no nearer to completion than my crossword, in which I had made STALLION into STARLING. The clue to 19 down was ‘Bright red’. I wrote down BALAS — a red ruby.
‘Bright red,’ I thought; perhaps I should write TOMAS; he had bright red hair which he dyed. Why did he dye it? Was he bright red in the political sense? H.K. said he had fought in Spain. Would H.K. know, and if he did would he tell me the truth? It was alarming that so few people told me the truth. Fought in Spain, I thought. I wonder how many Englishmen fought in Spain? The Home Office keeps a file devoted to Englishmen who fought in Spain. I would ask Jean to study it.
41 It’s moving
Jean met me at Paddington. She was still driving Dawlish’s old Riley.
‘What is it you do to Dawlish, that he lends his pride and joy?’
‘You have a disgusting mind.’ She gave me a girlish smile.
‘No kidding, how do you get him to trust you with it? He sends the doorman out to watch me when I park near it — let alone trust me inside when the wheels are moving.’
‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ said Jean. ‘I
‘My compliments tend to oversteer,’ I told her, ‘and I end up in a ditch backwards.’
‘You should try a touch of brake before changing direction.’
‘You win,’ I said. She always wins.
The Admiralty is next door to the Whitehall Theatre, where they get paid for farce. The policeman spotted Dawlish’s motor and let us pull across Whitehall into the courtyard among the official cars, their smooth black contours heavy with wax and crowded with reflection. Under the porch hung an old lantern, and brasswork was burnished to an illegible sheen. Inside the entrance a vast grate of incandescent coals flickered electric light through its artful plastic embers. A doorman in a braided frock-coat directed me past a life-size Nelson in a red niche who stared down with two blind eyes of stone.
The cinema projector and screen had been set up in one of the upstairs rooms. One of our own people from Charlotte Street was threading it up and opening and closing little boxes of blinding light. There were three senior officers there when we arrived, and we all shook hands after a sailor on the door was persuaded to allow us in.
The first minutes were hilarious. There was this boy Victor from the Swiss section, dressed up in long shorts with the elastic of his underpants grappling with his belly. But the serious stuff was well done. An old black Ford threaded its way over the uneven Portuguese cobblestones, stopped, and an old gentleman climbed out. The tall thin figure walked up a flight of steps and disappeared into the black maw of a church portal.
Another shot, same man, medium close-up moving across camera. He turned towards the camera. The gold spectacles glinted in the sun. Our photographer had probably complained that he was blocking the view, for da Cunha walked a little more quickly out of the frame. There were fifteen minutes of film of da Cunha. He was the same imperious gaunt figure that had given me a brown-paper parcel on a night that seemed so long ago. Without warning the screen flashed white and the film spool sang a note of release.
The three naval men got to their feet, but Jean asked them to stay a moment longer to see something else. A still picture flashed on the screen. It was an old creased snapshot. A group of army and naval officers were sitting, arms folded and heads erect. Jean said, ‘This photograph was taken at Portsmouth in 1938. Commander Andrews sorted it out for us.’ I nodded to Commander Andrews across the darkened room. Jean went on, ‘Commander Andrews is third from the left, front row. At the end of the front row there is a German naval officer — Lieutenant Knobel.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
The operator changed the slide. It was a part of the same picture enlarged, a big close-up of the young German sailor’s face. The projector-operator went to the screen with an ink marker. He drew spectacles on Lieutenant Knobel. The picture was very light in tone and now he drew in a new hairline on the plastic screen. He drew a darkened eye-socket.
‘O.K.,’ I said. It was da Cunha as a young man.
42 Hidden within treason
BRITISH NAVAL OFFICER FACES GRAVE CHARGES
BEARING ARMS AGAINST COMRADES
SIX CHARGES OF TREACHERY
The 1945 press cuttings that Jean had photostated for me lay on the dusty table in the Admiralty Library. The dates on the cuttings helped me to locate the file I wanted to see. It had a grey cover with a reference number. The pages were fastened together with three star-shaped clips and numbered to prevent loss of one of them.[28]
Out of the medical envelope slid cards, flimsies and reports. Here it was, the clincher:
O/E Bernard Thomas Peterson
Red-haired man. Complexion white 
freckles
Eyes: light-blue. Height 5? 9??
Weight: 9 stone 10 lb. Attentive>excitable
Birthmark: scar right ear-lobe. Intelligent.
This was Fernie Tomas. Jean’s search of the Spanish Civil War files at the Home Office had found a name curiously like Fernie Tomas — Bernie Thomas: otherwise Bernard Thomas Peterson.
So Fernie was an expert frogman, a renegade R.N. officer. I remembered the two-stroke cycle that gave Giorgio a ride in the night, the capsizing of the boat ‘by a frogman’ and Giorgio’s voice as he told me that the stars were going out. And da Cunha had been a German naval officer; they made quite a pair.
My hands were black with dust. I borrowed the soap from the bent tin and used the small stiff towel that was kept for visitors to the Admiralty Library.
‘Don’t forget your pass,’ someone called, ‘you’ll never get out of the building without it.’
43 Friday on a Portuguese calendar
To wake up in the sun in Albufeira is to be reborn. I lay in the no-man’s-land of half-asleep and hugged the crater of bedclothes, afraid to advance into the gunfire of wide-awake. The sound of the town dripped into my consciousness; the tinkle and clink of bell-laden bridles; the hoof taps, and the rumble of tall wheels over the cobblestones; the high note as trucks came up the hill in bottom gear; the crackle of water dropping from overflow pipes on to the beach below, and the squawk of cats exchanging blows and fur. I lit a Gauloise and eased my toes into the daylight beyond the blankets. From the beach came the rhythmic chanting of men heaving at the sardine net, and from the seagulls hoarse cries as they slid down the onshore wind to pounce upon discarded slivers of fish.
I stepped on to the balcony. The stone floor was hot underfoot, and on the grey wooden chairs sat Buddha- like cats squinting into the sunlight. Charly was fixing coffee and toast in the kitchen, holding the front of her silk housecoat closed. I am pleased to tell you that a lot of the coffee-making was a two-handed job. She stood against
