33
LONDON
Alfred Vicary felt an evening at home might do him some good. He wanted to walk so he left the office an hour before sunset, enough time for him to make it into Chelsea before becoming stranded in the blackout. It was a fine afternoon, cold but no rain and scarcely a wind. Puffy gray clouds, their bellies pink from the setting sun, drifted over the West End. London was alive. He watched the crowds in Parliament Square, marveled at the antiaircraft guns on Birdcage Walk, drifted through the silent Georgian canyons of Belgravia. The wintry air felt wonderful in his lungs, and he forced himself not to smoke. He had developed a dry hacking cough--like the one he had during final exams at Cambridge--and he vowed to give the damn things up when the war was over.
He crossed Belgrave Square and walked toward Sloane Square. The spell was broken; the case was in his thoughts again. It never really left him. Sometimes he was able to push it slightly farther away than others. January had turned to February. Soon spring would come, then the invasion. And whether it would succeed or fail might be resting squarely on Vicary's shoulders.
He thought about the latest decoded message sent to him by the codebreakers at Bletchley Park. The message was sent the previous night to an agent operating inside Britain. The message contained no code name but Vicary assumed it was one of the spies he was pursuing. It said the information received thus far had been good but more was needed. It also asked for a report on how the agent had contacted the source. Vicary looked for a silver lining. If Berlin needed more intelligence, it did not have a complete picture. If it did not have a complete picture, there still was time for Vicary to plug the leak. Such was the bleak nature of the case that he took heart from logic like that.
He crossed Sloane Square and drifted into Chelsea. He thought of evenings like this a long time ago--before the war, before the bloody blackout--when he would walk home from University College with a briefcase bulging with books and papers. His worries had been much simpler then. Did I put my students to sleep with my lecture today? Will I finish my next book before deadline?
Something else occurred to him as he walked. He was a damned good intelligence officer, no matter what Boothby might say. He was also well suited to it by nature. He was without vanity. He didn't require public praise or accolades. He was perfectly content to toil in secret and keep his victories to himself. He liked the fact that no one knew what he really did. He was secretive and private by nature, and being an intelligence officer only reinforced that.
He thought of Boothby. Why did he pull Vogel's file and lie about it? Why did he refuse to forward Vicary's warning to Eisenhower and Churchill? Why did he interrogate Karl Becker but not pass on the evidence of a separate German network? Vicary could think of no logical explanation for his actions. They were like notes that Vicary could not arrange into a pleasing melody.
He arrived at his home in Draycott Place. He pushed back the door and waded through several days of unanswered post into his darkened drawing room. He considered inviting Alice Simpson to dinner but decided he didn't have the strength for polite conversation. He filled the bath with hot water and soaked his body while listening to sentimental music on the wireless. He drank a glass of whisky and read the newspapers. Since his induction into the secret world he no longer believed a word in them. Then the telephone started ringing. It had to be the office; no one else ever bothered to call him any longer. He struggled out of the bath and covered himself in a robe. The telephone was in the study. He picked up the receiver and said, "Yes, Harry?"
"Your conversation with Karl Becker gave me an idea," Harry said without preamble.
Vicary was dripping bathwater on the papers scattered over his desk. The cleaning lady knew it was verboten even to consider entering his study. As a result it was an island of academic clutter in his otherwise sterile and immaculate home.
"Anna Steiner lived in London with her diplomat father for two years in the early twenties. Rich foreign diplomats have servants: cooks, butlers, maids."
"All true, Harry. I hope this is leading somewhere."
"For three days I've been checking with every agency in town, trying to find the names of the people who worked in that household."
"Good idea."
"I've got a few. Most are dead; the others are old as the hills. There was one promising name, though: Rose Morely. As a young woman she worked as a cook in the Steiner house. Today I discovered she works for a Commander Higgins of the Admiralty at his house in Marylebone."
"Good work, Harry. Set up an appointment first thing in the morning."
"I planned to, but someone just shot her through the eye and left her body in the middle of Hyde Park."
"I'll be dressed in five minutes."