Vicary thought of Boothby's disparaging remarks about him, and a cold shiver of anger passed over him. Vicary was a damned good Double Cross officer, even Boothby couldn't deny that. He was convinced it was his training as a historian that suited him so perfectly to the work. Often, a historian must engage in conjecture--taking a series of small inconclusive clues and reaching a reasonable inference. Double Cross was very much like engaging in conjecture, only in reverse. It was the job of the Double Cross officer to provide the Germans with small inconclusive clues so they could arrive at desired conclusions. The officer had to be careful and meticulous in the clues he revealed. They had to be a careful blend of fact and fiction, of truth and painstakingly veiled lies. Vicary's bogus spies had to work very hard for their information. The intelligence had to be fed to the Germans in small, sometimes meaningless bites. It had to be consistent with the spy's cover identity. A lorry driver from Bristol, for example, could not be expected to come into possession of stolen documents in London. And no piece of intelligence could ever seem too good to be true, for information too easily obtained is easily discarded.
The files on Abwehr personnel were stored on open floor-to-ceiling shelves in a smaller room at the far end of the floor. The V 's started on a bottom shelf, then jumped to a top one. Vicary had to get down on all fours and tilt his neck sideways, as if he were looking for a lost valuable beneath a piece of furniture. Damn! The file was on the top shelf, of course. He struggled to his feet and, craning his neck, peered at the files over his half-moon reading glasses. Bloody hopeless. The files were six feet above him, too far to read the names--Boothby's revenge on all those who had not attained regulation department height.
One of the Registry Queens found him gazing upward and said she would bring him a library ladder. "Claymore tried to use a chair last week and nearly broke his neck," she sang, returning a moment later, dragging the ladder. She took another look at Vicary, smiled as if he were a daft uncle, and offered to get the file for him. Vicary assured her he could manage.
He climbed the ladder and, using his forefinger as a probe, picked through the files. He found a manila folder with a red tab: VOGEL, KURT--ABWEHR BERLIN. He pulled it down, opened it, and looked inside.
Vogel's file was empty.
A month after he arrived at MI5, Vicary had been surprised to find Nicholas Jago working there too. Jago had been head archivist at University College and was recruited by MI5 the same week as Vicary. He was assigned to Registry and ordered to impose some discipline on the sometimes fickle memory of the department. Jago, like Registry itself, was dusty and irritable and difficult to use. But once past the rough exterior he could be kind and generous, bubbling with valuable information. Jago had one other valuable skill: he knew how to lose a file as well as find one.
Despite the late hour, Vicary found Jago working at his desk in his cramped, glass-enclosed office. Unlike the file rooms it was a sanctuary of neatness and order. When Vicary rapped his knuckle against the windowed door, Jago looked up, smiled, and waved him in. Vicary noticed the smile did not extend to his eyes. He looked exhausted; Jago lived in this place. There was something else: in 1940 his wife had been killed in the blitz. Her death had left him shattered. He had taken a personal oath to defeat the Nazis--not with the gun, with organization and precision.
Vicary sat down and refused Jago's offer of tea--"real stuff I hoarded before the war," he said excitedly. Not like the atrocious wartime tobacco he was stuffing into the bowl of his pipe and setting ablaze with a match. The vile smoke smelled of burning leaves, and it hung between them in a pall while they swapped banalities about returning to the university when the job was done.
Vicary signaled he wanted to get down to business by gently clearing his throat. "I'm looking for a file on a rather obscure Abwehr officer," Vicary said. "I was surprised to find it's missing. The exterior cover is on the shelf, but the contents are gone."
"What's the name?" Jago asked.
"Kurt Vogel."
Jago's face darkened. "Christ! Let me take a look for it. Wait here, Alfred. I'll just be a moment."
"I'll come with you," Vicary said. "Maybe I can help."
"No, no," Jago insisted. "I wouldn't hear of it. I don't help you find spies, you don't help me find files." He laughed at his own joke. "Stay here. Make yourself comfortable. I'll just be a moment."
That's the second time you've said that, Vicary thought: I'll just be a moment. Vicary knew that Jago had become obsessive about his files, but one missing dossier on an Abwehr officer was not cause for a departmental emergency. Files were misplaced and mistakenly discarded all the time. Once Boothby sounded a red alert after losing an entire briefcase filled with important files. Department legend said they had been found a week later at the flat of his mistress.
Jago rushed back into the office a moment later, a cloud of the vile pipe smoke floating behind him like steam from a locomotive. He handed Vicary the file and sat down behind his desk.
"Just as I thought," Jago said, absurdly proud of himself. "It was right there on the shelf. One of the girls must have placed it in the wrong folder. Happens all the time."
Vicary listened to the dubious excuse and frowned. "Interesting--never happened to me before."
"Well, maybe you're just lucky. We handle thousands of files a week down here. We could use more staff. I've taken it up with the director-general, but he says we've used up our allotment and we can't have any more."
Jago's pipe had gone dead and he was making a vast show of relighting it. Vicary's eyes teared as the little chamber of an office filled with smoke again. Nicholas Jago was a thoroughly good and honest man, but Vicary didn't believe a word of his story. He believed the file had been pulled by someone recently and hadn't made its way back to the shelf. And the someone who pulled it must have been someone damned important, judging by the look on Jago's face when Vicary had asked for it.
Vicary used the file to wave a clear patch in the cloud of smoke. "Who had Vogel's file last?"
"Come on, Alfred, you know I can't tell you that."
It was the truth. Mere mortals like Vicary had to sign out files. Records were kept on who pulled what files and when. Only the Registry staff and department heads had access to those records. A handful of very senior officers could get files without signing them out. Vicary suspected Vogel's file had been pulled by one of those officers.
"All I have to do is ask Boothby for a chit to see the access list and he'll give it to me," Vicary said. "Why don't you let me see it now and save me the time?"
"He might, he might not."
"What do you mean by that, Nicholas?"
"Listen, old man, the last thing I want to do is get between you and Boothby again." Jago was busying himself with the pipe again--stuffing the bowl, digging a match out of the matchbox. He stuck the thing between his clenched teeth so the bowl bounced while he spoke. "Talk to Boothby. If he says you can see the access list, it's all yours."
Vicary left him sitting in his smoky glass chamber, trying to set fire to his cheap tobacco, his match flaring with every drag on the pipe. Taking one last glance at him as he walked away with Vogel's file, he thought Jago looked like a lighthouse on a foggy point.
Vicary stopped at the canteen on the way back up to his office. He couldn't remember when he had last eaten. His hunger was a dull ache. He no longer craved fine food. Eating had become a practical undertaking, something to be done out of necessity, not pleasure. Like walking London at night--do it quickly, try not to get hurt. He remembered the afternoon in May 1940 when they had come for him. Mr. Ashworth delivered two nice lamb chops to your house a short time ago. . . . Such a waste of precious time.
It was late and the selection was worse than usual: a chunk of brown bread, some suspect cheese, a bubbling cauldron of brown liquid. Someone had crossed out the words Beef broth on the menu and written Stone soup. Vicary passed on the cheese and sniffed at the broth. It seemed harmless enough. He cautiously ladled him
self out a bowl. The bread was as hard as the cutting board. Vicary hacked off a hunk with the dull knife. Using Vogel's file as a service tray, he picked his way through the tables and chairs. John Masterman sat stooped over a volume of Latin. A pair of famous lawyers sat at a corner table, rearguing an old courtroom duel. A popular writer of crime novels was scribbling in a battered notebook. Vicary shook his head. MI5 had recruited a remarkable array of talent.
He walked carefully up the stairs, the bowl of broth balanced precariously on the file. The last thing he needed was to soil the dossier. Jago had written countless irate memoranda imploring case officers to take better care of the files.
What's the name?
Kurt Vogel.
Christ! Let me take a look for it.
Something about it just wasn't right--that Vicary knew. Better not to force it. Better to set it aside and let his subconscious turn over the pieces.
He set the file and the soup down on his desk and switched on the lamp. He read the file through once while he sipped at the soup. It tasted like a boiled leather boot. Salt was one of the few spices the cooks had in plentiful supply, and they had used it generously. By the time he finished reading the file the second time, he had a desert thirst and his fingers were beginning to swell.
Vicary looked up and said, "Harry, I think we have a problem."
Harry Dalton, who had drifted off to sleep at his desk in the common area outside Vicary's office, got to his feet and came inside. They were a dubious pairing, jokingly referred to inside the department as Muscle & Brains, Ltd. Harry was tall and athletic, sharp-suited, with thickly brilliantined black hair, intelligent blue eyes, and a ready all-purpose smile. Before the war he was Detective-Inspector Harry Dalton of the Metropolitan Police Department's elite murder squad. He was born and raised in Battersea and still had a trace of working-class south London in his soft pleasant voice.
"He's got brains, that's for certain," Vicary said. "Look at this: doctorate of law from Leipzig University, studied under Heller and Rosenberg. Doesn't sound like your typical Nazi to me. The Nazis perverted the laws of Germany. Someone with an education like that couldn't be too thrilled about them. Then in 1935 he suddenly decides to forsake the law and go to work for Canaris as his personal attorney, a sort of in-house counsel for the Abwehr? I don't believe that. I think he's a spy, and this business about being Canaris's legal adviser is just another layer of cover."
Vicary was flipping through the file again.
"You have a theory?" Harry asked.
"Three theories, actually."
"Let's hear them."
"Number one, Canaris has lost faith in the British networks and has commissioned Vogel to undertake an investigation. A man with Vogel's background and training is the perfect officer to sift through all the files and all the agent reports to look for inconsistencies. We've been damned careful, Harry, but maintaining Double Cross is an enormously complex task. I bet we've made a couple of mistakes along the way. And if the right person were looking for them--an intelligent man like Kurt Vogel, for instance--he might be able to spot them."
"Theory two?"
"Theory two, Canaris has commissioned Vogel to construct a new network. It's very late in the game for something like that. Agents would have to be discovered, recruited, trained, and inserted into the country. That usually takes months to do the right way. I doubt that's what they're up to, but it can't be totally discounted."
"Theory three?"
"Theory three is that Kurt Vogel is the control officer of a network we don't know about."
"An entire network of agents that we haven't uncovered--is that possible?"
"We have to assume it is."
"Then all our doubles would be at risk."
"It's a house of cards, Harry. All it takes is one good agent, and the entire thing comes crashing down."
Vicary lit a cigarette. The tobacco took the aftertaste of the broth out of his mouth.
"Canaris must be under enormous pressure to deliver. He'd want the best to handle the operation."
"So that means Kurt Vogel is a man operating in a pressure cooker."
"Right."
"That could make him dangerous."
"It could also make him careless. He has to make a move. He has to use his radio or send an agent into the country. And when he does, we'll be on to him."
They sat in silence for a moment, Vicary smoking, Harry thumbing his way through Vogel's file. Then Vicary told him about what had happened in Registry.
"Lots of files go missing now and again, Alfred."
"Yes, but why this file? And more important, why now?"
"Good questions, but I suspect the answers are very simple. When you're in the middle of an investigation it's best to stay focused, not get sidetracked."
"I know, Harry," Vicary said, frowning. "But it's driving me to distraction."
Harry said, "I know one or two of the Registry Queens."
Vicary looked up. "I'm sure you do."
"I'll poke around, ask a few questions."
"Do it quietly."
"There's no other way to do it, Alfred."
"Jago's lying--he's hiding something."
"Why would he lie?"
"I don't know," Vicary said, crushing out his cigarette, "but I'm paid to think wicked thoughts."
10
BLETCHLEY PARK, ENGLAND
Officially it was called the Government Code and Cipher School. However, it was not a school at all. It looked as though it might be a school of some kind--a large ugly Victorian mansion surrounded by a high fence--but most people in the narrow-streeted railway town of Bletchley understood that something portentous was going on there. The great lawns were covered with dozens of makeshift huts. The remaining space had been trampled into pathways of frozen mud. The gardens were overgrown and shabby, like tiny jungles. The staff was an odd collection--the country's brightest mathematicians, chess champions, crossword-puzzle wizards--all assembled for one purpose: cracking German codes.
Even in the notoriously eccentric world of Bletchley Park, Denholm Saunders was considered an oddball. Before the war he had been a top mathematician at Cambridge. Now he was among the best cryptanalysts in the world. He also lived in a hamlet outside Bletchley with his mother and his Siamese cats, Plato and St. Thomas Aquinas.
It was late afternoon. Saunders was seated at his desk in the mansion, working over a pair of messages sent by the Abwehr in Hamburg to German agents inside Britain. The messages had been intercepted by the Radio Security Service, flagged as suspicious, and forwarded to Bletchley Park for decoding.
Saunders whistled tunelessly while his pencil scraped across his pad, a habit that irritated his colleagues no end. He worked in the hand cipher section of the park. His work space was crowded and cramped, but it was relatively warm. Better to be here than outside in one of the huts, where cryptanalysts slaved over German army and naval ciphers like Eskimos in an igloo.
Two hours later the scraping and the whistling stopped. Saunders was aware only of the sound of melting snow gurgling through the gutters of the old house. The work that afternoon had been far from challenging; the messages had been transmitted in a variation of a code Saunders unbuttoned himself in 1940.
"My goodness, but they are getting a bit boring, aren't they?" Saunders said, to no one in particular.
His superior was a Scot named Richardson. Saunders knocked, stepped inside, and laid the pair of decodes on the desk. Richardson read them and frowned. An officer at MI5 named Alfred Vicary had put out a red flag for this kind of thing just yesterday.
Richardson called for a motorcycle courier.
"There's one other thing," Saunders said.
"What's that?"
"The first message--the agent seemed to have some difficulty with the Morse. In fact he asked for the keyer to send it twice. They get testy about things like that. Could be nothing. There might have been some interference. But it might be a good idea to tell the boys at MI5 ab
out it."
Richardson thought, Good idea indeed.
When Saunders was gone he typed out a brief memo describing how the agent appeared to struggle with the Morse. Five minutes later the decodes and Richardson's note were tucked inside a leather pouch for the forty-two-mile ride to London.
11
SELSEY, ENGLAND
"It was the oddest thing I've ever seen," Arthur Barnes told his wife over breakfast that morning. Barnes, as he did every morning, had walked his beloved corgi Fionna along the waterfront. Part of it still was open to civilians; most of it had been sealed off and designated a restricted military zone. Everyone wondered what the military was doing there. No one talked about it. Dawn was late that morning--a gray overcast sky, rain now and again. Fionna was off her leash, scampering up and down the docks.
Fionna spotted the thing first, then Barnes did.
"A bloody giant concrete monster, Mabel. Like a block of flats lying on its side." Two tugs were pulling it out to sea. Barnes carried a pair of field glasses inside his coat--a friend once spotted the conning tower of a German U-BOAT and Barnes was dying to catch a glimpse of one too. He removed the glasses and raised them to his eyes.
The concrete monster had a boat attached to it with a broad, flat prow pushing through the choppy seas. Barnes scanned off its port side--"Hard to tell the port side from the starboard side, mind you"--and he spotted a small vessel with a bunch of military types on deck.
"I couldn't believe it, Mabel," he recounted, finishing the last of his toast. "They were clapping and cheering, giving each other hugs and pats on the back." He shook his head. "Imagine that. Hitler's got the world by the short hairs, and our boys get excited because they can make a giant hunk of concrete float."