The English Agent Read online

  Margaret didn’t look up. Her head was bent low over her work, and her fingers flurried at the keys.

  Now Vera pushed the whole piece of orange into her mouth, gorging on the glorious swollen ripeness of it. But as she swallowed, the acidic juice caught the raw flesh of her sore throat and she found herself choking.

  Damn that Dericourt. Damn him.

  Edie

  Kieffer, talking in German, strode towards them, arms outstretched. ‘He’s got some new music. He wants you to play for him,’ the interpreter said. Edie nodded and went to sit down on the piano stool. The ivory keys were like teeth, running a smile through the octaves. The interpreter stood behind her. There was music on the stand; the title was in German. Kieffer grinned and nodded at the score. He reminded her of the Cheshire Cat from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, always smiling. She wondered if he’d disappear when things got awkward, like the Cat did.

  ‘Whenever you’re ready,’ the interpreter said. Her fingers touched the keys, and she began. It was an anodyne little tune: lilting, old-fashioned, but pleasant enough. It was only when the interpreter leant over and turned the page for her that she saw the lyrics, and then he began to sing. His voice, deep and complex, suddenly turned the bland little melody into something else: richer, sadder. Kieffer smiled as he stood watching them perform.

  When they reached the end, Kieffer applauded them both, and said something to the interpreter, who told Edie that they were free to go. ‘That’s it?’ Edie said.

  ‘He just wanted to break the morning up,’ the interpreter said. ‘He gets bored by mid-morning, needs a little boost.’ Kieffer said something else, before going back to sit behind his desk. ‘He wants us to perform for a s-staff party he’s planning,’ the interpreter added. ‘He says we are to practise here every morning after your scheduled transmission is completed.’

  Edie got up and walked past Kieffer towards the door. She paused in the doorway and turned to the interpreter who was escorting her out. ‘What was the song called? What was it about?’ she said.

  ‘ “Im Traum hast du mir alles erlaubt”,’ he replied. ‘It’s from a film where a young officer falls in love with a girl he shouldn’t. It’s a love song, about forbidden love.’

  ‘And what does the name of the song mean?’ she said. She caught his gaze then, and that’s when she was certain: certain he recognised her too, remembered the rainy day at place de la Madeleine, before it all began.

  ‘In the dream you allowed me everything,’ he replied.

  Gerhardt

  Kieffer shunted them out of his office as if he were sending children out for playtime. Gerhardt followed the English prisoner out of the door and along the corridor towards the stairs, hearing the usual sounds of the building: the tap of typewriters as they passed the clerks’ office, the flush of a toilet chain, someone whistling tunelessly, a door slamming, and the creak-thud of the girl prisoner trudging slowly back up to her room, with its barred window.

  Except she wasn’t really a prisoner any more, Gerhardt thought, watching the fabric of her blue dress sway as her slender legs pushed on up the stairwell. She’d stopped being a prisoner the day he brought her back from place des États-Unis and they’d undone her handcuffs, the day she transmitted back to her colleagues in London. She’d changed sides. What would the British call her now, he wondered, not a prisoner – a collaborator, a traitor, a double agent?

  He watched her climb, leaning heavily on the banister, a broken shoe catching on the brown lino as she made her way slowly upwards.

  At the top of the first staircase she hesitated, looking back at him, and he remembered the night when he’d talked her in off the ledge. He’d only done it because she was useful to them, but even so – he followed her as she continued to climb. Of course, it wasn’t really her choice to swap sides. She’d thought she was doing a deal, saving her friends. Gerhardt felt a stab of guilt. She still didn’t know what the Gestapo boys had done to her friends. If she were to know, what then? If she refused to transmit for Dr Goetz, stopped being useful and became instead a liability, what would happen to her then?

  They’d reached the top of one flight of stairs now, and she wearily turned the corner and began to climb the next. Gerhardt followed. He had told her that the reason Kieffer wanted them to practise the song was for a staff party. What he’d failed to mention was the party was planned to celebrate the end of the Funkspiel, when her part would be played out, and she’d no longer be of any use to the SD here. Gerhardt, suddenly, inexplicably, felt as if he wanted to weep.

  The stairs seemed to go on endlessly and pointlessly upwards, the wooden banisters smooth from the hands of so many tired servants over the years. At last they reached the top, the little dark corridor that contained her room. He followed her, seeing her safely to her door, as he had done many times already, and as he’d continue to do until – until when? How long would things carry on like this?

  ‘Kieffer makes me feel like a performing monkey,’ she said, waiting at the entrance to her room as he fumbled with the key in the lock.

  There was nobody about, nobody to hear his disloyalty. ‘I know. He does me, too.’

  The door swung open. Now was the time when he’d let her go, lock the door behind her, go back downstairs to work on written translation. Or, if it wasn’t busy, do some filing for the clerks and generally ‘make himself useful’ as Kieffer put it. (Kieffer said he’d been ‘very useful’ so far and had mentioned as much in a telephone call to Boemelburg, who had in turn told the Count. His father had written asking Gerhardt to detail precisely what he was doing that was ‘very useful’, claiming to be fascinated by the SD machine, telling his son to leave nothing out of his explanations.)

  Gerhardt watched her go inside, wondering what she did there in the hours she spent alone between transmissions, what she thought about when she was ceaselessly pacing the floor at night. He began to close the door behind her, shutting out the slender silhouette of her that stood uncertainly by the little barred window. ‘You can come in, if you want,’ she said, half turning, catching his eye. ‘Unless you have something else you have to do?’

  Chapter 14

  Vera

  How horrid the Tube had been this morning, Vera thought, pushing up the crowded steps of Baker Street Station towards the patch of greyish daylight, squeezed and shoved by the rush of commuters. There had been an air raid last night – reprisal for the Berlin attacks, no doubt – and the Tube stations had filled up with sheltering families. It was like the Blitz all over again. One had rather thought Hitler was occupied elsewhere, but there always had to be a bit of tit-for-tat, she supposed. Vera reached the top and breathed in, but the air was thick with fog and traffic fumes. She frowned and began to hurry down Baker Street towards Norgeby House.

  The dirty mist washed her face as she forged ahead. Buses streamed past in a red blur, splashing oily puddles in the gutter. There was a tug in her abdomen. Surely not that, not today? She ignored it and strode on. There was a nagging pain in her right temple – she hadn’t managed to get back to sleep properly after that blasted air raid. A man in a bowler hat barged past, causing her to turn awkwardly on her ankle, a pain shooting up the inside of her calf. He didn’t even pause to say sorry. He leapt onto the bus that had just disgorged passengers at the stop ahead, and the bus swerved away.

  She saw the knot of bus passengers disentangling ahead of her on the pavement, and she recognised one, a head taller than the others, jagged gait: Buckmaster. Watching him, she thought of a stick insect she’d kept in a jar as a child: awkward legs scratching up against the glass. Her mother had told her to set it free, but she’d kept it there, tumbling about in its glass prison, until one day she’d come back from a hunting trip with her brothers to find it motionless: dead.

  Norgeby House now reared up beside her. Buckmaster stepped underneath the curved glass awning and disappeared inside. She checked her watch. Yes, she was on time.

  There was that tug again, d
eep down between her stomach and her groin. She closed her eyelids slowly, as if shutting out the world would shut out the pain. But there was no release. She pushed through the front door of Norgeby House and her heels tapped against the marble floor. She began to climb the stairs up to F-Section, thinking about Dick and wondering if he’d got her last letter yet. Sometimes the post took weeks. She tried to imagine what he’d be doing now: breakfast or flight checks or PT – he’d told her all about his routine – but she struggled to remember the time difference between here and there (was it two hours or three in wintertime?) and she struggled, too, to remember his face. For some reason every time she thought of Dick, his features were overlaid with the insufferable Dericourt chap’s.

  As she reached the doorway to F-Section, there was another insistent pull in her stomach, and she realised she couldn’t possibly go in. Instead she wearily climbed the stairs to the second floor, to where F-Section shared ladies’ lavatories with N-Section, the Netherlands arm of the SOE.

  Her heels sank into the sea-green carpet as she passed the long mirror and went into the furthest cubicle and hung her handbag on the hook. She lifted her skirt, pulled down her knickers and sat down on the wooden seat. As she did so, the first wave of nausea came, a dull ache stretching across the whole of her lower belly. She leant forward and put her hands over her face, feeling the sweat begin to form at her temples. It will pass; it always passes, she told herself. A teaspoonful of bile surged up her throat, but she swallowed it back down. She let her urine pass in a hot stream. She wiped herself on the hard toilet roll, like baking parchment, and saw the red smear of blood on the slippery paper. She threw it down the toilet, frowned and checked her watch. What to do?

  Just then, she heard the lavatory door open. Two women came in. She could just make out their feet beneath the cubicle door. The crocodile courts were Margaret’s, her own secretary from F-Section, but the black patent pumps belonged to someone else, one of the N-Section girls. They were talking.

  ‘So, how’s tricks downstairs?’

  ‘Oh, you know, same old. Everything needs doing by yesterday. I’ve had this toothache since last week, and no chance to even make a dental appointment.’

  ‘Poor old you. Have you tried oil of cloves?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s just getting to that stage where – anyway, I mustn’t complain. Oh someone’s in that one—’ The door to Vera’s cubicle was nudged. ‘It’s fine, you go first, ducks.’

  The other girl went into the stall next to her. Vera heard the swish of cloth as she pulled down her knickers and the stream of urine going into the pan. They carried on their conversation all the while. Vera kept quiet. It wouldn’t do to make herself known. She needed to come up with a plan for how to deal with the curse, three days early and heavier than ever. Men just had no idea, she thought, waiting silently while the secretaries’ pointless conversation rattled on.

  There was the sound of the chain being pulled and the flush of water and the two girls swapped places. ‘Huge palaver here yesterday,’ said the voice of the patent pumps. There was the sound of a tap being turned on. ‘Something about a spy down in your lot.’

  Vera stiffened. Why would N-Section have intelligence on F-Section? What could possibly have alerted them?

  ‘No!’ came a muffled gasp from the cubicle next to her. ‘I can’t believe that, ducks. Really?’ Vera heard the rustle of toilet roll being pulled.

  ‘According to the chaps up top. I had to take down reams of shorthand about it all yesterday – thought my bally hand was going to drop off by the end of it. They even used the green telephone to call you-know-who.’

  ‘Who do they think it is?’ The toilet flushed in the next cubicle and Margaret’s court shoes disappeared out of sight.

  ‘They don’t know – they just suspect. I’ve got to type up the internal report this morning, and then it’ll be sent on up top for further action. It’s about compromises in the field, how the security breaches can’t all be coincidental, and so forth. Really, the spy could be anyone, out on operations, to do with the air transport, or even back here in Baker Street. It could even be you, Margaret!’

  At this, there was the sound of laughter. ‘If I can’t even find the time to get a tooth filled, I’m hardly likely to get the chance to lead a double life,’ said Margaret. ‘I think it’s all tosh. I can’t imagine any of ours getting up to that kind of thing.’

  Vera could picture them both, wiping their hands on the towel and primping themselves in front of the mirror, laughing at the impossibility of treachery. Sweet, pretty, young things – like that very young wireless operator she’d waved off during the last moon period: innocent. Just as Vera had been herself at that age, when she started working as a translator for the Pallas Oil Company in Bucharest. Just as she’d been when she’d met Hump at one of the German Ambassador’s parties in Bucharest, and just as she’d been the first time she went for dinner with the German Ambassador himself: Don’t. Don’t think about him. That book is closed, dear girl. Vera bit her lip and waited.

  She thought they’d never go, but eventually they did, leaving behind the scent of Penhaligon’s English Fern.

  Vera pulled her handkerchief from her jacket pocket and folded it in half, and half again. It had a lace edge, and her initials embroidered in the corner. It was a shame to ruin it, but what else could she do? She couldn’t be late, couldn’t do anything to upset Buckmaster these days. She placed the folded cloth in the gusset of her knickers, and pulled them up, hoping it would hold, sop the blood that had begun to gently seep from her. She smoothed down her skirt and picked her handbag off the hook. The pain twisted again in her stomach, but at least the nausea had passed.

  One day, she thought. One day I will no longer have to suffer through this monthly misery. Instead of the blood and the sickness I shall have a gently rounded belly, and darling Dick’s child, the heir to Felbrigg Hall, growing silently inside me. One day – one day soon, perhaps?

  She took off her watch before washing her hands thoroughly under the cold water – the hot tap had never worked. The soap wouldn’t lather properly, just slid in a creamish slick between her palms. But it would have to do. She needed to get on, couldn’t be late, not with things the way they were. She dried herself on the damp hand towel and fixed the watch back on her wrist, before checking her fingers one last time – no, there was no blood on her hands.

  Dericourt

  ‘It’s about the girl,’ Henri said, trying not to look irritated. He hated the way Kieffer only talked to him in the kitchen doorway, as if he were no better than a servant. There was a crash of metal pans from inside and the muffled sound of German swearing.

  ‘What about the girl?’ said Kieffer.

  ‘As you know, I’ve been delivering messages to London en clair from other agents in the network, but there’s been nothing from her or the other agents in her cell. Baker Street is getting suspicious. If she doesn’t write soon, they’ll get wind of your little game.’ He remembered Miss Atkins’ face as she looked at the pile of post on her desk. She wasn’t stupid, but, luckily, neither was she in charge of the outfit.

  ‘Thank you. I’ll see to it.’ Kieffer held out the brown envelope. Henri didn’t think it looked as fat as it should.

  ‘I’m flying back to England again tonight,’ Henri said, pulling out his penknife and slitting open the envelope. He hadn’t mentioned it to Jeannot. She made it so difficult; it was easier just to disappear periodically. She’d only accuse him of having an affair – as if he had the time for such pleasures these days. He began to count the notes. His thumb flicked through the money; it was as he suspected. ‘I think your accountant has made a mistake with my fee,’ he said, knowing that Kieffer handled that side of things himself. ‘This is not what was agreed. I’ll wait here while you find the shortfall and get the girl to write something to London.’ He handed the envelope back to Kieffer, noticing how his nostrils flared slightly as he took it.

  ‘Very well,’ Kieffer
said, turning away. He didn’t ask if Henri would like to wait inside. When he’d disappeared upstairs, Henri continued to stand in the doorway, leaning on the jamb, with the winter chill on one side and the blazing heat from the avenue Foch ovens on the other, one nostril breathing crisp garden air, the other stuffed with the scent of burnt fat and disinfectant. Caught on the border between two worlds, he pulled out his packet of English cigarettes and prepared to wait for his dues.

  Edie

  A knock at the door – she stiffened. It wasn’t time for her scheduled transmission. What could they want with her? ‘Come,’ she said, realising as she did so that she’d said it like they did, leaving out the ‘in’: ‘Komm’ – the German way.

  The door opened. It was Gerhardt.

  She had a name for him, now, her interpreter: Gerhardt Vogt. He’d been coming to her room after her scheduled transmission times, bringing her English tea, waiting whilst she drank it and taking the cup back to the kitchen again. She knew more than his name from those brief chats – she liked hearing about him; it helped her forget herself, even just for the few minutes it took to drink her tea. She knew that his mother was South African, that his uncle was something high up in the Nazi Party and that his little brother had been killed by an Allied bombing raid on his home town. He never mentioned his father, though. When she’d asked, he just said that his father didn’t live with his mother, that was all. She couldn’t tell him anything about herself, of course, but there was some comfort in those stolen moments, and she found herself looking forward to them.

  The clear Paris sunlight washed his dark SD uniform into a pale grey; it could almost have passed for an RAF uniform – if he’d only been born a few hundred miles west. ‘Kieffer says you must write to London,’ he said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Your Miss Atkins is suspicious because she hasn’t heard from you. Other agents have been sending messages back with the new Lysander pilot.’