"Winter in Madrid" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sansom C. J.)

Chapter Three

THE PLANE LEFT CROYDON at dawn. Harry had been driven there straight from the SIS training centre. He had never flown before. It was an ordinary civil flight and the other passengers were English and Spanish businessmen. They chatted easily among themselves, mostly about the difficulties the war had made for trade, as they flew out over the Atlantic before turning south, avoiding German-occupied France. Harry felt a moment’s fear as the plane took off and he realized the railway lines he could see far below, smaller than Ronnie’s train set, were real. That passed quickly, though, as they flew into a bank of cloud, grey like thick fog against the windowpane. The cloud and the steady drone of the engines grew monotonous and Harry leaned back in his seat. He thought of his training, the three weeks’ coaching and preparation they had given him before, this morning, they put him in a car to the airport.

The morning after the bombing Harry had been driven from London to a mansion in the Surrey countryside, where he had spent the entire three weeks. He never knew its name or even where it was exactly. It was a Victorian redbrick pile; something about the layout of the rooms, the uncarpeted floors and a faint, indefinable smell, made him think it had once been a school.

The people who trained him were mostly young. There was something eager and adventurous about them, a quickness of reaction and an energy that made them seize your attention, hold your eye, take charge of the conversation. Sometimes they reminded Harry oddly of eager salesmen. They taught him the general business of spying: letterdrops, how to tell if you were being watched, how to get a message out if you were on the run. Not that that would happen to Harry, they reassured him – he had diplomatic protection, a useful by-product of his cover.

From the general they moved to the specific: how to deal with Sandy Forsyth. They made him do what they called role-plays, a former policeman from Kenya playing Sandy. A suspicious Sandy, doubting his story; a drunk and hostile Sandy asking what the fuck Brett was doing here, he had always hated him; a Sandy who was himself a spy, a secret Fascist.

‘You don’t know how he’ll react to you, you have to be prepared for every possible eventuality,’ the policeman said. ‘You have to adapt yourself to his moods, reflect what he’s thinking and feeling.’

Harry had to be absolutely consistent in his own story, they said, it had to be watertight. That was easy enough. He could be absolutely truthful about his life up to the day Will had received the telephone call from the Foreign Office. In the cover story they had rung looking for a translator to replace a man in Madrid who had to leave suddenly. Harry soon had it pat, but they told him there was still a problem. Not with his face, but with his voice; there was an uncertainty, almost a reluctance, when he told his story. A sharp operator, as Forsyth appeared to be, might pick up that he was lying. Harry worked at it and satisfied them after a while. ‘Of course,’ the policeman said, ‘any oddness in tone could be put down to your little bit of deafness, that can affect the voice. Play that up, and tell him about the panics you had after Dunkirk as well.’

Harry was surprised. ‘But those have gone, I don’t get them any more.’

‘You feel them coming still, don’t you? You manage to suppress them but you feel them coming?’ He glanced at the file on his knees; Harry had his own buff file with a red cross and ‘secret’ on it now. ‘Well, play up to that – a moment’s confusion, like pausing to ask him to repeat something, can play to your advantage. Gives you time to think and fixes you in his mind as an invalid, not someone to be afraid of.’

The information about his panics had come, Harry knew, from the odd woman who had interviewed him one day. She never said who she was but Harry guessed she was some sort of psychiatrist. She had something of the busy eagerness of the spies about her. The gaze from her blue eyes was so penetrating that Harry recoiled for a second. She shook his hand and cheerfully asked him to sit down at the little table.

‘Need to ask a few personal questions, Harry. I may call you Harry?’

‘Yes – er …’

‘Miss Crane, call me Miss Crane. You seem to have led a pretty straightforward life, Harry. Not like some of the rum ’uns we get here, I can tell you.’ She laughed.

‘I suppose I have. An ordinary life.’

‘Losing both parents when you were so young, though, that can’t have been easy. Passed around between uncles and aunts and your boarding school.’

That made him suddenly angry. ‘My aunt and uncle have always been kind. And I was happy at school. And Rookwood’s a public school, not a boarding school.’

Miss Crane eyed him quizzically. ‘Is there a difference?’

‘Yes, there is.’ The heat that came into his voice surprised Harry. ‘A boarding school makes it sound like a place where you’re just left, to mark time. Rookwood – a public school, you’re part of a community, it becomes part of you, shapes you.’

She still smiled but her reply was brutal. ‘Not the same as having parents who love you, is it?’

Harry felt his anger being replaced by heavy weariness. He lowered his gaze. ‘You have to deal with things as they are, make the best of things. Soldier on.’

‘On your own? There isn’t a girlfriend, is there? Anyone?’

He frowned, wondering if she was going to start making suggestions about his sex life, like Miss Maxse had. ‘There isn’t now. There was someone at Cambridge, but it didn’t work out.’

‘Why was that?’

‘Laura and I got bored with each other, Miss Crane. Nothing dramatic.’

She changed the subject. ‘And after Dunkirk? The shell shock, when you found you were having panic attacks, were frightened of loud noises. Did you decide to soldier on then, too?’

‘Yes, not that I was a soldier any more. I won’t be again.’

‘Does that make you angry?’

He looked at her. ‘Wouldn’t you be?’

She inclined her head reprovingly. ‘It’s you we’re here to talk about, Harry.’

He sighed. ‘Yes, I decided to soldier on.’

‘Were you tempted not to? To retreat into – being an invalid?’

He looked at her again. God, she was sharp. ‘Yes, yes, I suppose I was. But I didn’t. I started by going into the hospital grounds, then crossing the road, then walking into town. It got easier. I wasn’t as badly affected as some poor sods.’

‘Must have taken courage, guts. Like helping your cousin’s family in the bombing the night before you came here.’

‘You go on or go under. That’s life these days, isn’t it?’ he replied sharply. ‘Even when you’ve seen everything you took for granted, believed in, smashed to pieces.’ He gave a long sigh. ‘I think the sight of everyone retreating on that beach, the chaos, all that affected me as much as the shell that nearly hit me.’

‘But soldiering on, it must be very lonely.’

Her voice was suddenly gentle. Harry found his eyes filling with tears. He said, without intending to, ‘That night in the shelter, it was so strange. Muriel, Will’s wife, she took my hand. We’ve never got on, I always felt she resented me, but she took my hand. Yet …’

‘Yes?’

‘It felt so dry. So cold. I felt – sad.’

‘Perhaps it wasn’t Muriel’s hand you wanted.’

He looked at her. ‘No, you’re right,’ he said in surprise. But I don’t know whose I did want.’

‘We all need someone’s hand.’

‘Do we?’ Harry laughed uneasily. ‘This is a long way from my mission.’

She nodded. ‘Just getting to know you, Harry, just getting to know you.’

HARRY WAS JERKED out of his reverie as the plane tilted. He clutched at the arms of his seat and looked out of the window, then leaned forward and stared out. They had come out into sunshine again, they were over land. Spain. Harry looked down at the Castilian landscape, a sea of yellow and brown dotted with patchwork fields. As the plane circled lower he made out white empty roads, red-tiled houses, here and there a jumble of ruins from the Civil War. Then the pilot said they were about to land at Barajas airport and a few minutes later they were down on the runway, the engines stopped and he was here, in Spain. He felt a mixture of excitement and fear; he could still hardly believe he was actually back in Madrid.

Looking out of the window he saw half a dozen civil guards standing outside the terminal building, staring over the runway. Harry recognized their dark green uniforms, the yellow holsters clipped to their belts. They still wore their sinister, archaic leather hats, round with two little wings at the back, black and shiny like a beetle’s carapace. When he first came to Spain in 1931 the civiles, old supporters of the right, had been under threat from the Republic and you could see the fear and anger in their hard faces. When he returned in 1937, during the Civil War, they were gone. Now they had returned and Harry felt a dryness in his mouth as he looked at their faces, their cold, still expressions.

He joined the passengers heading for the exit. Dry heat enveloped him as he descended the steps and joined the crocodile crossing the tarmac. The airport building was no more than a low concrete warehouse, the paint flaking away. One of the civiles came across and stood by them. ‘Por all#237;, por all#237;,’ he snapped officiously, pointing to a door marked ‘Inmigraci#243;n’.

Harry had a diplomatic passport and was waved quickly through, his bags chalked without a glance. He looked round the empty entrance hall. There was a whiff of disinfectant, the sickly smelling stuff they had always used in Spain.

A solitary figure leaning against a pillar reading a newspaper waved and came across.

‘Harry Brett? Simon Tolhurst, from the embassy. How was the flight?’

He was about Harry’s age, tall and fair, with an eager friendly manner. He was built like Harry, solidity turning to fat, although with the embassy man the process had gone further.

‘Fine. Cloudy most of the way, but not too bumpy.’ Harry noticed Tolhurst wore an Eton tie, the bright colours clashing with his white linen jacket.

‘I’ll drive you to the embassy, take about an hour. We don’t use Spanish drivers; they’re all government spies.’ He laughed and lowered his voice, though there was no one around. ‘The way they bend their ears back to listen, you’d think they’re going to meet in the middle. Very obvious.’

Tolhurst led him out into the sun and helped put his case in the back of a highly polished old Ford. The airport was out in the country, fields all around. Harry stood looking over the harsh brown landscape. In a field across the road he saw a peasant leading a couple of skinny oxen, ploughing the stubble in with a wooden plough as his ancestors had in Roman times. In the distance the jumbled peaks of the Guadarrama mountains stood out against the harsh blue sky, shimmering in heat haze. Harry felt sweat prickling at his brow.

‘Hot for October,’ he said.

‘Been a bloody hot summer. They’ve had a dreadful harvest; they’re very worried about the food situation. That may help us, though – makes them less likely to enter the war. We’d better get on. You’ve got an appointment with the ambassador.’

Tolhurst eased out onto a long deserted road flanked by dusty poplars, the leaves yellowing at the tips like giant torches.

‘How long have you been in Spain?’ Harry asked.

‘Four months. Came when they expanded the embassy, sent Sir Sam over. Did a spell in Cuba before. Lot more relaxed. Fun.’ He shook his head. ‘This is one awful country, I’m afraid. You’ve been before, haven’t you?’

‘Before the Civil War, then briefly during it. To Madrid both times.’

Tolhurst shook his head again. ‘It’s a pretty grim place now.’

As they drove over the stony, potholed road they talked about the Blitz, agreeing Hitler had abandoned his invasion plans for now. Tolhurst asked Harry where he had gone to school.

‘Rookwood, eh? Good place, I believe. Those were the days, eh?’ he added wistfully.

Harry smiled sadly. ‘Yes.’

He looked out at the countryside. There was a new emptiness to the landscape. Only the occasional peasant driving a donkey and cart passed them, and once an army truck going north, a group of tiredlooking young soldiers staring vacantly from the back. The villages were empty too. It was siesta time, but in the old days there would have been a few people about. Now even the once ubiquitous skinny dogs had gone and only a few chickens were left foraging round closed doorways. One village square had huge posters of Franco all over the cracked, unpainted walls, his arms folded confidently as his jowly face smiled into the distance. #161;HASTA EL FUTURO! Towards the future. Harry took a deep breath. The posters, Harry saw, covered older ones whose tattered edges were visible beneath. He recognized the bottom half of the old slogan, #161;NO PASARAN! They shall not pass. But they had.

Then they were in the rich northern suburbs. From the look of the elegant houses the Civil War might never have happened. ‘Does the ambassador live out here?’ Harry asked.

‘No, Sir Sam lives in the Castellana.’ Tolhurst laughed. ‘It’s a bit embarrassing, actually. He’s next door to the German ambassador.’

Harry turned, open-mouthed. ‘But we’re at war!’

‘Spain’s “non-belligerent”. But it’s crawling with Germans, the scum are all over the place. The German embassy here’s the largest in the world. We don’t speak to them, of course.’

‘How did the ambassador end up next door to the Germans?’

‘Only big house available. He makes a joke of glaring at von Stohrer over the garden wall.’

They drove on into the town centre. Most of the buildings were unpainted and even more dilapidated than Harry remembered, though once many must have been grand. There were posters everywhere, Franco and the yoke-and-arrows symbol of the Falange. Most people were shabbily dressed, even more than he remembered, many looking thin and tired. Men in overalls with scrawny weather-beaten faces walked by, and women in black shawls, patched and mended. Even the barefoot skinny children playing in the dusty gutters had pinched watchful faces. Harry had half expected to see military parades and Falangist rallies like in the newsreels, but the city was quieter than he had known it, as well as dingier. He saw priests and nuns among the passers-by; they were back, too, like the civiles. The few wealthier-looking men wore jackets and hats despite the heat.

Harry turned to Tolhurst. ‘When I was here in ’37 wearing a jacket and hat on a hot day was illegal. Bourgeois affectation.’

‘You’re not allowed to go out without a jacket now, not if you’re wearing a shirt. Point to remember.’

The trams were running but there were few cars and they weaved their way among donkey carts and bicycles. Harry jerked round in amazement as a familiar shape caught his eye, a hooked black cross.

‘Did you see that? The bloody swastika’s flying beside the Spanish flag on that building!’

Tolhurst nodded. ‘Have to get used to that. It’s not just swastikas – the Germans run the police and the press. Franco makes no secret he wants the Nazis to win. Now, look over there.’

They had stopped at an intersection. Harry noticed a trio of colourfully dressed girls wearing thick make-up. They caught his glance and smiled, turning their heads provocatively.

‘There are tarts everywhere. You have to be very careful, most of them have the clap and some are government spies. Embassy staff aren’t allowed near them.’

A pith-helmeted traffic policeman waved them on. ‘Do you think Franco will come into the war?’ Harry asked.

Tolhurst ran a hand through his yellow hair, making it stick up. ‘God knows. It’s a terrible atmosphere; the newspapers and radio are wildly pro-German. Himmler’s coming on a state visit next week. But you just have to carry on as normal, as much as you can.’ He blew out his cheeks and smiled ruefully. ‘But most people keep a suitcase packed, in case we have to get out in a hurry. Oh, I say, there’s a gasogene!’

He pointed to where a big old Renault was puttering along, slower than the donkey carts. Fixed to the back was what looked like a large squat boiler, clouds of smoke pouring from a little chimney. Pipes led under the car from the thing. The driver, a middle-aged bourgeois, ignored stares from the pavement as people stopped to look. A tram clattered by hooting and he swerved wildly to avoid it, the unwieldy vehicle almost teetering over.

‘What the hell was that?’ Harry asked.

‘Spain’s revolutionary answer to the petrol shortage. Uses coal or wood instead of petrol. OK unless you want to go uphill. The French have them too, I hear. Not much chance of the Germans being after that design.’

Harry studied the crowd. A few people were smiling at the bizarre vehicle, but it struck Harry that none were laughing or calling out, as Madrile#241;os would have done before at such a thing. Again he thought how silent they were, the background buzz of conversation he remembered gone.

They drove into Opera district, catching glimpses of the Royal Palace in the distance. It stood out brightly amid the general shabbiness, the sun reflected from its white walls.

‘Does Franco live there?’ Harry asked.

‘He receives people there but he’s established himself in the Pardo Palace, outside Madrid. He’s terrified of assassination. Drives everywhere in a bullet-proof Mercedes Hitler sent him.’

‘There’s still opposition then?’

‘The civiles have security sewn up in the towns. But you never know. After all, Madrid was only taken eighteen months ago. In a way, it’s an occupied city as much as Paris. There’s still resistance in the north, from what we hear, and Republican bands hiding out in the countryside. The vagabundos, they call them.’

‘God,’ Harry said. ‘What this country’s been through.’

‘It might not be over yet,’ Tolhurst observed grimly.

They drove into a street of large nineteenth-century houses, outside one of which a Union Jack hung from a flagpole, blessedly familiar. Harry remembered coming to the embassy in 1937, to ask for Bernie after he was reported missing. The officials had been unhelpful, disapproving of the International Brigades.

A couple of civiles were posted at the door. Cars were drawn up outside the entrance so Tolhurst stopped a little way up the road.

‘Let’s get your bag,’ he said.

Harry looked warily at the civiles as he climbed out. Then he felt his leg tugged from behind. He looked round to see a thin boy of ten, dressed in the rags of an army tunic, sitting on a kind of wheeled wooden sled.

‘Se#241;or, por favor, diez pesetas.’

Harry saw the child had no legs. The boy clung to his turn-ups. ‘Por el amor de Dios,’ he pleaded, thrusting out his other hand. One of the civiles marched sharply down the street, clapping his hands. ‘#161;Vete! #161;Vete!’ At his shout the little boy slapped his hands on the cobbles, rolling his cart backwards into a side street. Tolhurst took Harry’s elbow.

‘You’ll have to be quicker than that, old boy. Beggars don’t usually get as far out as this, but they’re thick as pigeons round the Centro. Not that there are any pigeons left, they’ve eaten them all.’

The civil who had chased the boy away escorted them to the embassy door. ‘Gracias por su asistencia,’ Tolhurst said formally. The man nodded, but Harry saw a look of contempt in his eyes.

‘It’s a bit of a shock at first, the children,’ Tolhurst said as he turned the handle of the big wooden door. ‘But you have to get used to it. Now, time to meet your reception committee. The big guns are waiting for you.’ He sounded jealous, Harry thought, as Tolhurst led the way into the hot, gloomy interior.

THE AMBASSADOR sat behind an enormous desk in an imposing room cooled by quietly whirring fans. There were eighteenth-century prints on the wall, thick rugs on the tiled floor. Another man, in the uniform of a naval captain, sat to one side of the desk. A window looked on to an interior courtyard full of potted plants, where a little group of men in shirtsleeves sat talking on a bench.

Harry recognized Sir Samuel Hoare from the newsreels. He had been a minister under Chamberlain, an appeaser dismissed when Churchill took over. A small man with delicately pointed, severe features and thin white hair, he wore a morning coat with a blue flower in the buttonhole. He stood and leaned across the desk, thrusting out a hand.

‘Welcome, Brett, welcome.’ The handshake was surprisingly strong. Cold, pale blue eyes stared into Harry’s for a moment, then the ambassador waved at the other man. ‘Captain Alan Hillgarth, our naval attach#233;. He has overall responsibility for Special Services.’ Hoare pronounced the final words with a touch of distaste.

Hillgarth was in his forties, tall and darkly handsome with large brown eyes. They were hard but there was something mischievous, almost childlike, about them and about the wide sensual mouth. Harry remembered Sandy reading adventure stories at Rookwood by a man called Hillgarth. They were about spies, adventures in dark backwaters of Europe. Sandy Forsyth had liked them but Harry had found them rather garbled.

The captain shook his hand warmly. ‘Hello, Brett. You’ll be directly responsible to me, through Tolhurst here.’

‘Sit, please; sit, all.’ Hoare waved Harry to a chair.

‘We’re glad to see you,’ Hillgarth said. ‘We’ve had reports of your training. You seemed to pick up everything reasonably well.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Ready to spin your yarn to Forsyth?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘We’ve got you a flat, Tolhurst here will take you round afterwards. Now, you know the drill? The cover story?’

‘Yes, sir. I’ve been seconded as an interpreter, after the illness of the previous man.’

‘Poor old Greene,’ Hillgarth said with a sudden laugh. ‘Still doesn’t know why he was rushed off home.’

‘Good interpreter,’ Hoare interjected. ‘Knew his job. Brett, you’ll have to be very careful what you say. As well as your – ah – other work, you’ll be interpreting for some senior people, and things are delicate here. Very delicate.’ Hoare looked at him sharply and Harry felt suddenly intimidated. He still couldn’t get used to the fact that he was talking to a man he had seen on the newsreels. He took a deep breath.

‘I understand, sir. They briefed me in England. I translate everything into the most diplomatic language possible, never add comments of my own.’

Hillgarth nodded. ‘He’s doing a session with the junior trade minister and me on Thursday. I’ll keep him in order.’

‘Maestre, yes.’ Hoare grunted. ‘We don’t want to upset him.’

Hillgarth produced a gold cigarette case and offered it to Harry. ‘Smoke?’

‘I don’t, thanks.’

Hillgarth lit up and blew out a cloud of smoke. ‘We don’t want you to meet Forsyth straight away, Brett. Take a few days to get yourself known on the circuit, settle in. And get used to being watched and followed – the government put spies on all embassy staff. Most of them are pretty hopeless, you can spot them a mile off, though a few Gestapo-trained men are coming through now. Watch out for anyone on your tail, and report to Tolhurst.’ He smiled as though it were all an adventure, in a way that reminded Harry of the people at the training school.

‘I will, sir.’

‘Now,’ Hillgarth went on. ‘Forsyth. You knew him well for a time at school, but you haven’t seen him since. Correct?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘But you think he might be well disposed towards you?’

‘I hope so, sir. But I don’t really know what he’s been up to since we stopped writing. That was ten years ago.’ Harry glanced out at the courtyard. One of the men there was looking in at them.

‘Those bloody airmen!’ Hoare snapped. ‘I’m fed up of them peering in here!’ He waved a hand imperiously and the men got up and walked off, disappearing through a side door. Harry saw Hillgarth gave Hoare a quick look of dislike before turning back to him.

‘Those are pilots who had to bale out over France,’ Hillgarth said pointedly. ‘Some of them have walked here.’

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Hoare said pettishly. ‘We must get on.’

‘Of course, ambassador,’ Hillgarth said with heavy formality. He turned back to Harry. ‘Now, we first heard about Forsyth two months ago. I’ve an agent in the Industry Ministry here, a junior clerk. He let us know they were all very excited there about something that was going on out in the country, about fifty miles from Madrid. Our man can’t get to the papers but he overheard a couple of conversations. Gold deposits. Large ones, geologically verified. We know they’re sending mining equipment out, and mercury and other chemicals; scarce resources.’

‘Sandy was always interested in geology,’ Harry said. ‘At school he had a thing about fossils, he used to go off and try to find dinosaur bones.’

‘Did he now?’ Hillgarth said. ‘Didn’t know that. He never got himself any formal qualifications that we know of, but he’s working with a man who has. Alberto Otero.’

‘The man with experience in South Africa?’

‘Just so.’ Hillgarth nodded approvingly. ‘Mining engineer. They gave you some reading up on gold mining back home, I believe.’

‘Yes, sir.’ It had been odd, grappling with the heavy textbooks in the evening in his little room.

‘So far as Forsyth’s concerned, of course, you know nothing about gold. Babe in arms on the subject.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Harry paused. ‘Do you know how Forsyth and this Otero came together?’

‘No. There are a lot of gaps. We only know that while he was working as a tour guide Forsyth got in with the Auxilio Social, the Falange organization that handles what passes for social welfare here.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s corrupt as hell. Rich pickings, with supplies so short.’

‘Does Forsyth still keep in touch with his family?’

Hillgarth shook his head. ‘His father hasn’t heard from him in years.’

Harry remembered the one time he had seen the bishop; he had come down to the school after Sandy’s disgrace to plead for his son. Looking from the classroom Harry had seen him in the quadrangle, recognized him by the red episcopal shirt under his suit. He looked solid and patrician, nothing like Sandy.

‘Forsyth supported the Nationalists, then?’ Harry asked.

‘I think it was the rich pickings he supported,’ Hillgarth replied.

‘You weren’t a Republican supporter, were you?’ Hoare gave Harry a searching look.

‘I didn’t support either side, sir.’

Hoare grunted. ‘I thought that was the great dividing line before the War, who supported the Reds in Spain and who the Nats. I’m surprised at a Hispanicist supporting neither side.’

‘Well I didn’t, sir. A plague on both their houses was what I thought.’ He’s a tetchy little bully, Harry thought.

‘I could never understand how anyone could think a Red Spain could be less than a disaster.’

Hillgarth looked irritated by the interruption. He leaned forward. ‘Forsyth wouldn’t have known any Spanish before coming out here, would he?’

‘No, but he would have picked it up quickly. He’s smart. That was one reason the masters hated him at school; he was bright but he wouldn’t work.’

Hillgarth raised his eyebrows. ‘Hated? That’s a strong word.’

‘It got to that, I think.’

‘Well, according to our man he’s got in with the state mining agency. Does wheeler-dealing for them; negotiating supplies and so on.’ He paused. ‘The Falange faction dominates the Ministry of Mines. They’d love Spain to be able to pay for food imports, instead of begging us and the Americans for loans. Trouble is, we’ve no hard intelligence in there. If you could get directly to Forsyth it could be of incalculable help. We must find out if there’s anything in these gold stories.’

‘Yes, sir.’

There was a moment’s silence, the oily swishing of the ceiling fan suddenly loud, then Hillgarth went on. ‘Forsyth works through a company he’s set up. Nuevas Iniciativas. It’s listed on the Madrid Stock Exchange as a supply procurement company. The shares have been going up, Ministry of Mines officials have been buying in. The firm has a little office near Calle Toledo; Forsyth’s there most days. Our man hasn’t been able to get his home address, which is a blasted nuisance – we just know he lives out in Vigo district with some tart. Most days at siesta time he goes for coffee to a local cafe. That’s where we want you to make contact with him.’

‘Does he go by himself?’

‘Apart from him there’s just a secretary at the office. He always takes that half-hour by himself in the afternoon.’

Harry nodded. ‘He used to like going off alone at school.’

‘We’ve had him watched. It’s bloody nerve-racking – I worry Forsyth might spot our man.’ He passed Harry a couple of photos from a file on the desk. ‘He took these.’

The first photograph showed Sandy, well dressed and tanned, walking down a street talking to an army officer. Sandy had bent to catch his words, his face solemnly attentive. The second showed him striding carelessly along, jacket unbuttoned, smoking. There was a confident, knowing smile on his face.

‘He looks prosperous.’

Hillgarth nodded. ‘Oh, he’s not short of money.’ He turned back to the file. ‘The flat we’ve got you is a couple of streets from his office. It’s on the fringe of a poor area, but with the housing shortage it’ll be credible to house a junior diplomat there.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Your flat’s actually not bad, I’m told. Used to belong to some Communist functionary under the Republic. Probably been shot by now. Settle in there, but don’t go to the cafe yet.’

‘What’s it called, sir?’

‘Caf#233; Rocinante.’

Harry smiled wryly. ‘The name of Don Quijote’s horse.’

Hillgarth nodded, then looked steadily at Harry. ‘Word of advice,’ he said with a smile, his tone friendly though his eyes were hard. ‘You look too serious, like you had the weight of the world on your shoulders. Cheer up a bit, smile. Look on it as an adventure.’

Harry blinked. An adventure. Spying on an old friend who was working with fascists.

The ambassador gave a sudden harsh laugh. ‘Adventure! Dear God preserve us. There are too many adventurers in this damn country if you ask me.’ He turned to Harry, his face animated. ‘Listen, Brett. You sound like you’ve got your head screwed on, but be damned careful. I agreed to your coming because it’s important we find out what’s going on, but I don’t want you upsetting any applecarts.’

‘I’m not sure I understand, sir.’

‘This regime is divided in two. Most of the generals who won the Civil War are solid sensible people who admire England and want Spain kept out of the war. It’s my job to build bridges and strengthen their hand with Franco. I don’t want it getting to the General#237;simo that we’ve got spies nosing round one of his pet projects.’

Hillgarth nodded.

‘I understand,’ said Harry. Hoare doesn’t want me here at all, he thought. I’m in the middle of some bloody piece of politics.

Hillgarth rose. ‘Well, I’ve got this ceremony for the Naval Heroes of Spain. Better show the flag, eh, ambassador?’

Hoare nodded and Hillgarth rose, Harry and Tolhurst following. Hillgarth picked up the file and handed it to Harry. It had a red cross on the front.

‘Tolly will take you to your flat. Take Forsyth’s dossier, have a good look, but bring it back tomorrow. Tolly will show you where to sign it out.’

As they left, Harry turned to look at Hoare. He was staring out of the window, frowning at the airmen who had started to drift back into the yard.