"How much do you remember, Doctor?" I asked.
He looked at me and smiled. "You want to hear the truth?"
"Tell me what you know and I"ll listen."
The Doctor had left England in the autumn of 1940. He didn"t explain why. It may have been because of his rejection by the RAF the story he told Turing. But he told so many stories to Turing that I can"t be sure it was true. In any case there are certain to have been deeper reasons. During the worst years of the war, he had travelled in South America and Africa. In October 1942 he came to Sierra Leone and heard of the Markebo incident from the local people. He examined the remains of the strangers, then crossed the frontier in search of the SS squad. He made this seem like an act of innocent bravado, but I wasn"t fooled. He must have known the risk he was taking.
"Why did you go?" I asked.
"I had to meet them I had to know. What I found in Markebo was like " He hesitated, his hands clasped. "Have you ever lost your memory Mr Greene?"
"Once or twice, when drunk."
He grinned. "Not the same thing. I have lost so much and what I found in Markebo was a clue. An impossibility. I have been looking for an impossibility for a long time. I found a couple but they didn"t lead me anywhere that I wanted to go I think this one might be different."
I recalled my own yearning to witness miracles, and nodded.
"The SS men I knew. I just knew."
He hesitated. I almost asked what he "just knew", but thought better of it.
"I found that they had gone back to Germany," the Doctor went on. "It must have been getting difficult to stay you know the Vichy French are nearly finished."
I knew he was right, from my own sources, but didn"t give anything away.
"They chose the wrong camouflage. The wrong side. The Germans must have looked stronger, bursting into the village like that, fully armed."
"What do you mean?"
He made an exasperated noise. "Mr Greene, you"re an intelligent man. The SS men died you heard it happen, and the priest and the villagers heard it too. Yet the "SS men" went back to Germany, still very much alive. How do you explain that?"
"Maybe they didn"t all die." The explanation sounded inadequate, probably because it was. I tried a stronger attack on his line of reasoning. "How do you know they were still alive?"
"When I checked the German paperwork in Vienna and the Germans always keep paperwork, believe me, tons of the stuff I found that they were in the Ivory Coast under cover. I"m not sure why..."
Another man might have interrupted with, "You were in Vienna! How did you get there?" But I kept my silence, and didn"t watch the Doctor"s face I could only see rapid earnestness there. I listened to his words instead, waiting for him to fall over them. He was a garrulous man, and I knew from experience that garrulous men always give something away, even if nothing they say is true.
"The paperwork showed that they returned from there, the full complement, under the command of one Oberleutnant Franz Schubert. The other names were interesting Leutnants Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven, Wagner, Strauss and Bruckner."
I chuckled. "With cover names like that you"d think they were trying to get captured! Even the SIS wouldn"t be so stupid."
The Doctor gave me a sly glance. "No, probably not. I have a feeling they got the names from listening to the radio. It must have been cla.s.sical night." He chuckled. "I"m glad you agree that they must be cover names."
"German cover names. For a German operation. That"s what you said."
"No, no. Schubert was a cover name. The others were different. They changed them."
"So because they changed their names they"re different people?"
"Probably."
"So what are you saying they"re spying on the Germans now? Who would do that, other than the Allies? The j.a.panese?" Or the Turks, I thought. I remembered a story that my recruiting officer had told me, about the (male) Turkish agent in Paris whose cover name had been Chanel Parfum.
"Think! They"re not j.a.panese, or English."
"So who...?"
"I know them." The Doctor"s voice had changed: it was solemn, almost sepulchral. "I know them, and I feel sure they would know me. They are like me. Not like you, or Brodie, or anyone else. I can"t explain."
He was sounding exactly as the "chieftain" had in D"nalyel, except that his English was better. Nonetheless I asked him, "What do you mean?"
"Oh, I don"t know them as in having a cup of tea. I"ve never met them not these particular people. It"s the feel of them, the way they are, that"s familiar. They"re operating in a world they don"t understand."
I remembered the strangers, the expressionless faces, the incomplete vocabulary. "Yes, you"re right there. But who are they?"
The Doctor didn"t reply, but stared at the corn dolly on the bed, as if in need of comfort. I became aware of footsteps in the pa.s.sage outside: Brodie. I swore aloud.
The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "A key point in the interrogation, Mr Greene?"
I nodded. "Go away, Brodie," I yelled through the door.
There was a silence, then a loud, theatrical cough and the sound of retreating footsteps.
The Doctor and I shared a smile.
"So a group of people who don"t know anything are masquerading as SS officers in Vienna?"
"Dresden, I think," said the Doctor absently.
"Wherever they are, it doesn"t seem as if we need to get involved."
"Yes, we do." The Doctor"s tone was that of a reproving adult.
I remembered the feeling of safety and peace I"d had around the strangers, and allowed the correction to stand. "So what do you suppose we should do?"
"I don"t know," said the Doctor, his voice again taking that hollow and sepulchral tone. "I never do."
"So...?"
"We need to visit Markebo," he said. "Together."
Something in the way he spoke alerted that part of me that was an intelligence officer. I began to think of the Doctor as a man with a weakness and thus a possible agent.
I shook my head. "I need to go back to England. You need to stay in here, until we work out what to do with you."
He jumped up and almost shouted into my face. "I can"t stay here! I have to find out what"s happening. You don"t understand I"ve lost so much this is my only chance to get it back!"
The emotion was genuine, but it was old emotion: a feeling from the depths of his heart that was being dragged into battle, because he thought that it would work on me. I knew that, but even so the emotion did its job: I became convinced that the Doctor needed me.
I did not yet appreciate his subtlety. He fooled me, even as he didn"t fool me. I was accepting that he was weak, when he wasn"t, and that he could be suborned, when he couldn"t be. I was making plans to run him as an agent, whilst he was already beginning to run me as his his agent. agent.
I have never liked being used, which is probably why it went so badly for the Doctor when I discovered the truth.
Chapter Twelve.
The Doctor and I travelled together back to Markebo on what should have been my last day in Sierra Leone. I"m not sure whether the Doctor thought there was anything new to see, or whether he"d invented the journey as a means of persuading me to get him out of the cells. We poked around in the jungle, looking for the remains of the strangers, only to find when we asked in the village that the Africans had thrown them into the river ("Best place," the Doctor commented).
We returned to the river and sat on the banks. The Doctor kicked off his shoes and splashed his feet in the water, like a child. Ripples spread and were lost in the slow swirling of the green water.
"Be careful," I told him. "I shouldn"t think it"s clean."
"The villagers wash their clothes in the river."
"And use it as a toilet, I expect."
He wrinkled his nose, but didn"t remove his feet from the water.
"Besides," I added, "there are leeches."
"Hmm." The Doctor lifted his dripping feet out and examined his toes. "Can"t see any. Perhaps they don"t like my blood." He began drying his feet on a large white handkerchief. "You shouldn"t be so dismissive of the Africans, you know. They"re just the same as you."
"In the sight of G.o.d," I said.
"In anybody"s sight," he said.
There was an edge of irritation in his voice: though I hadn"t intended to be derogatory towards the Africans, I felt chastised.
"Tell me," he said, in a quite different tone, "what do you think it takes to be human?"
Fool that I was, I mistook his meaning. I thought he was talking about maturity, and made an appropriate speech about what it is to be a man, the pa.s.sion and the uncertainty, the terror, the boredom "The sweaty nights," he interrupted. "Yes, yes, yes, I know. I mean human as opposed to " he waved at the river, and after a second"s confusion I realised he meant the disposed "bodies" of the strangers "not human."
I knew, then. I looked away from the Doctor, at the light of the sky reflected in unsteady silver patches on the water. I wondered what shape the Doctor would melt into when he died.
"I think I would make the same answer," I said at last. "It"s pa.s.sion that defines life. Pa.s.sion, and suffering."
"And you"re not sure about me, are you?"
I looked at him, saw a living, breathing being, with an expression of uncertainty and the shadow of a great suffering on his face.
"You"re not sure that I"m human." He leaned forward. "Well, let me tell you a secret. I"m not sure either. I"m not sure either."
I looked into his eyes for a while, then I remembered the "chieftain" and said, "We should take Ma.s.s together."
He agreed, and we walked together to the small, hot, brick church, where there was a service about to begin. The fear-filled priest glanced at the Doctor several times during his brief sermon, with an expression that may have been distaste. I wondered whether this was merely a reaction to the Doctor"s foppish appearance, or sprang from some deeper source.
I didn"t watch the Doctor"s face as he took the Flesh and Blood into his mouth. I didn"t have quite that much gall. But I wanted to.
Later the priest took me aside and asked, "Who is that man with you?"
I could see the suspicion and aversion in his whiskered face. I was a fool again: I thought he had a.s.sumed the Doctor to be a b.u.g.g.e.r, and I his companion, and that his aversion was because of that.
"He"s a scientist," I said, anxious to avoid the allusion. "He"s interested in the people who died here last year "
The priest grabbed my arm. "He"s the Devil"s agent," he hissed. "Be sure of it."
I stared at him, bemused by the melodrama. But there was sweat running down his face, and the grasp of his fingers on the muscle of my arm was like that of a drowning man.
"Don"t be fooled by them fighting each other, now. They all belong to Lucifer."
"You could say the same of any two armies," I told him. "The Devil works behind the truth, within the fabric of the world as a whole."
He let go, stepped back. "Don"t think your Jesuit"s sophistry will save you, man. Recognise evil when you see it."
"He"s a scientist scientist," I insisted, but I had lost conviction.
"Sure he"s what you say he is," said the priest, "but ask who he works for."
I didn"t ask. I thought the priest was ridiculous: simple truths may suffice for an African village, but the complex devilry of European war was beyond him. The locals" talk of sorcery, I decided, had worked its way into his superst.i.tious head. As we drove back to Freetown, I told the Doctor as much, making a joke of the priest"s melodrama, but he just shook his head.
"I"d have thought you of all people wouldn"t be so eager to see the triumph of the rational. He"s seen something he doesn"t understand, so he"s afraid yes. But don"t underestimate anyone"s powers of perception. If he thinks he"s seen evil, he probably has."
I stared at the b.u.mpy road ahead. It was dry, with a low, dusty sun in the sky. An old man sat by the side of the road, begging with dignity: the Doctor insisted we slow down and throw him a coin, though I doubted he needed it.
"The priest said you you were evil, Doctor," I said as we sped away. were evil, Doctor," I said as we sped away.
"Don"t be so sure I"m not."
We didn"t talk much after that. I left him at the port in Freetown: he said he would catch a Portuguese liner to Europe, but he left no forwarding address. I hadn"t expected him to.
In the eighteen months after I left Africa, I was in charge of intelligence operations in Portugal though my base was in England. The work involved the remote supervision of agents, and the management of an elaborate double bluff. We knew who the German agents in Portugal were, because of our decryption of the ENIGMA codes. But we couldn"t do anything to let them know we knew, or they would realise that the codes weren"t safe and start using their machines properly, which would mean we would no longer be able to break the codes. So we were forced to run agents who weren"t agents, double agents, triple agents, even imaginary agents who made nonexistent trips to England to report on Resistance movements that also didn"t exist. This baroque complexity was exciting, in its own way until agents started to die, because we couldn"t tell them about the danger without giving our sources away. Then I wanted to get out.
It was hard to leave. It wasn"t because I needed the money: one of my novels had been adapted for the stage, another was being made into a film. It wasn"t because I felt the need to "serve my country", or to fight the evil of n.a.z.i Germany. I wasn"t sure enough that my efforts were doing any good. Being a fire warden in London had, it seemed to me, been of more practical use.
However, I did need the distraction. My emotional life was a running sore. I had a wife and children in Oxford, and a mistress in London, a dull, obsessive yet friendly affair which had been going on for some years. I lived in two places, with two sets of warring emotions. The job took me away: writing on its own didn"t. Returning to England had renewed the rubbed-raw feelings I wanted an end to both marriage and affair. I was eager to escape into anything.