Riptide by John Lawton Read Free Book Online

hardly using me to the full, is it? When I was seconded to the unit I thought it was because I’d fluent German, because I knew Germans . . . and
I’ve picked up more than a smattering of Polish and Czech in the last four years.’
    ‘Anyone could do what you do?’
    ‘Doesn’t take what I know to tail a few blokes around London.’
    ‘Then we must see if we can’t make better use of your talents.’
    It was the kind of remark Stilton had become used to from the toffs. Three years a serving Tommy and almost
thirty as a copper had rubbed in the deferential nature of the Forces. Merit had little or nothing to do with it. You were born to lead or you weren’t. And Stilton wasn’t. It all came
down to class. Age – he was fifteen or more years older than Thesiger – and experience – he’d been in the last war, when Theisger was still a schoolboy – counted for
little. It was the sort of thing that took a war to change. The first year of Walter Stilton’s war had been routine. The second year, since Dunkirk, had been one of the best of his life
– working for Thesiger as a ‘spycatcher’. He and Thesiger got on very well. He’d rarely met a toff less strait-jacketed by his class. They understood one another very well.
Thesiger could drop the upper crust habitual allusions and ellipses of speech to talk plainly when he had to. And still it left Stilton frustrated. Thesiger’s generosity of spirit was
sincere, as sincere as his material generosity (he was the sort of bloke who’d share his flask and sandwiches with you), but it was unlikely to be followed up by any action. He’d
interrogate Jerry – Stilton and blokes like Stilton would traipse after them in the pouring rain noting their movements in little black notebooks.
    Thesiger sat down again – stretched out his legs, heels resting on the edge of his desk, talked through a puff of smoke, the cigarette waggling in his lips as he did so.
    ‘While we’re on the subject, Walter, I wanted to ask you – what news of our Jerry in Derby?’
    This was a man professing to be a Belgian refugee. Thesiger and Stilton had spotted him at once and decided to turn him loose. Let him find his place in Britain and then use him to feed back
misinformation.
    ‘He’s snug as a bug in a rug at the Rolls Royce works. We’ve got him making up parts for what he thinks is a new fighter engine. It’s about as likely to fly as a pig.
Most of it’s made up from the plans for my wife’s sewing machine, blown up to twenty times the scale. At worst we might inadvertently give Krupps the idea for a two-ton
Singer.’
    Thesiger grinned. Class notwithstanding, Stilton liked the man. It was largely thanks to him that MI5 could boast that there was not a single German spy in Britain they did not know about.
    ‘We can’t afford to lose Smulders. Not for a day. He’s not here to stay. He’s not a sleeper. He’s on something quite specific. If I knew what it was I’d not
have turned him loose. As soon as we know you’ll have to pull him in. There’s a risk of course – if Jerry has some way of communicating with him, then the minute he goes active
he’ll try and vanish. We must be ready for that, really we must.’
    ‘Do you mind if I stick in me two-penn’orth?’
    ‘By all means.’
    ‘He’s a twitchy sort of a bloke. One of the nurses came up behind him a bit too quiet like during his medical, and he rounded on her faster than a ferret after a rabbit. He’d
grabbed her by one arm before he checked himself. All smiles and apologies. She’d dropped her kidney dish. He helped the lass pick it up – was so charming to her he made the poor girl
bright red with embarrassment. But it was enough. A dead giveaway. He’s what you’d call Commando trained. A bare-handed killer.’
    ‘Perhaps we are wasting your talent. An assassin indeed. I’m inclined to agree. Assassin of whom, one wonders? They’d hardly send him across and expect him to take a crack