World War Two Will Not Take Place by Bill James
Mount sat down for a while away from the windows and thought back. During the chat with Baillie and Fallows this morning, Baillie had asked: ‘Have you considered the Etonians?’
‘Considered how?’ Mount said.
‘The Times said a gaggle of senior boys had been allowed to cut school and get to the Heston party,’ Fallows said.
‘They intoned his name,’ Mount said. ‘At least a hundred.’
‘Yes, The Times reported it as “Neville” over and over,’ Baillie said. ‘This could be crucial for SB’s state of mind.’
‘“Neville” over and over,’ Mount said.
‘The paper estimates 120 Etonians,’ Baillie said. ‘Might that have shocked SB? Perhaps made him wonder if he’d led Neville into a terrible error by humouring Adolf?’
‘I don’t follow,’ Mount said.
Fallows clapped his hands twice. ‘Ah, I believe I do. Very clever, Nick. Insightful. Look, Marcus, consider Sir Henry Newbolt.’
‘“A breathless hush in the Close tonight”?’ Mount said.
‘It’s public school cricket under way – probably Eton cricket,’ Baillie said. ‘We have a needle game, the result touch and go. And Newbolt proudly declares that because these schoolboys learned how to battle well at cricket, they’d be able to battle well as officers in a war and magnificently rally the ranks at bad moments. It’s where Britain traditionally got its army leaders: our public schools. They were first over the top out of the trenches. Why so many got mown down. But didn’t these braying Etonians at Heston turn all that inside out? They’d come to robot-bellow their support for murky deals, for appeasement, and their adoration of the PM and his bit of paper, gloriously wrung from Hitler and his troupe – by handing Hitler and his troupe everything they asked for. Did this sudden, shocking revelation appal Bilson, bringing on a collapse into confusion and regret, shame and a vast change of mind?’
Fallows said: ‘Or think of Rupert Brooke, public school poet and a First War officer, chortling at the start of hostilities in 1914: “Now God be thanked who has matched us with His hour.” These lads at Heston hailed a cowardly, feeble, eat-dirt hour. That’s what they’d been matched with. They exulted in the country’s humiliation. We imagine, don’t we, that SB’s purpose must be to get Chamberlain to keep Hitler quiet for, say, another twelve month, perhaps more, so we have time to build up strength. But what use is that if the potential officer class don’t want to fight – if the potential officer class flagrantly idolizes someone who’s cravenly dodged out of fighting? Might that shred SB’s strategy? And shred his morale?’
‘But if Chamberlain and Stephen had decided we should fight now, should try to block Hitler now, the situation would be entirely the same, wouldn’t it?’ Mount said. ‘If you’re right, the so-called officer class, the Etonians and Old Etonians, wouldn’t want to go to war tomorrow, any more than it would in a year or so’s time.’
‘The trip to Munich and early reports from there hatched a timorous, poltroon spirit,’ Baillie said. ‘Then it developed at a terrifying rate, overwhelming rate. True, we had the Oxford ’33 union vote: “This house will in no circumstances fight for king and country, thank you very much.” But that was only powerless, mischievous undergrads wanting to shock, and before we really knew very much about Hitler. Now, we have the Prime Minister seeming to back the students’ attitude five years later when Adolf’s aims are a good bit clearer – and bloody alarming. Think of that Reich Chancellery meeting with armed forces chiefs last November, where he said Germany’s legitimate desire for more space for her people could only be realized through force. Only through force. He actually named Czechoslovakia and Austria as territorial hindrances, didn’t he?’
‘November fifth. Bonfire night!’ Fallows said. ‘Couldn’t be more apt. Try not to let any of them use that force on you, Marcus, even if you are gunless. Maybe at Heston SB saw the link with that Oxford Union idiocy, despite all these subsequent developments, and it devastated him. And you, in your intuitive way, Marcus, sensed the devastation in him, diagnosed the volte face. Bravo! And now, off to Berlin! Weird.’
‘Yes, fascinating, but not, not at all, unexplainable,’ Baillie had said, explaining. Mount’s description of SB’s sudden mood change at Heston had handed Baillie a chance to try a spot of amateur psychology. And so, the reference to that mighty, officer-quality cricket match in Newbolt’s Close. After this, Baillie had categorized SB as a probable stoic, and then discussed what might happen if stoicism fractured. Nick fancied himself as a psychologist/psychiatrist. It could get tiresome. But, although he had no training in such mysteries – his degree was modern languages: double First, Cambridge, in French, German, Italian – now and then he would come up with a believable X-ray of someone’s mind and motives. Perhaps he had SB right, Mount thought.
Stephen Bilson said, at the start of the noon meeting in Section earlier today, ‘I’d like you to get over to Berlin and see friend Toulmin. Russia. I’m interested in Russia, Marcus. Toulmin works mainly on Jerry’s Russian desk at their Foreign Office, doesn’t he?’ No mention of a handgun came throughout their conversation.
‘See friend Toulmin.’ Hence the signal with the living room lights now, in the Steglitz apartment. Instead, Mount might have loitered near the German Foreign Office, where Toulmin worked, and tried to intercept him on his way home, but that could be dangerous, too: Foreign Office staff came under routine surveillance periodically, like most government employees who possibly knew things worth knowing, and who might secretly hate what Hitler was up to, and try to undermine it, also secretly.
Of course, Toulmin was not Toulmin. SB collected antique clocks and took cover names for the Section’s foreign agents from famous old makers and styles. Apparently, there’d been a Toulmin in the eighteenth century, a dab hand at ebonized, bong-bong-bong-striking models. SB had one. The arrangement with the current Toulmin required him to check the Steglitz windows at least every other day and call in immediately if he saw the lights. He had a key to the apartment. His stipend took account of these little reconnaissance trips, with payments generously credited for sixteen days in every month, regardless of their length. He operated as second string in Berlin. The Section’s major voice had been dubbed Fromanteel, after another ancient clockman. SB had one of his, too. Fromanteel would spill only to Stephen Bilson in person, or so Bilson said: all secrets people loved to feel they owned an agent, monopolized his or her disclosures.
In any case, SB thought Toulmin more likely to be right for the kind of queries required now – the Soviet area – and Toulmin would talk to anybody from Section. Mount had dealt with him before. Oh, yes. Toulmin knew a couple of girls from the Toledo Club, and they brought them back to the apartment after drinks last time Mount was in Berlin. Toulmin had always used his cover name with them, so Mount considered the security risk very minor. One of the birch wood and metal armchairs had collapsed under Toulmin and Olga, a hearty brunette, when she so playfully straddled him on it. Neither seemed too badly hurt, although unprotected by clothes.
Afterwards, Mount divided up the chair wreckage into three lots and shared them around other apartments’ bins. That seemed to him the wisest solution: he didn’t want cleaners to find the fragments in the living room and speculate. When the lease ended there would certainly be inventory questions about the missing chair, possibly of a valuable design, so he’d put in a note to Section explaining it gave way under him – him alone – and must have had a weakness. He did not claim for injuries, saying he suffered only bruising and shock. There was no question of docking money from Toulmin’s little salary for the destruction, and, in fact, Mount had paid for both girls and the drinks under ‘reciprocal entertainment of various special contacts’ on his expenses account. ‘Various special contacts’ as a species did not reach agent status, but might provide miscellaneous items of information. No names needed to be given for them, not even as ancient clockmakers.
‘Yes, Toulmin, a reliable lad, I believe,’ St
Baillie, this would-be psychologist, but not a stupid would-be psychologist, reckoned that stoicism – the magnificent, unflamboyant ability to keep buggering on – was what carried Bilson forward in the war and remained his chief strength. This had been Baillie’s argument after the poetry babble about Sir Henry Newbolt yesterday. There might be something in it. ‘The point about stoicism,’ Baillie had said, ‘is it works well, as long as it works well. But if it weakens, or fails altogether, there’s not much left. The ex-stoic may become a breakdown case, his behaviour either fallen into paralysis, or gone wild, irrational, incoherent.’
Had this happened to SB? Was the Berlin assignment for Mount wild, irrational, incoherent? ‘You’re concerned about Russia? In which respect, sir,’ Mount had asked him.
‘Moscow cuddling up to Adolf. A potential pact. That respect. I want to know if it’s happening.’
‘Is it likely?’
‘We in our little game don’t necessarily deal in likelihoods, Marcus.’ He said this mildly enough, but it was severe, instructional, a right-hand jab at naivety. ‘Possibilities are our meat. We have to guess at which way things might go. We pick through these possibilities until we reach what looks as if it could be a likelihood. Or we hope we do. And if we do – and that’s not at all guaranteed, Marcus – we then tell our leaders about it. I’m afraid we might have overlooked a possibility. Or that I might have overlooked a possibility. And a possibility that could develop into a likelihood. My error. A bad one. I think I know how it happened. Get over there, will you, and send Toulmin sniffing.’
‘For what in particular?’
‘This love affair I mentioned. Stalin and Hitler.’
‘An alliance between Moscow and Berlin?’
‘An alliance, a treaty.’
Mount felt left behind. ‘Excuse me, sir, but don’t most people see Germany and Russia as out-and-out political enemies: one fascist, the other Commie?’
‘Yes, perhaps most people do see Russia and Germany as natural enemies. But I’d like you to ask Toulmin to find whether there’ve been any private dealings, or preparations for dealings, or soundings-out for preparations for dealings, or soundings-out for soundings-out for preparations for dealings, between Moscow and Berlin. That is his objective, and yours, Marcus. Discover whether a new agreement is being cooked up.’ Some of Bilson’s army experience poked through there. Troops had to have clear, simple objectives. Mount and, via him, Toulmin, were SB’s foot soldiers. ‘This is not an unhazardous one for Toulmin,’ SB said. ‘I hope we’re always careful in what we ask our agents to do for us. Make it plain that we’ll try all we know to protect him and get him, and any family, out of Germany if matters turn rough. And we’ll up his retainer, of course. Go very cagily, Marcus. Jerry is improving his counter-us operation all the time. Matters, when they do turn rough there, turn very rough. The Third Reich is a new Reich and still feels vulnerable. Therefore, it defends itself ferociously.’
Then, Bilson seemed deliberately to move away from the perils of the operation. He said: ‘An earlier German leader, Bismark, asked those around him, “What’s the secret of politics?” Answer? “Make a good treaty with Russia.” Perhaps Hitler believes likewise. You and Toulmin will, I know, find out. Off you go, lad.’
In the evening, after making himself a meal in the Steglitz flat, Mount went to the nearby huge Titania-Palast cinema, also built in that New Objectivity mode. Hitler and the Nazis disliked the style’s plainness, coolness, lack of the ornate. They were Romantics – dark Romantics, but Romantics – driven by dangerous, passionate nationalism, dangerously boundless ambition, dangerous, master race, völkisch myth. Buildings should tally – should be something beyond the serviceable. Architecture should not just stand there and get used, it should assert, it should proclaim, the new, formidable, bold spirit of modern Germany.
There’d be no more New Objectivity architecture. In one aspect, Mount found this odd: an alternative translation of Neue Sachlichkeit was ‘New Sobriety’, and surely the teetotal Führer should have approved.
Mount watched Der Blaue Engel – The Blue Angel – part of a Marlene Dietrich festival: the first German sound movie, and mesmeric. He’d left the apartment blinds up and the lights on. Good job Hitler had got the electric industry working well after some bad interludes. Compare Musso’s success in making Italian trains run to time.
TWO
When Mount returned after the film, he saw from the street that his windows no longer showed lights. But this was all right, wasn’t it? This was positive, wasn’t it? For a moment, he’d felt shocked. Why, though? Toulmin must be there, obediently waiting. He had lowered the blinds, reversed the signal: clever. Blinds up meant: ‘I, alias Naughton, am here in Berlin and want to see you, Toulmin.’ Blinds down meant: ‘I, alias Toulmin, am here in your snuggery, Stanley, or most likely alias Stanley, awaiting your return.’ Perhaps, also, he felt more secure with the glass covered, even on the second floor. Toulmin would occasionally get nervy. Well, of course he’d get nervy. He spied. Nerviness went with this game. So did a vengeful death for those who played it. All regimes detested spies and being spied on. This new-Germany regime would probably detest spies more than most, as Bilson had hinted, and would show it if they caught one, also as Bilson had hinted.
Of course, Mount, also, spied. But for him it was a profession, and a fairly decent profession, with sterling people like SB running things, some of them medalled, and Cambridge double firsts as rankers: a sought-after, pensionable, classy career, hard to get into. But spying was not Toulmin’s profession or career. No. In fact, Toulmin actually spied on people in his profession and career: on foreign affairs deskmen who knew him as a colleague, not as Toulmin, an agent working to Mount. As Fallows had said not long ago, ‘One man’s agent is another man’s traitor.’ Toulmin’s behaviour would strike many as disgustingly corrupt and due no mercy if discovered. He’d be termed a renegade rather than a spy, although he spied for Mount. Toulmin had to live permanently among the people he spied on, bringing non-stop strain. On the other hand, Mount could go home now and then, resume normality, become simply and purely, for a time, Marcus Mount, known by friends and relatives as having ‘some tidy government job in London with a lot of travel’.
Despite these contrasts, Mount often grew very nervy, too. He felt especially anxious now, even though the dark windows could be regarded – should be regarded – as simply a message board, and a message board that had been considerately kept up-to-date. Was his jumpiness stupid, perverse? He thought he might have been seriously pushed off-balance by SB’s seeming plunge into crazy haste. Projects built in that kind of rushed, gimcrack way often failed. Also, he felt he might have been idiotically casual, over-relaxed, in drifting off to the cinema tonight. He was here to do a job for Stephen Bilson, not to drool over Dietrich.
Mount approached the apartment gingerly. Procedures for clandestine penetration of occupied premises had taken two full days in his training. Plentiful caution had been preached, and that stuck with him. But determination to get into the occupied premises regardless had also been part of the instruction. Normally, it would not be one’s
The wariness taught for clandestine penetration of occupied premises focused above all on doors and how to go through them. On the face of it, that’s what doors were for – to go through when open. But an open door into the wrong kind of area carried some perils. Standing in a doorway even for half a second meant you were nicely framed, a simple potshot for anyone inside and waiting for you. Techniques on how to manage doors and passing through them in these special conditions differed, depending on whether the officer had a firearm or not, and, if the officer did have a firearm, differed again depending on whether it was ‘blatant’ – that is, in the officer’s fist and visible – or ‘latent’ – that is, holstered, handbagged or waistbanded, and out of sight. Neither the blatant nor latent approach concerned Mount. He had no gun. To draw a weapon from the armoury would have required signatures and a proper record. SB didn’t regard the visit as that kind of operation. The Berlin jaunt was unofficial – unknown, except to Mount and Bilson, plus, illicitly, Fallows and Baillie. The Section had an unaudited and unauditable emergency cash store, which SB must have used for the flight costs and Mount’s spending wad. So, his ticket had been taken care of, and his working cash. But no pistol.
Mount saw the Berlin flit as an untypical SB impulse, a twitch. He would have to try to compensate through special prudence and organization. But, of course, special prudence and organization couldn’t eliminate every risk. He’d shown the Stanley Charles Naughton passport at Templehof, as usual, and said the purpose of his visit was business, as usual. That had seemed to be accepted by the squat little officer who let him through. And it had always been all right when S.C. Naughton had made his previous visits. Would there come a time, though, when an officer started wondering what kind of business this businessman, S.C. Naughton, did in Germany? ‘Welcome to Berlin!’ this officer had said, and gave a very genuine looking smile. That disturbed Mount.