moment’s reflection will tell you that such an idea is naïve. If you make uniforms, or weapons, or military ships, or medals, or coffins, or ammunition, or prayer books, or crosses for graves, your services are going to be in demand.
And that is what I noticed about STG: their share price was very healthy indeed. We didn’t hang on to outdated newspapers in the Gym; they were shipped to the basement, where they were held for a while, then destroyed. Down in the basement, I found earlier copies of the Berliner Zeitung, and of other German papers that also carried stock exchange listings. Using these various titles I was able to plot the share price of STG over the previous four months. And very interesting reading it made.
I wasn’t at my best that day—I thought I was coming down with a cold—but I showed the figures to Sheila and we discussed it with the team leader from the economics table. He agreed that my reasoning was sound, so Sheila and I went to see Pritchard.
“Yes?” he said, waving us to a seat, though Sheila, as before, preferred the radiator.
I took a sheaf of clippings from a folder I had created.
“Give me the headline,” he said. “We’re all busy, Hal, and we trust you.”
“Not this time, sir.” I sniffled as I said this. “You’ll want to see the raw material for yourself.”
He leaned forward and opened the file. “Stock prices? What is this?”
I gave him some background. “In 1912, our family firm published a book by a certain Ulrich Pöhl, a hydrologist, I suppose you’d call him. An expert on water, anyway—on tides, forces in water, underwater currents, hard science. He was a consultant to a Bremerhaven firm,” I said and I explained about STG. “For that reason, I’ve always taken an interest in the company, and when I came to the Gym I looked it up.” I pointed to the cuttings in the file. “I’ve been following it intermittently and if you go through those lists, you’ll see that, over the past four months, the engineering sector has risen by, roughly speaking, two percent. STG, on the other hand, is up twenty-three percent. Something’s going on there, and people in the know are buying shares.”
Pritchard put on his spectacles and started going through the figures. He sniffed once or twice and licked his finger, to flick through the cuttings, but otherwise said nothing. Eventually he was done.
“You’re right about the share price. What’s your analysis?”
I glanced at Sheila. She smiled encouragingly.
“STG is a Bremerhaven-based shipbuilding company with a hydrologist as a consultant. I’d say that points to submarines. Either STG have invented something new—a faster, deeper, deadlier sub— or they’ve got a big order to expand production.”
Pritchard was scribbling notes. “You’ve run this by the economics people?”
“Yes sir.” Sheila was lighting a cigarette.
“There’s no way of telling, I suppose, which of those scenarios is the right one?”
“Not really,” I said. “But Pöhl’s book came out in 1912. You could have our hydrologists check out what research he was doing in the years before the war—it might give us a clue. Also, you might have people check out the acknowledgments page in the book—he mentions by name other specialists he showed the manuscript to. Those names can be checked out as well. They might lead somewhere.”
He took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes.
“But we must have people on the ground in Hamburg, sir,” I added. “That’s still the best way forward.”
Pritchard was cleaning his spectacles with his handkerchief. “I was in Bremerhaven once, years ago. Not my favorite port, I must say.” He inspected the glass of his spectacles for dust and smears. “Submarines terrify me—I’d hate to be cooped up in a metal tube, all those feet below the surface, not knowing if, all of a sudden—wham!” He took an empty card folder from a drawer in his desk. “Well done, Hal. How’s the limp?”
“Getting better all the time, thank you, sir.”
“You’ll keep an eye on the STG share price, yes?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Maybe I should buy some shares myself.”
He grinned.
Later that week, I fell ill. It was a severe bout of flu but I was bad enough to have to stay in bed for two days. And so, very quickly, I came to rely on Lottie, who was, of course, at home looking after Will. He moved around the flat in spurts now. Having just learned to walk, after a fashion, his habit was to run faster than his