by Celia Rees
“Adie!” Tom’s voice came from above. “My jacket!”
“I gotta go.” Adeline stood up. “You keep safe now, honey.” She bent swiftly to plant a kiss on Edith’s cheek.
“Leo didn’t mention anything about this Paperclip business,” Edith said after she’d gone.
“He wouldn’t, would he?”
“Did you know about it?”
“It’s some time since I knew about anything, darling.” Dori frowned. “But they will be busying themselves with a similar kind of thing, you can be sure of that.” She rose from the table. “Time to find out. Meet you in the hall in twenty minutes.”
They got off the underground at Sloane Square. Edith thought that they were going shopping, but instead of crossing to Peter Jones, Dori turned into Lower Sloane Street. They walked past a terrace of handsome redbrick buildings and stopped in front of a wide porch ornately decorated in terra-cotta. Two shields on each supporting column announced that they had arrived at the Service Women’s Club.
“Mrs. Stansfield and guest,” the concierge said. “You’re expected. Madam is in the Library.”
They were shown through to a comfortable room, discreetly lit with pearly lights in wall sconces and table lamps. Magazines and newspapers lay on a pale-oak table. The newspapers looked as though they’d been ironed. A large fire burned in the wide grate. The effect was warm, cozy after the rawness of the January day.
The woman in the armchair by the fire rose to greet them. She was dressed in a closely fitting black costume, pale-green silk shirt caught at the throat with the same pearl brooch.
“Vera!” Dori embraced her, kissing each white cheek.
“Dori.” Vera Atkins returned a merest peck to either side. “And Miss Graham. How good to see you again. Do sit.” She indicated the sofa next to her chair. “Drinks?” She rang a small bell. “Gin and tonics,” she said to the girl who answered the call. No choice was offered. “This is a very good place to meet.” She looked up at the portrait of a handsome woman in WAAF uniform smiling down from above the wide mantelpiece. “The drink is cheap. There are no men about and it is very discreet. I won’t beat about the bush,” she said when the drinks were delivered. “I have a proposition to make.”
She turned toward them. As her black gaze fell on both of them, even Dori’s confidence seemed to falter. She was the most elegant and terrifying woman Edith had ever met.
“I did rather put you through it, Miss Graham. Gave you a bit of a grilling, but I had to be sure you were the right sort.”
“For whom? For Leo?”
“No. Not for them.” She gave a thin smile. “For me. I no longer have anything to do with his department. Interviewing you was my last service.” She adjusted the hem of her skirt. “I have recently been in Germany and will shortly be returning. I’m due to go out there in a few days, just as you are, Miss Graham. I have been tasked with finding out what happened to the girls who worked for Special Operations Executive, F Section.” Her eyes flickered toward Dori. “Our branch of the Service.”
She reached for her briefcase and took out photographs, placing each one on the low table: women in uniform and out of it, some smiling, some serious, some quite beautiful, all of them young.
“These are girls who were sent to France,” she said, her fingers aligning the photographs more exactly. “Girls whom I sent to France,” she corrected. “And who didn’t come back.”
Four pairs of eyes gazed back at Edith. Four women full of courage and pride who had stepped forward to enter Occupied France, that deadliest of arenas. Four lives given to the service of their country. Four families still waiting for news.
“Do you think any of them might have survived?” Edith asked.
“It is possible. Anything is possible. There’s always hope.” The black eyes became bleak. “But I think it unlikely.” She paused, seeming to collect herself. “We have to find out what happened to our women. Where they were taken, on whose orders, what those orders were, who carried them out. It will be my last service.” Vera’s fingers lightly played over the young faces. “I owe it to their families. I owe it to them.” Her voice had grown husky. “I mean to see them honored. I’ve made a start but new information is coming in all the time. It’s too big a job for one person. I need help.” She looked at Dori. “A person I can trust, and I’ve asked that Dori might join me. We will be working with the War Crimes Commission, tasked with bringing the men responsible to justice, while taking part in a wider search for other criminals of the Nazi regime. Men like your von Stavenow.”
Dori perched on the edge of the sofa. She sat very erect, hands clasped tightly, as if to hold in the tension running through her. She stared at Vera, her face paler than ever, hope and expectation contending with fear of disappointment in her intense, dark gaze.
“I invited Dori to come today for the yay or nay.” Vera picked up a silver cigarette case and lighter and lit a cigarette. “I’m happy to say it is yay. If it had been otherwise, we would not be meeting.”
Edith didn’t take her eyes off Dori. “You didn’t say anything about this.”
“Dori’s good at keeping secrets.” Vera drew deeply on her cigarette and let out a stream of smoke. “As, I believe, you are, Miss Graham, from what Dori tells me. Hidden depths.” She gave one of her thin smiles. “I like that. I’ve worked with far less promising material, it has to be said. That’s why you are here. Now.” She tapped ash into a cut-glass ashtray. “Leo has asked you to to keep an eye out for Nazi criminals, has he not? Like your friend von Stavenow, or any of his ilk that you might come across. Yes?” Edith assented. “All I’m asking is that you tell us what Leo’s interest is.”
“Why would you want me to do that?”
“Because I’m not entirely convinced that it completely coincides with our own.” She stubbed out her cigarette and sat back, hands folded. “Leo belongs to a different branch of the service now. A branch that is not interested in bringing these men to justice. Rather the opposite.”
“It’s what Adeline was talking about,” Dori said, urgently. “The Paperclip business.”
“You have proof that Leo, his people, are doing the same thing?” Edith asked.
Vera nodded. “They are calling it Haystack, as in ‘needle in.’”
“And if I find something?”
“You still tell Leo, or whatever minion he sends, the only difference is, you let us know, too.”
“So I’d be some kind of double agent?”
“If you want to put it like that.”
“Oh, I don’t know . . .” Edith said, uncertain.
“Do you want these men to get away with it?” Dori gripped her arm hard. “Do you? Do you think it’s right when so many died, when they have so much blood on their hands? She stared at the photographs on the table. “Look at them. Look! Those are our girls, my friends. It could have been me quite easily.” She gave a deep sigh. “In May, ’44, we had a message. From Paris. It was hard to decipher, but some of it said: They’re sending our joes up the chimney. We took it to mean they were being sent to concentration camps. The Nazis were clearing out Gestapo Headquarters on Avenue Foch, where they took agents. I’ve been there, seen the blood they didn’t bother to clean up, the instruments set out in neat order: scalpels, pliers, hammers, and chisels, like a cross between an operating theater and a carpenter’s bench. It wasn’t just our girls held there and tortured, but countless others. Countless! It’s not just the cosh and cock boys we need to go after. That’s what they used, didn’t they?” Her defiant stare challenged Vera’s wincing disapproval. “Rape and torture? They are not so hard to catch. I want the ones who gave the orders. They are the ones who will escape us if we are not careful. So much death, so much suffering.” Her voice was deep with emotion, her accent pronounced. “Then these, these monsters are free to go and live some nice life somewhere, with a new identity as if nothing had happened. Do you want that?”
Edith had never seen Dori so angry, so passion
ate about anything. Her face was as white as Vera’s, her dark eyes glittering, brimming with tears. She was shaking, gripping so hard that Edith’s arm was hurting. Her carefully cultivated insouciance had slipped. Edith could see now that it was just another disguise.
“Of course not,” Edith said, putting a hand on hers to calm her down.
“Then there is no choice that I can see.” Dori slowly released her grip, her voice full of unspilled tears.
“Dori feels strongly about this, Miss Graham, as do I, although I might not use the same language or show my emotions so readily.”
“I’ll do whatever I can.”
Vera acknowledged Edith’s answer with a slight nod and leaned back in her chair, eyes almost closed. The silence stretched.
“If messages are to pass between us,” she said finally, “we will need some kind of code.”
“I can’t just write to Dori, I suppose?”
“No!” Both women spoke at once.
“Your letters will come through Forces Mail,” Dori said. “No knowing who might be reading it.”
“That someone will is certain.” Vera’s eyes opened. “Germany is under Mil Gov, and Lübeck is right on the border with the Soviets.”
“We need a code and a safe delivery system.” Dori lit a cigarette. “Something simple.”
Vera gave Edith a long, appraising stare. “Quite so. Something that sounds innocent but isn’t. Something that only means anything to people who know the code.”
“A word code would do,” Dori said.
“Yes.” Vera thought for a moment. “It would.”
“A word code?”
“One of the simplest but surprisingly difficult to crack,” Dori explained. “Messages are sent by card or letter based on some common interest, bird watching, say, or some other type of hobby. The messages appear to be perfectly innocent, but the words are freighted with other pre-agreed meanings that convey a completely different message.”
“A word means just what I choose it to mean . . .” Edith smiled.
“Exactly.”
Edith frowned. “Why all this need for secrecy?”
Dori glanced at Vera, who gave a slight nod.
“In the war, not just individuals but whole networks were betrayed. Men and women sacrificed . . .” She glanced at the photographs spread out on the table. “Some of the girls were picked up more or less on arrival, which means the circuit was blown, or there was—”
“A traitor at the heart of SOE,” Vera finished. “Whoever it was might well have moved on to another branch of the Service. That is why we need secrecy. Such an individual will act without scruple, doing whatever is necessary to save his own skin. What we are asking you to do is not without danger.”
“We can’t risk—” Dori started.
“No, quite,” Vera interrupted. “It has to be secure. Between us. We will give it some thought, Miss Graham. Now, could you excuse us for a little while? We have things to discuss.”
“Of course.” Edith got up, taken aback. She hadn’t expected to be dismissed like that.
“Go for a walk or something.” Dori smiled, trying to make up for Vera’s abruptness. “We won’t be long.”
Edith turned her collar up against the chilling dampness coming from the river and strode off, hardly knowing where she was going, hands thrust deep into her pockets, while she weighed what was being asked of her. She frowned, burying her chin deeper into her scarf. Dori and Vera were telling her one thing while Leo had told her entirely another. She stopped. Or rather, he hadn’t. In typical Leo fashion, he had outlined Kurt’s crimes, shown her absolute, shocking proof that the man she’d loved had been warped and changed, done the most terrible things, been turned into a monster by the regime he’d served. What Leo had not told her was why he wanted him found. Nothing about Haystack, nothing about finding scientists to use them, nothing like that at all. That had been left to Dori and Vera. They wanted to find men like Kurt to bring them to justice, to make them pay for their crimes. Instantly, instinctively she knew which side to take. She walked on. There was no really choice that she could see. Official Secrets Act, or no Official Secrets Act. No choice at all.
She stopped, mind made up, only to find that she’d totally lost her bearings. She suddenly felt nervous, even panicky, her surroundings unfamiliar, fog coming up from the river. The road was lined with antique shops, most of them closed, windows filled mainly with junk, salvaged from bomb-damaged houses. She hurried to one with lights on and peered through chipped china, dusty pieces of sculpture, jumbled bric-a-brac. The man behind the counter looked up as the bell tinged. He was in his overcoat, his expression flickering between wanting to make a sale and getting to the pub.
“I’m just about to close,” he said. “Half day.”
“I just want directions.”
“Where to?”
“Lower Sloane Street?”
He gave a wheezing laugh. “You’re a bit out of your way. Here.”
He unfolded a worn map of the area, tracing the route with a nicotined finger. As Edith leaned forward, she dislodged a pile of books stacked in front of the counter.
“How clumsy of me.” She collected as many as she could, then paused, keeping one back. “How much for this?”
The bookseller turned the book in his hands as though it was a valuable first edition even though it was water stained, smelled faintly of smoke from someone’s bombed-out kitchen, and he knew perfectly well that it was one of those given free with gas cookers.
“Depends how much you want it, doesn’t it?”
“Sixpence?” Edith ventured. It was worth nothing, but she did want it. Badly.
“Ooh.” he rubbed the side of his purple, pitted nose. “I dunno . . .”
“Ninepence?”
“Done.”
Edith handed him a shilling. He reached for brown paper.
“No need.” Edith picked up the book and headed for the door.
“’Ere! You forgot your change!”
He shrugged and dropped the threepenny bit into the till.
Edith held the book cradled inside her coat. They had one just like it at home: the cover stained, like this, marked with spillages, crustings of flour, pages interleaved with pamphlets (Ministry of Food, Dig for Victory), recipes cut from newspapers, torn from magazines (Meals from the Allotment, Ruth Morgan’s Wartime Cookery, Stella Snelling’s Ideas for Leftovers). They spoke of scarcity, turning the garden over to vegetables, the tyranny of the ration. Besides cuttings, the book held menus collected from restaurants, hotels, RAF messes; recipes written out in Mother’s careful copperplate pencilled on lined paper; Louisa’s purple-inked scrawl on deckled stationery; Edith’s neat, small cursive in washable blue on Basildon Bond paper. Food, recipes, menus told you an awful lot. Taste and preference defined a person; what was on offer provided a wider context. Messages based on some common interest. Messages that appear to be perfectly innocent . . . Didn’t this fit that?
They were sitting where she’d left them, enjoying a second round of gin and tonics. The concierge tried to stop her, but she burst in, still in her coat, face pink with the cold and excitement.
“I’ve got it!” she said, waving the book.
“Got what?” Dori looked up.
“The code. It came to me when I saw this—the Radiation Cookery Book. A code based on recipes. Everyone is obsessed with food, have you noticed? What’s available, what’s not available: on ration, off ration, black market. Rationing and scarcity only sharpens the appetite. If that’s true here, I can’t see it being different over there.” Edith paused, the better to order and express the ideas that had begun to seethe. “The very words we use can be read in two ways, sometimes more than two. We talk about being in hot water, being hot, or cold, going from the frying pan into the fire, putting things on the back burner and, I don’t know, I’m sure we can think of others. Hot and cold, for example. See here.” Edith turned to the front of the book. “Regulos control the
temperature. Regulo 7 is very hot. Things cook quickly. Regulo 1 or 2, cool, slow cooking. I’m sure we can work out a whole code based on this book, understood only by us, each message couched in cookery terms, and Dori has the same edition!”
“I do?”
“In your larder. It came with the gas cooker. We use it to create a code. Anything of interest, I send a recipe or menu, with a note, a card, or letter, message embedded. Every woman interested in cooking swaps recipes,” Edith added. “What could be more natural? Or more innocent?”
“Or more likely to be beneath the attention of possible censors,” Dori finished, “who are bound to be men.”
Vera leaned back, long fingers laced, her face as severe as ever.
“It might just work.” She gave one of her rare smiles. “How exactly, will be up to you. Keep it simple. That’s my advice.”
After Vera left, Dori ordered more gin and tonics. Keep it simple. Edith would send recipes to Dori and, as a fail-safe, to her sister, Louisa. The messages didn’t have to be complicated. They could be limited to certain categories. A person of interest. Contact made. Developments in this area, or that area. Defined by the recipe sent, refined by nationality. British, American, German, and anyone else who happens along. What could be more natural than collecting recipes, menus, dishes, from different nationalities?
“A flavor of the place. A flavor of the people.”
“Taking the temperature, testing the water?” Dori ventured.
“Exactly. With reference to recipes found in here.” Edith patted the book. “Just so you know that such a thing is important.”
“But I can’t cook,” Dori said suddenly. “Does that matter?”
“Not at all.” Edith smiled. “It’s even better. I’m teaching you . . .”
“Oh, that’s good.” Dori grinned back. “We’ll mark pages up when we get back. Decide on prearranged references. Doesn’t have to be precise. More like progress reports. How you’re getting on, that sort of thing. It’s inspired, Edith. I really like it.” She finished her drink. “More than that, I think it could actually work.”