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You humanise Edward well, Le Jones. Ordinarily, I’d say writing compellingly about a trade fair would be a challenge, but you pull it off with aplomb. Dare say it helps when you have so rich a character available to you, willing to voice his own frustration with the tedium of royal life. (And what’s more, act on it.)
Eagerly anticipating the trip to Fort Belvedere.
Eagerly anticipating the trip to Fort Belvedere.
What a waste of talent ... Well, perhaps in this AAR his undoubted energies can be redirected.
Yet another fabulous post LeJones (and I don't just say that because of my nomination for a certain award).
*spits in disgust*
At least he's not Fr*nch
*spits in disgust*
At least he's not Fr*nch
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I'm up to the final build-up of the buildup of the buildup of the buildup in KFM. It's been a bumpy ride for the UK in that one.
Not sure I want that to happen here?
Not sure I want that to happen here?
Chapter 4, United Grand Lodge of England, London, 25 February 1936
The evening’s meeting had concluded and the members, changed out of their aprons and insignia, in the most part retired to the lounge or to a nearby club. One man, nervously, hung back, fidgeting with his apron straps fussily.
“Something up, Ernest?”
“Ah!” The man seemed relieved. “Sir Maurice, I need some advice”.
Sir Maurice Jenks, esteemed accountant, former Lord Mayor of London, pillar of the community (in his own upper-middle class way), looked warily around. He had heard the rumours and suspected that he knew what this was about, but had no wish to be implicated in what he was certain was a looming scandal. But he was supposed to offer support to a fellow mason in distress. He sighed. “Let’s get a drink, shall we?”
A few minutes, and a discreet cab ride, later, they were awkwardly ensconced in a side room in Jenks’ club. “You look all in,” Jenks said wryly, “there is a problem,” he said this not quite as a question, “and you require advice.”
“I didn’t know who to turn to,” Mr Ernest Simpson said unhappily.
“And this is a family matter”, Jenks said, again in part sympathetic, part wry, part questioning way. He sounded like a doctor confirming symptoms.
Simpson nodded, and looked into his scotch. “It’s Wallis.”
“It is Wallis,” Jenks repeated, with the same parish confessor tone. “She has been socially active,” he said, leading Simpson to the point.
“She mixes in some grand circles. The thing is, the King. As you know, he is, ah, er,”
“The King,” Jenks said, keeping his tone low, “is a ‘friend of the family’, is he not”.
‘Friend of the family’, in this context was a polite way of acknowledging Wallis’ adultery with him. Simpson immediately understood and nodded. Unlike his earlier nervousness, he seemed utterly unconcerned with the fact that his wife was sleeping with the King.
“I am confused,” Jenks said, sounding impatient. “If this is known and accepted, then why, Simpson, were you so nervous?”
“There is more,” Simpson continued, meeting Jenks gaze. “The King, I believe, wishes to marry Wallis.”
“I see,” he managed to say with a calmness that he did not feel. That meant something, and Jenks felt his stomach tightening at terror at the news. Of all the people in the land, he guessed that he was one of four (the protagonists and he), perhaps a couple more, that knew. Dear Lord! Why me?!
“What do you think is the right action,” Simpson said with an intensity.
“You will do nothing,” Jenks said, but as a continuation of a previous thought, so it was said with a detachment, while his mind grappled with the issue. “I must take advice, discreetly” he said, the last comment to reassure a startled Simpson. “You must leave this with me, Ernest” he used the first name as further reassurance. They drank their scotch in uncomfortable silence, Simpson taking the hint and retreating rather than asking for a refill.
After furtively checking that Simpson had gone, Jenks took some of the club’s writing paper and jotted a quick letter. Fortunately he was well acquainted with Clive Wigram in the Palace through his tenure as Lord Mayor, and was at least known to the Prime Minister. After jotting a quick note asking Wigram to have lunch with him (knowing Wigram’s flighty nature he feared that a more detailed letter would be incendiary) he prepared a more detailed letter to Baldwin.
Prime Minister,
You will, I trust, forgive the directness and impertinence of this presumptive letter, but I have spent a most disturbing evening with Mr Ernest Simpson, with whom I share a membership of the United Grand Lodge of England. Simpson and I enjoy a relationship best described as acquaintances, as he one of several petitioners whom sought patronage during my recent appointment as Lord Mayor.
Simpson has been, with the merest modicum of discretion, candid in admitting to the existence of an adulterous and improper relationship between Mrs Simpson and a figure well known to us. Simpson was forthright in confirming, as the cuckolded party, the identity of that other figure. He has, of pertinence in your deliberations regarding this matter, confided to me that the other figure appears resolute in seeking matrimonial relations with Mrs Simpson. It is not evident to me, as a mere temporary confidante to this concern, that the necessary legal proceedings required for this desire to be executed have been considered. I must therefore find this manifest confliction a troubling indication of Simpson’s state and clarity of mind.
I have sought, and obtained, Simpson’s consent to the principle of consultation with higher authority, but not the particulars. Your involvement in this matter is therefore not specified, nor is that of the cuckolder’s senior correspondence secretary. I seek to circumspectly brief the correspondence secretary so as to prepare him for what may be a likely outcome.
While I seek to disengage from this unseemly matter as expeditiously as possible, rest assured of my support and discretion in this matter.
Sighing, he signed it and handed it to a club official. The world of London clubs was such that messengers taking letters to Whitehall addresses was not unusual, so Jenks knew that no eyebrows would be raised, and that the letter would get through. Hurriedly, he gathered his coat and hat and decided to go home, leaving an instruction, later regretted, that if Mr Simpson enquired of his whereabouts they were not to be divulged. What a world, he thought in genuine astonishment.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
GAME NOTES
Another move along the board in the Abdication crisis.
Ernest Simpson is, ironically enough, similar to Edward VIII in that he has a bit a split characterisation; some say cuckolded husband, some say knowing accomplice. I’m saying kinda both, he is taken aback at the speed of events (he and Wallis haven’t yet decided to divorce, as I have Jenks explain to the Prime Minister) but is pretty open in discussing his wife’s adultery. He did confide to Jenks, whom he knew through their masonic membership, largely as described and Jenks did take the matter to Wigram and Baldwin (the latter seemingly did nothing about it). The block, of course, to a royal marriage is that the Simpsons were not even close to a divorce in February 36; Wallis’ status, such as it was, was that of a particularly favoured mistress (and given Edward VIII’s mercurial nature, a lot of society believed, perhaps more in hope than due to the evidence, that he would eventually give her up) whose husband, though not really in high society, knew, at least, to toe the line (much as the husbands of his grandfather Edward VII’s mistresses did). This is one of the earliest indications that the King’s ambitions for her might be greater than those allowed by convention. But, she still had a husband, so the Court and Government could afford to ‘wait out’.
I am not, nor am I ever likely to be, a freemason, but the building in London is astonishing, and very of its time (1933); it would not look out of place in Hitler’s Berlin or 1930s Washington. It feels at the same time art deco British, but quite foreign. All I know is that, aesthetically, I like it.
And Jenks? He is of course very real, and probably as pompous and self-righteous as made out here. I have been fortunate / burdened with knowing a couple of senior civics, including a recent Lord Mayor of London; it is a hugely symbolic role, and very different from the (confusingly) similarly-titled Mayor of London, an elected role. He was fascinatingly self-absorbed, and his knowledge of the real world could best be described as 'lacking'. What is known about Jenks is that he acted precisely 'according to spec' during the Abdication saga; he is very arrogant in thinking that the 'circle' is tight - a lot of people knew about the situation by early 1936...
@El Pip : I think that you’re on to something with your point – Edward was virtually ‘written off’ long before the crisis broke. As we’ll see, Baldwin (knowing that he had the Dominions, the Church, the Civil Service and the Royal staff behind him) was implacably imposed to any attempt at compromise.
@TheButterflyComposer : Again a good point, although some of the failings (lax security, for example) were simply inexcusable. And you’re right – playing this with ‘MEGXIT’ in the background (or while perhaps thinking of Princess Diana) makes you realise how some things don’t change.
@Captured Joe : Well, he was an odd character!
@DensleyBlair : Thank you, and you’re right, there are certain traits that just leap off the pages of history with King Edward. As for Belverdere, I will try…
@stnylan : I’ve got, in mind, another couple of updates (some time away) where Edward’s talents will be on display. Of course there are others where his significant failings will be on display.
@H.Appleby : Thank you, Sir, and the French will be handled carefully – given that France was the cause of my last AAR failing.
@TheButterflyComposer : KFM is a bumpy ride, for most of its fraught passage through 1940. As for this AAR, we’re not yet anywhere near the denouement, but some dramatic moments are promised…
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Ernest Simpson does indeed seem a rum old cove. I'm not one to judge a chap's personal life, but four marriages seems a tad excessive. Given he doesn't seem overly concerned about maintaining the sanctity of the institution, one wonders why he kept bothering.
An interesting look at the matter from the other side, but sadly I cannot find it in myself to muster up much sympathy for Ernest. It's not like Wallis' personality can have been much of a surprise; she had already broken her first husband, spent a year making "friends of the family" all over China and being "socially active" with any fascist she could find, she was just that sort of woman. What on earth did he expect would happen when he married her?
An interesting look at the matter from the other side, but sadly I cannot find it in myself to muster up much sympathy for Ernest. It's not like Wallis' personality can have been much of a surprise; she had already broken her first husband, spent a year making "friends of the family" all over China and being "socially active" with any fascist she could find, she was just that sort of woman. What on earth did he expect would happen when he married her?
Very nicely setting up the "old boy" network, even more so than our trio of civil servants.
(sorry, couldn't resist)
Perhaps he was an earnest optimist?
(sorry, couldn't resist)
The masons are still fairly active as a group. I'm fairly sure they tried to induct my father at one time but as an Irish Catholic he gently pointed out he was already in a influential cult.
I will never forget the opening of a year at my university and spotting, very brazenly, a flyer supposedly from the Freemasons openly asking for enquiries.
It takes a certain kind of madness to become the lord mayor in the first place, and to desire to such an expensive position with ostensibly no pay.
I will never forget the opening of a year at my university and spotting, very brazenly, a flyer supposedly from the Freemasons openly asking for enquiries.
It takes a certain kind of madness to become the lord mayor in the first place, and to desire to such an expensive position with ostensibly no pay.
I have come into close contact with at least one member of that very lodge, and while they do not share any of Jenks' complacent arrogance (or maybe arrogant complacency), I can attest to something of the 'otherworldly' character. They seem to be blessed by a sort of insulation from much of what goes on in the 'real world'.
And having also, regrettably, witnessed the workings of the old boys' network (even if just from a safe remove), the unimpeachable confidence that everything will be 'sorted out' rings gallingly true. There are some people who simply do not realise that their actions have consequences, and a whole army of other people dedicated to ensuring they never have to come to this realisation.
Great stuff as ever, Le Jones.
And having also, regrettably, witnessed the workings of the old boys' network (even if just from a safe remove), the unimpeachable confidence that everything will be 'sorted out' rings gallingly true. There are some people who simply do not realise that their actions have consequences, and a whole army of other people dedicated to ensuring they never have to come to this realisation.
Great stuff as ever, Le Jones.
To be fair, half the civil service is explicitly for keeping MPs out of trouble...so its goverment practice as well.
There's still a surprising number of these societies around. The catholic 'mafia' usually limit themselves to jobs for the boys but the masons depending on the lodge, go all the way from full on anarcho-bolsivism to fascist mysticism. England is still full of very silly white men playing dress up behind closed curtains.
There's still a surprising number of these societies around. The catholic 'mafia' usually limit themselves to jobs for the boys but the masons depending on the lodge, go all the way from full on anarcho-bolsivism to fascist mysticism. England is still full of very silly white men playing dress up behind closed curtains.
Events continue to move inexorably to their conclusion.
I'm sort of agreeing with @El Pip's conclusion from the previous chapter as well -- the more that this unfolds, the greater my impression that this is essentially a palace coup -- a relatively circumspect one as they go, but a coup nonetheless. It makes for an odd sort of dissonance that all these men are coming together to essentially oust their own King (for that's what they're doing, one way or another, even if they themselves hesitate to call it such even within the confines of their own mind) out of loyalty to "the Crown" as an institution.
I'm sort of agreeing with @El Pip's conclusion from the previous chapter as well -- the more that this unfolds, the greater my impression that this is essentially a palace coup -- a relatively circumspect one as they go, but a coup nonetheless. It makes for an odd sort of dissonance that all these men are coming together to essentially oust their own King (for that's what they're doing, one way or another, even if they themselves hesitate to call it such even within the confines of their own mind) out of loyalty to "the Crown" as an institution.
Often people's behaviour in these sorts of circumstances becomes much easier to comprehend when you realise that so much of what people do isn't geared towards the promotion of any particular goal, but done in the name of the survival of an institution. People are obsessed by the things!
Often people's behaviour in these sorts of circumstances becomes much easier to comprehend when you realise that so much of what people do isn't geared towards the promotion of any particular goal, but done in the name of the survival of an institution. People are obsessed by the things!
The big, you might call 'final', problem of nationalism, at least the 20th century version. It promotes an idea, that doesn't exist and often by definition can't exist. People want the monarch, not a monarch, typically. And like always, once you introduce some ridicule to the system, it collapses.
Francis Urquhart put it best;
"Bring down the monarchy? No! The idea is abhorrent to me. But to force the abdication of a particular King, that has been done before. And if the country's good required it of me, I wouldn't shrink from it."
Ultimately their duty, and loyalty, must be to the good of the country over an individual monarch. While I agree the men may shy away from putting it in such stark terms, that's what it comes down to and that is why I suspect for them there was no dissonance. Just a higher loyalty overriding other concerns.
Controversial opinion: whacking Diana was the right move.
Dr. Johnson put it best, "The triumph of hope over experience."
While he certainly played fast and loose with the "forsaking all others," at least he was fair about it, unlike an O.J. Simpson or someone.
The British Empire becomes much more impressive when you realize how silly most of the people who acquired it actually were.
Often people's behaviour in these sorts of circumstances becomes much easier to comprehend when you realise that so much of what people do isn't geared towards the promotion of any particular goal, but done in the name of the survival of an institution. People are obsessed by the things!
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
A bally rum cove indeed! It takes no imagination to see all of this happening as the historic backdrop of one Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster stories! There will be a Mosely type, running around in a pair of black footer bags, heading up the Blackshorts. But where is the Jeeves in this story to do all the sorting out?
None of the ‘gentlemen’ here seem capable of it. It needs the attention of a very discrete and competent gentleman’s personal gentlemen to guide King Eddy Wooster through his absurd and self-indulgent travails. Alas, none seems to be to hand. Dashed inconvenient, what?
None of the ‘gentlemen’ here seem capable of it. It needs the attention of a very discrete and competent gentleman’s personal gentlemen to guide King Eddy Wooster through his absurd and self-indulgent travails. Alas, none seems to be to hand. Dashed inconvenient, what?
Chapter 5, Wandsworth Park, London, 29 February 1936
He had blundered, he realised this now, in not changing the venue for the meeting just before their rendezvous. The signs were there, straight from Childers or Buchan, the deserted park, the strangely parked cars, all of it classic tradecraft signs that someone else was controlling matters. It was, he realised, with a mixture of relief and regret, time to break off the affair.
'Patrick, love' he imagined that she would greet him in her soft, lightly accented (Cockney, poor lamb) voice. She really wasn’t ugly, actually quite attractive for an unmarried girl in her late twenties. He had often wondered why she hadn’t married, she was too young to blame the lack of eligible men on a war that had ended when she was eight, and had a fairly decent income for a lower middle-class girl as a typist at the shipping company. He wondered if her, and everything about her, was, well, safe. Committing to a man, even one with prospects like the (entirely fictional) Patrick Byrne (they had, quite deliberately, given him ‘a dusting of the Fenian’ to throw scrutiny on Irish terrorists rather than His Majesty’s Government) would be a risk, and one that she would never make on her own. Cyril Butler, late of the Secret Service and, more recently, attached to the Security Service, didn’t relish ending their courting; while she was from pretty lowly stock she was worthy, if someone would make the time and investment, of attention and care. Careful old chum, Butler corrected himself, you’re getting too involved. On balance, despite his misgivings over ending the affair, he was pleased that this assignment would, God willing, soon be over.
But she was not there. The bench just behind the pavilion, he had told her (verbally, of course, nothing written down to give a trail to any snoopers). With a growing sense of unease, he slowed down. Yes, this was definitely a trap. ‘They’ were waiting; the man at the other end of the pavilion clearing was far too well-dressed for Wandsworth with shoes so polished he could use ‘em for a mirror (Butler had favoured a dishevelled, vaguely academic down-at-heel but well-bred look, that could work well in all manner of places). It was time to use 'the Wandsworth contingency'. Retreating quite overtly, it was now a race against time. Turning on his heels, he ran into the road.
Fate, that most capricious of deities, was on his side; there was a black cab on the other side of the street. “Lambeth, please,” he said, remembering to give a false destination first, and then abruptly get out later, just in case. The driver gave a surly nod, which Butler found oddly irritating. He had, in his flight from the park, been looking forward to the reassuring chat of a London cabbie. He sat back in the chair, seemingly relaxed but really keen a peripheral gaze for pursuers. But they were none. That’s odd, he thought, before another, darker, suspicion took over. The furtive glanced from the taxi driver who weirdly hadn’t said anything, the set-up at the park that hadn’t materialised, the absence of the girl, and now no pursuers, it pointed to one thing. I’m exactly where they want me, he realised. He had two choices, now, say, nothing, and risk being outnumbered wherever it was that they were going, or challenge the driver.
“I say chum,” he said in his best ‘now look here’ academic voice, “time to hop off, I think.” He tapped the window. The driver said nothing, but Butler had the distinct impression that they were accelerating. A sudden swerve to the right took them off their eastbound route from Wandsworth deeper into London, and pointing decidedly south, and away from help. Another lurch took them westward, back towards Wandsworth. There was only one thing for it, he would have to have a punch up. Feinting a coughing fit, he noticed the driver ease off as fell, spluttering, back in his seat; there was another swerve, this time taking them on a road vaguely parallel to The Thames and near the Victorian reservoirs opposite Fulham and Hurlingham. Why is it, Butler thought sourly, that every bit of green or open space in London seemingly has a spy in it?
He waited for another swerve (the driver was clearly agitated) and when it came, still pretending to be ill, he was prepared. As the car tipped to the left, he appeared to fall onto the floor of the passenger compartment. The driver, actually more alert than Butler had suspected, immediately swerved again, off the main road (Butler kneeling on the floor, couldn’t see this, but the ‘ride’ suddenly felt very, very bumpy) and slamming on the brakes. Thrown forward by the momentum, Butler timed it so that he unfurled himself, barging out of the cabin, using enough force to propel himself out of the way of the vehicle and onto the street. The taxi driver had faffed with securing the vehicle for too long, giving Butler a head start.
The busy shopping street, somewhere, he realised, in Putney, was perfect for Butler, as he continued to try and shake off whomever it was who was following him. His meeting with the girl, an industrialist’s secretary, had clearly been ‘rumbled’; it was obvious, and the pack , containing the final name that Knight and Kell needed, was clearly the target (and so, as the means for getting the pack to Thames House, was he). He needed, now, to slip, unobtrusively, into one of the shops, lose his pursuer, and get across Lambeth Bridge to confess his failure. There was a pub (it looked a tad working class for Butler, but at a stretch it could be a plausible bolt-hole). He barged, as dramatically as he could, into the pub; the landlord offering that most London of welcomes, a grumpy nod. The place was packed, which dumfounded Butler until he realised that today was a Saturday, and that there was a football match in nearby Craven Cottage, the ground of Fulham Football Club. Passing himself off as a local left-leaning academic type (perhaps a local councillor, or a teacher) who liked the sport, he worked his way through the pub and, slyly nicking a Fulham scarf, ingratiated himself with a bunch of supporters. He took off his crumpled tweed jacket, his fraying linen shirt immediately blending him in with the other fans. The supporters were a Godsend; his story, of being a bank clerk up from Wimbledon who had lost his group of friends, was plausible enough and he was able to bluff his way through a good humoured review of Fulham’s progress through the FA Cup (the fact that the last round had seen a 0 – 0 draw and then a 3 – 2 win at the replay against Chelsea, another London team, was known to Butler) that didn’t draw attention, good or bad, to his temporary status with the fans. They even bought him a beer, which gave Butler an opportunity to avoid what he imagined must be scrutiny from his pursuers, by bending down and getting some money from the discarded jacket for the inevitable 'no really, I insist' routine with his benefactors.
Of the pursuers there was not a sign. Butler suspected that they were waiting for the football fans to exit, en masse, from the pub, before swooping in and sifting through all that remained. Butler calculated that his best hope lay in getting across Putney Bridge. Sticking resolutely to the football crowd, he managed, deftly, to take another coat from the stand (an ill-fitting short coat, almost a workman’s donkey jacket) and, burying his head deep into the scarf, he went to watch a football match. They had beaten Chelsea earlier in the week, and now Fulham would take on Derby County.
The bridge crossing worried him; they were funnels, he remembered from his training, but open ones, with limited cover and opportunity for stealth. He was on the left side of the group, near its outer edge, and close to the wall. With a pounding heart, he looked upriver. A predator looking for someone matching Butler's description would find it easy to mark him, follow him and catch him.
"I say, you alright there?" That was one of the fans.
"Just worried about the game," Butler said in his best approximation of an obsessive fan. The man looked similar to Butler in age and background and, crucially, was deeper within the loose grouping. Feigning interest, he nudged, with smiled apologies, through some fans to talk to the man.
Who was utterly, totally dull; if he was a plant, he was a bloody effective one. Half a bridge talking about nothing but insurance schemes, Butler rued. The man was an old-fashioned Victorian / Edwardian do-gooder, and dull as dishwater. But he had served his purpose as Butler peeled away from the fans, having claimed to spot his group of Wimbledon pen pushers, just after Putney Bridge. Vanishing into the maze of Victorian terraces that made up Fulham’s housing, he took stock. He had to get to the girl, if only to make a last effort to get the pack. They (his pursuers) didn’t have it, he thought, or believed that he had it; the pursuit suggested that there was still, somewhere, a file that had the names that he needed. And the answer to that wouldn’t be at her employer’s office, he understood that their need for her came from a lack of ‘insider’ intelligence, and it wouldn’t be at her parents’ dingy little house in Battersea. That would be watched, perhaps incompetently, for all comings and goings. He had planned for this, and had told her to leave a message with a tobacconist in nearby Brixton, fitting his cover as an architect working on the Sunlight Laundry project. This had been a very discreet arrangement, and they hadn’t had to use it. But first, he needed to report in; he was very, very, late and Knight, as well as Kell, didn’t like overdue agents.
After carefully weaving around the suburban sprawl, pockets of football fans his natural cover, he took refuge in a telephone box that was as grimy as it was nondescript. He placed a call with a number at a London club,
“Hello Sir,” the porter, one of Kell’s trusted network, rasped down the line. “Would you like me to take a message?”
“Yes, please, could you apologise to Uncle Frank, and tell him I’ve fallen in with some football fans. Some of them a bit grubby, but I think I have fallen in with the right crowd now. I’m in Fulham and will be late for afternoon tea and the show”.
There was a pause. “I do believe,” said the voice, in a perfect imitation of a slightly patronising club porter, “that your Uncle was expecting you an hour ago.” Butler was chilled to realise that it was over an hour since this simple rendezvous had gone so wrong.
“Is he still there? I thought,” he said with as much forced levity as he could muster, “that I should get him some tobacco. Well, you know how particular my uncle is about the blend that he uses. He doesn’t like the Club’s. He likes the southern stuff”. That was a thinly veiled plea for someone to meet him at the tobacconist’s.
There was an even longer pause, and Butler could hear a second voice, the one giving the orders. Clearly Knight had sent someone senior to the club to give orders should Butler make contact. “He’s had to pop out, I’m afraid”, the porter said, in a deft mishearing of Butler’s false intent, “one of his shareholders has asked for some advice on a disposal”. Disposal? What did that mean? He feared if this was a subtle indication that the girl was dead. ‘Shareholders’ normally meant senior police or Home Office, or perhaps a politician.
“Oh, ok, well perhaps I will meet him in town, then.”
“I imagine, Sir, that might be possible, yes,” the kindly voice said approvingly. “Will any of your football supporters be joining you?” The delicious snobbery attached to ‘football supporters’ would be convincing for any eavesdroppers that this club functionary really was worried about a dissolute nephew bringing home ‘the wrong sort’, and not whether any enemy agents were tailing Butler.
“No no,” he said confidently, “I think that this is a family party.”
“I quite agree, Sir,” the voice said firmly. “Might I wish you a good day?”
__________________________________________________________________________________________
After everything that had happened, getting to the tobacconist’s (this time by bus) was mercifully easy. It wasn’t Knight who met him at the back of the shop, it was Vernon Kell.
“Sir,” he said warily. Kell looked far from pleased.
“That girl that you’ve been manipulating was found in the Thames two hours ago. Two boatmen found her body. Thankfully Darkins is dealing with it.” Darkins was an Inspector with Scotland Yard, and had a strong relationship with MI5. “Her body hadn’t decomposed so the violence of her death was obvious,” Kell said in a voice as chilly as a winter’s gale. “Of the boatmen, one was a former driver in the Army so has been ordered to keep silent. He is loyal, we believe. The second will be bought off, we will make the funds available,” he said, to no one in particular.
“I see,” Butler said guardedly.
“That girl was cleverer than you gave her credit for,” he said, still ominously flat. “She clearly knew that this was sensitive information, and deposited it here, rather than taking it to the park for the meeting”. He held up a tattered manila folder. “All of the names are here, of course, and in a letter to you she assures you that her employer will never know that it is missing. To him, she tells you, it is just a personnel list.” He took off his spectacles. “You may read the letter, if you have any residual…”
“…that won’t be necessary”, he said, harshly. “I was relieved to be breaking it off.”
“Yes, Knight said that she was irritating you,” Kell’s voice had a speculative note to it. “This information is useful to us,” he said, as if atoning for months of discomfort caused in the pursuit of this information.
“What is it all about?” Kell, classically, had not briefed Knight or Butler on why he needed the list of names, and had set up a large operation to get access to one filing cabinet in a London shipping agent’s office.
Kell paused, and then shrugged. “This list of names is vital to us understanding Nazi efforts in Europe and North America. We believe,” he clarified, “that this shipping company is being used to covertly place German operatives around the globe.”
“What will you do next?”
Kell closed his eyes. Despite it being early in the afternoon he looked tired. “We will analyse, and if it is legitimate we will offer it to sympathetic agencies. The French, the Americans, the Commonwealth” he said wearily. “With the situation in Germany getting progressively worse, we hope that this list has the details of the German network in the United States,” he said flatly. “That could bring us a closer relationship with our American cousins.”
“Hoover?” Butler was astonished that Kell was interested in working with the notoriously difficult US Bureau of Investigation (or, as Butler remembered from its recent renaming, the Federal Bureau of Investigation) chief.
“Indeed. He will be interested, I suspect, in this” he held up the folder, “if it is genuine. Which is why we will take our time, and verify its content”. He looked knowingly at Butler. “As for you, perhaps it is time to return to Sir Hugh and his team.”
“I’m being dismissed?”
Kell looked out, testily, from his spectacles. “This affair has put you under the microscope; the Gestapo know you and your methods. You are an adequate operative, perhaps with some rehabilitation and a spot of leave you could be very good. Well, good anyway.” He turned, nodding to a young agent guarding the door. “There is a car that can drop you off at a safe house,” he said, seemingly keen to end the conversation, “and you have my thanks for getting hold of this. You will travel further,” he said as he was led out.
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GAME NOTES
A bit of a mad update, this, with Butler charging around not-quite central London. I wanted, in this age of the “La Resistance” DLC, to focus on some intelligence but without the world ending importance that is often given to every act of an agent. The game event was, of course, the generation of my first UK agent (I have brought the game event forward a week or two) whom I have made an MI6 agent temporarily loaned to MI5 (thus explaining why he can jump between overseas activity and counterintelligence).
So, GRIPE WITH THE GAME ALERT…
MI6, MI5 (or for that matter, MIs 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14 (no 13, presumably for some mad superstition?), 15, 16, 17) WERE ALREADY SET UP BEFORE 1936. I loathe the fact that I have to build an intelligence agency. To quote “Goodness, Gracious Me”, you can 'kiss my chuddies'.
Ahem.
MI5, the Security Service, has often struggled with a less ‘sexy’ reputation than its sister service MI6. Led by (at this stage) Brigadier Vernon Kell (both the promotion to the Maj-Gen and the knighthood would come later), through thirty-one years (that’s not a typo!) he steered his service through some astonishing challenges. The dead girl in the Thames is probably too tactical a ‘challenge’, and I freely admit that I have simplified what was a very complex hierarchy to have Butler receive a debrief in person from his temporary Chief (known, simply, as ‘K’). This mission has, at its root, some basis in history, and it is the desire of MI5 to build a stronger relationship with the Americans revealed by Kell at the end. In the late 30s, MI5 sought to develop a relationship with the FBI by offering information about a German spy in New York who was part of an extensive Nazi network. Hoover at that point had no experience of counter-espionage operations, which often relied upon patient surveillance for long periods, and he quickly arrested a U.S. Army deserter, Guenther Rumrich, without informing MI5 about the plan. While the act of telling the FBI had been part of a British effort to establish a permanent link between London and Washington, Hoover’s premature intervention compromised a wider round-up in Europe, and enriched an FBI special agent, Leon Turrou, who promptly sold his story to the newspapers, much to Hoover’s fury. While that story is fascinating, it would have started with some seedy, pretty grubby work by MI5, plausibly by investigating the transport arrangements as a ‘hook’ to corroborate other arrangements. I have, deliberately, not focussed on the (fictional) company, or the act of a dowdy secretary nicking a file, but on the act of getting said file to Kell. Nor will I reveal whether the file is accurate, or even (really) what Kell needs. That is not the point, in an update focussed, heavily, on the act of conveying rather than the item being conveyed. The MI5 reveal to the FBI did not take place until 1938, and by setting the story in 1936 I have (hopefully) been convincing in showing that much intelligence work takes months, even years, of preparation and analysis.
If anyone is interested, Fulham beat Derby County 3 – 0, only to lose to Sheffield United in the semi-final a month later. The 1937 FA cup year, aka “Sunderland’s march to glory”, will be covered when we get there, but this in many ways was a golden age for football; lacking, perhaps, the ‘glitz and glamour’ of the modern game but having a real connection with the fans. The locations in London are / were as described, and in the absence of a more compelling occasion I came up with a football match, from which the rest of the story and locations blossomed. If it feels narrow and suburban then good, I didn’t want casinos and dinner dress and anything else (apart from the Le Carre/Fleming touch with the club porter) from the stories.
Oh stuff it; quoting the end of the Connery / Moore films freely, James Bond, I mean, Cyril Butler will return…
@El Pip : Hmmn – I think that I agree, although I am trying, at this stage, to be objective. I just wanted to paint a picture of Earnest that wasn’t the cartoony buffoon / wily schemer of myth.
@stnylan : I think that this is even more Establishment than Hankey, Fisher and co, actually.
@TheButterflyComposer : The chap I met (at my Inn of Court) was bonkers; he portrayed himself as a philanthropist (with other people’s money) and enjoyed bouncing from mad dinner to mad dinner.
Papa J had a hilarious reaction to the attempt to get him to join the local Rotary Club. Beautifully reported as: “Christ no!”
@DensleyBlair : So I’ve avoided the masonic angle, I’m probably too far gone for them to take an interest in me. I’ve based Jenks on a couple of civic types that I know quite well, and that sense of ‘steady as she goes’ or ‘all will be well’ just pervades.
@TheButterflyComposer : It is, but so are a lot of ‘old European’ nations. A German lawyer that I know and whose company I greatly enjoy is nevertheless extraordinarily stuffy and ‘old world’. He’d sport a schmisse if he thought he’d get away with it.
@Specialist290 : It is (and was, we haven’t drifted too far yet) like that, and that is the problem. The personification of the institution must be overthrown to protect the institution.
@DensleyBlair : The Crown does exert such loyalty in Englishmen (and, as we’ll see in the next update, not a few Scots) through ‘soft power’ and influence.
@TheButterflyComposer : So, the comparison with the veneration of the office of POTUS is fascinating. The reality is often so far removed from the ideal…
@El Pip : And I think that this attitude will prevail: to preserve an institution the flaky incumbent will be removed.
@H.Appleby : I’d never heard of the “Iron Law of Bureaucracy” but I like it, instantly (in that I think it’s accurate, not that I endorse people behaving like that).
@Bullfilter : It’s impossible to write in this period and not think of Wodehouse.
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Waiting for the continuation of "Abdication Crisis Arc". The very heart and soul of Britain is at stake. Will Edward and Wallis cave to the popular pressure and leave England probably for good, or will Edward and Wallis send the kingdom back three centuries to the past (as in pre-Charles I) and turn Brittania over to the dark side? I mean, Edward's focus branch is definitely the Evil British Empire branch (as seen from Code Geass, which is also an alternate history about the Evil British Empire. Imagine Star Wars, but Anakin usurps Palpatine as Emperor).
A very nicely constructed scene. Also, I think the following is a brilliantly delivered backhand compliment: "Well, good anyway". Had to chuckle.