Now he was over six hundred miles north-east of Munich – lost in the bleak wastelands of East Prussia. How the hell he was going to reach Munich, Paco, Switzerland, he had no idea. And in a few hours – after a fourteen day nerve-racking wait – he was supposed to meet the Fuhrer. He was still remembering Ryder Street when the door was opened quietly, Christa Lundt slipped inside, closed the door and leaned against it, her well-shaped breasts heaving.
'What's wrong now?'
He was away from the bunk in seconds, watching her closely as he walked towards her. Christa's face was bloodless, but when she spoke her voice was low and controlled.
'Why do you say now – as though I'm neurotic?' 'Get to the point..'
'As if you – we – hadn't enough trouble with that Abwehr man, Hartmann, sniffing all over the place and asking endless questions. He's been here two weeks, you know..'
'Get to the point,' he repeated.
'The Gestapo have arrived. They're enquiring about you..'
All thoughts of Ryder Street were wiped from his mind.
In wartime the turn of great events often hinges on the most minor of incidents. The same night Colonel Browne came within an ace of being killed.
It was nine o'clock at night. Still March, but only just. Browne was returning to his Ryder Street office and to reach his destination he had to cross Piccadilly, a wide thoroughfare. He had had a tricky time making his way down Dover Street. A heavy mist had drifted up from the river – almost a fog.
He could see his hand in front of his face – but it was a blurred hand. Moisture settled on his skin and the dank atmosphere chilled. There seemed to be no one else about. It was very silent – the dense grey vapour muffled all sound. Browne plodded on, feeling his way. It was too damnably easy to drift off the pavement and find yourself in the middle of the road without knowing it.
There were no street lights. The blackout was total. Even if a badly-drawn curtain had exposed a shaft of light from a window the mist would have masked it. He became aware of the squelch of his damp shoes, a gentle slushing sound. Then he realized that his own shoes were not in the least waterlogged. The sound was being made by another pair of shoes…'
Behind him. Don't panic! Instinctively his hand touched his breast pocket under his raincoat. He shouldn't be carrying the papers he had brought away from the meeting. But he wanted to study them again in the quiet of his own office.
He wished he had asked Tim Whelby, his assistant from Prae Wood, to join him for a drink. Whelby was proving to be a great asset. Quiet and attentive, he devoured a mountain of work. Often, while at Ryder Street, he stayed all hours at the office, going on long after everyone else had gone home…'
Browne stopped suddenly and listened carefully. The slush of the faintly-heard footsteps behind him had stopped. It was his imagination. Bloody nerves! He was getting old and over-cautious. He stiffened his back and walked on. Where the hell was Piccadilly?
The footsteps – treading his own deliberate pace – had resumed. He was certain of it now. Browne wished he was carrying the. 38 revolver locked away in his desk. The devil of a lot of use the weapon was lying in a blasted drawer…'
The shape like a leviathan loomed in the mist and – too late – he heard the slow chug of its engine. He walked into the side of the crawling double-decker bus, slammed his head into its bulk. His vision spun. He fell backwards, caught his foot on something upraised, regained his balance and reached forward with fumbling hands.
There was blood on his forehead, he was certain. Nothing seemed where it should be. The thought that he was suffering from concussion flashed through his mind and then he was staggering. God! He had been walking straight across Piccadilly without realizing it! A hand from nowhere grasped his right arm firmly.
'Are you all right? You just walked into a bus..'
The voice expressed genuine concern, the voice of Tim Whelby.
'Do you think I should be drinking?' Colonel Browne wondered aloud.
'One brandy can do no harm,' Whelby replied in his gentle voice.
They were sitting in a corner at The Red Lion, a pub just off Jermyn Street. Whelby had escorted his chief back to Ryder Street where the Colonel, despite the fact that he felt shaken up, had immediately locked the papers he was carrying in his safe. It was Whelby who had suggested they walked the short distance to the pub.
Browne sipped at his brandy and looked round to check who else was present. It was an old-fashioned place, a solid polished bar counter, the barman at the far end polishing glasses out of earshot. An American soldier stood near the barman absorbed in conversation with a girl who looked like a high-class streetwalker.
The smooth liquid warmed and soothed his rattled nerves. His head ached and was bruised where he had connected with the bus. Browne was trying to reach a difficult decision. By his side Whelby sensed this and kept quiet while he drank his Scotch. His presence was relaxing, Browne was thinking. They had chosen the right sort of chap for Prae Wood. Whelby was in charge of counter-espionage operations in Spain and Portugal. He drank rather a lot – but so did the others marooned out at St Albans.
'I could have got myself killed back there,' Browne observed. His speech was slightly slurred. 'Something I'm carrying in my head – nothing written down anywhere – would have perished with me.
'It will never happen again,' Whelby reassured him. He showed no interest in Browne's reference to a secret inside his head. `I'm going for a refill. Why don't you just stay with the one you've got..'
Despite his headache, Browne's mind was still sharp. Any suspicion that Whelby was trying to get him drunk was dispelled by what had just been said. If anything, it reinforced his feeling of confidence in his assistant.
'Cheers!' Whelby had returned with another large Scotch. 'Let me know when you want to go home.
'I like it here. You can think without being disturbed by a call from Downing Street.'
He sipped more brandy and felt even more well-disposed towards Whelby. A sound chap who could keep a secret and not blab it in some club all over London. Browne had seen enough of that. Careless Talk Costs Lives. He turned and looked straight at Whelby who returned the 'appraisal with a diffident smile.
'You should be with us for quite a while,' Browne ruminated.
'Depends on how I handle the job..'
'Depends on me. Getting your teeth into Jerry down there in Franco's backyard? Spent time in Spain before the war, I understand.'
'Early days yet,' Whelby replied and left it at that.
Browne finished off the brandy and sat up erect. He'd decided. 'A bad mistake that – not sharing Operation Eagle's Nest with anyone. He revolved his empty glass in slow circles.
'We've sent a chap called Lindsay to meet the Fuhrer. Knew him before the war, Lindsay did.. He paused. No point in going into details as to how Lindsay had made his way inside the Third Reich. 'Point is we had to give Lindsay an escape route when he completed his mission. He has to get to Munich – the rendezvous point is that great ugly cathedral with twin onion domes..'
'The Frauenkirche,' Whelby murmured, staring across the room. The American soldier was leaving with the girl.
'You visited Germany?' Browne queried.
Briefly,' Whelby replied and relapsed into silence, not looking at his companion.
'The Frauenkirche it is. When were you in Germany?'
Browne was more alert than at any moment since his near-fatal encounter with the bus. He was on the verge of probing Whelby's background. The latter sensed Browne's mood of revelation drifting away. He must say something.
'I was a member of the Anglo-German Fellowship. Keeping tabs on the Nazis, It's all on file…'
'Quite so, quite so.' Browne felt he had overstepped the mark. Better get it off his chest – show Whelby he regarded him as one of his crowd. 'We have an agent, Paco – pretty silly code-name. The agent will rendezvous with Lindsay at 1100 hours – wait there for him every Monday. Get him over the border into Switzerland. Someone else should know in case I meet another bus!'
Browne left it like that, ending with a joke which made Whelby smile again. Shortly afterwards they left the pub. Browne refused a helping hand even though he stumbled on the step leaving. Mentally he was relieved: Lindsay now had back-up. Physically he felt terrible. Splitting headache. All he wanted to do was to fall into
