World War Two Will Not Take Place (24 page)

Her fair hair was cut short, a part return to the Eton-crop style of the twenties, but bits of it stuck out from under the sides of her riding helmet. She had an oval, usually cheery and friendly, delicate-featured face. Today, though, he read determination there. He didn't like it because he guessed that any determination around was to do with cutting him adrift. Normally, there'd be a bright touch of mischief in her dark-blue eyes. He didn't find it there now, though. Oh, hell, had he brought these peepers, peekers, pryers, these trackers, these intruders on to their love by his special public prominence lately? Of course he had. This horrified him, enraged him, brought him a bucketful of guilt. He'd made himself very noticeable lately with the anti-appeasement speeches. Perhaps he'd also made himself – and herself – targets. And so they were shadowed. He felt almost certain of it. Liz felt totally certain of it.

He recalled a Robert Browning poem, ‘The Last Ride Together'. It sounded like a double entendre. He could remember some of its lines, clumsy and prosaic like so much of Browning, but they seemed right for today:

God, ‘of the same'! It sounded like a business letter. Anything for a rhyme. They cantered a while. He drew alongside her, and they stopped.

‘It doesn't trouble you all that much, does it?' she said, spoken like an accusation. ‘These snoopers.'

‘I'll try to discover what it's about.'

‘Couldn't you have started earlier?'

Yes, possibly he could have. ‘I—'

‘You didn't accept it was happening, did you?'

‘I couldn't understand why it should be. I still can't.'

‘I can think of half a dozen, none of them very nice, Lionel. And I expect you can, too, really.'

Near the Highgate flat they used, and once in town when they were waiting at a cab rank, he thought he'd noticed a pair of men close to the kind of description she'd reported to him: both in their twenties, one about 6′ 3″, dark-haired, bony profile, pointed, Mr Punch chin; the other shorter, plump faced, squarely built, also dark-haired but close cropped. Until then, in the taxi queue, yes, he'd wondered whether she was imagining, and whether he was imagining, too. It wouldn't have been like her to make such a mistake, but he'd wondered. Now, though, he'd admit that she, and perhaps both of them, might have this secret, off-and-on company. Did it trouble him ‘all that much'? How much was all that much, his fiddly, fine-point brain asked. He couldn't quantify, but it certainly did trouble him. It baffled him. Who were they? More important, who sent them?

‘You're an important figure,' she said.

‘I've had some luck.'

‘No, you deserve it – and know you do.'

He saw that behind this piffling chatter lay the true cause of distance between them. She'd come to regard him as caught up in a bigger world than hers: the Cabinet world, the Defence world, the Government world, the international politics world, the war or peace world. Perhaps that made it seem he had a place among great events and great people. Did Liz feel left behind, excluded? She wasn't the sort to tolerate that, or not for long. She wouldn't at all object to the kind of theme he'd been preaching lately, questioning the appeasement policy. She thought it was the right theme. What offended her, he thought, was the way this mission seemed to have taken him over, blocked her out.

‘Would she put people on to you, on to us?' she said.

‘My wife? Detectives?'

She said nothing for a moment, leaned forward in the saddle and stroked the animal's neck. ‘No. All right, I can see that's unlikely. A Minister's wife hiring sleuths to track her hubby, prove his adultery? Suppose it became public knowledge, and it very easily might. The disgrace – for her as much as for you.'

‘Exactly,' Paterin said.

‘Could it be the Press tailing us, then?'

‘A pair of reporters?'

‘Wouldn't it be news – well-known Cabinet minister's affair with the wife of company chairman? Now,
extremely
well-known. Hold the front page!'

‘The Press doesn't poke into private lives – not where there's potential scandal touching important people. Think how long it took to get Mrs Simpson into the British Press, and then only when she and the relationship had been made more or less respectable through the marriage and title of consort.'

‘Wasn't that silence a special arrangement with editors?'

‘The Press knows how to be discreet, and not just for royalty.'

She frowned and did some more thinking, some more pawing of the horse. ‘Well, possibly you're a potential security lapse because of me,' she said. ‘They could blackmail you.'

‘You mean the watchers are foreign spies?'

‘Why not?'

‘Because we wouldn't be of interest to them. And because the spies of all sides have plenty of real work to do at present.' He knew though, of course, that he and she
would
be of interest to an espionage operation. They rated as real work for them. Wouldn't Hitler's propaganda wizard, Josef Goebbels, judge it useful to have on file a few compromising facts about a government bigwig, especially a bigwig involved in Defence, and inclined to speak of the Reich as a dangerous, duplicitous enemy? This was the kind of mucky tactic he specialized in, wasn't it? True, relations between Britain and Germany looked serene after Munich. But not everyone believed that would last. Goebbels, or someone else high in the German hierarchy, might not believe it, and decide to prepare a muck fusillade in case. Paterin had heard that a specialist German team were in London to examine the processional route for the Hitler visit and discuss all-round protection measures. Suppose, as an extra, these people were told to find what they could about a noisy Cabinet minister's extramarital life. Paterin knew the rumours of his link with Liz were around in London. They might well have reached Berlin.

‘I feel what I've never felt before about us – dirtied,' she said.

‘If it happened – some sort of exposure – but it won't – but if it did, they'd be the dirtied ones.'

‘How? By contact with us? There are too many ifs and buts in your answer, Lionel.' She had small children and wouldn't think of divorce, at least for the present. Possibly she'd begun to believe he wouldn't either because of that large scale, pressured life he seemed immersed in.

They took a woodland path in single file on their way back towards the stables, Paterin ahead. He loathed being in front now: it was as though he wanted to lead peaceably, compliantly back to the stables, where they would say goodbye for good. They'd come in separate cars. How could he convince Elizabeth he needed her more than he needed these people who might change the world, and who adored spouting their brilliant plans from platforms? He'd say his public piece, make his uncompromising speeches, because he felt he had to. It was his role, as he saw it, his job. But this shouldn't come between her and him.

While they were still in the wood, Paterin saw a couple of men coming towards them on foot. They wore walking boots and hard-weather coats and trousers. One of them had a haversack on his back. They stared towards him and Liz. Paterin turned to alert her. He watched her face as she gazed past him at the men. Paterin made out no recognition in her eyes. He himself had already decided these were not the two he had glimpsed at Highgate and the taxi rank. The ages might be right, but not the physiques. Neither looked over six feet, neither was heavily built.

‘I told Nicholas here that we'd probably meet you on this path,' one of them said: an educated, cocky voice. ‘I'm Fallows. Oliver Fallows. This is Nicholas Baillie. We carry identity, if you think that's necessary. We have a security role. Generally, we do overseas, but there
is
a strong foreign aspect to this, and it's one of our colleagues in another country who has drawn our attention to it. This is a passably discreet spot for a conversation, if you have a minute. The stables won't be expecting you back quite yet.'

‘Which security role?' Liz said. She and Paterin had stopped their horses.

‘Oh, yes,' Fallows said.

‘Very much to do with your well-being,' Baillie said.

‘What is this?' she said. ‘Have you been to the stables asking questions? Absolute cheek.'

‘Routine, nothing more, believe me,' Fallows said. ‘And tactfully phrased.'

‘Routine, how?' she said.

‘Oh, yes,' Fallows said.

‘This is a damned intrusion,' she said.

‘Nicholas has some photographs he'd like you to look at, Mrs Gane-Torr. You and Mr Paterin, naturally,' Fallows said.

‘I think we should ignore these people and ride on, Lionel,' she said. ‘They use our names like . . . like threats. Yes, like blackmail.'

‘It's largely a matter of helping us, that's a fact,' Fallows said. ‘We'd be grateful. In return, we can offer advice.'

‘What advice? Presumptuous. How could we be in need of your advice?' she said.

‘Nick Baillie is an expert on basic precautions,' Fallows said. ‘He can give you help, and will, quite readily. It's not my specialism, but even I can see that to come riding here at pretty much the same time and on the same days of the week is not . . . well, sage.'

‘We realize that to carry out an ambush like this might strike you as distasteful,' Baillie said. ‘Oliver gabbles pleasantly, trying to make it all sound of not much consequence, even amusing, but, of course, we wouldn't be here if it were of not much consequence. And wouldn't have bothered on previous days to watch you in and out of the stables. You'd be quite likely to deduce that, in my view.'

‘What photographs?' Paterin said.

‘Lionel, do we really have to?' she said.

‘These are intelligence Service personnel, Liz,' he said.

‘Yes, I think I'd have guessed that without being told.'

‘We feel like serfs talking up to you like this on your hunters,' Fallows said.

Paterin slid off the horse. She hesitated, but in a moment stood with him. The horses nudged with their noses at the undergrowth and nibbled some greenery. It sounded blissfully, comfortingly rural. It wasn't.

‘These are what we term “snatched” photographs,' Baillie said. ‘That is, they were secretly taken – well, we hope secretly – and in some cases when the subjects were moving about. Actually, we think the back of your head is in one of them, Mrs Gane-Torr, waiting for a taxi. Focus and light are not always perfect, and bits of architecture or car or other pedestrians might get in the way. And you'll be looking at them in pale, declining winter-afternoon sunshine shaded by trees. But we'd be glad if you'd let us know whether you've seen these men before.' He took the knapsack from his back, opened it and produced six pictures. He handed three each to Paterin and Elizabeth.

‘Nick's good on the amateur psychology, as well as precautions,' Fallows said. ‘He'll most probably be able to read your reactions in your faces.'

Paterin and Liz each examined their allocated three, then did an exchange. ‘Who are they?' she said.

‘You've seen them now and then, have you?' Baillie said.

‘Certainly,' she said.

‘Yes,' Paterin said.

‘And it
is
the back of your head, Mrs Gane-Torr, is it?'

‘It underlines the fact that you were present,' Fallows said.

‘You know I was present,' she said.

‘We're taught to get confirmation whenever confirmation is possible,' Fallows said. ‘We have to convince others.'

‘They are called Schiff and Mair,' Baillie said. ‘They're Jerry intelligence hacks in Britain for a short while under the leadership of a Major Valk. Their main task is to ensure that the route for a state visit by Hitler in the spring is safe and suitable. But one of our colleagues in Germany tells us there's a secondary, confidential objective to their visit.'

‘My God, to build a dossier on Lionel and me?' she said.

‘This is how it appears,' Fallows said.

‘A dossier they might publish,' she said.

‘Only if things went bad between Britain and Germany,' Baillie said.

‘But that's almost bound to happen, isn't it?' she said.

‘We have Munich,' Fallows said. ‘Concluded with great skill by the Prime Minister and regarded by many as a triumph. Some folk believe, absolutely, that world war two will not take place.'

Paterin said: ‘You think the Munich agreement is going to fall apart – get kicked apart by Adolf? Is that the feeling in your . . . your office . . . your department? You have information to suggest this?'

‘We needed to confirm,' Fallows replied.

‘Confirm what?' Liz said.

‘That they had this additional, undisclosed duty while here,' Baillie said.

‘Information must always be tested,' Fallows said.

‘I want to leave now,' Liz said. ‘It's getting dark.' She remounted.

‘What will happen?' Paterin said.

‘Can you vary days and times when you ride here?' Fallows replied. ‘Likewise the place in Highgate.'

‘But what will happen about these men?' Paterin said.

‘Schiff and Mair?' Fallows said. ‘And possibly Valk?'

‘Yes,' Paterin said.

‘Well, we know about them now,' Baillie said. ‘I mean, know definitely.'