‘Well, you’re a grown man. You want to sit around this room and quietly decay that’s your business.’ She walked to the door, opened it and turned. ‘Only I would suggest you comb your hair and make yourself respectable. You’ve got a visitor.’
He frowned. ‘A visitor?’
‘Yes, he’s with Commander Lawrence now. I didn’t know you had any British connection.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Hare asked, bewildered.
‘Your visitor. Very top brass. A Brigadier Munro of the British Army, though you’d never think so. Doesn’t even wear a uniform.’
She went out, closing the door. Hare stood there for a moment, frowning, then hurried into the bathroom and turned on the shower.
Brigadier Dougal Munro was sixty-five and white-haired, an engagingly ugly man in an ill-fitting suit of Donegal tweed. He wore a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles of the type issued to other ranks in the British Army.
‘But is he fit, that’s what I need to know, Doctor?’ Munro was saying.
Lawrence wore a white surgical coat over his uniform. ‘You mean physically?’ He opened the file in front of him. ‘He’s forty-six years of age, Brigadier. He took three pieces of shrapnel in his left lung and spent six days on a liferaft. It’s a miracle he’s still around.’
‘Yes, I take your point,’ Munro said.
‘Here’s a man who was a professor at Harvard. A naval reserve officer, admittedly, because he was a famous yachtsman with connections in all the right places who gets himself in PT boats at the age of forty-three when the war starts.’ He leafed through the pages. ‘Every damned battle area in the Pacific. Lieutenant Commander, and medals.’ He shrugged. ‘Everything there is, including two Navy Crosses and then that final business at Tulugu. That Japanese destroyer blew him half out of the water so he rammed her and set off an explosive charge. He should have died.’
‘As I heard it, nearly everyone else did,’ Munro observed.
Lawrence closed the file. ‘You know why he didn’t get the Medal of Honor? Because it was General MacArthur who recommended him and the Navy doesn’t like the Army interfering.’
‘You’re not regular Navy, I take it?’ Munro said.
‘Am I hell.’
‘Good. I’m not regular Army, so plain speaking. Is he fit?’
‘Physically – yes. Mind you, I should think it’s taken ten years off the other end of his life. The medical board has indicated no further seagoing duty. In view of his age, he has the option of taking a medical discharge now.’
‘I see.’ Munro tapped his forehead. ‘And what about up here?’
‘In the head?’ Lawrence shrugged. ‘Who knows? He’s certainly suffered from depression of the reactive kind, but that passes. He sleeps badly, seldom leaves his room and gives the distinct impression of not knowing what the hell to do with himself.’
‘So he’s fit to leave?’
‘Oh, sure. He’s been fit enough for weeks. With the proper authorisation, of course.’
‘I’ve got that.’
Munro took a letter from his inside pocket, opened it and passed it across. Lawrence read it and whistled softly. ‘Jesus, it’s that important?’
‘Yes.’ Munro put the letter back in his pocket, picked up his Burberry raincoat and umbrella.
Lawrence said, ‘My God, you want to send him back in.’
Munro smiled gently and opened the door. ‘I’ll see him now, Commander, if you please.’
Munro looked out on to the balcony across the garden to the lights of the city in the falling dusk. ‘Very pleasant, Washington, at this time of year.’ He turned and held out his hand. ‘Munro – Dougal Munro.’
‘Brigadier?’ Hare said.
‘That’s right.’
Hare was wearing slacks and an open-necked shirt, his face still damp from the shower. ‘You’ll forgive me for saying so, Brigadier, but you are the most unmilitary man I ever saw.’
‘Thank God for that,’ Munro said. ‘Until 1939, I was an Egyptologist by profession, a Fellow of All Souls, Oxford. My rank was to give me, shall we say, authority in certain quarters.’
Hare frowned. ‘Wait a minute. Do I smell intelligence here?’
‘You certainly do. Have you heard of SOE, Commander?’
‘Special Operations Executive,’ Hare said. ‘Don’t you handle agents into occupied France and so on?’
‘Exactly. We were the forerunners of your own OSS who, I’m happy to say, are now working closely with us. I’m in charge of Section D at SOE, more commonly known as the dirty tricks department.’
‘And what in the hell would you want with me?’ Hare demanded.
‘You were a Professor of German Literature at Harvard, am I right?’
‘So what?’
‘Your mother was German. You spent a great deal of time with her parents in that country as a boy. Even did a degree at Dresden University.’
‘So?’
‘You speak the language fluently, I understand, or so your Naval intelligence service tells me and your French is quite reasonable.’
Hare frowned. ‘What are you trying to say? Are you trying to recruit me as a spy or something?’
‘Not at all,’ Munro told him. ‘You see, you’re really quite unique, Commander. It’s not just that you speak fluent German. It’s the fact that you’re a naval officer with a vast experience in torpedo boats who also speaks fluent German that makes you interesting.’
‘I think you’d better explain.’
‘All right.’ Munro sat down. ‘You served on PT boats with Squadron Two in the Solomons, am I right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, this is classified, but I can tell you that at the urgent request of the Office of Strategic Services your men are to be transferred to the English Channel to land and pick up agents on the French coast.’
‘And you want me for that?’ Hare said in amazement. ‘You’re crazy. I’m all washed up. Christ, they want me to take a medical discharge.’
‘Hear me out,’ Munro said. ‘In the English Channel, British MTB’s have had a very rough time with their German counterparts.’
‘What the Germans call a Schnellboot,’ Hare said. ‘A fast boat. An apt title.’
‘Yes. Well, for some contrary reason we call them E-boats. As you say, they’re fast, too damn fast. We’ve been trying to get hold of one ever since the war started and I’m happy to say we finally succeeded last month.’
‘You’re kidding,’ Hare said in astonishment.
‘I think you’ll find I never do, Commander,’ Munro told him. ‘One of the S.80 series. Had some engine problem on a night patrol off the Devon coast. When one of our destroyers turned up at dawn, the crew abandoned ship. Naturally, her captain primed a charge before leaving to blow the bottom out of her. Unfortunately for him, it failed to explode. Interrogation of his radio operator indicated that their final message to their base at Cherbourg was that they were sinking her, which means we have their boat and the Kriegsmarine don’t know.’ He smiled. ‘You see the point?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Commander