She just loved saying it, Lloyd could tell. She was a titled lady, and it meant the world to her.
She got into the car and the chauffeur closed the door.
Lloyd turned away. He was ashamed to realize that he had tears in his eyes. ‘Hell,’ he said aloud.
He sniffed, swallowing tears. He squared his shoulders and headed back towards the East End at a brisk walk. Today’s triumph had been soured. He knew he was a fool to care about Daisy – clearly she did not care about him – but, all the same, it broke his heart that she was throwing herself away on Boy Fitzherbert.
He tried to put her out of his mind.
The police were getting back into their buses and leaving the scene. Lloyd had not been surprised by their brutality – he had lived in the East End all his life, and it was a rough neighbourhood – but their anti-Semitism had shocked him. They had called every woman a Jewish whore, every man a Jew bastard. In Germany the police had supported the Nazis and sided with the Brownshirts. Would they do the same here? Surely not!
The crowd at Gardiner’s Corner had begun to rejoice. The Jewish Lads’ Brigade band was playing a jazz tune for men and women to dance to, and bottles of whisky and gin were passed from hand to hand. Lloyd decided to go to the London Hospital and check on Millie. Then he should probably go to the Jewish Council headquarters and break the news to Bernie that Millie had been hurt.
Before he got any further he ran into Lenny Griffiths. ‘We sent the buggers packing!’ Lenny said excitedly.
‘We did, too.’ Lloyd grinned.
Lenny lowered his voice. ‘We beat the Fascists here, and we’re going to beat them in Spain, too.’
‘When are you leaving?’
‘Tomorrow. Me and Dave are catching a train to Paris in the morning.’
Lloyd put his arm around Lenny’s shoulders. ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said.
4
1937
Volodya Peshkov bent his head against the driving snow as he walked across the bridge over the Moscow River. He wore a heavy greatcoat, a fur hat, and a stout pair of leather boots. Few Muscovites were so well dressed. Volodya was lucky.
He always had good boots. His father, Grigori, was an army commander. Grigori was not a high-flyer: although he was a hero of the Bolshevik revolution and a personal acquaintance of Stalin, his career had stalled at some point in the twenties. All the same, the family had always lived comfortably.
Volodya himself
His greatest piece of luck had been meeting Werner Franck in Berlin, while his father had been a military attache at the Soviet Embassy there. Werner had been at the same school in a more junior class. Learning that young Werner hated Fascism, Volodya had suggested to him that he could best oppose the Nazis by spying for the Russians.
Werner had been only fourteen years old then, but he was now eighteen, he worked at the Air Ministry, he hated the Nazis even more, and he had a powerful radio transmitter and a code book. He was resourceful and courageous, taking dreadful risks and gathering priceless information. And Volodya was his contact.
Volodya had not seen Werner for four years, but he remembered him vividly. Tall with striking red-blond hair, Werner looked and acted older than he was, and even at fourteen he had been enviably successful with women.
Werner had recently tipped him off about Markus, a diplomat at the German embassy in Moscow who was secretly a Communist. Volodya had sought Markus out and recruited him as a spy. For some months now Markus had been supplying a stream of reports which Volodya translated into Russian and passed to his boss. The latest was a fascinating account of how pro-Nazi American business leaders were supplying the right-wing Spanish rebels with trucks, tyres and oil. Texaco’s chairman, the Hitler-admiring Torkild Rieber, was using the company’s tankers to smuggle oil to the rebels in defiance of a specific request from President Roosevelt.
Volodya was on his way to meet Markus now.
He walked along Kutuzovsky Prospekt and turned towards the Kiev Station. Their rendezvous today was a workingmen’s bar near the station. They never used the same place twice, but finished each meeting by arranging the next one: Volodya was meticulous about tradecraft. They always used cheap bars or cafes where Markus’s diplomatic colleagues would never dream of going. If somehow Markus were to fall under suspicion and be followed by a German counter-espionage agent, Volodya would know, for such a man would stand out from the other customers.
This place was called the Ukraine Bar. Like most buildings in Moscow, it was a timber structure. The windows were steamed up, so at least it would be warm inside. But Volodya did not go in immediately. There were further precautions to be taken. He crossed the street and ducked into the entrance of an apartment house. He stood in the cold hallway, looking out through a small window, watching the bar.
He wondered if Markus would show up. He always had, in the past, but Volodya could not feel sure. If he did show up, what information would he bring? Spain was the hot issue in international politics, but Red Army Intelligence was also passionately interested in German armaments. How many tanks were they producing per month? How many Mauser M34 machine guns per day? How good was the new Heinkel He 111 bomber? Volodya longed for such information to pass to his boss, Major Lemitov.
Half an hour went by, and Markus did not come.
