Peter and Bridget looked up in surprise as Bernie barged into the Consular Services office.
“London has gone mad, sir,” Bernie announced. “Here are three more urgent messages that came in the last hour.”
He said nothing else, just gave Peter the decoded radio messages and left in a hurry. Bridget watched impatiently as Peter read through them.
“Well?” she said finally.
“I told you it was a treasure trove!” he said jubilantly. ”The Josefine dispatches are creating quite a stir in London.”
“Congratulations, Peter. We did it or H did it.”
“Yes, she did.”
Peter reread the dispatches and reflected on Kramer’s sources. Josefine was the code-name Kramer gave to several sources inside the Swedish Defence Ministry. His sources included a Swedish military attaché who made frequent trips to Britain and various young women from the ministry who had access to top-secret military reports. He was known to wine and dine the women at his favourite restaurants. Other intelligence he appeared to have simply purchased on the black market and fed to his Abwehr colleagues in Berlin. The rumour among his colleagues was that he was faking much of this intelligence in order to collect large payments for his carousing.
Peter had heard through his sources at MI6 in London that the Gestapo suspected Kramer of double-dealing and had a large file on him. They suspected him of providing the Russians with secret information about Luftwaffe operations in exchange for Russian intelligence about the Allies.
Peter returned to his dispatches and smiled at Bridget who was busy typing a report.
“Can I invite you to dinner, Bridget, to celebrate our success?” Peter said. “It was you who convinced me to recruit H in the first place. I might not have done it without your forceful presentation.”
“Forceful?” Bridget replied with a laugh. “You haven’t seen forceful yet, Peter. When you do, you might live to regret it.”
“Well, perhaps I should say your highly persuasive presentation of the facts. I am thankful and so is London.”
“Then it is a yes for the dinner, but we must keep it quiet. I wouldn’t want the old busybodies on the first floor chatting about me behind my back.”
“Seven o’clock, then. I’ll pick you up at your flat.”
“That’s fine, Peter.”
“You better give me your address.”
Bridget nodded and wrote her address on a piece of paper.
London
A taxi pulled up in front of the gatehouse for the Holloway Sanatorium, a mental hospital near Virginia Water in Surrey. The taxi’s passenger, Dorothy Furse, wore a WAAC uniform and was Head of Personnel for the SOE. Dorothy got out of the taxi barely glancing at the Victorian facade of the huge mental hospital as she made a beeline for a little man with thick round glasses standing in front of the gate and looking lost. A battered valise sat on the ground beside him. His rumpled clothes looked like he had slept in them.
“How are you, Ewan?” Dorothy asked.
Ewan Butler stared at her, but remained silent. He had an absent look on his face. He stepped forward, struggling with his bag. The driver took it from him and put it in the baggage rack as Dorothy opened the door for him.
“Come on, Ewan, we need to get you home.”
Dorothy and Ewan climbed into the taxi, and it pulled away from the curb.
“How long have you been away, Ewan?” Dorothy asked.
“A month, I think.”
“How did it go?”
“I slept a lot.”
Dorothy looked at the hopeless little intellectual who had been locked up in the sanatorium for drinking problems and was now being let go halfway through his treatment. Poor Ewan, she thought, poor SOE. The little sod would soon be working for them on the front lines.
“Do you feel better?” she asked.
“Better? I don’t know.”
“Harold Nicolson. You know Harold?” Dorothy asked.
“Harold?”
“Yes, the Member of Parliament. You remember him?”
Ewan ignored the question and watched the traffic.
“He called me and told me to collect you. He’s a friend of your family. I am to take you home right away so you can pack your things. You’re leaving tonight.”
“Leaving tonight?” Ewan repeated, showing little interest.
“Your wife is busy packing for your mission.”
“My mission?” Ewan laughed.
“Yes, Ewan,” Dorothy said, “you’re going to do your bit for King and country. They are sending you on a very important mission overseas.”
Dorothy helped Ewan up the steps through the front gate to a redbrick house in an upscale London neighbourhood. The taxi driver brought Ewan’s valise and Dorothy paid him. When she turned to ring the bell, the door was already open.
“Welcome home, darling!” Mary Butler said as she reached out to kiss her husband. Ewan stumbled into her arms as Dorothy noticed the hallway littered with trunks and suitcases.
“We don’t have much time, Mrs Butler,” Dorothy said. “You both might want to have a bite to eat before we drive you to the airfield.”
Ewan negotiated the baggage in the hall and headed aimlessly for the kitchen.
“Are you sure he is all right?” Mary asked. “He doesn’t look himself.”
“After a month in a sanatorium, Mrs Butler,” Dorothy said, “no one looks themselves. I think it’s only normal with all the medication.”
Stockholm
“So why did you leave your job as a schoolmaster at Rugby?” Bridget asked.
Peter and Bridget were having a drink in a cozy restaurant with a view of the waterfront and the setting sun in the west.
“I was about to get called up when I got a letter from a Cambridge don,” Peter said. “He was on a visit to the college and invited me to tea. It all started there. A few casual questions about my background, my German and French language skills, and my desire to serve. I was bored with teaching. I thought I could do something for the country.”
“Where did you learn to speak German and French?”
“Not at school, that’s for sure. I ran away from home when I was 15. My dad had a pub in Dartmouth, The Dauphin, until he lost it in a wager when I was a kid. Things went downhill from there. He was stinking drunk by three o’clock every day so my mum up and left us. She went home to look after my grandma. I had to get away, so I took a job on a German channel vessel as a seaman, doing deck and loading duties. The job took me to Dieppe, Le Havre, Calais, Antwerp, Bremerhaven and as far as Danzig. I was just a young chap learning a trade and having a great time. I met a lot of very interesting people who spoke a lot of different languages.”
It occurred to Bridget that it was the most Peter had ever spoken about himself. Even now it was just the bare essentials, enough to answer her question. Unlike most men in her presence, he had made no attempt to embellish or boast about his achievements. She looked down at his hands, his long fingers and nicely maintained nails. They were the hands of a confident man - a man of value - who didn’t sweat the fine details and knew where he was going.
“What about you?” Peter asked.
“Oh, me,” Bridget flushed with embarrassment, realizing that she’d been staring. “I’m a child of the diplomatic service, Peter. My dad worked in Cairo, Berlin, Rome, and Stockholm. That’s why I came back here. I speak German, Italian and some Swedish so it was very easy for me to move here. I feel almost at home in the city.”
The waiter brought their plates just as a large group of German Legation officers noisily broke up a meeting in a back room. As they filed out, Bridget noticed with a start that Dr Kramer was among them. Elegantly dressed and supremely confident, Karl-Heinz glanced in their direction.
“Guten Appetit, Herr Faye,” Karl-Heinz said as he passed their table.
Bridget froze, but Peter managed a nod and a word. “Guten Tag, Herr Kramer.”
Karl-Heinz smiled as he followed his colleagues out the door.