Waiting for Sunrise

1: The Glockner Letters

The ferry from Thonon nosed into the quayside at Geneva, then its engines were thrown into reverse to bring its stern round and the whole little ship shuddered. Lysander — Abelard Schwimmer — almost lost his footing and held on tight to the wooden balustrade on the top deck as thick grey ropes were slung out on to the dock and seamen hitched them to bollards, making the ferry hold fast. The gangway was lowered and Lysander picked up his tartan suitcase and found a place in the disorderly queue of people hurrying to disembark — then it was time for him to move down the wooden incline and take his first steps on Swiss soil. Geneva lay in front of him in the morning sunshine — big apartment buildings fronting the lake, solid and prosperous — set on its alluvial plain, only the bulk of the cathedral rising above the level of the terracotta and grey rooftops, reminding him vaguely of Vienna, for some reason. Low hills and then the dazzling snows of the mountains beyond in the distance. He took a deep breath of Swiss air, settled his Homburg on his head and Abelard Schwimmer wandered off to look for his hotel.

♦

After they had made their way from the front line to the rear, Lysander and Fyfe-Miller had been driven to Amiens, where a room had been booked for him in the Hôtel Riche et du Sport. He went straight to bed and slept all day until he was shaken awake by Fyfe-Miller in the evening and was informed that he had a train to catch to Paris and then on to Lyons. He changed into Abelard Schwimmer’s clothes — an ill-cut navy-blue serge suit (that already felt too hot), a soft-collared beige shirt with ready-knotted bow tie and clumpy brown shoes. If Fyfe-Miller had been planning to offend his dress sense, Lysander thought, then he had done a first rate job. He was given a red tartan cardboard suitcase — with some spare shirts and drawers in it — that also had, hidden behind the lining, a flat bundle of Swiss francs, enough to last him two weeks, Fyfe-Miller said, more than enough time to finish the job. The outfit was completed by a Lincoln-green raincoat and a Homburg hat.

“Every inch the ‘homme moyen sensuel’,” Fyfe-Miller said. “What a transformation.”

“You’ve an appalling French accent, Fyfe-Miller,” Lysander said. “The Hhhhom moyn senzyul — shocking.” He repeated it in the Fyfe-Miller style and then as it should be correctly pronounced. “The ‘h’ is silent, in French.”

Fyfe-Miller smiled, breezily.

“Quel hhhhorreur. I can make myself understood,” he said, unashamedly. “That’s all I need.”

They shook hands on the platform at Amiens.

“Good luck,” Fyfe-Miller said. “So far, so good. Don’t delay in Paris — you’ve forty minutes between trains. Massinger will meet you in Lyons.”

“Where’s Munro?”

“Good question…In London, I think.”

Lysander travelled to Paris, then to Lyons, overnight and first class — a railway engineer’s perk, he assumed. He shared a compartment with two French colonels who looked at him with overt contempt and never addressed a word to him. He didn’t care. He nodded off and dreamed of throwing his bombs into the sap — seeing the two startled faces of the signallers looking up at him before he switched his torch off. When he woke at dawn the colonels had gone.

Lyons station was crowded with French troops about to entrain for the front. Lysander was reminded that the front line was still not far away, extending down through Champagne and the Ardennes, curving in a meandering doodle from the North Sea to the Swiss border, almost five hundred miles, of which the British Army was responsible for about fifty. Massinger was waiting for him at the station buffet — drinking beer, Lysander noticed. They took the stopper train all the way to Lake Geneva, to Thonon on the south bank, and checked into the Hôtel de Thonon et Terminus, conveniently placed for the station in the lower town.

Massinger’s mood was fractious and ill at ease. When Lysander started to tell him about his fraught night in no man’s land he seemed only to half-listen, as if his mind were on more pressing matters. “Yes, yes. Indeed. Most alarming.” Lysander didn’t bother explaining in more detail, told him nothing about the bombing, about watching the dawn rise over the German lines as he crouched amongst the rushes of the drainage ditch.

They dined together but the atmosphere was still unnatural and forced. They were like vague acquaintances who — as ill luck would have it — found themselves as the only two Englishmen in a small French town. They were polite, they feigned conviviality, but there was no denying that, given the choice, they would far rather have dined alone.

Massinger at least had more information and instructions to give him about his mission. Once Lysander had arrived in Geneva and had settled in his hotel he was to go to a certain café everyday at 10. 30 and again at 4. 30 and stay for an hour. At some stage he would be approached by Agent Bonfire, they would exchange the double password and new instructions would be given, if Bonfire felt that the moment was opportune.

“Bonfire seems to be calling all the shots,” Lysander said, unthinkingly.

“Bonfire is probably our key asset, currently, in our entire espionage war,” Massinger said with real hostility, his raspy voice even harsher. “Bonfire reads all the correspondence going in and out of the German consulate in Geneva — how valuable do you think that is? Eh?”

“Very valuable, I would imagine.”

“Just make sure you’re at the Taverne des Anglais at those hours, morning and afternoon.”

“Taverne des Anglais? Don’t you think that’s a bit obvious?”

“It’s a nondescript brasserie. What’s its name got to do with anything?”

They ate on in silence. Lysander had ordered a fish, under a local name he didn’t recognize, and found it overcooked, bland and watery. Massinger had a veal chop that, judging by the effort he was deploying to cut it up, must be extremely tough.

“There’s one thing that’s worrying me, Massinger.”

“What’s that?”

“When I come to bribe this official…What if he won’t accept my bribe?”

“He will. I guarantee.”

“Indulge me in the hypothesis.”

“Then cut his fingers off, one by one. He’ll spill the beans.”

“Most amusing.”

Massinger put his knife and fork down and stared at him, almost with dislike, Lysander thought, it was disturbing.

“I’m deadly serious, Rief. You have to return from Geneva with the key to that cipher — don’t bother coming back if you haven’t got it.”

“Look —”

“Have you any idea what’s at stake here?”

“Yes, of course. Traitor, high command, etcetera. I know.”

“Then do your duty as a British soldier.”

After dinner, Lysander went for a calming stroll along the quayside and smoked a cigarette, looking across the vast lake — Lac Léman as it was known from this side — towards the shadowy mountains in Switzerland that he could still just make out in the gloaming. There was a strange light in the evening sky, the palest blue shading into grey — the Alpenglühen, he knew it was called, a unique admixture of twilit purple valleys combining with golden sunlit mountain tops. He felt excitement build in him — he would be off to Geneva on the first steamer tomorrow, more than happy to say farewell to Massinger with his tetchiness and insecurity. As Fyfe-Miller would have eagerly reminded him, phase two was waiting for him across the still black waters. He was ready for it.

As he strolled back to the hotel he found his thoughts returning to the Manchesters and the brief experience of trench warfare he’d undergone. He thought of the equally brief but intense acquaintances he’d made — Foley, Dodd, Wiley and Gorlice-Law. They were as familiar to him here, as he walked the streets of Thonon, as old friends, his memories of them as vivid as members of his family. Would he ever see them again? Probably not. It was inevitable, he knew, this dislocation and sudden rupture in war — still, the fact that it was did not console. Back at the hotel a note from Massinger was handed to him with his room key, reminding him that his steamer left at 6. 30, but that he, Massinger, would not be present for his embarkation as he was feeling unwell.

♦

The Hôtel Touring de Genève was a disappointment. Almost two years of war in the rest of Europe had effectively killed off the trade of regular visitors — tourists, alpine climbers, invalids seeking medical cures — all the customers that this type of establishment relied on. The atmosphere in the lobby was defeatist — it seemed uncleaned, dusty, waste-paper baskets unemptied. Geraniums were dying unwatered in the planters on the small terrace and this was midsummer. The hotel had eighty rooms but only five were occupied. Even the surprise arrival of a new client for an unspecified length of stay raised no glad smile of welcome.

That first evening he was the only diner in the dining room. The waiter spoke to him in clumsy German (asking him some question about Zürich that Lysander deflected) but he saw the logic in Munro’s choice for his identity — as a germanophone Swiss railway engineer in francophone Switzerland, and in a mid-level establishment like the Touring, Abelard Schwimmer was entirely unremarkable, run of the mill — almost invisible.

The Hôtel Touring was on the Left Bank, two blocks back from the lake front, in a street with a tram-line and some sizeable shops. On his first morning Lysander bought himself a pair of black shoes, some white shirts and a couple of silk ties and replaced his Homburg with a Panama. He changed clothes and felt more like himself — a well-dressed Englishman abroad — until he remembered that was exactly whom he wasn’t meant to be. He put the brown shoes back on and the Homburg but he refused categorically to wear a ready-knotted bow tie.

He went to the Taverne des Anglais at 10. 30 and drank two glasses of Munich lager as he waited the hour out. Nobody came, and nobody came at 4. 30, either. That evening he went to a cinema and watched, unsmiling, a comedic film about a botched bank robbery. He reminded himself that when the day came for him to return to his old profession he really must follow up some more cinema-acting opportunities — it looked ridiculously easy.

During lunchtime the next day (the 10. 30 rendezvous was also not kept) he bought himself a sandwich and hired a rowing boat at the Promenade du Lac and rowed a mile or so along the length of the right bank. It was a sunny day and the white and pink stucco façades of the apartment blocks, with their steep roofs, cupolas and domes, their curious splayed tin chimney pots, the quayside promenades and the Kursaal theatre with its cafés and restaurants spoke only of a world of prosperity and peace. As he rowed he could see beyond the city and the low bluffs that surrounded it to the almost searing-white peaks of Mont Blanc and its chain of mountains to the west. He came to a halt for a minute or two in front of the tall façade of the Grand Hôtel du Beau-Rivage — or the Beau-Espionage, as Massinger referred to it. “Keep out of it at all costs. Very dubious women of all nationalities, swarming with agents and informers, everybody with some story that they’ll try to sell you for a few francs — from the manager to the laundry maids. It’s a sink.” Children were screaming and splashing in the big swimming bath by the Jetée des Paquis and for a moment Lysander wondered if he should buy a swimming costume and join them — the sun was hot on his back and he felt like cooling off. He thought of rowing on to the Parc Mon Repos — he could see its woods and lawns beyond the jetée but he looked at his watch and realized that 4. 30 was not far away. He’d better return to the Taverne des Anglais and make do with a cold beer.

It turned out to be another non-encounter, so he had an early meal in a grill-room and went to hear an organ concert at the cathedral with music by Joseph Stalder and Hans Huber, neither of whom he’d ever heard of. He changed rooms in the Touring, asking to be moved to the back where it was quieter as the trams woke him early. He noticed he was beginning to sleep badly — he kept dreaming about throwing his bombs into the sap below the tomb. Sometimes he saw the starkly lit faces of the fair boy and the moustachioed man — sometimes it was Foley and Gorlice-Law. It wasn’t sleep that he was being denied, so much as that he didn’t welcome the dreams that sleep brought — the idea of sleeping and therefore dreaming was off-putting and disturbing. He decided to start delaying going to bed; he would walk the streets until late, stopping in cafés for hot drinks or a brandy, until boredom drove him back to his room in the hotel. Perhaps he might sleep better then.

The next morning, after another fruitless hour in the Taverne (he was being welcomed as a regular by the staff), he went to a pharmacy to buy a sleeping draught. As he wrapped the powder of chloral hydrate, the chemist recommended that he visit a health resort — but one that was above 2, 000 metres. Insomnia could only be cured at that altitude, he insisted. He suggested the Hôtel Jungfrau-Eggishorn high on the Rhône Glacier — very popular with the English before the war, the man said with a knowing smile. Lysander realized he was unthinkingly letting his disguise drop — he had to concentrate on being Abelard Schwimmer and speak French with a German accent.

As he left the pharmacy his eye was held by the sign of another, nearby shop: “G.N.LOTHAR & CIE” — and seeing this name, his son’s name, he felt the acid pang of this strange loss, the love-ache for someone he’d never seen, never known, who was present in his life only by virtue of the conferred familial role: this ‘son’ of his — this abstraction of a son — destined to be identified by inverted commas to distinguish his purely notional presence in his affections. Of course, new anger for Hettie returned — her callow ineptitude, her absolute thoughtlessness — but he quickly recognized this was fruitless, also. A waste.

However, sitting in the Taverne that afternoon, waiting for another hour go by uninterrupted, and thinking frustratedly about this child that he had and did not have, he began to think how foolish and absurd this process was, like some child’s game of espionage. He’d been for a row on the lake, watched a film in a cinema and attended a concert in the cathedral. Perhaps he might visit an art gallery, or enjoy a drink in the bar of the Beau-Rivage and fend off the ‘dubious’ women.

In fact there were two young, rather attractive women sitting in the window taking tea. One of them, he thought, kept glancing over at him as he sipped his beer. But no, that would be too risky, even for this child’s game –

Somebody sat down on the next table blocking the view. A widow in black crêpe, he saw, with a flat straw hat and a small half-veil. Lysander signalled a waiter — one more beer and he was off.

The widow turned to look at him.

“Excuse me, are you Monsieur Dupetit?” she asked in French.

“Ah…No. My apologies.”

“Then I think you must know Monsieur Dupetit.”

“I know a Monsieur Lepetit.”

She came and sat at his table and folded up her veil. Lysander saw a woman in her thirties with a once handsome face now set in a cold mask of resignation. Hooded eyes and a curved Roman nose, two deep lines on either side of her thin-lipped mouth, like parentheses. He wondered if she ever smiled.

“How do you do?” she said and offered her black-lace-gloved hand. Lysander shook it. Her grip was firm.

“Have you come to take me to him?” he asked.

“Who?”

He lowered his voice. “Bonfire.”

“I am Bonfire.”

“Right.”

“Massinger didn’t tell you?”

“He didn’t specify your gender.”

She looked around the room, seemingly exasperated, thereby offering Lysander a view of her profile. Her nose was small but perfectly curved, like a Roman emperor’s on a coin, or like some photographs he’d seen of a captured Red Indian chief.

“I am Madame Duchesne,” she said. “Your French is very good.”

“Thank you. May I offer you something to drink?”

“A small Dubonnet. We’re quite safe to talk here.”

She wasted no time. She would meet him tomorrow at his hotel at 10. 00 in the morning and would show him the apartment where the consular official lived. He was a bachelor, one Manfred Glockner. He usually left for the consulate around noon and returned home late in the evening. She had no idea what his official diplomatic role was, but to her eyes he seemed a, ‘smart, bourgeois, gentleman-type — something of an intellectual’. When he started to receive letters from England she became curious and decided to open them. She had missed the first three but she had opened the six subsequent ones. Nine letters in all over a period of eight months from October 1914 to June 1915.

“Opened?” Lysander asked. “Do you work in the consulate yourself?”

“No,” she said. “My brother is a senior postmaster here in Geneva, at the central sorting office. He brings me all the letters I ask for. I open them, I read them, I make copies if they’re interesting, then I close them again and they go to the recipient. Letters coming in, letters coming out.”

No wonder she was Massinger’s prize agent, Lysander thought.

“How do you open them without people knowing?”

“It’s my secret,” she said. Here a normal person might have allowed themselves a smile of satisfaction but Madame Duchesne just raised her chin a little defiantly. “Let’s say it’s to do with the application of extremes of heat and coldness. Dry heat, dry cold. They just pop open after a few minutes. No steaming. When I’ve read them I stick them down again with glue. Impossible to tell they’ve been opened.”

She reached into her handbag and took out some sheets of paper.

“Here are the six Glockner letters.”

Lysander took them and shuffled through them — six pages dense with columns of numbers like the one he’d seen in London. He folded them up and slipped them in his pocket, suddenly feeling unusual trepidation — the child’s game had become real.

“I’ll show you where Glockner lives tomorrow. I would suggest your visit be either at the dead of night or perhaps a Sunday — when the building is quiet.”

Tomorrow’s Friday, Lysander thought. My god…

“I’d better get to the bank,” he said.

“It’s up to you,” she said, unconcernedly. “I’m just going to show you where he lives. What you do next is your affair.” She finished her Dubonnet and stood up. She was tall, Lysander noticed, and he spotted that the material of her dress was of good quality and well cut. She pulled down her half-veil and screened her eyes.

“You’re obviously in mourning…”

“My husband was an officer — a captain — in the French army. We used to live in Lyons. He was killed in the second week of the war in the retreat from Mulhouse. August 1914. He was shot and badly wounded, but when they captured him they left him to die. Untended. I’m originally from Geneva so I came home to be with my brother.”

“I’m very sorry. My sympathies,” Lysander said, a little lamely, wondering what genuine condolences one could offer to a stranger almost two years after such a bereavement.

Madame Duchesne flicked her wrist as if batting the formulaic remark away.

“This is why I’m happy to help you in this war. To help our allies. I’m sure that was your unasked question.”

It was, as it happened, but Lysander thought of something more.

“These letters to Glockner — was there a postmark?”

“Yes, all from London West — English stamps, of course, which alerted me. I have the names of all the staff at the German consulate, my brother brings me their letters first as a matter of routine. See you tomorrow, Herr Schwimmer.”

She gave him a little bow — the slightest inclination of her head — turned and left. She had a firm confident stride — a woman of real convictions. There was something attractive about her bitter severity, he had to admit, her unshakeable sadness and profound melancholy. He wondered what she would look like in bed, naked, helpless with laughter, tipsy on champagne…He called for another glass of Munich lager. He was developing quite a taste for this beer.

2: The Brasserie des Bastions

Lysander and Madame Duchesne sat in a café almost directly opposite the entry to Glockner’s apartment building. It was noon. Madame Duchesne was inevitably in black, though this morning she had dispensed with the veil. Lysander wondered what her first name was but felt it impossible to ask such a question on so slight an acquaintance. Madame Duchesne did not invite familiarity. As he thought further, he realized that once Glockner had been identified it would probably be the end of their contact — she would have done her duty.

“He’s later than usual today,” she said.

Lysander noticed she had a closed gold cameo on a chain around her neck — doubtless containing a photo of the late Capitaine Duchesne.

“Here he comes,” she said.

He saw a smartly dressed man of medium height come out of the building. He was wearing a lightweight fawn Ulsterette overcoat and a Fedora. Lysander noted the spats, also, and that he carried an attaché case and a cane. He couldn’t see if he had a moustache or not as he had turned and headed off down the street.

“Is there a concierge?” he asked.

“I would imagine so.”

“Hmmm. I’d have to get past her, wouldn’t I?”

“I’m afraid that’s your problem, Herr Schwimmer.” She stood up. “Good luck,” she said in English, then, “Bon courage.”

Lysander rose to his feet as well, thinking that he didn’t want this to be their last encounter.

“May I offer you dinner tonight, Madame Duchesne? I’ve been in this city for four days now and I’m getting bored with my own company.”

She looked at him intently, her hard face expressionless. She had dark brown eyes, he saw. Fool, he thought — you’re not on some kind of a holiday.

“Thank you,” she said. “That would be most agreeable.”

He felt a boyish lightening of his heart at this response.

“Wonderful. Where would you like to go?”

“There’s a place near the museum with a very nice terrace that’s only open in the summer. The Brasserie des Bastions. Shall we meet there at 7. 30?”

“Perfect. I’ll find it — see you there.”

♦

That afternoon Lysander went to the bank and drew out 25, 000 francs in 500 franc notes — approximately £ 1,000. He had been offered 1, 000 franc notes but he suspected that, when it came to being tempted by a bribe, the bigger the wad of money on display, the better. He wondered what made Massinger so sure that Glockner was that biddable — perhaps it was a lazy assumption he made about poorly recompensed embassy functionaries. But Glockner didn’t seem down at heel or exhausted. He looked smart and spry — he wasn’t wearing celluloid cuffs or a spongeable cardboard shirt-front — there was nothing, at first glance anyway, that suggested he was corruptible.

He made sure he was early at the Brasserie, which turned out to be a wood and cast-iron building with two wide verandas extending from an ornate conservatory set back from the edge of the Place Neuve amongst the greenery of the gardens around the museum, yet far enough away from the circling omnibuses and automobiles of the busy square not to be disturbed by their noise or the dust raised by their tyres. He had changed his loathsome brown shoes for his black ones and his Homburg for his Panama and was wearing one of his new silk four-in-hand ties with a white soft collared shirt. He felt more like debonair Lysander Rief, the actor, and not stolid Abelard Schwimmer, the railway engineer. He wondered if Madame Duchesne would notice the subtle –

“Herr Schwimmer? You’re early.”

He turned to see Madame Duchesne walking along a white gravelled alley of young lime trees towards him. She was still in widow’s weeds, of course, but she was carrying an open fringed parasol against the evening sun and her fine taffeta dress was trimmed with lace at throat and wrists, falling fashionably short to her ankles to reveal gunmetal, buttoned boots with a neat French heel. She may be grieving still two years on, Lysander thought, but she was grieving in style. As they greeted each other and shook hands Lysander found himself speculating about her corsetry — she was very slim — and what chemise and bloomers might be underneath that rustling, close-fitting dress. He checked his thoughts, vaguely ashamed and surprised that Madame Duchesne brought out such lechery in him. As they were led to their table for two he caught a hint of her perfume — musky and strong. She wore no lip rouge or powder but the perfume was a gesture of sorts — perhaps she had put it on for him. He imagined her checking her appearance in the mirror before she set off and reaching for her scent bottle — a dab at the neck and the inside of her wrists…Enough. Stop.

“Shall we order a bottle of champagne?” he suggested. “I don’t think Massinger would object.”

“I don’t drink champagne,” she said. “Some red wine with the meal will be perfect.”

They each decided on the menu du jour: a clear soup, blanquette de veau, cheese and an apple tart. The wine he chose was rough and on the sour side, however, and they left it half-finished. Lysander felt increasingly tense and nervous and their conversation never really advanced beyond the formal and unrevealing.

As they ordered their coffee, Madame Duchesne asked if he was a soldier.

“Yes,” Lysander said. “I joined up soon after war was declared.” He didn’t expand on what kind of soldier he had been, telling her only that his regiment was East Sussex Light Infantry, but simply conveying that information seemed to make a difference. He thought Madame Duchesne looked at him differently, somehow.

“And what did you do before you became a soldier?” she asked.

“I was an actor.”

For the first time her impassivity wobbled and she registered surprise for a second or two.

“A professional actor?”

“Yes. On the London stage. Following in my father’s footsteps as best I can. He was a real giant of an actor — very famous.”

“How interesting,” she said, and he felt it wasn’t just a token remark. He had indeed become more interesting to her as a result, he was sure, and he felt pleased, calling for the bill and thinking he would go off somewhere for a cigarette and a couple of brandies. At least the evening had ended on a better note — better than he had expected. And what had you expected? he asked himself, aggressively. Idiot. Time had been filled, that was the main thing. Tomorrow he would reconnoitre Glockner’s apartment building and its environs and make a decision about what the best time to make a move would be on Sunday.

As they waited for his change, Madame Duchesne placed a small cardboard box on the table.

“A present from Massinger,” she said.

He picked it up — it was heavy and it rattled.

“Perhaps you should wait to open it when you return to your hotel,” she said.

But he was too curious and placed the box on his knee below the level of the table and lifted the lid back. He saw the gleam on the short barrel of a small revolver. There were some loose bullets beside it that had caused the rattling.

“What do I need this for?” he asked.

“It may be useful. Who knows? Massinger gave one to me, as well.”

Lysander slipped the box in his jacket pocket and they walked out into the formal gardens — box hedges, the trained rows of limes and planes, raked gravelled paths. There was still some light in the sky and the air was cool.

“Thank you for my dinner,” she said. “It was a pleasure to get to know you better.”

They shook hands and he felt the squeeze of her firm grip. Again he sensed this curious desire for her — this woman who apparently had no desire in her life.

“By the way, my real name is Lysander Rief.”

“You probably shouldn’t have told me that.”

“May I know your first name? Forgive me, but I’m curious. I can’t gain a full idea of a person without knowing their full name.”

“Florence.” French pronunciation, of course, so much nicer than the English — Florawnce.

“Florence Duchesne. Lovely name.”

“Goodnight, Herr Schwimmer. And I wish you good luck for Sunday.”

3: 25,000 Francs, First Instalment

On Sunday morning at 9. 45 Lysander saw the concierge and her husband leave Glockner’s building for church. He had gone in the day before with a fake parcel for a Monsieur Glondin and had been assured by the concierge that there was no one of that name in the building — a Monsieur Glockner on the top floor, but no Glondin. It was definitely Monsieur Glondin, he said — must be a mistake, sincere apologies. He had gained a good sense of the entry floor and the stairway up to the apartments and, judging by the heavy cross the concierge wore around her neck and the larger cross on the wall of her cubby-hole, he suspected that a pious absence might be likely as the church bells began to chime on Sunday morning.

After a minute or so he pushed open the small street door and strode to the stairway, unnoticed by the little boy who was sitting in the concierge’s seat with his head down scribbling in a book. He climbed the stairs to Glockner’s apartment on the fourth floor.

Standing outside the door, ready to ring the bell, he paused a moment, running through the plan of action he had made, mentally ticking off everything he had brought with him in the small grip he was carrying — every eventuality covered, he hoped. He took the revolver out of his pocket and rang the doorbell. After a while, he heard a voice close to the door.

“Oui? Qui est là?”

“I’m a plumber sent from downstairs. There’s a leak coming from your apartment.”

Lysander heard the key turn in the lock and the door opened. Glockner stood there in a silk dressing gown.

“A leak? Are you —”

Before Glockner could register that he didn’t look in the least like a plumber Lysander pointed his gun at his face.

“Step back inside, please.”

Glockner did so, clearly very alarmed, and Lysander locked the door again behind him. Gesturing with the gun, he steered Glockner into his sitting room. Glockner was recovering his composure. He put his hands in his dressing-gown pockets and turned to face Lysander.

“If you’re an educated thief you might find some books that are worth stealing. Otherwise you’re wasting your time.”

The room was lined with bookshelves, some glass-fronted, some open. A blond parquet floor with a self-coloured navy rug. A deep leather armchair set beneath a standard lamp with a pliable shade to direct the light for well-illuminated reading. A writing desk with a chair and on the one clear wall a line of framed etchings — cityscapes. An intellectual’s room — Florence Duchesne’s pen-portait was correct. Glockner spoke good French with a slight German accent. He was an even-featured, clean-shaven man in his mid-thirties with a slight cast in his right eye that made his gaze seem curiously misdirected, as if he wasn’t paying full attention or his mind had wandered.

Lysander pulled the hard chair away from the writing desk and set it in the middle of the room.

“Sit down, please.”

“Are you German? Wir können Deutsch sprechen, wenn Sie das bevorzugen.”

Lysander stuck to French.

“Sit down, please. Put your hands behind your back.”

“Ah, English,” Glockner said knowingly, smiling widely and nodding as he sat down, revealing some extensive silver bridgework at the side of his teeth.

Lysander walked behind him, and taking a short noose of rope from his grip, slipped it over Glockner’s wrists and pulled it tight. Now he could put his revolver down and with more short lengths of rope bound Glockner’s arms together and secured them to the back of the chair. He stepped back, put the revolver in his pocket and placed his grip on the desk, reaching in and removing the wad of 500 franc notes. He placed it on Glockner’s knees.

“25, 000 francs, first instalment.”

“Listen, you English fool, you moron —”

“No. You listen. I just need the answer to one simple question. Then I’ll leave you alone to enjoy your money. No one will know that it was you who told me.”

Glockner swore at him in German.

“And if you behave yourself,” Lysander continued, unperturbed, “then in another month you’ll receive another 25, 000.”

Glockner seemed to have lost something of his self-control and assurance. He spat at Lysander and missed. A lock of his fair, thinning hair fell across his forehead, almost coquettishly. As he continued to swear vilely at him the silver in his teeth glinted.

Lysander slapped his face — not hard — just enough to shut him up. Glockner looked shocked, affronted.

“It’s very simple,” Lysander said, switching to German. “We know everything — the letters from London, the code. We have copies of all the letters. I just need to know the key.”

Glockner took this in. Lysander would have said that this news had genuinely disturbed him somewhat, as if the full seriousness of his plight were suddenly made clear to him.

“I don’t have it,” he said, sullenly.

“It’s a one-on-one cipher — of course you have it. As does the person who is sending you the letters. We’re not interested in you — we’re interested in him. Give us the key and the rest of this Sunday is yours.”

As if to underline his words, the big bells from the cathedral a few streets away began to chime, sonorous and heavy.

“You’ve just signed your own death warrant,” Glockner said, with too evident bravado. “I don’t have the key — I just pass the letters on to Berlin.”

“Yes, yes, yes. Why don’t I believe you?”

Lysander took the wad of money off Glockner’s knees and reached into his grip and drew out a bundle of washing line, unspooling it and then roping Glockner securely to his chair — his chest and arms, his thighs and shins — bound tight like a spider spinning the filaments of sticky web around a pinioned fly. Then he tipped the chair back until Glockner was lying on the floor.

Lysander stood over him, looking down. In reality, he had no sure idea what he was going to do next — though it was clear that the bribe option had failed. However, having Glockner helpless like this served to make the obvious point that there would be alternative attempts at ‘persuasion’ imminently.

“It doesn’t need to be this hard, Herr Glockner,” he said, as persuasively as he could. “You don’t need to suffer. You shouldn’t suffer.”

He wandered round the apartment and looked at the etchings on the wall — street scenes of Munich, he saw.

“Münchner?”

“You’ll be dead by the end of today,” Glockner said. “They’ll find you and kill you — they know everything that’s going on in this town. I’ve an appointment at 11. 00. If I don’t show up they’ll come directly here.”

“Well, that gives us less than an hour for you to make up your mind and see sense, then.”

Lysander paced about the room. He drew the curtains and switched on the electric side-lights, wondering what to do. What was it Massinger had said? Cut off his fingers, one by one…Oh yes, very straightforward. Right, where do we start? Obviously, he wasn’t going to be able to mutilate the man and he felt a useless anger rise in him, directed at Massinger and his brutal complacency. This was exactly the situation he’d posited to Massinger — what if the bribe was not accepted? — and he had been mocked for his scepticism. In a mood of mounting frustration he walked out of the sitting room and went to find the kitchen.

The flat was small — apart from the sitting room there was a bedroom, a bathroom and a small clean kitchen with a stove and a soapstone sink and a meat-safe. He began to open drawers, looking for knives or shears — those kitchen shears for boning chickens — they’d snap a finger off at the joint. He would threaten Glockner — perhaps squeeze a fingertip between two blades of the scissors; perhaps that would work, terrorize him enough. The imagined snip would perhaps be more disturbing than anything real.

The first drawer revealed cleaning equipment — bleach, wire-wool pan scourers, scrubbing brushes of various sizes. In the second drawer he found the knives — no shears — but they were sharp enough. He looked under the sink and found a bucket — a bucket would be a good prop, as if there would be blood to mop up, that might add to the conviction of the whole charade, he thought. He stopped and stood up.

He was thinking. An idea had come to him — from nowhere. He opened the first drawer again and took out the two pan scourers and held them in each hand — a coarse steel mesh shaped into a squashy sphere. He began to think further — no need to shed a drop of blood at all…Then he ran them under the tap, shook the water from them, slipped them into his pockets and wandered back into the sitting room.

“Last chance, Herr Glockner. Give me the key to the code.”

“I tell you I don’t have it. I pass the letters on to Berlin where they’re decoded.”

“Last chance.”

“How do you say it in English? Fuck your mother, fuck your sister, fuck your wife, fuck your baby daughter.”

Lysander stooped over him.

“You’ve just made a terrible mistake. Terrible.”

He pinched Glockner’s nose shut with two fingers and, as he reflexively opened his mouth to breathe, Lysander rammed the first of the kitchen scourers deep into Glockner’s mouth — and then the second.

Glockner gagged and heaved. The bulk of the two scourers had forced his jaws wide apart, belling his cheeks. He was trying to force them out with his tongue but they were too firmly wedged in behind his teeth.

Lysander strode over to the armchair and unplugged the standard lamp, ripping the flex from its base. The flex was a simple, wound double-cable, covered in a fine gold-coloured thread. With his fingernails he picked the ends clear, exposing the wires and bending them into a rough Y-shape.

He dragged Glockner and his chair closer. Then he plugged the flex back into its socket and held the now live ‘Y’ in front of Glockner’s eyes.

Suddenly the thought came to him that he might not be capable of going through with this. But then he argued with himself — it would be just a touch, after all, no severing or cutting, nothing unseemly, no blades gouging flesh, just something that occurred as a matter of unfortunate consequence on a doubtless daily basis in dentists’ surgeries the world over. Glockner was going to the dentist — no one liked it particularly, no one knew what pain would be associated with the visit. It was a risk.

“You look like a man who’s taken good care of his teeth. Admirable. Unfortunately all that expensive dental work is now going to cause you intense, unspeakable pain. Every tooth in your head is in contact with the wire mesh of the scourer. Your copious saliva — look, it’s already dripping from the side of your mouth — is a very efficient electrolyte. When I touch this live electric wire to the scourers in your mouth…” he paused. “Well, let’s say you’re going to remember this agony for the rest of your life.”

He waved the wire right in front of Glockner’s eyes.

“Just give me the key to your code, then I’ll be out of here in five minutes. Nod your head if you agree.”

Glockner made some grating sound in his throat but it was clear from the way his forehead buckled and his crazy eyes glared that he was trying to swear at him again.

Without thinking further, Lysander touched the exposed live wires to the scumbled edge of the kitchen scourer visible between Glockner’s bared teeth. Just for a second.

Glockner’s inhuman throat-tearing roar of pain was hugely disturbing, made him flinch and wince in sympathy. It was the aural representation of his awful torment. He whipped the wires away and, in some disarray himself, watched Glockner writhe in his bonds, banging the back of his head against the parquet, his eyes weeping, overflowing. My god. Jesus.

Lysander fetched a pad-cushion from a chair and slipped it under Glockner’s head. He didn’t want anyone coming up from down below to see what the noise was. He held another cushion in his hand to muffle Glockner’s eventual screams.

“Now, Herr Glockner, that was just a split second. Imagine if I apply the wires and count to ten.”

He didn’t give him time to make any response — get this over with — he jammed the wire into the scourer and slammed the cushion over Glockner’s face. One second, two — no, he couldn’t go on. He pulled the wire away and kept the cushion in place. Glockner’s screams died away to rhythmic sobbing sounds, almost like a kind of animal, panting. He felt himself trembling as he removed the cushion.

Glockner’s face was slumped as if the muscles weren’t working, had gone terminally slack. His eyes were half-closed, blinking frantically.

“Nod your head if you agree.”

He nodded.

Carefully, quickly, Lysander picked out the scouring pads from his gaping mouth with his fingers. Glockner dry-heaved, turned his head and spat on the parquet. Lysander rose to his feet and carefully placed the live wire on the desk top, securing it with a paperweight.

“See?” he said accusingly. “If you’d just told me when I asked you first none of this would have happened — and you’d have been a rich man. Where’s the key?”

“Central bookcase…” Glockner coughed and moaned.

Lysander walked over to the central bookcase and opened it. It was full of German literature — Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Schopenhauer, Liliencron…

“Second shelf from the top. Fifth book along.”

Lysander ran his finger along the spines. The classic book-cipher. The PLWL code, as it was also known, so Munro had told him — page, line, word, letter. Unbreakable unless you had the book.

Fifth book along, there it was. He drew it out.

Andromeda und Perseus.

Andromeda und Perseus. Eine Oper in vier Akten von Gottlieb Toller.

He felt a coldness grip him as if his organs had been suddenly packed in ice. He felt his bowels turn and flex with a powerful urge to shit.

He stopped the questions screaming at him. Not now. Not now. Later.

He turned back to Glockner. He seemed to have passed out. His eyes were closed and his breathing was shallow. With an effortful heave, Lysander righted the chair and Glockner’s head lolled, a length of thick saliva falling from his mouth and dangling there, swaying like a lucent pendulum.

Lysander untied him quickly and dragged and laid him back on the rug again. He unplugged the flex and wound it round his palm before stuffing it in his pocket. He found Glockner’s attaché case on the floor by the desk and flipped it open, sliding the wad of 25, 000 francs into an internal pocket. He closed it and replaced it on the floor. He gathered up the lengths of rope and the scouring pads and threw them in his grip along with the libretto of Andromeda und Perseus. He had a final check of the room and the kitchen. He smoothed some ripples in the rug and straightened the books on the second shelf from the top so there was no noticeable gap. He closed the glass door. An unconscious man on his back, with not a mark on him. 25, 000 francs inside his attaché case. A standard lamp without a flex. Solve that mystery.

He stood for a moment in the hall, running through everything for a final time. Thank you, the Hon. Hugh Faulkner, thank you. He felt himself beginning to shiver. It was terrifying how easy it had been — no blood, no effort, even — just some logical thought and the application of electric current. Stop. Concentrate. From his grip he took a light Macintosh and a flat cotton golfing cap and put them on. The man leaving the building wouldn’t look like the man who entered. He pulled the door to behind him, leaving the key in the lock on the inside. He went down the stairs calmly, meeting no one and was glad to note that the concierge was still at church and the little boy had left his post. Lysander stepped out on to the street and strode away. He looked at his wristwatch — 10. 40 — he hadn’t even been in Herr Glockner’s apartment for an hour.

4: The Fiend

He spent the afternoon painstakingly decoding the Glockner letters — it kept his mind on the job. As the contents slowly revealed themselves — it was laborious work — it became obvious to him that what was being detailed in them was the movement of munitions and matériel from England to various sections of the front line.

On one page: “Fifteen hundred tons HE six inch to St Other to Béthune.”

On another: “Twen five thou coffins to Allouagne.”

And more of the same: ‘One mil five thou three oh three Aubers Ridge sector’; ‘Six field dressing stations villages behind Lens’; ‘Ammo railheads St Venant Lapugnoy first army Strazeele cavalry’; ‘Sixteen adv dressing stns Grenay Vermelles Cambrin Givenchy Beuvry’; ‘Fourteen trch mortar La Bassee canal’.

The list grew in astonishing, minute detail as he worked steadily through the close columns of numbers in the six letters. Assuming that the dates were recorded when these letters were intercepted, he reasoned, then this data would give a very intriguing picture of the focus of an impending attack. Artillery shells, small arms ammunition, food and rations, signalling equipment, field hospitals, pack animals, transportation — it seemed almost too random but anyone who knew what was involved in a ‘push’ would be able to read the signs and narrow the sector down with remarkably precise accuracy.

It was also clear to him that this information must have been generated far behind the lines — the scale and the quantities applied to armies and brigades, not regiments and battalions. Battalions drew their supplies from dumps that these movement orders fed. And even further away — there was mention of ten batteries of 18-pounder guns being shipped from Folkestone to Havre and then entrained for Abbeville; a loco shop was being established at Borre; a new forage depot at Mautort; summary of shunts at the Traffic Office, Abbeville; total of remounts sent from England to the First Army in May. Some of these facts and figures would be known to senior supply officers in France but the range and the scope of the knowledge displayed in the Glockner letters spoke instead — as far as Lysander’s ill-informed mind could determine — of a far greater overview of the whole movement and ordnance operation for the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front. The writer of these coded letters wasn’t in General Sir John French’s high command in St Other, he reckoned, but safely at home in the War Office or the Ministry of Munitions in London.

He put his pen down and, with some unease, picked up the source text — Andromeda und Perseus. He turned to the title page, noting with some relief that this edition wasn’t the same as the one he had. It had been published in Dresden in 1912, a year before his trip to Vienna, and had the title and author as simple text on the cover with no illustration. He knew that the fatal Viennese performances of Toller’s opera were not its premiere, so he assumed that must have taken place in Dresden, whence this copy originated…

Malign coincidence? No, impossible. As obscure texts went, Andromeda und Perseus was about as recherché as you could find. But the more questions he asked himself about the conceivable provenance of this, the key text in the PLWL cipher, the more confused and troubled he became. Why this particular, forgotten opera? And how come he was the one to discover it? The unwelcome thought came to him that the only other person he knew who possessed a copy of this libretto was one Lysander Rief. And what did that imply?…

He decided that it was pointless speculating further. He had to return home and, with Munro and Fyfe-Miller, thoroughly analyse all the ramifications of this discovery. There was nothing much he could do on a Sunday afternoon in Geneva — the Hôtel des Postes closed at midday so he’d have to wait until tomorrow to telegraph Massinger in Thonon. It opened at 7. 00 in the morning — he would be there. He sealed his transcripts of the six letters in an envelope and wrote his name and the Claverleigh Hall address on the front. Best for the precise details to be kept out of everyone’s hands for the moment, he reckoned, at least until he had decided what to reveal — or not — about the key to the cipher.

He went out for a stroll in the late afternoon, thinking that perhaps he would have liked to have talked over the matter — discreetly — with Florence Duchesne but he realized that he didn’t know where she lived. Then again, perhaps it was best that she knew as little as possible.

He took a tram across the Arve River and disembarked at one of the entrances to the Bois de la Bâtre on the far bank from the city. He wandered into the thick woods and left the pathway to find a secluded spot — far from any picnickers or strolling families — and patiently burned Glockner’s copy of Andromeda und Perseus a page at a time. He kicked the small pile of frail ashes here and there, stamping them into the turf as though they might somehow be reconstituted and read once more. He was beginning to think that the crucial course of action was to keep the cipher text a secret that only he knew — he wasn’t quite sure why, but out of the jabber of questions and answers that raged in his mind an instinctive way forward seemed to be emerging. Make himself the only keeper of the secret — who knew, in that case, what others might inadvertently reveal? The minute he saw Massinger he would be asked for it — he was fully aware of that — still, he had plenty of time to concoct a plausible story.

He ate an omelette in a brasserie by the steamer jetties and checked the departure times of the express steamers that did a round trip of the lake in a day. He drank too much wine and found his previous clarity of purpose begin to cloud as he wandered the streets, as if suddenly cognizant of the fact that, this Sunday morning in Geneva, he had tortured a man and extracted information from him. What was happening to him? What kind of fiend was he becoming? But then he thought — was ‘torture’ the right word? He hadn’t bludgeoned Glockner’s head to a bloody pulp; he hadn’t mangled his genitalia, or torn out his fingernails. He had given him every warning, also, every chance to speak…But he was disturbed, as well, he had to confess — disturbed by his own swift ingenuity and resourcefulness. Maybe it was the very absence of blood — and of mucus, piss and shit — that made his own…he searched for the word — device — that made his device so distancing and therefore easier to live with. What he had done seemed more like an experiment in a chemistry laboratory than the wilful inflicting of pain on a fellow human being…But then another voice told him not to be so stupid and sensitive: he was under orders, on a mission and the knowledge he had gained by his clever, robust and admittedly brutal actions had been vital for the war effort and, conceivably, could save countless lives. Of course it could. He had been told in no uncertain terms — do your duty as a soldier — and he had.

The night porter at the Hôtel Touring sleepily and grudgingly opened the main door for him after midnight. Lysander went up to his room, feeling tired but sure he would be denied even a minute of sound sleep, such were the relentless churnings of his thoughts. They were added to, considerably, when he saw that a note had been pushed under his door. It was unaddressed but he tore it open, knowing who had sent it.

“Your brother Manfred is gravely ill. Leave for home at once. People are very concerned.”

It could only be Florence Duchesne. Manfred — how did she know about Glockner? And what was the significance of that underscored ‘concerned ‘?…He lay on his bed fully clothed, running through the possibilities for the following day — what he should try and do and what he absolutely had to do in his own best interests. He was still awake, waiting and thinking, as the sunrise began to lighten the curtains on his windows.

♦

At seven o’clock in the morning Lysander was third in the queue at the main door of the central post office on the Rue du Mont Blanc. It was a huge grand ornate building — more like a museum or a ministry of state than a post office — and when it opened he strode to a guichet in the vast vaulted vestibule and immediately sent a long telegram to Massinger in Thonon.

HAVE THE KEY COMPONENT STOP AS SUSPECTED THERE IS A SERIOUS MALFUNCTION IN THE MAIN MACHINERY STOP STRONGLY ADVISE NO EXCURSIONS IN THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE STOP ARRIVING EVIAN LES BAINS AT 440 PM STOP

The last Glockner letter had been intercepted little more than two weeks previously. It was reasonable to suppose that its detail of ordnance supply would be relevant for any attack due towards the end of the summer. The autumn offensive, whatever and wherever it would be, was well advertised now as far as the enemy was concerned.

He then posted the six transcribed letters to himself at Claverleigh and left the post office at 7. 20. The first express steamer making the round trip to Nyon, Ouchy, Montreux and Evian left at 9. 15. Madame Duchesne’s note the night before seemed to imply that steamer points and railway stations might be watched — he had almost two hours or so to make sure he wouldn’t be apprehended.

5: Tom O’Bedlam

He locked the door of the below-deck gentlemen’s lavatory and placed his sack and seatless chair to one side. He sat on the WC and, with a sigh of relief, removed his shoes and shook the pebbles out. Then he washed the Vaseline off his upper lip and raked his fingers through his chopped hair trying to flatten it into some vestige of normality. Looking at himself in the mirror he could see he had gone a bit too far with the scissors.

After he’d left the post office he had made his other essential purchases as soon as the relevant shops on the Rue du Mont Blanc opened. First, was a coarse linen laundry bag into which he’d stuffed his raincoat and his golfing cap — he had left his cardboard suitcase and his remaining clothes in his room at the hotel — Abelard Schwimmer had no further use of them. Then he bought a glass jar of Vaseline and a pair of hair-scissors from a pharmacy before going on to a furniture shop where, after some searching, he found a cheap pine straight-backed kitchen chair with a woven straw seat. Any chair would have done — it was the straw seat that was important. By 8. 30 he had re-crossed the river to the Jardin Anglais and in a quiet corner, sitting on a bench, he had unpicked and unravelled the lengths of straw-raffia that made up the seat of the chair. He then looped and wound the straw into a loose figure-of-eight that he hooked on to the chair-back. He had his prop — now he just needed his costume.

His idea — his inspiration — came from a performance of his father’s that he remembered when Halifax Rief had played Poor Tom, Tom O’Bedlam, Edgar in disguise, the madman whom King Lear meets during the storm. To feign Tom’s madness his father had put axle grease in his hair to make stiff spikes, had smeared more grease on his lip below his nose and had filled his shoes with sharp gravel. The transformation had been extraordinary — unable to walk normally or comfortably, his gait had become at once rolling and jerky, and the smear of grease looked like snot from an uncontrollably running nose. The uncombed, outlandish greasy hair added an extra aura of filth and neglect. A tattered jerkin had finished off the transmutation.

Lysander couldn’t go that far but he aimed in that direction. He picked up some round pebbles from the gravelled pathways and put them in his brown shoes that he loosely and partially laced. Then he unbuttoned the cuffs on his serge jacket and rolled them up towards his elbow, letting the link-free cuffs of his shirt dangle. He buttoned the jacket badly, fitting buttons to the wrong buttonholes so it gaped askew at the neck. He put his tie in his pocket. Then he scissored off clumps of his hair at random, adding swipes of Vaseline — not forgetting a thick snot-smear under his nose. Then he picked up his seatless chair and his looped skein of straw, slung it over one shoulder and his linen sack over the other and shuffle-limped off to the jetty where the steamer was berthed. He looked, he assumed, like some poor itinerant gypsy simpleton, earning a few centimes by repairing furniture.

He could see no police or evident plainclothesmen eyeing the small queue of passengers waiting to board. He let most of them embark before he clambered painfully up the gangway, showed his ticket and went immediately to the seats at the stern, where he sat down, head bowed, muttering to himself. As expected, no one wanted to sit too close to him. No passports were required as the steamer was making a round trip and would be back in Geneva at the end of the day. Massinger would have received his telegram and would have plenty of time to make his way to Evian in time for the steamer’s arrival. Once they were together he could brief him on the essential contents of the Glockner letters. He imagined it would not take long to discover who was the source of the information in the War Office — only a few people could be privy to that mass of detail.

He heard the engines begin to thrum and vibrate through the decking beneath his feet and he allowed himself a small thrill of exultation. He had done it — it had not been easy, it had been the opposite of easy — but he had done the job he had been sent to do. What more could anyone ask of him?

The steamer began to ease away from the pier and head out into the open waters of the lake. The morning was cloudy with a few patches of blue sky here and there but, when the sun broke through, the dazzle from the lake-surface made his eyes sting so he sought the shade of the awnings. Soon they were out in the main water, at full steam, making for Nyon, and Lysander felt he could safely go below and remove his disguise.

In the lavatory, as cleaned-up as he could make himself, he stamped and levered the kitchen chair into pieces and stuffed the lengths of splintered pine and the bundle of straw into the dark empty cupboard that ran beneath the two sinks. He put on his Macintosh and his flat golfing hat and checked himself in the mirror, adjusting his cuffs and re-buttoning his coat correctly. Fine — just another tourist enjoying a tour of the lake. He tossed his empty linen sack into the cupboard as well — everything he needed was in his pockets. He flushed the lavatory for form’s sake and unlocked the door.

After Nyon, the steamer ceased hugging the shore and made directly across the lake for Ouchy, the port of Lausanne. From Ouchy the course was directly to Vevey before turning back a half-circle west, with Montreux and its wooded hills in full view, the wide mouth of the Rhône backdropped by the jagged peaks of the Dents du Midi in the distance.

He wandered down to the stern and leaned on the railings, looking out at the wake and the retreating vistas of Geneva and its ring of low hills and distant mountains. There were a few of the famous Genevan barques out on the water, low free-boarded, two-masters with big-bellied, sharply pointed triangular sails that seemed to operate independently. From certain angles they looked like giant butterflies that had settled for a moment on the lake, their wings poised and still, to drink. He watched their slow progress and waited until there was no other passenger near him and quickly tossed his small revolver into the water. He turned, no one had noticed. He walked away from the stern.

On any other day he would have enjoyed the spectacular views but he patrolled the decks restlessly, instead, his mind busy and agitated. There was a small glassed-in salon set behind the tall thin smoke stack where light meals and refreshments were served, but he didn’t feel hungry; he felt suddenly weary, in fact, exhausted from the stress of the last twenty-four hours. He climbed some steps to a small sun-deck in front of the bridge where he hired a canvas deckchair from a steward for two francs. He sat down and pulled the peak of his cap over his eyes. If he couldn’t sleep at least he might doze — some rest, a little rest, was what he needed, all he asked for.

He was dreaming of Hettie who was running through a wide unkempt garden holding the hand of a little dark-haired boy. Were they fleeing something — or were they just playing? He woke — upset — trying to remember the little boy’s features. Had he somehow encountered Lothar in his dream — his son whom he had never set eyes on, not even in a photograph? But Lothar was only a year old, now — this little boy was older, four or five. Couldn’t possibly be –

“You slept for nearly two hours.”

His head jerked round.

Florence Duchesne sat in a deckchair three feet away from him, in her usual black, a baggy velvet hat held on her head with a chiffon scarf.

“My god,” he said. “Scared me to death. I was dreaming.”

He sat up, regaining his bearings. The sun was lower in the sky, the hills on the left were less mountainous. France?

“Where are we?”

“We’ll be in Evian-les-Bains in an hour.” She looked at him — could that be the hint of a smile?

“I almost missed you,” she said. “I thought you hadn’t boarded. I had seen you — the chair and the sack, the curious limping way you had walked. Then, just as the steamer was about to leave, I realized. That’s him, surely? I remembered Massinger had warned me — be alert, he won’t look like the man you’re expecting to see.”

“How would Massinger know that?”

She shrugged. “I’ve no idea. He just warned me that you might be disguised. Anyway, bravo — no one would have guessed it was you.”

“You can’t be too careful…” He thought for a second. “But what’re you doing here, anyway?”

“Massinger wanted to be sure you got away safely. Asked me to chaperone you, discreetly. I’ve had a nice day out — I’ll just take the steamer back to Geneva.”

“What did you mean in your note when you said people were ‘concerned?’”

“Manfred Glockner is dead.”

“What?”

“He died of a heart attack. He was found unconscious in his apartment and rushed to hospital — but it was too late.”

Lysander swallowed. Jesus Christ.

“Do you know any reason why he should have died?” she asked him, casually.

“He was fine when I left him,” Lysander improvised, thinking of the meshed wire of the scourer, the strong domestic electric current…“I gave him the money, he counted it, then he told me the key to the cipher and I left.”

She was looking at him very closely.

“The money was found in his attaché case,” she said.

“How do you know?” he countered.

“I have a contact at the German consulate.”

“What kind of contact?”

“A man whose post I opened. It contained photographs that he would prefer remained private. Some of them I kept in case I had to remind him. So when I need to know something he’s very happy to tell me.”

Lysander stood up and went to the railing. He had to be very, very careful, he knew — yet he wasn’t exactly sure himself why he had lied to her so instantly. He looked across the placid lake waters at the French shore — the hills were rising again and he saw a small perfect château situated right at the water’s edge.

Madame Duchesne came to join him at the railing. He turned and had a good view of her profile as she stared at the slowly approaching shoreline. The perfect curve of her small nose, like a beak. Her nostrils flared as she inhaled deeply and her breasts rose. There was something about her that stirred him, she –

“Beautiful château — it’s called the Château de Blonay,” she said. “I’d like to live somewhere like that.”

“Might be a bit lonely.”

“I wasn’t imagining living there alone.”

She turned to him.

“What’s the key to the cipher? Did Glockner give you the text?”

“No. It’s in my head. He told me how it worked — it’s very simple.”

“What is it?”

“It’s the bible — in German,” Lysander said. He had never expected her to ask him this, directly. “But the trick is that the first number doesn’t correspond. It’s a double-cipher. You have to subtract a figure or add to get to the right page.”

“What’s the trick? It seems very complicated.” She didn’t seem convinced, frowning. “What makes it correspond?”

“It’s probably best if I don’t tell you.”

“Massinger will want to know.”

“I’ll tell him when I see him.”

“But you won’t tell me.”

“The information in the letters is extremely important.”

“You don’t trust me,” she said, her face still impassive. “It’s obvious.”

“I do. But there are times when the less you know, the better for you. Just in case.”

“I’ve got something to show you,” she said. “Perhaps when you see it, you’ll trust me.”

She led him down the stairway and through a door and down further stairs. The churning grind of the steamer’s engines grew louder as they descended through a bulkhead to another deck.

“Where are we going?” he asked, having to raise his voice.

“I’ve hired a little cabin, right down below.”

They found themselves in a narrow corridor. Lysander had practically to shout to make himself heard.

“There are no cabins down here!”

“Round this corner, you’ll see!”

They turned the corner. A door said, “Défense d’Entrer” and there was a steep metal stairway rising to the upper decks again. They seemed right above the engine room.

“Wait one second!” she shouted, rummaging in her handbag.

She drew out her small, short-barrelled revolver and pointed it at him.

“Hey! No!” he yelled, completely shocked and knowing instantly that she was going to shoot him. He raised the palm of his left hand reflexively in a futile gesture of protection.

The first shot, misaimed, hit him in the left thigh, making him stagger from its impact, though he felt nothing. He saw the second, immediately after, blast through the back of his raised left hand and felt the blow, like a punch, as the bullet hit his left shoulder, canting him round sideways for the third shot to slam into his chest, high on the right-hand side.

He went down heavily on to the studded metal floor and heard the noise of her feet clatter up the stairway. He raised himself off the ground on his elbows and caught the shockingly distressing sight of his own vibrant, red blood beginning to spill and pool beneath him before he slumped back again and felt his body begin to go numb, hearing the jocular, breathy phoot-phoot! phoot-phoot! of the steamer’s whistle announcing its imminent arrival at the sunny bustling quayside of Evian-les-Bains.