World War Two Will Not Take Place (2 page)

He and Mount had watched the Prime Minister's Daimler eventually move off on the way back to London. Other cars tagged behind in a triumphal procession, some carrying Press and broadcasting people, but most simply enthusiasts and sightseers. Several drivers blared their horns repeatedly in salute. At least this made sure the string of vehicles couldn't be mistaken for a funeral cortège, though the misery Mount sensed in Bilson might suggest a funeral was what it definitely was. Perhaps his sadness came from a larger cause than the schoolboys' behaviour. Did Stephen think he'd suddenly glimpsed the end of that vastly variable and internationally disputed quality, British honour? He'd wanted proper recognition of what the PM had achieved, but not on such a noisy, delirious, unthinking, reverential scale.

This morning, the Press was almost uniformly enthusiastic about the Munich trip.
The Times
had headlined its report of the meeting ‘A Cordial Welcome From The Führer', and the Labour
Daily Herald
had sent him off with the large type message ‘Good Luck' and spoken of united, cross-party support for his efforts.

At Heston, yesterday, SB gave the Daimler and its tail of admirers and news hounds half an hour to get clear, then followed. ‘He'll report to the king now and most probably to the Cabinet in the morning,' he'd said. ‘Delight all round. Out on the palace balcony with all the majesticals for the crowd, I expect. Our monarch, Edward, and his wife, Wallis, are fond of Adolf, aren't they? It's part of their affection for Europe. She's American. To her, Europe is Europe, whether it's Hitler's bit or someone else's. They have minds that generalize – are not good at differentiating. They'll be delighted with the outcome – pleased that the Prime Minister has preserved good feelings between the two countries. Come to me at noon tomorrow, Marcus. I'll want you to get over
sub rosa
, entirely
sub rosa
, to Berlin immediately.' He spoke it all in the same, matter-of-fact tone, as if Mount's trip must naturally follow the PM's encounter with the king and the Cabinet and all the majesticals – a natural, inevitable part of the same sequence.

Mount said: ‘May I ask what is the—?'

‘Noon. Silence on this, please, Marcus.'

But Mount had mentioned it to Nick and Ollie the next morning, this morning, as part of his account of the Heston sequence. ‘At first, Stephen seemed happily caught up with waiting for the Lockheed,' Mount said. ‘Then, only minutes afterwards, it's as if he suddenly had massive second thoughts.'

‘A revelation had hit him,' Baillie said. Nick was usually quick and definite in his judgements. ‘SB might be the sort for epiphany-type revelations: super-balanced most of the time, but if that balance is disturbed by some epiphany – some massive revelation – his mind becomes very, very disturbed. This could shove our master towards breakdown, temporary or worse. It's a familiar psychological pattern. It would be made worse, perhaps, when he heard the PM had been invited to the Palace to get the king's thanks face to face. And the crowd outside yelling, “We want Chamberlain! We want Neville!” Then, later, much the same at ten Downing Street.'

‘Suddenly, this very unlogged, false-papers mission to Berlin,' Mount said.

‘To do what?' Fallows said.

‘He'll brief me personally later today. For my ears only,' Mount said. ‘I'm packed.'

‘Skulduggery?' Fallows asked.

‘I assume no weaponry,' Mount said. ‘How does he get me something from the armoury if I'm not just
sub rosa
, but entirely
sub rosa
?'

‘Think you'll need something?' Baillie said.

‘It's Berlin,' Mount said.

‘Well, yes,' Baillie said.

‘Maybe he'll draw a handgun on the face of it for himself and let you borrow,' Fallows said.

‘You think so?' Mount said.

‘No,' Fallows said. ‘You might go and kill someone and the gun could be traced to him.'

‘
Who
might I go and kill?' Mount said.

‘That's for you to decide,' Fallows said. ‘Some SS thug giving you bother? How can I tell? You're skimping the information, Marcus.'

‘I'm skimping because I haven't got any,' Mount said. ‘Not till I see him, and it might be half mystery even then.'

‘Be severe with him,' Fallows said.

‘With SB?'

‘Come right out with it: “How's about a pistol, plus fifty rounds and a silencer, then, SB?” And he'll see the reasonableness of this and say, “Glad you asked, young Marcus. Have a brace and a hundred.” And you'll reply, selflessly, “Won't this leave you light on one gun hip, sir? I wouldn't want to be responsible for that. A single will do, and the fifty.”'

‘I do love humour,' Mount had replied.

Now, he took a taxi from Templehof Airport to the empty apartment. It was neat and spruce: the building management sent a cleaning firm in once a fortnight whenever the place stood unoccupied for a while. The wallpaper always struck him as William Morris-y: mostly dark green, plenty of lively leaves and stalks and gleams of sun through the foliage, very much pro-Nature, especially jungles. Mount could put up with the furniture. It had been bought to chime with the modernity of the apartment. A nest of three very black Bakelite tables sickened him a bit, but he liked the tall, slim hall mirror on a stand and the wide laminated birch and metal armchairs.

Several bronze and ivory statuettes of limbs-flung dancing girls cheered things up in the living room. This had two windows looking over the street. He raised the Venetian blinds. He'd leave these windows uncovered. The lights made an announcement: someone had arrived and required a visitor. It had been important to get an apartment on at least the second or third floor, so the message could be obvious, and so people walking the pavement couldn't gawp in. This signalling mimicked brothels, though their lights would be red, of course. It was one of the most primitive taught procedures for getting in touch with an agent, and fairly safe, although lights on in the day could cause curiosity. Telephoning would not have been primitive. Nor would it have been safe. Calls were randomly listened in on. Telegrams, even coded telegrams, could be a giveaway. Perhaps someone would wonder why they needed to be coded.

Mount sat down for a while away from the windows and thought back. During the chat with Baillie and Fallows this morning, Baillie had asked: ‘Have you considered the Etonians?'

‘Considered how?' Mount said.

‘
The Times
said a gaggle of senior boys had been allowed to cut school and get to the Heston party,' Fallows said.

‘They intoned his name,' Mount said. ‘At least a hundred.'

‘Yes,
The Times
reported it as “Neville” over and over,' Baillie said. ‘This could be crucial for SB's state of mind.'

‘“
Nev
ille” over and over,' Mount said.

‘The paper estimates 120 Etonians,' Baillie said. ‘Might that have shocked SB? Perhaps made him wonder if he'd led Neville into a terrible error by humouring Adolf?'

‘I don't follow,' Mount said.

Fallows clapped his hands twice. ‘Ah, I believe
I
do. Very clever, Nick. Insightful. Look, Marcus, consider Sir Henry Newbolt.'

‘“A breathless hush in the Close tonight”?' Mount said.

‘It's public school cricket under way – probably Eton cricket,' Baillie said. ‘We have a needle game, the result touch and go. And Newbolt proudly declares that because these schoolboys learned how to battle well at cricket, they'd be able to battle well as officers in a war and magnificently rally the ranks at bad moments. It's where Britain traditionally got its army leaders: our public schools. They were first over the top out of the trenches. Why so many got mown down. But didn't these braying Etonians at Heston turn all that inside out? They'd come to robot-bellow their support for murky deals, for appeasement, and their adoration of the PM and his bit of paper, gloriously wrung from Hitler and his troupe – by handing Hitler and his troupe everything they asked for. Did this sudden, shocking revelation appal Bilson, bringing on a collapse into confusion and regret, shame and a vast change of mind?'

Fallows said: ‘Or think of Rupert Brooke, public school poet and a First War officer, chortling at the start of hostilities in 1914: “Now God be thanked who has matched us with His hour.” These lads at Heston hailed a cowardly, feeble, eat-dirt hour. That's what
they
'd been matched with. They exulted in the country's humiliation. We imagine, don't we, that SB's purpose must be to get Chamberlain to keep Hitler quiet for, say, another twelve month, perhaps more, so we have time to build up strength. But what use is that if the potential officer class don't want to fight – if the potential officer class flagrantly idolizes someone who's cravenly dodged out of fighting? Might that shred SB's strategy? And shred his morale?'

‘But if Chamberlain and Stephen had decided we
should
fight now,
should
try to block Hitler now, the situation would be entirely the same, wouldn't it?' Mount said. ‘If you're right, the so-called officer class, the Etonians and Old Etonians, wouldn't want to go to war tomorrow, any more than it would in a year or so's time.'

‘The trip to Munich and early reports from there hatched a timorous, poltroon spirit,' Baillie said. ‘Then it developed at a terrifying rate, overwhelming rate. True, we had the Oxford '33 union vote: “This house will in no circumstances fight for king and country, thank you very much.” But that was only powerless, mischievous undergrads wanting to shock, and before we really knew very much about Hitler. Now, we have the Prime Minister seeming to back the students' attitude five years later when Adolf's aims are a good bit clearer – and bloody alarming. Think of that Reich Chancellery meeting with armed forces chiefs last November, where he said Germany's legitimate desire for more space for her people could only be realized through force.
Only
through force. He actually named Czechoslovakia and Austria as territorial hindrances, didn't he?'

‘November fifth. Bonfire night!' Fallows said. ‘Couldn't be more apt. Try not to let any of them use that force on you, Marcus, even if you are gunless. Maybe at Heston SB saw the link with that Oxford Union idiocy, despite all these subsequent developments, and it devastated him. And you, in your intuitive way, Marcus, sensed the devastation in him, diagnosed the
volte face
. Bravo! And now, off to Berlin! Weird.'

‘Yes, fascinating, but not, not at all, unexplainable,' Baillie had said, explaining. Mount's description of SB's sudden mood change at Heston had handed Baillie a chance to try a spot of amateur psychology. And so, the reference to that mighty, officer-quality cricket match in Newbolt's Close. After this, Baillie had categorized SB as a probable stoic, and then discussed what might happen if stoicism fractured. Nick fancied himself as a psychologist/psychiatrist. It could get tiresome. But, although he had no training in such mysteries – his degree was modern languages: double First, Cambridge, in French, German, Italian – now and then he would come up with a believable X-ray of someone's mind and motives. Perhaps he had SB right, Mount thought.

Stephen Bilson said, at the start of the noon meeting in Section earlier today, ‘I'd like you to get over to Berlin and see friend Toulmin. Russia. I'm interested in Russia, Marcus. Toulmin works mainly on Jerry's Russian desk at their Foreign Office, doesn't he?' No mention of a handgun came throughout their conversation.

‘See friend Toulmin.' Hence the signal with the living room lights now, in the Steglitz apartment. Instead, Mount might have loitered near the German Foreign Office, where Toulmin worked, and tried to intercept him on his way home, but that could be dangerous, too: Foreign Office staff came under routine surveillance periodically, like most government employees who possibly knew things worth knowing, and who might secretly hate what Hitler was up to, and try to undermine it, also secretly.

Of course, Toulmin was not Toulmin. SB collected antique clocks and took cover names for the Section's foreign agents from famous old makers and styles. Apparently, there'd been a Toulmin in the eighteenth century, a dab hand at ebonized, bong-bong-bong-striking models. SB had one. The arrangement with the current Toulmin required him to check the Steglitz windows at least every other day and call in immediately if he saw the lights. He had a key to the apartment. His stipend took account of these little reconnaissance trips, with payments generously credited for sixteen days in every month, regardless of their length. He operated as second string in Berlin. The Section's major voice had been dubbed Fromanteel, after another ancient clockman. SB had one of his, too. Fromanteel would spill only to Stephen Bilson in person, or so Bilson said: all secrets people loved to feel they
owned
an agent, monopolized his or her disclosures.

In any case, SB thought Toulmin more likely to be right for the kind of queries required now – the Soviet area – and Toulmin would talk to anybody from Section. Mount had dealt with him before. Oh, yes. Toulmin knew a couple of girls from the Toledo Club, and they brought them back to the apartment after drinks last time Mount was in Berlin. Toulmin had always used his cover name with them, so Mount considered the security risk very minor. One of the birch wood and metal armchairs had collapsed under Toulmin and Olga, a hearty brunette, when she so playfully straddled him on it. Neither seemed too badly hurt, although unprotected by clothes.

Afterwards, Mount divided up the chair wreckage into three lots and shared them around other apartments' bins. That seemed to him the wisest solution: he didn't want cleaners to find the fragments in the living room and speculate. When the lease ended there would certainly be inventory questions about the missing chair, possibly of a valuable design, so he'd put in a note to Section explaining it gave way under him – him alone – and must have had a weakness. He did not claim for injuries, saying he suffered only bruising and shock. There was no question of docking money from Toulmin's little salary for the destruction, and, in fact, Mount had paid for both girls and the drinks under ‘reciprocal entertainment of various special contacts' on his expenses account. ‘Various special contacts' as a species did not reach agent status, but might provide miscellaneous items of information. No names needed to be given for them, not even as ancient clockmakers.