Pantheon

Chapter Forty

James spent the first minutes of the train journey staring into the dark, thinking of Harry and Florence. He could see nothing outside as the train headed into what he imagined to be vast acres of American farmland, empty and endless. Instead he saw Harry’s face, his wide eyes looking into his father’s, asking him where he had been, and why he had not come for him when he had the chance.

Alone in that rattling carriage, James tried to formulate an answer. He imagined himself perching his son on his knee, explaining how there were moments in life when you had to do things you did not want to do. How sometimes your own needs, your own desperate hunger to see the two people you love most in the world, had to come second because of an even greater need. He heard himself saying these words to his son; and then he heard his son’s husky voice answer him back with a single word, repeated over and over again: why?

James closed his eyes and pictured Hope Farm. As the train clattered over the tracks at a pedestrian nocturnal speed, he saw it in bright summer sunlight, a place of white fences and orchards teeming with shiny apples, of yellows and ambers and the golden colours of American plenty. And the next moment in sharp contrast he imagined Harry and Florence huddled together on two bare wooden chairs in a tiny freezing kitchen, the whole scene bathed in blue-grey light. He knew it made no sense; that if they were just an hour away, as Dorothy had said, then their weather was no different from his. But he pictured it that way all the same.

What was Hope Farm? Why were they there? Dorothy had insisted she would not tell him how she knew — but he had not even asked, pressing her for no details. He had not wanted to hear anything specific, anything too real, because he knew that would make it harder to resist. His choice was hard enough already.

At intervals, as the night-time minutes turned to hours, he would be gripped by panic, becoming convinced he had made a grotesque mistake. What, after all, did he have to go on? The text of a lecture and a few casual remarks by McAndrew to his impressionable young niece. It was quite possible that the Dean had been thinking aloud in that Darwin anniversary lecture; that he was heading to Washington merely to boost his career. The most important meeting of my entire life. Perhaps the President had summoned him to serve in his cabinet, the way British politicians were always wooing Bernard Grey.

But James’s gut said otherwise. He knew what he had read; McAndrew could not have made his intentions much clearer. And surely only Lund’s discovery of a plan this ambitious could explain the poor man’s agitation — and indeed his murder by the Dean.

He thought back to those final moments at the station with Dorothy. The train had taken time to leave, as they shunted on new rolling stock. The delay had been awkward; neither knowing what to say to the other. To fill the silence, James had asked a question that had popped unannounced into his head. It came in the voice of William Curtis, the lecturer at the American Eugenics Society. The subjects in such a study will, of course, have to be photographed without clothing

…

‘This will sound strange and rude, but tell me something. Have you ever heard anything about students at Yale being photographed without-’ He hesitated. How to put this delicately?

‘Without what, James?’

‘Without their clothes.’

‘Oh, you mean the posture photos?’ She said it matter-of-factly, as if it were something perfectly normal.

‘The what?’

‘The posture photos. We had them done in our first week.’

‘“Posture photos”? Why “posture”?’

‘Because they were taken to help us with posture. You stripped off, they put steel pins on your back and then snap. Took your picture.’

‘Pins?’

‘Yes, about four inches long.’

Suddenly James was seeing those pictures stashed in Lund’s bag. ‘They put pins in your back?’

‘No! Not into our backs. They taped them on. Afterwards they looked at the shape of the curve made by the pins. Any of the girls, or boys I suppose, whose “postural curve” was not good enough were sent to posture improvement classes.’

As the train now rattled through the darkness, James heard the voice of Curtis echoing in his head. Discretion may demand that this work be done in combination, as it were, with another more conventional activity. Now it was confirmed: this was what Lund had first discovered. That Yale was taking nude photographs of its new students under the spurious cover of a posture-improvement drive.

James’s memory instantly threw up a sight he had not registered at the time but which he had stored all the same. He was in the Dean’s outer office, rifling through the filing cabinets. He had gone past the M’s — Memorial, Monroe, Montana — and landed in the P’s — Political Science, Posture Study, Professional Training. His eye had glided past, as if it were just another, regular field of university activity: posture study.

Now he knew better. This was a secret research programme aimed at proving the link between physical strength, intellectual prowess and ‘moral worth’. The men behind it were trying to answer the question Leonard Darwin had asked in that damned book of his: If our object is to try to improve the breed of man, should we not first decide on the kind of man most to be desired? Those photographs, which doubtless included not only Dorothy, the boy behind the counter at the Owl Shop and every other young person entrusted to Yale’s care, were the attempt to provide an answer. It must have been Lund’s discovery of the bogus posture study that first alerted him to the Dean’s unflinching brand of eugenics, that led him ultimately to realize the ‘bigger and more dangerous’ scheme his superior was embarked upon. Had he kept those photos in his briefcase as his only hard evidence?

James was disturbed by a sound so muffled, he first wondered if it was inside his own head. He looked up and over his shoulder; the carriage was still empty. It must have been a loose bit of gravel, thrown against the window. He went back to looking into the void outside, searching for the glimmer of even a solitary farmhouse. But he could see nothing.

A minute passed and there was another sound, louder and more metallic. James looked up again. All was quiet behind him and, apparently, at the far end of the carriage. There was a click.

He looked closer now, rising from his seat. Unlikely to be an inspector on this ghost train, doubtless loaded with sacks of mail and churns of milk rather than paying passengers, but not impossible. There was definitely movement on the other side of that door.

‘Who’s there?’ James called out, without thinking.

Now he saw the handle of the far connecting door, linking this carriage and the next, begin to twist.

The train hit some kind of rut and jumped, sending James stumbling towards the windows on the other side, his left shoulder slamming into the wooden seat post. He let out a cry of pain. At the same instant, the carriage door flung open.

All he could see was height, a tall man made taller by a hat that appeared to rise to a sharp peak, covering his face in shadow. He was walking this way, in brisk, deliberate steps. Only when he was about two yards away did he speak.

‘Hands in the air, Dr Zennor.’

Reflex sent James’s hands towards the ceiling, even before he had noticed the small, dull metal ring hovering in the air, parallel with the man’s waist. It took another second for him to understand what he was looking at: a revolver, its barrel covered by a silencer.

Time seemed to slow down; he felt detached from the scene, as if he were an observer rather than a participant. Something similar had happened during gun battles in Spain. It meant that, at this very moment, instead of fear or alarm, he felt irritation at his own foolishness. He had shouted ‘Who’s there?’ in his telltale English accent. He had betrayed himself.

‘Walk backwards. And keep your hands in the air.’ The voice was rougher than any he had heard in New Haven. Instantly James decided that this man knew nothing about him, that killing him was a job.

James did as he was told, reversing down the aisle between the benches, counting two, three, four paces. He stopped when he felt the blast of wind coming through the gap between the carriages. He was now in the standing area at the end of the car, a door on each side. The cold air seemed to slap him back to reality. Now his heart surged, a flood of adrenalin as he desperately tried to think of what he might do to save his life.

‘OK, that’s good,’ the man said. In the light, James could see he was thick-necked and square-faced, maybe a former boxer. His mouth carried the suggestion of a smile, like a man who enjoys his work. The gun was still hovering; his finger was on the trigger. What’s he waiting for?

The second-long delay provided the answer. In that instant in which he had not squeezed the trigger, James understood how this man wanted him to die. It was like Lund: he wants it to look like a suicide. He was going to try to shove James from the train, so that the police would conclude he had jumped.

The gunman stepped forward, confident that James would step back in terrified retreat, leaving him just inches from the door. James did as he was expected, trying to win himself another second or two in which he could think. He could not take his eye off the revolver. He could be shot right here before he had drawn his next breath, his body then kicked off the train, where it might not be discovered for days, unless the animals got to it first…

As the man took another step, instinct took over. Instead of walking backwards, James leapt forward, deliberately colliding with his attacker, his right hand reaching first for the gun, pushing it away.

The advantage of surprise paid off; the gunman fell back, slamming against the far door. Still gripping the man’s gun-holding hand, James rammed it into the doorframe, hoping to shake the weapon loose. But now the attacker had recovered his strength and his fingers refused to let go.

The train swerved around a bend and, in time with the movement, the gunman pushed back at James, sending him careering into the opposite door. To his horror, James felt it open — the rush of cold air against him, the carriage filling with noise. Only his fingertips, clinging to the wooden surround above the door kept him inside.

He was filled with rage. He would not die like this, not here, not now — not without seeing Harry and Florence one more time. This bastard would not stop him. All the fury and agony he had endured over the last weeks — and years — now flowed through him. Still gripping the doorframe, feeling his jacket billowing in the wind, he swung forward, kicking out with both his legs so that his feet landed directly in the attacker’s face.

The man stumbled backwards and James dived onto him, searching for the gun. The attacker reacted fast, firing a shot, but not fast enough: the bullet went straight into the ceiling. James gripped the man’s wrist and the pair of them wrestled on the floor, the gunman supine, James on top of him and with the advantage. He forced the man’s gun hand to the ground, where it would be useless. It was nearly there…

But the assassin refused to give up, his hand curled around the butt of the revolver ever tighter. And now James’s left shoulder began screaming. The exertion of this struggle was becoming too much.

James shifted his weight, so that his knee landed firmly on the man’s private parts. When he heard the yelp of pain, he did it again, shoving his attacker’s prone body along the floor, his knee pushing upwards against the man’s groin. One more shove and he had rammed the man’s head into the door.

But the gun hand was twisting, the barrel turning to face James, like the head of a snake. No matter that James had moved his left hand onto the assailant’s windpipe, where he hoped to strangle him, one squeeze of the trigger was all it would take…

He had only one option and he would have to rely on his left hand to do it for him. With his right still curbing the attacker’s gun hand, he reached up with his left, found the train door handle, turned it and, with the last of his strength, propelled the man forward, sliding him head-first into the fast, night air.

James remained there, kneeling on the floor of the train, buffeted by the wind coming in from doors open on both sides. He was panting. And, as the adrenalin faded, he became aware of the acute pain in his wrists, his legs and especially his left shoulder. At last he staggered to his feet, closed both doors and slumped onto a seat. His head hurt and he reached up to touch his forehead. When his hand came away there was blood on it. Even in a year of combat in Spain, even when he had seen his friend Harry’s brain shattered before him, he did not believe he had ever come so close to death.

He spent the rest of the journey pacing, like a captive animal that had been dangerously provoked. McAndrew had sent this man, there was no doubt in James’s mind. How had he known where to find him? He considered the possibility that Dorothy had betrayed him yet again, considered it and dismissed it. Her help for him, her feelings for him, had been genuine, he was certain of it. No, McAndrew had relied on more direct means. James remembered the Buick with the white-rimmed tyres. He might have shaken off his watchers for a few hours after Riley released him from jail, but they had clearly caught up with him. The gunman must have been at the station, watching from the shadows, seeing what train James took, then quietly climbing aboard.

And even though he felt no pity for the dead man, even though James believed he had every justification — in law and in morality — for what he had done, he could not shake the image of the man sliding off the train to a painful death. Back in Spain, James had shot at the enemy many times. Statistical probability alone meant he had surely killed at least one man, if not several. And yet he had never done it like this: he had never seen the face of a man he had killed. James thought of his parents and their lifelong vow of non-violence. What prayer would they utter after committing such an act?

To dispel the thought, he checked his watch. It would be hours before he reached Washington. He still had no clear plan how he was going to find McAndrew once he got there. He desperately needed help.

Twenty minutes passed and at last he saw lights in the distance, not just a few but whole constellations of them. The train was approaching New York.

Slowly, the suburbs gave way to busier, city streets. Billboards began to appear: for Dairy Queen ice cream, for Time magazine, for Peter Pan Peanut Butter. James watched them go by, clasping his aching shoulder.

Suddenly an image floated before James’s eyes: Time magazine, the edition he had read while watching and waiting outside the Wolf’s Head tomb, the page opposite the article on Lord Beaverbrook. He had scarcely registered it at the time, but now the whole double-page spread appeared to him — including the name, middle initial and all, waiting to be found. The only man James knew in Washington; probably the only man he knew in the whole of America.

He jumped onto the platform while the train was still moving, not wanting to waste a second. The station was deserted except for two men with brooms and an older man with a nest of a beard, peering into the dustbins looking for food. Remembering their location from his first visit here, he sprinted over to the phone booths, entering the first and nearest one.

He lifted the handset and was glad to hear the dial tone. He waited for the voice of the operator, nasal and metallic, yet still female: ‘Local or long distance?’

‘Long distance, please.’

‘What city?’

‘Washington, DC.’

‘What name?’

‘The name is Edward P Harrison.’

There was a long delay. James pictured a woman, middle-aged and bespectacled, leafing through a fat directory of thin pages, listing name after name. H for Hammond, Hanson, Harris…

‘There are two Harrisons, Edward P in the DC area, sir. I have a Dr Edward P Harrison?’

James wanted to smile. ‘No, the man I’m looking for is not a doctor.’

‘Connecting you now, sir.’

He heard a series of clicks, then a long ringing tone and then another. Damn it all, he wasn’t there. Damn, damn, da ‘Hello?’ A woman’s voice, sleepy.

‘Hello. I’m sorry to call so late. I need to speak-’

A man’s voice now, taking the phone. ‘Who the hell is this? What’s the idea, calling after midnight?’

‘Ed, is that you? It’s James, James Zennor. From Barcelona. I mean, we were in Spain together, remember, when you were covering the People’s Olympiad?’

There was a pause, into which James spoke again. ‘You took a letter for me, do you remember? When you went back home, through London?’

‘OK, now I remember. Zennor. You were writing your girl who’d left you for Hitler, wasn’t that it?’

‘She’d gone to Berlin, that’s right. You’ve got a good memory.’

‘Jeez, you sound terrible. You OK?’

‘Just ran into a spot of… bother, that’s all.’ He could feel the ache in his jaw, where he had slammed into the train door.

‘The thing is, I don’t know what time it is where you are, James, but it’s real late here. So if-’

‘My train’s just made a stop in New York, Ed. And I need your help.’

‘Call me in the morning and I’ll arrange for Western Union-’

‘I don’t need your money!’ The words came out faster and angrier than James intended. He cursed himself. He had only a minute or two before he had to get back on the train. ‘I mean, that is very kind of you, but I’m not asking for that sort of help.’ He was getting this all wrong. He thought of Dorothy Lake and the ambitious young staff of the Yale Daily News and hoped the same urges drove seasoned reporters as motivated new ones. He took a different tack: ‘I may have a very important story for you.’

An instant change in tone, sharper and more alert. ‘What kind of story?’

James had to think quickly. ‘One that could affect whether or not America enters the war.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘It involves the Dean of Yale University. He’s in Washington. I have reason to believe he is involved in a secret campaign to keep the United States out of the war. He told his niece that he was about to have the most important meeting of his life.’ James heard himself. He sounded like a lunatic. In a moment, Edward Harrison, Time journalist and James’s only hope in Washington, would surely hang up, explaining to his wife that it had been ‘some British guy’ he knew back in Spain who had clearly lost his marbles during the war.

But Harrison said something else. ‘A meeting? I’ve been hearing rumblings about this. I thought it was all happening in Chicago. They’re calling it the America First movement. Or America First Committee. Committee, I think. So what’s the secret plan?’

James heard a whistle, coming from his platform. ‘There’s more I can tell you. I’m on the slow train to Washington, it gets in at seven fifteen. Meet me at the station.’

‘But-’

‘Please, Ed. I promise you, it’ll be worth it.’

Ed Harrison acknowledged James not with a wave, but by holding up a brown paper bag, as he greeted the train that had just pulled under the shelter of the vast, arced roof of Union Station. The bag was soon revealed to contain two doughnuts, both for James.

‘I figured you’d be hungry,’ he said, looking hardly a day older than when the pair had met amid the sunshine, high hopes and infinite bottles of Sangre de Toro in Barcelona in 1936. Even unshaven, ten years older than James and with a head of unruly hair, he was still craggily handsome.

‘I wasn’t sure you’d be here,’ James said between mouthfuls.

‘What, and have you call again first thing in the morning? No thanks.’

‘I’m sorry about that. Will you apologize to your wife for me, for ringing so late?’

‘Who said anything about a wife?’

James saw the familiar wicked sparkle in Ed’s eye and remembered how women had flocked around Harrison the famous reporter, playing in the jazz band, drinking the men under the table and still staying sober. That type didn’t tend to get married.

‘So,’ Harrison said. ‘It’s been a long time. Four years, almost to the day, I’d say. What you been up to, James?’

The words that comprised the question were inoffensive enough, but in between them James detected a comment on the state he was in. He had tried to clean up after the battle on the train, but his jacket was ripped, his trousers stained and his face bruised, with dried blood along his jaw and in his scalp. Even before, his face had become thin and drawn, his shattered shoulder distorting the shape beneath his shirt. To Harrison, who had last seen James fit, tanned and youthful in the heady summer of thirty-six, he must have looked a wreck — a premonition of James’s future, aged self.

‘It’s not been an easy time, to be truthful. I stayed on in Spain; fought with the International Brigade.’

‘I remember.’

‘And I was wounded.’

Harrison nodded.

‘Shot in the shoulder. Took a long time to recover.’

‘And your buddy, what was he called? Fine man.’

‘Harry. Harry Knox. Killed, I’m afraid.’

‘Sorry to hear that.’

‘Same incident.’ James tapped his shoulder in a gesture that cursed the sheer dumb luck of it.

‘I’m real sorry. I went back, you know. To Spain. To cover the war. Several times, even at the end.’

‘I was back in England by then. Oxford.’

‘I thought I was doing my bit for the cause by reporting the war, “telling the world” and all that. But you guys, taking up arms — you’re all heroes, you know that.’

‘I didn’t feel much like a hero.’

‘You were taking a stand against fascism, that’s the point. Not many ready to do that. Especially not here.’

‘So I’ve gathered.’

‘My magazine’s on the right side: the boss would have Roosevelt declare war tonight if he could. But you know public opinion, it’s… Well, put it this way, not many Americans have seen what I’ve seen.’

‘In Spain, you mean?’

‘Spain, Germany, Poland. I’ve been covering this story as best as I can, telling it like it is, but-’

‘People don’t want to know.’

‘People don’t like war, James.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong, Ed. Some people like war very much. In fact, some people want to see this war run its course, unimpeded, till Britain is reduced to ashes.’

‘You talking about the Yale guy?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Before we get to that, what about the girl?’ the American asked, as they walked out of Union Station, the dome of the US Capitol visible and bright in the early morning sunshine. James had seen it in paintings; maybe the odd news photograph. It was like a pristine version of St Paul’s.

‘What girl?’ For a brief, guilty moment James thought he meant Dorothy Lake.

‘The girl I had to get the letter to? The one in England?’

A shot of pain went through James, as he thought of Florence and Harry at Hope Farm, wherever that might be. Were they still there? Or had they already left? The thought that they might have been spirited away once their location had been discovered, that James had forfeited his one chance to see them again, did not go through his brain, but his flesh, like an electric current of sadness.

‘I’m proud to say Florence Walsingham is now my wife. And the mother of my child.’

Harrison slapped him on the back. ‘Well done, old man. Well done! You couldn’t have married a more beautiful girl. They back home in England?’

James took that as his cue to fill Ed Harrison in — as briefly as he could — on what he knew and how he had come to know it. He did not linger on the disappearance of Florence or Harry, instead focusing narrowly on the Dean’s ‘Cleansing Fire’ lecture and the mysterious death of a subordinate who had apparently stumbled across his plans.

‘You mean to say that one of the country’s most senior scholars actually wants the British to lose the war, just so he can see what happens? Like, for an experiment?’

‘Yes, but also as an end in itself. He’s simply taking eugenic theory to its logical conclusion: we want more of the strong and less of the weak, so why not let war do what it does best?’

‘And eliminate those too weak to survive.’ Harrison shook his head. ‘You’ve had quite a month, haven’t you, my friend? No wonder you look like duck crap.’

‘Thanks.’

‘No offence. But, Jesus. And you think this is why he’s come here?’

‘Based on what he told his niece, yes.’

‘Well, you may be right. Look what’s on page sixteen.’ Ed handed him a newspaper. ‘That’s what I love about the Washington Post: you never know where you’re gonna find a front-page story.’

James read the headline. ‘Demanding “No foreign entanglements,” anti-war campaigners plan next move.’ He skimmed the details: business leaders and politicians coming together… promise to build mass opposition to intervention in the war in Europe… no shortage of funding, several millionaires… political backing in both Senate and the House… strongest support in Chicago and Illinois… lead spokesman the illustrious aviator, Charles H Lindbergh… socialist allies in the Keep America out of War Committee… prime mover Yale Law School student, P Alexander Tudor, who hopes to launch a formal anti-interventionist movement in September, likely to be called the America First Committee…

One word stopped him: Yale. As if reading his mind, Harrison leaned over, pen in hand, and circled the same word. He then said, ‘I’ve asked around. Turns out they’re meeting today, trying to secure some big names on the Hill in time for launch in September.’

James felt a tremor of anticipation run through him. ‘Where?’

‘Willard Hotel. Right by the White House. Sending a message to FDR, nice and direct.’

‘Can we go there now?’

‘I’m ahead of you, Dr Zee.’ As he spoke, Harrison gestured for them to turn right down Constitution Avenue, as wide and grand as a boulevard in Paris. James shot a glance over his shoulder, to check that no one was following. Soon, if not by now, McAndrew would learn that the killer he had hired had failed to complete his mission — and he would surely send another in his place.

‘The meeting’s closed to the public, of course,’ said Ed.

‘Damn.’

‘Worry not, Jimbo. When I say closed to the public, I mean closed to the public. Not the press.’

‘So you’ll be allowed in?’

‘As will you.’ And, with a flourish, Harrison reached into his bag, a deep satchel slung over his shoulder that James remembered from Spain, and produced a camera. Bigger than an encyclopaedia and twice as heavy, with a flashbulb post doubling as a grip for the right hand, it was the object James had seen in a hundred newsreels, but never up close. ‘Congratulations, Jim Zennor, newest addition to Time ’s legendary team of photographers.’

They passed a series of imposing, governmental buildings rendered with imperial grandeur in grey-white stone. This must have been how London looked a century ago, James thought: a capital city with the power to rule the world. How that had changed, the great British Empire now reduced to praying that the young Americans would ride to their rescue. Without their help, his country was doomed. All that muscle, but so useless if America refused to flex it.

He was just beginning to feel the heat — a damp, humid, almost tropical heat — when Ed signalled that they had arrived. The hotel was tall and wedge-shaped; it too would not have looked out of place on a European street corner. Through the windows on one side, he could see waiters in white aprons fussing over guests, lifting chrome plate covers to reveal steaming hot breakfasts. Even from the pavement, James could see a custard-yellow cloud of scrambled eggs placed before a moustached man, distractedly reading his morning newspaper. Even in his agitated state, James worked out that there must have been three weeks’ egg ration on that plate.

They walked into the lobby, as tall as a cathedral and as opulent as a palace, the floor shiny, the pillars dizzyingly high in amber marble, the ceiling decorated in gold. It could have been Versailles. ‘Remember,’ muttered Harrison through gritted ventriloquist’s teeth, ‘you’re the snapper. Hang back.’

James dipped his head to hide his face and whispered back, ‘But you don’t know what McAndrew looks like.’

‘Sure I do. Joy of working for a news magazine, Jimbo: we have a photo archive. I checked.’

While Harrison strode over to the reception desk, James loitered in the lobby, his eyes scoping the room for a familiar face. No sign of the Dean. No sign of any groups at all, in fact; just individual businessmen coming down for breakfast. It was not yet eight o’clock. Once again James tormented himself with the probability that he had got here too late. McAndrew had had a head start of several hours; he had probably had his meeting last night…

James could hear Ed Harrison demanding to speak to the manager, wanting to see the full list of associations holding meetings in the Willard Hotel. Just from the tone of the exchange, James could tell the reporter was being rebuffed. Perhaps McAndrew had left specific instructions to keep out the press. James strolled, as nonchalantly as he could, to the concierge desk. As he did, he called up before his mind’s eye page sixteen of that morning’s Washington Post. In that image, he found what he was looking for.

‘Excuse me,’ he said to a young man standing by a lectern-high desk, wearing a bell captain’s uniform at least two sizes too big for him. ‘I’m here for a meeting booked in the name of P Alexander Tudor. Could you tell me where I need to go?’

‘Oh, that would be a question for reception, I’m afraid, sir.’

‘I know,’ James said with a smile. ‘But they seem a little tied up.’ The sound of raised voices, Harrison’s the loudest, reached their side of the lobby.

They exchanged a brief smile of shared understanding. ‘Of course, sir,’ said the concierge, reaching for a pile of papers. After he had run his finger down one and then another column, he looked up. ‘You need the Buchanan Room, sir. On our lower level.’

James nodded his thanks and hissed in Harrison’s direction, eventually succeeding in breaking him away from his altercation with the front desk. He led the way down the carpeted stairs, following the signs until they came to two closed wooden doors bearing the name Buchanan.

James paused, not sure whether they were about to barge into a room where a dozen people would be having a quiet — and private — discussion around a single table or where four hundred people would be arrayed like a theatre audience, listening to speeches from a platform. Against the first possibility, and the chance that he would see and be seen by McAndrew instantly, he held tightly onto the camera, ready to lift it to his face.

Harrison pushed at the door confidently, notebook in hand. Everything about his demeanour, down to the tilt of his hat, announced him as a newspaperman. What a weapon it was, James reflected now: both a licence to pry and a protective shield.

The instant the door was open, James recognized the scene. They had walked into an event that had not yet started, clusters of men standing together engaged in pre-meeting conversation. There were perhaps forty of them, hovering and shaking hands; behind them, a long boardroom table laden with untouched notepads and pin-sharp pencils. A portrait of George Washington in a cheap wooden frame appeared to have been hastily attached to the wall.

James raised his camera and began to look through the viewfinder, hoping no one would realize what he had just realized: that although he had once been quite a keen photographer — an interest discarded, like so much else, after his injury — he had no idea how to use this machine. He let his finger feel for a shutter while surveying through the room. To his right he could sense Harrison advancing, plunging into the middle of the room as if he were the guest of honour apologizing for his late arrival.

In the small glass window, James saw a series of faces, none familiar. That they were well-heeled, he could guess — from the silvery smoothness of their hair, from the effortless cut of their suits. But no sign of the salt-and-pepper of the Dean. He let the lens glide slowly across the room. More captains of industry, a dishevelled overweight figure James took to be another pressman.

And then the camera froze in his hands.

It was the dog collar he saw first, only later raising the lens to confirm the man wearing it: the Reverend Theodore Lowell, pacifist, chaplain of Yale University and alumnus of Wolf’s Head. Quite a crowd from Yale then, gathering here in this Washington hotel just yards away from the White House to stop the march to war. Perhaps he and McAndrew had travelled here together; maybe Tudor had acted as their chauffeur, driving his two most distinguished allies down here. James concentrated his lens on Lowell’s lapel and then focused on the same area of the man to whom the chaplain was speaking.

Both wore the same Wolf’s Head pin.

He could hear Harrison’s voice above the others now, buttering up the politicians and plutocrats in the room, no doubt the first step to extracting information — not that different, James supposed, to the way the reporter approached girls.

And suddenly he was struck by a crucial realization. Though James knew what Lowell looked like, Lowell had no idea who James was.

Emboldened, he strode over to the cleric, the camera still covering at least half his face. ‘OK, a group picture, gentlemen,’ he said. He gestured for Lowell to gather closely with his colleagues, guessing that one of them was young Tudor. And then, as naturally as he could make it, he said from behind the camera, ‘And let’s have Dr McAndrew in this one, shall we?’

‘Oh, darn, you’ve just missed him,’ said the younger man, gesturing at an exit James had not spotted, at the other end of the room. ‘He had to dash out for a breakfast meeting, must have been half a minute ago, tops.’

James clicked and turned away, winded as surely as if he had been punched hard in the gut. After travelling all night, to miss him by just seconds…

He swivelled back towards the door, catching Harrison’s eye. James glared at him with such intensity that the American understood immediately, broke off whatever conversation he was having and followed.

They took the stairs outside two steps at a time.

‘He must have gone while we went downstairs or we’d have seen him,’ Harrison panted.

‘Not necessarily. He could have found another exit out of the hotel. Especially if he thinks he’s being followed.’

‘And does he?’ Harrison said, as they burst back into the lobby.

James thought of the corpse lying by the railway tracks, the confirming phone call the gunman was doubtless meant to have made to McAndrew but hadn’t, the Dean’s knowledge that James was therefore still alive. ‘Probably.’

Dashing across the marble floor, they emerged into the Washington morning. The warm, damp air hit James’s face in an instant, smothering blast. He looked left and right then right again, focussing on the other side of the street.

He couldn’t see the man’s face. Nor was it the hair he recognized, though once he was in pursuit he caught sight of the familiar salt-and-pepper. It was, instead, the purpose that caught his eye. Unlike everyone else strolling down Pennsylvania Avenue, Preston McAndrew was walking with unrelenting intent.

So that he could move faster, James thrust the camera back towards Harrison, who took it and shoved it in his bag.

James crossed the street with barely a glance at the traffic.

The eyes are your most lethal weapon. Never let your gaze waver, not even for a second. If you stay watching him without a blink, then you will never lose him — and he will be yours.

Jorge’s voice was his own now as James let his pace quicken and then slow, quicken and slow, synchronized with his prey. When McAndrew moved to cross Constitution Avenue, James did the same, reflexively making a three-quarter turn of his body, so that — had the Dean thought to look over his shoulder — he would have seen nothing to catch his eye.

The buildings had given way now to green lawns on both sides. Up ahead, poking into the sky, was the pale golden obelisk of the Washington Monument. McAndrew was marching towards it.

Suddenly James felt dangerously exposed. Buildings are a kind of shield for tailing a man; the pursuer always has the possibility of darting into an entrance or down a side alley. Jorge had warned him a dozen times. Once you are on open ground, you are in danger. Your subject will think, why is that man here, except to follow me? And he will be right…

James slowed to a stop and Harrison was at his side within moments. The American was breathing hard. ‘What do we do now?’ he gasped.

‘We watch.’ James’s gaze followed McAndrew up the slope towards the needle. ‘And we walk slowly. That way.’ He indicated a curved path towards the monument, leaving McAndrew to take the straight route.

The Dean was slowing down, just as James had hoped. He had guessed the rendezvous was here and it seemed he was right. He checked his watch. Twenty-five minutes past eight. Meet at the Washington Monument at eight thirty. He could almost hear McAndrew saying it.

He watched him take a seat on a bench among the forty-eight flags of the forty-eight states, and felt the fury bubbling and boiling inside him. This man who had so nearly had him killed, this man who had kept him from his wife and child, this man who through lies and deceit was determined to pass a collective death sentence on the people of Britain.

It would be so easy to have his revenge, James thought. The sprint across this patch of grass would take what, twenty seconds? McAndrew would run but he would not be as fast as James; few men were, despite his wound. He could tackle him at his knees, bring him tumbling to the ground and then it would require the smallest exertion of the fingers to choke the life out of him, to press his fingers to his throat and squeeze. And squeeze…

It would be justified too. Not just as self-defence, but as vengeance — vengeance in advance for the crime of plotting the agony of England, and vengeance for the torments he had already inflicted on James. All he had to do was run a few yards and he could have this man in his hands.

And yet he knew he had to resist that urge. It would not be enough simply to lash out and kill McAndrew. The Dean was here in Washington because he clearly had a plan, an operation involving others, and it was that plan that had to be stopped. Watching the Dean die now would be satisfying, but it would almost certainly leave the threat to England intact.

James turned to Harrison. ‘In a minute or two, someone is going to join him. I need you to tell me who he is.’

‘I’ll have to get closer.’

‘You can get as close as you like. He has no idea who you are.’

Ed Harrison walked ahead, gingerly and, to James’s mind, obviously. He had the studiedly casual gait of the amateur; so ostentatiously nonchalant it was immediately suspicious. It didn’t help that he was identifiable as a reporter from a distance of two hundred yards.

But Harrison was no fool. He had the wit to hang back, so that he was not in McAndrew’s immediate field of vision. Besides, James, his focus still on the Dean, could see that the subject was too preoccupied with his appointment to notice much else. McAndrew checked his watch three times in as many minutes.

At last, another man came into view. He approached the Dean’s bench, slowed, looked down and then appeared to hesitate. McAndrew said something and the man sat down. They then shook hands in a way that struck James as odd, looking straight ahead rather than at each other. But they were certainly talking.

James stared at them, wanting to miss nothing. He certainly did not recognize the second man and, he concluded from McAndrew’s posture and that initial hesitation, neither did the Dean. They were strangers who had nevertheless arranged a meeting.

So fixed was his gaze that only now did James notice that Ed Harrison had rejoined him. He heard him before he saw him, the same fast exhalation. Except this time it was not exertion that made the American breathless, but excitement. ‘You won’t believe who that is,’ he said. He looked back towards the two men conversing on the bench, surrounded by blue sky and fluttering flags. ‘Your Dean is locked in discussion with Hans Stoiber, the most senior diplomat at the Washington Embassy of the Third Reich.’