‘I can’t. You’re not.’ The voice was military. Uncommunicative.
‘Oh, no! I’ve done it again! Most frightfully sorry, sir!’ she gushed. ‘I do hope I’ve not disturbed you. Please forgive me. It’s my first day going solo, you see. I’m on test. I so hope you won’t tell? I think I’ve just inserted my toggle into the wrong slot and made a bad connection …’
A guffaw greeted this. ‘We’ve all done that, darlin’,’ said the fruity baritone, unbending suddenly. ‘Think nothing of it. Your secrets are safe with me. Well, they would be, wouldn’t they — this is the War Office here. Ho, ho!’ He seemed to find his remark hilarious but stopped slapping his thigh long enough to add: ‘And when you do finally plug into Supplies, tell them to change the tea. That Darjeeling they’re using this month is as weak as gnat’s pee.’
‘Assam? Shall I suggest Assam, sir?’
‘Yes. That the dark brown stuff? That should do it. Well — good luck with the test, Iris! This is Iris, isn’t it?’
‘I didn’t give my name, sir. That would be against the rules.’ Lily summoned up exactly the right touch of scandalized rebuke. ‘Goodbye, sir.’
She replaced the receiver, stunned by what she’d heard.
War Office? What had Sandilands and, it seemed, herself, by association of some not-yet-defined form, to do with the War Office? For what exactly did they need to know that she was ‘ready and able’? Why did they have a presence in the Scotland Yard building? The questions lined up to ambush her. The answers did not immediately present themselves. There were rumours in the force that a shadowy enforcement arm of some sort had a toehold in the Whitehall warren. Everyone had heard of ‘C’ and his department of patriotic scoundrels. MI1b? Or was it MI1c? Had Lily stumbled upon an organization of that nature? Not such a formidably secret department, she concluded, if an interloper like herself could ring them up and discuss tea supplies.
This flippant thought was supplanted by a more chilling one. She had done nothing to bring her own name to their attention. And yet their earlier conversation with Sandilands showed that they knew of her. Indeed, seemed to have plans for her. Plans on which she had not been consulted. What had he said? ‘Not fully briefed yet …’
‘Mata Hari?’ Lily had suggested half-jokingly, taking a stab at a description of the work he had in mind for her. A female spy, Dutch by birth, Miss Hari had used her allure to get information from both sides of the recent conflict. It was rumoured that, at the time of her arrest in a Paris hotel, the exotic dancer turned courtesan counted, amongst her many lovers, the German crown prince and the chief of the French anti-espionage bureau and that crucial information had passed from head to head to head on the pillow. All too unregulated. No one could be quite certain to whom the wretched woman really owed allegiance. As an agent, she had been turned and turned again. Done to a crisp, was the final decision, and she had been removed from the scene. A put-up job by the French it was generally thought, with the compliance of the British. The affair was considered significant enough to have her put on trial and executed by a firing squad in 1917.