emaciated man with sunken cheeks, hollows around his eyes, and a strong jawline. He wore a tweed jacket and a checked shirt with a knitted tie. He looked as if he were just off shooting, or fishing. I liked him.
When I had finished, he sat, drumming his fingers along his lips. After a while, he murmured, “May I ask you a question?”
I nodded. “Shoot.”
“How many ships do you think Hood has?”
“I don’t have to think. I checked before I left. Three.”
“And if a ship goes to Uruguay, say, how long before it comes back?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Guess.”
“Say a week to ten days to get there. Four days to turn around. She’d be back in just under a month.”
“Which means …” said Greg slowly, “that if the Hood people put their minds to it, their three ships could make three deliveries a month.”
“But they don’t. The husband of my wife’s friend, the man who works in the Port of London, says that the Samuel Hood comes up the Thames only two or three times a year.”
“She could transport pyrethrum from other ports.”
“Unlikely. It would be wasteful, for Hood, to have insecticide depots spread out all over the country. And their extraction works are in the East End. The Port of London is convenient.”
Again, Greg drummed his fingers against his lips. “That fits.”
“Fits? What fits? Fits what?”
“We think it works slightly different from the way you have it.”
“What are you talking about? What do you know?”
He pushed back his chair and lifted his feet onto his desk. His brown brogues could have been cleaner. “We’re not complete turnips out here, you know. We recognize what Switzerland can be used for— that’s one of the reasons we’re stationed here in the first place. But your information could be the final link in the chain.”
I didn’t say anything immediately. He would explain in his own good time. “What chain?”
“More coffee?”
“Have we still got all day?”
He looked at his watch. “Long enough. It’s your turn in the kitchen.”
I made the coffee.
Again he made sure the door was shut.
He tried his coffee, winced, and said, “More beans next time. One of the perks of living in Switzerland is the coffee—can’t get this back home, can we? So don’t spoil it—and that means don’t stint it. Okay?”
I nodded.
“Now, let me fill you in. It works differently in Geneva and in Lausanne, and even in Bern, but in Zurich and Basel we are very aggressive—discreet but aggressive—in our attitude to Brits in Switzerland. Yes, the damn country’s neutral, but we want to know why every Brit who’s here is here. A lot of legitimate business goes on during a war, of course, which means that some people are here for perfectly proper reasons. But some aren’t.”
He dolloped sugar into the coffee and that seemed to help, judging by the expression—or lack of it—on his face.
“We’ve infiltrated the Swiss border guards and their police, and so we get discreet lists of all Brits—and all others, too—arriving either by steamer on the lake or by train at Geneva. The police lists give us passport details and addresses inside Switzerland. We can’t check out everyone, but anyone who stays in central Zurich or Basel gets our attention. Again, discreetly, of course. They are followed, their hotel rooms are, shall we say, inspected while they are out. Their contacts are followed too.
“A lot of it is a waste of time, of course, but now and then we turn up an interesting pattern. And we have identified one pattern that we don’t fully understand but may just—just—fit with yours.”
I drank my coffee. I didn’t think it was so bad. But then I had been living in London. And it was good to have some sugar.
“One of the people we have highlighted is a certain Bryan Amery. He registered at the consulate in the normal way. He’s in his early thirties, was born in Leamington Spa but has spent time in London. According to such digging as we have been able to do—at this distance and while there is a war on—Amery is a precious-metals man. He works for a small firm with headquarters in Hatton Garden and his job is to keep his ear to the ground in Zurich and give his masters back home advice on when to buy and when to sell gold, silver, platinum, and copper. We haven’t actually faced him with this, you understand. This is all research on our part, back home.”