D-Notice by Bill Walker (big ebook reader txt) 📗

Sighing again, Thorley tore open the plain buff envelope and unfolded a single sheet of thick, creamy vellum. The name engraved at the top that brought him up short, as well as the twenty terse words written in a hasty angular script:

Your presence is required in the office of the Director at 54 Broadway Buildings, St. James’s, at precisely 1900 hours, Sir Basil.

Thorley’s pulse quickened, and a lone trickle of sweat began the long slow journey down his spine. He was being asked, no—ordered to appear at the headquarters of MI6, the arm of Britain’s Secret Service responsible for intelligence gathering outside Britain’s borders. And while his work as a translator for the Foreign Office touched upon MI6’s territory, there was no reason for them to be calling him in. Unless, somehow, he’d failed them, botched up a translation. Sometimes one word could change the whole meaning of a sentence, cast a more ominous light on something one would at first think to be an innocent statement. Or, as with troop movements, that one word could mean the difference between knowing the true whereabouts of a certain Panzer division, or where a Luftwaffe squadron was based. The German language could be capricious in that way. Something was wrong and they were probably going to pack him off to the Outer Hebrides, Scapa Flow, or some other godforsaken place where he could do little harm, and less good. The thought of that possibility drove his spirits into the depths of despair, for as much as the work bored him at times, it made him feel vital—needed.

But as quickly as the depression descended on him, it lifted when he realized that a transfer would come in the form of a personal visit by his superior, Sir Basil Ravenhurst, during regular hours. Sir Basil, as fair-minded a man as any he had ever worked for, would take him aside and, with solemn regret, tell him that his services were needed elsewhere. Thorley had seen it happen more than once. And even if that were the case, he could always resign and go back to his old post as a Professor of European Languages at Balliol College. Would that be such a bad thing? And suddenly he knew that it would, for he’d spent far too much time there to go back to the cobwebbed halls of Oxford.

“Sir?”

Thorley tore his eyes from the note and glanced up at the Wren. She had an expectant look on her round unlined face.

He started to speak, to ask her what it was all about, but he swallowed the words, knowing it was useless. Everyone tended his own garden; it was an unwritten and unspoken law every bit as sacred as those debated in the Houses of Parliament. It was the reason Thorley had not asked Roger what station he’d been listening to—it wasn’t cricket, as some would say. Thorley handed back the note.

“Tell Sir Basil I’ll be there,” he said.

“Very good, sir.” The Wren spun around and headed back the way she’d come, the heels of her sensible shoes clacking across the parquet flooring.

It never ends, Thorley thought, taking off his hat. The meeting would convene in exactly one hour, which meant he had no time to go home, and the special dinner Lillian was preparing would now go to waste.

Tramping back up the stairs, he walked into an empty office, picked up the phone, and dialed: BRIxton-1631.

“Hello?”

Her voice caressed his ear like warm velvet, in a way that always made his mouth go dry. This time it only made him feel guilty.

He and Lillian had only been married a year. She’d swept into the room at a Foreign Office party on the arm of a Flight Lieutenant and had abandoned the poor sod the instant their eyes met across that smoke-filled room. Until that singular blinding moment, Thorley had always pooh-poohed the idea of love at first sight, thought it the stuff of Hollywood claptrap. And, yet, one look into Lillian Dudley’s hazel eyes and Thorley was lost.

They’d spent the entire evening together pouring out their life stories: his in sheltered academia, hers spent in orphanages and foster homes, and not even the air raid that drove the party into the basement shelter could stanch the tide of romance. He noted, with no small irony, that it now seemed as if they spent more time apart than together.

“It’s me, love.”

He heard her sharp intake of breath. “Dear God, Michael, where are you? Dinner’s almost on.”

“I’m still here, something’s come up. Sir Basil’s ordered me to a meeting at MI6 in about an hour. Knowing those chaps, it could last quite a while.”

“That sounds serious,” she said, her voice edged with concern.

“It’s always serious. I just wish I’d left thirty seconds earlier. Are you cross with me?”

“No,” she said. “Just disappointed. I wanted this evening to be special.”

“Every evening’s special with you.”

“You always know how to make it all right,” she said.

“And you’re always the trooper.”

“Oh, Michael,” she said, the disappointment in her voice becoming palpable. “Will you at least have a sandwich while you’re out?”

“I will, sweetheart. Got to go. Love you. And sorry about dinner.”

He replaced the phone in its cradle and glanced at the large clock hanging on the far wall. Half past six.

He’d have just enough time to walk it.

Returning to the ground floor, he put on his hat, grabbed his cardboard box and rushed out the door.

Outside, the sun hung just above the spires of Westminster Abbey, that venerable sepulcher of Kings and Queens, sparking off red-gold reflections that dazzled the eye and stirred the soul. Thorley shivered, feeling the cool breeze that blew in off the Thames. It was early August, and yet it still felt as if winter lurked in the