XPD

22

Boyd Stuart did not view every foot of the Nazi newsreel film. It would have taken five working days to look at all of it: a fact that was clearly evident from the film tins which were stacked ceiling high in the two fireproof store rooms downstairs in the basement, along the corridor from the ‘viewing room’, as the cinema was officially called.

Two ‘research clerks’ had begun viewing and sorting the footage as soon as the first reels arrived. It had come to the SIS Ziggurat building south of the river via a cover address in Wardour Street. Most of it came through agencies and libraries but there was privately owned footage too, and some poor quality pirated material which had been made by reversal process from positives. All of the film submitted was in response to the news that a film company, compiling a documentary for TV, was paying top footage rates. It was wanted urgently but that was a normal requirement in the business of film and TV.

Boyd Stuart had spent all day screening the film that had been shortlisted for him. By the afternoon of Monday, July 16, he was growing dizzy with images of Adolf Hitler and his followers. He had watched the Führer staring stern-faced at maps, striding past ranks of soldiers, climbing into the Führerwagen of the train and climbing down from it, leaning out of its lowered windows to shake hands with Hitler Youths or accept flowers from flaxen-haired girls.

At four p.m. he first caught sight of the face he sought. He picked up the phone and told the projectionist to stop the film, mark the frame and bring it to the editing bench. Only fifteen minutes after that, he found the same man in two lengthy sequences of Hitler meeting Benito Mussolini alongside a train at Anlage Süd in August 1941. A large crowd of Hitler’s immediate staff had wanted to see the two dictators together, and there were many cameras in evidence amongst the German soldiers, SS men and Italians, jostling together on the raised wooden platform made especially for the dictators to alight from the train.

Stuart put the reel of film onto the editor’s flat bench. He wound it with his hand to find the frame he wanted, and held it illuminated and magnified on the small screen. He put a magnifier over the part of the image that interested him, but it enlarged the patterns of film grain and the texture of the viewing screen’s fresnel glass so that the picture became a confused blur, like some abstract painting.

Kitty King came into the room and put a cup of tea down by his elbow. ‘You’ve found something?’

‘Three different sequences, and there will be more.’

‘And this is the photo you found after the Wever farm explosion?’ She leant forward to study the big enlargement which was pinned over the bench.

‘Wever said he’d never worn one of those camouflage jackets before that journey to Merkers. I’ve looked up the dates and times of the American advance. That photo must have been taken at the salt mine on or about April 2, 1945. That’s Breslow next to him. The civilian is the one I’m trying to identify. Reichsbank Director Frank he was calling himself in 1945.’

‘And now you’ve found him?’

‘I think so but I’d like to find him enough times to get a positive identification.’

‘He’s in uniform for this one.’ She pointed at the lighted screen.

‘But the Germans let their security people wear any uniform and any rank they fancied when they were at work. I’ve got other photos that resemble him. Now I’ll enlarge them to some reasonable size.’

‘The dark room will curse you, Boyd. They’re up to their ears in work.’

‘I’ve got a triple-A priority, Kitty. There is nothing that takes precedence over whatever I need.’

She looked at him. She knew about the priority but didn’t understand it. She tried to find the answer in his face and, having failed, smiled at him. ‘It’s just history as far as I can see, darling,’ she said. ‘It’s only people who still remember those days who care: old fogies like the DG, and Mr Brittain in Plans, who won the MC and wears it on Remembrance Day.’ She touched her hair to push it back from her forehead, in a manner more narcissistic than remedial. She was especially beautiful there in the half-light of the cinema. Stuart felt a keen desire for her, and he saw her arch her body as if she sensed it.

‘I wish you’d move in with me,’ he said.

‘I’ll stay with you tonight, if you want me,’ she said softly. ‘But I’m not moving in; not with you, not with anyone.’

‘Why not?’

He expected her to raise her voice. They had had this sort of discussion before and it always had turned to the sort of jokiness that cloaked bitter recriminations. ‘Everything I touch… ’ she continued in the same lowered tone, ‘I sit down in a chair and I wonder if it was her favourite chair. I grab a dressing gown and I stop… wondering if I’m going to look like her in it. I look in the mirror and I see other women looking back at me. That’s not what I want, Boyd.’ There was something essentially feminine about her resentment of these inanimate objects, thought Stuart. She never seemed in any way jealous, or even curious, about any women he might have met in California.

‘Well, where would we find another place as good as the flat I’ve got now?’ said Stuart. ‘Those people upstairs are paying more than double the rent I’m charged. And your sister is not going to want us both moving in there with her.’

‘It’s all right for you,’ she said. ‘Men always expect women to adapt to anything they want.’

Boyd Stuart put an arm round her and gave her a brief hug. It was a far cry from all those earlier declarations of sexual freedom. But, like all cries for freedom, Kitty King’s had been more concerned with getting concessions than with giving them. It would always be like this, he supposed. She would tell him what made her unhappy but refuse to face any of the practical difficulties that would come from changing things. She smiled in response to his comforting arm. ‘Drink your tea,’ she said. ‘And I’ll take the cups back. I only came down to the vault.’

‘For what?’ said Stuart. ‘The ‘vault’ was the top-secret section of the archives stored in the basement strong room.

‘You’d never guess,’ she said. ‘To return the DG’s personal file.’

‘In the vault?’ They both laughed. It seemed like a good example of the Alice in Wonderland world in which they worked that something as innocuous as a biographical file should be locked away with such elaborate care.

‘He was in Switzerland for most of the war, wasn’t he?’

‘Except for the short time they let him serve with the army in Italy. He was deafened by the gunfire at Monte Cassino; that’s why he wears that hearing aid. He went back to Switzerland in time to work with Allen Dulles. They were negotiating the surrender of some German army units in Italy. He came back to work here in 1947.’ She repeated it as if it were some poem she had been compelled to learn at school.

‘I love you, Kitty.’

‘Don’t be silly, Boyd. Drink your tea. I must get back to work.’ She flicked through the DG’s file nervously, waiting for Stuart to finish his tea.

‘What’s that red sticker for?’ Stuart asked.

‘It’s a “stop mark”. The cover name must not be used at any time in the future. During the war, the DG used the name Elliot Castelbridge. It was common to have a cover name at that time. There was a wartime order, in case high-ranking department employees were captured by the Germans. Anyone who went to Switzerland or Sweden was redocumented into a permanent cover.’

‘The brief and exciting career of Elliot Castelbridge: eating warm fondue with cold wine, and waiting for the German surrender. Killed by a “stop mark”.’

‘You’re too hard on him, Boyd.’

‘He’s a Byzantine bastard,’ said Stuart without animosity.

‘Not at all. He is unmistakably Gothic.’

Stuart grinned. She was absolutely right. There was nothing of the devious oriental cunning that characterized so many of the senior staff of the department. The DG was a man of brutal bluffness, and even his appearance was more like the rough weathered stone of northern Europe than the smooth silks of the schism. ‘Don’t go.’

‘I must. Is your car here?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Will you be finished in time for dinner?’

‘There’s a very good new restaurant in Sloane Street.’

‘Just as long as it’s not curry.’ She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. For five minutes or more he sat there thinking about her, then he went back to work. He still needed ‘hard reference’ to the man in the film. Someone would be working all night on that one.