Russian Front (8) ‘Yes,’ said Sally simply. Both men looked sharply at her. ‘When?’ they asked, almost simultaneously. ‘Just after Captain Montague made such a fuss. What I mean is, after Colonel Morrison had counter-signed the order posting Hugh, Lieutenant Swayne, back to England for retraining and special assignment, Captain Montague stormed in angrily and wanted to know why his crack-shot scout was being taken away from him. Colonel Morrison told him that Hugh was to go to America to help train their scouts. This made Monty, Captain Montague, - we all called him Monty - livid. He’s very funny about Americans. Almost paranoiac, you might say.’ ‘You were present?’ This from Fortune. ‘Yes, or at least I could hear everything. There isn’t much room in the forward HQ and my office adjoined his. There’s no door as such, just a kind of wooden partition down half of the room. I heard everything. Colonel Morrison told me to bring in his bottle of Jameson’s. They had a couple of drinks and Montague calmed down. ‘Then Montague said, “It’s funny. I overheard you saying to that Russian liaison chap yesterday something that suggested Hugh was being packed off to Russia. I wouldn’t have minded that half so much.” Colonel Morrison thought about that and said, “Well, you weren’t supposed to hear that, so be a good boyo and keep it to yourself.”’ She thought for a moment. ‘Then …Well, nothing really’. ‘Nothing?’ said Fortune. ‘Tell us everything.’ Said Sasha in a flat, cold voice. ‘Well, I can’t really remember, but Monty – we called him that – said something about “So-and-so. That’s a czarist name, isn’t it? What’s he doing in the such-and-such. A set of initials. I can’t remember.” Something like that. Fortune and Sasha were lost in thought for a moment. Then Fortune looked at Sasha and, as if quoting from the bible, intoned: ‘”Romanov. That’s a czarist name, isn’t it? What’s he doing in the NKVD?’” ‘That’s it! Romanov was the name!’ said Sally. ‘Montague,’ said Sasha slowly, relishing each syllable. ‘I would like to speak with this gentleman.’ Fortune said, ‘As soon as we leave here I’ll talk to MI6 and their people will deal with it. We must find out what he knows, or rather, what he has guessed. According to my contact at MI6 he’s a very brilliant fellow. Classics scholar and all that.’ He turned to Sally, smiling. ‘There’s just a chance you may be in danger. The safest and most secure thing is for you to lose yourself for a few days. Take a short holiday, anywhere away from London.’ While he was saying this he scribbled a phone number on the back of the menu, folded it and gave it to her. ‘Call this number at least every other day and ask to speak to Lesley, not me, Lesley. She’ll tell you what to do next. Get your things from the flat if you want to but don’t return there after that. Now go.’ Then he was waving for the bill. Sally was outside the door of the hotel before she realized that she had not had time to eat a thing. At that moment, a welcome and rare sight. A taxi had just dropped someone off at the Hotel and the cabby looked at her expectantly from behind his tobacco-stained moustache and woolen muffler. ‘Cab, miss?’ Why not, she thought. The air had turned chilly in the shadows and she didn’t feel like walking back. She named the mews where she was staying and got in, settling back into the seat. She turned around to see if she could get a glimpse of Fortune or that grisly Sasha coming out of the hotel. Yes, there they were, walking hurriedly to a staff car that had appeared at the pavement. The taxi took only a few minutes to get to Regent Street. During the ride, she felt almost elated. Talk about cloak-and-dagger! This could be exciting. She couldn’t really believe that she was in any actual danger. It dawned on her that she needed to do some quick shopping if she was going away, so she asked the cab-driver to go a bit further and drop her near Oxford Circus. ‘You said Cranston Mews,’ he gruffed at her in an aggrieved voice, despite the fact that her detour would earn him more money. ‘Yes, I’m terribly sorry, I’ve just remembered I need to do some shopping.’ ‘Well, you want to learn to make your mind up, love. There are men in the desert fighting a war so girls like you can spend their days shoppin’.’ Sally had a sudden, beautifully vivid image of blowing the man’s brains out with a revolver. She had learned how to use one in Egypt. ‘How much do I owe you?’ she asked in a neutral voice, trembling with anger, as he dropped her by a poster urging civilians to buy war bonds. ‘One-an’-six,’ he muttered gracelessly, looking away from her. She wondered if he expected a tip. She opened her purse and gave him the exact money. He looked at it and looked at her with contempt. ‘Now fuck off, you nasty little man!’, she found herself roaring. As she stamped away, she expected him to follow her, but he didn’t. There weren’t that many people around and only one or two had glanced in the direction of her unladylike outburst. After a few more steps, and when it was clear that he wasn’t following to continue matters, she found herself grinning. She wasn’t shaking with anger any more, but she had shocked herself with her vulgarity. The independence of Army life certainly had an effect. Her father had always said that the best way to carry clothes is to wear them, so, once she had returned to the flat, she had taken off the smart suit and packed it carefully, changing into a tweed skirt and pullover. She put on a raincoat, deciding to leave the heavy overcoat that was in the wardrobe. A good raincoat should do in this weather. She put on the heaviest shoes in the wardrobe – how did they know her size in everything? Was it one of Lesley’s discreet talents to measure people up as she looked at them? – and packed the blue ones. The night wasn’t cold but she put a heavy pullover in the suitcase and a pair of trousers, which you could get away with in a surprising range of situations nowadays. She looked around. Gloves, yes. An umbrella? Yes. A small one, small enough to go in the suitcase. Good. She had gone into the kitchen, thinking to take some tinned goodies by way of a present in case she did actually get to meet Ma and Pa Swayne. She also knew that food could be very hard to come by when you went on your travels in wartime Britain. Apart from fish-and-chip shops, when they were open, very often the only way you could be certain of a meal would be to stay in a hotel. Either that or a rock cake at a railway station buffet. Seeing all the tins had reminded her that she was hungry, so she began to make herself a sandwich in the hasty, messy way of people eating on their own. Then she remembered her suspicions that there were hidden spy-holes in the flat and went a bit more slowly. She was actually about to lay a place at the kitchen table, chiding herself for being self-conscious, when she noticed the package. It was a brown paper parcel with ‘Sally Knott’ written on it in large pencil strokes. She cut the string with a knife, held the parcel up and a hard metal object fell out and clattered on to the floor. It was a gun, a small automatic pistol. Her eyes widened. Also in the package was an envelope containing fifty pounds in brand-new five-pound notes. Needless to say, there was a chit in the envelope which she was obviously expected to sign. My life might be in danger, she thought, but fail to sign that chit and I’ll be in real trouble. After stuffing the money back in the envelope and putting it in the suitcase, she hesitated over the gun. She certainly didn’t like the things, and in any case this was an automatic; she had only ever fired a revolver, whose workings were obvious. With an automatic it was more complicated. She put it in the case anyway, it was only small. As an afterthought she put the string and the brown paper in the case as well, vaguely intending to give these to Ma Swayne. Ordinary items like paper and string could be infuriatingly difficult to get hold of at times. Then she left for the station, putting the keys to the flat through the letterbox. The train chuffed out of Paddington Station half an hour late and almost immediately stopped, which was entirely normal. She pulled down the blinds in her First Class non-smoker and switched on a reading light. Fortunately, and unusually, there were only a couple of other people in the compartment, both in uniform. She looked at the Daily Telegraph she had bought at the kiosk at Paddington. Her plan was to stay the night in Bristol – she had daringly used the telephone in the flat to make a trunk call to reserve a room at the station hotel – and travel down to Exmoor tomorrow. There wasn’t really time to write to Hugh’s parents, so she would have to play that by ear. With an agonized squeal the train jolted itself into motion again. She wished she had brought a book. The train clacked on towards Reading. She wondered if the buffet was open. A cup of tea would be nice, but she didn’t want to leave her suitcase. * * * * About twenty feet away from her down the gently rocking corridor of the train, at the join between her carriage and the next, a man stood quietly smoking by the open window. He was standing watching the sliding door to her compartment in case she got out at a stop before Bristol. Who the devil was she, he asked himself? ‘Miss Sally’, the Bolshevik had called her. How much did she know? Was she a professional? Would he have to kill her? The train rolled on westwards through the darkness. There was a touch of ground frost. Chapter Seven LONDON FROM DUBLIN His name was Eichmann and a Royal Naval officer was almost the last thing in the world that he could possibly be. As Sally’s taxi pulled away from the hotel he had run back inside, memorizing the address she had given the driver. He knew he had to get there quickly if he was to follow her wherever she was going. He almost cannoned into Sasha and the Englishman coming out of the hotel. He muttered ‘Bloody briefcase!’ as he passed them, but they didn’t seem to care less or even notice him. He was just another uniform, a tree in the forest. When she had risen from the table he had followed her out of the restaurant as quickly as he dared, leaving his briefcase and his unfinished meal. The Head Waiter, his friend of twenty minutes since he had slipped him a five-pound note for a table near the window, had looked at him as he followed Sally through the lobby. Eichmann grinned and winked lasciviously, which seemed to explain all. The Head Waiter had smiled before returning to the business of bullying the young waiters. Just wait till the bank gets hold of that five, you smarmy swine, Eichmann had said to himself. It’s a good forgery but it’s not that good. Back in the restaurant Eichmann grabbed his large briefcase from under his table and slapped down another of the beautifully forged but sadly imperfect five-pound notes. Then he ran back through the lobby and smiled at the Commissionaire, proffering a pound note, a real one. A five would have been suspiciously generous for what he wanted. ‘Any chance of a taxi, old man?’ ‘I couldn’t take your money sir, much as it grieves me, there’s no cabs around at the moment.’ Fuck this stupid country, thought Eichmann. But he made a point of smiling ruefully and mumbled something about having to ‘leg it’ for his meeting. He hated having to draw attention to himself by running down the short street but there was nothing else for it. He had been risking his neck snooping around London for a week with no gain. Suddenly his luck had turned and he couldn’t let it go now. It was now just after two o’clock on a Friday afternoon. The woman – ‘Miss Sally’, the Bolshevik, Sasha, had called her – had been gone less than five minutes. Assuming she was going to spend any time at all at the address that he kept repeating to himself, he might still have time to tail her to wherever she was going. After trotting from the hotel around the corner to Buckingham Palace Road, he looked up and down for a taxi that did not appear. There was a bus stop less than a hundred yards away, but he didn’t have time to work out routes. He was standing by a traffic light, still looking both ways for a taxi, when the slitted light turned red and a bicycle stopped beside him. He found himself looking into the eyes of a young woman. She turned to him with a shy grin. She was in civilian clothes. ‘Cheer up, sailor, it might never happen!’ she said Her face was very near his and there was a faint whiff of beer. Coming back from a pub lunch? Someone’s birthday or leaving-do, perhaps? She wasn’t pretty but she had clear skin and friendly, big blue eyes beneath her woolen beret. These thoughts went through his mind as he transferred his briefcase to his left hand and punched her as hard as he could on the side of her head. She fell spinning off the bike and crashed to the road. He grabbed the handlebars, swung his leg on, and started to pedal away furiously, his briefcase banging against the front brakes, before she could do something stupid like grab the back wheel. He didn’t want to have to shoot her in the middle of the street. There had been no vehicles behind her at the lights. A van driver going the other way looked at him in outrage. As he pulled away past Victoria station he saw, in the bike’s side-mirror, the van driver going over to help the woman, who was sitting up at the lights holding her head in her hands. Another couple of vehicles were stopped, but it was difficult to tell in the shaking mirror if any police had appeared. He slowed down slightly as he passed Buckingham Gate and swerved to avoid a couple of RAF Ground Crew crossing to have a look at the Palace. Circling Queen Victoria’s memorial he pedaled up the Mall, struggling with the three gears of the bike. As he began to get warm with the exercise he noticed a basket on the front of the bike with a handbag in it. That would have to go before he was among crowds again. Braking sharply by a wastepaper bin one the park side of the road he rummaged through the bag, throwing out the purse, looking for the identity card. He found it and stuffed it in his jacket pocket. Authentic identification papers were like gold dust to any spy network. The Mall was all but empty at that time of the afternoon. Looking around he didn’t see anyone taking an interest in him. His uniform would have to go as well. He put the briefcase down, and took off his cap and jacket with its Lieutenant Commander’s gold rings and stuffed both beneath the handbag in the waste bin. Then he opened his briefcase and took out a neatly folded check jacket with leather patches on the elbows. Placing this on the handlebars, he changed his Services tie, tossing it in the bin, for a maroon woolen one. Having tied his tie he put the slightly crumpled jacket on and stood on both pedals to get going. The bike was a heavy, slightly rusty ‘ladies’ model that creaked a bit, but it was quicker than walking. At least he knew where Cranston Street was. Surely the Mews would be off that? It was. He left the bike leaning against a lamppost around the corner. With any luck it would soon be stolen, helping to cover his trail. Carrying his briefcase and walking briskly as if on his way to a meeting, he walked to the end of the Mews. He couldn’t see any movement, and there were no lights on in any of the windows, but that didn’t mean anything. At the end of the Mews he turned around, scratching his head as if he was lost, and turned back, this time without looking at the windows. At the street end of the Mews he stopped, crossed the road, and went into a Newsagents. The evening paper had just come out. He then opened the paper and leaned against a lamp-post, his briefcase on the pavement between his legs. From where he was he could see the whole length of the Mews and anyone who came in or out of any of the doors. Nothing for it but to wait. * * * * * Not being interested in pubs, culture or conversation, Martin Eichmann found Dublin boring and backward, despite the fact that his mother was Irish. He identified much more with his father, a German career diplomat and enthusiastic nazi who had looked down his nose at the Irish education system and insisted that Martin spend a good part of his teenage years in an English public school. Like many nazis, including Hitler, Eichmann Senior was something of an anglophile, at least to the extent of admiring the way the British ran their Empire. Martin Eichmann had gone straight from Ampleforth – his mother had insisted on a Catholic influence during his schooldays – to a junior commission in the German navy from whence he had drifted in to the Abwehr. With his Irish heritage and excellent English a posting to the German Embassy in Dublin was inevitable. He arrived there, ostensibly as a junior diplomat, in the summer of 1941 as the Wehrmacht was charging across the rich but chaotically farmed Russian prairie towards Moscow. Most of his time subsequently had been spent making forays, with a little guidance from an ambivalent IRA, to Northern Ireland to spy on the Royal Navy. His splendid Lieutenant Commander’s uniform had been made for him by a Belfast tailor who had believed Eichmann’s story that he had lost his when his destroyer was sunk in the Atlantic. By the autumn of 1942 he was deputy-head of military intelligence. He had come to London because he and his boss had received an urgent personal signal from Admiral Canaris, head of the Abwehr, ordering him there to find out anything he could about a Lieutenant Swayne, late of an elite unit in North Africa. This Swayne and an unidentified young woman were supposed to have gone AWOL in Lisbon, but a secret source had revealed that this incident was a cover story. The source suggested that Swayne was in fact on his way to Russia, possibly via the United States, for a most-secret mission. Swayne’s special skill was marksmanship. Canaris seemed to give credence to the idea that Swayne was on his way to assassinate Stalin, possibly as part of an Anglo-American plot to stir up counter-revolution in Russia. ‘Does Canaris seriously think that that the Americans and British want to upset things in Russia? Just when the Ivans are beginning to find their feet?’ asked Eichmann’s boss, Bruckner, who had been in Dublin for several years and fancied himself an expert on British current affairs. ‘Any temporary success the Bolsheviks have at Stalingrad is simply a result of our extended supply lines,’ snorted Eichmann, as ardent a nazi as his father. ‘They’re not going to beat the Sixth Army, are they? Ninety per cent of the city is already taken.’ Bruckner paused before speaking. Eichmann was something of a rising star, and he had to be careful not to express an opinion that could be construed as defeatist. What Eichmann didn’t know was that Bruckner, along with Canaris himself, was a member of what would come to be known as the Schwarze Kapelle – ‘Black Orchestra’ – a secret resistance organization dedicated to the proposition that Hitler must be defeated, even if that meant Germany losing the war. ‘Well, orders are orders. I suppose you better be off to London. Be careful.’ Eichmann leaned forward over Bruckner’s desk. He could see the Swastika flag hanging limply outside the window. He looked at it as he spoke, lost in thought. ‘While I’m away, I want you to get our English-speaking secretaries – Germans, not the local girls – to write to the headmaster of every public school in England. There’s a directory in the public library down the road. Say that Lieutenant-Commander Ryan …’ ‘That’s your cover name,’ said Bruckner. ‘I know that,’ said Eichmann testily. ‘Say that Lieutenant-Commander Ryan met Lieutenant Hugh Swayne at the Royal Navy base in Alexandria earlier this year and borrowed some money off him. Say also that we were both posted and lost touch without swapping addresses. Ask the headmaster politely,’ Eichmann sneered, ‘if there was a Hugh Swayne at the school between 1928 and 1932 or thereabouts, and if so, would they kindly write back with the address and, if possible, telephone number of his parents or next-of-kin.’
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Copyright © 1998 Aidan Steer |