A Mighty Endeavor (8 page)

“Pour it over the back of a silver spoon, madam.” The steward was back. “I would caution madam that it takes some practice to get just right though. May we offer you a Creole omelette, eggs Florentine or a south-western scramble with your choice of meats and hashed potatoes?”

By the time Eleanor had worked her way through her eggs Benedict, croissants and another Irish coffee, she was feeling slightly comatose. It was with a certain degree of relief that she heard the engines start up and felt the big flying boat taxying out to take off. That was when Gusoyn entered the cabin and joined them. He also looked well-fed. “I hope you unmarried ladies have been fed as well as us unmarried gents.”

Eleanor snorted slightly, one thankfully masked by a judicious roar as the four engines increased power. The passenger deck of the flying boat was divided into cabins; the cabin for unmarried women was well separated from that for bachelors. The niceties had to be observed. “Superbly. Thank you, ducks. How long until we get to Southampton?”

“I asked our steward. It is a two and a half hour flight so we should be landing in Southampton at ten. Our train for Nottingham leaves two hours later. We have a Pullman coupe reserved for us. We should be at your family home by six. Loki has told them which train we are on. By the way, I hope you did eat well. It may be our last chance for quite a while. Food is still rationed in Britain, you know.”

“You mean they’ve kept rationing in place, even though the war is over? Why?”

“Last year, Britain imported 20 million tons of foodstuffs per year, including more than half of its meat and three quarters of its cheese, sugar, fruits, cereals and fats.” Gusoyn reeled the figures off with gloomy relish. “Bacon, meat, tea, jam, butter, sugar, biscuits, breakfast cereals, cheese, eggs, milk and canned fruit have all been rationed. Bread and potatoes have not; not yet, at any rate. If it is any consolation, fish and chips is not rationed either although I am told it is very expensive. We will be given ration books when we disembark. If we stay at a hotel, we have to surrender them to the hotel management while we stay there and retrieve them when we leave. Oh, restaurant meals are not rationed but they are really expensive.”

“That shouldn’t worry us, ducks. We’ve got a big budget for this trip. Lillith’s done us proud on the money front. I’m not sure why.” Eleanor paused while the engines went to full power and the flying boat took off. Underneath, Ireland was richly green, the rolling hills running down to the deep blue of the Shannon River. She suddenly felt severely homesick and questioned her decision to leave her homeland. Then she settled down and common sense reasserted itself. England had held very little for her and the prospect of a new country had been overwhelming. Then again, there was a lot she had needed to hide.

Achillea was looking down at the same sights. In her case, she was seriously grateful for the fact that they were flying direct to Southampton. The last time she had visited the area they were now flying over, her behavior hadn’t been calculated to win friends and influence people. She was quite convinced there were people with memories long enough to put a bullet in her back if she ever returned to the small village of Beal na mBIath. “I guess Phillip wants to know what things are really like on the ground over here. We’re a reconnaissance party to him.”

“Keep that thought to yourself, ducks.” Eleanor looked around but they were alone in their section of the Boeing 314. “What’s a reconnaissance to him there could well be considered spying by the people here.”

Conference Room, Government House, Calcutta, India

“We have been given our instructions. It is for us to obey them.” Sir Richard Graham Cardew stuck his chin out pugnaciously. “There may have been some point in discussing whether we should follow London’s lead when we had no specific instructions to do so, although I could not see any merit in such a discussion and still do not for that matter. But now we have clear instructions and we have no option other than to obey them. That is the way it has always been and that is the way it shall remain.”

Lord Linlithgow frowned mightily, not quite so much at the content of the words but at the tone in which they had been uttered. The truth of the words might be argued; the tone of disrespect within them could not. He was already aware that Cardew was attempting to assemble a supporting clique from the traditionalists within the old guard of the Indian civil service. “Is there any word from the other Dominions?”

“There is indeed, Your Excellency,” Gerald Tarrant was actually having a hard job stopping himself laughing. The Australians might be an uncouth lot but they had a talent for a pithy phrase. They have sent a message to London which reads ‘if the Colonial and Dominion Offices had sent us a dispatch of the tone and content exemplified by this message, we would tell them to get stuffed.’ Prime Minister Robert Menzies has resigned, saying his identification with the London regime has rendered him unfit to lead Australia at this time.”

“Don’t tell me that cad John Curtin is the new Prime Minister there.” Harold Hartley was appalled at the prospect.

“I think you underestimate Mister Curtin.” Tarrant spoke somberly. “I believe he has every prospect of being an excellent Prime Minister whose leadership promises to serve Australia well. In his inaugural address to the Australian Parliament, he tore up the message from London and threw the pieces on the floor, saying ‘good riddance to bad rubbish.’ That won him much applause from the House.”

“That is a disgrace.” Cardew wattled furiously. “Who do those people think they are?”

“People who face a dilemma that is exactly equivalent to ours in form and content,” Lord Linlithgow said mildly. “They have reached their conclusion with regard to their own opinions and interests, just as we shall reach ours with regard to India’s needs and interests.”

“Maintaining the Imperial Connection is the only need or interest India should have.”

“‘Should have’ is a matter of opinion, Sir Richard. ‘Does have’ is another matter entirely. Let us not forget there is a moral aspect to this conundrum. Obeying the demands of London mean knuckling under to an accommodation with Nazi Germany and that thought is abhorrent to any civilized person. I have thought this matter over in great depth and I believe that we cannot, in conscience, do what Lord Halifax would have us do. In isolation, I would tend to believe that we should join Australia in our defiance of this order. But, we do not act in isolation. Let us not forget this is India and we should bear the interests and opinions of the Indian people in mind.”

“Why bother?” Cardew’ spoke derisively, an obvious sneer in his voice.

“Because this is their country, Sir Richard. We rule it in trust for them. Sir Martyn, you have spoken with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru? How does the Congress Party see things?”

“As usual, Your Excellency, they want independence now, if not sooner. Within that framework, however, there are many divisions. Nehru is now of the opinion that knuckling under to this order would make any rapid attainment of independence most unlikely and unproductive if attempted. On the other hand, continuing the war, for a short time at least, would underline India’s independence and bring their dream within easy reach. That is an attractive prospect for them. After some discussions, Nehru has come to the opinion that, since India is now in the war, it should stay in. May I add that his own abhorrence of the Nazi regime was of some importance in him reaching that position.”

“Communist rabble-rouser.” Cardew’s sneer cut across the room and more than one head nodded in agreement with him.

“Where do Nehru’s political opinions finally reside, Sir Martyn?” Lord Linlithgow spoke quietly while he marked down those who had nodded. They would need to be maneuvered out of the way.

“There is no doubt he is a socialist your excellency, one who believes that the best model for developing this country resides within the framework of large, state-run enterprises. He would fit very well within the Labour Party in that respect. But a communist? I do not think so. His guiding light is the future of India and all else takes second place to that. To be a Communist would mean that he would place the interests of international Communism over those of India and that he will not do. There are Communists in the Congress Party, of that I have little doubt, but they do not dominate its leadership. There are fascists also. I would name Subhas Chandra Bose as prime in their number. He is closer to the leading figures than any communist. I would suggest it is in our interest to support the existing Congress Party leadership and ensure that neither of those factions gains any significant power.”

Lord Linlithgow nodded. “So the Congress Party would support us in continuing the war?”

“Nehru asks for time, Your Excellency. Time to persuade those who hold different positions from his own of what lies at stake here. That would allow him to present his position as that of the Congress Party, rather than just a faction of it. I have an idea of how we can buy some time at least.”

“Pray tell?”

“I understand that the undersea telegraph lines are experiencing erratic problems at the moment. Some messages are being corrupted in transmission and I believe that this was one of them. It may possess real content that is quite different from the corrupted version we have received. We owe it to the responsibility of our positions here to ensure that we have received a true and fair copy. I suggest we return a ‘copy corrupt’ signal and ask for a retransmission.”

“Your Excellency, I object. This is a lie; a damnable lie.”

“I think not, Sir Richard. Can you prove to us, here and now, that the message we received was not corrupted in transmission?’ Lord Linlithgow paused before continuing, “I thought not. Sir Martyn is right. Whole sections of critical importance may have been omitted. It has happened before. I would remind you of the time when the text of the Holy Bible was corrupted in transmission and the word ‘not’ was omitted from the Seventh Commandment. Sir Martyn, do as you propose.”

Bank de Commerce el Industrie, Geneva, Switzerland

“There’s one person who will know how to get this information used.” Branwen felt like ducking for cover as she made the suggestion. Mentioning Phillip Stuyvesant to Loki was akin to pouring gasoline on an already-raging inferno.
Why can’t these two grow up?
Sometimes Branwen felt as if she wanted to take both of them quietly to one side and bang their heads together.

To her astonishment, Loki nodded in agreement. “I hate to admit it, but you are almost certainly right. If we send this material over now, it will get lost at best. Nobody in authority knows who we are.”

“May the gods be praised for that.” Branwen spoke fervently.

“Right. But now that very anonymity is turned against us. To the world at large, we’re just bankers and traders.”

Loki shook his head. He had just returned from Germany. What he had seen there turned his stomach. The reason behind his trip was a simple one. Five years earlier, a member of his family by the name of Morrigan had been framed as a communist by a man Loki had trusted and left to the tender mercies of the Gestapo. That had left Loki with only one practical option. He had made a trip to Germany, found her and put a bullet into her head before she could talk. She would have talked, eventually, and there was far too much she could tell her interrogators. Loki knew that. He also knew that his rifle shot had been the only mercy she was likely to receive. On that trip, his eyes had been fixed on what he had had to do and he had ignored what lay in clear sight around him.

That hadn’t been the case on this trip. It had been purely a matter of revenge. He had found Odwin Noth, the man who had betrayed Morrigan. Loki had framed him as a communist agent and then killed him. Only, this time his eyes had been open and he had taken full measure of the German regime in a way that not even Kristallnacht had made clear. He had also achieved something else. He was a banker, a Swiss banker; Germany was a country where everybody in authority wanted a numbered Swiss bank account of their very own. That made him a sought-after guest; in so doing, he had been able to recruit people right across the entire spectrum of German industry. Loki never asked questions that seemed to have direct military or political significance; he was far too astute for that. Instead, he expressed interest in little things that seemed to have no direct relevance to anything much. What his contacts never realized was that each piece of data was a part of a jigsaw. When fitted together, they provided a picture of German industrial production and planning that was completely unmatched. Quietly, Loki was proud of what he had created. Not just because nobody had ever achieved so complete a picture of a nation’s industry at war before, but because even those who had helped prepare it never knew the product existed.

“I took the liberty of contacting Phillip. He’s sending Igrat over to collect the information. She’ll have Henry with her as a bodyguard.” Branwen waited for the explosion. Dealing with a situation that involved both Phillip Stuyvesant and Loki was rather like juggling bottles of nitroglycerine. One could never be sure quite what was happening or when one would explode.

“That’s good. Is there any word from England yet?”

Branwen relaxed slightly. “On Churchill? No. He seems to have vanished completely. The general presumption is that he headed south as soon as news of the Coup broke and made it to Ireland. Our guess is that he’s still there, in hiding and waiting for things to settle down before flying over to Canada.”