Robert Craven - Get Lenin

The summer rain had been pouring out of the heavens in titanic bursts, washing Whitehall in a deluge, flooding its corridors and rooms with an unseasonal gloom. Chainbridge had risen early and driven through the rush hour traffic. London, bustling as ever, was glistening in the early morning light. Eva and De Witte had left his chambers for a safe house near Kensington to unwind. Later that week they would be guests of Oswald and Diana Mosley at a BUF rally, maintaining their cover as journalists sympathetic to the Fascist cause.

He ascended the steps to a discreet doorway on King Charles Street and was ushered through the Georgian foyer, past the armed serviceman who saluted him, to Liddle’s office. It was a small room off a non-descript corridor, filled with the smell of beeswax and tobacco, and peppered with maps of Europe around the walls. In common with Chainbridge’s chambers, it was piled high with sensitive intelligence from all over Europe. Unlike Chainbridge’s chambers, it had no windows. Chainbridge couldn’t function without being able to observe the seasons and marvelled at Liddle’s fortitude. He never left this broom closet.

The room, like the corridor, was as quiet as a monastic cell. The whole environment here made Chainbridge feel uneasy, the slow pace and old school tie feel of the place. From these corridors, ministers directed soldiers and spies, sometimes deliberately, to their deaths for the greater good of the Empire. He was an old soldier who found the peacetime uncomfortable, yet he never wished to see wholesale slaughter again.

He stood beside the desk, refusing the chair he was offered. He always preferred to stand before a superior.

‘Henry, how solid is this?’

Chainbridge assumed his intelligence was being dismissed out of hand. He bristled. ‘Miss Molinaar has a better insight into the way a Russian mind works than we have. This Russian attache is well connected within the Politburo at a political and family level. I trust her judgement. And we still have no word as to the whereabouts of Leonard and McGowan. We’re assuming the Gestapo intercepted them.’

Liddle hummed tunelessly for a moment as he reviewed the dossier. There was a possible redoubt beyond the Urals and no-one to verify it. He trusted Chainbridge’s views; he wouldn’t have come to him with this without due consideration.

Chainbridge and De Witte had broken several Communist rings operating within the Oxbridge universities. Now B5B section’s focus was Oswald Mosley and his bunch of thugs. Mosley could yet be a British Hitler or Mussolini in the making should a war ever break out. The section was juggling the forces of the extreme right and the extreme left, both Leviathans heading on a collision course across Europe. B5B was underfunded and understaffed, and Liddle seemed to be the only one, apart from Chainbridge and Churchill, who could foresee that Germany might disregard any kind of peace treaty.

Added to his woes, the Admiralty was vying for the counter-espionage brief and the glamorous tars seemed to have the upper hand with the current government. Liddle sighed inwardly. The shinier the brocade on the epaulettes, the more likely counter-intelligence would be moving off his desk. He was a policeman at heart, which meant hard graft and footwork, and the pain-staking gathering of evidence.

‘I’ll pass it up the chain of command, but don’t get your hopes up. Chamberlain believes he’s got Hitler where he wants him.’

Chainbridge turned to leave, Liddle rose also. The rain seemed to be increasing in volume outside, the din almost drowning out his voice.

‘Henry, as you know we’re struggling to improve the network. With too few operatives in the field that we can trust, we will need Miss Molinaar back in mainland Europe. The Polish authorities have requested that she be returned to them and that suits our purposes too. De Witte will have to remain here. I need the two of you to start putting feelers out across the country for operatives. You and I know there’s a war coming and that maniac in Berlin wants to set the world alight. We need to be prepared,’

Chainbridge nodded slowly. Liddle handed him a dossier,

‘Supplied to us by the Yanks. Mister Donald T Kincaid will be in Berlin a week from today depositing some of his considerable fortune into Hitler’s coffers. Miss Molinaar is to strike up a relationship with Kincaid as a joint mission between ourselves and the Poles, and remain with him as his companion. He has transferred an enormous amount of money lately and we don’t have the why’s, where’s or how’s. He’s an open supporter of Hitler and stands on the first amendment in all of his outbursts when questioned about it.’

Chainbridge skimmed the first few paragraphs: D.T. Kincaid, film magnate, many media interests — newsreels, newspapers, periodicals and advertising. Some of the photographs were from London where he was searching for his next big star. Amid all the doom and gloom of the papers, a man of this magnitude was bringing the Technicolor razzmatazz of Hollywood to Britain. A very, very rich man; political too.

‘I’ll talk to Miss Molinaar.’

Liddle dialled the Foreign Office extension as Chainbridge left.

‘Hello, yes, I’d like to talk to the Minister. We have a bit of an oddity here, might be worth following up on. Something our friends the Russians might be up to.’

Oswald Mosley was in his element, surrounded by journalists, hangers on and well-wishers. Despite the waning fortunes of the British Union of Fascists, he still managed to be newsworthy and pull a crowd. It was more of a banquet than a rally, with long benches and tables stretching the length of the converted cellar down along the London’s docklands. It reminded Eva of a German beer hall.

A podium stood on a stage at one end, flanked by the red, white and blue flags of his party. Granite-faced Blackshirts formed a line in front of the stage, with matching black batons resting between their hands, a necessity after the last rally was broken up by rampaging Jews, Communists and Irish Dockers in protest at his extreme right wing manifesto.

Eva and De Witte were introduced to him by Diana Mosley and Eva noted that he and Peter had similarities. Mosley was dashing, rake thin and with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. He appraised Eva in a single glance, slowly exhaling his cigarette smoke as he did so.

'Hello again,' he smiled. 'Munich a few weeks ago? I never forget a pretty face.'

She held his gaze to Diana’s discomfort and allowed him to kiss her hand which he did as smoothly as a libertine. In his black uniform, webbing and jodhpurs, he resembled a lounging fighter pilot or suave Hollywood leading man. Eva produced her camera, a German Leica, and took a few shots. He posed gallantly, his eyes never leaving her.

De Witte cleared his throat and pushed his way through the press corps. He held a leather-bound board with blank paper clipped to it. A long stylus chained to it made grooves into the paper as he jotted in shorthand. Discreet wires running across the board allowed him to ensure straight lines as he wrote, using his thumb to tell him where to place the next line.

Mosley observed he, like most of the aristocrats attending, was sympathetic to King Edward’s plight in Spain, that he might in fact be the rightful King of England.

De Witte retorted, ‘So if war was declared, a more sympathetic monarch to the Fascist crusade may be more acceptable to the British population?’ He then followed on, ‘How do you plan to depose the current monarch? A French or Russian style revolution perhaps?‘

Ignoring De Witte, Mosley introduced his Italian and German SS guests beside him who saluted straight armed in the flash of bulbs. He told the press he believed that the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy were potential allies against the rise of Communism. His Fascist brothers from Europe were here tonight attending the dinner in solidarity with the BUF and the people of the United Kingdom. They shared his belief that Germany and England would not go to war against each other again, citing the willingness of Westminster to appease Hitler.