Gavin Lyall - All Honourable Men

“Ship him up,” he ordered, and went to the decanters on the sideboard to see what he had to offer.

Tilsey turned out to be a thin man of roughly Ranklin’s age, with sandy hair and moustache and generally looking military. Which he was, of course. He would be invisible in a respectable London street or Government building, but little use for keeping watch on foul opium dens in dockland. However, any spy who wanted to frequent foul opium dens was welcome to get on with it unwatched.

They exchanged greetings, Tilsey accepted an Irish whiskey and water, and stood warming himself in front of the fire. “Have you heard of a chap called Gunther van der Brock? He’s-”

“One of the Continental secrets-for-sale boys, otherwise a cigar wholesaler in Amsterdam.”

“That’s the chap.”

“-only it’s a whole firm and I believe they pass that name around, so it may not be our lad.”

“Just under six feet, stout, dark hair, big moustache, spectacles, last seen wearing a light grey town suit and a dark green cloak,” Tilsey recited.

“He’s the one I know. Is he over here?”

“You know him? Good. Yes, he got into town around teatime. He’s staying at the Metropole in Northumberland Avenue, quite openly using his own name. Van der Brock, anyway.”

Good for them picking him up so quickly, Ranklin thought. And presumably following his every footstep – or rather, since Kell was even more understaffed than the Bureau, getting Scotland Yard’s Special Branch to do so. “He’s probably the best of that ilk, deals in only the top-quality secrets. But here, he’d bloody well better be selling, not buying. What’s he been up to?”

Tilsey sighed. “We hoped he might have come to see your people, but obviously not. We lost him in Whitehall.”

“In Whitehall ?” They’d managed to lose a large man in a green cloak in one of London’s widest streets, well lit and probably not too busy?

Tilsey put on a lopsided smile. “Perhaps you haven’t looked out of the window recently.”

Ranklin walked over, twitched aside the curtains and stared blankly. He rubbed the glass, then realised it was London that had gone blank. Fog.

There should have been trees, lights, a skyline; there was nothing. Down below should be street lamps: there might be a slight glow, that was all. The building felt it had become an island, and those in the street must feel they had fallen overboard in mid-ocean.

“I see what you mean.” He walked back to the fire with an instinctive shiver.

“We were out of touch for nearly two hours,” Tilsey resumed. “He got back to his hotel just half an hour ago. Of course, he may just have been wandering around, lost, himself. But. . .”

Ranklin shared his doubts. Gunther must know London well enough, he wouldn’t be in Whitehall by accident. And that put him within yards of every important Government department, even the Prime Minister.

They sank into armchairs and thoughtful gloom. Reaching for any hope, Ranklin said: “Of course, he wouldn’t be too likely to be visiting an informant in a Government office, out of hours and dressed that memorably. He’d choose a crowded tea-shop or railway buffet . . . sorry.”

Tilsey was nodding politely; he must have thought all that already. “The only other places we know he visited were St Martin’s post office – he picked up a poste restante letter there – and a cigar shop in Trafalgar Square. He was in there about twenty minutes, but perhaps just to give himself a business alibi. Then we lost him near the Admiralty.”

“Perhaps Whitehall was a blind and the cigar shop was what mattered. . .” Ranklin’s imagination raced ahead: important men went to cigar shops, and they didn’t buy in a hurry, they stopped to chat. A cigar shop as an intelligence exchange? – no, a whole raft of them, all such shops in central London, secret messages rolled up inside Havanas. . . It was far better than the popular myth that every German waiter belonged to a great spy ring.

He coughed apologetically. “Daydreaming . . . But how can we help?”

“As I say, we hoped he might have visited you chaps, but. . . However, since you know him, would you care to bump into him ‘accidentally’? – if we can suggest a venue?”

“I’m happy to – but he won’t think it’s an accident,” Ranklin said firmly. “It’d tell him he’s being watched. And he doesn’t let slip information, he sells it.”

“Major Kell will have to decide whether it’s worth that. But if he approves, it may have to be early tomorrow: van der Brock’s only booked in for one night. May I telephone you in, say, half an hour?”

“Of course.” And Tilsey left to search in the fog for the New War Office, luckily only the width of the street away. Ranklin wondered if he should try and locate the Commander and ask for his approval, but decided it was too delicate a matter for the telephone and eavesdropping operators. And dammit, if he was acting deputy, he could authorise himself.

Tilsey rang up after twenty-five minutes. “Would you feel like breakfast at the Metropole tomorrow at eight?”

* * *

After his stay at the Savoy, Ranklin’s hotel standards were high, and the Metropole didn’t match up – except for size. At breakfast time, the vast pillared dining-room had a funereal air. Not the jolly scandal-swap when the deceased has been planted, but the brittle, respectful hush of the gathering beforehand.

Ranklin persuaded a waiter to lead the way to where Gunther – still wearing a distinctive and foreign-looking light grey suit – was buttering toast and reading the Financial Times . He looked up, spread his arms in welcome and spattered crumbs from under his heavy moustache.

“Captain! A wonderful surprise! Sit down, sit down. Coffee?” The waiter found another cup. “You have not yet eaten?” Ranklin asked for bacon and eggs. “If I had a magic carpet, I would every day breakfast in England. Except, I do not understand porridge .”

“It’s Scottish. A Presbyterian form of the confessional: after eating it, you can behave any way you like.”

Gunther chuckled, adding more crumbs to the atmosphere. “And your Chief is well? Good. And Mr O’Gilroy? I thought of him only this morning. This weather hurts my side,” and he touched his right ribs. That dated from their first meeting when Gunther wanted to kill them and had rashly got into a bayonet duel with O’Gilroy. However, once he had convalesced, they had become . . .

. . . not friends. Yet more than business associates. Looking idly around the room – not full, at this time of year – Ranklin thought smugly They don’t know . Here we sit, two men from the world of international espionage, and nobody here knows. Such thoughts were one of the few compensations of the job; it was like belonging to a secret family: you can’t choose your relatives, but they were still family . . .

The waiter brought Gunther a plate of bacon, eggs and everything else, assuring Ranklin that his would be along in a moment. Then, professionally looking at neither of them, asked: “Are you gentlemen together?”

“On my room bill, of course,” Gunther said expansively. A clue? Since he watched the pennies, had he already concluded a good piece of business? But buying or selling?

He held his knife and fork poised, deciding which part of the crowded plate to clear first, and asked before his mouth got full: “And is this just a sociable meeting?”

“When one hears that a master dealer has set up his stall in town, naturally one hurries to view his stock.” Then Ranklin realised he had to go on, since Gunther’s cheeks were bulging. “We were just a little hurt that you hadn’t let us know you were coming.”