Текст книги "The Enterprise of England"

Автор книги: Ann Swinfen

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Chapter Two

Arthur Gregory helped me to move my table back near the window, for the benefit of the light, and we piled all the packets except the one from the Caribbean ship on to the table against the wall. All the time we were rearranging the office, Phelippes ignored us, his head down and his short-sighted eyes close to his papers. I felt a growing irritation that he could just assume I would take up my position as before in the corner of his office. During the final weeks of my service to Walsingham in the previous year I had often needed to work alone in dangerous situations. Then during the recent few months, free of them all, I had revelled in my rediscovered independence. Now, here I was, back like any junior clerk, scribbling away at my desk.

‘Will this do?’ I said finally, in a loud voice. ‘I am not in your way?’

Phelippes looked up and peered at me across the intervening space. Then he put on his spectacles and looked vaguely around the room at what we had done.

‘Aye. That will do. Have you looked at the Caribbean despatches yet?’

‘Not yet,’ I snapped. I looked at Arthur and raised my eyebrows in despair. He simply grinned and clapped me on the shoulder.

‘Good to have you back.’

The papers he had previously been carrying he had placed on my desk while we were moving the furniture. Now he pointed toward them.

‘Perhaps you should look at these as well, to be sure I have made no mistakes. I’ll get back to carving some new seals. King Philip has been employing a lot of new agents and they all have their own seals. It’s difficult to keep up with copying them.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’ll check them for you.’

Arthur’s real talent lay in his ability to carve exquisite forged seals that even the owners of the originals would not have been able to recognise as false. Without his skills, Walsingham’s activities must surely have failed long before now, for much of what we did involved intercepting enemy despatches, opening and deciphering them, then resealing them and sending them on their way. Without Arthur’s immaculate seals our interference would soon have been noticed. This way England’s enemies were not alerted by the disappearance of their despatches, but at the same time we kept abreast of their correspondence. I often thought it was fortunate that Arthur was an honest man. Had he turned his talents to crime, he could have become very rich indeed.

As well as intercepting foreign correspondence, Phelippes’s office served as the centre point for the entire complex web of Walsingham’s informers, agents and spies. At its height, the service had five hundred agents, in addition to friendly sea captains and merchants in many countries, and England’s ambassadors, who kept their eyes and ears open and passed on any information they came across. Indeed, the service itself was the eyes and ears of the English state. Without it the Queen would have been assassinated long before this and the country overrun by foreign troops. I shuddered when I remembered the invasion of Portugal when I was ten. The Spanish troops had flooded across the country looting, raping and slaughtering with savage intensity. Their officers did nothing to restrain them. I had heard that some of those same officers had been shocked at the bestiality of their own soldiers, yet they had not tried to stop it. The cruelty inflicted upon the Protestant Netherlanders by the Spanish troops under the Duke of Alba, about the time I was born, had been on the same scale and it was said that in the New World the Spaniards had come near to wiping out the native people. I had no illusions about what would befall England if a Spanish army succeeded in invading.

I helped myself to a handful of uncut quills and a pot of ink from one of the shelves on the wall above the coffer where my wet cloak lay in a heap, and chose several different types of paper from another shelf, then I sat down at my old desk and tapped the reports and Arthur’s papers into neat piles. Like Phelippes, I could work best when all the tools of my trade were in immaculate order. Taking my penknife out of the purse at my belt, I began trimming and shaping the quills to my satisfaction. Arthur had returned to his room. Apart from the scratch of Phelippes’s pen and faint sounds from Arthur’s miniature gouges as he carved a new seal, a comfortable silence fell over the room. Now and then the fire would spit or the coals would collapse inwards. My boots were still steaming, but my stockings were drying.

I drew Arthur’s papers towards me. They dealt with activities witnessed by one of our agents in Rome. There had been much coming and going of Spanish envoys to the Vatican, who were clearly seeking papal support for whatever schemes Philip was currently plotting. The agent had managed to bribe one of the servants in the papal service to bring him news. It did not amount to much. Philip wanted gold for some great enterprise, but Pope Sixtus was as parsimonious as our own Queen and was resisting Spanish blandishments. Arthur had made a few minor mistakes in deciphering, but nothing which altered the sense of the two reports, which more or less repeated the same information.

When I had corrected them, I carried them over and placed them in the pile on Phelippes’s desk where he gathered together the reports from our own agents. Back at my own desk I reached for the packet taken from the Spanish ship heading for the Caribbean. They were tied together with a bit of tarred string. This must have been done by the English sea captain, for they would never have been sent out from the Escorial like that. The smell of the tar brought back vividly my own terrible sea journey from Portugal and I held the string in my hand, my eyes closed, trying to push away the memories. I dropped it on the floor and gritted my teeth. I must concentrate on the task in hand.

Without thinking, I reached behind me to the shelf where I had always kept my own keys to the codes our agents used and those codes of our enemies which we had broken. There they all were, just as I had left them late in the previous year. I felt a little jump of pleasure in my chest as I looked at the familiar sheets. Some of them represented many hours of work and I was proud of them. Despite my reluctance, despite my annoyance with Phelippes, I began to feel the old excitement of the hunt. Opening the first of the documents, I could see that it was somewhat water-stained. Hardly surprising, for the Spanish ship had been taken, it appeared, after a fierce though brief battle. A quick glance confirmed that it was written in a new cipher. I curled my toes inside my stockings, which were now nearly dry. A new challenge. I tipped my hour-glass over. Had I lost my touch?

By the time the sand had run through the hour glass I had cracked the code and started to decipher the first despatch.

‘This is from King Philip himself,’ I said, breaking the silence. ‘Addressed to the governor of Mexico. He is ordering the return of two thousand experienced troops by the next ships back to Spain. Also supplies of dried corn and vegetables, and salted fish.’

I rubbed the feather of my quill along the side of my nose.

‘A bit different from the usual cargo of gold and silver.’

‘Hmm,’ said Phelippes. ‘I expect his men in the New World send gold and silver anyway, as a matter of course. So. Troops. Experienced troops. He may just want them for the Duke of Parma in the Low Countries. Since the battle at Zutphen the Spanish are pressing ahead, trying to consolidate their gains in some of the areas that France claims, as well as crushing the Protestant Dutchmen.’

‘But?’

‘But I think it’s likely he may want them for what he has been calling for many years the Enterprise of England.’

‘You mean the invasion.’

‘Aye. You know that we have been watching him for ten years or more, slowly building up his trained army and the great ships of his navy. One of his reasons for seizing Portugal was to secure the Portuguese navy and all her excellent ports along the Atlantic coast. They have given him a much stronger hold over the western trading routes, even if Drake and Hawkins and the others manage to pick off his ships from time to time. We know that he set his heart on conquering England long ago. Even that scoundrel Mendoza has us in his sights. When we expelled him from his embassy here three years ago he said, “Tell your mistress Bernardino de Mendoza was born not to disturb kingdoms but to conquer them.” Arrogant bastard.’

‘What makes you suspect Philip is planning anything other than his usual trouble-making?’

‘Just a feeling in my bones. And the time is right for him. As I said before, if an invasion by the Scottish queen’s Guise relations had put her on the English throne, Philip would have feared the alliance against him. Now he has been named her heir and France is riven by civil war between the Catholic League and Henri of Navarre’s Huguenots, Philip has the ideal opportunity to bring his years of planning to fruition.’

‘These experienced troops of his?’ I pointed with my quill to the letter I was deciphering. ‘The Spanish troops in the Netherlands are a trained and experienced army as well, aren’t they? What troops do we have to fight them?’

‘Nothing,’ he said grimly. ‘Save our troops raised for the campaign in the Netherlands. The Queen will not agree to a standing army. Too expensive, and possibly risky if they grew restless. We could no more resist a Spanish army if they made landfall in England than your people in Portugal did. Our only hope is our navy, and that is small enough, God knows. Philip is unscrupulous. He has been seizing every foreign ship that comes trading into any Spanish or Portuguese port, and adding them to his navy. The Venetians are furious!’

Outside the window, the dark of the winter afternoon was drawing in. Thoughtfully I fetched a candle and lit it from Phelippes’s. When I had set it down on my table I looked at the packet of letters ordering supplies of food and troops to be sent to Spain.

‘So – it really is a crisis, then? Or could be?’

‘It could be. Or,’ he conceded, ‘it could be just more of Philip’s obsession about seizing England, playing itself out in his endless schemes. What we need is time, time to strengthen our navy against his monstrous ambition. Do you know what his motto is?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Non sufficit orbis.’

‘The world is not enough,’ I said.

So it was that, despite my determination to break away from Walsingham’s service, I found myself back to my old routine, spending half my time at St Bartholomew’s and half at Seething Lane. The reports and intercepted messages all conveyed a similar picture: Spain was building and seizing ships, buying in supplies of food and armaments, training soldiers, hiring mercenaries, purchasing slaves for its galleys from north African corsairs, and continually pressing the Vatican for money. It was rumoured that there were English and Welsh slaves serving on the galleys which would be used to attack England, as well as Spanish and Portuguese ‘volunteers’, that is, men who had been unfortunate enough to be press-ganged into service in the Spanish navy. Just like the slaves, they would be shackled to their oars. If a galley was sunk, her chained oarsmen would perish with her.

Once, for two years, I had lived under the brutal regime inflicted by Spain on Portugal, until my father and I had made our escape in a merchant ship belonging to Dr Hector Nuñez to join the exiled Marranos (as we were called) in England. Our community in London at that time probably numbered between sixty and eighty souls. We were all novos cristãos or New Christians, having been forced to convert in our native land, but we held Jewish services of a sort on the Sabbath at the home of Dr Nuñez, though we had no rabbi. Under English law, we must also attend church services on Sundays. The penalties for failure to do so were heavy. Although we all met together at our single makeshift synagogue, the churches we attended were scattered all over London. My father and I attended St Bartholomew’s beside the hospital – both church and hospital had once been part of the Priory of St Bartholomew, dissolved in the time of the Queen’s father. For myself, I was unsure where my faith lay. Although I had been born Jewish, I had found much consolation in the Protestant faith of England, with its belief in reading the Bible for oneself, as Walsingham himself had once urged me to do. It was a far cry from the rigid control of the Spanish Catholic church and its reign of terror under the Inquisition.

Our Marrano community tended to fall into two distinct groups. There were the professional men like my father and Dr Nuñez and Dr Lopez. They were all doctors, bringing with them to England their advanced skill in Arabic medicine. There were also a few eminent apothecaries and one or two lawyers who had been born in England and trained here. Many of this professional class, who lived mostly near the Tower, not far from Walsingham’s house, also had interests in the spice trade, some – like Dr Nuñez – owning their own ships, others – like Dr Lopez and my father – investing in the trade. My father’s investments were small, for we had lost everything when we escaped from Portugal. Dr Nuñez and Dr Lopez had chosen to come to England before the Spanish invasion with its accompanying Inquisition, so they were far more prosperous than we were. Dunstan Añez, Ruy Lopez’s father-in-law, had come much earlier. His grown-up children had been born here and thought of themselves as English. He was one of the leaders of our community, a wealthy man holding a distinguished position, as Purveyor of Groceries and Spices to Her Majesty the Queen, while Ruy Lopez was the queen’s personal physician.

The other part of the Marrano community scraped a living as craftsmen or dealers in secondhand goods or pawnbrokers. Their homes were clustered around Bishopsgate, just outside the northeast city wall, near Bedlam and Petty France, where the Huguenot refugees had settled.

My father and I fell somewhere between these two groups. By birth and education we belonged to the professional group, but we were much poorer and our hospital cottage in Duck Lane would have fitted inside one room of Dr Añes’s grand house. Still, the other men respected my father and from time to time we would be invited to dinner by one of them. Not only had Dr Nuñez provided us with passage on one of his ships when we escaped from Portugal, but Dr Lopez had secured my father’s position at the hospital and his wife Sara had taken us into her home when we first arrived, destitute, in London.

Soon after I had begun work once more in Phelippes’s office, we were invited to dine at the Lopez home. The weather was still very cold and I was concerned for my father. It was a long walk to Wood Street, where Ruy had bought a fine house amongst the English merchants. My father at sixty was beginning to show his age. The extra burden of work falling on his shoulders since I had gone back to working for Walsingham had started to tell on him, and now he had the first signs of a chest infection.

‘Are you sure we should go today?’ I asked. ‘I could send a message to tell Sara that you are not well.’

‘I am well enough,’ he said stubbornly. ‘It would be discourteous to cry off now. It is nothing but a slight cough. I have been treating it myself. Besides, it is good for us to mix in company from time to time.’

This last remark surprised me, for my father had become something of a recluse since we had come to England, unlike the old days when he had been part of a gregarious and sociable group at the university of Coimbra. Usually it was he who demurred at going anywhere. I had only once persuaded him to come with me to the festivities at the Theatre last Christmas. By ‘mixing in company’ I wondered whether he meant that I should strengthen my ties to our own community. Much of my time nowadays was spent amongst the English, both in Seething Lane and, whenever I had any leisure, with Simon’s fellow players in Master Burbage’s company. I had seen little enough of them lately, my time being so occupied between my patients and my intelligence work, though I knew from Simon that they were rehearsing new plays for when the playhouses opened again in the better weather.

As it was impossible to convince my father that he should stay at home, I persuaded him to wear gloves and wrap a thick scarf around his head and his physician’s cap. We set off into the snow, which was still falling, even in March. Just inside the city gate we found a street vendor selling hot chestnuts.

‘How many for a farthing?’ I asked.

He scooped up a shovelful for me to see. I nodded and he gave them to me a screwed up cone of paper. We were close to the grid where the Newgate prisoners beg passersby to give them food, so I bought another farthing’s worth and pushed the chestnuts through the grid into the frantically grabbing hands.

‘Now,’ I said to my father, ‘we don’t need to eat these, for we’ll be royally fed at the Lopez house.’

‘I wondered why you bought them.’

‘Here, put them in your pockets and keep your hands warm with them.’

Although he laughed and protested, I filled his pockets with the hot nuts, allowing myself just one to eat.

‘You grow more like your mother every day,’ he said.

I shook my head. ‘Best not to say that aloud. Best not even to think it.’

‘But I do think it, Caterina.’

I felt myself grow cold and looked about to make sure no one had heard.

‘Not Caterina any longer, Father. Christoval. Kit.’

He sighed. ‘I wish it did not have to be so.’

‘It is better this way. How else could I earn my living? Now come, we don’t want to be out in the snow any longer than we need.’

The Lopez house was well heated with generous fires in every room and heavy curtains as well as shutters over the windows to keep out any vicious serpents of cold air. There were thick carpets on the floors and the well polished furniture glowed in the light of many candles. Sara took me aside before we joined the others and gave me a quick hug. When she had taken us in five years ago, I was a terrified child of twelve. Although I had already assumed my disguise as the boy Christoval, she soon discovered that I was in fact Caterina, though she had kept her word and never revealed the truth to anyone, not even her husband, Ruy.

‘So, you are back working for Walsingham again,’ she said.

‘Aye. Not willingly, but there is much work to be done and I could not refuse.’ I grimaced. ‘Secrets and plots and foreign intrigue. I’ve no wish to be involved, but it seems my skills are needed.’

‘I am afraid Ruy is becoming ever more entangled in just such affairs. You know that he is now appointed ambassador to Dom Antonio?’

I nodded. Dom Antonio was the claimant to the throne of Portugal, the focus of the hopes of our Marrano community, for he was himself half Jewish. If he could be restored to power, and the Spanish monarch driven out of Portugal, many of my countrymen dreamed of returning home. The Queen, I knew, saw Dom Antonio as a useful counter against the King of Spain, but she was famously cautious and I wondered whether he would ever see his throne or his country again.

‘Dom Antonio is living out at Eton,’ Sara said, ‘and Ruy is for ever back and forth, treating him and plotting with him.’

‘Is he ill?’

Sara smiled a little sardonically. ‘Only the illness brought on by years of self-indulgence – an excess of wine, an excess of food, and an excess of women. He is a poor leader for us to rest our hopes on.’

The dining table was much as I remembered it from our last visit, the strange foreign wood gleaming richly in the light of many candles. The two heavy candelabra which Ruy had bought from Drake’s looted Spanish treasure held pure beeswax candles more than two feet high. As before, we drank from fine Venetian glass, but today our food was served on silver-gilt plates. More of profits from Drake’s privateering expeditions.

‘As I see it,’ Ruy said, with a smug smile, ‘What Drake achieves is a better balance in the economy of the world. The Spanish steal gold and silver from the barbarians of the New World and make of them objects of great beauty. However, had they no plunder from the Americas, Spain would be the poorest country in Europe without food and wine enough to feed her own people. Therefore she uses the gold to buy provisions from the rest of us.’

‘She does not so much buy, of late,’ said Dr Nuñez, somewhat bitterly, ‘as steal provisions from us. My ship Fair Wind just escaped being impounded with all her cargo in Bilbao last month.’

Ruy bowed his head in acknowledgement.

‘Quite so, Hector. Spain buys or steals provisions from the rest of Europe. Drake then steals gold, silver and jewels from the Spaniards, to restore the balance.’

‘So the only losers are the native peoples of the Americas?’ I said, emboldened to speak out by Ruy’s expensive wine.

‘They too are recompensed,’ Ruy said, raising an ironic eyebrow. ‘For do the Spanish not repay them with missionary priests, who draw them into the arms of the Holy Catholic Church?’

There was a ripple of somewhat uneasy laughter at this. All those sitting around the table had a painful relationship with the church of Spain, and tales were rife of the tortures inflicted on the Indians to force them into accepting the conquistadors’ idea of Christianity.

‘At any rate,’ said my father, ‘these dishes are very fine, Ruy. You were lucky to get them.’

Ruy tapped his nose with his finger. ‘I have an arrangement with Drake. Once the Queen has chosen her portion of the spoils, Drake grants me a private view of the remainder, before it goes on sale. After he has chosen his personal items, of course.’

‘Of course.’

I looked down. I always found Ruy’s flaunting of his wealth and his possessions uncomfortable. He would like, I was sure, to be as ostentatious as Drake himself, who loaded his new wife down with so many jewels she looked like one of those statues of the Virgin which used to be paraded through the streets in Portugal. The sheer weight of them must make it difficult for her to move.

The servants were clearing away all the dishes from the first course from the table and I let my eyes travel over the portraits on the wall opposite me. There were individual portraits of Ruy and Sara, and a large painting of the entire family, including all the children, the family dog and an exotic parrot that had lived for just a few weeks before turning up its African toes and dying in last winter’s English cold. There was also a miniature of the eldest daughter Anne, who was of an age with me. It had been painted, Sara had told me, to aid in marriage negotiations Ruy was carrying out with a number of his foreign trading partners, to Anne’s own dismay. She had no wish to leave England.

‘It is true,’ said Lopez, in answer to some question my father had asked, when I had not been attending. ‘I must dance attendance on Dom Antonio with enemas of senna for his over-indulgence, and words of honey for his political demands, but we are everywhere frustrated. Drake was with me when I urged the Portuguese expedition to the Privy Council in December, and Walsingham believes we should catch the Spaniard napping before he wakes and makes his move, but the Council is full of pusillanimous laggards. And the Queen will make no decision.’

‘And the Dom himself?’ my father asked.

‘Impatient. Full of frustrated anger. And when he is in this mood, he drinks himself to a stupor. He was the same when we were youths, at home in Crato. He must have his will, or he will sulk. And to be sure, his money is fast running through his fingers, trying to maintain his little court. They are beginning to drift away. Or turn their coats.’

Dr Nuñez looked up sharply. ‘There is a traitor amongst them?’

Lopez smiled complacently and finished his glass of wine before he spoke. Then he dismissed the servants from the room, for he was not so far cup-shotten as to lose all caution.

‘You recall Mendoza, the former ambassador from Spain?’

There was a general murmur of agreement.

‘Well, he is now based in Paris, as you know. One of the Dom’s followers, Antonio da Vega, is in Mendoza’s pay. However, his letters to Mendoza are passed across the Channel through the good offices of my cousin Jeronimo.’

Lopez stroked his beard but could not conceal a faint smirk.

‘Before Jeronimo conceals the letters in his bales of goods, he is kind enough to make copies for me. I have been whispering a few nothings to da Vega, who has passed them to Mendoza, who has, no doubt, sent them on to His Majesty, King Philip.’

The men laughed, and Sara and I exchanged glances, while Beatriz Nuñez looked uncomfortable and Anne Lopez gazed down at her plate.

‘I have definite word,’ said Dr Nuñez slowly, ‘that the Spaniards are preparing an invasion fleet. The killing of the Scots queen has only made them the more determined to attack England. My agent in Cadiz has sent reliable intelligence that the harbour there is filling up with merchantmen which have been commandeered to be converted into warships.’

He gave a bitter little laugh. ‘They have even seized one of my own ships! Unlike the Fair Wind, the Nightingale could not escape in time. One of my own ships in the Spanish navy! Now there is a fine irony.’

‘You have informed Walsingham?’

‘Naturally.’

Lopez tapped his teeth with his fingernail and helped himself to more wine, forgetting to serve his guests. At a nod from Sara I rose and moved quietly round the table refilling glasses.

‘I think we could turn this to our advantage,’ said Lopez. ‘It would be possible to feed da Vega with tales of England’s plans – false trails, to put the Spaniard off the scent. For surely Burghley and the Queen will send Drake against Cadiz?’

‘That is my belief. Sir Francis did not say so in so many words, but—’

‘Yes.’ Lopez interrupted. ‘I can make da Vega believe that Drake is preparing for a privateering venture against Brazil or Goa, somewhere far away. Word will go from da Vega to Mendoza, and from Mendoza to King Philip, so they will believe themselves secure.’

‘You must speak to Sir Francis.’ There was a warning note in Dr Nuñez’s voice. ‘Do not embark on such a scheme without his authority, Ruy.’

‘Hmm,’ said Lopez, and there was a distant look in his eye that I recognised. ‘It could be a pretty scheme.’

I kept my counsel while they spoke. None of them realised that I knew far more of these affairs than they did.

The following day I reported the gist of this conversation to Phelippes, for I well understood Ruy’s complacent rashness. It would be characteristic of him to ignore Dr Nuñez’s warning and embark on some scheme of feeding false information to Mendoza on his own, without consulting Walsingham. The result could well be the destruction of some other careful plan which Sir Francis and Phelippes were themselves carrying out.

‘I see,’ said Phelippes. ‘Come with me. I think we need to speak to Sir Francis.

I followed him to Walsingham’s own office, where he greeted me courteously.

‘I am glad you are working with us again, Kit. You know that we value you.’

I mumbled something in reply. I thought he was looking a little less frail than he had done at the funeral, but he was still pale and his face was drawn with fatigue.

‘Kit has been hearing something useful to us,’ said Phelippes.

I repeated Ruy’s talk at dinner.

‘So da Vega is a traitor,’ said Sir Francis, stroking his beard. ‘That does not surprise me. Dom Antonio is very short of money, and what little he has he spends on himself instead of on his followers. That is not the action of a wise leader. It is to be expected that some of them will desert to a higher paymaster, like Medoza. I will speak to Dr Lopez. His scheme has some merits. And he is correct that we are considering an attack by Drake on Cadiz.’

‘Why Cadiz?’ I asked. ‘I thought the main Spanish fleet was gathering in Lisbon, despite what Dr Nuñez said last night.’

‘The port of Lisbon is very heavily defended with a battery of cannon,’ Walsingham said. ‘Also, it is some distance up a narrow part of the river Tejo from the coast, as I am sure you know, Kit. Therefore it is impossible to make a surprise attack. As soon as Drake started to sail up the Tejo toward the city, a galloper would be sent by land with a warning. It would soon outstrip the ships. An English fleet caught in the river would be vulnerable to ambush.’

‘Oh, I see.’ I had little understanding of military tactics, but I was learning. Even to my ignorant mind, this made sense. ‘And Cadiz?’

‘Cadiz is the centre for provisions,’ said Phelippes. ‘It has warehouses full of supplies to feed the men as well as weaponry and gunpowder and shot. The supply vessels are being mustered in the harbour there. And it is much more open to attack by sea. Strike at Philip’s supplies and he cannot move.’

‘Clever.’ I said.

Walsingham gave a tight smile. ‘Wars are won as much by clever tactics as by brute force, Kit, as you will learn. For although we may delay Philip’s planned invasion, it will come in the end.’

His words left a chill in the air.

Walsingham took up Ruy’s idea, but kept the control of it in his own hands. A very deluge of plans and schemes rained down upon Mendoza in Paris, channelled through da Vega, who believed he was passing on genuine secrets garnered from his position close to Dom Antonio. At the same time, Walsingham sent secret dispatches to the Queen’s ambassador in Paris, Sir Edward Stafford, intimating that Sir Francis Drake was to make a pre-emptive strike on Spain’s possessions in the New World, to cut off her supplies of money, goods and men.

I did not understand this, until Phelippes explained.

‘Stafford is a rogue,’ he said. ‘Constantly in debt. He is an inverate gambler and falls more and more into debt with every passing week. He needs money and will sell his soul to the highest bidder. Look at this.’

He tossed a report on to my desk. It was in one of our own ciphers, one so familiar I could read it without recourse to the key.