Gifts of War (32 page)

Upstairs I had been fairly lucky, in that I had made some sort of intelligence breakthrough reasonably early on. In the Crypt, however, it was different. I spent a very difficult two months scanning the paperwork I was given—captured documents, enemy morale reports, statistics of men and matériel provided by our side, interrogation reports—without, to be frank, spotting anything remotely useful. April came, and I was growing anxious.

What I remember most about that winter was not the cold or the rain or even the snow but the wind. We learned to dread the east wind. If there was an east wind in London, the chances were that there was an east wind at the Front—when the Germans would release their gas.

But then we were overwhelmed by the news that food riots had broken out in Russia, that the Cossacks had refused to fire on the rioters, and that the czar, faced down by railway workers, had abdicated. Russia was an ally, or had been—what was going to happen there?

That’s when I spotted something that, at first, was a long way from Russia. It was a passing reference made by one of our agents in Zurich. Most days he took his midmorning coffee at the Café Odeon. This café, I knew from my general reading, was famous in Zurich as the home of the Dada artists’ cult. It was frequented by Hans Arp, Frank Wedekind, James Joyce, Emmy Hemmings, and many other artists sitting out the war. In the account I am referring to, the agent happened to mention that he hadn’t seen one of the celebrated regulars in a few days: Lenin.

That set me thinking. Incredible events—revolutionary events— were happening in Russia. Lenin was—or should have been—in exile in Switzerland. But surely, now that the revolution was happening, he would want to get back to his home? And wouldn’t that spell trouble?

The procedure in the Crypt was different from upstairs. If you had an idea, you went straight to the colonel.

His name was Lockart, Hamish Lockart, and he was a Scot. He wore a mustache, had a mass of freckles and brilliant red hair. His rimless spectacles made him look like nothing so much as a Prussian.

“Aye?” he would say as you approached him. “What is it?”

A deputy shared his office, a major like me but of much more standing. His name was Frank Stanbury.

“Aye?” said Lockart, as I entered his glass booth. “What is it?”

I told him.

He frowned and didn’t ask me to sit down. “And what do you read into that?”

“Maybe Lenin’s gone back to Russia.”

He shook his head. “How would he get there?”

“Via Germany.”

“Why would imperial Germany allow a known revolutionary free passage?”

“Simple,” I said. “Self-interest. Lenin’s against all traditional authority. What he wants most of all is to pull Russia out of this war. If he did, think how many German divisions that would free up—to transfer to the Western Front.”

“You know this Lenin person, do you?”

“No, of course not. But I read. He thinks—like a lot of people— that this war was started by governments and generals and that it is ordinary people who are being made to suffer. He thinks it’s very likely that if Russia can pull out of the war, others will follow.”

Lockart sat back in his seat. He exchanged glances with Stanbury.

“What do you think, Frank?”

Frank, it was clear, had got where he was by never expressing an opinion, certainly not one that could be contradicted all too easily.

“Difficult,” he whispered, running his tongue around his lips— nerves, probably. “What do you think?”

It was like watching a tennis game, back and forth.

Lockart said nothing for a full minute. He stroked his mustache and kept his gaze on me. His calculation was always the same: not to bother his superiors unnecessarily, but not to stifle the supposedly brilliant ideas of his subordinates.

“Say you’re right. What would our next move be?”

“Double-check whether Lenin’s really gone, using our people on the ground in Zurich—”

“Which wouldn’t be very expensive—”

I nodded. “Then, if he
has
gone, we need to talk to our people on the ground in Petrograd, warn them to expect trouble and to position themselves accordingly.”

Another long silence. More rubbing of the mustache.

Then: “Very well. Come with me.” He rose, buttoned his tunic, tightened his tie, and led the way out of the basement. We ran up a flight of stairs, strode across the internal courtyard, and entered the building through a set of imposing double doors, made of some fancy Indian hardwood from the empire.

Inside the doors, it was immediately quiet. A plush carpet, spongy as a cricket square, high bookshelves, crystal chandeliers, and the smell of polish, which, for some reason, I found comforting. Across from the double doors, at the end of the carpet and the bookshelves, were more double doors. We were clearly somewhere very senior indeed. As we approached those doors, as we passed a buttress, a desk came into view, with a forbidding-looking woman sitting at it.

“Margaret,” said Lockart. “Is the brigadier free?”

She rose to her feet. She was an imposing figure, “stout,” as my mother would have said, though she was tall enough to carry it. “Just a minute, I’ll check.” She tapped lightly on the doors and stuck her head through the gap she had opened. She turned back to us. “Give him a minute.”

We stood without speaking. Lockart resumed polishing his mustache; Margaret went back to her typing; I watched dust particles dance in the shafts of sunlight from the windows.

The brigadier was as good as his word. After no more than a minute, the door opened, and he came out and shook hands with Lockart.

“This is Major Montgomery, sir,” said Lockart.

“You new?” said the brigadier.

Before I could answer, Lockart did it for me.

“The major was a bit of a star in the Gym, sir. He’s been with us a couple of months.”

The brigadier fixed me with his stare and nodded. A light went on in his head. “I’ve heard about you.” He nodded again and said, “My name’s Malahyde. Come in.”

His room was huge. Same plush carpet, same bookshelves and books as outside, plus a high window that gave onto a courtyard that until then I hadn’t known existed. A lawn with trees.

He waved us to some chairs and himself sat on a sofa, with a low table between us. He crossed his legs, revealing expensive socks and elegant, slim ankles. Very shiny shoes.

“Got something for me, have you?”

Again, Lockart was first off the mark.

“It may be a long shot but… well, that’s what we’re all about in the Crypt.”

There was a pad of paper on the low table. The brigadier took out a fountain pen and laid it on the pad.

“Fire away.”

Lockart looked at me and nodded.

I told Malahyde what I’d told Lockart.

He didn’t move and heard me out in silence. He didn’t even blink. It was unnerving. When I was done, he leaned forward, picked up his pad, and made a few notes. Then he put the pad back down and put away his pen. He was a very tidy man.

“Well, you did right to come to me. It should be easy enough to check whether Vladimir Ilyich is still in Zurich or has disappeared. If he’s still there but ill, or having a secret affair, that’s one thing. If, on the other hand, he really has decamped for Russia, then that’s a different kettle of fish entirely.”

He addressed himself to me. “Major Montgomery, this is good work. If Lenin
is
on his way to Mother Russia, we’d have found out in due course, but obviously time is of the essence here and you’ve bought a few days, I would guess.” He changed his tone. “But I have
to point out that you have signed the Official Secrets Act. You must tell no one about this. Not even your wife, if you have one. Do you understand?”

I nodded. Of course I understood.

“What I mean is, no one likes the Germans at the moment—but they are a good honest enemy. There are, however, plenty of closet Bolsheviks in Britain who’d like to see revolution here someday. We don’t want them making trouble, not just now anyway, with the war the way it is, and if they think Lenin is on his way to Russia that could cause all kinds of bother. Do I make myself clear?”

Again I nodded. I didn’t want an argument and, whatever my politics, I didn’t want Russia pulling out of the war—not for now.

“Keep at it, will you?” The brigadier got to his feet: we were being dismissed. He held out his hand for it to be shaken. “Now I need to get to work. See if I can build on what you have done.”

We were shown out. As we retreated back down the plush carpet, I heard him bark at Margaret, “Get me Downing Street, will you.”

At just over two, Will was noisier and more unruly than ever. He ran uncertainly around the flat, jabbed his fingers into any hole that would accommodate them, climbed every piece of furniture, burned himself once and scalded himself twice, through getting too close to the fire or the cooking stove. He seemed to have no fear and was as good-natured as a cat on a dairy farm.

Sam had long since settled in as a teacher at St. Paul’s Ladbroke Grove. To begin with, as she had finally admitted, the children had been a good deal more unruly, and quite a bit more smelly, than the darlings of Middle Hill. “But they’re just as bright,” she assured me, before I could offer any criticism. “They’ve had harder and dirtier lives—but they’ve got such spirit, Hal. They fight a bit, call the teachers
names—but it’s not hostile. It’s cheek, really. They know we know more than they do, but they don’t think that makes us better than them… we’re all equal. When we get on to the really interesting bits of a lesson, they all quiet down and concentrate. They know all about city life, of course, and, since they usually live in cramped conditions, there’s little we can teach them about the raw practicalities—money, work, sport. We don’t teach sex but we don’t need to—they’ve seen all that, too.”

“So what
do
you teach them?”

“History. Geography. Biology—how animals work, what happens on farms, which many have never seen, why the seasons change. Art— they love art. Many of them can look at pictures all day long.”

“Do you prefer it to Middle Hill?”

“I keep asking myself that question. I loved village life, but I like my life here too. Growing up in Bristol, we had excursions—day trips—into the countryside. But although I enjoyed those trips, I never felt
part
of the countryside, never felt it was part of me. In Middle Hill I did start to respond to, you know, the wildlife, the seasons, I started getting to know the hedgerows, the copses, I learned the different breeds of cow and pig, I knew all the words for the different parts of horses’ harnesses, I understood the diagnoses of the local vet—most of them, anyway. And yes, I loved it, all of it. But”—and her eyes shone—“I think the city is my natural habitat. Bristol wasn’t London, oh no, but… your sister was right and I’m glad we are here.”

We were in the kitchen at the time, making Will a hot drink. Having grown up with condensed milk, he didn’t share Sam’s or my revulsion.

“The real difference is the parents. In Middle Hill the parents were behind the children. Here, it’s different. Once or twice parents have come in and said that their child is being turned into a dreamer, that we shouldn’t fill their heads with far-off places. So I ask them to
sit through a class. The headmistress doesn’t mind. When they see how we teach
—what
we teach, how the children react—they change their minds, usually. Some of them become quite interested themselves. More and more parents are coming to the school—that has to be good. I say ‘parents’—it’s the mothers, of course.”

Lottie, meanwhile, had found herself a man at last. His name was Reg and, when she had met him, he had been a trainee policeman. He was nice enough, if creepy-quiet—tall, thin, with very short-cut dark hair and a mustache. Why did Sam’s sisters always seem to go for men with mustaches? Reg liked fishing, so Lottie and he spent hours on river and canal banks, on the edges of reservoirs, filled-in gravel pits, and so on. It got Lottie out at weekends, so that she saw a bit of the countryside on the edges of London. Reg lived in a police barracks and, after a day’s fishing at the weekend, they would arrive home late, usually after Sam and I were in bed, and spend the night together. He would be gone at dawn the next day. I never knew if Lottie thought she was deceiving us, but neither Sam nor I cared. Lottie must find her happiness where she could.

But then Reg was conscripted into an army unit in Yorkshire. So, more tears as he made his farewells. He and Lottie did
not
get engaged before he went, so I hoped there would be no replay of the Faye episode. Still, it wasn’t easy for Lottie.

Sam had made friends with one of the other teachers at the school, a woman called Ellen Smith whose speciality was science. She came round for lunch one Saturday and brought her fiancé with her. He, Edward, was an assistant harbormaster in the Port of London. I liked him immediately and we got on well. We went out to the pub but sat in the garden rather than the bar, because the weather had turned mild and we had Will with us. While Sam and Ellen talked, I asked Edward about his job.

“It’s pure organization,” he said. “I enjoyed math at school, especially
geometry, and it’s just as well. My job is all about timing and layout. Say a ship comes in, from the West Indies, for example. I’m told by telegraph when it’s coming, what size it is, and how long it’s going to be with us. So I allocate a berth. All well and good, assuming, of course, that it’s in a convoy and doesn’t get torpedoed. I arrange the customs inspection, handle any quarantine problems, make sure all the paperwork is in order.”

“But… ? I sense a ‘but’ coming.” Too right. He smiled. First off, I don’t control the rate at which ships arrive. If the port is full—and it happens—ships have to anchor in the estuary. That’s expensive for them, and so is hardly popular. And it creates work for me, since I have to alert customs, who will keep an eye on them.

“Then, some ships overstay the amount of time they have told us. Ships are big things, so you can’t just tell them to move. But if they stay, they are fined—and getting the money out of them can be a problem, though they know that if they mess us around they can’t come back. Then, of course, sailors who have been at sea for weeks at a time are apt to go overboard when they reach the shore. They drink, go whoring, get into fights, get arrested, in some cases get sent to prison. I don’t have to deal with all that but I do have to keep abreast of it, insofar as it affects when a ship leaves and we can bring in the ones waiting outside.” He smiled. “As a job it’s more interesting than it sounds, and I enjoy it. Of course, over time, certain ships and certain captains get a reputation and you learn to look out for them.”