Winter in Madrid Read Free Page B

her hands.
    ‘Yes. Yes, I did. Excuse me, Miss Maxse, but I’m a bit in the dark …’
    She smiled again. ‘Of course. What did the Foreign Office tell you when they rang?’
    ‘Only that some people there thought there might be some work I could do.’
    ‘Well, we’re separate from the FO.’ Miss Maxse smiled brightly. ‘We’re Intelligence.’ She gave a tinkling laugh, as though overcome by the strangeness of it all.
    ‘Oh,’ Harry said.
    Her voice became serious. ‘Our work is crucial now, quite crucial. With France gone, the whole Continent is either allied to the Nazis or dependent on them. There aren’t any normal diplomatic relationships any more.’
    ‘We’re the front line now,’ Jebb added. ‘Smoke?’
    ‘No, thanks. I don’t.’
    ‘Your uncle’s Colonel James Brett, isn’t he?’
    ‘Yes, sir, that’s right.’
    ‘Served with me in India. Back in 1910, believe it or not!’ Jebb gave a harsh bark of laughter. ‘How is he?’
    ‘Retired now.’ But judging by that tan you stayed on, Harry thought. Indian police, perhaps.
    Miss Maxse put down her cup and clasped her hands together. ‘How would you feel about working for us?’ she asked.
    Harry felt the old shrinking weariness again; but something else too, a spark of interest.
    ‘I still want to help the war effort, of course.’
    ‘D’you think you’re fit to cope with demanding work?’ Jebb asked. ‘Honestly, now. If you’re not you should say. It’s nothing to be ashamed of,’ he added gruffly. Miss Maxse smiled encouragingly.
    ‘I think so,’ Harry said carefully. ‘I’m almost back to normal.’
    ‘We’re recruiting a lot of people, Harry,’ Miss Maxse said. ‘I may call you Harry, mayn’t I? Some because we think they’d be suited to the kind of work we do, others because they can offer us somethingparticular. Now, you were a modern languages specialist before you joined up. Good degree at Cambridge, then a fellowship at King’s till the war came.’
    ‘Yes, that’s right.’ They knew a lot about him.
    ‘How’s your Spanish? Fluent?’
    It was a surprising question. ‘I’d say so.’
    ‘French literature’s your subject, isn’t it?’
    Harry frowned. ‘Yes, but I keep my Spanish up. I’m a member of a Spanish Circle in Cambridge.’
    Jebb nodded. ‘Academics mainly, is it? Spanish plays and so on.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Any exiles from the Civil War?’
    ‘One or two.’ He met Jebb’s gaze. ‘But the Circle’s not political. We have a sort of unspoken agreement to avoid politics.’
    Jebb laid the paperclip, tortured now into fantastic curls, on the table, and opened his briefcase. He pulled out a cardboard file with a diagonal red cross on the front.
    ‘I’d like to take you back to 1931,’ he said. ‘Your second year at Cambridge. You went to Spain that summer, didn’t you? With a friend from your school, Rookwood.’
    Harry frowned again. How could they know all this? ‘Yes.’
    Jebb opened the file. ‘One Bernard Piper, later of the British Communist Party. Went on to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Reported missing believed killed at the Battle of the Jarama, 1937.’ He took out a photograph and laid it on the table. A row of men in untidy military uniforms stood on a bare hillside. Bernie stood in the middle, taller than the others, his blond hair cut short, smiling boyishly into the camera.
    Harry looked up at Jebb. ‘Was that taken in Spain?’
    ‘Yes.’ The hard little eyes narrowed. ‘And you went out to try and find him.’
    ‘At his family’s request, as I spoke Spanish.’
    ‘But no luck.’
    ‘There were ten thousand dead at the Jarama,’ Harry said bleakly. ‘They weren’t all accounted for. Bernie’s probably in a mass grave somewhere outside Madrid. Sir, might I ask where you got this information? I think I’ve a right—’
    ‘You haven’t actually. But since you ask, we keep files on all Communist Party members. Just as well, now Stalin’s helped Hitler