The Spy (20 page)

Valerie did the same. De Beck had turned, he glanced over his shoulder.
Something
? A face, he thought, back there on the shore.
Shimmering
. Just a tree, with a low limb. Valerie had stopped in midair when she saw him. He moved on, footsteps crunching into the sand. Dropping the leg that looked like a limb, she stepped from behind the tree. She followed, in step with his movements, arriving at the place where he had stopped. She looked down.

She could tell it was him, from the initials.

In the training film for the cross-country, the narrator had compared soldiers blazing trails to cats marking their territory. Seymour had borrowed this rare footage, she'd learned, from his own instructor, chap named Bridley. She bent down, like the soldier in the film, rolling sand between her forefinger and thumb. She sniffed, cataloguing the smell. Pierre, on his home ground, was obviously leaving a trail for her to follow:
good to know, in case he got lost
. She straightened up.

De Beck had disappeared!

A dark form was cutting across the field
.

She distinguished the outline of a hedge, and a shadow, fast disappearing through it. On either side, blackened by war, lay the ruined ruts of wheat:
the road to the farm
. Damp red poppies bent low to the earth. In the dim light, they looked like drops of blood.

They were moving as a team...

Out of darkness, a VOICE that turns her heart to ice!

“
Wer geht da?'

Still running, she skidded to her knees and froze! Through the branches, she could see it: the back of the Frenchman, his hands raised.

“
Ami
,” she heard him say.

A rifle bolt opened, it slammed shut.

“
Freund. Ein Freund!”
Pierre amended, seconds from death.

The shot was held.

Lucky Pierre. Not to die at dawn. When to die then? Was she next? Did they know she was here? How could they know! Her heart pounded wildly, like the heart of a bird.

Sinclair groaned, she kicked off the sheet. She was ripping at her gown
.

Crouched, trembling, Marchaud became the grass.

She wished herself a shadow, she dreamt herself a tree. Something was at her window. She remembered she'd been playing with dolls. Dolls, without heads.

A twig snapped.

She opened her eyes.

“
Vorwärts und weisen sie sich AUS
!”barked the Bogeyman.

She closed them.

A pillow slid from the bed. Valerie felt herself falling. She fell into a ditch. De Beck was being arrested! Two men were talking: they were German. One of them was Pierre, he had an American accent. The second man, older, a Commandant, he was...?

Von Schroeder. He is a Banker
...

A Banker?

The Commandant peered at the prisoner, studying the Frenchman's countenance. A broad grin spread across his face. “
Horst Liebeck! Wo warst Du? Willkommen zu hause!”

She grabbed for her camera! Where was it?

“—
Horst Liebeck
? The Commandant waved the guns aside. Gratefully, Pierre lowered his arms. “So, Liebeck! How is London? Still standing? Tell me about Marley Square!” For the past four years, it has been Pierre's favorite place to go.

He has been expected
...

Von Schroeder was showing Pierre a photograph. They were looking down, staring at the corpse of a British spy. Her face of white is wet with blood. Black tears, forming ruts, drip down onto the road.

Marchaud gasps, places her hand to her mouth. Sinclair, her
other
, will be shot by the Gestapo after extraction of the information in her memory: photographs arranged by von Schroeder. He will give them to de Beck.
But what are they looking at!
In darkness, she listens:

Rain is falling.

Beyond its echo in the summer night, comes a voice, frightening and faceless, yet clear, like stars and wind, and whispering.

Her name is Mary Gladstone
...

“
Wer ist Frau Mary Gladstone?”

She is you, unless you remember
...

Her eyelids seemed glued together, bonded, as if from dead streams of tears. She tried to focus and found the bedclothes disarrayed. Why wouldn't she remember? Because of her camera? Had she taken it? Dawn spread its thin film across her field of vision.
Had she opened the curtains!
Daylight came, the sun slipping through, hot on her cheeks.

Sinclair yawned...

She was awake
.

Saturday's sun was hitting them hard.

Through the left rear window a comer chop of light flashed on braided felt, touching the unyielding shoulder of blue broadcloth, just under the epaulet. The driver lowered the visor. Commodore Blackstone, O.B.E., V.C., was sitting stiffly in the back of his personal car, as he had for some thirty years, eyes straight ahead, for all appearances cut from the same marble as Nelson. His driver, maneuvering the black Bentley through the Buckinghamshire traffic, shot past raised beds of blue and yellow flowers down early-morning lanes of red mercury gravel.

Once past the sentries, and into the welcome brick of Bletchley Park, Commodore Blackstone found solace. Equal to Mountbatten in pay, if not in public relations, Blackstone's hatred of Lord Louis, the sponsor of Valerie Sinclair, engulfed him as he walked down corridors that smelled of cleansing solvents and into the large office where his Adjutant, Lieutenant Conrad Parker, had already arranged the morning's dossiers. Fluent in German, familiar with Berlin, Parker had been recruited from the London School of Economics. Having personally seen to his Clearance, the Commodore considered the future banker, who was dark of thought and insidiously silent, a particularly valuable asset in the ongoing business with his European partners.

“By Jove! ‘Pronto,' as they say, ah?”

Following their journey through the labyrinths of history, the thick stack of files had reached their final destination and were now awaiting one of the two hand stamps that would determine their fate:

KEEP
, or
DESTROY
.

The decision was Blackstone's.

In looking back over his life, he knew that people in high places were afraid of him. Yet he had come too far to let this influence his judgment. Controlling the ticket office on MI.5's midway of recent attractions, a hot cup of tea at hand, the Commodore opened the first of the folders, turned it sideways and read the name:
Erich von Schroeder
. Their positions analogous, von Schroeder orchestrated Intelligence for Germany.

They had met, before the war.

He looked inside:
J. Henry Schroeder Co., Schroeder Bankers, Hamburg. Present Rank: Commandant, Abwehr. Present location unknown: presumed France
. Without glancing up, he said, “Good work, Parker.” He flicked through the rest of the tabs. “By the way, have Bridley call me, will you?” Not gone five seconds, there was a tap at the door. “Now what?” The Commodore looked up.

It was his Adjutant.

“Sorry, sir. I just remembered. About Bridley—?”

“Bridley, yes? What about him?”

“There was a cable early this morning, sir. I didn't want to bother you.”

“Ay? Nonsense, Parker! Out with it!”

“Bridley is out of the country, sir. No one quite knows where, but the cable did state that he would be sending a message—to Commander Hamilton, sir.”

“Intercept it, Parker.”

“Yes, sir!”

So! David Hamilton, sucking up to Mountbatten, thought he had Bridley in his pocket, did he? That torpedo who worked for him, too! Lieutenant Seymour, wasn't he? Marty Seymour's kid. Why, the bounders were as clear as a spyglass! There was a new breed of blackmailer these days—but he still had a trick or two. Blackstone scribbled a note. Alone with his thoughts, Parker gone, he read:

Von Schroeder. Pre-military: Goethe University, London School of Economics. Present at meeting with Adolf Hitler, 4 January, 1933, Berlin. Schroeder Banks financed the debt incurred by Hitler's private army. Represented by the London office of Sullivan and Cromwell (J.F. Rulles) rep. V.S. Bank
.

Schroeder is listed among 17 Merchant Bankers who make up the Financial District of London. With Belgium Banker Franqui, #8 of the consortium, the Schroeder family financed the American President Hoover. Hoover, a mining engineer, serving Franqui's copper interests in Singapore
.

There was more, the print being small; and he finally reached the bottom of the page:
In 1936, Schroeder merged with Rockefeller, #3, re-forming, in 1937, the Canadian Cartel of Bechtel-McCone International: Ottawa and London. Bechtel, accessed to Washington, is responsible for the favored selections of Chairmen of the Federal Reserve; and, often, other Government Posts. In 1938, the London Schroeder (Bank) became Germany's Agent in Great Britain. In 1939 Schroeder Bros. Erich and Bruno
, #5
and
#6
respectively, arranged with Lord Docker exchange of Shares, Bank of England
.

See Bechtel Construction
.

“That would be
Boer's
Bank,” the Commodore concluded, and jotted the note on a separate pad. All Rothschild Associates, himself included, owned Shares there—until Emily convinced him to go with
National Westminster
. Thinking of their future, she had started handling more of their affairs lately, what with the war.

Bloody nuisance, sometimes, these dossiers.

He tore the note from the top of the pad, folded it carefully, and placed it in the side pocket of his blouse. A shareholder in what he was investigating, Blackstone's own motives were above reproach. “Conflict-of-interest” was one of those American phrases. Among International Bankers, trained and recruited at the London School of Economics, the first secret was that there weren't any.

The American Fed was a hoax. Had been, since 1913
.

Purchased by Germany's Paul Warburg—spelled Rothschild—with Congressman Carter Glass doing the selling. Name changed, from the Owen-Glass Act. Lights out, in Congress. The Bill's sponsor, Senator Robert L. Owen, waiting in the wings. No further mention of Owen. Hmmm. Politics, that: somebody had to throw
somebody
a bone.

Pensioned quite well, was he?

Leave it to the bloody Yanks
!

Cleaned up, as it were, and under its final name, the American Federal Reserve Act of 1913 had actually been authored and successfully lobbied by one Paul Warburg. Nice touch, that “Federal”. In the consortium, Warburg was listed as #4.
Neither an American Agency nor the ‘Central Bank' of the United States Government
, the London officer had underlined,
but a foreign-owned private credit monopoly
. When Roosevelt was elected, he appointed James Paul Warburg, the son, as his Budget Director. Nephew of Max Warburg, Paul's brother, and Germany's top spy. Both brothers had attended the Paris Peace Conference: Paul Warburg as President Wilson's Chief Financial Advisor; Max, #7, heading up the German delegation. John Maynard Keynes, the economist, representing
England
? Opposing German reparations? Had someone taken leave of their senses! Hmmm...let's see, who were OUR chaps? Ah, yes! Lord Balfour and Baron Edmund D. Rothschild. Good thing the
Bankers
were there!

League of Nations? Ridiculous!

In his final reference to the Federal Reserve Act, having already appointed Paul Warburg its first Chairman, Woodrow Wilson confessed on his death bed, “
I have betrayed my country
.” The President's funeral, in the rain, in 1924, had included the attendance of two men, one of them Warburg.

The other, an outside Operative.

The Commodore glanced over his shoulder. Seems he'd heard something...a vibratory
clicking
of some sort...there, amid darting shadows! An invisible presence, it had moved faster than his eye could follow. Blackstone blinked. Air currents, Victorian plumbing. It was forever drafty at Bletchley. He turned back around...was he being monitored?

Who would dare!

The strange sound lingered in his mind for a moment, like the closing of iron doors. Adjusting his glasses, the Commodore flipped quickly through the rest of the file. Attached by metal to the back of the folder, a yellowed document revealed itself to be the U.S. Naval Secret Service Report, dated December 12, 1919:

“
Warburg, Paul Moritz. New York City, German-born naturalized citizen. Was Vice-Chairman Federal Reserve Board. In this capacity, arranged twenty million dollars converted to pounds, transhipped in gold, furnished by Germany for Lenin and Trotsky
.

Has a brother who is leader of the espionage system of Germany
.”

Note: With Rockefeller interests, family controlling stock in German rail industry
.

Twenty million in gold, for the Bolsheviks. A sealed train, by night, transversing Germany. An insignificant amount of money, internationally; but to
whom
had it gone, unbeknownst to the rest? Traveling on Rockefeller's rails...

Had the American Navy tried to prove something?

Blackstone knew, and had known all of his life, that the London Financial District, made up in the majority of Seventeen Merchant Bankers, controlled the monetary policy of the United States. The conversion had taken place in London. The goal of international banking was a stable price label. The Czar had threatened stability. Lenin, his adversary, had thus served international banking far better than anything drummed up by the Radicals.

Trotsky entered, spokesman for the Left.

Blackstone admired Hegel, as had Lenin; but he hated Frank Harris, who honored sexual license. Harris, later backed by Victoria and supported by writers Jack London and Rudyard Kipling—odd union, that—would ultimately appraise Marxism in its own right, calling its philosophy a fraud. Trotsky, ignoring reality, tried to get rid of money. Lenin, ultimately, got rid of Trotsky. Roosevelt got rid of the gold standard. Rothschild and Associates would get rid of the gold: