by William Boyd
‘I want you to go to the café and order breakfast,’ Romer said. ‘Speak French, if you have to speak English make it very accented and broken. Ask if you can get a room for the night, or something. Get a sense of the place, dither, poke around – say you’ll be back for lunch. Have a look and report back to me in an hour or so.’
Eva had felt tired as she had scanned Prenslo through Romer’s binoculars – she’d had a busy twenty-four hours, after all – but now, as she walked down Prenslo’s main street towards the Café Backus, she suddenly felt her body taut and alive with adrenalin. She looked casually about her, noting the people out on the street, a lorry loaded with milk churns passing by, a file of schoolchildren in forest-green uniforms. She pushed open the door of the Café Backus.
She ordered her breakfast – coffee, two boiled eggs, bread and ham – and ate it alone in the large ground-floor dining-room that gave on to the glassed-in veranda. A young girl served her, who spoke no French. Eva could hear a clatter of plates and conversation from the kitchen. Then two young men came out of a double door to one side and stepped out on to the forecourt. They were young but one was bald and the other had very cropped hair in a military style. They were wearing suits and ties. They hung around the petrol pumps for a while, staring up the road at the custom post’s barrier. Then they re-entered, glancing incuriously at Eva, who was having her coffee-cup refilled by the waitress. The double doors swung closed behind them.
Eva asked to see a room but was told that the rooms were only let in the summer. She asked where the lavatory was and, deliberately mishearing the directions, pushed through the double doors. There was a large conference room behind with tables ranged in a square. The bald man was all sharp angles, elbows and knees jutting, sitting on a chair looking at something on the sole of his shoe; the other man was practising a tennis serve with an invisible racquet. They looked slowly round and she backed out. The waitress pointed Eva in the right direction and she walked quickly down the corridor she should have taken to the lavatory.
There, she unlatched, shoved and wrenched open the small frosted-glass window to reveal a view of the unpaved car-park, the swings and the see-saw and the pinewoods beyond. She closed the window, leaving it unlatched.
She went back to the Hotel Willems and told Romer about the two men and the conference room. I couldn’t tell their nationality, she said, I didn’t hear them speaking – perhaps German or Dutch, certainly not English. While she had been away Romer had made some telephone calls: the meeting with the general was due to take place at 2.30 that afternoon. There would also be a Dutch intelligence officer with the two British agents – his name was Lt. Joos; he was expecting Eva to make contact with him. Romer gave her a slip of paper with the double passwords written on it, then he took it back from her and tore it up.
‘Why should I make contact with Lt. Joos?’
‘So he knows you’re on his side.’
‘Will it be dangerous?’
‘You’ll have been in the café some hours before him. You’ll be able to tell him anything suspicious you might have seen. He’s coming to this rendezvous cold – they’re very happy to think you’ll have been there.’
‘Right.’
‘He might not even ask you anything. They seem very relaxed about the whole show. But just watch, watch everything very closely, and then come back and tell me every detail.’ Romer yawned. ‘I’m going to get some sleep now, if you don’t mind.’
Eva tried to doze herself but her brain was working too energetically. She felt, also, a strange excitement in her: this was new, more to the point this was real – Dutch and British agents, a conspiracy with a German general – it was a far cry from losing shadows in Princes Street.
At one o’clock she retraced her steps up Prenslo’s main road to the Café Backus, where she ordered lunch. Three other elderly couples were already installed in the veranda area, their meals well under way. Eva sat in the back, across from the double doors and ordered a full menu though she wasn’t in the least hungry. There was more bustle about the café: cars were stopping for petrol and in the reflection of the window Eva could see the black and white barrier of the frontier rising and falling as cars and lorries passed to and fro. There was no sign of the two young men but when she went to the lavatory she noticed a black Mercedes-Benz now parked behind the café by the swings and the see-saw.
Then, just after she had ordered her dessert, a tall young man with receding hair in a tightly waisted dark suit came into the café and, after talking to the maitre d’, went through the double doors into the meeting room. She wondered if this was Lt. Joos; he had not even glanced at her as he walked by.
A few moments later two other men arrived; the British agents, Eva guessed at once. One was portly, in a blazer; the other was dapper with a small moustache and wearing a tweed suit. Now Joos came out of the room and spoke with the two men: some consternation and irritation was evident and there was much looking at watches. Joos went back into the meeting room and emerged with the bald young man, a short conversation ensued and the two British accompanied him back through the double doors to the meeting room. Joos hovered outside like a major-domo or a doorman at a night-club.
By now only one couple was left on the veranda finishing their meal, the wife spooning out the coffee grounds and sugar from the base of her coffee cup, the husband smoking a small cigar with all the histrionic relish of a large one. Eva approached Joos with an unlit cigarette and said, in English as programmed, ‘Do you smoke, may I trouble you for a light?’ Joos replied, as programmed, ‘Indeed I do smoke.’ Then he duly lit her cigarette with his lighter. He was quite a handsome man, lean with a fine straight nose, his good looks spoilt by a cast in his left eye: it seemed to be looking over the top of her head. Then Eva asked him: ‘Do you know where I can buy any French cigarettes?’ Joos thought for a bit and then said, ‘Amsterdam?’ Eva smiled, shrugged and went back to her table. She paid her bill as quickly as possible and went to the ladies’ lavatory. She opened the window to its full extent, climbed on the lavatory and squeezed out. Her heel caught on the latch and she dropped to the ground awkwardly. Standing up and dusting herself down, she saw two cars speed through the border crossing from the German side and heard them pull up at the front, with much spraying gravel, outside the café. She moved round to catch sight of them and was in time to see half a dozen men run inside.
Eva walked quickly across the car-park, past the swings and the see-saw, and into the fringe of the pinewoods. After a minute, or less, a rear door of the café opened and she saw the two British agents, flanked by a man on each side, being marched over to the parked Mercedes. Then, suddenly, from around the front of the café, Joos came running. There was a series of flat abrupt cracks, like branches splitting, and she realised that Joos was shooting as he ran – he had a revolver in his hand. The British and their guards went down, taking cover behind the car. One of Joos’s bullets hit the windscreen and there was a small bright scatter of glass.
Joos was running towards the wood, not directly at Eva, but to one side, to her right. By now the guards were standing up, their own pistols drawn and were firing back at Joos. Two more men came out of the café and started running after him, also firing. Eva noticed that Joos ran well, agilely, even in his tight-cut suit, like a boy, and he almost made the cover of the pine trees when he seemed to stumble, then stagger a bit, then the two men running after him fired again at closer range – ‘Pan! Pan! Pan!’ it sounded like – and he fell quickly and limply to the ground, not moving anymore. The men each grabbed him under his arms and dragged him back towards the car. The two British were pushed inside and Joos’s body was lugged in after them. Then the car was started and driven out of the car-park and round the Café Backus at speed. The other men trotted after it, pushing their revolvers under their jackets.
Eva saw the black and white barrier at the frontier rise up and watched first one, then the two other cars cross safely over the border to Germany.
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Eva sat still behind her tree for a while, emptying her mind as she had been trained: there was no need to move, better to pause rather than do anything sudden or rash, storing away the details of what she had seen, going back over the sequence of events, making sure she had them correct, reminding herself exactly of the words she and Lt. Joos had said to each other.
She found a path through the wood and walked slowly along it until she came to a forester’s dirt track which led her in time to a metalled road. She was two kilometres from Prenslo, the first signpost she came to informed her. She walked slowly down the road towards the village, her mind full of noisy and competing interpretations of everything she had witnessed. When she reached the Hotel Willems she was told that the other gentleman had already left.
4
The Shotgun
BÉRANGÈRE CALLED IN THE morning to say she had a bad cold and could she cancel her tutorial. I acceded immediately, sympathetically and with some secret pleasure (as I knew I’d still be paid) and decided to take the opportunity of two free hours and caught the bus into the town centre. On Turl Street I stepped through the small door into my college and spent two minutes reading the notices and posters pinned to the big board under the vaulted gatehouse before going into the porters’ lodge to see if there was anything interesting in my pigeon-hole. There were the usual flyers, Middle Common Room sherry-party invitations, a bill for wine I had bought four months previously and an expensive white envelope with my name – Ms Ruth Gilmartin MA – written in sepia ink by a very thick-nibbed pen. I knew instantly who was the author: my supervisor, Robert York, whom I regularly traduced by referring to him as the laziest don in Oxford.
And, as though to punish me for my casual disrespect, I saw that this letter was a subtle reprimand – as if Bobbie York were saying to me: I don’t mind your taking me for granted but I do ever-so-slightly mind your telling everyone that you do take me for granted. It read:
My dear Ruth,
It has been some time since last we caught sight of each other. Dare I ask if there is a new chapter for me to read? I really think it would be a good idea if we met soon – before the end of term if possible. Sorry to be a bore.
Tanti saluti, Bobbie
I called him immediately from the phone box in the lodge. He took a long time to answer and then I heard the familiar patrician basso profundo.
‘Robert York.’
‘Hello. It’s me, Ruth.’
Silence. ‘Ruth de Villiers?’
‘No. Ruth Gilmartin.’
‘Ah, my favourite Ruth. The prodigal Ruth. Thank the Lord – you gave me quite a nasty turn there. How are you?’
We arranged to meet the following evening at his rooms in college. I hung up and stepped out into the Turl and paused for a moment, feeling oddly confused and guilty all of a sudden. Guilty, because I had done no work on my thesis for months; confused, because I was now thinking: what are you doing here in this smug provincial town? Why do you want to write a D. Phil. thesis? Why do you want to be an academic? …
No quick or ready answers came to these questions as I plodded slowly up Turl Street towards the High – contemplating going to a pub for a drink instead of returning home for a frugal, solitary lunch – when, as I passed the entrance to the covered market, I glanced over and saw an attractive older woman emerge who looked remarkably like my mother. It was my mother. She was wearing a pearl-grey trouser suit and her hair seemed blonder – recently dyed.
‘What’re you staring at?’ she said, a little crossly.
‘You. You look wonderful.’
‘I’m in remission. You look terrible. Miserable.’
‘I think I’ve reached a crossroads in my life. I was going to have a drink or two. Care to join me?’
She thought this was a fine idea so we turned about and made our way to the Turf Tavern. It was dark and cool inside the pub – a gratifying respite from the brazen June sun – the old flagstones had been recently washed and were mottled with moisture and there were very few customers. We found a corner table and I went to the bar and ordered a pint of lager for myself and a tonic water with ice and lemon for my mother. I thought about the latest episode in Eva Delectorskaya’s story as I set the glasses down, tried to imagine my mother – then virtually the same age as me – watching Lt Joos shot to death before her eyes. I sat down opposite her: she had said that the more I read the more I would understand – but I felt a long way from comprehension. I raised my pint glass to her and said cheers. ‘Chin-chin,’ she said, in return. Then she looked at me as I drank my beer, puzzled, as if I were slightly deranged.
‘How can you drink that stuff?’
‘I got a taste for it in Germany.’
I told her that Karl-Heinz’s brother, Ludger, was staying with us for a few days. She said she didn’t think I owed the Kleist family any more favours, but she appeared unconcerned, even uninterested. I asked her what she was doing in Oxford – usually she preferred to do her shopping in Banbury or Chipping Norton.
‘I was getting a permit.’
‘A permit? What for? Invalid parking?’
‘For a shotgun.’ She saw my face move into a rictus of incredulity. ‘It’s for the rabbits – they’re ravaging the garden. And also, darling – I must be honest with you – I don’t feel safe in the house anymore. I’m not sleeping well – every noise I hear I jerk awake – but really awake. I can’t get back to sleep. I’ll feel safer with a gun.’
‘You’ve lived in that house since Dad died,’ I reminded her. ‘Six years. You never had any problems before.’
‘The village has changed,’ she said, darkly. ‘Cars drive through all the time. Strangers. Nobody knows who they are. And I think something’s wrong with my phone. It rings once then cuts out. I hear noises on the line.’
I decided to act as unconcernedly as she had. ‘Well, it’s up to you. Just don’t shoot yourself by accident.’
‘Oh, I know how to use a gun,’ she said, with a small self-satisfied chuckle. I decided to say nothing.
She rummaged in her bag and produced a large brown envelope.
‘Next instalment,’ she said. ‘I was going to drop it off on the way home.’
I took it from her. ‘Can’t wait,’ I said, and it wasn’t, for once, a flippant remark.
Then she covered my hand with hers. ‘Ruth, darling, I need your help.’
‘I know you do,’ I said. ‘I’m going to take you to a proper doctor.’
For a moment I thought she might hit me. ‘Be careful. Don’t patronise me.’
‘Of course I’ll help you, Sal,’ I said. ‘Calm down: you know I’ll do anything for you. What is it?’
She turned her glass around a few times on the table-top before she answered.
‘I want you to try to find Romer for me.’
The Story of Eva Delectorskaya
Ostend, Belgium. 1939
EVA SAT IN THE agency’s conference room. A heavy squally shower was passing, the smatter of rain making the sound of fine thrown gravel against the window panes. It was darkening outside and she could see the buildings opposite all had their lights on. But no lights were lit in the conference room – she was sitting in a curious premature winter afternoon’s dusk. She picked up a pencil from the table in front of her and bounced its rubber end on her left thumb. She was trying to keep the image of Lt Joos’s boyish run across the car-park at Prenslo out of her mind – his fluid easy sprint and then his fatal stagger and stumble.
‘He said “Amsterdam”,’ Eva repeated in a low voice. ‘He should have said “Paris”.’
Romer shrugged. ‘A simple mistake. A silly mistake.’
Eva kept her voice calm and level. ‘I only did what I have been instructed to do. You say it yourself all the time. A Romer rule. That’s why we always use double passwords.’
Romer stood up and crossed the room to look out of the window at the lights across the street.
‘It’s not the only reason,’ he said. ‘
It also keeps everyone on their toes.’
‘Well, it didn’t work for Lt. Joos.’
Eva thought back to that afternoon – yesterday afternoon. When she reached the Hotel Willems and learned that Romer had left she called the Agence immediately. Morris Devereux told her that Romer was already on his way back to Ostend and that he had telephoned ahead to say that Eva was either dead, wounded or a prisoner in Germany. ‘He’ll be pleased to know he was wrong,’ Morris said drily. ‘What have you two been up to?’
Eva herself made it back to Ostend by early the next morning (two buses from Prenslo to The Hague, where she had a long wait for a night train to Brussels) and went straight to the office. Neither Angus Woolf or Blytheswood said anything to her about what had taken place; only Sylvia grabbed her arm when no one was looking and whispered, ‘You all right, sweetheart?’ putting her finger to her lips. Eva smiled and nodded.
In the afternoon, Morris said she was wanted in the conference room and she went through to find Romer sitting there, smart in a dark charcoal suit and a gleaming white shirt with a regimental tie – he looked like he was off to make a speech somewhere. He gestured to her to sit and said, ‘Tell me everything, every slightest thing.’
And so she did, with impressive recall, she thought, and he sat and listened carefully, nodding from time to time, asking her to repeat a detail. He took no notes. Now she watched him standing by the window where, with the palp of his forefinger, he followed a rain droplet wiggling its way down the pane.