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.
Lysander realized he could think of three or four symbolic, doom-laden interpretations of this encounter with a London crow but decided to investigate none of them further. He threw his cigarette into the Thames, picked up his attaché case and, watching out for the speeding traffic, made his way across the Embankment to the Annexe’s front door.
Once he’d presented his credentials, Lysander was taken by an orderly up to the fourth floor. They pushed through swing doors into a lobby with two corridors on either side. On the wall were lists of various departments and meaningless acronyms and small arrows indicating which corridor to take – DGMR, Port & Transport Ctte, Railway and Road Engineering, DC (War Office), Ordnance (France), Food Controller (Dover), DART (Mesopotamia), ROD (II), and the like. Lysander and the orderly turned right and walked down a wide linoleum-floored passageway with many doors off it. The sound of typewriters and ringing telephone bells followed them all the way to a door marked ‘Director of Movements’. The orderly knocked and Lysander was admitted.
The Director of Movements, Brevet Lt.-Colonel Osborne-Way (Worcester Regiment) was not at all pleased to see him, so Lysander recognized in about two seconds. His manner was unapologetically brusque and cold. Lysander was not offered a seat, Osborne-Way did not attempt to shake his hand, nor return his salute. Lysander handed him over his magic laissez-passer to the kingdom of the Directorate – a sheet of headed notepaper signed by the Chief of the Imperial General Staff himself, Lieutenant-General Sir James Murray, KCB, that said that ‘the under-named officer, Lieutenant L.U.Rief, is to be afforded every possible assistance and access. He is acting under my personal instructions and is reporting directly to me.’
Osborne-Way read this missive several times as if he couldn’t believe what was actually written down in black and white. He was a short man with a grey toothbrush moustache, and large puffy bags under his eyes. There were seven telephones in a row on his desk and a camp bed with a blanket was set up in the corner of his office.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said, finally. ‘What’s it got to do with the C.I.G.S., himself? Why’s he sending you? Doesn’t he realize how busy we are here?’
As if to illustrate this claim two of the telephones on his desk began to ring simultaneously. He picked up the first and said ‘Yes. Yes . . . repeat, yes. Affirmative.’ Then he picked up the second, listened for a moment and said ‘No,’ and hung up.
‘This is not my idea, sir,’ Lysander said, reasonably. He was affecting a slightly drawling, nasal voice, faintly caddish and bored-sounding, he thought, conscious that this tone would make Osborne-Way like him even less. He didn’t care – he wasn’t entering a popularity contest. ‘I’m just following orders. Some unfinished, supplementary business to Sir Horace Ede’s commission of inquiry on transportation. Matter of some urgency given the up-coming all-nations’ conference.’
‘What do you need from us, then?’ Osborne-Way said, handing the letter back as if it was burning his hand.
‘I’d like a list of all personnel in the Directorate and their distribution of duties. And I’d be grateful if you’d alert everyone in the Directorate to the fact that I am here and have a job to do. At some stage I will want to interview them. The sooner I’m finished the sooner you’ll see the back of me,’ he smiled. ‘Sir.’
‘Very well.’
‘I believe I have an office assigned to me.’
Osborne-Way picked up a telephone and shouted, ‘Tremlett!’ into the mouthpiece.
In about thirty seconds a lance-corporal appeared at the door. He had a black patch over one eye.
‘Tremlett, this is Lieutenant Rief. Take him to Room 205.’ Then to Lysander he said, ‘Tremlett will fetch you any files or documents you need, any person you wish to interview and will provide you with tea and biscuits. Good day.’ He opened a drawer on his desk and began removing papers. The meeting was clearly over. Lysander followed Tremlett back along the wide passageway, taking two right-angled turns as they made for Room 205.
‘Good to have you aboard, sir,’ Tremlett said, turning and giving him a lopsided smile, the portion of his face below the patch not moving. He was a young man in his early twenties, with a London accent. ‘I’m on extension 11. Give me a tinkle whenever you need me. Here we are, sir.’
He opened the door to Room 205. It was a windowless box with a dirty skylight. Here was a table, two wooden chairs and a very old filing cabinet. On the table was a telephone. It was not a room one would want to spend many hours in, Lysander thought.
‘What’s that curious smell?’ he asked.
‘Disinfectant, sir. Colonel Osborne-Way thought we should give the place a good swab-out before you arrived.’
He told Tremlett to bring him Osborne-Way’s list as soon as possible, sat down and lit a cigarette. His eyes were already stinging slightly from the astringency of the disinfectant. The battle lines had been drawn – the Director of Movements had made a pre-emptive strike.