World War Two Will Not Take Place (11 page)

But the training would undoubtedly say ‘bail out and bail out NOW' for this kind of situation. It was one of those ‘greater good' moments. Here, that would clearly mean safeguarding the Berlin operation's secrecy and effectiveness. This put considerations for the welfare, even the life, of an agent like Toulmin, more or less nowhere. In any secret project there might come a crisis where someone, or more than one, was dispensable. Meticulously, unemotionally, anti-emotionally, the training had spent three days carefully itemizing emergencies where flinging a former mate and informant into the acid bath would be not only OK, but a bit of a triumph. Compensation for the family should be properly seen to, of course.

Still standing in the centre of the room, Mount went on trying to get his thoughts in order. Why would they bring Toulmin back here, if that's what they were at? Perhaps they wanted something from one of the rooms, something he could point them to. The papers? As Mount had suspected, maybe there had been no search of thirty-seven. Had they caught Toulmin trying to escape? Hence the suitcases and the poor state of the apartment, left in a rush. Had he sensed, or even been tipped off, that they meant to move against him? Toulmin might not be the only whisperer in government employ, nor the only active anti-Hitlerite. For instance, SB had a Most Secret dossier on two brothers called Kordt, well up in the state hierarchy, yet possibly plotting against the regime and Adolf. One of those or someone like them might have got a word out to Toulmin, the word being: ‘Vanish!' Wherever the warning originated, did Toulmin make a run at once? And had they anticipated he would and snared him at the airport or railway station?

The papers, again. He hadn't looked at them properly. Might there be something that would incriminate Toulmin? Could they lead to Mount? Should he sweep them all up, jam them into his pockets like the chair receipt, and disappear while he had time? But was this another symptom of his college-boy obsession with ink and papers? Possibly it came from even further back – those regular espionage tales in the lads' magazines,
Hotspur
and
Skipper
, about the theft of what were always called ‘vital secret documents', threatening the safety of the realm. And then there was Richard Hannay's search for the crucial notebook in Buchan's
The Thirty-Nine Steps
. Fiction. And fiction putting a strain on credibility. Would an agent in continuous danger like Toulmin write sensitive stuff down and leave it around on a sideboard? Was he a suicidal idiot? Forget the papers. Try another tack.

Suppose Mount didn't, in fact, give in to wise, standard-issue funk – took no undeniably prudent flit. Instead, if he went to meet them in the corridor now, or on the stairs, would Toulmin be able to indicate somehow whether he was OK – a sly wink, a fleeting half-grin, a frown? After all, they would probably encounter other people in the apartment block as they made for thirty-seven. Mount could be simply a resident, entitled to some formal greeting, as far as those two were concerned. Naturally, Mount wouldn't speak or show special recognition, and neither should Toulmin. But he'd realize he was not forsaken. Foreigners sometimes referred to Britain as ‘perfidious Albion', meaning faithless. He wondered whether he could prove this false, at least about the Mount subdivision of Albion. Honour still had a place, hadn't it? There'd been no time spent on honour in training, though.

True, the men with Toulmin might be especially alert. To locate and lure any of his contacts could be one reason they'd returned to thirty-seven. Everyone around the place would be regarded as a possible secret pal of Toulmin, his brother spy. And, of course, if those two forced a conversation – didn't allow the encounter to stay silent, as Mount planned – they would at once know him to be British. His German was good, but admittedly not mistakable for German German: Wellington school had insisted he take a ‘living language', as well as the classics, and there'd been an excellent German crash course in the Section. But, although the Berlin assignment would help him improve fast, he knew he came nowhere near bilingual yet.

In any case, what if Toulmin somehow signalled he was
not
OK, deeply
un
OK? Mount wouldn't be able to do much about it, except grieve: those two probably armed, and he with just twirls and a torch and some unarmed combat skills. So, then, do a bunk while doing a bunk remained possible? Mount carefully piled up these reasons to justify his own quick flight now – and felt sickened by them. Could he really abandon Toulmin? This was an agent who had taken huge risks for Mount, and, if for Mount, for SB, for the Section, for GB, for the empire. Reward? Write him off. Disgusting. Yes, that ‘greater good' gloss was merely ‘the end justifies the means' in poor disguise: chuck morality and loyalty for the sake of some possible, undefined advantage. Stephen Bilson might say he believed in the greater good, but Mount would bet that if he and SB's special agent in Berlin, Ahasuerus Fromanteel, so-called, were in this kind of situation, SB would not abandon him. Although Mount had no gun, a sudden physical corridor attack on those two by him – the surprise of it, the shock of it – might enable Toulmin to bolt, and perhaps Mount could somehow hinder, obstruct, any pursuit, or handgun volleys, from those two attendants.

He hung on in the apartment as if semi-paralysed, while trying to deal with these doubts, then decided in a spasm that they were sentimental, goofy and – worst of all – defeatist. When he joined the Service he deliberately picked a career where the greater good was the
only
good, if things went rough. It would be paltry to rat on that now. He had just proposed to himself two ridiculously probable killings in a corridor of this
Splanemann
-
Siedlung
development – Toulmin's and his own. They'd be inexplicable back in London;
kaput
for the operation. SB would be stunned, not just by the absurd, wanton deaths, but because Mount had flouted the most basic of rules and gone to Toulmin's home, endangering Toulmin and himself,
fatally
endangering Toulmin and himself, and blazoning the Section's stealthy purpose and preposterous incompetence. No, it mustn't be like that.

Pieties and quaint honour duly strangled, Mount edged to the side of the window again. The three men were not in sight outside now. They must have entered the building and be on their way upstairs. Get out, get out, before they reached the third floor corridor. NOW. He left thirty-seven and turned towards the other end of the building. In his saunterings earlier he had seen a secondary set of stairs and an entrance there. To residents he passed in the corridor and on one of the landings he gave a small but bonny smile and nod: tokens of solid,
Splanemann
-
Siedlung
, communal feeling.

Surrounding the apartment block was a stretch of public space, part grassed and with some trees. He got behind a holly tree and watched the windows of thirty-seven. From here he could see virtually the whole frontage of the block. After a few minutes, lights came on in the apartment. Then Toulmin appeared and drew the curtains of the living room. It was unmistakably Toulmin and, in any case, this association with the apartment decided identity. To Mount, he looked relaxed and still thoroughly undamaged. He seemed to have a lit cigarette sticking up between the fingers of his right hand, away from the curtain material. His head and face were half turned back into the room. He might be chatting to people behind him. He pulled at the curtains with what looked like a sort of leisurely satisfaction, as though delighted to be back in the cosiness of his own place, shitheap or not. A faint line of light was visible above the living-room drawn curtains.

Mount stayed on behind the holly. More or less automatically he'd done a description in his head of the two men with Toulmin, and he memorized it: a tic from training, a ritual, but the men might matter. He went over these impressions now. He'd judge both to be less than thirty and physically powerful and fit, though not in the loose-limbed way male ballet dancers might be powerful and fit. The one to Toulmin's right was about 5′ 10″, wide-shouldered, wide-chested, dark hair cut close. He wore a long trench coat, no hat. What Mount took to be a small cigar had glowed between his lips. The other man would be four or five inches taller; leaner, but not gangling. His hair appeared dark, also, though Mount couldn't make out much of it because he had on a cheese-cutter cap. His overcoat was navy or black and looked like good material, very well cut. He wore the hat slightly to one side – a sort of attempted raciness. It was this taller man who, like Toulmin, carried a suitcase. Mount could make out nothing much of the faces.

After about ten minutes Mount saw these two leave the apartment block. The man with the cap no longer carried a suitcase. Mount felt bludgeoned by choices again. He could follow them and try to discover who they were, where they came from. But he had never been good at tailing, nor at counter-tailing, come to that. ‘Too self-centred,' they'd said at training. The two men might have a car, though, parked somewhere away from notice. He couldn't track that. It would be much simpler, easier and quicker to get Toulmin to tell him about them. But this supposed it to be Toulmin in there, alive, and still working for Mount, and, if for Mount, for SB, for the Section, for GB and the empire.

Yes, instead of gumshoeing, Mount might go back to thirty-seven and ask Toulmin what had happened, suppose (1) Toulmin could be asked; (2) Toulmin wanted to answer; and (3) wanted to answer with the truth. Or, Mount could put an end to this evening's business, go home, and wait there to see if Toulmin called in. If not, Mount should get down to the Wilhelmstrasse tomorrow and perhaps the next day, hoping Toulmin would soon be back at work and interceptable.

To Mount, only the return to thirty-seven now, tonight, seemed right. All the alternatives looked like postponements and evasions;
would
be postponements and evasions. He went back up to the third floor on the stairs he had just come down and was about to use the skeleton key on Toulmin's lock when a middle aged couple came out from apartment thirty-nine, next door, perhaps on their way to a restaurant or to visit friends. They might know Toulmin, at least by sight. Perhaps they'd find it odd – worse than odd – to see a stranger able to open the door. They might suspect a burglary and call the police. Mount kept the key hidden in his hand and knocked gently with his knuckles, like a visitor. Toulmin did not respond. The couple paused behind Mount. ‘We think he was certainly there a little while ago,' the man said. ‘We heard sounds. Perhaps with company. Voices.'

Did Clifford have it right and some of the
plattenbauten
had slewed, letting noise through?

‘Men's voices,' the woman said.

‘He has been away, but we believe he came back,' the man said.

‘Perhaps he is asleep after a journey,' the woman said. ‘But if your business is important and you don't mind waking him, it might be necessary to knock harder on the door.' She came forward and formed fists, then gave the door a patterned beating with them. ‘
Mein herr!
' she yelled. ‘Here is someone to see you.' She turned to Mount. ‘I do not know his name. He is very solitary here.' The man also knocked on the door: heavier blows, and less frequent.

The woman from thirty-four opposite came out into the corridor to complain that the din had woken her baby. Mount could hear it screaming. The door to thirty-seven remained shut. ‘I wanted to see some other apartments,' Mount explained to her. ‘Certainly yours was very impressive, but I need additional information.'

‘These apartments are famous,' the man said.

‘Indeed, yes,' Mount replied.

‘It is what is known as a settlement,' the older woman said. She continued to hammer the door, but in a slower series of blows now.

‘He knows about it. He was here with many others this morning, examining,' the woman from thirty-four said.

‘I thought I'd do some random calls, to extend my familiarity with the . . . the settlement,' Mount said.

‘We are very satisfied with number thirty-nine,' the man said.

‘We are proud to be in the vanguard of this type of accommodation,' the older woman said.

The thirty-four woman went back into her apartment to calm the child.

‘I'll try an apartment on one of the other floors, I think,' Mount said.

‘You could have come to look at ours,' the man said, ‘but we have an appointment elsewhere.'

‘I think you must be English,' the woman said. ‘You speak German, and understand it, very well, but I think English.'

‘Are the English interested in this settlement?' the man asked. ‘Many countries admire it. Although there is not always full friendliness these days between Germany and England, certain civic problems, such as accommodation, are the same, and we can help each other.'

‘Why I'm here,' Mount said.

‘Cooperation,' the man replied.

‘Vital,' Mount said.

‘In a social sense,' the man said.

‘In many matters,' the woman said.

‘Civilized,' the man said.

‘Certainly,' Mount said.

‘Doesn't life have to continue, despite political troubles?' the man said.

‘I agree,' Mount said.

‘Mutual help,' the man said.

‘Not to be denied,' Mount said.

‘For instance, didn't the Führer kindly attend the wedding of your Diana Mitford and Oswald Mosley, held in Josef Goebbel's own house because some English did not like Oswald Mosley?' the woman said.

‘A happy international gesture,' the man said.

‘If you wish, you may call on us in the morning, and we would be glad to show you thirty-nine,' the woman said. ‘Certain special features.'