co-ordinate attacks on convoys in and out of Freetown. One or more of our codes has been broken.
Short and thin. But there were those little signs that meant so much to an experienced eye that never made it into a report. He wondered if he should have included a few:
…the prisoner Brand kept touching his lip…
…Kapitan zur See Mohr lost his composure when codes were mentioned and refused to make eye contact…
All this was evidence too but it counted for nothing because the Section’s work was not respected in the Division. You had to have friends to put your case. He would send Winn a copy and Fleming too.
‘How was it?’ Charlie Samuels was standing beside his desk: ‘You’ve been hammering that typewriter without mercy.’
Lindsay glanced beyond him into the body of the room: even Dick Graham was busy.
‘I’m preparing my defence,’ said Lindsay quietly.
‘I thought you might be. Checkland wants to see me again,’ Samuels looked at his watch, ‘in ten minutes.’
His eyes were roving restlessly in every direction but Lindsay’s, and he was nibbling a thumbnail like an anxious schoolboy summoned to his headmaster’s study.
‘Rest easy, Charlie, it’s my fault, he knows that,’ said Lindsay.
‘Yes, well…’ He sounded uncertain.
‘Here.’ Lindsay pulled the sheet from the typewriter and offered it to him: ‘Read it, it might help.’
Samuels smiled weakly and shook his head: ‘Not on your Nelly. Surrender followed by an abject apology. Section 11 suits me very well. I hate the sea, and I have family to look after in London.’
‘You’ve never mentioned them.’
‘You’ve never asked.’
It was true. Lindsay felt a little ashamed.
‘Time up,’ said Samuels. ‘Wish me luck.’
Lindsay was still at his desk an hour later, his thoughts flitting from Mohr to Winn to Mary to Mohr. Rich golden light was streaming low through the south-facing windows, casting twisted shadows across the floor as the trees swayed in the gentlest of evening breezes. The office was empty but for the duty Wrens. The other interrogators were sipping pink gins in the mess. The late courier had taken Lindsay’s report to the Admiralty and by now Checkland would have his copy too. He wanted to ring Mary but she would be at her desk in Room 41. Better to ring later and from the privacy of his home.
Turning to the window, he was struggling into his jacket when the door opened behind him. With strange certainty, he knew the person he least wanted to speak to had just stepped into the room.
‘Lindsay, a word.’ There was an ominously satisfied note in his voice.
‘Here?’ asked Lindsay, turning to face him.
Henderson looked at the Wrens; one was bent low over her desk, no doubt keen to impress with her industry, the other busy at a filing cabinet by the door.
‘I say, would you mind leaving us alone? We’ll answer the telephones.’
Lindsay settled into his chair and concentrated on appearing more relaxed than he felt. The last thing he wanted was another unpleasant encounter. The Wrens swept a few personal things into their bags and left without saying a word.
‘You know why I’m here?’
Lindsay leant forward and shook a cigarette from the packet on his desk.
‘Samuels is going. The Director is sending him to a POW camp in the north, an old racecourse. He can’t do much harm there.’
Poor Samuels. Lindsay had the uncomfortable feeling he had presented Checkland with the excuse to get rid of him. He drew deeply on his cigarette, then said: ‘Pleased?’
Henderson coloured a little: ‘Not at all pleased. Two officers in the Section disciplined, intelligence sources put at risk…’
‘Are you sending me to the races too?’
‘I knew that first week you were shadowing me that we had made a mistake.’ There was something like a triumphant ‘told you so’ in Henderson’s voice.
Lindsay could not help smiling; he had begun to find the man’s unrelenting hostility grimly amusing. It was an unfortunate smile. The expression on Henderson’s face changed in an instant from complacent triumph to fury. He made a noise like a bull, half grunt, half moan, and slipped from the edge of the desk he was leaning against as if preparing to charge. Rough words tumbled from him instead: ‘You’re arrogant. You think your decoration allows you to behave just as you like. You’re wrong. You see only a small part of the picture. I wish my sister…’ He was struggling for something sufficiently insulting; ‘…you’re an arrogant German bastard.’
‘Finished, sir?’ Leaning forward a little, Lindsay ground the butt of his cigarette into the ashtray. He did not feel anger, he felt contempt.
‘And what was the Colonel’s message, sir?’
24
Big Ben began to strike half past seven and before its closing chime Mary Henderson was on her feet and walking with brisk purpose through the park. Before her was the Citadel, forbidding even on a warm summer evening, a masterpiece of its kind, featureless and impartial. Inside it, the wheels of the machine were turning still, churning out an endless stream of paper. A cheery word to the guards at the Mall entrance then on into the Admiralty’s cool marble hall. A group of crisply dressed Staff officers had just left the Director’s office and were chatting noisily at his door. Mary slipped past, head bent, anxious to catch no one’s eye.
‘Dr Henderson…’
It was the Director’s Assistant. She turned to greet him:
‘Ian, how are you?’
Fleming reached for her hand, then kissed her warmly on both cheeks: ‘Lovely, even in your customary academic dress, and do you know, I was just thinking of you.’
Mary raised her eyebrows sceptically. She had known Ian Fleming since childhood, an old family friend who had been at Eton for a time with her brother. But he was an adventurer — fine words had been followed more than once by a direct challenge to her virtue. A handsome thirty-three, Fleming was tall, immaculate, with wavy hair, tired close-set eyes, a strong jaw and a severe mouth that turned down a little disdainfully at the corners. She had always stoutly resisted his attempts to seduce her — that was why they were still on good terms.
‘I’ve just left the Director. We were talking about your chap. Your name was mentioned too,’ he said, squeezing her hand gently between both of his.
Mary coloured a little and slipped free: ‘Why on earth…’
‘It isn’t a secret, is it? Don’t academics take lovers?’
‘Only sensitive ones.’
Fleming gave her a small dry smile: ‘Have you spoken to him today?’
Mary shook her head.
‘Then come with me.’ He guided her by the elbow into a transept off the main corridor, then through a green baize door into a small office. ‘You don’t, do you?’ he asked, waving a packet of Morland cigarettes at her. ‘Very wise, they’re rather strong,’ and he gestured towards a chair in front of the desk. The room was thick with the smell of stale tobacco, well ordered, bright, unremarkable but for the view across Horse Guards to the Foreign Office and the garden of Number 10 Downing Street.
