The English Agent

by Clare Harvey

  But he tossed the gun in her lap. It lay inert in the folds of her black dress, dragging the fabric down between her thighs. They’d reached the crossroads now. He pressed the brake, and the car drew to a halt. ‘Why would I kill the woman I love?’

  Gerhardt

  ‘You didn’t let me finish,’ Gerhardt said, putting the car into neutral. ‘I couldn’t let you leave without telling you I love you.’

  She shook her head, opened the door a fraction further. ‘I think you’re better off without me,’ she said. ‘You don’t owe me anything, you know.’

  ‘But I do. I owe you everything. I have never felt like this about anyone before. If you’d told me a few weeks ago that the Count would accept me as his son, I would have felt overjoyed, but everything has changed now,’ he said, looking out over the flat fields of Picardie, dark and empty as the sea.

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘Being with you changed everything,’ he replied, looking down at the gun where it lay in a dip on the skirt of her dress. The car door was still open a crack, the night air seeping in. ‘I won’t stop you from leaving, if you think that’s the right thing to do. But take my gun, at least. You’ll need it.’ The last thing he wanted was for her to go. But she’d been a prisoner long enough. She deserved her freedom.

  ‘Everyone who gets close to me gets hurt in the end,’ she said, picking the gun up from the folds of her dress, holding it high, pointing it in his direction. He could see down the barrel, into her eyes – not blue, but grey in the darkness. Her finger caressed the trigger.

  Edie

  ‘You say you love me, but you know nothing about me, except my name,’ she said, holding the pistol, remembering her weapons training in the Scottish Highlands. She met his gaze along the barrel of the gun.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, looking unblinkingly back at her.

  ‘I used to be a soldier,’ she replied. ‘I watched a man drown and did nothing to save him. I had to get rid of my baby before it was born. I saw my best friend killed, and it was my fault she died. I volunteered to come out here as an escape from those three deaths. I thought I could – God, how stupid I was – I thought I could somehow expiate that guilt by doing undercover work here. But then your Gestapo boys murdered my colleagues, and now you, you, you—’ Her voice was breaking with the effort of containing her sobs, the weapon wavering between them.

  She lowered the gun, took her finger from the trigger. ‘I’m so scared I will just destroy your life, like I destroy the lives of everyone who comes into contact with me.’

  He put his arms round her, and she let him. ‘I do love you,’ she said. ‘It’s unbearable.’ She pushed the gun back into his holster as he pulled her towards him.

  Gerhardt

  ‘What now?’ Gerhardt said as they sped on through the French countryside. When he’d left the restaurant he hadn’t thought beyond going to avenue Foch to tell her he loved her. And now here he was in a stolen car with an escaped English agent.

  ‘Keep going,’ she said. ‘We might make it to the Channel before dawn.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘We find a boat, and we hope that the tide is on our side.’

  They needed to get to the coast, to find a friendly fisherman and for the seas to be calm and clear, she said. And then where – to England? He’d be thrown in jail, of course. To neutral Ireland, perhaps, if they could find someone willing to take them that far? It was possible: there was still a chance.

  The road was straight and empty, running ahead of them into the darkness. He caught her looking at him and glanced back. ‘I’ll have to ditch my uniform,’ he said. She nodded. He turned his attention back to the road. ‘And we’ll need to pay for the boat. I’ve got my watch. It must be worth something.’

  ‘I have a solid-silver powder compact,’ she said, ‘and you have your watch. Together, they might just save us.’ When he glanced sideways he could see that she was biting the edge of her thumb.

  Far in the distance behind them he thought he glimpsed a single beam of light: a motorbike? Who would be out on a motorbike after curfew, at this time of night? In any case, it was kilometres behind them, away over the darkened fields. Gerhardt fixed his eyes on the road ahead and drove on.

  Edie

  Edie decided to take the mirror compact from its hiding place in the bodice of her dress, thinking to feel the weight of it, gauge how much it might be worth. But it was caught on something snagging on the dress, and when she tugged, a piece of cloth came too. Except it wasn’t a torn strip of lining that she pulled out, it was a thin silk scarf, patterned with lines and swirls. She almost disregarded it, let it slip to the floor. It was the compact she was interested in. But just then the moon came out from behind a cloud, shining full into the car, and she saw that what she held in her hands wasn’t just a silk handkerchief.

  ‘Look at this,’ she said. Gerhardt turned his head as she held it out. ‘A map.’ The screen-printed patterns weren’t mere decoration, there were blue swirls of rivers, grey ribboning roads, black-dotted fence lines, and there, marked in red ink with a cross, was an ‘L’.

  ‘L’ for ‘landing strip’.

  ‘L’ for ‘Lysander’.

  They were approaching another junction. There was a choice: north-west to the coast, or north-east, to Picardie. Gerhardt began to feed the wheel through his fists, sending the car left. ‘Not that way,’ she said. ‘We need to head towards Aisne and find a landing strip in a field near Château Thierry.’

  The engine growled as they turned right, away from the coast. She glanced back the way they’d come. What was that? She thought she could see a single point of light in the far distance, but when she looked again it was gone. She must have been mistaken. They’d lost Kieffer, and there wouldn’t be any other vehicles on the road at this hour, after curfew, would there?

  Gerhardt

  Between them they worked it out. The double-agent Lysander pilot who supplied black market goods to avenue Foch: he was the key. She said she knew he’d been the one who brought the fake Chanel dress because she’d seen him arriving with the bag, watched from her vantage point as she sawed through her window bars in the lonely afternoon. It was a British map, screen-printed silk. English agents used them all the time, she said, grinning in recognition; it was exactly the same as the ones they’d used in training.

  ‘But how do you know it’s not a trap?’ he said. ‘How do you know whose side this pilot is really on?’

  ‘It could be a trap, you’re right. The pilot could betray us. But I think Miss Atkins is behind this. And I think we can trust her.’

  Gerhardt thought about this ‘Miss Atkins’ and wondered how her influence could have extended across the Channel, and why she cared so much about this particular agent of hers. But he said nothing, because, after all, what choice did they have?

  Once they’d found their way from the map, they held hands as he drove along the wide road, feeling the warmth of the connection between them. The moon shone down, lighting up the way as it cut between fields and sky. And he was together in the car with the woman he loved. Driving, driving away. In his rear-view mirror he could just make out a few final volleys of flack over Paris, drifting skywards like sparks. And for a moment he thought he heard the sound of a car somewhere in the distance behind them, but told himself it was probably just his ears still ringing from the air raid. He let his mind drift and the memory-dream reach its conclusion:

  The girl was waving from the kerb . . .

  The chauffeur pulled the car in beside her and furled up the black-and-red swastika flag that hung from the stubby flagpole in the car bonnet so that it no longer showed . . .

  The girl got out without waiting for Hans to open the door for her . . .

  ‘Shall I pass on your regards?’ Gerhardt’s mother called out through the window, as Hans put the car back into gear.

  ‘Yes, do,’ said the young woman, smoothing her palms down her skirt.

  ‘Remind me of your name
again, dear?’

  The woman opened her mouth to reply. ‘Miss Rosenberg – Vera,’ she said. ‘Do pass on my regards to Count Friedrich von der Schulenburg. And thank you again for the lift.’

  He wondered who she was, Vera Rosenberg. And he wondered what happened to her, after that long-ago midday in Bucharest.

  Chapter 22

  Dericourt

  ‘And when are you going to bring your new wife to meet me?’

  Henri prodded the dying embers with the poker, not answering his mother. Never, he thought. She can never meet you. I’ve told her you’re dead.

  From outside there was the faintest crackle of distant flak, no louder than twigs burning in the hearth. Paris, just one hundred kilometres south-east, would be blazing tonight, he knew. And Jeannot was there.

  His mother finished sweeping the stone floor, opened the back door and swished the detritus outside. There was a sudden blast of icy air as she did so, and the firelight flickered. He poked again at a charred log. Deep inside it was still orange-red. Jeannot sometimes wore lipstick that colour; it made him think of her lips. Ah Jeannot. He sighed.

  His mother locked the door and hung the keys in their usual place on the nail. There was a grunt from upstairs: a muffled, angry voice. ‘I should go to bed,’ his mother said. ‘Your father doesn’t like it if I stay up too late. In any case, I have to be at work for six.’ She took off her apron and hung it over the banister. ‘Tell me again about your wife, and I can imagine her when I’m going to sleep, or when I’m scrubbing the steps tomorrow,’ she said, pausing on the bottom stair.

  ‘She’s small and pretty, like you, Maman,’ he said. His mother smiled at this, and made an absurd coy gesture, tilting her head and lifting a hand to her straggled hair. Maybe she had been pretty once.

  ‘And her personality? Her character?’

  ‘Sometimes happy, sometimes sad,’ Henri replied. When he’d left their apartment she’d been sobbing uncontrollably. She’d lashed out at him when he’d gone to kiss her goodbye. He’d locked the knife drawer, taken the key. He’d taken her shoes, too, scooping them from the corridor floor on his way out. She wouldn’t be able to hurt herself, or go anywhere without her shoes. As for the bombs, they weren’t aiming for the city, only for the weapons depot. She should be fine, shouldn’t she? She should be safe until his return, by which time the moon would be waxing and she’d be returned to a giggling sprite.

  ‘Well, goodnight, son,’ his mother said, turning to go. In the firelight the grey in her hair looked rose gold. Henri pushed himself out of the rocking chair and went over to her, kissing her on both her paper-dry cheeks.

  ‘Goodnight, Maman,’ he said. As he pulled away there was a sharp prick of metal against his thigh. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled them out. ‘I nearly forgot. I have a gift for you, Maman.’ He opened his palm to reveal the twin stars nestling there.

  His mother gasped, put a hand to her mouth. ‘Henri, are they really—’ She couldn’t even say it.

  ‘Yes, Maman, they are really diamonds. Diamond earrings. For you.’

  ‘But I couldn’t possibly—’

  ‘Sell them, if you want. Sell them and use the money to stop working. Or wear them to church on Sundays. I don’t mind. They’re yours.’ He took her hand away from her mouth, turned it to make a cup, and tipped the diamond earrings into it, closing her fingers shut.

  ‘I don’t know what to say. Thank you, son.’

  He couldn’t look at her face, knowing there’d be tears in her eyes. He couldn’t cope with her tears. ‘Don’t thank me,’ he said. ‘For God’s sake, don’t thank me for anything. Now go to bed, or Papa will be angry with you.’

  He turned away, back to where the empty rocking chair waited, and then sat down, head in hands, listening to her footsteps going upstairs one-two, in tune with the in-out of his breathing. He stayed like that for a long time, hearing the creaking timbers as his mother padded across the bedroom and slipped into bed beside her husband. Eventually it became quiet in the little house, and Henri judged it was time. He wouldn’t sleep by the fireplace, as he’d done as a child with his two elder brothers, jostling on the hard floor for the place closest to the still-warm embers. He heaved himself slowly out of the rocking chair, ran a hand through his hair, and pulled on his flying jacket. Then he took the door key off the nail, and unlocked the door. The cold air was a slap in the face. He wondered if anyone would be waiting at the landing strip? No matter – he’d done what he’d had to do. It was time to go.

  Edie

  ‘She won’t budge,’ Gerhardt shouted above the throb of the Lysander engine, as he shouldered the landing strut.

  ‘Let’s try again,’ Edie replied. Because what was the alternative? It was a small miracle they’d got this far, made it to the airstrip on the outskirts of the market town. Even given the chaos of the bombing raid and its aftermath, word would be out by now: Boemelburg’s car missing, she and Gerhardt gone. No roadblock soldier would wave them through, regardless of Gerhardt’s prestigious family connections. And the pilot wouldn’t risk flying in daylight. They’d be stuck. As stuck as the Lysander’s landing gear was in the muddy field. She shivered, bitter-cold, even though Gerhardt had given her his coat to wear.

  Winter was on the cusp of spring, and the icy French fields were beginning to thaw. The hem of the stupid evening dress clung to the cloddy earth as she turned to look up at the cockpit. The pilot gave the thumbs-up from inside the cab, the engine roared, and they tried pushing again, but the wheels spun deeper into the claggy quagmire, flicking mud over them, but not moving the aircraft forward an inch.

  The Lysander’s engine died down to a judder and then stilled. The pilot got out, booted feet sinking in the white-flecked earth as he joined them. The skies were stilled, British bombers long gone. There was nothing but the faint rustle of the hedgerows and the distant tweet of a waking bird. Soon it would be dawn, creeping from the east, overtaking them. The pilot took out a cigarette. ‘I can point you in the direction of a safe house in the village,’ he said. ‘But you can’t stay with me.’ His cigarette tip was like tracer fire. The smell of his smoke in the night air reminded her of Miss Atkins, and of that long-ago night in Tempsford when she left for France.

  They couldn’t go to a house in the village. Who’d take on a uniformed German on the run with a British traitor? They’d both end up getting shot, sooner or later. ‘Eh bien, we can’t stay here,’ the pilot said, shrugging and flicking ash into the mud.

  ‘No, we can’t,’ Edie said, taking off Gerhardt’s coat and flinging it in front of one of the plane’s wheels. ‘This might give it some purchase – one last try,’ she said to the pilot. ‘Please.’

  ‘All right then,’ he said, ‘one last try.’ He was just about to get into the plane when they all saw it: in the distance, where ebony became indigo and the slender moon was sinking towards the horizon, moving across the dark flank of the valley’s edge: a single amber light, travelling at speed. A motorbike?

  As the light wavered closer, bouncing off hedgerows and into ditches, illuminating the winding country road, they could hear the buzzing sound of an engine. But it didn’t sound like a motorbike.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said. The pilot nodded and tossed his cigarette away before clambering into the cab. He turned the ignition. The engine roared back to life, and the rotor daisy-wheeled in the darkness. She leant against the strut, heaving forwards, willing it to move. She could see Gerhardt pushing from the other side. The plane’s wheels kicked and skidded against the half-thawed ground and the thrown-down overcoat.

  The vehicle was closer now. She could make out a moving shadow fast approaching. No, it wasn’t a motorbike. It was a car with only one headlight working, and something wrong with its engine, cough-choking up the road in the wrong gear. She thought about Kieffer chasing them through the streets of Paris. His car had been hit by shrapnel, but what if it hadn’t been burnt out? What if it had just been damaged? She thought of the so
ldier at the roadblock – he’d seen which way they went. Picardie was flat and open and there were no other vehicles on the roads – it would have been possible for Kieffer to make out their distant tail lights and follow them, follow them all the way here to the makeshift airstrip in the muddy field.

  The Lysander wheels still spun uselessly. ‘It won’t work,’ the pilot shouted from the cockpit window. Edie saw the car coming to a halt by the gate at the end of the field. Above the sound of the engine she could just hear shouts: German. What was that? A whirring crack across the night – a shot, then another. Black figures oozing out of the car towards them across the field. It was Kieffer – of course it was Kieffer.

  She pushed as hard as she could against the strut, and fell into the mud. The plane had lurched forwards, finally catching on the fabric of the coat. They were at last clear of the rut. Gerhardt’s hand was there, helping her up. Could they do it? Bullets buzzed past like angry hornets. The plane had begun to move, bumping slowly at first, but with increasing speed over the pitted earth. They sprinted to the ladder and Gerhardt shoved her in front of him into the hatch. She hurled herself inside, hitting something hard, winding herself. She caught herself up, turned in the little cab to see a dark line of Linden trees, rearing up out of the grey fields outside the window.

  ‘Gerhardt!’ Edie shouted. Where was he? He’d been behind her on the steps. She looked through the hatch – but outside was a jostle of moving space. She couldn’t see him. The pilot rammed the revs up and the plane surged. She could hear more shots. Where was Gerhardt? She turned back to the hatch. He was there, on the ladder, but not yet inside, and the plane was already nosing upwards.