One
London, July, 1942.
He had always hated the month of July. In the shadow of Cave Hill, over the cranes and chimneys of Belfast, through the bustling docks and shipyards, across the lough, the beat of the Lambeg drum would fill the air. It was his earliest childhood memory; the footfall of the Orange Order, the banners, sashes and sectarian catcalls to that triumphant drum. The streets ran with blood every twelfth of July. It flowed down the narrow cobblestones of tightly packed choleric red brick slums where the Billy boys and Fenians collided and all the bonfires blazed. With a start he broke his reverie, jarring himself to the present. He stared out at the sandbags in passing windows and doorways, some boarded up, some missing; this wasn’t the England he had left, it was already a new and different country. London was cloaked in smoldering grime that permeated every pore. It smeared the windscreen. As the government car dashed past Regent’s Park, the dawn was breaking over the city; Section Chief Henry Chainbridge smoothed out the worn leather attaché case on his lap and smoked his umpteenth cigarette,
‘‘Bad night?’’
‘‘Bad week sir, the docks got it again last night. A couple of bombers got through; dropped all their incendiaries,’’ replied Knox, the uniformed M.T.C. driver from the front seat.
‘‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’’ Chainbridge leaned back and returned to his thoughts, his stomach hadn’t settled from his journey. A train out of Switzerland through occupied France, rowboat out of Normandy to the trawler that had landed him in Poole, Southern England and Lysander aircraft to the outer reaches of the city where Miss Knox was waiting. Thirty six hours of running on nerves and cold water shaves, dodging the Gestapo.
‘‘Cigarette?’’
‘‘No thank you, sir, I’m on duty.’’ Chainbridge snapped the ornate Russian cigarette case closed. Knox turned the car smoothly up Baker Street to number 64; the headquarters of the Special Operations Executive, a featureless building of thirty windows stacked up neatly in rows of grey. Somewhere in the distance the gradual whine of air raid sirens increased to a howl.
‘‘Best get indoors sir.’’
Chainbridge was ushered by her into the dark, airless office of Intelligence Director Douglas Gageby; ‘‘DG’’. Beneath his pomaded hair and immaculate slate-coloured suit, Chainbridge knew he was all spit-shone top brass from top to toe, burnished from some distant tropical sun. It was the first time both men had met face-to-face. Gageby didn’t rise to meet him, merely looked up from a report garish yellow in the desk lamp light. He waved in the general direction of the chair in front of his rosewood desk. Chainbridge eased his exhausted lanky frame into the soft leather, it didn’t bother him in the slightest that he had to look up at the director from it.
‘‘Tea? Coffee? Or after your journey Henry, something stronger?’’
‘‘Tea, thank you.’’ a few moments later an aide brought in a tray, like the building, he gave off an air of exhaustion. Chainbridge sipped it, savoring the flavor of the leaves; he loosened his collar despite himself.
‘‘Black market out of Ireland,’’ Gageby looked up as he spoke, ‘‘fought them in ’22, don’t you know; now they keep the char flowing across the sea.’’ He finished the report and accepted the files from the attaché case manacled to Chainbridge’s wrist.
‘‘Have you slept?’’
‘‘Managed a few winks on the trawler. I don’t sleep much these days.’’
‘‘None of us does.’’ Gageby studied the man opposite him; tall and rake-thin with a shock of grey hair, hawkish features, unshaven, a thick woollen cardigan beneath his jacket, and the beginnings of a stoop. He appeared more of a crumpled professor of antiquities rather than a spy. Nevertheless, he had an energy that radiated from within. Both men smoked and drank for a few minutes in silence, Chainbridge tapping his ash into the cup’s delicate saucer placed at his feet on the rich Persian carpet. His shoes he noted were grimed and he needed a bath. He felt like the ragged end of nowhere. With a satisfied grunt, Gageby closed the files and spread his squat fingers flat out on the desk in thought. Chainbridge noted the man’s knuckles were covered in hair, his face streaked in places with razor burn, his expression broken only by a tic that sporadically danced below the left eyelid,
