The Secret Generations (21 page)

The lawyer
’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade.’

She joked back with a line from
Romeo and Juliet
:
‘
Oh! Then I see Queen Mab has been with you.’

‘
Not a jest, old darling,’ his eyes fixed on the hot, dusty road ahead. ‘It’s going to happen, and there’s precious little the statesmen, priests, lawyers or even hired assassins can do about it.’

‘
War?’ A sense of cold in the pit of her stomach. Nobody – she thought – knew what to expect from a modern war. ‘Surely not! England doesn’t have to be involved. It’s not our quarrel – the Balkans: Serbia, Austria, Russia, and the damned Germans.’

‘
Events make it our quarrel.’

He went on to explain the delicate situation; how the Austro-Hungarian differences with Serbia, together with those between Germany and Russia, had merely been waiting, as though in storage, until some opportunity presented itself to bring the rising hatred to the point of violence.

‘We’re certain the Kaiser sees the Archduke’s assassination as an opportunity not to be missed,’ James shouted, above the engine and rushing wind. ‘They’ve played it very close. A long game as Uncle Giles would say. Kaiser Bill continuing with his sailing trip around Norway, while the Emperor remained in the Tyrol. We suspect they were planning all the time. Now the good old Kaiser’s turned up in Potsdam. There’s talk of doing some old-fashioned bartering over France and Belgium, but the Government isn’t going to wear that. I fear we’ll be at war within the week.’

‘
Who are
we
, James?’ she asked.

‘
Who? … What? …’

‘
You said…
We
are certain…
We
suspect. Who are
we
?’

James glanced at her, then back to the road ahead.
‘Military people…’ Then, flatly, with no feeling, ‘Maggie, you must have some idea of the kind of work I do.’

‘
I find it odd that a Sandhurst instructor’s always dashing around Europe. You disappear for weeks on end.’ Somewhat coolly she added, ‘I have no reason to believe you keep a mistress…’

‘
Maggie!’

‘
Well,’ the laugh came back to her voice. James loved the laugh. ‘Well, you service me enough when you’re at home –and I’m certainly glad of that. My friends tell me they come off rather badly in that department when their husbands find a little actress, or a tart, to play with.’

‘
Good God, do you all get together and discuss your…?

‘
Sex lives,’ she supplied. ‘Yes, I think we do. The silly brainless girls I’m forced to mix with seem to think they should provide the stud references in case they play musical beds at one of the idiotic little house parties. I suppose it’s really quite healthy, Jamie.’

‘
Don’t call me “Jamie”,’ he snapped. He disliked the diminutive for himself, though called his wife ‘Maggie’ without turning a hair.

‘
Then don’t treat me as though I was one of those idle pretty-pretty ladies who haunt country houses at week-ends. I’m asking plainly enough: what
do
you do, James? Tell me straight.’

He stopped the car by the roadside, leaving the engine ticking over loudly. A horse reared up in the field across the hedge; then snorting, cantered away.

James looked her full in the eyes. ‘I’m under instruction as an intelligence officer. When I go away, that’s part of it.’

‘
And when you go abroad?’ He sensed she was very still, like someone in church, at prayer. Some doves cooed from a copse on the far side of the road. You could hear them, all mixed up with the low growl of the idling engine.

‘
Sometimes it’s a test. Twice it’s been to find out things and talk to people. Now, you must promise not to tell a living soul, not Sara even. Certainly none of your pretty-pretty friends.’

She gave a little nod.
‘You’re a spy.’

He said that no, it wasn
’t that easy. ‘Like talking about the world situation, it’s an oversimplification. Spy is not a word we…’

She laid a hand on his arm.
‘It’s all right, darling James. I know. I’ve suspected for some time. You Railtons are such a secretive bunch.’ She remained silent for a moment. ‘Funny, everyone’s been so full of that business in Dublin, and the possibility of civil war. We should have been looking further afield.’ She held on to his hand, nails digging into his palm. ‘Thank you for telling me. I worry. I love you so much, you see, and, if war does come, then I shall worry a lot more. But I won’t ask anything, I promise.’

He moved, as though to begin the drive again, but she would not let go of his hand.
‘Turn the engine off.’

He did as she said, and she took him by the hand, into the field where the horse now stood a few hundred yards away. There, behind the hedge, she laid herself on the grass, lifted her skirt and took him. It was exciting for both of them, out in the open, with only turf under them, the warmth of the sun on their bare flesh, the possibility of discovery adding a piquancy to the experience.

Now, as she walked with Sara, Margaret Mary recalled the moment so vividly that she could almost feel James within her. Sara’s voice shattered the daydream. ‘Oh, Lord, what’s this?’ Billy Crook was galloping towards them on Mr Marconi, one of the big greys. He pulled the horse up close to the two women, touching his cap. Billy was a tall, good-looking lad of almost seventeen now. ‘Mr James sends his compliments, Ma’am,’ he spoke directly to Sara. ‘He asks if you’d do him the honour of going back to the house as quickly as possible.’

Sara thanked him, noticing, not for the first time, that he had certainly inherited the Railton nose and eyes. Something really would have to be done for Billy.

‘What on earth can James want…?’ Sara began, then saw the look on Margaret Mary’s face. ‘Oh no? You don’t think they’ve let things get that far? Not war?’

‘
I have to get back to Town.’ James was calm. Margaret Mary simply asked if it was the worst.

‘
I fear so. The Austrians have bombarded Belgrade. Half Europe appears to have mobilized, and the German Imperial Army seems to be preparing to move through Belgium. Ultimatums and notes are flying about like confetti.’

Within the hour they were walking out to the motor.

Sara watched. James had gone through a great change. She felt that his marriage had probably helped, but there was something else – an inner reserve, giving off an almost monastic feeling. There was a part of him which Sara could not reach, and she wondered if Margaret Mary was able to penetrate it.

*

In Berlin, as matters became clear, Steinhauer was at work day and night. If it really was to be war he would have to visit other countries straight away. First, though, he had particular work to do.

One of his priorities was to send a series of messages to six spies in England. There were various ways he could do this: by courier
– a neutral sailor, or the like, who would post the messages to certain addresses; by wireless, using the link now established via the Embassy in Washington which was able to relay coded signals to England and France; or by a simple personal letter, taken out and posted in Switzerland.

Before
‘The Fisherman’ had left, Steinhauer carefully set up three new ‘post offices’, unknown to Naval or Military Intelligence, one in Scotland, another in the British Midlands, and the third on England’s south coast. ‘The Fisherman’ would call at all three, making the journeys specially, once a month.

He sent six letters to six different names. Inside was a one-word order, hidden in normal pieces of correspondence, plus the designated code for each agent. These spies were
Angler
,
Dust
,
D12
,
D14
,
Brewer
, and
Saint
. Only
Angler
and
Saint
were real – the same person, Ulhurt – the others being ‘ghosts’, so that the number might confuse Steinhauer’s superiors. The key word in the letters for
Angler
and
Saint
was ‘hook’. That one word meant that ‘The Fisherman’ was to begin his sabotage work.

*

In London the whole family knew that it was only a matter of days, maybe hours. Caspar telephoned his mother, Charlotte, to say that he expected movement orders soon. She must not worry if she heard nothing for a while.

Mary Anne
– who had got her way and was training at St Thomas’s Hospital – came home full of the rumour that the student nurses there would be asked to take up some form of active duty immediately they qualified.

Andrew was now sleeping at t
he Admiralty, just as Charles spent all his time at the – considerably enlarged – MO5 offices.

Giles, with his grandson, Ramillies, in almost constant attendance, rarely left his suite of rooms in the Foreign Office. It was there, at roughly the moment James was returning from Redhill Manor, that the first Railton family catastrophe exploded.

The telegram came quite normally. Ramillies even recognized the name, but could make nothing of the contents. It was brought over from one of the many convenient addresses Ramillies had come to know well. He had taken it in to his grandfather immediately.

As Giles read the piece of paper, Ramillies saw the change in his face, as though, in a second, he had come to his true age. There was shock and bewilderment in his eyes; lines appeared where none had be
en a moment before, while a terrible tremor overtook his hands.

‘
You all right, sir? Is…?’

‘
Go, Ramillies,’ the croak of an old man. ‘Go. Just for a few minutes. I need to be alone.’

When Ramillies had left the room, Giles Railton stared back at the paper, reading it again.

MRS JUNO LEFT PARIS UNEXPECTEDLY THIS MORNING WITH THE BLUE BOOK STOP INEXPLICABLE STOP PLEASE ADVISE SIGNED MARTHA
He needed no code book to decipher the message. In plain language it read:

MDME GRENOT LEFT PARIS SUDDENLY THIS MORNING WITH KLAUS VON HIRSCH I NEED YOUR INSTRUCTIONS SIGNED MONIQUE

Giles
’ own daughter, Marie, had turned coat and run off with the Assistant Military Attaché to the German Embassy in Paris, leaving her husband and children: betraying country and family. Giles ran a hand over his head, as though feverish. How in God’s name could this have happened?

*

Possibly Giles Railton had not wished to read between the lines of Monique’s regular reports from Paris. Certainly she had given him many hints that all was not well.

For the best part of four years now, the young girl, trained by Secret Service experts, had kept a close watch on Marie and Marcel Grenot, and become established in the area; living quietly in her small apartment above the Bistro Abbeaux, almost directly opposite the Grenots
’ Paris home. Monique was, to use the later trade argot, ‘part of the scenery’.

After Marie had been advised to close down her activities because of the French authorities
’ suspicious, near paranoid, attitude, Giles had seriously considered pulling Monique out of Paris. But that extra sense, acquired through years of walking the secret corridors, told him to leave things as they were.

Later, when the first shock-waves of Marie
’s disappearance with von Hirsch had settled down, Giles admitted, with no reluctance, that all the signs had been there for some time. Despite the plea for caution, despite the two Grenot children, despite her former protestations that she was a loving wife and mother, Marie had left. Nobody, least of all her own father, had taken into account that unstable phenomenon, love.

Certainly, when it had all started, some years before, Marie was happy enough, with her growing family and a devoted, if humourless, French husband. In those days The General was still alive, and, together with her father, convinced her that a liaison with the handsome A
ssistant German Military Attaché was for the good of her country; and very much within the arcane and military tradition of the Railton family.

Only a few months before his death, The General had said to her,
‘Your father has entrusted you with a secret mission. You are one of the first Railton women to act, under orders, as a soldier.’ He had given her that particularly charming smile. ‘This assignment is a soldier’s job.’

Once the relationship between her and von Hirsch was established, Marcel had to be constantly soothed and reassured, lied to even; and at last Marie had found it necessary to give herself to the German: and very pleasant it turned out to be. So pleasant that Marie returned to him again and again. What she failed to comprehend
– just as her father had failed –was that the affair, while well-faked by her in the early stages, began at the most dangerous time for any married woman: almost fourteen years into her marriage to Marcel.

Though she was not conscious of the fact, already back in 1910 Marie had become disillusioned with her husband. He was developing pernickety mannerisms; those irritating habits of a man rapidly becoming set in his ways; a passion for order, born of his work. Marie suffered, like so many women, with a sense of sameness mewing her into a pattern of daily, family life. The mutual passion was spent, for neither of them had the experience to inject any new excitement into the intimate side of their marriage.