4
London, 6 January 1940
RORY LOOKED AT HIS WATCH as he waited on the sidewalk for Ewen Crossley, his immediate superior and an old friend from the Great War. It was not at all like Crossley to be late; the man was normally a stickler for timings. Rory shoved his hands into his coat pockets and shrugged, loosening his neck muscles. A minute later when his friend arrived, Rory was surprised to see that he had brought with him another man.
Crossley beamed. “Very sorry. I’m running late, Rory. Shall we walk?” Crossley swept the three of them along and set off at a brisk pace. His smile disappeared and he looked around furtively. “Let’s talk a little ways on, shall we?”
It was early morning, still cold and damp, with wispy remnants of the night’s smog lingering in the alleys. The closeness of the city unnaturally amplified the sounds of their footsteps. Despite the recent imposition of petrol rationing, London’s air was no more breathable than it had been before the war. Rory thought that wartime London’s streets had a severe feel about them, as if the entire metropolis was consciously readying itself for the coming struggle. Depressingly, it seemed almost everyone in London was once again wearing some kind of uniform. It wasn’t at all the same city Rory had known even five years ago. When he was last here, the city had the jostling self-assurance of one of the world’s great capitals. Now, like a failing invalid determined to beat a mortal illness, London had become grim and resolute.
Ewen Crossley seemed mildly apprehensive this morning. Rory’s old friend had at last been given a title in his new organization. His papers had come through. He was no longer officially a member of the Secret Intelligence Service working under cover of the Foreign Office. His new designation was the deputy director of operations in the Ministry of Economic Warfare. Crossley walked slowly beside Rory.
Beside shared military service, the two men had much in common. Both bore scars from their time in the trenches: Rory’s less obvious glass eye, and Crossley’s jagged scar, which ran from his left cheek to his ear. Rory was pleased to see that over the years the contour from Crossley’s wound had faded from a disfiguring angry red slash to a more subtle white line. Despite the scar, Crossley’s face was open and perpetually cheerful. His obvious good nature overshadowed the scar’s testimony to his violent past.
From appearances alone, the two friends might have been from different generations. Rory, wearing a stylish black fedora, strode forward with his hands thrust deep in his trench coat pockets. Crossley was bare-headed. His hair was still a thick disordered thatch but had uniformly turned grey – quite a difference from the shock of red curls on the man Rory had known two decades before. The other man was much stouter. He also wore a fedora, as well as a heavy wool coat and thick, round, tortoise-shell glasses. He said nothing and stared straight ahead as the other two talked.
Crossley swivelled about, looking up and down the street. Satisfied that there was no one within earshot, he slowed his pace and said, “Rory, I want you to meet Harold Thornton. Like me, Harold’s come over to join us from mi6. He’s part of the recruiting team, and I thought if we had our meeting while we walked to Aston House, we’d save time and get a lungful of fresh air while we’re at it.”
Rory and Thornton shook hands hastily. Rory nodded impassively and grinned as if at a private joke. He’d been expecting some kind of interview but was surprised at the matter-of-fact way his new employers had chosen to spring it. “Fresh air here in London? You’re kidding me, Ewen. Northern Manitoba, now, there’s fresh air.”
Crossley put his head back slightly and gave a good-natured obligatory laugh to the light-hearted but not very funny observation. “I suppose you’re right. Rory, now that we have some time, maybe you can give us an indication of what you’ve been up to for the last twenty-odd years.”
“Okay. Can I assume then that your interview’s officially begun?”
“You can’t have been a policeman all these years and still think I really wanted to go for a stroll to chat about old times, can you?” said Ewen, smiling. “I’ll be honest, Rory, I have to make a report to Harris. He needs to confirm what kind of work he can task you with. All the others are getting the same routine – only, with your background, we have much higher expectations.”
Crossley and Rory had known each other on and off since the Great War. Back then, Ewen Crossley had been in charge of training Rory for a clandestine mission in Imperial Germany. Their contacts had been infrequent in the intervening years; in fact, apart from Christmas cards, they had only met twice on business, but there was still a strong bond of trust between them.
“I haven’t seen you, Ewen, for what, five years now? But you know, even back then, in one way or another, we hoped the Nazis would somehow just disappear. We were all wishful thinkers. Somehow we hoped that the German people would simply overthrow them. I guess the signs were there to read if we’d cared to. Doesn’t seem like five years though, does it?” He paused and they walked in silence for a short distance.
“There’s no point in playing games,” Crossley said. “So, Rory, for Harold’s sake, let’s start where we left off at the end of the war. You left England in 1919, and now, twenty years later, you’re here. What happened in the meantime?”
“Okay. I’ll give you a brief outline and if you have any questions, just ask.” Rory looked upwards and vigorously rubbed his chin as if he were about to make some kind of a decision. Instead, he said nothing for a few moments. “When I demobilized, I went back to Montreal. I suppose the biggest surprise to everybody was that I didn’t join my father’s firm. He was disappointed; still is. The last I talked to him, he still wanted me to quit the RCMP, go back, and help run the business for him. He’s getting on, and things are picking up for him now that there’s another war on. He runs several small- to mid-sized textile and manufacturing companies that have been quite successful. But it’s never had any interest for me.”
Rory paused, as if he didn’t really believe what he had just said. “So, to make a long story short, in 1919 I ran into a friend of a friend and I ended up in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. They even let me in missing an eye and two fingers on my left hand. They made a number of exceptions for otherwise fit veterans in those days. I’ve been in the RCMP for nineteen years and served mostly in Western Canada. Spent a lot of time in the North and in isolated locations. I liked it. I liked the people. It was useful and challenging work.”
“I envy you,” Crossley said. “You sound like you’ve had a more interesting time of it than I have. Tell me more about your police work.”
“I’ve been reasonably successful as a police officer. Of course, I started as a constable, and that raised a few eyebrows. Some of the people I knew thought I was taking a step down from being a major, but I never looked at it that way. I’ve always figured that if you’re going to learn a new line of work, you learn it from the ground up. Besides, I was young and I had no other choice, and my fellow constables were top-quality people. Since then I’ve had a variety of very good jobs. Worked with some wonderful people in and out of uniform. Put some not so wonderful people away where they belong. I never specialized in anything. I preferred it that way. I’ve been a general investigative officer, initially running a beat in northern Manitoba; later on, I had several commands in rural and isolated areas, and in small cities, mostly in the Prairies and the North. I’ll probably not make the highest ranks. I don’t have the right instincts, and to tell the truth, I’m just not that interested in doing some of the administrative jobs that will get me there, although the war probably rescued me from a posting to Ottawa. Who knows? I might have liked that.” He shrugged. “I’m happy where I am, or where I was a month ago, anyway.”
Crossley smiled briefly. “I can see you being a police officer.”
“Yes, well, I’ve preferred to work in the field. It gives me a sense of accomplishment. How am I doing so far, Harold? Is this the kind of thing you were expecting to hear?”
“Pretty much. You know I’m going to have to ask you later to commit a brief summary of this to paper.” Harold had a wonderfully crisp, theatrical voice and a Liverpool