The English Agent Read online

  ‘Henri, please!’

  ‘Yes, little chicken, I’m coming.’ He plucked one of the fruits from the top of the pallet and began the three paces to the bedroom, remembering to sidestep so as not to trip over her shoes, which she always kicked off in the corridor.

  He pushed open the door. She’d left the shutters open. Moonlight caught the edges of things: a mirror; a coverlet; a shoulder; a cheek. ‘My love, my chéri!’ she said. ‘Ah, what’s that smell? It smells like sunshine!’

  He walked over to where she sat up in bed, propped up with bolsters and pillows, loose hair running like a silver stream over her bare shoulders. ‘I have something for you,’ he said, holding the orange behind his back and leaning towards her, ‘but first you must pay.’ She tipped her face up so her lips met his. He never tired of them: so soft and plump, like ripe plums picked straight off the tree. There were other women – of course there would always be other women, with firmer breasts, slimmer thighs – but Jeannot’s lips . . . ah, no other woman had Jeannot’s lips.

  She pulled away. ‘I hope it’s my diamond earrings,’ she said, laughing. It had become a bit of a joke between them.

  ‘Not this time, I’m afraid, chicken,’ he said, handing over the orange, ‘but soon, I hope.’

  ‘Oh chéri, thank you. How long has it been since we had oranges? Not since Marseille, and even then – oh, I can’t remember. So sweet. Sweet like you, Henri. You are always so sweet to me. Shall we eat it now? Shall we be very naughty and have a midnight feast, like children, and not care about the juice on the sheets?’ She laughed again, a gushing laugh, as if she were skipping home from school on a sunny day. How he loved her when she was like this. He wanted to keep her like this forever, even though experience told him that when the moon waned again she’d be all tears, and he’d have to lock the knife drawer. So it went with her: she was either deliriously happy or suffocating with despair, waxing and waning with the moon. Poor Jeannot.

  ‘Let us feast on this orange first, and then I shall feast on you!’ he said, beginning to unbutton his shirt. ‘And if you are a very good girl, then perhaps tomorrow we can go shopping for something more exciting than black market fruit.’

  He thought about the satchel with post for the agents; he’d leave it with the barman at Café Colisee, who’d pass it on to the agents. He thought about the Photostats he’d made of some of the London post, safely in the canister at the bottom of the pallet of oranges, which he’d deliver in person to 84 avenue Foch after breakfast, just as a taster, for Boemelburg’s successor.

  He unbuckled his belt. ‘How would you like to have lunch at the Lucas Carton, and then maybe we could go to the Champs-Élysées?’ he said. ‘I have seen a frock in Rochas that would look perfect on you, chicken.’

  Chapter 9

  Gerhardt

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

  ‘Oh, I do apologise. I thought this was the Ambassador’s car,’ said the girl, her smile dropping away.

  ‘It is,’ said Gerhardt’s mother. There was a pause.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you,’ said the girl, beginning to turn away . . .

  ‘Let’s get this sorted out then,’ said Josef, taking his hands off the steering wheel and rubbing them together. Gerhardt blinked himself out of the memory. The staff car had stopped outside one of the magnificent buildings in place des États-Unis: five-storey blocks with grey roofs like cloche hats above their giant cream façades. In the centre of the square was a small park: a smudge of green grass, an oily grey pond, and a scrawl of leafless trees.

  ‘You can wait here, Josef,’ said Norbert from the back seat, shunting the prisoner towards the door.

  ‘No, no, I’m coming with, mate,’ said Josef, pulling the key out of the ignition. A woman in a black coat hurried along the pavement beside them, pulling a little boy in a blue cap. She cast a worried glance at the car, and sped on, tugging the boy behind her. Other than that, the place was empty. Gerhardt got out of the car to join the others. Church bells were ringing in the distance. The sunshine had been bright on the way here, but the tall houses cast giant shadows over the square, and the air was cold as a crypt. The woman and boy had gone now.

  Josef bounded in front as they began to walk towards what they called ‘the house prison’. The English girl stumbled on the edge of the kerb, but Norbert grasped her arm and held her upright, then marched her towards the vast double doors in the curved stone surround. Gerhardt followed; until yesterday he hadn’t even known that the Sicherheitsdienst had its own prison. But then, he’d only been in the job a short time; there were probably all kinds of things that went on in the SD that he didn’t know about.

  The doors opened from inside as they approached – someone had been watching, waiting for their arrival. A thin woman nodded curtly at them as they entered, and closed the heavy wooden doors softly behind them. They were inside a mirrored hallway, with black-and-white tiles on the floor and a marble staircase winding upwards. The air was very still, like a chapel. Gerhardt could see them all reflected again and again in the mirrors, as if there were a whole troop of them, instead of just three young men escorting a frightened girl. ‘This way,’ the woman said in a reedy voice, opening a door he hadn’t noticed, concealed by a mirrored panel off to one side. Narrow steps led down into the darkness.

  Josef sprang ahead, as if he could hardly wait. Norbert shoved the girl in front of him and Gerhardt brought up the rear. He had only descended a couple of steps when the thin woman shut the door behind him, and they were encased in gloom, footfalls loud in the darkness. Nobody spoke.

  At the bottom, the stairwell opened out into a cool, whitewashed space with low ceilings and alcoves, lit by a bare bulb. But there were no longer any bottles of wine or kegs of Calvados in the cellar; instead there was a chair with buckled leather straps hanging from the arms, and a bath full of water. To one side two men sat at a card table with what looked like a toolbox. They were reading through some documents. As the group arrived, the men got up, came over and shook everyone’s hands except the prisoner’s; they ignored her completely. One was short and wiry, with round spectacles perched on a long nose. The other was bigger and broader, with thin hair smeared across his pate and the complexion of an overripe peach. Nobody introduced themself: no names were mentioned whatsoever.

  The two men cross-referenced the information they had with the file Norbert had brought from the SD headquarters. They appeared satisfied and asked Norbert to escort the prisoner to the chair with the straps. Gerhardt looked at the girl’s face as she sat down, but it was as blank as the façades of the buildings in place des États-Unis: she didn’t show any emotion at all. Norbert undid the girl’s cuffs and strapped her arms to the chair, using the buckled straps that were attached. He had to do them up on the tightest notch because her arms were so slender. After that, Norbert asked whether he was still needed and the two men said no, he could go, they could take it from here; everything was in order. Josef wanted to stay and watch, but he had to drive Norbert back to avenue Foch, so they both left, boots ringing on the stone steps and door clicking shut at the top. The wiry man was ticking things off on the forms, and the big one was taking some tools out of the box and placing them on the green baize.

  Gerhardt watched. He had a schoolfriend who had joined the Abwehr. He’d heard that the SD handled interrogation differently from the Abwehr, but just how, he wasn’t sure. Next time he saw his friend, they could compare notes. The SD had an impressive record of agent capture and counter-intelligence work. It would be interesting to see how they worked.

  He thought, briefly, about the girl’s suicide attempt. Just for a moment, alone in her room with her, he’d almost liked her, felt sorry for her. She’d reminded him a little of Lisel. But that feeling had passed – she was a terrorist, after all.

  The girl sat motionl
ess in the chair and the interrogators checked their notes, muttering to each other and shuffling the pages. It was just a matter of process, Gerhardt thought. They would extract the information, and he would interpret. He really only had a passing interest in what was about to take place. He didn’t care about the girl, and he certainly didn’t feel complicit in anything.

  Not then, not before it all began.

  Edie

  All night they’d kept her awake. Suicide watch, the interpreter called it, but she knew it was just a technique to try to get her to talk, waking her with a torch in her eyes and a slap in the face every time her head lolled forwards. But they’d covered that in training. She kept her mouth shut. At first light they’d bundled her in the car and taken her to this calmly impressive building in the diplomatic quarter.

  In the cellar the interpreter said that all she had to do was to give her security check and it would all be over, but she kept her mouth shut tight as she’d done all night, so the other men rolled up their sleeves, pulled her out of the chair and pushed her into the bathtub. Icy water rose up and over her head. She gasped at the shock of the cold, drawing water into her lungs and choking, but as soon as she resurfaced and took a breath they pushed her down again. And again. And each time there was water in her ears and nose and the gargling rush of it as she came back up.

  He said just tell me your security check and this will be over, but she shook her head. No. No! And the hands were on her shoulders, pushing her down again, and the water engulfed her. Hauled up, gasping, she saw his face through a liquid veil. You can make it stop, just tell them, tell them and it will all be over, he said, but she set her jaws and prepared to hold her breath again. The jab of their fingers in her collarbone. Down she went, thinking of witch hunts and ducking stools: if you float you’re guilty; if you sink, you’re dead.

  The white enamel bath was like the whites of the interpreter’s eyes and his chattering teeth as they pulled her up again, his face close to hers. Just say something, and I can make this stop, he said, and she saw that his hands were clutched together, as if in prayer. But then they had her down into the icy waterfall again before she’d had the chance to draw breath, and the pain bit her lungs and she remembered how it was, in the darkness with the sirens and the roar of the bomb blast and the rush of water and the American’s dead weight on top of her and how she’d squirmed and struggled but couldn’t break free. And she was there underneath him in the water, in the blackness. In the blackness.

  Then she was in the chair where the buckles bit and tore at her wet flesh and the blood ran down to the floor, turning the stone pink-brown where it pooled. Her throat was raw from choking, lungs scoured. Please just tell me your security check – she could hear the interpreter’s voice, but she couldn’t see him. He must be behind her. You can make all this stop, he said. One of the men was reaching for something from the table. And she remembered the American with his greedy tongue and smoky breath and she thought that it couldn’t be worse than that, nothing they did could be worse than what he’d done. So she shook her head. No. She saw the man pick up a pair of pliers. Dear God, just tell them and make it stop – the interpreter’s voice was urgent, and she turned her head to look at him.

  Gerhardt

  It was only when she turned, hair flattened wet, eyes huge with fear, that he finally realised. How stupid he was not to have noticed before. ‘Halt!’ he shouted.

  The two men paused, open-mouthed and frowning. ‘There’s something I have to confirm with Kieffer before we can continue,’ Gerhardt said.

  The girl prisoner – she was the girl from place de la Madeleine, the girl he’d helped the day he’d come down for his interview with Boemelburg. She was the girl with the heavy suitcase and the petrified eyes, drenched in the winter rain. Gerhardt’s eyes took in the scene in front of him now as if clicking the shutter on a camera: the drenched girl, the uniformed man leaning over her with the pliers. Gerhardt turned and ran up the stone cellar steps two at a time.

  The mirrored hallway was empty, the narrow-faced woman nowhere to be seen. He called out, but nobody answered. A door opposite was ajar, so he scudded across the chequered floor and into a reception room, dodging a chaise longue and a coffee table to reach a telephone perched on top of a polished walnut tallboy in the corner. ‘What are you doing?’ A nasal voice from across the room. In his haste he hadn’t seen her there, regarding him, crow-like, from her vantage point on the window seat.

  ‘I need to contact Major Kieffer. It’s a matter of great urgency,’ he said.

  ‘My orders were not to disturb him until the job was complete,’ she replied.

  ‘But some new information has come to light,’ he said.

  ‘So soon?’ she drawled, raising her eyebrows and tapping ash from the end of her cigarette holder into a large shell that lay next to her on the seat. ‘Well, that’s quick work. Very well. But don’t be long. I’m expecting a call myself.’

  Gerhardt lifted the receiver and dialled.

  ‘Kieffer speaking.’

  ‘It’s Vogt, sir.’

  ‘That was fast. Well done. What’s the check?’

  ‘I don’t have the check, sir.’

  Suddenly Gerhardt realised how stupid he’d been. All they wanted was her security check, and he didn’t have that. All he had was – well, what did he have? Evidence of a possible rendezvous point for herself and her cell, that was all.

  ‘Well, why the hell are you calling me now? Get on with it and call me again when you have it. I’m going out now.’

  ‘But I have other information, about her colleagues,’ Gerhardt said. ‘Her cell meets in a room above the Lucas Carton. There are three of them: a young man with blonde hair, a woman with black hair, and an older man with a limp.’ He remembered it all now: glimpsing those three inside the room as the door opened, and seeing her walk off into the rain with the tall man later on.

  ‘She told you all that, but didn’t tell you her security check? God in heaven! As long as I live I will never fathom the British psyche. We need her check, Vogt. As soon as possible. We need to make this Funkspiel work.’

  Gerhardt could sense that Kieffer was about to hang up on him. And if he did there would be no choice but to go back down to the cellar and witness – and be party to – no, it was intolerable. ‘But surely you can use them – her colleagues – if you bring them in?’ he said.

  ‘Of course we could use them, but . . . oh, I see what you mean.’ Gerhardt hadn’t really meant anything, hadn’t paused to think of a strategy. He kept quiet. ‘You mean we should bring them in and let her see we have them, use her instinct to protect her colleagues as leverage. Very good, Vogt. If we play our cards right, we might be able to get even more out of her than merely her security check. What is it the British say? Softly, softly catchee monkey or some nonsense like that? Right, tell the boys to pause, and I’ll get Josef over with the car. Don’t tell her what’s happening, though. Don’t tell her anything.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Oh, and well done, Vogt. I like a man who can take a situation and work sideways. I think you may have found your vocation.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  When Gerhardt hung up, he told the crow-woman that a car was coming to take the girl back to avenue Foch. He had an uncomfortable feeling as he walked across the mirrored hallway towards the cellar door, seeing both sides of himself at the same time: endlessly reflecting. But interrupting the interrogation, passing on the information about the girl’s colleagues – it was the right thing to do, wasn’t it?

  Dericourt

  Henri touched Jeannot’s thigh under the tablecloth. The fabric of her dress was as thin as flower petals, and he could feel her stocking tops. ‘When Kieffer gets back, you need to make your excuses and leave, chicken,’ he said, watching her scrape the last of her duck à l’orange onto her fork and into her pouting mouth. He watched her moistened lips as she chewed and swallowed the tender meat.

  ‘But why,
chéri? Can’t I stay for coffee, at least?’

  He lifted his hand from her thigh, reached into his pocket, took out a roll of notes, and peeled a couple off for her. ‘Buy yourself a coffee in one of the cafés over there.’ He nodded to the window next to their table, through which they could see all of place de la Madeleine, the circling black cars a jet necklace round a grubby décolletage. ‘I’ll meet you very soon, but first Kieffer and I have business to discuss. It would only bore you, chicken.’

  Jeannot shrugged and put her knife and fork neatly beside each other on the clean plate, then dabbed at the side of her mouth with one of the thick white napkins. Only then did she pluck the notes from his outstretched hand, and tuck them inside her crocodile clutch.

  Just then Kieffer returned, winding his way through the crowded restaurant. Watching him, Henri was reminded of a ball on a bagatelle board, ricocheting until gently coming to rest at their table. Kieffer smiled as if he’d just hit a top-scoring triple eighteen. He apologised for having to leave them for so long during the meal, claiming to have had a work issue to attend to, then took a seat on the other side of Jeannot, who was now applying lipstick, gazing at herself in her compact. She smacked her lips and clicked it shut. Then she checked her watch (a rather nice British Harwood – he’d found it in a box of discarded agents’ things in the hangar at the airfield, and it seemed a shame to let it go to waste). ‘It has been a very great pleasure to meet you, Monsieur Kieffer,’ she said. ‘But I’m afraid I have to run, as I have a hair appointment.’ She glanced across at Henri when she said this, who gave a little nod of acceptance – a perfect reason to cut short her lunch date.