The Judas Code - Derek Lambert

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heeded the warnings – and there were many – two tyrannies might have remained relatively unscathed and the world today might have been a very different place. With such a momentous fact as the pivot of a novel it soon becomes easy to believe that the accompanying material is also true. Who knows, perhaps it is.

      And what of Stalin? How was he reacting to the fact that almost the entire German army was on his doorstep? Incredibly, he appeared to ignore it. Was he the victim of some kind of hysteria that deprived him of the ability to act? Or were there other powerful reasons for not acting – reasons known only to him? – Russia Besieged by Nicholas Bethell and the editors of Time-Life Books

      Despite all the indications that war with Germany was approaching neither the Soviet people nor the Red Army were expecting the German attack when it came … History of World War II, editor-in-chief A.J.P. Taylor

      Never had a state been better informed than Russia about the aggressive intent of another … But never had an army been so ill-prepared to meet the initial onslaught of its enemy than the Red Army on June 22, 1941. The History of World War II, by Lt. Col. E. Bauer

      It is almost inconceivable but nevertheless true that the men in the Kremlin, for all the reputation they had of being suspicious, crafty and hard-headed, and despite all the evidence and all the warnings that stared them in the face, did not realise right up to the last moment that they were to be hit, and with a force which would almost destroy their nation. – The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L. Shirer

      My advertisement in the personal columns of The Times read: ‘Would anyone with the key to the Judas Code please contact me.’ The response was prompt: at nine a.m. on the day of publication a man called at my London home and threatened to kill me.

      The threat wasn’t immediate but as soon as I saw him on the doorstep smiling and tapping a copy of the newspaper with one finger I sensed menace.

      He was in his sixties with wings of silver hair just touching his ears and what looked like the scar from a bullet wound on his right cheek; he wore a light navy blue topcoat with a velvet collar and carried a furled umbrella; the elegance and the legacy of violence combined to give the impression of a commando who had retired to the City.

      ‘Your request interested me’, he said. ‘May I come in?’

      Wishing that I hadn’t unlocked the ground-floor door by remote control and allowed him to reach my apartment on the top floor of the old block near Broadcasting House, I said: ‘It is rather early. Perhaps—’

      ‘Nine o’clock? You look pretty wide awake, Mr. Lamont, and I won’t take up much of your time.’ He took a step forward.

      ‘Before we go any further, Mr. …’

      ‘Chambers.’

      ‘Do you mind telling me how you found out where I live? I only gave a telephone number …’

      ‘It’s not so difficult to obtain an address from a telephone number. If you know how to go about it, that is.’

      ‘And my name?’

      ‘The same source. Now if you would be good enough …’

      ‘To step aside? I don’t think I would, Mr. Chambers. Perhaps you would be good enough to telephone me to make an appointment.’

      ‘Aren’t you being a little formal for someone as obviously enterprising as yourself?’ He tucked The Times beneath his arm on his umbrella side.

      ‘I’ve always been a stickler for protocol.’

      ‘Really? You surprise me. I had heard quite the opposite.’ His voice frosted. ‘Let me in, Mr. Lamont.’

      ‘Get stuffed,’ I said, terminating my brief relationship with protocol.

      He, too, abandoned niceties. He levelled a Browning 9mm automatic at my chest and said: ‘Don’t try slamming the door. It’s only in Hollywood that wood panels stop bullets. Now turn round and go inside.’ The door clicked snugly behind me. ‘That’s better,’ he said as we entered the living-room. ‘Now sit down in that easy chair beside the fireplace.’

      I sat down, feeling slightly absurd in my red silk dressing gown, rumpled blue pyjamas and leather slippers savaged by a friend’s dog, and waited. Chambers sat opposite me and appraised the room – the books scattered across the worn carpet, bottle of Black Label and its partner, an empty glass, punished leather sofa, windows looking across the rooftops to the pale green trees of Regent’s Park. In short, fading elegance; in fact, the workshop of an author who commuted to a house in Surrey where his wife and children lived.

      Having completed his inventory, Chambers waved the gun and said: ‘Do I really have to go on pointing this at you? I know I’m much older than you. Forty-five aren’t you?’ – I was forty-four – ‘But I think I’d get the better of you in physical combat, and I’m not just being conceited.’

      He could well have been right. Anyway I told him to put down his gun and tell me what he wanted. There was always the possibility that I might be able to surprise him later.

      He stood up and slipped off the topcoat. Underneath he wore a charcoal grey pin-stripe with a waistcoat and a gold watch-chain with a seal fob looped across it. He slipped the Browning inside the jacket without spoiling its shape and sat down again. ‘And now,’ he said pleasantly, ‘tell me why you want to know about the Judas Code,’ one finger straying to his cheek; the bullet must have taken a lot of bone with it because the scar was almost a furrow.

      ‘You must have guessed that – I’m writing a book.’

      ‘The Judas Code … a good title. Why did you choose it?’

      ‘I didn’t: it was unavoidable. Kept cropping up while I was researching a book about the last war. I wanted to know why Stalin ignored all the warnings that Germany intended to invade Russia in 1941.’

      ‘That’s simple. The warnings came from Churchill and Roosevelt and other interested parties and he interpreted them as mischief-making. Most accounts of World War II have made that quite clear.’

      ‘But it doesn’t wash, does it? He also ignored warnings from his own spies. Richard Sorge in Tokyo, for instance. And the evidence before his own generals’ eyes – the build-up of the German army on his borders.’

      ‘And why are you, a novelist, so anxious to put the record straight?’

      ‘Three reasons. One, because I abhor flawed logic. Any history student who suggested in an exam that Uncle Joe misread Hitler’s intentions just because he thought the Allies were deceiving him would deserve to get C minus.

      ‘Two, because if Stalin had got it right then you’d have to re-draw today’s maps of the world. If, for instance, Germany and Russia had persevered with their unholy alliance, if their armies hadn’t bled each other for more than three years, then Britain might be a Nazi or a Soviet satellite.’

      Chambers took a silver cigarette case from the inside pocket of his jacket, on the other side from the Browning. He didn’t offer it to me – perhaps he even knew I’d given up smoking – and selected a cigarette. He lit it with a gold Dunhill lighter and inhaled with pleasure. A true smoker, not a chain-smoker. ‘And the third?’

      ‘Because it’s my guess that the real reasons behind Stalin’s apparent stupidity will make a better story than any novel I’ve written.’

      ‘I see.’ He blew a jet of smoke into a shaft of dusty sunlight. ‘Yes, I can see that.’ His voice had assumed an introspective quality and I wondered if I could jump him. I had never been an athlete, let alone a fighter, but I was big enough and fairly fit. He said crisply: ‘Don’t try it,’ followed by: ‘But you haven’t explained about the Judas Code.’

      ‘Why don’t you explain it? It

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