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  The battle for Arnhem was still dominating the headlines in the paper and in an effort to secure the Heveadorp ferry, the Polish Brigade had been dropped south of the Neder Rijn River that morning. Further down he read that the Guards and the 82nd United States Airborne Division had run into stiff opposition north of Nijmegen in their bid to link up with the British 1st 28

  Airborne which, after five days of savage fighting, was slowly being cut to pieces. Dryland put the paper to one side and looked up in time to see Pitts enter the bar.

  He stood there on the threshold, a large shambling man in his late fifties, his baggy three-piece suit looking as if he had slept in it. In 1940 he had been lured away from the quiet sanctuary of Oxford to join the political warfare section in Hugh Dalton’s Ministry, and having enjoyed the comfort of a somewhat cloistered existence for many years, it had been a shock to Pitts when he discovered that in London he was expected to fend for himself. A confirmed bachelor, he lived alone with two neutered Siamese cats in a mews flat off Cadogan Gardens. He had been Dryland’s history tutor when the latter was up at Oxford and on occasions, he was still inclined to treat him as an undergraduate. His blank gaze swept the room until at last recognition dawned and he ambled towards Dryland with a broad smile on his face.

  Dryland said, ‘I’m glad you could make it, Leonard. Can I get you a drink?’

  His watery eyes took in the row of bottles displayed behind the bar. ‘Since one can’t get a decent port these days,’ he said morosely, ‘I think I’ll settle for a whisky.’

  ‘I’m afraid it will have to be Irish, sir.’

  Pitts favoured the barman with a disbelieving stare which had no effect whatsoever. ‘In that case,’ he said ponderously, ‘I’d be obliged if you would drown it in ginger ale.’ He turned a calculating eye on Dryland. ‘Are you dining here by any chance, Tony?

  The inquiry was made in the hope that, as usual, he would not have to pay, and Dryland was getting just a little tired of Pitts’s habit of sponging off him. This time he had a cast-iron excuse.

  ‘Laura’s expecting me for dinner,’ he said.

  ‘Laura?’

  ‘Laura Cole, one of our secretaries. I met her husband in Algiers in 1942—he’s an officer in the Pay Corps.’

  ‘Pretty, is she?’

  ‘Attractive.’

  ‘I recall you had an eye for the girls when you were up at Oxford.’

  Dryland put on a wry smile. ‘I always run into problems.’

  ‘I don’t see where the problem arises if her husband is still in North Africa.’

  ‘My problem is an Acting Lieutenant-Colonel by the name of Ashby.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ Pitts said vaguely. ‘I don’t think I know him.’

  ‘You will. He’s stolen a march on the Special Operations Executive of your Ministry.’

  ‘Really?’

  29

  ‘I’m not joking.’

  ‘My dear Tony,’ Pitts said grandly, ‘I’m sure what you have to say is much too serious to be taken lightly. Who is this man Ashby?’

  ‘Have you come across MI21?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m not surprised; it’s easily the most dormant intelligence department in the War Office. If you look them up in the staff list, you’ll find they are known as the German Section and I’m afraid we made the error of turning Gerhardt over to them after we had finished our interrogation in depth.’

  Pitts glanced about him. ‘I don’t think we should discuss this affair in public, Tony,’ he said guardedly.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘My dear boy, think of all those posters—careless talk costs lives—that sort of thing.’

  ‘Ashby has a plan to assassinate Martin Bormann.’

  ‘For God’s sake, keep your voice down.’

  ‘It involves active co-operation with the Nazi Party,’ Dryland said softly, ‘at least, Gerhardt implied as much when he first broached the subject to us, but our friend Ashby has been astute enough to erase any such inference in the paper he presented to the Director of Military Operations.’

  Pitts raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. ‘It’s got as far as that, has it?’

  ‘He short-circuited the usual channels.’

  ‘How?’

  Dryland finished his beer and ordered another round. ‘The old pals act,’ he said. ‘You know how these regular officers cling together—someone probably said, “Let’s give old Michael Ashby his chance.”’

  ‘The War Office isn’t a charitable institution, Tony, he must have impressed them.’

  ‘He met Gerhardt for the first time last Friday and now, six days later, DMO has cleared his plan subject only to final approval by your Ministry. That’s what really impresses me.’

  ‘I’d be more impressed if you came to the point.’

  ‘All right, Leonard—your department can veto this project and I want you to stop Ashby. Shall I tell you why?’

  ‘Not here you won’t,’ Pitts said firmly. He drank the rest of his whisky hurriedly and placed the empty glass on the bar. ‘We’ll take a taxi back to my place, if we can find one.’

  Dryland stole a glance at his wristwatch and saw that he had about forty minutes in hand before he was due to meet Laura Cole. Even allowing for the journey at both ends, he calculated 30

  that he had ample time to win over Leonard Pitts. His argument was, after all, extremely simple—the war was virtually won and now the prime consideration should be to safeguard the peace.

  There must be no more dissension among the Allies, for Churchill’s infatuation with the Balkans had already soured Anglo-American relations, and he shuddered to think what might happen if it became known that the War Office was secretly making overtures to the German General Staff through a deadbeat Lieutenant-Colonel called Ashby.

  ‘Very well,’ said Dryland, ‘let’s go. I’m sure if you speak nicely to the doorman, he may be able to get us a taxi.’

  ‘Tipping,’ Pitts said loftily, ‘helps to perpetuate our class system and it is an anti-social habit. I will not be a party to it.’

  Ashby was looking for eleven men and he had come north to a camp just outside Ormskirk to find them in the ranks of the Pioneer Corps 1268 Company, a unit composed entirely of Austrian and German nationals. A high percentage of these men had spent the early part of the war in an internment camp on the Isle of Man and were known to Ashby, whose section had vetted them before they were released. They included doctors, lawyers, writers, artisans, intellectuals, democrats, communists, socialists, conservatives and trade unionists. United only in their hatred of the Nazi Party, they were a fractious group of men who, since being released, had been employed on menial tasks for which they were totally unfitted, with the result that they had become demoralised. After a day spent in their company, he was forced to recognise that they were scarcely the ideal material for a great enterprise.

  He had started with a list of thirty possibles taken from the records his section in St Albans had built up over the years, and as one by one they had appeared before him in the bare Nissen hut which had been set aside for his use, they had answered his probing questions truthfully or evasively according to their natures, so that by the end of the day Ashby had been forced to reject all but three. The names of these men—Gunther Albach, a forty-five-year-old lawyer from Berlin, Ewald Remer, a thirty-nine-year-old lecturer in political history from the University of Heidelberg and Karl Frick, a labour leader from Hamburg—leapt at him from the otherwise naked sheet of foolscap clipped to the millboard.

  Of the three men, only Frick was equipped for the task he had in mind. A dedicated communist, he had gained a reputation for being a tough negotiator and long before 1933 his activities in the Hamburg shipyards had made him an enemy of the Nazi Party.

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  He had seen the writing on the wall when Hindenburg had appointed Hitler to be his Chancellor and on the day the aged Field-Marshal had died, Frick had left Germany for good. Exiled in Paris, he contribut
ed articles to L’Humanité and earned a precarious living as a writer until the Spanish Civil War broke out. German intervention in that conflict saw him become one of the first volunteers for the International Brigade. With the defeat of the Republican Government, and having twice been wounded in action, Frick arrived in England in April 1939.

  It seemed to Ashby that in failing to get the men in the numbers he required, he might just as well face the fact that the operation would inevitably be shelved. A priceless opportunity would go by default and he would have to return to his poky little office in St Albans where he would be forced to sit it out for the rest of the war. If that happened, his only consoling thought was that no one could possibly object if he took a few days leave. He rarely saw Katherine and the children who were living up in Yorkshire on her father’s farm and he knew that they were gradually drifting apart. Jeffrey was just eight and Elizabeth was only six and it was scarcely surprising that he was a stranger in their eyes. In the last five years, the family had spent less than a month together.

  The soldier tapped politely on the door before he entered the hut. He looked absurdly young and at a guess Ashby thought that he was still under twenty. He had an open, almost childlike face and any woman would have envied him his long black eyelashes.

  He said, ‘May I attend to the blackout, sir?’

  ‘You needn’t bother, I’m just about to leave.’

  The soldier hovered and looked embarrassed. ‘I’d like to volunteer, sir,’ he said quickly.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I know you’ve been interviewing a lot of men today and I wondered if you would consider me?’

  Ashby said, ‘And your name is?’

  ‘Scholl, sir, Klaus Scholl.’

  ‘And your age?’

  ‘Nineteen, sir,’ he said eagerly. ‘There are others of my age in the company who would like to …’

  ‘I don’t suppose you even know what you’re volunteering for, do you?’

  ‘No sir, but I would like to play a bigger part in this war than I’m now doing.’

  ‘You’d better see to the blackout.’

  ‘Does that mean you won’t consider me?’

  32

  ‘Did I say that?’ The boy shook his head. ‘Well, then,’ said Ashby, ‘don’t jump to conclusions.’

  Scholl turned away, switched on the lights, and then picking up the plywood screens, slotted them into the window frames.

  ‘How long have you been in England, Scholl?’

  ‘I arrived here in June 1939 with my mother and sister.’ He swallowed and then said, ‘You see, my mother is Jewish and my father decided to get us out of Germany while there was still time.’

  ‘Did he come with you?’

  ‘No sir,’ Scholl said woodenly, ‘he had to remain behind because he was an Inspector of the Criminal Police in Wuppertal and the authorities would not let him have a passport. We last heard from him in 1940 when my aunt in Zurich forwarded a letter he’d written to my mother saying that he’d been granted a divorce.’

  Anger showed in his pale green eyes. ‘They had no right to make him do that.’

  ‘Does it bother you being a kike?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A yid—one of the chosen—a Jew—does it get under your skin?’

  ‘Sir,’ Scholl said loudly, ‘have you got something against Jews?’

  ‘No, I just wondered if you were sensitive about it.’ Ashby smiled. ‘Before I cut you off in mid-sentence, you were about to say that you knew of others who might like to be interviewed.’

  ‘I know of one who would.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Willie Haase—unlike me, he’s a pure Austrian. His father was a close friend of Chancellor Schuschnigg, and since he was on their wanted list, he had to get out of Vienna in a hurry when the SS followed the army into Austria.’

  ‘I think I’d like to meet him.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t look so worried—if he’s like you, I want him.’

  Scholl was too young, too sensitive and too immature but Ashby was playing the numbers game. At the back of his mind was the knowledge that no one in Whitehall had expected him to find a team of German nationals but now, with a bit of luck, he could tell them that he had Gerhardt, Albach, Remer, Frick, Scholl and Haase. With six he was halfway there, with six already committed, the Special Operations Executive might even allow him to tap their resources.

  Laura Cole avoided looking at the picture frame on the dressing-table whenever she brought Dryland back to the two-roomed flat in Grenville Place just off the Cromwell Road. To make love to 33

  another man in front of her husband’s photograph still troubled her vaguely. On those rare occasions now when she was really pricked by her conscience, she liked to think that he was probably keeping a mistress happy somewhere in Algiers, and of course there was no getting away from the fact that he was in a much safer place.

  He was exposed to very little danger in a Base Pay Office seven hundred miles from the nearest fighting, and he certainly had never seen a flying bomb trace its fiery comet across the night sky, had never held his breath when the deep-throated snarl of its jet engine suddenly cut out, counted off the seconds while it plunged towards the earth and then jumped when the warhead exploded. He didn’t have to cope with ration books, clothing coupons and shortages; he didn’t have to queue for buses and trains or limit himself to a bath once a week in five inches of tepid water. He didn’t know what it was like to make two ounces of butter last for a week or a meat ration which was barely sufficient for one meal, but above all else, Laura Cole had convinced herself that since he was having such a marvellous time of it, he was never bored or tired or sick of the damn war.

  They had pub-crawled after dinner and although she was pleasantly tight, she resented it when Dryland took the key out of her hand and opened the door.

  ‘You don’t own me,’ she said belligerently.

  ‘Of course I don’t.’

  ‘Then stop acting as if you do.’

  Dryland closed the door behind him. ‘Are you trying to pick a quarrel with me?’ he said lightly.

  ‘I don’t like your attitude.’

  ‘I annoy you?’

  ‘You most certainly do.’

  ‘In that case I wonder you can bear to work in the same office with me.’

  As she placed the camel-hair coat on its hanger in the wardrobe, she caught a glimpse of the petulant expression on his face in the full-length mirror and she felt uneasy. No one had to remind Laura Cole that she would still be working in a munitions factory in Acton but for Dryland’s intervention and that if she left her reserved occupation for any reason, she would have to go wherever the Ministry of Labour directed.

  She faced him with a bright smile. ‘Now you’re being stuffy,’

  she said pertly.

  Dryland sat down on the bed. ‘I’ve had a bad day.’ He lay back and patted the eiderdown and then, in a persuasive tone of voice, he said, ‘Come over here and be nice to me.’

  34

  Laura Cole hesitated briefly before kicking off her shoes and then she walked across the room and lay down on the bed beside him. ‘What is it this time?’ she said.

  ‘A man called Ashby—he’s about to upset the applecart with a plan to co-operate with the German Underground.’

  ‘What plan?’

  Dryland thought about taking her into his confidence and decided against it. ‘He’s hoping to arrange a separate peace,’ he said. The lie was, in any case, stronger than the truth and suited his purpose better.

  ‘He must be crazy.’

  ‘I made the same mistake and underestimated him. Ashby may be self-effacing and devious but he’s a long I way from being crazy. He’s hoodwinked our chief and the Department of Military Operations, and unless Pitts can block it through his Minister, his plan will receive official support and blessing.’

  ‘And then what happens?’

  He reached out and t
ouched her shoulder-length brown hair.

  ‘Well, I expect we shall have to lend him a hand.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Ashby will have to keep in close touch with interested parties here in London and he can’t very well do that from his St Albans office. I daresay we can find a corner for him and provide any secretarial support he’ll require.’

  ‘And is that where I come in?’

  Dryland rolled over on to his side and brushed his lips against her mouth. ‘Maybe. It would certainly be a tremendous advantage to know exactly what he has in mind.’

  ‘So that you can put a spanner in the works?’

  Dryland managed a convincing laugh. ‘Good heavens, Laura, whatever put that ridiculous idea into your head?’

  He kissed her again and this time his mouth opened and her tongue found his. By any standard, she was an attractive and desirable woman and one who was easily aroused, and Dryland knew that as long as he professed to care for her, Laura Cole would be only too happy to do anything he asked of her. He placed a hand on her knee and slowly moved it up under her dress until he was able to caress the softness of her thighs above the rayon stockings.

  35

  5

  TRUSCOTT’S OFFICE WAS on the ground floor of the Main Building and faced the inner, triangular-shaped courtyard which was permanently in shadow. Furnished to War Office scales and decorated in the drab style favoured by the Ministry of Works, the only touches of colour in the room came from the maze of charts, posters and graphs which covered every wall. Pride of place in this exhibition of military art had been given to an organisational chart which, by means of a family tree, reminded Truscott of the various intelligence sections for which he alone was responsible.

  In relation to the other sections, MI21 was something akin to an illegitimate child, and as such, its place in the family was indicated by a dotted line. Until the Gerhardt affair had arisen, this broken line had not seemed very significant, but now Truscott had discovered that, because the chain of command was ill-defined, Ashby was able to consult the Director of Military Intelligence without reference to him. It was not an arrangement which exactly pleased Truscott, but since he had been in the chair for a bare three months and his opinion of Ashby had necessarily been formed as a result of a one-day visit to St Albans, he was reluctant to make an issue of it.