If someone sitting behind a desk could be said to be soaring in triumph, then, Jago thought, Major Smedley was up with the eagles.
‘You’ve done it now, Craze.’
‘Sir?’
‘I’ve had a phone call. The paperwork is on its way apparently, but the gist is: Captain Craze is to be sent down, finished in Military Intelligence. So clear your desk and pack your pens, you’re not coming back.’
It was the sack – again. Jago had not liked the job, but he hated the humiliation of losing it even more. Smedley was still fussily attacking him.
‘You wouldn’t be told, would you? Even after I binned that wretched report of yours, you tried to go over my head, which is typically arrogant of you. Well, its contents have upset someone. You’re going to be jumped on from a great height. They’re sending a car.’
They were moving quickly, Jago realised. Barely two days had elapsed since his Chichester trip and he was about to be sunk without trace. Smedley must be a happy man, he thought.
‘I can’t work you out, Craze: all you had to do was keep your head down to see out this war and then return to Oxford.’
Jago looked at Smedley the survivor, and knew he’d work diligently for saint or sinner, for Churchill or Hitler. Jago thought he was a slave in all but title. ‘If Jerry had marched up Whitehall in 1940, you’d have done that, wouldn’t you, sir? You’d have kept your head down and tried to see out the war? I do believe you’re one of life’s collaborators, Major Smedley.’
The major stared at him. Jago realised Smedley wasn’t triumphant, he was disappointed. Jago had disappointed him. And as the major was a shit-slicer by trade, he now sliced shit, and the turd was Jago.
‘I called you arrogant because you are. You can’t settle to any task given you and work at it diligently. You have to step back and try to grasp the bigger picture, not allowing that that might be someone else’s job, higher up the chain. Someone older and wiser. You’re like a lot of modern young men, you want to start up the top. True research calls for humility, a putting aside of assumptions, opinions, even beliefs, and getting down on your knees to investigate the dirt under your feet. You’re all head space, Craze, no knees. And there’s something else. Plenty of undergraduates turn up at university to find themselves; there’s something about you that makes me think you arrived to lose yourself. You’re an army in retreat, a shambles.’
Jago wanted to be away, out of the office, away from the lecture, but Smedley hadn’t finished. ‘I’ve met your sort before, so frightened of being labelled you sabotage your own life. No job is worthy of you because by doing it conscientiously it might define you. You have a first-class brain, Captain Craze. Unfortunately, it’s attached to a will-of-the-wisp.’
Jago went quietly. Outside, a Riley saloon car, painted khaki, was waiting for him. The driver was a FANY, a member of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. She was one of the bright young things that ran errands around London. The same girls who sometimes parachuted into occupied Europe as secret agents. She was also unmistakably Lavender from the Chichester debacle.
Now Jago felt he was lost in Alice’s Wonderland. The White Rabbit had turned up in the Riley to drive him down the rabbit hole. He hovered on the pavement, with too many questions jostling for position to allow one of them the opportunity to be asked. Then Lavender forestalled him.
‘You can ride up front or in the back, sir,’ she said, without any acknowledgement that she knew him.
Jago climbed in beside her and stared at her in daylight. She looked young enough to still be at school; fresh in stale old bombed London. That the Communist Party had assets in uniform didn’t surprise him; that they could pull strings to make sure Jago was supervised by one of their number did. He wondered who would spy on him in his next posting, and how low he was going to fall; was he to be banished to Army Postal Services or the Catering Corps? And what then – a fatal accident? A hit and run in the blackout? He felt so angry; to be murdered for a mistaken assumption. He hadn’t got the bloody Walpurgisnacht Plan. He turned on the driver irritably.
‘Do we talk about the other night?’ he said.
Lavender changed gear with an alarming cry of protest from the throttle. ‘Best not, sir. Think of it like a play at the theatre; when I’m in these togs I’m playing Lavender, the brave young lass in the FANY. When I’m pointing the Webley at you, I’m another creation on the stage. Two separate characters played by the same actress. Get it?’
Jago did and entered the play. He understood. Lavender was leading two lives, just like him, and with a second secret life, discretion wasn’t just required, it was mandatory.
‘So where are we heading, a mobile bath unit? Where are you taking me?’
‘Sorry, sir, I’ve taken a vow of silence.’
She stared at the road ahead and didn’t for a second glance in his direction. Jago knew this lack of cooperation came from the fact she hadn’t forgiven him for the treatment of her comrade, Austen.
Jago brought his mind back to his present crisis. He knew how these things played out; first he was going to find himself on the carpet for a bollocking, followed by a formal dismissal. Then he’d be back in the car for a drive to a seedy backwater of the war effort, where the officer commanding would tell Jago how unhappy he was to accept him and how he’d be keeping a close eye on him. Then he’d be handed over to a semi-criminal sergeant, smelling like an ashtray, who’d find Jago a desk with one leg shorter than the other three. Behind this rocking monstrosity, Jago would spend his days chasing plumbing supplies and facing a large wall clock that would tick his brain into despair and move as slow as death.
‘Here we are, sir,’ said Lavender, pulling up at an office on Baker Street.
Phase one, he thought: the bollocking. He presented his military pass to the redcap on the door. He was asked to wait in the lobby and a few minutes later Lavender reappeared.
‘If you’ll come with me, sir; we’re on the second floor.’
‘Lavender…’
‘Sir?’
Jago looked up and down the corridor; he needed to talk to her. The place seemed deserted apart from a military policeman on a corner staring into infinity and wondering whether to put it on a charge. Jago stepped into an alcove that housed two red fire buckets, one containing water, the other sand. Each to be used on their own specific fire hazard. After a beat, Lavender reluctantly stepped into the alcove with him.
‘Austen, is he your – young man?’
Lavender huffed; it was the only word that Jago could find to fit the noise of her impatience.
‘Is he my young man? Are we walking out? Do we have an understanding? Are his intentions honourable? You really have wafted in from the shires, haven’t you sir? Anyway, I think you know for a fact in what direction Austen’s sexual appetites lie.’
Jago was irritated to discover he was blushing. ‘I suppose I do.’
Lavender stopped mocking him and looked coldly into his eyes. ‘Austen’s my brother, sir.’
And the way she said it, the weight she gave the words, told Jago that Austen would always count more in Lavender’s life than any gentleman caller.
‘Oh, right,’ he said weakly.
Her answer was brusque. ‘Let’s get on, shall we sir? We’ve got a war to win, a revolution to organise, a population to agitate, a worker’s paradise to bring about and a load of toffs to put up against a wall and shoot.’
She marched off out of the fire-point alcove and Jago followed her, knowing that, as far as Lavender was concerned, he was going to end up with his back to that wall.
They reached a solid mahogany door with a military plate screwed to it, bearing the legend, KNOCK AND WAIT.
‘You don’t have to wait, sir,’ she said, reaching for the handle to open the door for him. ‘And by the way, sir, I hope you won’t take it amiss if I tell you,’ she whispered, ‘you’re improperly dressed.’
Jago entered the office in confusion.
‘Major Craze,’ Lavender announced to the assembled group of three, all wearing headgear, Jago noticed. They brought their right arms up into a salute as he entered, longest way up, shortest way down. He returned their salute. As he did so her words registered: Major Craze.
He caught her eye and she glanced at the rank pips on his shoulder. ‘Said you were improperly dressed, sir; there are pips where there should be a crown.’
A captain of the Dorsets stepped forward. ‘I’m Captain Thomas, sir, outgoing CO. This is your staff.’ The captain waved a hand at the others.
Jago saw all three services were present, both sexes and officers and other ranks. By way of welcoming him, those with commissions smiled, and the elderly naval rating straightened his back. There was a sophisticated woman, in glamorous early middle age, who looked like she’d been poured into her RAF squadron leader’s uniform. The sailor looked like his skin had been removed, sent to a leather factory and only returned to him when suitably tanned. Lavender was looking at Jago with scorn. The rabbit hole had just got deeper.
The captain of the Dorsets continued, ‘I’ll do the honours after I’ve briefed you, if I may. Come through to my – your office, I should say.’ He turned to the ancient naval rating, who bore a striking resemblance to a dissolute old vampire Jago had seen in a pre-war German film. His memory supplied a name: Max Schreck as Count Orlok in Nosferatu.
‘Tea and biscuits, Nightingale.’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ the rating said, as he lumbered away leaving an audible grumble, ‘Biscuits he wants, and them on the ration’, to float behind him.
The office was that wartime mixture of heavy old wooden furniture, clashing with contemporary metal storage. It was not a room that seemed harmonious to Jago.
‘Well, this is it,’ said Captain Thomas.
He seemed to be waiting for Jago to speak, to comment, to ask a question, but Jago was lost; there wasn’t even a carpet underfoot for him to receive a bollocking on. ‘Please forgive me, but what the hell’s going on? What’s this all about? My sudden promotion to major? Frankly – I’m totally lost.’
‘I take it you’ve not been filled in, sir?’
‘I’m in the dark.’
They caught each other’s eye and, in that look of shared bemusement, betrayed their joint amateur-soldier status. Inside they relaxed slightly.
‘What a way to run a war, eh?’
‘I thought I’d been brought here for the sack. What is this place?’ said Jago.
‘I’m told you’re SOE?’
‘Was,’ said Jago. ‘I’ve been with Military Intelligence for the last two and a half years.’
‘But in the beginning, weren’t you interviewed here? This is Station X; SOE headquarters.’
Jago remembered the chaos of the times; the radio call-up of the Reserve, two days before war was officially declared. The guard sergeant at Victoria Barracks had missed the wireless broadcast and, not having been briefed, had tried to send him away again. But then others had turned up, other TA men with their kitbags, and the sergeant had muttered quietly, Christ, there’s going to be a war. And the chaos had continued; his regiment had gone to France but thanks to his degree he’d gone on a commissioning course, then instead of returning to his regiment he’d been sent to the newly formed espionage service. There hadn’t been any interviews in Baker Street, just a posting to a stately home.
‘No, I was sent straight to the Finishing School, at Beaulieu.’
Captain Thomas nodded. ‘I see. Well sir, 64 Baker Street is SOE headquarters; designated Station X. Up here on the second floor we run just one operation, known as Foxley. And actually I’m in the same fog you are. Yesterday I was informed I was standing down as CO as a Major Craze was taking over.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Jago.
The captain smiled. ‘Don’t be. I’m going back to my regiment – at last.’
‘Are they giving you a company?’
‘No such luck. I’m to be battalion intelligence officer – but I’m going to be there, I’m going to be there at the end. I’ve spent the war in an office and I thought I’d missed my chance, but now I’m re-joining my regiment.’
He smiled the smile of a happy soldier. Jago knew how he felt and what he meant by he was going to be there. The captain was going to be at the sharp end, the place where the real war happened. It would be something he could tell his grandchildren, strip his sleeveand show his scar and explain Grandpa’s part in the great adventure to free the world – if he survived being there.
‘And Foxley is?’ asked Jago.
‘Well, truth to tell, it’s been a bit of a dead duck, sir. We’ve been charged from virtually day one of this war to devise ways to kill Adolf Hitler, and Foxley is our assassination team on Obersalzberg.’
‘And is Hitler too well defended to pull it off, an impossible target?’
‘There’s no such thing as an impossible target, sir, but for most of the war we’ve been ordered to hold our powder. You see, when Hitler was a demigod to his own people, we daren’t bump him off, for fear of what they’d do in revenge to our lads in the POW cages. The generals’ botched attempt told us that possibly the time is right for us to have a serious pot, and, as we have a team in place, upstairs has given us the go.’
Jago felt like one of the heavier pieces of old oak furniture in the office had just dropped on him. ‘You’ve been given the green light to kill Hitler?’
‘If the German generals take over, the thinking is they’ll respect the Geneva Convention and look after our boys until they can repatriate them.’
At that moment Jago didn’t care about the POWs. ‘And is this assassination attempt – imminent?’
‘Well they’ve already had one pop.’
Jago felt a surge of panic. ‘They tried to kill Hitler?’
‘Well he is the enemy, sir.’
Jago was astonished to find that he was relieved that Herr Hitler had survived. He realised this must have been the attempt the collaborators had discussed.
‘So, this team we have…?’
‘Four strong; an Anglo-German nurse is Control, a turncoat SS officer who’ll carry out the kill, a Swiss businesswoman on radio in Switzerland, who then hand delivers to our so-called postman, who has regular access to Obersalzberg and gives the messages to the nurse.’
Jago sorted the facts in his head. It didn’t make sense. Clive Roberts, of the Secret Intelligence Service, had told his fellow collaborators he didn’t believe that SOE had any assets on Obersalzberg, but in fact they had a whole team, while the traitors just had one, and he was to come under the Control of the MI6 asset, the Three Graces. The answer came to Jago: there were two subversive groups up that mountain, each planning to shoot Hitler, one answering to SOE and the other to MI6. It was worse than Jago had imagined, but at least he was now in a position to block the SOE assassination.
‘And there’s about to be another attempt?’ he asked.
‘Everything’s in place. My last order as CO was Go,go,go! Kill the beast. Ah, here’s Nightingale with the char – and three biscuits. Excellent foraging Nightingale.’
‘Aye,’ said the lugubrious Nightingale, bearing the tray before him like a high priest bearing reliquaries at a pharaoh’s funeral. ‘Digestives, and I had to go cap in hand to get ’em.’
‘Well done Nightingale, now beat it.’
‘And begging your pardon, sir, Commander Godwin is back and wanting to come aboard. He’s in the lobby. The lady dressed as an RAF officer has gone to fetch him up.’ Nightingale went.
Captain Thomas turned to Jago. ‘We don’t like bodies wandering around unescorted in Baker Street. Do you know Commander Godwin?’
Jago lied, which he had been taught was a mortal sin the last time he’d worked for SOE. Only lie when there really was no alternative, had been the maxim. Lies trip an agent up. ‘No, I don’t know Commander Godwin.’
Had he failed to tell the truth because, at heart, he felt he hadn’t really known who Nicky was, ever?
‘Neither did we, till yesterday; then he turned up with the milk. He had the correct authorisation so we stood back and he went through everything with a fine-toothed comb. Finally, he announced you were to be the new CO and I was to be returned to my regiment.’
The door opened after a courtesy knock and the smart female squadron leader looked around. ‘Commander Godwin is here, sir,’ she said.
‘Thank you, Mrs Cambridge – Squadron Leader I mean – show him in.’
Nicky entered. ‘Hello Jago, good to see you again.’
The lie was exposed. The wisdom of SOE training revealed. But this was London and not Berlin, and Captain Thomas was too much a gentleman to ask an embarrassing question of a superior. Jago stewed in mortification and blamed Nicky and refused to acknowledge him.
Nicky broke the silence. ‘Good morning, Captain Thomas. You may go.’
‘Sir,’ said the captain. He stepped through the door and out of Jago’s life.
Nicky stared at Jago. ‘I expect your head’s spinning?’
Jago didn’t want commiserations, he wanted explanations. ‘What’s going on? How did the Communist Party become aware of me? Was it you who gave them my report?’
Nicky had a poke at the biscuits in a desultory fashion, and then abandoned them. ‘Believe me–’ he said, but Jago hadn’t finished.
‘Did you betray me, Nicky? Did you tell them what I am?’
Nicky sighed. ‘I didn’t have to, old man. They know all the queens who come down from Oxbridge. They keep close tabs on the cottages. Your toilet habit betrayed you.’
Jago’s embarrassment made him angry. ‘Do you know the Don is threatening me with blackmail?’
‘Don’t judge us all by the Don. He’s old school. The Party wants to own you and will use blackmail to that end, but not me. I want a new world, not the old one with new masters.’
‘Don’t be naive.’
‘I don’t think I am.’
But Jago wasn’t listening. ‘When we bumped into each other again, was that arranged by the Party?’
The sudden near-collision in a Whitehall corridor. The surprise and pleasure when he recognised Nicky. Their decision to have a drink after duty, not their decision at all, Jago realised. It had been ordained by the Don.
Nicky had the decency to look shamefaced. ‘It was a set-up, I admit. But what happened after wasn’t politics.’
‘Nothing happened.’
‘No. Quite.’ And Nicky shut up.
Jago hated that he was a thing to be moved around the world at the whim of other people and their plans. ‘Can the Kremlin arrange promotion within the British Army?’
Nicky succumbed to the biscuit and bit into it. ‘On night watches on the Murmansk run, we dunk these in cocoa and rum. Keeps out the cold. The Arctic convoy is the worst of them all. But no one complains, none of the men. Everyone knows the Russians are shouldering the lion’s share of the war effort against the Nazis. Anything we can do to help Uncle Joe we do. There are people here, in London, who feel the same and some of them have a lot of scrambled egg on their sleeve. One of our high-ranking friends arranged for your transfer and promotion, and in the process scuppered the collaborators’ plans for you. Poor Captain Thomas has inherited that destiny.’
‘What do you mean?’
Nicky finished the biscuit, brushed his fingers and shrugged. ‘Captain Thomas is a good man and, as so often in war, bad things happen to good men. He thinks he’s on his way to re-join his regiment in Northern France but he’s been lied to. I lied to him, and sadly he’s about to fill the role others had designed for you. Captain Thomas is going to see out the war in a Pay Corps depot outside Peebles.’
‘Is that necessary?’
Nicky stared at the tea growing cold in the cups, and then he looked at Jago. ‘Oh yes, quite necessary I’m afraid. You have enemies, old man. This way there’s a chance they’ll believe that it is you who has gone to Scotland. Now, down to business. You should know there’s an imminent attempt on Hitler’s life being planned by Foxley…’
But Jago hadn’t finished. ‘We’ll work together, Nicky. I accept that. But our friendship, as I said before, is over.’
Nicky met Jago’s eyes. ‘Alright, Jago. If you say so.’
‘I do. Now, the attempt by Foxley?’
‘I set wheels in motion yesterday and I hope I’ve scotched it. The problem is, one can’t just pick up the phone and say Scrub it,lads. Our radio contact is in Switzerland, which makes wireless communications easier and safer, but then this Swiss national has to travel to Munich to give the message to the Postman, who in turn has to deliver it to Control, and then she has to inform the trigger man to put his safety catch back on.’
‘But we do have assets close to Hitler?’
‘Very close, why?’
‘Then, if they haven’t already killed him, they must not just be called off, they have to be re-tasked. They must reverse their role. We know for a fact there is at least one other team operating in Obersalzberg and their mission is to kill Adolf Hitler. So our team must be told in future they are there to protect him. They must be told to save Hitler.’