He paused slightly, then ruefully added, “And for mine.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
It was close to midnight. Joe Bristow had been working at his office in the House of Commons since three o’clock that afternoon. He was tired and wanted to go home, to his wife, to his bed. But he could not. Because George Burgess was sitting across from him, drinking his whiskey and talking about airplanes.
Most of London was asleep, but not Sir George. He’d been working late, too, going over facts and figures for a speech he was to deliver at the Commons tomorrow, on the need for the Royal Naval Air Service to be brought under the wing of the Admiralty as part of the Royal Navy’s military branch.
First Churchill and his boats, Joe thought. Now Sir George and his planes. Every day there was some new call for increased military spending, usually fueled by the latest petulant remark, naval acquisition, or military parade put on by the kaiser.
“You simply cannot imagine it, old man,” Burgess said. “The speed and maneuverability are unparalleled. And to be up in the clouds, safely able to see the exact position of an enemy encampment, the number of troops and cannon, well, the implications for reconnaissance are nothing less than staggering, to say nothing of the potential for the deployment of aerial munitions. I’ll take you up myself, Joe. I can witter on about it all day, but you must see a war plane’s capabilities for yourself.”
“I’m going to hold you to it, George,” Joe said. “We can fly right over Hackney. I’ll show you where I plan to build a new school.”
“I shall put it in my calendar,” Burgess said, ignoring the arch note in Joe’s tone. “We’ll go to Eastchurch during the August recess, to the navy’s flying school there. I’ll take you up in a Sopwith and you’ll be convinced. The Service is only in its infancy now,” he added, “and it must grow up quickly. It has only forty airplanes, fifty seaplanes, and a hundred or so pilots, and it must be enlarged. We’re being left behind. The Italians, the Greeks and Bulgarians, even the Americans are miles ahead of us with the development of combat planes, and—”
Burgess’s words were interrupted by a battering on Joe’s door.
“Does no one in this city sleep anymore?” Joe said. “Come in!” he bellowed.
“Sir George? Thank goodness I’ve found you. Hello, Mr. Bristow.” It was Albie Alden, breathless and disheveled. He’d clearly been running.
“What is it, man?” Burgess asked.
Albie struggled to catch his breath. “We’ve had a bit of bother at the SSB,” he said, glancing at Joe uncertainly.
“Speak plainly,” Burgess said impatiently. “This man’s as loyal to his country as the king.”
“Two German spies were nearly apprehended tonight.”
“Nearly? What do you mean by nearly?”
“Sit down, Albie,” Joe said, pouring another glass of whiskey and pushing it across his desk.
Albie took the empty chair next to Burgess. He knocked the drink back in one gulp, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then continued speaking.
“Four days ago, our code work, plus intelligence from a paid informant, revealed that a man named Bauer—Johann Bauer—has been working at Fairfields.”
Burgess, who’d been shaking his head as Albie spoke, suddenly swore. Joe knew why. Fairfields was a shipyard in Scotland. On the River Clyde. They built ships for the Royal Navy.
“Johann Bauer?” Burgess thundered. “That name’s as German as sauerkraut! How the hell did a man with a name like Johann Bauer get work on the Clyde?”
“By changing it to John Bowman,” Albie said. “He had all the documents. A forged birth certificate from an Edinburgh hospital. School leaving papers. A reference from an iron monger’s. Nobody suspected a thing.”
“But his voice,” Burgess said. “His voice would have given him away.”
Albie shook his head. “His accent’s impeccable. Was impeccable.”
“What happened?” Joe asked, pouring Albie another drink.
“As I said, we were on to Bauer, but we didn’t move right away. We wanted to watch him for a few days first, to see if he might lead us to anyone else. I think he figured out we were on to him, though, because he suddenly left Govan last night and took a train to London. He was followed, of course. By one of our men from the SSB. When he got off the train, he traveled to East London, to a pub called the Blind Beggar.”
“I know that pub. It’s in Whitechapel,” Joe said.
Albie nodded. “Bauer met another man there, Ernst Hoffman—he goes by the name of Sam Hutchins. They ate supper together, then left the pub and walked to Duffin’s, a boardinghouse. Our man slipped in after them and watched them go upstairs to one of the rooms—a room we later found out had been let to a man called Peter Stiles. That’s when our man—Hammond’s his name—decided he had to act. He went to the police to get help, then he and five constables moved in. Hammond banged on the door to the room where Bauer and Hoffman were. A man answered. He yelled ‘Who’s there?’ and when Hammond said it was the police, he said he’d be right there, he just had to put his trousers on.”
Albie took a swallow of his drink, then continued. “Immediately after that, two gunshots were heard. The constables broke the door down, but it was too late. When they got inside the room, they found Bauer and Hoffman dead on the floor and the dormer window wide open. The third man—Stiles—apparently shot both of them in the head, then climbed out of the window to the roof and escaped. Hammond immediately went to the fireplace. Papers were burning in it. Stiles must’ve been worried that he might be caught and didn’t want to be caught with the papers on him. Hammond managed to pull a few of them out before they were completely burned.”
“What were they?” Burgess asked, his voice somber.
“Blueprints.”
“Not the Valiant,” Burgess said.
“I’m afraid so,” Albie said.
Burgess picked up his own whiskey glass. For a few seconds, Joe thought he would fling it across the room, but he restrained himself.
“What’s the Valiant?” Joe asked.
“Our best hope,” Burgess replied. “A new and very advanced class of warship.”
“One of the dreadnoughts?” Joe asked.
“A super-dreadnought. Only four are being made, and they’re supposed to outdo anything the Germans have come up with.”
“We must look on the positive side,” Albie said.
“I didn’t realize there was one,” Burgess shot back.
“Two enemy spies are dead. Their plans to pass the blueprints to Berlin have failed.”
“We were lucky this time, damned lucky,” Burgess said. “The next time we might not be.” He stood up and started pacing the room. “We have to find the other man—Stiles. He’s the spymaster. I know it. I feel it in my bones.”
“We are working on it, sir. We’ve gone through the contents of the room, and we’re questioning the Duffin’s landlady, and each one of her tenants, trying to get descriptions of Stiles—his habits, his movements, everything we possibly can.”
“Good man,” Burgess said.
“Can you get him?” Joe asked, alarmed at the thought of this vicious man at large in East London.
Burgess didn’t reply at first. Big Ben’s chimes, loud and somber, were sounding the hour—midnight.
When the last echoing tone finally faded away, he spoke. “Oh, we’ll get him, the wily bird,” he said, his voice hard. “We shall stalk him, carefully and patiently. We shall flush him out, and when he tries to fly back to Berlin … bang! We shall send a bullet straight through his black and treacherous heart.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Seamie Finnegan, standing wide-eyed in the foyer of 18 Bedford Square, a tall Georgian town house, turned to his friend, Albie.
“Does one have to be exotic and stylish to be here?” he asked him, watching a young man with kohl-rimmed eyes swan by, all perfume and silk scarves.
“No, or we wouldn’t be here,” Albie said.
“You just have to know the hostess, Lady Lucinda Allington.”
“And how, exactly, does a nearsighted swot like yourself know such people?” Seamie asked, smiling awkwardly as a girl with short hair, rouged lips, and a cigarette in a holder blew smoke rings at him and giggled.
“I was at Cambridge with Lulu’s brother Charles. He died some years ago now, poor bastard. Typhoid. It was a terrible blow to the family. I’ve remained friends with his sister. Come on, let’s see if we can find her.”
Seamie and Albie hung their coats and set off in search of their hostess. They wound their way through the high-ceilinged rooms of the house, each painted a shockingly bold hue—peacock blue, crimson, chartreuse—past all sorts of equally colorful people talking, drinking, or dancing to the songs played on a gramophone. Albie pointed out various painters, musicians, and actors, telling Seamie that if he didn’t know who they were, he should. They found their hostess—Lulu—in the dining room, having her palm read by a stunning Russian ballet dancer named Nijinksy. He was wearing a silk turban, a fur-trimmed jacket, and red silk trousers tucked inside brown suede boots.
Lulu was slender, with a swan’s neck, red hair, and hazel eyes. Her voice was deep and dramatic, her face intelligent and lively.
“Albie Alden,” she said, taking Albie’s hand with her free one. “Why on earth are you here?”
“Lovely to see you, too, Lu,” Albie said, bending to kiss her cheek.
“Why aren’t you at your sister’s lecture?” she asked. “Everyone I know is there. Virginia and Leonard, Lytton, Carrington …”
“Everyone?” Albie asked. “What are all of these people doing here, then?”
Lulu looked around the room. “Oh, these,” she said. “They’re not people. They’re actors, most of them. Or dancers. They’ve all just come off one stage or another and are looking to cadge as much free champagne as they possibly can. But you … why aren’t you at the RGS?”
“Have I introduced my friend, Seamus Finnegan?” Albie said.
“Finnegan? The explorer? I’m quite honored to meet you,” Lulu said to Seamie. “Though I would have thought that you would be at the RGS, too. Aren’t you interested in Everest? Having been to the South Pole, I should think that—”
Albie took Lulu’s hand from the palm-reading dancer. “I say, old boy, what have you got there? Ah! Her tact line. Damned short, isn’t it?”
Lulu looked from Albie to Seamie. “Oh, dear. Am I being tedious? Is Willa not a good topic?”
Albie smiled ruefully. “Most people would have figured out by my reticence on the subject and by my Herculean efforts to change it that no, she is not.”
“I’m sorry. I had no idea. I’ll make it up to you by telling you where I’ve stashed the champagne.” She lowered her voice. “It’s in the oven.”
Albie thanked her and started to move off. “I’ll want to know why!” she called after them. “You’ll have to tell me everything.” Then she turned back to the handsome dancer. “Now, Vaslav,” she said. “Tell me if I’ve got a chance with that delicious Tom Lawrence.”
Seamie followed Albie into the kitchen. A beautiful and bored woman was sitting on the kitchen table, smoking, as a man spouted poetry to her. Across the room, a wiry young man was balancing a plate on top of a wooden spoon, the end of which was positioned on his chin, while he stood on one leg. A group was egging him on in Russian.
Seamie was glad they’d got away from Lulu and her talk of Willa. He had resolved to put Willa out of his mind the day of her father’s funeral, and he was doing his best to stick to that resolution. He thought now, as Albie opened the oven door, took out a bottle of Bolly, and poured two glasses, that maybe he shouldn’t have come to this party at all. Maybe he should have just stayed home. It had been a last-minute decision. Albie had dropped by to visit with the Finnegans at their new flat. He said he’d been going mad cooped up at his mother’s house.
“Where’s Jennie?” he’d asked, after Seamie ushered him into the living room and started to open a bottle of wine.
“She’s gone to the country. To her cottage in the Cotswolds,” Seamie said. “Felt in need of a bit of quiet.”
“The baby tiring her?” Albie asked.
“Yes,” Seamie said.
“Why didn’t you go with her?”
“She wanted to go for the week.”
“So?”
“So I’ve work. At the RGS.”
“Oh, yes. Forgot about that. You’ve become an upstanding and respectable member of society, haven’t you?”
Snorting, Seamie chucked the wine cork at him. Work had kept him from going to Binsey, but the truth was, there was another reason he hadn’t gone, one that he did not share with Albie: He’d sensed that Jennie had not wanted him to.
“Seamie, darling,” she’d said to him two days ago, “I hope you don’t mind, but I won’t be able to attend Miss Alden’s presentation at the RGS with you. I’m feeling a bit weary, and I thought I might go to Binsey for a few days. To my mother’s cottage. For a bit of a rest.”
“Are you not well?” Seamie had asked her, immediately worried.
“I’m fine. Just tired. It’s completely normal. Harriet says so.”
“I’ll come with you,” he said. “We’ll go at the weekend. I’ve never seen the cottage and I’d like to. Besides, you shouldn’t make the trip alone.”
“You are so sweet to me,” she said, smiling, but her voice had a slight edge of something in it—anxiousness? nervousness? He wasn’t quite sure. “I think that’s a lovely idea, of course I do, but I don’t want to drag you all the way there just so you can watch me nap. It’s a beautiful place, but it is rather dull. I don’t plan on doing much while I’m there. Just a bit of reading, I should think. I’ll also catch up on some correspondence, and perhaps I’ll arrange for a man to come and look at the roof. The last time I went, I noticed some shingles were missing.”
Seamie didn’t know much about pregnant women, but he knew they could be moody and odd, prone to frets and tears. Maybe Jennie needed a break from noisy London, he thought, from all the demands of her life: checking in on her father, supervising the new teacher she’d hired to take over her duties at the school, attending suffrage meetings. Maybe she needed a break from him but did not know how to tell him—a break from running their home and cooking his meals and attending an endless number of RGS dinners.
“Of course,” he’d said, not wanting to press her any further. “You must do what you think best, but you must write to me. Every day. So that I know you’re safe and well.”
She kissed him and said of course she’d write and that she would miss him terribly. He’d put her on the train just this morning at Paddington Station and promised to pick her up again next Saturday evening.
“Well, since you’re a bachelor again, let’s go live it up,” Albie had said later. “We can head to a pub—there must be something decent around here—and then a party. Some friends of mine who live on Bedford Square are having a do.”
“Live it up, Alb? Since when do you live it up?” Seamie asked him.
“Every single day of my life,” Albie said, looking at him over the top of his glasses.
Seamie laughed. “Really? And since when do you like parties?”
“I love parties. Quantum physics is one big endless party,” Albie said.
They’d finished their drinks, gone to a pub for a few more, then made their way to Bedford Square. Seamie noticed that no matter how much he might be joking, or talking about parties, Albie looked weary, yet again. Seamie had told him so and asked him if there was anything wrong.
“The funeral … work … it’s all got to me,” Albie replied. “I shall take a holiday at Easter. Go to Bath or some such place and restore myself, but for now, I must rely on Theakston’s Bitter, and old friends, to do the job.”
Seamie had nodded, but had been unconvinced. He knew that the death of a parent, combined with a heavy workload, would be enough to exhaust anyone, but
deep down, he still felt there was more to Albie’s ever-present air of nervous strain than his old friend was letting on. Perhaps it’s Willa, he thought, and Albie—considerate fellow that he is—isn’t mentioning her out of tact. He knew that Willa and Albie were both staying at their mother’s house. Perhaps they still weren’t getting on. Seamie thought about pressing Albie on it, but he didn’t wish to speak of Willa either, so he decided against it.
“Shall we mingle?” Albie asked him now, glancing about the room.
“After you,” Seamie said, sweeping his hand before him, still wondering at his friend’s newfound sociability.
As they moved through the various rooms of the house, Seamie met a writer named Virginia Stephen, her sister Vanessa Bell, who was a painter, and Vanessa’s husband Clive, a critic. He met the poet Rupert Brooke, bumped into Tom Lawrence, who’d come from the RGS, and whom he was glad to see again, then chatted with an economist named John Maynard Keynes.
Albie had explained to him, on the way over, that Lulu was at the center of a colorful coterie of artists and intellectuals called the Bloomsbury Group. “It’s a very forward-thinking bunch,” Albie had said. “Not terribly mindful of proprieties, morals, or much of anything else, as far as I can see.”
Seamie enjoyed meeting these people, enjoyed their dramatic clothes and gestures, but for some reason, when they found out who he was and what he’d done, the talk always turned to Willa and the RGS lecture. Time and time again, he’d found himself explaining that no, he had not gone to hear it, but he was certain it must’ve been fascinating.
An hour had passed this way when Seamie decided he could take no more. He decided to find Albie—who’d earlier said he was going to make the acquaintance of two painters he’d heard about, young Germans visiting from Munich—and let him know he was leaving. The only problem was, he couldn’t find him anywhere. It was getting on; the party had become loud and crowded. More people were arriving by the minute, making it difficult to move through the rooms.