Chapter 70

There you are! ” Beth sat down at the Go board, summoning a smile. “I’ve been looking for you. Fancy a game? ”

The woman stared at her blankly. She had a bandage about her head; her hair had been shaved from the crown of her skull.

Beth kept the smile pinned in place, laying out the black and white pieces. “You first. ”

The sharp-eyed woman just sat there, looking at the board as if she’d never seen one before.

It’s just drugs, Beth told herself. Every patient was dozy after surgery. Most surgeries here were minor things. . . Beth reached out, touching the woman’s hand, then nearly jumped out of her skin as a nurse spoke behind her.

“Visitor for you in the rose garden, Miss Liddell. ”

Osla? Beth nearly overturned her chair, forgetting about her Go partner for an instant. Or Mab? Oh, God, one of them had come at last. . .

But it was a man standing beside the stone bench at the center of the dormant rose garden. A tall man in an expensive overcoat, his back to Beth, smoking a cigarette. The smoke smelled foreign but somehow familiar.

Gitane cigarettes.

Giles Talbot turned, a smile fixed in place, but the smile disappeared as he took in her appearance. He stared at Beth with something more than horror. . . with guilt. Beth stared at him as the matron droned about visitation rules, and connections clicked in her brain like a lobster sliding into place under her pencil.

“It’s you, ” she said when the matron departed. “You. ” Not Peggy, after all.

He managed a rueful smile. “Hullo, Beth. ”

She looked at her old friend. His suit was expensive, and his red hair gleamed; he was a long way from the rumpled academic she’d met at Bletchley Park. Giles. All this time it had been Giles, not Peggy. Beth could feel fury boiling beneath her skin. If he touched her, his fingers would blacken.

“It’s safe to talk. ” He stubbed out his cigarette, not quite meeting her eyes. “One never trusts visiting rooms; anyone could be listening. ” There was no one in earshot here; the day was too cold for many inmates to venture outside. “But a garden. . . I think we can talk freely. ”

“What is there to say? ” Beth answered.

“Look, I really am sorry. I never meant to land you in this mess. I just—panicked. Had to get you out of the way before you had a word with Travis about that report. ”

So he’d been the one to spot it on her desk as she was trying to break the other Rose messages. “I thought it was Peggy, ” Beth heard herself saying. “She told Mab about the Coventry raid. ”

“I told her. She was annoyed at you already because you bit her head off in ISK. I was going to tip Mab off about Coventry, but I thought it would look better coming from someone else, so I primed Peggy to carp about you instead. Wasn’t sure it would work, but she brought it up without any nudging once I steered the conversation round. ”

“Clever, ” said Beth. It really was. “Why are you here, Giles? Why now? ”

“I never thought things would go on this long. Time to bring an end to this little standoff. ”

That was ominous, but Beth was filled with too much rage to make room for fear. “I’m limited to family visitors only. Who are you supposed to be, my brother? ”

“I got them to bend the rules for an old friend. And that’s right, isn’t it? ” He smiled. “We really are old friends. ”

“Friends don’t lock up their friends in asylums. ”

“Come now, it’s not a bad place. I made sure of that. Top-quality care, gentle handling—”

“Yes, I’m very gently bundled into a straitjacket whenever I complain about anything. ” Beth spat out the words. “You traitor. ”

He brushed a bit of pollen off his sleeve. “I’m no traitor. ”

“You broke the Official Secrets Act. ”

“I am a patriot—”

Beth laughed.

“I am patriotic enough to commit treason in my country’s best interests. ” His voice was low, fierce. “Grow up, Beth. Countries are high, shining ideals, but governments are made of selfish, greedy men. Can you honestly say our fellows at the top always know what they’re doing? ” The words spilled from him in a torrent. Beth wondered if he was relieved, finally, to have an audience for all these carefully marshaled arguments. “How often did we watch them bungle information we gave them? Misuse it or ignore it or withhold it from allies who were dying for need of it? ”

“I don’t know. ” Beth leaned forward, lowering her voice too. “What was done with the information was never my business. My job was to decrypt it and pass it on. ”

“Such a little worker bee. Well, let me tell you that isn’t enough for some of us. ” He bent forward, his nose almost touching hers. An outsider would think they were lovers, Beth thought—a man and woman swaying toward each other among the roses, eyes locked in passionate, unblinking communion. Only that passion was hatred, not love. “Maybe you can close your eyes to where your work goes and let the Official Secrets Act dictate your conscience. I can’t. If I see information that should be passed to our allies rather than dying in a Whitehall desk drawer because the cabinet doesn’t want to share its toys, I don’t make excuses. I act. I knew what the consequences were, I knew what my own people could do to me, and I acted anyway. Because it was the right thing to do, if we were going to defeat Hitler and his rancid ideology. ”

“It wasn’t our job to decide what the right thing was. ”

“It’s every thinking human being’s job, especially in war, and don’t tell me differently. Letting a wrong happen because the rules forbid you from acting—that was the defense of a good many Germans, after the war. I was following orders. But it didn’t save them from the noose when the war crimes trials started. I looked at my superiors and I knew they were doing wrong, so I moved against them. I got myself a Moscow contact, and I passed information that saved thousands of Allied lives in the USSR. ”

“Passed information or sold it? ” she asked, mocking.

“They pay me, but I don’t ask for it. I’d have done it for nothing. ”

“So you’re still a patriot. Just a richer one. ” Looking at his fine coat, his air of success. “All from smuggling decrypted messages? ”

“And gathering gossip. Women love to talk. Confide in a female and—here’s the key—tell her you’re in love with someone else. Either she’s relieved because she knows you’re not about to lay it on, or she takes it as a challenge and starts to flirt. Either way, she starts talking. ”

Beth shook her head. “I still can’t believe no one ever caught you. ”

“Osla just about did. ” He sounded unconcerned. “I nipped into Hut 4 when everyone was out goggling over a visiting admiral, and she nearly caught me copying some files out. ”

Beth remembered something. “Were you the one who reported her taking files out of Hut 3 later? ”

A shrug. “She kept sniffing about, checking things—I didn’t want anyone believing her. ”

“Brave of you, ” said Beth. “Throwing another friend under the train. ”

“You know nothing about brave. ” Giles moved even closer. “You’d never have the courage to do what I did, you prim little rule follower. You couldn’t make a choice that bleak and live with the consequences. ”

“But you’re not exactly living with the consequences, are you? ” Beth whispered back. “I am. You’re walking around free, and I’m locked up for a nervous breakdown I never had. You stole my life, because I found you out. ” She drew back, looking him right in the eye. “How does your conscience square that? ”

He flinched almost invisibly. There, Beth thought. That’s the weak spot. Her old friend really didn’t think he’d done wrong in selling intelligence. . . but he knew he’d done wrong getting her locked up.

“I didn’t mean this to happen—”

“But it did. The road to hell, Giles—what’s that paved with again? ”

“You’re the one responsible. ” He withdrew, pacing quickly around the stone bench. “You can get out of here whenever you want. Just give me those decrypts. ”

Beth thought of Dilly’s safe, the key she’d been hiding in her shoe for the past three and a half years. Triumph warmed her in a sudden savage glow. Giles had sewn her up so neatly, but he’d missed her bolt to Courns Wood.

“I know you hid them somewhere, ” he rushed on. “Did you get anything else out of the other messages? Did any of them mention my name? ”

Beth didn’t answer.

“Never mind. Tell me where they are, and I’ll see you out of here. ”

“What gives you that authority? ” she replied. “Why would you have any right to dictate my future? ”

“I’m MI-5 now, Beth. Recruited after the war. I’m not the contact on file here at Clockwell, handling your case, but my bosses won’t think it odd if I start taking an interest in you, considering we used to be friends. I can volunteer to take your case, put in a report that you’ve got your mind and your self-control back. You’ll be released. ”

To be free. Fresh air, buttered toast, a bed that smelled of starched linen and not of old piss stains. . . Beth bit the inside of her cheek. It was an illusion and she wasn’t going to be tricked by it.

“Do something for me, ” she heard herself saying. Her hand crept up, fidgeted with the ragged ends of her hair. “Please? ”

“Anything. ” He bent down, took her hands. “I want to help you. ”

“Every night, tell yourself what you told me. How you’re a patriot, not a traitor. How you’re the hero of this story, not the villain. ” Beth smiled. “Then remember that you got an innocent woman locked in a madhouse to save your own skin, and ask yourself: how goddamned heroic is that? ”

He said nothing. His face had gone white.

“By the way, ” Beth added, “how long have you been selling MI-5 secrets to Moscow? I’m guessing since your first week on the job. ”

He turned even whiter. Beth sat down on the bench, thinking, Checkmate. It had just been a guess.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, ” he said at last.

She smiled contemptuously.

“How—” he began, and stopped.

We won the war and no harm came to BP—even with your meddling, Beth thought. But who knows what damage you might cause now, interfering in MI-5 business?

“The Soviets aren’t our allies anymore. How do you justify that, Giles? Selling to our enemy. Are you calling this patriotism, or is it just cold hard cash now? ” Raising her eyebrows. “Or maybe it’s self-preservation. You give them what they want or they turn you in? Are you only now realizing the hold they’ve got on you, as long as they want it? ”

“It won’t be forever. ” His face hardened like a stubborn child’s. “Just a few bits and pieces, then I’m done. ”

“Is that what they’re telling you? Or what you’re telling yourself? ”

He seized her hand, a gesture that would have looked friendly to any nurse watching from a distance, but he bent her little finger back almost to the wrist. A spike of pain drove up Beth’s arm, and she cried out in surprise.

“I was trying to do this nicely, ” he whispered. “But if you’re going to be stupid, I’m done dancing around. Give me what I want. ”

“No. ” Beth tried to yank free.

“Yes. Because if you don’t, you’ll be a drooling idiot forever. The new head physician has reviewed the case of Alice Liddell, and he has a suggestion to improve your moodiness and your occasional fits of violence. Oh, and your promiscuity—apparently you propositioned an orderly in a closet recently. Can’t have promiscuous acts among the patients; it wouldn’t be good for the place’s reputation. ” Giles leaned closer. “Do you know what a lobotomy is? ”

The pain was still screaming down Beth’s arm.

“It’s a neurological procedure favored in America. Surgical severance of the connections between the prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain. ”

Beth’s skin crawled as if a rat had run over her nerves.

“They shave your scalp and drill into your skull, then shove a metal spatula in there and hack until the links are severed. ” His voice was brutal. “You’re awake the whole time. The nurses encourage you to sing songs, recite poetry, answer questions. The procedure is over when you’re no longer able to speak. ”

Horror slithered down her spine. Beth saw herself on an operating table, her head in a vise, singing When Cunningham won at Matapan by the grace of God and Beth. Struggling to find the next line. Falling silent—

Like her Go partner.

“After the operation, you’ll be in a state they call surgically induced childhood. ” His words rolled over Beth in waves. “Sounds spiffing, doesn’t it? Didn’t we all adore being children? But it might not be much fun the second time around, once you get past toilet training. Ideally you’ll remain in an infantile state, and they’ll guide you into a more docile, accepting personality. Results vary, of course. You might end up a vegetable pissing her sheets for the next fifty years. ”

Beth managed to wrench away. Her whole arm was numb; she stood clutching it and trembling.

“You’re telling yourself I’m lying. I’m not. ” He looked down at her, biting his lip as though he were the one in pain. “Dr. Seton is very enthusiastic about the procedure. He’s already begun lobotomizing some of his other patients; perhaps you’ve noticed. He really shouldn’t have told me you were on the list, considering I’m not the MI-5 contact on record in your case, but I can be very persuasive. ”

Beth collapsed back onto the bench, breath coming in gasps. Holes drilled in her skull. Toilet training. She could imagine herself sitting on this bench, smiling vacantly, remembering something about keys and roses, but having no idea what it all meant. Sitting on this bench for the next fifty years.

You’re lying, she thought. But she no longer believed it.

“MI-5 won’t contest your doctor’s recommendation, Beth. ” Giles dropped onto the bench beside her. “Maybe you’ll end up fine, a little fuzzy around the edges. But maybe you’ll be a shell with a head full of mashed turnip. ” His voice rose. “So give me what I want, or you’ll find yourself strapped to a table as they go at your skull with a drill. ”

Beth screamed. She clapped both hands over her mouth in time to contain it, but it went on and on inside her head. Her head, her brain. She was nothing without her mind. She’d survived here for more than three years because of her mind.

“I didn’t suggest this, I’ll have you know. I didn’t even know the procedure existed. But I’ll let it happen. ” He leaned closer. “You want to know why I’m finally here talking to you? Because I’m tired of worrying if you’ve figured out it was me. I’m on my way up, I’ll have a family soon, and I’m done worrying if you might be a threat to all that. So tell me what I want to know. Either you walk out of this place with no proof against me, or you stay here forever unable to remember what proof you had. Either way, I’m free. ”

He stood. “Think about it. Because I hate the thought of anyone cutting into that admirable brain of yours, but my God, I’m tired of living on the edge. ”

He waited.

Beth flung herself on him. She couldn’t stop, couldn’t think, couldn’t reason, just flew at Giles and tried to tear him to pieces. She would have clawed his eyes out of his sockets, but he threw her away like a rag doll before the orderlies could even descend.

“Your surgery is scheduled for the afternoon after the royal wedding. ” He stepped back, straightening his tie. “I’ll ring here that morning. Tell the doctors you wish to see me—I’ll speak to the MI-5 chap handling your file, get the surgery stopped, and volunteer to take your case. Say nothing, and the surgery goes forward. ” Pause. “I like you, Beth. I always have. So don’t make me do this. ”

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