Agent of Death (20 page)

‘All quiet, now,’ said Leonard, and quiet they were. The sound of the ship’s engines and ventilators and the crashing of waves against the bow were heavy in the silence. ‘We’ll hear it all once more,’ he said. ‘You first, Roger.’ He pointed to a man with three pips on his shoulder. He was Captain Lawrence, the officer commanding Able Troupe.

‘Yes, Simon,’ said Lawrence, and the naval lieutenant’s jaw dropped in horror at the appalling familiarity. Then he recollected and shrugged. The army was barmy and that was all there was to it.

Lawrence pointed at the map of Punno, which was roughly square with sides ten miles long. It had two big inlets: Stighahmsgolf to the north-west, Lokishamsgolf to the south-west, and a much smaller inlet forming a T-shaped harbour on the eastward, Sweden-facing side. The T-shape lay on its side with the long axis pointing towards Sweden and the top running north–south.

This small inlet, Härönholmen, was our main target, because the SSA base was on its southern shore. They had a research camp, a small aerodrome with a six-hundred-yard runway, a wired-in enclosure with watchtowers and floodlights for the slave workers, and on the shore of the inlet there was the Swedish version of a stately home: the Punnoshaus, an eighteenth century Palladian mansion once owned by a member of the Swedish royal family as a summer palace. This was thought to be the base for the SSA garrison, while the Swedish battery that had fired on us was on the far western side of the island, facing out into the deep of the Skagerrak channel.

‘We land here,’ said Lawrence, pointing to the innermost end of the Lokishahmsgolf. ‘Two round trips for launches towing barges. Everyone ashore by zero one hundred hours at the landing site, which is nine miles from the SSA at Härönholmen, and about eight from the Swedish battery. My Red Section – two Brens, two mortars, twenty riflemen – will take position by zero three hundred hours, commanding the road immediately outside the battery, where we will prevent any attempt by the Swedes to intervene. On your signal, Simon, we will enter the battery, deal with any opposition, and disable the training gear so the guns can’t be aimed.’

‘And, just to be clear,’ said Leonard, ‘what is our attitude towards Swedish neutrality?’

‘Sod it,’ said Lawrence, ‘and sod the Swedes. They’ve had a lovely war making money out of the Germans. So they’ve got no friends anywhere and nobody cares if we tread on their toes.’ The naval lieutenant laughed.

Leonard nodded. ‘Carry on, Roger.’

‘My Green Section,’ said Lawrence, ‘together with four Brens and an additional four Brens from Baker Troupe, will secure the Punnoshaus mansion …’

It was all very thorough. Each officer spoke. Each recited his duty for the fiftieth time and even I’d heard it enough times that I knew it by heart. Everyone knew everyone’s duty, and we’d rehearsed it back at Lympstone several times, at night, on a full-scale mock-up of the target laid out with sticks and ropes and wooden frames. That was Leonard’s method and it worked. Last of all, Leonard looked at me.

‘Wing Commander?’ he said, and I noted that I was given my rank. I was given it because I wasn’t one of them. That also was Leonard’s method. But I knew what was expected. I looked round and gave my own little speech yet one more time.

‘We are looking for a weapon called Mem Tav,’ I said, ‘and for a man called Abimilech Svart. Nobody knows where he is, but we do know he’s given up on Hitler, so we think he may already be out of Germany, out of the war, gone somewhere he thinks is safe, such as Punno Island.’ I reached into the map case hanging from my chest and pulled out my copy of the colour print believed to represent Svart, ‘This is him,’ I said, and held it up for them to see. They all had one, but I showed it to them anyway, then put it back in the map case. ‘The weapon will be delivered in a modified flying bomb, which will circle over a city, spraying the agent, and killing everyone in the city. Millions of people could die from one attack, and there is a submarine on the loose somewhere with at least one of these weapons – a Mem Tav flying bomb – which could be used to attack any city within two hundred miles of the sea. We want any possible information on any of this, and we are attacking Punno Island to get hold of it. Also there is something like an exceedingly long flying bomb launching ramp to the north of the SSA base. We need close examination of that and photographs.’

They all nodded. They knew it all already, but they listened patiently, giving me their full attention, because in their own odd way they were as disciplined as guardsmen. Then I paused before the difficult bit. ‘And I remind you that if anyone drops suddenly and doesn’t move, and it looks like he’s dead, then you must not go anywhere near him, because if Mem Tav has killed him, it’ll be on him, and if you touch him, it’ll kill you, too.’ I looked at Leonard.

‘You heard the wing commander,’ he said, ‘so do exactly what he says.’ He let them ponder, then spoke again. ‘Finally, my lovely boys, I can tell you something that has been kept in deepest secrecy, though a lot of you may have made guesses: our invasion fleet – us and the Americans and Canadians together – sets out for the Normandy beaches tomorrow, to pay the Huns back for Dunkirk.’ There was a huge cheer, and delighted stamping of feet and men hugging one another. ‘But,’ said Leonard, and got silence, ‘listen again to Wing Commander Landau.’ He nodded to me.

I took my cue. ‘The Germans could still win,’ I said, ‘even if we’d taken Berlin. They could still win if they used Mem Tav to wipe out one city after another. Say London, Manchester, Birmingham, and threatened more. They could dictate an armistice. They could make our troops fall back. They’d only need four or five active Mem Tav weapons to do it, and we think the SSA will do exactly that if we don’t stop them. That’s why this raid is so important. So, if it can be done, we’ve got to make the Jerry signallers on Punno send out a message to this Mem Tav U-boat in their own special codes, so it fools the sub. All available listening stations on our side are waiting, and if we can make the sub reply, we can find it from the bearings of its signal. That’s up to me, but I may need help, and it’s important.’ I looked at Leonard. ‘Brigadier?’

‘Thank you, Wing Commander,’ he said. ‘I’ve just one thing to add. We’ve not got unlimited time on Punno Island. There’s a Swedish army base on Orust Island, about three hours away by road plus a forty-minute ferry ride to Punno and, if they find out what we’re doing, it could mean a real, serious fight and we don’t want that. So! It’s nearly twenty-three hundred and time we got to the boats. Get ready! Check your kit. And in the unlikely event that any of you is known unto God, you may say your prayers. Then let’s try to get into the boats and ashore without anyone turning us into prats in the eyes of our hosts. I don’t care what the Swedes and Germans think, but we really can’t have the sodding navy taking the piss ever after because some of you managed to get your feet wet.’

They laughed and got on with it, and well before midnight the ship was at dead stop and wallowing, blacked out and dark, on the waves a few hundred yards from the mouth of Lokishamngolf, with winches whining and boats and barges full of men going down on davits into the water. The first wave was ashore within twenty minutes, and the last man landed twenty minutes after that, with the boats pulling away, and the sailors waving to us as they looked back.

‘Now then,’ said Leonard, ‘Landau, you stick to me like glue, and the rest of you remember that “gentlemen in England now abed shall think themselves accursed they were not here.”’

‘What?’ said a dull voice.

‘It’s the Bard, Dave,’ said Leonard, ‘the bleedin’ Bard.’

‘Oh.’

Then, without another command, the troupes separated and marched off silently into the dark, navigating by compass, and making remarkably little noise. They had rubber soles on their boots, not hobnailed leather, and every piece of kit was wrapped so it didn’t clatter or bang. They were the experts and I went with them, sticking to Leonard as instructed and wondering if I would have to use my pistol.

Afterwards that seemed a very innocent thought.

CHAPTER 24

Bletchley
Park
,

Milton
Keynes
,
Buckinghamshire
,
England.

Monday
5 June
,
14
.
50
hours.

This time the windows to Sir Donald Trent’s office were not obscured with blinds, and fewer people were present: only Sir Donald, Brigadier Sanders, and Lady Margaret Comings. The mock-Tudor windows gave a nice, bright, English summer illumination to the papers spread out across Trent’s massive mahogany desk – his own property – an antique by Gillows of Lancaster. All three were standing so that they could more easily move around to look at the great spread of papers.

Trent sat down in his chair behind the desk, and waved a hand at Sanders and Lady Margaret indicating that they should sit in chairs facing him. Trent took off his glasses, polished them with his handkerchief, and looked at Brigadier Sanders.

‘No, Steven, it cannot be,’ he said. ‘The biggest seaborne invasion in history is ready to sail: battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and the rest. Nearly five thousand vessels and a million men, and we are hoping to take the enemy by surprise. But the success of the invasion depends upon Bletchley’s providing our commanders with accurate, up-to-date information of the enemy’s Order of Battle behind the Normandy beaches.’ Sanders nodded. ‘And you, Steven … and this lady ...’ Trent heartily disliked Lady Margaret and did not address her directly. ‘You, Steven, want the use of yet another Colossus at a time when those we have can barely keep up with the enemy’s existing traffic, let alone that which will erupt once the invasion is launched.’

‘Donald,’ said Saunders, ‘look at what we’ve discovered already. We are looking at a new world, new horrors.’

‘The present world has horrors enough,’ said Trent. ‘How many of our young men do you think will die in Normandy? Let us at least make sure they succeed in their aims.’ He shook his head. ‘No, Steven, I cannot allocate another Colossus to your work.’

Sanders sat back in his chair. He looked at Lady Margaret. ‘Go on then,’ he said. ‘You try.’

Trent frowned heavily and turned on Steven Sanders, who had once been his friend. ‘I see,’ he said, ‘you will set your creature to work on me, in the expectation that if she fails she will go behind my back and smile into Winston’s eyes.’ He looked at Lady Margaret with focused hostility. ‘So, madam, is it your premise that I should surrender at the outset because the prime minister is susceptible to young women?’

She stifled the reply that leapt to mind: that men were susceptible when virile, which Churchill obviously was and Trent was not. But that wouldn’t have helped. Instead she played the role of the sort of woman that Trent did like: quiet, dutiful, and admiring. So she shrank her personality, sat straight backed, knees firmly together, and affected an expression of apology.

‘Can I ask you to consider, once more, what we have achieved, sir?’ she said, quietly, and gave a tiny smile, lowered her eyes, and looked at him so imploringly that she damn near hooked him in one stroke. She really was that good. Trent shrugged and said nothing, but at least he was listening. ‘These are Russian intercepts,’ she said, ‘old intercepts, cracked on one of our …’ she affected to corrected herself, ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she said, ‘I mean one of
your
Colossus machines.’

‘Huh!’ said Trent.

‘These intercepts were transmitted by the Russians,’ she said, ‘using captured German Enigma sets, which the Russians know are more secure than their own devices. But they’ve improved the German machines, in the knowledge that we routinely crack their transmissions.’ She paused to explain. ‘They know that from the Russian sympathizers,’ she said, ‘here at Bletchley.’

‘Yes,’ said Trent, ‘our communist cell.’

‘Yes, sir,’ she said. ‘But they don’t know the full extent of what a Colossus can do, because
you’ve
made sure that our communists know only what we choose.’

‘Quite,’ said Trent, ‘and very useful they are, too.’

‘Yes, sir,’ she said, conveying the impression that it was only Trent’s personal genius that had engineered this double-think manipulation.

Trent shrugged modestly. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘But these,’ she pointed at another column of typed sheets, ‘these are from Svart himself, on Punno Island.’

‘Svart’s base in Sweden,’ said Trent.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said. ‘The first interesting thing is that they were transmitted in the Russians’ own highest-security code: the code that’s used by the Soviet State Committee for Defence, the Supreme Soviet Command, and their Red Army General Staff.’

‘And Stalin himself,’ said Trent, beginning to join the discussion.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Lady Margaret, giving every impression of admiration for Trent’s quickness of mind. But she had to be careful now, because Trent really was quick minded. He’d never have got his present job otherwise.

‘So you’re telling me,’ he said, ‘that Svart and his SSA somehow got hold of the specification of top Russian codes, as used on German Enigma machines, modified under extreme secrecy inside the Soviet Union?’ She nodded. ‘Is Svart really that clever?’ he said.

‘Yes, sir. And I’m afraid we have to assume that he may be able to crack our own British codes. Our only advantage seems to be that he doesn’t know that we’re cracking his.’

‘Quite,’ said Trent. ‘So these papers represent a conversation between Svart and Stalin.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So what does he say? Svart?’

‘What we have here is only summary with some guesses,’ she said. ‘We can’t crack everything Svart is sending out …’ she paused and Trent got the point.

‘Which is why you want another Colossus,’ said Trent.

‘Yes, sir. But we think we’ve got most of this particular exchange.’

‘Have you though?’ said Trent with a glum expression. ‘So what is it?’

‘Well, look at this first, sir, to give a flavour of Svart’s thinking.’ She picked up a typed sheet, and looked at Trent, ‘Remember, sir, this is straight from the man himself, to Stalin.’ Trent nodded, and she read aloud, ‘“I ask you to reconsider, because I admire you. By comparison to yourself, Hitler is a mere witch-doctor. He is high priest of a failed religion. As for your allies: Roosevelt is a mouse in temporary control of the American elephant, and Churchill lives in the past. His country is impoverished and his British Empire will be gone in five years. But you, Comrade Stalin, are the future. You have single-handedly transformed your nation …”’ She looked up. ‘There’s a lot more like that, sir. It’s flattery, but we think he really does admire Stalin – or at least he did at first – because Stalin holds immense personal power, and tolerates no opposition. And Svart likes that.’

‘So what does he want? Svart?’ said Trent.

Lady Margaret chose another paper. ‘This one is from Stalin. He says: “You are asking for Latvia as a homeland for the Karolings, in exchange for disclosing manufacturing details of your device. Our response is that your technical advice would have some small value, but totally unequal to any grant of Soviet sovereign territory.”

‘So,’ she said, ‘Svart offered Mem Tav to the Soviets. He wanted a whole country in return, and that was Stalin’s response – his negotiating position.’

‘But what the devil are the Karolings?’ said Trent.

Sanders took over. ‘That’s the sect that Svart’s a member of,’ he said. ‘We’ve done some more digging on them. The full name is the
Nebukadnezzarwarheitsbund
, known for short as the
N
-
Bund
. It means “The Nebukadnezzar Truth Group”.’

Trent didn’t speak German, so Sanders explained, ‘Nebukadnezzar Svart was the founder,
warheit
means truth, and
bund
means group or association.’

‘Was Nebukadnezzar Svart’s father?’

‘No. His great-grandfather, and his second name was Karol: Nebukadnezzar Karol Svart. Hence Karolings as yet another name for the sect.’

‘Well, who are they?’ said Trent. ‘What are they?’

‘A jolly fine set of fellows, Donny,’ said Sanders, ‘you’d love them. They’re an extreme Mennonite, Aryan, militaristic sect, devoted to the second coming of Christ. They originally came from Switzerland, but most of them moved to Germany because they loved everything Hitlerite. They have another colony in Latvia, we think there’s one in South America, and there may be others.’ Sanders turned to Lady Margaret. ‘Tell Sir Donald about the Latvian group.’

‘Yes, sir,’ she said, and looked at Trent. ‘We think that the NKVD has rounded up all the Karolings in Latvia. They’ve been arrested and interrogated to find out what they know, and it would be a ruthless interrogation using torture.’ She rearranged the papers. ‘See here, sir: here’s the date when this conversation started, here’s where Svart asks for Latvia. Here’s Stalin’s first response. Then there’s a lot of arguing over terms. Then finally Stalin says this: “Our information from the Latvian Karolings is that you have only one active device following Ulvid and cannot make another without their minerals. Since we shall soon have another major weapon, we have no use for yours and these negotiations are ended.”’

Lady Margaret and Sanders looked at Trent, who shifted in his chair and fiddled with his glasses again. A struggle fought across his face, then he drummed fingers on the desk and sighed.

‘I suppose we can take it that “another major weapon” is the atom bomb?’

‘Yes,’ said Sanders. ‘The Soviets know about it, and will certainly try to make one.’

Trent nodded, facing hard reality. ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he said miserably. ‘It’s these communist true believers among our scientists. Why they believe such clap-trap I don’t know, but they do and if they don’t pass on the actual engineering drawings, they’ll give Stalin the broad sweep, such as how to separate the fissile isotope, and that alone would save years of work.’ He shook his head in dismay. ‘But surely that’s no reason to refuse something even worse than the atom bomb? Why has he shut out Svart?’

‘We think we know why, sir,’ said Lady Margaret. ‘But first of all, these transcripts have given us an important clue. Landau told us that Mem Tav is actually made in the warheads – made as it’s used – by mixing three ingredients.’

‘Yes,’ said Sanders, ‘and now we think they pass these ingredients over a catalyst.’

‘What’s that?’ said Trent.

‘A substance that makes a chemical reaction take place without getting involved in it.’

Trent looked puzzled. ‘Do they?’ he said.

‘Yes. And Latvia is famous for the mines at Ventspils that produce
Ventspilsite
, which is the world’s main industrial source of the lanthanides.’

‘Which are?’ said Trent.

‘Catalysts, Donny! The things that kick a chemical reaction up the beam ends and make it work. The lanthanides are fifteen different metallic elements, from lanthanum to lutetium in the periodic table, and they turn Svart’s ingredients into Mem Tav.’

‘Which of the fifteen would that be?’ said Trent, and Sanders lost his bounce.

‘We’ve no idea,’ he said. ‘It could be any of them, or a mixture. But the point is that if Stalin won’t give them to Svart, he can’t make any more Mem Tav warheads.’

‘So is that why Stalin broke off the negotiations?’ said Trent.

Sanders smiled. ‘No. There’s another reason.’ He looked at Lady Margaret.

‘Here, sir,’ she said. ‘These were sent by Svart just before Stalin finally ended the negotiation.’ She handed some sheets to Trent, who read them, and smiled, and then laughed.

He looked up. ‘He said
that
? To Stalin?’

‘Not in person, sir,’ said Lady Margaret.

‘By Jove, I should think not!’ said Trent. ‘But it’s very funny. Nasty, but funny.’

‘You’ve not got to the best bit yet,’ said Sanders.

Trent read on, finding yet more mockery, and burst out laughing all over again. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘no wonder Joe Stalin wouldn’t deal with him, because it’s not only Stalin himself that would have seen this, but his decrypting people and personal staff.’ He frowned. ‘But why should Svart insult Stalin if he wanted an agreement?’

‘We think he realized he wouldn’t get what he wanted,’ said Lady Margaret, ‘and he couldn’t resist a stab in return. Or maybe he’s just like that. Spiteful. Can’t help himself. But do keep reading, sir, because there’s something at the end.’

Trent went through the papers, chuckling merrily. Then he stopped. ‘What’s this?’ he said, and read out Svart’s words: ‘“I warn you, Comrade General Secretary, that should we reach no agreement, I have the means to persuade others to my point of view. Meanwhile, what is the difference between a Georgian with a moustache, and a duck with a sausage?”’

Trent tried to read out the punchline, but he couldn’t. He was laughing too much. But, when he stopped laughing, he looked again at Svart’s warning and found that it wasn’t funny at all. He looked at Sanders and Lady Margaret.

‘My first thought,’ he said, ‘is to consider Wing Commander Landau’s mission to Punno Island, because what you have just told me may help him send a radio message to get this Mem Tav U-boat to betray itself. And that, in my opinion, is now our first priority, because the navy have tried to find it and have failed.’ He indicated the papers on his desk. ‘So! Does Landau know all this?’