‘Who normally lives here?’ Appleby asked in the silence that followed the dying of the engine.
‘I do,’ said Political quietly.
‘This is your home?’
‘Be it e’er so humble. My wife and I like to have a lot of space in which to avoid each other.’
‘Where is she?’
‘I sent her away. And her maid with her.’
‘And where’s Lemmer?’
‘Inside.’ Political pointed to the lights. ‘Waiting.’
‘How many people will he have with him?’
‘Nadia may be there. Otherwise . . . nobody.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m
sure
of nothing.’
‘Give me the keys.’
Political handed them over. ‘You want me to lead the way?’
‘No. I want you to wait here.’ Appleby took a pair of handcuffs out of his coat pocket. He snapped one round Political’s wrist and the other round the steering wheel.
‘You’d have a better chance of outwitting him if I came with you.’
‘I doubt that. Come on, Max.’
They trod carefully as they approached the house, communicating in whispers. It was agreed Max would enter from the rear, Appleby from the front. Beyond that their intentions would be determined by what happened. They were both carrying guns.
‘It’s hard to believe Lemmer will just be sitting by the fire waiting for me to be delivered to him,’ murmured Appleby.
‘Maybe he’s certain Political will do what’s been asked of him.’
‘Maybe. But even so . . .’
They came to the open gates and went in. A gravel drive led between shrubs and trees towards the house. They walked on the grassy verge, the undergrowth brushing damply against them.
The drive curved ahead, slowly revealing the frontage of the house as they proceeded. As Max’s line of sight altered, he saw that the front door was wide open. Much of the length of the parqueted hall within was clearly visible.
‘Something’s wrong,’ Appleby whispered from close behind.
‘What, d’you think?’
‘I don’t know. But there’s only one way to find out. I’ll go in. Forget cutting round the back. Stay here and watch out for me.’
‘No, Horace. You stay here. I’ll go in. I’m faster on my feet.’
‘I suppose I can’t argue with that. But for God’s sake be careful.’
‘I will be.’
Max started towards the house, keeping to the shadows. The open door and the blazing lights were either an invitation or a declaration. There was no way to tell which.
Max was holding his gun in both hands to steady his grasp as he crossed the drive, his shoes crunching on the gravel. He stepped into the porch, then the hall.
No one sprang out to meet him. He heard no movements in nearby rooms, though he could hear the crackle of a fire somewhere. He paused by the first doorway he reached, then strode through it, gun raised.
He found himself in an empty drawing-room. A fire was warming the hearth and the surrounding sofa and chairs. But no one was there.
As he moved back out into the hall, a telephone began ringing. He followed the sound to a book-lined study, empty, like the drawing-room. The telephone stood on the desk. He walked across to it and hesitated before picking up the receiver. But not for long.
He said nothing. And for a moment neither did the caller. Then: ‘Is that you, Max?’ The voice was Lemmer’s.
Max swallowed hard. ‘Where are you?’ he asked, hardening his tone to suppress any note of surprise.
‘In a safe place. Is Appleby with you?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Of course he is. And Political too. I knew what he would do as soon as I heard matters had miscarried at Glamorgan Street. He is very predictable. As are you, Max, I have to say.’
‘How did you hear what had happened?’
‘Nadia had the house under observation. She came to warn me the operation had been bungled. I considered waiting for you, but the judgement of risk is a fine art. It must always be done dispassionately.’
‘You’ve lost, Lemmer. We have the Grey File.’
‘No. You have photographs of the contents. That is regrettable. I would have preferred to obtain them as well as the original. But you have been resourceful, as ever. I cannot complain. It was because of your resourcefulness that you succeeded in Orkney where others would have failed.’
‘We have your list of spies.’
‘You do, yes. But it is double-encoded. I decided to take extra precautions after the fiasco of the Zimmermann cable. You would need a genius to decipher it. A genius such as Bostridge. And Bostridge is dead. Without him, British Intelligence does not have the capability to unlock my secrets. Political will not be able to tell you much of value. I seal my operatives in watertight compartments. The ship itself cannot sink.’
‘You
hope
they don’t have the capability.’
‘I
know
they don’t, Max. And time will prove me right. Time in which I can make use of the document you have so kindly returned to me.’
‘What are you going to do with it?’ Appleby appeared in the doorway as Max asked the question. Max mouthed ‘Lemmer’ silently to him. And Appleby gave a rueful half-smile, acknowledging it had always been unlikely Lemmer would expose himself to capture.
‘The file is an asset to be traded, Max. Don’t you understand? Those who have been bought can be sold. I told you before. This is about the future, not the past. It is the future I offered you. And you can still have it. I can give you Farngold in return for your services. You want to know about Farngold, don’t you? You want to know what your father died for. I can tell you.’
‘Nadia’s already put that to me. I told her to go to hell. I tell you the same.’
‘You will not learn the truth any other way.’
‘We’ll see about that.’
‘Think about it. The offer remains open.’
‘I don’t—’
Max broke off. He had half-heard something that sounded like a gunshot. And it was obvious from Appleby’s reaction he had heard it too.
‘What was that?’ he asked, pulling away from the telephone.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Appleby. ‘We’d better check Political.’
Appleby set off. Max heard the burr of a dead line in the earpiece of the telephone. Lemmer had hung up. He headed after Appleby.
A dog was barking in one of the neighbouring houses, roused by the noise. Max and Appleby hurried towards the car. The was no sign of movement inside the vehicle.
The reason soon became clear. Political was dead, sprawled across the front seat of the car, his right wrist still handcuffed to the steering wheel, a splatter of blood and brain haloed around his head. A revolver lay close to the curled fingers of his left hand.
‘Damn,’ said Appleby. ‘I should’ve searched the car. The gun must’ve been hidden under the dashboard.’
‘You think he killed himself?’
‘What else?’
‘Lemmer mentioned Nadia. This could be her handiwork.’
As if to confirm Max’s conjecture, a noise reached them through the darkness of a car driving away from somewhere not far off.
‘It makes no difference.’ Appleby sighed. ‘He’s dead either way.’
‘There’s worse,’ said Max. ‘Lemmer asserts that without Bostridge you’ll never decode the contents of the file.’
‘And you believe him?’
‘He sounded as if he believed it.’
‘And he’s always right, isn’t he?’ Appleby slapped his hand down in frustration on the bonnet of the car. ‘Damn it all to hell.’
GLANCING THROUGH THE
windows of C’s office at Secret Service Headquarters, Max noticed dawn was already lighting the London sky. It had been a sleepless night for many besides him and it did not promise to be a restful day. The shootings at 24 Glamorgan Street, the death of Political and the failure to apprehend Lemmer cast shadows that would stretch a long way into the future.
C had reproached neither Max nor Appleby for what they had done. He seemed relieved to be able to discuss the events with two men whose loyalty he could rely on. But those events gave him no cheer. His sombreness was that of someone who knew more questions were going to be asked of him than he could satisfactorily answer during the official deliberations that were bound to follow. ‘This,’ he had gloomily confided at one point, ‘could finish us.’
By ‘us’ he meant the Secret Service he had more or less single-handedly created. Lemmer had nibbled away at it like a mouse presented with a cheese. How many holes there were only Lemmer knew. The answer was in their hands.
‘D’you think he’s right about Bostridge, Appleby?’ C asked after a brief, mournful silence. ‘Uniquely gifted and therefore irreplaceable?’
‘Quite possibly, sir, yes.’
‘What about Mrs Underwood?’
‘I’m sure she’ll do her best.’
‘But it probably won’t be good enough. Is that what you’re saying?’
Appleby shrugged helplessly ‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘And we have to worry one of Lemmer’s people will be looking over her shoulder all the time, monitoring her progress?’
‘We do, sir, yes.’
C emitted something between a groan and a sigh. ‘I always took Political’s air of knowing more than I did for natural superciliousness. Now I realize he was probably chuckling to himself at the knowledge that he was serving a different master. He and God knows who else. The Foreign Office will at least be relieved MI5 is compromised as well, so there’ll be no crowing at the War Office. There’ll be no crowing anywhere.’
C looked at Max with weary benignancy. ‘You’ve done well, young man. Don’t think because I’m downcast I don’t appreciate the risks you’ve taken to open our eyes to the ugly truth. Appleby will try to persuade you to take some further risks on our behalf, if only because men we can trust absolutely – men such as you – are presently in short supply. But I want you to understand you’re not obliged to agree. You’ve earned the right to leave us to clear up our own mess.’
‘I mean to nail Lemmer, sir,’ said Max, as clear as a blue sky in his own mind on the point.
C nodded gratefully. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’
‘The question is how,’ said Appleby.
‘Indeed,’ said C. ‘The hunt for traitors will threaten to consume the Service in the days and weeks ahead. I anticipate a summons from Lord Curzon as soon as he receives reports of what’s occurred. Assuming he leaves me in post – and I’m not counting on that in the circumstances – I shall need you as my right-hand man, Appleby, in rooting out the truth. Naturally, we’ll put the best decipherers we can find onto the job of cracking Lemmer’s code, but we have to assume they won’t achieve early success. While they rack their brains, we’ll have to subject every member of this Service to scrutiny, beginning with Political’s own department. And we’ll have to share information with MI5 and Admiralty Intelligence. There’ll be no room for inter-service rivalry. I suspect Special Branch will become involved as well. It won’t be agreeable work. But it has to be done. Can I rely on you?’
Appleby, whose expression suggested he was under no illusions about the scale of the tasks ahead, nodded grimly. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Now, as to Lemmer, what do we think he’s up to? Why did he want the Grey File so badly? It’s disturbing to suppose he had so many people working for him that he’d forgotten who some of them were.’
‘It would’ve been risky to let Commander Schmidt hold onto it,’ said Appleby. ‘Sooner or later, he’ll leave Scapa Flow. Lemmer couldn’t afford to wait until then.’
‘It was more than that,’ put in Max. ‘It’s about what he does next. “Those who have been bought can be sold.” That’s what he said.’
‘But what exactly does that mean?’
‘Maybe he plans to turn freelance,’ said Appleby. ‘Sell the information his agents obtain for him to whoever’s willing to pay for it.’
‘Or maybe he plans to sell his agents as a job lot,’ Max suggested, suddenly realizing how such a scheme could easily commend itself to a man such as Lemmer: a cynic, a manipulator, a grand puppeteer. ‘That would explain why he needed the Grey File so urgently. To show it to a prospective buyer. To display the goods on offer.’
‘Yes,’ said C thoughtfully. ‘I believe you may have it, young man.’
‘Sell it to who?’ asked Appleby.
‘One of the powers represented in Paris,’ C answered, still in a thoughtful vein.
‘But everyone’s represented in Paris, except Germany and their allies.’
‘Even Germany’s represented now, Appleby.’
‘Then we need someone there to find out who the prospective buyer might be, sir.’
‘Agreed. Which you’re no doubt about to say brings us to our young friend here.’
Appleby leant forward intently in his chair and stabbed the air with the stem of his pipe. ‘Political based his trumped-up case against me on information from inside the German delegation attributed to Anna Schmidt. She’s obviously still working for Lemmer. The letter she wrote to her husband proves it. Bostridge referred to cables Lemmer sent her from China early last year. He said the pair had . . . what was it?’
‘A private code within the code,’ said Max.
‘Exactly. And some of the cables mentioned the Grey File. Just a phrase to us at the time, of course. But Lemmer told you, didn’t he, Max, that he’d double-coded the contents?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who’d process new material for the file – who’d encode it – while he was in the Far East?’
‘Anna Schmidt.’
‘So, she knows the code. And she’s waiting for Lemmer in Paris, to play her part in this . . . auction.’
‘I’ll go,’ said Max, answering the question that had not yet been put to him.
‘You can’t go
officially
, Max,’ said C. ‘You’d be answerable to Jefferies. Political nominated him to replace Appleby, so he’s inherently suspect. He’ll be recalled for questioning, of course, but as things stand I can’t be entirely confident of anyone I send in his place. You’ll have to operate alone.’
Max shrugged. ‘It’s how I prefer it.’
‘And you’ll have to operate
quickly
,’ said Appleby. ‘Lemmer’s not likely to let the grass grow under his feet.’
‘I can leave straight away.’
‘It might be best if you did,’ said C. ‘Inquiries may be launched that I can’t control. There may be attempts to detain you here if you linger.’
‘The German delegation is housed at the Hôtel des Réservoirs in Versailles,’ said Appleby. ‘How you’re to gain access to Frau Schmidt I don’t know. Political’s contact within the delegation is almost certainly working for Lemmer.’