The Samurai Inheritance (11 page)

He stopped and listened again, ears tuned to any potential danger. Fortunately, the sacks of paper were stacked methodically in their usual places. He went directly to the one that would contain draft copies of the minutes of high-level government meetings. It was sealed, of course, but he’d managed to take a wax copy and a contact had helpfully run him off duplicates. It was the work of seconds to unclip it and untie the string at the neck of the sack. Finding the kind of information he sought took longer, but he willed himself to stay calm. Experience had taught him to identify documents of interest among the piles of turgid dross about potato quotas and provision for the return of evacuees. He found a partial minute of a War Cabinet meeting about the dispatch of African troops to the Burma front, which would be of interest, and pushed it into the buff file he carried on these expeditions. One more. Just one more and he would leave. He leafed through the sheaves of paper, skim-reading the first line and discarding them one by one. And froze.

‘TO BE STAMPED TOP SECRET’.

‘… Source X …’

Who was Source X? His hands shook as he realized the implications of what he was reading. He was finished. Source X was in Tokyo, but this information had been corroborated
by other means
. Every word he read increased his certainty.
Other means
meant intercepts, and if they were reading intercepts that meant they’d broken the code. They
knew
, or if they didn’t know they would know soon. His first instinct was to thrust the paper back into the sack, seal it and walk out, never to return. Still, he hesitated. A little voice reminded him that the information it contained, allied to the knowledge that his employers’ codes had been broken, was priceless. It might even change the course of the entire war. More importantly, it would buy his freedom. He scanned the paper again, marvelling at the utter ruthlessness of what he was reading. Could his old friend have really been so callous? But there it was in the final two words. NO ACTION.

He hurriedly placed the page in the file and resealed the sack, replacing it exactly in its original position. After waiting with his ear to the door for a few moments to ensure the passage was empty, he walked swiftly back through the warren of corridors and tunnels, then up two flights of stairs to his own office in the Admiralty. He was sweating profusely as he pushed the file into a leather briefcase and donned his dark blue overcoat. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he switched off the light and walked smartly down the stairs to the front door, passing the familiar pictures of long-dead admirals and watery battle scenes clouded by gunpowder smoke.

When he reached the entrance hall he could feel the eyes of the chief petty officer at the front desk on him. Normally the old sailor would have wished him a friendly goodnight, but tonight there was something different about him. The tall man’s steps faltered, but somehow he recovered. Two Royal Navy guards stood, one to each side of the porticoed steps, their rifles at the port. All it would take was one word and a search of the briefcase and he’d end up in the tower. He could already feel the rope tightening around his neck.

‘Excuse me, sir?’

His guts turned to ice. Christ, he’d lived this moment a thousand times, waking and dreaming, and now it had come. Very slowly he turned to face his accuser.

‘Don’t want to be going out on a night like this without an umbrella, sir.’

He blinked. Yes, it was raining. Pouring, in fact. ‘Of course.’ He managed a rictus of a smile, accepting the black brolly the man thrust in his hand.

‘Goodnight, your lordship.’

‘Goodnight, Stevens.’

He emerged past the guards and raised the umbrella in the shelter of the portico before walking into the rain. As he walked up Whitehall he was filled with a strange mix of exhilaration and terror. In his briefcase he had the greatest secret of the Second World War. It would buy him his freedom and dictate the fate of thousands, but it also contained his doom. It was only a matter of time.

XIII

‘The officer in charge of the mission in ’thirty-six was a Major Kojima Yoshitaki, of the Imperial Japanese Army,’ Jamie said into the phone. ‘According to the article, he attended a joint Luftwaffe–
Wehrmacht
exercise while he was in Germany, but if I was laying odds I’d say the real reason he was in Berlin was the Anti-Comintern Pact. He was accompanied by a couple of lieutenants, but if the Nazi foreign ministry was handing out gifts, he was the man receiving them.’

‘What about the Americans you mentioned,’ Keith Devlin demanded.

Jamie flicked through his notebook for the names Magda had provided. ‘Richard Parker and Hal Roberts the Third, two US State department officials who were given the grand tour by Goebbels’ propaganda ministry. The report in the
Berliner Morgenpost
mentioned museum visits, which makes it interesting.’

‘Agreed,’ the Australian growled. Jamie could imagine him looking out of the office across to Sydney Harbour like Zeus surveying the mortal world from Mount Olympus, aware of, but not part of the world below. ‘Something’s bothering you?’

Jamie blinked. Was the man bloody psychic? ‘Two things, actually.’ He mentioned his theory about a Soviet mission in the wake of the Japanese–Nazi alliance.

‘I have a few friends who may be able to help out with that. Leave it with me. The other thing?’

‘America. Japan. Possibly Russia. Unless I’m mistaken, Mr Devlin, you have people in all those countries who are much better placed than I am to move this search on. They’ll know their patch; they’ll have contacts in all the right places.’ He waited for a reaction, but all he could hear was soft breathing at the other end of the line. ‘What I’m saying is that we know the Bougainville head was still in circulation in nineteen thirty-six and if it still exists it’s likely to be in one of those countries. Maybe this is where my part in this ends?’

‘I hear what you’re saying, Jamie son, and I can understand your point of view. You’re keen to get back to those lovely girls of yours. I’ve no problem with that at all. But maybe I’m in a better position to see things than you are.’ Devlin paused as he considered his next words. ‘You see, it’s not just your talents I need, son. It’s your instincts and that thing that keeps you going when other men would have stopped long ago. The thing that helped you track down the Raphael and in all those other little mysterious shindigs I’m not supposed to know about. Yes, we have proof the head was still around in ’thirty-six, but even if we track it down to one of these people, what are the chances they still have it after sixty-odd years? No, you stick with it. I’ll get back to you on the Soviets and the Yanks, after that it’s up to you. Just let me know what you need and you’ll have it by return.’

Jamie considered telling Devlin his room had been searched, but some instinct decided him against it. ‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll wait for word. There is one other thing. I’ve had an offer of help. A professor at the museum who’s an expert on the Melanesian islands. They say there’s a possibility of confusion in identifying the head.’ He shrugged. ‘Apparently they all look much the same if you’re not a specialist and they’re known to have been faked in the past.’

‘I can understand that,’ the Australian agreed. ‘We need to be certain of the goods. What’s he offering?’

‘Er, he’s a she, and she’s offering to come along to provide support and expert advice. She also speaks Japanese, which could come in handy if we end up going down that road.’

Now it was Keith Devlin’s turn to let the silence drag. ‘Well, mate, I reckon the final decision has to be up to you. I don’t have a problem with anything that makes it more likely we succeed and I won’t mention it to the lovely Fiona if you won’t.’

‘It’s not that—’

‘Only kidding, son.’ Devlin chuckled. ‘What’s she asking, this … expert?’

Jamie managed to curb an urgent need to tell his client to stick his didgeridoo where the sun doesn’t shine. ‘Nothing yet, but she seems very keen to help out.’

‘Maybe in that case it’s better that you have her close, so you can keep an eye on her. Ask her how much she wants per diem, plus a bonus if she verifies the head as the genuine article, then offer her half and we’ll see how keen she really is.’

‘Of course, Magda, that will be perfectly acceptable, and obviously my client will make a donation to the museum to compensate for your absence. I’ll be in touch once he gets back to me with the details.’

A gentleman doesn’t haggle with a lady and anyway it was Keith Devlin’s money. In all honesty, Jamie had to admit he’d never been comfortable with the haggling side of things, which was a bit of a drawback in the art business. It might even have been one of the symptoms of Saintclair Fine Arts’ glacial cash flow before the lovely people at the Princess Czartoryski Foundation had come up with their Raphael finder’s fee. The thought of all that money now languishing in his bank account just waiting to be splashed out on obscure but interesting works, that might, or more likely might not, be worthy of the investment gave him the warm glow of a gambling addict standing at the entrance to a casino with a hatful of chips. The mood only lasted until he finally listened to the little voice from his left shoulder demanding to know what the hell he thought he was doing.
Well, actually, little voice, I’m doing what Jamie Saintclair always does, I’m flying by the seat of my pants
. So what if the little voice pointed out that flying by the seat of his pants had almost got him killed several times in the past?

One part of him worried that, subconsciously, he wanted Magda Ross along for reasons that were less than altruistic. Yet it was more than that. Some instinct told him his meeting with Dr Ross, Melanesian expert and authority on shrunken heads, was no accident. The same instinct said she had a part to play somewhere down the road. In any case, she’d made it clear she didn’t get in the way of other people’s relationships. Fiona’s face swam into his head and he swore this would be a professional partnership and nothing more. So why did the image of the gambler return, except this time he was down to his last chip and red was calling him like a siren to a shipwrecked sailor?

Devlin called back the next morning. ‘The US angle is a dead end, and unfortunately for those two diplomats I mean that literally. Seems they hung about in Germany for an extended vacation and eventually stopped off in Frankfurt, where Parker had relatives.’

‘That doesn’t sound as if it would be fatal.’

‘No, but they made a fatal decision when they chose their method of transport to go home. Does Frankfurt, May ’thirty-seven ring any bells with you?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘The Hindenburg?’

‘Ah. So if they took the head back with them it’s gone.’

‘That’s right. Which leaves us with the Japanese delegation …’

‘You’re not going to tell me Major Kojima Yoshitaki lived in Hiroshima?’

‘That’s quite a sense of humour you have there, Saintclair,’ Devlin said after a dangerous pause.

‘All part of my lovable personality, Keith.’

‘Yoshitaki’s dead,’ Devlin continued, ‘but his family still has property in Tokyo. I suggest that’s your next port of call. The Japs are very particular about family heirlooms, so if the major took a liking to the chief’s head, there’s a good chance they’ll still have it.’

Not if they have any taste
. ‘Won’t that make it more difficult to get it away from them?’

Devlin laughed. ‘With your charm and my chequebook they don’t stand a chance, mate.’ Behind the faux joviality, Jamie suspected, lay the unspoken assurance he’d discovered in several powerful men. If, by any chance, the Yoshitaki family resisted the combination of charm and chequebook, Keith Devlin would do whatever it took to get his hands on the Bougainville head.

‘There’s an Etihad flight from Tegel to Tokyo tomorrow night,’ he told the Australian. ‘Can you get your people to book two seats on it? Any class will do as long as they’re together.’

‘You’ll be on it. I’ll also have my PA find you a good hotel. One room or two?’

‘I think you know the answer to that perfectly well, Mr Devlin.’

‘Don’t be so touchy, son. Two rooms it is. The Hyatt’s as good as any in central Tokyo if you don’t mind the waiters looking down on you, and local middle management and their hookers.’

‘You haven’t mentioned the Soviets.’

‘There’s nothing yet. If a Russian delegation met Hitler in the spring of ’thirty-seven, it was sent in secret. It’s what you’d expect from Stalin,’ Devlin chuckled admiringly, ‘he was a bloke who liked to keep his cards close to his chest. Finding out will take a little longer than I expected, but if it happened we’ll know about it in the next couple of days.’

Jamie thanked him and rang off. He called Magda Ross’s cell number. ‘We’re going to Tokyo,’ he said. ‘The flight leaves from Tegel tomorrow at six p.m., so if it’s convenient I’ll pick you up around three.’

‘Sounds great,’ she said cheerfully. ‘It will be good to visit Japan again, especially if someone else is picking up the bill. I lived there for two years when I was fourteen, but I haven’t been back since.’

Next morning Jamie rose just after five and fifteen minutes later he was outside the hotel in shorts, T-shirt and trainers. He’d done some research the previous day and discovered a patchwork of walkways by the Spree that would make a good run. If his suspicions about being watched were correct, a phone was ringing somewhere and someone was frantically throwing on some clothes. He waited, doing some stretches in the street, glad that at this ungodly hour there was no one to see him. Sure enough, after a few minutes a car appeared round a corner to his left and drew to a halt a hundred paces away. He smiled.

He’d chosen his route quite deliberately. First through the park opposite the hotel and past an impressive statue of two grim-faced, bearded men that he belatedly realized were Karl Marx and his brother in arms, Frederick Engel. He’d known Berliners were forgiving, but personally he’d have been tempted to melt the fathers of modern Communism down and strike a posthumous medal for the hundreds of men and women who’d perished in the death strip of the Wall trying to flee the ideology they created.