The Company of Strangers

Anne smoked some more.

‘Crosswords have their own kind of completeness, too,’ she said, ‘if you’re any good at them.’

Things were digging into her. Her bra felt tight. Her waistband knotty. She wasn’t getting on with these two men and she didn’t know how it had happened. Maybe that first exchange and the last one really had been too cheeky. Perhaps they’d seen one thing, imagined and extended their idea of her and she’d revealed something completely different. Was she this difficult?

‘The thing about intelligence is that the picture is always incomplete. We deal in fragments. You, in the field, even more so. You might not always know what you’re doing, you might not always appreciate the importance of what you hear. There are no solutions and, even if there were, you wouldn’t have known the question in the first place. You listen and report,’ said Sutherland.

‘Something else for you to listen for in the Wilshere household, apart from people’s names, has some relevance to the endgame we were talking about earlier,’ said Rose. ‘To make the doodlebugs, or any rocket for that matter, the Germans need precision tools. To make those tools requires precision cutting instruments. They need diamonds. Industrial diamonds. Those diamonds are finding their way in here on ships from Central Africa. We have tried searching those ships when they put in at our ports, like Freetown in Sierra Leone, but a handful of diamonds is not so easy to find on a 7,000-ton ship. We think, but we have no proof, that Wilshere is bringing in diamonds from Angola and getting them into the German Legation, where they are sent by diplomatic bag to Berlin. We don’t know how he does it or how he gets paid for doing it. So anything you hear about diamonds and payment for them in the Wilshere household must be communicated, via Cardew, to us at once.’

‘How do you want me to do that?’

‘Wallis will look after that. You’ll see him and arrange things with him.’

He glanced at his watch.

‘Cardew had better take you up to the house now. It’s getting late. I’ve told him to brief you on Wilshere and his wife, but I’ve also instructed him to exclude certain details which, for the safety of your cover, it would be better for you to find out yourself. I don’t want you going in there knowing too much about the situation and not reacting correctly to…developments. You’re supposed to be a secretary. First time abroad and all that. I want you to be curious about everything and everybody.’

‘That doesn’t sound as if it’s going to be too difficult, sir.’

Sutherland grimaced. The brown column of teeth appeared again and shut down just as fast. He went to the door and called for Cardew.

Chapter 8 (#ulink_54673a44-a3ac-5125-ba23-1b964f22094d)

Saturday, 15th July 1944, Estoril, near Lisbon.

Meredith Cardew drove Anne west past empty beaches. The sun was still high and the air crammed with heat, the sea in a flat calm, the Atlantic Ocean just licking at the sand. She didn’t speak, still overwhelmed by that first meeting with Rose and Sutherland. Across the estuary Cardew pointed out the beaches of Caparica and further into the haze, discernible only as a smudge, the headland of Cabo Espichel. He was trying to loosen her up.

The saltine air that came through the windows brought back weekends by the sea before the war with her mother fully clothed and scarfed against the sun and wind, while her own young body went hazelnut brown in a day. It was easy to love this place, she thought, after London with its bombed-out, blackened houses, the drab grey streets piled with rubble. Here, by the sea, under the big sky, the palms and the bougainvillea flashing past, it should be easy to forget five years of destruction.

Cardew drove one-handed, clawing tobacco into his pipe with the other. He even managed to get the pipe going without sending them off down the rocks and into the sea. He was mid thirties, with thinning, reddish blond hair which had been razor cut up the back. He was tall, very long legs, and slim with a long nose and a facile smile working on the corners of his mouth. His baggy trousers flapped as his knees seemed to be conducting an unseen orchestra; the turn-ups were halfway up his shins, which were covered by thick beige socks. He wore heavy brogues on his feet.

What were the winter clothes like?

He smoked the pipe blowing stage kisses. His right arm had suffered a severe burn up to the elbow. The skin was shiny and patterned like sea fossils in rock.

‘Boiling water,’ he said, catching her looking, ‘when I was a child.’

‘Sorry,’ she said, flustered at being caught out.

‘Did Sutherland and Rose fill you in?’

‘As much as they were prepared to. They said they’d purposely left some gaps.’

‘Ye-e-e-s,’ said Cardew, a frown of uncertainty rippling down his forehead. ‘Did Rose say anything about Mafalda?’

‘He said she was having a breakdown of some sort, not “howling at the moon”, as he put it, just nerves.’

‘I don’t know what it is. Something to do with her husband perhaps, but it might just be a genetic thing. A bit of inbreeding back down the line. These big Portuguese families are known for it. Marrying each other’s first cousins and the like and before you know it…I mean, look at the Portuguese royal family. A set of March hares if ever I saw one.’

‘Isn’t that all over now? The royal family?’

‘Thirty-six years ago. Terrible business. The king and his son came up to Lisbon from the country, from Vila Viçosa in fact, not far from where Mafalda’s family comes from, near the border. They arrived in Lisbon, trundling through the streets, both assassinated in their carriage. End of the monarchy. Well, it took a couple more years to fizzle out, but that was the effective end: 1908. Still, she might just be depressed or something. Whatever, she’s not right, which is probably why Wilshere’s looking for some company.’

‘Female company, so I understand.’

Cardew shifted in his seat and looked as wary as a grouse on the Glorious Twelfth.

‘Bit of a rum one, old Wilshere. He’s broken the mould. Not your average chap.’

‘Does he have children?’

‘Only sons, who are away. No daughters. Probably why he wants female company. And here I am with four, for God’s sake,’ he said, a little gloomy. ‘Sporting legacy gone…although the eldest one’s school long-jump champion.’

‘All is not lost, Mr Cardew.’

He brightened, bounced the end of his pipe by clenching his jaw.

‘I think you’ll like Wilshere,’ said Cardew. ‘And I know he’ll like you. You’ve got that determined look about you. He likes girls with a bit of spunk. He didn’t like Marjorie.’

‘Marjorie?’

‘My former secretary. The one who married a Portuguese and is now pregnant. The husband won’t let her work, says she’s got to lie down. Poor girl’s got six months to go. Still, that’s why you’re here. Wilshere didn’t take to her, anyway. She was a bit too English for his taste and he upset her. Yes, he can be a bit like that. If he takes to you, you’re all right. If not he’s…he’s a difficult bugger.’

‘He likes you.’

‘Yes…in his way.’

‘Aren’t you a bit too English as well?’

‘Sorry, old girl. I’m a Scot, both sides. Talk like a Sassenach but I’m a Scot through and through. Like Wilshere, in fact, he’s Irish down to his heels but talks with a silver spoon in his mouth.’

‘Or a hot potato…if he’s Irish,’ said Anne.

Cardew roared, not that he found it so funny. He was just the type who liked to laugh.

‘What else is there to know about Patrick Wilshere?’ she asked.

‘He can be a charmer…’

‘As well as a drinker and a gambler.’

‘He rides, too. Do you ride?’

‘No.’

‘It’s nice up there on the Serra de Sintra on horseback,’ said Cardew. ‘Sutherland told me you had a top-class brain. Maths. Languages. That sort of thing.’

‘It didn’t leave much time for anything else. I’m just not sporty, Mr Cardew. Sorry. I’m not much of a team person, I suppose. It’s probably something to do with being an only child and…’