The Samurai Inheritance

XII

The tall, distinguished-looking man in the naval commander’s uniform marched through the parquet-floor corridors as if he owned them. His habit of working late into the night had long endeared him to his peers, particularly the man who was now his ultimate superior and who exhibited the same trait. Of course, it helped that they were old chums of the same class and with the same connections. It made people wary of challenging him, but things had changed recently, and even in his uniquely privileged position he understood his situation was quite precarious.

After three years of war, the resilience of his countrymen astonished him. He’d hoped for an early accommodation with the Nazis and a swift return to peace once the folly of incurring the wrath of Adolf Hitler became clear. Instead, Britons shrugged off defeat at Dunkirk and the horrors of the Blitz with the same equanimity they’d accept a setback for their local football team. They’d dug in, drawn breath and now they were fighting back. In North Africa, Rommel had just suffered a decisive defeat at some dusty railway halt called El Alamein and an Allied invasion force had landed at Oran in Algeria. Only last week the Russians had launched a counter-offensive on the Volga front to encircle German forces at Stalingrad. The conflict was at a tipping point. In the Far East, in a war he’d done everything in his power to stop, there was stalemate on Guadalcanal, but a sense that the mighty American industrial machine had only just begun to flex its muscles … exactly as he’d predicted.

It had started with a chance meeting, a shared interest — in this case aviation, in which he was regarded as something of an expert — which developed into an unlikely friendship and an admiration for a culture that had so much more depth, and, yes, more integrity than his own. He’d barely noticed as a few shared personal confidences — keep it under your hat, old boy, but so and so is … — developed into something more. Eventually, it had blossomed into a relationship that, on his part, was designed to ensure peace between the two countries closest to his heart.

And so it might have stayed if it hadn’t been for his gambling debts. A chap had to accept help where it was offered, particularly when it was help from an old chum. It came as rather a surprise when it emerged such generosity might have a price.

Minor commercial information from his own department had been enough at the start, but somehow they’d always wanted more. He’d wriggled, of course, when he realized what was happening, but once one accepted the reality of one’s situation it was so much easier. His greatest coup had been a decade earlier when he had supplied his — yes, let us be frank — his employers with the plans of a top-secret float plane in the earliest stages of its development. If he thought about it at all, it was with pride that he’d helped to shape a nation’s military future. When that future came to pass at a terrible cost to his own country and others he’d watched with neither guilt nor shame.

Finally, he reached the office he was looking for. He pulled out a bunch of keys secretly put together over the years, which allowed him access to every room of any importance in the building.

They’d posted guards in the main corridors of the upper floors soon after the fighting began in 1939. In contrast, security in the basement levels was more or less nonexistent, especially here where the scrap paper from the typing pools was stored before burning. He slipped into the room and locked the door behind him. It was amazing what you could find when you knew where to look. Once the war started, technical details were much harder to come by and he’d thought his usefulness might be at an end. It turned out his masters were even more interested in the thoughts of those in power, and the political undercurrents that dictated their strategy, particularly those involving the great ally.

He stopped and listened again, ears tuned to any potential danger. Fortunately, the sacks of paper were stacked methodically in their usual places. He went directly to the one that would contain draft copies of the minutes of high-level government meetings. It was sealed, of course, but he’d managed to take a wax copy and a contact had helpfully run him off duplicates. It was the work of seconds to unclip it and untie the string at the neck of the sack. Finding the kind of information he sought took longer, but he willed himself to stay calm. Experience had taught him to identify documents of interest among the piles of turgid dross about potato quotas and provision for the return of evacuees. He found a partial minute of a War Cabinet meeting about the dispatch of African troops to the Burma front, which would be of interest, and pushed it into the buff file he carried on these expeditions. One more. Just one more and he would leave. He leafed through the sheaves of paper, skim-reading the first line and discarding them one by one. And froze.

Who was Source X? His hands shook as he realized the implications of what he was reading. He was finished. Source X was in Tokyo, but this information had been corroborated by other means. Every word he read increased his certainty. Other means meant intercepts, and if they were reading intercepts that meant they’d broken the code. They knew, or if they didn’t know they would know soon. His first instinct was to thrust the paper back into the sack, seal it and walk out, never to return. Still, he hesitated. A little voice reminded him that the information it contained, allied to the knowledge that his employers’ codes had been broken, was priceless. It might even change the course of the entire war. More importantly, it would buy his freedom. He scanned the paper again, marvelling at the utter ruthlessness of what he was reading. Could his old friend have really been so callous? But there it was in the final two words. NO ACTION.

He hurriedly placed the page in the file and resealed the sack, replacing it exactly in its original position. After waiting with his ear to the door for a few moments to ensure the passage was empty, he walked swiftly back through the warren of corridors and tunnels, then up two flights of stairs to his own office in the Admiralty. He was sweating profusely as he pushed the file into a leather briefcase and donned his dark blue overcoat. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he switched off the light and walked smartly down the stairs to the front door, passing the familiar pictures of long-dead admirals and watery battle scenes clouded by gunpowder smoke.

When he reached the entrance hall he could feel the eyes of the chief petty officer at the front desk on him. Normally the old sailor would have wished him a friendly goodnight, but tonight there was something different about him. The tall man’s steps faltered, but somehow he recovered. Two Royal Navy guards stood, one to each side of the porticoed steps, their rifles at the port. All it would take was one word and a search of the briefcase and he’d end up in the tower. He could already feel the rope tightening around his neck.

‘Excuse me, sir?’

His guts turned to ice. Christ, he’d lived this moment a thousand times, waking and dreaming, and now it had come. Very slowly he turned to face his accuser.

‘Don’t want to be going out on a night like this without an umbrella, sir.’

He blinked. Yes, it was raining. Pouring, in fact. ‘Of course.’ He managed a rictus of a smile, accepting the black brolly the man thrust in his hand.

‘Goodnight, your lordship.’

‘Goodnight, Stevens.’

He emerged past the guards and raised the umbrella in the shelter of the portico before walking into the rain. As he walked up Whitehall he was filled with a strange mix of exhilaration and terror. In his briefcase he had the greatest secret of the Second World War. It would buy him his freedom and dictate the fate of thousands, but it also contained his doom. It was only a matter of time.