The Winter Agent

by Gareth Rubin

  He turned the handle and pulled. Nothing happened. It was still locked. He cursed and reinserted the pick, feeling about for a pin he had missed. There it was, right at the back. He pressed it into place and tried the handle again.

  This time, it turned, and he pushed the door open, stepping through into a chilly room with a hint of damp in the air – clearly once a workshop. Her father had been an engraver, she had said. Deep-welted wooden benches sprouted iron clamps and there were examples of the man’s intricate work covering the walls – bronze medallions, steel discs, copper plates. He had had talent, Reece could tell. One thing was absent, however: there were no tools to be seen, for this was a workshop without a workman. It had been preserved only as a spotless and dustless memorial. He couldn’t help but wonder if anyone would do the same for him. His recent life, the actions he had been forced to accomplish, would hardly be looked upon with such unadulterated admiration.

  The workshop led to the kitchen, equally spotless, with copper pans hung by size on the walls, gleaming even in the jaundiced light. A tat-tat-tat came from somewhere, a tap dripping into a deep square enamel sink.

  He went on, into a living room with old-fashioned furniture. It could have been the home of a proud artisan family before the first war, with children running around and a mother instructing them on their catechism. The front door to the house opened directly into this room. He examined it: a single heavy lock that he would most likely hear turning. There was also a circular staircase that led to an upper floor. Reece guessed there would be two rooms above, no more, and perhaps not even that many.

  Climbing up, he indeed found two doorways. Picking one, he stepped through to find a room both empty and full. The master bedroom, it had neat furniture: a small but well-made bed and a dressing table with a triptych of mirrors. But there was nothing of the detritus of everyday life. There was no discarded comb, no book left open, no jacket sleeve trapped in the door of the wardrobe. There was, as in the workshop below, an overriding atmosphere of preservation – as if it were being maintained as a memory, not a living place.

  And beyond that, Reece could tell that there was something else missing. Something that would ordinarily be there but wasn’t – yet he couldn’t identify what it was. His eyes raked the bedroom: the well-formed casements, the smooth floorboards, the bed jutting against a painted plaster wall. Somewhere, there was a blank space.

  He had no time for the absence, however: he had a painful task ahead. He stalked out, into the other bedroom. And then, without warning, her eyes were boring into him, making him stop and stare back.

  On a mantelpiece above an iron fireplace the photographic image of an eighteen-year-old girl looked out at the world with curiosity, and perhaps a sense that she barely belonged in it. The sepia print shaded her skin a caramel brown, but the hair was dark and the eyes as hooded as they always would be. She was shading them from the sun, leaving most of her face in deep shadow. It was a summer holiday, perhaps, freezing in time a moment without guard.

  So this was her room, her life, her image looking back at him. It made it harder to fulfil the duty he had been set. Now he, too, had stolen in to subvert and betray.

  He lifted the picture so that his face and hers almost touched. Who had taken the photograph? Her father? Her mother, maybe, or a boyfriend. Perhaps just a friend. Even then there had been something in her expression, deep-set into the lines and curves of her face, that said there was a gulf between her and everyone and everything around her. He put the photograph back.

  Outside, a slate-grey cloud slid across the sky. He recognized some of the clothes in an open wardrobe – those she had worn in England and some she had worn in Paris. So she lived in this house, her family home. Why? The Germans could have given her a huge apartment seized from an unfortunate local. Sentiment, it must be, though that seemed out of place in a woman who gave her services to the Nazis.

  He went through her washbag, the books on the shelves, the few souvenirs on her desk. After that, a more thorough hunt: turning out the contents of the desk in her bedroom and the chest of drawers in the larger bedroom; feeling behind the wardrobes for envelopes taped to them; shaking out books and examining the furniture. Then down to the ground floor and through the kitchen and workshop. Nothing.

  There were no negatives, no prints, and nothing that told him anything more about her. He went back upstairs and sat on her bed, his fingers searching for the here-and-now question: The photographs could come or go, but when she stood before him would he be able to go through with it?

  He would do, he told himself, what he had to do. No more, no less.

  She was no more than an informer, and the standing sentence had to be applied. He needed her alive for just long enough to tell him if she still had the photos; if she didn’t, he had to extract from her anything she had seen in the prints. After that, she was as much Boche as the Germans in uniform. He loathed the last two years of his life as much as he loathed what she had done.

  Pats of rain began tripping down the glass of the window, looking for gaps between the frame and the brickwork, thin passages into the building.

  He gazed at the ceiling, listening to the rain become heavier, feeling it on the air, little daylight now coming through. The ceiling had spores of black mould at the edges. On the walls were a couple of framed prints. Monets. A Degas showed ballerinas at a bar. There were books of piano music on a shelf, a dark wooden metronome beside them. And yet, again, as he looked around the walls he was sure there was something missing, something that he had grown used to seeing in rooms like this. He sat there for a while, thoughts tumbling through his mind.

  The sound of a key turning in the lock downstairs was a knell for him, dull metal falling upon dull metal.

  Siegfried Klaussmann sat at an ornate Louis XIV desk at 11, rue de Saussaies. Despite the urgency of what he had just been told, he couldn’t stop himself mentally replaying the moment when he had failed to pull his gun in time and the British spy’s blade had pierced the throat of Kriminalassistent Karl Schmidt.

  He pushed his chair back and stood to smooth down his uniform. He thought through the Eidsformel der Schutzstaffel, the SS oath of loyalty he had once taken: I swear to you, Adolf Hitler, as Führer and Chancellor of the German nation, loyalty and bravery. I vow to you, and to my superiors designated by you, obedience until death.

  He couldn’t help feeling that when Marc LeFevre had cut a ragged hole in Schmidt’s neck it had been an attack, however small, on the German nation that Klaussmann had sworn he was loyal to. He could now think of little but finding the spy and watching while he was beaten to the ground, his broken wrists bound behind his back.

  And now, standing in front of Klaussmann, was a man who might be able to aid him. He was an oily little man, a caretaker who maintained Passy cemetery. On the desk was a picture drawn by a police sketch artist to Klaussmann’s own description of Marc LeFevre. The caretaker had confirmed that this was the man who had been asking suspicious questions and had then covertly followed a French woman and her Wehrmacht driver. Klaussmann could only speculate as to who this woman, Clémence Dubois, could be. Could she be the mistress of a senior German official? Possibly. It was also conceivable that she was attached to one of the SS units made up of French volunteers, or one of the other security forces. But he would consider her later. For now, capturing LeFevre was his only concern.

  ‘When?’ Klaussmann demanded.

  ‘About an hour ago, sir. I came straight here. As fast as I could. I knew I should tell you because the lady he was following and asking about was telling one of your soldiers what to do, so she must be with you gentlemen … but I had to stop at the checkpoints and –’

  ‘Give me the address.’

  The man handed over a grubby slip of paper with a street address in Saint-Cloud written in a surprisingly neat hand. ‘I had to take it from the register book, sir.’

  ‘What register?’ Klaussmann asked, going to a large map on the wall and s
earching for the short lane documented on the paper. ‘The register of burials?’

  ‘That’s right, sir. It’s how my manager got her address, and then he sent a messenger there first thing this morning.’

  Klaussmann tapped a thin line on the map, lettered with the name of the street. The place where he would cage the animal Marc LeFevre. ‘You did the right thing. Just the right thing.’

  ‘Will there be –’

  ‘You will be paid for the information. So long as it is accurate.’ The man smiled broadly. Klaussmann addressed his adjutant. ‘I want to know who this woman Clémence Dubois is. Find out if she’s in our files. She must be linked to him somehow – and she had a Wehrmacht driver. But we can’t wait – get a squad together to bring him in.’ He handed over the address the caretaker had supplied. ‘He’ll resist, so make sure the men are ready.’

  CHAPTER 15

  How to defend yourself against surveillance

  Do not go straight to your destination. Make use of a vehicle, either public or private. If you use the former, board it on the run. If you use the latter, do not take one which offers to pick you up, and start by telling the driver the wrong destination. You should never take a vehicle right up to your destination but complete the journey on foot. Make some innocent visits on the way. Visit at least one crowded place. If you suspect you are being watched, check up to make sure that you are really being watched. You may easily imagine that you are being watched, especially if your nerves are strained.

  At the sound of a key turning in the lock Reece could feel the moment of necessary action creeping in. When the door eased from its tight wooden frame his fingers twitched to the twine and his eyelids lifted once more to the wall above him. And it was then that he realized what was missing in this and the other bedroom.

  In every French house he had entered as an adult, there had been a crucifix above the bed. When he was a boy the houses he had visited with his father had been occupied by atheists who sneered at the religious peasants, but now, even in intellectual homes, let alone this one, owned by a simple artisan engraver, they had become more fashionable – no longer to protect against the influence of the Tempter but to show deference to the ultra-Catholic sensibilities of the militia and the Vichyites.

  The absence had to mean something, but he put it to the back of his mind.

  The moment came nearer, sealed in as the door below slammed shut. He heard a car leaving and sat up, waiting to hear if her footsteps would climb the spiralling stairs. If it were her, it would have to be the knife, face to face, with the blood and chaos that would come with it. For all that it made no difference in the end, he didn’t want it to happen that way. There should be some dignity for them both. He wanted to preserve something of the old world, where such madness was still madness, rather than the everyday. At least with twine around her throat, he wouldn’t soak his hands in blood.

  But the steps shuffled into the kitchen, and Reece heard her opening cupboards, arranging plates. He went to the doorway, listening for further movement.

  She returned to the living room and began humming something to herself. He crept through to her parents’ room and lay on the floor, his ear to the boards, trying to hear the tune and the words. Really, he was hoping for a clue, anything that would let him into her thoughts, anything that would show him the path she had walked for them both to end up here.

  He had to decide exactly how. There was a chance she was armed, or she might have a gun stashed somewhere, so charging down the stairs at her was a big risk. Even if she had no weapon, she had been through the same hand-to-hand training as him. Sheer strength was important in such fights, but it wasn’t everything. And he had no idea what the Germans had taught her.

  It would be best to take her by surprise, unseen. But if he waited up here until she happened to come upstairs, she might never come – who was to say she hadn’t just returned to complete some task before going straight back out again? Any theatricals designed to bring her up the stairs – deliberately making a noise, perhaps – would be more likely to send her out calling for the Feldgendarmerie.

  He moved noiselessly to the top of the stairs, but a knock on the front door made him freeze. The sound was a quick, urgent rat-a-tat and he could just make out Charlotte striding quickly to the door.

  ‘You’re early,’ she said. Reece retreated silently to the bedroom. He heard the front door close and someone enter.

  ‘We had to be.’ It was another woman’s voice. It was older and creaking, almost drowned out by the rain outside.

  This changed everything. The presence of someone else – even an old woman, as she seemed to be – cracked his intention apart. Better to abort an op and plan a new one than try to adapt to unpredictable circumstances.

  ‘Come in,’ Charlotte told her.

  ‘Are the others coming?’

  ‘Yes.’

  More coming. Reece cursed his luck.

  ‘Have any more … gone?’ the old woman asked.

  ‘Not that I’ve heard.’

  ‘Well, that’s something.’

  Could he distract them somehow and make a run for it? Perhaps.

  There was another knock at the door. Charlotte answered without a word and more people came into the house. ‘François now,’ a man’s voice said.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Reece had little chance against them all. He could only hide. His best option would be to remain in the master bedroom. Charlotte was less likely to go in there. If she – or any of the others – did, he would slash with the kitchen knife and charge for the door, hoping to get away before they realized what was happening.

  He pulled the door closed. There was a lock on it and he considered turning the key, but that would only seal him in and alert anyone there to the fact that someone was inside.

  Then, from the room underneath, he heard a strange sound. It was Charlotte, quietly singing in a language he didn’t know. The song had a supplicatory, devotional quality.

  How long could he wait? What if they were going to spend the night here? He had to think of a way. He rubbed his brow. What if …

  ‘Hello?’

  The voice made him catch his breath. The single word had come from the other side of the bedroom door. It was female. Curious.

  He stepped back and crouched, pointing the tip of the blade at the doorway, ready to spring and run.

  ‘Hello?’ it repeated, uncertainly now, with a note of concern, or worry. An idea came upon Reece: he could use her as a hostage, grab her and hold the knife to her throat until he could get out of the house. Below him, the singing stopped abruptly. He tensed. He heard steps clicking up the spiral staircase. It was going to happen now. He had no choice. He wrenched the door open and grabbed the figure in front of him. And then he stopped, amazed.

  It hadn’t been a woman’s voice he had heard; it had been that of a boy aged around ten years old with golden hair matted with rain and a shallow circular cap on the crown of his head. Two interlocking triangles forming a six-pointed star were picked out on the cloth in silver thread. The shock, the impossible situation, stayed Reece’s hand and the boy shook free and began to scream. Someone with an adult’s heavier step was on the stairs and Reece jumped back into the room and threw the door closed.

  No crucifixes above the beds. That prayer-like singing. They had been telling him who Charlotte was. But how could that fit with what he knew she had done, with who he knew she worked for? It made no sense to him.

  ‘There’s a man!’ the boy screamed.

  Even before he heard it he saw a small hole punch through the wood of the door. He dropped to his side, tumbling down, a bullet just missing him. In the living room chairs were being turned over and people were rushing around.

  Two more rounds slammed into the wall beside him. He raised his knife as the door itself burst open. His eyes met Charlotte’s. Dark and hooded as they had always been.

 
Her mouth opened. She had a clear shot. He could see right into the barrel of the gun, a small white semi-automatic, and waited for the impact. Her finger seemed to twitch. The gun remained frozen, pointed at him. But no bullet burst from its pipe.

  Below, he heard the last person leave the house, out through the back door. Then there was silence.

  ‘Maxime.’ Her chest rose and fell with the breath of the word. He waited. It was up to her now. He wasn’t going to beg for his life, and there would be no point anyway; she was going to do what she was going to do. He saw her lips form words, but the sounds made no sense to him. And then they seemed to weave into words. ‘On your front.’ He didn’t move. ‘I said, on your front.’ Slowly, he lay back, his feet towards her, and turned on to his stomach. He couldn’t see her, he could only see the window and the dimly lit day. The sky seemed to be nothing but pouring rain.

  ‘You don’t need to do this, Charlotte,’ he said calmly.

  There was a pause. ‘Put the knife down.’ He felt its warm metal in his fingers, but it was useless now. He placed it by his side. The dull steel, grimy with the dirt and oil of his fingers, contrasted with the swept-clean floorboard.

  ‘You don’t have to.’ He felt the floor against the palms of his hands. At least it would be clean. There wouldn’t be the pain, the weeks and months of pain, of captivity at the hands of the Gestapo. He waited for it, more calmly than he had ever thought he would. Maybe because there seemed nothing left for him to do. Still, he waited.

  Still, no shot came. Only the sound of his heart beating against the floor.

  He turned his head to see the muzzle of her gun still trained on him. It was as if they were staring at each other through a tunnel. ‘Who else is here?’ she demanded.

  There was no point in lying. ‘No one,’ he said. He tried to understand what she wanted. Was she going to try to wring information from him, as he had planned to do to her? He would make her sweat for anything he gave up.