Ashe slapped a large black-and-white photograph of Colonel Mahmut Aslan onto his secretary’s desk, then grabbed his blue overcoat and opened the door of his office. ‘Get this faxed off to Hamburg, will you please, Karla? I’ve spoken to the Hamburg letting agent.’
‘Who he?’
‘One Gerhard Fitzthum, of Fitzthum & Nietzsche. They deal in property and antiques. Question is: can he positively identify the image of this person? Was the person depicted involved in the letting transaction for the Altona apartment? Need an answer today, Karla. Details in the covering note. Call you from London. Adios!’
Ashe stepped over the large brass pentagram embedded into the polished-stone threshold and entered the marble reception of Freemasons’ Hall, 60 Great Queen Street, London WC2.
The reception was vast and dim. Ahead: a grand staircase, carpeted in the distant past. Ashe approached the reception desk. A uniformed man with a passionless demeanour looked him up and down for signs of Masonic engagement. Ashe was not wearing a black tie. His trousers were black, his shirt was black, his jacket was an encouragingly blue cashmere, but his hair was rather long and unruly.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I’ve an appointment with Julian Travers. Your information officer.’
‘I know what he does, sir.’ The man looked around for his phone and groped about for a printed list of internal numbers. ‘Travers, is it, sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘Here it is: Travers, J., Information Officer.’ He prodded the internal number. ‘Gentleman here to see you, Julian. Excuse me, what’s your name, sir?’
‘Ashe.’
‘Says ’is name’s Ashe. Right. Mr Travers says to go up to ’is office. First floor.’
Ashe turned and headed for the staircase.
‘Excuse me, sir. I’m s’posed to ask for ID now, sir. Security thing.’
Ashe turned to the man and looked him in the eye with a twinkle. ‘I was taught to be cautious.’
The security guard winked. ‘Right, sir. First floor, sir.’
Ashe tore up the staircase to the floor housing the Library and Museum of Freemasonry and turned right, down a narrow corridor opening off into dozens of separate Lodge rooms. He was amused, as always, to remember that this public building housed the largest collection of lavatories in central London, and he popped into one to check that the unmistakeable smell of damp and cleaning powder had remained unchanged. Like many things in the lodge, the lavatories had an air of faded grandeur; their vast powder-blue basins, magnificent urinals and purpose-built brass ashtrays speaking of an old-fashioned, masculine sensibility.
Rounding a corner, Ashe narrowly avoided crashing into a battalion of old ladies emerging from an ancient-looking cleaning cupboard. He stopped briefly to congratulate them on the high shine on the lapis-lazuli-coloured linoleum flooring, which stretched, seemingly endlessly, down to the shabby grey lift, and took another right towards the library gallery.
As he passed a cleaner’s cupboard decorated with newspaper pictures of the royal family, not updated since the 1980s, Ashe reflected that, like the edifice of English Freemasonry in general, Grand Lodge seemed to be in a state of denial. Instead of mysticism, magic or spirituality, here was a granite ideology of empire and enterprise: a brotherhood of trust, a sober cult of moral rectitude. It was a building that should have been constructed with eternity in mind. Instead, it belonged to the twenties and thirties and seemed to have stayed there.
Change, inertia’s gift, would surely come to Grand Lodge, but what kind of change would it be? Given the character of the times, and the spiritual vacuity of the influential, any change was likely to involve further reduction of spiritual substance, probably to cold-zero. The end of modernisation was likely to be a hierarchical social club with historical frills whose genuine roots had been lost, and, where not lost, ignored by those with the most to lose from their revival.
As Ashe approached the library gallery, Julian Travers came bounding towards him, his polished Oxford shoes squeaking as he moved. Travers was a well-knit package of indefatigable enthusiasm, his gaunt, kindly face set off by thick black ‘Harry Palmer’ specs.
The men shook hands.
‘We’ve been out of touch too long, Julian.’
‘That’s life. Hey, how’s Lichfield? Still writing? Lectures? All that stuff?’
‘Less and less. I’m into travel. Research. Look, are we meeting here, or outside?’
‘Prince of Wales OK?’
‘You can’t get away from Masonry, can you?’
‘They say it’s the best fun you can have with your trousers on!’
‘Or rolled up.’
The two men chatted briskly about old times at Oxford as they made their way out of Grand Lodge and onto the pavement of Great Queen Street in Covent Garden.
‘You know, we Magdalen chaps used to come down to your bar at Brasenose because the beer was always better.’
‘Yeah! The girls were friendly at Brasenose.’
‘You have a creative memory, Julian. We called our bar “the sewer”.’
In the crowded pub, Ashe and Travers found window seats with a view of Drury Lane. There was an aroma of steak-and-kidney pies mixed with Italianate dishes of indeterminate provenance. Italian customers seemed to prefer the pies.
‘OK. Did you get it?’
‘You know this could cost me my job.’
‘Never. I’ll take a digital photo in the loos and give it straight back.’
‘I took it from the Grand Secretary’s desk.’ Travers reached for the folded wad of typescript, bound by a paper clip, in his inside pocket. ‘This isn’t on file.’
‘Why not?’
‘Don’t know. Matters pending? It’s not unknown for documents of historic significance to be destroyed in Grand Lodge.’
‘The sign perhaps of a confident institution.’
Travers caught Ashe’s irony and smiled. ‘Well, I hope it’s what you wanted to see.’
‘Have you read it?’
‘Are you kidding? I’m the information officer.’
‘I thought you ran the publicity.’
Travers laughed. ‘My dear Toby. I’m run by the publicity.’
‘Travers!’
Julian shuddered; it was the booming voice of the Grand Secretary himself, Bob Foulhurst.
‘See who’s here!’ Foulhurst turned to two other men, also wearing black ties, dark suits and waistcoats, and carrying briefcases. ‘Look! It’s Tigger – out for a crafty lunch!’
Ashe folded his hands over the document, covering as much of it as possible.
‘Afternoon, Tigger!’ boomed the balding provincial grand secretaries accompanying the Grand Secretary for a lunchtime drink.
‘Shouldn’t you be on a working lunch today, Tigger?’
Ashe looked up at Foulhurst. ‘Your brilliant information officer is just being brilliant.’
‘Who might you be?’
Ashe showed the Grand Secretary a Cranfield Royal Military College of Science card. Foulhurst perused it, sceptically. His eye caught the document under Ashe’s hand.
‘Not passing information on to outsiders are you, Tigger? Pro-Grand Master won’t like that.’ He pointed to the papers under Ashe’s flattened hand. ‘Not one of ours, is it?’
Ashe interjected. ‘As a matter of fact, Grand Secretary, I’m passing information on to your library and museum. Wonderful stuff about Service Lodges. Means a lot to veterans. I believe it involves the Duke of Kent. Was it his request, Julian?’
‘Er…’
‘Anyhow, the Duke has in the past taken a keen interest.’
The reference to the Duke of Kent settled the Grand Secretary somewhat. The Duke of Kent, being Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England, was entitled, Foulhurst surmised, to do things even he, the Grand Secretary, did not know about.
On the other hand, Foulhurst felt a right to know about everything that passed within the Craft. ‘The Duke, you say? I’ll have to have a chat next time we meet.’
‘Come on, Bob!’ The Provincial Grand Secretary for Lancashire patted Foulhurst on his shoulder. ‘We’d all like a drink before we go into Lodge.’
‘Sorry. Sorry, Peter. Right. Be sure you’re back in the office by two, Tigger. Goodbye, er… whatever your name is. Not one of us, is he, Julian?’
‘No, sir.’
‘I see. Well, keep it brief.’
As the three men moved to the other side of the bar, Ashe noticed sweat beginning to gather on Travers’ forehead.
‘How the fuck can you put up with shit like that, Julian? And you an Oxford man!’
‘That’s the whole trouble, Toby. None of these guys went to a decent university. But Masonry gives them rank. And in their little world, they’re like kings.’
‘That’s sad. You deserve better. No one should have to put up with crap like that in this day and age. And what’s all that “Tigger” stuff?’
‘You know. I run around, always doing something.’
‘And they laugh at you?’
‘Their little joke.’