Our Friends in Berlin

by Anthony Quinn

  ‘It doesn’t follow –’

  Brunner interrupted her in another guttural blast of German, at the end of which Marita sullenly backed away, as if washing her hands of the matter. In the meantime he removed his RAF jacket and with a short gasping laugh threw it on a chair – that he should have fooled so many. He planted himself squarely in front of Amy.

  ‘So. Miss Strallen. You said before that everyone was “tight-lipped” about Fortitude. What is it? Please don’t pretend ignorance.’

  Amy swallowed. ‘I have no idea –’

  ‘There is talk of landings in Bordeaux, in Norway. Then a third attack directed at the north coast of France. The Pas-de-Calais, possibly. Or Normandy. Which?’

  ‘You’re not listening to me. I barely know Jack Hoste.’

  His expression was sceptical. ‘You know him well enough to stay the night in his rooms.’ He glanced at his wristwatch. ‘There is no more time for bluffing. It would be better for you to speak now –’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She seemed to hear the slap before she felt it, his open hand having blindsided her with the speed of a whip. The shock of the blow made her stagger. The room seemed to have tipped sideways.

  ‘I will ask again. Fortitude. What is it?’

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t tell you if I don’t know.’

  He looked away, disappointed. The second blow sent her sprawling across the floor. The force of it had stunned her, and she whimpered as Marita helped her to her feet. She scolded Brunner, who shook his head as he left the room. From the bathroom came the sound of a tap being run.

  In a hushed, urgent voice Marita said, ‘Amy, just tell him what he wants. They know already. You’re not betraying anyone.’

  She looked at her, baffled. ‘But I don’t know, honestly. You think they’d tell me such a thing?’

  ‘It might become very unpleasant for you if you don’t,’ she said, her face close to Amy’s. ‘As you can see, Brunner isn’t a gentleman when it comes to extracting information’.

  Amy’s eyes were watering with the pain. Blood was beating in her throat. ‘Marita, I’m sorry that I – once I knew about Hoste they didn’t give me any choice. I know you hate me for –’

  ‘Shush. I don’t hate you. I just want you to tell him – tell us.’

  Tell us. And Amy realised: she wants to know as badly as he does. They were working as a pair. This was the technique in action. She tried to think of something she might divulge that would satisfy him – or that would at least make him think twice about forcing it from her. In her mouth she could taste the copper sweetness of blood.

  She got to her feet just as Brunner returned, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow. He stood in the doorway, hands on hips, his eyebrows raised in enquiry. But Marita shook her head.

  ‘You are merely delaying the inevitable,’ he said in a reasoning, almost benign way. ‘We will have this information one way or the other.’

  He signalled again to Marita with his eyes, then turned away.

  ‘We must get you something to drink,’ Marita said, with the half-fearful, half-fascinated air of watching someone on a high ledge, about to jump. Amy allowed herself to be ushered through the door into the kitchen, but had taken only a few steps when she felt from behind his hand locking around her throat, then jouncing her across the room. His grip was intent, and blindingly painful; with his other hand he had crushed her arm up against her back. He was hauling her into the bathroom, its single window clouded and jammed shut. The tub had been filled nearly to the brim.

  She heard Marita’s intake of breath, and then another shouted exchange. Was machen Sie? she cried. Amy twisted about in an effort to free herself, but Brunner kicked out at her ankles and she dropped forward on her knees. She felt something go in her arm. Grasping her head by the hair he plunged her face down into the water. Her panic on swallowing the first cold mouthfuls provoked an animal spasm of resistance, but her rearing up only made him tighten his grip, and she inhaled the drowning flood.

  Then he jerked her head back and she was gasping air again, spluttering out the bathwater from her nose and mouth. Her lungs ached with the effort of catching her breath. At her ear came his voice: ‘I can stop this right now. Just tell me – what is behind Fortitude? Where will the invasion come?’

  Marita’s voice rose from somewhere near. ‘She doesn’t know, for God’s sake.’

  He asked her again, and she shook her head. Before she had time to think she was under once more and staring at the porcelain whiteness below, soundless panicked bubbles escaping her mouth. This time it went on, and she felt her strength start to fade even as she fought against his adamantine hold. Down, down, she seemed to be racing to the bottom of a liquid abyss, beyond help –

  When he released her she was almost too exhausted to draw a breath. Slumped against the rim of the bath, she coughed and spat, her lungs clawing raggedly at the air. Brunner, seated on the edge, seemed to be taking a breather of his own. Amy, on her knees, looked round; she saw her through the doorway, her back turned, unable to watch.

  ‘Marita,’ she called pleadingly.

  Marita moved her head, the merest twitch. But she wouldn’t look at her.

  ‘You see, there is no one coming to help you, Amy,’ said Brunner, her name sounding a mockery on his lips. He was fixing his sleeve where it had come unrolled. The sporty strength she had admired on first meeting him – when he had been ‘Tomas’ – now seemed brutish, a means of hurting someone. ‘I don’t want to continue this. I’m sure that you don’t. So kindly tell me what you know, and we can have done with it.’

  ‘He wouldn’t tell me,’ she half sobbed. ‘Hoste. He never would.’

  ‘What? This man you opened your legs for – he tells you nothing?’ He was shaking his head, standing up. And without warning he hoisted her upright and thrust her bodily, with a splash, into the bath. The shock of it hadn’t time to register before she felt his boot land on her neck, and stay there. Her arms, trapped against the sides, flailed uselessly. Suddenly her head bobbed above the waterline, and she heard Marita beating on his back with her fists. Let her go, she screamed. But Brunner pushed her off violently, and Amy saw her land with a thump on the floor.

  He was muttering to himself in German as he leaned over. ‘Still nothing to say?’ he asked. A single word was all she could manage – an agonised whisper. Please. She tried to catch her breath, before the next one, but it was too late. He met feeble resistance now as he held her under: she had thrashed her way to exhaustion. The world seemed to be detaching itself from her, it was receding, slipping away, away. To die was not so hard.

  A deafening crack tore the air, monstrous in the tiny space. The fugue she had sunk into suddenly dissolved – her mind snapped back into focus. After a split-second delay, like a tree just before it topples, his weight sprawled on top of her. A helpless weight. It wasn’t until she felt his stillness that she understood. A hand reached down to pull the plug, and water streaked with blood was emptying, eddying around the hole. Then Marita, the revolver still in her hand, was crooking her arms beneath her, dragging her out of the tub. She had a glimpse of Brunner’s lifeless body, slumped face down, a dark crimson perforation just below his right ear.

  22

  Hoste paid off the cab on Curtain Road and bolted into the cobbled courtyard. Pushing through the door he took the stone steps two a time, his heartbeat plunging and racing ahead of him. This was the safe house where he and Marita had first met, back in ’41, the time she had tried to call his bluff with the bogus coppers. He had become used to following hunches, but there was no telling with this one. What if he’d got it wrong, and they had taken Amy somewhere else?

  Or if he’d guessed right but was too late?

  He burst into the office – and halted. Amy sat huddled on a couch in the makeshift kitchen, a blanket around her shoulders. She looked in a terrible state, bruised around her cheeks and throat, her hair stringy and dishevelled. On the other si
de of the room Marita leaned against the kitchen counter, smoking. There was something in her expression he couldn’t read, something beyond the predatory, ironic watchfulness of old.

  He detected the sharp stink of cordite in the air, and stepped towards the poky little bathroom. A man in a blue shirt, head pooled in blood, lay lifeless in the tub. He had been shot at close range – one could tell from the powder residue scorched on his neck. He wouldn’t have known a thing about it. Hoste paused for a moment, half mesmerised by the squalid scene. It was how he imagined himself being dispatched one day.

  ‘Brunner?’ he said, stepping back into the kitchen.

  Marita nodded. ‘The Gestapo will want to know how they lost one of their most effective interrogators.’

  ‘I’ll take care of it,’ he replied, and knelt down before Amy. She appeared to be shivering. She flinched in pain when he touched her arm. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  She raised her bloodshot eyes to him. Her voice was gluey. ‘I was that close to – if Marita hadn’t been there –’

  He took her hand in his, and gently raised her to her feet. ‘Do you feel strong enough to walk? I’m going to take you to the hospital.’ But then he saw that Amy wasn’t looking at him; she was looking past his shoulder at Marita. She had the revolver trained on both of them.

  ‘I’ll take care of it. And how do you propose to do that?’

  Hoste met her sarcasm with an unintimidated calm. ‘Berlin knows the risks. Your involvement won’t come up.’

  ‘Let’s drop the pretence, Hoste. It’s over. Brunner told me who you are.’

  ‘Brunner. The man whose head you just put a bullet through? I’m sorry, but that doesn’t sound like someone you trusted much.’

  ‘He was a good agent – one of the best. He simply confirmed what I’d begun to suspect. No one in Berlin has heard of you.’

  ‘Nor would they have done. That’s in the nature of being a covert operative. When he recruited me before the war, Heydrich insisted there should be no record of my service – it would be safer that way. Given that every other agent who tried to infiltrate this country was captured, his precaution was sound.’

  ‘And how convenient for you, now that he’s dead. If I had undertaken proper checks I might have exposed your little scheme from the start. And I should have listened to Billy Adair. He always thought you were a fake.’

  Hoste felt the walls closing in. But he still knew how to bluff.

  ‘Why would I have been paying you – handsomely, for years – if I were not an agent of the Reich? Why would I have risked my life recruiting people if I were not running a fifth column?’

  Marita’s lip curled in imperious contempt. ‘The risk you took was in making me your dupe. Many have tried to get the better of me and ended up paying for it. Your turn has come round.’

  She cocked the revolver. Amy, who had been leaning against Hoste, now took a step in front of him. ‘Marita. Please. If you ever had any love for me, please don’t harm him.’

  Marita’s face fell in disbelief. ‘What are you saying? I just shot a man dead out of love for you. And I did it even after I knew you’d betrayed me.’

  ‘I never meant to, you know that. But with Hoste – I was in love before I knew it. I had to save him, and the only way to do that was to betray you.’

  Marita and Amy stood staring at one another, like actors in a play, neither of them sure of their next line. Hoste was too stunned by Amy’s words to know whether they were true or not – he hoped they were. The sands of his life had been slipping through the hourglass, narrowing his time. And just when it seemed too late this woman had declared herself to him. He felt an abrupt and agonising tenderness towards her.

  ‘A touching story. Nevertheless,’ said Marita, ‘he deserves what’s coming. Empty your pockets – slowly.’

  He tossed onto the table his wallet, a pen, a packet of cigarettes. His gun, in a shoulder holster, came last.

  ‘I believe it’s traditional for the condemned man to have a last cigarette,’ he said.

  She picked up the packet and tossed it to him. He took one out, and she handed a lighter to Amy. ‘Light it for him,’ she said.

  Amy’s hand was trembling as the flame touched the tip. It felt like she had lit a fuse. Hoste gazed at Marita through the smoke. ‘One more thing. You told me there was someone at MI5 passing information to the Russians. Did you ever find out who it was?’

  She snorted a half-laugh. ‘Always working … I might as well ask you about Operation Fortitude. We have much in common, Hoste, you and I. Deep cunning, a refusal to trust anything or anyone, a fine talent for deception – and a contempt for humanity.’

  He considered this for a moment. ‘I would agree with all that, except for the last. Unlike you I don’t despise humanity, and I don’t hate Jews. That’s your disfiguring flaw. It has corrupted your life, and warped your judgement. You were a good agent, but your hatred gives you away like the stink from a wound. I should know – I’ve watched you at work for three years. Nobody with that much poison in them can survive for long. Not you, and not your friends in Berlin either.’

  Amy detected the smallest tremor of feeling steal across Marita’s face as she listened. Tears had started down her own. It was an admission, and she knew that with it Hoste had signed his death warrant. He had finished the cigarette, and crushed it under his heel.

  Marita said, ‘The war is far from over. We shall see who is left standing at the end.’ She raised the revolver, drawing a bead on him. ‘Amy – step away.’

  She shook her head; her eyes were too blurred to focus. ‘I can’t,’ she sobbed. ‘Marita, please.’

  Her tone in reply was colder than death. ‘I’ll shoot you as well if I have to.’

  Another sob convulsed her, and instead of moving away she tried to put her arms around him; the injured one she couldn’t raise. He felt suddenly light-headed in the mystery of her love. How slow he had been to realise it. The time he had wasted … His mouth twitched a half-smile at Marita just before he seized Amy in his embrace and turned them bodily about. He began to walk slowly towards the door, his back shielding her. He was ready for the shot when it came, and tried to hold himself steady, until a second shot knocked the breath out of him, and he sank to his knees. But he didn’t feel regret. He had been loved. He could hear Amy crying, shrieking out no no no, and was glad that she, at least, had breath in her.

  They had brought her to St Bart’s Hospital. The ambulance men, called to an abandoned paperworks off Curtain Road, had found her lying on the second floor. She had bruises on her face and neck, and a broken arm. The man lying next to her was dead, from bullet wounds in the back. In the bathroom another man, as yet unidentified, had been shot in the head. The anonymous telephone call had come from a woman. The police announced that the killer, whoever he was, was still at large.

  Johanna arrived shortly after they had finished putting her arm in plaster. She looked horror-struck on seeing Amy’s pale, bruised face. A thug, no doubt some black marketeer, had mugged her on the street. Well, you know Shoreditch, darling … She couldn’t be told the real story – MI5, German agents and a home-grown Nazi who was her long-time friend sounded too incredible for words, and there was the Secrets Act binding her to silence in any case. She was touched by Jo’s offer to put her up at her place for a few nights, just while she got back on her feet, but she refused; she needed to be on her own.

  The following day, Tessa Hammond arranged to call on her at Queen Anne Street. The Section would have to debrief her on the incident. When she saw Amy’s arm in a sling she insisted on making the tea. Amy stood gazing out of the kitchen window while the kettle boiled. She sensed from Tessa’s brittle mood that she wasn’t the only one putting on a brave face.

  ‘He didn’t want to involve you,’ she said, busying herself with the tea things. ‘He hated the idea of putting you in danger.’

  ‘I know.’ Amy’s voice came out painfully hoarse. ‘But I’m glad that I
did it.’

  She recounted the events as best she could, and managed to keep possession of herself even as she described what Brunner had done to her. She ought to have known he wasn’t RAF – no serviceman would have needed ‘WAAF’ explained to him.

  ‘We’re still not sure how he got into the country. Probably some well-connected Nazi friend of Marita’s arranged it,’ said Tessa. ‘Lucky for us you never knew the detail of Fortitude.’

  Amy looked at her. ‘I suppose it was. If I had known I would certainly have told him.’

  ‘You can’t be certain,’ Tessa said with a smile. ‘I would have bet on you taking it to the grave.’

  But Amy said nothing. They drank their tea, still not quite catching one another’s eye. The space between them vibrated thickly with emotion, with the kinship of loss, yet neither woman seemed able to articulate it. Amy got up and drifted back to the window. She found it a comfort to watch the world outside going about its business. Life went on, because it could do nothing else.

  ‘And Marita – anything?’ she said presently.

  ‘Vanished, for the moment. She may still be in London, but it’s unlikely. She probably had an escape plan worked out. They’ve set a watch on the ports, and will check private airfields. The security is pretty tight.’

  She won’t be caught, thought Amy. Even if they got near her, she’d never be taken alive. She pictured Marita now, trying to recall exactly the moment she had pointed the revolver at them. Would she have killed her as well if Hoste hadn’t been shielding her?

  ‘It’s so hard to judge the person from the face, don’t you think?’ she said abruptly.

  ‘Sorry?’ Tessa looked startled.

  ‘Oh … It’s just that when he first came to the bureau – Hoste – I thought he was rather sweet, but probably ineffectual. You know, hopeless with women. Whereas when I first met Marita she looked so interesting and, well, it was like falling under a spell. It was only gradually I came to know how dangerous she was, and by then it was too late.’