A week later Plum was back, this time accompanied by foulmouthed Mancunian called Rose, a former Malayan policeman who had made himself a name as a Circus sniffer dog. Rose questioned me as roughly as if I were myself a part of the deception. But when I was about to lose my temper he disarmed me by declaring that, on the evidence available, the Brandt organisation was innocent of misdoing.
Yet in the minds of such people as this, suspicions of one kind only fired suspicions of another, and the question mark hanging over Bella’s father, Feliks, had not gone away. If the father was bad, then the daughter must know it, went the reasoning. And if she knew and had not said it, then she was bad as well. Moscow Centre, like the Circus, was well known for recruiting entire families. A father-and-daughter team was eminently plausible. Soon, without any solid evidence I was aware of, London Station began to peddle the notion that Feliks had been responsible for the betrayals five years ago.
Inevitably, this placed Bella in an even more sinister light. There was talk of ordering her to London and grilling her, but here my authority as Brandt’s case officer held sway. Impossible, I advised London Station. Brandt would never stand for it. Very well, came the answer—typical of Haydon’s cavalier approach—bring them both over and Brandt can sit in while we interrogate the girl. This time I was sufficiently moved to fly back to London myself, where I insisted on stating my case personally to Bill. I entered his room to find him stretched out on a chaise longue, for he affected the eccentricity of never sitting at his desk. A joss stick was burning from an old ginger jar.
“Maybe Brother Brandt isn’t as prickly as you think, Master Ned,” he said accusingly, peering at me over his half-framed spectacles. “Maybe you’re the prickly one?”
“He’s besotted with her,” I said.
“Are you?”
“If we start accusing his girl in front of him, he’ll go crazy. He lives for her. He’d tell us to go to hell and dismantle the network, and I doubt whether anyone else could run it.”
Haydon pondered this: “The Garibaldi of the Baltic. Well, well. Still, Garibaldi wasn’t much bloody good, was he?” He waited for me to answer but I preferred to take his question as rhetorical. “Those jokers she shacked up in the forest with,” he drawled finally. “Does she talk about them?”
“She doesn’t talk about any of it. Brandt does, she doesn’t.”
“So what does she talk about?”
“Nothing much. If she says anything of significance, it’s usually in Latvian and Brandt translates or not as he think fit. Otherwise she just smiles and looks.”
“At you?”
“At him.”
“And she’s quite a looker, I gather.”
“She’s attractive, I suppose. Yes.”
Once more he took his time to consider this. “Sounds to me like the ideal woman,” he pronounced. “Smiles and looks, keeps quiet, fucks—what more can you ask?” He again examined me quizzically over his spectacles. “Do you mean she doesn’t even speak German? She must do, coming from up there. Don’t be daft.”
“She speaks German reluctantly when she’s got no choice. Speaking Latvian’s a patriotic act. German isn’t.”
“Good tits?”
“Not bad.”
“Couldn’t you get alongside her a bit more? Without rocking the lovers’ boat, obviously. Just the answers to a few basic questions would be a help. Nothing dramatic. Just whether she’s the real thing, or whether Brother Brandt smuggled her into the nest in a warming pan—or whether Moscow Centre did, of course. See what you can get out of her. He’s not her natural father, you realise that, I suppose. He can’t be.”
“Who isn’t?” For a confused moment I had thought he was still talking about Brandt.
“Her daddy. Feliks. The one who got shot or didn’t. The farmer. According to the record, she was born January ’45, wasn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Ergo, conceived around April ’44. At which time—if Brother Brandt’s to be believed—her supposed daddy was languishing in a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany. Mind you, we shouldn’t be too straitlaced about it. No great feat of skill, I suppose, to get yourself knocked up while your old man’s in the pen. Still every little detail helps when we’re trying to decide whether to abort a network which may have run its course.”
I was grateful for Mabel’s company that night, even if we had not yet found our form as the great lovers we were so anxious to become. But of course I didn’t tell her anything of my business, least of all about Bella. As a Vetting girl, Mabel was on the routine side of the Circus. It would have been quite improper for me to share my problems with her. If we had already been married—well, that might have been a different thing. Meanwhile, Bella must remain my secret.
And she did. Back in my solitary bed in Hamburg I thought of Bella and little else. The double mystery of her—as a woman and as a potential traitor—elevated her to an object of almost unlimited danger to me. I saw her no longer as a fringe figure of our organisation but its destiny. Her virtue as ours. If Bella was pure, so was the network. But if she as the plaything of another service— a deceiver planted on us to tempt and weaken and ultimately betray us—then the integrity of those round her was soiled with her own, and the network would indeed, as Haydon put it, have run its course.
I closed my eyes and saw her gaze upon me, sunny and beckoning. I felt again the softness of her kisses each time we greeted one another—always, as it seemed to me, held for a fraction longer than formality required. I pictured her liquid body in its different poses, and turned it over and over in my imagination in the same way that I contemplated the possibilities of her treason. I remembered Haydon’s suggestion that I could try to “get alongside her,” and discovered I was incapable of separating my sense of duty from my desires.
I retold myself the story of her escape, questioning it at every stage. Had she got away before the shooting or during it? And how? Had some lover among the security troops tipped her off? Had there been a shooting at all? And why did she not grieve more for her dead father, instead of making love to Brandt? Even her happiness seemed to speak against her. I imagined her in the forest, with the cut-throats and outlaws. Did each man take her at his will, or did she live now with this one, now with that? I dreamed of her, naked in the forest and myself naked with her. I awoke ashamed of myself and put through an early-morning call to Mabel.
Did I understand myself? I doubt it. I knew little about women, beautiful women least of all. I am sure it never occurred to me that finding fault with Bella might be my way of weakening her sexual hold on me. Determined on the straight path, I wrote to Mabel daily. Meanwhile I fixed on the Daisy’s forthcoming mission as the perfect opportunity to undertake a hostile questioning of Bella. The weather was turning foul, which was what suited the Daisy best. It was autumn and the nights were lengthening. The Daisy liked the dark too.
“Crew stand by to sail Monday,” said London Station’s first signal. The second, which did not arrive till Friday evening, gave their destination as the Narva Bay in northern Estonia, not a hundred miles west of Leningrad. Never before had the Daisy ventured so far along the Russian seaboard; only rarely had she been used in support of non-Latvian patriots.
“I would give my eyes,” I told Brandt.
“You’re too damn dangerous, Ned,” he replied, clapping me on the shoulder. “Be seasick four days, lie in your bunk, get in the way, what the hell?”
We both knew it was impossible. The most Head Office had ever granted me was a night spin round the island of Bornholm, and even that had been like drawing teeth.
On the Saturday night we gathered in the farmhouse. Kazimirs and Antons Durba arrived together in the van. It was Antons’s turn to go to sea. With such a small operational crew, everyone had to know everything, everyone had to be interchangeable. There was no more drink. From now on, they were a dry ship. Kazimirs had brought lobsters. He cooked them elaborately, with a sauce that he was famous for, while Bella pl
ayed cabin girl to him, fetching and carrying and being decorative. When we had eaten, Bella cleared the table and I spread the charts under the hanging overhead lamp.
Brandt had said six days. It was an optimistic guess. From the Kieler Förde the Daisy would make for open sea, passing Bornholm on the Swedish side. On reaching the Swedish land of Gotland she would put in at Sundre on the southern tip, refuel and top up her provisions. While refuelling, she would be approached by two men, one of whom would ask if they had any herring. They were to reply: “Only in tins. There have been no herring in these waters for years.” All such exchanges sound fatuous in cold blood, and this one reduced Antons and Kazimirs to fits of nervous laughter. Returning from the kitchen, Bella joined in.
One of the men would then ask to come aboard, I continued. He was an expert—I did not say in sabotage, because the crew had mixed feelings on the matter. His name for the trip would be Volodia. He would be carrying a leather suitcase and, in his coat pocket, a brown button and a white button as proof of his good faith. If he did not know his name, or carried no suitcase, or did not produce the buttons, they were to put him back on shore alive, but return to Kiel at once. There was an agreed radio signal for this eventuality. Otherwise they should make no signals whatever. A moment’s silence gripped us, and I heard the sound of Bella’s bare feet on the brick floor as she fetched more firewood.
From Gotland they should head northeast through international waters, I said, and steer a central course up the Gulf of Finland, until they were lying off the island of Hogland, where they should idle till dusk, then head due south for Narva Bay, reckoning to make landfall by midnight.
I had brought large-scale charts of the Bay and photographs of the sandy coastline. I spread them on the table and the men gathered to my side to look at them. As they did so, something made me glance up and I caught sight of Bella, curled up in her own corner of the room, her excited eye full upon me in the firelight.
I showed them the point on the beach that the Zodiac should make for, and the point on the headland where they should watch for signals. The landing party would be wearing ultra-violet glasses, I said; the Estonian reception party would be using an ultra-violet lamp. Nothing would be visible to the naked eye. After the passenger and his suitcase had been landed, the dinghy should wait no more than two minutes for any possible replacement before heading back for the Daisy at full speed. The dinghy should be crewed by one man only, so that if necessary he could take a second passenger on the return run. I recited the recognition signals to be exchanged with the reception party, and this time nobody laughed. I gave the shelving and gradients of the landing beach. There would be no moon. Bad weather was expected, and surely hoped for. Bella brought us tea, brushing carelessly against us as she set out the mugs. It was as if she were harnessing her sexuality to our cause. Reaching Brandt, who was still stooped over the beach chart, she gravely caressed his broad back with both hands as if filling him with her youthful strength.
I returned to my flat at five in the morning with no thought of sleep. In the afternoon I rode with Brandt and Bella to Blankenese in the van. Antons and Kazimirs had been with the boat all day. They were dressed for the voyage, in bobble hats and oilskin trousers. Orange life jackets were airing on the deck. Shaking hands with each man in turn, I passed round the seaproofed capsules that contained their lethal pills of pure cyanide. A grey drizzle was falling; the little quay was deserted. Brandt walked to the gangway, but when Bella made to follow him, he stopped her.
“No more,” he told her. “You stay with Ned.”
She was wearing his old duffle coat, and a woollen hat with earflaps, which I suspected she had been wearing when he rescued her. He kissed her and she hugged him till he pushed her off and went aboard, leaving her at my side. Antons stepped into the engine house and we heard the engine cough and come to life. Brandt and Kazimirs cast off. Nobody looked at us any more. The Daisy cleared the quay and headed sedately for the centre of the river. The three men’s backs remained turned against us. We heard the hoot of her ship’s horn, and watched her until she had slipped behind the curtain of grey mist.
Like abandoned children, Bella and I walked hand in hand up the ramp to Brandt’s parked van. Neither of us spoke. Neither of us had anything to say. I glanced back for a last sight of the Daisy, but the mist had swallowed her. I looked at Bella and saw that her eyes were unusually bright, and that she was breathing fast.
“He’ll be all right,” I assured her, releasing her hand while I unlocked the door “They’re very experienced. He’s a great man.” Even in German, it sounded rather silly.
She got into the van beside me and took back my hand. Her fingers were like separate lives inside my palm. Get alongside her, Haydon had kept insisting. In my most recent signal, I had assured him I would try.
At first we drove in companionable silence, joined and separated by our shared experience. I was driving cautiously because I was taut, but my hand still held hers to give her comfort, and when I was obliged to take a firmer grasp of the steering wheel, I saw that her hand stayed beside me, fingers upward, waiting for me to come back. Suddenly I was terribly concerned about where to take her. Absurdly so. I thought of an elegant basement restaurant with tiled alcoves where I took my banking joes. The elderly waiters would provide her with the kind of reassurance she needed. Then I remembered she was wearing Brandt’s duffle coat, jeans and rubber boots. I was no better dressed myself. So where? I wondered anxiously. It was getting late. Through the mist, lights were coming on in the cottages.
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
She put her hand back on her lap.
“Should I find us somewhere to eat?” I asked.
She shrugged.
“Shall I take you to the farmhouse?” I suggested.
“What for?”
“Well I mean, how are you going to spend the next few days? What did you do the last time he was away?”
“I rested from him,” she said, with a laugh I had not expected.
“Then tell me how you would like to wait for him,” I suggested magnanimously, with a hint of rank. “Do you prefer to be alone? Meet up with other exiles and have gossips? What’s best?”
“It’s not important,” she said, and moved away from me.
“Tell me all the same. Help me.”
“I shall go to cinemas. Look at shops. Read magazines. I shall listen to music. Try to study. Get bored.”
I decided on the safe flat. There would be food in the fridge, I told myself. Give her a meal, a drink, get her talking. Then either drive her to the farmhouse or send her by cab.
We entered the city. I parked two streets away from the safe flat and took her arm as we walked along the tree-lined pavement. I would have done the same for any woman in a dark street, but there was something disturbing about feeling her bare arm inside Brandt’s sleeve. The city was unfamiliar to me. In the lighted windows of the houses, people talked and laughed as if we didn’t exist. She clasped my arm and drew my hand against her breast—to be precise, the underside of it, I could feel its shape precisely through the layers of clothing. I was remembering the Circus bar-room jokes about certain officers who picked up their best intelligence in bed. I was remembering Haydon asking me whether she had good tits. I felt ashamed, and took back my hand.
There was a man-door to one side of the cemetery gates. As I unlocked it and ushered her ahead of me, she turned and kissed me on the eyes, one after the other, while she held my face in both her hands. I gripped her waist and she seemed weightless. She was very happy. I could see her smile by the yellow cemetery lights.
“Everyone is dead,” she whispered excitedly. “But we are alive.”
I went ahead of her up the stairs. Halfway, I looked back to make sure she was following me. I was scared that she might have changed her mind. I was scared altogether—not because I was without experience—thanks to Mabel I was not—but because I knew already that I was encountering a different category
of woman from any I had known before. She was standing right behind me, holding her shoes in her hands, still smiling.
I opened the door for her. She stepped through and kissed me again, laughing in merriment, just as if I had lifted her up and carried her across the threshold on our wedding day. I remembered stupidly that Russians never shake hands in doorways, and perhaps Latvians didn’t either, and perhaps her kisses were some kind of ceremony of exorcism. I would have asked her, except that, near enough, I had lost my voice. I closed the door, then crossed the room to turn up the fire, an electric convector affair which, as long as the room was cold, blew out warm air with enormous vigour, but afterwards only fitfully, like an old dog dreaming.
I went to the kitchen to fetch some wine. When I returned she had disappeared and the light was on under the bathroom door. I set the table carefully with knives and forks and spoons and cheese and cold meat and glasses and paper napkins and anything else that I could possibly think of, because I was taking refuge in the distancing formalities of hospitality.
The bathroom door opened and she emerged wearing Brandt’s coat wrapped round her as a dressing-gown and, to judge by her bare legs, little else. Her hair was brushed. In our safe flats, we always keep a brush and comb for hospitality.
And I remember thinking that if she was as bad as Haydon seemed to think she was, it was a pretty terrible thing for her to be wearing Brandt’s coat in order to deceive the man she was already betraying, and a pretty terrible thing for me to be the man she had selected, while my agents were heading for high danger with lethal pills in their coat pockets. But I had no sense of guilt. I mention this in order to try to explain that my mind was zigzagging in any number of directions in its effort to still my desire for her.
I kissed her and took off her coat, and I never saw before or since anyone so beautiful. And the truth is that, at that moment and at that age, I had not yet acquired the power to distinguish between truth and beauty. They were one and the same to me, and I could only feel awe for her. If I had ever suspected her of anything, the sight of her naked body convinced me of her innocence.
The Secret Pilgrim Page 10