I Spy (23 page)

“Which gentlemen?”

“The plainclothes policemen he’d arrived with.”

“You were
arrested
! What for?”

“They had an idea I was a German spy.”

The sentence hung in the air for a couple of seconds while important bits of the jigsaw puzzle clicked into place in Trey’s head.

“Oh
I
get it! Wait a second...no I don’t...if they thought you were Gessler, who is German, why did we end up in Constantinople?”

“I was the cat they wanted to set among the pigeons.”

“You were?”

“Sure, especially as I had been supplied with a list of places that it would be very suspicious for a German spy to be seen in.”

“So you weren’t doing business?”

“I was not, no...”

Trey left the fact that his father had been pulling the wool over his eyes and ploughed on to the main question. “So who the heck
is
this Gessler, Pops, and how come he looks like
you, for crying out loud?”

“That’s a whole other story, Trey.” T. Drummond MacIntyre II consulted his watch. “Shall we go and eat? I’ve booked a table at a restaurant and Ahmet’s going
to drive us, I’ll explain everything in the car...”

It turned out to be a one-of-a-kind journey.

After Trey’s father had told Ahmet which restaurant he’d wanted to go to, he sat back, took a cigarette out of his silver case and tapped the cork-tipped end on it.
“There’s something we’ve never told you...” He took his time lighting the cigarette, then put the case and lighter away. “I’m adopted.”

Trey almost fell off the seat. “
Adopted?
” His father nodded. “But...”

“Your mother and I didn’t think it was something we needed bother you with, just yet...it’s not like
you
were the one who was adopted. And we didn’t want you
thinking anything about Gramps and Gramma, like they weren’t your real grandparents.”

“I wouldn’t...” Trey didn’t know
what
to think about
any
thing, truth be told; and then the final piece of the picture came into focus. “Okay,
right...so
this
is how come you get to look like Gessler, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. My mother was German, from Hamburg.”

“So
you’re
German?”

His father shook his head. “I was born in Chicago, where my mother and father had emigrated to a couple of years before; she died when I was only a few weeks old. I have always known this
part of the story, but what I
didn’t
know, until we arrived in London, was that I was one of identical twins.”

“You mean that stinker Gessler’s your
brother
?”

Trey’s father nodded.

“I got stuffed in a trunk and had a
gun
jammed in my ear by my
uncle
?”

“Indeed you did. His –
my
father...
my
real father, for some reason I don’t know, put one of us up for adoption and went back to Hamburg with the other; Gramps and
Gramma Cecilia couldn’t have children of their own, so I was the lucky guy they got instead. And they were never told I had a twin brother.”

“But how...?” Trey felt a huge and quite inexplicable lump in his throat.

“How did I find out the truth?”

“Yeah...” He blinked and swallowed hard.

The car slowed and pulled up by the pavement.

“We’re here, I’ll tell you more when we get inside.”

Ahmet got out and came round to open the passenger door, saluting smartly as they left the car.

Even though he’d already had a very large lunch (just as he’d promised himself he would), Trey still felt – even after what he’d just learned – that he could do
justice to everything the menu had to offer tonight. He walked into the restaurant, taking note of what was on people’s plates for inspiration. Which was why he failed to spot where they were
going, and got the surprise of his life when he went through the door the maitre d’ was holding open and into a private room. Everyone was there, waiting for them: Arthur and Christina with
their parents; Baba Duan and Hatijeh, Evren and Neyla (so smart they were almost unrecognizable), but...

Trey stopped in his tracks. “Why didn’t you invite Ahmet in? You
can’t
make him wait outside!”

“I haven’t, Trey,” his father looked over his shoulder, “he’s just parking the car.”

Trey turned round to see Ahmet, hat in hand and smoothing his hair down, stepping rather shyly into the restaurant as a waiter opened the door for him. “You are the
best
,
Pops!”

It wasn’t long before the conversation came back round to the whys and wherefores, the who-did-this and who-did-thats of the previous few days, and it was after the
waiters had taken the orders that Trey set the question ball rolling again.

“So who was this guy up in Scotland who thought he’d spotted a German spy, Pops?”

“He works for MI6, the British secret service, Trey; good man.” George Stanhope-Leigh dabbed his mouth with his napkin. “He knew of Gessler – we have a file an inch thick
on the man – and when he saw your father that night at dinner his first thought was that he’d stumbled onto some German espionage plot. You were under pretty close surveillance from
that moment on.”

“So how long did it take for you to convince them you weren’t a spy, Mr. MacIntyre?” asked Arthur.

“Not long. They were able to use the new transatlantic cable service and telephone the New York office to verify I was who I said I was. Then, a couple of days later, they came to me with
a proposition.”

“A proposition?” Trey leaned forward.

“They’d done some digging and found out more about my adoption, and, as they said, it’s not often you get handed the identical twin of a German spy on a plate. They wondered,
in their slightly roundabout, but charming English way –” Trey’s father smiled across the table at Arthur and Christina’s parents – “if I might be able to help
them out.”

“I find it is astonishing what people will do, if you ask nicely,” Mrs. Stanhope-Leigh said, taking a sip of white wine.

“Very true, ma’am...”

“But how could
you
help, Pops?”

“All I had to do was go about my business, as normal, but add the trip to Constantinople.”

“But why Constantinople, Mr. MacIntyre?” Arthur queried. “Why not somewhere in Germany?”

“Like Berlin?” added Christina, just to annoy her brother.

“They said they’d been keeping tabs on my twin, now a Colonel in the
Abwehr
, the German secret service; they knew he was up to something down here that had to do with the
Russians, and they wanted to try and put a spanner in the works.”

“Which explains the places you have the inestimable Mr. Ahmet drive you here –” Baba Duan gestured with a small bread roll – “and there to!”

“You know about that?” T. Drummond II looked surprised.

“My baba know about many things...” Evren translated for Neyla and his mother and they both nodded enthusiastically in agreement.

“That he does!” George Stanhope-Leigh laughed.

As the starters were delivered Trey’s father explained that, after talking things over with the US Ambassador in London, he’d agreed to help, but only if he was promised complete
protection, and that neither he nor Trey would be put in any danger. Everything, he said, seemed to go perfectly, his appearance in Constantinople ruffling all the right feathers, especially the
Russians.

“That man with the gun who you threw out of the—” Trey couldn’t stop himself from butting in, realizing too late that this was something he
wasn’t
supposed
to know anything about. “I came home early and heard the shouting... I was, um, hiding behind the chesterfield, Pops, but I wasn’t spying, honest!”

“Really?” Trey’s father raised his eyebrows, but then smiled and decided not to pursue the matter. “As soon as I told George –” he glanced at Mr.
Stanhope-Leigh – “about Mr. Paklov’s visit, we knew things were coming to a boil. The man was clearly not satisfied by my story – true though it was – of me being
merely an American businessman, and he sent people back to get me...the ones who I gather nearly caught you, son.”

“I had also just heard from one of our agents in Nuremberg that Gessler – who had gone back to Germany only a few weeks ago – had left the city, when he
should
have been
keeping an eye on some National Socialist Party rally that was being held there.” Mr. Stanhope-Leigh sat back in his chair. “We thought it wise to assume he’d heard that he had
been seen in Constantinople and needed to find out what was going on down here. All of which was our signal to get you two out.”

“That’s when our ‘best laid plans’ got bent out of shape, Trey, because you weren’t here when George’s men came to pick us up...”

“Very sorry,
effendi
...” Ahmet shrugged in a what-could-
I
-do? way.

“Not in any way your fault, Ahmet,” said T. Drummond II. “Miss Renyard had told Simpson, the butler, she was taking Trey and Arthur to one place, then changed her mind; so the
men sent to get Trey couldn’t find him. They then went to the hotel, but, to compound matters, you were late getting back, Trey. The men assumed this meant you’d been taken straight to
the house with Arthur, and so they managed to miss you again.”

“But what about the blood, Pops...I found
blood
on the floor in the hotel, and a chair tipped over. It looked like there’d been a fight!”

“No mystery, I’m afraid.” T. Drummond II held up his left hand, pointing to his thumb, which had a Band-Aid on it that Trey hadn’t noticed before. “Knife slipped
when I was sharpening a pencil...quite a deep cut, too. And they had me out of the suite so fast I knocked the chair over grabbing my jacket.”

As the table was cleared and reset for the next course, Trey, Arthur and Evren (with occasional prompting from Neyla) cajoled more information out of their parents, finding out that Reinhardt
Gessler had been setting up a network of double agents within the Russian secret service, and that Levedski, the man Trey’s father had had a showdown with, was one of them. The big idea had
been to make it look as if Gessler himself was a double agent, at the same time as putting the wind up the Russians. As many twists and turns as a
Black Ace
story, to Trey’s way of
thinking – not to mention that the last couple of days had often been rather
too
close to a Trent Gripp novelette for comfort.

“Lucky for me you left your money clip behind, right, Pops? Otherwise I’d never have met Baba Duan and who
knows
what would’ve happened.”

“Kismet!” beamed Baba Duan. “Without the help of Chance and Fate, we never all would have met and have such tales to tell!”

“I should say Chance and Fate had little to do with you somehow managing to unearth the information about the house in Rumeli, Mr. Hendek. But, however you did it, I will remain for ever
in your debt for looking after my boy.” T. Drummond II stood up and raised his wine glass. “A toast to you all, and with it my thanks for achieving a successful outcome!”

Trey stood up next to his father. “More by luck than judgement, as Gramps would say.”

“And so he would!”

As Trey sat back down, a thought occurred to him about luck and judgement. “One thing, Pops, what about the Giovedis?”

“Who?”

“The
Giovedis
, who just
happened
to be around to rescue me in Venice. Remember?”

“Ah yes.” T. Drummond II smiled. “It would have completed the picture to have Captain de Luca and Lieutenant Nicholls here as well.”

“
Who
?”

“The Giovedis are actually US Special Agents de Luca and Nicholls, based in London at the Embassy; they were seconded to MI6 to look out for us the moment we got on the train to Paris.
But, unfortunately, they’re already back in London.”

“We were on our
own
from there to Constantinople?” Trey looked theatrically shocked at the thought.

“I should say not!” Mr. Stanhope-Leigh returned the look. “A couple of my very best men took over for the last leg of the journey.”

“Didn’t spot them, did you, son!”

Trey shook his head. But the fact that he’d missed those two didn’t take away from the fact that he
had
seen someone following them at the Gare de Lyon in Paris! Except the
man hadn’t been a wise guy crook, he was a good guy.

With a bit more practice, maybe he really could make it in the private detective business...

Also by Graham Marks

Stretch Wilson’s world is a hard place. All he has, since his father was taken as slave labour, is his dog, Bone – until the fateful day when he discovers something
extraordinary deep in the heart of Bloom’s Mount, a gigantic pile of ancient rubbish and waste. Something that will change his life for ever.

Battle is inevitable as the sun rises on a world where once again Setekh, God of Chaos, and Horus, God of the Sky, walk the land. And now Stretch is the only person who can
stop the evil that lives in Kaï-ro from taking control, for eternity.

ISBN 9780746078884