William Boyd - Waiting for Sunrise

“How do you find Massinger?” she asked, still looking down.

“Difficult. He’s a difficult personality.”

Now she looked him in the eye.

“I find it difficult to trust him entirely. He changes his mind — a lot.”

Was this a subtle warning, Lysander wondered. He decided to remain neutral.

“Massinger’s worried about his job, his role. They want to shut down Geneva and Switzerland — concentrate on Holland.”

“I’m going to Luxembourg via Holland. I have to meet a man called Munro.”

“Munro runs Holland — I think. There’s some rivalry, inevitably.”

“I could have gone to Luxembourg from Switzerland very easily. Do you think that’s significant?”

“I don’t know,” he said, honestly. He reflected that they shouldn’t actually be talking to each other like this but he felt her constant doubts and suspicions were exactly like his. You thought you had possession of key facts, of certainties, but they disappeared and were facts and certainties no more.

“I’m just like you,” he said. “Following instructions. Trying to think ahead. Be aware of potential problems. Trying not to slip up.” He smiled. “Anyway, I wish you luck. I’d better go.” He rose to his feet and she did the same. She took a card out of her bag and handed it to him.

“I expect to be in London a few more days,” she said. “It would be nice to see you again. I remember our dinner in Geneva — un moment agréable .”

He looked at her card — a card supplied by the hotel she was staying at, Bailey’s Hotel, Gloucester Road. There was a telephone number.

“I’ll telephone you,” he said, not really knowing why — or even if — he should try to see Florence Duchesne one more time. But somehow he didn’t want this to seem like a final parting so he held out this prospect, at least, that they would meet again.

At the front door, outside on the pavement, they made their farewells. She was going to explore, she said, this was her first visit to London. They shook hands and Lysander felt the extra pressure as her squeeze on his fingers tightened and she looked him directly in the eye again. Was that a warning — was he to be careful? Or was it a covert reminder that she expected to be telephoned and would like to see him again? Lysander watched her walk away, the cut of her musquash coat making it sway to and fro, and he speculated about different short-term futures, courses of action, of how he had once imagined Florence Duchesne tipsy on champagne, naked, laughing…it didn’t seem such a fantasy any more. He hailed a passing cab and asked to be taken to the Annexe.

♦

He knew he would have to work late that night. Tremlett, with the aid of the magic letter from C.I.G.S., had managed to secure all of Osborne-Way’s claims for travel and expenses that he had submitted to the War Office. The proviso for their release was that they could only be out of the building for one night.

Tremlett dumped the heavy ledger on his desk.

“Is Captain Vandenbrook in his office?” Lysander asked.

“Captain Vandenbrook is in Folkestone, sir. Back tomorrow morning.”

That was good, he thought — Vandenbrook carrying on as normal. “Right,” he said to Tremlett. “Bring me the War Diary and the travelling-claims-by-land dockets.”

He spent the next two hours going through Osborne-Way’s claims and collating them with Vandenbrook’s movements but there was no visible overlap. In fact Osborne-Way had been in France on at least two occasions when Lysander was sure that Glockner’s letters had been left at hotels in Sandwich and Deal. One thing was clear, however — Osborne-Way had enjoyed himself in France. Nights in expensive restaurants in Amiens; a weekend in Paris at the Hôtel Meurice — on what business? — everything charged to the War Office and the British taxpayer. Frustrated, Lysander wondered if he could score some petty revenge and have Osborne-Way’s extravagance brought to the attention of someone senior to him, a quiet word that might have the effect of –

He became aware of loud voices and hurrying feet in the corridor outside Room 205.

Tremlett knocked on the door and peered in. His eye patch was slightly askew.

“We’re going up top, sir. Zeppelin coming over!”

Lysander unhooked his greatcoat from the back of the door and followed him out and up the stairs to the roof of the Annexe. Half a dozen people were gathered on the flat area by the lift housing staring westwards where the long lucent fingers of searchlights stiffly searched through the night sky, looking for the dirigible. There was the distant popping of anti-aircraft fire and every now and then a shrapnel star-shell burst high above them.

Lysander looked out over the night city, some seven storeys up from street level. To his eyes it could have been peacetime — motor cars and omnibuses, headlights gleaming, shop fronts lit beneath their awnings, ribbons of streetlamps casting their pearly glow. Here and there were areas of approximate darkness but it was almost inviting, he imagined, to the captain of this airship somewhere overhead. Where shall I drop my bombs? Here? Or there? And, as if his thoughts had been read, the first searchlight found the Zeppelin and then another two joined it. Lysander’s first thought was, my god, so huge — gigantic — and serenely beautiful. It was very high and moving forward steadily — how fast, he couldn’t tell. The increasing noise from the artillery fire blocked out the sound of its engines as it seemed to float unaided above them, driven on by night winds rather than its motors.

Another gun, nearer, began to fire — Pop! Pop! Pop!

“That’s the gun in Green Park,” Tremlett said in his ear, then shouted out into the darkness, “Give ‘em hell, lads!”

More cheers came up from the others on the roof as Lysander looked up at the Zeppelin, awestruck, he had to admit, at the vast lethal beauty of the giant silvery flying machine caught in the crossbeams of three searchlights, now almost overhead, it seemed.

“It’s eight thousand feet up,” Tremlett said. “At least.”

“Where are our planes? Why can’t we shoot it down?”

“Do you know how long it takes one of our planes to climb to eight thousand feet, sir?”

“No. Not the faintest.”

“About forty minutes. He’ll be long gone. Or else he’ll drop ballast and jump up another thousand feet. Easy as pie.”

“How do you know all this, Tremlett?”

“My little brother’s in the Royal Flying Corps. Stationed at Hainault. He’s always — WOAH! FUCK ME! —”

The first bomb had exploded. Not far from the Embankment — a sudden violent wash of flame, then the shock wave and the flat crack of the explosion.

“That’s the Strand,” Tremlett yelled. “Fuckin’ hell!”

Then there was a short series of explosions — Blat! Blat! Blat! — as bombs fell swiftly one after the other, Tremlett bellowing his commentary.

“They’re going for the theatres! Fuckin’ Ada! That’s Drury Lane! That’s Aldwych!”

Lysander felt a bolus of vomit rise in his throat. Blanche was in a play at the Lyceum. Jesus Christ. Wellington Street, corner of Aldwych. He held his watch up — it would be just about the interval now. He looked up to see the Zeppelin turn slowly, heading northwards, up towards Lincoln’s Inn. There were more thumps as bombs fell, out of sight.

“Big fire there!” Tremlett yelled. “Look, they got the Lyceum!”

Lysander turned and raced through the roof access door and pelted down the stairway. He burst out on to the Embankment — the noise of police bells and fire engines, whistles, shouts, all coming down from the Strand and, in the distance, the sound of even more bombs dropping. He ran up Carting Lane past the Hotel Cecil to the Strand. Here he could see the flames, tall as the buildings, a bright unnatural orange lighting the façades on Aldwych and Wellington Street. Gas, he thought, a gas main’s gone up. People were rushing along the Strand towards the source of the fire. He pushed his way through them and sprinted up the slope of Exeter Street. There was a thick dust cloud here and all the street lights had been blown out. He turned the corner to see glass and bricks scattered on the road and the first fuming crater. The earth itself seemed to be burning at its centre and fringes. Three bodies lay huddled at the side of the road, like tramps sleeping. The fire was blazing garishly at the end of the street and he ran towards it. He could see it was at the side of the Lyceum itself, the gas main billowing flames forty feet high. Bells, shouts, screams. A woman in a sequinned gown stumbled out of the darkness past him, whimpering, the frayed stump of her right arm twitching at her shoulder. A man in an evening suit lay on his back, both arms thrown wide, not a mark visible on him.