The Spy (2 page)

Couldn't he get his bloody own?

Well, he would take care of it. Lieutenant Carrington listened, making sure the quarry was gone. He squashed the cigarette and reached for his phone. He punched in the Code. The scrambler kicked in: Southampton.

His party was on the line: “Martin? John here—! No no, squire, it's not about the bloody buzzbomb, it's—”

Go ahead
....

“—about Sinclair. She's up for grabs.”

There she goes! Catch her!

Like the White Rabbit's watch, women in the service were looked upon as inferior machines: fast-running, but running backwards. Officers of the Empire agreed among themselves that it was true. God saves the Queen! Remember, chaps, a man's duty is to protect the Crown!

At the moment, its name was George.

His Majesty's picture used to hang on the wall of the lounge until it got hit with a wrench last Saturday during a misunderstanding between two boilermakers. They had been fighting over a woman.

Aside from herself, the lounge was empty where she sat.

Sinclair was busy putting on her lipstick.

It was not that she was trying to keep out of the war; she was trying to keep it out of her future. The war had delivered her into a world of new opportunities, and she had grabbed them. As often as not, they were revolving doors, like the ones used to enter public places. At the Royal Hotel, new bird in the manager's school, where she had worked as a receptionist and before her job with the Ferry Pilots, she had watched the proud and powerful coming through the doors, never having to go back through them to do battle in the streets again. Like all young employees, she had been told—and at first had believed—that her pitifully paid job was a chance to rise. Blocked by Management and Rules, Valerie Sinclair had come to see that those who rise, arise from those who have already risen.

It was life at the Top, at the Bottom.

One afternoon Duncan Sandys, Winston Churchill's son-in-law, walked in with half a dozen men to make the prearrangements for Mrs. Churchill's arrival. Valerie's accommodations were so excellent that the grand lady herself, despite suffering from insomnia, had come downstairs to thank her. Women being women, they had a chat. Two days later, Clementine Churchill, reporting to Winston, fan of Lewis Carroll, described the girl's childlike face to her husband.

He had made a note.

When Churchill made notes, he intended to use them.

Military types who frequented the hotel had begun to impress her. She was keen to do her bit, and while the F.A.N.Y.s looked promising, it would not be as a nurse. She had considered the Royal Marines, not that they would take her. She had to decide quickly: word had it that the hotel was changing hands. When Valerie was offered a job with the American Stage Door Canteen, the Brits raised the ante. If she joined the W.R.N.S., she would be excused from the barracks life at the Wrennery, which she detested. Any deal, including housing, was usually what British Intelligence wanted it to be; and she would get her own flat. She held out for and received additional pay, and found herself with a contract that didn't call itself a contract. They would make it easy for her: all she would have to do would be to move up the street.

Sign here.

Immediately, they sent her north to the Ferry Pool until someone figured out what to do with her. That someone was Winston Churchill, the girl's recall to Weymouth predicated upon his pleasure. Thus when the hotel was taken over by the Americans, it was the Royal Navy who caught her when she jumped.

Feet clutching its northern rim, a single sea gull was perched on the drainpipe looking for pickings. Following her with suspicious eyes, he flapped off the roof and sailed overhead. Birds that shit on people, a welder had told her, were supposed to be a sign of good luck. She looked hopefully at the bird.

“Save it,” she said.

Flashing her card at the gate, Valerie jaywalked to the Dorothy Cafe, a favorite hangout for naval personnel. It was Tuesday, which meant fish and chips. Her Security Pass said she was twenty-three, but half the guards thought she had faked it. It didn't keep them from whistling at her. As Mrs. Churchill had observed, her face was that of a child, and it turned them on; but mostly it was because she was stacked. She knew what they wanted alright; and she went along with it, enough to whet their whistle. As for the rest, she was rather like her purse.

She kept it to herself.

In the restaurant she sat alone, feeling what young people feel when they are strong and impatient, but have yet to decode their potential. Normally hungry, she picked at the fish, which was beastly. A repeat performer, it had been carried over from last week. By the end of the hour most of it was still on her platter staring up at her.

Back in her office she selected a stick of chewing gum from the pack that she got from a Yank, hitched up her enthusiasm, and returned to work at her desk piled high with its secret files. She felt a rush of energy humming in the reaches of the room—magnetic, as if she could taste it.

Something had entered her thinking
....

It was like a projector, the soft whir of a shutter, bringing fresh prints of the day's activities. As she worked, she found herself remembering the years at the vicarage. Where classmates had seen bushes and buildings and the walls of a church, Valerie Sinclair had seen misty living figures, whom she had befriended, and whom she had personally named the
Inhabitants
. She had not told the other children of these ghoulies, bodies standing there between the trees, ever in the evening, as real as Puck. Occasionally, during these reveries, Carrington would look up to ask her some question that related to the endless forms, some thousands of pages ago, to which she responded quick as a wink. He depended on her memory.

A warm wind was blowing through the window, bearing creosote and salt, and she got up to sharpen her pencil. Lieutenant Carrington gathered up his own. “Here, do mine for me while you're at it, will you?”

“Yes, sir.”

And she ground them all fine, sharp as needles, like razors. Retouch pencils used in the dark stalls of the Camera Shop, they were like weapons. Carrington tested one and was impressed. “Bloody fine job,” he acknowledged, “wonder why I can't get them that way?”

The afternoon passed and the phone rang. Carrington, at the other desk, picked it up. He nodded and spoke something in a low voice. Replacing the receiver, he reached for his hat.

Valerie looked up.

“I shall be visiting ships in the bay most of the afternoon.” He was on his way out the door. “You know how to reach me if I am needed, don't you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“By the way, should a call come in from a Lieutenant Commander Loot, please ask him to ring me at home, will you?”

“Yes, sir. Will he be calling from MI.5, sir?” She would have to use the scrambler.

“I hope not.” Carrington grinned. “No, he will be calling from Demolitions, I would think. You will recognize him by his high-pitched voice. It sounds like a whining shell.”

How peculiar, she thought.

Carrington hadn't been gone five minutes, when his telephone rang. She checked her pad: Loot—voice like bullet. She picked up the phone. “Lieutenant Carrington's Office.”

“Am I speaking to Wren Sinclair?”

Loot, it wasn't.

“This is Commander Hamilton.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied, turning quickly to a clean page. She wondered how he knew her name.

“Is Lieutenant Carrington there?”

“No, sir, not at the moment.”

“I shall be arriving at Weymouth by train tomorrow at 1500 hours. Can you have Lieutenant Carrington meet me?”

“Yes, sir. I will let him know immediately.”

“Do that,” said Hamilton. “I shall be wearing a grey suit, with a white carnation in the buttonhole.” He sounded important.

“Yes, sir. I will give him that message.”

“Good show. I'll see you then.”

“Sir?”

Lines clicked, she was holding Carrington's phone.

Had her call been recorded?

The next day, and late in the afternoon, Lieutenant Carrington introduced David Hamilton to Valerie Sinclair. Staring into a pair of steady grey eyes, the girl from Newton Swyre was impressed by the demeanour of the tall, broad-shouldered, thirtyish-looking man in the well-tailored suit. “What do you know about Operation OVERLORD?” he asked her, watching closely as to how she answered.

It was a TOP SECRET exercise.

“Not a thing, sir,” she replied.

She blushed when she heard, “Carrington, let me congratulate you on having a very smart and efficient secretary.”

She liked him.

Carrington glanced at his watch. Hamilton said: “Well now! Perhaps we shall see you again—shall we?—before we leave.” As they walked down the hall, she peered after him.

Was he single?

That evening, on the 21st of June, having returned to Southampton, Commander Hamilton immediately rang up his Adjutant, Lieutenant Martin Seymour. It was Seymour who had trained Valerie Sinclair as a candidate for Naval Intelligence. The Commander suggested dinner at the Officers Club at 23 Greenapple Street, convenient to both, before going to the office where they could work undisturbed. Arriving early, Seymour met him in the entrance.

They entered the busy bar, and found places.

“Two whiskeys, please.”

The ice, in the bucket to Seymour's right, was on hand for the Americans. “So then,” said Hamilton, “Loot's drawn a course on Wren Sinclair, has he?”

“Well, sir, he certainly thinks he has.”

Hamilton fingered his drink. Loot's attempt to purloin Carrington's secretary was on the table before they left the bar. It was academic, really: MI.5 would have first dibs.

“Pack of Ovals, will you?” Hamilton signaled for the orderly. They found their table, ordered, and were soon eating. Glasses clinked in the background, and low conversation hummed. The entire country had tightened its belt, but not here. Seymour, taking advantage of the invitation, skipped over the fish, going straight to the chops. Hamilton, opting for the steak, attended to the meal with efficiency and dispatch: couldn't run a war on just fish and chowder. The orderly came up. The Commander passed on the dessert. Seymour followed.

It was not the time for small talk.

“Carrington reports that Lieutenant Commander Loot, the D.E.M.S. officer in charge, has already filed the requisition for her transfer.”

Hamilton put his cup down, and dabbed at his mouth with a napkin. “Suffering a labor shortage, is he?”

“Yes, sir.” Hamilton lit Seymour's cigarette. “He as much as told Carrington to make sure that Sinclair cleaned her desk out by the weekend, and to inform him the moment she was ready.”

“He did, did he?” The Commander eyed the Gainsborough on the wall. “Yes, well,” he said: “Scratch an Englishman and youll find a German.”

Seymour grinned. That was Loot, all right.

“Did he bother to tell the girl?”

“The girl? No, sir. He just told Carrington.”

“I see,” quipped Hamilton. “Trying to get his hands on our spy, is he?”

“Well, no. It's more than that, of course. His own secretary is perfectly competent. It's just that the
second
Mrs. Loot—she's a friend of Kay Summersby, you know—is still going with the French Major, and has taken up with one of the Eisenhower chaps. Poor Loot has run aground again with his first wife as well.”

“Come come, Seymour, have you no sense of decency?”

“Not really.”

“Hmmm. I remember...sordid affair. Last year, wasn't it?”

Seymour said that it was.

“Loot's requisition—copy to Bletchley?”

“No, sir.” Seymour was still reading the desserts. “I took the liberty of intercepting it this morning—”

“Very good, Seymour.”

“We caught it just before it went in.”

“Close one, that,” noted Hamilton. He was embarrassed to think a 'chaser like Loot could have upset his plans. “See the new orders for Loot are sent over to Parker, will you?” Lieutenant Conrad Parker was Martin Seymour's counterpart. At Bletchley Park, home of the ULTRA secrets, the German-speaking Parker, recruited from the London School of Economics, served as Adjutant to Commodore John Blackstone. One of two at theTop in the Royal Navy, the other being Lord Louis Mountbatten, Blackstone's clout was one notch above an Admiral and just below God: an ultimate rank obviously reserved for Churchill, Lord of the Admiralty before he became Prime Minister. Hamilton, mere mortal wedged between the two Commodores, and choosing the one closer to his advantage, had thrown his allegiance to Mountbatten. Blackstone, the
Keeper of the Files
, theoretically Hamilton's boss, was not unaware of this. Touchy about Mountbatten, who enjoyed more prestige, and determined to keep Hamilton in line, Blackstone had appointed Conrad Parker as
Keeper of the Codes
. Filed under P for PRICK by the Southampton office, Parker, no match for Seymour, was of the old school, an institution not attended by these two enjoying their dinner.

“Loot, sir. New orders?”

It was as good as done. Invergorden, in North Scotland, was too far. Dover, or Hell-Fire Corner, where the barrage of the big guns at Calais had not left a windowpane standing, was too close.

“Special Assignment in Manchester sound about right?”

“Yes, sir!” Ratio of sailors to women: fifty to one.

“You see, old boy, we just can't have the likes of Loot running off with our candidates, and still call ourselves a company.”

Seymour picked his teeth.

“Jolly good then!” Hamilton eyed the desserts. “Finished?” Seymour threw the menu on the table. The Commander called for the orderly and settled the bill. “We had best get on to the office.”

Pushing his way through the bar, Seymour grabbed some ice.