The Suicide Exhibition: The Never War (Never War 1) (12 page)

Brinkman sighed. ‘That’s all I need.’

David Alban sat down without being invited. He stretched his legs out and yawned. Brinkman pretended to be involved in paperwork, refusing to spare the man more than a glance. He knew what MI5 in general thought of Station Z, and Alban in particular was more than sceptical. He was downright hostile.

‘You’re ruffling feathers again, Colonel,’ Alban said at last.

Brinkman closed the cover of the file he’d been examining and fixed Alban with a stare. ‘Oh?’

‘Friend Fredericks at Station X has been on to us.’

‘I’d hardly call him a friend. And as you say “us” I assume that’s someone higher up the chain than you.’

Alban grinned like an annoying schoolboy. ‘Assume away, old man.’ The grin faded, and Alban leaned forward. ‘But he’s not happy. Making waves. He’s a man of considerable influence, and rightly so, given what his people have achieved.’

‘He’s an administrator,’ Brinkman countered. ‘He’s not even that important at Station X.’

‘Then he has important friends.’

‘Don’t we all,’ Brinkman snapped.

Alban ignored the comment. ‘Fredericks says that you’ve commandeered one of his top men. “Poached” was the word he used, actually. Like an egg. First SOE and now Station X, you’re overreaching yourself, Colonel. And if you keep pinching – “poaching” – other people’s prize personnel, it’s only a matter of time before the gamekeeper comes after you.’

‘And you see yourself as the gamekeeper, do you?’ Brinkman asked.

Alban grinned again. ‘Oh I’m just an errand boy, I’ve no illusions about that. But even an errand boy can wonder what gives you the right to behave in such a cavalier manner.’

‘My authority comes from the Prime Minister himself,’ Brinkman said quietly. ‘And I will not have it questioned by a self-confessed errand boy.’

Alban seemed unimpressed. ‘Well good for you. Enjoy it while you can, I say. Because, you know what Winston’s like. He has six impossible ideas before breakfast each and every day.’

‘
Mr Churchill
knows how important our work here is,’ Brinkman said. For some reason Alban’s use of the Prime Minister’s Christian name irritated him more than anything else the young man had said.

‘Implying that I don’t?’

‘I know you don’t.’ Brinkman opened the file again, staring down at it. ‘You have no idea what we do here.’

Alban’s shadow fell across the desk as he stood up and leaned over, hands pressed down either side of the file. ‘I don’t want to know. But I’ll tell you what I
do
know.’

Brinkman looked up, and was surprised at Alban’s grim expression. The man suddenly looked much older, and Brinkman wondered if perhaps he had underestimated his ability and position as well as his age.

‘I know that your Station Z is a passing fad of the Prime Minister’s. I know that you’ve upset SOE, which he really does care about, and you’ve upset Station X which Churchill knows is vital to the war effort. And I know that your own security here is a joke.’

Brinkman said nothing.

Alban straightened up. A nerve twitched for a second under his left eye. ‘You were followed to Bletchley, you know.’

‘Yes, I do know.’ Brinkman watched for a reaction, but there was none. ‘And it wasn’t our security that the two individuals in question breached to get into the site.’

‘They were following
you
.’

Brinkman stood up, angry. ‘Which you could only know if you were following me as well.’

The grin was back. ‘Just doing my job, Colonel.’

‘Then kindly get out of here and let me do mine.’

‘With pleasure. As it happens, I have an appointment at Euston station. There are a couple of people coming in on a train from Bletchley that I have to arrest for breaching the Official Secrets Act.’

‘Errand boy promoted to policeman?’ Brinkman said. It was a cheap jibe and he regretted it as soon as he’d said it. But he was not about to apologise.

Alban’s expression didn’t change. But there was a tremble of suppressed anger in his reply. ‘I don’t know what exactly your department does, Colonel,’ he said. ‘But you’re not very good at it, and it’s costing us funds and resources that could be better used elsewhere.’

‘Goodbye, Mr Alban. If you could see yourself out, I have important things to do.’ Brinkman turned back to his file.

Alban watched him for a moment before he left. As he turned to go, he said: ‘You’re an expensive luxury, Colonel. And this war isn’t about luxury – it’s about austerity and thrift. First chance I get, I’m closing you down for good.’

THE SHIP DOCKED
at just after three in the afternoon, and Leo Davenport was there to meet it. If the captain noticed that ‘Carlton Smith’ had lost his beard since leaving Lisbon, he didn’t mention it. He also pocketed the folded banknotes that Davenport gave him without comment.

Having got his cargo this far, Davenport was determined not to lose it now. He watched as a crane lifted the large wooden crate and lowered it gently onto the back of a flat-bed truck that Davenport had arranged. As soon as it was secured, he gave the crane driver and the dockers a cheery wave and clambered up into the lorry’s cab to sit beside the driver.

Every time he came back to London, it seemed to Davenport that there was less of the city standing. They drove past burned out cranes and warehouses, through streets lined with rubble swept to the pavement edges. Several times he had to stop while the driver worked out a new route because the way was blocked. Roads were closed, or the way impassable because of fire engines and military vehicles. Everywhere smelled of dust and ash.

Although Davenport was in no particular hurry, he did glance skywards every now and again, hoping that the Luftwaffe would hold off at least until he reached his destination. It would be just his luck if he managed to smuggle his cargo across France and into Portugal, ship it across the
hostile seas only to see it bombed to bits on a London street almost within sight of its destination. Doubly annoying if he himself got blown up with it.

Eventually they turned in through imposing iron gates and drew up outside an even more imposing building. The classical façade stood proud and defiant in the evening sunshine, though Davenport knew that much of the interior had been burned out by incendiary bombs back in May.

‘Here you are, guv,’ the driver said. ‘The British Museum.’

Davenport told him to wait and he’d send someone to help unload the crate. He descended from the cab, and hurried up the wide steps to the main entrance where he found a uniformed official. Davenport briefly explained that he had a delivery to go to Mrs Archer. He waited while the crate was unloaded and carried round to the back of the museum.

With four men carrying the crate, hoisted up on their shoulders, it looked rather like a funeral procession, Davenport thought. He went ahead to hold open the door, standing back to let them through.

‘Hey – aren’t you…?’ one of the men started to say as they passed.

‘I get that a lot,’ Davenport told him. ‘I gather he’s not so handsome in real life.’

‘Not so handsome on the big screen, if you ask me,’ the man grunted as he helped manipulate the large crate through the narrow doorway.

Davenport sniffed. ‘That’s a matter of opinion,’ he murmured.

With the crate safely deposited in a storeroom off one of the main galleries of the museum, Davenport made his way down a narrow corridor. Halfway along, he let himself through a doorway marked ‘Strictly Private’. Along another corridor, and he reached a solid metal door. It was locked, and Davenport spent almost a minute with a piece of wire and a narrow-bladed instrument before he managed to open it. He locked it again behind him, and descended a flight of stone steps.

The steps emerged into a large area beneath the Great Court – a cavern of unpainted brick and rough stone. An area that few people knew even existed. Illuminated by electric lights strung from the vaulted ceiling high above, the whole area was almost filled with shelves and cupboards, crates and boxes and tea chests. Soon, Davenport knew, another crate would be added to the collection.

He made his way through narrow paths left between the boxed artefacts and shelves. He always went the same way, a route he had memorised long ago. But even though he passed the same display cases and shelves, crates and boxes, he always saw something that he couldn’t recall ever seeing before. This time it was a large earthenware jar with a lid in the shape of a jackal’s head. Ancient Egyptian, he thought – a canopic jar. He must have seen it dozens of times and just not noticed it before. But then this place and the things gathered together in it never ceased to amaze him.

Davenport’s destination was at the heart of the maze through the collection. Several of the pathways met in an open area. In the middle of it was a single desk, surrounded by several filing cabinets. A woman sat at the desk, intent on a large book open before her. She was old – her face lined and ancient, her steel grey hair tied up severely. Sensing she had company, she glanced up, peering over her gold-rimmed reading glasses. Her eyes were greyer than her hair, but alert and unblinking.

‘Oh it’s you,’ she said, and returned her attention to the volume in front of her. ‘I do wish you wouldn’t just let yourself in like that. Where have you been, anyway?’ Her voice was stronger and younger than one might expect. ‘Gallivanting?’

‘Always gallivanting, Elizabeth,’ Davenport admitted. There was no spare chair, so he perched on the edge of a packing case and watched her until she sighed, took off her glasses and looked up again.

‘Well?’

‘I brought you a present. From France.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘What sort of present? I should
warn you that my yearning for silk stockings and perfume has long since passed.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true. But actually, I don’t know exactly what it is. A prize of opportunity, you might say.’

She leaned back, amused. ‘Yes, well, you were always the opportunist, Leo.’

‘The Nazis were excavating a site. Bronze Age, I think. Ancient, anyway. It was… interesting.’

‘Then you must tell me all about it.’

‘Oh, I will,’ he promised. ‘But when they cleared out I managed to get hold of one of the larger artefacts. I’m hoping, if I liberated the right crate, that it’s the coffin and mortal remains of a chieftain. It’s in a storeroom off—’

She waved a hand, interest evaporating. ‘I don’t care where it is now. Tell young Edward. He can have it brought down here.’

Davenport nodded, amused. Young Edward might be younger than Mrs Archer, but he was probably in his seventies. The two of them had run this place for as long as Davenport had known about it.

‘You haven’t been tempted to move out then?’ he asked.

‘Ship some of this stuff out to Wales or dump it down the Aldwych Tube tunnel with the other exhibits and artefacts and I’d be lucky ever to get it back. It’s safe enough down here. We had a bomb in Prints and Drawings last September. It got through four floors to the sub-basement, but still didn’t penetrate this far.’

‘Must have done some damage,’ Davenport guessed.

‘Didn’t go off. Four days later another bomb fell through the hole the first one made. What are the chances of that, do you suppose?’ Mrs Archer stood up, pushing the book she had been examining to one side. ‘Now, let’s find an atlas and you can show me where exactly in France you’ve been.’

He followed her over to a bookcase. After a glance, she moved on to another.

‘The trouble with this place is that’s it’s almost impossible to find anything that’s less than a few hundred years old.’

‘Does that include the staff?’ Davenport said.

That earned him a glance that was half amused, half resigned. But before she could comment, a telephone began to ring. Elizabeth Archer made her way back to her desk, uncovered the phone lurking beneath a pile of papers and answered it abruptly.

‘Yes.’ She listened for a moment, then said: ‘Yes, he is.’ She held the receiver out to Davenport.

He took the phone. He could guess who it was – there were not many people who knew this number. Even fewer could have known that he might be here.

After a brief conversation, he hung up.

‘You’re leaving?’ Elizabeth guessed.

‘Sorry. But I shall return to tell you all about my adventures and the mysterious crate.’

‘But first?’

‘But first, someone’s in trouble. And as usual, it’s up to me to get them out of it.’

The journey back from Bletchley was a nervous one. Both Guy and Sarah were desperate to talk about what had happened, what – if anything – they had discovered. But before they got the chance, a man let himself into their compartment and settled on the seat beside Guy. He nodded a greeting, then unfolded a copy of
The Times
.

They sat in silence for most of the journey, exchanging only the blandest comments to pass the time. Several times Guy thought he saw the man with the paper staring at him or Sarah. He was probably being over-anxious, he thought. And of course, Sarah was well worth staring at.

He was relieved when the train finally pulled into Euston. The man with the paper waited politely for the two of them to leave before following. When they stepped down from the train to the platform, the man continued to follow closely behind as they made their way towards the main concourse.

‘Is he following us?’ Sarah hissed as they pulled ahead of the man.

‘It’s probably nothing,’ Guy replied quietly.

‘I thought he was staring at me,’ Sarah said.

‘Me too.’

Her mouth twitched into a half smile. ‘That’s all right. I don’t mind
you
staring.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’ He realised she was joking as soon as he’d said it. ‘Sorry.’

Sarah glanced back. Guy resisted the urge to look back too, but he could see the man reflected in the glass of a window as they crossed the main concourse.

‘Probably heading for the underground, like us,’ he said.

‘Or not,’ Sarah added as they approached the wide steps leading down.

Standing at the top, also holding a newspaper, was a man in a long nondescript raincoat. His hat shadowed his face, but Guy could see that his attention wasn’t on the paper so much as the people passing by. Did he imagine it, or was there a flash of recognition as he and Sarah approached?