Derek Lambert - The Judas Code

Sinclair said levelly: ‘What you are suggesting, Prime Minister, could involve the deaths of millions.’

Churchill said quietly: ‘Millions of deaths? You are probably right. But what you have to remember is the alternative. And that, quite simply, is the end of civilisation as we know it. The extermination of democracy. The death of liberty. The end,’ pointing at the green tranquillity in front of them, ‘of all this.’

The sparrow finished its dust-bath and flew away.

‘Winston.’ Clementine’s voice reached him from the back door but Churchill ignored it: his deafness, not as bad as some people believed, was sometimes a great asset.

After a while Sinclair said: ‘Odd to think that the key to the whole thing is a young man named Hoffman who hasn’t the slightest inkling of what’s afoot.’ He knocked out his pipe on the heel of one of his brogues.

‘The key to Phase Two certainly,’ Churchill replied. ‘But first of all we have to convince Corporal Hitler of our good intentions if he does attack Russia. Do you have any ideas?’

‘Some,’ Sinclair replied.

‘Please be a little more explicit, colonel, we are on the same side you know.’

Sinclair scraped the charred bowl of his pipe with the blade of a silver penknife. Where would either of us be without our dummies? Churchill pondered as ash fell from his cigar.

‘I believe in keeping an operation like this as tightly parcelled as possible,’ Sinclair said at last.

‘Lisbon?’

‘It’s the obvious centre. Much better than Switzerland, always has been. You can get in and out of the place because it’s not landlocked. By sea and air,’ he added.

Churchill said: ‘I do know where Lisbon is.’

‘But, of course, we wouldn’t use Hoffman in this phase. He isn’t ready for it.’

‘Of course not. That goes without saying, surely.’ Churchill suspected that Sinclair was wasting time, hoping that Clemmie reached them before he had to elaborate. ‘Who then?’

‘Another agent,’ Sinclair told him.

Clementine was walking across the lawn towards them, determination in her stride.

‘Who, man, who?’

‘With respect, sir, you did say you weren’t interested in the details.’

‘I am now.’

Clementine was a hundred yards away, rounding a bed of red, white and blue petunias.

‘Well, the man I have in mind won’t be an innocent abroad like Hoffman.’

Churchill stood up and prodded his now-cold cigar at his spymaster. ‘For the last time, Sinclair, who is this man?’ He wasn’t all that interested but he didn’t like to be defied.

‘Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of German military intelligence,’ Sinclair said. His usually enigmatic features added: Satisfied?

‘Thank you, colonel,’ and to Clementine who was now standing beside them, empty basket and scissors for cutting flowers in her hand: ‘There you are, my dear.’

‘Here I am,’ she said, ‘and there you are, which is not where you’re supposed to be at all. It’s long past time for your nap.’ Her tone implied that this was a far more serious matter than staying out of doors during an air-raid.

Churchill gave her a peck on the cheek and Sinclair a wink. ‘Very well, my dear, just off.’

‘And so am I,’ said Sinclair, bowing to Clementine.

As Churchill walked thoughtfully across the lawns the siren at Westerham began to moan another warning. Churchill turned and looked inquiringly at his wife but she shook her head firmly and he continued on his way to the house.

CHAPTER FIVE

The softest touch for a creator of disinformation is a subject who wants to believe the creator’s lies.

So I am lucky in that respect, Sinclair thought as he walked his red setter in the woods near his Berkshire home: Hitler wants to believe my lies – that Britain is at last ready to acknowledge his genius and do a deal.

And I’m also lucky that, for the time being, Hitler still trusts the purveyor of the lies, Admiral Canaris, head of the Abwehr, the intelligence section of the German High Command.

But I am unlucky in my own state of mind. The head of an intelligence agency should be impersonal, clinical in his judgement. But that is no longer true of me, not since the death of Robin. Now I am fuelled by hatred and that distorts judgement.

He picked up a stick and threw it for the dog, who disappeared among the rotting silver birch trees; a gun emplacement had blocked the natural drainage and the trees were dying like over-watered house plants. But it was a quiet place, becalmed among green fields, especially on evenings such as this with shafts of fading sunlight reaching its bed of moss. A place to contemplate. A place to plan. A place to hate.

The dog came bounding back and placed the stick at his feet and he threw it again, thinking: ‘Admiral Canaris and I have a lot in common. We are both confused by hatred. I loved my son and so now I hate Germany: he loves Germany but hates Hitler. But you’ve got to stop this,’ he admonished himself. ‘Start to plan!’

Once more he threw the stick. How to entice Canaris to Lisbon? That shouldn’t be too difficult; he was already involved with Franco in neighbouring Spain, and Lisbon was the European capital of espionage, which was Canaris’s profession.

To anticipate the reactions of Canaris he would have to study him more deeply. As he walked down the flinty lane towards his home in Finchampstead he poked a particularly bright flint with his walking stick and found that it was a jagged sliver of shrapnel.

When he reached the big rambling house he called to the setter: ‘Robin, come here.’ But the dog’s name was Rufus.

*

In his study he consulted the file on Canaris.

He lit his pipe and, as the day died outside and his wife cooked an austerity meal in the kitchen, the admiral emerged from the dossier and took a bow.

He was fifty-three years old but looked older. His silken hair was prematurely grey and he was known as Old Whitehead.

He had served in the Navy in the last war with distinction. On one occasion his cruiser had been scuttled off the South American coast before the superior guns of a British warship; he had been interned on an island close to Chile but had escaped to the mainland in a rowing boat disguised as a Chilean. He had crossed the Andes on horseback … taken a train to Argentina … sailed to Amsterdam on a forged passport, calling at the British port of Falmouth!

A man to be reckoned with.

His escapades had continued in spectacular fashion and his star had been in the ascendant until he had fallen foul of Admiral Erich Raeder who had blocked his promotion in the conventional Navy, thereby setting him on course for espionage.

Ironic, mused Sinclair, that Raeder had advocated defeating Britain before attacking the Soviet Union.

On January 1, 1935, on his forty-eight birthday, Canaris had become head of the Abwehr.

He was 5 feet 3 inches tall. He had pale blue eyes. His manner was mild. He had difficulty in sleeping. He was a hypochondriac although his only known complaint was bad circulation which accounted for the coldness of which he continually complained.

He was a pessimist. He detested Hitler because of his persecution of the Jews and he feared for his country because he believed its leader was a madman.

He was subject to fits of melancholia.

In Lisbon the approach would have to be circumspect. Canaris was co-operating with British Intelligence but he certainly would not co-operate to the extent of bringing about Germany’s downfall.

So he would have to be persuaded that Churchill genuinely wanted to settle for peace; that, with the spectre of war on two fronts removed, Hitler would be able to concentrate on crushing Russia.