Alice, in fact, was busily writing her report on Smuts’s staff changes when Simon’s letter in reply to her previous three arrived. She sighed with relief when she saw the familiar handwriting on the envelope and tore it open quickly. It was posted from the north-eastern front, which did not surprise her, for, as the most active in the vast territory over which the war was now being fought, she had always felt that that was where he and his two companions would be operating.
Simon had deliberately included some juicy details of the attack on the nek, which he knew she would appreciate and would liven up her cables which, perforce, had to be based on the anodyne army HQ briefings. He told of the inferred incompetence of Malleson, in contrast to the feisty aggression and eventual success of Tighe. But what, he asked, had she actually been up to? What was the nature of the ‘quite busy’ work she was doing in boring old Mombasa?
Alice smiled and quickly put aside her story on the staff appointments and added a rider to her previous cable on the action near Taveta. ‘Information has just been received on the story behind General Smuts’s success in the north-east …’
Good old Simon! He knew she would appreciate these discreetly dropped crumbs from the battlefront. She finished writing the piece – carefully concealing the source of her information, of course, and wrapping in diplomatic language Malleson’s leaving of the field when the battle was at its height – and took the cable to the censor’s office. As a very experienced correspondent and an old hand at not incurring the censor’s displeasure, she was sure that his blue pencil would not be used on her copy. But she had other, additional, fish to fry that day.
She turned on her most bewitching smile for the benefit of the staff sergeant on duty. ‘Staff,’ she said. ‘Could you leave your desk for a minute, do you think?’
He returned her smile, looked round at the empty office and tugged at his moustache. ‘Of course, Miss Griffith. I will see you at the usual place in about five minutes, if that is convenient? But I must be quick.’
‘Of course, that will be most convenient, thank you.’
She had less than that to wait in the narrow alleyway round the corner from the censor’s office, before the staff sergeant came furtively to her side.
‘I could be shot for this, you know, Miss,’ he said.
Alice pressed a golden guinea into his hand. ‘Now, as I explained before, you are not betraying the army, Staff,’ she said. ‘I just want to check that this man is not scooping me with his stories, that’s all. It’s just commercial competition, you see. We correspondents are all in competition with each other. Dog eat dog and all that. You and the staff captain see everything that I write, so you will know that I am not robbing him of his exclusives. I just want to keep an eye on him, that’s all.’
‘Very well, Miss.’ He gave her a copy of a long cable. ‘It’s in Boer language, as usual. We have to get a South African army bloke to censor them, ’cos neither the captain nor I can understand a word … Hasn’t been censored yet, though, so I shall need this back pretty smartly, please.’
He sniffed. ‘I have to say that I haven’t got much time for the bloke. He’s a surly so-and-so, never passes the time of day. He’s still fighting the Boer War, if you ask me. I’d better have this back within a couple of hours, Miss, please.’ He pocketed the coin, touched the brim of his cap with his forefinger and marched away, ramrod tall.
Alice hurriedly put the cable in her handbag and walked back quickly to her hotel. Back in her room, she drew down the blind, for her bedroom looked across the street directly into a busy office whose window faced hers. Then she locked the door and smoothed out the cable on her dressing table. It was in Afrikaans, of course. Addressed to the office of the Boer newspaper Die Burger in Pretoria, it was signed Herman de Villiers and seemed innocuous enough.
Alice had only picked up a smattering of Afrikaans in her many sojourns in South Africa and so she found it extremely difficult to decipher the cable. Brow furrowed, however, she did her best to wade through the story, tracking through the place names and comparing it to her own story, and realised that it was a fairly straightforward account of the battle of the nek. However … she stiffened. There was something strange about the middle of the story, which seemed to be a distinctly discrete section, even, perhaps, written in a different language and with a signature at the bottom – Lowe. Some kind of story within the story. No more than – what? – two hundred and fifty words, perhaps.
She looked up at the ceiling and sucked hard on her pencil. Why a story within the story? She looked down again at the text. Ah, of course. The umlaut over the ‘o’ of Lowe. The insert was in German! And Lowe was probably a code name.
Alice stood and opened the top drawer of her dressing table and sorted through her underwear. She had studied German in a perfunctory way at finishing school in Switzerland and she had kept her German dictionary and grammar somewhere … but where? Eventually, with a cry of joy, she found it and began to work, her tongue poking out in concentration.
Within the half-hour, she had finished. She could not accurately translate the message slipped so innocuously into the copy but the meaning was more or less clear. And Lowe was the German word for lion, certainly a code name. The German section stated that Smuts intended forthwith to attack the German defences at Kahe and that when von Lettow-Vorbeck was forced to retreat Smuts would aim south-east for the Central Railway to cut him off.
Alice licked her lips. This meant that, in addition to de Villiers, there were probably two or even three more spies working with the British Army HQ – certainly the South African interpreter in the censor’s office and someone out in the field with the army command. Perhaps there was a whole network of them? No wonder von Lettow-Vorbeck always seemed one jump ahead of the British and South Africans in the field!
She must act quickly. But what to do? Alice frowned. Smuts, of course, was not at his Mombasa HQ so she could not turn to him. But who to approach? Whoever was feeding de Villiers with information was reasonably senior in the army hierarchy, or at least very much involved with communications between the general in the field and his HQ.
She snapped her dictionary tightly shut. Obviously, she must warn the head of Smuts’s staff here at Mombasa that the general’s plans were being relayed back to a pro-German source in the Boer capital of Pretoria, presumably for onward transmission to von Lettow-Vorbeck out there in the wilds of German East Africa. Alice frowned. She would like to set her own trap for Mr Herman de Villiers, if she could think of a way. She had a personal score to settle with him, and Alice Griffith was not one to let a score settle and fester. It was now perfectly clear that he had spied on her when she employed the Calipha to take her into the delta. She had begun to suspect him recently when she saw him slip money into the hands of that obsequious clerk at the hotel desk. Unnoticed, she had observed them whispering in conclave for some time and referring to the hotel register. Yes, before delivering him up to the army, she must first devise a plan to trap him, to ensure that, when he was caught, he would be caught for good!
But first, she must ensure that no more of the general’s plans were passed to the enemy. She pinned up her hair, which had become a little bedraggled while she was attempting the translation, placed her smartest straw hat on top of it and left her room, carefully putting the cable in her handbag and locking the door behind her. She left the hotel by the back entrance and made sure she was not being followed before hailing a cab.
Once at Army HQ she asked to see the brigadier who was Smuts’s chief of staff in Mombasa. Brigadier Lawrence had served under Alice’s father as a young subaltern and, although she had not traded on the acquaintance before, she decided it was time to play this card.
Lawrence sat, jaw in hand, listening to her as she told her story. Then, without speaking, he held out his hand to read the original of the German cable from ‘The Lion’, then her translation of it.
‘You translated well, my dear Miss Griffith,’ he said. ‘Luckily, I learnt German myself some years ago when I was on secondment to the Kaiser’s staff in Berlin …’ Then, seeing the alarm materialise in Alice’s eyes, he held up his hand. ‘No, madam, I am not your spy at headquarters, and I think my record in the army, particularly in the Anglo–Boer war, will prove that. But,’ he tapped the German letter with his forefinger, ‘I might just have an idea who it might be.’
He sniffed. ‘Certainly, a rocket has to be administered to the captain in charge of the censor’s office for letting this cleverly inserted stuff slip through. And, of course, we shall arrest the South African interpreter pretty damned quickly now. But first …’ he pondered. ‘I think we might just alter one or two key phrases about Smuts’s intentions so as to misdirect our German friends in the field.’
Lawrence looked up quickly. ‘You obviously have to return this cable?’
‘Yes, I have only “borrowed it” so to speak.’
‘Good. Leave it with me while I get this central bit retyped, so that it can be passed on. Then we can certainly arrest the interpreter. And, presumably, this de Villiers chap. He is undoubtedly a traitor.’
‘Indeed, sir. But may I suggest you leave him be for the moment? I would like to make sure that we catch him red-handed, so to speak. I have a personal score to settle with him.’
‘Very well. But don’t leave it long. The man must hang before he can do any further damage.’
‘Of course. I will be back within the hour for the rewritten piece and I hope to have a suggestion for you then.’
‘Splendid. Thank you, Miss Griffith. Your father would have been proud of you.’
She smiled. ‘How kind of you.’
Back in the hotel, she perched on the bed and thought hard. There was probably enough circumstantial evidence of de Villiers’s guilt already to hang him, but the final nail in his coffin would be, somehow, to catch him in the act of betrayal. And she wanted, very much, to be involved in that. How to trap him?
The newly installed electric fan whirled slowly above her head but did little to stir the heat within the room. Somewhere, in the distance, a command was barked and boots slammed onto sandy ground – a reminder that this picturesque, previously peaceful port was now also an army town. Slowly, a plan began to form within Alice’s brain. She slowly nodded and smiled. Yes. That would do.
She moved quickly to the writing table and began scribbling on a cable form, addressing it, as usual, to the foreign editor of the Morning Post, Fleet Street, London. Then she tucked the cable into an envelope but did not seal it. Looking down from her first-floor landing, she was glad to see that the treacherous clerk was on duty down at the hotel desk.
Picking up the envelope, she walked slowly down the stairs, pulling down a strand of hair to let it fall, languidly across her brow. She smiled at the clerk and put a hand to her brow.
‘I wonder if you could do me a favour?’ she asked.
‘Of course, madam.’
‘I think I have caught a touch of the sun and am feeling rather unwell and very tired.’ She held up the envelope. ‘This is a most important cable I wish to send to my newspaper back in England and it should go to the army censor’s office without delay. You know where that is?’
‘Oh yes, madam. Quite near.’
‘Quite so. Good. Could you arrange for someone to deliver it to the staff sergeant on duty there? I am afraid I am too unwell to take it myself.’ She discreetly passed over a ten-shilling note. ‘Get someone you can trust to take it, for it is most important. I must go back to my room to lie down.’
‘Of course, madam. It shall be done right away. Would you like tea in your room?’
‘No, thank you. I wish to sleep and not to be disturbed.’
‘Very well, madam. It shall be done.’
Slowly Alice climbed back up the stairs, pausing at the stairhead to look behind her. Yes, the clerk was on the house telephone. Good, the plot was in motion. Then, she hurried past her room, hung a ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door handle and then slipped down the back stairs, out into the alleyway and walked quickly to the censor’s office.
The staff sergeant was still on duty. She quickly explained to him that a communication from her to London would shortly be delivered but that it should not be censored or transmitted. He frowned but Alice gripped his hand. ‘Staff,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I am working for Brigadier Lawrence now. All will be explained to you in due course, but do not, I repeat, do not, mention any of this to your staff captain. He will hear soon enough.
‘Oh, and I shall be returning Mr de Villiers’s cable to you very shortly. Let it be submitted to your Afrikaner translator for censoring and transmission in the normal way. Staff,’ she leant forward. ‘Treachery is afoot and these are important moments. Say nothing to anyone, not even your captain. Do you understand?’
His jaw sagging, he nodded. ‘Whatever you say, Miss. Whatever you say.’
She hurried on back to Army HQ and was immediately shown into Lawrence’s office.
‘We have changed the cable, Miss Griffith,’ he said, handing it to her. ‘We should let it go now. But you mentioned a plan. What is it?’
‘Thank you, Brigadier. Yes it’s pretty straightforward. This is what I propose. I have concocted a story – a fake cable from me to my office – which tells of a move by General Smuts to outmanoeuvre von Lettow-Vorbeck south of Kahe by pretending to attack the town full on but diverting most of his troops to the south to take the Germans in a pincer movement as van Deventer moves up. To give the story some validity to de Villiers, I have hinted that my informant is my husband, who is with Smuts and scouting for him. De Villiers will know this and has long suspected that Simon has been feeding me confidential information.’
‘Hmm. How will the South African get the story?’
‘The clerk at the hotel where the press are all staying is in de Villiers’s pay. I pretended that I have a touch of the sun and asked the clerk to send the story to the office to be censored. But he will, of course, show it to de Villiers, who, I am sure, will incorporate it into his next cable.’
‘Yes, but how do you propose to catch him red-handed, so to speak?’
‘If you can give me two soldiers – military policemen will be ideal – who can be hidden away in the censor’s office, in disguise as clerks, say, we can arrest de Villiers as he hands his story over for censorship. The story in his hand will be sufficient evidence to convict him. And I would like to be there when it happens.’
‘Very well. That seems straightforward. I will see to it. Now you had better get his original story back to the office. I want my own “amendments” to his story to be sent off to Pretoria to mislead our Teutonic friends.’ He grinned impishly. ‘You are not the only one to play games, my dear Miss Griffith. Let’s catch them both ways.’
‘Indeed, sir.’
Alice took the altered cable and hurried with it back to the censor’s office. ‘This can be censored now, in the normal way, and released, Staff,’ she ordered. ‘No one is to know I have intercepted it.’
‘Very good, madam.’
‘Now, has a new cable from me to my office been delivered to you from my hotel yet?’
‘No.’
‘Good. Now, Brigadier Lawrence will shortly be sending round to you two military policemen, who will pretend to be clerks working here in this office. Let them pretend to be working, but they will actually be here to make an arrest – Mr de Villiers. I want to be here when this happens. Is there a little room, say round the back, where I can wait for a while?’
‘Yes, our supper room. But the captain’s not here yet.’
‘That doesn’t matter. The fewer people who are involved in this the better. Let me go and sit in there and wait. This may take some time.’
‘Very well.’ The staff sergeant tugged at his moustache. ‘I wish I knew what the bloody ’ell was goin’ on, Miss. But I suppose you know what you are doing?’
‘I hope so, too. Show me the way.’
The MPs arrived quickly. Burly men who had changed their tunics, with their chevrons, for plain, clerks’ jackets. It was some time, however, before de Villiers put in an appearance, which made Alice edgy. But she realised that he would have had to write a new story, incorporating a new German passage embedded into it, and this would take time.
At last, however, as she peered around the open door of the inner office, she saw the tall, bearded figure of Herman de Villiers walking up the slope towards the entrance to the censor’s office. He walked with the indolent grace of a bushman, a slim, tall, fit man striding along, his step light and springy, seemingly without a care in the world. ‘Your man is approaching,’ Alice hissed to the two ‘clerks’. ‘Arrest him as soon as I identify him by name. Be alert now.’
Looking about him carefully, de Villiers walked through the door, a cable in his hand. Alice chose that moment to appear from the inner office, lift up the flap on the counter and walk toward the South African.
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘Mr de Villiers. How good to see you. Have you come to file another story you stole from me?’
‘What?’
Alice turned towards the MPs. ‘This is your man. Take him now!’
Immediately, de Villiers seized Alice, swung her round and threw her towards the gap in the counter so that she collided with the two men as they tried to move forward. The first fell to the ground, Alice on top of him, but the second, with great presence of mind, attempted to vault the counter. Unfortunately, his boot caught on the top of the counter, which sent him sprawling backwards.
De Villiers turned and ran through the doorway and down the hill with all the speed and agility of a veldt springbuck, his long legs pumping.
‘Ah blast!’ cried Alice. ‘He’s got away. After him! He mustn’t escape. After him!’
The portly nature of the two military policemen, which gave them such an air of command on patrol, alas, did nothing for them now. Scrambling to their feet, their faces red, they made for the door. But de Villiers, with a ground-consuming stride, was out of sight before the soldiers could push through the narrow doorway, disappearing around a bend in the pathway below them.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, don’t let him get away,’ screamed Alice. ‘He’s a German spy. After him. After him!’
She herself ran after the MPs and, in fact, soon caught them up as they paused at the bottom of the hill, gasping and gazing at the empty path before them.
‘He must have gone up that side street there,’ shouted Alice. ‘One of you go that way. The other follow me.’
But there was no sight of the Afrikaner. It was as though he had disappeared into thin air – or, more likely, into the myriad backstreets of downtown Mombasa.
‘Follow me back to my hotel,’ shouted Alice. ‘I doubt if he has returned there but you need to make one more arrest and we need to search his room. Come quickly, now.’
The three stormed into the lobby. The ferret-like clerk was there, his narrow eyes widening as they approached the desk. ‘That man there,’ said Alice, ‘arrest him. But first,’ she leant across the counter, ‘Give me the key to de Villiers’s room.’
‘Oh, I can’t do that, madam,’ he began.
Alice drew back her hand and slapped him hard across the face, so that he staggered back. ‘You are already under arrest,’ she shouted. ‘These men are military policemen and we have a warrant to search his room. Don’t you dare delay me any further. Give me his key.’
Jaw sagging and holding his cheek, the clerk gave her the key. ‘Good. Now, Constable, take this man into custody.’ Then to the other, ‘Come with me. We need to search the room and take whatever evidence we can find.’
She leant across and picked up the desk telephone and rattled the cradle. ‘Operator, put me through immediately to Army Headquarters in Mombasa. Quickly now.
‘Yes, hello. I wish to speak to Brigadier Lawrence urgently. It is Miss Griffith calling.’ She tapped her fingers impatiently while she waited. Then: ‘Brigadier. The bloody man got away. Slipped away like an eel and disappeared into the backstreets of Mombasa, where, no doubt, he has accomplices who will give him protection. Is there anything you can do to stop him leaving the city, do you think?’
‘Give me his description now and I will do my best. I doubt if we will find him. He might go upcountry or, more likely, find a boat to take him to Dar es Salaam in German country. I will alert the naval authorities. I have already set in train the arrest of their man here in our censor’s office and the subeditor on the Pretorian newspaper. As I understand it, we managed to get our fake message back to the paper before startling the fox, so to speak, so perhaps we’ve been able to cause some confusion amongst von Lettow-Vorbeck’s staff. Now, the description, if you please.’
Alice described de Villiers as best she could. As she finished, she said: ‘Brigadier, I am so sorry we let him escape. It was undoubtedly my fault for wishing to be there to gloat when he was arrested. Revenge is never sweet, you know. It’s a fallacy.’
Lawrence grunted at the end of the line. ‘Do not blame yourself, dear lady. You found the scoundrel in our midst, you baited the trap perfectly, we failed to snap it shut, I fear. We must give our military policemen more exercise. Now, do search the room thoroughly – I will send you another couple of chaps, skilled in this sort of work, and make sure we pick up everything that might condemn him. We might have a court case on our hands and we will need to convict him properly. Thank you, again, madam.’
‘Thank you, Brigadier. You are very kind.’
Alice joined the MP who was scouring the room. When the other two men arrived, she decided to leave. She had much to think about.
Lying back on her bed in her hot little room, she mulled over the events of the day. Well, at least they had dug out the spy and spies in their midst. Presumably, Lawrence would inform Smuts immediately and, perhaps, some credit might accrue to her account. Like all generals, it was known that Smuts, for all his legal training and democratic leanings, was not overly fond of the press, keeping his plans close to his chest and refusing to meet the correspondents fretting around the fringes of his headquarters here in Mombasa. And yet … and yet … An idea began to form in her mind. General or not, Smuts was very much a politician now, and anxious to impress the Cabinet members fighting the war back home. The Morning Post was undoubtedly a true-blue Tory supporter and, perhaps because of Alice’s coolly impartial reporting from the front in Africa, it generally cast an approving eye on the African campaign. But, despite Tighe’s recent success at the nek, it must be apparent that things weren’t going completely Smuts’s way. She had heard that the South African was not without vanity. He could do with some good press back home.
Frowning, Alice drew a piece of Morning Post-headed paper towards here, scribbled her Mombasa address at the top and began to write:
My Dear General,
Alas, we have not met, but perhaps you may know that I have been reporting on the German East African campaign for my newspaper, the London Morning Post, since the war began. I feel we have done our best to give an accurate account of the events of the campaign so far.
In the last few days, I have been able to carry out work that has led to the unmasking of a German spy amongst the ranks of the correspondents reporting on the war here from Mombasa and, indeed, others working in the censor’s office here and, from back in Pretoria, supplying vital information to von Lettow-Vorbeck in German colonial Africa. Brigadier Lawrence knows about this and will, no doubt, have already informed you of the details.
I need no reward for merely doing my duty and am happy to have been of assistance – although sorry that, at the last moment, the spy, Herman de Villiers, was able to escape. Efforts are in hand to apprehend him as I write this.
I am writing to you, however, on another matter. My newspaper is anxious to give our readers – who, I might add, are among the best-informed in Britain, including many members of government – a balanced view of the man who is leading our, and South African, troops fighting the Germans in this hugely difficult terrain.
To this end, would you please consider granting me permission to visit you at your headquarters in the field and allow me to interview you? Obviously, anything I write will be subject to the usual military censorship, although I flatter myself that, after covering from the front line the fighting in the Anglo–Zulu War of 1879, the campaigns that followed in Egypt, the Sudan, the first Anglo–Boer War and, of course, the second, plus the uprising of the Pathan Rebellion in the nineties and the British mission to Tibet under Colonel Younghusband, I can claim to possess skills that ensure that I impart no secrets or covert forms of encouragement to the enemy.
On a personal note, perhaps I should add that my husband, Simon Fonthill, is now working for you with his two comrades between the lines as a scout. It would be a wonderful blessing to me, having been apart from him for a month or more now, if, in visiting you, it enabled me to share a few moments with him.
Please forgive the intrusion on your valuable time, but I look forward to hearing from you.
With respect and most sincerely,
Alice Griffith (my professional name)
She read it through carefully and then sealed it and addressed the envelope. Then she settled down to write to Simon and tell him all the happenings of the last few days. On reflection, she decided not to reveal her approach to Smuts. Oh wonderful, to arrive out of the blue and surprise him! If her luck held, that is …
A reply came from Smuts surprisingly quickly. It read:
After the remarkable service you have rendered to us in unmasking what I can only call a spy network in Mombasa and Pretoria, it would be churlish of me, my dear Miss Griffith, to refuse your request. In fact, perhaps now would be the best time for you to venture into the field, for we are forced at the moment to rest and recoup as a result of the heavy rains that afflict us.
I shall give instructions to Brigadier Lawrence as to my precise whereabouts and ask him to arrange for your transport here. Do bring a raincoat!
Alas, I cannot send you the best wishes and love of your husband because he is currently out in the bush, where he and his old comrades continue to render me valuable service. But I can assure you that, as of this time of writing, they are all perfectly safe.
I have been a devoted reader of your writings from the days when your troops pursued me from pillar to post in the last war between our nations and it will be a delight to make your acquaintance at last, dear lady.
With every good wish,
Sincerely,
J. Smuts, General
Alice hugged herself with delight. An exclusive interview with the commander-in-chief and a possibility – just a possibility – to see her dear husband after all these weeks. What joy!