William Boyd - Waiting for Sunrise

“Exceptional,” Massinger chipped in, proprietorially. Switzerland was his territory, Lysander remembered.

“Congratulations,” the captain said. “So you’re the man who found our rotten apple.”

“We haven’t quite found him yet, sir,” Lysander said. “But we think we may know what barrel he’s in.”

The captain chuckled, enjoying the metaphor’s resonances.

“So, what do we do next?” he said, looking at Massinger and Munro.

“Not really my area,” Massinger said, defensively, and once again Lysander wondered about the hierarchy in the room. The captain was the big chief, clearly, but who was the senior between Massinger and Munro? What autonomy did either of them have, if any?

“I think we have to get Rief into the War Office somehow,” Munro said. “His best asset is that he’s completely unknown — unlike us. Fresh face — a stranger.”

The captain was drumming his fingers on his desk top. “How?” he said. “He’s just a lieutenant. Nothing but bigwigs in the War Office.”

“We set up a commission of enquiry,” Munro said. “Something very boring. Send in Rief with authorization to ask questions and examine documents.”

“Sir Horace Ede chaired a commission last year on transportation,” the captain said. “There could be some supplementary matters arising —”

“Exactly. That Lieutenant Rief had to cover and account for.”

“And there’s a joint nations’ conference coming up which would explain why we have to have everything ship-shape.”

“Couldn’t be better.”

Massinger was looking increasingly uncomfortable at being sidelined in this way with nothing to contribute. He cleared his throat loudly and everybody stopped talking and looked at him. He held up both hands in apology. Then took out his handkerchief and blew his nose.

“How long would you need, sir?” Munro asked.

“Give me a couple of days,” the captain said. “The higher the authorization the easier it’ll be for Rief, here.” He turned to Lysander. “Hold yourself in readiness, Rief. If we want you right at the heart of things then we need to give you some power.”

Massinger finally spoke. “You don’t think we’re treading on M.O. 5 ‘s toes, do you, sir?”

“This wretched mess all originated out of Geneva,” the captain said with a trace of impatience in his voice. “It was your show — so it’s our show. I’ll square things with Kell. He doesn’t have any men to spare, anyway.”

Lysander didn’t know what they were talking about. He picked at a loose shred of skin on his forefinger.

“Right, let me get on to it,” the captain said. “We’d better give our rotten apple a codename so we can talk about him.”

“Any preferences?” Munro asked.

Lysander thought quickly. “How about Andromeda?” he said, his eyes fixed on Munro. Munro’s face didn’t move.

“Andromeda it is — so let’s find him, fast,” the captain said, and rose to his feet. The meeting was over. He crossed the room to Lysander and shook his hand. “I saw your father play Macbeth,” he said. “Scared me to bits. Good luck, Rief. Or should I say welcome aboard?”

Munro told him to go away and enjoy himself for a few days until he was called for. Once everything had been set up he would be briefed and given precise instructions. So he returned to the White Palace Hotel in Pimlico and tried to keep himself distracted and amused even though he was aware of a steadily increasing undercurrent of uneasiness flowing beneath the surface of his life. Who was this all-powerful captain-figure? What role and sway did he enjoy? To what extent, if at all, could he rely on Munro and Massinger? Could he trust either of them? And why had be been selected, once again, to do his duty as a soldier? Perhaps he’d gain some answers in the coming days, he reflected, but the complete absence of answers — even provisional ones — was troubling.

He went to his tailor, Jobling, and had a small buttonhole fitted for his wound-stripe — an inch-long vertical brass bar worn on the left forearm — sown into the sleeves of his uniform jackets. Jobling was obviously moved when he told him the nature of his injuries. Three of his cutters had joined up and two had already died. “Don’t go back there, Mr Rief,” he said. “You’ve done your bloody bit, all right.” He also adjusted the fit of his jacket — Lysander had lost weight during his convalescence.

He went to see Blanche in The Hour of Danger at the Comedy. Backstage in her dressing room she didn’t allow him to kiss her on the lips. He asked her to supper but she said she couldn’t go as she was ‘seeing someone’. Lysander asked his name but she wouldn’t tell him and they parted coolly, not to say acrimoniously. He sent her flowers the next day to apologize.

He quickly organized a small dinner party in a private room at the Hyde Park Hotel for four of his actor friends with the precise intention of finding out the name of Blanche’s new beau. Everybody knew and, to his alarm, it turned out to be someone he was slightly acquainted with as well — a rather successful playwright that he’d read for called James Ashburnham, a man in his late forties, a widower. A handsome older man with a reputation in the theatre as something of a philanderer, Lysander thought, feeling betrayed, though a moment’s reflection made him realize he had no right to the emotion — he was the one who had broken off their engagement, not Blanche. As Blanche had reminded him, they had decided to remain friends, that was all, consequently her private life was her concern alone.

Of course, being rejected for someone else made him feel hurt and his old feelings for Blanche re-established themselves effortlessly. She was an extremely beautiful, sweet young woman and whatever they had shared together couldn’t be simply tossed aside that easily. What was she doing having an affair with a middle-aged playwright old enough — well, almost — to be her father? He was surprised at how agitated he felt.

On the Friday morning there was a knock at his door and Plumtree, the young chambermaid, told him there was a gentleman to see him in the back parlour. Lysander went downstairs with some trepidation — it was underway, the play was about to start again — orchestra and beginners, please. Fyfe-Miller was waiting for him, smart in a commander’s uniform, with a file of papers under his arm. He locked the door and spread them on the table. He and Munro had analysed the variety of information in the Glockner letter decrypts and were convinced they could only have come from one department in the War Office — the Directorate of Movements. This department was currently housed in an annexe to the War Office on the Embankment in a building near Waterloo Bridge. Lysander was to report there at once to the director, one Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel Osborne-Way, who would ensure that Lysander was provided with his own office and a telephone. He was expected this afternoon — there was no time to waste.

“Can’t it wait until Monday?” Lysander asked, plaintively.

“There’s a war on, Rief, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Fyfe-Miller said, not smiling for once. “What kind of attitude is that? The sooner we find out who this person is, the safer we shall all be.”

♦

At two-thirty that afternoon, Lysander stood across the street from the seven-storey building that housed the Directorate of Movements. He was standing approximately half way between Waterloo Bridge and the Charing Cross Railway Bridge. Cleopatra’s Needle was a few yards away to his left. The phrase ‘searching for a needle in a haystack’ came pessimistically into his head. The Thames was at his back and he could hear the wash of water swirling round the jetties and the moored boats as the tide ebbed. He was smart in his new uniform with his brass wound-bar and with highly polished, buckled leather gaiters encasing his legs from knee to boot. He took his cap off, smoothed his hair and resettled it on his head. He felt strangely nervous but he knew that, above all, he now had to act confident. He lit a cigarette — no hurry. He heard a flap of wings and turned to see a big black crow swoop down and settle on the pavement two yards from him. Big birds, up close, he thought — size of a small hen. Black beak, black eyes, black feathers, black legs. “City of kites and crows,” Shakespeare had said about London, somewhere. He watched as the bird made its hippity-hoppity way towards half a discarded currant bun in the gutter. It pecked away for a while, looking around suspiciously, then a motor car passed too close and it flew off into a plane tree with an irritated squawk.