Apart from Romer and Eva the other four members of Romer's 'team' were Morris Devereux – Romer's number two – an elegant and suave ex-Cambridge don; Angus Woolf, a former Fleet Street journalist who was severely crippled by some congenital deformation of his spine; Sylvia Rhys-Meyer – Eva's flatmate – a lively woman in her late thirties, married and divorced three times and an ex-Foreign Office linguist and translator; and Alfie Blytheswood – who had nothing to do with the material that came out of the agency but was responsible for the maintenance and smooth running of the powerful transmitters and the occasional wireless encryptions. This was AAS in its entirety, Eva came to realise, very quickly: Romer's team was small and tight-knit – apart from her everyone seemed to have been working for him for several years, Morris Devereux even longer.
Eva hung her coat and hat on her usual hook and made for her desk. Sylvia was still there, flicking through yesterday's Swedish newspapers. The ashtray in front of her was brimful of cigarette butts.
'Busy night?'
Sylvia arched her back and eased her shoulders to simulate fatigue. She looked like a stout, no-nonsense county wife, the wife of the local GP or a gentleman farmer, bosomy and broad-hipped, who wore well-cut suits and expensive accessories – except that everything else about Sylvia Rhys-Meyer contradicted that initial assessment.
'Fucking boring, fucking dull boring, boring dull fucking, dull fucking boring,' she said, standing up to allow Eva to take her seat.
'Oh, yes,' Sylvia added. 'Your dead-sailors piece has been picked up all over the place.' She opened and pointed to a page in the
Svenska Dagbladet.
'And it's in
The Times
and in
Le Monde.
Congratulations. His nibs will be very pleased.'
Eva looked at the Swedish text, recognising certain words. It was a story she had suggested at conference a few days before: the idea of twenty Icelandic sailors washed up in a remote Norwegian fjord, alleging that their fishing boat had sailed into heavily mined waters off the port of Narvik. Eva knew at once that it was the sort of story Romer loved. It had already provoked an official denial by the British War Office (Norwegian territorial waters had not been mined by British ships) – more to the point, as Romer would say, it was loose intelligence: a fishing boat sunk by a mine – where? – and it was information useful to the enemy. Any further denials would be either disbelieved or be too late – the news was out there in the world doing its dirty work. German intelligence officials monitoring the world's media would note the alleged presence of mines off the Norwegian coast. This would be conveyed to the navy; maps would be taken out, amended, altered. It was, in essence, the ideal illustration of how Romer's unit and A.I. Nadal was meant to work. Information wasn't neutral, Romer constantly repeated: if it was believed or even half believed, then everything began subtly to change as a result – the ripple effect could have consequences no one could foresee. Eva had had previous small successes during the four months she'd been in Ostend – news of imaginary bridges being planned for, of Dutch flood defences reinforced, of trains being re-routed in northern France because of new military manoeuvres – but this was the first time the international press had picked up one of her stories. Romer's idea, like all good ideas, was very simple: false information can be just as useful, influential, as telling, transforming or as damaging as true information. In a world where A.I. Nadal fed 137 news outlets, twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, how could you tell what was genuine and what was the product of a clever, devious and determined mind?
Eva took her seat, still warm from Sylvia's generous buttocks, and pulled a pile of Russian and French newspapers towards her. She assumed that someone high up in the British Secret Service had seen the merit in Romer's idea and that this explained the strange autonomy he seemed to possess. It was the British taxpayer, she surmised, who had bought the Agence d'Information Nadal (and thereby ensured Pierre-Henri Nadal a very comfortable retirement) and was now funding its development as part of its Political Warfare department. Romer and his 'unit' were involved in feeding careful and clever false information out into the world – through the bona-fide medium of a small Belgian press agency – and nobody really knew what the effect might be. No one could tell if the German high command was taking note, but the unit always counted it a success if their stories were picked up (and paid for) by other newspapers and radio stations. However, Romer seemed to want the stories they sent out to conform to some kind of plan to which only he had the key. In conference, he would sometimes demand stories about rumours of potential resignations of this or that minister, or scandals undermining this or that government; or he would say, suddenly: we need something on Spanish neutrality; or else call immediately for statistics about the increase in sheet-metal production in French foundries. The lies had to be constructed with all the scrupulousness of truth. Instant plausibility was the key concern – and the team laboured to supply it. But it was all somewhat vague and all – to tell the truth as Eva saw it – something of a parlour game. They never knew the consequences of their clever little fibs: it was as if the individual members of the unit were players in an orchestra, sequestered in soundproof rooms – only Romer was able to make out the harmonies of the tune they were playing.
Sylvia came back to the desk, her coat on and a smart felt hat with a feather jammed on her head.
'Supper in tonight?' she said. 'Let's have steak and red wine.'
"Fraid not,' a man's voice said.
They both turned to see Morris Devereux standing there. He was a lean, acerbic, sharp-featured young man with prematurely grey hair which he brushed sleekly back from his brow without a parting. He took care over his clothes: today he was wearing a dark navy suit and an azure bow tie. Some days he wore brilliant scarlet shirts.
'We're off to Brussels,' he said to Eva. 'Press conference, foreign ministry.'
'What about this lot?' Eva said pointing to her pile of newspapers.
'You can relax,' Morris said. 'Your dead sailors have been picked up by Associated Press. Nice cheque for us and you'll be all over America tomorrow.'
Sylvia grunted, said goodbye and left. Morris fetched Eva's coat and hat.
'We have our master's motor,' he said. 'He's been summoned to London. I think a rather nice luncheon is on the cards.'
They drove to Brussels, passing swiftly through Bruges with no delay but at Ghent they were obliged to detour on to minor roads to Audenarde as their way was blocked by a convoy of military vehicles, lorries filled with soldiers and small tanks on low-loaders and, strangely, what seemed to be an entire division of cavalry, horses and riders milling about the road and its verges for all the world as if preparing to advance on a nineteenth-century battlefield.
In Brussels they parked near the Gare du Nord and, as they were late for lunch, they took a taxi direct to the restaurant Morris had already booked, the Filet de Boeuf in the rue Grétry. The press conference was at the
hôtel de ville
at 3.30. They had plenty of time, Morris thought, though perhaps they should pass on dessert.
They were shown to their table and ordered an aperitif as they scanned the menus. Eva looked about her at the other clients: the businessmen, the lawyers, the politicians, she supposed – eating, smoking, drinking, talking – and at the elderly waiters bustling importantly to and fro with the orders and she realised she was the only woman in the room. It was a Wednesday: perhaps Belgian women didn't go out to eat until the weekend, she suggested to Morris – who was summoning the sommelier.
'Who knows? But your refulgent femininity more than compensates for the preponderance of males, my dear.'
She ordered museau de porc and turbot.
'It's very strange, this war,' she said. 'I keep having to remind myself it's going on.'
'Ah, but we're in a neutral country,' Morris said. 'Don't forget.'
'What's Romer doing in London?'
'Ours not to reason why. Probably talking to Mr X.'
'Who's Mr X?'
'Mr X is Romer's… what? Romer's Cardinal Richelieu. A very powerful man who allows Lucas Romer to do pretty much what he wants.'
Eva looked at Morris as he cut his foie gras into neat little squares.
'Why isn't the Agence in Brussels?' she asked. 'Why are we in Ostend?'
'So it'll be easier for us to flee when the Germans invade.'
'Oh yes? And when will that be?'
'Spring of next year, according to our boss. He doesn't want to be trapped in Brussels.'
Their main courses arrived and a bottle of claret. Eva watched Morris do the whole sniffing, glass held to the light, wine rolled around the mouth performance with aplomb.
'We'd eat and drink better in Brussels,' Eva said. 'Anyway, why am I on this trip? You're the Belgian expert.'
'Romer insisted. You do have your identification with you, I hope.'
She assured him she had and they ate on, chatting about their colleagues and the deficiencies and disadvantages of life in Ostend, but Eva found herself wondering as they talked, and not for the first time, about what tiny part she was playing in an invisible grander plan that only Romer really understood. Her recruitment, her training, her posting all seemed to betoken some form of logical progression – but she could not discern where it was leading. She could not see the Eva Delectorskaya cog in the big machine – she could not even see the big machine, she realised. Ours not to reason why, Morris had said, and she ruefully conceded that he was right, as she carved off a square inch of turbot and popped it in her mouth – delicious. It was a pleasure to be in Brussels, away from her French and Russian newspapers, lunching with a cultured and amusing young man – don't rock the boat looking for answers; don't make waves.
The press conference was held by a junior minister and was designed to outline the Belgian government's position with regard to Russia 's recent invasion of Finland. Eva's name and details were taken at the door and she and Morris joined about forty other journalists and listened to the junior minister's speech for a minute or two before her mind began to wander. She found herself thinking of her father, whom she had last seen in Paris in August for a few days while she was on leave and before she moved to Ostend. He had looked much frailer, thinner, the wattles under his chin more pronounced and she noticed also how both his hands trembled in repose. The most disturbing tic was his constant licking of his lips. She asked him if he was thirsty and he said, no, not at all, why? She wondered if it were a side-effect of the drugs he had been given to stimulate his heart but she could not lie to herself any more: her father had embarked on a slow form of terminal decline – doughty old age was behind him, now he was entering the final fraught struggle of his time on earth. She thought he had aged ten years in the few months she had been away.
Irene was cool and incurious about her new life in England and said, when Eva asked about her father's health, that he was doing very nicely, thank you, all the doctors were very pleased. When her father asked her about her job she said she was working in 'signals' and that she was now an expert in Morse code. 'Who would have thought it?' he exclaimed, something of his old vigour returning for a moment or two, putting his trembling hand on her arm and adding, in a low voice so Irene couldn't hear, 'You did the right thing, my dear. Good girl.'
Morris tapped on her elbow, jerking her out of her reverie, and passed her a piece of paper. It was a question in French. She looked at it incomprehensibly.
'Romer wants you to ask it,' Morris said.
'Why?'
'I think it's meant to confer respectability on us.'
Therefore, when the junior minister had finished his speech and the moderator of the press conference asked for questions, Eva allowed four or five to take place before she raised her hand. She was spotted, pointed at –
' La Mademoiselle, là -
and stood up.
'Eve Dalton,' she said, 'Agence d'Information Nadal.' She saw the moderator write her name in a ledger in front of him and then, at his nod, she asked her question – she had no real idea of its import – something to do with a minority party in parliament, the Vlaams Nationaal Verbond, and their policy of '
La neutralité rigoureuse'.
It caused some consternation: the junior minister's reply was brusque and dismissive but she noticed another half-dozen hands being raised for follow-up questions. She sat down and Morris gave her a covert smile of congratulation. After five more minutes he signalled that they should leave and they crept out, leaving by a side entrance and crossing the Grand Place at a half-run through an angled, spitting rain towards a café. They sat indoors and smoked a cigarette and drank tea, looking out through the windows at the ornate cliff faces of the buildings round the massive square, their sense of absolute confidence and prosperity still ringing out across the centuries. The rain was growing heavier and the flower sellers were packing up their stalls when they caught a taxi to the station and then drove back steadily and without delays or diversions towards Ostend.
There were no military convoys on the road at Ghent and they made good time, reaching Ostend by seven o'clock in the evening. On the journey back they talked casually but guardedly – as did all Romer's employees, Eva now realised. There was a sense of solidarity that they shared, of being in a small elite team – that was undeniable – but it was really only a veneer: no one was ever truly open or candid; they tried to restrict their conversation to frivolous observations, bland generalities – specific times and places in their past, pre-Romer lives were never identified.
Morris said to her: 'Your French is excellent. First class.'
And Eva said: 'Yes, I lived in Paris for a while.'