The Secret Generations (57 page)

‘
You almost certainly won’t have to, darling Richard…’

‘
No, not fight… I don’t even know if I’ve got the guts to fly an aeroplane again. I’ve become a coward.’

She shushed him and made soothing noises. He was shivering and moaning, muttering that he was a fraud to have taken the medal.
‘They’re for heroes…’ when she got him into bed. She locked the door, stripped and climbed in beside him, lying close, trying to will her own small strength into his body, telling him he had nothing to reproach himself for. ‘It happens to a lot of men, darling. It’s a kind of fatigue…’

‘
And they shoot them for it, for being cowards…’

‘
No. You’re not a coward. Dick, remember yourself before the crash, before the flight. You say Uncle Brad’s made you think about how you were. You
can
do it again, though nobody’s going to make you; and you
are
a hero, I promise.’ And he relaxed, becoming calm, tenderness returning with the tranquillity, then fire ravaging his loins so that she first took him in her mouth, and then into her body, and when it was over they slept.

They missed dinner, and wondered what Uncle Bradley must have thought; but then Sara said it just did not matter what he thought. At midnight, she crept downstairs and the great old house was silent, breathing its history, the stones and wood recalling other people who had admitted to being cowards, yet were full of courage for admitting it.

She prepared a simple cold meal and took it up, so they ate it like children having an illicit dormitory feast.

The next day Uncle Brad went up to London. He would be back within the week.

*

Colonel Farthing had been gi
ven plenty of official introductions, as his main duty was to examine liaison with security and intelligence. So, Brad Farthing was taken first to meet Reginald Hall at the Admiralty. In passing, he was introduced to Andrew.

‘
Been staying with Richard and the lovely Sara,’ Brad boomed, almost wrenching Andrew’s arm from its socket.

He talked long with
‘Blinker’ Hall, who gave little away; and certainly let the American nowhere near the men and women of Room 40.

Farthing
’s meeting with Vernon Kell, and the people from MI5, turned up little except technicalities.

Charles Rail
ton was still in Scotland – attached to the Branch – so Brad Farthing did not meet him. On the fourth day of his London visit he did, however, meet Caspar when calling on C – a visit which was arranged with all the trappings of secrecy.

They talked for the best part of a day, for other matters were becoming an increasing concern to C
’s Service and to the men at Military Intelligence also – not only important, but also exceptionally worrying.

Earlier in the year, on 16 March, Czar Nicholas II of Russia had abdicated. A provisional government under Prince Lvov had proved ineffective. There were stories of an imminent rebellion in the Russian Army, of shortages of food and supplies, and
– only a day ago – the collapse of Lvov’s regime.

Returning prisoners and Bolsheviks who had been hiding in Switzerland swelled the revolutionary ranks. The situation was confused, and the latest hard information was that a revolt in Petrograd
– formerly St Petersburg – had failed, yet had caused the setting up of a new government, Socialist-orientated and led by Lvov’s former Minister of War, Alexander Kerensky. C and many of his colleagues could only see Bolsheviks round every corner. ‘If they’re going to act successfully, this is their time,’ C had told Caspar, who now understood why certain known Russian-speakers and experts had been haunting C’s headquarters – not least of all the familiar ghostly figure of his brother Ramillies.

At the end of the week, Brad Farthing went back to Redhill Manor to find Dick vastly improved. His worries, on first seeing his nephew, must, he thought, have been unfounded.

‘Charles may be coming for the week-end,’ Sara, announced brightly. She had received a telegram from him. ‘From Glasgow, of all places. You never know where Charles will pop up next.’

‘
Let’s hope he pops up here’ Uncle Brad swallowed his whisky. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting Charles. That fellow Kell’s told me a lot about him.’

*

It was Vernon Kell who was initially responsible for Charles’ return to London, though Kell would never know what drama was produced by his orders. The two men had spoken on a number of occasions as Charles, with Wood and Partridge, had continued to follow ‘The Fisherman’s’ trail in Scotland. Now, as they seemed to have reached a dead end, Kell decided he could use Charles in better ways. He informed Thomson and telegraphed Charles to return. He was to report to the office on Monday. It was now Thursday afternoon. Wood and Partridge laboured at the police headquarters; Charles was at the railway hotel, right by Glasgow Central Station. He rang London immediately on receipt of the telegram.

‘
There’s a train in an hour or so,’ Charles told Kell, ‘but I’ll leave it and come down on the night sleeper. Prefer it.’

‘
As you wish. See you on Monday, around lunchtime.’

He telephoned Wood, breaking the news that he was being returned to normal duties and would travel back that night. The trail had gone cold.

Then he put in a trunk call to Redhill Manor and spoke to Sara, confirming that he would be coming for the week-end. Only if he brought Mary Anne and young William Arthur, she said. But he could not promise. Mary Anne was now working in one of the London hospitals and William Arthur had his school books. Nanny Coles was patiently coaching him.

Charles packed his bag, placed it on the bed for the porter, automatically checked the cumbersome Webley revolver he now carried everywhere, and went down onto the station concourse to book himself a sleeping berth on the night train.

At the ticket office, the man in front of him was also trying to book a sleeper. Charles had long since become wise to the ways of a good agent. His eyes were seldom still, his head turning in a natural manner, constantly on the watch, and his ears alive to sounds and conversations.

‘
Harker,’ the man booking the sleeper told the ticket clerk, spelling out the name, as though the woman clerk might find it difficult, ‘H-A-R-K-E-R. Harker.’

And Charles turned his h
ead in the direction of the concourse, saw that one of the platform gates was open, with passengers already moving through for the afternoon London train, and, with disbelief, laid eyes on a tall man, walking with a heavy limp. The man turned slightly to show his ticket at the barrier, and Charles saw the rough, pitted red skin of the terrible burn scar down the right side of his face. It was quite visible as he lifted his head and the light struck below the broad-brimmed hat. ‘The Fisherman’ was there within his grasp. In one of those strange mental visions, he again saw him in the Rosscarbery street. This was overlapped by the cottage interior. Warm blood dripped down a framed photograph.

But I,
that am not shaped for sportive tricks…

Charles stepped forward and bought a first class single ticket to London, then turned and moved with gathering speed, back to the hotel. Within four minutes he had settled his bill while a porter was dispatched to bring down his small bag, and headed back onto the station concourse. He had fifteen minutes, and knew this was one occasion when he would have to resort to that part of his work he most distrusted
– a disguise.

In the gentlemen
’s lavatory he delved into the bag, bringing out the tin containing a few small devices for use in emergency. The hair had been chosen to match his own, and the spirit gum held the neatly-made walrus moustache in place so that even he, peering closely in the glass, admitted its seeming reality. The spectacles, added to the moustache, completely altered his appearance to the extent that he looked at himself a little too long.

Then he set out for the afternoon train, pausing briefly to
buy a newspaper. In his mind there was one picture – the man going through the barrier: the man in Rosscarbery, the man who killed and maimed with explosives, the man who strangled with a white silk scarf.

And that so lamely and unfashionable

That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;

Charles sauntered casually along the platform, glancing sideways into compartments, as if looking for one that was suitably empty, and seeing everything
– from the uniformed soldiers going back off leave, to the nervous thin girls escaping from their Glasgow homes, to what they believed to be brighter lights and golden opportunities in London.

Around him, middle-aged lovers hugged and kissed farewell, while in more than one compartment similar lovers studiously avoided each other
’s gaze, lest someone would recognize them and so carry back tales of illicit week-ends in far away cities.

He reached the centre of the train, and the second batch of first-class coaches. A group of young officers, slightly tipsy, with bottles poking from baggage, prepared to summon up courage for a return to the front by making the journey at least memorable. The train was by no means crowded
– a compartment which contained a hard-faced woman with a small boy who looked miserable, two business men, gold chains curving over their waistcoats, cigars misting the compartment, settling down to put the financial world to rights. Then:
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun

And descant on mine own deformity.

The rest of the compartment was empty, while
‘The Fisherman’ – Charles’ quarry – sat, newspaper open, propped in a window seat. Now he had him: hook, line, sinker and gaff.

He continued to walk the length of the train, counting the coaches, boarding it at the last moment
– climbing into the most forward carriage as the whistle blew and the station master waved his green flag.

Then, as the train swayed out of the station, Charles slowly made his way back towards the carriage in which
– he knew – ‘The Fisherman’ sat, oblivious to the danger that was upon him.

At first, he th
ought that, perhaps, he had mis-counted. There was no sign of the man in the compartment. Charles continued walking the length of the train towards the rear, passing through the restaurant car in the hope of seeing him there, pushing past men and women crowded in the third-class corridors, until he reached the far end of the train, with its sealed off guard’s van.

Once more, Charles walked along the tilting drunken corridors, as the train began to build up speed. Again, no sign of the big, scarred man with the stiff leg.

At last he was sure. ‘The Fisherman’ must have been flushed from the train. He was certainly not here now. Charles knew of an agent’s sudden anxieties, the intuition that bids him change his mind, play safe, move. Trust nobody. Weave. Duck and dive. Always look as though you have purpose and confidence. Change plans at the last possible moment.

Charles sensed the frustration of the hunter who suddenly loses the deer he has stalked all morning.

Resigned, he found an empty compartment in an almost deserted carriage, and settled in for the lengthy run to London. He would report to Kell on arrival, so that Wood and Partridge could be alerted.

They were coming up to Carlisle when the carriage door slid open. Charles looked up and his stomach rolled, for there was the man
– the schoolboy’s comic drawing of a spy, in his black coat and brimmed hat, all the details, including the Mauser automatic pistol engulfed by his huge paw.

For a man of his weight and bulk,
‘The Fisherman’ was exceptionally agile. The door slid open, then closed again with a click, the Mauser’s eye never leaving Charles as the man’s other arm moved swiftly to pull down the three blinds over the windows which looked onto the corridor.

Then, still smiling,
‘The Fisherman’ slowly sat down opposite Charles.

Plots have I laid, inductions dan
gerous…

They went through Carlisle, and on into that long open run before Manchester.

‘Mr
Charles
Railton, I believe?’ The voice had no guttural inflexion, no foreignness.

Charles stared at him, his eyes wandering between the pistol barrel and the face, with its dreadful map of fire, the cartography produced at Glen Devil Farm.

‘I’m afraid you have the advantage of me…’ melodramatic, but he needed to play for time. ‘My name is Rathbone, Leonard Cyril Rathbone.’

‘
Really? I think it’s Railton – in fact I
know
it is.’ ‘The Fisherman’ was calm, the voice reasonable, ‘and I should know it. You’ve been following me all over Scotland, and I’ve watched you at it. I even watched you in the Central Hotel this morning.’

Charles
’ face must have shown a twitch of surprise, for he continued, ‘Don’t they teach you that a disguise is no good unless it’s complete? The herring-bone pattern of your suit, Mr Railton, the cut of the jacket, the hat. A moustache and spectacles alter the face, but the clothes make the man. The clothes and the shoes.’

Charles remained silent, holding
‘The Fisherman’s’ eyes in his; then breaking his silence with an acknowledgement of the weapon. ‘Not your style, sir. Where’s your white scarf today? Or your explosives? Or the axe you used in Ireland, all that time ago, when I first saw you?’