“I must remind you, sir, that Colonel Martineau was given a definite promise after that business in Lyons that his services wouldn’t be required again. His health alone should make it impossible.”
“Nonsense, Jack. Harry could never resist a challenge. Find him. And another thing, Jack. Check SOE flies. See if weVe got anyone with a Jersey background.”
“Men only, sir?”
“Good God, Jack, of course not. Since when have we been interested in men only in our business.”
He tapped on the partition and the driver took them away from the curb.
T iti
I he cottage in Dorset, not far from Lulworth Cove, had been loaned to Martineau by an old friend from Oxford days. It stood in a tiny valley above the cliffs, and the way to the beach was blocked by rusting barbed wire. There had once been a notice warning of mines, not that there were any. That had been the first thing the landlord at the village pub had told Martineau when he’d moved into the area, which explained why he was walking along the shoreline, occasionally throwing stones into the incoming waves, the morning after Dougal Munro’s meeting with Eisenhower at Hayes Lodge.
Harry Martineau was forty-four, of medium height, with good shoulders under the old paratrooper’s camouflaged jump jacket which he wore against the cold. His face was very pale, with the kind of skin that never seemed to tan, and wedge-shaped, the eyes so dark that it was impossible to say what their true color was. The mouth was mobile, with a slight ironic smile permanently in place. The look of a man who had found life more disappointing than he had hoped.
He’d been out of hospital for three months now and things were better than they’d been for a while. He didn’t get the chest pain anymore, except when he overdid things, but the insomnia pattern was terrible. He could seldom sleep at night. The moment he went to bed, his brain seemed to become hyperactive. Still, that was only to be expected. Too many years on the run, of living by night, danger constantly at hand.
He was no use to Munro anymore, the doctors had made that clear. He could have returned to Oxford, but that was no answer. Neither was trying to pick up the threads of the book he’d been working on in 1939. The war had taught him that if nothing else. So, he’d dropped out as thoroughly as a man could. The cottage in Dorset by the sea, books to read, space to find himself in.
“And where the hell have you gone, Harry?” he asked morosely as he started up the cliff path. “Because I’m damned if I can find you.”
The living room of the old cottage was comfortable enough. A Persian carpet on the flagged floor, a dining table and several rush-backed chairs and books everywhere, not only on the shelves but piled in the corner. None of them were his. Nothing in this place was his except for a few clothes.
There was a sofa on each side of the stone fireplace. He put a couple of logs on the embers, poured himself a scotch, drank it quickly and poured another. Then he sat down and picked up the notepad he’d left on the coffee table. There were several lines of poetry written on it and he read them aloud.
The station is ominous at midnight. Hope is a dead letter. He dropped the notepad back on the table with a wry smile. “Admit it, Harry,” he said softly. “You’re a lousy poet.”
Suddenly, he was tired, the feeling coming in a kind of rush, the lack of sleep catching up with him. His chest began to ache a little, the left lung, and that took him back to Lyons, of course, on that final and fatal day. If he’d been a little bit more on the ball it wouldn’t have happened. A case of taking the pitcher to the well too often or perhaps, quite simply, his luck had run out. As he drifted into sleep, it all came back so clearly.
Standartenfuhrer Jurgen Kaufmann, the head of the Gestapo in Lyons, was in civilian clothes that day as he came down the steps of the Town Hall and got into the back of the black Citroen. His driver was also in civilian clothes, for on Thursday afternoons Kaufmann visited his mistress and liked to be discreet about it.