Simon Tolkien Inspector Trave Trilogy: Orders From Berlin, The Inheritance, The King of Diamonds. Simon Tolkien

       CHAPTER 7

      Seaforth woke up early and, wearing only his robe, went and sat cross-kneed on a Persian prayer carpet that he had bought from a travelling merchant in Germany three years earlier. The towers of London rose up all around him outside the windows of his penthouse apartment, but he had eyes only for the sinuous arabesque design of the scrolling lines intertwining on the rich midnight-blue background of the rug. They soothed his mind, and he concentrated on slowing his breathing until he had it perfectly under control. Only then did he begin his mental autopsy of the previous night’s events.

      He knew he’d been a fool to lose his temper and alienate Ava for no reason, although he realized that the mistake had occurred earlier when he took the phone call from his contact at the Portuguese embassy and let her wander around the apartment unattended. He should have told Monteiro that he’d call back. And then seeing her with the diary had infuriated him. It enraged him again now, when he thought of his brother writing by candlelight in the trenches, describing unimaginable horrors, and this woman who knew nothing about anything throwing the book at him across his bedroom as if it were some piece of worthless rubbish. She’d thrown it so hard that its spine had been damaged when it hit the floor, and now Seaforth wanted to break her spine – snap it like a twig with his strong hands. That’s what she deserved—

      He stopped himself. He was going to pieces again, giving in to the nervous pressure that was building like an aneurysm inside his head. He unclenched his hands and held them out from his body, palm upward, and took more deep breaths, concentrating on relaxing his taut muscles one by one. These mental and physical exercises were second nature to him, refined over years of practice, but he’d never before found them so difficult to perform.

      He tried to focus on the positive sides of what had happened. He’d needed a wake-up call that he wasn’t as cool, calm, and collected as he’d assumed himself to be. Now he knew that he had to be vigilant and that he couldn’t take himself for granted, as he had in the past. And in the final analysis, he hadn’t really lost anything. He didn’t know how much Ava had read of the diary, but none of it incriminated him, and it didn’t really matter that he’d quarrelled with her, because he didn’t need her any more. She’d served her purpose, and he’d brought her back to the apartment only for the sake of a little distraction while he waited for the go-ahead from Berlin for his assassination plan. And now he wasn’t going to have to wait any longer. The telephone call the night before had been to tell him that Heydrich’s package had arrived. Seaforth looked at his watch. He was due at the embassy in less than an hour; it was time to get dressed.

      He left Cadogan Square with a spring in his step. The sun was shining and he walked at a brisk pace along the pavements, tapping out a rhythmic beat on the concrete with his ivory-handled cane until he got to the Portuguese embassy. He paused for a moment outside, looking up at the green-and-red flag fluttering above the entrance, and then glanced back along the street, but not because he didn’t want to be seen. Quite the opposite, in fact. It made him smile that he could walk openly up the steps to take collection of a bundle of documents prepared for his use by the head of the Gestapo in Berlin without a worry in the world. Because this was where his MI6 comrades expected him to come to take delivery of reports sent by his fictitious agent in Berlin. He was doing nothing suspicious. There was no need for safe houses or dead drops. Just a phone call and a short, pleasant walk through the morning sunshine.

      A liveried underling took Seaforth’s hat and cane and led him up a wide, red-carpeted staircase lined with portraits of Portuguese ambassadors to the Court of St James’s going back to the eighteenth century. At the top, he knocked at a large mahogany-panelled door and announced the visitor’s name with a dramatic flourish, then stood aside to allow Seaforth to enter the august presence of the second secretary, Senhor Miguel dos Santos Monteiro – the same man who had called Seaforth on the telephone the previous evening.

      He had a florid drinker’s face, a crooked aquiline nose, and an enormous dignity. Unbeknownst to Seaforth, he was the author in his native Portugal of a book on etiquette, viewed by many in the country as the definitive authority on the subject, and he insisted on their occasional meetings following a prescribed form from which they never deviated. Today was no exception. Turkish coffee – unavailable in the rest of London – was served in delicate cups, and the two men conversed for fifteen minutes on a variety of subjects upon which no restriction was placed, save that there should be no reference to the war. This building was neutral territory, and Senhor Monteiro intended to keep it that way.