‘Well, we’ve done our job,’ David answered shortly. ‘He wants to get out of here.’
Ben said, ‘Would you two agree he’s holding something back? About his brother?’
David looked at Geoff, who nodded slowly. ‘Yes.’
‘He’s at the end of his tether,’ David said.
‘So,’ Ben asked. ‘Where do things go now?’
‘I don’t know,’ David answered. ‘We have to report back.’
‘That woman with you, she’s in charge of this op, isn’t she?’
‘Natalia? Yes.’
‘I’ve heard she’s good.’
David looked at Ben. ‘Frank trusts me to get him out of here. But not enough to tell me about his brother. And I don’t think he trusts you completely, he doesn’t understand why you’re helping him.’
Ben laughed dryly. ‘No’ such a heidcase as he looks then, is he?’
David said angrily, ‘You scared him into phoning me.’
Ben’s face reddened. ‘Don’t you get all moral with me,’ he snapped. ‘Mister fuckin’ la-di-da. You’ve been given a job to do, just like me.’
‘David,’ Geoff said, putting out a hand. ‘He’s right.’
David brushed it off, glaring back at Ben. ‘I care about Frank, and don’t you bloody forget it.’
‘Dae ye?’ Ben leaned forward and spoke with a quiet, angry intensity. ‘Then you ought tae be thinking about how to get him out of here, pal, before he tells whatever it is that’s so bloody secret to the wrong people. Because if that happens, Mosley’s guys will take him and they won’t fanny around. I got done over in ’41, when the Communist Party was banned, that’s how I got this nose. But that’s nothing to what they’ll dae to him. They’ll squeeze him like a bloody orange. And none of us wants to see that.’ He stood up. ‘Now come on, do you want people to hear us arguing, you silly prick?’
‘Look here—’
‘We all want him safe,’ Geoff said firmly, looking Ben in the eye.
David took a deep breath. ‘All right. But don’t forget what I said.’
‘And dinnae you forget I’m the one keeping him safe, day after every fuckin’ day. Now come on.’
Ben took them outside, locking and unlocking door after door. There was rain in the mist now. Natalia was still sitting in the car. She had turned the engine off; David thought she must be cold. The three men stood on the steps. Ben looked around, then handed an envelope to David. ‘I’ve lifted the key to Frank’s flat from the stores,’ he said curtly. ‘You’re going over there now, yes?’
‘That’s right. Natalia has the address.’
‘And the place in town to drop the keys off afterwards? Natalia knows where?’
‘I think so.’
‘Good. I have tae get the keys back to the stores, or I’ll be in the shit.’
‘We’ll make sure they’re returned.’
Ben said, ‘Right then.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’ve been told it might become necessary to spring Frank, get him out of here. If he knows something important and he’s keeping mum, that’s maybe just what the big bosses will decide to do. Try and get him out of this country.’
‘But how could he be got out,’ David asked, ‘with the security this place has? And if anyone tried to take him by force, he’d yell the place down.’
Ben spoke quietly: ‘There’s only one person who’d be able to inject him with something to keep him quiet, then persuade the other staff they was authorized to take Frank outside. Me. Then I’d have a price on my head, pal, and my job gone too. I’d be well and truly fucked. But you can tell them in London I’ll do it if I’m told to.’
David saw Ben’s utter determination. He nodded. ‘All right,’ he said quickly.
‘Now fuckin’ hook it.’
They all looked round as the main door behind them opened and a patient was led out by an attendant, holding him by the arm. Ben nodded to him as he led the man down a side path. The attendant wore a peaked cap but the patient was bareheaded; he didn’t react as the cold rain fell on him. Ben looked at David again. He said, more calmly, ‘Dinnae worry. I’ll keep him safe.’
DAVID TOOK THE BACK SEAT AGAIN; he could think better there.
They told Natalia about what had happened at the hospital: Frank’s quiet desperation, his unwillingness to talk about his brother, the visit from the police. She thought for a moment, then said, ‘So you think he may have some secret.’
‘Maybe. Or perhaps it was just something personal.’
‘My sense was it was more than that,’ Geoff said quietly.
‘And the police,’ Natalia said. ‘It is worrying they are still interested.’
‘That chap Ben said he didn’t tell them any more than he had already.’
‘They may come back,’ Natalia replied.
David looked at her face in the mirror. ‘So what happens now?’
‘It will be for Mr Jackson and the people above him to decide.’
‘If Frank were to be got out of England,’ Geoff asked, ‘how would that be done? It would have to be by sea.’
‘I don’t know.’
David saw Natalia give Geoff a quick, sharp look. He thought, is that what the people at the top are planning? He wondered, too, if Frank had some big military secret, the Resistance might want it for themselves. He realized suddenly that although he had been active among them for more than two years he still thought of the Resistance as an entity separate from him. He said, ‘How could you get Frank to the coast? It’s well over seventy miles in any direction.’
‘And he’d probably try to get away,’ Geoff added.
Natalia looked at David in the mirror. ‘Unless he was travelling with someone he trusted.’
‘You mean me?’ David frowned. ‘I doubt he’d trust me that far. Especially if I’ve said I’ll help him, and then I kidnap him.’
‘And what will happen to him if he knows something important and lets it slip in that place?’ It was more or less what Ben had said. Natalia went on, ‘I am not being unfeeling. I am sorry for your friend. But nothing good can happen to him in that asylum.’
‘I know,’ David said. Natalia was still studying him, the slightly angled Tartar eyes hard again, calculating.
As they approached the southern outskirts of the city the weather was still foggy, a wet mist through which light rain fell. They came onto a main road, driving past a complex of low factory buildings from which they heard a continual mechanical crashing. They passed a vast space where hundreds of identical cars stood, end to end. A sign by the gates was marked
‘That must be the big Austin Morris factory,’ Geoff said. David saw there had been a fire in a tall building beside the road; it was a black skeleton. Geoff continued: ‘I heard an office block got burned down last month. The workers rioted over not being allowed to join a union. It’s not just happening in the North any more.’
Natalia said, ‘Remember that lorryload of soldiers we saw on the way up? Things are getting rough in Yorkshire.’
‘There’ll be a lot of bloodshed,’ David said.
‘What else are people to do?’ she demanded.
‘What are you hoping for?’ David asked her. ‘The workers’ revolution? I think that’s what that nurse Ben’s after. I doubt Churchill would agree.’
‘The Resistance is an alliance of anti-Fascist forces, like every resistance movement in Europe. When we win, there will be elections and people can choose their own government. And, no, I am not looking for the revolution.’
Geoff said, ‘I wish we could go back to where we were before the war.’
‘That is a dream,’ Natalia answered flatly. ‘Things will get worse before they get better. Whatever comes in
