End of Spies by Alex Gerlis (best free ereader txt) 📗

list of various other restrictions, which he began to read, but the sergeant told him to sign the form agreeing to the conditions before they changed their minds.

His large Victorian house in the country was unchanged. His man had stayed on and kept the house and its grounds in reasonable enough order, and he greeted him as if he’d just returned from a round of golf rather than a few years in prison without trial.

Of course they watched him all the time, and he didn’t doubt his letters and telephone calls were being monitored, so for the rest of 1944 and the early part of 1945 he did nothing. It was a strange existence; one that reminded him of being back at sea on one of those voyages where one would sail hundreds of miles from land for weeks on end with the weather unchanging, and a torpor settled on the ship that led to strange behaviour, particularly among younger officers, who became prone to making wrong decisions, such as altering course for no reason.

He began to spend days sitting in his library, staring out of the long window as the changing light altered the colour and shape of the lawn and the trees bordering it. He became like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner:

Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean.

But around February, he realised he needed to snap out of his torpor. He began to make contact with the remnants of his own organisation, scattered around the country like survivors from a shipwreck. He entrusted his man with letters, giving him strict instructions on how he was to post them from the town he visited on his day off, never using the same postbox. The letters would instruct the recipient to call him at a telephone box at a given time, to hang up if he didn’t answer, to never use their own names and certainly not his. He would slip out of the house at dusk, confident he wasn’t being followed, making his way under the cover of the high hedgerows common in those parts to a telephone box at the crossroads of a country lane and a larger road.

That was how he made contact once more with Myrtle Carter, and with Bourne and Ridgeway. It was how he heard about the murder of Arthur Chapman-Collins, who had been one of the few people he could really rely upon. And it was how he found out about Agent Milton, perhaps his greatest success. He was astonished that Edward Palmer was not only alive but still free and active as an agent. He’d half expected to encounter him on a landing at Brixton prison. Instead, he was operating from the heart of the British War Office.

When he found out about Palmer, he realised that he once again had a purpose. All was not lost. That purpose intensified when one morning his man brought him his breakfast tray and on it was an envelope with his name neatly typed on the front. His man explained he’d found it in the porch when he’d come down that morning. It hadn’t been there when he’d locked up the night before.

The Admiral waited until the man left the bedroom before opening the letter.

Somehow Wolfgang had managed to contact him, which was quite remarkable.

He read the letter three or four times, and once he was sure he’d memorised it, he carefully placed it in the fire and watched it disintegrate.

First Palmer, now Wolfgang.

He most certainly had a purpose now.

He was no longer becalmed.

The man hath penance done,

And penance more will do.

Chapter 8

Paris, September 1945

‘Tom said I’m to help.’

The man on the other side of the table was avoiding looking at them, concentrating instead on sawing through his steak. Much to the horror of the waiter, he’d insisted on it being bien cuit, and it seemed as if the chef had taken revenge for this insult to France.

Prince and Hanne glanced at each other, and she raised her eyebrows. Tom Gilbey had assured them Wilson would do all he could to help, but his attitude could at best be described as grudging. They were in a small restaurant on Avenue Carnot, close to the hotel on Avenue de la Grande Armée where Prince and Hanne were staying. It had indeed felt like a honeymoon until now.

‘By the way…’ Wilson was still chewing a piece of steak as he spoke, jabbing his fork in their direction, ‘I presume you’re on expenses?’

Prince said they were, and Wilson said in that case there was a very decent Côtes du Rhône on the wine list, and would they mind terribly if he ordered a bottle?

‘I suspect the Germans shipped the best wines back home,’ he continued, still chewing as he spoke. ‘Hardly a decent bottle to be found in the city, but for some reason they appear to have left the Côtes du Rhône. Odd, eh?’

They agreed it was odd, and Hanne said something about how maybe they’d poisoned them, and Wilson looked unsure if it was a joke. When the bottle arrived, he insisted on pouring: a large glass for himself, a slightly smaller one for Prince and a half-glass at best for Hanne. He looked annoyed when Prince picked up the bottle and topped up their glasses.

‘Is your hotel all right, by the way?’

‘It’s perfect, thank you.’

‘Jolly good – had to pull a few strings to get you a decent room. Tom tells me you need to find someone. Care to tell me more?’ He was using his steak knife to dislodge a piece of meat from between his teeth.

‘I’m not sure how much he told you…’

Wilson was helping himself to another glass of wine, ignoring theirs. Gilbey had told them he could come across as somewhat brusque, but that he’d had a decent war and had managed to get into Paris before the liberation. Since then he’d been based at the British Embassy in rue du