Washington Shadow

by Aly Monroe

Genres: Spy Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

Book 2 in the Peter Cotton spy thriller series, for fans of John le Carré and Robert Harris. 'Addictive' Sunday Telegraph 'Monroe provides terrific and convincing historical atmosphere; I am delighted that she is writing more Peter Cotton novels' The Times The war is over. The game has begun. September 1945. Bankrupt and desperate, Britain sends John Maynard Keynes to boom town Washington to beg for a loan. Under cover of the backup team, agent Peter Cotton is sent to investigate the break-up of America's wartime intelligence agency. Cotton finds himself caught up in a world of shadows involving an extraordinarily attractive woman from the US State Department, a Soviet ex-tank commander claiming to be his opposite number, a contrarian African academic, an ambitious, quick-tempered boss from the world of misinformation . . . and an Anglo-American conspiracy that will change the world of post-war intelligence for ever. The Peter Cotton spy thriller series: Book 1: The Maze of Cadiz Book 2: Washington Shadow Book 3: Icelight Book 2: Black Bear Short story: Redeemable

Release date: October 28, 2010

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 360

Sample

ON SUNDAY, 26 August 1945 Peter Cotton flew from Hamburg in Germany to London in a DC-3 with four nurses, a lieutenant on compassionate leave, a number of bags of post and a regimental mascot – a well-behaved goat called Ajax – and his handler. In his battle jacket pocket, Cotton had orders to present himself at the temporary office of the Economic Warfare Unit the next day.

On Monday, Cotton found the office three floors up in a narrow building behind the Oriental Club in Hanover Square. For a moment he thought they were still moving in, but then saw that two girls in uniform were emptying shelves and packing boxes with files.

‘We’re being entirely wrapped up,’ said D, ‘and archived. Moira?’

Cotton had never seen his boss in anything but a naval commodore’s uniform. Now he was dressed in an elderly blue tweed suit, bagged at the knees, looking like a bad-tempered country solicitor.

One of the girls went to a desk, opened a drawer and took out an envelope.

‘Read what’s in that,’ said D, ‘and sign it.’

Cotton opened the envelope.

It contained a three-page joint statement from the heads of MI5 and MI6, drawing ‘Urgent Attention’ to the differences between WAR and PEACE.

It is not – and never will be – the policy of His Majesty’s Government to instigate, carry out, be part of or otherwise sanction, permit or condone the taking of human life by any member of His Majesty’s Intelligence Departments in time of peace.

Cotton paused.

‘They’re clearing out the farouche, the louche and the schoolboys,’ said D.

Cotton looked at him. It was D who had originally picked him out, then overseen his training. D had always been extraordinarily focused and insistently to the point in wartime. Today, there was no sign of that. He looked drawn, as if his skin had fused to the bones behind his face.

Cotton read on. The second page was mostly one long, particularly opaque paragraph on the terms ‘covert’ and ‘clandestine’ as they were forthwith to be understood. The third page merely contained a reminder that the reader had already signed the Official Secrets Act.

Cotton looked up. ‘About “covert” and …’

‘What can and what cannot be attributed to His Majesty’s Government,’ said D.

‘Quite which is which?’ asked Cotton.

‘I think “covert” means the government can deny any involvement. “Clandestine” means the government doesn’t have to deny it.’

Cotton thought this was probably accurate but extremely cynical from someone about to give him his new orders.

‘You do have to sign before I can proceed,’ said D.

Cotton signed. D beckoned and they went through to his office. D shut the door. He frowned.

‘Why on earth are you dressed as a major?’ he asked.

‘The military authorities decided that for personal security and ease of identification in Germany I should put on uniform.’

D shrugged and sat down. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘now you’re being sent to the States, to our Embassy in Washington.’

‘When will I be leaving?’

‘Just as soon as you can be got on a ship or a tin can that floats.’ D checked himself. He sighed. ‘Are you au fait? Mm? With events of the last month … and a day?’

Cotton nodded. ‘I think so,’ he said.

On 26 July the Labour Party had been declared winners of the British general election. To the surprise of many foreign observers and some British – ‘including Lord Keynes’ as D said – Winston Churchill had been replaced as Prime Minister by Clement Attlee. Cotton had voted Labour himself – and the election result had been no surprise to troops, who thought they had fought for some measure of justice and reward.

‘Right enough,’ said D. He started counting off on the fingers of his left hand. ‘Hiroshima. Nagasaki. On August 15th the Japanese finally surrender. World War Two is entirely over.’

Cotton nodded. ‘Yes.’

D leaned forward. ‘Then two days later, on the 17th or hangover day’ – more than a whole week before the Yanks even arrive in Tokyo – President Truman calls time on lend-lease.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Gone! Not a cent more to keep his British allies afloat.’ D almost smiled.

‘Well, I’m not saying the British government is shell-shocked,’ he went on, ‘but … Let’s say it’s a little optimistic to call them merely rattled.’ D cleared his throat and leaned back in his chair.

‘Four days ago, at a crisis meeting held at Downing Street, our new government decided to send a mission to Washington under Lord Keynes. He’s leaving today on a Canadian troopship. We’re sending a begging bowl delegation. Huge bowl, rather small delegation. You’re following on.’

D opened a drawer of his desk. ‘Drink?’

It was eleven in the morning and Cotton could still taste the powdered egg he had been given for breakfast. ‘No, thanks,’ he said.

D poured whisky into two glasses and pushed one towards Cotton. He had a milk jug filled with water and poured some in until his glass was nearly full.

‘Cheers,’ he said and drank about a third of it.

Cotton nodded but did not drink.

D put down his glass and sat back. He looked up at the ceiling. ‘In 1939,’ he said, ‘the American government sat down and made a shopping list of what they wanted from the war others were about to fight. On one side of paper. Clear?’

‘Yes.’

‘Priority one? Naturally, the annihilation of Nazi Germany. Priority two? The defeat of Japan, of course.’ D lowered his eyes and looked at Cotton. ‘Any ideas on priority three?’

Cotton shook his head.

‘The destruction of the British Empire,’ said D.

Cotton nodded. ‘I see,’ he replied. ‘What was priority four?’

D smiled. ‘What I have been trying to get over to our side is that American policies have been entirely consistent with this list. I think they are still horrified by the one-sheet-of-paper business. They’d have preferred two bits of paper, one for enemies, one for allies, I suppose.

‘As you know, lend-lease was designed to keep us fighting. But it was also arranged to make sure we were never an industrial power again. The Americans were “spending” us – mostly in their own interest – and now we are pretty much spent.’

D took another mouthful of his whisky and water.

‘I sometimes think the Yanks are being awfully polite about it. If the British want to see 31.4 billion dollars as proof of disinterested friendship in the fight for civilization, well that’s Britain’s affair. Or if we see ourselves as a not quite equal but proud, loyal partner, in need of a loan to get us back on our feet, that’s our mistake as well.’

D downed the rest of his whisky.

‘The truth is however that a reverse colonization has taken place. Once we colonized the States; now they are making us a dependency.’

Cotton nodded. He had heard this take on things before, but never with quite such dispatch. D poured himself some more whisky and poured water on top of it. Cotton could not work out whether the stuff was exacerbating D’s exasperation or soothing his contempt.

‘Our politicians are in shock but unable to see, let alone accept, what has happened. That’s partly because they have chosen to cower behind public reaction. They can’t actually say “Well done, everyone, we’ve won – but now, sorry about this, chaps, we’re utterly broke and have to start all over again exactly as if we had lost. Well, just like those people we’ve been fighting.”’ He groaned. ‘I can see us rattling about in a hollow victory for generations.’

Behind Cotton in the office Moira’s voice rose.

‘Rosalind! Have you used all the string?’

D smiled and tapped himself on the chest. ‘I don’t really know how long I’ve got left here,’ he said. ‘If our masters borrow some American vigour I’ve got about two days. If they are being British about it, I could be hanging about here for weeks and weeks. Keep in touch till then.’

Cotton nodded. ‘Very well.’

‘In Washington you’ll be under the wing of Geoffrey Ayrtoun. Know him?’

‘No, I don’t,’ said Cotton.

‘Yes, it’s the kind of name that begs a sir in front of it.’ D pulled himself up, shook his head. ‘Late thirties perhaps. Very effective, I understand. Was in Propaganda and Misinformation. Advertising before that. Sausages and soap powder. You will take your orders from him.’

Cotton nodded.

‘You don’t know Washington DC?’

‘No.’

‘It’s a provincial town that doubles as a national capital. I can’t really think of an equivalent. It’s false, like Berlin or Madrid or Leningrad, in the sense that somebody plonked it down somewhere with a rotten climate. A Frenchman’s Cartesian plan was kicked off but then the proportions aren’t quite right, the domes aren’t part of a circle, the columns look more like cake decoration than genuine supports … it’s like an essay with too many not quite accurate quotes at the beginning. So it is top heavy and then has notes and straggle and later considerations that have nothing to do with the plan.’

D looked up. ‘Mind you, it is a boom town. The population has doubled with the war. And the place is crawling with foreigners trying to worm their way into America’s favour and join in making the new world.’

‘What about the British Embassy?’ asked Cotton.

‘Ah,’ said D. He gave himself a moment. ‘The Ambassador is Lord Halifax, an aristocrat who has never let his idleness and love of hunting cloud his right to high office. People forget he was Foreign Secretary at Munich and the alternative to Churchill in 1940. He never did quite manage to appease Hitler, not after mistaking him for a footman at their first meeting, but I dare say he’ll be able to tone down Lord Keynes’ more intemperate outbursts.’

Almost despite himself, Cotton was impressed. It was one of the briskest hatchet jobs he’d heard.

‘The rest of the Embassy crew is made up of mealy-mouthed diplomats, family dead wood, communist toadies, ferocious snobs – those last two sometimes the same – and of course I mustn’t forget the pillow-diddlers.’

Cotton had never heard the expression ‘pillow-diddler’.

‘No?’ said D. He shrugged. ‘A cocksman for information and influence.’

‘How does that work exactly?’

‘Well, it is true that sperm serves as invisible ink – though the sheet is usually of paper or, at most, a nice silk scarf. Every man is his own pen, as they used to say. In DC, stuffed with bored wives and daughters no longer able to partake of foreign travel, our pillow-diddlers saw themselves as part of the Allied war effort. They diddled for Victory. One attaché diddled Clare Booth Luce whose husband runs Time magazine. I think the logic was that a little bit of sheet shrieking would turn the American readers of Time pro-British.’

D barely bothered to shake his head. ‘By the way, they’re keeping you in uniform,’ he said.

‘Really? Why?’

‘The policy is to “show them our medals” apparently,’ said D.

Cotton frowned in disbelief. ‘But why would we do that?’

‘Mm. It’s quite one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. Can you imagine why the Americans should consider their medals as having less value than ours? But that’s the reaction. We are going to impress them into understanding our contribution. And Keynes has decided to be optimistic. Apparently pessimism is something you give in to. Optimism is useful hope.’

‘So what will my role be?’ asked Cotton.

‘You’ll be an academic sort of soldier, a brave economist. And you’ve got a promotion. You’ll be a half-colonel.’

‘Are you serious about this?’

‘Yes! You’re part of the policy, part of the medal rattling. And don’t forget the economist part. You get to be a shaman before a charlatan.’

‘You’re putting me off?’

‘Absolutely not! You don’t have much of a choice anyway. Let’s say the situation is “awfully fluid”.’ D imitated someone who spoke in a holy drawl. ‘Ayrtoun will give you the specifics of what they want from you when you get there. But in general terms we are trying not to disappear in the Coronation of the US as winners of the world war. We’ve had some trouble over the atom bomb, you know, even though some of our scientists worked on it. Like lend-lease, formal co-operation has now ended. They just forgot to send some of the papers on. Nothing too mean in that, just forgetful, because the Americans like to believe they are awfully practical.’

D looked at him. ‘I’m drinking too much,’ he said. ‘Look, on a personal level you’ll get out of Britain for a while. We’re utterly whacked and fingering our morals while wondering how much power we’ve lost. You may get some time to think about your future, and DC won’t look too bad when you’re job hunting. With luck you could be demobbed early next year. Or … you can see what you are capable of.’

‘Why have I been chosen?’ asked Cotton.

‘I really wouldn’t want to depress you,’ said D but then decided to do so. ‘You got three ticks. One was for Madrid and your work on the Nazi–Argentinian connection. They liked your paper on that.’

Cotton dipped his head.

‘That was one tick. And in Germany you wrote another paper on the effects on the British Army of ending European lend-lease. I take it you said “not good”?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Two ticks. And then, I suggested you. Third tick. I said you are quiet, cautious, reasonably resourceful and you are, as much as economists ever are, capable of a larger view. In the Embassy, people will ask you lots of questions about how it is all going with Keynes and company.’

‘They’re not going to know?’

‘My dear chap, its sauve qui peut and pass the parcel out there. If you don’t know, you can’t be responsible. And that’s our side. Oh, by the way,’ he added. ‘You’ll be travelling with another man.’ He looked down at a paper on his desk. ‘Yes, chap called Tibbets.’

Later Cotton made his way to Waterloo. Nothing much had changed in London since he had last been there in June. The standing buildings were still black with soot, the bomb damage and rubble looked very much as it had done. The only difference Cotton saw was in Waterloo Station, where some German prisoners of war had been put to clearing away the sandbags and were making brisk, quite cheerful progress. Some of them were scrubbing the red brick.

Cotton took a train to Dorking and a cab to his father’s house in Peaslake.

He found him outside by the apple store priming a smoke gun. Since the death of his wife in 1938, James Cotton would begin conversations as if they had been going on for some time or as if his son had just been round the corner fetching something.

‘I was a bit of a worshipful husband, you see.’ He looked up. ‘What do you think you’ll be?’

Cotton smiled. ‘That would depend on who I marry, don’t you think? I’m being sent to Washington DC.’

‘Yes,’ said his father. ‘You’re quite right. I do think I was lucky. How long will you be gone?’

‘Not sure. But at least a couple of months?’

‘So you might see Joanie.’

‘No might – I will.’

‘I’d better get writing then. You can take some letters for the grandchildren.’ He paused. ‘I always thought Halliday was an extraordinary name for a child. Foster is a bit better. Your mother used to laugh a little at Stephen Foster songs, but rather liked them, I think … and Emily is quite perfect, of course.’

‘I’ve brought you some bacon and I filched some sugar from the RAF.’

‘Good. I’ve been getting the apple store ready, you know, and waging my own little war on wasps. They spoil the fruit, you see. I have no choice. I have to take it as a kind of robbery.’ He looked up and smiled. ‘It must be pretty exciting, eh? You are going to see your sister and the grandchildren.’

Cotton put his arm on his father’s shoulder. ‘We’ll get you to see them as soon as we can.’

His father beamed. ‘Oh, Isla would have loved to have seen those children!’

Cotton sucked on his teeth. Though he had not been drinking, they felt as if he had. He turned away from the fusty, cider smell of the apple store.

COTTON HAD not seen his sister, who lived in New York, since 1936 – and he had an American brother-in-law, a niece and two nephews he had never met at all. He could not see, after docking in New York City on 11 September, with a train to catch to Washington DC, that he had enough time to visit them. He was intrigued, then, to watch Jeremy Tibbets dash off to Brooks Brothers to order a Botany 500 suit, some shirts and a quantity of ‘proper socks’.

Tibbets wriggled down the gangplank past the GIs. Cotton wondered what was on the paper he was waving, then heard his plummy tones:

‘Coming through! Diplomatic business!’

They had crossed the Atlantic on an American troopship from Le Havre.

‘American steel around you now, gentlemen,’ the captain had said when they went on board. ‘You’re welcome but you will keep an eye on that headroom, won’t you? Have a good trip.’

They had been given one-half of a four-berth cabin and Tibbets immediately claimed the lower bunk.

‘I’m a restless sleeper,’ he explained. ‘I wouldn’t want to disturb you from the upper berth.’

Tibbets was so slender, he looked taller than he was, with a long, smooth, young, rectangular face and lots of dark, floppy hair. He wore a hairnet when he went to sleep. Cotton was not aware his face had even twitched but Tibbets explained he had the advice from his father. ‘It protects the follicles,’ he said.

Tibbets also soon volunteered that his mother was from ‘the wallpaper family’.

Wallpaper was not something Cotton knew about but the name Sanderson came to him.

‘No, no, no,’ said Tibbets forgivingly, ‘not those,’ but he did not give a name.

Tibbets described himself as being ‘purely on the research side’. In such cramped quarters, however, it was not difficult to see that he spent a lot of time fiddling with numbers and Cyrillic characters in a kind of grid, and that he was finding his code book, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, rather strange.

Cotton went back to his own reading. Before he left, he had been given Henry James’s The Ambassadors as his code book for communicating with D. It was a story of European freedom for some Americans, and different kinds of betrayal on both continents. James described his moral hero Strether as a ‘fine central intellect’ but what struck Cotton as he read in the thrum of the ship was the extraordinary sensitivity of so many characters to shades of meaning as they talked on and on.

Cotton had also been given quantities of figures on the British Colonies – demographics, GNPs, exports, main crops and production figures, all from before the war, with guesses since. This was to be his cover. He would say he was working on the economic implications the Anglo-American negotiations would have for the colonies and the sterling area.

In a third, much slimmer file was a job D had advised him to palm off on someone else. It was a civil servant’s ‘Consideration’ in civil servant’s language. It suggested that:

given the schedule of work and social engagements, the likelihood of one or more of the British delegation providing what will be denominated a distraction (in other words, causing a scandal) approaches levels of some certainty.

The ‘consideration’ also mentioned that ‘much of the US press is hostile towards us and not above underhand methods’.

The British were, however, well looked after on the crossing, given quantities of chicken, steak, mashed potato, spinach and corn – what Cotton knew as maíz, from his childhood in Mexico. Tibbets was particularly fond of tinned peaches and ice cream for dessert and would then smoke his cigarette of the day, a Lucky Strike.

‘Fabulously comfortable,’ he said. ‘One could get used to this.’ Tibbets liked to use ‘one’ from time to time.

Round them, the ship played music for the troops going home. Harry James, Perry Como, Les Brown and his Band of Renown, and a singer called Doris Day.

‘Gonna take a sentimental journey, Gonna set my heart at ease…’

‘The musical equivalent of saltpetre.’ Tibbets sniffed.

At Charterhouse, Cotton had pretended to be more tone-deaf than he was – the school was proud of its choral tradition. It had been one of his cheerfully admitted failings. That did not stop him finding Perry Como’s song ‘Till the End of Time’ a dirge every time it was played.

‘Mozart’s my thing,’ said Tibbets, though Cotton had not asked. ‘And Bach, of course.’

‘Never thought my heart could be so yearny… ’ Cotton found it irritatingly catchy.

The GIs themselves sometimes preferred songs by Ethel Merman and Celeste Holm. ‘Why is a Private called a Private?’ and ‘Three Day Pass’. They had adapted the words, as they had for the Gershwins’ ‘Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off’, and sang them with gusto :

‘You say teste and I say tasty…’

This upset the chaplain but it struck Cotton as quite inventive. He found the troops better-humoured than the British, a bit noisier and not quite as stiffly disciplined.

New York City appeared first as a smudge on the horizon, then as a low, dark, convex button. There was a kind of visual fizz above the button and then, shrouded in a morning mist, possibly of its own making, New York sprouted a series of what looked like immensely tall, very slim pencils. On a calm sea and under a pale blue sky they watched the famous skyline take on detail.

‘A mammon-made atoll,’ said Tibbets. He said it with relish. ‘These people have completely moved on from Vitruvian Man.’

Cotton laughed. Tibbets appeared to admire, envy and resent the Americans, but it did not stop him being pompous or patronizing. For most of the GIs, seeing New York from the new immigrants’ point of view was a source of excitement and pride. Some of them were calling out the names of the tallest skyscrapers. ‘Singer! Woolworth!’

‘No! That’s the Bank of Manhattan!’

Tibbets later had a story that he had heard one of the young soldiers identify the Statue of Liberty as ‘the Liberty Belle’.

When they had docked, Cotton went to thank the ship’s captain for both of them.

‘You’re welcome, Colonel,’ said the captain. ‘You’re on the west side of Manhattan. That’s the Hudson River. Glad to help out.’

Cotton organized their baggage and asked the cab driver to take him to Pennsylvania Station.

‘P. . .