‘Mrs Cambridge, not Squadron Leader, please,’ she said as she sat, at Jago’s request, in the upright chair opposite his desk. ‘At the beginning of the war, they liked to give everyone a rank and so bring us under military authority – but Nightingale is quite correct when he refers to me as the lady dressed as an RAF officer.’
Jago smiled. ‘I know what you mean – pre-war I was in the TA but whenever I come across an old sweat such as Nightingale, I still feel as if I’m in fancy dress.’
Mrs Cambridge stared at Jago. ‘Major, do you ever wonder if they too might be suffering a minor crisis of confidence in your presence? Do we, the citizen soldiery, make them, the regulars, uneasy?’
Jago couldn’t imagine why. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Take Nightingale, all carved oak and whittled in battle, but read his papers and what do you find…’
‘Yes?’
‘You find that Nightingale is a country of one. I suspect he became that the moment his mother dumped him, as a baby, on the church steps. That act put a sea around Able Seaman Nightingale. Donne is wrong – the odd man is an island.’
Jago had expected a superficial male-type briefing on his team; Mrs Cambridge obviously had other ideas.
He tried to debate with her. ‘Surely the Senior Service gave him a sense of belonging, a family?’ Jago had joined his TA regiment with just such a hope.
Mrs Cambridge looked down her nose at him. ‘We have the habit of handing over our orphans, when they reach the awkward age, to the military. But under the tradition and tattoos, believe me, Nightingale is still not a joiner. Nightingale will never go above and beyond the call of duty, because at heart he doesn’t believe he has a duty. Duty is the burden of those who belong and Nightingale’s mother made sure he never did.’
‘Can he be trusted?’
She shook her head sharply and closed her eyes as if to cut herself off from the very idea. ‘Of course not. He knows how to wear the uniform in a way we never will. He knows the slang of belonging, but Nightingale’s loyalty belongs to no one but himself.’
It was a devastating broadside that had wrecked Jago’s first impression of the able seaman. Jago had asked Mrs Cambridge her opinion of the tiny team he’d inherited, hoping for some honest answers. She’d let him have her honesty with both barrels. He tried to lighten the exchange. ‘Well he is good at liberating biscuits.’
But Mrs Cambridge had no intention of dropping the body of Nightingale’s reputation. ‘Nightingale’s talent isn’t biscuits, but manipulating authority. He trained your predecessor to believe that he, Nightingale, is a character – a Dickensian matelot, a sketch by Boz come to life. Nightingale saluted Captain Thomas, but in the fullness of time, Captain Thomas bowed to Nightingale.’
‘Well what are Nightingale’s duties, exactly?’
Mrs Cambridge tutted at the question. ‘Whatever you want them to be. Make the old lead-swinger work. Give him an order and stick to it, in spite of his sighs, his small shake of the head, his muttered asides that, believe me, you are meant to hear. Make him work for his corn.’
Jago nodded and pretended to ponder Mrs Cambridge’s words before he asked the question he’d really invited her into his office to ask. ‘And Yeoman Bangle, what are her qualities? Tell me about her.’ Lavender. He needed to know more about the young communist who, one day, could point a Webley at his heart and then next turn up, as honest as the day, in the King’s uniform.
‘Worth her weight in gold. Two tours behind enemy lines in France as a radio operator – a damned good one apparently. Can you imagine that, Major Craze, a girl from a humble background, who’d never even had a holiday abroad before, adrift in an alien world, lugging around a transmitter in a suitcase? Then, having made contact, living like a mole underground beneath churches and barns; only coming up to tap out her messages on the music box, aware during every beat that the enemy are monitoring her effort and homing in on her broadcast.’
Jago found he could imagine that degree of fortitude. He remembered his own female radio operator looking at him with concerned eyes and trying to persuade him to join her aboard the Lysander.
‘I trust,’ he said, ‘Lavender was never – entertained by the Gestapo?’
‘Nearly, but no. All the fault of those wretched Frenchmen of course.’
‘What did they do?’
Mrs Cambridge glared at Jago as though he was one of the guilty Frenchmen. ‘Machismo, that’s what they did. Male pride is the most redundant quality in a modern industrialised war; that pathetic, pale, historical reflection of the warrior. Instead of being discreet, they have to be manly and swagger, and become such awful show-offs. We try to train them not to but they will stick themselves in photos – you know, posing in the mountains, cradling a Bren gun and swathed in bandoliers of ammo. Group photos sometimes, it’s insane – Jerry raids a farmhouse, does a search and finds the snap, probably under the same floorboard the pervert keeps his filthy Parisian postcards. Then Jerry goes out and rounds up the whole team.’
Jago found himself surprised. ‘Did Lavender allow herself to be photographed?’
‘She did not! But some idiot man managed to get her into shot by accident. She appeared in profile behind and between two resistance heroes, posing for the grandchildren they’re now never going to have. The Gestapo had her face and so we had to get her out and home again, which, with difficulty, we managed. Of course she can’t go back and so she twiddles her thumbs on the Home Front.’
Jago thought that, whatever the young communist was up to on the Home Front, it wasn’t twiddling her thumbs. Mrs Cambridge was off again. ‘And that toad, Nightingale, tries to get her to swab the decks – his job!’
He didn’t want her to go back to damning Nightingale. ‘Mrs Cambridge, tell me about the Foxley team in Berchtesgaden.’
‘Stop right there,’ she said and actually wagged a finger at him. ‘First and foremost, before I brief you, we must be correct regarding the geography. Berchtesgaden is a very large railway station with a small town attached. It’s where Hitler arrives and once he leaves it, so do we. The town we’re fascinated by is Obersalzberg, ten minutes from the railway station. It’s a closed world, a Vatican City, and it’s where Hitler lives, far more than Berlin. He has his home there, the Berghof…’
‘Also known as the Eagle’s Nest,’ Jago said brightly, wishing to contribute. Very quickly he wished he hadn’t.
‘No, Major Craze, the Berghof is never referred to as the Eagle’s Nest. The so-called Eagle’s Nest, or – to give it its correct name – Kehlsteinhaus, is not, as some mistakenly believe, the Western Front equivalent of Hitler’s headquarters, the Wolf’s Lair, in the east. The Eagle’s Nest is a very unimportant folly on top of a mountain. It’s a grandiose tea-house, ignored on the whole by Hitler, but adored by Eva Braun, his mistress.’
‘Good lord,’ said Jago, ‘I had no idea he was interested in women. A mistress?’
‘She’s kept secret from the German people. The fact that the Führer likes bedding a young blonde half his age might take away some of his mystique, present him as just another man.’
Jago took this in, as he stared out of the window at a flight of hungry pigeons pursuing one who’d been lucky to find some crust. The birds swept in and out of sight, like a dogfight between fighter planes; the metallic shades on the pigeons’ throats their squadron colour. He gathered his thoughts as the crust changed beaks, was fought over and finally dropped.
‘Alright,’ he said. ‘Finish briefing me on the team here, and then we can move on to Foxley on – Obersalzberg.’
A brief, if severe, smile lit her face at Jago’s correct use of the Nazi town. ‘We’re the dregs of a much larger operation that never got the green light. Much of the talent and ambition has transferred. As a skeleton crew, we suffer a sort of passed-over peevishness and claustrophobia. Nightingale is our orderly – I’ve said enough on him. Lavender is officially our driver…’
‘And unofficially?’
Mrs Cambridge leaned into him to give emphasis to her words, her admiration. ‘She’s been there. None of us has. Lavender knows what it’s like for our people on the Obersalzberg, living a lie day after day, waiting for the door to come crashing down. Lavender advises us on how to manage our asset.’
‘And Captain Thomas, my predecessor, how did he see his role?’
Mrs Cambridge smothered the look of scorn, the way a Spartan wife might smother a newborn daughter. ‘Captain Thomas was an English manager. You know how the British organise these things: they appoint someone with a degree from a good university to oversee artisans in a trade the graduate knows nothing about. The captain was a nice young man without any talent whatsoever for deception, espionage and assassination.’
Jago looked around the office, his office, and considered whether to ask the question. ‘Do you think I come from the same mould?’
‘Probably.’
Jago discovered he didn’t need this confirmation of his own belief in his inadequacy for the task. ‘Tell me, Mrs Cambridge, what qualifications are relevant to being a spymaster?’
‘Someone who’s lived a secret life. Have you ever lived a secret life, Major? How clandestine are you, sir?’
More than you’ll ever know, he thought. ‘If I told you it wouldn’t be secret.’
Mrs Cambridge laughed. ‘Touché. Now me I suppose. Who is Mrs Cambridge, what is her role in the running of Foxley and has she ever lived a secret life?’
Jago found he was really interested to hear her answer. His initial impression had been that she was the wife of someone important in government. A committee woman, who’d nagged her way from placing evacuees into rural homes into a role with a uniform and a commission. ‘Well, has Mrs Cambridge lived a secret life?’
She leaned back and seemed to shed her suburban respectability as she crossed her legs, adopting a posture that Jago found rather wrong for a woman in a uniform. It wasn’t coarse in any way, just rather too assured and not subordinate.
‘To begin with, the Mrs is honorary – there is no Mr Cambridge. Do you like the theatre, Major?’
This question was so random that Jago had to think for a moment to remember that he did. ‘Yes actually, I do.’
‘Shaw?’
‘Sometimes, if he’s not being too preachy.’
‘Have you ever had that experience in the theatre when it seems as if the playwright has rifled your mind and has stolen the story of your life? You sit in the auditorium dumbfounded, as you watch yourself on stage.’
‘Sort of…’ he hedged. The Lord Chamberlain would not have permitted the depiction of Jago’s life to be given dramatic licence.
Mrs Cambridge continued. ‘Shaw did that to me with his play MrsWarren’s Profession.’
‘I’ve read it – never seen it. If I remember correctly,’ he said, ‘it’s the one where Mrs Warren’s daughter discovers that, far from being respectable, her mother runs a brothel.’
Mrs Cambridge smiled. ‘That’s the one. I never knew my mother and was raised by my father, who had a fancy-lace business. The lace was manufactured in Switzerland, Bavaria and Brussels. After his death, I thought why not manufacture some of the lace bound for Britain in Nottingham, home of English lace, and save on import duties? I travelled to Switzerland to inspect my inheritance and take advice from my managers, and…’
‘Discovered there was no lace?’
She laughed a laugh that would never have graced a village bunting committee. ‘Well, some – on the girls’ underwear. I was like Lavender in occupied France. I was in an alien world. A nice girl, a respectable young woman, clever, I’d worn the scholar’s gown at Girton, and suddenly I discovered I was in fact not a spinster of the Establishment, but the madam of three bordellos. I almost panicked and demanded to be rescued and shipped home. My first thought was to sell up and get out, but it was pointed out to me the business would continue with or without me, and the new owner might not be so considerate an employer as my father had been. He was low church and had a Methodist’s heart. And of course…’
‘What?’
She smiled again. ‘Well – is there anything so disappointed as a female graduate who realises the journey is over? So far my girl and no further, time to bury your brains in a compost heap and pick up the threads of your preordained life. No career for you, best marry a minor civil servant and settle in Purley. Of course I stayed in Geneva.’
‘And are there really bordellos in the Cantons?’
‘The only establishment more discreet than a Swiss bank is a Swiss brothel.’
In spite of the shadow of his puritan mother railing in his head at the scarlet woman before him, Jago was intrigued. ‘You gave it a go?’
‘I gave it more than that, Major Craze; I gave it my best shot. I gave it my considerable energy and ability. To my disappointment, I discovered the houses virtually ran themselves under the eyes of the mothers, those ladies who had risen beyond the horizontal career to the lofty heights of vicarious madams. The years rolled by and the money rolled in, and so did boredom. I understood why my father shot things – if Nightingale had been present I’d have cheerfully shot him.’
Not Nightingale again, he thought. ‘Quite.’
‘I bought my chalet above Lake Geneva, and took out a long lease on an apartment in Dolphin Square, and nearly went mad from lethargy. You will understand I went to pains to protect my respectability. For example, I never visited a house during its hours of operation, but I did like to rub shoulders with the girls during daylight. It’s the fascination that creatures of the demi-monde always cause in us sheltered ladies. I’d sit with them at their very late breakfasts and listen, while they repeated the snippets of gossip the men had shared the night before. Indiscretion, thy name is sated man; with the cigarette smoke, they breathe out secrets. And as war clouds gathered and governments considered investing in umbrellas again, it occurred to me that here was another business even more exciting than living off the earnings.’
‘Spying?’
She nodded. ‘I took myself off to Bern, to the British Embassy. An indiscretion, passed across a pillow to my best redhead, had given me the name of the head of MI6 there. He was a brigadier, small in stature and mind. I was shown in and barely opened my innings when I was shown smartly out again. The problem with MI6 is that it is staffed with men like the brigadier, men who disapprove of the role they are currently playing. They are quite unable to embrace the sordid, to delight in the deception, and to lie in the face of love. They are no use at all.’
Jago knew that; the peacetime Intelligence Service had been filled by men with first-rate, third-rate brains. The real brains were in academia, the Treasury and the Diplomatic Corps. ‘How did you end up here?’
‘With war imminent, I travelled to London and blackmailed a diplomat, and regular user of my facilities in Brussels, into finding a berth for me where my intelligence gathering might be used. SOE came along in the fullness of time and a desk was found for me in Baker Street.’
‘Switzerland and Bavaria?’
‘Well spotted, Major. Yes, I run our person on the Obersalzberg. Radio communications are quite out of the question so near to the Berghof, so we talk via my madam in Switzerland. She travels legitimately across the border to the sister brothel in Munich. There, or in Berchtesgaden, she meets the messenger. Once the man is briefed, he delivers the message to Obersalzberg, to which he has legitimate access on a daily basis.’
‘And our person on the mountain?’
‘A rather brave Anglo-German lass who’s a part-time nurse at the Platterhof Military Hospital, and a nursery helper in the kindergarten.’
The telephone rang on the green leather-topped desk in front of Jago and he answered it. He listened to the voice on the other end of the line, talking as clearly as if they were in the room, even though they were speaking from the lowlands of Scotland. Jago took in what was told to him. He replaced the receiver.
‘What’s wrong?’ Mrs Cambridge asked. ‘What’s happened? Who was that?’
‘It was a policeman in Peebles, a military policeman. Captain Thomas is dead, killed in a friendly fire accident. Blown to bits.’
The knock on the office door startled them. It swung open and Lavender stood in the doorframe. ‘Commander Godwin to see you, sir.’
She stepped aside as Nicky entered and she closed the door behind him. Jago and Mrs Cambridge rose to their feet.
‘Have you heard?’ he said.
Jago knew what he meant. ‘This very instant.’
Mrs Cambridge spoke. ‘Friendly fire, we understand? An accident.’
‘Accident?’ Nicky said. ‘Murder more like, and listen Jago – he was almost certainly mistaken for you.’