Beneath Gray Skies (14 page)

“Yes, sir?”

“Make sure that those Germans get all their cotton and tobacco from us. We all know how much we need customers buying from our store. And we need people to see about getting the oil out of the ground and selling it to them, too. I know for a fact there’s a lot of oil under Texas and Oklahoma, probably more than in California, and we could start selling it to Germany, if we knew how to get it out cheap enough. Right now, there’s not enough people who’ll buy from us to make it worth our while. But if the Germans want it, that’s another matter.”

“How do you want them to pay, sir? The German economy’s pretty bad right now.”

“They can pay in factories and experts or something. That’s the deal, Austin. We’ll sell them oil and cotton and tobacco. They help us make airplanes and automobiles and things. But we need some money in advance before we really get started on all of this. You know as well as I do how we need some ready cash.”

“Yes, Mr. President. I shudder every time I look at the Treasury books. But I’d like to remind you that the Germans have been forced to pay massive reparations to France and Belgium and their currency’s worthless right now. And I heard tell that a lot of their gold reserves went to those Russian Bolsheviks to start their revolution.”

“I’d heard that about the reparations, too. I hadn’t heard that all their gold had gone over to Russia. Your job, Austin, is to call in our debts. Mr. Hitler owes us, and I want you to make sure he understands that. I want you to screw some money out of him. Not promises, but money.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Okay, Austin. Now see what you can do as soon as possible. I want you to start over there next week. Oh, and that’s another thing. See if you can get them to start a regular passenger service between Germany and New Orleans or something, and get those German ports opened up to our ships. Come and see me before you go, and let me know what you’ve found out.”

“Yes, Mr. President.” Sometimes the Secretary of Commerce felt like an errand boy. But then, he consoled himself, errand boys never picked up the kind of gratuities he would be able to secure for himself as a result of the deals that he hoped to make with the Germans.

“
The Confederacy
is
a perfectly rotten little state, in all senses of the word.”

L
ondon seemed perpetually cold to Christopher Pole. His new boss in this secret corner of the British government service, Henry Dowling, sympathized with him, and insisted that he have the desk nearest the office coal fire, but it didn’t seem to make a lot of difference. His ribs still ached from time to time in the cold and damp, but his fingers were getting better, and the doctor told him he would be able to take the splints off in a week or so.

Dowling had promised Christopher that he would take him to a “decent shop” (whatever that might mean) in the next few days and get him some “proper clothes.” As long as they were warm, thought Christopher. The Brits seemed to positively relish their horrible climate.

“Time to go and see C, Pole,” Dowling said. Christopher had had to become accustomed to being called by his family name—the Brits seemed to do it all the time to each other, but he had to call Dowling “sir”, just as Dowling had to address his superiors as “sir”. Why “C” was just called “C”, Christopher had yet to learn. “I want you to come and take notes. It’s all about your friend Brian. C wants to talk to me about the Berlin report I handed in a week ago. Don’t know why it’s taken so long for him to read it.”

Christopher had been surprised to learn that Brian had been a British spy planted in the Army of the Confederacy, and even more surprised to learn that he, Christopher, was now technically a British Intelligence agent. He had signed a piece of paper called the “Official Secrets Act”, and Dowling had laughed. “Tell anyone what you do for a living, and we’ll stick you in the Tower of London and cut off your head,” he’d grinned. Noticing Christopher’s look of alarm, he quickly added, “Just joking. Sorry. We don’t cut people’s heads off any more. But we don’t want you talking about what goes on in this building, what?”

British humor took some getting used to, too, thought Christopher. You could never tell when they were joking or not. There were other ways that they did things which just seemed plain wrong. Like the business of what side of the street you went on, for example. The Brits drove all their traffic on the left, when everyone knew you should stay on the right.

-o-

H
enry Dowling had set him straight on that business one day in the office, though. “Look, Pole,” he explained. “Imagine you’re wearing a sword. You’re right-handed, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So which side does your sword live? Think about it.”

Christopher thought about it a bit. “Left, I guess, sir, so I can pull it out easy with my right hand.”

“Good. Now tuck this umbrella into your belt, pretend it’s a sword. Good man. Now let’s say this chair is a horse. The back of the chair is the horse’s head. Which leg are you going to put over the horse first when you mount?”

“Right leg, of course. Otherwise the sword gets in my way.”

“Well said. So which side of the horse are you getting on, if you’re going to face the front?”

“Left, sir.”

“Excellent. Now, if you’re on the right side of the road, you’re going to be in the middle of the road while you get on your horse, eh? And if you’re on the left side of the road, you can have a mounting block on the pavement,” (Christopher had just learned the hard way that this meant “sidewalk” in British English, having been shouted at by a bus driver in the street to “stay on the bloody pavement”) “out of the traffic? So you carry on riding on the same side of the road that you got on the horse, which is the left. Clear?”

“Suppose you’re right, sir. But sir?”

“Yes, Pole?”

“You don’t wear swords any more, and not that many folks ride horses nowadays. So why still do it?”

“Habit, Pole, habit. Like so many things. Like you still drink cold tea, when us civilized chappies drink it the proper way.” Christopher shuddered inwardly. He still hadn’t got used to the notion of putting milk and sugar into hot tea, and had trained the office canteen to let him have his tea cold, with a slice of lemon.

Another thing he hadn’t got used to was the money. Twelve pennies in a shilling and twenty shillings in a pound. Crazy. Quarter-pounds were called “crowns.” And then you had things called “half-crowns”, which were worth two shillings and sixpence. And then, just to make matters even more complicated, there were things called “guineas.” There wasn’t a coin called a “guinea”, but the prices of some things seemed to be marked in guineas, worth one pound and one shilling each.

“How do you learn all this, sir?” he had asked Dowling one day, after trying to work out three times seven shillings and ninepence in his head.

“It’s not as easy as your system, is it, Pole?” Dowling had said. “One day, probably in the next ten years or so, we’ll have a logical system for counting our money. But in the meantime, look at how easy it is to split our pound into two, three, four, five, six, eight, ten or twelve or sixteen or twenty equal parts. You can’t do that with dollars and cents, now, can you?”

-o-

D
owling’s voice snapped him back to the present. “Do come on, Pole, old chap. C will have us for breakfast if we’re not there pretty sharpish.”

Christopher collected his official notebook and pen, and a file of papers, following Dowling down the corridor to C’s office.

He’d only met the legendary head of the British Secret Service once, when he was first brought to London, and had been too shy and embarrassed to look him in the eye. The door to C’s reception office was open, and Dowling and Pole signed the appropriate form, and passed it to C’s effete male secretary.

“You’re one minute early,” announced the latter, making a great show of pulling out his fob watch and consulting it. “Wait here,” pointing to two hard-backed chairs.

“Berk,” muttered Dowling to Christopher, unintelligibly. After what Christopher assumed to be a minute, the secretary picked up the telephone on his desk. After a few words on the telephone, he turned to Christopher and Dowling. “C will see you now,” making a theatrical production out of the simple statement.

“Bloody twit,” said Dowling to Christopher, out of the secretary’s earshot. Christopher had a reasonable idea what he was talking about this time.

C was seated at his desk at the far side of the room. A view of London roofs was visible through the window behind him. In the distance, Christopher thought he could see the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, to which he’d been taken on his first Sunday in London, and been impressed by the size and the majesty of the place, as well as by its graceful beauty.

“Dowling. Pole. Good morning,” said C without looking up. He continued reading the papers he had been studying when they walked in. They waited in silence for a few moments. Suddenly C looked up, turned to Christopher and smiled.

“Settling in all right, old boy? Making yourself at home? Dowling treating you well? Digs comfortable, work not overtaxing you, and grub edible, I trust?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Christopher, hardly understanding half of what had just been said to him.

“Good, good,” smiled C. “Now then, young Dowling,” picking up the piece of paper. “Your little jaunt to Germany.”

“Yes, sir?” To Christopher’s ears, Dowling sounded somewhat nervous.

“This business has not made me a happy man, Dowling. A bloody awful piece of work by your standards, if I may say so, in many respects. I’ve been waiting to talk with you about it for several days because we’ve been presented with several faits accomplis, and I’ve wanted to think what to do about it all. To the details, anyway. First, it took you three whole days to find out when the
Robert E. Lee
was due to dock at Bremen, and when you did find out, it was too damn’ late. Yes, yes, I’ve read your reasons,” as Dowling started to speak. “Not good enough, Dowling, not good enough.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Anyway, you did get to Berlin in the end. I suppose you couldn’t be blamed for the speed that things happened, and there’s no way you could have stopped Herr Hitler’s coup single-handed. A word of our suspicions to the right authorities might have saved poor Rathenau’s life, though, and the lives of all the other poor beggars murdered by the Nazis. Do you know, we think two hundred and fifteen people were killed that day? That’s more people than we have working in the whole of this bloody building.”

“Sorry again, sir. I’d like to remind you that all I had to go on were suspicions, and we all would have looked like proper charlies if I’d been the boy crying wolf all over again. If I might remind you of what happened then, sir, Lyttleton made a complete ass of all of us over the Luxemburg and Liebknecht business? He told us at the time that the Bolsheviks were coming close on their heels with snow on their boots.”

“Point taken, Dowling.” C turned to Christopher. “Mr. Dowling is usually a very good officer indeed, Pole. One of the best. I want you to know that. On this last occasion, he was merely good and not very good. If it had been anyone else,” turning back to Dowling, “I would have been pleased with the work. As it is, this lapse from your usual impeccable standards is distressing to me. So,” turning to Christopher again, “please continue to listen and learn from him. My annoyance today is only minor.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Dowling.

“You’re not off the hook yet. Why the bloody hell did you and Bloody Brian go to Zurich, and why on earth did you leave him there? I told you to bring him back, dead or alive, and that wasn’t a figure of speech.”

“Sir, it’s in the report.”

“I have read it, Dowling. I understand that the man was in trouble. He’d snatched a Jewish girl from under the nose of this Goering feller, and shot him three times in the process.” He broke off and glared at Christopher, who had started giggling. “What’s so damned funny, Pole?”

“I was thinking, sir, that Mr. Goering had been shot in the leg. Shooting him three times in the process sounds like it might be a sight more painful.”

“Oh, I see. A joke. Ha ha,” without laughing. “Thank you, Pole.” A somewhat quizzical look over the top of his glasses. “To return to our muttons, Dowling. Our man shoots one of the top Nazis, runs away from the Confed army, and you take him on a little pleasure trip to Switzerland. I know you wrote about all this in your report, but now that you’ve had a little more time to think about all this, tell me again what happened, and most importantly, why it happened. And you,” turning to Christopher, “take notes on all of this.” Christopher opened his notebook and poised his pencil.