FOUR
Anthony made his way to his club through the crowds of Regent Street. Before the war he’d had rooms in Sadlers, a club which, for no apparent reason, attracted a large number of medical men, and his things were still stored in a trunk in the basement. He certainly needed a shave, he thought, ruefully rubbing his hand over his chin, and the idea of a warm bath and a change of clothes filled him with eager anticipation. With any luck he could get his old rooms back.
It was strange to be back in London again, to hear English spoken so casually by the crowds, to see all the old shops and landmarks, grubby with soot and so unexpectedly, so heart-tuggingly familiar, they were oddly beautiful in the spring sunshine. He would never have described Swan and Edgars, for instance, with its display of linen, haberdashery, corsets and socks, as beautiful, yet the sight of the shop with its curved glass windows, there as it had always been there, gave him a lump in his throat.
He expected London to have changed and in some ways it had; there were far more soldiers on the streets, for a start, and some buildings were swathed in steel netting. He couldn’t think why, at first, then realized, with a shock, it was to ward off damage from bombs dropped by Zeppelins.
It seemed incredible that war could touch London. He thought of Sir Charles’s idea of arrogance with rueful agreement. Paris, he knew, showed its wounds openly, gashed by air raids, its public spaces from the racecourse at Longchamps to the Palace of Versailles, neglected and overgrown. Paris was like a deserted city, with virtually every other shop closed and bearing the notice that the owner was fighting the Boche. What happened to Paris could surely happen to London and yet . . . Sir Charles was right. It was French, it was foreign, it was safely overseas. He couldn’t make himself believe it could happen here.
Anthony stood on the corner of Regent Street and Piccadilly, amidst the growl of motor cars, the hubbub of passers-by, the clatter of hooves, the creak of wheels and the shouts of street vendors, trying, amongst all this noisy, careless unconcern, to imagine London scarred by war. It was no use; the city was simply too big and too vibrant.
Not that the war was entirely absent, of course. There were war posters plastered on the hoardings. They lacked the angry bite of the posters in Berlin and Kiel, consisting mainly of injunctions to the able-bodied to join up. Of course! The Germans didn’t need to urge men to enlist. Conscription took care of that. Remembering the crowds of volunteers that had besieged recruiting sergeants in Trafalgar Square last August, Anthony was surprised that any more men were needed. About a hundred thousand men had joined in the first few heady days of the war, but, going off the message on the posters, that wasn’t enough.
Women of Britain say – ‘GO!’ That was rather moving, with a picture of a little boy clutching onto his mother’s skirts, as she sadly watched a line of departing Tommies march past the window. There was a real sacrifice implied there. She might be saying, ‘Go!’ but she didn’t look very happy about it.
At The Front. Every fit Briton should join our brave men at the Front. Enlist Now. Although the image was dramatic, it was hardly enticing. A team of horses pulling a wagon had suffered a near miss from a huge shell. The horses reared in panic and the driver was hanging to the reins for grim death. At least it gave the prospective recruit some idea of what he might be in for.
Halt! Who goes there? If you are a friend join the British ranks and help the brave lads at the Front. That was illustrated by the lonely silhouette of a solider against the skyline, with rifle at the ready. And, thought Anthony cynically, if the idiot stood out in the open like that, bellowing challenges to all and sundry, his military career was likely to be very short indeed.
A painful jab in the ribs made him spin round angrily. Two women with ferocious expressions were standing behind him. One, hefting an umbrella, looked as if she was about to assault him again. ‘Did you just hit me with your umbrella?’ demanded Anthony incredulously, rubbing his side.
The women exchanged meaningful glances. ‘I most certainly did, young man,’ said the umbrella-wielding woman, her double chin wobbling with indignation. ‘How you can look at those pictures of our brave boys and their selfless sacrifice without feeling utterly ashamed, I do not know.’
She surveyed his clothes and his stubbly chin with a sort of loathing horror. ‘Why are you not at the Front? You speak like an educated man. Whether you have come down in the world through drink or wanton fecklessness, I do not know, but surely you can see that the war is your chance to redeem yourself, to put good some of the ravages your path – your manifestly unsatisfactory path – in life has led you down.’ She took a white feather from her bag and brandished it like a weapon. ‘It is my duty to give you this!’
Anthony, his side throbbing from the ferrule of her umbrella, didn’t know whether to laugh or tell her to mind her own business. The White Feather movement had started before he’d left London and hundreds, if not thousands, of women had enthusiastically taken upon themselves the task of handing out white feathers to those whom they considered to be shirkers.
She leaned forward, seized the lapel of his jacket, and made to insert it in his buttonhole. ‘Enlist today! There is still a chance to make good! Be a man amongst men!’
Anthony’s sense of humour won. To be taken for a tramp and an inebriate tramp at that, to be upbraided for cowardice, urged to enlist and to be able to produce a white feather was, properly considered, very funny indeed. Sir Charles would love the joke.
His hand closed over hers. ‘Thank you,’ he said brokenly. ‘You have pointed out the right path to me.’ The women looked at him dubiously, wondering if he was serious. ‘It was gin that brought me to this,’ he said earnestly, trying to keep the laughter out of his voice. ‘I shall reform and—’
‘Star anger.’ It was a clear, high voice, the speaker close at hand. The words cut through the welter of noise surrounding them.
Anthony, the ferocious woman still clinging on to his lapel, whirled. Standing by a taxicab, outside Swan and Edgars, with a commissionaire in attendance, was a well-dressed, middle-aged man in a top hat and a coat with an astrakhan collar. He stood back to allow his companion, a woman in a blue velvet coat and a wisp of a hat, get into the cab. The sight of the man struck a vague chord of memory. The woman looked up at him, smiling as he bent over her. Anthony could have sworn she’d said ‘Star anger’. Then, for a fleeting second, he saw her face.
It was as if he had been drenched with icy water. She was, quite simply, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen and the shock brought him up dead. For a moment – it was like a moment outside time – London seemed to freeze.
The White Feather women, the crowds, the noise, all stopped. Then, with a shock like thunder, the implication of what she’d said crashed in upon him. Star anger. She knew what star anger meant!
Anthony tried to run towards her but the ferocious woman held him back. He ignored her, intent on getting to the woman in blue. ‘Hoy!’ he shouted as loudly as he could. ‘Stop!’
The woman in the blue coat didn’t hear him. She gathered her skirts together and disappeared into the taxi. The man climbed in the cab, the commissionaire closed the door and the taxi pulled away from the kerb.
Anthony unclasped the ferocious woman’s hand from his lapel, took the white feather and, shaking off her clutching hand – she clearly thought he’d gone mad – strode rapidly to the commissionaire. ‘Excuse me,’ he said crisply. ‘Who were those people? The man and woman who just got in the cab?’
The commissionaire blinked. Anthony could see him contrasting his voice and his clothes. ‘What’s it to you?’
Anthony pulled out a sovereign – the only English money he had was a roll of sovereigns – from his pocket and pressed it into the man’s hand.
The commissionaire’s bewilderment increased. ‘I’m sorry, guv, I can’t help you. They were going to Waterloo, if that’s any use.’
The White Feather women joined them. ‘Did you give this man money?’ demanded the ferocious woman.
‘Yes,’ said Anthony desperately. ‘I’m an eccentric millionaire. Now hop it, will you, my good woman.’ He turned to the commissionaire. ‘Call a taxi for me, please.’
‘My good woman!’ repeated the ferocious woman, shrill with indignation. ‘How dare you!’
The commissionaire put his whistle to his lips and blew.
Amidst a stream of recriminations from the women, a taxi drew up. The driver looked doubtfully at the embattled and down-at-heel Anthony.
‘He’s all right,’ said the commissionaire with a grin. He had thoroughly enjoyed listening to the women on the subject of Anthony’s shortcomings. ‘He’s an eccentric millionaire.’
‘Aren’t we all,’ said the taxi driver looking at Anthony and his unwanted companions disparagingly. ‘I’m not taking that lot on board. This is a cab, not a circus turn. Millionaire! Pull the other one, mate.’
He put in the clutch and drove off, leaving Anthony on the pavement. Anthony sighed in exasperation and, leaving the women arguing on the pavement, made for the underground. It was hopeless, of course. He couldn’t buy a tuppenny ticket with a sovereign, so had to stop at the news kiosk for change, which meant further delays.
There were lots of trains leaving from Waterloo, he thought despondently, as he stood on the station concourse. Lots of trains from which, if you made the right connections, you could get to any destination in Britain. His hand curled over the white feather in his pocket. If it wasn’t for those blasted women he’d have caught the man in the top hat and the woman in the blue coat.
Maybe – just maybe – it was as well he hadn’t. After all, what would he have said? If he had caught them, he might have given the game away. Cavanaugh said they were looking for a gentleman and the man in the top hat was a gentleman, sure enough. What’s more, he was certain he’d seen him somewhere before. And the woman? His stomach turned over as he recalled that fraction of a second when she’d looked in his direction.
‘Would you recognize either of them again?’ asked Sir Charles, when Anthony telephoned his private line from Waterloo station.
Oh yes, he would certainly recognize them again. He couldn’t, although he didn’t say as much to Sir Charles, get the woman in blue’s face out of his mind.
There was something else too, he added to himself as he plunged back into the underground. Whatever star anger meant, it meant something to the woman in blue. Somehow or other, he would see her again.
Fortunately, MacIntyre, the porter at Sadlers, remembered him well, otherwise Anthony might have had trouble being admitted to his old club.
‘I’ve been abroad,’ he said, as carelessly as he could, trying not to laugh as MacIntyre’s raging curiosity visibly diminished. That respectable doctors should turn into tramps, inebriate or not, the minute they set foot abroad was clearly nothing more than MacIntyre expected and part of the dangers inherent in foreign travel. ‘I don’t suppose my rooms are still free?’
They weren’t, much to MacIntyre’s sorrow. ‘Another gentleman’s got them now,’ he said, apologetically. ‘He’s a very nice gentleman,’ he added, as if that made up for it somehow. There were, however, two fine quiet rooms at the back, next to the fire escape. He was sure that Mr Walbreck, the secretary, would be glad to arrange everything for him.
Richard Walbreck, the secretary, did indeed arrange everything. That had all been simple enough, thought Anthony. He could only wish the task of finding Frankie would prove as simple. It sounded impossible to hunt through the biggest city on earth for someone called Frankie, but he had hopes that someone would remember Cavanaugh.
Following Sir Charles’s suggestion, he didn’t start his hunt until his new uniform arrived. He unpacked the box, put on his clothes and, knotting his tie, looked at the military figure reflected in the mirror. It struck Anthony as sheer make-believe. To be a colonel with no regiment and no men had a comic opera, Gilbert and Sullivan quality about it that was as unlikely as his mission.
He wasn’t sure if he liked what he saw in the mirror. He’d spent months trying to be unremarkable and the uniform, with its green cap-ribbon and tabs, singled him out as a member of the Intelligence Service. But that, according to Sir Charles, was a very good reason for wearing it. Sir Charles reassured him that he couldn’t have a better camouflage than khaki. It would also, he had added with a grin, save him from being presented with any more white feathers.
During the next couple of days, Anthony tried to hunt up his old friends, but most of them had joined up and Cavanaugh’s acquaintances proved even more elusive. There were men who remembered the passing American visitor but, despite Sir Charles Talbot following up every lead, there was no result. They seemed, thought Anthony with frustration, on the afternoon of the fourth day, to be getting nowhere. Even an investigation into Cavanaugh’s journalism proved fruitless. He had written pieces for the American press, but had published nothing in England. And the quest, as Anthony quickly realized, was urgent.
Cavanaugh had died because a gentleman in England had betrayed him. What else that gentleman could pick up was deeply worrying. Anthony was stunned by the facts which were freely floated round London drawing rooms and not so much whispered, as openly discussed after the port.
Some of the talk was harmless chit-chat, such as Tom receiving his commission in the Blues and Royals, Dick getting the MC and Harry being sent to Gallipoli. That went with the discussions about which rifle it was best for an officer to carry, now rifles had replaced the traditional swords, and if a soldier who threw a hand grenade should be called a grenadier or a bomber, but he could, with very little effort, have written a fairly detailed report on the situation in the Dardanelles, given the inside story of Aubers Ridge and Festubert and found out about the new bombsight being developed by the Central Flying School. He learnt Italy was about to declare war, who was likely to be who in the forthcoming coalition government, how the army had first won, then lost, then drawn the battle of Neuve Chapelle and the vicious infighting between Field Marshall Sir John French and virtually everyone else.
It mainly came, as most information does, in bits and, naturally enough, Anthony couldn’t know if it was accurate but anyone with their eyes open would know where to go and who to ask to check their facts.
Sir Charles wasn’t remotely surprised. ‘You can’t stop people talking,’ was his comment when Anthony called to see him. ‘We’re convinced that anyone we meet over dinner, who speaks as we do and knows the same crowd is fundamentally safe. For instance, who told you about the new bombsight?’
‘That was Kenneth Bourne after dinner two nights ago but a fair few people knew about it. Shelia Matherson mentioned it too. I’ve known them both for years.’
‘So it wouldn’t cross their minds it was something they shouldn’t talk about. The more I think about it, the more worried I am. To be totally accepted in English society must be one of the most casual and yet one of the most difficult tricks in the world. We don’t ask for a man’s credentials or ask to see his papers. We know that sort of thing by instinct.’
‘Well, so we do,’ Anthony replied. ‘Either you know someone or you know someone who knows someone or you know what school they went to or where they come from. It’d be difficult for a foreigner or an outsider, however plausible, to break in to that circle, unless you’re suggesting a disguise or a false identity.’
‘I can’t see it working like that. I’m convinced Cavanaugh was on the right lines. Our man’s working on the inside. He’s doesn’t need a disguise or a false name. This is much more subtle.’ He shook his head with an anxious frown. ‘He’s one of us. Damn it, Brooke, Cavanaugh must have talked to someone. We have to find who.’
Anthony had been in London for over a week when he got a break. He’d bumped into an old friend, Jerry Ross, in the Savoy. Over the second whisky-and-splash he pitched in with his standard gambit. He’d run through the usual list of friends and their doings before casually asking, ‘Do you remember that American chap who was here before the war? Terence Cavanaugh. Quite a character.’
To his delight, Jerry frowned. ‘Was he the bloke who’d been a cowboy or something?’
‘That’s the one,’ said Anthony, keeping the raging urgency out of his voice.
‘I don’t know how many of his tales I believed, but yes, I knew him. A friend of my sister’s introduced him. He was a real tough egg, I’d have said, but pleasant enough.’
With painful carelessness and another one for the tonsils, Anthony elicited the information that Ross’s sister’s friend was a Miss Tara O’Bryan. And that, the sum total of Jerry Ross’s knowledge, was to prove priceless.
Next morning Anthony had a visit from Sir Charles’s assistant, the elegant Farlow. ‘Colonel Brooke?’ he murmured in inaudibly cultured tones. Anthony had to smother a grin. He was sure MacIntyre, the porter, who was watching them from his desk in the hall, thought he was entertaining a duke or an earl, at least. Farlow leaned forward confidentially. ‘I’ve come from Mr Monks.’
‘What is it?’ asked Anthony quietly.
Farlow cleared his throat. ‘Mr Monks wants you to meet him in the bar in the Melbourne at quarter past twelve. Lunch,’ he added languidly. ‘Oh, and Mr Monks said to come in uniform. Create the right impression, don’t you know?’
‘Who on earth,’ demanded Anthony when he joined Sir Charles in the bar of the Melbourne, ‘is that chap Farlow?’
Sir Charles grinned broadly and picked up his sherry. ‘Bertram Farlow? He’s one of the stars of the department. I use him to fetch and carry and do odd jobs. He’s not very bright, but he looks impressive, doesn’t he?’
‘Very.’
‘I hide behind him on occasion, so to speak. One look at Farlow and no one takes any notice of me. He used to be an actor and, despite looking as if he’s too aristocratic for words, he’s actually the son of a Lancashire millworker.’
‘Good grief. Anyway,’ said Anthony, mentally dismissing Farlow, ‘why did you want to see me? Have you got a lead?’
Sir Charles drew his chair closer. ‘We have. Incidentally,’ he said with a look at Anthony’s clothes, ‘the uniform suits you.’
‘Never mind my uniform. What about this lead?’
‘Ah, but your uniform is part of my scheme. It was your pal Ross with his sister’s friend, Miss Tara O’Bryan, who led us in the right direction. Have you ever heard of a man called Sherston? Patrick Sherston?
Anthony frowned. ‘Somewhere or other. The name rings a bell.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Hang on! I’ve got it. He was the man getting into the taxi! I couldn’t place him but I knew I’d come across him. He’s Irish, isn’t he, Talbot?’ He lowered his voice. ‘Could he be one of the Sons of Hibernia?’
‘If we suspected every Irishman of being involved with the Sons of Hibernia and their ilk, we’d have to keep an eye on half the army and most of the police,’ said Sir Charles. ‘However, he does have a link to Cavanaugh. Tell me what else you know about Sherston.’
Anthony shrugged. ‘As I recall, he’s a newspaper man and a pretty big cheese. He owns the newspaper, I mean. I met him at the university once. He was at a dinner hosted by my crowd at the School of Tropical Medicine, the neuropathology and parasitic diseases people. There was a fairly big donation in the offing. He made a speech about the Congo, Uganda and German East, setting the scene for everyone. It was a pretty good speech as these things go. I swapped notes with him afterwards. He sounded as if he knew Africa like the back of his hand, but he admitted his experience amounted to a holiday on the Cape and ten minutes with an encyclopaedia. I think I’d always treat him with care but I rather took to him.’
‘That’s the man. Well, I didn’t know you’d met him, but he’s joining us for lunch at one.’
Anthony sat up. ‘Is he, by George? What’s his association with Cavanaugh?’
‘All in good time,’ said Sir Charles with a grin. ‘To go back to Mr Sherston for a moment, it’s because we’re meeting him for lunch that I particularly wanted you to wear uniform. It commands respect, you know.’
‘And why do you want me to command Mr Sherston’s respect? Particularly, I mean.’
Sir Charles sat back in his chair. ‘Because, as you said, Patrick Sherston is a newspaper man. You said he was a big cheese. That, if anything, is an understatement. He owns the Sherston Press and is, in consequence, a very important person indeed. He owns the Examiner, the Mercury, the Sentinel and a host of others. As well as the big papers he’s got lots of little magazines with names like Modern Poultry Breeding and so on.’
‘Crikey. The Sentinel? We’re moving in elevated circles. Does he know who you are?’
Sir Charles shook his head. ‘No. He knows I work in Whitehall, but he thinks I’ve got something to do with police pensions. I’ve known him in a vague sort of way for years and would never have thought he’d had any connection with Cavanaugh if it hadn’t been for your friend Ross mentioning Miss Tara O’Bryan. Sherston is Miss O’Bryan’s uncle.’
‘Is he, by jingo?’ murmured Anthony. ‘Are they close?’
Sir Charles nodded. ‘Very. Miss O’Bryan’s father is dead and both she and her mother, Veronica O’Bryan, Sherston’s sister, live with him. You might have heard of Miss O’Bryan’s father, Bernard O’Bryan. He was a well-known poet and literary figure in Dublin twenty-odd years ago.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Anthony. ‘I don’t know much about poets.’
‘He made quite a name for himself. He was an expert on Irish folklore and mythology and fiercely pro-Independence. He was a fiery sort of beggar, calling for young men to sacrifice themselves on the altar of freedom and so on. I don’t know how much was poetic licence and how much was meant, but it’s violent stuff. Sherston’s pro-Independence but so are many people, on both sides of the Irish Sea. He’s never made any secret of it and it might or might not be important. I hope it isn’t. What is important for our purposes is the name of his house. Guess what it is.’
Anthony shrugged. ‘It could be anything, I suppose.’
‘It’s Starhanger.’
‘What?’
Sir Charles smiled triumphantly. ‘Starhanger. And if that’s not Cavanaugh’s Star anger I’ll eat my hat.’
‘That’s incredible!’ Anthony couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice. ‘And the woman I saw – the woman in blue – could she be Miss O’Bryan?’
‘How old was she, would you say?’
Anthony had thought about this. He had thought about the woman in blue intently ever since that life-shattering glimpse. ‘She’d be in her twenties at a guess.’ He wanted it to be her. He very much wanted the woman in blue to be her.
‘That sounds about right,’ said Sir Charles. ‘There is a Mrs Sherston, Mrs Josette Sherston, but we don’t know anything about her. What does worry me is that Sherston is undoubtedly a gentleman.’
Anthony gave a low whistle. ‘I see where you’re going. Surely you don’t think Mr Sherston might be our gentleman?’
Sir Charles looked at him with a twisted smile. ‘It seems incredible, doesn’t it? And yet in many ways he fits the bill. He’s had a few swipes at the powers that be in his time, which is probably why he isn’t Lord something or other. He might resent that, you know. He was very pro-Boer and, as I say, he’s all for Irish Home Rule. He’s run many an article about John Bull’s other island, as he usually calls it. He might see his role as Cavanaugh’s gentleman as a way of paying off a few old scores. Granted what Cavanaugh said, I can’t deny he fits.’ He paused. ‘There’s another thing, too. I looked him up in Who’s Who. His second name is Francis.’
Anthony stared at him. ‘Francis? And we’re looking for a Frankie? That’s a coincidence.’
Sir Charles held up a steadying hand. ‘And that could be the top and bottom of it. I hope to God it’s not him. There’ll be hell to pay if it is. Since the war started, Sherston has become the patriot of patriots and has some very influential friends. He’s also put his money where his mouth is as regards the war. Any member of his staff who joined up has been guaranteed full pay for the duration of hostilities and he’s raised no end of money for various good causes associated with the services. If it’s a front, it’s a very good one. He regularly dines with Asquith and other members of the cabinet.’
‘He’s in a perfect position to have valuable information.’
‘I agree. However, you see what I mean when I said he’s someone we have to treat with caution. We’ve got a free press and Sherston knows how to use it. If this goes wrong, Sherston can make such a stink it’ll wreck the department. It’s hard enough to justify our work to some of the bigwigs in the War Office as it is, without giving them that sort of ammunition. We can’t afford to let him have the faintest suspicion we’re looking into him and his affairs, but it’s important that we do. I want you to be invited to Starhanger. You can find out an awful lot very quickly about a man in his own home. I’d like to be there as well.’
Anthony raised his eyebrows. Considering he’d only met the man once, the assumption Sherston was going to immediately offer him bed and board seemed a bit cool. ‘How on earth am I going to manage that? And how are you, for that matter?’
Sir Charles smiled once more. ‘I’ll see if I can swing it. As for you, Sherston’s a newspaperman, yes? I made a point of running into him at the Garrick last night and you came up in conversation. I didn’t know you’d met him, of course, but he was interested, and I offered to introduce you. After all, you’ve been in Germany. That’s a pretty good inducement for any newspaperman. He’d love to get your story. You’ll be surprised when he suggests it, of course, but a series of articles about your exploits as Herr Doktor Conrad Etriech should make good reading. Don’t give them to him for anything less than an invitation to Starhanger.’
‘I can’t blab to the newspapers!’ said Anthony, horrified.
Sir Charles spread his hands out in enquiry. ‘Why not? You can’t go back to Germany as Doktor Etriech so you might as well tell Sherston about the good doctor’s doings. He’ll invite you to Starhanger right enough.’
Anthony winced. The habit of secrecy was so ingrained that to talk to the popular press went against all his instincts. Sir Charles saw his expression. ‘Come on, Brooke. There’ll be no pictures, of course. You’ll be totally anonymous but we have to offer Sherston something to get you into Starhanger.’
Anthony didn’t like it. Despite his respect for Sir Charles, he thought he was mistaken. That he was later shown to be right gave him no pleasure at all. He tried to pin down why he was so uneasy about the idea. After all, Sir Charles was his chief and should know what he was doing. Maybe, he thought, it came down to experience. Sir Charles was lacking the edge, the raw instinct for survival, that had developed during those months in Germany.
Anthony said as much but Sir Charles wasn’t convinced. Reluctantly, Anthony allowed himself to be persuaded. ‘Well, if you’re sure,’ he said grudgingly. ‘You say Sherston knows about me?’
‘He’s very keen to meet you,’ said Sir Charles. ‘He’s got a certain impression of me, which I don’t want to disturb. Follow my lead, won’t you?’ He laughed. ‘Relax, man. No one will know it’s you behind the stories in the papers unless you tell them so.’
‘Perhaps,’ Anthony said dryly. He’d seen too much of the gossipy nature of London society to believe there was any such thing as a secret any more. Still, if Sir Charles believed it would work, it probably would, he reassured himself glumly, no matter how his feelings were lacerated in the process.
‘Now, once we’re at Starhanger, there’s another scheme I want to try.’
‘What’s that?’
Sir Charles sat forward in his chair. ‘Cavanaugh was betrayed. He thought his betrayer was associated with Starhanger, but he could’ve been mistaken. With someone like Sherston involved we have to be completely certain. I want you to give out some false information once you’re in Starhanger, something that’s so delectable it’s bound to be picked up and acted upon. If it’s picked up, then we’ll know that Starhanger is definitely where our gentleman operates from. Once we know that, we can start identifying exactly who he is.’
Anthony lit a thoughtful cigarette. This was more his sort of thing than Sir Charles’s newspaper scheme. ‘You haven’t worked out the details yet?’
‘No, not yet.’
Anthony knew what Sir Charles was after. They needed to sell Fritz a pup, but it had to be the right sort of pup. ‘What about troop movements?’
Sir Charles frowned. ‘Perhaps. I suppose we could invent a lot of troops massing for an attack and see if the Germans fall for it by bringing artillery to bear, but by the time we’ve warned any real troops to keep clear and posted observers to see what actually happens, we’ve involved a dickens of a lot of outsiders.’
‘What about a ship? If I put it about that a ship carrying a highly desirable cargo was to be in a certain place at a certain time, that’d do it.’ Anthony could tell Sir Charles wasn’t convinced.
‘We can’t risk an actual ship,’ objected Sir Charles. ‘We don’t want another Lusitania. On the other hand, we need a real ship to observe the action. Maybe if we could have a dummy of some sort . . .’ He shook his head impatiently. ‘We’d still need some crew on board, even if it’s only two or three men, to make it look alive. If it was just a hulk, a U-boat wouldn’t attack and if there is something there, any U-boat attack might be nothing more than coincidence. Besides that, it means involving the Admiralty. They might not cooperate and, as I said, the fewer people who know about our idea the better.’
He stroked his chin, thinking out the flaws. ‘I could do with something on a much smaller scale,’ he said eventually. ‘Something we can control from beginning to end. And something, as well, where it’s not obvious afterwards that the Germans have failed. If it’s clearly a fake then they’ll know we’re on to them and I don’t want to give our gentleman and his friends any more warning than I can help.’
This was going to be more difficult than Anthony had anticipated. ‘Let me think it over,’ he said. ‘I might be able to come up with something.’
Sir Charles nodded. ‘Good man.’ He glanced at his watch as the waiter approached. ‘It’s after one. I imagine Sherston’s here. Don’t worry about the invitation. Follow my lead and with any luck it’ll all come quite naturally. You’re a club acquaintance of mine, by the way and I’ve been impressed by your adventures. Pitch it strong.’
‘All right,’ said Anthony, with a feeling of distinctly modified rapture.
‘Mr Sherston’s in the lobby, sir,’ said the waiter.
Sir Charles put his glass on the table. ‘In that case, let’s go and meet him, Colonel Brooke.’