Sam Bourne - Pantheon

The idea was both dizzying and dangerous. He had to make sense of this too, even this. He had no alternative, not if he was to find his way back to Florence and Harry.

Very well, he told himself. If he could not learn directly what George Lund had told his wife, he would have to work with what he had: the last communication Lund had made, even in death. He would have to discover the truth about the Wolf’s Head.

For an hour he paced up and down, or sat at the bench across the street, all the time watching the entrance to the Wolf’s Head tomb. He kept an especially vigilant eye out for a black Buick with white-trimmed wheels, but saw nothing. Good man, that Riley: apparently he had done as James had asked and let no one know that the English gentleman arrested for criminal trespass had been released from custody. On the belt-and-braces principle, James had stopped by the J Press shop on York Street to pick up a new jacket. Inspired by the Lunds’ elderly neighbour, he had opted for a blue blazer as well as a Panama hat, which he now wore low, covering his eyes. If someone was tailing him, the least James could do was put him off the scent.

Still nothing. The building deserved its name; it was locked, empty and silent as a tomb.

James glanced at the copy of Time magazine he had picked up from a news-stand on his way over here. He had been drawn by the image on the cover of Lord Beaverbrook, first occupant of the newly-created Ministry of Aircraft Production. The magazine was full of praise for the man Churchill had brought in: ‘Even if Britain goes down this fall, it will not be Lord Beaverbrook’s fault. If she holds out, it will be his triumph. This war is a war of machines. It will be won on the assembly line.’

The magazine was clearly impressed and the overall assessment was upbeat, but the opening line made James’s heart sink. Even if Britain goes down this fall… Florence had not been hysterical to fear a Nazi invasion. It was a possibility, maybe even a probability.

Looking up, he saw a white-haired man approaching. At that moment, James recognized his face: it was Theodore Lowell, the university chaplain and pastor he had seen preach at the Battell Chapel on Sunday. He froze, but Lowell did not even glance at him, just looked left and right to check traffic before crossing the road. Without altering his pace, he slipped in among the lawns and bushes leading to the Wolf’s Head’s building.

That was not in itself a surprise: Lowell’s was the only name James had recognized on the alumni list in Lake’s notebook. As a former member of the society, he had every right to pay a visit; as chaplain, he might even have been there on pastoral duty. (James imagined him counselling a wayward young man to drink a little less and pray a little more.)

But there was something about the way he walked, an urgency, that struck James. No, it was more than urgency — it was furtiveness. Lowell didn’t want to be seen. He looked quickly behind him and disappeared into the side door.

James had just resumed his position on the bench when there was another rustle of movement and someone emerged from the tomb, from the same concealed entrance. This figure was taller and, James guessed, younger; his hair was darker. Just in time, James raised his magazine so that he would not be seen.

This second man now reached the pavement and started walking north towards Elm Street. James waited five, six, seven seconds and then began to follow.

The voice of Jorge, the Spanish republican who had coached both him and Harry Knox in the art of shadowing suspected members of Franco’s Fifth Column in Madrid three years earlier, remained in his head throughout. Remember, you walk at the same speed as the subject. Slower, and you will lose him. Faster, and you reveal yourself at once.

The pursuit was challenging, James having to part a large group that emerged from Davenport College when he had barely got into his stride — muttering apologies and ‘excuse me’s’ — having to shield his eyes from the afternoon sunshine, all the while keeping his gaze fixed on the man twenty yards ahead of him. He was walking with purpose this man, whoever he was, at a pace that suggested his destination was not far off.

The hardest part of any pursuit is the turning of a corner, when the risk of losing the subject is at its greatest. The temptation is to accelerate, but that too carries a risk: the subject, if vigilant, will notice that someone previously distant has come much closer. And once a pursuer has been noticed, he is useless.

James maintained his speed, but as he turned the corner, he looked to where he expected the subject to be — and saw nothing.

Damn. Hurriedly, James scanned the other side of the street. Not there. He examined his own side of the road, and again saw nothing. He stared into the distance, to see if the man he had followed had cottoned on and broken into a sprint, but there was no sign of him.

There. He had been searching for a moving target, and so his eye had passed over the static figure. His prey was just one building ahead, standing by the front door of what looked like a large Georgian house. His demeanour suggested he had no idea he had been followed.

James sucked in his breath, a predator trying to shrink into invisibility and avoid detection. Now, at last, he could get a decent look at the man. He was tall, impressively built, but much younger than James would have guessed, perhaps even an undergraduate. Was this a ‘junior’, and therefore a current member of Wolf’s Head? His right leg was vibrating slightly under his trousers, a sign, James decided, of impatience. The man knocked on the door a second time. A moment later the door opened.

Instinctively James stepped back, trying to recede into the street scene, as he watched the young man hand over a large white envelope. There was a brief exchange and then he appeared to be invited inside. The door clicked shut behind him.

James walked past the building, as naturally as he could manage. He glanced rightward once, noticing that mesh curtains blocked any view inside the windows. A brief flash of sunlight dazzled him: a reflection bouncing off the nameplate by the front door.

The least risky option would be to move fast, right now. Wait, and the young man he had followed might re-emerge. Wait, and he would eventually be noticed. James marched to the front door, his stride purposeful, as if he too were making a delivery. He pretended to ring the doorbell, instead taking a quick look at the brass plate just beside it. Then he looked again to make sure he had read the words properly.

What he saw there surprised and baffled him, but there was no mistaking what it said in clear, engraved letters.

London

He remembered this feeling sharply. The same hot blend of nerves and pleasure, of fear and excitement. The last time he had experienced it had been in his junior year at St Albans. A few of the seniors had got hold of some ‘erotic’ pictures, a set of photographs rumoured to be utterly depraved. Everyone in his class was desperate to see them and it fell to young Taylor Hastings to get his hands on them.

He had done it through a series of negotiations, trades and promises — but he had done it. As he left the seniors’ dorm that night, his satchel containing the all-important ‘documentation’ slung over his shoulder, he had felt his face grow hot. He was aroused in anticipation of seeing those pictures, most certainly — indeed, he made a stop at the squash court bathrooms in order to have his own, personal private viewing — but he was also engorged with the thrill of the forbidden. His bag contained a set of photographs of women in a variety of poses, some acrobatic, others shocking — including one of a bare backside greeted by the smack of a cane — but all in violation of at least a half-dozen school rules and perhaps a couple of state obscenity laws into the bargain. What’s more, he had, through a rather smart sleight of hand, taken more pictures than the seniors had agreed to. The result was the pleasure of a deception, the kick of committing a small, but elegant crime — and that, he understood at that moment, was a sexual pleasure too.