17Trinity
Thursday, June 7th
One day earlier
OF THE QUESTIONS on Hermann’s mind, one was foremost: Where had Newt been going? What was his destination from King’s Cross Station, with the device in his pocket and no money to his name?
But in fact, on Thursday afternoon, Newt had just returned to London. A train had taken him north under the late morning sun, and another had returned him south by the late, humid afternoon.
Newt set out in the morning heat feeling, physically, much better. The transducer’s adverse effects had lessened since the dual test the night before. There was no more ringing, and his mind felt clearer than it had in days. Only the intermittent vertigo persisted. Propelled by claustrophobic restlessness and Hermann’s contagious anxiety, he was aiming for a simple goal of intelligence gathering. He had to do something. Did he need the device to do it? Both components? Probably not. But he brought them just in case. In all, he felt ready and able to ask the questions on his mind and to get some answers about the man on the margins of all this: the mysterious Raleigh Becket.
His destination was Dr. Gottlieb’s alma mater, Cambridge University. When he disembarked, Cambridge Station was bustling with end-of-term travel. Though it was hot under the sun in Hermann’s oversized jacket, Newt found himself shivering. He narrowly avoided death by trunk trolley and stopped at a bench to count the money left in his pocket. Getting to the train station with no wallet had been tricky, and the round-trip ticket had nearly cleaned him out. Newt wasn’t sure whether Hermann had taken his wallet on purpose. It wasn't like him, so Newt was trying not to accept the theory. But Hermann was being really paranoid right now.
Newt didn’t have enough for any more cab fares. He thought wistfully of the Bonneville, still stranded at the Estate. Riding it at this point, though, probably would have been a challenge. The fact remained: he needed a lift.
Newt asked a dazed-looking undergraduate for change outside the phone booth. Then he called the university, got himself transferred to St. Catharine’s, and breezily lied to a secretary about having a personal appointment with the don. After another pause, a gravelly voice said:
“Thurston, who’s this?”
“Professor! It’s Newt Geiszler. I’m in town for the day. Might you be free sometime this afternoon?”
“As it happens, I am,” said the ancient voice. “Are you on campus already, Newton?”
“No,” said Newt. “Still at the station. Just arrived.”
“Ah. Yes. Good. I’ll send somebody 'round.”
“You aren’t still riding your bicycle, Professor?”
“No, no, regrettably no,” said Thurston, with a heavy sigh like someone launching into a long story. “I’m afraid I really have become too old for it. My knees...”
“That’s a shame.”
“I’ll send one of my graduate students,” Thurston said, as if he didn’t hear Newt, which he may not have. “He’ll be there for you presently.” Thurston rang off abruptly.
After a long career in the secret services, Thurston had ‘retired’ to take a post at Cambridge. There, he specialized in Old English literature and Germanic philology, while he continued his work as a talent-spotter. It was he who had first recruited the nervous young Hermann. Newt had only met him once or twice, and found the old professor both compelling and alien, but he remembered Newt because he remembered everything.
“This must be the Thurston express,” Newt said a few minutes later as the unmistakable craft drew to a halt in front of the station. The undergraduate riding it, in shirtsleeves and wool pants, put a foot down. Thurston’s famous bicycle was military-issue from WWII, and it looked fit to haul a cannon. Its detailing was painted eggshell blue. A little wooden cart was frequently hitched behind it, painted the same color. The venerable professor’s slow trips around the campus were well known. In his heyday, Thurston had towed around books and sometimes students in the cart.
“I thought it was retired,” said Newt.
“The don said you requested it specifically,” said the undergraduate. He was not looking impressed by that.
“Not as such,” said Newt, failing to conceal his laughter.
“All the same, you’d better get in,” the student said, nodding to the cart. “He’s waiting for you.” Newt climbed in and rode, facing backwards, to Cambridge University.
The day was bright and full of birdsong, and the wind pleasantly cool in the hot sun. The green and brick campus slipped by at a non-nauseating speed. It was here that Hermann had diverged from his academic path, onto the unlikely path that led underground—'underground' both figuratively and literally, Newt reflected. He wondered, had Hermann ever taken a ride in the Thurstonmobile? He guessed no, but he spent an enjoyable moment picturing it. He thought of his own years at his various universities, and didn’t miss them a bit.
It occurred to Newt belatedly, as cars slowed down and passers-by turned to gawk, that this was perhaps the most conspicuous way to travel. An undergraduate whooped as he flew past.
Professor Thurston was huge, as vast as his indeterminate age. He ushered Newt into his sitting room, walled with bookshelves of leather-bound Germanic titles, and asked another undergraduate to bring them tea. Newt politely sipped, feeling at home in the unrepentant plush-and-leather extravagance of academia.
In the venerable Thurston's time at the secret services, he had been a “computer,” a person who archived and processed immense amounts of personnel data in his head. The electronic computers they had now were only just catching up with what Professor Thurston could do with his eyes closed. His memory was as vast as the Black Chamber’s archives. He knew every agent, on each side, every name and every alias. Everybody in the Division had known him, once; you could be sure that he knew about you, too, even if you hadn’t met.
It couldn’t be said that Thurston knew anyone particularly. He knew each person like a curiosity. His memory was extraordinary, by far more extraordinary than Newt’s simple photographic memory—it was agile, it made connections, and it stretched back decades. While Newt’s archive was in ideas and concepts, Thurston’s was in people: their habits, their careers, their lives. But the thousands of lives in his head were still, to him, data points.
Thurston settled down with his tea, wheezing as he lowered himself into an unwilling armchair. There was first some preamble about Thurston’s troubles, his lazy students and the uncooperative committees. He asked after all the radio lab employees, including Hermann (whom he referred to as “your man”), and Newt reported their affairs and career trajectories faithfully. There was a moment of confusion when Thurston also asked after Augustus Westerby, and it took clarification before Newt realized that he’d meant Wesley—an unexpected blip for the professor. Could it be that he was losing his gift, after all these years?
“I don’t suppose you’ve just dropped by for tea and pleasantries, then, Newton?” Thurston finally said, setting his cup down and leaning back in his chair.
“You suppose correctly, Professor,” said Newt, leaning forward in his.
“What’s on your mind?”
Newt opened his mouth, and his well-ordered set of questions blew away like a deck of cards in a brisk wind. The question that came out was:
“What is Raleigh Becket’s problem?”
Thurston made a thoughtful exhale that sounded like a winded racehorse. “Becket,” he said.
“Raleigh Becket. He was probably still a runner when you last heard of him,” Newt said. “He’s risen in the ranks ever since Bowen leveled the playing field—as it were, by blowing it to pieces.”
Thurston didn’t respond. He looked unfocused, half-asleep. Newt wondered if he had traveled here in vain.
“Ex-Marine,” Newt said, trying to jog his memory.
“Mm,” said Thurston, eyes closing fully.
Watching the professor, Newt wondered where a person's memories went when you could no longer access them. Did they vanish from existence? Or were they still stored in Thurston’s head someplace? Would they be, perhaps, accessible with the right tools? He had both components of the device...
“I think he served in the Middle East,” said Newt.
“It was the Suez Crisis,” Thurston corrected conversationally, eyes still closed. “Becket may have been the only Englishman who came out of that looking well.”
“What did he do?”
“Timely information to his commander and shrewd advice, too, I’m guessing. It got him a transfer into the Division. As—”
“And then he was posted to Berlin?”
“Some time later, yes,” said Thurston. He opened his eyes. “Are you going to interrupt?”
“No. Sorry, Professor.”
“Why did you come to see me for this, rather than consult the record?” Thurston asked, picking up his teacup again, which looked minuscule in his gigantic hand.
“I got a tip, of sorts. From Caitlin Lightcap.”
“Ah, Miss Lightcap. Such an interesting choice for recruitment, I always thought... Not really suited to the field, emotionally, you know. She’s still out in the cold, I assume?”
“Very much so,” said Newt, choosing unhappily to ignore the slight against his friend.
“An extra-curricular tip, then. What was it she told you?”
“Well, it actually started with… Wagner,” Newt said before he finished thinking about whether he should say it or not.
“The Wagner Mission? Of ‘63? Or ‘34?”
“’63,” said Newt reluctantly.
He hadn’t really thought about how much he’d have to confide in Thurston to get his information. Was Thurston still in touch with his old buddies? With the Chief? Newt wanted information from him, not the other way around. But whatever he said might make its way back to Century.
In his pocket, he touched the little box with the transmitter inside.
“I don’t know much about it,” Thurston said. “It was after my time.”
“It’s Hermann, you know," Newt burst out. "He was on that mission. And he never told me about it. Traumatic experience, I guess. Well, he finally did. Tell me. About it. Recently. And after all that, he never even found out what happened to the device, right, the one Becket lifted—supposedly—from the East Germans. So I decided to ask around a bit, see if I could figure out who took it—to put Hermann’s mind at ease, you know. I mean, the guy goes on one away mission and then blames himself when it has a horrible outcome. How many of these operations turn out, anyway? Gotta be less than 20 percent! I mean, it’s ridiculous. So I was talking about it with Lightcap, and she said—well, her note actually was about Rennie, not Raleigh. And I guess, I guess they could have been in cahoots, but that just doesn’t, I don’t know, it just doesn’t fit with what I know of Becket, so I thought—”
“What was it she told you about Charles?”
“Just that he and Victor were close,” said Newt, pulling his babbling up short.
“Yes, certainly,” said Thurston, looking at him placidly. “They were involved for many years.”
“Involved?” said Newt, taken aback. “Charles Rennie and Vice Chief Victor?”
Thurston frowned at him. “Yes. Your man never told you?”
“No! What? Did he—do other people know about this?”
“Not my business whether or not others know. Just my business to know it all, in case they come to ask. I suppose you never knew them, but yes, young man, they were involved, lovers if you’re feeling sentimental.”
“But—” Newt’s mind was racing. How could he never have known? All these years? “But they’re so... different.”
Thurston made a nonverbal noise and picked up his teacup.
He didn't believe it. He knew it was true, if Thurston said it was, but it wasn't penetrating his reasoning faculties. “How long were they together?” Newt persisted.
“Forever. Until Charles died, as far as I know,” said Thurston.
“And Hermann knows this? Why didn’t he ever tell me?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said Thurston, setting his cup down carefully. “But I believe you came to me about Mr. Becket, not old workplace gossip.”
“I—er, yes,” said Newt, rubbing his jaw. The conversation kept getting away from him. “Is it possible—” He ventured his working theory: “Did Becket and Rennie know each other well? Is it possible they were in cahoots?”
Thurston considered. “It’s possible.”
“Would you say it’s likely that Rennie recruited Becket for one of his, you know, schemes? His weapons-dealing friends?”
“To steal the coveted Wagner device, for instance, and sell it to these weapons-dealing friends?”
Newt shrugged. “For instance.”
“It’s possible,” said Thurston. “It’s possible.”
“But not likely,” said Newt, hearing his tone.
Thurston was sipping his tea. He set the tiny cup down.
“In my opinion, the crack of corruption went much deeper than Charles’s weapons-dealing friends,” he said. “Not everyone sees it the way I do. Victor, for instance, does not agree with my theory. He still believes Charles was a casualty of Bowen’s betrayal. But these last ten years, I’ve given the problem much thought.” Thurston spoke of it as if it were a puzzle, a theorem whose solution eluded him.
He raised his finger and traced a triangle in the air. “Victor, Bowen, Rennie.”
“The holy trinity,” said Newt, with an irony that Thurston did not seem to notice.
"To really understand it, you must understand his conspiracy with Robert. I believe Charles was working with Robert, for the other side, for many, many years. Together, they deceived the whole service, and Victor most of all."
“But to truly make you understand, I ought to go back to the beginning,” he said.
“Before we discovered Robert Bowen, the Soviets recruited him. It was, we believe, early in his university studies. They recruited him as a deep cover agent, a mole. He was meant to build an illustrious career in English intelligence, to gain power and access, and act on the Russians’ behalf every step of the way.
“At the same time, Victor, who was a year ahead of him in his studies, was already a member of our early recruitment group at Oxford. Victor’s father was the youngest son of the Duke of Dodge. I wonder, what did young Victor think of his cousin, the duke-to-be, as they grew up together? Alfred was the boy’s name, I recall. How Victor must have hated him. By the time we met, he was older, and it was all a joke to him. The title—! In this day and age, who would want such a thing? Victor was a soldier, a man of action! A man of action, like his friend Robert.
“They met in Robert’s second year, after he got himself recruited. In my estimation, Victor was absolutely crucial to his rise in the service. Someone like Robert, someone who is hungry for power, they need acolytes. That’s exactly what Victor was. Oh, when I met them, they were thick as thieves. Enchanted by Robert, Victor was. Everyone was, men and women. But Robert gave Victor the time of day, and that made him feel like the most important man in the network.
“Now, I am no great judge of character. Not my purview, not my function. But there was always something cruel about Robert the charmer. He was always a philanderer—everybody knew about his dalliances in the secretary pool and among the coding bay girls. His attention, his approval was a wonderful thing. But a barb from him stung, and made you the more desperate to recover in his eyes. Even I, unsentimental as I am, could feel it.
“Well, the war came and put an end to their studies. Robert and Victor were posted together in London for the first years of the war, and then separated. I believe Victor ended up in Spain. Robert was sent to Paris. He was superb. That was also where he discovered young Charles. Do you know how they met?” Thurston asked, remembering there was another person in the room and opening his eyes. It was plain that this was where his interest and his expertise lay: in the glory days.
Newt shook his head. “No.”
“I quite like this story. It’s a few months into the posting in Vichy France, and Robert’s restless. He hears about this underground café still operating, where the opposition and the criminal element drink and play cards. He thinks he’ll go play a few hands, meet some locals, maybe win a few francs. He steps through the door, and there’s a shout, and someone’s socked him in his jaw. He goes down, and two Frenchmen jump on him, shouting about a debt. He protests: ‘There must be some mistake! I’ve never been here before!’ They take a second look. They realize that he's not who they thought he was. ‘But my, you look so much alike! Are you a twin?’
“So Robert searches for his doppelgänger. And he finds him, running a check-and-telegram con on a German troop, no less: Mr. Charles Rennie.”
Then Thurston said something else. Newt, coming back to himself, realized he had missed a sentence or two.
“...steal the plans for an offensive on the southern flank...”
“What? Sorry—could you repeat that?”
Thurston blinked, disoriented by the interruption.
“Repeat what?”
“Just, whatever you just said.”
The professor cleared his throat with consternation and said: “I was explaining the way they operated in Vichy France. Charles made a connection to a troop of Nazis, posing as a dealer who could bring them contraband; when they got used to him, Robert walked right into their barracks. They took him for Charles, let him through the door, and he cleaned them out. Plans and code books and all.”
Thurston raised his two index fingers, and crossed them demonstratively.
“One replaces the other.”
Newt nodded attentively, still feeling a little disoriented. He was very warm.
“Well, after the war, Victor joined them, and the happy trio was posted to Istanbul. It was there that Charles and Victor took up together. Istanbul was a hotbed in those early postwar days—I’m sure you know the story of Victor’s broken jaw—”
“I just don’t see it,” said Newt, unable not to interrupt. “The two of them? How did they get along? What did they even talk about? Victor’s so straight-laced, and Rennie is—was—a crook. Although, well, Victor was different then, I guess. That’s what Hermann says. Was he?”
“I really haven’t the slightest idea,” said Thurston, annoyed at the interruption.
That, Newt thought with some frustration, could sum up your knowledge on the whole issue. Thurston really was a computer—human behavior was all statistics to him.
He tried again to believe it. Rennie and Victor. He had an uncomfortable feeling that his inability to accept or empathize with the complex private lives of these men made him more like Thurston than a person.
“But if I may,” the professor was resuming, “Istanbul. They collected good intelligence, the three of them. They set up networks that were in use until 1963. They were there for five years. Then, Robert was promoted to Swiss Head of Station—quite young for it, too—and posted in Berne. Rennie went along with him. Headquarters offered Victor a job in London, and he took it. Married his secretary. Settled down.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. Most of these men do. During this period, I retired. I recruited your man, Gottlieb, with Victor’s help. In the late ‘50s, Bowen returned to London for promotion.”
That must have been when Caitlin met him, Newt thought. Thurston said something else, and again, Newt had the curious sensation of the memory getting lost along the way. He felt sure he had heard it, but it hadn’t been recorded for storage. Newt shifted uneasily in his seat, to see if he still had control of his faculties. He did. He had the uncomfortable sensation that his body and mind were performing tasks, unsupervised.
He touched his ear. No ringing. Maybe that silence was not a relief, but rather something to be wary of.
“...and Victor got a divorce.” Thurston was saying. “Around this time, the Americans lodged their complaint about Bowen. That was when the net began to close around him.”
“Yikes,” Newt murmured, a little distracted by his own unsteady thoughts.
Another moment passed and disappeared. Then:
“...they moved to arrest him quietly, but he’d already run off to the Estate. I know you know all of this, of course. But I’ll add in my own suspicion.”
Here, Thurston sat forward. The professor’s voice grew sharper, straighter, like an archer searching for its target. It drew Newt back to attention.
“When Robert went missing, Headquarters sent out an emergency alert to all homeland stations. That included the Training Estate. According to Headquarters’ records, a call was placed. But no staff remembers it. In the inquiry, afterwards, everyone swore there was no call. And they were all fired, of course. In the final report, it was decided that Robert himself intercepted it.
“But I believe that he had somebody on the inside, at the Estate. Somebody he trusted, who interfered with that message. Somebody who was never identified.”
Thurston sat back again, straightening up. His intensity ebbed away—he seemed to be coming out of his trance. Newt, too, was feeling more lucid. Maybe the heat of the afternoon had been putting him to sleep.
“Well, 36 hours later, he gets a lift to the station, gets on the local train to Great Yarmouth Port, gets picked up by a Norwegian merchant, and sails off into the sunrise, as it were. To the great unknown East.
“So that was it. Bowen was gone, Rennie was dead. And Victor swore revenge.”
Newt nodded. “Revenge,” he repeated. “Do you think Bowen’s still alive?”
“I do,” Thurston said, shifting and beginning to lift himself out of his chair. “Though we can't really know what they've done with him in Moscow. Would they give him a job? He's their hero, certainly. But would they trust him?”
After Newt went to the bathroom to splash some water on his face, he returned for the final questions. He had learned far more than he’d expected, about matters he had never thought to wonder about. The scale and scope of Bowen’s operation awed him, and his own muddled maybe-frame-up shrank to a mere inconvenience in comparison. Yet things were making more sense, somehow—even if he didn’t have the answers he had wanted, his researcher’s intuition told him that he was in the right arena, asking the right questions.
“Where did Becket come from? What does he want?”
“He was a bit after my time, but I can offer you the broad strokes of his career,” Thurston said. “American father, French mother, raised in England. He joined an elite force in the Royal Marines quite young, along with his older brother. His brother was tragically killed in a training accident. He was only 22.
“After the Suez Crisis, young Raleigh came home from Egypt, discharged from the Marines, and went to the Estate to be trained. The Division’s newest bright star. I don’t know who fast-tracked him. He was quite young—hardly 23, as I recall. From there, he was posted to Bonn, and then later West Berlin. That was a coveted position, at the time—dangerous posting, lots of excitement. In ‘63, Vice Chief Bowen sent him over the wall to East Berlin, to help Rennie. Then, the Bowen crisis broke, and his position was compromised.”
“He vanished, didn’t he?”
“Quite right. Along with every forward-thinking operative in the field.”
“He seems to have a talent for surviving a crisis.”
“Mr. Becket is an ambitious young man. He saw early that a career in the Marines would not give him the stature it once would have. Someone gave him an opportunity to jump ship, and he took it. He’s made a remarkable job of it already—he’s the Head of Station in Vienna before the age of 40. He has his eyes on the prize, as it were: Whitehall, or intelligence minister.”
And Newt was reminded of Thurston’s description of young double agent Robert Bowen: He was to build an illustrious career. Was that where Newt’s theory was wrong? Was Becket not another Rennie, but another Robert Bowen?
He bid goodbye to the professor and rode back to the station in the bicycle cart, conducted this time by a different student. Newt was thinking of Becket the ambitious young man: that was exactly the impression Newt had got from him on their trip to Langley together. That was, now that he thought of it head-on, the reason why he had never trusted Becket. It seemed so obvious now.
But how could he have broken into the stables at the same time he was in the meeting?
And why had he targeted Newt?
In the bicycle cart, Newt watched the bricks and bikes flash by and thought of Hermann here. Not as a student, but as a professor. That was where Hermann really belonged, Newt thought, breathing in the spring wind. He belonged in a dusty, sunlit library, not in a damp, unlit basement where the mold aggravated his asthma. His discoveries deserved to see the light of day.
On the train, the strange lethargy returned. Newt slouched low in the leather seat and for many stops, he remained unusually still. He reviewed all that Thurston had told him, focused intently on it, wanting to make sure he had remembered it all. But he found that his line of thought kept falling away from what he wanted to pursue, like he was a climber on a rope, descending into a canyon bit by bit. He wanted to stop, grip the rock face, climb back up a few inches and examine things, but the inexorable force of gravity kept on pulling him down.
He descended into his memory, trying to work something out. Becket, the conference meeting schedule, the stable sign-in sheet.
Becket had signed in at 8:20, out at 8:31, and then joined Victor and Rosewater for the meeting, until 9:15. Newt had arrived at 8:45. The intruder had come in at approximately 9:04 by Newt’s time. And Victor had arrived at 9:20.
So how had Becket fooled them? Had he perhaps left the meeting early, unreported? Had someone else done his dirty work? Was Victor covering for Becket?
He came back to himself again; it was a moment later. Getting lost in thought, that was nothing new. But this was different. The rope was dropping him down into the chasm, bit by bit, but he could never remember falling. He just kept finding himself deeper and deeper. It was his short-term memory, he realized, like back in Thurston’s office. It wasn’t integrating.
With another jolt, he came back to the present moment again. Newt realized all at once that he was in trouble. He looked at his hands, and felt the nauseating disconnect between the act and his desire to do it. He didn’t remember wanting to do that—was he in control of what he was doing?
He touched the tips of his fingers to his thumbs. The sensation, repeated, felt real; it felt like putting his thoughts outside of his head. He kept doing it.
He was stepping off the train and onto the platform. As his heel landed on the pavement with a jolt, he ran back over the last minute. He had stood up and walked out of the train car and down the little steps, right? He must have. But he had no memory of doing so.
Now he was walking along the platform. The crowd of commuting strangers carried him onward. The motion and the jolting of walking was grounding him a bit. Some other program was running, in the background, unsupervised. Something about the sign-in sheet, the meeting, the stables. There was something there...
But a weight was pulling him, jolt by jolt, down into the dark. What was down there? What if the rope snapped?
The jolts came every three steps. Now every two. He was stopped under a two-sided clock. A bell was tolling the hour.
The clock still said it was one minute til. How long had he been waiting for the minute to finish?
He was unstuck from time. But his long-term memory still worked.
He felt something slide onto his lip. He tasted iron. Blood.
It clicked into place.
“Oh,” whispered Newt. “I know how he did it.”
On the platform, the flow of commuters halted and circled. Somebody was shouting, calling for help, a medic, and somebody was on their knees taking the pulse of the unconscious man.