David had been given a key with the number 16 on it, for him and Natalia. The two of them stopped outside the room, while Ben and Frank went into the one next door. Natalia smiled at David uncertainly.
‘I suppose we’d better go in,’ she said.
The room was small and dingy, the window giving a view of the backs of neighbouring buildings. It was dominated by a large double bed with a candlewick bedspread in an unpleasant shade of yellow. David put his suitcase on it and looked awkwardly at Natalia. She smiled tightly. ‘So, Sarah is out.’
‘Yes.’
‘How do you feel now, about seeing her again?’
David sat on the bed. ‘I don’t know. Scared, I suppose.’ He laughed sadly. ‘Ironic, isn’t it, according to our papers you’re my wife now.’
‘You will go back to her, won’t you?’
‘We’ve been through so much, I’ve put her through so much. She needs me. But . . .’
Natalia sat beside him, looking at him with those slightly Oriental, green eyes. ‘You will go back to her in the end,’ she said sadly. ‘Because you are loyal.’
‘I don’t know.’
She didn’t answer. He asked, ‘If we get to America, have they planned anything for you?’
She looked at him, the sun shining through the window on that lustrous brown hair. ‘They told me, before I came to join you at Chartwell, that I am to go to America with you. I need to rest. Perhaps I will do some more painting. I have been doing this work for a long time. They said I am in danger of becoming burnt out.’
‘Are you?’ His heart leapt at the thought that Natalia was coming too.
‘This mission has been different,’ she said. ‘You know, all these years since my husband died I have had nobody. Oh, little affairs here and there but nothing serious, just work. But then I met you.’ She stood up. ‘People like me are especially useful to the Resistance. People without nationality, identity, family. I have been full of hate, anger, it has been all that’s kept me going for years.’ Tears came into her eyes. ‘Now – yes, I’m tired. Meeting you helped me realize that.’
‘I’ve realized a lot since I met you.’
She smiled. ‘Perhaps you are a little in love?’
‘Yes, yes I am.’
‘I used to look forward so much to seeing you, those evenings in Soho. Your people, you especially, seemed so – honest. Many of those I have had to deal with these last seven years were not, they wanted money and power. You just wanted freedom, the end of all this evil.’ There were tears in her eyes. She leaned over and took his hand lightly. ‘But your wife was in the way then, as she is now.’
A knock made them both jump. They looked at each other. David went and opened the door. He feared it would be Sarah, that she would see Natalia with him in tears, but it was Ben. He looked at them sharply. ‘Jane’s husband’s back. He wants to see us. We’re all next door. Come on through.’
‘Give us a minute.’
Ben shut the door. Natalia went over to the little washbasin and quickly washed and dried her face. ‘He’s worried, isn’t he? About – complications?’
He reached out his hand but she only shook her head and walked past him, touching his arm gently before opening the door.
Ben and Frank’s room was identical to theirs except that there were two single beds. A fat man in shirt sleeves, a lick of brown hair drawn across his bald head, stood by the window. He looked at David and Natalia with a touch of impatience. Frank and Ben were sitting side by side on one of the beds. Opposite them, on the other bed, a large map of the coastline was spread out.
The man said, ‘I’m Bert. We need to get on at once. I don’t like leaving Jane downstairs alone, not when there’s something like this on.’
‘All right, pal,’ Ben said soothingly.
‘This is like any war, there’s periods when it’s quiet and nothing’s happening, but everyone needs to be ready at a moment’s notice. Just like that.’ Bert clicked his fingers sharply, then looked at David. ‘Where’s your wife?’
‘Jane said she went out for a walk.’
Bert sighed. ‘All right.’ He sounded annoyed. ‘We’ve all been waiting for days, with no word from London about when you were coming, then everything goes mad yesterday. You’re on your way tonight.’
‘The American submarine knows we’re here?’ Natalia asked quietly.
‘Yes. They’ve been wondering what the hell’s going on, too.’
‘How do you contact them?’ Natalia asked.
‘We’ve a radio. Not here, in the town.’ He looked at each of them in turn. ‘It’s fixed now, you all travel to Rottingdean tonight, after dark. The sub will be waiting out at sea. You get picked up at one a.m. The weather forecast’s good, it’s going to stay cold and dry with a calm sea.’ He stepped over to the map lying on the bed. ‘Come and look here.’ David and Natalia went and stood at the foot of the bed. He glanced at her; she looked composed and concentrated again.
Bert asked, ‘Does anyone know this coast at all? No? Well, see those grey areas? That’s the cliffs, a sheer drop to the sea, there’s just a path between them and the water at high tide, it’s called the Undercliff Walk. The cliffs start just east of Brighton, here, and carry on to this gap in the cliffs – see, there? That’s Rottingdean village, three miles east. There’s a bay there, a cove, Rottingdean Gap. Then the cliffs rise again on the other side.’
‘What sort of place is this Rottingdean?’ Ben asked.
‘Small, an old fishing village, tourists come in the summer and there are people who’ve retired there. Posh, some of them; Rudyard Kipling lived there. It’ll be very quiet late on a Monday night. You get down to the cove, where there’s a small beach between the cliffs, a little before midnight. There’ll be a boat ready to row you out to sea.’
David said, ‘And then they take us away.’
Bert nodded. ‘It’s a spy sub, the Americans are often nosing around the Channel, seeing what messages they can pick up. They don’t usually risk taking any of our people off, though, in case something goes wrong and there’s a diplomatic incident.’ He looked at Frank, his face puzzled. ‘But they seem to want him very badly.’
‘Yes.’ Frank’s voice sounded composed. ‘They do.’
Ben asked, ‘Do you know where we’re goin’ tae, in America?’
Bert shook his head. ‘No idea. Somewhere along the East Coast, I suppose, to start with.’
‘What if there’s patrol vessels?’ Ben pressed.
‘We’ll have people watching the sea from the cliffs either side of Rottingdean. We haven’t noticed any increased naval activity in the Channel – in any case, the Germans wouldn’t tell the British authorities about this one. The waters off the coast are quite shallow, so the sub will have to come in on the surface and wait for you about a mile offshore. It’ll be risky for them, and it means it’s important you row out and reach them on time. Anyway, our people should be able to see any boats out at sea. If that happens, the mission gets called off and you come back here.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Everyone understand?’
‘All clear,’ Ben said. The others nodded. Bert took the map and folded it.
‘Right. We’ll have another briefing later; my contact in town will have some more details this afternoon. Thank God it’s getting too near Christmas for the shops to bother with reps, the last one’s gone home now. All the same, I want you all to stay in the hotel. Keep to your cover stories. We do get casual visitors occasionally even at this time of year and we don’t want anyone noticing anything unusual. All right? Now, I’ve got to go and help Jane get lunch.’ He smiled awkwardly. ‘It’s best to keep to normal routines so far as we can. Lunch will be ready in an hour.’
Natalia asked him, ‘Have you done this many times before?’
‘We’ve put people up for a few days. Some Jews, week before last. Nothing as big as this though.’
Natalia looked at David, took a deep breath. She said. ‘I didn’t sleep last night. I wouldn’
t mind getting some rest now. David, perhaps you could go to the lounge for a couple of hours. Then you can meet your wife when she returns.’
‘Yes,’ Ben said. ‘Good idea.’ He spoke lightly but gave David a determined nod. Frank too was looking at him, a concentrated stare.
‘I’ll show you where the lounge is,’ Bert said. ‘You can see the street from there.’ He smiled. ‘You can watch for her.’
Bert took David downstairs. At the bottom he glanced back up, then said quietly, ‘That Muncaster, he was in a loony bin, wasn’t he? Will he be able to go through with this? He won’t go nuts or anything? This is very important for some reason, to us and the Yanks.’
‘No,’ David said. ‘I think he’s all right.’
‘I hope so.’ Bert raised the flap in the desk and headed through to the back room.
David went into the lounge. There were several armchairs, well worn, the arms greasy, a writing desk, a television, and a bookcase with an assortment of pulp novels. He went and looked out of the window, trying to calm himself, to think.
He heard the door open quietly behind him. He wondered if it was Natalia, if she had changed her mind, but it was Frank who entered. He closed the door and stood uncertainly against it.
He said, ‘I wanted to thank you for what you offered to do, yesterday. If – if it had gone differently, with Churchill.’
David smiled awkwardly. ‘I wouldn’t have let them break their promise.’
‘You might have had a problem, reaching me with the pill.’
‘I’d have done it, or Ben would.’
‘We’ve made it to Brighton,’ Frank said.
‘Yes. Yes, we have.’
‘I’ve always loved the sea, ever since I went to the seaside on holiday when I was small. You used to swim in competitions, didn’t you?’
‘When I was at school. I gave it up at Oxford, took up rowing, remember? But I still go to the pool sometimes – well, I did.’ He sighed. ‘I always used to like diving down into the deep water, into the silence.’
‘Yes. Silent, peaceful. Another world. Maybe I’ll learn to swim in America.’ Frank looked down for a moment, then back up at David. ‘Your wife should be back soon.’
‘Yes.’
Frank shifted nervously from foot to foot, then said, ‘Natalia – she’s a good woman. A very good woman.’
‘I know.’
‘I won’t say anything, about what I saw the night of the raid. But Sarah is your wife—’
‘It’s not your business, Frank,’ David said, quietly.
He sighed. ‘No. No, I suppose it isn’t.’ He paused. ‘I keep thinking about Geoff.’
‘I know.’
‘He paid the biggest price.’
They were silent a moment, then David said, ‘The secret, the nuclear secret your brother told you—’
‘I shouldn’t have told you it was that. I’m sorry—’
‘No,’ David said. ‘I’ve been thinking – what is it? What is this thing that’s cost us all so much? It’s just that –’ he groped for words – ‘I feel it would help me now, to deal with everything, with Geoff’s death, if I knew. After all, after tonight either we’ll be with people who know it all already, or—’
‘Or we’ll be dead. I know.’
David said, ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. I’m not thinking straight today—’
‘Edgar was very drunk that night,’ Frank said, very quietly. ‘I didn’t want him in my flat, I didn’t want to see him again. But he had to show he was better than me, he always did. I remember he said, “Do you know what I do, what my work is?” Then he told me, leaning right in so I couldn’t avoid hearing. He said it was the atom bomb. I never believed they’d actually built it, you see, despite that film of the mushroom cloud. I thought for once our government and the Germans were right to say it had been faked. Because the uranium, the explosive material inside the bomb, the amount of ore you’d need would be colossal, unimaginable.’
David said, ‘The ore the Americans get from Canada.’
Frank looked startled. ‘How do you know about that?’
‘It was an issue that came up at the Dominions Office. It was one of the subjects I stole papers on, for the Resistance.’
Frank said, ‘Everyone who worked in science in the academic world had been talking about the atom bomb since they found it was theoretically possible, back in 1938. But Edgar told me the Americans have been experimenting for years, for most of the forties, and they’d actually refined a new type of uranium, an isotope, as it’s called, and a few suitcases full would be enough to destroy a city. He told me the basics and because I’m a scientist, too, I understood; it only took a few minutes. Just a few minutes.’ He shook his head. ‘You see, if anyone who wanted to build a bomb knew what Edgar had told me, it would save them years of research. Years and years. The Germans could do it. I remember Edgar boasted that just one of the bombs the Americans have got – just one – could destroy central London in an instant.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ David said.
‘Afterwards, he realized what he’d done and told me to forget it.’ Frank laughed, and for a moment David heard something wild, deranged in his tone. Then Frank said, his voice low, ‘That was what made me angrier than anything else, that was what made me lose control and push him away. But I pushed him so hard he went out of the window. And then I suppose I went mad.’
‘Hearing that would be enough to drive anyone mad, I should think.’
Frank smiled sadly. ‘But I was a little mad before. Not so much now.’
‘I think we’re all a bit mad in this terrible world.’
‘Perhaps,’ Frank said. ‘You can’t understand what a relief it is to tell someone everything. I know you won’t say a word. I think perhaps I’ll go and lie down for a bit.’ He laughed nervously. ‘We probably won’t be getting much sleep tonight, eh?’
‘No.’ David looked at him.
‘I’ll see you later.’ Frank hesitated, then added, ‘Good luck.’
David stood looking at the closed door for a moment, then turned back and stared out of the window. And then he saw Sarah, walking towards him up the street. She wore strange clothes and her hair was short, a different colour, red. Her strong-boned face looked exhausted, drained. What have I done to her? he thought.
Chapter Fifty-Two
THE FOG HAD GRIPPED THE CAPITAL for three days now; it felt as though it would never end. Gunther had bought a white facemask in a chemist’s. It didn’t make much difference though; the fog made his throat and nasal passages painfully sore and he had an almost constant headache. He didn’t take painkillers, they made little difference and he thought they dulled the mind. On the evening after the news of Hitler’s death Gunther groped his way home late in the evening. Goebbels, the new Führer, had made a speech extolling all that Hitler had achieved – the restoration of German greatness, her mastery of Europe, her destruction of Stalin and the settling of accounts with the Jews. The fulfilment of Germany’s historic destiny. He had spoken of the magnificent funeral that would be held in Berlin in a week’s time; in the meantime Hitler’s body would lie in state at the Reich Chancellery, where already huge crowds were starting to queue outside. But Goebbels had said nothing of the continuing war in the East. It had been left to Himmler, in a broadcast of his own a couple of hours later, to speak in his slow, toneless voice of Germany’s need to destroy each and every last stronghold of the Russian subhumans.
Every radio and television in the embassy had people crowding round it. And already SS and army people were grouping together, talking quietly. Gunther sensed that if there was to be a struggle for power, it would come quickly.
Gessler, after his initial shock at the Führer’s passing, had quickly recovered control of himself, refocused. He took Gunther up to his office, sat behind his desk, confident and energetic again. He said, ‘If there’s any change in policy towards the Russian war, or moves against the SS, we are ready to strike. In t
he name of Adolf Hitler and his legacy.’
‘This could turn into a civil war,’ Gunther said quietly.
‘They’ll lose. The whole boneheaded upper-class stiff-necked lot of them. We’ve got a million SS forces, all the Gauleiters and most Party members on our side.’
‘Has Speer said anything?’
‘Not yet.’
‘What about Bormann?’
Gessler waved a hand dismissively. ‘Now Hitler’s dead he counts for nothing. Bormann doesn’t matter.’ He leaned forward. ‘But our mission does, more than ever now. I should have some more news very soon, about where Muncaster’s people are being picked up.’ He smiled. ‘I have a phone call booked to Heydrich himself. I will let you know the result. I am Heydrich and Reichsführer Himmler’s lieutenant in this embassy now, more than ever.’
Later that afternoon Gunther had interrogated Drax again; he had told him about how they had abducted Muncaster from the hospital. He said, a note of satisfaction in his exhausted, rasping voice, that the cell system the Resistance used meant nobody in each operating group knew anyone outside their own cell. Drax told him about the woman who had accompanied them. She was from Eastern Europe and called Natalia; that was all he knew. Again, it was barely more than Gunther already had in his file; even her name was probably a pseudonym. He could see from the weary satisfaction in Drax’s eyes that he knew these titbits would not help Gunther. Throughout the conversation he had coughed, putting his hand to his bandaged chest, which obviously hurt him. The doctor told Gunther that Drax had internal bleeding and would probably not last long. They should get him across to Special Branch soon, so they could at least question him about the Civil Service spy ring before he died.
Gunther told him, ‘MI5 are unravelling the network in your Civil Service. As usually happens in a wide-ranging enquiry, they’ve found a couple of people who have caved in. One of the names they gave us was a very senior man in the Foreign Office. Sir Harold Jackson.’ Gunther saw from the flicker in Drax’s eyes that he recognized the name. ‘When Special Branch went out to arrest him at his house in Hertfordshire, he and his wife stood on the doorstep and fired at them with shotguns, then turned them on themselves. We think he was the leader of your cell.’