at last he shook the offered hand, holding it and the glance a little longer than Duval expected.
‘We have things to discuss, I take it.’ A grin. ‘And I’ve a hell of a thirst.’
Knox considered this. ‘Come along, then.’ He gestured Duval towards the marble stairs. Before he turned to follow, a last glance of shared meaning between the two soldiers.
Lectures from men. Her father. The vicar. The MP. (What had he wanted? A daughter-in-law? A wife?) Professors. Ralph, trying a pose of gravity like an outsized hat. The policeman, after the march. Her father again. All so wise and so uncertain. Hopeful because strange, precocious Flora’s dominant characteristic is her intelligence, ergo she is halfway a man; but then uneasy, because Flora does not follow the languid rules of chat, and watches, and challenges, and has breasts, and is all in all a most peculiar sort of man.
This man sat with his back to the net curtains, which glowed white around him and left his face in shadow. As if he were an absence. She’d not stifled a gasp at the cheapness of the attempt at advantage.
Then she’d entertained a vague fancy that he was embarrassed – perhaps disfigured, even. And now she realized it was probably one of the habits that men adopted in their strange world of deceit and intrigue.
‘I shan’t try to appeal to patriotism or duty, Miss Hathaway; I think you—’
‘And yet by invoking them you have tried to do just that. Diminishing them, while implying vaguely that you have some yet stronger claim.’
‘I do not belittle patriotism or duty, believe me. They are both of them admirable values, and we have sore need of them. Nor’ – he shifted – ‘before you exercise your reasoning at my expense again, do I imply that you are not patriotic or dutiful. But patriotism and duty should be felt, not appealed to.’ The old man watched Flora Hathaway’s eyes carefully; they had the habit, when thinking, of hardening. ‘They might, moreover, seem insufficient cause to send a young person – a particular young person, chosen rather than innumerable others – on a journey that will certainly expose them to loneliness, anxiety and doubt, and conceivably to hostility and to danger.’ Still she stared back at him. ‘It is a journey for which one must discover one’s own motives.’
Still the eyes, unblinking, reasoning.
The old man shifted again, and took in a long breath. The words came faster: ‘Because we may be involved in a national fight for survival. And in such a fight, we must use our every capacity to its uttermost. We can’t afford to exclude people on the basis of irrelevant aspects of their background or physiology. As individuals, by extension, we must use our strongest talents to the fullest. Success will depend on each of us being all that he – she – can be. I don’t put a thoroughbred to pulling a cart. I don’t put a scholar to checking a grocery bill.’
Flora Hathaway stared into the shadow. She felt oddly alive in the conversation. ‘Sir, I loathe you for the cynicism with which you exploit the point. But I give you credit for being perhaps the first man I’ve met to understand it.’
‘You’re most kind, Miss Hathaway. But I’m not playing a game. Our every last capacity. To its uttermost.’
‘Someone already thinks I’m working for you!’ Ballentyne had hoped for more impact. This Mayhew just raised his eyebrows in polite interest.
‘They attacked me because of it.’
‘Ah. Yes, rough business, sometimes. Foreigners get the funniest ideas about the British. Chap in your line – research and so forth – not the first time you’ve been accused of spying, perhaps.’
‘The first time I’ve been cut up and shot at.’
Mayhew watched him for a moment. ‘Look here, Ballentyne: I can’t pretend there’s not an element of… risk here. No, that’s a foolish British understatement. Danger, is the word. We think you’re the chap for this sort of work; but… you need to be aware of that. Consider it; earnestly. Reflect. No reason why you should be known. We take all precautions. But still. Europe is a tinderbox. The highest tension; mutual suspicion. That’s before you even start on what the Germans are doing in Turkey, and what the Russians are doing in Persia. Everyone looking at everyone else. Particularly in the rougher parts, where you’ve tended to—’
‘They – this German said I was working for a particular department. The – something… General-Co-’
‘Yes, it’s a bit of muddle here. Different departments. New outfits starting up. The Admiralty, the War Office; everyone’s getting their own little intelligencing shop and no one’s talking to anyone else. Quite properly but, well, the Sub-Committee sometimes… Look: quite understand if, on reflection, you feel…’
A knock, and a head thrust into the room. ‘Ah, Ballentyne, isn’t it?’ Ballentyne couldn’t quite make out the face; the bearing and voice seemed old. ‘Good man. Tylor, at Oxford, speaks very highly of you.’
Ballentyne had half risen. ‘He’s a great man, truly.’ The sun was in his eyes. ‘I’m not sure our anthropology and ethnography are much use to your espionage; European politics—’
‘On the contrary, Mr Ballentyne. European politics is all anthropology. I’m not interested in political philosophers and diplomatic flim-flam. You’re a man who thinks about human animals. About tribes. And that will serve you in Paris and Vienna and Berlin, at least as well as in your Albanian hamlets. Don’t let the frock-coats and feathers fool you, Mr Ballentyne. Modern Europe is essentially primitive.’
In the shadows that attended on the Kaiser, the honoured visitor settled himself in a chair and began to investigate the cigarette box in front of him. ‘Now, Colonel: you’re a soldier as well as a chief of espionage. What – in discretion, of course – can you tell me of your dispositions?’ A finger still hovering, he looked up. Come now: a little Prussian boastfulness… ‘How is our battlefield?’ A pout, and he closed the cigarette box untouched.
Nicolai sat stiff-backed across the desk. He looked up over his shoulder to a large map of Europe, and with an extended palm began to divide the Continent. ‘As you will I’m sure know, Herr Krug’ – a glance at the visitor, who gave a little smile – ‘St Petersburg: good; Constantinople: excellent, the spies are thieves and of little consequence, but we are well-placed in the Turkish government and this more than compensates; Rome: not bad, would be better if I knew to count them for ally or enemy’ – another little smile from the visitor; and that, my dear Colonel, is why you do not understand espionage – ‘Paris: not as good as I would wish; London: excellent.’ The palm came down and settled flat on the desk. ‘We have an excellent network in Britain.’ He looked up. ‘And you will have your own private sources there, Herr Krug.’
‘Together, a most potent force.’ He leaned forwards a fraction. ‘Which must be protected.’
‘The British are nowhere.’
‘Distracted, Colonel. I told you.’ He pulled a cigarette case from inside his coat. ‘They are more worried by Dublin and Calcutta than they are by Europe.’
‘And old-fashioned. An empire that has passed its time.’
‘Yes.’ A connoisseur’s breath, a whimsy of memory. ‘They used Latin for secret communication in southern Africa. Charming! Quite charming.’ A slender, dark cigarette tapped precisely against the case twice. ‘Now they are making new efforts; new bureaux, with new men.’
‘Indeed. We watch them coming off the boats at Calais and Hamburg.’ The visitor smiled; why Colonel, that was almost witty. Nicolai’s gloved palm floated over the desk a moment, then slapped softly down. ‘We will gather them when we choose.’
‘Yes. Yes, I suspect that we will.’ The cigarette glowed and sagged between two straight fingers. ‘And yet. And yet I think you have never heard, Colonel, of the Comptroller-General for Scrutiny and Survey.’
British Intelligence adrift. The threats unseen and everywhere. One threat – the threat – somewhere.
When the four had gone, their faces lingered in the old man’s mind. Ronald Ballentyne: straight and perplexed. James Cade: confident, calculating. David Duval, watched from a window: challenging and sure, until he thought there was no one watching. Flora Hathaway – Flora Hathaway…
And then they faded, stepped back to the corners of the office, silent observers. The old man looked down at the desktop, at the cloud of papers. In them, he glimpsed a shape, the shape he had been trying to define for more than a decade.
He is one of three men.
He is the Spider.