“He was tried in camera and found guilty under the Treachery Act of 1940. He was sentenced and executed by firing squad in the Tower of London only a week or so ago.”
“I see,” Hugh said.
“One of the other captured spies, hearing of Jakobs’s fate, has proved much more amenable. We’ve been able to persuade him to work as a double agent for us.” Masterman grimaced. “The key word to remember with double agents is disinformation. We feed them disinformation to send back to their contacts at Abwehr in Berlin. However—and this is a big however—we must also include some true information, to make the false seem credible. So it’s a game, really. A very, very high-stakes game.”
A seagull flying overhead shrieked. “Yes, sir.”
“Our prisoner’s a German, name of Stefan Krueger. You’ll be working with him.”
“Sir?”
“Krueger was an Abwehr S-chain agent—parachuted into Britain at the end of 1940, with the task of blowing up a factory producing Spitfires. However, he was picked up immediately and turned himself over to MI-Five. He was sent to Latchmere House and interrogated at length by Lieutenant Colonel Robertson. Do you know Robertson?”
“I know of him, sir.”
“Robertson’s a good judge of character. And he pegged this one immediately. Called him vain—said he thought of himself as something of a ‘prince of the underworld.’ ”
Hugh’s lips twisted into a sardonic half smile.
“But he’s more of a mercenary. Krueger has no scruples and will stop at nothing. He plays for high stakes and would like the whole world to know it. He himself knows nothing of fear, and no feeling at all of patriotism—which is all to the good, actually. He feels no loyalty to Hitler or the Nazis. Right now he works with us because it suits him and because he’s getting perks and extras that he wouldn’t normally get in prison, like being able to live under room arrest at the Queen’s House at the Tower of London.”
Hugh’s gaze went to the medieval fortress they were heading toward. Now the meeting place made sense. “What’s he involved with?”
“Krueger has duped the Germans into believing—with the help of faked photographs provided by MI-Five—that he carried out a successful sabotage attack on the Spitfire factory, at the Supermarine facility in Woolston, Southampton.” Masterman gave a bark of a laugh and opened his large black umbrella as heavy drops of rain began to fall. “MI-Five agents dumped rubble around the site and we planted a story in the Daily Express about the so-called raid. His handlers at Abwehr bought everything.”
“Fantastic, sir.” Hugh had forgotten his own umbrella and was getting soaked. “That’s quite a coup,” he said, ignoring the water drops drenching his best suit.
“Glad you think so,” Masterman replied. “Because you’re going to be in charge of his next ‘mission.’ It’s been sent via code.” The older man pulled out a piece of paper. “This is what we intercepted.”
Hugh accepted the scrap of paper, raindrops splattering it, making the ink bleed. The letters and numbers made no sense to him.
NAF9H20
51649900161
515700247
51604700350
51595000479
51588900466
51588480049782
5158165005055
515804570056176
515764560058494
He memorized it, then handed it back to Masterman, who tucked it into his breast pocket. “Code, sir?”
“Yes. And although we have his cipher disk, it hasn’t helped at all. So we’ll show it to Krueger, but we’ll also need to have one of our best men at Bletchley working on it. I suggest Edmund Hope. He’s done some work with Frain. You’ve worked with him, too, correct?”
“Uh, yes,” Hugh said. He tried not to grimace.
“You’ll need to get him on this.” Masterman looked closely at Hugh’s face. “I hope that won’t pose a problem, Mr. Thompson?”
“No, sir,” he lied. “Of course not, sir.”
Just as the rain eased up, the two men arrived at the Tower of London.
A former Norman keep, surrounded by thick stone walls, the Tower wasn’t actually a single tower but a cluster of buildings—Norman, medieval, Tudor—topped with ornate weathervanes and gruesome gargoyles. Over the centuries, it had been an infamous prison: Queen Elizabeth I, Sir Walter Raleigh, Samuel Pepys, and countless unknowns had been kept there; many of them—including Queen Elizabeth’s own mother—had left minus their heads.
The Tower had been closed to the public in 1939, just before Parliament had declared war on Germany. It was now being used for military purposes under the name the Tower Prisoner of War Collection Center. It had sustained some bomb damage but was still basically intact.