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  ‘Black. No sugar.’

  The servant poured the coffee and backed out of the room with a bow. As the door was about to close, another face appeared round it.

  Roosevelt cupped his hand and signalled the newcomer to step forward. A man of about fifty emerged from the shadows. His gingery red hair was razored sharp at the sides and back, leaving a thick shock on top. His face was narrow and freckled, and he wore a military uniform, minus cap or jacket.

  ‘Do you know Dexter Flood, Professor?’

  Wilde rose to his feet once more. ‘We haven’t met, sir, but of course I know of him.’

  ‘Colonel Flood is presently seconded to the War Department, on the Army General Staff, though like you he has a background in academia.’

  Flood crossed the room and shook Wilde’s hand. ‘Good to meet you, Professor. I’ve heard a lot about you.’

  Had he? What had he heard? Wilde certainly knew something of Flood. In the early thirties, he had attended a lecture he gave: Friends and Enemies: Fascism and Bolshevism in the Old World. Flood had taken a hawkish line against the Soviet Union; less so against the fascist movements in Europe. Perhaps that had been understandable before the full threat of Hitler and Mussolini became clear.

  ‘Colonel Flood is central to the reason I asked you here, Tom. If you agree to help us, he’ll be your point of contact.’

  Why had he been summoned here? The question had troubled and intrigued Wilde since the invitation arrived by courier at his mother’s Boston home two days ago.

  ‘Oh, you have to go, Tom!’ his mother had insisted. ‘An invitation from the president? Of course you have to accept!’

  Wilde had shrugged. Of course he’d go, but he was more than a little surprised; he had no idea Roosevelt had even heard of him.

  Flood poured himself a coffee and cream and spooned in sugar, then took a hard-back chair to the right of Wilde. He had a pad of lined paper and he unscrewed a large red fountain pen. He scribbled a heading at the top of the pad, and then underlined it.

  ‘OK then, here’s a straight question, Professor Wilde,’ Roosevelt said, ‘and I want a yes/no answer, one that hasn’t been filtered through embassies and the State Department. Where does England stand in all this? Are they expecting to be part of this coming war?’

  Once again, Wilde did not hesitate in replying. ‘Yes.’

  ‘They won’t just roll over? They’re not going to sign up to some kind of dishonourable fudge with the Hun?’

  ‘No. That won’t happen, not after Czechoslovakia, though there are some who would wish it so.’

  Roosevelt nodded slowly, as though Wilde were confirming something he already suspected. ‘Now tell me about morale. Do the British think they can win? Because Joe Kennedy and plenty of others sure don’t think they can.’

  ‘I don’t think it ever occurs to the British that they could possibly lose. The last time they lost a war was against us a couple of centuries back.’

  Roosevelt laughed out loud as he stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray, immediately fishing in his silver box for a fresh one. ‘The history man speaks.’

  ‘But people aren’t happy about the prospect of war. Many fought in the trenches and they don’t want it to happen again.’

  ‘That’s understandable.’

  Wilde had always liked what he read about Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was a man of intellect and high education who managed to communicate with the working man and woman and make them believe he was on their side. The evidence seemed to prove their faith was justified. But you could never be sure, not with politicians. Any history man would tell you that.

  ‘How long have you been home, Wilde?’

  ‘Ten weeks, Mr President, much of it visiting my mother in Boston. I’ve given some lectures at the east coast universities, tried to sell a few copies of my new biography of Sir Robert Cecil and I’ve listened to some blues and jazz.’ He had also spent hours at the graveside of his late wife, Charlotte, and their child, talking to her about Lydia, asking her thoughts and advice. But that wasn’t something he needed to share.

  ‘And you’re going back when?’

  ‘The ship sails tomorrow.’

  ‘Did you get to hear Billie Holiday?’

  ‘Caught up with her at Café Society in the Village, sir. Worth the trip over just for that.’

  Roosevelt adjusted his rimless pince-nez on the bridge of his patrician nose and stared for a moment at Wilde. It was unlikely the President had the freedom to go to jazz clubs in New York.

  ‘Lucky you,’ Roosevelt said. ‘Anyway, down to business.’ He nodded in Flood’s direction. ‘Over to you, Dexter.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr President.’

  Wilde met the colonel’s serious gaze. He wondered why Flood hadn’t made general; he surely had the qualifications: hero of the Great War having led an assault that captured a German command post in September 1918, military historian with a professorship from Princeton, something of an expert on European politics in the twentieth century. Had he fallen foul of someone somewhere – surely something or somebody had halted his advance?

  ‘Have you heard of fission, Professor Wilde? The new science papers coming out of Germany?’

  ‘Sure, I’ve heard of it, even tried to understand it. Why?’

  His old friend Geoff Lancing had attempted, briefly, to explain it to him; it was a difficult concept for the layman.

  ‘Because there are physics men here in America who believe it means that a superbomb might be possible. What some people like to call an atomic bomb. Even Einstein believes it’s no longer merely the stuff of H. G. Wells. The War Department has to take such warnings seriously.’

  Fission. Lancing, a brilliant young physics professor back in Cambridge, had bubbled over with enthusiasm – and not a little trepidation – as he’d tried to interest Wilde in the subject. Much of the technical detail had gone over Wilde’s head, but he had got the gist. This wasn’t just splitting the atom; this, as he understood it, was bursting them apart with explosive force.

  ‘I have a good friend who tried to explain it,’ said Wilde, ‘but I couldn’t claim to understand the fine detail.’

  ‘Nor me, Professor, nor me,’ Roosevelt said. ‘How could a tiny thing like an atom cause an explosion? Gas, that’s the thing that scares me. The Italians have dropped it from the air in Abyssinia, so you have to think about it coming from the sky onto a crowded Western city. Hell on earth. But this atom thing, well, that beats me . . .’

  ‘It really isn’t my field, Mr President.’

  ‘Of course not. Back to you, Dexter.’

  ‘OK, Wilde, you’re not a scientist. But you have eyes and ears. And you’re going home to Cambridge, which is the place where it all began. The Cavendish Laboratory.’

  The Cavendish, in the heart of Cambridge, was where men had first split the atom. The lab had long been at the very heart of experimental particle physics and Geoff Lancing was one of its leading lights.

  Wilde studied Flood. What he saw was a career man who hadn’t quite made it to the top, but still managed to wield influence. Perhaps he had spent too long on campus, not enough time on the parade ground.

  ‘We need to know what’s going on there,’ Flood continued. ‘The world of atomic physics is a small place. There are questions to which we would like answers. For instance, do Britain’s top men believe this superbomb is possible? How difficult is it to make? Who are the real brains – the leaders in the field? We’d like to hear what you can find out. And we’d like to hear it in layman’s terms. Simple as that.’

  ‘Then I’ll keep my eyes and ears open.’

  ‘Come on, Wilde,’ Flood said. ‘We know your background. You may not call yourself a spy, you may not be part of any agency, but goddamn it, Professor, you’re in the thick of it already! You take briefings from Vanderberg at the US embassy, you watch your contemporaries like a bird of prey . . .’

  ‘Take briefings from Jim Vanderberg? He’s a friend, that�
��s all, an old college friend. We just talk, shoot the breeze like friends do.’

  Flood held up a defensive hand and grinned. ‘No one’s accusing you of anything, Professor. You do good work. We’ve got a pretty good idea what you did at the back end of ’36. You’re just the sort of guy we need.’

  Did Flood really know Wilde’s role in those events? The foiling of the conspiracy to prevent the abdication of Edward VIII had been a closely guarded secret. Wilde shrugged. ‘I suppose I should be flattered.’

  Roosevelt clapped his hands. ‘Good man. We don’t want to be caught off guard. If anyone looks like they’re going to get a superbomb, I want to know about it.’ He glanced at his watch and Wilde began to rise, as did Colonel Flood. The interview was over. Ten short minutes in which they had covered the likelihood of war, the possibility of an atomic superbomb and the pleasures of jazz. All that and good White House coffee. The President put the dying butt of his second cigarette in the ashtray groove, then leant across and shook Wilde’s hand warmly. ‘Good to meet you, Professor. Keep in touch. I need a clear, unbiased voice over there in the dark days that lie ahead of us. Missy LeHand is my gatekeeper and she will tell you exactly how to contact me. I’d value your view over those of a dozen diplomats. Just keep everything short and to the point. On the science matter, communicate with Dexter.’

  ‘Certainly, Mr President.’

  ‘And perhaps you’d send me a signed copy of your new book.’

  ‘It would be my pleasure, sir. I think you’ll find that Sir Robert Cecil was every bit as ruthless in his own way as Walsingham.’

  ‘Power politics! Nothing changes down the ages.’

  Flood walked towards the door. ‘I’ll show the professor out, Mr President.’

  ‘Thank you, Dexter.’

  As the door closed behind them, Dexter Flood clapped his hand on Wilde’s shoulder. ‘Glad to have you on board, Wilde. You keep me in the loop, OK.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘This friend of yours inside the Cavendish, that would be Dr Lancing, right? Augustin G. Lancing?’

  Wilde moved away from Flood’s chummy hand. ‘What makes you think that?’

  Flood shrugged and grinned through his mass of freckles. ‘A hunch, Wilde, just a hunch.’

  ‘Well, you should know that Lancing has wisely dropped the Augustin. He’s Geoffrey Lancing. But why mention him particularly? I know two or three people inside the Cavendish. There’s a Cavendish man in my own college.’

  ‘That would be Paul Birbach, right?’

  ‘You know a lot, Colonel.’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who else do you know in the Cavendish?’

  ‘Only passing acquaintances, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Torsten Hellquist, yes?’

  ‘Yes, I do know him slightly. Why?’

  ‘Because Hellquist and Birbach are the ones that worry us. They have dubious sympathies. We don’t believe they’re on our side.’

  So that was why he had been called here. Somehow they knew about his acquaintance with Lancing and Birbach and Hellquist. If they knew so much already, why did they need him?

  Flood lowered his voice. ‘I want to know what goes on in that Cambridge laboratory. I want to know about those two goddamned foreigners, what they’re doing – when they screw and when they fart. Got it?’

  ‘I won’t see them that much, I’m afraid. Our paths don’t cross that often.’

  ‘Then find a way in. Use Lancing. Ask him who’s best – who among his researchers has a brain the size of Texas? Those are the guys we need to worry about – the clever fellers, not the also-rans. No one gets a superbomb before the USA. Comprende?’

  Wilde did not reply.

  ‘There’s one other thing. Have you heard of Milt Hardiman?’

  ‘No, should I have?’

  ‘Only if you read the society columns. But he’s a good man, for all his wealth. A patriot. He’s over there and he’ll be making contact with you. He’s on our side and he’ll be working with us on this. Confide in him – work together. He can get messages to me.’

  ‘Milt Hardiman.’

  ‘Milt. Short for Milton. Everyone calls him Milt. Just don’t play poker with him – he’ll rob you blind.’ Dexter Flood grinned and put out his hand, gripping Wilde’s in a warm, friendly handshake. ‘You’ll be OK, feller. Serve your country.’

  A few minutes later, walking out into the fresh air on Pennsylvania Avenue, Wilde tried to make sense of the whirlwind meeting. One thing was clear – the invitation to the Oval Office had been nothing more than an attempt to schmooze him, so that Dexter Flood could use him. Schmoozed and used.

  Roosevelt’s role had been peripheral. He had been there to flatter Wilde. Devious bastard. For all his down-home, folksy appearance, Roosevelt was as wily and unscrupulous as Queen Elizabeth I’s spymaster, Walsingham.

  In which case, who exactly was Colonel Dexter Flood?

  JUNE 1939

  CHAPTER 3

  Eva Haas and the man she knew only as Baumgarten drew up outside the barbed wire of Dachau concentration camp near Munich in a large, closed-top Opel car. In the vehicle’s trunk, there were two sets of hiking clothes, one for her, one for Arnold Lindberg.

  Baumgarten was dressed in the full, menacing black uniform of an SS captain – a Hauptsturmführer. Eva wore a dark, sexless jacket and skirt, with a party badge at her breast, a face scrubbed clean of make-up, with her hair hidden beneath a braided wig, in the tight style favoured by Wagnerian singers at Bayreuth. She looked at herself in the mirror and the face that stared back at her was horribly similar to that of the sinister Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, leader of the NS-Frauenschaft. Eva was shaking and tried to bring her body under control. She must show no fear.

  ‘Hell on earth,’ Baumgarten said, looking through the electrified wire at the regimented rows of prisoner huts. On both sides were watchtowers manned by guards with sub-machine guns.

  ‘First the telephone,’ Frau Haas said. ‘We do nothing until I know for certain.’

  ‘Of course.’ He smiled reassuringly, put the Opel into gear, then drove at a steady speed into the nearest village. They scanned the dull, empty streets for a telephone kiosk, but were out of luck. ‘Perhaps the railway station,’ he said.

  The station had no public phone, but Baumgarten approached one of the platform guards, a small, timid man whose eyes bulged in terror at the sight of an approaching SS officer. The little man’s body stiffened and he snapped a sharp salute. ‘Heil Hitler!’

  ‘I need a telephone.’

  ‘Yes, sir. In the signal box. Let me take you, sir. Wesselmann will help you, sir.’

  The signal box was a hundred metres away at the point where the road crossed the track. The signalman, Wesselmann, was less deferential than his colleague but had no option but to allow the call. No one could refuse an SS officer.

  ‘Please leave us,’ Baumgarten said.

  Reluctantly, the signalman abandoned his post and climbed down the steps. From the window Eva could see him light up a cigarette.

  ‘Now call her,’ Baumgarten said.

  Her hands wet with sweat, Eva called a number in Berlin. It was answered after less than a minute. ‘Miss Forster?’

  ‘Frau Dr Haas?’

  ‘Yes, is –’

  ‘All is well, dear, he’s on the train. No fuss at all, and he’s in a carriage with some nice children. I heard just an hour ago that the train has now crossed into Holland. All is well, my dear.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you, Miss Forster.’

  Eva’s terror ebbed away. Her hands and body stopped shaking. Now, there was no doubt in her mind. She had to get out of Germany – and if Baumgarten had an idea that might work, she had to try it.

  Together, they drove back towards Dachau, but they stopped on the way and parked in a lay-by in the shade of thick woodland. Baumgarten climbed out of the car and removed the bags with their hiking gear, placing them carefully in a b
ramble thicket. ‘They may search the car,’ he explained.

  At the concentration camp, they were confronted once again by barbed wire, watchtowers and by an endless line of shuffling prisoners on the other side of the wire. Eva felt enveloped by a profound fear and darkness. Arbeit Macht Frei, the entrance sign said, work makes you free. No freedom behind this wire. They pulled in at the main gate and climbed from the vehicle, presenting themselves at the guardhouse with sharp, straight-arm salutes. Baumgarten did the talking. Even in uniform, women were nothing but helpmeets and breeding machines in the new Germany.

  Baumgarten slapped a signed and stamped paper down on the counter in a high-handed manner. ‘Transfer to Sachsenhausen. Inmate Lindberg, Arnold,’ he said, and rattled off Lindberg’s official prison number.

  The chief guard, like Baumgarten an SS officer complete with death’s head insignia on his cap, laughed. ‘Doesn’t he like the food here?’

  ‘He is needed for questioning in Berlin. Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse.’

  The guard stiffened. ‘Ah, yes, well, that makes sense, of course, Herr Hauptsturmführer.’ Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse was the headquarters of the SS, the Gestapo and the SD, the domain of Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. If the orders came from there, then there could be no argument; Sachsenhausen was only a short drive from Berlin.

  The guard looked at the transfer paper supplied by Baumgarten, then shuffled through his own record of the day’s orders. ‘He is not on the list, Herr Hauptsturmführer.’

  ‘Nor will he be. This is top secret.’

  The guard looked uneasily from Baumgarten to Eva.

  ‘This is Frau Haas, my secretary. She will take notes on the journey.’ The implication being that time was of the essence: the interrogation would start immediately.

  ‘I must put a call through to the commandant.’

  ‘Do that, but be quick. We have a long drive. Here’ – he handed over a swastika-embossed card – ‘tell him to ring that number. Tell him my name is Baumgarten.’

  The guard’s eyes widened as he looked at the name on the card. He clicked his heels and saluted. ‘Yes, sir, straightaway, sir.’