Code Name Verity

by Elizabeth E. Wein

  Maddie put on her pyjamas and pulled the blankets up to her chin, her mind full of air and moonlight and the silver Seine. She did not sleep.

  Queenie came in at half past five. She didn’t think about whether or not she’d wake Maddie; she didn’t even check that the blinds were down. She snapped on the electric light overhead, heaved her travel case on to the bare bureau and hauled out the regulation WAAF pyjamas and a hairbrush. Then she sat down in front of the mirror and stared at herself.

  Maddie stared too.

  Queenie was different. Her hair was pinned up as usual, but not in the signature French chignon twist she’d been wearing when Maddie had left her last night. Queenie’s hair was scraped back severely from her forehead flat against her skull and wound into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. It wasn’t flattering. It made her seem plainer, and her face was made up in pale colours that weren’t flattering either. There was a harshness to the set of her mouth that Maddie had never seen before.

  Maddie watched. Queenie laid down the hairbrush and slowly took off her blue WAAF tunic. After a moment Maddie realised she was being cautious, not slow – moving carefully, as though it were painful to stretch her shoulders. She took off her blouse.

  One arm was livid with bruises, red turning purple, the clear, brutal marks of a big hand that had gripped her hard and not let go for some time. Her throat and shoulders were scored with similar ugly marks right the way round. Someone had tried to choke her to death a few hours ago.

  She touched her throat gently and stretched her neck, examining the damage in the small mirror on the dresser. The room wasn’t very warm and after a minute or two Queenie sighed and inched herself into the cotton shirt of her men’s pyjamas, still moving cautiously. Then she stood up, incautiously this time, and wrenched all the steel hairpins from her tightly bound hair. With a vicious scrape of the back of one hand she scrubbed the beige lipstick from her mouth. Suddenly she looked very much more herself, a bit dishevelled, as though she’d pulled off a mask. She turned round and saw Maddie looking at her.

  ‘Hullo,’ Queenie said with a crooked smile. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you.’

  ‘You didn’t.’ Maddie waited. She knew better than to ask what had happened.

  ‘You saw?’

  Maddie nodded.

  ‘Doesn’t hurt,’ Queenie said fiercely. ‘Not much. Just – it was hard work tonight. Had to do a bit more improvisation than usual, play it closer to the edge –’

  She scrabbled abruptly in her tunic for her cigarettes. Maddie watched quietly. Queenie sat down on the end of Maddie’s bed and lit a cigarette with hands that shook a little.

  ‘Guess where I went with the lads tonight,’ Maddie said.

  ‘To the pub?’

  ‘To France.’

  Queenie spun round to stare at her and saw the sky and the moon still lighting up Maddie’s eyes.

  ‘France!’

  Maddie hugged her knees, reeling with the magic and menace of that stolen flight.

  ‘You’re not supposed to tell me that,’ Queenie said.

  ‘I’m not,’ Maddie agreed. ‘I wasn’t even supposed to have gone. But we didn’t actually land there.’

  Queenie nodded and examined her cigarette. Maddie had never seen her friend quite so undone.

  ‘You know what you looked like just now,’ Maddie said, ‘when you came in, with your hair pulled back in that strict Victorian governess way, you looked like –’

  ‘– Eine Agentin der Nazis,’ Queenie supplied, taking a long, shaking drag on her cigarette.

  ‘What? Oh. Yes. Like a German spy. Or everyone’s idea of a German spy anyway, fair and scary.’

  ‘I think I’m a bit small for the Aryan ideal,’ Queenie said, observing herself critically. She stretched her neck again, felt the bruised arm cautiously and raised the cigarette to her lips, more steadily this time.

  Maddie did not ask what had happened. She was never so petty. She did not dabble with minnows at the surface when there were thirty-pound salmon swimming deeper down.

  ‘What,’ Maddie said quietly, ‘do you actually do?’

  ‘“Careless talk costs lives,”’ Queenie retorted.

  ‘I don’t talk,’ Maddie said. ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I speak German. Ich bin eine –’

  ‘Be sensible,’ Maddie said. ‘You translate . . . What? Who do you translate for?’

  Queenie turned towards her again with the narrow gaze of a hunted rodent.

  ‘You translate for prisoners of war? You work for Intelligence – you translate at interrogations?’

  Queenie hid herself in a cloud of smoke.

  ‘I’m not a translator,’ she said.

  ‘But you said –’

  ‘No.’ Queenie was quiet too. ‘You said that. I told you I speak German. But I’m not a translator. I’m an interrogator.’

  —

  It is ridiculous that you have not already guessed the nature of my Intelligence work, Amadeus von Linden. Like you, I am a wireless operator.

  Like you, I am bloody good at it.

  Our methods differ.

  ‘On the job,’ as it were, I am called Eva Seiler. That was the name they used for me throughout my training – we were made to live and breathe our alter egos, and I got used to it – Seiler is the name of my school and was easy to remember. We had to discipline people who called me Scottie by accident. In English I can fake an Orkney accent better than a German one, so we went with that when I was operational – obscurely difficult to identify.

  That first day – that first assignment, the very first one – remember how giddy everyone was the morning after, when they handed out all the champagne and perfume at The Cottage? I’d caught a double agent. A Nazi agent masquerading as a French Resistance courier. They’d suspected him and they brought me in to be there when they landed him in England – I caught him off guard at the low ebb of his strength and adrenaline (he’d had a long night being hauled out of France, they all did). He was a known womaniser; he didn’t have the balls to admit he didn’t recognise me when I threw myself at him in that frosty little debriefing room, laughing and weeping and exclaiming in German. The room was bugged and they heard everything we said.

  It wasn’t always that easy, but it paved my way. Mostly these men were all so desperate or confused by the time I appeared, with my neutral Swiss accent and comfortingly official checklist, that they were often gratefully cooperative if not wholly bewitched. But not this night, not on the night last April when Maddie flew to France. The man I interviewed that night didn’t believe in me. He accused me of treachery. Treason against the Fatherland – what was I doing working for the enemy, the English? He called me a collaborator, a backstabber, a filthy English whore.

  You know – the stupid man’s big mistake was in calling me ENGLISH. It made my fury wholly convincing. A whore, we’ve established that, filthy, it goes without saying, but whatever else the hell I am, I AM NOT ENGLISH.

  ‘You’re the one who’s failed the Fatherland, you’re the one who’s been caught,’ I snarled at him, ‘and you’re the one who will face trial when you’re returned to Stuttgart –’ (I recognised his accent, a coincidence and a direct hit) ‘– I am merely here doing my job as Berlin’s interpretive liaison –’ (oh yes, I said that) ‘– And how DARE you call me ENGLISH!’

  At which point he launched himself at me – we don’t usually bind these men – and took my head beneath his arm in a grip of iron.

  ‘Call for help,’ he commanded.

  I could have escaped. I’ve been trained to defend myself against an attack like that, as I think I proved during the street brawl when I was arrested.

  ‘Why?’ – Still sneering at him.

  ‘Call for help. Let your English masters come to your aid or I will break your neck.’

  ‘Calling the English for help would be collaboration,’ I gasped coldly. ‘I don’t depend on the English for anything. Go ahead and break my neck.’

>   They were watching, you know – there is a slotted window to the kitchen which they can watch through – and if I had called for help or seemed anything but wholly in control they would have come to my aid. But they saw what I was doing, what a tight wire I was walking, and they sat biting their nails and let me win that battle on my own.

  And I did win. It ended some time later with him breaking down in tears on the floor, clutching at my leg and begging me to forgive him.

  ‘Tell me your assignment,’ I commanded. ‘Tell me your contacts, and I will filter what I pass on to the English. Tell me, and you have confessed to your countrywoman and given nothing to the enemy.’ (I am shameless.) ‘Tell me, and perhaps I will forgive you for threatening to murder me.’

  His behaviour then was truly embarrassing and I actually kissed him on the top of his head in benediction when he had finished. Miserable, nasty man.

  Then I did call for help. But with disdain and dismissal, not with fear.

  Good show, my dear. My, you’ve nerves of steel, haven’t you! Jolly good show, first rate.

  I didn’t let on how much he’d hurt me and they didn’t think to check. It was that night’s nerves of steel that landed me in France six weeks ago.

  I forgot to change my hair back to normal when I changed my clothes – I don’t wear my WAAF uniform for interrogations – the hair was a small mistake. They took the nerves of steel into account, but not the small mistake. They didn’t notice that he’d hurt me and they didn’t notice that I do make small, fatal mistakes from time to time.

  But Maddie noticed both.

  ‘Come and get warm,’ she said.

  Queenie stubbed out her cigarette and turned off the light. She didn’t get into her own bed though; she climbed in next to Maddie. Maddie put careful arms round the bruised shoulders because her friend was shaking all over now. She hadn’t been before.

  ‘It’s not a nice job,’ Queenie whispered. ‘It’s not like your job – blameless.’

  ‘I’m not blameless,’ said Maddie. ‘Every bomber I deliver goes operational and kills people. Civilians. People like my gran and granddad. Children. Just because I don’t do it myself doesn’t mean I’m not responsible. I deliver you.’

  ‘Blonde bombshell,’ Queenie said, and spluttered with laughter at her own joke. Then she began to cry.

  Maddie held her lightly, thinking she would let go when her friend stopped crying. But she cried for so long that Maddie fell asleep first. So she didn’t ever let go.

  —

  my heart is sair, I darena tell

  my heart is sair for somebody

  O, I could wake a winter’s night

  a’ for the sake o’ somebody

  ye pow’rs that smile on virtuous love

  O sweetly smile on somebody

  frae ilka danger keep her free,

  and send me safe my somebody

  we two ha’e paddl’d in the burn

  frae morning sun till dine;

  but seas between us broad ha’e roar’d

  sin’ auld lang syne

  for auld lang syne, my friend

  for auld lang syne

  we’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet

  for auld lang syne

  Oh God, I am so tired. They have kept me at it all night. It is the third night I have had no sleep. Too little, at any rate. I don’t recognise any of the people guarding me; Thibaut and Engel are all tucked up in their pensions and von Linden is busy tormenting that screaming French girl.

  I like writing about Maddie. I like remembering. I like constructing it, focusing, crafting the story, pulling together the memories. But I am so tired. I can’t craft anything more tonight. Whenever I seem to stop, to stretch, to reach for another sheet of paper, to rub my eyes, this utter shit of a bastard who is guarding me touches the back of my neck with his cigarette. I am only writing this because it stops him burning me. He cannot read English (or Scots) and as long as I keep covering page after page with lines from ‘Tam o’Shanter’ he does not hurt me. I can’t keep it up forever, but I know an awful lot of Robert Burns by heart.

  Burns, ha ha, Burns to stop the burns.

  Behead me or hang me, that will never fear me –

  I’LL BURN AUCHINDOON ere my life leave me

  Burning burning burning burning

  Oh God, those pictures.

  burning

  Maddie.

  Maddie

  Ormaie 23.XI.43 JB-S

  Von Linden himself put an end to the proceedings last night – came storming in like the Charge of the Light Brigade and swept the pages together while I fell flat on my face on the table in a pool of ink with my eyes closed.

  ‘Lord God Almighty, Weiser, are you an idiot? She will not produce anything worth reading when she’s in this state. Look – this is verse. English doggerel. Pages and pages of it!’ The Jerry philistine proceeded to wad everything I can remember of ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ into balls of waste paper. I think he may read more English than he lets on if he recognises Burns as English. ‘Burn this rubbish. I have more than enough irrelevant nonsense out of her without you encouraging it! Give her water and take her back to her room. And get rid of that filthy cigarette. We will talk about that tomorrow.’

  Which was as emotional an outburst as I have ever heard from him, but I think he is overtired too.

  Oh yes, and ENGEL has been CRYING. Her eyes are very red and she keeps scrubbing at her nose, which is red too. I wonder what would make On-Duty-Female-Guard Fräulein Engel blub on the job.

  Special Operations Training

  After that disastrous interview last April (it wasn’t disastrous for Intelligence, I suppose, but it left Eva Seiler a bit damaged) Berlin’s interpretive liaison was given a week’s leave To Think About Her Work and whether she wanted to continue it. In other words, Queenie was given the opportunity to Gracefully Bow Out. She spent the week in Castle Craig with her lady mother, the long-suffering Mrs Darling (as it were) – poor Mrs Darling never had a clue what any of her six children were actually doing, or when they were coming or going, and she was not best pleased at the black marks on her fine-boned daughter’s Celtic white skin.

  ‘Pirates,’ Queenie said. ‘I was bound to the mast by Captain Hook.’

  ‘When this dreadful war is over,’ said her mother, ‘I want to know Absolutely Every Last Detail.’

  ‘Absolutely Every Last Detail of my work falls under the Official Secrets Act and I will be thrown into prison for the rest of my life if I ever tell you anything about it,’ Queenie told her mother. ‘So stop asking.’

  Ross, the youngest of the Glaswegian evacuees, overheard this conversation – it was just as well Queenie hadn’t given her lady mother any details (careless talk costs lives, etc.) – but the official-looking, pretty wireless operator became rather a worshipped goddess among the Craig Castle Irregulars after that – she had been held prisoner by pirates.

  (I love those wee laddies, I really do. Nits and all.)

  During that week also, Queenie’s darling, elegant French nanny, her lady mother’s constant companion, in a fit of maternal compassion began to knit Queenie a pullover. Being limited in materials, due to shortages and rationing, she used a gorgeous, sunset-coloured wool which she had unravelled from a suit tailored for her by Ormaie’s most expensive modiste in 1912. I mention my sweater’s advent here because I think of it as part of the endgame – as though my poor loving nanny is a sort of Mme Defarge, knotting my fate inexorably into the stitches of this nobly field-tested woollen garment. It doesn’t look much like military issue, but it has seen active service and has the bloodstains to prove it. Also it is warm and fashionable – at least, the memory of fashion clings to it. It is still warm.

  At the end of my week of reflection I decided that, like my dubious ancestor Macbeth, I was in figurative blood stepped in so far that there wasn’t much point in turning back; and also I loved being Eva Seiler. I loved the playacting and the pretence and the secrecy of it, and
I flattered myself with my own importance. Occasionally I pulled Very Useful Information out of my ‘clients’. Location of airfields. Aircraft types. Code. Things like that.

  At any rate, after that April interview, everyone including Eva agreed that she needed a change of scene. Perhaps a few weeks on the Continent, where she could put her sangfroid and multiple languages and wireless operator’s skills to much-needed use in Nazi-occupied France.

  It seemed like a good idea at the time.

  Do you know – you probably do know – that in enemy territory the life expectancy of a w/op, or W/T operator as they say in SOE, is only six weeks? That’s the usual time it takes your direction-finding equipment to ferret out the location of a hidden radio set. The rest of a Resistance circuit, the web of contacts and couriers, skulks in shadows, squirrelling away explosives and carrying messages that can’t be trusted to a postman, moving every day, never meeting in the same place twice. At the hub of the wheel, still and vulnerable, the wireless operator sits amid a pile of equipment that is awkward to shift and difficult to conceal, snarled in a fixed web of stat and code, radiating noisy electric beacons that beckon your trackers like neon advertisements.

  It is six weeks today since I landed here. I suppose that’s quite a good innings for a wireless operator, though my success at staying alive for so long would carry more weight if I’d actually managed to set up a radio before I was caught. Now I really am living on borrowed time. Not much more to tell.