Seaforth stopped to look, but Thorn paid no attention, continuing his angry march down Birdcage Walk with his hands thrust deep inside his trouser pockets. Ever since he first came to London, Seaforth had loved St James’s Park, and he felt profoundly grateful that he now worked so close to it that he could come here almost every day, sit under the ancient horse-chestnut trees, and look up past the falling boughs of the weeping willows to where the buildings of Whitehall rose from out of the water like the palaces of a fairy kingdom. But today there was no time to dawdle. Churchill was waiting for them in his bunker, and Seaforth turned away from the view and walked quickly to catch up with his companion.
He felt intensely alive. In the morning and again in the afternoon, he’d left his desk and gone out and joined the crowds in the street outside, gazing up at the aerial dogfights going on above their heads — Hurricanes and Spitfires and Messerschmitts wheeling and twisting through crisscrossing vapour trails, searching for angles of attack. The noise had been tremendous — the roar of the machine guns mixed up with the exploding anti-aircraft shells; the underlying drone of the aeroplanes; the shrapnel falling like pattering rain on the ground; bombs exploding. Several times he’d watched transfixed as planes caught fire and tumbled from the sky, with black smoke pouring out behind them as they fell. A Dornier bomber had hit the ground a few streets away, exploding in a column of crimson-and-yellow flame, and Seaforth could still hear the people around him cheering, throwing their hats up into the air while the German crew burned. Some bombs had fallen close by — there was a rumour that Buckingham Palace had been hit — but Seaforth had been too absorbed in the battle to worry about his personal safety. He’d felt he was watching history unfold right above his head.
And then at the end of the day he had been caught up in the drama when the unexpected summons had come from the prime minister’s office and he and Thorn had set off together through the park. Now the day’s fighting seemed to be over — there was no more sign of the enemy, only a few British fighters patrolling overhead, although Seaforth knew that the bombers would almost certainly return after dark to rain down more terror on the city’s population. Seaforth wondered about the outcome of the day’s battle. He’d tried to talk to Thorn about it, but Thorn had shown no interest in conversation.
Seaforth didn’t like Thorn; he didn’t like him at all. He objected to the disdainful, upper-class voice in which Thorn spoke to him, treating him like a member of some inferior species. He rebelled against having to answer to a man for whom he had no respect. He tipped his felt hat back at a rakish angle and amused himself with trying to annoy Thorn into talking to him.
‘Is it true what they say, that Churchill receives visitors in his bath?’ he asked. ‘I hope he doesn’t do that with us. I think I’d find it hard to concentrate. Wouldn’t you?’
Thorn grunted and stopped to light a cigarette, cupping the lighted match in his hand to protect it from the wind.
‘You hear so many strange things,’ Seaforth went on, undaunted by his companion’s lack of response. ‘Like how he takes so many risks, going up on the roof of Downing Street to watch the bombs and the dogfights — as if he’s convinced that nothing will ever happen to him, like he’s got some kind of divine protection; a contract with the Almighty.’
‘Why are you so interested in where he goes?’ Thorn asked sharply.
‘I’m not. I’m just trying to make conversation,’ said Seaforth amicably.
‘Well, don’t.’
‘Whatever you say, old man,’ said Seaforth, shrugging. He whistled a few bars of a patriotic song and then went back on the attack, taking a perverse pleasure in Thorn’s growing irritation.
‘How many times have you seen the PM? Before now, I mean?’ he asked.
‘Two or three. I don’t know,’ said Thorn. ‘Does it matter?’
‘I’m just trying to get an idea of what to expect, that’s all. Where did you go — to Number 10 or this underground place?’
‘You ask too many damn questions,’ said Thorn, putting an end to the conversation. He took a long drag on his cigarette, inhaling the smoke deep into his lungs. He was trying not to think about Seaforth or the forthcoming interview with the Prime Minister, and the effort was making his head ache.
He was eaten up with a mass of competing thoughts and emotions, and he felt too tired to work out where genuine distrust of Seaforth ended and his own selfish resentment of the young upstart began. Churchill’s summons to the two of them had placed him in an impossible position. His inclusion was recognition that he was the one in charge of German intelligence, but Thorn knew perfectly well that it was Seaforth Churchill wanted to talk to. It was Seaforth’s report that the Prime Minister wanted to discuss; it was Seaforth’s high-value agent in Germany he was interested in. Thorn was no better than a redundant extra at their meeting.
They reached Horse Guards and climbed the steps to 2 Storey’s Gate. Thorn felt a renewed surge of irritation as he sensed Seaforth’s growing excitement. They showed their special day-passes to a blue-uniformed Royal Marine standing with a fixed bayonet at the entrance and went down the steep spiral staircase leading to the bunker. Through a great iron door and past several more sentries, they came to a corridor leading into the labyrinth. Seaforth blinked in the bright artificial light and greedily took in his surroundings — whitewashed brick walls and big red steel girders supporting the ceilings. It was like being inside the bowels of a ship, Seaforth thought. The air was stale, almost fetid, despite the continuous hum of the ubiquitous ventilation fans pumping in filtered air from outside, and there was an atmosphere of concentrated activity all around them. Through the open doors of the rooms that they passed, Seaforth saw secretaries typing and men talking animatedly into telephones — some in uniform, some in suits. People hurried by in both directions, and Seaforth was struck by the paleness of their faces, caused no doubt by a prolonged deprivation of light and fresh air. Tellingly, a notice on the wall described the day’s weather conditions, as if this were the only way the inhabitants of this God-forsaken underworld would ever know whether the sun was shining or rain was falling in the world above.
They stopped outside the open door of the Map Room. This was the nerve centre of the bunker, where information about the war was continually being received, collated, and distributed. Two parallel lines of desks ran down the centre of the room, divided from each other by a bank of different-coloured telephones — green, white, ivory, and red — the so-called beauty chorus. They didn’t ring but instead flashed continuously, answered by officers in uniform sitting at the desks. Over on a blackboard in the corner, the day’s ‘score’ was marked up in chalk — Luftwaffe on the left with fifty-three down and RAF on the right with twenty-two. It was a significant number of ‘kills’ but fewer than Seaforth had anticipated, judging from the mayhem he’d witnessed in the skies over London during the day.
Seaforth’s eyes watered. The thick fug of cigarette smoke blown about by the electric fans on the wall made him feel sick, but he swallowed the bile rising in his throat, determined to see everything and to try to understand everything he saw. No detail escaped his notice — the codebooks and documents littering the desks lit up by the green reading lamps; the map of the Atlantic on the far wall with different-coloured pins showing the up-to-date location of the convoys crossing to and from America; the stand of locked-up Lee-Enfield rifles just inside the entrance to the room.
‘What are you looking at?’ asked a hostile voice close to his ear. It was Thorn. Seaforth had been so absorbed in his observation of the Map Room that he had momentarily forgotten his companion. But Thorn had clearly not forgotten him. He was staring at Seaforth, his eyes alive with suspicion.