Read Riptide (aka Bluffing Mr. Churchill) for Free Online Page B

it with her teeth.
    ‘Not much,’ she said.

§ 8
    It was a pity they could not run to a two-way mirror. Stilton had never seen a two-way mirror. The FBI had them in the flicks. A two-way mirror would really make him feel like
a spy rather than just a policeman. Not that he was not utterly proud to be an officer of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch – it just lacked a whisper of romance, that dark hint of
adventure.
    He sat in the next room with the lights out. Watching Thesiger and his quarry through the inch-open door. Thesiger was talking to a Dutchman – Jeroen Smulders. It was the third time
he’d had him in since he was picked up in a dinghy off the coast of Essex. He was Dutch – Stilton was satisfied of that – and neither he nor Squadron Leader Thesiger had been able
to find a codebook among his effects – a Dutch/English pocket dictionary, a Lutheran bible, a collection of half a dozen worn, well-thumbed love letters – but he was, beyond a shadow of
a doubt, a German spy. Thesiger had had the man checked out by the M.O. ‘Just for your own sake – no communicable diseases, that sort of thing.’ And the M.O. had confirmed
everything Stilton had suggested. Smulders was nearer thirty than the forty his papers claimed – his hair had been taken up at the roots over the frontal lobes to age him – his
sideburns treated with peroxide – two teeth pulled recently – and fifteen pounds of flab added by stuffing himself over a matter of a few weeks to disguise a hard core of underlying
muscle. He could take it off as easily as he had put it on with a dash of will-power. Smulders was young, fit and probably trained.
    ‘Trained what?’ was the question Stilton had put to himself. Your run-of-the-mill spy (was there such a thing?) didn’t need to have the physique of a Spartan warrior. Your
run-of-the-mill spy more than likely was a forty-two year old Dutch printer, hotfoot from Delft, telling you he was fleeing the enemy. The Germans had gone to a lot of trouble with this man. But
too quickly, the new body, the new persona, sat atop the old too loosely.
    Stilton saw the two men rise. Saw Thesiger shaking hands with Smulders, wishing him good luck. Smulders gathering up his papers, walking out into his new life, safe in Britain, an island haven
in an occupied Europe.
    Thesiger lit up a fag. Stilton took his hat and his macintosh off the back of the door and pulled it wide. Thesiger perched on a corner of his desk, the epitome of calm. He was not one of those
officers for whom ‘on duty’ required a stiff upper lip and a ramrod backbone, any more than it seemed to require a regulation uniform. Thesiger was frequently to be found in corduroy
trousers or a rough woollen pullover or with a tatty old cravat tucked around his neck – the blue battledress with its insignia of rank the only concession he made. Most of the time he was to
be found with his feet up – and on cold days this winter he’d sat with his feet in the bottom drawer of his desk for warmth, until the day a Wren came in without knocking and he’d
stood too sharply in the presence of a lady and shot through the bottom of the drawer.
    ‘Have you got a few minutes?’ he said.
    ‘O’ course. He gets a lift to the station. One of my blokes gets on the London train with him. Another picks him up at Fenchurch Street. Routine stuff. Doesn’t need a Chief
Inspector.’
    Thesiger held out a packet of Craven A.
    ‘No thanks, sir. I’ve given up. Strictly a pipe man from now on.’
    ‘Given up?’ Thesiger could not keep the astonishment out of his voice. People didn’t give up cigarettes. They either smoked or they didn’t. ‘Ah well . . . tell me,
Chief Inspector. Do I detect a sour note in your use of the word “routine”?’
    ‘All I meant was that anyone could do it. I meant no offence.’
    ‘And I took none. But it does seem to me that you think all this is a bit beneath you.’
    ‘Not exactly. But it’s