The Empire of Night

22

I did bolt. Politely. She was not terribly disappointed, being strong. My mother was still very much alive and had miscalculated this whole thing. Or perhaps she hadn’t. Perhaps she was even now amused at the thought that her posthumous message had been delivered and had thus set in motion this very sort of playlet for two. She’d relish the irony, given her own two-hander at the Hotel Adlon.

But my playlet had ended its run. I was glad for that, glad to focus now simply on risking my life for my country as a spy in Germany. The irony with that being I had to wait to hear from my mother to actually get started.

Word came early the next day. She was happy to receive my telegram and Sir Albert was absolutely insistent that he put me in the Adlon near the two of them. Still working on my performance, she said. Every other night it is in German.

I vowed never again to engage her in innuendo. But I knew the vow was futile.

I met with Trask one last time, at the A.B.C. café on Duncannon Street just opposite Charing Cross Station. It was a tea and pastry shop mostly (the A.B.C. once having been the Aerated Bread Company) but it was a guy’s place, for all that, with severe dark wood tables and chairs, a checker-tiled floor fit for a bar, mirrors on the wall, and a roomful of men.

Trask and I ordered coffee, however, to the faint distaste of the waiter.

We drank, we spoke of its mediocrity as coffee but of its superiority, even still, to yet another cup of tea. At least we were among men drinking tea. Trask made this last point; I had not, out of deference to Millicent Gibbs.

Then Trask and I leaned toward each other and lowered our voices to only what was necessary, though the conversational welter at tea-time that surrounded us was plenty of ground cover for our conversation. Our business was brief.

“Our English friends will give you some help over there, in case you need it,” Trask said.

“You’ve spoken to them, I take it.”

“I have.”

He took a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and passed it to me. “This is where and when.”

It read: Thursday night. Nine o’clock. Zum Grau Köter. South of the Stettiner train station on Borsig-Strasse. “Too much smoke and noise.”

The place was called the Gray Dog. The “help” would identify himself by speaking of the smoke and noise.

I looked at Trask.

“It’s a cabaret,” he said.

“One of their people inside Germany?”

“Yes.”

“We don’t have anyone inside?”

“That would be you.”

“How will he know me?”

Trask’s hand came low across the table once more.

He put an object in my palm, small but with a little weight. I opened my hand and glanced just before I dropped the thing into a side coat pocket.

A brass Reichsadler, the Imperial Eagle, with a blunt-ended pin attached to the back.

“Your boutonnière,” he said.

“Any other news from the Brits?” I said.

“Nothing.”

“Did you ask?”

“I did.” Trask nodded at the piece of paper in my hand.

“You have that in your head now?”

“I do.”

He extended his hand and I gave the paper to him. He stuffed it into his inside pocket. “Now,” he said. “What was the word?”

I told him the details of the telegram from Isabel, and I asked, “Should I take Stockman up on the offer of the Adlon?”

“You will have no secrets in your room,” he said. “The place is an anthill of German spies.”

“To refuse him on this. .”

“You can’t,” Trask said. “Perhaps it’ll be useful for you, as well, as long as you can keep your act going.”

“I can do that.”

“You need to deal with your extras,” Trask said, meaning my weapons, my alternate credentials.

“I told them I’d stay at a boarding-house. Unnamed.”

Trask instantly knew what I was driving at. “Good,” he said.

“I take it the Baden is safe?”

“Relatively. The clientele is assumed to be of little interest. The German operation along the Unter den Linden is high-level stuff.”

“I’ll check in at the Baden before the Adlon,” I said.

“Tonight I’ll send round a tool or two,” he said. “The base of a wardrobe is pretty useful. Just in case.”

I nodded.

I kept silent for a moment and he shifted needlessly in his seat, as if there was a touchy thing he needed to say but he hadn’t figured out how to work it in smoothly.

He said, “Unfortunately we don’t presently have an equivalent of Metcalf in Berlin. But if and when you need to leave the country abruptly, make your way to the embassy and invoke my name. They can take care of you.”

“All right,” I said.

Trask and I looked at each other for a moment. I figured we’d said all that we had to say. But just as I thought to lean back in my chair and finish my coffee, Trask gave me a final thought for my trip. “It’s come to this now,” he said. “If they think you’re a spy and you can’t get to our boys at the embassy on your own, they’ll assume you’re a Brit, take you to Spandau Prison, and shoot you the next morning.”