Best Kept Secret

35





HE WALKED INTO London Airport and headed straight for the Crew Only sign.

‘Good morning, Captain May,’ said the duty officer after he’d checked his passport. ‘Where are you flying today, sir?’

‘Buenos Aires.’

‘Have a good flight.’

Once his bags had been checked, he passed through customs and headed straight for gate No. 11. Don’t stop, don’t look round, don’t draw attention to yourself, were the instructions given by the anonymous man who was more used to dealing with spies than authors.

The last forty-eight hours had been non-stop, after Emma had finally agreed, albeit reluctantly, that he could assist them with Operation Run Out. Since then his feet, to quote his old master sergeant, hadn’t touched the ground.

The fitting of a BOAC captain’s uniform had taken up one of those hours, the photograph for the fake passport another; the briefing on his new background, including a divorced wife and two children, three hours; a lesson on the duties of a modern BOAC captain, three hours; a tourist’s guide to Buenos Aires, one hour; and over dinner with Sir Alan at his club, he still had dozens more questions that needed to be answered.

Just before he left the Athenaeum to spend a sleepless night at Giles’s house in Smith Square, Sir Alan had handed him a thick file, a briefcase and a key.

‘Read everything in this file during your journey to Buenos Aires, then hand it to the ambassador, who will destroy it. You’re booked into the Milonga Hotel. Our ambassador, Mr Philip Matthews, is expecting to see you at the embassy at ten on Saturday morning. You will also hand him this letter from Mr Selwyn Lloyd, the foreign secretary, which will explain why you’re in Argentina.’

Once he’d reached the gate, he walked straight up to the attendant at the desk.

‘Good morning, captain,’ she said, even before he’d opened his passport. ‘I hope you have a pleasant flight.’

He walked out on to the tarmac, climbed the steps to the aircraft and entered an empty first-class cabin.

‘Good morning, Captain May,’ said an attractive young woman. ‘My name is Annabel Carrick. I’m the senior stewardess.’

The uniform, and the discipline, made it feel like being back in the army, even if he was up against a different enemy this time, or was it, as Sir Alan had suggested, the same one?

‘May I show you to your seat?’

‘Thank you, Miss Carrick,’ he said as she led him to the rear of the first-class cabin. Two empty seats, but he knew only one of them would be occupied. Sir Alan didn’t leave that sort of thing to chance.

‘The first leg of the flight should take about seven hours,’ said the stewardess. ‘Can I get you a drink before we take off, captain?’

‘Just a glass of water, thank you.’ He took off his peaked cap and put it on the seat beside him, then placed the briefcase on the floor under his seat. He had been told not to open it until the plane had taken off, and to be certain no one could see what he was reading. Not that the file mentioned Martinez by name from the first page to the last, referring to him only as ‘the subject’.

A few moments later, the first passengers began to make their way on to the plane, and for the next twenty minutes they located their seats, placed their bags in the overhead lockers, shed their coats, and some of them their jackets, settled themselves down, enjoyed a glass of champagne, clicked on their seat belts, selected a newspaper or magazine, and waited for the words, ‘This is your captain speaking.’

Harry smiled at the thought of the captain being taken ill during the flight and Miss Carrick running back to ask him for his assistance. How would she react when he told her that he’d served in the British merchant navy and the US army, but never the air force?

The plane taxied on to the runway, but Harry didn’t unlock his briefcase until they were in the air and the captain had turned off the seat-belt sign. He pulled out a thick file, opened it and began to study its contents, as if he was preparing for an exam.

It read like an Ian Fleming novel; the only difference was that he was cast in the role of Commander Bond. As Harry turned the pages, Martinez’s life unfolded in front of him. When he took a break for dinner, he couldn’t help thinking that Emma was right, they should never have allowed Sebastian to go on being involved with this man. It was far too big a risk.

However, he’d agreed with her that if at any time he felt their son’s life was in danger, he would return to London on the next plane with Sebastian sitting beside him. He glanced out of the window. Instead of flying south, he and William Warwick were meant to be on their way up north that morning to begin a book tour. He’d been looking forward to meeting Agatha Christie at the Yorkshire Post literary lunch. Instead, he was heading to South America, hoping to avoid Don Pedro Martinez.

He closed the file, returned it to the briefcase, slid it under the seat and drifted into a light sleep, but ‘the subject’ never left him. By the age of fourteen, Martinez had left school and begun life as an apprentice in a butcher’s shop. He was fired a few months later (reason unknown), and the only skill he took with him was how to dismember a carcase. Within days of becoming unemployed, the subject had drifted into petty crime, including theft, mugging, and raiding slot machines, which ended with him being arrested and sent to prison for six months.

While he was locked up, he shared a cell with Juan Delgado, a minor criminal who’d spent more years behind bars than on the outside. After Martinez had served his sentence, he joined Juan’s gang and quickly became one of his most trusted lieutenants. When Juan was arrested yet again and returned to jail, Martinez was left in charge of his dwindling empire. He was seventeen at the time, the same age as Sebastian, and he looked set for a life of crime. But destiny took an unexpected turn when he fell in love with Consuela Torres, a telephone operator who worked on the international exchange. However, Consuela’s father, a local politician who was planning to run for mayor of Buenos Aires, made it clear to his daughter that he didn’t want a petty criminal as a son-in-law.

Consuela ignored her father’s advice, married Pedro Martinez, and gave birth to four children, in the correct South American order, three boys followed by a girl. Martinez finally gained his father-in-law’s respect when he raised the necessary cash to fund his victorious election campaign for mayor.

Once the mayor had taken up residence in city hall, there were no municipal contracts that didn’t pass through Martinez’s hands, always with an added 25 per cent ‘service charge’. However, it wasn’t long before the subject became bored with both Consuela and local politics, and began to expand his interests when he worked out that a European war meant there would be endless opportunities for those who could claim neutrality.

Although Martinez was naturally inclined to support the British, it was the Germans who offered him the opportunity to turn his small fortune into a large one.

The Nazi regime needed friends who could deliver, and although the subject was only twenty-two when he first turned up in Berlin with an empty order book, he left a couple of months later with demands for everything from Italian pipelines to a Greek oil tanker. Whenever he attempted to close a deal, the subject would make it known that he was a close friend of Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, and had met Herr Hitler himself on several occasions.

For the next ten years, the subject slept in aeroplanes and on ships, trains, buses and once even a horse and cart, as he travelled around the world, ticking off a long list of German requirements.

His meetings with Himmler became more frequent. Towards the end of the war, when an Allied victory looked inevitable and the Reichsmark collapsed, the SS leader began paying the subject in cash; crisp English five-pound notes, hot off the Sachsenhausen press. The subject would then cross the border and bank the money in Geneva, where it was converted into Swiss francs.

Long before the war had ended, Don Pedro had amassed a fortune. But it was not until the Allies were within striking distance of the German capital that Himmler offered him the opportunity of a lifetime. The two men shook hands on the deal, and the subject left Germany with twenty million pounds in forged five-pound notes, his own U-boat, and a young lieutenant from Himmler’s personal staff. He never set foot in the fatherland again.

On his arrival back in Buenos Aires, the subject purchased an ailing bank for fifty million pesos, hid his twenty million pounds in the vaults, and waited for the surviving members of the Nazi hierarchy to turn up in Buenos Aires and cash in their retirement policy.



The ambassador stared down at the ticker tape machine as it clattered away in the far corner of his office.

A message was being sent direct from London. But as with all Foreign Office directives, he would need to read between the lines, because everyone knew that the Argentinian secret service would be getting the message at the same time, in an office just a hundred yards up the road.

Peter May, the captain of the England cricket team, will be opening the batting on the first day of the Lord’s Test match this Saturday at ten o’clock. I have two tickets for the match, and I hope Captain May will be able to join you.

The ambassador smiled. He was well aware, as was any English schoolboy, that Test matches always began at 11.30 a.m on a Thursday, and that Peter May didn’t open the batting. But then, Britain had never been at war with a nation that played cricket.



‘Have we met before, old chap?’

Harry quickly closed the file and looked up at a middle-aged man who clearly lived on ‘expenses’ lunches. He was clinging to the headrest of the empty seat next to him with one hand, while holding a glass of red wine in the other.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Harry.

‘I could have sworn we had,’ the man said, peering down at him. ‘Perhaps I’ve mistaken you for someone else.’

Harry heaved a sigh of relief when the man shrugged and walked unsteadily back towards his seat at the front of the cabin. He was just about to open the file again and continue his background study of Martinez, when the man turned round and made his way slowly back towards him.

‘Are you famous?’

Harry laughed. ‘That’s most unlikely. As you can see, I’m a BOAC pilot, and have been for the past twelve years.’

‘You don’t come from Bristol then?’

‘No,’ said Harry, sticking to his new persona. ‘I was born in Epsom, and I now live in Ewell.’

‘It will come to me in a moment who you remind me of.’ Once again the man set off back to his seat.

Harry reopened the file, but like Dick Whittington the man turned a third time, before he had a chance to read even another line. This time he picked up Harry’s captain’s hat and collapsed into the seat beside him. ‘You don’t write books, by any chance?’

‘No,’ said Harry even more firmly, as Miss Carrick appeared carrying a tray of cocktails. He raised his eyebrows and gave her what he hoped was a ‘please rescue me’ look.

‘You remind me of an author who comes from Bristol, but I’m damned if I can remember his name. Are you sure you’re not from Bristol?’ He took a closer look, before releasing a cloud of cigarette smoke in Harry’s face.

Harry saw Miss Carrick opening the door of the cockpit.

‘It must be an interesting life, being a pilot—’

‘This is your captain speaking. We are about to experience some turbulence, so would all passengers please return to their seats and fasten their seat belts.’

Miss Carrick reappeared in the cabin and walked straight to the back of the first-class section.

‘I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but the captain has requested that all passengers—’

‘Yes, I heard him,’ said the man, hauling himself up, but not before he’d blown another cloud of smoke in Harry’s direction. ‘It’ll come to me, who you remind me of,’ he said, before making his way slowly back to his seat.