The English Agent

by Clare Harvey

  The older man smirked. ‘Quite so. So who is it you transmit for?’

  ‘Well, naturally I don’t know his name. We were introduced via a mutual friend and I was told that it was best not to ask too many questions.’ The half-truths came quite easily, once she’d begun. She didn’t know Felix’s real name, and they were introduced via a mutual friend, Miss Atkins. And really, she was only transmitting what she was told. As she spoke, she almost came to believe the lies herself. ‘I’m not a saboteur at all, Monsieur. And if you don’t mind, it’s getting late. I should be getting home – it’s not safe to be out after dark, you know,’ she said, starting to rise.

  His hands were on her shoulders in an instant, pushing her back to a seated position. The interpreter rushed over to handcuff her again. As he fumbled with the handcuffs, she noticed how his nails were bitten right down to the quick, just like her own.

  The older man kept his hands clamped on her and leant down. ‘How much does he pay you per transmission?’ His breath was hot and wet in her ear. She plucked a figure from the air: the price Mummy had paid for the Molyneux dresses, that time in 1939. She heard him take a sharp intake of breath. He asked more details then, about her contacts and how she’d met them. Lies came more easily now she’d started. When describing her contacts, she gave descriptions of friends from her previous life. She took her dead friend, Bea, and muddled her into a composite of her and Justine. So Justine became what Bea had been, a working-class girl with a baby to support, a domineering mother, and not enough money coming in. And Bea, poor Bea, gained new life in Justine’s black jumpers and slacks, with a roll-up permanently at her lips. Edie felt like the girl in the fairy tale ‘Rumpelstiltskin’, but instead of spinning straw into gold, it was her old life that she wove into the fabric of fiction for the SD boss.

  Periodically the interpreter would interrupt with a question in English, trying to catch her out, but she kept her eyes turned away from him, fixing her gaze on where her palms rested, damp with nervous sweat, on the silken wood of the piano lid.

  ‘So you really don’t care who you work for – which side you’re on. You’re simply doing this for the money?’ the older man said, and she nodded. ‘Well, we have the set and the crystals. That’s all we need for now. But perhaps we can do business together?’ Edie inclined her head. Let him think that, if it bought her some time. His hands were still on her shoulders, but his grip was relaxing. The light was fading at the window behind her. Her mind raced with possibilities. If they let her go now, she’d surely be followed, but perhaps she could find a way to lose them: the streets were a rabbit warren in some parts of the city. But if they kept her here she could perhaps offer to help them use the transmitter, for a price, and alert London that way. And she could pick up as much information as possible on the internal workings of the SD whilst she was here. Her eyes scanned the room, taking in the pinboard with coloured string linking different locations on a map. She was so busy thinking of possibilities that she wasn’t even really listening when the interpreter spoke.

  ‘You played Beethoven so beautifully earlier,’ he said.

  ‘How very kind,’ she replied, her English manners as reflexive as breathing (always acknowledge a compliment, that’s what Mummy said). The hands on her shoulders tightened to a vice.

  ‘I thought you said you didn’t understand English, Fräulein?’

  Gerhardt

  Frau Bertelsmann’s behind was like battleship on an ocean swell as she led the way. The girl prisoner followed her, and Gerhardt brought up the rear, closing the door to Kieffer’s office behind him. Their footsteps pattered along the marble floor towards the stairs. Gerhardt wondered where Frau Bertelsmann had decided to put the girl. His own room was on the fourth floor, where the air smelled of dust and secrets.

  The girl stumbled a little on the first step, turning on her funny French shoes. Gerhardt reached forward to stop her from falling, catching her sleeve, and she half turned, eyes wide, before regaining her balance and continuing up the stairs. As his arm fell back to his side, Gerhardt felt again a tug of familiarity – hadn’t he seen her somewhere before? Maybe it was just déjà vu. He followed her up the stairs to the second floor. For this, they’d pulled his first night off – for this straggly girl with hair that trickled like a dirty stream between her angular shoulder blades. She doesn’t look much like a terrorist, he thought. She looks like a child who’s been in a playground fight – her matted hair, torn clothing, cut on her head – nothing more than a scrap over stolen sweets or a broken pencil case. They reached the top of the stairs and went three doors along the corridor, just opposite where the back stairs snaked up towards the fourth floor, where Gerhardt’s room was.

  Frau Bertelsmann’s solid bosoms heaved from the climb as she took out a key. Gerhardt and the girl waited. He was standing quite close to her, could smell the disinfectant that had been hastily dabbed on her cut face when she was brought in, and something else, too: sickly-sweet, pungent. He glanced down and saw the dark stain on her skirt: the girl had been sick.

  If they hadn’t caught her, he might be sitting with the blonde and the brunette from the queue. After the film he might have asked them to join him for a drink, and the night would just be beginning. He shoved his hands in his pockets and tilted on his heels, resenting the girl for ruining his night off.

  Frau Bertelsmann appeared to have jammed the key. She tutted and swore softly under her breath, ramming and twisting again and again, as Gerhardt and the girl prisoner silently watched. The girl turned towards him slightly in the gloom, brushing his sleeve with her own, and for a moment he thought she was going to catch his eye, and he wondered what colour her eyes were. Were they green like Lisel’s? But she turned away, not looking at him.

  At last the lock gave, and Frau Bertelsmann flung the door open, ushering the girl inside and following on herself. She left the door open for Gerhardt, and flicked the light switch on, illuminating the room: white-painted floorboards, a powder-blue rug, and a picture of a rural scene in a gilt frame. It would have been a girl’s room once, before the war, Gerhardt thought. It was very like he’d imagined Lisel’s room to be – not that he’d ever seen it, because Lisel’s parents were very strict about things like that.

  The girl prisoner slumped down on the end of the bed.

  He was aware that Frau Bertelsmann was frowning at him, waiting impatiently to close the door, but he stalled deliberately, taking a deep breath and setting his jaw before stepping across the threshold. He wasn’t looking forward to what was coming next.

  Edie

  The woman with the face like a blob of grease garbled something in German and pointed at her. ‘She says you are to undress,’ said the interpreter. It was pointless trying to maintain the pretence of not understanding English. ‘She says your clothes will be laundered, but for now you can wear these.’ The woman swooped towards Edie, and for a moment Edie thought she was going to strike her, but instead she lifted the bed pillow to reveal a pair of black-and-white-striped pyjamas, just like her old Army-issue ones from back home.

  ‘You’ll need to undo me, or I can’t undress,’ Edie said, chiming the cuffs against each other. The interpreter came over. She’d avoided looking at him all through the questioning, scared of betraying her understanding of English. It didn’t matter now. She looked at his head, bent over her handcuffs: ash-brown hair, parted on one side. He straightened up, holding the cuffs. There was something about his face: it was as if she knew him from somewhere, but she couldn’t place him.

  The woman spoke, pointing at Edie. ‘Now you can undress,’ said the interpreter. He moved across to the window and gazed out, his hands leaning on the sill, making it clear that he wouldn’t look at her.

  Edie bent over to unlace her shoes. The woman watched, arms folded across her ample chest, as Edie placed her shoes side by side on the rug. Edie had to get up to take off her stockings, hoicking up her dress to unclip her suspenders and rolling them down. She put them on th
e bed, then reached up again to unhitch the suspender belt. She picked up the pyjama bottoms, thinking she could put them on underneath her dress. The man was still at the window, seemingly engrossed in the bare treetops and lowering sun. He was hardly taller than the woman, and quite slight, but there was a tautness about the way he held himself, Edie noticed, like a bowstring – careful energy held under tension.

  ‘Unterhosen,’ the woman said. Edie paused. ‘Unterhosen,’ the woman repeated, louder this time, pointing at Edie’s groin. Then she said something to the interpreter.

  He cleared his throat. ‘She says you should also remove your under things,’ he said. Edie pulled down her knickers and quickly stepped out of them: left-right. She reached for the pyjama bottoms.

  ‘Nein. Weiter.’ The woman gestured at her.

  ‘She needs to see you naked before you can put on the pyjamas,’ the interpreter said. Edie took off her woollen jacket, stealing a glance at him. He was still looking outside, not at her, his profile sharply defined against the fading outdoor light: short nose, definite jaw.

  Edie undid the buttons on her dress, and unbuckled the fabric belt, glad to be rid of the stench of sick, and threw it on the pile with the other things. But as she did so the pages of newspaper that she used for extra warmth, no longer held in place, fell out from the gap between her dress and her slip, whispering down and landing with a crackle at her feet. The woman snorted derisively. They’ll think it’s just rubbish, Edie thought, looking up. The interpreter had turned just slightly so his face was no longer in profile, but his gaze was still fixed on the window.

  Once she took her slip off she’d be bare from the waist down. Edie faltered. The woman tutted and said something to the interpreter, who in turn muttered something to Edie. But he spoke in such a low voice she couldn’t hear. ‘I beg your pardon?’ Edie said. ‘I didn’t quite catch that.’

  ‘Hurry up and get your clothes off,’ the interpreter said loudly. Edie reached and grasped the slip – navy-blue, satin – smooth under her fingertips. It slid off her body and she let it fall onto the bed. The chill air goosebumped her flesh. The woman pointed at her brassiere, and she didn’t need to ask for translation, unhooked the back and plucked the twin triangles of cream cotton away from her shivering skin and threw them onto the pile with the other things.

  Now she reached out again for the pyjamas. The woman said something to her in German, gesturing, and the man said something in English but at that moment there was the sound of the van leaving the driveway, and she didn’t hear it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, trying to cover her breasts and groin with her hands, and shivering with the cold, ‘You’ll need to repeat that.’

  ‘She needs to look at you. P-put your hands up and turn round slowly for her,’ he said with the hint of a stammer. She looked at him as he said it. Was it just the sunset, or was his face flushed? The woman grunted and gestured. Edie stepped off the rug, away from the newspaper and the discarded slip, held out her arms and turned an awkward pirouette, whilst the woman inspected every inch of her flesh, making soft grunts as if verbally checking a list. The woman seemed unconvinced by what she saw, and said something to the man. His hands were balled into fists on the windowsill, Edie noticed, as he replied in German, his voice rising. The woman answered, loud guttural sounds like spitting out rotten food. Their disagreement volleyed, until finally the woman made as if to go to the door, calling something as she went. The man started, began to turn, said something, and turned back. The woman returned to Edie. The interpreter sighed, and said, ‘You have to lie on the bed with your knees bent, so she can see you properly.’ His breath was condensing on the windowpane, clouding it up.

  Edie lay on the scratchy blankets, thinking of the last time she’d been forced to lie like this, naked in a strange room, with her knees up high. It had been different then, a hot summer’s day, a doctor with clammy hands: the blood and the pain. Why couldn’t they shout, shine lights in her eyes, slap her face – they’d covered that in training at Beaulieu: she could cope with that.

  The woman had taken a pair of pale rubber gloves from her pocket and was putting them on, heaving her bulk towards where Edie lay. The rubber was cool-slick against the flesh of her thighs as Edie’s legs were pushed apart. The woman prodded, right up there. Edie winced. A sob escaped her mouth, despite herself, and the woman tutted, said something else and moved away.

  ‘She says stop being such a b-baby and get yourself into the pyjamas,’ said the man, his voice barely a whisper. Finally satisfied, the woman slapped off the rubber gloves, balled them up, and put them back in her pocket. Edie pulled on the pyjamas, the material thick and rough against her bare skin. She wiped the single hot tear away from her cheek – she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

  The interpreter finally turned away from the window and faced her, a frown hardening his features. ‘She will handcuff you and then we’ll go,’ he said. The woman shackled her to the bedstead and picked up her dirty clothes and shoes, leaving the newspaper on the floor. The interpreter opened the door for the woman, and she bustled out. He was halfway through the doorway himself, when he paused and stepped back into the room, crossing to the bed where she sat. She flinched. But all he did was bend down to pick up the sheets of newsprint from where they still lay on the rug. Edie held her breath as he lifted them up.

  There was a metal bin by the door. He was just going to put the old newspaper in the bin, wasn’t he? As he picked up the yellow-grey sheets of paper, something fell out, a small piece of writing paper. It drifted down, landing on the blue rug, like the tiniest of clouds in a summer sky. She thought he hadn’t noticed. But he stopped and plucked it up, turning it over. He held it up, reading the handwriting – her handwriting.

  ‘What’s this?’ he said.

  Gerhardt

  The piano music carried on even after he knocked. What was it? Mozart’s 453, keys tapped precisely: accurate and unfeeling as if typing a memo. He knocked again. This time his boss heard. ‘Come,’ he called. Gerhardt pushed open the door.

  Kieffer sat at the piano, far across the room by the big windows. The remains of the daylight seeped in through the empty panes behind him, but his face was in shadow. ‘Heil Hitler,’ said Gerhardt, giving the Nazi salute.

  ‘Heil Hitler,’ Kieffer replied, his arm a swift moving shadow, raised and lowered in an instant.

  ‘Ah, young Vogt! So sorry I had to cancel your night off, but as you’ve seen for yourself, a competent interpreter is critical in these situations. Everything all right up there?’ He flicked his eyes up to indicate the English prisoner on the third floor.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Gerhardt, thinking of the girl in the room upstairs, huddled in the striped pyjamas, and shackled to her bed. He watched as Kieffer got up from the piano and walked towards him across the vast red rug that spanned the centre of his office.

  ‘They tell me you’re new to the job, too,’ said Kieffer, referring to his own arrival in post, replacing the recently promoted Boemelburg. ‘How are you finding Paris?’ Kieffer was close now, smiling broadly. Gerhardt replied that he hadn’t seen an awful lot of Paris yet, but that his colleagues had promised to show him the sights. ‘Well, good to have you on the team,’ Kieffer said. ‘Once we’ve established the most efficacious use of our new resource,’ Kieffer began, and it took a moment for Gerhardt to realise that by ‘new resource’ he meant the girl prisoner, shivering upstairs on the bed, ‘then you can go and have some fun with the boys. As Herr Hitler is so fond of saying, everyone should visit Paris at least once in their lifetime.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Gerhardt, remembering the slip of paper in his pocket, the little snatch of English poetry he’d found on the girl’s rug. Kieffer was smiling still, pushing his wavy hair back from his head. Then he gave a lazy stretch. Gerhardt put a hand in his trouser pocket and felt the piece of paper. It might be important, he thought. It might be some kind of message or code. But then again, it might just be somethin
g sentimental, a reminder of a lover, perhaps. He thought again of the girl. Did she have a lover, back in England, he wondered, someone writing poetry for her?

  ‘I do like it when a plan comes together, don’t you, Vogt?’ Kieffer said. ‘It’s taken the team weeks to catch that agent at just the right time, so we get her crystals and her set. Now Dr Goetz can get on with transmitting back to London as if he’s the agent himself. They’ll never know they’re sending messages to us. Cigar?’ Kieffer walked over to the fireplace and took a wooden box off the mantelshelf. He waved it in Gerhardt’s direction. Gerhardt, still standing awkwardly in the centre of the Persian rug, replied that he didn’t smoke.

  Kieffer raised his brows but didn’t insist. The coals were glowing in the hearth, but the light had all but gone from the huge windows now, and the room was beginning to blur at the edges with night-time shadows. Only Kieffer himself was in sharp focus, outlined by the glow from the fire, brandishing his cigar like a conductor. ‘They’ve been doing this with marvellous success in the Netherlands for months now,’ he continued. ‘Boemelburg mentioned it to me and I thought, that’s what we have to do here. The British always think they’re so clever. They never suspect that anyone might be equally intelligent. They think they’re the only ones who know how to play games.’ He blew out a rush of smoke and grinned.

  Like the cat that’s got the cream, Gerhardt thought, reminded again of what Josef said earlier. Kieffer seemed so certain of success that Gerhardt was embarrassed about the piece of paper. It was clearly of no importance at all. Perhaps he should just return it to the prisoner?