‘Because, like you, they’re all up to some nefarious activity?’ Joanna suggested. ‘So where is he?'
‘Just hold on a moment. Let’s have the password.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. Suppose I said I’d forgotten it?’ ‘Then I would have to place you under arrest.’
‘You think you could arrest me? I could — ’
‘Break me in two? I imagine you possibly could. But you’d have to find your way around this.’ She levelled the large Browning automatic pistol she had taken from her drawer. ‘Holy shit. I never knew you people carried guns.’
‘We don’t carry them, as a rule. We just keep them handy, to deal with people who want to be funny.'
‘All right, all right. The password is Pound. I am Pound Three. You are Pound Two. Right?’
Thank you. Pound One is at a meeting. He’ll be back for lunch.’
‘Shit.’ Joanna seated herself behind the big desk. ‘You guys keep liquor on the premises?’
‘You do realize it is only eleven o’clock in the morning?’
‘Look, in the States we drink when the mood takes us. Not when the clock says we can.’
‘Please yourself. We have some Scotch. But the only mix is water.’
‘So who wants a mix?’
Rachel went into the tiny flat adjoining the office, poured, and brought the glass back. ‘So what’s the rush? Can’t you stay to lunch?’
Joanna regarded the quarter-filled glass with disfavour. ‘1 guess rationing is really starting to bite. I can stay for lunch, but it’ll have to be quick. I’m catching a boat out of Harwich tonight, and they want us onboard by six. And I have to check with MI5 before I leave London.’
Rachel sat down and crossed her knees. ‘You’re going back to Germany?’
‘Well, back to Sweden first. But of course I’m going back to Germany. I’m the SD’s tame messenger girl, remember?'
‘Do you know what you’re carrying?’
‘Nope. And I don’t want to. Oskar gives me the letter, I bring it to England, give it to MI5, they steam it open and note the contents. Then they give it back to me and I mail it from the Dorchester. I get a reply and take it along to MI5. They steam that open, note the contents, and return it to me, and I carry it back to Germany.’
‘But MI5 must act on the information, surely? You’d know about that.’
‘I don’t think they do intend to act on it. If they did, they’d blow my cover. I think they just like to know what the other guys are doing … as long as they’re not doing anything too drastic.’ She held out the empty glass.
Rachel took it into the other room to refill it, then brought it back. ‘But the time will come when they have to act. Do you have any idea what your Nazi friends would do to you if they found out you were actually working for us?’
‘Honey, the only people in all the world who know I am working for you are you, me, James, my contact at MI5, and the brigadier.’
‘And your French friends. The de Gruchys.’
Joanna grinned. ‘They’re all dead, remember? I said so.’ ‘And the Nazis believe you?’
‘Oskar will believe anything I tell him. He’s nuts about me.’ She regarded Rachel’s somewhat invisible bosom speculatively. ‘It must be my tits. And I saved his life, as far as he knows. But anyway, even if we fall out, what can he do? I’m an American citizen, and a well-known one. My mom is a millionairess who plays bridge every week with Mrs Stimson.’
‘There’s such a thing as an accident.’
‘He wouldn’t dare. Now tell me, you guys got anything going?’
‘After the catastrophe in September? Orders are for everyone to lie low for a few months, certainly until Monsieur Moulin gets back. Anyway, it is going to take that long for the Group to re-establish itself. I hear James.’
‘You guys sleep together?’
‘Do you mind? He’s my boss.’
‘Then you do sleep together.’
‘Oh … bugger off.' She stood up as the door opened. ‘We have a visitor, sir. Pound Three.’
‘I was just talking about you,' Major James Barron said, handing his hat and coat to Rachel and stamping his feet; it was raining outside. He was a big man, not yet thirty — he was, in fact, several years younger than Joanna — with the powerful shoulders of an athlete, as he had been before the war, even if at the moment he moved rather sluggishly — he was still recuperating from the wound he had suffered three months before. His face was rugged rather than handsome, and wore a perpetually surprised expression. This was because, even after very nearly two years, he had still not fully come to terms with his position. A captain in a line regiment in France in 1939, he had regarded his secondment to Military Intelligence at the beginning of 1940 as a bit of a jolly. But after being wounded in the Dunkirk evacuation, he had been offered a job in the newly formed Special Operations Unit.
This had undoubtedly been because of his extensive French contacts, especially the enormously wealthy wine-growing family of de Gruchy. Pierre de Gruchy, the family son and heir, had escaped with him from Dunkirk and had already been training as an agent to return to France. It had seemed natural to the powers that be to make his friend Barron his control. James had been happy to take on the job, if only because it gave him an opportunity, hopefully, to keep in touch with the eldest daughter, Liane, with whom he had fallen in love at their first meeting. It had never occurred to him that Liane would become a leader of the Resistance, would cut such a swathe of destruction — and indeed, murder — through the German occupying forces that she was now the most wanted woman in France, or that she would wind up under his control as well. If he was not actually responsible for her life or death, he was still the man who gave her group its orders, which too often involved life or death situations.
It had also brought under his aegis this reincarnation of some Norse Valkyrie, who laughed, drank and sexed her way through life, apparently without a care in the world. James knew that wasn’t true. He knew that Joanna cared as much about Liane as he did, but he also knew she was the loosest cannon in the business. He trusted her absolutely, but he never knew what she was going to do next. And now that she was playing the most dangerous game of all, that of the double agent …
Joanna vacated the desk and came towards him. ‘Aren’t you going to kiss me?’
‘Ah … I’m on duty. And I assume you are, too.’ He had never been able to shake off the feeling that if he once got into Joanna’s arms he would never get back out again.
Joanna pouted. ‘You are on duty twenty-four hours a day,’ she pointed out. ‘So is Rachel. But you kiss her, all the time, when you’re not doing something better. She just admitted it.’ James looked at Rachel, who took off her glasses to polish them. ‘Anyway,’ Joanna said. ‘What’s the old buzzard on at now?’
James sat behind his desk and Joanna pulled up the only other chair in the room. The usual. He feels we should have more control over, or at least information on, your movements.’ ‘And I hope you told him that is impossible. I work for the Gestapo. I do what they tell me, go where they send me, stay where they want me to stay. When I’m going some place, they tell me the day before. You want me to give that up?’
‘I would, personally. When I think what they would do … ’ ‘Don’t you start. She’s already been on at me. They’re not going to do anything to me.’
‘Because you’re an American? Not to mention a Swede.’ ‘Because they trust me, or at least Oskar Weber does. It’s my business to make sure he goes on doing that. Besides, if I chucked it, I’d be no more use to you, right?’
James sighed. ‘Right.’
‘So, I’m going back tonight. You got anything for me?’ James sat up. ‘Yes. There’s been trouble in Bordeaux. You remember Franz Hoeppner?’
‘How could I forget?’
‘Well, after Liane kidnapped him in September, he was relieved of his post.’
‘That figures. He must have wished she’d shot him.’ ‘Probably ev
en more so now. Anyway, he waited in Bordeaux to hand over to his successor, a fellow called Kessler.’
‘Don’t tell me he’s been shot?’
‘Hoeppner hasn’t been shot. Kessler has, virtually as he stepped off the train.’
‘Great stuff. I’m glad they missed Hoeppner. though. He gave me the impression of being a nice guy.’
‘Well, maybe he’s changed. He's just taken a hundred hostages and says that if the assassin is not handed over he’ll shoot them.’
‘WhatT Both women spoke together.
‘It could have been orders from Berlin. Our problem is the assassin. According to the report we have received, it was Amalie de Gruchy.’
‘Oh, my God!’ Joanna cried.
‘They’ve shot Amalie?’ Rachel was equally aghast.
‘She got away. That’s why he’s taken the hostages.’ ‘Thank God for that,’ Joanna said. ‘I mean that she at least got away.’
‘But wait a moment,’ Rachel said. ‘Did we command the assassination?’
‘No, we did not.’
‘And didn’t you command them to spend the next couple of months regrouping and re-arming, and to do nothing until the return of Moulin?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Then what can have gone wrong?’
‘That is what we have to find out. You get on the buzzer to Pound Seventeen in Limoges. I wish to speak with Liane.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ She seated herself before the radio.
‘I cannot believe Liane would have disobeyed your orders,’ Joanna said. ‘Or that she would have allowed Amalie to take such a risk. Isn’t it likely that Hoeppner was mistaken?’
‘Not a chance, for three reasons. One is that the Nazis believe that all the de Gruchys were killed in that shoot-out in the Massif Central; why would they throw out Amalie’s name, thus giving the lie to their earlier claims, which, incidentally, were your claims?’
‘Hmm,’ she commented.
‘The second reason is that Hoeppner knows what Amalie looks like. He rescued her from the Gestapo back in June of last year, remember?’
‘Yes,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Because Freddie von Helsingen asked him to. Freddie was coming over heavy on Madeleine even then, and he couldn’t risk her sister being executed or sent to a concentration camp.’
‘Quite. Which provides the third reason for Hoeppner’s claim to be correct. Gratitude. If Amalie set out to kill the new German commandant of Bordeaux, don’t you suppose that she’d have killed the man sitting beside him as a matter of course? Apparently she stared at him from a distance of six inches and didn't pull the trigger, even though she must have supposed she was about to die herself.’
‘She always was a crazy, mixed-up kid.’
Rachel had been tapping away at her key and writing down the returns. Now she signed off. ‘Pound Seventeen has had no contact with the de Gruchys for four weeks. He assumed, like us, that they were lying low.’
‘Holy shit! What did you tell him?’
‘To contact us the moment they surface.’
‘Shit, shit, shit!’
‘Amen,’ Joanna agreed. ‘Are you saying that the boss knows about this?’
‘He knows about the business in Bordeaux, and that if it is true they have acted without orders. He is hopping mad, and told me to sort it out. If I have to go back to him and tell him I have now lost contact with them, and therefore cannot control them, he is going to go straight through the roof. And I can tell you what else he’s going to do: he’s going to cancel that funding for the route that Liane has applied for. He never has liked the idea of dealing with a brothel.’
‘Someone is going to have to go in.’
James looked from face to face. ‘I’ll do it,’ Rachel said. ‘Now wait a moment … ’
‘You’re not fit enough. And Pound will never let you, after the last time.’
‘We’ll talk about it. But you can help, Joanna. I want every scrap of information you can collect on just how much your friends know about the present situation. We know that the de Gruchys were top of their wanted list before the shoot-out. They’ll be even higher on the list if they appear to be coming back from the dead.’
Joanna nodded. ‘I’ll do what I can.’
‘Incidentally, how do you propose to handle this? It was your evidence that convinced Jerry they were dead.’
‘Mine and Captain Karlovy's. And all I claimed was that Liane was dead. I showed him her body, while agitating all the while that we had to get Weber out of there before he bled to death, and as it was dark and Karlovy was in a hurry he didn’t look very closely. As for the others, I reported that they had retreated deep into the cave and were probably dead. They were happy with that; it was Liane they were after. So I was optimistic about Amalie. They’ll buy that.’
‘I hope to God you’re right.’
‘So let’s get on it. There was a rumour going about that you were going to take me out to lunch.’
Rachel threw her hat into the corner as she and James entered the office. ‘You know, I cannot bring myself to like that woman. But has she got guts.’
James closed the door behind them. ‘So have you. But I don’t think … ’
She stood against him, put her arms round his neck, and kissed him on the mouth. ‘I’m the only one who knows the situation. Besides, I enjoyed the last time.’
‘You damn near got killed.’
She kissed him again. ‘That’s because I had you along, and you were the one who nearly got killed.’ She went into the flat. ‘I think we could both do with a lie down. That was an alcoholic lunch. It always is with Joanna.’
He followed her into the bedroom, watched her undress. This was something he could do by the hour, no matter how often he had done it before. Her movements were gloriously erotic, but there was more to it than that. James came from a relatively humble background — his father was a housemaster at a public school. Thanks to that, he had been able to attend the school himself, and had thus gained entry to Sandhurst — there would have been very little point in his attempting Oxbridge. Thus his life’s course had appeared to be set in a regular motion, occupying dead men’s shoes while slowly working his way up the ladder of promotion. He had set his sights no higher than retirement as a half-colonel.
The outbreak of war in September 1939 had had a tremendous effect on his life, as it had done on everyone in the Army, if only because it suggested that there might be more than the usual number of dead men’s shoes to fill in the near future. Besides, it was what they had all been trained for, without any real expectation that their training might ever be put to practical use. And, for more than six months, virtually nothing had happened. Thus he had welcomed the transfer to Intelligence as a relief from the boredom of drilling and digging and waiting. Until May 10th 1940.
By then he had stumbled, inadvertently, into the glamorous, exotic world of the de Gruchys. It had begun with a chance meeting at a dance thrown by the British Ambassador for such officers who might be on leave in Paris, just before Christmas 1939. There he had met Madeleine de Gruchy, and been swept off his feet by her looks and her chic, her clothes and her aura. That she had made some time to spend with him had seemed a miraculous turn of fortune, a glimpse of how the other half lived, on both sides of the Channel, for Madeleine’s mother was an English aristocrat, and she and her sisters had been educated at Benenden, and regarded England as a second home. Her sisters! He had supposed that evening had been no more than an unrepeatable incident. But out of the blue had come an invitation for him to attend the marriage of the youngest, Amalie, to Henri Burstein. He had obtained leave, and had gone to Chartres in a mood mostly of disbelief that he should have been included in such a family affair, knowing that it must have been engineered by Madeleine, which had to mean that she was interested in him. He had looked forward to seeing her again while not daring to consider to what else he might look forward … And then he met Liane.
Madeleine was a lovely girl, if somewhat serious.
Amalie was both pretty and vivacious. But Liane was a goddess! A goddess who lived according to her own rules — rules neither understood nor approved of by her family. Liane had preferred to live in her Paris flat rather than do the rounds of the family houses in England and France, and spend her evenings with the left-bank would-be authors and painters than at fashionable cocktail parties. Unmarried at thirty, her private life had been a family scandal, beginning with her expulsion from her Swiss finishing school for having an affair with her best friend — Joanna Jonsson.
Not then knowing her background, that she should have looked twice at him and then offered him her body had appeared another miracle. That he should find himself responsible, however indirectly, for her fate, had been a macabre twist. That she had a disconcerting habit of taking that fate and its possible savage ending into her own hands was both frustrating and terrifying.
Most frustrating of all was the uncertainty of whether her feelings for him were anything like as intense as his desire for her. On the half-dozen occasions they had lain naked in each other’s arms she had given herself to him with an uninhibited passion. But this was an aspect of her personality, and he had no means of knowing if she gave herself to other men, or women, with equal abandon. And when he wished to talk about afterwards — because there had to be an afterwards; the war could not go on for ever — she always gently turned him aside with the reminder that she was an outlaw and a murderess. But in a war, where did lawful killing end and murder begin? The more important question was, when it was over, how did one revert to being a normal human being, a domestic housewife? Could one? But that question applied equally to the male.
He loved Liane, but without this woman now lying naked on the bed in front of him, carefully taking off her spectacles and placing them on the bedside table, he knew he would have gone mad. The amazing thing was that Rachel Cartwright was out of a drawer every bit as top as Liane de Gruchy. Her father was a general, and his ancestors had been generals right back to the Great Rebellion. He knew that to her, also, the war had been a bit of a lark, in the beginning. But as a general’s daughter she had felt obliged to do her bit, and, after joining the ATS, she had rapidly volunteered for special training, which had brought her to this office. They had regarded each other with suspicion at first. But due to Special Operations’ policy of working in small, isolated sections under an overall commander — to lessen the risk of penetration by or betrayal to the enemy — they had found themselves spending most of every day alone together, and this had soon carried over into the nights. He could reflect that, while he had broken every rule in the book by taking someone who was essentially an enlisted ‘man’ to bed, the idea had been entirely hers. And she was an adorable companion, on either side of the sheets; utterly loyal, always anxious to please, and while she knew all about his feelings for Liane, she was also filled with the wartime spirit of living for today and worrying about tomorrow when it came — because tomorrow might never come.
Legacy of Hate Page 2