“He seems genuine enough,” she said.
“Keep putting him through his paces. Milk him-you know how important it is.”
“I wish I were going with you instead. Dinner at the Savoy-an evening at the Haymarket… I could do with a bit of that. I feel as though I’ve been shipwrecked up here.”
“This was your own idea.”
“Darling, the whole blessed thing was my own idea and I confess I’m unforgivably proud of it.”
“You’ve a right to be.” The Austin was swinging up the verge of the runway toward him. “I hope the rest of us can live up to it.”
“You will,” she said, very soft. Sergei drew up and reached across the seat to push the passenger door open for him.
She stood watching while the Austin took him away toward the main gate.
They drove south and west along the chain of lochs through the dark green highlands. The sky was matted but they had no rain down the craggy length of Loch Ness. There was virtually no traffic. They ran on south at a steady forty and fifty miles per hour through the early hours of the afternoon. Maneuvering Scottish recruits were tenting on the banks of Loch Lomond and on a brighter day it would indeed have been bonnie-swards of rich grass dropping gently toward the cool deep water.
At four they picked up the smoke of Glasgow’s furnaces above the hill summits. Alex navigated from the street map on his lap and Sergei did an expert job of threading the clotted traffic. The city was dreary, black with soot.
The approach to the railway station was jammed with traffic. Alex lifted his case over the back of the seat and pushed the door open. “You may as well drive straight back unless you want to stop for supper. Pick me up here on the Sunday evening express from London-you’ve got the timetable?”
“Yes sir. Godspeed then.”
“Take care driving, old friend.” He hopped out and carried his case inside the thronged station. The scabs twinged now and then but he no longer had to make a conscious effort not to limp.
His priority pass got him a seat in a leather-upholstered compartment and he rode south into grey rain flipping through a newspaper and two news magazines he’d bought to catch up on what had been happening in the world since he’d left Washington ten days ago. In France the Nazis were retaliating against acts of sabotage by executing innocent French hostages. In Tokyo there had been an assassination attempt against Baron Kiichiro Hiranuma, the Vice Premier of Japan.
In Russia the Wehrmacht had now occupied four hundred thousand square miles of Soviet territory and the advance continued. There had been a terrible pitched battle for Smolensk. The Russian remnants had been forced to evacuate the city. Yet correspondents’ dispatches from Moscow indicated that life in the capital went on nearly as usual. Ration cards were now required but the stocks of food and necessities seemed quite sufficient. The German invasion had divided into three prongs aimed at Leningrad, Moscow and the rich industrial basins of the south. Scattered Russian resistance and the length of their own supply lines had slowed the Nazis’ advance; but the blitzkrieg continued-apparently right on schedule. Hitler meant to make his Christmas speech from Moscow.
Well past midnight he left the train at Euston Station and was collected by a War Office lieutenant who had a Daimler staff car waiting. “It’s a good thing you’ve got digs, sir. I didn’t think there’s a room to be had in all of London. I’m putting up in a bed-sitter in Paddington with an RN ensign and two Anzac lieutenants.”
They drove north and east. The blacked-out streets were virtually empty except for the occasional helmeted bobby and fire-watchman. Twice they had to dodge craters in the streets but most of the buildings were intact.
When they made the turn into the Archway Road the driver said conversationally, “There’s still a car behind us, Lieutenant.”
They turned right into Shepherd’s Hill with open ground falling away steeply to the left side of the road.
The Daimler slid to the curb and a car puttered past; Alex had a look at it but it told him nothing; there wasn’t enough light to see the driver’s face.
“Thanks for the lift.”
When the other car had disappeared over the hill he took his valise up the steps and rang. The Daimler stayed at the curb until the door opened and he stepped inside.
Baron Ivanov answered the door himself. “Were you followed?”
“Yes. I expected it.”
The tiny Baron wore an expensive smoking jacket; his bald head gleamed in the lamplight. Black velvet curtains hung heavily against all the windows; the house was rich and warm and elegant in the style of a century ago.
Ivanov showed him to a bedroom-upstairs in the rear. “I hope you will be comfortable.”
“It’s quite luxurious.”
“Anatol has asked me to see to your needs.”
“A good night’s sleep at the moment. Is there a rear way out?”
“It is a terribly steep embankment-it is almost a cliff. There is an old railway line beneath the rear garden.”
“Is there a tube station nearby?”
“At the intersection where you turned.”
“I don’t suppose there are any taxis.”
“Not this far out, but you are welcome to the use of my Bentley at any time. My chauffeur lives on the premises.”
“That’s very kind.”
“It is not kindness I assure you. According to Prince Leon you are our last hope.”
“I’m a soldier, Baron, not a Messiah.”
“Whatever I have is at your disposal. I suppose I should caution you that the last White Russian general who borrowed my Bentley was shot at for his pains. It took quite a bit of string-pulling to have the bulletproof glass replaced.”
It wouldn’t have been politic to ask why the Bentley was armored in the first place; obviously the job had been done long before Vassily Devenko’s ride in the car. The Baron had fingers in many schemes and-his enemies said-hands in many pockets; it was not unlikely his political and military alliances had impressed him with a need for prudence. The house itself was wired with a visible alarm system.
Alex expected the Baron to bid him good night and leave the room but the tiny aristocrat went to the dressing table and perched himself on the upholstered stool before it. “There is something you must do for us.”
Somewhere across London the air-raid sirens began to wail. The distant keening distracted the Baron; he said, “They rarely bomb this far north in London but if you hear the alarms you will find our shelter in the cellar. The ladder is directly under the staircase we just used.”
“Thank you.”
He began to hear the distant banging of pom-poms. The Baron said, “I am told you have a contact inside the Kremlin-someone with Stalin’s ear.”
He looked up quickly but the Baron said, “I do not intend to press you for his identity. But we need to make use of him.”
“I’m afraid I can’t-”
“Hear me out, General Danilov. As you know the bank with which I am connected has offices in many nations. I am in communication through our Zurich affiliate with the surviving German branches of our international financial structure. In theory the German offices have been nationalized but the organization still maintains its ties with our offices here in London. The financial transactions of the Grand Duke Mikhail and his people in Munich are supervised by White Russian officers of the same banks. It is through me that Count Anatol and Prince Leon and the rest of you receive information concerning the activities of the White Russian loyalists who live inside the borders of the German Reich.
“We have discovered that the German group threatens to jeopardize our own scheme. I have told Anatol Markov and he has taken the information back to Spain. It is possible you will receive instructions from Prince Leon but communications are uncertain and we haven’t much time. I’m taking the liberty of telling you this myself in case Spain does not reach you in time.”
“Go on.”
“They are planning an assassination. The design is to kill Stalin, substitute a double for him and issue orders to the Red Army-through the double-to retreat before Moscow. Russia then will have lost the war and Hitler seems prepared to install the Grand Duke Mikhail on the throne of a Vichy-style occupation government. The double already exists-a creation of Lavrenti Beria’s-a professional actor who has been transformed by plastic surgery into a remarkable likeness of Stalin.”