The Ends of the Earth (17 page)

‘He married again?’

‘So I understand. A Japanese woman. She is never seen with him in Tokyo. As far as I know, she never comes here.’

‘And Sam and Malory? Where are they?’

‘At the house of a friend of Yamanaka in Sendagi. Will you go to them there?’

‘You said you’d arranged for them to leave Japan tonight.’

‘I have. From Yokohama, on a Dutch ship bound for Shanghai.’

‘Then I’ll see them in Yokohama, before they go. The less time they have to think about staying the better. I want them safely out of the country. Shanghai is perfect.’

‘If you want them out of the country, do not let them know you are still alive.’

‘I have to, Commissioner. I need to know everything that’s happened since they arrived.’

‘Also you do not want them to believe you are dead and that Lemmer and Tomura cannot be touched.’ Fujisaki glanced at Max knowingly. ‘Is that it?’

‘I prefer not to leave my friends in needless despair, if that’s what you mean.’

Fujisaki did not explain what he meant, though Max suspected he knew. Sentiment was weakness. It was a luxury they could not afford. But without it they were no better than Lemmer. That was the dilemma they would have to live or die by.

‘I’m going to give this everything I have, Commissioner.’

Apprehensive though he knew he should have felt, Max was actually possessed by something much closer to satisfaction when he and Fujisaki parted. Whatever he learnt from Sam and Malory before seeing them on their way, there was no reason to hold back now. As when a long-delayed order for action had reached his squadron in France, there was a sense of physical release. At last, he was off the leash.

From the post office next to Ueno station he despatched an urgent cable to box-holder Brown at Evian-les-Bains post office in France. Western Europe was nine hours behind Japan, so Appleby would receive the message in the morning. Max knew he would act on it without delay.

PLEASE CONFIRM ACQUISITION OF ARTICLE ASAP TO BOX SIXTY-SEVEN GPO NIHOMBASHI TOKYO. GREAVES

The wheels had begun to turn.

VERONICA UNDERWOOD, NEE
Edwards, secret service senior cipher clerk, recently reassigned as special assistant to Horace Appleby, emerged from the post office in Evian-les-Bains that morning at an unusually sharp pace.

She was a slim, blonde-haired, fair-featured woman in her late twenties, discreetly dressed, though not discreetly enough to escape an appreciative glance from a man who was entering the post office as she left.

The past fortnight had been a trial for her, but she had borne it without complaint. She respected Appleby and knew if he judged something essential it truly was.

‘I can give you no details of what’s involved, Mrs Underwood,’ he had said to her in the Piccadilly tea-room where they had first discussed the matter one hot June afternoon. ‘I need the help of someone I can trust absolutely in an operation crucial to the safety of the realm. Where we’re going and why will have to wait. All I can say is you’ll never have been involved in anything more important. I know you were fond of Bostridge. Well, this is a chance to bring to book the men responsible for his death. What do you say?’

She said yes, of course, as patriotism and loyalty to the Service demanded. And her husband did his best to accept her decision. She realized, after setting off for Switzerland with Appleby a week later, that he had chosen her not so much because of her deciphering skills (which, though considerable, were not in Bostridge’s league) as because he was sure of her. If she had worked for Lemmer, he would not have allowed her to leave the Service, to which she had only recently returned at Appleby’s pleading. As it was, Appleby explained, Lemmer had more spies than the most pessimistic assumptions had ever indicated, some – too many – within the Service itself. Their mission was to extort the names of those spies out of Lemmer by the disagreeable recourse of kidnapping his son. ‘I don’t like it any more than you will, Mrs Underwood. But it has to be done.’

She could only agree. Lemmer had to be stopped. Therefore his son had to be taken. And minding him during however many days they would have to hold him captive would fall partly if not mostly to her. But there it was. With no progress to report in deciphering the Grey File – the impenetrably encoded master-list of Lemmer’s agents Max had delivered to Appleby – and therefore no indication as to who was loyal and who was not, drastic action was called for. And this was it.

The team Appleby had assembled for the operation, to be carried out on both the French and Swiss sides of Lake Geneva, was small and, by normal standards, of questionable suitability. It was just as well Veronica was willing to do anything he asked of her. Working with the incorrigibly flirtatious Lionel Brigham, officially on extended leave from the Foreign Office, was by turns irksome and irritating. He reacted as badly to being given orders as was to be expected of a displaced mandarin, but addressing her as ‘my girl’ and making occasional suggestions she preferred to pretend she did not understand proved a sore test of her forbearance.

The other two members of the team were a French father and son, Michel and André Marmier, Lake Geneva fishermen and boat-repairers, whom Appleby had recruited to buy and crew a motor-launch and do whatever else might be needed without quibbling. For this they were to be generously rewarded. Marmier senior was taciturn even in his native language and spoke no English. Marmier junior was marginally less silent and possessed some facility in English, along with a muscular physique he seized every opportunity to display and which Veronica could not help admiring.

Appleby had rented – technically, Brigham had rented – a lakeside villa west of Evian called Les Saules. He had paid over the odds considering its shabby condition, but it boasted three crucial facilities: a cellar, a telephone line and a landing-stage. Veronica’s first task was to render the villa habitable and stock it with food – ‘woman’s work’ as Brigham called it. Really, the man was insufferable, but evidently indispensable.

Appleby had bought two cars, one in Evian, which Veronica drove, one in Lausanne, which he and Brigham used to monitor the comings and goings of the boys at Institut Le Rosey, along the lake at Rolle.

Young Eugen, they discovered, was keen on sports, which led him to cram in solitary cross-country runs between lessons and meals, presumably in order to bolster his physical superiority over his classmates. These runs took him along the hill-top trail above Rolle, which he often had more or less to himself in the late afternoon and early evening. Whether his father would have been happy to learn now vulnerable this made him was hard to say. After all, it was impressive evidence of a Spartan temperament and no one was supposed to know who his father really was.

But Appleby knew.

Veronica emerged into the market square and walked briskly across to the café where locals and visitors were sitting at parasol-shaded tables, with twittering birds competing for any crumbs that fell from late-breakfast croissants.

Appleby was not eating, having already consumed bacon and egg at the villa, fried for him by Veronica. Much to her relief, Brigham had not been staying at Les Saules. Appleby preferred to keep him on hand on the Swiss side of the lake, where he had installed himself, no doubt in some luxury, at the Hôtel Beau-Rivage Palace in Ouchy.

Appleby looked up from his coffee and newspaper as she approached and saw at once the envelope in her hand. ‘Is that what I think it is?’ he asked.

‘A telegram, yes. At last.’ She handed it to him and watched as he tore the envelope open. ‘It can only be from him.’

‘I should say so.’ Appleby squinted at the message, then looked up at her. ‘And it is.’

‘The green light?’

‘Yes. The waiting’s over.’

She sat down at the table, feeling suddenly and unaccountably nervous. ‘My goodness,’ was all she managed to say.

Appleby smiled. ‘There’s time for you to have a cup of coffee.’

‘I’d rather have a cigarette.’

‘Go ahead.’

She lit one and took a deep draw on it. ‘When will it happen?’

Appleby looked thoughtful, as if weighing his answer carefully. Then he nodded. ‘Today.’

Appleby was not, as it happened, the only person known to Max who had received a telegram from Japan that morning. Winifred, Lady Maxted, carried hers with her as she travelled up to London, where she had arranged at short notice to have lunch with her brother George.

Her departure from Gresscombe Place had been slightly delayed by the persistence of her daughter-in-law Lydia in demanding to be told what the telegram contained. She had been disappointed, although Winifred knew the subject would be reopened when she returned home that evening.

They met at the Ritz, which George had nominated as really the only place for lunch with a lady, especially when that lady was his sister. ‘Champagne always tastes better at the Ritz,’ he asserted, before putting his assertion to a thorough test.

But, champagne or no, it was obvious to him from the outset that she was worried about something. ‘Why not just come out with what it is, Win?’ he suggested after they had ordered their meals.

‘This,’ she said simply, sliding the telegram across the table for him to read.

She watched George wrestle his reading glasses on to his nose and peruse the brief but telling message. A twitch of his eyebrows was the only immediate sign of his reaction. Then he handed the telegram back to her. ‘A bit of a facer, Win,’ he said with a grimace.

‘Yes.’ She nodded and looked down at the stark words printed on the form. ‘Indeed.’

YOUR SON IN TOKYO SEEKING TRUTH. PLEASE ADVISE WHAT IF ANYTHING YOU WISH ME TO TELL HIM. HODGSON

‘When did this arrive?’ George asked.

‘This morning.’

‘Does Ashley know what it says?’

‘No. He was out. And I declined to satisfy Lydia’s curiosity on the point.’

‘Hodgson’s the fellow who …’

‘Arranged our departure from Tokyo, yes. I had no idea he was still there, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Someone told me he married a Japanese woman.’

‘Can you rely on his discretion?’

‘Oh yes. He’s of the old school. The question he poses is how discreet I want him to be, now James has arrived in the land of his birth.’

‘The boy’s after Tomura, of course.’

‘Yes. That’s clear. It’s what I’ve feared all along. I’d hoped persuading Count Tomura to leave Paris would prevent this. There must have been other events we don’t know about that prompted James to follow him to Japan. Where he is, as Mr Hodgson says, seeking the truth.’

‘But will he find it?’

‘I don’t know, George. Nor do I know with any certainty what the truth is.’

George frowned in puzzlement. ‘Surely—’

‘When I spoke to Count Tomura in Paris I had the odd and rather disquieting impression that my threat to reveal all was actually more of a threat than I knew.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I told him, quite falsely, of course, that I’d met Jack Farngold a couple of years before the war. The possibility seemed to agitate him. I sensed he was harbouring a secret beyond the secret I implied I was willing to lay bare; that it amounted to more – yes,
even
more – than I was aware of.’

‘How could it?’

‘I simply don’t know. But he gave way to me just a little too easily.’

George mulled her answer over as their first courses arrived. When the waiter had gone, he said, ‘Do you want my advice on how to reply to Hodgson?’

She nodded. ‘Very much.’

‘Tomura’s a dangerous man. James is risking his life in Japan, whether he knows it or not.’

‘Oh, he knows it.’

‘Trying to stop him going was obviously wise. It’s a pity you weren’t successful. But now he’s there, now he’s … on the scent …’

‘You think I should help him as much as I can.’

‘There’s only one thing worse than him learning the truth, Win.’

She sighed. ‘Better a living son who may disown me than a dead one who never had the chance?’

George winced. ‘I wouldn’t have put it quite like that.’

Winifred gazed around the restaurant then, at the brightly dressed parties at the other tables and the decorative murals and the verdancy of Green Park, glimpsed through the open windows. ‘Here we sit, amid all this prettiness, while thousands of miles away…’ She shook her head. ‘I wish I could protect James, I truly do. I have always wished that. And I have never been able to. All I have done is … delay the inevitable.’

‘What will you tell Hodgson?’

She gave a wintry little smile. ‘What I must.’

At that moment, on the Swiss shore of Lake Geneva, the ferry from Evian-les-Bains was drawing alongside the pontoon at Ouchy. As the vessel tied up and its passengers began to disembark, Lionel Brigham rose from the nearby bench, where he had been idly smoking a cigarette, and moved forward.

Appleby was one of the first off the boat. He exchanged a nod with Brigham and they marched smartly away.

The day was sunny and warm, the light diamond-sharp, the waters of the lake sparkling. Summer ease had descended on Ouchy. But there was nothing suggestive of ease in the two men’s urgent pace and grave expression.

‘I gathered from your phone call that Max has been in touch.’

‘He has. He’s ready for us to move.’

‘Today?’

‘Assuming the boy obliges us by sticking to his routine, yes.’

‘Oh, I think he will. You’ve alerted the Marmiers?’

‘All the arrangements are in place,’ Appleby replied, with a hint of curtness.

‘I can’t tell you what a joy it’s been working with you,’ said Brigham, with more than a hint of sarcasm.

‘We’re not here for the pleasure of each other’s company, Brigham.’

‘I console myself with that thought.’

‘So do I.’

WITHIN MINUTES OF
his reunion with Sam and Malory, Max realized how unrealistic his plan was of learning all he could of the events leading to Jack Farngold’s death and Morahan’s arrest before seeing his friends aboard the
Star of Batavia
and waving them off on their voyage to safety.