Chapter Nine

Luke was attempting to solve a problem.

On the outbreak of war, the barber Karl Ernst had been arrested, charged with espionage activities, and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. His twenty-one correspondents had been luckier. They had merely been interned. It was copies of letters to them that Luke had collected from Mount Pleasant. He had noted in particular the nine cases in which the recipient had been entrusted with verbal messages for der Vetter.

All nine had been questioned about this. They had replied, with suspicious unanimity, that since they neither knew who der Vetter was, nor where he was to be found, they had been unable to comply with the instruction, which they assumed had been given to them in error. Their interrogators had not believed a word of this. But since the use of judicial torture had been abandoned in England in 1640 – a great mistake, Kell thought – there was nothing further they could do.

Luke was now approaching the problem as a mixture of geography and geometry.

The plan he was drawing covered the part of London that lay south of the river, between Greenwich Park on the west and Erith Marshes on the east. He had marked on it, with a small cross in red, the addresses of those nine correspondents. From them he had drawn a tentative series of lines inward. He had hoped that he could arrange them so they met at a single point, the centre of his imaginary circle.

Kell, who had come in and was looking over his shoulder, said, “Your problem can never be solved by a Euclidean construction. The points you have drawn do not fall on the circumference of a circle. Therefore you cannot ascertain its centre.”

Luke said, “All I had really hoped for was that it would give us an approximate location for der Vetter. What it has demonstrated, so far, is that he is, or was, south of the river and in the district SE7, SE18, or SE2.”

“Allow me to correct you,” said Kell. “Had your lines miraculously converged at a single point it would not have demonstrated even that.”

Luke could see that he was in his schoolmasterly mood that morning. This was almost as dangerous as the friendly and expansive mood. When he donned the mortarboard, if you wanted to avoid having your knuckles rapped, your observations had to be sensible and your replies well considered.

“Knowing the elaborate precautions that our quarry has taken to dig himself in out of sight, can you suppose that he would have disclosed his whereabouts to nine of his subordinates? Unthinkable. Clearly the centre of your imaginary circle – if it could have been plotted – would have located a single, trusted go-between who could pass messages on to him – either directly, or maybe through a further intermediary. We are dealing with very careful, experienced people. Not with a troop of Boy Scouts.”

Luke agreed that they were not dealing with Boy Scouts.

“Allow me, then, to turn to more immediate matters. First, what news of Hubert?”

“I saw him yesterday. He has a very stiff neck, but is recovering. He hopes to be out of the hospital by the end of the week.”

“He is lucky to be alive,” said Kell coldly. “Going off on his own like that, without asking for help, or even leaving a message. It was the act of a novice, a tiro.”

“I did wonder whether we could proceed against that editor, Mr. Portlach. After all, he led Hubert into the trap.”

“Quite impossible. All he has to say is that he was given the address, in confidence, by a third party and that he had no idea it would lead to trouble.”

(Not many marks for that answer.)

“What we should be devoting our attention to is something different: the reason for the attack, the motive behind it. Well?”

“It did occur to me that Hubert might have been seen visiting the Irish Citizen. It could have been deduced that he was making inquiries about Forbes.”

“It’s possible.” (Five out of ten.) “I understand that the local police head – I’ve forgotten his name …”

“Chief Inspector Horniman at the Albert Dock Station.”

“Of course. I’d forgotten. You served in that division. You know Horniman?”

“Yes, sir. A very sound man.”

“Then we must treat his opinions with respect. He says that, in his view, both the attack on Daines and the robbery at the Chemical Works were probably – he won’t go farther than probably – the work of the same people. A collection of Irish scallywags from the docks who call themselves the boys from Killarney. Did you ever encounter them?”

“Not directly. I knew about them. Not really an organised gang. A pack of dangerous louts who would get together to do different jobs—”

“If they were dangerous, why were they not apprehended?”

“The difficulty was getting evidence. They usually wore masks. And on other occasions, when they might have been seen, people were afraid to testify against them.”

“So. A reign of terror,” said Kell, pursing his lips and looking more like a schoolmaster than ever. “Then let us move on to the next question. The really important one.”

He paused. Luke wondered what appalling poser was coming.

“These Killarney boys, as you call them. Being Irishmen, no doubt they are ardent proponents of home rule.”

Luke felt that it was safe to nod.

“We know that their fellow countrymen are preparing for an open strike. Rebellion against the hated English oppressors. Very well. The reason for the Irish helping our German enemies can be divined. They look to them for help in their own struggles. Help in the shape of arms and explosives. Maybe a few junior officers and NCOs from the German Army would increase their power of resistance. You agree?”

“I’d have said that what they’d be mainly looking for would be a shipment of arms. Irishmen prefer to fight their own battles.”

“You may be right. The distinction is not important. The basic fact is that the Irish have a very adequate motive for supporting the Germans. But what do the Germans look to get from the Irish? Trouble in Ireland? That was going to come, whether they helped or not. No, no. They are realists. They must have bargained for some more immediate and valuable return for their efforts.”

“Could they not be counting on a similar sort of trouble here?”

“Absolutely impossible. Out of the question. Think what you’re saying.” (Nought out of ten. Black mark.) “Do you suppose that, with this country on a war footing, any form of public protest or disturbance would be tolerated? Marches and demonstrations? Nonsense. They would simply be identifying themselves as traitors and placing their own heads on the block. Think again.”

Being unable to think of an appropriate answer, Luke said nothing.

“Are you so busy,” said Kell impatiently, “that you get no chance to read the papers? The responsible ones? The Times?”

“Yes, sir. When I can.”

“Then no doubt you will remember the leading article that appeared last week. Clearly an inspired effort, based on facts culled from the high command in France. Indeed, it could not have been expressed more clearly if it had been signed by General French himself.”

“Yes, sir. I think I did see it.”

“Then you will have noted that now that trench warfare has started, the vital matter, to both sides, is the supply of shells – heavy-calibre shells in particular. At the start of the war, we were a full year behind the Germans and are now making desperate efforts to catch up. If those supplies could be interrupted, or seriously diminished, it might cost us the loss of the battle that is now impending. Even the loss of the war. That would be something worth paying for, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Luke. He had not thought of it before, but as Kell spelled it out, it seemed obvious.

“Then tell me this: where are our main reserves of ammunition and explosives held?”

Luke was about to blot his copybook still further by admitting that he didn’t know, when Kell answered his own question. He placed one thick finger in the middle of Luke’s map.

“The Royal Arsenal. Go and see them. Ask for Colonel Lemanoir. He’ll be expecting you. Satisfy yourself that he appreciates the danger of an attack. What precautions are they taking? Are they alive to the desperate importance of protecting the stocks they hold and the further stocks they are beginning to accumulate?”

Colonel Lemanoir, with his poker-back stance and his vast blond moustache looked, at first sight, like a typical stupid guardsman. The impression did not last. Luke soon discovered that he was intelligent, agreeable, and cooperative. Much of his approval stemmed, no doubt, from the fact that the colonel knew and approved of Vernon Kell.

“First met him when he was with the Staffordshires in India. Remarkable chap. Knew four foreign languages already. Soon picked up Hindi and Urdu. Brilliant. Can’t have got his brains from his father, who was a stupid soldier like me. Must have inherited them from his mother. She was the daughter of a Polish count, did you know?”

“No, sir. He doesn’t talk much about himself.”

The colonel chuckled. “Know what he called himself? A Yarmouth bloater. Just because he happened to have been born when his parents were in Yarmouth on holiday. A pretty inappropriate nickname. Now, let’s run through it again. You can really divide us into three sections. First there’s the school and the office block – which we’re sitting in at the moment. Behind us is the Military Store Department. That’s the big building you can see through the window and where we keep the bulk of our ammunition. We do all our testing there, too. Then, to the east, as far as the canal, that’s what we call the Gun Yard. We keep the pieces under cover – you can just see the roofs of the sheds.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t be difficult to cross the canal?”

“Easy. When the tide’s out you could paddle across it. That’s one of the reasons why my predecessor had that wall put up.”

It was a handsome brick wall, circling the Military Store Department and the office block, nine feet high, with a walkway inside it, six feet up.

“Our guards use that. They can patrol the whole wall. Only two doors in it. One in front. That’s the one you came through. The other is at the back, opposite the shipping pier. Both locked at night, of course.”

Luke thought that the arrangements looked efficient and pretty well marauderproof. Helped by a batten of overhead lights, the guards on the inner footway would be able to detect the slightest movement inside the enclosure.

“Do you keep all your explosives in the Military Store Department?”

“We used to. Can’t house it all now. We’re turning out new stuff every day. So what we did, we built three or four magazines along the riverbank, between the canal entrance and Dundee Dock. Would you care to see them?”

“I’d like to do that,” said Luke.

They walked across the Gun Yard, crossed the canal by a wooden bridge, and went from there along a path that led out onto the marsh.

The new magazines were squat, concrete boxes, sunk to half their depth in the ground, each with a double steel door in front.

“It’s dispersal that’s the real safety factor,” said the colonel. “To get at the whole of our stock, an intruder would have to break open a number of different boxes.”

“Under observation from the wall.”

“Exactly. As long as those lights were functioning, I wouldn’t fancy his chances of opening even one of them. What the devil was that?”

It had come from the direction of the Isle of Sheppey, a rumbling explosion.

Luke and the colonel stood, staring at each other, as the echoes died away across the marshes.