Four pages later was a photostat, headed: Confidential from H.M. Honorary Consul, Mr D. M. Price, Vera Cruz, Mexico. 18 May 1944. The incident reported on the night of 12 May has been fully investigated by officers Diaz and Guarez of the Vera Cruz Criminal Police. The death of R. de V. Frisby was recorded in the General Hospital, following a car accident in which two British Subjects, employees of ABCO, were concerned. Since the Mexican authorities have not involved the British, the identity of the two employees concerned need not be included in the record.
There followed a scribbled memo in the margin which Hawn had some trouble deciphering. He thought it said: ‘“T” (or “I”) S. and R. are damned lucky. The Mexics take an extraordinarily lenient view of drunken driving. Somebody might take a note of this.’ It was unsigned.
Six pages further on, he found a smaller, rather smudged photostat: AMERICA-BRITANNIC CONSORTIUM. (UK Division, Caribbean.) Confidential Report to Sir Richard Maynard, Foreign Office, 30 June 1944. Following a fatal accident outside Vera Cruz last month, I have arranged for one of our personnel, Mr Alan Oscar Rice, to be interviewed by SOC/Division Officers, Major D. Dyson and Captain G. Simpson. Their report contained in File 237/42 ABF.
Hawn disregarded the second, slimmer file whose code was not what he wanted. He returned to the computer desk and asked for File 237/42 ABF. The woman fed the information into the machine; it hummed, then stopped. No card appeared. ‘Are you sure you’ve got the right code?’ she asked.
Hawn showed her the bulky AJBCO file. She looked faintly puzzled. ‘According to the computer, it should be stored.’
‘What does it mean if the computer rejects it?’
‘It means that the information has either been reclassified or is missing.’
Hawn then asked her if they had anything on Alan Oscar Rice, German refugee, granted asylum in the US in 1943, and worked for ABCO in the Caribbean, 1943-44.
She fed the card into the computer, and a moment later the information came back: all references to Dr Alan Oscar Rice were contained in the file he had been studying. He next asked for Shanklin, Special Operations Executive, later employee of ABCO in the Caribbean, 1943-44.
Shanklin’s SOE period was little more than a detailed elaboration of his Who’s Who entry, with the potentially useful information that he had spent five months in Istanbul between November 1942 and April 1943, where his duties were to recruit agents. His career in the Caribbean referred once again to the ABCO file that Hawn had been studying.
There wasn’t much to learn about Toby Shanklin, except that he might or he might not have once been guilty of causing death through dangerous, even drunken driving on an empty road outside Vera Cruz. Hawn had made a note that there had been no mention of witnesses — except for Shanklin and Rice.
Yet HM’s Vice-Consul’s masters had been worried enough to send two officers all the way across the Atlantic to investigate de Vere Frisby’s demise, and had drawn a blank. Either the paperwork had been scanty, or it had been suppressed.
Hawn had just time for a pub lunch, before going on to the London Library, where he looked up the complete Foreign Office Lists for 1939-44.
Rupert de Vere Frisby was born in 1916 in Berkhamsted: graduated with First-Class Honours in PPE from Trinity College, Oxford, 1936; entered Foreign Service 1937, posted to Baghdad. 1940-42 worked at Bletchley Park. Served as Information Officer to British Embassy, Lisbon 1942; transferred, Vice-Consul, Istanbul 1942-43; transferred, Vice-Consul, Vera Cruz, Mexico, 1943-44. Died in road accident 12 May 1944.
Not a startling wartime career; but there were several aspects of this cryptic entry which interested Hawn. De Vere Frisby had come down from university with excellent qualifications for the FO; but a top degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics seemed incompatible with the esoteric rigours, four years later, of Bletchley Park — the top secret decoding centre, which had handled the ‘Enigma’ machine.
Hawn guessed that Frisby had been employed as some kind of political evaluator — a job which would have carried enormous responsibility, as well as giving him knowledge of a wide scope of secrets. Yet two years later he was popping up as Information Officer in Lisbon — certainly a cushy capital at that time, as well as one of the most volatile nests of spies and intrigue. It was also well known, on the inside, that FO Information Officers were mere errand boys for the Ministry of Defence, or MIG.
After Lisbon, Rupert de Vere Frisby had been given Istanbul — another neutral capital, and again hardly a dull spot for a young man still of military age: followed by the port of Vera Cruz on the other side of the world, where he had met his untimely death. Except for Bletchley, all his jobs had been Consular. Rupert de Vere Frisby had been a British secret agent.
And he had been killed either by another British agent, or by a Nazi agent who was also a war criminal — depending upon which one of them had been driving that car.
Hawn then checked on the two SOC/Division officers, Dyson and Simpson. Here he drew a blank. Dyson had been drowned in a swimming accident three months after the memo had been written to the Foreign Office; and Simpson had later been murdered by the Gestapo in Slovakia.
When Anna got back that evening, her satchel was bulging with files and photostats, and she was lugging a string bag full of books taken out of the LSE library. She went to
