Chapter 48
Chapter forty-eight
London
Crispin knocked on the door of the flat at the address given him by his new employer at the Home Office, and it was opened a quarter of the way by the kind of fellow all the great men had as their private secretaries. Crispin recognised the type instantly.
“I’m here to see C,” Crispin said.
“See C?” the secretary repeated, befuddled.
“I’m not sure there’s a good way to say that, really,” Crispin said apologetically.
The man looked down the passage and then reluctantly let him in.
“Did K send you?” he said once the door was shut. “And what’s your codename?”
“I’m not sure I have one yet,” Crispin said. “And I don’t know any K. Sorry.”
“Look here, you’re not supposed to come here on any account, didn’t they tell you that, at least? Who on earth gave you this address?”
“Oh, that was the Home Secretary,” Crispin said, relieved to be able to communicate without initials. Then a suspicion hit him. “Is he K?”
The secretary made a strangled sound.
“No, he is most definitely not. This is impossible! I don’t know how they expect us to get anything done this way. Where did he dig you up? Naval Intelligence?”
“Colonial Office,” said Crispin.
“All right, all right, don’t tell me,” he said irritably, “I’m not supposed to know anything. I’m not supposed to say anything. And C pays for everything out of his own pocket, so don’t ask him for funding, I’m warning you, he won’t have it.”
“Will C see me?”
“Don’t,“ implored the secretary.
“Unintentional, I assure you,” murmured Crispin.
“Wait a minute, and I’ll see—find out,“ he corrected hoarsely and disappeared into an inner room.
A moment later and the door opened again. The secretary motioned for Crispin to come in and left him alone with a white-haired man, grim of lip and golden of monocle. He was seated at a scrupulously neat desk.
Crispin recognised the Navy in every detail of his dress and surroundings.
“Good afternoon, sir,” said Crispin. “I’m terribly sorry for disrupting things. I wasn’t given much information at my briefing and—“
“The Home Secretary shouldn’t have briefed you at all, if it comes to that, young man. Is he paying you?” His monocled eye was large, and because it was large, it looked even more aggrieved than the other. “Because I’m stretched as it is with my field agents.”
“I’m quite content with my wages from the Colonial Office, sir, where I work as a cartographer. I’ve no need of funds.”
The man blinked and Crispin exulted—he’d scored a point. “Cartographer, eh? What did Winston have you working on?”
“The Brotherhood of Saint George,” said Crispin.
“I beg your pardon?” the man said flatly, and Crispin suspected he was begging nothing.
“An association of disaffected Englishmen, an anti-foreign secret society of nativists,” Crispin explained. “I made contact with one of them but he was chased off by a journalist before we could speak. I was to pose as a potential recruit.”
C took his monocle off and laid it on a waiting cloth.
“Disaffected Englishmen,” he repeated. It was clear Crispin’s stock was plummeting by the second. “And are they passing details of our naval developments to Germany?”
“Not to my knowledge, sir,” Crispin admitted. “But they have been rather disruptive in the Asian Quarter.”
C was rubbing his leg now. Rheumatism? Or some kind of nervous gesture?
“My dear chap, do you even know what we are trying to do here?” he asked.
Crispin swallowed. “Would you be so good as to tell me, sir?”
“In the light of a growing body of evidence of a well-funded, skilled network of German spies within Britain, the Committee of Imperial Safety together with the War Office has urgently recommended we hone our espionage game, which—between you and me—has been rather ad hoc. The Secret Service Bureau is—officially—completely unrecognised by His Majesty’s Government.
We are not even supposed to know we exist, and sometimes I’m not convinced we do.
“ He gave a hollow laugh. “The work, such as I can make of it, is split between myself and K. And no, I won’t tell you who K is, so don’t ask.
Half the time neither of us know whose job is what.
I am trying to bring some discipline to all of this,”—he waved his hand in exasperation, and Crispin recognised again the naval mentality—“which is a challenge when all my staff are blackguards.
The kind of people who will betray their country for a case of champagne and a midnight meeting.
“ He paused. “What’s worse, they seem to be largely incapable blackguards. Meanwhile, we are neck-and-neck in the arms race with the Reichstag! Or at least we think so—they may be a good deal ahead of us, for all we can tell. Can you imagine, now, why I do not have any time for disaffected Englishmen setting fire to laundries?”
Crispin nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Unless you have family or connections in Germany or Austria-Hungary, especially near a significant port, I doubt you can be of any use. If young Winston wants to run about with you playing at infiltrating secret societies like someone in a Boy’s Annual, that’s on him and the Home Office, it certainly won’t be part of the work of the SSB!
Not if I have anything do to with it. And since I am at present paying for it, there’s an end! ”
C got out a fountain pen and began to scribble emphatically on a notepad.
An end, thought Crispin.
A quick end to his new life. And it had lasted only a handful of days.
Prepare to be completely extraneous, Penny had said, for everything except procreation.
He imagined himself saving up for a dull little villa in the suburbs, and an inoffensive wife and children he would slowly come to resent.
“Now,” C said more calmly, “please give me your name so I can make an accurate record of this meeting in case the Home Secretary kicks up a fuss.”
“Fairweather, Crispin Fairweather,” Crispin answered.
The scribbling slowed, then stopped.
“Are you related to the Fairweather at the War Office?”
“Yes, sir,” said Crispin, “he’s my father.”
How much worse this would all be if the man was a friend of his father’s. Would they laugh about it over a whisky and soda at the club?
C looked at Crispin. “Then you also share a connection to the Ormdale family,” he said slowly.
Crispin tried his best not to stammer. “Yes. Yes, of course. We’re very close,” he lied.
“Well,” he said, capping his pen and rearranging a few items on the desk. “How very interesting.”
Crispin stopped breathing.
“There’s just a chance…” the man said slowly, wiggling his monocle back into place and this time the larger eye was not aggrieved, but bright, like a bird that has spotted a worm, “there is just a chance you might be able to help us with something, and after that… Well, we’ll see how it plays out, shall we? ”
“May I smoke, sir?” Crispin asked.
“Of course,” the man said, the line of this mouth curving upwards for the first time. “So…what about a codename, then? Any preference?”