The Chase: A Novel (33 page)

“I saw your face,” he said. “Why don’t you try honesty for a change? You’re scared, Claire. You think it’s Jean-Léon, too.”

“You’re wrong,” Claire cried furiously. “Bad call. You are wrong, wrong, wrong!”

“I think you protest overmuch,” Ian said softly. “Why do you have to be so stubborn, Red? Has it ever occurred to you that I have your best interests at heart?”

Claire’s heart turned over, hard.

“Claire.” There was no mistaking the plea in his tone. Then he shifted toward her.

For one split second, Claire thought he intended to take her in his arms. In the next instant, he staggered hard toward her, as if struck brutally from behind, and there was no mistaking the shock on his face.

She caught him, but his weight knocked her down. Claire felt his blood and realized he’d been shot. She screamed.

PART FOUR

AGAINST THE SUN

CHAPTER 14

August 1, 1940

Lionel had taken a flat in Knightsbridge in June 1939, on his seventeenth birthday. On that day, he had enlisted in the air force as well. He had lied about his age to both his landlord and the RAF recruitment officer. But because his father was both a baron and a leading member of the Conservative majority, he wasn’t questioned about his age—or anything else. In fact, he was automatically given an officer’s rank of lieutenant and sent to a special officer-training program created for enlisted personnel like himself in a time when war seemed imminent and unavoidable.

The timing was fortuitous—three months after signing his lease and one month out of the RAF officer-training program, war on National Socialist Germany was declared, an event that happened more through sheer default and ineptitude than moral rectitude or resolution on the part of Great Britain. Because Lionel was fluent in German, and because he had done rather poorly on the tests designed to distinguish potential pilots from the masses, he was assigned to an intelligence unit. His superiors then transferred him to the ministry of information the moment that it was created, shortly after Chamberlain’s ouster and Churchill’s advent.

Of course, he lived in the officers’ quarters of his unit. But the flat was a necessity as far as he was concerned, and as he was a rich and titled nobleman, no one questioned it. Indeed, his fellow officers assumed that he kept a tart. Lionel did little to quell those rumors; instead, he fed them very deliberately. And although the flat was small, cold, and barely furnished, although the hot water rarely ran and the place was nothing like the lavish Elgin Hall, it suited him perfectly. In fact, he quite liked it.

Father hated it.

It had been a ho-hum and ordinary day, and Lionel was rather bored. But then, everyone was bored with the “phony” war. The battle for the English Channel continued. British radio reported the loss of eight RAF planes, with two pilots missing; it also claimed the downing of eighteen Luftwaffe bombers and four ME-109s. Lionel had been in his office with his aide, George Suttill, when he heard the report. Inwardly he had smirked. Suttill and another assistant had cheered. Lionel knew those reports were false and purposefully exaggerated for the sake of civilian morale. Everyone around him seemed to actually believe them when, for God’s sake, they worked in the ministry of information, which in another country would be labeled the ministry of propaganda. It was their job to feed the public false cheer and to paint black pictures white, or at least an acceptable shade of gray.

He was surrounded by idiots and morons.

Lionel sighed and reached under his small bed to pull out his leather valise. He carried it across the flat’s single room and set it down on the desk where he often worked late into the evening beneath the mandatorily dimmed glow of a small lamp. His windows were covered with black tape; the blackout had been in effect for more than a year. He opened the valise. Inside was a high-frequency radio transmitter and receiver. Very calmly, Lionel began punching out his coded message on the wireless.

Translated into English, the message read, “Urgent. RAF flight changes stop new patterns stop Four Finger formations.” He signed off with his code name, Swan. The name was a nod to his cousin Rachel, whom he saw from time to time, inconclusively. She was a WAAF stationed at Fighter Command.

He knew she was stationed at Bentley Priory and that she was about to become engaged to some Jew. He made it his business to keep track of her. Deciding on the code name Swan had somehow pleased him. He knew she would hate it, but in a way, his choice had really been a compliment.

Lionel did not wait for an answering transmission. The fact that the RAF had changed their fighter tactics only spoke to the fact that the Luftwaffe had been outflying them all summer. The information was important but did not require an answer from his contacts at the Auslandsorganisation in Berlin. Besides, he was hardly the only agent in Britain, and perhaps another spy had already sent along the information.

It amused Lionel that the average person thought spying to be glamorous and exciting, when the fact was that there was little excitement about what he did. Espionage was mundane work at best. Lionel spent his spare time gathering technical data on the British military and then transmitting it to Berlin. Only in novels did spies resort to force or seduction; theft and bribery were the most common techniques. It was amazing what a few pounds could do. And of course, Britain remained an open society in spite of some censorship caused by the war, which made his job ludicrously simple.

His knocker banged.

Lionel got to his feet, moving without haste. Three years ago, when he was fifteen, he had spent an entire summer outside of Berlin, ostensibly lured there by his German girlfriend, who was actually an Abwehr plant. There his induction into the German intelligence community had begun—he had spent two months at an estate called Park Zorgvliet, a spy school filled mostly with foreigners like himself, eager to serve the Führer and the Fatherland for various personal and ideological reasons. At the A-Schule West, he had learned he was calm and rational by nature, that not much ever ruffled him, and that his fear, when it did rise, could be controlled. He had passed his courses with superior grades and, upon returning to Britain, had been careful to behave as the most patriotic of Englishmen, no matter how he wished to do otherwise.

Now Lionel closed the valise, and as he carried it to its hiding place beneath the bed, he called out, “Yes? Who is it?” But he already knew.

“It’s your father,” Lord Elgin responded from the other side of the door.

Lionel was pleased. Usually his father made him feel all of thirteen years old, and he did not like being reduced to a nervous boy. But things had changed; no, things were about to change. For he had just received the most exciting instructions of his short career as a German agent.

He opened the door. “Hello, Father. This is a surprise.”

Randolph Elgin did not smile in return. He had become portly in the past few years and now wore a steel-colored goatee. He entered, his expression indicating that he could hardly stand to do so in such an impoverished place.

Carefully, Lionel closed the door behind him. “Isn’t it a bit late for you to still be in the city?” Elgin usually rushed home to Ellen, the horrid whore.

Elgin looked around with stiff disapproval, then walked over to the flat’s single chair—other than the one at the desk—and sat down, removing hat and gloves and resting his cane against the arm of the chair. “I’ve been at Whitehall most of the day. It looks as if that bastard will finally invade, Lionel. Intelligence has learned of a new order, Eagle Day.”

It usually went this way. The intelligence arms of both sides in a constant race, with neither side ever being much ahead—or behind—the other. “Really? And when will Eagle Day occur?” Lionel knew that this could not be true because he had not been notified, and if an invasion was imminent, his contacts would alert him.

“That’s the problem. We don’t know. Our sources can’t pinpoint a precise date. Churchill has sent out a war alert to all of our forces and the Home Guard. I think it will sow panic. I wish he would rein in that brash nature of his. Jesus Christ.”

“There was a time when you admired his audacity,” Lionel commented, remaining neutral. “It doesn’t behoove you, Father, to argue with him now.”

“He can do more harm than good if he continues this way,” Elgin said flatly. “Plus, I heard this amazing rumor. Apparently our intelligence people think we have a spy in our midst.”

Lionel merely blinked. “Father, I hate to say this, but surely there are quite a few spies among us, it is a time of war.”

“You are always so blasé,” Elgin said with a flash of anger. “Do you not care if there is a traitor somewhere in our military?”

Lionel almost blinked. “Is that what they say? And why do they think such a thing?”

“There have been a series of advertisements placed in the
London Times.
Apparently those ads are coded instructions being read by the Abwehr in Berlin.”

Lionel raised both brows. “Fascinating,” he said. It was times like these that he found the most interesting. He felt oddly detached, almost as if he were not inside of his own body—so he could be a completely objective observer of the unfolding event. He thought with the utmost clarity. He had objected from the beginning that using the newspapers to send less urgent information was too risky, but his superiors had ignored him. Lionel decided that he would no longer use the
Times
to send Class 3 information, no matter what he was told to do. He had no intention of hanging as a traitor and a spy. The war had not even begun, not really, and it was much too soon for him to have to pack up his bags and flee.

An image of Rachel flashed through his mind. He dismissed it.

“Can you imagine the audacity? Using our own newspapers to communicate with the Nazis!”

“I think it is a rather foolish scheme,” Lionel said calmly. “If indeed there ever was such a scheme.”

“Mark my words. We will catch this man, sooner rather than later.”

“I am sure that we will.”

His father grunted and glanced around the flat. “I do not understand why you keep this flat.” Elgin looked right at him. “I have heard the rumors. I have heard that you bring a woman here. A mistress. Is it true? They say she is lovely.”

“She is very beautiful.”

Elgin stared at him, his jaw flexing. He finally said, “I cannot imagine you in a relationship. I suppose I should be pleased.”

“Yes, you should.” Lionel smiled. It was so hard to contain himself.

Elgin made a cry of exasperation. “So how are things at the ministry? I saw the new poster: ‘Keep mum, she’s not so dumb.’ Bloody good idea to warn our chaps about talking too freely, Lionel.”

“It’s catchy,” Lionel agreed. He had tried to discourage the poster, as it was very effective, portraying two soldiers with whiskeys and cigarettes conversing carelessly in front of a gorgeous blond woman. The rest of the poster read
CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES
.

“You haven’t come home for dinner in weeks,” Elgin said. Lionel had expected this tack. “We miss you. John keeps asking when you will visit. What should I tell your brother?”

My half brother
, Lionel corrected him, but silently. “Tell him I will come home as soon as I have the chance.”

Elgin stood up with the help of his cane. “Don’t you care about him, even if you don’t care about us?”

“Of course I care,” Lionel said, not meaning it. His father had annoyed him—and angered him—his entire life. Fortunately, as he became older, he had learned how to see through and past his father, so that Elgin could no longer rile him. Lionel did not like becoming angry—it ruined his control.

Besides, very soon his father would never make him angry again. “You know, Father, you should really call before coming by.”

Elgin flushed. “I am sorry. But surely you have nothing to hide, now do you?”

Elgin would
dare
to play cat and mouse with him? “I have nothing to hide, Father.”

“Sometimes I wonder,” Elgin said bluntly. “Sometimes I wonder about you.”

“Really.” Lionel turned away. He walked over to a real radio and turned it on. The strains of “We’ll Meet Again” came on. Vera Lynn was singing.

“Why do you turn away? And shut that off.”

Lionel faced his father slowly.

“Sometimes I think that I do not know you at all. My own son,” Elgin said heatedly.

Lionel did not answer. In a secret pocket on the lining of his sleeve was a three-inch knife. The instructions he had so recently received would truly liberate him. His life would change forever—the way it had when he had gotten rid of Harry. From time to time he did dream of his brother, who remained seventeen, his eyes filled with hatred and accusations. But he had no regrets. Had Harry lived, Lionel would not be who and what he was today.

“Did you hear a word I said?” Elgin stomped past him with the cane and turned off the radio. The sudden silence after Vera’s beautiful alto was startling.

“Of course I heard,” Lionel said, maintaining a pleasant smile on his face. God, he hated this man. He always had and he always would.

“How can a father not know his own son? I look into your eyes, and I feel as if I have come up against a huge wall. A huge blank wall,” Elgin said.

“Maybe you have,” Lionel remarked. His tone was amazingly calm, and carefully, he slipped the knife into his right palm, keeping it concealed. “Just because you sired me, that does not give you a right to get into my mind.”

“A right? But you are my son—and my heir! Why can’t you be more like Harry? Why are you always hiding your feelings from me, from everyone?”

Lionel felt his face change. “Don’t talk to me about Harry,” he said very slowly, very succinctly, very dangerously.

“Why not? Surely you can cherish your brother’s memory. Or have you already forgotten him?” Elgin challenged.

Lionel thought that his smile felt tight. “I will never forget Harry,” he said. “Harry was—is—a god.”

“How dare you speak so mockingly of your brother!” Elgin cried.