The English Agent Read online

  Out in the courtyard at the end of the passage, Madame de Jouvenal was hanging bed linen on the lower branches of the lime tree. She shot Edie a sympathetic look as she was force-marched towards the black van, but Edie did not respond. She wondered, after all, whose side Madame de Jouvenal was on. The Sicherheitsdienst hadn’t needed to break down the door to her room; someone had given them a key.

  It was dark inside the back of the van, metallic-smelling. They made her sit at the far end, with her back to the cab. The equipment was in the middle, lights and dials stilled for now. They sat on seats on either side, legs apart, exchanging words in the guttural language she couldn’t even begin to understand. It was odd that she didn’t feel more scared, but there was something so coolly professional about the way they’d caught her, searched the room, made their field notes. Somehow she knew that assault wouldn’t form any part of the process, not then, at least.

  The man who’d held her fast with his fingers – he seemed to be in charge – had gone to sit at the front with the driver. But her hands were still cuffed behind her. There was a way of getting out of the cuffs; they’d covered it in training. It was fiddly, but not impossible, if you had a watch on. It was to do with using the winding pin from your watch to unpick the lock on the cuffs. But Edie didn’t wear a watch, hadn’t managed to replace the one that Miss Atkins had confiscated.

  The engine had been running, but now the van lurched off suddenly, and she was flung forwards. Her cuffed hands were no good at protecting her, and she banged her forehead on the metal edge of the detector equipment in the middle of the van. The men stopped talking momentarily, but didn’t offer any help as she struggled to get back up onto the seat, head throbbing. They carried on chatting. She wondered what they were discussing – the thrill of catching a ‘terrorist’, or what they were having for supper that night. She wondered if they’d celebrate.

  Edie remembered when her ATS unit had shot down an enemy plane, and everyone felt so jubilant. They’d had bacon sandwiches for breakfast that morning, on CO’s orders.

  She felt a trickle run down from her forehead, all the way to her cheek. The metal edge of the detector must have broken the skin. She longed to be able to put up a hand and wipe it away. The van careered on through the Paris streets. The men lit up cigarettes, and the air got warm with their body heat. It was dark, but she could see their faces by the light of their cigarettes, swimming black-and-white masks in the dingy fug, like clowns’. She was shunted and tumbled as the van sped on, hearing the strange foreign sound of their voices and smelling the acrid scent of their horrible cigarettes.

  She hadn’t meant to vomit, but the sick just came, hurling up her throat, acid bile all over her dress, all down the edge of their precious detecting unit. But still they barely glanced in her direction.

  Perhaps they had seen it all before.

  Gerhardt

  Gerhardt had been promised the night off. He was in the queue for the Soldatenkino when the car drew up at the kerb next to him. His arrival in the Sicherheitsdienst had coincided with Boemelburg’s promotion and transfer to Berlin. The new boss – Major Kieffer – had rescheduled the pass system, and he’d only just got his turn. Gerhardt hadn’t even bothered to check what film was showing, but he’d decided that he was going to see a film, grab something to eat in one of the street cafés near by, and then before curfew maybe head over to that little bar that Josef had told him about. It didn’t really matter that he was on his own; there were lots of other young Germans he could hook up with – those girls in front of him in the queue, perhaps, with their shiny hair and carefully ironed civil service uniforms – the whole night stretched ahead. And then the car drew up.

  The window wound down and Josef poked a head out: ‘Kieffer wants you.’

  ‘What, now?’ Gerhardt replied. He was almost at the front of the queue. The brunette was nudging her plump blonde colleague, and they both glanced back at him, smirking.

  ‘No, next Tuesday. Of course now, you idiot,’ said Josef, winding up the window. The girl burst out laughing. Gerhardt felt himself flush, and walked quickly over to the car, getting in the passenger seat next to Josef.

  ‘My first night out in Paris,’ he said, slumping down on the black leather and slamming the door behind him.

  ‘I know, but there’ll be others, though, mate,’ said Josef, jamming the car into gear and accelerating off. ‘Next time, if we get a night off together, I’ll take you to the sweetest little whorehouse I know, on the other side of the river. What those girls will do for a few Reichsmarks will knock your socks off.’

  They swerved round the place de la Concorde, cutting past a vélo-taxi, causing the cyclist to wobble, and the smartly dressed woman in the cart to scream as her hat flew off into the road. Josef laughed. ‘Cheese-eating fools!’ he chuckled, accelerating away. Gerhardt, embarrassed, shifted down further into his seat.

  Josef slowed down as they went up the Champs-Élysées. ‘Take a look.’ He motioned out of the windscreen. ‘Say what you like about the cheese-eaters, they know how to dress their women.’ They passed expensive-looking shops with mannequins in frozen attitudes staring archly out through plate-glass windows. Gerhardt imagined having enough money to take a woman shopping here – some impossibly smart Frenchwoman in a porcelain-white suit and very red lipstick, who’d demand a litre of Chanel No. 5, and a magnum of the best champagne, and afterwards . . . Actually the thought petrified him, and he found himself thinking instead of Lisel, his pretty neighbour from back home. But he couldn’t imagine her here in Paris at all.

  They’d reached the Arc de Triomphe, and Josef slowed down even more, easing round the iconic arch. ‘And buildings,’ Josef said. ‘They do women and buildings well, but as for the rest—’ Josef made a face. Gerhardt looked up. A vast red-and-black flag billowed from the archway. He thought about the swastika that had been on his father’s car, when they used to go visit him in the holidays. The flag had flipped as the car sped through the dusty streets, the chauffeur dodging the potholes. He remembered people turning to look as they passed. He’d felt like royalty, asked his mother if Father was a king. She’d laughed: no, darling, just a diplomat, and remember, don’t call him Father here, just Uncle, don’t forget. There was one particular memory that was so old he wasn’t entirely sure whether or not it was a dream.

  The girl was standing in the kerb. The sunshine was so bright and her dress was white, so all he could see in the glare was the pinkish blob of her face underneath a bell-shaped hat, and one arm waving slowly. The chauffeur pulled the car in beside her. Gerhardt looked questioningly up at his mother, who shrugged. ‘Hans must recognise her. Or perhaps she’s in trouble,’ she said.

  Through the windscreen, the road ahead of them wound upwards, away from the river. Gerhardt had been down to see the boats with his mother. He liked being on his own with his mother, without the new baby, who always seemed to need her for something. The baby had been left behind with a nanny – the midday sun was too strong for him. When they were alone together, Gerhardt’s mother talked to him in English, told him stories about her childhood in Cape Town, and girlhood in Beirut, where her father was a banker, and the handsome German diplomat who’d wooed her away from her family and set her up with her own house in Leipzig.

  The girl walked over to the car and leant in towards the open window, smiling. Her broad mouth had lots of very white teeth. ‘Yes?’ said Gerhardt’s mother . . .

  Gerhardt heard some shouting from outside on the street. He blinked himself out of his daydream. His attention was caught by some French children, in those funny black overalls they wore, chucking pebbles at the pigeons on the pavement, and shrieking in hilarity as the birds flapped away. They were probably the same age as he’d been, when he’d been driven like a prince around Bucharest in his father’s car that summer. How thin their arms were, he thought, how pinched their faces.

  ‘So, what does Kieffer need me for?’ Gerhardt said as they turned into avenue Foch. />
  ‘The detectors have picked up an English terrorist and a wireless set,’ Joseph said, speeding up again, even though they were almost there.

  ‘I bet Kieffer’s pleased,’ said Gerhardt.

  ‘Like the cat that’s got the fucking cream, mate,’ said Josef, as they drove through the double avenue of bare plane trees, cutting between the huge blond buildings. ‘So obviously, you’re needed for the next couple of days. But like I said, next time we’re off together, I’ll show you the sights. And I mean the real sights, not this tourist nonsense, know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes. Great,’ Gerhardt said, not knowing if he did understand. From what he’d heard, Josef’s idea of sightseeing involved absinthe and dubious side alleys near Sacré-Cœur. He looked out of the window, wondering what exactly he’d be asked to do. Would Kieffer question the agent himself, or would there be others involved? Nobody had really explained what his duties were, other than being available for translation at all times. He was glad they’d caught one of the British saboteurs, though. It was a British bomb that had killed his little brother, sent his mother dead-eyed and snivelling to shuffle through her existence as if she were herself a ghost.

  Josef skidded to a halt. The gate guard told them there was a van in the driveway, so they left the car outside. The guard, recognising them, didn’t bother to check their ID, but let them straight through the side entrance. The walls of 84 avenue Foch rose up like a white cliff face. The boxy black wireless-detector van almost filled the driveway. It had reversed in, so its back doors opened to the front of the building. The intelligence crew were just getting out, falling like shadows onto the little green square of lawn. The front door opened behind the van, and Kieffer strode out.

  ‘Ah, Vogt, we found you, good, good!’ He was smiling, and Gerhardt thought of what Josef said – like the cat that’s got the cream. ‘Sorry to drag you in from your night off, but as you’ll see, an interpreter will be essential. She was caught in the act of transmitting. We’ve got her crystals, too.’

  Gerhardt started. Had he heard Kieffer say ‘she’ and ‘her’? Surely he must have been mistaken. But at that moment a figure emerged from the back of the van: slight, with long auburn hair, wearing a dark blue jacket. She looked straight at him. There was a dribble of blood, like a red teardrop, running down one cheek. There was something familiar about her. Then the intelligence officer shoved her inside the building and she was gone.

  ‘But she’s just a girl,’ Gerhardt said.

  Edie

  When the door shut, there were just the three of them: the older man who seemed as if he were in charge, and a much younger man, who seemed somewhat ill at ease. Edie guessed he must be about the same age as her. The older man lit a cigar and said something seemingly casual to the younger man, who nodded.

  A typewriter tapped in the adjoining room. The air smelled of smoke and wood polish. Edie looked around as the young man ushered her across the floor and towards the huge windows. The room had obviously once been some kind of drawing room. Maps and photographs of France were tacked to the panelling. A large desk stood on the left-hand side, near the door to the adjoining room, underneath a picture of Hitler. There was a lit fire in a hearth on the wall opposite the desk, with a piano near by. Two chairs had been placed near the windows: bloated brocade and toffee-coloured wood.

  The older man motioned for Edie to sit, so she did, perching on an overstuffed chair, slippery beneath her thighs. He said something to the younger man, who sat next to her, tipped forward on the edge of his seat. The older man remained standing, puffing his cigar. Edie looked away, ignoring him. The less she said, the better.

  ‘He just wants to know your name,’ the interpreter said. His English was perfect, but he had an odd accent. Edie wasn’t going to be caught out so easily.

  ‘Je m’appelle Yvette Colbert,’ she replied.

  The older man snorted and took a few steps across to the hearth to tap a head of cigar ash into the fire. ‘He knows you’re not Yvette. He knows you’re not French, and that you speak English. That’s why I’m here,’ the interpreter said. Edie shrugged as if she didn’t understand.

  The interpreter looked up at the older man, who flattened his lips together and shook his head, walking back towards them, before saying something else in German. ‘He says it will be easier all round if you just drop the pretence,’ the interpreter said.

  Edie looked resolutely out of the window towards empty treetops and beyond. The older man knelt down next to her and began to talk softly in German-accented French. ‘What’s happened must be a terrible shock, I know. It can’t be easy for you.’ His eyes were searching for contact with hers, she knew, but she looked past the wavy chestnut hair, streaked with grey, and the forehead like a ploughed field, and thought about how on earth she could escape from this place. ‘You have your job to do and I have mine. But in the end we are just doing our best in the situation we find ourselves in. We must help each other. Nobody needs to get hurt.’ He patted her knee, and she flinched. Her stomach churned and the smell of her sick was putrid-sweet in her nostrils. Her forehead stung from the cut.

  She heard the interpreter say something in German to the older man, who barked an impatient response. Edie stared at the scratchy branches cutting the pale-gold afternoon sky. If she could hold out then it might give Felix, Justine and Claude a chance to get away, she thought. But how would they know she’d been captured? She wasn’t due to meet up with Justine again for days. If they didn’t hear from her they’d probably just assume she’d had to find a new safe house, like last time. If only she could alert London.

  When she didn’t respond the older man stood up and began to pace around the room. ‘There is a spy in your organisation. You may as well comply,’ he said in French. Edie remained mute, focusing on the way the slanting afternoon sunlight gilded the trees, trying not to hear what was being said. ‘Yes, there is. We are getting information direct from Baker Street, in fact.’ It couldn’t be true; it must merely be a tactic to get her to talk.

  ‘We know all about your Miss Atkins, your Major Buckmaster, everyone at Norgeby House,’ the interpreter chipped in in English. She tried to keep her face as expressionless as possible, although it felt as if her innards were being clawed out.

  ‘I don’t know what you want with me. My name is Yvette Colbert and I am a piano teacher,’ Edie said in French, deliberately avoiding eye contact with the English interpreter.

  ‘Then why don’t you come over here and play for us?’ The older man gestured towards the piano, smooth as amber in the light from the big window. She held up her cuffed hands. He said something to the interpreter, who went to the desk and said a few words into the telephone. Moments later a large man heaved into the room, a set of keys clinking at his belt. He gave the Nazi salute, and the two men returned the gesture. He lumbered over to her. She watched his stubby fingers turn the key in the lock. He breathed heavily – he must have come up from downstairs – he had halitosis.

  ‘Well, come on then, let’s hear it!’ said the older man as her hands were freed.

  Edie pushed herself up from her seat. She saw the large man give the handcuffs and key to the interpreter on his way out. The door thudded behind him. She walked towards the piano; the older man stepped aside as she passed. She sat down at the piano stool. ‘But what should I play?’ she said, pointing to the empty music rack. ‘There is no score here.’ Even though she spoke in French her gesture must have made it clear what she was asking.

  It was the interpreter who replied, ‘Beethoven.’ And the older man nodded his agreement.

  Her fingers touched the keys. They think I’m going to play ‘Für Elise’, she thought. Anyone with even a few weeks of piano lessons can play that one, and hope to get away with it. But instead she began to play the Moonlight Sonata. She fumbled at first, hit a wrong note, saw the older man draw breath, ready to interrupt and humiliate her, but then she closed her eyes, continued, and she was good: not brilliant, but good
– good enough to teach spoilt little Parisian children, at least. They let her finish the whole piece; a full fifteen minutes playing blind, filling the room with smooth, rich sound.

  When she stopped, she opened her eyes and saw the older man stub out the remains of his cigar. He clapped, and the interpreter joined in. Did she know the Moonlight Sonata was Herr Hitler’s favourite piece? the interpreter asked in English. Did she know the bombing raid on an English city called Coventry was codenamed ‘Moonlight Sonata’, on Herr Hitler’s orders? The older man flashed her a wide smile as the interpreter spoke, watching her carefully, but Edie shrugged, said she didn’t understand English, and shut the piano lid. She refused to even glance at the interpreter.

  The older man walked over and stood behind her as she sat, so close that his uniform brushed against her hair. She shivered. ‘You played very prettily, but it proves nothing. There’s no evidence that you teach the piano. However, the evidence that you transmit coded messages to the enemy is incontrovertible,’ he said. She could hear him breathing, feel the fabric of his jacket against the back of her head, smell his cologne, his cigar smoke.

  Start from the truth and work sideways. Hide in plain sight. Those were the maxims they’d been taught in training. If they threw her into Fresnes Prison for non-compliance there would be no chance of alerting the rest of the cell, or Miss Atkins either.

  ‘Let me explain,’ Edie said, looking down at the smooth expanse of honey-coloured wood. ‘I was asked to do this wireless transmission as a favour for a friend of a friend; I know Morse code – before the war I trained as a telegraph operator, you see. But the content of the messages has nothing to do with me. I just transmitted what I was told. I don’t know anything about them; it’s all just nonsense as far as I’m concerned. I do it for the money. There’s no money in piano teaching these days. And the alternative . . .’ She paused, turning on the piano stool so she could make eye contact with him. ‘I’m sure you know what the alternative would be. How else does a girl make money in Paris these days?’