could give him, and promised to look out for a green suede jacket in Spain, size 36.
The airport bus dredged through the sludge of traffic as sodium-arc lamps jaundiced our way towards Slough. Cold passengers clasped their five-shilling tickets and one or two tried to read newspapers in the glimmer. Cars flicked lights, shook their woolly dollies at us and flashed by, followed by ghost cars of white spray.
At the airport everything was closed and half the lighting switched off to save the cost of the electricity we had paid seven and six airport tax for. A long thin line of passengers shuffled down the centre of the draughty customs hall while Immigration men snapped passports in their faces with impartial xenophobia. In the lounge a blonde with smudged mascara played us a gay tune on her teeth with a ballpoint pen before we were sealed into the big, shiny, aluminium pod.
Sitting near the front of the aircraft was a plump man in a plastic raincoat. His red face was familiar to me and I tried to remember in what connexion. He was bellowing loudly about the air conditioning.
The surrounding airport was twittering with Klee-like coloured lights and signs. Inside the cabin the strongest had fought for and won their window seats, sick bags were ready and cabin temperature control set at ‘Roast’. Starters whined, dipped the cabin lights to half strength and heaved at the propeller blades. The big motors pounded the wet air, settled into a roar and dragged us up the black ramp of night.
The automatic pilot took control; white plastic cups danced and shuddered across the little stage clipped before me, shedding plastic spoons and large wrapped sugar segments.
I could see the back of the plump man’s head. He was shouting. I tried to remember everyone who had been involved in the ice-melting file transaction, and wondered if Dawlish had checked this passenger list.
Eight thousand feet. Beneath us green veins of street-lighting X-rayed Weymouth on to the night. Then only the dark sea.
Thin damp triangles of bread clung helpless across the pliable plate. I ate one. The steward poured hot coffee from the battered metal pots in appreciation. Constellations of city lights merged with icicles of stars suspended in the cavern of the sky.
I dozed until – Plonk Plonk – the undercarriage came down and cabin lighting was turned fully bright to open sleep-moted eyes. As the plane rumbled to a halt anxious holidaymakers clasped last year’s straw hats and groped towards the exit door.
‘Goodnightsirandthankyou … goodnightsirandthankyou … goodnightsirandthankyou …’ The stewardess bestowed a low communion upon departing passengers.
The plump man edged his way along the plane towards me. ‘Number 24,’ he said.
‘What?’ I said nervously.
‘You are number 24,’ he said loudly. ‘I never forget a face.’
‘Who are you?’ I asked.
His face bent into a rueful smile. ‘You know who I am,’ he shouted. ‘You are the man in flat number twenty-four and I am Charlie the milkman.’
‘Oh yes,’ I said weakly. It was the milkman with the deaf horse. ‘Have a good holiday, Charlie. I’ll settle up when you get back.’
‘Coaches for Costa del Sol,’ the loudspeakers were saying. The Customs and Immigration gave a perfunctory sleepy nod and stamped ‘30 days’ on the passport.
I could see a square, solid, British figure fighting through the Costa del Sols. ‘Welcome to Gibraltar,’ said Joe MacIntosh, our man in Iberia.
Joe MacIntosh drove me out to one of the married-officer accommodations along Europa Road past the military hospital. It was 3.45 a.m. The streets were almost empty. Two sailors in white were vomiting their agonizing way to the Wharf and another was sitting on the pavement near Queen’s Hotel.
‘Blood, vomit and alcohol,’ I said to Joe, ‘it should be on the coat of arms.’
‘It’s on just about everything else,’ he said sourly.
After we’d had a drink Joe promised to brief me in the morning before he went on ahead. I slept.
We had breakfast in the mess and the water supply wasn’t quite as salty as I remembered it. Joe filled in some of the details.
‘We have been hearing about this counterfeit paper money for some years; it’s being washed up out of the sea.’
I nodded.
‘I’ve made a little sketch map.’
Joe opened his wallet and pulled out a page of a school exercise book. On it was drawn a shaky tracing of the south-western quarter of the Iberian peninsula. The Straits of Gibraltar were in the bottom right-hand corner. Lisbon was near the top left. Small mapping-pen crosses had been inked in along the coastline. The 100-kilometre stretch between Sagres (on the extreme south-western tip) and Faro curved, in a 100-kilometre-long bay. Trapped into the curve like bubbles were most of Joe’s little marks.
Joe began to tell me the arrangements he had made. ‘The nearest town to the wreck is Albufeira, here …’ Joe hadn’t changed much from the tall, muscular, Intelligence Corps lieutenant who came to Lisbon as my assistant in 1942. ‘… This is a list of all the wrecks that have happened between Sagres and Huelva and …’ Scores of young Intelligence Officers came to Lisbon in ’41 and ’42, all anxious to spend one strenuous week bringing the Axis to its knees. Mostly they fell prey to the simplest little security traps we set or they got into arguments with Germans in cafés. We hooked their new boys and they hooked ours, and old timers (anyone who had spent more than three months there) exchanged sardonic smiles with their enemy opposite number over thimbles of black coffee. ‘… using an Italian civilian frogman with whom I have worked before. He is perhaps the best frogman in Europe today. If you stop overnight in the town I have marked I’ll phone him to meet you there. Code word: conversation. I’ll be going by another route.’
‘Joe,’ I said. Through the window I could just see Mount Hacho on the North African mainland across the clear air and sunny water of the Straits. ‘What have you been told about this operation?’
Joe slowly brought a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, took one and offered them.
‘No thanks,’ I said. He lit his own and then put away his matches. His hands moved very slowly but I knew his mind was working like lightning.
He said, ‘You know the Wren with the rather large …’
‘I know the one,’ I said.
‘She’s the cipher clerk,’ Joe said. ‘I was chatting her up the other day when I noticed a clip-board with carbons of all the messages I’ve sent from here to London over the last two months. They all had BXJ in the corner. I’d never heard of that priority before, so I asked her what it was.’ He dragged on the cigarette. ‘They are sending all our signals traffic to somebody in London for analysis.’ Joe looked at me quizzically.
‘Who?’ I said.
‘She’s only the clerk,’ Joe said, ‘it’s the signals officer that redirects them, but she …’ He tailed off.
‘Go on.’
‘She’s not sure.’
‘So she’s not sure.’
‘But she thinks it goes to somebody c/o the House of Commons.’
I signalled for some more coffee and the Spanish waitress brought us a big jug. ‘Have some coffee,’ I said, ‘and relax; it’ll all work out.’
He gave me a shy Li’l Abner