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Born in 1946, Alan Judd trained as a teacher but instead became a soldier and diplomat. He is now a full-time writer, contributing regular current
affairs articles to various newspapers, most frequently the
Daily Telegraph
, as well as writing regular book reviews and acting as the
Spectator’s
motoring correspondent. He is
the author of several novels drawing on his military and diplomatic experience, the first of which,
A Breed of Heroes
, was later filmed by the BBC.
The Devil’s Own Work
, a
literary ghost story inspired by Judd’s meeting with Graham Greene, won the
Guardian
Fiction Award.

Also by Alan Judd

The Noonday Devil

Tango

The Devil’s Own Work

Breed of Heroes

Uncommon Enemy

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers, 2001
This edition published by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2011
A CBS COMPANY

Copyright © Alan Judd, 2001

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.

The right of Alan Judd to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988.

Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1st floor
222 Gray’s Inn Road
London WC1X 8HB

www.simonandschuster.co.uk

Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-84739-773-7
eBook ISBN: 978-1-47110-105-2

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

To Bim

BERLIN, 1945

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

BERLIN, 1945

EXTRACT TO PF 48/78/76 FROM GEN 100/472 (RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE SERVICE (RIS) OPERATIONS AGAINST BRITISH AND ALLIED SERVICE PERSONNEL OVERSEAS).

BER/1 minute 51 to H/BER, p.2 cont.

4. They left the café at about 2125hrs. Subject paid for both. He is described as about 5' 10" with light brown hair, centre parting, clean shaven, ruddy complexion as
if used to living in the open, aged 28–30 approx. No obvious distinguishing marks. His uniform was clean and pressed and he wore the crown on his shoulders. His beret was blue.

Comment:
MORNING LIGHT is still confused by British uniforms and insignia. When shown examples and questioned again, he
was
certain
that subject was wearing battledress and was a major. It is
probable
that he was attached
to a headquarters but was still wearing divisional flashes (unidentified), and
possible
that he was Royal Engineers. MORNING LIGHT was sure he was
not a Gunner (the only cap badge he recognises).

5. The woman was about 5' 7" with shoulder length blonde hair which shone as if washed. She wore a cream shirt or blouse and a loose, floral-patterned skirt. They were smart
and clean, as if new. She had black shoes with heels and nylon or silk stockings with no ladders or holes. She carried a black handbag and wore make-up and nail varnish. MORNING LIGHT could not say
whether she wore any rings. Her German was native Berlin, her English fluent.

Comment:
MORNING LIGHT’s own English is such that almost any other German he hears speaking it sounds fluent to
him. Asked to describe the woman’s features, he stressed that she was beautiful
(‘bild schon)
and that her teeth were very good
(‘ebenmassige Zahne)
but was vague on
particulars.

6. They continued to talk animatedly when they left the café and turned right before crossing the road into Bernauerstrasse. MORNING LIGHT followed them as soon as he
had settled his bill but did not regain sight until he saw them turn into Friedrichstrasse and into the Russian zone. He did not follow them in. Although they did not touch each other or walk
arm-in-arm, they gave the impression that they would be more than friendly
(‘mehrals freunde’).
Subject appeared to hesitate as they entered the Russian zone and she went a few
paces ahead before stopping. They both laughed, and the British officer followed.

Comment:
MORNING LIGHT believes the woman was of good background (‘
aus guter Familie
’) because she
naturally paused for subject to open the door for her on leaving the café, which, ‘being a British officer’, he naturally did. She was not the usual Nazi Party/Communist Party
call-girl. Asked why he was sure this was a controlled operation rather than a girl operating on her own – or not operating as a tart at all – he insisted that no woman in Berlin can
now dress and look like that without support and protection. There are no ‘nice rich girls’ left in Berlin, he says, and her returning to the Russian zone is, in his eyes, conclusive.
There were also two men at a nearby table who appeared to take an interest in the couple. He could not describe them, beyond saying they were middle-aged and ordinary
(‘
unscheinbar
’). An interest in the girl was natural enough but he had a feeling (‘
das Gefuhl haben
’) that they could have been surveillance (SV).

7.
Action:
Given that we now know MORNING LIGHT’s wartime reporting to have been accurate, his judgement on such
apparently trivial matters is worth taking seriously. It should be possible to identify the erring major by checking army headquarters lists of field officers, concentrating on those recently
detached from fighting divisions and starting with Sappers. Although this may well turn out to be a straightforward security matter, we should not bring in the Military Police at this stage but,
with the new GADFLY programme in mind, we should look first for any opportunity for development. Army Intelligence Corps representation has recently been beefed up and I suggest we start with them.
If this is to become the first GADFLY case, we need to act a.s.a.p. – this day if possible. May I go ahead?

RH

BER/1.

I
t was a warm summer when Charles Thoroughgood left the army and joined the secret service but politically the world was deep in the Cold War. He
moved to London and rented a basement flat in Kensington with a view of sodden detritus in the well of the building and the housekeeper’s kitchen. He suspected that, from behind her dirty net
curtains, she spent days and nights in unprofitable surveillance of his own uncurtained window. ‘Slack Alice’, Roger Donnington, his colleague and flatmate, had dubbed her. ‘Face
that would stop a coal barge.’

One autumn Monday, he got up after a restless night to a humid, muggy London. The flat’s tiny bathroom had no window and the electricity was off. Shaving by candlelight was a slow
operation because he had to keep moving the candle as he traversed each cheek, and it was difficult to get any light at all beneath the chin without risk of singeing. He had long owned an electric
razor, a present from his mother, but it had never left its box. The idea of using it had always felt like a concession to something, perhaps a luxurious and corrupting modernity. It was irrelevant
now, anyway, because he had used the battery for his radio. Calling an electrician to restore mains power had, so far, proved too great a concession for either him or Roger.

The milk and butter in the powerless fridge smelt rancid. Someone would have to throw them away, sometime. He made toast in the gas stove, covered it with Marmite and drank black tea. He tidied
the bedclothes on his double mattress on the floor, put on his light suit and flicked a tie free of the clothes crammed on the hook on his bedroom door. Before leaving he knocked on Roger’s
door. Roger had his own mattress in the sitting room, with the television at its foot. Charles had got in late the night before, so had no idea whether Roger was alone or accompanied. There was no
answer. He knocked again, louder. ‘Okay?’ he called.

Roger’s groan became a cough. ‘Okay.’

It was not to be a normal day at the office, though few were at that time. He was glad of that: secret service seemed so far to provide the advantages of bureaucratic employment –
security, purpose, companionship and, though he might not yet have admitted it to himself, the pleasing consciousness of service – without the monotony he assumed to go with office life. He
wouldn’t need his bike that day, so left it propped up against the bedroom wall.

The best features of the flat were the front door of the building and the curving staircase, both of a size and grandeur to give an impression of spaciousness and opulence within. It had been
cheaply converted into flats during the 1950s and 1960s and already the additions seemed older and more worn than the house. The plaster was cracked, paintwork faded, doors warped and skirting
boards had parted company with their walls. The door of Charles’s flat was tucked beneath the bottom turn of the staircase, so that stepping from it into the entrance hall was literally to
enter a bigger and brighter world.

Out on Queensgate, he turned left towards Hyde Park after a deliberate glance across the wide street to check that his car was undamaged. The rush-hour traffic was heavier than usual, perhaps in
anticipation of further wildcat strikes on the Underground, and the delay in crossing the Cromwell Road gave him the pretext to look about as if seeking a quicker way. He did the same at Kensington
Gore, then walked behind the Albert Memorial and into the park. He walked unhurriedly, trying to establish a regular but not purposeless pace.

He looked back around again before he crossed the Serpentine Road and took one of the footpaths to Marble Arch and Speakers Corner. Anyone following would have to keep well back, or ahead or to
the side, but then close quickly before Charles entered the Marble Arch subway. Presumably they would have car as well as foot surveillance, and radio. A car team might become a foot team when they
needed to close, but to do that the cars would have to loiter in the busy Park Lane or Bayswater Road, which was never easy.