Emma entered a large room in which the staff, most dressed in uniform, scurried about in every direction. No one walked. A figure appeared out of the melee and greeted her with a huge smile.
‘I’m Rupert Harvey,’ he said. ‘Sorry about the organized chaos, but it’s always like this when the ambassador is returning to England. It’s even worse this time, because we’ve had a visiting cabinet minister with us for the past week. All your paperwork has been prepared,’ he added, returning to his desk. ‘I just need to see your passport.’
Once he’d flicked through the pages, he asked her to sign here, here and here. ‘A bus will be leaving from the front of the embassy for the airport at six this evening. Please make sure you’re on time as everyone’s expected to be on board the plane before the ambassador arrives.’
‘I’ll be on time,’ said Emma. ‘Would it be possible to leave my bags here while I go sightseeing?’
‘That won’t be a problem,’ said Rupert. ‘I’ll have someone put them on the bus for you.’
‘Thank you,’ said Emma.
She was about to leave when he added, ‘By the way, I loved the book. And just to warn you, the minister is hoping to have a private word with you when we’re on the plane. I think he was a publisher before he went into politics.’
‘What’s his name?’ Emma asked.
‘Harold Macmillan.’
Emma recalled some of Mr Guinzburg’s sage advice. ‘Everyone is going to want this book,’ he’d told her. ‘There isn’t a publisher who won’t open their doors for you, so don’t be easily flattered. Try and see Billy Collins and Allen Lane of Penguin.’ He’d made no mention of a Harold Macmillan.
‘Then I’ll see you on the bus around six,’ said her second cousin twice removed, before he disappeared back into the melee.
Emma left the embassy, walked out on to Massachusetts Avenue and checked her watch. Just over two hours to spare before her appointment with Colonel Cleverdon. She hailed a cab.
‘Where to, miss?’
‘I want to see everything the city has to offer,’ she said.
‘How long have you got, a couple of years?’
‘No,’ Emma replied, ‘a couple of hours. So let’s get moving.’
The taxi sped away from the kerb. First stop: the White House – 15 minutes. On to the Capitol – 20 minutes. Circling the Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials – 25 minutes. Dashing into the National Gallery – another 25 minutes. Ending up at the Smithsonian – but there was only 30 minutes left until her appointment, so she didn’t make it past the first floor.
When she jumped back into the cab, the driver asked, ‘Where to now, miss?’
Emma checked the address on Colonel Cleverdon’s letter. ‘3022 Adams Street,’ she replied, ‘and I’m cutting it fine.’
When the cab drew up outside a large white marble building that occupied the entire block, Emma handed the cabbie her last five-dollar note. She would have to walk back to the embassy after her meeting. ‘Worth every cent,’ she told him.
He touched the rim of his cap. ‘I thought it was only us Americans who did that sort of thing,’ he said with a grin.
Emma walked up the steps, past two guards who stared right through her, and on into the building. She noticed that almost everyone was dressed in different shades of khaki, although few of them wore battle ribbons. A young woman behind the reception desk directed her to room 9197. Emma joined a mass of khaki uniforms as they headed towards the lifts, and when she stepped out on the ninth floor, she found Colonel Cleverdon’s secretary waiting to greet her.
‘I’m afraid the colonel has got caught up in a meeting, but he should be with you in a few minutes,’ she said as they walked along the corridor.
Emma was shown into the colonel’s office. Once she had sat down, she stared at a thick file on the centre of the desk. As with the letter on Maisie’s mantelpiece and the notebooks on Jelks’s desk, she wondered how long she would have to wait before its contents were revealed.
The answer was twenty minutes. When the door eventually swung open, a tall, athletic man, around the same age as her father, burst into the room, a cigar bobbing up and down in his mouth.
‘So sorry to have kept you,’ he said, shaking hands, ‘but there just aren’t enough hours in the day.’ He sat down behind his desk and smiled at her. ‘John Cleverdon, and I would have recognized you anywhere.’ Emma looked surprised, until he explained. ‘You’re exactly as Harry described you in his book. Would you like coffee?’
‘No, thank you,’ said Emma, trying not to sound impatient as she glanced at the file on the colonel’s desk.
‘I don’t even have to open this,’ he said, tapping the file. ‘I wrote most of it myself, so I can tell you everything Harry’s been up to since he left Lavenham. And now, thanks to his diaries, we all know he should never have been there in the first place. I can’t wait to read the next instalment and find out what happened to him before he was sent to Lavenham.’