murderer and was pursuing a plan whose villainy Thorn could only guess at. Any doubts that Thorn had had on that score had been removed by what he’d seen in Ava’s flat three days earlier. But, as Thorn knew full well, believing in Seaforth’s guilt was one thing; getting C to accept it was quite another. Seaforth was C’s golden boy, the goose that was laying the golden eggs with the gilt-edged intelligence reports he was getting out of Germany with such clockwork regularity. Thorn felt a wave of despondency sweep over him as he went into C’s office, leaving the staccato noise of the twins’ typewriters behind him on the other side of the thick oak door.
The room was in fact an office only in name. It was far more like the living room of an expensively furnished apartment, and HQ rumour had it that an equally capacious bedroom complete with a four-poster bed lay on the other side of the closed door behind C’s large mahogany desk. True or not, there was no doubt that there was a staircase or an elevator that allowed C to come and go undetected — an advantage that added considerably to his mystique and prestige.
This lateral extension of HQ into the neighbouring house in the terrace was all C’s doing. Albert Morrison in his days as chief had inhabited a dreary office in the main building with small unwashed windows and second-hand Ministry of Works furniture, from where he had issued his directives amidst an organized chaos of books and papers. But C had refused to follow suit. Instead he had somehow managed to persuade the penny-pinchers over at the Treasury to approve the cost of purchasing the new space and converting it to his specifications, and Thorn had to admit that the results were impressive.
C came out from behind his desk to shake his deputy’s hand and ushered him to one of two deep leather armchairs that were positioned on either side of a large marble fireplace in which a crackling fire was burning, made to Thorn’s astonishment of logs as well as coal. It was late in the day and the light was beginning to fade in the world outside, and the flames threw dancing shadows on the tall ceiling. A rectangular eighteenth-century portrait in an ornate frame above the mantelpiece showed one of C’s ancestors dressed in the uniform of the Household Cavalry, sitting astride an enormous warhorse with snorting nostrils.
C sat down opposite his visitor. He was in his shirtsleeves, and a half-smoked Havana cigar burned between the fingers of his left hand, sending a column of thick blue-grey smoke up towards the chandelier overhead. The smell reminded Thorn of his visit to Churchill’s bunker with Seaforth two weeks earlier. He bristled at the memory, feeling a surge of anger against his enemy, but then he took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down.
‘I have a confession to make,’ he began, trying to sound contrite.
‘Well, maybe I’m the wrong person to bring it to,’ said C with a smile. ‘I’m not a priest, you know.’
‘It’s not that kind of confession,’ said Thorn. ‘It’s about the decoded message that Hargreaves showed us at the morning conference ten days ago.’
‘The one sent by someone in Germany pretending to me?’
‘Yes. I took it to Albert Morrison.’
‘You did what?’ C looked shocked, as if he couldn’t believe what Thorn had just said.
‘I thought he might know who the sender was. I know I was wrong-’
‘You’re damned right you were,’ said C, interrupting angrily. ‘That message was a top-secret document and Albert had no security clearance. I’m surprised at you, Alec. A man of your experience should have known better than to do something so stupid.’
‘I agree,’ said Thorn, bowing his head. ‘And I’m sorry. Believe me, I’ll regret what I did to my dying day. But I need you to know what happened afterwards. Albert wasn’t home, so I left him a note, and then, as soon as he got it, he came over here in a taxi.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because the police told me. I’d already gone home, but I think somebody intercepted him in the street out there,’ he said, pointing through the cigar smoke over towards the window, ‘and guessed why he was here. And then that somebody followed him home and murdered him because he knew too much. I’ve thought about it over and over again and that has to be what happened. It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise — that Albert rushes over here and then two hours later he’s dead.’
‘Coincidences happen,’ said C, sounding unconvinced. ‘I read in the newspaper that Albert’s son-in-law has been charged with the murder. I don’t think the police would have done that if they had no evidence, now, would they?’
‘Well, that’s just it,’ Thorn said eagerly. ‘I was at Ava’s, Albert’s daughter’s, flat when they came to arrest him. He’s a doctor called Bertram Brive. But when I first got there, Bertram was out, and Ava was with someone we both know. She was with Charles Seaforth.’
‘Ah, was she now?’ said C archly. ‘I was wondering when the conversation was going to come round to him.’
‘Hear me out,’ said Thorn, ignoring the gibe. ‘I need you to understand the sequence of events. Albert’s murdered and Seaforth, who hardly knew him, turns up at the funeral and starts paying attention to Ava, whom he’s never met before. And then three days later he’s in her flat when she finds a cuff link in her husband’s desk that matches one the killer left at the murder scene. And not only that — I got her to admit that Seaforth picked the locks on the desk drawers to enable her to look. There was no one else in the room, and he had the perfect opportunity to plant the evidence.’
‘Why would he do that?’ asked C, looking unimpressed.
‘Because he murdered Albert and he needs someone else to take the blame. Can’t you see what I’m saying?’ asked Thorn, allowing a note of special pleading to creep into his voice.
‘Yes, I do see. But I also wonder whether you’re allowing your emotions to get the better of you?’ asked C, leaning forward with an air of apparent concern. ‘Albert’s death must have been a great blow to you. I know how close the two of you were. And we both know you’ve had issues with young Seaforth for some time.’
‘Are you saying it’s affected my judgement?’ asked Thorn angrily.
‘Well, has it?’
‘No, absolutely not. You’re right I don’t like Seaforth, but that’s not the reason I’m here. There are other things he’s done …’
‘Like what?’
‘Well, look at the way everyone else’s German agents have gone west — put up against the wall or sent to labour camps. But his intelligence gets better each week. Doesn’t that tell you anything?’
‘We’ve been over all that,’ said C, shifting in his chair, beginning at last to show signs of impatience. ‘Have you got anything else, Alec, or is this really just another one of your hunches?’ he asked, his voice laced with sarcasm.
But Thorn had come too far now to back down. ‘Did you get Hargreaves’s memo the other day?’ he asked. ‘About the earlier radio message that they’ve matched to the one we discussed in the meeting, both using the same code?’
‘Yes. Sent four days earlier, giving a date for a drop, no doubt from an aeroplane, but no location. Signed C. Not exactly a breakthrough, is it?’ said C, who prided himself on his encyclopaedic memory for all the documents that passed across his desk.
‘The place had obviously been agreed in advance,’ said Thorn. ‘But that’s not what matters. The point is that this isn’t some run-of-the-mill mission like you thought it was before. The date of the drop was the same day as the radio message, which means that the agent receiving the message wasn’t likely to be the one picking up whatever equipment or documents were being flown in. There’s got to be a sleeper of some kind monitoring the location. And the people involved are using radios and a code that’s been hard to break, which points to a sophisticated operation, one that we should be taking seriously.’
‘And MI5 are taking it seriously,’ said C. ‘I can assure you of that. It’s just it’s their job to deal with it, not ours. We’re in the business of foreign intelligence, in case you’ve forgotten.’
‘Unless it’s one of our agents who’s involved,’ Thorn countered. ‘Did you know that Seaforth was away on the day after the message about the drop was sent? He never came into work at all.’
‘Gone to meet the sleeper agent instead, I suppose you’re saying. Did he give a reason for his absence?’
‘He phoned Jarvis in the morning to say he was sick. But he looked healthy enough when he came in the next day. I can tell you that.’
C took a pull on his cigar, looking silently at Thorn as if weighing all that he’d said. ‘It’s not enough, Alec, and I think you know that,’ he said finally. ‘What you’re telling me is all circumstantial. You say that your dislike for Seaforth has nothing to do with you accusing him, but I’m not so sure of that. I’m sorry to say it, but, unconsciously
