Hostage (15 page)

A stroke of luck. Mick paid an early call on Elise to receive her report and to watch Mallant’s morning stroll once more for himself. He never appeared, but Rex did. He showed an interest in a tattered, dusty display of dahlias close to the garden railings. Elise confirmed that Mallant had always done the same. She was sure that there was never anybody else near the dahlias. In the early morning few people were in the garden and she would have noticed any regular visitor.

The answer must be that they are interested in something or somebody on the far side of the square; if that somebody signalled or perhaps was merely in a certain position, then there was no cause for alarm. A fair deduction is that the bomb is nearby. Otherwise I cannot see why Mallant should walk through the square every morning or why Rex should replace him in his absence. If the bomb is somewhere else and it is so important to inspect the site every day, why bother with Argyll Square?

The cache may well be in or under one of the pleasant, shabby Georgian houses. It must be a private house or one converted into flats. To bury or conceal the thing in a small hotel where movements of staff and guests are incalculable would be asking for trouble. Argyll Square is a very reasonable choice. Assuming a radius of about two miles for the effect of blast, the explosion flattens the heart of government in Westminster and Whitehall and much of the City and West End. The effect of the uncontrollable fire storm extends out for over three times that area.

This at last gives me some information worth passing to Special Branch. I find I have no longer any objection to calling them in provided I am convinced that their mass intervention has a chance of success. Till now I could be of no use to them. They would certainly be interested in what I could reveal about Magma – which I have no intention of doing – but the subsequent arrests and interrogations would get them no nearer finding the bomb.

In an anonymous note to that Assistant Commissioner Farquhar whom Sir Frederick mentioned I have suggested that Special Branch should examine all drains in and about Argyll Square and check the basements of private houses. To prove the authenticity of the warning I mentioned that it was an A bomb of U235 for which they were searching – a fact still unknown to all but a small circle.

There is a risk that police activity in the right district may convince the Action Committee that the bomb should be exploded before it is too late. I think I am justified in taking the gamble that the police get to it first though an uneasy half of me hopes that Argyll Square is after all not the bomb’s correct address.

The reaction has been immediate and immense, with the army assisting the police. Roads torn up. Sewers exposed. Drains plumbed. In the central garden of Argyll Square bulldozers at work on flower beds, lawns and paths. Mine detectors and instruments far more massive than Geiger counters. Everyone in the neighbourhood questioned and identities established. Elise had no trouble at all. Like many of our partisans she has never spoken in public, written for the underground press or openly joined any subversive organisation.

They are clever. Streets in Kensington and Paddington have also been dug up and drains tested so that Argyll Square only appears one of several localities under suspicion.

If the bomb was nothing more than a bluff, what a triumph this disorganisation, this chaotic mess would be and how I would have approved and rejoiced! The breakdown of self-satisfied, twopence-off society in those London streets could not be surpassed by flood or fire. Everyone knows that the search is for a large bomb, but not what sort of bomb.

Triumph short-lived. Mick tells me that his cell has been ordered out of London and that he has been put in touch – an exceptional move – with the leaders of the other two London cells to arrange dispersal. That means that the Action Committee were prepared to explode the bomb rather than attempt to move it; so the police were dangerously close and my hunch was right. I wonder if fire storm and fall-out will extend as far as Ealing. For myself I don’t care if it does. I am helpless.

This morning I was discussing with Mick what we do with Elise. Somebody should be on the spot to continue the watch. Mick insisted that he was going to take her place himself. During the resettlement of local partisans nobody need know that he has not left London. No new Group Commander has yet contacted him.

He spoke of Elise with an anxiety which for him was unusual and said that I would need her assuming I got away to any secure future. He doesn’t grasp my position – death, back to gaol or for all my life on the run. Of the three I honestly prefer the first. What use am I to a woman or a woman to me?

I replied that if I allowed myself to look forward at all I wanted no sort of tie.

‘She’d be disappointed to hear that,’ he said.

‘Romantic fascination, Mick. In normal times I might respond. She’s a lovely thing.’

‘You haven’t?’

‘No. Why this sudden interest?’

‘Friendship.’

‘She’d be more suited to you.’

‘To me? Well, she doesn’t know it.’

It was the slight bitterness in his voice which at last made me understand the full extent of his loyalty.

‘Are you that fond of her, Mick?’

‘I always have been.’

‘And no jealousy?’

‘Not while I thought you and Clotilde were fixed up. But the last weeks with Elise here and Elise there and me knowing dam’ well that you were using her but not why – well, jealousy I wouldn’t like to call it that, Gil. Sadness, more like. The two people I. …’

He became incoherent with good north country embarrassment and we let it go at that. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to lay off my supposed affairs of the heart.

‘Clotilde, you know. She’d do a lot for you.’

‘She might have the decency to make it an easy death.’

‘When I saw her with Rex she believed you were just going your own way and not a serious danger.’

‘She’s got enough evidence.’

‘Not for her, I reckon. You know what some women are. If you can’t do wrong for ’em, then you can’t do wrong.’

I remember writing something in this diary to the effect that when a man and a woman have worked closely together and meet in new and less businesslike circumstances, curiosity might well lead them to bed. I never thought she could be fulfilling more than curiosity. Yet I do recall that unexpected tenderness. It could be that in all our other transactions she had been proudly withholding herself, duty and discipline being emphasised for her own benefit rather than mine. I had always felt that her command manner was overdone and supposed that she wished to show herself as militant and efficient as any mere male partisan. I was stupid. She was so sure of her quality – and so were the rest of us – that she had no need for that muscular mentality and must have known it.

I asked Mick if he had really any solid reason for his belief.

‘Just a dirty mind, Gil. But Elise was very sure. She said Clotilde was never natural with you.’

The processes of human intelligence are odd. Sometimes I think the subconscious is a far better planner than the reasoning conscious. At this moment, out of any context, a remark of Sir Frederick came flooding back into memory:

I should not let him go and I should choose for him a London prison.

He underrated Magma. Partisans are expendable and we all know it. But Clotilde? If they thought the Government had got her, wouldn’t they put off the explosion? But the Government would not have her. I would. And then I could count on misunderstandings, bargaining, delay till the position was clarified. If they intended to use the bomb anyway they could very well wait some days in order to get Clotilde back – as was done for her before and now with a far more credible threat.

I told Mick that Elise should remain in her hotel where she would be safe for a day or two and that he was to keep in daily touch with me and with her.

Had he noticed a telephone in Clotilde’s flat, I asked him. Yes, there was one. That is essential, though I am not yet sure how it is going to be used. Above all it is essential that I leave convincing evidence that the police have arrested her.

God, I am contemplating the very depths of dishonour! But time, time, time – I must have time.

I have taken a cautious look at Onslow Mews, a small opening of Onslow Street in Fulham, about fifty yards deep and lined by private garages, one of which, at the bottom end, has been converted to the tiny maisonette which contains Clotilde. It is cleverly selected for her, without inquisitive and inconvenient neighbours, and allows me to devise a plan which in theory will work provided the timing is not too wildly out and there are no unforeseeable accidents. Success also depends on whether the telephone number through which, as Group Commander, I could reach Rex in the evening is still in use. Mick, being only a cell leader, does not know it.

According to Mick’s account of his interview with the pair, Clotilde opposed any drastic measures against me until I was given a chance to explain. It will seem to Rex quite likely that we have been lovers and thus believable that I – in spite of being a traitor and possibly a secret police agent – should warn her through him as soon as I learned that Special Branch or the Anti-Terrorist Squad had found and identified her.

Now I have to work this out on paper. I can only get in touch with Rex at 6.30 in the evening. The dialling code shows that he is then standing by a telephone in Clerkenwell. The number cannot be that of his house or business; otherwise any of the Group Commanders whom he handles would be able to discover his true name.

Very well. At 6.30 I warn Rex that he should tell Clotilde to get out of her flat and stay out. He is bound to act on that, but he will want to confirm that the police have in fact raided Onslow Mews. He must do that himself, for he has no time to pass orders down to a cell, and anyway they are already dispersed. By taxi or Underground it will take him at least thirty-five minutes to get from Clerkenwell to Fulham.

By that time there will be police cars in the mews and lights on in the flat while it is being thoroughly searched. What Rex, arriving as a casual onlooker, can ask without arousing suspicion is very limited: ‘what’s up, constable?’ or ‘any luck?’ And the police reply will be noncommittal as it always is – more than usually so, considering that the raid is top secret. I can take it that the entrance to the mews will be blocked and therefore – unless someone is trapped inside while garaging his car – there should be no independent witness who can say whether a police car did or did not drive away with a woman.

It’s a gamble, a reckless gamble. But the probabilities are that Rex is going to be left in suspense; and when no news at all comes in from Clotilde during the night he must assume that the police have got her.

I’ll put through the call to Assistant Commissioner Farquhar immediately after telephoning Rex. Assuming he has given orders that any anonymous communication to him is to be taken seriously – and I’ll bet he has – his men will be on the spot and in force within ten minutes, or at any rate well before Rex arrives.

Now for Clotilde. She bolts at once when Rex warns her and Mick picks her up smartly outside the mews. If she is out when Rex calls and returns later she will really be arrested. Another gamble! I have no way of ensuring that she will be in. Neither Mick nor I know her number or the name in which she has rented the flat.

I may improve on my message to Scotland Yard, but something like this, I think, will do:

Urgent for Assistant Commissioner Farquhar, Special Branch. Take it down now because I am not going to hang about for you to trace where this call is coming from. My letter of Sept. 3rd to Farquhar is proof of bona fides. If you raid immediately you will find Miss Alexandra Baratov probably with others at 2 Onslow Mews. She was arrested on June 28th and later released in consequence of a threat of which we both know.

Mick’s car is a station wagon. We can hide Clotilde fairly well under blankets and rugs whereas a woman bound and gagged in an ordinary back seat must be noticed by some passer-by. It’s a pity that I cannot put her to sleep. When Herbert Johnson vanished into limbo he carried nothing but a suitcase and himself to Ealing. In any case I never possessed any drugs to be administered orally or by injection; they could be obtained, if judged necessary for any operation, by a Group Commander from committee stores.

However, I do not think Mick should pick her up in the estate car. A folding bed will be in it, blankets, a Primus stove, a basket of food and drink. All that invites too much curiosity. It will seem more natural if she is rescued in my own car, empty, casual, very ordinary and just right for a short run to safety.

All very tentative. I wonder how I shall look back on this so-called planning.

Yesterday evening I left Mick’s estate car in a nearby car park and put through my two telephone messages from a box only a minute’s walk from Onslow Mews. In speaking to Rex I invented a convincing detail telling him that his tame assassin had been careless enough to make a note of Clotilde’s address and that the police had found it. Myself I did not know where Clotilde was and could not warn her that her retreat was likely to be raided at any moment if it had not been done already. He never questioned my information and tried to keep me talking. I cut him off and got through to Scotland Yard.

Meanwhile Mick had parked my car round two corners from Onslow Street. Five minutes later we were both hanging around on the pavement with the entrance to the little cobbled mews between us. The long street of four-storey brick houses turned into flats was typical of London. There were no shops handy, no pub and nothing in which one could reasonably show an interest; so we could not idle plausibly. Any experienced detective would have spotted us at once. We kept moving back and forth with pedestrians going out for a meal or returning from work. Time went past, and still no Clotilde. A car drove into the mews, and three minutes later a young man came out on foot. He was too short for Clotilde but Mick and I both converged on him to have a closer look. The ten minutes I had allowed for police to arrive were nearly up. I dared not enter the mews myself or allow Mick to do so in case we were trapped there and held for questioning.