John Lawton - Riptide

‘And the Jews. They’re going to exterminate the Jews?’

‘Eventually. They have no scheme I know of as yet other than sticking them up against a wall and shooting them. Thousands of Polish Jews have died that way. But Heydrich will think of something. The Jewish Question long ago became the Jewish Problem. A problem requires a solution. Heydrich’s good at that sort of thing. And east of the current front line, the entire territory is already regarded as an SS fiefdom. The only law will be death’s-head’s law. Himmler sees himself as an Emperor for the East-but Heydrich is the smarter man. If they succeed, it will be Heydrich who rules this wilderness.’

Crossing the lobby of Claridge’s, Cal heard a woman’s voice say ‘There he is now’, and turned to see the receptionist talking to an RAF officer.

‘Captain Cormack,’ she called out to him. ‘A gentleman to see you.’

A gentleman he might be-but he was the oddest-looking RAF officer Cal had ever seen. RAF blouse, with green corduroy trousers,-an open-necked shirt and gumboots.

‘I’m Orlando Thesiger,’ the scarecrow said, in a voice as posh as Reggie’s.

This meant nothing to Cal. It was hardly a name to be forgotten once heard.

‘Walter worked for me,’ he added. ‘It was me seconded him to your operation.’

‘I’m so sorry, Walter never did tell me your name. Always called you the Squadron Leader. Told me odd bits about all the fun he had out in Sussex.’

‘Essex, actually. Wot larx, eh?’

‘Yeah, that was pretty much how he saw things.’

‘Look, you must excuse the clobber-we’re a bit off the beaten track in Essex, and the walk to the station’s a trifle muddy… all the same, I was wondering if you’d care for a spot of lunch. A spot of lunch and a bit of a chat.’

Cal wouldn’t. He couldn’t face the off-the-ration champagne and foie gras diet of the English upper classes again. It seemed somehow to run against his current feelings. It seemed like pissing on the graves of dead men. He knew the time-there was a huge clock on the wall just above Thesiger’s head-but feigned looking at his wristwatch.

‘Won’t take long,’ Thesiger said. ‘I brought sandwiches.’

He tapped the side of his gas mask case.

‘I thought we could just sit in the park for quarter of an hour.’

‘Sandwiches?’ Cal said, warming.

‘Yes. In the park. Brought enough for two.’

Grosvenor Square was sunny. Thesiger slipped off his blouse and sat in his shirt and braces. With the last vestige of rank and service stripped from him he looked more like a pig farmer having a day in the city than a spycatcher. But, then, what did spycatchers look like? Cal carefully hung Kevin Stilton’s blue jacket on the end of the bench. One day he might have to give it back.

Thesiger flipped the lid on his sandwich tin.

‘Help yourself, old chap.’

Cal bit into an indeterminate paste. He knew he was pulling a face, but it tasted like nothing on earth.

‘Sardine and Bovril,’ said Thesiger. ‘My favourite. Ever since

Nanny used to make them when I was a boy. Many’s the time Walter and I ate sardine and Bovril butties together.’

Cal forced down a lump. Very salty, very fishy, with a curious undertaste of beef. ‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Walter.’

‘Quite. No point in beating about the bush, is there? My line isn’t the front line. I’ve never lost a man before. If you can see what I mean. Walter’s death was shocking, simply shocking. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you, but by the time those thick buggers in Scotland Yard bothered to tell me what had happened, someone else had already got you out. If I’d known, I’d have cleared you right away. I gather you had rather an awful couple of days. And after that, well, it was Reggie’s show, so I kept out of it until now. But you’re right, it is Walter that brings me here. I want to know exactly how he died.’

Cal told him.

For several minutes Thesiger sat in silence, slowly finishing his sandwiches.

Then he said, ‘You say he felt nothing?’

‘I think he died instantly.’

Thesiger thought for a while.

‘This is tricky. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but could Walter’s death have been avoided?’

‘If I’d got there on time.’

‘No, no. I don’t mean in terms of such detail. And please don’t start blaming yourself. I mean, as simply as I can put it, did my colleagues throw Walter away?’

‘Squadron Leader, right now I’m not the greatest fan of your colleagues. The Special Branch treated me like a criminal. If this were the USA I could cite you the clauses in the Bill of Rights they violated. But as you don’t have a bill of rights, let’s say they treated me like shit and leave it at that. But your more secret colleagues have given me the runaround from the moment I got here. Reggie’s a decent guy, I’m sure, but he feels no obligation to share anything with me and certainly not to tell me the truth. Since I got here I’ve been expecting to see a nation locked into total war-what have I seen? Playboys who know where the Krug ‘20 is always to be found. Society women playing at being interim cops while they wait for the next London Season-or serving sherry and smoked salmon in East End shelters… old generals lost to the present in re-living old battles… I could go on, but we’ll take it as read. England shocks me. They talk the war, they live the war, but they don’t seem to know it’s happening. The worst things happen-the Hood going down, dammit even the sinking of the Bismarck -and still something in England is unmoved by this. Some eternal core is unchanged. The crassest, the stupidest things happen… but throwing away Walter wasn’t one of them. I can’t blame your people for that. I’d love to, but it was my people killed Walter. There are moments I wish they’d killed me instead.’

Thesiger thought about this too. Where Reggie would have an answer on the tip of his tongue, Thesiger seemed to have to ruminate.

‘You’re right. Of course. The worst things happen. I don’t know whether the English were unmoved by the death of all those German sailors. You might say they were already numbed by the loss of the Hood. Perhaps you could say we accepted the necessity. What I saw was not celebration, it was acceptance. Personally, I was moved. You may have noticed, I’ve a German surname.’

Cal hadn’t noticed, but if he thought about it he supposed Thesiger might be as German as Reininger or Shaeffer or von Schell-his grandmother’s maiden name.

‘I had second and third cousins fighting on the other side in the last war,’ Thesiger went on. ‘And doubtless their children fight me in this. But don’t underestimate us. It is, as you so rightly say, total war. Deep down the English know this. Deep down, that’s why we’ll win.’

Cal forced down a whole triangle of surf and turf, just to be polite.

‘You say your nanny taught you how to make these?’

‘Yes-doubtless another English indulgence, another denial of reality-this fondness for nursery food.’

‘Walter had a thing about spotted dick.’

‘Ah, my dear chap-the hymns I could sing you in praise of spotted dick

Cal let him. It was their wake for Walter Stilton.

Stahl was shaving. The dye in his hair would take weeks to grow out. The shaved patches at the forehead just as long. The moustache could come off now. He shaved blind, eyes closed, feeling for the bristles with his fingertips, braille-tracing. He had managed not to look in a mirror since they brought him in. Now, the moustache gone, he opened his eyes, saw a face in the mirror he could not recognise, and the presence or absence of a moustache seemed to have nothing to do with it. He did not know this man. He reminded him of someone he once knew years ago before… before all this nonsense began. A talented Viennese youth, a bit gawky, with blowaway, fine blond hair and bright blue eyes, who had played piano with an occasional quintet at school, made up of the school’s usual string quartet and him. Schubert. Always the Schubert. The school’s principal insisted on hearing it every year. He tried to think when he had last played the Schubert Trout Quintet in A. 1927 or ‘28 perhaps-and when had he last seen any of the quartet? That required no thought, he knew that. It had been in the March of 1938-he had seen Turli Cantor, second violin, scrubbing flagstones with a brush in the gutters of Vienna. Vienna-her greatest son Franz Schubert. Dead at thirty-one. Stahl was thirty-one.