The Trinity Six. Charles Cumming
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I would like to express how sorry I was to hear about her death.’ The words sounded sincere. ‘A lovely girl. Very bright.’
‘Thank you. Yes, she was.’ Gaddis took advantage of the improving atmosphere between them to discover more about their relationship. ‘She said that she met you on several occasions.’
This was confirmed with no more than an abrupt nod. Neame then looked down at the satchel and asked if Gaddis was recording their conversation.
‘Not unless you’d like me to.’
‘I would not like you to.’ Again the response was quick and clipped; Neame clearly wanted to leave no doubt as to who was in charge. He winced as a sharp pain appeared to jag across his hunched shoulders, then quickly suppressed his discomfort with an almost imperceptible shake of the head. Gaddis recognized the familiar, uncomplaining stoicism of the war generation. His own grandfather had possessed it, his grandmother also. No fuss. No complaints. Survivors. ‘Charlotte visited me on three occasions,’ Neame continued. ‘I am resident at a nursing home not far from here. The Meredith. Twice we met at country pubs for a chat about Eddie, and once in my room. In fact, that occasion was rather amusing. She had to pretend to be my granddaughter.’ Gaddis thought of Charlotte engaged in the subterfuge and found himself smiling. It was the sort of ruse she would have enjoyed. ‘I must say that I was shocked when I heard that she had died.’
‘We all were.’
‘Do you suspect an element of foul play?’
Both the implication of the question and the calm, matter-of-fact way in which Neame had posed it took Gaddis by surprise. ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Do you?’
Neame sighed deeply in a way that Gaddis thought of as overly theatrical.
‘Well, I wouldn’t know, would I? But now you’re the man on the scene. You’re the chap tracking the story. And I suppose you want me to tell you all about Eddie.’
‘You approached me,’ Gaddis replied, because he was becoming slightly irritated by Neame’s manner. ‘You were the one who wrote the emails. You were the one who sent Peter. I have absolutely no idea how you knew that I was taking over from Charlotte. I can only assume that she told you we were planning to write a book together.’
‘That is correct.’ Gaddis did not suspect that Neame was lying. The metal trolley was again being dragged across a distant stone floor, the metal scream of wheels further adding to the combative atmosphere between them. ‘I’m assuming that you know about St Mary’s?’
‘I know about St Mary’s.’
Here at last was an area of the story with which Gaddis was familiar. The old man turned to face him again, a smell of lavender in the air. His teeth were faded to yellow-grey, his blue eyes as clear and as deep as stained glass.
‘Then you’ll know that Eddie’s death was a put-up job. You’ll know that the Office cooked the whole thing up to protect him.’
‘Protect him from what?’
‘Or from whom?’ Neame reached out to touch the handle of his walking stick. The answer to the question appeared to be as much of a mystery to him as it was to Gaddis. ‘All I know is that Eddie wanted to say goodbye. He told me what was about to happen. I knew that this would probably be the last time that I ever saw him.’
‘And was it?’
Neame produced another of his deep, regretful sighs. ‘Oh, he’s probably dead by now. Most of us are by the time you get to my age.’
Gaddis acknowledged the remark with a half smile but felt the familiar sting of disappointment. A dead Cambridge spy wasn’t as valuable to him as a Cambridge spy who was alive and well. More out of frustration than common sense, he decided to test the limits of Neame’s knowledge.
‘So you don’t know for sure that Edward Crane has died?’
Neame leaned back very slightly, tilting his head upwards and gazing at the distant ceiling. It became clear, after a few seconds, that he had no intention of responding to the question. Gaddis tried a different tack.
‘You’d known him since childhood?’
‘Since Trinity. That hardly qualifies as childhood. I will say this, though. Eddie sent me a document about a year after the St Mary’s operation. A sort of shortened autobiography, if you will. Highlights from the life of a master spy.’
This revived Gaddis. Here, at last, was something concrete. He felt a rush of satisfaction, a feeling of the pieces at last coming together. Charlotte had mentioned the document, but he did not want to betray to Neame too much of what he knew.
‘Jesus,’ he said, momentarily forgetting that he was sitting in the body of a thirteenth-century cathedral. Neame grinned.
‘This is a place of Christian worship, Doctor Gaddis. Do mind your language.’
‘Point taken.’ It was their first shared joke and Gaddis again tried to take quick advantage of Neame’s lighter mood. ‘So what happened to this document? Do you still have it? Have you attempted to get it published?’
‘Published!’
‘What’s so ridiculous about that?’
Neame coughed and again appeared to be seized by a short, intense pain in his chest. ‘Don’t be absurd. Eddie would have had a fit.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Because he was a creature of habit. That habit was privacy. He gave me his memoirs on the tacit understanding that I would not disseminate them.’
‘Do you really believe that?’
Neame looked as though nobody had questioned his judgement for forty years. Gaddis tried a different approach.
‘By writing down an account of his life and by sending it to you, wasn’t Crane subconsciously hoping that his story would see the light of day?’
‘Subconsciously?’ Neame made the word sound utterly absurd.
‘I take it from your reaction that you’re not a Freudian.’
A thread of spittle appeared on the old man’s lower lip which he was forced to wipe away with a folded white handkerchief. The effort appeared both to annoy and to embarrass him; here were the small humiliations of old age. Replacing the handkerchief in the pocket of his tweed trousers, he turned to face the altar.
‘Look, I have arranged to meet you here today because I have made a decision to set the record straight about Eddie Crane, whom I believe was a hero to our country.’
‘A hero.’ Gaddis repeated the word without inflection.
‘That is correct. And not the modern sort of hero, either. These days a young man can dip his toe in Afghanistan and be given a VC. It’s a nonsense. I mean the proper sort of heroism, the hero who risks not just life and limb, but reputation.’ Neame coughed with the effort of driving home his point. ‘But I want to be able to tell the story in my own way and in my own time. I cannot simply betray Eddie’s confidence by releasing his manuscript to the highest bidder. I want to be able to control the flow of information. I want to be dealing with somebody that I can trust.’
Gaddis wanted to say: ‘You can trust me,’ but thought better of it. He knew that he was slowly earning Neame’s respect, moment by moment, but did not want to jeopardize that with an incautious remark.
‘The manuscript came to me with some information about Eddie’s new circumstances. There was also a set of instructions.’ Just as he had felt beside the canal, Gaddis longed to be writing notes, but he was obliged to commit everything to memory. ‘Eddie told me that he was living quietly in Scotland under a new identity, protected by his former masters in the Foreign Office. He was not, he said, in particularly good health and did not expect to see me again. “These are some private recollections of an unusual life,” he wrote. “I have set them down for my own personal