Get Lenin (7 page)

Twenty minutes later Eva was collected in a taxi by De Witte who, to her surprise, was blind and, even more to her surprise, proved to be excellent company. The ferry from Sothampton took her to Calais and from there she travelled on to Paris where Yvette supplied her with a gun and Eva arranged to meet 'Spassky' who turned out to be a female Russian agent based in Barcelona. They were to travel together. At the Gare D’Austerlitz they both took the Perpignan train, and from there crossed the Pyrenees into Spain posing as journalists.

Chapter 4

London, 1938

Henry Chainbridge sat back deep into the leather chair. The rain was lashing the windows of his small chambers above his shop, Chainbridge Books, ‘
Fine prints and antiquities a speciality
’. Opposite him on a well-worn leather sofa sat Eva and her handler, Peter De Witte. Both looked drained from the train journey out of Germany, across France and over the Channel.

Eva was one of three agents he had sent to Munich and the only one to return alive. A silver pot of coffee and fine china were placed on a low table by an Indian woman dressed in a brightly coloured sari. As quietly as she appeared, she slipped back into the shadows with a discreet bow.

Eva’s information ahead of their arrival had raised eyebrows in Whitehall: Poland was to be divided between Germany and Russia. The Soviets had commenced a new rail link using gulag labour beneath the city of Moscow itself. They were also involved in deep mining near the city of Tyumen, in Siberia, again for unspecified reasons. Despite the rapprochement between the Soviet Union and Germany, Stalin did not trust Hilter an inch.

Chainbridge let his cigarette burn down to the filter before stubbing it out. In the event of an attack, Lenin’s tomb would be a priority evacuation, probably to Tyumen. He re-read the last sentence, slowly blowing out smoke.

‘
Are they serious..?’ His voice was warm, whiskey and tobacco mellowed, and hinted a university education. There were still traces of his native Belfast accent when he spoke at length.

Eva noted that behind him, on his long bookshelves in pristine lines, stood leather-bound ancient Greek and Cyrillic embossed books like her grandfather’s. A print of Johan Sebastian Bach hung on the far wall in a broad gilded mount frame. Beneath it, objets d’art from India stood alongside notebooks, paintbrushes and pencils. A phonograph sat against the far wall, with Shellac discs glistening in their sleeves. Fragile music manuscripts lay under glass and discreetly illuminated on tables beside an upright piano. From time-to-time Eva had sat at the piano recalling preludes learnt as a child, helping her unwind from assignments. This room always made her feel safe, reminding her of her grandfather’s study. It had that same smoky, tumble-down feel.

‘
Apparently they value a corpse over a civilian population,’ said Eva, crossing her long legs.

It’s a pity Peter can't see the beauty beside him, thought Chainbridge. In the lamplight, her auburn hair glowed like a halo, her cheekbones shadowing down to a warm generous mouth. She reminded Chainbridge of a Da Vinci study.

Peter sat still, head inclined, in an immaculate slate-grey suit, fine-tuned to the nuances in the room. A deep scar ran across his face, temple to temple, which in the shadows gave the appearance of folding in on itself. It almost added to his good looks.

‘
I suppose Lenin’s a beacon to half the world’s proletariat, a psychological blow to the Soviets if anything should happen to him,’ said Chainbridge, skimming the salient points.

‘
A propaganda coup,’ agreed Peter. His timbre was deep, the tone clipped. Chainbridge leaned forward looking into Eva’s wide-set grey eyes.

‘
How drunk was this attaché?’

‘
Very ... but in a Russian’s case, drunkenness is relative. He didn’t slur a word. They believe that an attack is inevitable, it is only a question of when, and they are preparing for it,’

Chainbridge closed her report pensively. Her hunch seemed to square with what another agent had uncovered - schematics for a new type of Zeppelin being commissioned by Goering in readiness for an attack of the Soviet Union. If Chainbridge had this information, then he assumed his NKVD counterpart would have it too. Hitler was signing non-aggression pacts with Stalin and Von Ribbentrop was strutting around Europe with reams of treaty drafts under his arm. Confetti and smokescreens.

He removed his glasses deliberately as if a solution would present itself before he put them back in their case.

Anti-Soviet agents were assisting the Nazi war machine and every spy agency in Europe was using Berlin as its hub. Berlin, in turn, was trying to neutralise what they considered to be enemy agents almost as soon as they set foot on German soil. What they had here could be misinformation - it could be something or it could be nothing. Hitler, like Comrade Joe, was skilled at keeping everyone guessing. Snatching Lenin from under the Soviet's nose was one thing; Hitler had a flair for the dramatic. Invading Poland, though, that would precipitate an international crisis.

‘
Number 10 won’t buy it. I know Chamberlain. He believes Hitler has gone as far as he needs to go. He thinks Versailles has been put to bed.’ Chainbridge rose to his feet, his long frame and receding grey hairline gave him a slightly avian appearance. ‘Besides, Chamberlain thinks we’ve achieved peace in our time,’

Both men smiled ruefully at that remark. Eighteen years earlier, Henry Chainbridge and Peter De Witte had fought against the Red Army during the Russian Civil War, an Englishman and a Dutchman fighting side-by-side with other nations until De Witte was blinded by grenade shrapnel at Arkhangelsk as the allied forces were routed by the Bolsheviks.

They hadn’t exchanged a single word until that moment when Peter fell screaming in pain, clutching what was left of his face after the grenade exploded. However, afterwards, Henry had stayed with him, practically dragging him through the frozen tundra to the port of Murmansk for evacuation to England. For three weeks De Witte had endured the agony with only sips of vodka and the odd lukewarm watery coffee to act as painkillers. Salt biscuits and stale bread dipped in tea were forced into his mouth, For most of the journey he had wanted to die. Henry had sat with him through this voyage, holding his hand and talking. He had kept him alive. When it suited him, Chainbridge could talk, spinning yarns from dusk till dawn. He’d been an endless stream of tales from his native Belfast, switching to memorised quotations from Chaucer, Shakespeare and W.B Yeats. Bringing him home to Oxford, he had stayed with De Witte through his gradual recuperation.

A linguistics professor before enlisting, De Witte found a part-time position in the classics faculty at the university. There he met and eventually married a fellow Dutch academic, Martha Vermeer. She became his nurse, his lover and his eyes, a steady North Star through his pain and anger. She helped him learn Braille and they moved to Utrecht in the late 1920s where they took lecturing roles at the university there. Their marriage allowed him to rediscover his vocation as a teacher, a vocation he had abandoned once he took up arms and joined the Allied Expeditionary force in response to the Russian Revolution.

But he was restless, longing for the thrill of adventure and exploration, challenging in his own words ‘the limits of his limits’. The couple drifted apart and by the early 1930s De Witte found himself back lecturing in Oxford alone. Martha steadfastly refused to divorce him.

By that time, Chainbridge had been approached by MI5 and B5B to create a cell monitoring Communist sympathisers in the nation’s universities. He asked De Witte to join him. The Dutchman’s aural senses had become acute as compensation for his loss of sight, and he could sit stock still for hours, focusing on conversations picked up on hidden microphones. He was fascinated by linguistics and being a natural polyglot began developing a cipher code based on Braille. Throughout the 1930s the two men built a small operating unit of spies who were discreet and highly effective.

Then De Witte asked MI6 about the possibility of going to Spain just as the country convulsed into civil war. His request was refused and he remained in London, assisting MI6 to monitor communications and code-breaking messages sent by both sides in the civil war, especially the Soviet Union's codes.

He had escorted Eva to Southampton at the start of her first mission and from that journey their relationship had flourished despite their rarely having occasion to meet each other in person. The result of the operation had been that Chainbridge had gained invaluable insights into German, Soviet and Spanish undercover operations.

Chainbridge also knew that later that year, in Barcelona, Eva had killed Locher, one of the key German operatives she was monitoring, after he had confronted her with his discovery that she was spying for Polish and British intelligence, or so she had said. However, Chainbridge's ever-sharp intuition told him that Eva was working another agenda, perhaps on the instructions of her Polish masters. Whatever the true facts, Chainbridge was duly encouraged that this beautiful lady could be as cold-blooded and lethal as any successful operative would have to be to survive in the field. She was also an accomplished translator, fluent in Russian, Polish, German, Dutch and English.

Chainbridge had been unable to uncover much about her life before she visited him in London that first time other than that her grandfather was a celebrated Dutch intellectual. However, since her return from Spain to Poland, she had appeared in a film produced by an avant-garde director in Warsaw, had toured Europe in an experimental theatre group, and then disappeared for a year, reappearing after being screen tested personally by Goebbels who had spotted her at a cabaret in Berlin. Presumably in line with her Polish secret service guidance, she had begun to cultivate an image of an occasional, but gifted, actress on the look-out for a rich man. This allowed her to move in the privileged circles of the Nazi party
é
lite. Her beauty and confidence meant there was always a man in attendance. Her smile, the kind that starts in the eyes, had an effect on men that was undlilutedly chemical. They would literally do anything she wanted. Perhaps that was why she was drawn to Peter; he couldn’t see her.

Did De Witte ever get jealous about Eva’s professional affairs? No, Chainbridge thought not. He and De Witte were too wise to let petty emotions get in the way, well aware of the morass Europe was sliding into.

Chainbridge turned away from them allowing them a private moment together. Staring out at the autumnal rain streaming down the window panes, he asked, ‘Tell me more about this Donald T Kincaid chap, Eva.’

* * *

Guy Maynard Liddle of B5B section looked up from his desk at Chainbridge after reading the assessment from Eva and De Witte. As Chainbridge’s immediate superior; he answered to Department head Vernon Kell, who in turn answered to the Foreign Office and effectively the Prime Minister.

The summer rain had been pouring out of the heavens in titanic bursts, washing Whitehall in a deluge, flooding its corridors and rooms with an unseasonal gloom. Chainbridge had risen early and driven through the rush hour traffic. London, bustling as ever, was glistening in the early morning light. Eva and De Witte had left his chambers for a safe house near Kensington to unwind. Later that week they would be guests of Oswald and Diana Mosley at a BUF rally, maintaining their cover as journalists sympathetic to the Fascist cause.

He ascended the steps to a discreet doorway on King Charles Street and was ushered through the Georgian foyer, past the armed serviceman who saluted him, to Liddle’s office. It was a small room off a non-descript corridor, filled with the smell of beeswax and tobacco, and peppered with maps of Europe around the walls. In common with Chainbridge’s chambers, it was piled high with sensitive intelligence from all over Europe. Unlike Chainbridge’s chambers, it had no windows. Chainbridge couldn’t function without being able to observe the seasons and marvelled at Liddle’s fortitude. He never left this broom closet.

The room, like the corridor, was as quiet as a monastic cell. The whole environment here made Chainbridge feel uneasy, the slow pace and old school tie feel of the place. From these corridors, ministers directed soldiers and spies, sometimes deliberately, to their deaths for the greater good of the Empire. He was an old soldier who found the peacetime uncomfortable, yet he never wished to see wholesale slaughter again.

He stood beside the desk, refusing the chair he was offered. He always preferred to stand before a superior.

‘
Henry, how solid is this?’

Chainbridge assumed his intelligence was being dismissed out of hand. He bristled. ‘Miss Molinaar has a better insight into the way a Russian mind works than we have. This Russian attaché is well connected within the Politburo at a political and family level. I trust her judgement. And we still have no word as to the whereabouts of Leonard and McGowan. We’re assuming the Gestapo intercepted them.’