96 
The Fog Lifts

At the sound of the wailing death plunge, Churchill paused. Over the bluff down at the water’s edge, the dinghy was putting out across the waters.

“See if there’s another boat around here!” ordered Churchill.

Now he spun around and ran toward the lighthouse.

What he found was not a pretty sight. At the base of the slender column of white lay the broken and battered form of his erstwhile colleague, onetime respected member of Parliament turned traitor against brothers and nation.

Churchill stood for several moments, shaking his head in revulsion and sadness.

The echo of steps reverberated from inside. Churchill glanced up just as Lieutenant Langham ran out the door from the tower. He wobbled slightly as his legs of lead tried to reacquaint themselves with level ground.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “There was nothing I could do. He was over the side the moment I entered the gallery.”

“I know, Lieutenant,” replied the First Lord to his young assistant, still shaking his head in disbelief. “I thought I knew the man. I considered him a friend. How could it come to this? What a tragedy—a waste of a good life. How could he let such a worthless cause as this turn him so far from the things he once believed in?”

“War does strange things to people,” replied Langham, in an uncharacteristic moment of reflection in the presence of his superior.

They heard footsteps approaching from behind them.

“So do deceptions like the Fountain of Light,” added Amanda, walking up and joining them. “I speak as one who allowed it to do strange things to my whole outlook.”

One quick glance at Beauchamp’s body and she turned away in disgust.

“Ugh . . . that’s so awful—oh, I can’t bear the thought of it!”

Lieutenant Langham hurried to her side and led her quickly away from the scene.

“How are you otherwise, Miss Rutherford?” he asked as they walked back toward the now desolate house.

“I think I will be fine. But it doesn’t look as if we did any good.”

“On the contrary,” said Churchill, now joining them. “We will shut down this operation for good.”

Colonel Forsythe ran toward them from across the plateau.

“They’re gone, Mr. Churchill,” he said. “They’ve taken the only craft available.”

“I was afraid of that. But they won’t get far in that little dinghy.—Lieutenant,” Churchill added, turning toward Lieutenant Langham, “it doesn’t look like we’re going to be able to pursue it from here. You had better radio the base at Whitby immediately and have the Coast Guard dispatch a vessel.”

“Yes, sir.”

Langham ran off to the communications vehicle, while Forsythe instructed some of his men to take care of the body.

Churchill led Amanda back toward the house.

“Once we get back to London,” he said as they walked, “where will you be, Miss Rutherford—er, Mrs.—what should I call you anyway?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Churchill,” answered Amanda with a sigh. “I will have to sort it all out later. I do apologize for not telling you everything. It didn’t occur to me to think all that business about my involvement was important.”

“No harm done,” rejoined Churchill. “I suppose I will just call you Amanda, then. But I feel I need to apologize as well.”

“You . . . whatever for?”

“For doubting you in there,” said Churchill. “I should have known that, however mixed up she might have been for a time, the daughter of Sir Charles Rutherford would come right in the end, and would be a young lady whose word I could trust. But I have to say, I was momentarily quite confused with everything being said. They were so convincing I didn’t know what to make of it.”

“Ramsay and Mr. Barclay have a way of making anything they say seem plausible,” nodded Amanda. “They twisted my perceptions around so badly I didn’t know black from white—as you know only too well from that outrageous pamphlet I helped them write. I am deeply embarrassed by that now. At the time they had my brain so mixed up.”

“I begin to see just what you were up against. In those few moments in the lounge back in there, that young Halifax blackguard had the thing turned upside down and their whole network sounding completely reasonable. If he hadn’t grabbed you, who knows how it might have ended up? They might have had me joining the Fountain of Light!”

“I doubt that, sir,” laughed Amanda.

“It hardly matters now. The minute he pulled a gun on you, suddenly the fog cleared and I saw that you had been telling the truth all along.”

“Unfortunately, it took much longer for the fog in my brain to clear.”

“Well, apparently it has now. So, Amanda, back to my original question—where will you be in London?”

“Uh, I don’t really have any immediate plans,” she answered. “I hadn’t thought past just getting back to warn you about what I had heard.”

They reached the now deserted house. Churchill led the way inside. The fire was still burning. Amanda walked into the lounge and glanced about pensively.

“You know,” she said, “this really is a comfortable place. I can see how easy it would be to sit here with a nice fire, enjoying pleasant conversation and tea, and get lulled to sleep by the warm and cozy atmosphere. I wonder if all deceptions begin like that—seemingly innocent, even pleasant and friendly and enjoyable. That’s certainly how they wooed me. The deception creeps over you in ways you never see coming. And they were especially clever in never making a full disclosure about what they believed. So I did not have to face squarely what I was slowly becoming part of until I was all the way inside. By then it was too late. It was just all so . . . comfortable that I never paused to look beneath the surface for what sorts of things they stood for.”

“Well, I don’t know about all that,” said Churchill. “But I do know that it would be a shame to waste a good fire. What do you say we enjoy a cup of tea, like you said, while we are waiting for Lieutenant Langham and the others to wrap it up?”

“It will be my pleasure,” said Amanda, walking into the kitchen. “I’ll see what I can find.”

“You know,” Churchill added as he followed her, “there will no doubt be a commendation in this for you, possibly from the prime minister himself. It is impossible to know, of course, but shutting down this channel in and out of England, not to mention destroying the method they were using for signaling German U-boats . . . it may have a significant impact on the outcome of the war. There may still be some submarines lurking along our coast. But I would think that once we get those subs out of our waters, things could begin to turn for us.”

“I am glad my experience—miserable though it was—may serve some use in the end.”

“In any event,” said Churchill, “we will make arrangements for a place for you to stay the moment we arrive back in the city. I will need to be off to Scapa Flow myself. But Lieutenant Langham will handle the details and will see to whatever you need. At some point we will want to talk to you further and get a more detailed statement about exactly what went on in Vienna. We need to make as many identifications as possible. Hopefully by then we will have nabbed all the scoundrels in that little boat out there and have them behind bars.”