Requiem for a Patriot by David J. Oldman

Author:David J. Oldman [Oldman, David J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Media
Published: 2018-04-26T04:00:00+00:00

22

Tuesday, February 4th 1947

I had arranged to see Lizzie that evening at the ABC tearooms where we first met and so decided to leave contacting Konstantin Berezin until the following day. I was supposed to see her at seven-thirty, but by eight-thirty she hadn’t arrived.

I called her number from the nearest telephone kiosk. There was no reply. Even the man who sometimes answered wasn’t picking up the telephone.

I still didn’t have an address for her – she had told me her landlady didn’t appreciate gentlemen callers – so I went back to the ABC, deciding to give her another half-hour. By nine she still hadn’t turned up. It was too late to see Berezin – the address I had for him was out by Gladstone Park and I thought by the time I found the place it would be gone ten. So in the end I gave the evening up and went home.

Even though Lizzie and I had not parted on the best of terms on Monday morning, I hadn’t thought the matter serious enough to warrant her standing me up. There was a chance she had tried to telephone my flat to say she couldn’t make it, although unless one of the girls from the basement happened to be using the bathroom at the time and left a message, I wasn’t going to know. And since there was no note waiting for me when I got home, I was left none the wiser.

I listened to the wireless until eleven, giving her plenty of time to call if she had a mind to, then went to bed. I even forewent my usual last cup of tea, having already drunk my fill at the ABC.

****

In the office the next morning Magdalena looked brighter than the cold and dreary weather warranted and by the time I arrived had already sorted the previous day’s transcripts couriered in earlier from Dollis Hill.

She smiled and chirped, ‘Good morning,’ as I walked in and told me there had been more than usual ISPAL traffic overnight as I dropped behind my desk.

We were always at least a day behind with the SIME and ISPAL material and generally longer after a weekend. The cipher intercepts were gathered by the Government Code and Cipher School at a station in Sarafand in Palestine, under the Signal and Intelligence umbrella known as SIGINT. Since these had to be decoded and translated – if written in anything other than English – before being transmitted to the GC&CS establishment in England, decoded again and then sent on to us, it always surprised me we got them as quickly as we did. Even so, it seemed an extremely tedious and long-winded business for what, in the main, turned out to be little more than tiresome chit-chat. But as it all came under the catchall of Defence of the Realm I supposed they knew what they were doing.

‘In that climate,’ I said to Magdalena as she brought me some of the Palestine intercepts, ‘you’d think they might take the weekend off now and again and go to the beach.

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