William Boyd - Waiting for Sunrise

HAVE THE KEY COMPONENT STOP AS SUSPECTED THERE IS A SERIOUS MALFUNCTION IN THE MAIN MACHINERY STOP STRONGLY ADVISE NO EXCURSIONS IN THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE STOP ARRIVING EVIAN LES BAINS AT 440 PM STOP

The last Glockner letter had been intercepted little more than two weeks previously. It was reasonable to suppose that its detail of ordnance supply would be relevant for any attack due towards the end of the summer. The autumn offensive, whatever and wherever it would be, was well advertised now as far as the enemy was concerned.

He then posted the six transcribed letters to himself at Claverleigh and left the post office at 7. 20. The first express steamer making the round trip to Nyon, Ouchy, Montreux and Evian left at 9. 15. Madame Duchesne’s note the night before seemed to imply that steamer points and railway stations might be watched — he had almost two hours or so to make sure he wouldn’t be apprehended.

He locked the door of the below-deck gentlemen’s lavatory and placed his sack and seatless chair to one side. He sat on the WC and, with a sigh of relief, removed his shoes and shook the pebbles out. Then he washed the Vaseline off his upper lip and raked his fingers through his chopped hair trying to flatten it into some vestige of normality. Looking at himself in the mirror he could see he had gone a bit too far with the scissors.

After he’d left the post office he had made his other essential purchases as soon as the relevant shops on the Rue du Mont Blanc opened. First, was a coarse linen laundry bag into which he’d stuffed his raincoat and his golfing cap — he had left his cardboard suitcase and his remaining clothes in his room at the hotel — Abelard Schwimmer had no further use of them. Then he bought a glass jar of Vaseline and a pair of hair-scissors from a pharmacy before going on to a furniture shop where, after some searching, he found a cheap pine straight-backed kitchen chair with a woven straw seat. Any chair would have done — it was the straw seat that was important. By 8. 30 he had re-crossed the river to the Jardin Anglais and in a quiet corner, sitting on a bench, he had unpicked and unravelled the lengths of straw-raffia that made up the seat of the chair. He then looped and wound the straw into a loose figure-of-eight that he hooked on to the chair-back. He had his prop — now he just needed his costume.

His idea — his inspiration — came from a performance of his father’s that he remembered when Halifax Rief had played Poor Tom, Tom O’Bedlam, Edgar in disguise, the madman whom King Lear meets during the storm. To feign Tom’s madness his father had put axle grease in his hair to make stiff spikes, had smeared more grease on his lip below his nose and had filled his shoes with sharp gravel. The transformation had been extraordinary — unable to walk normally or comfortably, his gait had become at once rolling and jerky, and the smear of grease looked like snot from an uncontrollably running nose. The uncombed, outlandish greasy hair added an extra aura of filth and neglect. A tattered jerkin had finished off the transmutation.

Lysander couldn’t go that far but he aimed in that direction. He picked up some round pebbles from the gravelled pathways and put them in his brown shoes that he loosely and partially laced. Then he unbuttoned the cuffs on his serge jacket and rolled them up towards his elbow, letting the link-free cuffs of his shirt dangle. He buttoned the jacket badly, fitting buttons to the wrong buttonholes so it gaped askew at the neck. He put his tie in his pocket. Then he scissored off clumps of his hair at random, adding swipes of Vaseline — not forgetting a thick snot-smear under his nose. Then he picked up his seatless chair and his looped skein of straw, slung it over one shoulder and his linen sack over the other and shuffle-limped off to the jetty where the steamer was berthed. He looked, he assumed, like some poor itinerant gypsy simpleton, earning a few centimes by repairing furniture.

He could see no police or evident plainclothesmen eyeing the small queue of passengers waiting to board. He let most of them embark before he clambered painfully up the gangway, showed his ticket and went immediately to the seats at the stern, where he sat down, head bowed, muttering to himself. As expected, no one wanted to sit too close to him. No passports were required as the steamer was making a round trip and would be back in Geneva at the end of the day. Massinger would have received his telegram and would have plenty of time to make his way to Evian in time for the steamer’s arrival. Once they were together he could brief him on the essential contents of the Glockner letters. He imagined it would not take long to discover who was the source of the information in the War Office — only a few people could be privy to that mass of detail.

He heard the engines begin to thrum and vibrate through the decking beneath his feet and he allowed himself a small thrill of exultation. He had done it — it had not been easy, it had been the opposite of easy — but he had done the job he had been sent to do. What more could anyone ask of him?

The steamer began to ease away from the pier and head out into the open waters of the lake. The morning was cloudy with a few patches of blue sky here and there but, when the sun broke through, the dazzle from the lake-surface made his eyes sting so he sought the shade of the awnings. Soon they were out in the main water, at full steam, making for Nyon, and Lysander felt he could safely go below and remove his disguise.

In the lavatory, as cleaned-up as he could make himself, he stamped and levered the kitchen chair into pieces and stuffed the lengths of splintered pine and the bundle of straw into the dark empty cupboard that ran beneath the two sinks. He put on his Macintosh and his flat golfing hat and checked himself in the mirror, adjusting his cuffs and re-buttoning his coat correctly. Fine — just another tourist enjoying a tour of the lake. He tossed his empty linen sack into the cupboard as well — everything he needed was in his pockets. He flushed the lavatory for form’s sake and unlocked the door.

After Nyon, the steamer ceased hugging the shore and made directly across the lake for Ouchy, the port of Lausanne. From Ouchy the course was directly to Vevey before turning back a half-circle west, with Montreux and its wooded hills in full view, the wide mouth of the Rhône backdropped by the jagged peaks of the Dents du Midi in the distance.

He wandered down to the stern and leaned on the railings, looking out at the wake and the retreating vistas of Geneva and its ring of low hills and distant mountains. There were a few of the famous Genevan barques out on the water, low free-boarded, two-masters with big-bellied, sharply pointed triangular sails that seemed to operate independently. From certain angles they looked like giant butterflies that had settled for a moment on the lake, their wings poised and still, to drink. He watched their slow progress and waited until there was no other passenger near him and quickly tossed his small revolver into the water. He turned, no one had noticed. He walked away from the stern.

On any other day he would have enjoyed the spectacular views but he patrolled the decks restlessly, instead, his mind busy and agitated. There was a small glassed-in salon set behind the tall thin smoke stack where light meals and refreshments were served, but he didn’t feel hungry; he felt suddenly weary, in fact, exhausted from the stress of the last twenty-four hours. He climbed some steps to a small sun-deck in front of the bridge where he hired a canvas deckchair from a steward for two francs. He sat down and pulled the peak of his cap over his eyes. If he couldn’t sleep at least he might doze — some rest, a little rest, was what he needed, all he asked for.