Andrew Taylor - The Second Midnight

‘Love me, Alfred.’

‘Good God!’ Kendall leaped to his feet and broke away from her. She tried to seize him again, but he palmed her away. ‘Alfred, milacek—’

‘Madame, I must ask you to leave.’ Kendall backed away and took refuge on the far side of the bed. These foreigners were sex-mad. ‘I insist that you go,’ he pleaded. ‘Josefina, please.’

Madame Hase stood up; she was lopsided because one of her slippers had fallen off in the struggle. She refastened her dressing gown, found the missing slipper and picked up her candle. Kendall hastened to open the door for her.

‘You must understand, Josefina,’ he said as she passed him with her face averted. ‘I am married; I am here on duty—’

‘You English.’ She looked up at him. The candle turned the tears in her eyes to glints of fire. ‘You have no romance in you.’

Dansey lowered himself with great care into the armchair nearest the fire. ‘Just imagine I’m not here.’

‘That won’t be easy,’ said Michael drily. ‘Would you like a drink?’

‘No, thank you. If you have to introduce me, call me Mr Hayward. Has the report from Moravec come in yet?’

Michael nodded. ‘The DB can confirm at least half of the information from their own sources. They seem to think the rest is at least plausible.’

‘But none of it is particularly significant?’

‘Well, no. It identifies a few names which were new to the DB on the provisional regional committees. There’s a sort of shopping list which starts with gold and ends with tanks. But there’s no firm information about what the Bolshies plan to do.’

‘That is probably because they don’t know themselves.’

Dansey fell silent and glanced round the small sitting room. Michael cringed inwardly: this was the first time Dansey had visited his rooms in Dover Street and Michael felt that his possessions – and hence his private self – were unfairly at the mercy of Uncle Claude. He wished he had removed his own paintings to the bedroom. But that would have been worse: Dansey would have noticed the lighter patches on the wallpaper and drawn his own conclusions.

He was suddenly ashamed of the shabby, comfortable room with its oversized furniture. The furniture was part of his past – he had kept back a few pieces from the sale after his mother’s death – but most of it looked ridiculous here.

‘Extraordinary,’ Dansey said. He was looking at a painting over the sideboard. First he looked through his glasses and then over the top of them. ‘Not one of yours, I hope?’

‘No, sir. Chap called Chagall.’

‘Glad to hear it. I’ve known children with a better sense of perspective. And I wonder why he found it necessary to give the man green hair.’ Dansey changed the subject without warning, or even altering his tone. ‘How’s Kendall taking it?’

‘Better than I’d expected. Of course he thinks the information he brought out was vital – perhaps that’s some consolation. I think I was more upset about the boy than he was. He’s one of these people who keep their emotions very tightly battened down.’

‘I hope he doesn’t think we’re going to send him back by the next train to collect the boy? You’ve made that clear?’

Michael got up to fetch the cigarette box from the sideboard. When he replied, he was safely out of Dansey’s sight. ‘Not in so many words, sir. I thought I’d leave it until today.’

Dansey refused a cigarette. ‘That was foolish of you.’

‘I hadn’t the heart to do it.’

Kendall had come off the boat train at Victoria yesterday afternoon. The little man had been wearing a baggy Hungarian suit; he had no luggage, apart from the contents of his pockets; he had so little money left that Michael had had to give him the cab fare home. His return journey from Prague had taken him the better part of a fortnight. Despite all he had gone through, he had been pathetically happy – full of himself like a dog who believed he had earned his master’s approval.

‘I hope your heart’s in better shape this afternoon.’ Dansey glanced at his watch. ‘He’s late.’

At that moment, they heard the doorbell. A moment later, Mrs Granger, Michael’s landlady, showed Kendall into the room. He bustled in, shook hands with Michael and looked enquiringly at Dansey.

‘Mr Hayward,’ Michael said with a wave of his arm. ‘A colleague of mine.’ A spurt of mischief made him add: ‘Just imagine he isn’t here.’

Kendall was about to hold out his hand but Dansey confounded the move by giving him the slightest of nods and becoming lost in contemplation of the fire.

When he had settled his guest in a chair and given him a cigarette, Michael produced an envelope from his inside pocket. He handed it to Kendall.

‘It’s rather more than the sum we agreed on,’ he said awkwardly. ‘You’ve done a very good job. Had I known it was going to be so difficult we wouldn’t have asked you to go.’

And I certainly wouldn’t have suggested you took the boy with you.

Kendall stuffed the envelope in his pocket without looking at its contents. ‘Only too glad to be of use,’ he mumbled. ‘Hope you don’t mind that I had to pretend I was a – ah – senior officer. It was the only way to get those chaps to cooperate.’

‘Not at all.’

It made it all the worse, Michael thought, that Kendall had done so well. He had been recruited as nothing more than a courier on the lowest of levels, but he had had to deal with problems which would have taxed an experienced agent. It was hardly his fault that his job had lost what little importance it originally had when Moravec arrived in London.

‘When do you want me to go back?’

‘Captain Kendall.’ Michael paused, wishing Dansey was at the other end of London. ‘As a matter of fact, it would be better if you didn’t go back. Your face is known, you see. You couldn’t go back under your own name because there’s no exit stamp on your passport. The Gestapo has almost certainly circularized your description. Quite frankly, your return could jeopardize the whole operation – destroy the value of the work you’ve done for us.’

Kendall sat there with his mouth open as he grappled with the meaning of Michael’s words. He sagged in the chair: the jauntiness had been sponged out of him.

‘But what about Hugh – my son?’

Michael glanced at Dansey but Uncle Claude was still staring at the fire. ‘We’ll tell the Embassy about him. You can let us have his address? I’m sure they’ll get him home almost as soon as you could. It’ll have to be carefully handled, of course.’

Kendall nodded, apparently satisfied. Michael felt a sudden revulsion for the man’s stoicism. Did his warped sense of patriotism obliterate his affection for his son? It was uncanny: Kendall was less concerned about his son than about the fact that His Majesty’s Government didn’t propose to send him back to Prague.

Kendall scribbled Spiegel’s address in his pocket book, tore out the page and passed it to Michael.

‘Then there’s my luggage,’ he said. ‘Can the Embassy send someone round to the Michalov Palace? It’s only just around the corner.’

‘Of course.’ Michael stood up, hoping that Kendall would take the hint. ‘One of our people will telephone you in the next few days and arrange a meeting. We’d like to get your firsthand impressions of the invasion in detail.’

But Kendall remained in his chair. ‘I notice a lot of changes here since I got back. Even Chamberlain seems to realize that war’s inevitable. Does this mean you’ll be expanding your permanent establishment?’

‘It’s a possibility.’ Michael moved slowly towards the door. It was more than a possibility: he knew for a fact that both SIS and Z Organization were actively trawling for recruits – and had been since Munich.