Angel of Darkness

by Christopher Nicole

  She left the suitcase on the dock to be picked up by Tommy, put on her sun hat, and carried her coat on her arm as she walked slowly up the path, listening to the ever-present rustle of the casuarinas and the faint rumble of surf from the north beach. Then there was a ferocious barking, as the dogs raced down the path, teeth bared, and came to a sudden halt as she approached them; then advanced again, tails wagging, gurgling their pleasure.

  Anna hugged and kissed them both. ‘You darlings! Have you been good?’

  More gurglings. Anna looked up the slope and saw Tommy coming towards her. ‘Miss Anna? Is really you?’ Slowly he came towards her.

  ‘Did you think I was a ghost, Tommy?’

  ‘Well, Mr Bartley was saying . . .’

  ‘He was always a pessimist.’ She embraced him. ‘All well?’

  ‘Oh, yes, ma’am. Save, well, nothing ain’t well if you ain’t here.’

  ‘I’m here now. And I’m not going anywhere again, ever. Do you think you could bring my bag up to the house?’

  ‘You got it, ma’am.’

  She looked past him at Clive, standing at the top of the slope. ‘Anna? My God, Anna!’ He ran almost as fast as the dogs, took her in his arms, and kissed her again and again. ‘My darling, darling girl . . . we thought . . .’

  ‘That I was done for? So many people have thought that, so often, throughout my life.’

  ‘But how . . .?’

  ‘It’s a long story. I’ll tell you all about it.’

  He held her hand as they walked up the slope, the dogs padding behind them. ‘But . . . your coat? We took it from Fahri’s hall.’

  ‘I was there, remember. This is a new one.’

  ‘In addition to getting out of Russia, you managed to pick up a new sable?’

  ‘I had a friend,’ Anna said modestly.

  ‘And that watch? It looks like . . .’

  ‘It is, a Rolex.’

  ‘A gold Rolex?’

  ‘Another friend.’

  ‘Oh, Anna . . . if you knew . . .’

  ‘I know you stopped that ship.’

  ‘You mean you were there?’

  ‘I was in the engine-room bilge.’

  ‘My God! But . . .?’

  ‘It wasn’t so bad. Save when I could hear you standing immediately above me, and couldn’t get to you. I was bound and gagged, you see.’

  ‘The bastards! I wanted to impound the ship and take it apart. But the police received a radio call informing them that I was acting without authority, and insisted on calling off the search.’

  ‘Baxter?’

  ‘I think Billy was almost as upset as I was. It was a government decision. Those bastards can’t think beyond their parliamentary majority, and by killing Fahri you had become too much of a liability. As far as they’re concerned, you’re dead or in a gulag, not to be thought of again.’

  ‘That can’t be bad. So my immunity is gone?’

  ‘No. They wanted to revoke it, but I pointed out that if you were dead there was no point. I also told them that if they did, I was going to the newspapers with the full story of your life and your employment by the government.’

  ‘That couldn’t have made you very popular.’

  ‘It didn’t. I was sacked.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Well, I was invited to resign.’

  ‘Oh, Clive. I’m so terribly sorry. But if you thought I was dead . . .’

  ‘That was logic. My heart told me that one day I’d see you stepping ashore on to that dock.’

  ‘Oh, my darling! But your career . . .’

  ‘The only career I want for the rest of my life is caring for you.’

  ‘And fathering my children.’

  ‘I would love that. If you want it.’

  ‘More than anything else in the world. Clive . . . do you know why I took on the Fahri job?’

  ‘Joe explained.’

  ‘And he wouldn’t help?’

  ‘He was in the same position I was. The State Department couldn’t risk the diplomatic fall-out of trying to get you out of Russia, which would have meant admitting that you had been working for them all these years, and also that you committed a murder for them in England. But you still have your immunity.’

  ‘Well, then . . .’ She ran up the steps to embrace her mother.

  ‘Oh, Anna!’ Jane held her close. ‘Is it really you?’

  ‘Really and truly. Papa!’

  He hugged her, then released her so that she could embrace Desirée. ‘What have we got for dinner?’

  ‘I got grouper steaks, Miss Anna.’

  ‘Oh, splendid. May we have it a little early?’

  ‘You got it, ma’am.’

  ‘Isis! Sweetheart!’ She scooped the cat from the floor. ‘Now, Papa, what have you got?’

  ‘I have a bottle of Veuve Clicquot on ice.’

  ‘Then let’s have it.’

  Jane sat beside her on the settee. ‘Anna . . . are you really home?’

  ‘I’m home, Mama,’ Anna said. ‘For ever and ever and ever.’

  EPILOGUE

  Anna drank champagne. We had moved upstairs to be in the cool of the naya. ‘The trouble with for ever,’ she said, ‘is that for ever is such a very long time. Happiness is a very transient business, even in the most perfect circumstances, because it depends on so many factors.’

  ‘Such as Fair Cay?’ I ventured.

  ‘Such as Fair Cay. It was Paradise, for twenty-five years. In that time Clive and I had two lovely children, and grew to know and love each other more and more. But of course, in twenty-five years . . .’ She sighed. ‘Papa died first. I think those years in prison took more out of him than he would ever admit. But Mama soon followed. Then the dogs. They were sixteen. Isis lived to be twenty.’

  ‘You never replaced them?’

  ‘They were my friends. One doesn’t go into a shop and buy new friends. One remembers them as they were. Then Desirée. Then, in 1978, Clive went. He had been ill for some years. Elias had long gone, so that left Tommy and me. Tommy was by then well into his sixties, and I was getting towards that figure. Oh, my family visited me as often as they could, but they had their own lives to live, their own way to make. There was nothing for them in the Bahamas, certainly after independence. And by then, too, everyone who knew anything about me was dead. Billy Baxter, Joe Andrews . . . I don’t know for certain about Jerry, but as he was a couple of years older than me, I imagine he’s gone by now.’ She smiled. ‘Even Kruschev is dead.’

  ‘And Beria got the chop.’

  ‘Yes, in July 1953. It must have been a very long four months for him before he finally faced the firing squad. Even Charles was dead. Anyway, Tommy used to come up to the house every night for a drink before dinner, and we were sitting there one night and suddenly we looked at each other. I don’t think we said anything: we just knew our time was up. I gave him a golden handshake, a few instructions as to selling the chickens, and left.’

  ‘Just like that? What happened to the cay? Did you sell it?’

  ‘No, I still own it. But I’ve never been back. Although I intend to, when I’m dead, to be buried with Mama and Papa and Clive, and the animals. The kids know that. But until then . . . after thirty years there’d be too many ghosts. I imagine by now it’s a real Sleeping Beauty island. I like to think that some day someone will visit it and say, Hell, I could turn this into paradise.’ She sighed. ‘So I settled most of my money on my children, keeping only enough capital to provide me with a comfortable old age, and looked around and found this place.’

  ‘What made you choose Spain?’

  ‘Two reasons. My family is all settled in Europe. Mainly in England, and as you know I can never return there. But travel nowadays is so easy they can drop in whenever they feel like it, or when they feel I might feel like it. The other is that Spain is full of ex-pats, quite a few of whom have pasts they’d rather keep to themselves. So I could lose myself in the crowd, and live with my books and my me
mories. Anyway, there you have it. Will you tell my story, Christopher?’

  ‘I certainly will.’

  ‘Without comment, criticism or prejudice?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But I’m so sorry to have reached the end. It’s been such fun remembering it all again.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘But of course you are going to see me again, Christopher. You have become my principal link with my past. I expect you to come and visit me at least once a year from now on. And now, do you know, I feel like anther bottle of champagne. Encarna,’ she called.

  There was no reply.

  She went to the door into the lounge. ‘Encarna,’ she called again. And then her voice changed, and became the crack of a whip. ‘Down! Flat!’

  She had never spoken to me like that before, although I suspected that she had used that tone often enough during her career. I obeyed without hesitation. As I fell to the floor, I heard several sharp cracks, and the sound of shattering glass, accompanied by a dull thud. I looked up and saw Anna, also on the floor, a crumpled heap. There was no blood to be seen, but . . . ‘Anna?’ I whispered. ‘Oh, my God, Anna!’

  I heard a soft footfall, and turned my head, still lying flat on the floor. I felt the hair on the back of my head begin to prickle; then the prickle seemed to spread to my entire body. I was looking at an exquisite pair of bare feet, thrust into sandals. And as I raised my head, my gaze followed a pair of the longest and most perfectly shaped legs I had ever seen, before reaching a pair of shorts enclosing narrow hips and thighs. Above, a loose shirt fluttered slightly in the breeze, which flattened the material against full breasts; and above them there was a classically beautiful face, framed in a long skein of golden hair. It was as if I had, magically, been transported back to Berlin in 1945: this girl was certainly no older than twenty-five, and she was carrying a Walther PPK in her right hand. Now, in a soft voice that was like liquid silver, she exclaimed ‘Damnation!’

  I could not stop myself looking from her to the body on the floor.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I am not a reincarnation, Mr Nicole, although I have been told that I take after my grandmother.’ She knelt, rested two fingers on Anna’s neck, and sighed.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘You know my name?’

  ‘Of course I know your name. I have kept you under surveillance every moment you have been in this house.’

  Slowly I pushed myself up. ‘But . . .’

  ‘I think by now you know enough of Grandma’s methods, and indeed, her approach to life, to understand that she never took an unnecessary risk. Do you think she would have allowed you, or any man, into this house without adequate support?’

  ‘You mean you live here? And I never saw you?’

  ‘I do not live here, Mr Nicole. I live in London. But I happened to be spending the summer with my grandmother when you first telephoned, and she told me to keep an eye on you. But never to let you see me.’ She gave a smile that was absolutely a copy of Anna’s. ‘Grandma was a very feminine person, as you may have observed. I suspect that she felt my presence might distract you from her.’

  ‘But when we went out together . . .?’

  She nodded. ‘I was against it. But by then she had come to trust you.’

  ‘And now she is dead. While . . .’

  ‘While I was in the garden. Because I, too, had come to trust you. I felt she was quite safe while in here with you. And anyway, I was sure Encarna would call me if I was needed. But those thugs must have surprised her. So I didn’t even know they were in the house until she managed to get the back door open and call.’

  ‘Those men!’ I looked through the door at the two bodies lying on the floor, surrounded by spreading blood. Both had pistols in their hands, and both had bullet wounds in the head. I turned to her, my mouth open.

  ‘Grandma taught me everything she knew,’ she said. ‘Do you know these men?’

  ‘No. But if they followed me here . . . that means I am responsible for Anna’s death!’

  ‘I do not think so. You have been here for three hours. If they followed you, they took a very long time to come in. In any event, Grandma died of a heart attack.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘Because her heart has been weak for a long time. After the sort of life she led, I suppose that’s not surprising. We had been warned that it could happen at any moment. That is why Mother insisted one of us always be here.’

  ‘But the shock . . .’

  ‘The slightest shock would have done it. It had nothing to do with you. I would say that these men, like you, have been tracking her for years, but not to interview her.’ She stooped and turned one of the men over, felt in his breast pocket, found his wallet, and looked at the driving licence. ‘Edel.’

  ‘My God!’

  She looked up. ‘You know the name?’

  ‘Edel was the name of the atomic scientist turned traitor who Anna executed for MI6 in Argentina, in 1949.’

  ‘Did he have children?’

  ‘There was a wife and son. Anna actually paid for their passages back to their home in Denmark. This must be the son.’

  ‘I don’t think so. How old was the son when his father died?’

  ‘I think she told me he was six.’

  ‘This man isn’t sixty-six. I would say he is not more than thirty-five. He must be the grandson. Two generations, living in hate. That is very sad. Sad for all of us.’ She stood up. ‘Now, I think you had better leave.’

  ‘But . . . what about . . .?’

  ‘Encarna and I will dispose of these two bodies. Then arrange for Grandma to be embalmed, before she is taken to . . . well, the place where she wishes to be buried. Please don’t ask me where that is, because I’m not going to tell you.’

  I didn’t have to, because I knew. ‘But may I ask you one thing more?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You said that Anna taught you everything she knew. Does that mean that, well, you . . .’

  ‘Yes, Mr Nicole. That is what it means. Now let me ask you something. Did you know my grandmother when she was a girl?’

  ‘Unfortunately, no. But I feel, after meeting you, that I know her now. As she was.’

  ‘You say the sweetest things. Now go and tell her story. I wish we could have met in happier circumstances.’

  ‘So do I.’ I looked down at Anna, for the last time. ‘To think of Anna dead . . .’

  ‘But Anna is not dead, Mr Nicole. Anna can never die. Is she not a reincarnation of Eurynome, the Goddess of All Things, who spends eternity dancing across the heavens in a glow of light, creating and destroying as she thinks fit? She is up there now, smiling at us. And do you know, I would say her smile is warmest when she looks at you. Goodbye, Mr Nicole. We shall not meet again.’

  I turned to the door, but stopped to ask her one last question. ‘Won’t you at least tell me your name?’

  ‘Why,’ she said, smiling, ‘my name is Anna.’

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