by Celia Rees
“Is the doctor already in situ called Richter, by any chance?”
“Why, yes. How did you know that?”
His blue eyes shifted from quizzical to cold and appraising. Edith toyed with her brandy, giving herself her time to think.
“Oh,” she said eventually. “He was Kurt’s boss—before the war. I think I might have met him. I’ve a good memory for people.” She put down her glass carefully. Her mental repugnance had taken a queasy lurch into physical revulsion. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to go to the powder room.”
She barely made it to the lavatory before vomiting. The alcohol she’d just consumed scorched her throat. She wiped her mouth and blew her nose on the hard lavatory paper. At the sink, she rinsed and spat. The German attendant ignored her. She took a few deep breaths to calm herself, her hand shaking slightly as she applied more powder and redid her lipstick. Her image was slightly skewed, the beveled edges of the mirror refracting light.
“I say, are you all right? You’re looking a bit dicky.” Bill Adams stood up when she returned.
“I have a migraine starting,” she said; her voice sounded thick, roughened by the rawness in her throat. “It’s probably the brandy. I shouldn’t touch it.”
“My wife has them. Awful things.” His handsome feline face creased with concern. “Let me call your driver. We must get you home.”
Jack was most concerned, giving her aspirin to swig down with tea from his thermos and tucking a blanket around her for the journey home.
“That Adams is an arsehole, I told you ma’am. What did he want, anyway?”
“Oh, nothing much. Best I don’t talk, Jack. If you don’t mind.”
The pain was so bad she couldn’t think clearly. She closed her eyes. Careless talk costs lives.
She arrived back in Lübeck with the migraine thudding in her right temple, moving to the other side of her head. Nevertheless, she dosed herself with veganin and tried to stave off the pain long enough to compose messages to Dori. She had to report her meeting with Adeline and her conversation with Adams. A couple of things he’d said had stood out, but she couldn’t quite recall them now. Damn this migraine, she couldn’t think straight. Concentrate on the most important things. Dori needed to know that their post was being monitored and what was intended for von Stavenow.
She picked up her pen and straightened her shoulders. Her encounter with Adams had canceled her doubts. All thoughts of giving up were forgotten. There could be no going back. She had it chapter and verse from Adams’s own mouth. They had no intention of punishing Kurt. That was confirmed. Leo wanted him found so that he could be taken to Britain, where they would use him. His experience, his knowledge were useful; it didn’t matter how, or by what vile means, it had been obtained. Dori was working with Vera Atkins and War Crimes to bring him to justice, and Edith was proud to be helping them. Their work was so very important, and it was a race against time now to see who found him first.
She worked slowly, stopping every now and then, her face crimping and releasing as the pain flared and subsided. The letters and numbers swam across the page in front of her, but she gathered them in patiently as she carefully composed the messages she had to send.
Dear Dori,
I hope you enjoyed the promised Prussian dish and found the Menu Américain of interest. No more Latvian recipes, I’m afraid—a bit of a dead end—but a selection of menus and a couple of oddities.
Invalid Menu—experiments continue as if nothing had happened. I’m attaching by Paperclip. Still of considerable interest. Must not be lost or mislaid.
Barnsley Chops at Hamburg Officers’ Club. Rather too fiercely grilled. Indigestible. Find under Meat: Roasting and Grilling. Served with Cumberland Sauce.
Yours, Edith
P.S. The mail is getting more and more unreliable. Hope this gets through!
Dori
Paddington W2
Brown government-issue envelopes stacked on the hall table. One longer, creamy thick paper. Hotel Atlantic. Letters from Edith. Edith’s neat, elegant writing, the royal-blue ink she used. Dori put them in order. Dated at different times but arrived all together. She would not be opening them yet, however eager she was for news.
Anton’s tread on the steps. He’d been out for his constitutional. It was a cold, gray, foggy morning, but Anton went five times around the square whatever the weather.
“Are they still out there?” Dori asked.
He nodded as he hung up his hat and coat.
“Psy mysliwśkie. Hunting dogs—part of a pack. Sometimes one alone.” He smoothed his white hair back. “Sometimes two, sometimes three. Never the same two days running. Young men standing, smoking, sitting. What are they doing in the square with the babies and the old ladies?”
“Hmm.” Dori frowned. “Take a look at these, will you?”
He picked up the letters one at a time and scrutinized them carefully with the aid of a jeweler’s loupe that he took from his pocket.
“Cheap brown paper,” he said as he ran the glass down the sealed edges of the upper flap, then the gummed lower flap. “Not so easy to open without leaving some trace.” The paper was dulled, cockled. There were traces of tears along the edges of the seal, the bottom flap slightly curled, the gummed part convex. Anton picked up a paper knife from the hall table and slit one of the envelopes along the top and down the sides and reapplied the glass. “Traces of gum. This has been steamed opened and resealed in a clumsy way.”
Dori thanked him with a ten-shilling note and took the letters down to the kitchen. Flaps and seals. Definitely covert but not very good at it. She opened the letters, slitting the tops as Anton had done. The correspondence might have been read, but their code had not been discovered, she was pretty sure of that.
It was hard not to think in cookery terms. Things were heating up out there, coming to the boil. The Prussian Dish located. Plot thickening with the Balts and with the Germans. Frau Schmidt and what Edith termed the Schwestern, like-minded Nazi fraus gathering for kaffee und kuchen, and then there was American interest to lend savor . . .
Eye of newt, and toe of frog . . .
A brew of peculiar potency. A charm of powerful trouble.
Then there was Adams and his gristly Barnsley Chop and his suspicions. The witches’ charm continued in her head: Finger of birth-strangled babe, ditch-delivered by a drab. Probably tasted similar. Adams alerted by Leo, no doubt, and whoever was making a mess of steaming these envelopes open. Dispatched to warn Edith off, especially since von Stavenow was due to be Paperclipped—once they found him. Dori fed the papers into the fire. She remembered her grandmother writing notes in the strange symbols of some lost and ancient script, holding them for the flames to take from fingers as bent and gnarled as oak twigs. Blessings or curses? Dori never dared to ask.
The last of the papers glowed then whitened to ash. It was all coming together now. Make the gruel thick and slab.
She started like a guilty thing at the shrill drilling of the front doorbell. She wasn’t expecting any callers. She tied on an apron, to look suitably occupied, and ran up the stairs.
“Mrs. Stansfield?” One of Anton’s suspicious young men stood on her threshold, the collar of his overcoat turned up, a scarf round the lower part of his face, the brim of his hat shading his eyes. A companion, similarly muffled, stood at the bottom of the steps. “Come with us, please.”
“Says who? Come with you where? What’s this about?” Dori stood, arms folded, looking suitably put out. “I’m busy in the kitchen.” She indicated the apron. “As you can see.”
The young man planted his feet more firmly. The other one mounted the steps behind him. “Nevertheless. We insist.”
“Oh, very well.” Dori removed her pinafore. “If you insist. I’ll just get my coat. Won’t be a moment.”
The first young man placed his foot against the doorjamb.
Dori put on her coat and opened the drawer of the hall table. Under cover of rummaging for a li
pstick, she slipped out the little Beretta she kept there and slid it into her pocket. She applied a swipe of Chanel. Police? Unlikely. Expensive shoes and no warrant card offered. We will see what we shall see. She worked her lips together and picked up her keys.
“I’m ready.” She stepped out, closing the door. “Where are you taking me?”
They didn’t reply. They walked close, one either side of her. She sensed another behind. The two at her side stared straight ahead. Their proximity, their expressionless faces, masks of indifference verging on hostility shown to the already guilty, reminded her of being picked up by the Gestapo, although there was no gun at her back or nuzzling her ribs.
At the end of the square, they turned left and then right, halting in front of a pub on a corner not far from the station. The men stood back for her to enter. The door wheezed back slowly behind her. Dori stood on the threshold, taking in the room. A bleak white light leaked through smeared pebbled windows; cigarette smoke hung in blue drifts below a ceiling enameled brown by accumulated tar. The walls were lined with button-backed bottle-green leatherette banquettes, torn or slashed in places, horsehair showing. Rickety round-backed chairs clustered about a scatter of scarred and ringed-round tables. The small grate was empty. The sparse clientele were still wearing their overcoats; solitary men standing, elbows on the bar, one foot resting on the tarnished brass rail. The landlord wiped the counter with a towel. Above his head, a line of dusty colored lights hung in uncertain loops above a row of optics. They looked as though they’d been there since Christmas, 1938.
The two men walked her over to a booth in the far corner, separated off by a wooden panel topped with stained glass.
Leo was waiting for her. Crombie overcoat buttoned up. Bowler still in place.
“Thank you, Crowther.” One of her escort peeled off and made for the door. “Burman, could you get drinks? I’ll have a whisky to go with this.” He indicated a cloudy pint in a dimpled glass. “And whatever Mrs. Stansfield would like.”
“Gin. And tonic, if they have it. If not, anything they’ve got.”
Leo moved up into the corner. Dori slid in beside him.
“Just wanted a little chat,” Leo said when the drinks arrived.
“About what?” Dori tasted her gin. Watered and further diluted by some ghastly cordial. “I say, could one of your young men get me a whisky? Whatever they’ve put in here tastes like Jeyes Fluid smells.”
Dori watched Leo as he signaled to one of the young men nursing a half pint at the bar. Leo wasn’t to be trusted, not under any circumstances. As slick as a snake, he could strike just as fast. He’d been attached to SOE from one of the other secret outfits. Seconded in 1940. His brief was Strategy, far above Dori in the poor bloody infantry. Those were the days. Set Europe ablaze. Didn’t quite work out like that, though, and when it started going pear shaped there was old Leo, quick as a wink, to conceal and disguise. Hide the cockups. Paper over. Generally cover collective arses. Thick as thieves with Buckmaster, boss of SOE, the biggest arse to cover. Less thick with Vera. Cover-ups meant double agents protected, circuits blown, SOE agents betrayed for whatever reason, and that spelled “traitor” in Dori’s book. It amounted to a betrayal of the agents sent to France, the organization that sent them, and ultimately the country. She had no proof it was him, and whatever evidence there might have been was disappearing by the minute, but Dori went by instinct and she knew it was Leo.
The young man brought over a squat glass of whisky.
“Better?” Leo asked as Dori tasted.
“Oh, much. Now.” Dori put down the glass. “What did you want to chat about?”
“Oh, this and that.” Leo took a sip of his beer. “Orders come through yet?”
“Yes, they have as a matter of fact.”
“Good, good. Off soon to Germany?”
“Yes. Is that why you wanted to see me?”
“Something else entirely.” Leo pushed his beer away and toyed with his whisky. “Won’t beat about the bush. Are you in touch with Edith at all?”
“Yes.”
“And what do you correspond about?”
“Oh, this and that.”
“Does she send you recipes?”
“Indeed, she does!” Dori smiled her surprise that he would know that.
“Hmm.” Leo settled himself deeper into his overcoat. “I find that odd.”
“Odd? What’s odd about women sending each other recipes? She sends the same ones to her sister, Louisa.”
“I know Louisa. She’s a good cook. You, as far as I know, are not.”
“So what does that prove?”
Leo knew he was on to something and wasn’t quite sure what, so he’d come on a fishing expedition. He looked up, his pale-blue eyes suddenly sharp behind the magnifying lenses.
“It won’t do, Dori.” He tapped the words with his fingernail on the side of his glass. “It will not do.”
“What won’t do?”
“Yes, she sends Louisa recipes, menu cards, and so on. Louisa has been kind enough to show them to me, but that doesn’t account for the book references.”
“Ah, that’s me, I’m afraid. My secret.” She felt herself growing scarlet. She’d always been able to blush, or cry, at will. “I can’t cook, as you pointed out. Edith has been teaching me. She’s going to be in northern Germany. Cabbage soup and spaetzle, piroggen, blaubeere küchen,” Dori recited. “It’s the food of my homeland. I want to know how to cook them myself. Edith directs me to particular recipes in the Radiation Cookery Book and adapts them for me. Odd, I concur, and faintly shameful for me, but there it is. You must allow us ladies our eccentricities.”
“Hmm.” Leo turned his whisky glass round and round between his pudgy fingers. Dori kept silent, letting him mull. “It is odd,” he repeated. “Edith has her own oddities, but she’s not one for duplicity. She’s doing a useful job. Wouldn’t want her put off her game. No shenanigans.” He held his index finger up, moving it in ticktocking admonition. “I know you’re up to something, I just don’t know what. Yet. Whatever it is, I don’t want Edith mixed up in it. How’s it going in Germany?”
Leo threw out the question, a quick cast into a different pool.
“Vera’s identified the three female agents who ended up in Ravensbrück. She’s still working on Natzweiler.”
“Good. We need this business cleared up. Some of the parents are kicking up a stink, going to the papers, saying we’re not doing enough. The Express loves that kind of stuff.” He drained his whisky and stood up. “Good luck.” He offered his hand, the palm soft, slightly sweaty. “I hope you didn’t resent our little chat?”
“Not at all.” Dori returned his weak clasp with her own strong grip. “Best to know where we stand.”
“Exactly, Dori.” Leo smiled and touched the brim of his hat in parting. “Auf wiedersehen!”
His young men fell in beside him as he left the pub. Alone, Dori finished her whisky and ordered another. She drained it quickly. Leo was right. The sooner she got to Germany, the better.
28
Lübeck Billet/Atlantic Hotel, Lübeck/Hamburg
16th–17th March 1946
Billet Breakfast
Eggs and Bacon
Eggs pale and rubbery, made with powder, fresh suddenly unavailable.
Hotel Atlantic Breakfast
Omelette au Champignons
“Es regnet.” Frau Schmidt announced with some satisfaction. Rain was nearly as disruptive to travel as snow.
“I know.” Edith did not look up from her scrambled eggs.
“Es regnet junge Hunde. I tell Stephan to get the wood in dry.”
“Very wise. We say ‘cats and dogs.’”
“The roads will be bad.”
“I know that too.”
It was the weekend. She was going to Hamburg to meet Harry. It had been two weeks. A lot had happened. She had to see him, and a bit of weather was not going to stop her. There was something she needed to talk to him ab
out, something she had to know.
Jack arrived, cape slick, cap sodden. He stood dripping in the hall while Edith put on her coat.
He held out a wing of his cape for her and they made a dash for it.
“Is that Stephan?” A figure hunched in a field-gray greatcoat disappeared round the corner. “A bit wet for him, ain’t it?”
He started the car. The engine caught, then died, caught, then died again.
“Bloody starter motor’s been playing up. Ah, here we go.”
Jack kept his eyes straight ahead, trying to see through the slap of the windshield wipers. Suddenly, he looked down.
“Bloody hell! What’s up now?”
“What is it?”
“Nowt, probably. Brakes feel a bit spongy. Water gets everywhere.”
They drove on. The ridged, frozen roads had softened to viscous milky brown mud. In the sodden fields, dark soil and tangled mats of yellowy-green grass showed through the decayed snow. Retreating drifts revealed the remains of scout cars, trucks, even an upended tank, beside it a wooden cross, capsized and fallen to one side. The ditches were brimming. Streams coursed across roads slick with water streaming from blackened mounds of melting snow.
As they took the steep hill that led down to the river, the car started to aquaplane. Jack pumped the brake pedal, cursing.
“Nothing! There’s nothing there!”
Jack’s face was ashen, his jaw rigid, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. Edith clung onto the sides of her seat, teeth gritted, foot braced on an imaginary brake. They were gaining speed. She looked frantically from side to side. The river was overflowing, the turbulent brown-gray waters churning great clashing chunks of ice, whole trees tossed like toothpicks. The heavy car slewed as Jack fought to control it. They were heading toward the bridge: a flimsy, temporary structure bucking and rippling under the force of the water and the impact of the floes and debris crashing into it.
“Hold on!”
For one terrifying moment, Edith thought the car was going to turn over, but it righted itself and they ended up half in, half out of a ditch just before the bridge.