Philip Eaton had still not mastered the problems associated with dressing and undressing with only one arm and a badly damaged left leg. Tonight was doubly difficult. Having spent ten minutes getting from his day clothes into his pyjamas, the telephone had rung and he had to set about reversing the operation.
At last he was dressed. Almost. He couldn’t put on a necktie or cufflinks without assistance and he still had trouble with his shoelaces, so he left them loose and sat down on the sofa to wait. Five minutes later the bell rang and he called out that the door was bloody open.
Guy Rowlands came in, cigarette between his fine fingers, a benevolent smile on his charming, well-bred face. ‘Oh dear, Philip, let me help you.’
‘Damn it, Guy, this is the bit I hate. Pain is simply something to be endured, but the humiliation of not being able to dress properly is intolerable.’
‘I know, truly I do. Let’s get that tie on you and be on our way. The first lord awaits us.’
‘I’m an adult for pity’s sake, not a bloody infant.’
*
It was clear to Eaton that Winston Churchill was a changed man. Even at this late hour, you could sense his energy. And why not? He was back in charge of the Admiralty as First Lord and had been asked by Chamberlain to join the War Cabinet. He had accepted, of course, and had wasted no time in heading off up Whitehall to the Admiralty, a place he knew well and loved from his time there in the Great War, to meet the Sea Lords, chiefs of staff, civil servants and section heads. It was said he had closeted himself with these men from 6 p.m. until late, acquiring detailed information on fleet deployments and their needs. This was the first day of a conflict that he believed would be a second great war, and there was no time to lose.
Now it was half an hour past midnight and Churchill was back at his apartment in Morpeth Mansions across the road from Westminster Cathedral. But he had no intention of retiring to bed just yet, for important men were arriving from their homes, summoned secretly by telephone.
At last they were all assembled in his sitting room. It had the intimacy of a college common room, with men lounging wherever they could on sofas, armchairs, hardback chairs, even the floor. Every man was equipped with a brandy glass and their smoking implements of choice, be it cigarettes, cigars or pipes. A single, low-wattage bulb barely lit the room, and the lack of light and the pall of tobacco smoke simply added to the atmosphere of mystery and conspiracy in this blacked-out space. Eaton knew it was no accident but design – for drama had suited Winston Churchill all his life. He had always been something of an actor, and he liked to have the leading role.
He got right to the heart of the matter.
‘We all know what has to be done, gentlemen. We have to impress our cause upon the American public and political opinion. With the minimum of delay.’
Churchill’s growl was commanding. He clutched a long Havana cigar between his puffy fingers. A wisp of blue smoke spiralled lazily from the burning tip to join the cloud that hung around the ceiling.
Eaton, like every other man in the room, felt the weight of the moment.
Churchill had clearly taken a risk in calling this meeting, for its purpose could not be discussed outside this room; even the prime minister had not been told, and nor would he be. But this was a time for such risks; wars were not won by faint hearts.
‘And we must bear in mind,’ Churchill continued, ‘that the Hun will do all in his power to deter our American friends from intervening or supplying us with arms. You may think that this will be a war of many tons of steel and iron. You may think that it will cost countless lives and much misery. And you would be correct. But it will also be a war of words, of propaganda, and that, in the first instance, is a battle we must win.’
Philip Eaton watched him and listened with admiration. And yet he wondered why he had been summoned here when he had only been out of the plaster cast on his leg two weeks, and had still not mastered life without a left arm. He was beginning to understand.
Since the hit-and-run incident, he had been away from his MI6 desk, convalescing. Oh, he had received reports from Terence Carstairs on a regular basis, so he knew what was going on, but that wasn’t the same as being there, taking vital decisions, analysing reports from abroad, dispatching agents into the field or travelling overseas to the stations under his control.
Churchill growled on. ‘We need aircraft and we need ships, and America is our best hope of acquiring them in short order. The Nazis and their allies in the States will work to thwart us at every turn. Nor should we underestimate our foe, for Dr Goebbels is a master of the dark propaganda arts. He will tell the Yanks that Britain should be left to rot and that Europe should be left to Germany – and many will listen to him.’
While Eaton had been away, his work at MI6 had been covered by Guy Rowlands. Now that he was back in harness, Rowlands was literally a shoulder to support him. Not only had he done his tie and shoes, but he had driven him here from his Chelsea home in his silver BMW 328, a two-seater sports roadster that seemed rather out of place in the smoky, almost empty London streets.
‘I think I’m going to have to swap this little beauty for something a bit more British,’ Rowlands had said with evident regret.
‘You always were a flashy bugger, Guy.’
‘What do you think I should go for – Bristol? Aston Martin?’
At Churchill’s flat, Rowlands had helped Eaton up the stairs then made him comfortable on a rather fine sofa.
Eaton tried to ignore the pain. His leg was worst. The fractures had healed, but he would never walk without a limp. The loss of an arm was another matter; the difficulty there was more to his sense of self than the physical handicap. If he had been a religious man, he might have thought the injuries just reward for his sins. His many sins. But there was no God.
He gazed around the room at the others present. He recognised them all and knew most of them. What they shared was either loyalty to Churchill or a role in the dissemination of information, or both. The press baron Beaverbrook was there of course, as was Sir Frederick Ogilvie, director-general of the BBC. Who else? Duff Cooper, still on the back benches; the ever-present Brendan Bracken, one of Churchill’s best friends; Desmond Morton, who had provided Churchill with so many secrets regarding German rearmament; the scientist Frederick Lindemann.
And then there were the secrets boys: Eaton and Rowlands sharing the sofa while their boss Sir Hugh Sinclair, chief of MI6, occupied a wing chair. Sir Hugh – known to one and all as Quex – had nodded in acknowledgement at Eaton on entering the room. Eaton had afforded him a smile in return and tried to conceal his shock; Quex was gaunt, his flamboyance gone. ‘God,’ Eaton whispered to Rowlands. ‘He looks worse than me. Is he ill or simply under pressure?’
‘Both, perhaps.’
Across the room, Maxwell Knight and Guy Liddell from MI5 sat in the shade nearest the door, watching, evaluating. Like cats.
Liddell had passed a few words with Eaton before taking his seat. ‘Good timing, Eaton. Don’t want to miss the war.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Come, come, don’t be like that. Anyway, we’ll need you boys. Five’s really up against it. We have upwards of sixty thousand German nationals resident in Britain, and they’ve all got to be checked out. That’s without the other aliens and undesirables we need to vet. My complement of staff doesn’t quite make a couple of rugby teams.’
Eaton smiled at Liddell but made no promises. His gaze now was focused on Churchill’s pug-like features, as he tried to spur on the impish Beaverbrook.
‘Max, your papers sell more than any in the land; you will be at the forefront of this battle for America’s hearts.’ He stabbed his cigar towards Ogilvie. ‘The BBC, too, of course. Goebbels most certainly understands the power of the wireless – we must do even better.’
He began to address the men from the Secret Intelligence Service. ‘Your role will be obvious to you. Your agents in Germany and the occupied territories must report anything that shines a light on the filthy behaviour of Hitler’s thugs. We know there will be atrocities and great cruelty, for we have seen such things from them already. These degradations must be publicised so that the decent men and women of the free world cannot turn away and say “This has nothing to do with us.” In our own operations we must ensure that civilian casualties are kept to a minimum. And at home, it is the task of the MI5 to prevent anything being done by fifth columnists to harm our country’s reputation in the wider—’
He stopped in mid-sentence because there was a knock at the door. It opened and Churchill’s wife Clemmie stood there, attired in dressing gown as though she had just risen from her bed. She nodded briskly to the assembled men, then approached her husband and spoke a few words in his ear. He instantly rose from his seat and followed her from the room.
The men sat silently save the occasional cough. Churchill returned five minutes later, his face grave. Eaton knew the old boy was an emotional man and, watching his fallen face, he wondered for a moment whether he might cry.
‘Gentlemen, a report has come through. We have had the first casualty at sea in this war. An unarmed British passenger liner has been torpedoed by a German U-boat in the Atlantic off Northern Ireland. There were fourteen hundred aboard, crew and civilians, including Americans, British and other nationalities. It is certain that many have perished. The ship is the Athenia, out of Glasgow and Liverpool, bound for America. She is still afloat two hundred miles north-west of Malin Head, but mortally wounded.’ He paused, his voice choking. ‘Now perhaps the world will see why we have chosen this fight.’
*
Something woke Wilde. He leant over and checked his watch: three o’clock in the morning. He listened. No siren, no moans from Marcus’s room, no screaming. But something was wrong.
Creeping from the double bed so as not to wake Lydia, he moved stealthily across the room. He stubbed his bare toe on the corner of the bed and just managed to suppress a yelp of pain. At the window, he inched back the blackout and looked out on the rear garden: nothing.
Feeling his way back across the room, he found the door and turned the handle. The door creaked as he opened it and he stopped moment-arily, before stepping into an impenetrable darkness. All the windows in the house were curtained in blackout material so dense there was not even a chink of light. With hands outstretched he manouevred his way by touch to the top of the stairs. He was about to switch on the light when he noticed the front door was open. He took the steps down slowly, clutching the banister. At the front door, a quarter moon brought some visibility to the street.
Why was the door open?
He stood on the front doorstep, as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. Across the road, beside the fenced-off garden at the centre of the square, he thought he saw shadowy movement. At first he dismissed it, but then, he heard voices too.
‘Marfield?’ He called in an urgent whisper. ‘Marfield – is that you?’
They had gone to bed at eleven o’clock, soon after Lincoln Tripp had left. Wilde had joined Lydia in bed without waking her and had lain there on his back waiting for sleep to come, the sound of Marfield’s voice in his head. He had sung a Brahms lied, ‘An Die Nachtigall’. Wilde was no expert on music, but he knew perfection when he heard it. Whatever Marfield had been through, whatever the dust and smoke of the Spanish war had thrown at his vocal cords, his voice remained intact.
‘Marfield,’ he called again, this time a little louder, but not so much that it would wake neighbours or those already asleep in this house.
Now Wilde could make out a figure about fifty yards away. Two figures. Wearing nothing but his pyjama bottoms, Wilde padded silently along the front path and out of the gate. A cloud passed and the fragment of moon brought the faint outlines into sharper relief: Marfield and someone else, someone smaller.
As Wilde stepped out into the road, he saw that the two figures were tussling. Wilde moved faster. At that moment one of the figures broke away and stalked into the road. It was Marfield. As he passed, Wilde reached out to clutch his right shoulder, but Marfield didn’t seem to register that he was there. He strode, instead, to the front door.
Wilde’s instinct was to follow him, but instead he took two steps towards the other, smaller figure. At first he thought it was a woman, but then, no, it was a slender young man. And then he changed his mind again: it was a young woman. As she started to hurry away, he followed and caught her easily. ‘Stop, I want a word.’
She turned abruptly and pushed the muzzle of a pistol into his bare chest, the cold metal pressing on his sternum. He had a clearer view of her face now. Dark, small, olive-skinned, with raven hair. A face he had seen before, fleetingly, outside the main gate at Le Vernet. Then she had spat at his feet; now she pressed the gun barrel hard into his chest so that he momentarily backed off. He wasn’t afraid. She had already had her chance to use the weapon, either on Marfield or on him.
‘Why are you here? What do you want with Marcus?’
She said nothing, pushed him again with the gun, and then turned and vanished.
Wilde lost her within a few strides. For a couple of moments he stood looking into the darkness after her, then returned to the house. He found his way to Marfield’s room. As he opened the door, there was a glow. Marfield was sitting on his bed, smoking.
‘What in God’s name was that all about? Who was she? She had a pistol!’
‘I told you, Professor. I have enemies.’
‘That woman was outside the camp in France. She’s followed you here, for pity’s sake! I’ve helped you this far – but if your enemies have weapons and the means to follow you to England, you’re going to need a great deal more professional protection than I can offer. And you’re going to have to tell me what’s going on.’
Marfield pulled deeply at the cigarette so that the tip burned bright orange, then exhaled a long stream of smoke. ‘You shouldn’t have bothered with me. You should have left me to rot at Le Vernet. Don’t put yourself in the line of fire, Professor Wilde.’