by Manda Scott
The voice is cultured, not quite English. If he didn’t know who it was, Laurence might think it was a Scot, an Aberdonian, perhaps, but educated south of the border. It sounds, in fact, distressingly like Patrick did in the days when he had a tongue. He watches Céline close her eyes against this pain.
Uncle Jeremy: ‘Exactly so. The Cousins will give you a new name and an identity of your choosing. You will be safe amongst new friends, free to build a new life. They will pay well for your services, of that I have no doubt: better than us. The only question is whether or not we let them know the exact extent of your help to us. And whether that help will continue.’
‘You are suggesting that there are aspects of my “help” of which you might wish your closest allies to remain unaware?’
Uncle Jeremy: ‘I think there is very little of which they are entirely unaware. There may be nuances, however, that escape the colonial mind. They think very literally, our Cousins, something to do with their relative lack of a heritage, I believe. Their nation remains adolescent to a great degree: very vigorous, but lacking in subtlety.’
‘Whereas you and I are infinitely subtle.’
‘Larry, I’ve heard enough.’ Céline slams a hand hard on the desk. ‘Stop this. Please. This is obscene. This is Kramme? And the Brigadier is passing him to the Americans? Selling him?’
‘It is. And he is. Or was. And you haven’t heard nearly enough. Bear with me. There is reason in my madness. What comes next is the key to everything.’ Laurence has heard it before, but still, he sits on the chair’s edge.
Uncle Jeremy says, ‘We have our moments. Carpe Diem, as they say.’
There is a pause, a whiffle of a sleeve on the table, perhaps a long draw on the cigarette? A look? A nod? A raised brow? Why did nobody put a camera in the room?
Kramme: ‘I, too, have my price. A life for a life. If you want continued access to that particular asset, you will have to find me Patrick Sutherland.’
Uncle Jeremy: ‘That could be tricky. He died in forty-four.’
‘We both know this is not true. And you know where he lives.’
Uncle Jeremy gives ground again. That’s twice in one conversation. The shock of this is as real now as it was five days ago when Laurence first played the tape, even now that he knows where it’s leading. The Brigadier says, ‘Reaching him might be problematic.’
‘Where is he?’
‘In the mountains of Morez, north and east of Saint-Cybard.’
‘Returned to the place of his wounding? How very English. He has friends there, I imagine?’
‘More than anywhere else. And you can see that there isn’t time for you to get over there, find him and get back for your flight to Washington.’
‘You can move mountains when you need to, Sir Jeremy. This is my price. I will not leave Europe with unfinished business of this magnitude trailing behind. Some scores, we cannot leave unsettled. Were you to ask Major Sutherland, I have no doubt he would agree. We owe to posterity, to our prides and to each other, a settling of debts.’
Another pause. A match is struck, a cigar or a cigarette or a pipe is lit, smoke is blown out. He can almost smell it. ‘In that case, I shall give the matter some thought. Moving on, I believe there might be some advantage in our sharing the product of your recent investments in personnel without our Cousins necessarily being aware of our involvement. I would like to propose—’
Laurence stops the tape. Céline stares at the reels, at the length of conversation still to go, at the length already passed. ‘When did this take place?’
‘Eight days ago.’
‘Uncle Jeremy knew he was dying?’
‘I believe he did. He left the tape in an envelope marked with my name. This note was inside.’ He slides it across the desk.
‘One more thing.’ From the drawer, Laurence brings two more envelopes, each with a name and two words:
At his nod, she opens them both. In his envelope are photographs in colour and black and white of Kramme, Sophie, Patrick. In hers are three ciphers.
She sorts them into date order, earliest first:
In their uncle’s hand, underneath, is written:
Céline sits back, throws her hands behind her head. ‘I found these in Kramme’s desk in Saint-Cybard. Minus the annotations, obviously.’
‘I know.’
‘I really did think Diem was Sophie.’
‘So did I. So did she. So, I think, did our uncle.’
‘He is telling us we were all wrong?’
‘I think he is inviting us to revisit our assumptions. If he were certain, he’d have said so.’
‘Then …’
‘If Sophie is not Diem, then we have to widen our net. Whoever it is, they’re not only alive, but an active and useful source for Kramme.’
‘Nobody from the Maquis is in the Russian zone.’
‘If you listen again, and I have listened until I could recite it backwards, they are not only talking about the east. We spy on our friends as much as we do our enemies. I think this is an agent inside a friendly power: specifically, inside the French Deuxième Bureau. If it’s not Sophie, then we have three choices: JJ, René—’
‘Or Daniel Fayette. Strewth. But Laurence—’
‘They’re all decent people who fought with utmost courage. I know.’
‘And still do. They’re the best the French have.’
‘Which is why whoever it is makes such a good source.’
‘Christ. If Sophie finds out …’
‘I am rather hoping she will want to do something useful.’
The desk is stifling. The window calls, and the high, grey skies. Far below, the mourners are a mess of Brownian motion on the croquet lawn: clots of black and grey with the occasional glint of gold, silver, scarlet. Someone looks up. Laurence is too high up to see who it is; they too low down to see him. He leans his forehead on the cool glass. The pressure helps him think, however uncomfortable the result. ‘I think our uncle is – was – genuinely trying to help in his own obscure, twisted, clandestine way.’
Céline lights another cigarette. ‘But what do we do? Presumably Kramme is safely across the pond by now, starting a new life with a new name?’
Laurence turns, leans the back of his head on the glass. ‘He’s not, as a matter of fact. He was en route to a nicely hidden airfield yesterday afternoon when he vanished. Safe to say the Cousins are very, very cross about it.’
Céline blows smoke in three rings, watches them rise. ‘He’s gone to find Patrick.’
‘He has. But this is Uncle Jeremy’s parting gift to us and he planned it well. If we are clever, if we have luck and the right people on our side, we can get Kramme and Diem in one fell swoop. Two birds, one hand, all that kind of thing. The point is that whatever we do, it will have to be under the radar. Off the books. On our own initiative and our careers finished if anyone finds out.’
‘That would be a fair price.’ Céline nods, thinking. ‘Just to be clear, this is “get” as in “kill”?’
‘You think it’s a bad idea?’
‘Not at all.’ She smiles at him as he once saw her smile at Julie. ‘Not. At. All.’
He feels a remarkable lightness. ‘In that case, cousin mine, we have some planning to do. I rather imagine this is all going to hinge on Sophie and her relationship with Paul Rey. Is it strong enough, do you think?’
Rising, she pats him on the shoulder. ‘We have to hope it is. Because if we’re wrong, we’ll be risking half a dozen lives for a wild goose chase and I really don’t want to die for a mistake of that magnitude.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
BERNAUER STRASSE, BERLIN
27 February 1957
IT IS DARK. The night air smells of recent rain, of wet pavements, of winter’s end. The damp street is quiet, ghostly, even. Ahead is the railway yard, and the ends of the tracks where men work on through the damp and the dark. Their shouts are guttural and Slavic; proof, should she need it, that she is in the Russi
an zone.
Sophie has a new Leica and the lens is good, she doesn’t need to be closer, but there’s an itch, a need to see and not be seen, a thirst for the sting of adrenaline in her mouth, the taste of saliva that only flows with risks met and taken. She slides into a doorway and here, now, she is not a young woman, but ancient, stooped, frail; one of those few who survived when all about her died, who foraged through the after-war hell and is foraging still. She picks up a fag end from the pavement and moves on.
A dozen paces, and nobody has stopped her. In the railway yard, they are lifting iron tracks; a dozen men to each side, unscrewing them, unbolting, crowbarring them up and then lifting them, to be walked on shoulders like a many-legged python and dropped into the trucks.
This is worth a photograph: Khrushchev digging up German train lines to ship back to Russia. Khrushchev, who is as broke as everyone except America, and who is trying to rebuild the things that Germany destroyed using German technology.
There is a rumour that when the first Russians entered the east, they stole every piece of technology they could lay their hands on, that they are rebuilding the Kremlin along German lines – but they’d have to have the materials and manpower to do it, and if they’re scavenging railway lines, that’s not likely. So many things to be inferred from one photograph. Or a dozen: click. Click-cli-cli-cli-click. Snap. Nobody asks her to smile. She lifts her face to the new rain and smiles anyway. One job done. One more to do. One for each of her handlers: the one she is paid by, and the one she sleeps with. Nobody asks too many questions. She turns back the way she came and begins a meandering walk to the American sector.
An hour later, she is safe. Safer. She keeps clear of the bars. There is rubble enough, broken buildings, broken roadways.
She waits, huddled in the doorway of an abandoned café. She is not meeting with someone, exactly, but she believes that John Nadolinsky, US citizen, will pass by shortly and she intends to be in the right place to intercept him when he does. He too, she has been told, had business in the Russian sector tonight. The boundaries are porous. They may not always be so, but for now it suits all sides to be able to cross from one to the other and back again.
She is good at waiting: she always has been. In part of her mind, she is back in Paris, waiting to make a kill. Germany has not yet been defeated. Patrick Sutherland has not yet been unmade; she has not, in fact, met him.
In the part she chooses to hide, she has met him, and he has been unmade. He cannot work, and so she must provide for two. To this end, she has joined with former colleagues – Daniel, René – both now decorated heroes of the Maquis, and together they have built an import/export business that trades primarily between Lyon and Munich, although recently, branches have opened in Orléans and Frankfurt.
In the course of this endeavour, she has discovered a facility for numbers that surprises everyone who knew her before the war, herself included. This, combined with elfin looks, a nurse’s empathy and an Audrey Hepburn haircut, has elevated her as high as a woman might reasonably go within the new firm, certainly far enough to make business trips to Germany twice or three times a year.
Thus she is in Bonn this week as part of a trade delegation that has come to investigate the financial implications of the expansion of the European Coal and Steel Community.
This is the delegation’s penultimate day in Germany. Today, also, Madame Amélie Duval – this is the name by which the world knows her now: JJ has erased all outward record of Sophie Destivelle – has a migraine and is unable to attend. Men of several nations have sent flowers to her room on the second floor of the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten. She has sent pretty hand-written cards to each, thanking them, or somebody has in her name: she has distinctive handwriting that is, she is told, easy to forge.
Because she is not languishing in pain in her room. She is here, in a damp doorway in Berlin, and here, however damp, however cold, however long she has to wait, she is free of responsibility and of morality.
Her gun is a Browning Hi-Power, smaller than the wartime Colt; small enough to go in her handbag or, as now, in the hand that clasps her walking stick, hidden in the folds of her shawl against the prying eyes of passers-by.
There are few enough of those, and none who are likely to take notice of an old, hunched, white-haired, broken-winded grandmother. It is amazing, really, that she made it through the war.
Bernauer Strasse is a ghost station. Trains do not run from the French sector to the Soviet one or vice versa; there is no legitimate reason to go down those steps, but someone has done, and that someone pauses at the entrance, looks left and right, sees the old woman collapsed in the doorway, coughing. In the absence of anyone else, he takes a chance.
As he approaches, she tries fruitlessly to light her cigarette. Strike … strike … strike: the familiar sound of a match failing to spark. A whiff of damp phosphorus taints the air.
With sad, tired eyes she looks up at the passing man. She doesn’t ask for his help, and won’t: her life has been one of men walking past. He pauses. His reflection shimmers on the rain-glazed road. He smiles. John Nadolinsky, soon-to-be-late US citizen, is not a bad man, just overconfident, and poor in his street craft.
In Bostonian English he says, ‘Here, lady, try this,’ and, leaning over, flicks his lighter.
The shot takes him under the chin, jerks him back just a little, but she is up, and catches him, sways him round and down into the doorway. There is very little mess and none of it on her. She does not cut his throat, or mark her scarf with his gore: those days are past. She searches his pockets and finds the envelope she was sent for. His lighter has fallen onto the sidewalk. She stoops to pick it up, thinks better of it and walks away. Both jobs done.
Her blood sings. She is alive.
An hour later, she is in the bar of a hotel in the American sector, drinking coffee, smoking. Her wig this time is ash blonde, tending just to the first edges of grey. Her diamanté-sparked glasses crowd her face, hiding her too-big eyes. She is a middle-aged American conducting a quiet, harmless tryst with a married countryman in a way that offends the Germans. JJ will want a report, but JJ can wait until the morning. Paul Rey sits down opposite, his gaze on her face.
‘You OK?’
‘If you are.’ The film canister is already in a dead drop, but the letter is more urgent. She slides John Nadolinsky’s envelope across the table and watches him open it. He, too, has changed his appearance, but underneath, he is leaner, more lined, more patrician than he was. His gaze is harder. He laughs less, and when he does, it counts for more. He has responsibilities now, and a second wife. His hair is closer to silver than gold. Since ’44, he has lost weight, gained gravitas and political acumen, and become a founding member of America’s shiny new spy agency.
And he has become European. He is almost British in his sense of irony now, French in his freedom of expression. He is American only in his caution. Three of his men are already seated around the bar: Long Tall Louis from Texas, Ben from Milwaukee, Anthony from Boston, who pronounces the hard consonant of his first name softly and makes her want to slap him. They are as different as any three American agents could be, except in one thing: they worship Paul Rey with a fervour that borders on the pathological.
Sophie ignores them, as they ignore her. It has taken three years to reach this stalemate, but it does appear stable.
Paul’s eyes scan the page she has brought him. He folds it, slides it back into the envelope and that into an inside pocket. She asks, ‘Was he selling you to the Soviets?’
‘Not just us. All of you, too.’
‘You would say that anyway. You think I’ll have nightmares if I discover that I’ve killed an innocent man.’
He regards her, chewing his bottom lip. After a moment, he takes out the envelope and slides it back across the table. ‘I’m not sure anything gives you nightmares. I want you to know that I wouldn’t order a death I didn’t believe to be necessary.’
The page, unfolded, sho
ws a typed list of seventeen names, each with an acronym after it: SIS, CIA, DB, and the name of the official position: trade attaché, undersecretary, passport officer … all the paper-thin covers that may as well be descriptions of their ranks in their relevant agencies. Amélie Duval is not on the list; her cover is good.
Other names jump off the page: Jean-Jacques Crotteau, René Vivier, Daniel Fayette, Theodora Vaughan-Thomas. She looks up. ‘Céline is in Bonn?’
‘Apparently so. I have it on good authority that she may have wind of our mutual target.’
Her guts clench, wetly. Some things have not changed at all. ‘Kramme?’
‘Yes. Theodora Vaughan-Thomas is going to the Canadians’ reception tomorrow night under the name Susan Tomlinson. She will look suitably spinsterish: red-haired, and dowdy. You’ll enjoy meeting her.’
He is smiling, but he is serious, too. She leans in, presses a dry kiss to his cheek. ‘She will never be less than beautiful.’
He reaches his hand to cover hers. His thumb inscribes a circle on the back of her wrist that makes her blood sing. She turns her hand over, and catches his thumb as he draws it across her palm. ‘Do you think of her, when we’re together?’
His smile fades. His hand moves to her cheek and then drops away. He stands, reaches for her coat and holds it open. His gaze is grey and flat and sharply pained. In this moment, he is really very French. ‘Shall we go?’
RHEINHOTEL, BONN
28 February 1957
Kramme. Kramme is in Europe. Kramme is going to hunt Patrick (she has telephoned him. He is safe). Kramme can be caught and Sophie Destivelle, who so very badly wants to do the catching, is stuck in a reception of mind-bending dullness, making conversation with imbeciles.
She is wearing a red satin-silk dress not entirely unlike the one that Kramme gave her. Her nylons are American. Her heels are stupidly tall. Of necessity, she is unarmed. The doors are too far away to be useful. JJ is nearby, standing under a ghastly, baroque chandelier talking to the Canadian ambassador, holding a champagne flute in his fist as if it were a stick of celery. His gaze flicks periodically to one of the three armed agents of the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage, colloquially known as the Deuxième Bureau, who prowl the margins of the guests, competing with a similar number, similarly attired, from the other acronym agencies: the SIS, CIA, KGB.