The English Agent

by Clare Harvey

  The van hit a pothole and a slaughtered bird slithered from the back and down into Henri’s lap. He held it for a moment, stroking the cool feathers, feeling for the bullet wound. There it was: soft and sticky as a woman’s hole. ‘You’re a good shot,’ Henri said, turning to put the duck back on the pallet behind him. ‘Who are you supplying?’

  The man mentioned a couple of restaurants that Henri had never heard of. When the man said how much he’d expect to get for selling his wares, Henri sucked his teeth. ‘You know you could get double that selling to the Ritz or the Lucas Carton or one of the other high-end outfits,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, but I hear they already have someone supplying them,’ the man replied, hunched forward over the wheel. The road coiled snakelike into the valley below.

  ‘Bladier?’ Henri said.

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘We go back years,’ Henri said, scratching an imaginary itch on the side of his nose.

  ‘Then maybe you can help me,’ the man said.

  ‘Maybe we can help each other,’ Henri replied. They’d be in Paris by dawn.

  Chapter 7

  Edie

  Edie heard voices and footsteps but they went right past her door and on up the stairs. They’d be keeping themselves busy with her transmitter, she thought. There’d been laughter up the stairwells last night, as they congratulated themselves on their good fortune: a transmitter, crystals and code, all in one day. If only she’d been a better operative, hadn’t had to keep her code written down for transposition. If only that interpreter hadn’t seen – if he’d just thrown the old pages of Pariser Zeitung in the bin, where they belonged.

  She hadn’t slept last night, only slipped into fitful half-consciousness, waking with a jerk every time the moon shone in through the shuttered windows, mind feverishly working on how to deal with the situation. They didn’t have her security check, that was something. Thank God they didn’t have her security check, but she had to find a way to escape.

  Edie sat up and stretched round so she could see outside. Her handcuffs chinked against the bedstead. Her wrists were red-raw from tugging against the metal. Earlier on the woman had cuffed her to the bed after opening the shutters and taking her to the bathroom to watch her urinate. Through the little rectangle of window there were treetops and a glimpse of the buildings across the boulevard. She pulled against the handcuff but it bit deeper into the flesh of her wrist. If only she had longer nails, she might just be able to reach the mechanism. But her nails were chewed to the quick, soft and raw as fillet steak.

  Edie heard footsteps on the stairs and the click of a key in her door. She let go of the cuff. The door opened, but it was only a scrawny cleaning woman with a dustpan and a basket. Edie let out a breath. The woman began to sweep.

  Swish, went the brush: swish-swish, and Edie remembered how Nanny used to brush her hair at bedtime: one hundred strokes and then kneel down for prayers. She looked down at the woman’s back, her threadbare blue dress, knotted spine like a bicycle chain pushing up under the thin fabric. The sunlight slid in through the window, casting a triangle of beige on the brown blankets. Edie pulled her knees up to her chest as the cleaner swept, flicking the invisible pile of dust into a dustpan and straightening up. Her hair was streaked with grey, but underneath the old dress her body was upright and strong. Edie tried to catch her eye, but she moved swiftly away, emptying the dustpan into the metal bin. Edie lowered her feet and looked down at the blue rug, sliced diagonally into two tones by the shaft of sunshine: powder blue and deep sky. That’s where it had fallen, her poem. That’s where he’d found it: ‘June Thunder’, it was called. It was by a modern poet, Louis MacNeice. Miss Atkins had chosen it for her. A personal favourite, she said. And it was better to have something modern because it would be harder for them to guess – they’d be on to something like Kipling in a shot, she said. Miss Atkins didn’t think the Germans would have heard of Louis MacNeice.

  But the Germans hadn’t had to guess at all, because Edie had practically given it to them. They had her set, her crystals and her code. Why had she never been able to code without seeing her crib written down?

  The woman was whistling tunelessly, rubbing hard at smears on the glass. Edie remembered how the interpreter’s breath had condensed just there, last night. The cleaner paused, catching Edie’s eye in the reflection. She smiled – a crescent shadow on the empty pane. Edie thought about the interpreter. What had he seen in the glass, she wondered?

  Edie heard a juddering rattle. Cool air washed in like a wave. The cleaner had opened the window and was wiping the outside sill. She’d begun whistling again, but you could barely hear it above the sound of army boots tramping along avenue Foch – a military parade was approaching. The windows open easily, Edie thought. There are no bars, either. She thought about the outside. The small patch of grass at the bottom held no hiding places, and anyway, there were high fences and the gate guard to contend with. But if she could climb up – she’d been good at climbing in training, she remembered: her small feet wedged well into tiny crevices, and her light frame meant it was easy to haul herself upwards – surely there would be a way of getting out over the rooftops? She’d glanced at the front of the building when she arrived: balconettes laced every window, and hadn’t there been a lightning rod, and some guttering, too? If only she could get out of the handcuffs.

  The cleaner shut the window with a thud, muting the parade. Edie heard footfalls on the stairs, someone calling up to a colleague, the flush of a toilet somewhere down the corridor: all the commonplace sounds of a working building. The cleaner was at the foot of her bed now, in the slab of sunshine, wiping the trellised bedstead with the vinegary cloth. Then she swept up past Edie to the head of the bed, passing so close that the fabric of her sleeve brushed Edie’s face, and Edie could smell her: vinegar, raw onions, cheap soap and tobacco. A bit like Justine, Edie thought. She had to find a way to get out, warn Justine and Felix what was going on.

  The cleaner wiped the bedhead, moving Edie’s cuffed wrist so she could dust underneath. She’d stopped whistling now, and was muttering to herself: How they expect me to make the bed properly with this girl tied to it, it’s ridiculous. That Frau Bertelsmann can fuck herself if she thinks I’m going to be able to do a proper job on this room, what with everything else going on at the moment . . .

  She was speaking French, Edie realised. Of course. The Germans would hardly go to the trouble of bringing their own domestic staff, when there was a whole nation of cheap, desperate labour to be had.

  ‘Je m’appelle Yvette,’ Edie said. ‘Et vous?’

  The cleaner clicked her tongue and stood up straight, looking down at Edie. ‘Rosa,’ she replied, hands on hips. She’s young, Edie realised. The grey hair and old-fashioned dress disguise it, but her face is unlined – she’s barely older than I am. ‘My name is Rosa, but I’m not supposed to talk to you,’ she said, running a hand through her frizzy hair, which was pinned back into some kind of low bun. It was a very natural gesture, simply a tired woman pushing her hair back, but as she did so a hairpin fell out and landed between Edie’s bare feet. Edie quickly covered it, feeling the hooked piece of wire digging into the soft skin under the arch of her foot. Rosa turned, threw the rag into the basket by the door, picked it up and left.

  Edie held her breath, thinking that at any minute Rosa might come back for the missing hairpin, but Rosa’s footfalls disappeared downstairs. Edie lifted her foot. The hairpin was almost in the same place as her poem had been yesterday, when the interpreter had taken it. She put her right hand down between her knees and scooped it from the rug. It was perfect.

  Vera

  ‘Miss Atkins?’ Margaret said, smiling beside the open ledger.

  Vera shook her head. ‘I’ve already signed it. I’ve been in since 8.30, dear girl.’

  ‘It’s not that. It’s Jenkins. He wants to see you in Room 52.’

  Vera nodded, checking her watch. It wasn’t yet ten. She walked along
the corridor. There was the muffled sound of typewriters tapping from behind closed doors. Figures scurried past clutching beige files stamped Subject to confirmation. A messenger boy was pushing a trolleyload of papers out of the cordoned-off area as she approached and, recognising her, left the signals-room door ajar. As she walked in she could see the call signs of active agents marked up on the blackboard: Taff, Bombproof, Cat, and all the others, along with their scheduled times. Five men in civilian jackets sat with their backs to her at five desks set against the wall, peering down at papers under the yellow glare of table lamps. It was silent except for the clack-chattering of the teleprinters on the far wall. Jenkins, F-Section’s own, sat at the furthest end, near the permanently blacked-out windows.

  ‘I thought you should see this, Miss Atkins,’ he said, looking up as she entered.

  ‘See what, dear boy?’ She walked towards him.

  Jenkins’ chair scraped on the bare lino as he got up from his desk. He cleared his throat and put a pencil behind his ear. ‘It’s this message from Cat.’

  ‘How’s she getting on? Keeping to her scheds?’ Jenkins showed Vera the decoded message. At first glance Vera didn’t see anything out of the ordinary about it. It was asking for information regarding weapons drops and potential locations for a planned Lysander landing.

  ‘I’m not sure about it,’ said Jenkins. ‘It was received hours late.’ Vera had another look. Cat had been consistently keeping to her times, since that ticking off she’d been given. But who knew what was going on in the field? There could be all sorts of reasons why she couldn’t stick to her exact timetable. A mistimed report didn’t really signify anything.

  ‘Nothing wrong with her coding?’ Vera said. The paper Jenkins showed her was the decoded version. There were a couple of question marks – letters that he couldn’t be certain of – but no more than usual.

  ‘It’s coded properly.’ He pointed to the paper. ‘But something in the phrasing sounds off, don’t you think? Look here, where it says Supply drop details at earliest convenience.’ Vera looked down to where his finger prodded the thickly typed capital letters. ‘I’ve been decoding Cat since she dropped, and she’s never used that phrase before. Normally she’d say Supply drop details soonest.’

  ‘I see,’ said Vera, taking the sheet of paper from him and scanning down through the message. ‘And here,’ she said, resting a fingernail on one word and holding the paper out to Jenkins. ‘I’m sure you’ve already noted this?’

  He nodded, frowning. ‘Yes, her security check’s missing, too. And that’s most worrying of all. Her message was sent hours after her sched, with a different “fist”, and she hasn’t included her check, so—’

  ‘So can we be sure it’s her?’ Vera said, finishing his sentence. She looked at Jenkins with his tousled hair, messed up where he’d been ruffling it in concentration, and his skew-whiff tie. It was how he looked that made people underestimate him, but he was one of the best decoders they had.

  Jenkins looked back, his round eyes blinked owlishly. ‘I just thought you should see it,’ he said.

  “Quite right. I’ll fetch Major Buckmaster,’ she replied, handing back the paper before walking out of the signals room and down the hallway. It was a worry, she thought, striding forwards. If Yvette’s set had been captured, it changed everything. And what if it wasn’t just her set. What if it was Yvette herself who’d been caught and taken in? It didn’t bear thinking about. Buckmaster was at his desk, chewing on his pipe stem and frowning at a roll of blueprints that lay open in front of him. ‘Buckie, there’s something I need you to see,’ she said.

  ‘It’s the morning briefing shortly; can’t it wait?’ he replied.

  ‘No, I don’t think it can, actually.’

  Buckmaster sighed and pushed himself out of his chair. Vera walked ahead of him to the signals room. The other decoders were a line of mute jacket-backs against tables, but Jenkins still stood, holding the message, waiting for them.

  ‘Tell him what you told me,’ Vera said – there was no time for pleasantries.

  Jenkins pulled his earlobe and cleared his throat. ‘We’ve had a message from Cat, but it’s not on sched and missing the check,’ he said.

  Vera looked at Buckmaster. He tapped his pipe stem against his lip.

  ‘One of the Paris cells, isn’t he?’

  ‘She,’ Vera corrected him. ‘Cat is that new female WT we dropped during the last moon period to replace Sparks. Her codename is Yvette Colbert, remember?’

  ‘The girl?’ Buckmaster said. ‘Silly thing. Tell her to remember her true check next time, will you?’ He turned to leave. ‘Now, we really should get on. There’s a lot to get through this morning.’

  Vera exchanged looks with Jenkins. ‘But, don’t you see, if she’s been captured whilst transmitting, the Germans might have her code. How can we be certain this message is from Cat, and not a German Intelligence job?’

  Buckmaster shook his head. ‘She’s just new to the post, that’s all. I don’t think we need to be overly paranoid.’

  ‘With respect, I think we do. She’s had months of training. You know as well as I do that the necessity to keep to the security protocols will have been drilled into her.’

  Jenkins looked nervously from one to the other, the decoded message rustling in his hand.

  ‘Well, let me take a look, then,’ said Buckmaster, reaching out for the paper. He squinted as he looked down at it.

  ‘Would you like me to fetch your reading glasses from the office?’ Vera said.

  ‘Not at all. I can see perfectly well,’ Buckmaster said, scanning through the words. ‘Well, there’s nothing really untoward as far as I can make out,’ he said at last. ‘The girl just got a bit flustered and forgot the check, that’s all.’ He handed the paper back to Jenkins, who put it down on the desk. ‘Well, if that’s everything?’ Buckmaster turned to leave.

  Vera placed a hand on his arm. ‘No, Buckie – I mean, Major – if this agent is in a situation where she’s been captured and the message comes back reminding her to use her check – well, that’s just going to prove to the Germans that she’s been lying; it will play right into their hands.’

  Jenkins was looking at his feet now, tugging at a lock of curly hair that fell down his forehead.

  ‘Um, a word in private, Miss Atkins,’ Buckmaster said, pulling his sleeve away from her touch. ‘Please excuse us for a moment, Jenkins.’ Vera followed Buckmaster outside the signals room and into the corridor. ‘In here,’ Buckmaster said, ushering her in front of him into an empty meeting room and closing the door behind them.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at, Vera?’ he said as soon as the door was shut. ‘Undermining me in front of the staff – it’s just not on, you know.’

  ‘Oh, come on, it’s not a question of undermining you, it’s about the security of the mission, as you very well know, dear boy,’ said Vera, returning his glare.

  ‘I am not your dear boy, Vera. I am the head of this section, and as such I demand some respect. I do not expect to be let down like that. Where’s your loyalty, woman?’

  ‘Buckie, please don’t make this about anything other than it is. I was only thinking of the predicament that poor girl could be in, and the future of the whole Paris network, not just her cell.’

  ‘What utter tosh. That girl has just had one too many vins rouges and forgotten herself, that’s all. I’m fed up with your games, Vera.’

  His face was so red it looked almost purplish. Vera was reminded of beetroot sandwiches. She deliberately moved in closer to Buckmaster, leaning up and brushing a stray strand of cotton from one of his lapels. ‘Don’t let’s fight, Buckie—’ she began.

  ‘Enough, Vera,’ he said, pushing her hand away. ‘You’ve asked me to sponsor your naturalisation and I shall do so – but only if I can be certain of your loyalty. I’m putting myself on the line for you. I don’t expect to be undermined like that, in front of my own men, too. I need you onside, Vee.
I need to know who you’re with.’

  ‘I’m with you, naturally,’ Vera replied, smoothing the rejected hand against her skirt.

  ‘Well then, go and sort this out,’ said Buckmaster, his skin returning to a normal shade. ‘And for goodness’ sake, don’t be late for the briefing.’

  ‘As you wish, Major,’ Vera replied. Buckmaster stayed behind in the meeting room, and she crossed the corridor on her own, checking her watch on the way.

  Vera asked Jenkins for a clean sheet, and borrowed his pencil. The lead slid easily against the thick cream paper. It only took a moment to write out a response to Cat’s message. It was the shortest message Vera had ever given Jenkins to send: death warrants probably took longer to formulate, she thought, passing the sheet to him as she finished.

  She saw Jenkins’ eyes widen as he read the words, and heard his intake of breath as if he were about to speak. Vera slowly lowered her lids, so Jenkins, the faceless coders, the teleprinters, and the black rectangles of the signals room-windows were momentarily out of sight. ‘That will be all,’ she said with finality, opened her eyes, and walked out, closing the door behind her. She sighed, and leant briefly on the doorframe. It was done, and the devil take the consequences.

  Edie

  ‘Major Kieffer and Dr Goetz request your presence immediately!’ the voice rapped out as the door was flung open. Edie let the hairpin slip to the floor and kicked it under the bed with her foot. She’d almost had it that time, could feel the mechanism about to give. The interpreter stood in the doorway. She had that nagging déjà vu again. In daylight she could see his face clearly – dark brown eyes and a tip-tilted nose – where did she know him from? ‘Hurry up!’ he said, coming over and undoing her handcuff from the bedstead. He hadn’t noticed the hairpin. He clipped the free cuff onto her right hand and ushered her out of the door and down the stairwell, dark after the sunny room. She feared she’d fall on the steep stairs – her handcuffs made it impossible to hold the banister – but he offered no help.