Restless (24 page)

She saw Romer standing waiting for her on the steps, hatless and wearing a long dark grey overcoat she hadn't seen before. She smiled instinctively, happily, thinking again of their two days in Long Island. To be in New York in November in 1941, going to meet her lover on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum seemed the most normal and natural of activities in the world – as if her whole life had somehow been steering her in the direction of this particular moment. But the realities massing elsewhere behind this encounter – the war news she'd read in the newspapers this morning, the Germans advancing on Moscow – made her realise that what she and Romer were experiencing was, in actual fact, utterly absurd and surreal. We may be lovers, she reminded herself, but we are also spies: therefore everything is entirely different from what it seems.

He came down the steps to meet her. She saw his frowning, serious face and wanted to kiss him, wanted to go immediately to that hotel across the road and make love all afternoon – but they didn't even touch; they didn't even shake hands. He circled round her and pointed to the park.

'Let's go for a stroll,' he said.

'Nice to see you. I've missed you.'

He looked at her in a manner as if to say: we simply can't talk to each other like this.

'Sorry,' she said, 'Chilly, isn't it?' and walked briskly ahead of him into the park.

He increased his speed and caught up with her. They walked along the pathway in silence for a while and then he said, 'Fancy a bit of winter sunshine?'

They found a bench with a view of a small valley and some craggy rocks. A boy was throwing a stick for a dog that refused to chase it. So the boy would fetch the stick, walk back to the dog and throw it again.

'Winter sunshine?'

'It's a simple BSC courier job,' he said. 'To New Mexico.'

'If it's so simple why don't they do it?'

'Since the Brazil map they want to seem extremely kosher. They're a bit worried that the FBI might be watching them. So they asked me if someone from Transoceanic could do it. I thought of you. You don't have to if you don't want to. I'll ask Morris if you don't fancy it.'

But she did fancy it, as she knew he knew she would.

She shrugged. 'I suppose I could do it.'

'I'm not doing you a favour,' he said. 'I know you'd do a good job. A good secure job. That's what they want. You pick up a package and you give it to someone else and you come home.'

'Who'll run me? Not BSC.'

'Transoceanic will run you.'

'All right.'

He gave her a piece of paper and told her to read it until she'd memorised the details. She studied the words that were written down, remembering Mr Dimarco at Lyne, all his tricks, match colours to words, match memories to numbers. She handed the piece of paper back to Romer.

'Usual telephone code to base?' she asked.

'Yes. All the variations.'

'Where do I go after Albuquerque?'

'The contact there will tell you. It'll be in New Mexico. Possibly Texas.'

'And then what?'

'Come back here and carry on as normal. It should take you three or four days. You'll get some sun, see an interesting part of the country – it's big.'

He moved his hand along the bench and interlinked his little finger with hers.

'When can I see you again?' she said, softly, looking away. 'I loved the Narragansett Inn. Can we go back?'

'Probably not. It's difficult. Things are heating up. London is getting frantic. Everything is rather…' He paused, as if to say the words was distasteful. 'Rather out of control.'

'How's "Gold"?'

"Gold" is our only ray of sunshine. Very helpful, indeed. Which reminds me: this operation you're on is "Cinnamon". You're "Sage".'

'"Sage".'

'You know how they love procedure. They'll have opened a file and written "Cinnamon" on it. "Top Secret".' He reached in his pocket and took out and gave her a bulky, buff envelope.

'What's this?'

'Five thousand dollars. For the man at the end of the line, wherever that is. I would leave tomorrow if I were you.'

'Right.'

'Do you want a gun?'

'Will I need a gun?'

'No. But I always ask.'

'Anyway, I have my nails and my teeth,' she said, making claws with her hands and baring her fangs.

Romer laughed, giving her his wide white smile and she suddenly flashed to Paris and that day when they first met. She had a sudden vision of him crossing the street towards her. She felt weak.

'Bye, Lucas,' she said, then looked at him meaningfully. 'We have to sort something out when I come back.' She paused. 'I don't know if I can carry on like this – it's getting to be a strain. You know what I mean – I think-'

He interrupted her. 'We'll sort something out, don't worry.' He squeezed her hand.

She was going to say it, she didn't care. 'I think I'm in love with you, Lucas, that's why.'

He didn't say anything, just took this in with a slight pursing of the lips. He squeezed her hand again and then let go.

'
Bon voyage
,' he said. 'Be careful.'

'I'm always careful. You know that.'

He stood up, turned and walked away, striding down the path. Eva watched him go, saying to herself: I command you to turn, I insist you turn and look at me again. And sure enough he did – he turned and walked backwards for a few paces and smiled and gave her his familiar half-wave, half-salute.

The next morning Eva went to Penn Station and bought a ticket to Albuquerque, New Mexico.

'PEOPLE WILL THINK WE'RE having an affair,' Bobbie York said. 'All these impromptu visits. I'm not complaining. I'll be very discreet.'

'Thank you, Bobbie,' I said, refusing to participate in his banter. 'You are my supervisor, after all. I'm supposed to come to you for advice.'

'Yes, yes, yes. Of course you are. But how can I advise someone as capable as you?'

I had postponed Bérangère's tutorial so I could see Bobbie in the morning. I didn't want to sit in his rooms as he plied me with whisky again.

'I need to talk to somebody who can tell me about the British Security Services in World War Two. MI5, MI6 – that sort of thing. SIS, SOE, BSC – you know.'

'Yeeesss,' Bobbie said. 'Not my strong point. I sense Lord Mansfield has bitten.'

Bobbie was no fool, however hard he strove to seem like an amiable one.

'He has,' I said. 'I'm to meet him on Friday – at his club. I just feel I need to be a bit more clued-up.'

'My, what drama. You've got to tell me all about this one day, Ruth, I insist. It seems splendidly cloak-and-dagger.'

'I will,' I said. 'I promise. I'm a bit in the dark myself, to tell the truth. As soon as I know I'll fill you in.'

Bobbie went to his desk and searched through some papers.

'One of the very few advantages of living in Oxford,' he said, 'is that there is an expert on just about every subject in the world, sitting on your doorstep. From medieval astrolabes to particle accelerators – we can usually serve one up. Ah, here's the man. Fellow of All Souls called Timothy Thoms.'

'Timothy Thoms?'

'Yes. Thoms spelt with an "h". I know he sounds like a character in a children's book or some harassed clerk in Dickens but he's actually a hundred times cleverer than I am. Mind you – so are you. So you and Timothy Thoms should get along like the proverbial conflagrating house. There: Dr T.C.L. Thoms. I've met him a couple of times. Agreeable fellow. I shall procure you a meeting.' He reached for his telephone.

Bobbie arranged for me to see Dr Thoms two days later at the end of the afternoon. I deposited Jochen with Veronica and Avril and I went into All Souls and was directed to Dr Thoms's staircase. The afternoon was sultry, oppressive and threatening, the sun seemed sulphurously hazed, producing an odd yellow light in the air that amplified the yellow in the stones of the college walls and I wondered for a moment – prayed for a moment – that it would storm. The grass in the quadrangle was the colour of desert sand.

I knocked on Dr Thoms's door and it was opened by a burly young man in jeans and a T-shirt – in his late twenties, I would have said – who had a shock of curly brown hair tumbling to his shoulders and an almost painfully neatly trimmed beard, all angles and hard edges.

'Ruth Gilmartin,' I said. 'I've come to meet Dr Thoms.'

'You've found him. Come in.' He had a strong Yorkshire or Lancashire accent – I couldn't tell them apart – 'Coom in' he had said.

We sat down in his study and I refused his offer of tea or coffee. I noticed he had a computer with a screen like a television on his desk. Bobbie had told me that Thoms had written his doctorate on Admiral Canaris and MI5 penetration of the Abwehr in World War Two. He was now writing a 'vast book' for 'vast sums of money' on the history of the British Secret Service from 1909 to the present day. 'I think he's your man,' Bobbie had said, rather pleased with his efficiency.

Thoms asked me how he could help me and so I started to tell him, in the most circumspect and vague terms I could manage, given my limited knowledge of the subject. I said I was going to interview a man who had been fairly high up in the Secret Intelligence Service during the war. I just needed some background information, particularly about what was going on in America in 1940-1, before Pearl Harbor.

Thoms made no effort to conceal his quickening interest.

'Really,' he said. 'So he was high up in the British Security Coordination.'

'Yes,' I said. 'But I get the impression he was something of a freelance – had his own small operation.'

Thoms looked more intrigued. 'There were a few of them – irregulars – but they were all reeled in as the war went on.'

'I have a source who worked for this man.'

'Reliable?'

'Yes. This source worked for him in Belgium and then in America.'

'I see,' Thoms said, impressed, looking at me with some fascination. 'This source of yours could be sitting on a goldmine.'

'What do you mean?'

'He could make a fortune if he told his story.'

He. Interesting, I thought – let's keep him a he. And I had never thought of money, either.

'Do you know about the Prenslo Incident?' I asked.

'Yes. It was a disaster, blew everything wide open.'

'This source was there.'

Thoms said nothing – only nodded several times. His excitement was palpable.

'Have you heard of an organisation called AAS Ltd?' I asked.

'No.'

'Does the name "Mr X" help you identify anyone?'

'No.'

'Transoceanic Press?'

'No.'

'Do you know who "C" was in 1941?'

'Yes, of course,' he said. 'These names are beginning to come out now – now the whole Enigma/Bletchley Park secret is exposed. Old agents are talking – or talking so you can read between the lines. But,' he leant forward, 'this is what is fascinating – and it makes me sweat a little, to be completely honest – as to what SIS was really doing in the United States in the early days – what the BSC was doing in their name – is the greyest of grey areas.
Nobody
wants to talk about that. Your source is the first one I've ever heard of – from an agent in the field.'

'It's a stroke of luck,' I said carefully.

'Can I meet your source?'

'No, I'm afraid not.'

'Because I have about a million questions, as you can imagine.' There was a strange light in his eye – the light of the scholar-hunter who has smelt fresh spoor, who knows there is an unblazed trail out there.

'What I might do,' I offered, cautiously, 'is write some of it down, in broad outline, see if it made any sense to you.'

'Great. Happy to oblige,' he said, and leant back in his seat as if, for the first time, he were just taking in the fact that I was, for example, a member of the female sex, and not simply a new mine of exclusive information.

'Fancy going to the pub for a drink?' he said.

We crossed the High and went to a small pub in a lane near Oriel and he gave me a potted synopsis of SIS and BSC and the pre-Pearl Harbor operations as far as he understood them and I began to understand something of the context for my mother's particular adventure. Thoms spoke fluently and with some passion about this covert world with its interconnecting lines of duplicity – effectively a whole British security and intelligence apparatus right in the middle of Manhattan, hundreds of agents all striving to persuade America to join the war in Europe despite the express and steadfast objections of the majority of the population of the United States.

'Astonishing, really, when you come to think of it. Unparalleled…' He stopped suddenly. 'Why are you looking at me like that?' he asked, a bit discomfited.

'Do you want an honest answer?'

'Yes, please.'

'I can't decide whether the hair doesn't go with the beard or the beard doesn't go with the hair.'

He laughed: he seemed almost pleased by my bluntness.

'I don't usually have a beard, actually. But I've grown it for a role.'

'A role?'

'In
Don Carlos.
I'm playing a Spanish nobleman called Rodrigo. It's an opera.'

'Yeah. That Verdi bloke, innit? You can obviously sing, then.'

'It's an amateur company,' he explained. 'We're doing three performances at the Playhouse. Want to come and see it?'

'As long as I can get a baby-sitter,' I said. That usually scared them off. Not Thoms, though, and I began to sense Thoms's interest in me might extend further than any secrets I possessed about the British Security Coordination.

'I take it you're not married,' he said.

'That's right.'

'How old's the kid?'

'Five.'

'Bring him along. You're never too young to start going to the opera.'