Madeleine's War (13 page)

“Ah, Matt, there you are. Good.” He stood to one side but followed me back in, closed the door behind him, and sat down on the chair reserved for visitors.

I hung my coat on the coat hook, sat down too, and gestured to the pile of folders on my desk. “Sir, this is how far behind I am with my paperwork, after my weeks in Ardlossan. Can it wait?”

He shook his head so that his spectacles caught the light. “No, I'm afraid it can't.”

Hilary Armstrong, the
Honourable
Hilary Armstrong, as his father was a baronet, was the top man in F Section. He was my immediate boss, and at only one remove from the minister of war himself. In theory, that also made him just two away from Churchill.

Hilary was the perfect example of what our French colleagues called a
rosbif
, a “roast beef.” He had ruddy cheeks, a moustache that bristled like a lavatory brush, and a voice with the longest vowels in history. He came from a “goooood” family of soldiers, who had served in every conflict since Waterloo. This made him a man of supreme self-confidence, intensely patriotic even by the standards of the time, who was never seen without his regimental tie, hand-cut suits, and brown brogues—he clearly did not depend on his wage packet as so many of us did. He was older than me but only just and until now had served the entire war behind a desk. So far as I was concerned, in this he had betrayed his family tradition, and, however talented an SC2 commander he was, I held it against him that he had not seen action in the field. I could not forgive him this, though in the office I had to disguise my true feelings. All the people we were sending into France and elsewhere were taking bigger risks with their lives than he was.

I looked at him now. He had rather droopy eyelids, half covering eyes that never gave anything away—they played the Whitehall poker game to perfection. He had boxed at school, he told me, and had once been cut over the eye. The scar that had formed afterwards had never quite gone away and he sometimes rubbed his thumb over it. He did that now.

“We've had a curious message from Trident.”

I hunched forward on my chair. Trident, I knew, was the code name for Alex MacGibbon, our man in the Banquet circuit operating in the Rennes region of France. Current rumour, which is all it was at that stage, held that the invasion would occur in the Pas de Calais. But if it came in Normandy, which was another possibility, Rennes would be vital.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Trident has sent a message to say that he needs one hundred thousand francs for sabotage activity and can we please drop it to him in the usual way.”

I sat back in my chair. “And that is curious because…?”

Hilary brushed his hair off his forehead. “Unlike you not to see what's what immediately. It's curious for two reasons. One, Trident's message, on this occasion, was sent in English, when usually he transmits in French. And secondly, there
is
no usual way of sending him money—we have never done it before. You know that.”

I played with a ruler on my desk. Hilary was right. And I should have spotted it myself immediately. “What about his bluff checks?”

“Omitted. As were his true checks.”

I was suddenly out of breath.

“He has been captured, then.” My heart seemed to swell in my chest. Capture, for an agent like Trident—every agent, come to that—meant interrogation. Interrogation, eventually, meant torture; then deportation, imprisonment, and, finally, but not too far down the line, execution.

“May I see the transcript of his message?” I said.

Hilary handed across a slip of paper.

I cast my eye over it. The letters were set out in groups, as they were in the coded message. That was normal, so we could judge exactly what the agent was saying.

After I had assimilated the whole thing—which took a few moments—I said, “This was dictated by the Gestapo, and Trident is trying to tell us so.”

Hilary took back the slip of paper and said, “That's one possibility. Or…
or
…he transmitted in a hurry and forgot the usual procedure.”

“Is that likely?” I said. “He went through Ardlossan—I trained him myself.” I shook my head firmly. “He's been captured, sir.”

“Why didn't he use his bluff checks?”

“Because the Gestapo know about them.” I leaned forward. “This is serious, sir. That circuit's been penetrated.”

“You think so?” He didn't look convinced.

“Yes, and we certainly must assume so.”

He scratched his chin. “If what you say is true, that's the third agent we have lost in the past month and a half.”

“I know.”

Hilary shifted in his seat. “We can't be
certain
he has been captured—the request
might
be genuine—”

“Hilary! Sir!—I can't believe you might think that!” I looked out of the window.

“Didn't you ever make mistakes in the field, under pressure? I know you think I have no hands-on experience but I'm trying to be understanding here—”

“Don't be,” I said quickly. “You were ahead of me to begin with, but I'm catching up. Trident's an experienced agent, sir, ten months in the field. He knows—or has learned—how to handle pressure, and he knows how important the correct procedure is. No, he's been captured all right.”

I looked out of the window again. There were barrage balloons to the south, silver and sobering.

Hilary sat in front of me without speaking for a while, tapping the tips of his fingers on my desk. “Did he make a mistake, or was he betrayed? Will we ever know?”

I was thinking furiously. I looked at the calendar on my desk.

“It's April 13th,” I said.

“What's the date got to do with anything?”

“I don't know whether Alex has been betrayed, or made a mistake. But…this may not be as bleak as it sounds.”

“What do you mean? I'm going to have to write a bloody letter to his wife—”

“Not necessarily, sir.”

He rubbed his moustache. “What? Are you going to tell me what's going on in that devious brain of yours?”

A smile crept across his lips but then disappeared.

“Can we afford one hundred thousand francs?” I leaned forward.

“You're not thinking of paying? I thought you thought—?”

“I
said
‘Can we afford it?' ”

He paused. “I can find it, yes. But—”

“If we send the money, the Gestapo will think we have been taken in—am I right?”

“Ye-e-es, I suppose so. But—?”

“Think.”

I took out my cigarettes.

“They will either take the money and spend it, disposing of Trident as they go along, as they would do anyway if we don't send the money. Or…they will be taken in, which may have consequences.”

I took two cigarettes from my packet. “One, it may keep Trident alive for a little longer, giving him at least the chance to escape, though I don't hold out much hope of that.”

I gave a cigarette to Hilary.

“Two, in due course, perhaps…they will send us other messages, with fresh instructions. Showing they haven't spotted that we have seen through their deception.”

A light went on in Hilary's head. “Oh…I see—Yesss!” He lit a match and leaned forward.

I nodded, letting him light my cigarette too. “And…depending how high up you are in the food chain, sir, as the invasion draws near, we will be in a position to feed the Gestapo…whatever information it suits us to feed them.”

He looked at me, having fully caught up. “That could well be worth a hundred thousand francs.”

I nodded again, straightening my tie. “Exactly. And Trident will not have been captured for nothing.”

He stood up. “I'm not at the top of the food chain, but I do know someone who is. A couple of people actually. They might just go for this.”

He stood and turned to leave, but turned back. “The only people who have seen Trident's message are the person who was on duty, of course, and the decrypt analyst, Toby Sheldrake.”

Toby was in charge of codes and communication, and the man with whom I shared G. He was next in the pecking order after Hilary and me.

“Let's keep it that way,” he said. “We need to have a word with Toby and tell him to make sure all messages from Trident from now on are seen only by you, him, or me. And we'll assign only one cryptanalyst to handle his messages.” He nodded. “You do it, Matt. It will attract less attention coming from you.”

I tapped ash into an ashtray. “You're right.”

He opened the door, nodded, and said, “Our role in the invasion may have just got more interesting, Colonel.”

MY FLAT WAS ON THE FIRST FLOOR
of a white-painted, eighteenth-century terraced house, from where you could hear, if not see, the buses in Lisson Grove. There was a small flight of steps leading up to the front door and, inside, a graceful staircase of generous proportions that ended in a landing with two doors opposite one another.

Not having my key, I knocked. It felt strange having to knock on my own front door.

Beyond the door Zola started barking immediately. Could he tell it was me—from my smell perhaps?—or did he bark every time someone knocked on the door? I'd been away so long I couldn't remember.

Madeleine opened the door, and I gasped. She was wearing only a towel. Two towels in fact, one around her torso, and one—like a turban—around her head. She had washed her hair and taken a bath—her skin still had that ruddy-red hot-bath complexion and her hair, what I could see of it, was still wet. Its curls and ringlets sparkled in the light.

Zola looked up at me and wagged his tail, but not overmuch. He hadn't entirely forgiven me for deserting him when I had been in Ardlossan, and he obviously couldn't be certain how long I was going to be around this time. So he was circumspect with his affections.

I closed the front door behind me and bent down to stroke him. The hallway of my flat was hardly the best room—green wallpaper that I didn't like, but hadn't had the energy so far to change, a mirror, a coat rack, a photograph of the old waterfront at Marseilles, a small table against a wall, a jug with no flowers. Flowers were not my priority.

Madeleine looked up at me and then took off her towel.

“Remember this?” she said.

I ran my eyes over her naked skin, her breasts, the dark brown circles around her nipples, her stomach, her thighs, the wedge of hair at the base of her belly.

“It's been three days,” I said in a whisper. “But it felt like forty days in the wilderness. Hang on. I'll help us to a drink.”

She reached forward, took my hand, and placed it on her breast. “Feel my skin, how warm it is, how hot. You go into the bedroom and get undressed. I'll make the drinks.”

“There's only whisky or gin,” I said. “All we had in Scotland was whisky. Let's have gin for a change.”

I went through into the bedroom. Zola followed.

I took off my clothes, and laid them on a chair. Zola jumped up and sat on them. He liked to do that and hadn't forgotten. I was touched. He usually slept there.

I got into bed, took off my watch, and put it on the bedside table. I looked around. The room seemed tidier than I remembered it, and the window was wide open. Noises—traffic noises, church bells, a roar from an animal in the nearby zoo—rolled through into the room. They brought back the silence of Scotland.

Madeleine came in with the drinks.

“There's no ice,” she said. “But I've run the tonic bottle under the tap. It should be cold enough.”

She handed me a glass and sat on the bed, unselfconsciously naked. She unwrapped the towel around her head and pummeled her hair. It led off in all directions.

“How was your afternoon?”

I made a face and swallowed some gin.

“There are some things I can't tell you, Madeleine. I'm sorry.”

I tapped my temple.

She ran her finger round the rim of her gin glass.

“I told you at Ardlossan, I'm not the sneaky type. Your secrets would be safe with me. But I won't pry, not about war matters anyway.” She grinned and pulled the sheets down and touched the top of the line of scar tissue that began in the middle of my chest, below my throat. She ran her finger all the way down the line, to where it ended just above my belly button.

“I've never asked. Having only one lung, ought we—you know—ought we to be careful? Not be too energetic, I mean, not go at it the way that we did in Scotland?” She smiled, slightly ironically.

“I'm here now, aren't I? I've survived one bout with you. I'll risk another.” I put my glass down by the side of the bed. I reached forward and held her shoulders.

She opened her lips and I pulled her towards me.

There was a small noise. When I looked, I could see that Zola had jumped off the pile of clothes he had been lying on and scampered into the other room.

ONE OF MY JOBS AS
SC2 second in command was to take the night codes from our headquarters in Cathcart Place to Broadcasting House at the end of most working days. You could walk from where we were to “B.H.” in Portland Place in a matter of minutes, but even so I was always accompanied by an armed bodyguard, in plain clothes, so as not to attract attention. I was instructed to vary my route as much as possible, in case I was being watched, but there were only a limited number of ways to cover such a short distance. I sometimes walked east straight along Wigmore Street, and turned left into Portland Place; sometimes I went through Manchester Square into Devonshire Place, and occasionally I wound my way through Upper Wimpole Street and Harley Street Mews. But it only ever took a few minutes.

The night codes at the BBC had by then become something of a national showpiece. They were read out—in a sombre voice—after the
Ten O'Clock News
, and were required listening for most people even though they had no idea what the codes meant—the point being that they were deliberately weird and mysterious and, apart from anything else, were meant unfathomably to boost morale. The news reader might say such things as “Trafalgar Greets Lightning,” or “Saturn Three Is Not Satisfied,” or “Indian, Four, Black.” Given that I was second in command at SC2, I knew what some of the messages meant—I had drafted them myself. But I didn't understand all of them, and in any case many of them were nonsense. In order to avoid the obvious giveaway that more codes would be sent out ahead of important military initiatives, complete fakes were used all the time to ensure that roughly the same amount of “messages” were sent out every evening.

People knew that the codes were necessary, or thought that they did, but that didn't stop us making fun of them. On bumping into someone you knew well but hadn't seen for a time, you might say, enigmatically, as you shook hands, “Pyramid Shadows Pharaoh.” And they would reply, “Wasp Stings Frankfurt.”

I had a pass to get me into Broadcasting House but by the time I had arrived in London, I was known to all the receptionists at the BBC, and even though I took out my pass and brandished it, they hardly glanced at it.

My destination, as always, was the third floor, the news department, and
its
deputy director, Alistair Prior. Alistair was a bouncy, round Yorkshireman who had started life as an engineer, and had been responsible for many of the broadcasting innovations that the BBC had introduced.

There was a lift in B.H., but I preferred the stairs and ran up them three at a time. My bodyguard, Tony, remained in reception on the ground floor. B.H. wasn't a security risk.

I reached the main corridor of the third floor and pushed through the double doors into the newsroom. Several of the reporters who looked up from their desks, and who recognized me, smiled or waved. I was the source of mild amusement to them, and they referred to me—to my face—as “Mystic Matt” because of my mysterious messages.

Alistair was bending over one of the desks as I came in. He turned, saw who it was, and straightened up. Smiling, he came over to me and held out his hand.

“Welcome back,” he said. “I know better than to ask where you've been, but it's good to see you again. Your stand-in while you were away is a real misery-guts.”

“Have a heart, Al. Jock's okay but his wife was killed in the Blitz and he's having a hard time getting over it.” I looked around the newsroom and then back to Alistair. “I haven't been anywhere exciting,” I said. “And I'm glad to be back in London.”

He led the way into his office. I followed, closing the door behind me. Strictly speaking, the handover of the codes had to be done privately: my purpose in the BBC offices was, formally, a secret—but in the newsroom that had gone out of the window months ago.

Alistair and I sat down. I took out the envelope with the codes inside and he reached down into one of the drawers on his desk and took out a bottle of Laphroaig and two glasses. This, too, had become a ritual.

Alistair had an incongruous build. He was small but barrel-chested, his hair was thinning, and he had rather fleshy lips. But his features added up to a smiling face that was somehow more than the sum of its parts. I liked him. Some months before, his brother, who was with our forces in North Africa, had gone missing and I had used the SC2 network to establish that he had been injured—injured and not killed—and invalided to an American hospital base rather than a British one. That had set Alistair's mind at rest and our friendship had gone on from there, the Laphroaig sessions being one result of it. It was in the natural order of things that the codes had to be taken to Broadcasting House at the end of the working day, so we were hardly doing anything that might have been frowned on had our superiors known about it.

He raised his glass to me. “You missed a couple of good shows while you were away.”

“Oh yes?”

“Yes, a new Rattigan,
No Medals
at the Vaudeville, with rave reviews for someone called Thora Hird. And we're going to get a new theatre on the South Bank after the war—assuming we win, of course. Oh, and yes, Ivor Novello went to jail and was released.”

“He
was
? Why? What happened?” I was a great admirer of Ivor Novello's songs and Alistair knew it.

“He allowed a fan of his to claim petrol for him, as being of national importance, when in fact he was using it just to drive his Rolls to and from the theatre. He definitely used the petrol, and with rationing he should have asked questions. But he convinced the court he didn't know what the fan was up to. She was besotted by him, and did him a favour without his knowing about it, or asking for it. So he was imprisoned for not being careful enough, but released immediately because he didn't know she was behaving fraudulently. All right for some, eh?”

“What news of the invasion?” he said, adding the words without a pause, as if it was entirely natural—and perhaps hoping to surprise me into revealing something.

I shook my head and frowned. I didn't like it that he had tried to bounce information out of me. It was out of character. I paused before saying, “What have you heard?”

He swallowed some whisky. “The feeling here is that it's going to be the Pas de Calais.”

“Oh yes? Why do you say that?”

“We've had RAF pilots in here, for programmes, and while they have to be careful what they say on air, off air they say that when they fly back from the continent, the Pas de Calais area is the most heavily populated part—populated with German soldiers, guns and tanks, I mean. In other words, the Germans are expecting the invasion in the Calais area and they must know something we don't.”

I sipped my whisky. “That could be it—but I don't know, I really don't.”

“And if you knew you wouldn't tell me, right?”

I nodded. “Sorry. Is it
so
important for you to know right now?”

He grinned. “Yes and no. The actual place is neither here nor there.” He checked himself. “But what I would dearly like to know is
when
the invasion is going to happen. For purely personal reasons.”

I waited, giving no ground at all.

He sighed.

“Viv and I are finally getting married. She wants a big, formal, fancy, white wedding with all the trimmings, and she wants it quickly. She would be devastated if we chose a day and it happened to be the day.”

I was relieved and relaxed into a smile. “That's wonderful news, Al. Viv must be delighted.” Vivien was Alistair's long-term girlfriend, who had been agitating to get married for as long as I could remember.

He nodded. “She's pregnant, of course.”

I made a face. “By accident or design?”

He flashed his eyes at me.

“I daren't ask. But it means we are getting married soon—that's why I want to know.” He looked at me long and hard.

“I'm sorry, Al,” I smiled, shaking my head. “Even if it means not being invited to the great day…”

He held up the envelope with the codes in it. “Nothing in here? You must know what some of these messages mean?”

“Some,” I replied, nodding, “but by no means all. You'll just have to pick a day and hope for the best.”

Alistair drank some more whisky and took the codes out of the envelope. He scrutinized them.

“
Fougère manque pré
. What does that mean?”

“Fern misses meadow.”

“Conducteur est cramoisi?”

“Driver is crimson.”

He shook his head. “This one's in English: ‘Farm, Farewell, Fantasy.' Do you know what
any
of these mean?”

“I know what the last one means, but not the others. They may not mean anything.”

He finished his whisky. “You're invited to the wedding anyway—I'll give you a date very soon. But…but, if you do learn something, and you are in a position to tell me…to help Viv really—it's her day after all…”

“I shall look forward to it,” I said. “Whenever it is. But I'm not going to be able to help you, Al, you know that. Do you know
anything
about military affairs?”

“Not really. Not other than what I read in the papers.”

“Did you know that attacking forces, on average, lose three times the number of men that defending forces lose? If the Germans do know where the invasion is going to take place, I don't think we have a chance. So I hope for our sakes that it's not the Pas de Calais.”

I stood up. “Say hello to Viv for me, and tell her congratulations. Any idea what you want as a wedding present?”

“Of course.” He stood up too, smiling. “The date of the invasion.”

He came round his desk, and held out his hand. “Good to have you back. Sorry about what I did just now. It was a bit underhand of me. It won't happen again, I promise. See you tomorrow. How's
your
love life, by the way?”

“Looking up, as it happens.”

“Good! Great. What's her name? Bring her to the wedding.”

“Madeleine. I will…unless—”

“Unless what?”

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

I opened the door to his office and hurried out. As I descended the steps of B.H., I told myself glumly to start preparing for an unpleasant change, a change as potentially big in my life as the wedding would be for Alistair. Bigger even. Madeleine had swept into my affections when I wasn't expecting it, and bowled me over. But by the time of Alistair's wedding, I might have seen her for the last time.

WHEN YOU HAVE LIVED YOUR LIFE
on your own, as I had until the point when Madeleine moved in with me, and if you don't count a West Highland terrier as a person—which Zola would certainly have had views about—you get used to having things your own way. Apart from the needs of your job, you are a free agent—you get up when you want, go to bed when you want, do the washing up when you want, shave when you want,
cook what and when you want, tidy up when you want, empty the ashtrays when you want…and all the rest.

When I got home from Broadcasting House that day, Madeleine was waiting for me. She had been to the hairdresser and her hair smelled differently. She took me straight to bed and Zola went without his walk, which was normally my first task on arriving home. He had to wait for nearly two hours and he was not pleased.

Like most of the trainees who had been through Ardlossan, Madeleine was given political instruction in the mornings after she had returned to London, but had the afternoons free. In SC2 we knew that the agents would be sent abroad soon enough, and so their afternoons were deliberately left for them to enjoy the time they had left as best they could. Madeleine, as I was to discover, as well as going to the hairdresser, had taken my flat under her wing.

As we lay on our backs on the bed early that evening, with Zola uttering the occasional whimper, because his walk had been overlooked, I raised myself on one elbow and reached for my cigarettes.

“What's happened to the table that used to be here?” I said. In our rush I hadn't noticed it had gone.

“I had a tidy up,” said Madeleine, rolling over and kissing the back of my shoulder. “The bedside tables go better by the sofa in the drawing room, with lamps on them. Go and have a look.”

I couldn't tell her that was something else—besides her hair—that she shared with Celestine, who had also been manically tidy. What I did say was, “I'm too exhausted to move. At least for now. Where are my cigarettes?”

“Over there, on the desk.”

“That's no good, it's too far away. After a couple of hours' sex with you, I need reinforcements to hand. A cigarette after sex is one of life's great luxuries. You should know that.”

“I've just moved the furniture around a bit, that's all. You'll see—you'll like it. I moved the table in the kitchen from the middle and placed it against the wall, I've moved the wireless to the side of the fireplace, so it's easier to keep warm while you're listening, and I've put the standard lamp by the sofa, so it's easier to see to read at night.”

She let the last letter of that last word hang in the air.

“And you've moved the bedside tables.”

“Yes, the drawing room was a little lacking in furniture. We can buy two new tables at the weekend.”

“Can we? And do you have any more plans for my flat? Is the bed as you like it?”

She chuckled. “The bed's fine. Though I wonder what the people in the flat underneath make of all the noise.”

I turned over and kissed her breast. “
You
make most of the noise, so you'd better go down and apologise—”

“I do
not
! Take that back, or I'll never do…you know…again.”

I sighed, got out of bed, retrieved my cigarettes from the desk, and lay back down again. I lit two cigarettes and passed one to her.