Madeleine's War by Peter Watson

Author:Peter Watson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2015-06-02T04:00:00+00:00

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I HAD ONLY BEEN IN DOWNING STREET once before this and my second visit was a very brief one. As I arrived, at two minutes to eight o’clock on the following morning, the door miraculously opened to let me in. In the hall was Hilary standing next to a man with one arm, the sleeve of his naval jacket pinned back more or less to where his elbow should have been.

“Good, good,” said Hilary quietly, in that way of his. “Bang on time, Matt, excellent.” He was in his usual three-piece tweed suit, striped tie, and shiny beer-brown brogues.

He turned to the man beside him and said, “Okay, we can go. Lead the way.” He turned to me, smiling, and said, “Frank here lost his arm at Dunkirk. But all the rest of him is in full working order.”

Frank stepped forward, the main door was opened, and out we went, back into Downing Street. The morning was sunny and fresh.

We turned right and headed west, down a flight of stone steps at the St. James’s Park end of the street, and Hilary slowed his stride so that I drew level. “The PM’s in his war office, the bunker below ground. Ever been?”

“No. I didn’t know there was a bunker. Where is it?”

“You’ll see. Not far. It’s reassuring in its way, but it’s not that deep. I’m not sure it would survive a direct hit.”

At the foot of the steps we turned left, along the edge of the park until we came to King Charles Street, running between what I did know was the Home Office building, and the building housing both the Foreign Office and the Treasury. That street also ended in a flight of steps.

“Do these steps have a name?”

“Buggered if I know,” growled Hilary.

“King Charles Steps, sir,” said Frank. “Here we are.”

I suddenly saw what he meant. Set into the wall at the foot of the Foreign Office building was a small door. It was a sooty black, hardly different from the dirty stones with which the Foreign Office walls were faced. There were no markings, and it was wholly inconspicuous.

Like the Downing Street door, it opened as we approached—seemingly all by itself—and we went straight in. A woman with raven-black hair immediately closed and locked it behind us.

We showed her our passes.

“Sign in, please,” she said, scrutinising each one carefully. “You are expected.”

To Frank, she said, “Take them down to conference room E, that’s—”

“I remember,” said Frank. “Third on the right round the bend—am I right?”

“Show-off!” she murmured, but she was smiling.

We descended some stairs. Not many, maybe fifteen; so we weren’t all that deep. Hilary was right—this bunker would not survive a direct hit.

At the foot of the stairs we turned left. The bunker, I noticed, was built of large breeze blocks, painted over in that universal wartime khaki-green colour. Someone must have made a fortune out of that grey-green paint.

Frank led the way.

The bunker was busy. People were coming towards us, secretarial types,

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