Simon Tolkien - Orders from Berlin

‘God, I wish I knew what I was looking for,’ said Trave, rousing Ava from her reverie. He was systematically pulling open every cabinet and drawer in sight and rifling through any documents he found. He didn’t bother to put anything back, just threw the discarded documents on the ground and moved on to the next cache.

‘Haven’t you any idea?’ she asked.

‘Not really. I’m guessing something written down, something about whatever it is he’s planning. Something connecting him with his masters back in Berlin. If it’s here, of course,’ he added, speaking from the bedroom, where he’d gone to continue the search. ‘Because that’s the worst part — not knowing whether there is anything …’ Trave’s voice trailed away, and Ava went over to the bedroom doorway and found him holding the photograph of the smiling young man in uniform that she’d noticed when she was in the room before.

‘It’s his brother, isn’t it,’ she said, although she thought she already knew the answer.

‘Yes,’ said Trave. ‘He was called Alistair, and I think he’s the reason we’re all in this mess.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Seaforth’s mother told me that Charles found out after the war that his brother was executed for cowardice by the British Army in 1916 and that the discovery enraged him — with the kind of rage that doesn’t go away but grows inside a person year after year like a cancer, until he can think of nothing else. Or at least that’s what I think happened,’ said Trave, shaking his head.

But it wasn’t what Ava wanted to hear. ‘You make him sound like a victim,’ she said. ‘And he’s not. He’s evil, like the monster in that picture over there,’ she said, beckoning Trave over to join her in the doorway so that she could show him the Francis Bacon painting hanging above the mantelpiece in the living room. ‘Look — it’s his Dorian Gray picture, the man behind the mask.’

Trave was silent, gazing up at the picture. Ava watched him, trying to guess what he was thinking, but when he spoke, it wasn’t at all what she expected to hear.

‘We need to get it down,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘Just a hunch, that’s all.’ He put Alistair’s photograph on the desk, moved a hard-backed chair over in front of the fireplace, and then climbed on it. Carefully he lifted the picture and found it came easily away from the wall. Ava helped him set it on the carpet, and when she looked back up, she gave a gasp of astonishment. A compact stainless-steel safe was revealed behind where the screaming head had been. There was a small combination dial in the centre of the recessed door.

‘How did you know it was there?’ she asked.

‘I didn’t. It was the logical place for a safe, that’s all. Although I suppose it explains why none of the desk drawers or the cabinets is locked,’ Trave added with a sigh, looking round the room. ‘God knows how we’re going to open it.’

‘Can’t you use the gun?’

‘It won’t work.’

‘Why? It did on the door.’

‘Safes like this are bulletproof. There’s no way we’re getting inside it unless we know the combination.’

‘And that could be anything,’ said Ava, acknowledging defeat. She felt bitterly frustrated. To have come this far only to be thwarted by a locked steel door was a hard pill to swallow. ‘Come on. We need to get out of here,’ she said, turning away and moving towards the door. ‘Those gunshots of yours made a hell of a noise. Someone’s going to have called the police. They’ll be here soon.’

But Trave didn’t respond. Instead she saw he’d gone over to the desk while her back was turned and had picked up the photograph of Seaforth’s brother again. He was staring at it intently, as if it contained some kind of secret. And then he suddenly put it down, climbed back on the chair in front of the fireplace, and began twisting the dial on the safe this way and that. He stopped, waiting for a click, but nothing happened. And then he tried again, but still without success.

‘What numbers are you putting in?’ asked Ava. She’d crossed the room to stand behind him.

‘The date Alistair was shot — the eleventh of February, 1916. His mother told me it; she said it was the day before his birthday. It was a long shot, but I thought it was worth trying,’ said Trave, opening his hands in a gesture of resignation.

He started to get down from the chair, but Ava put out her hand to stop him. The movement caught him by surprise and he almost lost his balance. ‘His birthday!’ she repeated. ‘Why don’t you try that?’

Trave nodded, feeling stupid that he hadn’t thought of the idea himself. He turned back to the dial and entered the numbers, first with the nineteen and then without. And on the second attempt, the safe opened.

There were bundles of cash inside, which Trave didn’t disturb, an old book that looked like a diary of some kind — maybe the one that Ava had told him about — and at the back, several brown envelopes. Trave took them over to the desk and emptied their contents onto the blotter. Lists of names; letters in German; carbons of intelligence briefings marked ‘TOP SECRET’, and a four-page carbon document in English headed ‘PLAN’ in capital letters, which had been in an envelope on its own. On the first page it was marked for the attention of Gruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8, Berlin, and it was signed at the end with the single letter ‘D’ above the date, 19 September 1940.

Trave read quickly, handing each page to Ava as soon as he had finished. Within a few sentences it had become obvious to him that D was Seaforth and that he was indeed a high-level spy working for Nazi Germany.

Elegantly phrased and carefully written, the document described Seaforth and Thorn’s meeting with Churchill on 15 September and suggested that Heydrich should provide further intelligence of sufficient interest to engineer a summons to a second meeting with the Prime Minister, at which Seaforth would shoot Churchill and Thorn and blame the assassination on Thorn. In a separate section added at the end, Seaforth told Heydrich that his radio message sent on 17 September had been intercepted and decoded by British intelligence. He said that one man, the former chief of MI6, had understood the significance of the message but that Seaforth had eliminated him and believed that his cover was now once again secure, provided future communications were sent only by ‘the traditional route,’ whatever that might be.

There was no mention in the document of Seaforth’s personal grudge against the British Prime Minister, but Trave felt he could sense behind the dry, careful language Seaforth’s belief that he was an instrument of destiny. And it would be difficult for Seaforth to think otherwise, Trave thought, given the unexpected opportunity that had presented itself to exact a personal revenge on the man who had signed his brother’s death warrant.

‘Come on,’ said Trave, gathering the papers. ‘We need to find a way to warn Churchill. Seaforth’s going to carry out this plan as soon as Thorn gets back from the hospital. I know he is.’

‘Why? How can you be so sure?’ asked Ava. She was in a state of shock, finding it almost impossible to come to terms with what she’d just read. She wanted to sit down for a minute and try to absorb the full measure of Seaforth’s perfidy.

‘I can’t be sure,’ said Trave, answering her question. ‘But he’s seen me round at Broadway asking questions and he’s going to want to strike quickly before things start to unravel — assuming that he’s got the intelligence he needs from Berlin, which seems likely, given that this document was sent nearly two weeks ago. I’m sure Heydrich will have given him the go-ahead. The plan looks like a good one from what I can see. It’s simple and daring and it may well succeed if he gets the chance to put it to the test.’